Death Embraces Read online

  To be on the safe side, I started tunnelling sideways instead of upward. Thanks to my vampire hardened fingernails, it was easy enough to make my way through the soil. After about five feet or so of digging, my fingers encountered an obstacle. Carefully poking at it, I determined that it was made of wood. Investigative digging to both sides then upwards determined that whatever it was, it was much bigger than the box my head and hand had been interred in.

  I reached the top of the obstacle quickly enough then dug sideways again. I was reluctant to keep on going upwards when I was still so close to my hand’s burial site. Reaching the far side of the wooden hindrance, it was the thought of my own small wooden boxes that made me realize what the obstacle was and where I buried. It was a coffin and that meant I was in a cemetery.

  A graveyard would be a logical enough place to hide my remains. It also explained the holy dirt. If the ground was consecrated then there would be plenty of anti-vampire soil to inter my parts in. I hoped whoever had buried me had sustained some nasty injuries during the process. They probably wore protective gloves and didn’t even get an itchy spot. Stupid vampires didn’t tend to last long. And what are you basing that assumption on? Your overwhelming three weeks of being a vampire yourself? I winced a little at my cutting subconscious. It was being particularly harsh today.

  Staying at my current depth, I remained above any more coffins that might be in the area. I did squish a few bugs and worms during the journey but being smeared by their goo was a small price to pay for freedom.

  After I’d dug maybe thirty feet or so, I figured I’d probably moved far enough away. Angling upwards, I stopped digging when I could feel the heat of the sun burning through the soil. My hand retreated back down the underground tunnel and dug out a small niche to wait out the day. Righty, as I’d nicknamed my hand, deserved a rest after what I’d put it through.

  Step one of my barely thought out plan for freedom was now complete. With hours of daylight still left, I decided I’d better think this through all the way. Ok, I need to break all of my body parts free and bring them together. What then? Pretend I was just a big jigsaw puzzle? I’d have to put myself back together like Humpty Dumpty. The question was; could I magically reattach all of my limbs or was this just wishful thinking?

  I was pretty sure that survival after decapitation was an unprecedented event. There was no doubt that I wasn’t a run-of-the-mill vampire. But just because I could still think and control my dismembered parts didn’t mean I’d be able to reattach them. I have to try. I can’t just stay in my boxes and wait to die.

  In the secret depths of my mind, I made myself a promise. If I managed to reunite my body and couldn’t reattach everything, I’d just drag all my pieces out in the open and let the sun finish me off. It would be suicide by sunlight. True death would have to be better than being Humpty Dumpty for the rest of my unnatural life.

  If I really was going to go ahead with my mad plan, I needed to know where the rest of my body was located. Drawing my consciousness back in, I concentrated on my left hand. Feeling an answering twitch somewhere in the distance, my consciousness swept off towards it. Sending out my will was harder with the killing sunlight glaring down and it took longer to reach the appendage this time.

  Finally, I located then possessed my left hand and did a quick victory fist pump. Since I had time to kill before Righty could make its way to the surface, I started building a wall. Lefty wouldn’t be able to free itself without a bobby pin but it could at least do its bit to help.

  This time, I had to build three walls before I finally located the lock. I built the wall high enough so that, once Righty picked the lock, I’d be able to slip Lefty outside with a minimum of fuss. When the wall was high enough and my fingertips could touch the lid, I allowed my hand to rest.

  Since the sun was still up, I spent some time attempting to locate the rest of my body. With a bit of practice and persistence, I found them all. As the last of the sun’s rays slipped over the horizon, my concentration increased. Suddenly, my consciousness was hovering over eleven different locations at the same time.

  Drawing a map in my head, I wondered if my burial had been accidental or intentional. I’d been buried in roughly the shape I’d be if I was still whole. My head was at the top with my upper torso in the direction I was thinking of as south. Below the torso was my lower body. Further south were my legs and feet. All were buried a good distance from each other but they should be easy enough to locate. My hands and arms were off to the east and west.

  Now that I had a fair idea of where all of my bits and pieces were, I had to rethink my plan. It would be a pain in the butt for Righty to have to traverse what must be a sizable cemetery to break Lefty free only to have to return later to retrieve my right arm. The arm was only a hundred feet or so to the north of Righty. It just made sense to go after it first.

  Sending my consciousness back to Righty, I dug the rest of the way up to the surface. Just before my fingers broke free, I froze. Someone was standing over my head again. I cautiously sent my consciousness upwards. Whoever the watcher was, they were standing right over me. After a few minutes, I sensed them walking away. It had to be a guard and that meant I needed to be extremely careful.

  Righty finally broke free of the ground and felt around gingerly. My fingers encountered thick, coarse grass. I’d left a small hole behind so spent a few minutes locating nearby tufts and covering the small excavation with plucked blades. I hoped it wasn’t glaringly obvious that something undead had crawled out of the ground.

  Satisfied with its job, Righty scurried towards the area where my severed right arm had been laid to rest. I kept my hand low to the ground, dragging the protruding bone behind it rather than running high on my fingertips. My greatest fear was that a vampire guard would spot my hand and know what it was and whom it belonged to.

  Bumping blindly into headstones, statues and other obstacles that I couldn’t identify just by touch, I let out a yelp when I crashed into something furry. At first I thought it was a cat. That turned out to be wishful thinking. A pair of viciously sharp teeth bit into the webbing between my thumb and pointer finger.

  “Rat!” I whisper-shouted then scrunched my eyes shut and sent all of my concentration to my hand. While I wasn’t afraid of the disgusting, diseased rodents anymore, the last thing I needed was for my hand to be carried off to feed a horde of rat babies.

  The rat sawed at my skin with its teeth as I grappled with it. Blood flowed sluggishly from the wound rather than pouring from it. Being undead, my circulation had ceased to function. The rat released me suddenly and I guessed that it had tasted my blood and had found it to be as disgusting as I did.

  I had a moment of panic when I realized I’d dropped the bobby pin during the brief struggle. Casting around for it, I encountered another rat. Teeth pierced my pinkie then the rat tried to carry my hand away. A third rodent entered the fray and pounced on my thumb.

  Both rats bit deep and I was suddenly in a tug of war as they tried to carry me off in two different directions at once. Screw this! Tugging free, I balled my hand into a fist and punched the closest rodent. For a few seconds there was no movement, then they attacked Righty together.

  Anyone watching the battle would have seen a mad swirl of rats being flung through the air as a very strange animal fought for its life. Anything that I came into contact with was seized, squeezed viciously then tossed aside. I was bitten again and managed to put out a beady eye with my finger. That seemed to be the last straw for the rats and they stopped attacking. I pictured my hand to be a small but ferocious dog guarding its turf as I turned it in a circle, waiting for further attacks.

  After a minute or so, I figured the rodents must have given up and fled the scene. My first order of business was to wipe eye jelly off my fingers onto the grass. My second task was to find the bobby pin again. Searching through the cool grass, I located the dropped tool and scurried onwards towards my goal.

  Stopping a safe
distance away from where I sensed my arm lay, I found the edge of a headstone and dug a tunnel next to it. Again, I carefully pulled grass over the hole to cover it from sight. Hiding my excavations was a smart move and I was frankly surprised that I’d thought of it. Like lock picking, stealth and cunning had never been my forte. Convincing women to buy a pair of jeans and two shirts that they didn’t really need was more my area of expertise.

  I made good time digging my way through dirt to the box that contained my arm. It wasn’t any easier picking the second lock. Cursing under my breath, scared that if I voiced my frustrations out loud I might alert someone in the vicinity of my buried head, I wouldn’t allow myself to give up. The lock finally gave after several hours of probing at it with the makeshift lock pick. My severed arm couldn’t do anything to help. It lay there patiently in the long, narrow coffin as Righty did all the work.

  Digging quickly, Righty scraped enough dirt away from the lid to be able to push it open. Like a large and creepy albino spider, my hand climbed inside and felt for my wrist. Finding the jagged edge of flesh, it seized my arm and hauled it to freedom.

  Before continuing onwards, I took the time to try an experiment. Straightening my arm out in the small tunnel that I’d made, I felt for the bone of my wrist. What I found was a hole two inches deep due to the extra bone protruding from the wrist end of my severed hand. Aligning the edges together, I backed my hand up until the bone poked into the hole. I’d hoped the limb would magically reattach itself but nothing happened.

  Discouraged, I grabbed the limb and started the laborious task of dragging my arm back down the tunnel then up towards the surface. It was a tight squeeze since the tunnel was hand sized rather than arm sized. I still had a few hours left before dawn rose and I wanted to make some headway on reaching Lefty. Once it was free, it could help with the rest of the excavating. “Two hands make light work,” I giggled with a touch of hysteria as my fingers cautiously poked up through the hole again.

  Hauling the arm out, I abandoned it briefly while I made an attempt to disguise the now larger hole. Then I began hauling the arm around the many unseen obstacles in my way. After an hour or so of slow progress, my fingers touched something different. Whatever it was, it was far softer than a headstone.

  Carefully prodding the object, I determined that it was a plastic bag. Inside were the remains of what must have been a takeaway meal. Now this will definitely be useful.

  Emptying the bag of its trash, Righty crawled inside and checked thoroughly for holes. Finding none, it backed out again. The possibility of losing the bobby pin if it was left loose in the bag worried me. My solution was to push it inside the hole in my wrist and into the spongy bone tissue. I didn’t have a body handy to shudder with but my mind shuddered instead at my morbid ingeniousness.

  It was much easier to drag my arm when it was inside the bag. The end poked out a few inches but I made better time. When I felt dawn nearing again, I dug way my downwards, hiding my burrowing as best as I could. It took a lot longer to dig and drag at the same time rather than making my way across land. Since I didn’t need to fall into an unconscious state that mimicked death during the day, I was going to keep going for as long as I could.

  Crossing beneath the graveyard at a depth of about four feet, I was drawn towards the box that contained my upper body. It was central to the rest of my body parts and seemed like the logical place to gather my pieces together. It was hard enough moving my smaller parts beneath the ground. Trying to dig a tunnel large enough for my shoulders to fit through was a daunting prospect.

  Digging downwards to what turned out to be a sizable crate that housed my upper torso, I hollowed out a large space and tucked my arm in beside the box. Before moving on, I plucked the bobby pin free from the bone of my wrist and crushed the plastic bag into a small ball. Holding the bag and bobby pin tightly, I orientated myself then set off underground, now tunnelling towards Lefty.

  I judged it to be half a kilometre away and it took me the rest of the day to dig my way to it. With an hour left before nightfall, I allowed myself to rest with Righty still about thirty feet away from its twin.

  Chapter Five

  Forcing myself awake from a dream where I was reliving the moment Luc had swung his sword at me, I sensed someone standing over the grave of my head again. I could feel them up there, only a few feet above me. I judged that night had fallen not long ago. My brief nap had reinvigorated me enough that my exhaustion was gone and I was eager to resume excavating.

  Minutes later, the watcher was gone. I hoped that anyone guarding the rest of my body was also gone. I’d been careful to keep my tunnels at a distance from where I’d been interred but there was always a chance my creeping body parts could be spotted. A boot pinning my hand to the ground would be an indication that I’d been found out.

  Since I was so close to my left hand, I tunnelled the rest of the way underground. I’d had a bit of practice picking locks now and it only took me about three hours to break Lefty free. It waited patiently until its twin had pushed most of the dirt out of the way then helped to push the lid up and slid free.

  I clumsily high fived myself then spent a few confusing minutes trying to move both hands at once. Still new to the art of possessing my own body parts, I found it was too difficult to split my thoughts at first. Giving Righty a break, I gave it the task of holding onto the bobby pin and made it crawl into the plastic bag.

  My left hand had less bone poking out of the severed end of its wrist. It was easier to manoeuvre as it backtracked down the tunnel I’d already made. At what I judged to be around twenty feet from where Lefty had been stashed, I headed upwards. Dragging the bag containing my right hand out of the fresh hole I’d made, I patted the grass back into place then started scurrying towards where I could feel my left arm buried.

  After only a hundred feet or so, I was close enough to start tunnelling again. All of this would have been a lot quicker and easier to do if I didn’t have to hide my exploits. Fear of discovery kept me from being lazy and simply digging straight down to where I knew my arm was buried.

  Since I was right handed, I had to swap back to Righty to break my arm free. Lefty just didn’t have the dexterity that the task required. Despite my practice, it was dawn before the lock finally gave. Using Lefty, I began digging soil away from the lid. Splitting my concentration, I slowly gained control of both hands at the same time. In tandem, they dug a large enough space to be able to push the lid up then drag my arm free.

  My arm went into the plastic bag then I had a decision to make. My hands and arm were only a couple of hundred meters away from where my head had been entombed. I could either dig my way underground to my head or dig my way towards my torso and stash my left arm there. Since I had a whole day to kill before any of my body parts could emerge to the surface, I opted to go after my head.

  Lefty did the brunt of the work, digging its way stolidly through the dirt. Righty followed, dragging the arm in the plastic bag. Picturing my limbs patiently making their way through the dirt like blind moles started me giggling. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was worried I might be going mad. A deeper part thought there was a good chance that I had already crossed that line.

  I sensed my limbs drawing closer and closer to my interred head. Then my enhanced hearing picked up the sounds of digging. Finally, they were right outside the box. This lock proved to be more stubborn than the others. Darkness fell, my nightly visitor showed up, stayed for a while then disappeared again and I still couldn’t get the frigging lock open. The hairpin incessantly scratched inside the metal opening just above my face and then something horrible happened; the bobby pin snapped.

  Frustrated rage filled my mind. My hands groped through the soil. Lefty connected with something hard and lumpy then turned to vent its wrath on the lock. “Why. Don’t. You. Open. You. Stupid. Thing!” With each word my mouth uttered, Lefty bashed the rock it had found against the lock.

  With a feeble metallic clink,
the lock broke. I let out a victorious croak as my hands busied themselves digging the lid free of dirt. I was so absorbed in the task that I wasn’t really thinking about how utterly strange it was. So, when I first saw my hands push the lid open, I was completely freaked out and let out a distressed shriek. No one should have to endure a sight this horrible. For a few moments my strained mind teetered on the edge of annihilation.

  Closing my eyes, I willed the madness away. If I gave into it, the Comtesse and the dark entity that was slowly but surely taking over her over would win. Like it or not, I was the only vampire standing between what might turn out to be Armageddon for both humans and my kind.

  Willing Righty into the box, I forced it to climb up my face. Balancing precariously, it slapped my cheek soundly. Hysteria faded along with the sting of the blow but I kept my eyes closed as my hand backtracked. It stopped long enough to scratch the itch on my chin that had been driving me crazy for the past three nights and days.

  Keeping my eyes closed was an excellent idea and doing so made it easier for me to concentrate. By now I had established firm control over both of my hands. They worked together to grab handfuls of my hair then dragged my head out of captivity. The bag was large enough to hold both my head and left arm. Using both hands, I widened the tunnel and dragged the bag along by the thumbs. Dirt kept finding its way inside but I didn’t bother to tip it out. Not enough was getting inside to slow me down.

  Working my way back down the tunnel, I stopped when I’d dug a distance of about fifty feet. Dawn was maybe two hours away now. If I was quick, I would be able to make my way up to the surface and race closer to my torso before descending into the ground again. Weighing up my options, I decided to try it. I was growing in confidence but wasn’t quite cocky yet.