At the Twilight's Last Gleaming Read online

  OTHER BOOKS BY DAVID BISCHOFF

  Dragonstar:

  Dragonstar (with Thomas F. Monteleone)

  Day of the Dragonstar (with Thomas F. Monteleone)

  Night of the Dragonstar (with Thomas F. Monteleone)

  Dragonstar Destiny (with Thomas F. Monteleone)

  Gaming Magi:

  The Destiny Dice

  Wraith Board

  The Unicorn Gambit

  Nightworld:

  Nightworld

  Vampires of Nightworld

  Star Fall:

  Star Fall

  Star Spring

  Star Hounds:

  The Infinite Battle

  Galactic Warriors

  The Macrocosmic Conflict

  The UFO Conspiracy:

  Abduction

  Deception

  Revelation

  Other Books:

  The Seeker (with Christopher Lampton)

  The Phantom of the Opera

  Forbidden World (with Ted White)

  Tin Woodman (with Dennis R. Bailey)

  The Selkie (with Charles Sheffield)

  Mandala

  Wargames

  The Crunch Bunch

  A Personal Demon (with Rich Brown and Linda Richardson)

  The Manhattan Project

  The Blob

  The Judas Cross (with Charles Sheffield)

  Hackers

  Philip K. Dick High

  The Diplomatic Touch

  The H.P. Lovecraft Institute

  At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming

  Copyright © 2010 by David Bischoff

  Hotspur Publishing

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  A LETTER TO THE READER

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  Dear Reader,

  Vampires! Zombies!

  What with all the hoopla lately about such supposedly supernatural entities, it’s as though they were invented in the 21st century.

  Nope.

  They were around. Oh yes, they were around!

  I mean, Stephanie Meyer didn’t invent fangs anymore than she invented puberty, adolescence or hickeys on teenage necks. And to listen to Anne Rice and Charlaine Harris, you’d think all the vampire action was in New Orleans and the South.

  But they get it all wrong.

  Now that vampires and their ilk are out of the closet, so to speak, and under girls’ bed sheets along with pop stars, Grandma can spill her truth.

  I can tell my story.

  Oh, and in case you might be interested at first, let me tell you there’s plenty of teenage hanky panky, bloodsucking, weird love and much, much more.

  And come to think of it…my story does happen in the South.

  South of Washington D.C. in 1968.

  1968 -- the year they say changed the world.

  My name?

  Why it’s Rebecca.

  Rebecca, like the famous Daphne du Maurier novel of the same name that kind of started off the whole gothic craze in the 20th Century.

  This is my vampire love story.

  So turn off your cell phone, drape the garlic on the windows and listen up.

  It’s not quite the kind of story you might think!

  PROLOGUE

  I DREAMED I went to Manderlay High School again last night. I knew that Death waited for me there.

  The school was dark, its square windows staring out like the empty eyes of a zombie. Across the grass, wet with sprinkler dew, I walked like one possessed.

  My heart thumped in my chest. I knew that my killer would be waiting for me there, but I could not turn back.

  The moon was bright. It was just coming up over the trees, full as the wind-blown sails of a ship. The American flag in the front courtyard snapped in the breeze.

  I pushed the bar on the front door. It whispered open.

  I smelled new floor wax but, as always, I could see no custodian.

  No, I thought. Go no further. Turn. Run. Run as hard as you can, girl. Run for your life.

  The moon cast shadows in the foyer, but beyond them was darkness. I stepped forward, unable to control my steps. My shoes clicked against the linoleum as I walked into the huge expanse of the multi-purpose room.

  A candle in the distance flickered meagerly. It has been set on a table, on the proscenium of the high school stage. Beside the dripping candle was a small black vase. From that vase grew a single rose, red as blood, rising up from shadow.

  I walked toward the table, striding up the stairs to the stage, then along the proscenium. The stage curtains billowed in some ghostly breeze.

  I went to the candle, and stared into it.

  I picked up the rose from its vase. As I did so a thorn pierced my thumb. In the candlelight I watched a bead of blood blossom slowly on my skin, then drip with a hiss into the candle flame.

  “Rebecca.”

  I turned.

  He was there. I felt the strength of the night again, the promise.

  He came to me, but I did not run.

  I knew that he was Death but I yearned for this Death.

  I ached for it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I LOVE THE night.

  I hate to go to sleep and I hate to wake up. This is true even now, decades later.

  But today was The Day, and when my alarm rang, I didn’t bash at the thing with horror, nor did I burrow under my blankets in denial.

  No, today was The Day.

  I sprang out of bed. The bathroom tile was cold on my feet, but Dad had fixed the water heater so that my shower was scalding. I scrubbed myself hard with Ivory soap and washed my hair in Head and Shoulders shampoo. Washed, rinsed, w
ashed again. The hot water sluiced across my scalp and long black hair. Every speck of dandruff had to be banished.

  Today was the day.

  Black was my color today.

  Black felt right.

  Not that I hadn’t been wearing black every day for a while.

  Mourning? No.

  Attitude? A statement? Well, maybe. Goodness knows, Joan Baez wore black in those days. All those other mournful ‘60s “Michael Row the Boat ashore” folk singers who had come out from the gloom of coffee shops and into the glare of concert halls and TV studios wore black.

  And while every other suburban American household in 1968 had a color TV, the Williams home of early 1968 still had an old RCA vacuum tube black-and-white dinosaur chained in the basement.

  So maybe it was kind of like a protest.

  I still wear black.

  I don’t know. Sure, black clothing hides some of the lumpiness of my figure, which is good.

  But as I think back, back all those years, maybe it would best to be there.

  To be Rebecca Williams of 1968 again.

  Rebecca Williams then -- but I should remain Rebecca of now when I think I should explain something.

  How do I do that? How do I journey back all those decades to when I was young.

  First I shall dress in black.

  Okay. Now I close my eyes. Click my emerald -- oops! -- black slippers.

  And here I am again, looking into that 1968 mirror.

  Mostly, when I looked in the mirror back then, with my long black hair and my black eyelashes and my big nose and my big mouth, I didn’t see Rebecca Williams when I wore stylish black. I saw Jane Eyre or Victoria Winters or some other heroine.

  But still, somehow, black mostly made me feel like me.

  That day, The Day, I combed my hair out quickly and grabbed up my schoolbooks. Then I put the small package in my book bag, the package with the thing that Harold and I had bought at the store in the new shopping mall in Marlow Heights. I thought, Today is the day.

  I examined the ensemble in the mirror. Designer duds. Turtleneck sweater. Black skirt. Black stockings. Black shoes.

  Then I thumped down to breakfast.

  “Good morning, Morticia,” said my father, peering up from the Washington Post.

  “Good morning, Gomez,” I said.

  I grabbed the box of shredded wheat, pulled out a single brick of frosted cereal and placed it gingerly into the bowl. I stared at all the sugar. I cringed and put the brick back in the box.

  “Mom, can I just have a single soft-boiled egg and dry toast?” I asked.

  “What’s wrong with cereal?” said my Dad, his brow wrinkling beneath his balding dome.

  “Oh, Peter, don’t worry. I was just going to make one for myself,” said my mother, wrapping her bathrobe around her midsection and going to the stove.

  The newspaper crinkled over the eggs and bacon as my father leaned over to my brother, “Oh, these annoying diets, eh, Donald? Can’t these women see that they’re beautiful just the way they are?”

  Donald just shrugged and stared morosely into his Captain Crunch cereal. Donald was in ninth grade and was learning bad sleeping habits too.

  “Don’t torture yourself, Gomez,” I said. “That’s my job.”

  Dad chuckled wryly as he always did when I used that line. He always set himself up for it. Dad’s heroes weren’t comics, they were straight men. Bud Abbott, Dean Martin, and the king of them all, George Burns. Sometimes Dad calls mom Gracie.

  “The Addams Family again,” said Donald. “I hate that show.”

  With a single black and white cyclops chained in the basement, TV had lately been a bone of contention in the Williams household. My father called the basement the battle dungeon.

  As my mother bustled over the stuff, and my brother munched his cereal, I pulled out the comics section from the paper to check out today’s Peanuts.

  I glimpsed a headline.

  “More nasty stuff in Vietnam,” I said pointedly.

  “It will be handled,” my father said stiffly. “It’s a ticklish situation, but it will be handled.”

  My father was a colonel in the United States Air Force. He was stationed down the road at Andrews Air Force Base. I’ve always been proud of my father. He served in the Korean War, and had been a career officer ever since. But I read the paper and watched the news and listened to the radio, and I was starting to agree with all the people who weren’t happy about this undeclared war.

  I held my tongue. I turned to the comics and read Peanuts. Lucy was psychoanalyzing Charlie Brown for five cents. I wondered what Lucy would say to me about what I was going to do later this afternoon. Unquestionably she’d charge me more than five cents.

  “Mom,” I said. “What time is dinner tonight? I’m going to stay after school a bit.”

  “I can make it seven, I guess,” she said. “What, no Dark Shadows, Bec?”

  Dark Shadows, I should explain, was a half-hour weekday afternoon soap opera with ghosts and witches and a heart-throbby vampire named Barnabas Collins.

  “I can get the plot details from friends,” I said. “Or you could tell me, brother.”

  “I don’t watch soap operas,” said Donald.

  “I keep on telling you, you’d like it. You like sci fi...”

  “Science fiction.”

  “You like science fiction. They’ve got time travel in Dark Shadows.”

  “Time travel and vampires,” said Dad. “Bit of a mishigosh, if you ask me.”

  I ignored him. “It’s really very well done and rather thrilling,” I said, with my nose in the air and a snooty upper class attitude – something I do rather well after my time in England.

  “Time travel, huh?” said Donald.

  “Goodness knows what’s going to happen next,” I said. “It just started out as a Gothic. Victoria Winters comes to Collinwood manor. Then months later...a ghost. A few more months....an Egyptian curse. A few more months…a vampire....”

  I enunciated the word with a kind of awe and reverence.

  “And a most remarkable vampire. A rare and beautiful vampire of great distinction,” I said.

  There was silence.

  I looked up.

  Mom had turned from her work at the stove.

  Dad’s half-frame glasses had swiveled my way.

  Now his dark serious eyes were peering at me over them. Even Donald was looking at me in a startled way, his cheek bulging with cereal.

  “A thespian,” said Dad. “We have a thespian in our midst.”

  I was startled.

  “Very nicely put,” said Mom.

  “Drama queen!” said Donald, but there was a new kind of respect in his eyes.

  I blushed. “I guess I get kind of carried away.”

  “Gotta watch this show sometime,” said Dad. “Sounds like they really chew the scenery, huh?”

  “Pardon me,” I said, trying to stay in character to hide my alarm, hoping they would change the subject.

  “Chewing the scenery,” said Mom, who always acted as Dad’s interpreter, since Dad seldom stopped to explain himself. “That usually means ‘overacting’, but I believe your father means extravagantly entertaining acting.”

  She put down my toast and soft-boiled egg in front of me. Steam rose up into my face.

  “You bet!” I said, suddenly plain old Rebecca Williams again.

  I studied them for a moment, wondering if they had guessed what was up with me, why I wasn’t coming home that day.

  But their own preoccupations had closed back in and I was just an egg-sucking piece of the family furniture again.

  My secret was safe.

  For now.

  CHAPTER TWO

 
; HERE’S WHAT YOU do if you’re Rebecca Williams of 1968 and you need to get to Crossland Senior High School.

  You put on your padded jacket with the hood. It’s January and it’s cold outside. You step out into the gray day. Be careful as you negotiate your way down Ludlow Drive -- ice patches on the macadam!

  Then you hook a left down onto Acton Road, trying not to fall on your tail as you slip and slide down the hill to where Acton bisects Henderson Road.

  There you wait for the school bus.

  A gaggle of students were already there at the bus stop. Plumes of breath misted above their heads. The scene had a mournful quality about it, as though the crowd was waiting for a black hearse on a one way trip to the graveyard instead of a bright yellow school bus on the first day of the rest of their lives.

  The sky seemed buttoned down tight over the world, like a cheap coffin lid. The humid Washington, D.C., area weather nipped at my face, and I could almost taste the salt that had been dumped to clear the snow and ice on this important road. The drifts of snow had been herded back from the asphalt and now stood grimy and gritty, like sentinels on the way to Mordor.

  The moroseness of this daily winter scene always suited me. It matched the gleeful melancholy of my adolescence. Yet somehow today I felt at odds with it all. I didn’t feel one bit morose or depressed or even a tad bit gloomy. I was excited. But I hid it all beneath my usual scowl.

  No one bothered me. I didn’t talk much with my peers in the neighborhood. It was one of those suburban neighborhoods that had sprung up in the early fifties along with the baby boom, and the kids had grown up together. Dad had moved our family to the area last summer after he’d been stationed at Andrews Air Force Base. And so Donald and I were the interlopers here, the strangers. Moving around the country and around the world with your family sounds like a grand adventure -- on paper. In fact, it’s pretty hard to make new friends and then lose them after a year or two as you move on to the next assignment.

  “Hey, Bill,” I said. “Hello, Susan. Hello, Janet.”

  I smiled my usual wan smile. Perhaps if I’d been much younger, we’d be best pals now, since children tend to be indiscriminate about playmates. But they already had busy lives. And while they were polite, I’d never really clicked with any of them.