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It feels as if they’ve been at this dance forever. Perhaps they have been, though Peter knows that’s impossible. Ahh, for the old days, when vampires were just an impossibility, characters that railed and demanded and begged for attention but existed only as celluloid creatures. Peter knew better now, and it was enough to make him want to crawl under the blankets and block his ears, to pretend nothing was happening or would ever happen to him. Peter remembers when Jerry was simply some odd notion his so-called-stalker Charley had, some malformed thought, like a bad smell in the back of his refrigerator, something going off and hinting to him that all he japed at during his day job was secretly a sign of something terribly wrong and very, very real.
A portend, like a bad omen, that he was in charge of stopping. Heaven help him.
**
Jerry likes elegant enemies. Men with style and with taste who can put up a good fight instead of flopping over like rag dolls. Women who could bite and scratch and claw – but also stab and wound like a valkyrie. He preferred the women. They were harder to understand.
Men are uncomplicated, in his opinion. He understands the simplistic drives that push him then and prod him to action now. Lust. Hunger. Blood. Good times. They were a simple game, an easy hunt.
He would never, of course, inform a man of his opinion. Not when he wasn’t in the mood to hear any backtalk.
Peter is different in that way. He is smart, and thoughtful. He takes his time when they’re face to face and knee to knee, struggling and sweating through the ecstasy of pain and the nightmare of death. A more even matching he’d never experienced in his entire afterlife. His suffering would be legendary when he spoke of it to his next victim. His next.
It’s the largest gesture of respect he can afford this man. This difficult and stubborn man.
***
Peter is afraid, but he has a plan. Wolfsbane, garlic, holy water – none of them work on Jerry because he lacks faith. Charley has it, and for Charley it’s a shield. But Peter must use the old standbys, things he cannot directly wield. But sunlight – that’s the oldest trick in the book. Sunlight will work, will kill, and will protect him. It must!
He squares his shoulders and stares into the red eyes of the creature bearing down on him. Well, there’s only one way to test out his theory.
****
Jerry didn’t expect to die this way.
He didn’t expect to die at all. His plan was to go on forever, strong and vital, a weed refusing to die. The plan was to take as many victims as possible down along with him. His plan was to rule the world.
Not to die here, without help and unmourned, at the hands of a teenage boy and TV presenter.
A TV presenter, of all fucking things!