Camdeboo Nights by Nerine Dorman

Uniondale–without picking up hitchhikers this time–before he’d slipped onto the R62’s tight curves through Oudtshoorn.
    He had been conscious of her attempts at reaching for him for three days, her brief ghostly flickerings tantalizingly close, brushing up against his nape but he’d stopped only to refuel and hole up, sometimes resting on Rose’s back seat covered in a pile of old blankets.
    Twice Mantis had inadvertently overtaken him–she drove a gleaming black BMW with tinted windows–but he stuck to his plan of doubling back often, taking dusty farm roads and getting back onto the tar–or leaving it–only once his skin started raising blisters in the sun’s glare.
    Constant glances in his rearview mirror had been the norm, and Rose overheated on more than one occasion. Hunger was his constant companion, he’d needed to feed. The maintenance of a hyper state of awareness and pushing his body to its limits always took its toll.
    He’d found a drunk farm-worker outside of Calitzdorp then took a road plunging through the folded sandstone cliffs above Riversdale.
    Granted, traveling this close to known renegade territory had also been a gamble, but a move Mantis would not expect. When he’d made it safely through the Outeniqua pass without suffering ambush at the most likely points, he’d gripped the leather-bound steering wheel with less fervor.
    He’d rolled down the window and allowed Rose to slow down to a cruising speed of ninety kilometers an hour. The burned-bitter brush smells of the Karoo, the flat, ribbon-like expanse of the N9 ran ahead of him. Back on familiar turf.
    This time no pale woman waited twenty kays outside of Uniondale, although he still sped up until he’d passed the small town.
    Halfway in the middle of nowhere, in the heart of the Camdeboo plains, he’d stopped the Hudson, gotten out and stood for a long while, drinking in the stillness. He’d wanted to savor this moment, with the distant hooting of an owl, the sense that this ancient flat and bone-dry land had waited a million years and could quite easily wait a million years more.
    Would he still be here, then? The oldest vampire he’d heard of was based in Cairo, and claimed to have been Cleopatra the Seventh’s lover. He couldn’t fathom such an age.
    Could he spend so long running–always running–from the others, from himself?
    No moon this night and the stars shone clearer and brighter than he’d seen since forever. The magnesium-bright flare of a meteorite ignited, searing across the west, where his preternatural vision could still detect the last flame of sunset licking the horizon.
    The land was so empty. If he walked out now, he’d be lucky if he encountered so much as a jackal. He could be dragged into the vacuum of space to drift for eternity between suns.
    Thought of the eternal void hurt his brain.
    He needed to escape, but where? Rose’s warm leather-smelling interior had beckoned and he’d sunk into the well-worn driver’s seat with a groan, his flesh molding to the contours he’d worn into the upholstery over the years.
    The engine had roared into life, bringing a certain satisfaction. Trystan knew every part of this machine as intimately as he’d known some of his lovers. He’d taken her apart and put her back together so many times he bore the knowledge of every cog, gear and piston, of the different timbres of her engine, when she needed oil, when a part needed replacing. He’d lost count of the years they’d been together.
    They encountered few cars that night, yet Trystan had driven past the turn-off to Nieu Bethesda three times, to make sure no one followed.
    They’d crested the first pass and traversed the plateau, and he’d relaxed only once Rose’s nose dipped and they entered the green river valley that had been his sanctuary for so long.
    In the distance, the lights of the hamlet winked merrily. He’d slowed at the bridge, waiting for a kudu bull, whose magnificent horns curved with