Blood Rites (14 page)

“I won’t even know when I can come home,” he complained, his resistance already crumbling.

“I’ll buy the Cleveland papers every day. I’ll send you a telegram as soon as Carrera is arrested. We can even tell Corey how to reach me. The medical examiners always hear all the newest gossip.”

Dick was too tired to fight. Besides, what Judy said made perfect sense for more reasons than she knew. Helen was Dick’s niece. She couldn’t come here to say good-bye, he’d have to go to her. And after he was gone, well Alan and Helen had always been close. But, as he reluctantly agreed, he thought the last people he wanted to see now were immortal and psychic. How long would it take for Stephen to sense his self-pity and discover the truth?

The family spent the night in a hotel by the airport. Maybe it was just the room and the fact that they had checked in under an assumed name that brought back the past. Dick and Judy didn’t speak of it, not even after the kids stopped giggling and fell asleep in their adjoining room. Instead they made love with an urgency they hadn’t felt since they’d first met.

In the morning, Dick woke to the brush of Judy’s fingers on the four long slashes Charles Austra’s nails had made on his body. He wore those scars as he did the one on his thigh where he’d been stabbed a year after he started on the Cleveland police force or the cut on his stomach where the surgeons had opened him up to remove the German bullets he’d taken during the war. The marks of his jobs. He pretended to be asleep as Judy’s fingers moved down his side, following the lines from thigh to shoulder. Though Dick’s first wife had died ten years ago, he still loved her and always would. He had no right to be jealous of the dead.

They went their separate ways from the airport. Carol and Judy left first, then Dick and his son walked quickly to their own gate. Dick waited until they were in the air and Alan had stopped pressing his nose against the window glass before beginning, awkwardly, to explain in as vague a way as possible who they would be visiting.

“I know,” Alan said before Dick could finish. Then he told his father all about his dreams. He described Stephen’s house, their land. He even knew the names of their children and the nearest town. The details convinced Dick that his son had somehow shared his cousin’s life. For the rest of the flight, Dick considered how this bond could be possible and why, of all of them, only Alan could accomplish it.

Distracted first by the need to explain where they were going, then by his son’s strange revelations, he didn’t notice the late arrival who sat behind him on the plane to Denver or think anything of the second late passenger who caught the connecting flight to Edmonton. Dick and the second man even exchanged a few words at the Edmonton airport while Dick and Alan claimed their bags, threw them in the back of a brown pickup, and drove away in the company of a black-haired young man with a face no one would forget.

The man caught the first return flight to Denver. His accomplice had learned Wells was headed for Dawson. He had the license plate of his host’s truck.

Enough. He’d been paid to trail, not kill. The killing would be left for someone younger and more capable, someone who would not fail.

II

During the three-hour drive from Edmonton to Dawson, Alan said very little. He sat between Stephen and his father, clutching the carry-on bag holding his books and chess set along with the box of chocolates for Helen and the blocks that he’d bought for Helen’s babies at the Denver airport. Stephen and his father didn’t say much, either, and Alan stared out the window at the trees and the mountains. He’d never seen mountains except in pictures. Those had always been sunlit, and shown from a distance. Here, close up on a grey and rainy day, they looked huge and frightening. When they drove through narrow passes, he craned his head to look nervously at the rock walls, waiting for them to fall and crush the car.

Stephen rested a hand on his knee. “Don’t worry. I’ve made this drive a hundred times and they never move. Your father told me at the airport that you have dreams about Helen. Tell me about them.”

Alan did. Somehow he remembered more about them now than he did on the plane. He could even see some of the dreams in his mind. When he’d finished, Stephen said, “You missed your cousin a great deal, yes?”

“Sure.” Alan tried to turn his attention back to the mountains. He felt embarrassed and thankful when Stephen didn’t ask him anything more.

They reached the house late in the evening. It was everything Alan remembered, and as he hugged Helen, he stared past her, openmouthed, at the lamplit room inside. Then he saw Hillary, and for a moment he forgot the rest.

He’d dreamed about her too, but she had seemed the least real of any of his visions—a beautiful, quiet creature on the edge of his nights. He flushed as they were introduced and, after a quick “hello,” stared at his shoes.

“Would you like to see the babies?” Helen asked.

Anything
, the boy thought.
Anything to get me away from her
. Not that he didn’t want to be near Hillary but she made him feel so terribly awkward, little, and dumb.

“Hillary, take Alan in. And pull Dickey out of his father’s loom.”

Dickey had taken advantage of everyone’s absence to crawl out of his crib and, with feet and hands on the floor, waddle out of the nursery to explore everything he wasn’t supposed to touch. His brother, Patrick, woke as he left. Smaller and far less mobile, Patrick had a mind capable of instigating more trouble from his crib than Dickey could ever conceive of causing on his own. Now, with a wicked knowing smile, he led his duller brother on.

Dickey ripped at the threads of the loom, breaking a few, tasting some of the others. Hearing Hillary coming, he gripped the most colorful skeins tightly with his long-fingered hands. With effort, Hillary pried his fingers away from the yarn, then picked him up. “Chair!” he declared. Hillary immediately sat him down on a potty chair next to the stove. He stood, turned and peed standing up, exactly as he had seen his father do, then grinned triumphantly at Hillary, displaying four tiny teeth on the top and bottom and two longer ones in the back of his mouth.

“Good boy!” Hillary said, and carried him back to the nursery. Alan, the flush deepening and spreading from his cheeks to his entire face, followed.

Hillary set him down next to his brother on a thick feather mattress in a large carved wooden crib. They immediately joined hands, then the two naked, long-limbed infants stared up at Alan with huge, prying eyes. They looked alike though far from identical. Though both had their father’s pale skin and loosely curled hair, one was larger than the other and his hair was grey rather than black and shone like polished silver in the candlelight.

“Hello, Alan Wells,” the smaller one said in a singsong voice that seemed to be an exaggeration of his father’s accent.

Alan gaped at the pair. “How—how old are they?” he stammered.

“Twenty months though they look much smaller. The big one with the yarn in his fingers is Dickey. The smaller one is Patrick. He’s been causing all the trouble today, isn’t that right?” Hillary purred the last words and began stroking Patrick’s stomach in a widening circle. Then she seemed to realize where her hand was moving and pulled quickly back, giving the infant a sharp look as if he’d somehow been responsible.

Patrick responded to Hillary’s retreat by biting Dickey’s hand. Dickey wailed in a high piercing screech like the sound of an angry blue jay and pounced on his brother. The boys immediately became a twisting knot of arms and legs, rocking the crib with their battle.

“Come on,” Hillary said and began to leave the room.

Alan didn’t want to leave the boys alone. Their fight looked too lethal. He stayed by the cradle, staring down at the twins who battled like a pair of Tasmanian devils. He wondered what would happen if he tried to separate them and not at all sure he wanted to find out. He wished now that he’d brought them crayons and coloring books instead of wooden alphabet blocks. They’d probably use the blocks as weapons.

Hillary stopped at the door and motioned for him to follow. “It’s all right to leave them. They can’t hurt each other, not really.“ After they were both in the main room, she closed the nursery door, making certain it was latched.

Stephen and Alan’s father had just brought in their suitcases. “The twins are fighting again,” Hillary said to Stephen. “I think they’re frightening Alan.”

“I’ll toss them outside and let the rain cool them . . .” Stephen noticed Alan’s horrified expression and stopped mid-sentence. His smile vanished for a moment as he closed his eyes. In the nursery, one of the twins gave a quick “yip” of surprise, then both boys fell immediately silent.

Alan stared with wide eyes at the door, then, searching for some semblance of the usual, walked over to Helen who was boiling water on the stove.

“Do you still have the dog?” Alan asked her.

“What dog?”

“The one you call Wolf.”

Helen glanced at Dick. “You haven’t told him very much about us, have you?”

“I thought it would be better if Stephen did. I wasn’t certain how he’d react.”

“If that’s true, why did you bring him here?” Stephen asked.

“A sudden emergency. One I really didn’t want to discuss in a wire from Western Union.”

—Not you and Judy?— Helen questioned privately.

Dick shook his head once, slowly so his son wouldn’t notice. “As soon as the coffee’s ready, I’ll explain,” he said aloud.

They all sat around the table, Alan and Hillary drinking mugs of hot chocolate, Dick slowly sipping his coffee as he described the shooting the day before.

“Is there a chance you were followed?” Helen asked when he’d finished.

“There’s always a chance,” Dick admitted, “but it’s slim. We were out of the house less than two hours after the shooting. Carrera will assume the force followed usual procedure and has us hidden somewhere under police protection.”

“So why didn’t you send the family east and stay for the fight?” Stephen asked.

“I don’t handle organized crime.” Dick noticed Stephen’s puzzled look and added, “Besides, I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity for some extra paid vacation.”

“And to bring Alan, yes?”

“He’s ready to know all of this. But I think you should be the one to tell him.”

“As you wish.” Stephen slid down the bench until he sat across from the boy. Alan was just finishing his chocolate, his head tilted back, when he froze and the hand holding the mug slowly lowered it to the table. Alan sat so still he hardly seemed to breathe as he stared, expressionless, at Stephen.

Not a word was spoken but Dick knew that Stephen was conveying a great deal to Alan in private. Stephen finished some minutes later with a quick toss of his head and held out his hand. Alan immediately joined hands with Stephen while wiping the chocolate mustache from his mouth with his other sleeve. Then he stared at Stephen, a frown growing on his face. “Would you show me your teeth?” he finally asked.

Stephen grinned, revealing rear fangs long and white as those of some great cat.

“Can I feel them?”

“Yes.”

Alan walked around the table and stood in front of Stephen. He touched the tip of his index finger to the end of one long tooth and jerked his hand back. “They’re sharp!” he exclaimed.

“They have to be. They’re how I live.” Stephen patted the bench and Alan sat down between Stephen and Helen.

“Is it always that easy with kids?” Dick asked.

“It depends on the kid.” Stephen hugged Alan, saying as he did, “Now we must understand your dreams, yes?”

“Yeah,” Dick answered for his son. He wanted this mystery solved.

“I’ve considered everything I know about situations such as these and only one thing makes it possible. He has family blood in him.”

“Not possible!” Dick retorted, uncertainty making him angry.

“I think I know,” Helen said. “He has my mother’s blood. Remember, Uncle. After Carol was born she donated blood for Mary.”

“Jesus! That’s right. Helen, you must have been eight or nine. I’m surprised you remembered.”

“I recently went through a difficult delivery myself,” Helen reminded him.

“Do you dream about Alan?” Dick asked Helen.

“Sometimes. I assumed they only showed how much I missed him. Apparently, though, we were contacting each other.”

Dick asked Stephen the same question. Stephen replied immediately and with some annoyance, “I never dream.”

“Never?”

“Not the pleasant way your kind dreams. Ours are a kind of delirium that comes with stress or grave mental illness. They aren’t pleasant. I suppose the closest I ever come to dreaming is at the movies. The lights dim. The images flash and for as long as I sit there, I am not in control of what I see.”

That explained Stephen’s fascination with and terrible taste in movies but not Alan’s talent. “But if his mind somehow comes here, shouldn’t you at least feel his presence?”

“He has no power to make his presence clear. My mind is stronger than Helen’s. Perhaps if he dreamed about me, I would sense him but he does not,” Stephen explained.

“But shouldn’t he be dreaming about all of you?”

“No,” Stephen answered. “The family has a yearly blood sharing to strengthen the psychic bonds between us. Alan’s ties to us would be far too weak. Then, of course, we must consider Alan’s resolve. He wanted to contact his cousin, so he did.”

“I always knew you’d be the first to know,” Helen told her cousin with a friendly wink. “We have books on dreams. Would you like Hillary and me to show them to you?”

“Oh, please,” Alan replied and followed the women to the bookcase on the far side of the room.

Dick watched his son kneeling next to Helen, his fair skin and dark hair making him resemble Stephen’s sons. “Can you change him the way you did Helen?” Dick quietly asked Stephen.

“No. I am sorry.”

“Don’t be. It was just something I figured I should know.”

Stephen glanced at him and Dick sensed the unspoken question. He shrugged and shook his head. The wall, he thought, had begun falling down. He assumed the worst when Stephen told him privately, —It is late. We’ll wait until Alan is asleep and then speak more of this, yes?—