Blood Rites (9 page)

Later she noticed the bodyguard studying the nude, an expression of avid interest on hjs face. In spite of her earlier misgivings, she entered his mind and pulled back immediately. For him, this painting was less art than pornography. The girl’s body excited him, the pain in her eyes even more. He sensed Helen watching him and looked past the painting at her. He had eyes like a white wolf’s. Ice-water blue. Predatory. Ruthless.

Though he’d made no threat against her, she almost wished he would. Something tangible would be better than this vague feeling of uneasiness, this strange, terrible desire to destroy him for no reason save the harsh instinctive warnings his presence evoked. She watched him weaving through the crowd, always the appropriate distance behind his boss, until Carrera made his choice, arranged the sale, and left.

Two of the armed men Dick had noticed earlier left with him, a third, a wiry brown-haired man in his early forties, stayed behind.

“One of yours?” Dick asked Stephen.

Stephen chuckled. “One of yours. He’s with the FBI. But I don’t think he’s here on business. Shall we inquire?”

“You can but you won’t get a straight answer unless you drag it out of his mind.”

“I think you’re wrong. Come with me.” Stephen made his way through the crowd with Dick on his heels. The man saw them coming and looked at Stephen with friendly recognition.

The three moved to a quiet corner where Stephen introduced Dick to Gregory Hunter, then commented, “I didn’t think you’d be here today, Gregory.”

Hunter laughed. “I notice Laurie isn’t here yet. After last night, I’m not surprised. As for me, the boss rang me out of bed at ten. I wasn’t awake enough to figure out if he phoned to chew me out for fraternizing with the enemy or to congratulate me on how well I do it.”

“The enemy?” Dick asked.

“AustraGlass is not an American company, Mr. Wells. That’s enough to make it the enemy these days even if their new director weren’t such an avowed pacifist,” Hunter said with a trace of bitterness.

“Have you thought about the offer we made you last night?” Stephen asked.

“I could hardly turn it down considering how sick I’ve gotten of Washington. But I think I’ll have to remind Laurie far too often that old habits die hard.”

“Been with the Bureau long?” Dick asked.

“I started a year after the war ended. They like war heroes at the Bureau.” Hunter wasn’t bragging, simply stating a fact he hardly seemed to support. The agent looked at Stephen. Dick sensed a private exchange, then Stephen excused himself and moved through the crowd toward Helen.

Hunter turned to Dick and said, “The champagne and the noise is a little thick for my hangover. Would you like to join me upstairs for a couple of beers? New York’s playing Cleveland at Dallas. It ought to be a hell of a game. Who knows, by half-time Laurie may even be moving.”

Dick glanced around the lobby. The minks and feathered hats on the women, the three-piece hand-tailored suits on the men, and the brief snatches of conversation he’d overheard made him feel both underdressed and uneducated. He couldn’t visit with his niece here. He didn’t even want to. He nodded, and as they walked to the elevators, he asked, “What’s upstairs?”

“Paul’s penthouse. You haven’t seen it? Well, just wait until you see the pleasure dome that New England puritan built for his ladylove.”

Hours passed. Helen signed invitations for admirers, answered questions for critics and reporters, laughed with strangers. She felt exhausted, not physically for she was never really tired anymore, but mentally. The noise hurt her ears. Too many perfumes competed for her attention. As soon as the crowds began to thin, she took an elevator to Paul and Elizabeth’s penthouse and looked out the slanted smoke-tinted windows, feeling the press of the masses on the streets far below her.

Stephen had been right to take her directly to Chaves. She wondered if she would ever be comfortable in cities as Stephen obviously was. She wandered through the apartment, discovering her uncle asleep on the bed in one of the guest rooms, one of Paul’s imported beers on the nightstand, the TV turned to
Dragnet
. It reminded her of the usual Saturday evenings at home when she, Dick, and her two younger cousins had their dinner in front of the television watching Officer Friday get his man, both Carol and Alan intent on the action, amazed that this was what their father did for a living. He never enlightened them about the usual boredom of his job, instead he would tell them he was careful. He wanted them prepared for the worst.

She had intended to wake her uncle and talk to him but decided against it. She thought of how quickly their worlds had divided and wondered if she would ever see the rest of her human family again.

Night fell, the stars—God and man-made—switched on. Stephen came upstairs with Paul and, sensing her sadness, held her. She buried her face against his neck, smelling the elusive musky scent of his hair, feeling his patient concern. “No more shows. No more interviews. It’s over,” she said.

Stephen did not question her change of plans. If she didn’t leave now she never would. “I’ll cancel everything. Then I’ll need only a few more days to make our final arrangements.”

A fleeting smile touched only her lips. “I don’t want to wait here.”

“My cottage on the Maine coast can be opened two weeks early,” Paul suggested. “At this time of year the place will be deserted. I can call the caretaker in the morning and let her know you’ll be arriving.”

“Maybe your uncle would go with you,” Stephen added. “He told me he took a week’s leave. I don’t think he likes New York very much.”

As she considered this, Helen frowned. “I guess I would like the company. I’ll ask him in the morning.” She moved away from Stephen and walked toward the hallway. “Make whatever plans you like for me. Right now I don’t care to hear them. Good night.”

In a moment a bedroom door closed somewhat too hard.

“It’s hard to give up a life,” Paul commented.

“Especially now. But she wants a family so much she’ll probably have twins within a year.‘’

Paul laughed. “Why not triplets?” he asked.

Suggesting triplets had been a joke but Stephen replied seriously, “We discussed it. Triplets would make too dangerous a delivery.”

“You really have a choice?” In all his years with Elizabeth, she had never told him this. He found it unbelievable.

“The women do though only to a degree. Mistakes do happen, usually single births. They’re tragedies in a way. The mothers die and we gain but a single child when our numbers are already so few.”

“Will Helen be all right?”

“Her grandmother’s delivery was difficult. So was her mother’s. They survived. There is a clinic about twenty miles away from our house. It’s equipped for most emergencies. Food will be a more annoying problem. James didn’t give much thought to grocery stores when he chose the location.”

“Maybe you should take up farming and buy a cow to milk.”

“Cows require too much effort. I might try goats.”

“Well, milking is easy anyway.”

“Is it? I never had to learn. How did you?”

“Phillipe Dutiel took me to Brittany just before the war. His parents had a dairy farm.”

“When will the boat be ready?” Stephen asked, changing the subject. He did not wish to discuss Philippe Dutiel.

“It’s in the water,” Paul said. He sat in one of the chairs, kicked off his shoes, and stretched his legs out on an otto-man, unbending the stiff right one more slowly than the left. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in all our years together, old friend, it’s never put off one of your requests.”

II

The next morning, Helen and her uncle caught a small commuter plane to Bangor, picked up a car, and drove to the coast. The day was brilliant, the spring sun beating down on the farmland around them. Dick loved the warmth of it on his arms and legs but sympathized with Helen. His niece wore a dark, long-sleeved coat with the collar turned up, a hat to hide her face. She sat with the back of her head pressed against the passenger window, screening out the worst of the rays, her dark glasses reflecting his face on the occasions when he glanced at her.

She should have been happy, he thought. Hell, after her reception in New York, she should have been ecstatic but she hardly spoke at all. Her passivity concerned him. It implied she was somehow unhappy or at least confused. He had always thought of her as a daughter and, like any good father, wanted only the best for her. If his feelings had been any less pure he could never have let her leave home without a struggle. “That was quite an affair yesterday,” he finally said.

“I suppose. Money opens doors.”

“Opens them early, you mean. You would have been successful anyway. Stephen just speeded up the process.”

For the first time since they started the trip, Helen smiled. “Isn’t that ironic?” she said.

“Damn it, girl. If you’re going to run off with some foreigner who has cat’s teeth in his mouth and a thousand-year employment record, he might as well have money.”

Helen laughed and squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t want to give you the wrong impression. I’ve just had too many hectic days and yes I do still get tired.”

Even through his shirt and jacket, he felt aroused by her touch, a swift stab of lust gone as soon as she let him go. He wondered if she knew what desire she created in him and decided he’d just be careful around her. He began talking, telling her with happened in the weeks after she had gone and how he had finally persuaded Judy Preuss to marry him. “We want you at the wedding,” he said.

“Only me?” she asked.

“Yes, Judy said she’s sorry. We will be inviting Elizabeth and Paul but Stephen reminds Judy too much of the past. She hopes you both understand.”

Instead of replying, Helen pointed to a tavern that served lunches. The place was sandwiched between two larger buildings with one small window in the front. Once inside, Helen chose a table as far from the daylight as possible. Dick ordered a hamburger and a beer. Helen asked for a bowl of soup and some ice in a glass, then filled the glass from a bottle of the cloudy Tarda water she carried in her oversize purse. Without waiting for it to cool, she drained the glass and filled it again. When she took off her glasses he saw how tired she looked, how sad.

“Are you all right?” Dick asked. Realizing she couldn’t possibly understand what he meant from his words alone, he rephrased, “Is this change what you expected?”

“Stephen tried to show me what his world was like but nothing could prepare me for how I must live. And the metamorphosis isn’t over. It can’t be. I feel too human.”

“How do you think you’re supposed to feel?”

“I don’t know but not like this.”

“Listen, girl. One of the things I liked most about Stephen as I got to know him was how much he cared about you and the kids. Hell, how much he cared about all of us. After he told me what he was, he started acting like some indestructible prehistoric god. But when I looked past that facade, I just saw a man—a man more sensitive than I would ever want to be.”

“I’m not sure I understand what you’re telling me.”

“I’m saying that you shouldn’t try to build a wall to separate what you were from what you want to be. If you do, everything you become will be a lie.”

“It already is, Uncle.”

“Is it?”

“When Stephen suggested that I ask you to come with me, my first thought was that he was guaranteeing that, should I need it, I would have a willing source of food.”

“Overprotective is he?” Dick asked with a straight face.

Helen laughed and leaned across the table to kiss him on the cheek. “I miss you so much, Uncle. All of you.”

Dick waited until the waitress set down their order. When they were alone again, he apologized for the lecture and changed the subject. “Now, the wedding will be on August twelfth in Sandusky. Judy’s sister will be maid of honor. Corey’s the best man. We want you in the wedding party.”

Helen shook her head. “Tell Judy that I can’t come either,” she said, then explained how she and Stephen planned to stage their deaths.

“You’re sure that’s what you want?” Dick asked when she’d finished. Helen nodded and he went on, “Well, I suppose we can keep in touch somehow. Maybe we can send letters through Paul.”

Helen smiled. “More than that. I’ll want you to visit us. We both will.”

“Then I’ll arrange to see you. I promise.”

“I thought you’d be the hardest one to tell. I dreaded it and you’re making it so easy for me,” she said and he sensed her thankfulness in her tone and the quick merging of their minds.

“I never had a choice, not from the day you and Stephen met.”

“No, Uncle, you never did.” She reached across the table and took his hand, and he was thankful to notice that the sexual charge of her touch had vanished. “The nude is being donated to the Cleveland Art Museum. The Andalusian series has been purchased by the Austra family. The self-portrait will stay with me. Most of the money this sale has raised along with every painting that hasn’t been sold is going to belong to you.“

“Helen, I can’t let you . . .”

“That’s my estate. I can’t take it with me. Besides, I want to help put Carol and Alan through college. This way I can do it without the risk of anyone knowing what happened to me.”

“I suppose we can’t tell the kids the truth, can we?”

“Maybe someday. Not yet.” She hesitated, then added, “And you’ll have to destroy every photograph of me except those taken when I was a child, and all their negatives.”

“Damn!” Dick said. “Carol’s been keeping a scrap-book.”

“What photos does she have?”

‘ ’Just the ones we took after you had your hair cut in that stupid shingle. What were you, about fifteen?“

Helen laughed, the first sincerely happy moment of the day, as if apprehension had exhausted her. “Let her keep it. Nobody would recognize me from that.”

They talked about the past while they finished their lunch, Helen speaking of last summer’s events in a hazy detached tone, as if they had taken place years ago. As they got ready to leave the restaurant, Dick asked her again, “Are you sure you want to do this?”