DarkWalker (16 page)

Next to him now, Lisa nodded. Her eyes were steady, solid, teary but determined; otherwise, she was a mess of mud and blood, a woman in disarray—Nick’s normal state. Her fists were clenched. She gripped the knife in her right hand so tightly her knuckles were white.

“You’re a hunter,” Lisa said, casting her eyes on him now. “Track them.”

The vampire had gone downwind, so her scent would be carried away. Nick could make logical guesses as to which direction she might go from one roof to another. But in truth, he had never tracked a particular beast before. And she hadn’t made it easy.

He’d never seen one flee. This one hadn’t fled, exactly; she’d come down, taken her prey, and gone off to feast in private. It wasn’t simply a
rare
event, it was unique in Nick’s experience. They found corners, shadows, empty places where they could feed without interruption. The seductive type, like the vamp that took Jack, tended to troll clubs and bars, finding their victims and luring them away without spectacle, quiet and unseen, undetected except by scent.

Lisa waited for him to respond. Her eyes told him she’d hunt the beast alone, though she didn’t know how—or what to do if she found it. Worse, if she found Jack already dead (which was probably the case), or a vampire himself now, she’d be dead (or undead) inside one minute—and she wouldn’t care.

Nick still reeled from the attack. There’d been five of them, different creatures working together—plus the rats. Organized. There may be more.

The moment he’d arrived, Nick had thought this city reeked of a vampire infestation. Now he realized he was wrong, that it was much worse than that.

His whole life—the training, the encounters, even the loss of Chris Hunter and Diane—led to this moment, this decision: go after the beasts and all their allies, or walk away?

What a stupid question.

2.

Lisa waited, surprised her mind was so clear. She didn’t even consider alternatives. Go after Jack. Fight for him. She’d always wanted to fight for someone.

Twelve hours ago, she would have laughed at the idea of fighting demonic armies. That was before teeth dropped out of the sky, before Jack unveiled the shadows. Her senses were open now, her night vision sharpened and her hearing more acute. She was fit. Ready and willing to fight for her love. Able. And, for good or bad, not alone in her struggle.

“We need to know more about what we’ve seen already,” Nick said. “How to kill that red behemoth, for instance. And the clay thing, in case there’s another.”

The computer hung from her left hand, the straps of the soft briefcase crunched within her fist.

“And,” Nick said, “we have to get away from here. The police will only slow us down.” Until he said it, Lisa hadn’t heard the approaching sirens.

Lisa nodded. “We can’t have that.”

“This way,” he said, going to the back of the club and scaling the four-foot brick wall.

They climbed down from the roof to an alley behind the club.

Lisa spent little time trying to puzzle anything out. It was useless to assert reason on anything she’d experienced tonight. She’d seen enough horror movies to know the constant skeptic died—horribly—crying at the end that she believed, truly believed, and needed no more convincing.

If her mind was shot, if this was all a dream, she’d wake up with the alarm or anti-psychotic medicine, and Nick and Jack and the multitude of demons would fade from memory.

They moved more quickly now that they weren’t the focal point of
every
shadow, past a clearing and under the I-4 overpass. Not so far they couldn’t hear the police sirens or see flashing lights, but far enough so they could open the computer and see what they would see.

“It’s almost morning,” she said. The sky had brightened faintly.

“It
is
morning,” Nick told her. “Newspapers have been delivered. Bakers have baked, bagel shops are hopping.
Sunrise
in . . . about twenty minutes.”

“Vampires are night creatures, right?” Lisa asked. “I mean, the thing that took Jack, it won’t be out and about during the day, will it?”

Nick hesitated. “
Most
sleep during the day, yes.”

“So if Jack survives until sunrise,” she said, though his chances seemed slim, “he’ll probably be okay until sunset.”

Nick didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was a false hope; he’d said
most
, not all, and his hesitation suggested
not this type
. And the other creature—the giant with bright red flesh—hadn’t been a vampire. It was subject to different rules.

3.

Nick Hunter opened Jack’s database, spent a few minutes figuring out how to work it, and finally searched for vampires.

It listed eleven kinds. More than Nick had seen, but fewer than Chris Hunter had known about.

Nick scanned the pages of information, but it was mostly technical and overly detailed: temperatures, wind directions, dimensions of the rooms or alleys; the names of bars and bartenders; at least two victims’ names and addresses. It lacked the information Nick needed: how to kill them, where they lived, weaknesses specific to their race of vampire.

He found a type of Chinese vampire: Chiang-Shih. It exhaled poison. When insubstantial, it became a sphere of light (like will-o’-the-wisps). Jack had apparently seen one in
Chinatown
(which
Chinatown
, it didn’t say) half an hour before dawn. It was sitting in an alley, growling and hissing, counting grains of rice.

Nick found no particular name for the seductive vampire, and nothing he didn’t already know. Fast, agile, strong, and devastatingly beautiful, they were mildly hypnotic and had a high level of pheromones.

“He saw her,” Nick said.

“The vampire?”

“Just . . . a few nights ago, it looks like. Here. He talked to a ghost about her. No, the ghost talked to him.
Wanted to tell him stories
. This entry has both.” Nick read more, summarizing for Lisa. “She winked at him. Touched his back.”

Lisa had approached while he read and looked over his shoulder. “You sure it’s the same one?”

“He describes her as Asian, dark hair to her shoulders, with brown, almost amber eyes.” Nick shook his head. “Nothing else.”

“Sounds like a lot of Asian women,” Lisa said.

“Yes, but this is an Asian woman who also happens to be a vampire . . . a
western
vampire, not Asian, and at the same club. It’s got to be her.” Nick finished reading the brief entry. “It doesn’t say anything else.”

“How about how to kill it?” Lisa asked.

Nick opened his jacket, showing Lisa his silver and wood. “Got that covered.”

“And the other thing?” Lisa asked. “With the red skin?”

Nick searched for
behemoth
, but found nothing. Red appeared all over the place, describing dozens of things—even the eyes of certain rats, which Nick had seen tonight. But for blister red skin, Nick found only one entry.

It described the place and the temperature (warmer around a gas station somewhere south of Route 80 in
Pennsylvania
, forty degrees elsewhere). A kid, working the night shift, had apparently read from some book (Jack hadn’t named it), and summoned a nine-foot-tall mass of muscle in a cloud of reddish smoke. The creature grabbed the kid (and ignored Jack, just outside, who had stopped to buy a drink). The smoke thickened, and they vanished. Inside, Jack picked out his drink and a few things to eat. The creature’s feet had left scorch marks in the cheap linoleum that would dwarf Bigfoot’s tracks. Heat lingered. The counter had been burned.

Nick stared at the entry, at its title, unaware his mouth was hanging open until Lisa touched his arm. “What is it?”

“It,” Nick said, swallowing hard, “is a full-fledged demon from Hell.”

Lisa stared at the screen. “It doesn’t say that.”

“Demon.” Nick pointed at the word. “It says
demon
. Where do you think they’re from?” But she didn’t look as scared as Nick felt—which, oddly, reassured him.

She held his gaze. She had no tears any more, not even a hint of them. “Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re going to kill it.”

A moment of hesitation. Fear. All the things he didn’t know, the knowledge and lore that existed outside his realm of experience, held him down. It wasn’t too late to walk away; the watcher was gone, dead by now or a vampire himself.

But that was running away.

Worse, Nick felt responsible for Lisa. It wasn’t his fault she’d become involved in this, but he couldn’t knowingly let her hunt vampires without knowledge or preparation.

But a
demon
.

Everything he knew about demons came from books or movies—and even there, his experience was slight. Ancient spells manifested demons, and spells sent them back. But Nick was no sorcerer. They’d met one earlier, the
vaudoux
, but Nick knew of no way to track a man who vanished in a cloud of smoke.

Knowing this might be the last day of his life, Nick shut down the computer and inhaled deeply. “I think I know what we have to do. It’s not the demon we need.”

“It’s the vampire,” Lisa said.

Slowly, Nick shook his head. “No. The
vaudoux
.”

They returned to the scene of the crime. There was no indication of it; the door had been shut, no police lingered outside the club, only smeared clay—like mud—on the wall.

Nick imagined the
vaudoux
was still nearby; he’d said he was “already close."

He went to the storefront at which the witchdoctor appeared, under a brown awning proclaiming “Best Sushi.” The raw smoke smell lingered, heavily mixed with blood, sweat, and exhaust. The street was no longer empty, either; a few people walked the sidewalks, and cars and trucks lumbered down the one-way road.

“What, exactly, are we looking for?” Lisa asked. She knelt beside the door, touching the ground with one hand.

“He’s got to be close,” Nick said. “He appeared here, right before the attack.”

“I don’t think he attacked us.”

“Then maybe he’ll help,” Nick said. “I’ve never fought a demon before. I don’t know how they die. Or if.”

“And the vampire?” Lisa asked. “You can track her, right?”

Nick looked skyward, to the rooftops across the street. “Won’t do us much good if we find her just to die. Won’t help Jack any, either.”

When vampires burned, they often left a silhouette in the ground; rain washed away the smoky outline. The
vaudoux
, however, had left no such trace. Nick assumed that, wherever he’d disappeared to, the
vaudoux
had gone no further than line of sight. If he had summoned the demon, he must have been within sight of that, too, nearer the corner.

Maybe it was as simple as summoning him. “
Vaudoux
,” Nick said. “Show yourself.”

1.

Lisa’s belief system had to change
. She’d grown up Catholic. Though she stopped attending church years ago—except for Christmas, because she enjoyed the choirs—she never stopped believing in God. The fundamental lessons she’d been taught as a child stayed with her.

There were ghosts and demons in the Bible, weren’t there? She wasn’t sure. Couldn’t name one. People had been brought back from death—not just Jesus. Had Lazarus been like the zombie last night, without a mind, bound to another’s commands? She didn’t think so. There were variations; she’d learned that much already.

Jack was still alive. He had to be. She had some small amount of time left before the creatures did anything with him. The vampire could have slit his neck there, dropped Jack dead to the sidewalk, but that’s not what happened. She took him. That had to mean something.

When Nick called the
vaudoux
, Lisa remained on one knee, fingers on the cold concrete. A shiver ran through her, fear and pain—not physical pain, but emotional, psychological, something deeper and more penetrating.

“Show yourself,” Nick said again.

Lisa didn’t think the
vaudoux
had been responsible. It didn’t feel right. The demon, the crimson-skinned giant, had directed the attack.

The wind gusted. The air warmed. The sky brightened while they waited. No one came. No puff of smoke, no smell of rotting flesh, no gnashing teeth, no vampire mistress, no
vaudoux
.

“The demon,” Lisa said. “Maybe there’s something more there.”

Nick didn’t stop her as she crossed the street, but didn’t follow. He was scanning the rooftops, as if he possessed x-ray vision that would penetrate the bricks and find what he sought.

Remnants of clay clung to the wall and sidewalk, but most of it—and everything else—was gone. No rat, corpse, or batboy remained, and no demon.

When she stepped over the spot where the demon had stood, heat struck her—ten, twenty, maybe thirty degrees hotter. Her breath caught. Vision swayed. Red smoke curled around her, soft and caressing like a lover, covering her ears and muting all the sounds around her. The sulfuric scent burnt her nostrils. The world flickered: bits of flame and smoke, swatches of shadow, the hard concrete under her feet. Her vision funneled, white creeping in from the edges, and the ground rose to meet her.