Hag Night (37 page)

You have to get it going again. You have to lead and you know it.

But that’s where the trouble lay. She did not want anything to happen to Rule or Morris or even Megga, but she feared—as Wenda Keegan—that she would make the wrong choice. If she got these people killed, then their lives would be on her hands, and maybe on her soul, and she did not like that, she did not like that at all.

“Well?” Megga asked her.

Wenda looked up at her. “Well, what?”

“Are we going to do something or what?”

“It’s under consideration.”

Rule cleared his throat. “It’s not a decision to be made lightly. In the final analysis, we’re in grave danger regardless of our actions. Yes, we might die and become like them if we wait here…but on the other hand, if we try a breakout and luck does not favor us, it’ll be all the same, won’t it?”

Megga looked exasperated. “I’m not waiting. I refuse to wait.”

Wenda stood and went over by the fire. “Oh, shut up already.”

She did not expect what came next. Megga charged at her, hooked her by the elbow and spun her around. Before Wenda could do much more than be surprised, Megga took a swing at her. She’d reached her breaking point so she bunched her fist and sent it at Wenda’s face. The blow was struck out of rage, so there wasn’t much control behind it. One of her knuckles caught Wenda’s cheekbone, the force of it carrying Megga herself around in a semi-circle. Wenda responded instantly, jumping forward and shoving Megga hard before she could regain her balance. Megga hit the floor, flipping herself onto her back to make another try at it, but Wenda was on her by then. She straddled her, gripping her by the throat with one hand and bringing the stake up with the other like she was going to impale her right then and there.

“Don’t!” Rule cried out.

Megga had a foam of saliva on her lips, her teeth clenched, her eyes wild and stormy.

If I kill the bitch here and now it’ll probably save us a lot of trouble down the road, a whole lot of trouble.

“So do it!” Megga challenged her. “Fucking stake me!”

But Wenda had already loosened her
hold on the stake though she still gripped Megga’s throat. No, she wasn’t about to do it, but the absolutely insane thing was that the vibe she got off Megga was that she seemed to
want
to be staked…as ludicrous as that seemed. She was practically hungry for it and that in itself was as scary as anything Wenda had thus far encountered. Was it something suicidal and self-destructive in her or was it something more? A lot of writers liked to toy around with the pop psychology idea that the stake through the heart of a vampire was something more than impalement but a symbolic sexual penetration. All the Freudian overtones aside, Wenda nearly believed it at that moment because Megga wanted it.

“Please,” she said.

But Wenda got off her. There would be no penetration and Megga looked disappointed.

That’s when Morris, who seemed oblivious to everything but his primitive fascination with the fire, turned and said the most absurd thing: “Don’t hurt her, Vultura. She’s under contract the rest of the season.”

Megga didn’t seem to see the humor in it, but Wenda started laughing. It came rolling out of her and when it subsided, she said, “Okay, Morris. But when this season is through, fire the bitch. She can go back to working the drive-thru window at Wendy’s with rest of her Goth tribe.”

Which was spiteful, of course, but true.

Megga pulled herself from the floor and sat down in her chair, lighting a cigarette with a visibly trembling hand.

Wenda rubbed the welt on her cheekbone and tried to make sense of it all. Several ti
mes tonight, Megga had openly come on to her. Now she had attacked her, then was nearly reduced to tears when she wouldn’t shove the stake into her. She was acting like some pissed-off, jilted lover. How did you explain any of that? There was a weird sexual undertone to it. Megga was moody by nature. She was argumentative, confrontational, sarcastic, bitter, angry…and tonight she’d displayed all these things, as expected. But the eroticism was not something Wenda had seen coming. But it was there. It was still there. Even now as Megga sat brooding and smoking, she would look over at Wenda with her dark eyes and the seduction, the appetite in them, was there.

Maybe this is how she copes. Maybe this is her version of a nervous breakdown. Maybe the stress and terror and anxiety are finally forcing her out of the closet and she’s confronting feelings she always had about me.

But it was nothing that simple and Wenda knew it.

She’d never had any doubts in her mind that Megga swung both ways or that her almost obsessive devotion to Bailey was more than just sisterly, but she did not believe that Megga had been harboring the hots for her. It just didn’t wash. There was something there, something going on, but she had the intuitive feeling that it had more to do with the psychic influence of those things outside than with any hidden, deep-set yearnings.

The good thing was, it felt like Vultura was back.

And Vultura was not real happy with Megga the Graveyard Girl. She was filled with disdain and something quite near loathing for her. Not only was Megga not to be trusted, she had morphed into some crazy and nicely fucked-up bitch with highly questionable sexual desires…if wanting to be staked was any indication.

Wenda kept watching her and as she did so, a series of images began to pass through her head. None of them, she thought, were of her own making. She was channeling images from Megga’s mind and she knew it. She saw children taunting Megga as a child, calling her
Creepy Meggy,
because while other girls played with dolls or poured over issues of
Tiger Beat
, Megga walked around with books of macabre cartoons by Charles Addams, old well-thumbed horror comics like
Tales from the Tomb
and
Witches’ Tales,
and decorated her room with posters of cinematic ghouls like Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and Reggie Nalder. In fact, her first true sexual experience had been auto-erotic as she masturbated at thirteen while watching a vampire flick called
Subspecies.
An attractive teenager, but disenfranchised, friendless, and antisocial, she snuck into cemeteries at night and masturbated while pressed up against headstones and vaults. Bailey represented something to her. Bailey was everything she was not. She was a purity that Megga needed to corrupt. When Bailey did not do what she was told, Megga would slap her again and again until she drew blood and then, overcome by the sight of it, she would lick it off her lips and seduce her.

Was that the nature of their relationship?

Was it some sadomasochistic thing?

Wenda could not be sure. She was certain that the images of Megga’s childhood and teenage years were correct, but the Bailey-thing was murky and she could not tell whether it was true or some suppressed fantasy.

Finally, Wenda turned away because she began picking up images of herself. Of Megga licking blood from her. Of biting her in a place she would never care to be bitten.

But as she tried to shut it out, it was like maybe Megga herself had turned the volume up and she could hear her voice plain and clear:
You don’t have to be afraid, Wenda. You never have to be afraid of us. All those stories and movies are all utter crap and there are no such things as vampires. It’s a silly word of Serbian origin. Meaningless. We prefer more descriptive terms like Vurderlak and Vulkodlak, Vorvolakas and Vurvolak. We exist between reality and dream, light and shadow, life and the grave. Take my hand and I’ll show you things you never knew existed. I’ll take you places undreamed and to worlds untenanted. I’ll take you beyond the pale of death and to the Other Side and back again. I’ll make you young and beautiful forever. Just let me touch you. Let me put my hands on you. Let me put my lips on you—

Wenda forced it out of her head because she knew then it was not Megga at all, but something using Megga like a sort of relay station. And as she realized this, she could still hear its voice calling out of the night, rising louder and omnipotent, a buzzing and hissing and thoroughly inhuman voice. It was growing angry and impatient. It did not like to be ignored. It could do things that would
make her sorry and as it described them in detail its voice took on the whining petulance of an angry child, a rotten little brat that was not getting its way.

Then she knew.

Somehow, she knew.

Because underneath that awful voice there was something else, a stinging sort of pain born of fear because it could not corrupt her and this frightened it. She had something. Something it was afraid of…only she did not know what it was and if she hoped to live through the night as a living, breathing human being and not wake up tomorrow night as a slinking graveyard rat with a black and depthless hole where her soul had once been, she had better figure out what it was.

What made her special.

What made her different.

And, most importantly, what made them
afraid
of her.

“What is it?” she said aloud.

Megga looked at her, blinking.

“What is it? I have something they don’t like and you know what it is.”

“You’re losing it,” Megga said, sitting on her little secret golden egg of knowledge, refusing to lift her flanks so that Wenda might get a look at it. She would not tell and maybe that was because she was afraid to.

“Well?” Rule said, maybe sensing another confrontation and wanting to steer things clear. “What are we going to do?”

Wenda turned from Megga. “You think our best bet is to try and get out of here?”

He shrugged. “I suppose I do.”

“Okay. Let’s do it. Let’s go out there. Let’s see if we can get the drop on them.” She looked over at Megga. “You’re hot for this, so you can lead the way. There’s the door. Lead us out.”

Megga got up, keeping her distance from Wenda whom she clearly did not trust. Still looking back at her, she went over to the door and reached for the knob. And as she did so, there sounded a knocking from the other side.

2

When Reg got out onto the roof, he realized in his white-edged terror that he had nearly forgotten about the storm, the raw immensity of it, the glacial chill that blew like needles of ice straight from its whirling gut. But as soon as he stumbled out into the snow, it found him. It screamed in his face and sent frozen currents of air up his back. The wind seemed to hit him from every direction like it wanted to squash him flat. The snow was coming down heavy. It blew in his face and spun around him in white tempests. It was about two feet deep as he inched along on all fours so he could climb to the roof next door.

When he’d made it about ten feet from the broken window, he turned and looked back. The shadows and flying snow obliterated everything. He couldn’t even be sure where the window was now.

He trusted in his instincts and kept moving.

The pitch of the roof was low and the snow itself gave him good traction as he moved along. The blizzard raged around him, a primal and angry force. It moaned and howled and if somebody had shouted five feet from him, he doubted whether he would have heard them. He didn’t dare try and stand or even rise to his knees: if that wind got hold of him, it would toss him right off the roof and to the street far below. Better to stay down low where it couldn’t get a grip on him.

He was trying desperately not to think of Doc.

Trying desperately not
to remind himself that he had abandoned Doc.

Later. There would be time for guilt later.

He sidled up to the edge of the roof and it was just as he’d seen it out the window earlier with Burt: these houses were all packed in tight and getting from  one roof to the next would be easy enough, though not without danger.

He knew he was only two houses away from where Wenda and the others had gone. If he could cross the next roof he’d be there and then he could kick a window open and get inside.

Brushing snow from his face with fingers that were already numb inside his gloves, Reg moved precious inches closer to the edge of the roof. The house next door was a different type and it had a steeply-pitched roof. Not only that but it was about five feet lower. The gap between them was maybe two feet, which wasn’t much in good weather…but tonight, in this goddamned storm, it was like jumping from one icefall to the next on Mount Everest. This is what held him back.

You got a choice to make, man. You can go back and face those things or you can sit here and freeze to death. In an hour you’ll be like a frozen steak. Or, you can jump
to the next roof and pray you don’t roll right off it.

“Fuck it,” he said under his breath.

He got up in a crouch, kicking the snow away from him so he had himself a good launching platform. He counted to three, sucked in a breath, and then sprang like a cat. He didn’t fly like he would have without all the heavy winter gear on, but he spanned the roofs easily and landed in the snow of the one next door and what was utterly amazing to him was that when he landed, despite the pitch, he landed solid and sure.

That wasn’t so bad.

But that thought had barely passed through his mind when the snow beneath him gave way and he felt his boots skidding over iced shingles and he was sliding with no way to slow his descent. He let out a cry that was lost in the storm. He kept sliding, picking up speed, his boots dislodging columns of snow that swept up and over him, much of it going up his pant legs and up the back his parka. Then he struck something solid that groaned, but held. A rainspout, a gutter…he didn’t know what it was but it was all that saved him.