Return of the Wolf Man (23 page)

“Put your mouthpiece near his mouth,” Stewart said. She reached for a button on the control panel. “I’ll record it. The fire chief might want it.”

“I can’t tell if he’s trying to say something or if he’s trembling,” Emma said. She watched intently for a few seconds more. Then the lips stopped moving. The giant body was still again.

Emma put her fingers to his wrist for a moment, then sat back. She shook her head. “I just don’t get it at
all.
It’s like that Edgar Allan Poe story ‘The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar.’ A man’s body was dead but his soul was trapped in limbo, keeping the body alive. Rotting, but alive.”

“I think I’ll stick to Tom Clancy,” Lew Kelly said.

“Are you sure what you just saw wasn’t a death rattle?” Mary asked. “Muscles can tense in pretty misleading ways when people die.”

“I’m sure,” Emma said. “If this man’s dead then so am I. His chest is still moving and I still get a pulse. It’s very, very faint but it’s there.”

Emma started as something moved by the giant’s feet. She looked over.

A woman was standing there, staring down at her. She was a ghostly figure wearing a tattered white crinoline gown, a head of filthy black hair, and a depraved expression on her ashen face.

“How did you get in here?” Emma demanded. “Who are you?”

The wraithlike figure did not reply. She extended her arms and moved her bony fingers slowly as though beckoning the medic.

“I asked you a question!” Emma yelled. “Did you come through the storage compartment?”

“Emma, how did who get in here?” Mary asked.

Before Emma could answer, a strong, grayish-white hand rose slowly behind her. After the Monster’s powerful hand grabbed her neck and squeezed tightly, she was unable to say anything. His thick fingertips met on the other side of her throat; her larynx and pharynx were immediately pulped beneath his grip, and her internal and external jugular veins both burst. Her head sat on top of his fist like a plucked flower. Blood spilled from both sides of her silent mouth.

Sandra Mornay’s eyes widened at the sight of the blood. Hissing delightedly, she moved toward the dying woman. The Monster continued to hold the paramedic while the vampire knelt in front of her. A wicked smile on her pale mouth, Sandra parted her lips and placed them over the medic’s bloody chin. Her tongue scooped away the blood, then moved down Emma’s wrinkled neck.

When the vampire was finished, the Monster lowered his arm. He released the dead woman and his eyes opened slightly. They were dark slits against his pasty face.

“Emma!” Mary said. “Come in!”

Sandra rose contentedly. Twin streams of blood leaked from the sides of her mouth as she gazed at the Monster.

“Rise,” she commanded.

“Yes . . . Master,” the Monster said in a gravelly voice. He spread his fingers and placed his open hands on the floor. He sat up, his arms extended in front of him. Then he stretched his right arm to the side and leaned against the wall. He rose awkwardly.

Sandra raised a slender arm. She pointed to the front of the helicopter. “Kill them,” she whispered. “Kill them all.”

“Yes . . . Master.”

On the flight deck, the pilot and copilot continued to listen.

“Emma?” Mary said. “Emma?”

“It sounds like her radio’s gone dead,” the pilot said. “I can’t even hear her breathing.”

“I’m going back,” Mary said. She hurriedly unbuckled her seat belt and slid from the seat. “Emma was talking to somebody and it couldn’t have been Junior. Somebody must’ve hidden in the storage compartment.”

“You want my blackjack?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

The pilot nodded as the copilot went to the door a few feet behind them. She opened it and stopped cold.

The entrance was filled with the giant. She could only see to the top of his massive chest. The rest of him was hidden by the top of the doorway. As she stood there, his arms rose from his sides. He grabbed her throat tightly and lifted her up by the head. Her feet kicked until three of her seven cervical vertebrae snapped, severing the spinal cord. The copilot went limp and the Monster dropped her corpse. Then the giant raised his arms and pushed against the top of the doorway.

Pilot Kelly hadn’t heard anything but the loud beating of the main rotor. When he finally turned, he saw Mary lying on the floor. He also saw the giant pushing against the wall above the doorway. A moment later the powerful arms pushed through and the lightweight materials crumbled like cake. The creature stalked onto the flight deck.

“Mayday!” Kelly shouted into the radio as he threw the chopper into a rapid descent. The Monster fell forward, against the copilot’s seat.

“LifeSaver One,” said the dispatcher, “what is your problem?”

“LaMirada! He isn’t human!”

“Say again?” said the dispatcher.

“I said he’s not human! Mary is lying on the floor—I can’t see Emma. I’m going to try and land somewhere!”

The blue nose of the chopper was pointing down at nearly a forty-five-degree angle, the landing lights flashing against the dark sky. The Monster pushed against the back of the chair. It bent across the base and smashed into the systems display. Growling, the Monster leaned on the wreckage and stood unsteadily. In rage, he put his fist through the side door. Wind poured through the opening and whipped the ragged tails of the giant’s coat.

Battered by the wind, the pilot leaned hard on the control stick and banked to the east. The sudden, arcing turn spilled the giant against the door. It also swung the helicopter toward a cove just south of the marina. He saw a small patch of beach where he could set the chopper down.

“Come on!” he said through his teeth as he pushed the chopper ahead. “You’re going to make it. You’re going to—”

With an enraged cry, the giant pushed himself off the door. Tromping over the wrecked copilot’s seat, he stopped in the center of the flight deck, bent his upper back against the ceiling, and pushed.

“Don’t!” Kelly screamed as the giant pressed upward. “Christ almighty,
don’t!”

The Monster snarled and continued to raise his massive shoulders. The plastic and aluminum of the ceiling structure cracked, buckled, and filled the cabin with sickening groans. Above, the main rotor drive shaft whined as its bolts strained against their base.

“Stop it!” Kelly cried. “Don’t you understand? You’ll
kill
us!”

Frantically, Kelly flipped on the automatic pilot, released his harness, and ran at the Monster. He was too late. As he reached for the giant’s head, the top of the chopper popped open. The helicopter shuddered as the rotor hub came free on the port side. The rotor head continued to spin as it twisted to the starboard side of the craft. With a deafening crash, the blades slashed into the air inlet above the cabin. They sliced through the wall and turned the helicopter on its side.

“God—!”
Kelly screamed, an instant before he fell against the port wall and was knocked unconscious.

He was unaware of the chopper dropping, like a dart, the remaining two hundred and twenty feet to the cove.

He was unaware of the awful crash, which crushed the flight deck into the tail boom and send the rotor head pin-wheeling off.

He was unaware of the fuel tank exploding, of the wreckage being consumed in a black and red fireball.

He was dead as two figures emerged from the flaming holocaust. The one who came first was wailing and waving his arms violently, the sleeves of his coat ablaze. He lurched across the narrow sandbar and waded into the sea to put the fire out. The other walked more slowly, the crinoline of her dress in flames. She drifted into the surf, steam rising around her with every measured step. Stopping when the waters were hip-high, she raised her arms to the moon. Ash swirled on the waters and rode the air around her as she celebrated the murderous flames and the blood on her tongue and the eons of death from which these great waters smelled. It was glorious to feel, to walk the earth again.

Then she heard the voice inside her head. Lowering her arms, she came to attention. The voice commanded her to take the Monster to a safe place. It ordered her to walk in the water, away from the wreckage, so that their footsteps could not be traced. It told her to wait until he came to collect them.

“Yes, Master,” Sandra Mornay replied.

She looked at the Monster, who was standing immobile several paces ahead of her. His back was wet and glowing red from the fire of the burning helicopter. His arms were hanging straight down and dripping salt water.

“Come,” she said to him. “We must do the Master’s bidding.”

The Monster raised his arms in front of him until they were nearly parallel to the sea. He turned slowly, his head tilted slightly back, his hooded eyes nearly shut.

“Yes,” he said from deep in his throat. “I . . . come.”

As sirens sounded in the distance, the undead woman and her living dead companion waded toward the north, toward darkness.

FIFTEEN

A
fter the coming of darkness, the motor yacht slipped quietly from its permanent berth. The sleek, modern, forty-nine-foot vessel slashed purposefully through the calm waters off the coast of Marya Island. It moved with almost supernatural ease, barely stirring the waters as it glided swiftly out to sea. There were no lights onboard and no one moved on deck until the ship reached nearly the halfway point between the Morgan Islands and the western coast of Florida. Then, a shadow seemed to pass from the cabin to the foredeck of the yacht. It stopped near the pointed bow.

Wrapped tightly in his long black cloak, Count Dracula was unaffected by the motion of the ship. The gusting sea breeze stirred neither the vampire nor his cloak. As the streamlined vessel sped through the dark waters, Dracula was only aware of what had drawn him from the cabin: an ominous change in the ambience of the night. It was subtle at first, a sense that there was something powerful lurking beyond the horizon. The feeling grew stronger and more focused as the ship continued toward the shore. It wasn’t a storm, the coming of which Dracula occasionaly felt. It wasn’t war and bloodshed, which the vampire could also sense. What was out there was fury, bundled tightly and ready to erupt. But it wasn’t human rage. It was much too powerful and vivid.

There was no outward sign of Count Dracula’s sense of dread. His dark eyes remained fixed, his strong nose aloof, his full lips pressed together. Inside, however, the Lord of the Vampires was no longer at peace.

His body had reacted quickly to the manifestation. All of his defenses came alive. It began with a tingling in the base of his skull. The nerves there wriggled like maggots moving through his face and throat and brain. They heightened the vampire’s predatory senses and made him salivate, which he rarely did after feeding. As Dracula tasted the blood-tinged saliva, his eyes narrowed and his lips parted slightly. His two small fangs glistened rose-red in the moonlight.

Something new is out there,
he told himself. Something baleful and pernicious. Something out of his control.

The maggots spread through his neck and shoulders, all the muscles of which came alive. He closed his eyes and allowed his spirit to join with the vermin of the shore—the bats and rodents, the hornets and lice, the frogs and snakes. The collective search was neither long nor difficult. The creatures of blight and darkness felt what he did: an animal hunger that was kin to his, yet more feral. They sensed a roiling demon-center that drove an uncontrollable need for blood.

Dracula knew to whom the animal fury belonged.

It was Talbot . . . the Wolf Man.

Count Dracula opened his eyes. To his unnatural eyes the stars were bright smears churning in the turbulent atmosphere, the moon a beacon blinding to look at. He stared across the sea, which was white with flame reflected from above. This matter could not be dealt with by his éminence grise on shore. Sandra Mornay would be no match for Talbot. Dracula must confront his old nemesis himself.

The vampire swept downstairs, to the main cabin. He collected something from Andre and then he returned to the deck. Unfurling his cloak, the vampire spread his arms full. The cape filled with wind and it shrank as he did. Within moments, the powerful, gray bat was flying through the night, following a beacon more powerful than any known to mortal predator.

SIXTEEN