The Falstaff Vampire Files (16 page)

The woman’s answer, an incomprehensible growl, contained words. Sir John spoke to her in some form of English—an occasional word sounded familiar. But it was a dialect beyond my understanding.

Whatever she said displeased Sir John. He demanded something that must have been, “show me,” although I couldn’t understand that either. Over his shoulder to us, he said, “Wait,” with that same unmistakable command voice.

He followed her, both of them squeezing through the hedge where the raccoon had gone.

We waited, all in shock. I deposited Vi back on the bench next to Lucy, who hadn’t seem to register most of what just happened. Ned stood up and moved behind the bench, putting his hands on Lucy’s shoulders. He motioned me to sit down with Vi and Lucy. I didn’t argue. I perched on the edge of the bench next to Vi, who was shaking.

“Did she bite you?” I whispered.

“No, but she would have if he hadn’t stopped her.”

Mina put her hands on her hips and marched over to Hal, who looked at the ground.

“That was Doll,” Hal said at last. “Sometimes Jack and I would go find her out on the street preying on the homeless. This is the worst I’ve seen her.”

Sir John came back alone several minutes later, looking grim.

“She has a dark hole to hide in when the sun comes up. She stays with a group of men she can feed on. They think they use her, but she only lets them live so she can feed. She’s been lifting her skirts and taking men’s coins since before your country was a gleam on the horizon of the first exploring sailor.”

“You called her Doll. Is she Doll Tearsheet from Shakespeare’s
Henry the Fourth
play?” I had to ask.

“The same, or as near as makes no matter.” This time he did not smile at my tone of awe, but turned seriously to Hal. “You wonder, young man, why I will not bring you over to this half life. Look at Doll. Six hundred years ago she was a young, contentious girl with a lively laugh and hair like a sunset. No dowry, no husband, too wild for the nunnery. Nothing she could do but whore.” He sighed. “Where else would a soldier meet his love, but a bawdy house? Her own wit sparred with mine as few could. We parried words and kisses. We parted. She heard of my death, but when they changed me, I came back for her. I found her dying from disease a needle’s worth of your medicine could cure. I saved and damned her in a moment with one kiss.”

Mina had come closer to listen. Her eyes glistened with tears. “That is so sad.”

“Sad indeed, young Mina. I was so new to this half-death myself, I could not know how endless life could crush a weak mind. The constant change—a new world on your heels, before you truly grasp the last one. Her reason broke. But her body burns on, and she has some low cunning left to scrabble about and live. I would I had let her die. I’ve no more heart to snuff that candle now than I did when I first relit it. She is my penance. Where I go, I bring her. I look after her as I can. I do not need another such burden on my soul—if soul I still have.”

Hal moved closer to get Sir John’s attention. “I just need an edge, that’s all I want from you. If you give that to me, I won’t turn to the others.”

“You don’t know what you ask, lad. A vampire can go mad—just look at Doll. The Others are pure death for anyone who engages them. Stay away.”

Hal seemed not to have heard. “It may be too late for that. Share the blood and power you have. I need it. The job I do, I see what has to be done. I watch the men in charge screw it up, just from arrogance and stupidity. It’s not my pay grade to make those decisions, but even if it were, they’d sabotage it. The whole damn system is blind. I need to do it another way. With the right edge I could change the world.”

“The gift you ask of me would not solve that riddle.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and Hal said, “I already know how things need to be done. All I need is the power to get them done my way. If you can’t give it to me, I will go back to the Others. I know how to find them.”

“Find them?” Sir John shook his head. “Foolish lad. Look at poor Lucy. The Others are among us already. They haven’t followed you yet, but they will,” he muttered. “Best to travel by day, if you can. At night—look for a place to hide.”

He turned and started out the gate.

“Wait!” Hal caught up with Sir John, and I heard his questioning voice as they walked away. No answer from Sir John.

Ned took Lucy by the hand, nodded politely. “Glad to meet you all. We’d best be going.” He followed Sir John and Hal out the gate.

Mina stood looking after them and finally turned to go. “I’m sorry, Kris,” she said. “I’m sorry for everything.”

“I am, too,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.”

She nodded, turned and walked away.

Chapter 45

Sir John Falstaff’s words

on black digital recorder, undated

A few growls chase the pup
away. Who could look on Doll’s fate and want to live a vampire half-life? Six centuries undead. Were she human she would reek, but the unwise man who ventured close enough try to lift that skirt would find she smelled of vampire perfume and new mown hay. Curious creatures, we smell sweet to lure our prey, with a faint flavor of how we died. Doll’s death was in a hayloft. My own death smells of wood and smoke and ground cover.

Young Hal has opened the gate to hell. I walk along, preyed upon in the streets and threatened in my daytime refuge.

Danger lurks in the night. Things more fatal to vampires than humans only because we see them and our presence lures them like a deadly spoor. Hungry Ghosts—the city teems with ’em, fragile but fatal to the unwary who walk across their now-unmarked graves without the proper care. And those red-eyed horrors seeping through the Death Gate.

A host of night terrors, yet none I fear more than the dawn.

So now I search the streets without the comfort of safety from the sun. I need to nose out yet another lair, if only briefly. Hmm, briefs may yet deliver me. My fingers find a scrap of purple silk in my pocket, and recall the lips that tasted of sack sherry and a hint of pork chop. Time for a visit to my lady from the restaurant.

Chapter 46

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 13th continued

A few hours later Sir John
returned, accompanied by two men in overalls wheeling a huge dolly.

“I must leave,” he said as they loaded up his crate. Vi and I trailed after him.

While the men loaded his coffin, Sir John said softly, “Hal has opened the gate to the Others—I know not how. They speak no words. They never walked as men. They drink the life of those who call them. Most humans cannot see them.” He fell silent when the workmen passed by rolling the huge crate down the hall.

We started to follow, but Sir John held us back.

“Where will you go? Will we see you again?” Vi asked.

“If we survive. Because I drank your blood, Vi, and yours, Kit, you may see them.”

“We don’t even know what they look like.”

“Pray you never do. If they come to your window, you will see red eyes. Look away. Ignore them—your attention feeds them. Seal the windows against the night. Invite no one in.” He tipped Vi’s chin up and looked down into her face. “Leave your curiosity to go hungry for once.”

Then he was gone.

Vi set herself to transcribing her notes in a somber mood.

I went home to read client files. It was past midnight when Vi called.

“Kris, do you see something strange in the garden?” I brought the phone to the window with me. The night was dark. At first I saw nothing, but there did seem to be a presence in the garden. I couldn’t quite make out any actual figures.

“I don’t see anything.” The minute I said it there was a kind of rushing toward my window, as if a gust of wind had blown up against it. I jumped back.

“Vi, we should stay away from the windows. I still don’t see anything, but that felt like an attack of some kind.”

“Good idea.”

The next morning the meowing feral cats in the garden woke me. I called Vi and got no answer. I rushed over to her place and found her collapsed on the floor near the window. She was dreadfully pale and I couldn’t wake her.

I followed the ambulance to the hospital. I called Larry’s place, forgetting that he was in Edinburgh, but Bram Van Helsing answered and came to the hospital to sit with me till we could see Vi.

He got there in time to offer moral support when a doctor told us she was severely anemic and they were transfusing her. She regained consciousness and begged me to go feed all her cats and to come the next day after I had fed them in the morning.

“If she’s well enough to obsess over the cats, she’ll be home soon,” I told Bram.

“She’s a very selfless lady.”

Bram went with me again the next day, when the resident in charge of Vi’s case pulled me aside. A serious young man who looked about sixteen to me, but must have been close to thirty. He looked at the chart in his hands while he spoke.

Fat people make doctors nervous—I’ve had them crouch against the door when forced to examine me naked, as if my flesh could contaminate them. Fortunately I was clothed and he only had to talk to me about Vi.

“Ms. Semmelweis said she has no next of kin. You’re neighbors, right?”

“Friend, neighbor, and tenant. I rent the cottage behind her house.”

I felt Bram move closer, so that he was standing next to me.

When he looked up from the chart, the doctor turned to him with obvious relief.

“Do you know anything about the marks on her neck?”

“No.” I managed to keep myself from touching the marks on my own neck. Not that it mattered. The doctor was speaking to Bram.

“Well,” Bram cleared his throat. “She does have several cats.”

“How many?

Ah, the homemade sanity test. Multiple cats with no resident male equals proof positive of crazy-old-ladyhood. Bram looked to me for an answer.

“I’ve seen three, but she also feeds a couple of strays every day.”

The doctor nodded as if this confirmed his worst suspicions. Either he really believed that cats could inflict vampire-style bites on the neck, or he was writing “Older female patient exhibits MCS—Multiple Cat Syndrome—Prognosis Uninteresting” on his chart.

“We’d feel better if we could do more tests and find out what’s happening. But she insists on going home. My question is whether she’s competent to make that decision.”

I adopted a firm tone, just to see if he was capable of acknowledging me. “I’m a clinical psychologist and my professional opinion is that she’s sane.”

Bram nodded in agreement. “I’m a psychiatrist, and while I don’t know her as well as Kris does, from what I’ve seen of Violet, I’d tend to agree.”

The doctor nodded at Bram, with the smile of a man recognizing a colleague. I’d forgotten that as a psychiatrist, Bram was also a medical doctor.

“If you and your wife are going to be around to keep an eye on her, we’ll feel better about sending her home. Bring her back in if she has more problems. We may be having this conversation again soon.” The doctor snapped the chart shut and bustled off to his next errand.

“Sorry about that,” Bram said. “Do you mind?”

“Do I mind the way he treated me like a cranky old lady and you as an equal? There was a time when that stuff bothered me, but in recent years I try to ignore it, and concentrate on getting what I want. “

“Of course that’s terrible,” he said. “But I meant did you mind how he assumed we were husband and wife?”

“No.” I smiled, and he smiled back. “I liked that part. Thanks for sticking up for Vi.”

“My pleasure.” He took my hand and we walked like that down the hall to tell Vi she’d be coming home soon.

“Seeing my cats will make me feel better,” she confided in me. I couldn’t refuse her. I told the hospital that I would stay with her and take care of her till she got better.

“Keep her hydrated and make sure she eats,” the doctor said. “She could go downhill fast. Bring her back in if she starts to get worse.”

Bram helped me walk her to the car and up her front steps when we brought her home. She was very weak.

“Kristin, here’s my cell phone and pager number. Call anytime, day or night. I’ll be over at Larry’s. I can get here in five minutes.”

Chapter 47

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 19th continued

I checked on Vi between clients,
but after she drank some of the protein drink the hospital had sent home with her, she slept. I went over at noon to cook her some lunch, but she was still deeply asleep. I kept checking her all afternoon between clients. Finally she roused up a little in the late afternoon and had some soup and more protein drink. I was worried that she would simply go to sleep and never wake up again.

Around sunset I came into the room to see that Vi was up and sitting in a chair. I told her which cats had come out when I fed them. The formerly feral mother and kitten only came out when I wasn’t in the room, and ran to hide if they caught me peeking in the door. I managed to sneak a few pictures of them with my cell phone and got a smile out of Vi when I showed her.

I had expected the cats to be piling into bed with her, but even the bold males seemed to be hiding. “I probably smell like the vet’s office from all the medical stuff,” she said, as if too exhausted to think about it. She ate a tiny bit of rice and chicken casserole and said she would be sleeping soon, but she wanted to sit up a bit.

I made sure she had the cell phone within easy reach, so she could just press a button in case she needed help and was too weak to call out, and I went to the next room to sleep, my cell phone next to the bed.

But it was Vi’s voice in next room, strong and loud, that woke me when she called out at three a.m. “Kris, can you see them?”

I sat up, instantly alert, scrambled out of bed and ran into Vi’s room. She stood looking out the window in an odd posture, almost as if she was trying to press her face against the glass.

“Stop her!” a voice said so clearly that I looked around expecting to see Sir John next to me.