The Falstaff Vampire Files (23 page)

“They can’t seem to get in,” I reported.

“Yet,” she added. “They’re like that at Hal’s, and then they followed me home.” She leaned back languidly. “I wonder if they followed Hal’s jet to DC.” She seemed almost entertained by the prospect.

The phone rang. I sighed and answered.

“Kris, it’s Bram Van Helsing.”

“It’s a friend who might help us,” I said. “Hang on, Bram.” Mina nodded, but she seemed to be half asleep already. “Feel free to nap on the couch, Mina. I’ll take it this call in the other room.”

I sat down in the kitchen with my back to the window.

“Larry told me what you’re fighting—or as he put it, hallucinating,” Bram said. “I’m coming over.”

“I didn’t know you were in town.”

“I just got in. I didn’t want to show up on Larry’s doorstep unannounced, so I got a hotel room over on Van Ness. Then I found that message from Larry on my voicemail. You should have called me, Kris.”

“You’re right, I should have—not that there’s much you could do from Arizona, or even here. You may not be able to see these things, Bram. Some people can, some people can’t. Larry couldn’t.”

“Well, I did some research and I have a weapon. I don’t know if it will work.”

“Mina is here with me. She can see these things too, which makes me feel a lot saner, even though we’re both scared. I think we should sleep.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Yes. Come before sunset. Maybe they won’t even show up and we can all go out to dinner.”

Bram’s voice was gentle. “Either way, we’ll be ready.”

Neither of us believed it was over.

Mina had fallen asleep on the client couch. I brought her a pillow and spread a blanket over her and went to my bedroom. Even with the heavy curtains over the windows, flickers of red danced under the door and behind the curtains. I must have slept, because I dreamed, and the dreams were almost as bad as the reality.

Chapter 63

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 28th

In the gray dawn
I put out some dry food for Vi’s cats, who were still hiding. I passed by the door of my office and heard faint snoring as Mina slept. I got myself a cup of coffee and fed the ferals in the garden where they sat waiting patiently in the usual spot.

Then I had to face Vi’s house. It seemed deserted. No signs of damage. I had no idea what it would look like if the Others had killed Vi permanently.

It was the first time I had been down in the cellar since the coffin was installed. My heart beat faster with each step down the stairs. The cellar was the same, the coffin on its stand. Vi had not brought the computer down here. Her note to me had been handwritten. She had not written a word on her book in progress since she became a vampire, so far as I could tell.

I raised the coffin lid a little and looked in to see Vi in the same dead condition that Sir John had demonstrated on his first night in Vi’s house. Only Vi looked more gray than waxy pale.

The harsh front door buzzer startled me. I dropped the coffin lid with a crash. I apologized to Vi—not sure whether she could hear it or not. I went upstairs, sighing in relief to close the basement door. The buzzer sounded again.

On the front steps stood Pamela, the unofficial head of the unofficial feral feeding group, holding a long narrow steel mesh contraption by a suitcase-style handle on top. “I brought the humane trap,” she said. In the other hand she held some supermarket shopping bags. I let her in.

“Thanks for loaning me this. Vi told me not to feed the ferals before trapping them.”

“Vi told you?” She looked at me oddly.

Oops.

“I helped her trap them the first time, and then again to go to the vet to be spayed.”

“Oh, of course. It’s good that you’ve got some experience.”

Pamela had clearly been in the place before, because she talked as she walked straight back to the kitchen. I followed her. She put her bags on the table. “I know everyone’s bringing you food, but these are from the farmers’ market—apples, grapes, lettuce, onions and potatoes.” She glanced around. “Didn’t Vi feed the cats here?”

“We’ve got repairmen coming in, so I took all the tame cats next door,” I said, improvising. “I don’t want these girls sneaking out and going feral again.”

Pamela nodded approvingly. “Let me show you how to set this up.”

Once I had demonstrated to her satisfaction that I could open and prop the trap door, set the triggering device and reset it when it sprang, she sat back on her heels—she was very limber for a woman in her sixties.

“Did you know that Violet wrote vampire fiction?”

Pamela smiled. “I heard that, but I haven’t read any of her books.”

“Would you like a copy? I’m sure she’d want you to have one.”

Pamela nodded, and followed me into the front room. It looked forlorn, although the furniture was still in place. She went directly to the mantelpiece to look at the portraits—and ashes. I explained that those were cats that had died.

“Maybe they’re together now.”

I looked at her sharply. Oh, she meant in the afterlife.

“She really liked black cats. I used to tease her that those looked like pictures of the same cat. So she would give me the rundown on how Othello loved to drink honeydew melon juice, Ophelia was a pure-bred Persian who liked her tummy rubbed, and Portia was a tiny, half-Siamese who ruled the household with an iron paw.”

Pamela examined the pictures solemnly. “Vi was an amazing woman.”

I felt guilty deceiving Pamela, who seemed like such a nice person. But I couldn’t imagine telling her what really happened. “Vi always wondered why all the vampires in books look like teenaged underwear models.”

“Maybe old women can recognize a deal with the devil when they see it. Or maybe the vampires are too afraid of us.”

We both laughed. “I like that idea. Thanks for listening to me,” I said as she got up to go.

She gave me a hug. “Call if you have any problems with the cats. When you’re finished with the trap I’ll come get it.”

She left the bags of produce on the kitchen counter with instructions not to store the onions and potatoes next to each other, because the fumes from the onions would make the potatoes rot. Or maybe that was vice versa. My kitchen chemistry comes back to me in fits and starts.

After she left, I put out a teaspoon of food on a small paper plate inside the trap and went to take the groceries Pamela had brought over to the cottage. Mina was taking a shower.

I left her a note to help herself to anything she wanted, and went back to Vi’s.

The cat food in the cage had been consumed. I put down another teaspoon, and this time when I left the room I watched from behind the door. It took a few minutes, but Lady Macbeth, a chubby silver and gray striped cat, sneaked out from a hiding place behind the stove. Her daughter, Juliet, followed, crouching down cautiously. Lean and long, with a lovely dark marbled coat, she pressed up as close as possible to her mother for safety, and lashed her long, fluffy tail anxiously.

After they went into the cage together and ate every molecule of food, they wandered out, retreating from the room when I went in to put more food in. On the third teaspoon of food, I sprang the trap. Lady Macbeth stood up instantly and started to try to back out. Not possible. The cage door was solidly shut. Juliet began throwing herself at the sides of the cage. I dropped a blanket over it as Pamela had instructed, and sent a silent prayer of thanks to whatever angels watch over feral cats.

I hefted the cage in both hands out of the house and across the way to the cottage. The metal mesh shook in my hands, but neither cat made a sound. Vi told me that ferals don’t cry because they did not expect rescue. They would escape by any means possible, but they would not risk drawing attention by making noise. To them, I was the predator.

I put the cage down in the bathroom and set up the litter box, food and water. Then I opened the cage and left, closing the door. I heard some thumps and thuds and when I next went into the bathroom, both cats had discovered the linen closet and hunkered down there, hissing when I peeked in the door. For the moment the bathroom would be their new home.

My office door was open, the blanket had been neatly folded on the sofa, and a note from Mina said she had gone to work, but would like to come back afterward.

I called her at work. “I had to get out and do something,” she said. “I’ll be back before dusk.”

Chapter 64

Sir John Falstaff’s words

on black digital recorder, undated

Death seeks me that onetime
did flee from me.

Again adrift. Walking, the midnight streets, the Others surge in stronger numbers.

Too close, too close by half. New dangers from my lovely prey. Last night when I rose, I came across my new hostess dragging my old greatcoat out of my box to be cleaned. Disaster!

She said t’was dusty. Indeed it is, as befits a grave.

No, never wash that coat. The coat holds more than secrets.

It was not always so. I found the coat in some European battlefield, its owner dead. Now my cherished grave dust lines its secret pockets. That soil engrained in every fiber holds me to this world. My old coat holds the dirt that’s irreplaceable for such as me that live by moonlight. Not much of it. I’ve outlived many graves and often need to travel light. Many’s the time that coat and a length of good old velvet were all that stood between me and the killing sun of the day. Wash that coat and wash me away.

But what’s this? A familiar scent. Mistress Kit’s perfume unraveling like a scarlet thread to the steps of a house. Hmm, old enough to have a basement or windowless closet. Up the steps and ring the bell. A man of simmering energy answers. Not young, but perhaps not so wise in some dangers.

He smiles when I say Kit Marlowe told me to meet her here. I spin a tale of looking for new lodging, mayhap a basement or windowless closet—the word has a special power for him.

“Staying in the closet is not the only choice, sir, even for a senior. Would you like to come in and wait?”

He invites me in. I am careful to leave no visible marks. His basement is secure, his mind disbelieves my very existence. This will do for awhile.

Chapter 65

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 28th continued

Bram Van Helsing showed up
before sunset, carrying a huge duffel bag. He put it down inside the door to the front room. We hugged like old friends. “How is it going?”

“It’s scary. What did Larry tell you about the night I called him? “

“About what you’d expect.”

“He really wanted to take me to the local ER for a psych evaluation.”

“I might agree with him, if I hadn’t seen Sir John rise from the dead. So I’ve got an open mind, even if it was forcibly ripped open. Maybe I’ll be able to see these guys—and then persuade them to go away.”

“I hope so, but be very careful about looking at them.” I looked into his eyes. “That’s what killed Vi, and the vampires say the more attention you pay to them, the stronger they get.” I told him about feeling that they were draining me through the window.

“So the vampires can all see these things?”

“And most humans can’t. The vampires learn to block them out. Or at least that’s what Vi’s vampire lawyer says.”

“Her vampire lawyer?”

We sat in the garden on the stone bench for awhile and I filled him in on the first week of Vi’s vampire life.

“I brought a weapon that may work on your infestation, but I need a flat surface to assemble it.”

“Let’s go inside.”

“I remember these characters.” Bram said as Ariel and Sly ventured out to greet him, sniffing the duffel bag and wrinkling their noses at it. Bram reached down to scratch Sly’s chin. “How’d they get over here?

“Vi is afraid the Others will destroy the cats.”

“So now you have all these cats in this small cottage.” He laughed, and scratched both cats’ ears as they rubbed against his hand so he could do them in sequence.

“They really like you. Would you like the grand tour? The grounds are not extensive. This is the kitchen.”

“Nice touch with the duct tape around the curtains, by the way.”

“It made a lot of sense at the time.”

“The room just beyond the entryway must be your office.”

“How did you guess?”

“The couch has that therapeutic look to it.”

“There’s the bathroom further down the hall. We have to keep the door closed because that’s where I have got Vi’s feral female cats on lockdown for the moment, so they don’t sneak out “

“I need a flat surface to assemble this weapon.”

“So for a flat surface, you can use the desk in my office—it’s bigger than the table in the kitchen.”

Bram unzipped a duffel bag all the way around until it lay flat on the desk. Then he began to bring out and assemble parts. There was a hose and a fuel tank. The finished product looked lethal enough.

“I looked around for things that would kill vampires, and I put together some specs and got the local pyromaniac—Three Fingers Revere, over in the physics department at the U, to help me put it together. He gave me a crash course in using it.”

“Three Fingers?”

“Used to be Four Fingers, but he had a bad rocket season a few years back.”

Full dusk arrived and Mina buzzed at the door.

“Remember the woman I told you about the first day I met you? The one with the vampire fixation? Turns out she was right. She can see these things too.”

She hurried down the path as the first wave of Others poured out of what looked like a rift in the rain clouded sky.

“Do you see them?” I asked Bram as they surrounded Vi’s house.

“No. I don’t see anything.” He sounded disappointed.

“Okay. Please don’t try. It’s not a skill anyone wants to develop.”

“I think we can still use my flame shooter. When Larry said he couldn’t see your intruders, I thought about how we could get at them if I couldn’t see them either.”

I hustled Mina through the door and introduced her to Bram. She stared at him as he strapped on a heavy vest.