The Falstaff Vampire Files (7 page)

I tensed up, remembering the months when I worked in a full-fledged mental hospital. You thought you could tell the dangerous ones, but you could make a fatal mistake. I knew a psychiatric nurse who guessed wrong. The patient she misjudged had always been so quiet—right up until he nearly fractured her spine.

This man bowed in such a courtly way that all my misgivings melted away and I took his outstretched hand. He bent over my knuckles to kiss them in that European fashion that always causes consternation in American women. He released my hand and stayed a safe arm’s length away. I relaxed a little.

Despite his hair sticking up in all directions, and his track suit pants with the stripe along the side that he clearly had slept in, he smelled faintly of pine shavings with perhaps a hint of wood smoke, newly cut grass, and a faint, not unpleasant, overtone of fresh mushrooms.

The man in the box began to cough again—at length. “Beg pardon. The dust. A quintessence of dust, as the poet would have it.”

“Right, from
Hamlet.
Are you an actor who played Falstaff on stage?” I started to edge backwards towards the door, but I didn’t dare look back to check my progress.

“One man in his time plays many parts,” he said with a chuckle that became a cough.

I stopped backing up. “That’s from
As You Like It.”

“Indeed. Remarkable. Few in this age find time to read the Bard. A gifted gentleman. His homage caught my attention, as well it might. I have had centuries to study him, since our chance meeting when he studied me.”

I ignored the part about meeting Shakespeare. He seemed harmless. A deluded lover of theater. “Have you been staying here?” I gestured to the shed around me.

“Since it was new. Now, like myself, the old building’s sadly fallen off.”

I blinked. Delusional or flat out lying, of course. The shed looked as old as the house itself, which must have been built in the 1930s. He would have had to be in his eighties to have been living here that long. His hair and beard were white, his cheeks and nose mottled red, but for all his coughing and groaning he moved with a fluid grace that didn’t advertise advanced age.

“Surely you weren’t born here.” His strong English accent sounded genuine.

“No, the old girl in the main house brought me over here when she was young, poor gal. Hold on a moment. Mistress Reba?” He raised his head, nostrils flared as if scenting the air, head tilted as if listening. “A sea change. She’s gone from here. Must have taken her off while I slept the daylight away.”

“The nurse said they’re changing the locks.”

“The nurse! A nun in deed, if not profession. All in black with vinegar for blood.”

I laughed and nodded. An odd turn of speech, but it did describe her well. “You might want to get your stuff out first.”

“And so I must.” His eyes narrowed as he focused on me.

Oops. I took another step backwards with one hand behind me to feel the door knob. “Do you need me to call someone for you?”

“No.”

“Any family in the area?”

“All dead. Long dead.”

“Have you tried the Veterans Hospital just up the hill? They have resources. Are you a veteran?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Yes. But that was in another country.”

“And besides, the wench is dead.” I finished the quote without thinking.

He examined me again carefully. “Not only the Bard. You also know Chris Marlowe.”

“I am Kris Marlowe,” I said, again without thinking. Damn. I hadn’t meant to give him my whole name.

“That cannot be. Christopher Marlowe was a man, and dead 400 years.”

“No, my name is Kristin Marlowe.”

“Ah.” He lurched forward and stood with difficulty, hanging onto the edge of the box. He held out his hand to me. “Pray you help me get out of this box then, Mistress Kit? Just a hand from you for leverage.”

Against my better judgment I went over next to the box and held out my hand, which he gripped strongly. He clambered up and out of the box, still holding it.

“I’m sorry, sir—” I let go of his hand.

“A thousand thanks. Your servant, ma’am.” He sketched a bow, short-circuited when he staggered sideways and had to grab the edge of the box to stay upright. This brought on another coughing fit.

“Would you like some water? I’ve got bottled water in the car.”

“Water!” he gasped between coughs. “Would you kill me, girl?” He shook his head, “Thank you, but no.”

I noticed a faint twitch go through him at the word “car.” Uh-oh, he was going to hitch a ride. I decided to see if I could make a dent in his delusion. “I remember now. In the plays, Falstaff drinks sack.”

“Sack and sugar, so he did, and so did I once.” He sighed so gustily that the light bulb on the string above us shifted, casting huge shadows.

Maybe he had quit drinking. From his looks he should have reeked of it, but there was no scent of liquor around him. “By your speech you must be English—”

“Yes, as you say now, I am an export of that sceptered isle, the other Eden.” He turned his piercing blue eyes on me. “Shall we go, then?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I just realized that if you’re English, the Veterans Administration here wouldn’t be able to help you, unless you’ve served in the United States military.”

Sir John bent over the open crate and hauled out an enormous greatcoat that looked as if it had survived the Battle of Waterloo. He put the coat on with surprising agility, closed the lid of the crate without so much as a creak. Then he turned to examine me with entirely too much interest. “You wouldn’t have a basement or even a dark corner of a shed—” he gestured eloquently to the space around him, “for an old solider to lay down a bedroll for a day or an evening.”

“No, I’m sorry, uh, Sir John,” I sighed. “Maybe the VA hospital could give you some British contact information or referral to some agencies.”

He looked at me expectantly. He already knew I was going to help him. Damn my co-dependent nature, this was beyond stupid and into dangerous. Maybe I was still angry enough at Hal and the world to do something crazy. But the old guy did not appear dangerous and he was more than a little charming. I felt sorry for him about to lose his shed crash pad.

“All right. Come on. It’s not far. “

“Let us to this hospital. The touch a plump and rosy young nurse or three would revive me in no time.” He saw my scowl and swiftly amended. “Even a few words with some other old soldiers would steady the nerves.”

Other old soldiers with bottles in paper bags? He took my arm and I did not protest. Again that piney, foresty smell.

I didn’t have a sense of violence about him, but I did remove my arm from his grip and kept just out of reach as we walked toward the car. He paused outside the car as if needing an invitation. I opened the door and said “Here you go,” feeling like a fool, but something about his presence dispelled fear and inspired amusement. His bulk was enough that it took some maneuvering to get him into the passenger seat. But I had purposely bought a reasonably roomy VW Beetle because of my own size. Sir John didn’t try to buckle the seat belt, and I wasn’t about to reach over to help him fasten it.

It was only a few blocks and a few hills to the Fort Miley VA Hospital. I knew the route intimately. My late husband had been in and out of it several times in his last years.

I paused at the main entrance on Clement Street. “The hospital is right up there.”

Sir John gave a disheartened sigh. “That’s a long march uphill for an old man at night. Not fond of hills. Less altitude, more breath, I say. Are you sure you wouldn’t have a place for me to sleep?”

I sighed. “I’ll drive up the hill and drop you in front of the hospital.” At the top of the hill, I stopped for the stop sign before driving into the drop off area. No visible pedestrians. A cab was just pulling away and a Muni bus waited at the terminal just beyond, doors open, motor off, the driver not visible.

Sir John suddenly reached out, grabbed my neck and pulled me across the seat.

“Hey!” was all I could say before I felt a sharp stab of pain just below my chin.
My god, he must have a knife
. I leaned forward onto the horn, but I didn’t hear it sound. I was pinned in by the steering wheel in front of me and his body holding me by the neck cutting off breath and any scream for help.

My last thought was
Kris, you fool—you should have run when you had the chance.
But instead of fear, I felt overwhelmed with an almost pleasurable, drowsy tugging at my mind, like a drug, pulling me down into dark oblivion. Then nothing.

Chapter 21

Hal Roy’s spoken notes

silver flash drive/voice recorder

undated

Jack was a hard habit
to break. Aunt Reba didn’t want to try. As I heard the story later, she had installed him in the old house to begin with, but moved him out to the shed when they quarreled.

After a summer of wild rambles with Jack, I went off to boarding school, then to college. I tried to patch together a suitable life for myself, but I couldn’t stay away from Jack.

Every time I left San Francisco my life seemed to slow down. I didn’t start to live again until I stood outside the shed ready to open the padlock, help Jack out of his coffin, open a bottle of wine and delve between the thighs of the ladies who gravitated to him. My only fear was that I would arrive and find he was gone. I deputized Ned and Lucy to keep an eye on him in case my aunt could not. When I came back he was there and waiting for me.

We talked into the night, serious conversation wrapped in laughter, and punctuated by Jack’s own style of orgy. He asked about my education, and I told him. He grasped it all and turned it back to me as a joke. He had read so much over the centuries, but he never seemed to have had the urge to master any serious course of study—not that it was book learning that drew me to him.

I could never take him all in—just when I expected him to be a lowlife rogue, he would turn philosopher on me. His easy grasp of every world he entered hinted at a mastery of secret knowledge that I wanted more and more. When he told me it was dangerous, I knew I had to have it.

I only told a few people about Jack. Ned and Lucy because I had known them since high school, but no other friends at school or girlfriends. This was one thing I could not share. They all would have thought I was insane. Even if I had brought them here to show them—well, I couldn’t trust anyone that much. After college it was either going to be grad school or the army for me. I went with a graduate program in international politics and United States foreign policy.

“I served as a page to a great lord,” Sir John said. “Got my education in his service, and my knighthood on the battle field. One must needs be a knight in those benighted times. But you must be a scholar.” He patted my shoulder. “Let’s have a brave debauch to send you off to battle the books.”

Chapter 22

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

August 5th continued

I opened my eyes
to find myself behind the wheel. The only sound was the engine of the car. A glance at the gearshift showed it in Park. I recognized one of the remoter parking lots at the edge of the Fort Miley VA Hospital grounds. I had no memory of how I drove here or when I stopped the car. I took a deep breath and realized I felt good. Beyond good. Obscenely good, relaxed and drained of tension, as if I’d just come from a session with Hal and hours of lovemaking.

“How goes it with you, lady?” a deep rumbling voice asked near my ear.

I turned and gasped to see the round face of the white-haired, white-bearded stranger in the passenger seat.

“Mistress Kit.”

It all came back in a rush—Hal’s house, the shed. Sir John—who was now looking at me with an unreadable expression. His voice radiated kindly concern, but there was a kind of self-congratulation on his face that made my heart sink. He certainly looked better, as if he had shaken off the effects of a hangover.

“You jumped on me!”

“I bent over you. You fainted.”

“I’ve never fainted in my life.”

“No? You did seem to rally.”

I felt distanced from my body, as if I were floating just slightly above it. Considering the odd setting, I should not have felt this way. A faint trickle of fear invaded my euphoria. “What did you do to me?”

“I swear I took no liberty with your person.” He laid one plump hand across his heart. “Look to your clothing, my lady—not a button undone, not a fold misplaced.”

Embarrassed, I looked down and put up a hand to feel how my blouse seemed to have been buttoned up to the top button. Odd. I never do that.

“The last thing I remember was the stop sign just before the admissions entrance. How did we get here?”

“You drove through there, out here, and then—I know not what overcame you.”

“Let’s go back to the entrance.”

I had to turn the car around. It was pointing toward the dark trees and bushes of Land’s End that separated the VA from the ocean and San Francisco Bay.

I pulled through to the Admissions area drive-through under the hospital that I remembered so well from Mark’s stays here. The wards loomed back into the darkness of the hospital night—a slower pace than daytime, but never totally sleeping. A taxicab pulled in ahead of the car, and a middle-aged man on crutches climbed out slowly. I looked at the dashboard clock and found it was eight p.m. It felt much later.

I fumbled a few bills out of my purse and pressed them into Sir John’s hand. “You have to go now. You can follow that guy who just got out of the cab. There’s an information desk in there.”

Sir John took the bills, and stuffed them somewhere up inside that huge coat. “Most kind, my lady. Fare thee well.” He made a production of getting out of the car, and even bowed dramatically. Nice touch—one last gasp of Shakespearean fantasy.

I drove away feeling saddened. He would probably end up sleeping in the park with a bottle I’d given him the money to buy. But I felt I had to do something, and I needed him out of the car.

It wasn’t until I got home, unbuttoned my collar and looked in the mirror that I saw the two puncture marks on my neck.