The Light at the End (21 page)

Rudy took a few uncertain steps backward, frowning vaguely. Danny started to giggle. The others were too stunned to do anything but stare.

“Doncha
see
?” Ian looked up, met each of their gazes with his own red and watery one. His face was stretched in a grin so extreme that it looked unreal, like a nightmare clown in a fever dream. “Oops! Don’t know muh own
strength!
” he shouted, Bullwinkle-style, and laughed again. Then he turned to Rudy and said, “Man, you’d be scary as
hell
if you weren’t such a putz! You don’t even know what you just
did
, do ya?”

Rudy stared at him blankly.

“You don’t know your ass from a
hole
in the wall!” Ian shouted, leaping to his feet. He pushed Rudy’s chest, sending the vampire stumbling backwards, “You’re a
joke
, man! You’re a million laughs! We oughta get you a rubber nose and call you… Count Bozo, Vampire!”

Rudy backed away from him, almost blindly. The red eyes swam in the white face like a pair of mud-puppies at the bottom of a river. A snarl formed on the pale lips, but there was no force behind it. Rudy was on the defensive entirely: his body off-balance, his mind madly squirming.

Ian had gotten him halfway to the door, still pushing and prodding and leering obscenely. “Go on, man!” he shouted. “Get outta here before I laugh myself into a hernia!” He gave Rudy a final shove that sent the vampire skittering.

Everybody in the place was watching them now. Jeers and catcalls rose up from the ranks, reminding Rudy all too vividly of the crowd at the Cinema Village. He was poor old Mr. Carving Knife, getting ripped to pieces in front of a howling mob, without a chance in hell of pulling himself back together again.

Rage, pain, and confusion churned like witch’s brew in his eyes. He wavered there for a moment, then turned and pushed his way through the crowd, pausing at the door to lock vengeful, humiliated eyes on Ian. Then he was gone.

Ian watched him leave, still laughing hysterically, but all the humor had leaked out of him like air from a ruptured inflatable doll. It was almost a convulsive thing, like hiccups gone haywire, that wracked his chest as Rudy disappeared into the night before him.

For a moment, he forgot where he was.

And when he snapped out of it, Ian Macklay felt strangely drained and disoriented; as though he, too, had stumbled upon a hidden potential and then found it beyond his control.

When Ian came back to the table, he was greeted by the open gape of a dozen moon-shaped eyes. He grinned at them weakly and flopped down in his seat, brushing at the blond hair plastered to his forehead. His fingers trembled. He wrapped them around his glass and then paused, staring a hole in the table.

“That was amazing,” Danny said. Ian looked up and saw that the guy was smiling and nodding with frank admiration.

“No fooling,” Allan added. He, too, was obviously impressed. “Ian, man, I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“Aw, shucks,” Ian replied, but his head was spinning. He looked at the others, trying to gauge their reactions. Josalyn stared at him the way a child might, watching Daddy perform some miracle far beyond a tiny mortals ken. The same combination of fear, awe, and gratitude was at play on Stephen’s face.

Joseph, on the other hand, looked darkly troubled. Ian puzzled over it for a moment, saw the way that Joseph averted his eyes, and understood.

He can’t understand why he just sat there
. Ian smiled, nodding ruefully.
He’s mad at himself for not doing something… and maybe just a little bit jealous of me.

The only expression that he couldn’t quite get a handle on was Claire’s. She, too, refused to engage his eyes; and he didn’t know her well enough to guess what that meant.

“Do you believe that?” he said at last. “Do you believe the way he went out of here with his tail between his legs? That was
weird
.” He shook his head, took a long-awaited swig of beer. “I’m amazed he didn’t kill me.”

“Rudy can’t stand to be humiliated,” Josalyn said. A bit more color, a bit more strength, had found its way back into her face. “If there’s one thing he can’t stand, it’s for someone to point out his weaknesses. It drives him crazy. He thinks he’s so perfect.” She paused, looked down at her hands. “That’s why he hates me so much.”

“Why?” This from Allan, who pointed the stem of his pipe at her as he leaned forward. It had gone out during the altercation. He relit it as she spoke.

“Because… the night he disappeared, I had a big fight with him. At my apartment. We’d been… going out for a little while.” She studiously avoided Ian’s eyes. “He started jumping all over me. He did that a lot. And after a certain point, I just stopped taking it.”

“So I started yelling back at him. I told him what I thought of him. I told him that he was an emotional eight-year-old: a selfish, egotistical prick who didn’t give a good God damn
who
he hurt so long as he got his own way.” She paused to pull a cigarette from her purse. Allan lit it for her.

“He got crazy. I got even crazier, I mean, I was just
screaming
at him after a while. And I realized that, after a little while, he just didn’t know what to do any more. He couldn’t react.”

“He can dish it out, but he can’t take it.” Joseph chewed on the thought for a moment, his eyebrows uplifted. Ian watched him do it, smiling, seeing Joseph turn it to an advantage in his mind.

“So then what happened?” Allan asked, egging Josalyn on.

“I told him to get out,” she said. “And he went.”

“Wow.” Ian boggled at the sheer simplicity of it. He looked at Allan and shrugged; Allan echoed the gesture. “So what do we do now? Insult him to death?”

“Embarrass him right out of Dodge?” Allan said. They laughed nervously.

“We gotta kill that son of a bitch,” Joseph rumbled. “That’s all there is to it. We gotta lay that boy out on a slab, and I mean
quick
. That’s the whole reason I came out here tonight: to see if anybody wanted to help me.” He glanced around the table. “I mean, really, we should be out there after him right now.”

“C’mon, Joseph,” Ian said. “We don’t have any tools with us. I doubt if any of us even carries a cross.” He looked around; nobody volunteered one. “Yeah. Maybe
you
could take him apart with your bare hands, but nobody else around here could.”

“This is crazy,” Stephen moaned suddenly. “This is absolutely insane.”

“You noticed,” Ian replied smartly.

“Why don’t we just call the police or something?” Stephen’s face was pinched and drawn. His eyes bugged out. He looked like Peter Lorre in a hall of mirrors, reflected in the long concave glass that makes beanpoles out of potato-shaped men.

“What? And cheat ourselves out of a vampire hunt?” Danny gasped, as if stunned. His eyes sparkled merrily behind his thick glasses, “You wouldn’t want to miss this, would you, Claire?” She shook her head decisively, but her eyes were far away.

“Listen, wimpo,” Joseph addressed Stephen. “I don’t wanna hear that kind of guff from you. Especially after tonight. Man, if you had to wait for police protection, he’d be fittin’ you for a coffin right now.”

“Besides that,” Ian added, “they’re already looking for him. For the Subway Psycho, anyway. And if we told ‘em who and what he is, do you think they’d believe us?” He laughed ruefully. “They’d go to any one of our apartments and find dope laying around; next thing you know, they’re patting you on the head and getting out the handcuffs. ‘Uh, sure, kid. Vampires. Tell us where you buy this stuff, we’ll let you off easy.

“No way around it,” Joseph emphasized. “We’re gonna hafta get him ourselves. Lay a few traps out for him and nail that bugger good.”

“So who’s with us?” Ian asked. “Allan?”

“I’m thinking,” Allan replied. He plucked at his beard with one hand and brought the pipe to his lips with the other, staring off into space.

“I’m with you,” Josalyn interjected suddenly. The old resolve… a confidence that none of them had seen before… breathed fire into her words. “I want him dead. I don’t want to… have to worry about him any more.”

Ian met her gaze; and once again, the spark flew between them. This time, there was no omigod-is-this-happening jolt attached. This was a connection, pure and unwavering, completely free of static. They held it for a timeless stretch of seconds without perimeters, a wordless linkage of minds.

Yes
. The word came suddenly, unbidden.
Yes
. It took a moment, stuck in time once again, to realize that it came from neither of them.

“Yes,” Allan was saying, “I’m here, boss. I’m in the game.”

That left Stephen. Stephen, who trembled in the spot between the rock and the hard place, with Rudy Pasko on one side and Joseph Hunter on the other.
Along with everybody else
, he thought, feeling the bond that was arising between them. Feeling very much apart from it. Feeling very much alone.

And wondering, suddenly, why that should have to be.

“All right,” he said finally. It sounded, to his ears, like a stranger’s voice: a part of himself that was only now coming to light. “All right. You can count me in, too.”

As the net closed securely.

Over them all.

Outside
…

No moon. No stars. A thick, muggy haze, congealing in the heavens. Black clouds, draped like a shroud across the top of the Manhattan skyline.

On the streets
…

A million souls, wandering down a million separate paths. Each one, distinct. Each one with a purpose.

That few of them had found.

At the uptown entrance to the Astor Place station
…

He stood. Bent. An old man, shivering despite the heat. A tiny bottle of clear liquid, gripped tightly in his hand.

Muttering to himself. Eyes closed. Head bowed. Bringing the mouth of the bottle to his lips. Kissing the cold glass.

And dropping, ever so slowly, to his knees.

In his hands
…

The tiny bottle. It’s tiny cork, removed. One liver-spotted finger over the lip, keeping the clear liquid within. One liver-spotted finger, pulling away.

A last benediction.

Then: the bottle, tipping slightly. A trickle of dancing transparency, pouring out of the bottle and onto the grimy pavement below. Defining a straight line that stretched out in front of him for six inches, then stopped.

The process, repeated. Another line, bisecting the first. Bringing them together.

In the form of a cross.

On the old man’s face
…

Lines. Many lines. Lines etched in vitriol, carved by time’s scalpel, crosscutting his face like the folds of the brain. Each one distinct. Each one a memory.

This one, speaking of a day many years in the past, when the walls of the death camp had first loomed into view from the cattle car window. This one, and this one, for the man who’d been beaten to death with a shovel: first, when the right arm came away at the shoulder; second, when the forehead flattened and crumbled inward, body still teetering on nerveless legs.

This one, born at the moment that his wife had been led into the gas chambers. And this one, permanently fixed by the sight of his son, dangling from the rafters by a length of tawny rope.

All old lines. Very old.

And then
this
line, this
new
line, formed just three days ago. Formed in the subway, by a sight to blast Man’s soul.

Screaming for that woman. That poor, poor woman. On the train.

Other lines, too. Deep grooves of exertion. Lines that formed around the mouth as he smiled with satisfaction. Character lines, achieved through a life both sweet and starkly painful. Lines that bloomed like flowers. Like graves.

As he dragged himself, slowly, to his feet.

Joseph was watching from the other side of the street.

He saw the old man perform his strange ritual at the top of the stairs. He watched the old man rise, with what seemed to be extraordinary effort, to his feet. He faded back into the shadows and observed as the old man turned toward him and began to cross that stretch of road where Fourth Avenue segued into Lafayette Street like two hit singles on a master deejay’s console.

The old man shuffled across the flat concrete expanse at his own aged pace. He kept glancing furtively to his left. A pair of teenage hotdoggers in their respective souped-up Fords were idling noisily at the intersection, New Jersey plates glimmering in the glow of the street lamps, impatiently revving their engines. Joseph didn’t trust them to wait out the traffic signal, and he could see that the old man harbored similar doubts.

The opposing lights turned yellow just as the old man crossed the center line into the second lane. Joseph noted with alarm that both cars had jerked into gear and were edging their way into the intersection.
They’re gonna drag race
, his mind informed him wearily.
Jersey geeks. They can see the geezer in the middle of the road. They just don’t give a damn.

Automatically, he took a few short steps out of the shadows.

The light turned green.

Simultaneously, the cars peeled out. The engines roared, the tires screeched, like beasts in agonized flight. Great flatulent plumes of gray-black exhaust blasted out of their asses as they leaped forward, pedals to the floor.

The old man froze, nailed like a rabbit by the headlights. He was only about seven feet from the curb; if he hurried, he could make it with no problem. But it didn’t appear that he
could
hurry, and valuable seconds had been lost in paralysis.

The cars continued to accelerate.

“HEY!” Joseph yelled, breaking into a run. The old man’s eyes snapped over to him; the spell of the headlights was broken. He began to move again, far too slowly. The cars closed in like dogs on the kill.

They were thirty feet away. They were twenty feet away. Joseph reached the old man roughly a yard away from the curb, and they were ten feet away.

Nine feet. Eight. Joseph took the old man in a bear hug that straddled the line between caution and haste. He was afraid of squeezing too hard; he was even more afraid of moving too gingerly. It struck him in a flash of utter clarity that they could be reduced to several hundred pounds of hamburger in three seconds flat.

Joseph whirled and raced back toward the curb with his cumbersome burden. There was a white-knuckled moment of doubt as the headlights and the howl of the engines overwhelmed him…

And then they were on the curb, the cars barreling past them and off into the night.

“Those stupid bastards,” Joseph growled quietly, eyes locked on the motorheads as they disappeared around the bend. Then he remembered that he was still clutching the old man to his chest like an enormous sack of potatoes. “Oh, my God,” he said, easing the old man to his feet. “Are you okay?”

The old man stood there, pale and shaking. His eyes were closed, and there was a peculiar look of concentration on his face. He looked like he was trying to hold it together, like someone who’s had too much to drink and is keeping from vomiting through sheer force of will. There was a long, terrifying moment in which Joseph was certain that the man was going to have a heart attack and die on the spot.

But he didn’t. Instead, he shook his head, smiled, looked up at Joseph with pale gray eyes that glittered like polished stones, and said, “I am fine. And I thank you.”

“Those goddamn kids,” Joseph blustered, masking his relief and sidestepping the old man’s gratitude. “I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with ‘em. They’re crazy.”

“They will learn.” The old man’s voice was calm, almost reverent. “Someday they will kill someone, or one of them will die. They will discover how frail we are, how easily shattered. They will see how delicately life is balanced. And then, perhaps, they will begin to think.”

Joseph watched him, studied him as he spoke. An obvious intelligence sparkled in his eyes. His clothes, though slightly baggy, were nicely tailored; and aside from the patches of dirt on his knees, they were also clean. It was clear that this man hadn’t been sleeping in gutters and pissing himself; it was clear that the man was sharp and sane.

So what was he doing
, Joseph wondered in private,
on his knees, sprinkling water on the sidewalk and talking to himself?
The question took him off into his mind for a moment; when the old man addressed him a moment later, he popped back in with his thoughts akimbo.

“Uh… beg pardon?” he fumbled with his tongue.

“I asked you,” and the old man smiled, “if you are often saving peoples lives.”

Joseph didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He looked into those eyes, and he knew that the old man was seeing him…
really
seeing him… with a preternatural clarity that cleaved to the heart of the man and knew what it found there. Joseph was not accustomed to being seen so clearly, so quickly. Joseph was practically floored.

“Did you see what I was doing?” the old man asked.

Joseph shook his head, slowly. “I saw you doing
something
…” he volunteered.

“Ah. The old man looked away then, enigmatically, grinning at the pavement. He sighed, cleared his throat, said nothing more. After thirty seconds, Joseph got the hint.

“Uh… what
were
you doing over there?” he asked.

Even as the question was posed, he knew the answer. He saw it in the old man’s eyes as they came back up to lock with his own. He saw it in his memory, in the old mans stance and manner as he’d knelt and gestured in front of the subway stairs.

The subway stairs
…

And he knew, suddenly, why he’d been watching so closely.

“Oh, my God,” Joseph murmered, his lips curling upward.

“Exactly,” said Armond Hacdorian.