They Thirst (62 page)

He was walking back toward the altar when someone huddled on the end of a pew with a blanket draped around his shoulders said, "Father?"

Silvera stopped. It was the young man he'd found sprawled on the ground. He was shirtless, his broken ribs now bandaged with the torn strips of a woman's brown dress. "Did a woman come in last night?" the young man said, his eyes sunken and dark with hopelessness. "A black woman, very beautiful. . . ?"

"No," Silvera said. "No one else came in after I found you."

The young man nodded. There were deep lines around his eyes, as if he'd aged twenty years in one night. He looked dazed, on the verge of tears. Silvera had seen that look of shock often enough now to become familiar with it. "They took her," the young man said softly. "The ones on the motorcycles. I've got to find her, Father . . . I can't let them . . . make her one, too . .."

"What's your name, son?"

"Name? Wes. Wes Richer. Where is this place?"

"My church is in East L.A. Where did you come from?"

Wes seemed to be trying to remember, but was having difficulty. "My car," he said. "The freeway . . ."

"The freeway? The nearest off-ramp is over a quarter-mile away!"

"I heard the bell," Wes said. "I knew if I kept going, I'd reach it. I wasn't aware of how far away it was, I just knew I . . . had to get there. Her name was . . . is . . .

Solange. The ones on the motorcycles took her." He pressed a hand against his side and winced. "Broken ribs, huh? I figured as much. How bad am I?"

"One of the women looked after you. She says you've got two fractured ribs on the left side. How bad do you feel?"

"Pretty fucking bad. Oops, sorry." He looked at the brightening window. "Is it morning?"

"Yes. Where did these motorcycle riders go?" The idea of vampires on motorcycles chilled him. It was bad enough that they were on foot, but vampires with vehicles was almost too terrible to think about.

"I don't know. East, I think. They were members of some kind of biker gang, and they said they were going to connect up with some others." He coughed a couple of times and winced. "Shit. My throat and lungs feel like they've been sandpapered. Do you have any water?"

"I'll get you some." Silvera went back to his room where he'd taken the case of bottled water and packs of paper cups that he'd gotten from the grocery store down the street. Two of the bottles were already empty. Silvera poured just a little into a cup and took it out to Wes. "Make it last," he told the young man, who nodded and drank gratefully.

"I've got to go," Wes said when he'd finished. "I've got to find Solange."

"No one's going anywhere. The storm's gotten stronger. You couldn't walk two blocks in it before you laid down and died."

"It was my fault they found us. I stood there and waved and shouted like an idiot, and then they swooped right down on us like fucking vultures. I should've known what they were! I should've known that only the . . . the vampires would be out there. Now they've got her, and God only knows what they've done to her!" His lower lip quivered. He crushed the cup and flung it aside. "I've got to find her!" he shouted, his eyes flaring with defiance.

"And where will you start looking?" Silvera asked him. "They could've taken her anywhere. And by now they've . . ." His voice trailed off because saying it would be unmerciful.

"NO!" Wes said. "I don't believe that!"

"You can't go out in this storm, Mr. Richer. Do you want to die so much?"

Wes smiled thinly. "Man, I'm half-dead already. So what does it matter, huh?"

Something about the cold logic of that pierced Silvera. It seemed to him that only the half-dead might have the courage to fight against the vampires because the living would have too much to lose. He had refused to help Palatazin, and that man had surely gone to his death. He remembered Cicero's triumphant shriek: "The Master lives!" Yes. Palatazin—or what had been Palatazin— was dead by now, and the Master's flock had increased. Only the half-dead, only those who had seen the limits of their lives and accepted that end as a fact, could hope to find the strength within themselves to fight back.

Silvera held his hands up before his face. They were shaking like the hands of an elderly man with the palsy.

How much longer could he hope to live? Two years? Three, possibly? Incurable, the doctors had said. Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Lou Gehrig's disease. First weakness and atrophy of the muscles in the hands coupled with fibrillations and spasticity. Muscular atrophy spreading to the forearms and shoulders. Wasting away week after week. Incurable. Lying in a hospital bed, probably in some charity ward, softening into a gray mass of jellied flesh. Nurses with grim lips hovering at his bedside. Incurable. Being fed through his nostrils. Time creeping. Messing his pants and being wiped clean by the nurses, trembling in bed, caged within a house that had gone rotten but refused to fall until all the dignity of its tenant had been thrown out into the garbage with the rubber diapers and the bibs and the nasal catheters.

Is that how I want to die?
he asked himself. Now he saw his impending death as a gift from God. He had been given the opportunity to choose death with dignity or, as that quivering mass of flesh, the endless haunting of the realization that thousands—possibly millions—would be consumed by the vampires simply because he wanted two more years of life, because he wanted to die as a shriveled thing in a hospital bed.

The Master lives,
Cicero had said. And Silvera knew it was true. In that castle somewhere in the Hollywood hills, the Master lived and plotted his moves for the next night's assault on the remaining humans of Los Angeles. A knot of dread was slowly gathering in his stomach. Palatazin had surely been killed. Who else but he knew that the Master had taken refuge in the Kronsteen Castle? Calm determination set in, but the fear kept jumping in his stomach like something trying to draw his attention. How could he get through the storm to the castle? He really didn't even know how to find it, and there were hundreds of roads, both paved and dirt, twisting through the hills. And what about the people here in the sanctuary? He couldn't just leave them to fend for themselves. But tonight the vampires would be back, maybe many times stronger than the night before. He was going to have to pray and seek guidance.

"I want to find Solange," Wes said grimly. "I don't care what I have to do or where I have to go."

"Don't be a fool. How far could you get with those broken ribs? You don't even know where you'd be going. You'd wind up suffocated on some East L.A. side street." He paused because he could see the anger in Wes's eyes quickly giving way to pain. "I'm sorry," Silvera said quietly. "How about some more water?"

Wes shook his head. "No. I . . . I just want to try to sleep . . ."

"All right. And I have some thinking to do. If you'll excuse me." He moved away from Wes without looking back, because he'd seen the young man's face and heard his first strangled, hopeless sob.

The boy on the sofa suddenly screamed and jerked his head up.

Jo, sitting in a chair beside him, leaned forward and put a hand on his shoulder. "It's all right," she said soothingly. "No one's going to hurt you. Come on, lie back."

"No! House is on fire! They're burning up, both of them!" His eyes were wild, and he was fighting the bedspread that covered him.

"It's morning," Jo said, putting more pressure on his shoulder to keep him still. "Whatever happened to you last night is over. Everything's going to be all right now."

"Huh?" He looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. "Who are you?"

"I'm Jo, and that's Gayle over there. What's your name?"

"It's . . . uh . . ." He squinted and touched the back of his head. The wound had been covered with a couple of large, square Band-Aids. "Head hurts," he said. "My name is . . . uh . . .
Tommy!"
Everything but his own name seemed dark and jumbled together. Strange backward images of things were caught in his brain like distorted reflections in a hall of mirrors. "Head hurts bad," he said.

"It should. But I guess that's a good sign. You've been shot."

"Shot? Like with a bullet?"

"Well, grazed is the right word, I suppose. Come on, lie back down. You don't want to start bleeding again, do you?"

He allowed her to push him back down on the pillow. Thunder crashed between his temples, and he felt sick to his stomach. He was trying to remember his last name and where he lived and what he was doing on this sofa with this woman sitting next to him. He concentrated on making sense out of one of the funhouse mirror reflections. There was a bed, and on that bed there were shapes covered with the sheets. They were lying very still. Something painful struck him across the top of the head, making him wince and whimper, and that mirror shattered to pieces. He decided not think about any more reflections, not just yet.

"He's been gone a long time," Gayle said, standing next to the window. Her voice was as taut as overstretched cable, and all she could see out there were blowing currents of white and yellow.

"He knows what he's doing," Jo answered. Something cold leaped up around her heart; she forced it away and smoothed the spread up under the boy's chin. Tommy was as pale as death, and now she could hear him whimpering softly.
What kind of hell did he go through last night?
she wondered.

In another moment Gayle said, "There he is!" and opened the front door. A swirl of wind and sand blew in, and at the center of it Palatazin, a sheet around his head and face like an Arabian headdress, stepped across the threshold, carrying the cardboard box of stakes he'd just retrieved from the Falcon. Gayle quickly closed the door, having to push hard against it. Palatazin laid the box on the floor and unwrapped his protective shroud. It had strained the air enough for him to breathe through his teeth, but walking out there was like struggling through glue while being struck in the face with buckets of sand. His shirt was soaked with sweat.

"Could you see anything moving out there?" Gayle asked him.

"I could hardly see five feet in front of me," he said. "I walked right past the car before I realized where I was. But there's one blessing. Our friend with the rifle can't see either. How's the boy?"

"He was awake a few minutes ago," Jo said. "He says his name is Tommy."

Palatazin came over beside the sofa and looked down at him. "Do you think he's going to be all right? He's so pale!"

"You would be too if you'd taken a bullet across the back of your head." She lifted the cold washrag and felt his forehead for perhaps the twentieth time in an hour. "He doesn't have a fever, but I wouldn't know whether he had a concussion or not. At least he was coherent when he spoke."

Palatazin nodded, his brow furrowed in concern, and then turned back to the window. He was glad this boy was alive, of course, but now he was responsible for the life of one more person. What was going to happen to them after he'd gone? Taking them with him was out of the question. If Jo protested, he would remind her that she'd almost died in the storm last night, and having to keep three other people together out there would be more than he could handle. He gravely doubted his own chances of making it across Hollywood. "The car's completely covered over now," he said to Gayle. "The dunes are piling up almost as tall as the house."

"And you still think you can make it up to the Kronsteen castle?"

He didn't look at her. "I have to try."

"It's over four miles! If you say you can't see more than five feet in front of you, how the hell will you even know where you're going?"

Palatazin motioned toward the gun and shoulder-holster lying across the back of a chair. "I want you to keep that. I'm going to leave you the rest of the holy water, too. If I get up there . . .
when
I get up there . . . I won't need anything more than the hammer and stakes. I think the vampire king is somehow controlling this storm. When he dies, I think the storm will blow itself out to sea. Until then it's going to circle over the city and possibly get worse before nightfall. .."

"Wait a minute!" Jo said, rising from her chair. "Do you think you can climb up that mountain
alone?"

"You're staying here, Jo. All of you are. Don't argue because the decision's been made."

"Like hell it has! We'll take a vote on it!"

"No, we won't!" he said angrily. "Yes, I'm going up alone to the Kronsteen castle. You and Gayle and the boy are staying right here. You'll have the holy water and the gun. I suggest you go down to the basement after dusk and lock yourselves in. Save the holy water as long as you can. If you have to use the gun, aim for the vampires' eyes. With any luck and the help of God, I can reach the castle much faster than if I had to take care of the two of you and an injured boy . . ."

"We can take care of ourselves!" Jo said. "You won't have to worry about us!"

"You're staying here," he told her, his voice stern.

"The Kronsteen castle? Orlon Kronsteen's castle?"

Palatazin looked past Jo. The boy sat up from the sofa; he still looked dazed and weak, but his voice was clear. "Is that where you're going?" the boy asked.

"That's right," Palatazin said. "How are you feeling?"