Vamparazzi (45 page)

Then he laughed exultantly and turned to confront the sea of costumed, wing-wearing, befanged, gothpainted, Jane-look-alike, and mad-scientist vamparazzi piling through the stage door and flooding the hallway.

I saw Treat and Casper knock down Dr. Hal (whose picket sign today said:
IMMORTAL LIFE IN PRISON!
) while he was shouting, “No prisoners!” Then they high-fived each other.

The two Caped Crusaders leaped into the oncoming sea of people, swirling their capes with gusto and shouting, “Bam! Pow! Zam!” as they shoved and hit people.

A gaggle of Janes, unable to get past the bottleneck my posse was creating in the hall, were screeching, “Daemon! Daemon!
Please.
” Some of them were weeping with lust-maddened hysteria.

“Fire exit!” Daemon choked out, his nose running and his eyes still streaming. “Didn't you say something about the fire exit?”

“Hah! Yes!” Bill laughed maniacally as he and Leischneudel grabbed Daemon and started half-carrying, halfdragging him. “Fire exit! Stay together, everyone!”

As he passed Edvardas' prone body, Tarr asked me, “What is
that?
”

“A Lithuanian vampire hunter.”

“Yeah, that's what I thought.”

Mad Rachel started bawling her eyes out, making her makeup run as she wailed, “I want Eric! I want my mamma!”

“Come
on
,” I said, dragging her by the arm. “Didn't you hear Bill? Stay together!”

We all ran toward the darkened wings, through them, and then across the stage. The curtain was down, and the working-lights for the crew offered enough illumination to ensure we didn't trip over the furniture in our mad dash to escape. The house of the Hamburg, directly on the other side of the curtain, sounded like the Roman Coliseum in some epic gladiator film. As the others kept running (except for Daemon, who was staggering while being dragged), I paused to peek through the curtain, wondering if there was any possibility of escaping unseen via the fire exit in the house.

“Good God!” I blurted.

There were dozens of people rampaging through the theater, with still more pouring through the doors at the back.

“Come on, come on!” Tarr grabbed my arm and dragged me away from the curtain, hauling me the rest of the way across the stage with him. “That is
not
your audience anymore, kiddo!”

“Don't call me that,” I snarled at him and jerked my arm out of his grasp. “This is all your fault!”

“Hey, Daemon wanted to be noticed,” Tarr said with a nasty sneer. “Well, now he's been noticed.”

“Run!
Turn back! RUNNNNNNN!
”

Emerging from the darkened wings at this end of the stage, Victor collided with Bill, Leischneudel, and Daemon. The four men all fell down, tumbling across the stage like billiard balls.

Rachel ignored them all and kept running forward, disappearing beyond the wings.

Victor was babbling as he hauled himself off the stage, and then scooped Daemon up. “I was waiting for you. By the door. Like I said I would! There was a knock. I thought it was you!”

“You opened the fire door?” I guessed.

Rachel screamed in terror and came running back this way.

Tarr said, “Yep, he opened the fire door.”

“And they came
pouring
in,” Victor wailed. “Dozens of them! What do we
do?
”

“No, no, no!” Daemon shouted. “How can this be happening to me?”

“Oh, for God's sake,” I said.

Bill pointed at the curtain. Beyond it, the decibel level of the seething horde was still rising. “There's a fire exit that way, if we can get to it.”

I shook my head. “Not a chance. I looked.”

Bill was practically jumping up and down with excitement as he said, “Stage door, no. Fire exit, no. House, no.”

“Are you saying we're trapped?” Leischneudel asked in horror.

“We all going to
die!
” Rachel howled while runny mascara streaked down her face.

“I know another way out!” I said suddenly. “If we can get to it.” There might be time, if we move fast enough. “This way!”

I ran toward the rear of the backstage area, near where Bill had found the rappelling ropes earlier. I went past the spot where Lopez and I had sat talking two nights ago, and down the hallway where he had then led me, into the alcove where the basement door was.

“No, this is a dead end,” Leischneudel protested.

“It's not! Who has a flashlight?” I asked.

Bill pulled one out of his work belt. “I do.”

Victor, who was hauling Daemon now, said, “I have a small one on my key chain.”

“Me, too.” Tarr added to me, as if I might care, “I like gadgets.”

I opened the basement door.

“No!”
Rachel howled. “We'll be trapped like rats!”

“There's an underground tunnel,” I said. “Abandoned old water mains. We can escape this way. Hurry! Before anyone realizes where we've gone.”

I lifted up my Regency skirts and started descending the stairs, the adrenaline of terror making me unusually swift and agile. I heard my colleagues stampeding behind me, and then the heavy basement door, already high above my head now, thudded shut behind us.

“Get out your flashlights,” I said. “Bill, shut off the overhead light.” When the vamparazzi got as far as that dead-end alcove, there was less chance they'd look for us down here if the basement was dark.

By then, I hoped, we'd be long gone, anyhow. Lopez had said there were other exits from the tunnel. It shouldn't be too hard to find one.

As soon as the lights went out, Rachel wailed, “This place is scary! I want Eric!”

“Shut
up,
” Tarr and I said in unison.

In the faint illumination provided by one large and two very small flashlights, I led them all across the basement, behind the rusted-out machinery and forgotten junk, and down the slick old steps to the heavy door in the wall.

Bill was laughing with delight. “What
is
this place? Esther, this is amazing!”

“You ain't seen nothing yet. Come on.”

We entered the tunnel that ran under the street and connected the Hamburg to the old underground access chamber below Eighth Avenue. I was halfway to it when Victor, at the end of our queue, called out to me, “Uh, Esther? Problem.”

Daemon's voice was raspy as he said, “Leischneudel, come
on
. What's the hold-up?”

“Uh, I'll wait here,” Leischneudel said. “No one will look this far away for me. And the cops will have things under control in a while.”

I said to Bill, “You take the lead. The access chamber is right ahead of you. When you get there, open the old iron door under the spiral stairs. It's very stiff, but it opens. That's the tunnel. From there you can get to an exit. A manhole or something like that.”

“What about you?”

“I'll be right behind you with Leischneudel.”

“Esther!”

“You guys go ahead. I know where I'm going.” I added, “And whatever's wrong with Leischneudel, I can bring him around.
Go.
”

As they proceeded toward the access chamber, I started making my way back through this tunnel, passing my colleagues. When I reached Tarr, I realized I'd need a flashlight, and I took his without apology as I said, “Give me that. You can follow Bill.”

As I passed Victor and Daemon, I remembered with a sudden chill that I suspected Victor of being the rogue vampire.

He said something to me, but I didn't hear what it was. The tunnel was reverberating with the echo of Mad Rachel's wails.

When I reached the door to the basement, where Leischneudel stood wringing his hands, trembling and sweating, it was pretty easy to guess what was troubling him. “Claustrophobia?”

He nodded. “I don't have too many problems in ordinary daily life, but an underground tunnel? I can't. Esther, I
can't
.”

I tried to convince him that we could do this as if it were a trust exercise in acting class, where he'd close his eyes and just let me lead him. But his nerves were shot to hell, and he was too frantic and panicky to be talked into this.

As we stood arguing, the lights suddenly came blazing on throughout the cellar, making us blink and squint. We heard the basement door slam in the distance, and then we heard two men's voices. After a moment, we realized
whose
voice it was and why we couldn't understand what he was saying.

“The vampire hunters!” Leischneudel whispered in terror.

“My God, those guys are tough,” I said with reluctant admiration.

Leischneudel grabbed my arm, pulled me inside the dark tunnel with him, and quietly closed the heavy door behind us.

“Come on, come
on
,” he whispered. “Let's go.”

“I thought you were claustrophobic?”

“I am. It turns out I'm just
more
phobic about vampire hunters.”

We proceeded through the dark, uneven tunnel with fast, fear-fueled steps. When we emerged into the access chamber, our colleagues had already pried opened the door and entered the tunnel. We were alone in the chamber. Leischneudel paused and looked around at the nineteenth-century construction and the crumbling spiral staircase that led to nowhere.

“Wow, this is amazing!” he said. “If I weren't terrified out of my mind, I think I'd enjoy this.”

We heard shouts behind us in Lithuanian.

“Holy shit! Get in the tunnel,” I said.
“Now.”

We ran through the iron door, sloshing into the thin layer of water there and slipping a little on the tunnel's old curved floor.

“Should we close it behind us?” Leischneudel reached for the rusty door and tugged. It screeched a little.

Something whizzed past us with deadly speed. A crossbow bolt!

“Uncle Peter!” I cried. “Edvardas! Stop this
now!
”

The next crossbow bolt came so close to me it brushed my arm. Startled, I nearly dropped Tarr's key-chain light. Then I turned it off, realizing what a good target it made me. I hastily stuffed the thing inside my corset so I wouldn't lose it. As my eyes adjusted to the complete, opaque blackness underground, I saw the dancing lights of the Lithuanians' flashlights flicker through the open doorway and bounce around the brick wall.

“Let's go,” I whispered. “We'll have to lose them in the tunnels.”

“Right.”

I turned and ran. So did he.

Terrified, confused, and functioning in pitch darkness in a strange place, it was a few seconds before we each realized we weren't running in the
same
direction.

“Esther!”

“Leischneudel!” I took a step in his direction, then stopped abruptly when I heard two crossbow bolts fly through the door directly between us and clatter violently against the curved brick wall.

I instinctively backed up a step—then shrieked when something snakelike touched me, hanging down from the ceiling.

“Esther!” Leischneudel shouted.

“I'm all right!” I realized in that instant what it was.
Tree roots.
Hanging down through the ceiling. I remembered Lopez showing this to me. “Leischneudel, there are stalactites hanging down near you.
Be careful.
Now run! You'll come to an exit! You
will
. Go!”

“Esther, no, I won't leave you—”

“I'm not a vampire, and they know it. They won't kill me.” I hoped I was right about that. “I'm going to try to reason with them. Go!”

“No, Esther—”

“Go!”
Some brick dust fell on my head and into my eyes. I couldn't see anyhow, but the stinging was painful and distracting, and it made my eyes water. As some bits of mortar fell on my head, I remembered Lopez telling me that intruding tree roots could cause structural instability in these old underground tunnels.

I heard Leischneudel's footsteps sloshing through the water as he fled into the dark. The tree root brushed me again, making me jump and gasp in frightened revulsion a second time. I backed well away from it, not wanting it to touch me again.

I heard the Lithuanian voices getting closer.

“Uncle Peter, can you hear me?” I called.

“Who
is
that?” the old man called.

I heard something all around me that sounded like sliding pebbles. I backed up a step further, my heart pounding with instinctive fear.

“I'm a friend of Thack's!
Do not shoot me.
”

“Friend of
who?
”

I heard rumbling like thunder, followed by cracking.

“Your nephew! Thackeray Shackleton!”

“Oh—that ridiculous name! What
was
the boy thinking?”

“Do
not
come into the tunnel.” My chest was pounding with anxiety. “I think it's in danger of caving in!”

I moved forward, feeling my way along the wall. Something big fell in front of me, plummeting from the ceiling and hitting the water with a heavy thud and a splash. Pebbles hit me in the head.

“Young woman! Come
out
of there!” The voice was frightened, not threatening.

“I'm try—”

Somewhere behind me, from the far, dark reaches of this long-abandoned tunnel, a woman screamed in bloodcurdling terror.

The echo reverberated through the darkness and seemed to trigger the cave-in in earnest. The whole ceiling collapsed above me, and I threw myself backward just in time to avoid being buried by it. The long, echoing, thundering crash was deafening as the tunnel shook and I scrambled around in stygian darkness, screaming in blind, panic-stricken fear. I was coughing, holding my hand over my nose and mouth as I crawled through the water on my hands and knees, struggling to move in this ridiculous Regency costume while trying to escape from plummeting rocks and debris.