Vampires (17 page)

“Felix,” said Cat. “Show him the gun.”

Felix tossed the lump to Carl and sat down on the curb.

Carl caught it and drew in a sharp breath. “It did this?”

Felix lit a cigarette and nodded without looking up.

Carl shook his head. “Wow,” he muttered softly. “Strong.”

Jack's voice sounded odd: “Yeah. Strong. Unreal strong. Strong like we never imagined.”

“Something,” muttered Cat, “for you to look forward to.”

“Huh?” asked Carl.

Cat lit a smoke of his own. “Haven't you heard? Jack's going to be a vampire.”

“Not funny, Cherry,” growled Jack.

“Not meant to be, buddy,” was the response. “What is all this?” Carl wanted to know. “It's a fact,” drawled Cat. “We just heard from his recruiter.”

“You talked to her?”

"Well, for one thing we mostly just listened and for another thing, it wasn't her. It was him.

“The man?”

“The man. And I don't think he came up because he was thirstier than she was, Carl. I think he came up to kill us and take Jack here and make him a vampire.”

Then they told Carl about the exploding elevator.

And about the crossbow.

Carl looked pale. “He actually caught it?”

Jack nodded.

“At what range?”

“Twelve feet.”

Carl stared. “Lord!” he whispered.

“'Gods' is the way he put it,” said the previously silent Father Adam. The priest's voice was hard. “He said they were gods and he said we were fools with wooden stakes. He said Jack was the pope's altar boy.”

Carl blinked. “Anything else?”

From Cat: “He doesn't like white crosses-but they can't kill him. He's not afraid of. . . what was it? Garlic? He said he'd break Felix's back or something if he even pointed a gun at him.”

“What did Felix do?”

“Shot him anyway.”

“Way to go, Felix!” gushed Carl.

And Felix, from his seat on the curb, turned and gave him a dead look.

And then nobody wanted to talk about it anymore.

“Enough of this,” cried Cat suddenly. “What about the sheriff?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, “we better get moving.”

And everyone, save Cat, seemed to move at once.

Cat stared at them. “You seem pretty sure.”

Carl grinned, shrugged. “He said he'd handle it, Cherry.”

Cat frowned. “He's only one guy.”

Carl grinned some more. “He's a Texas sheriff.”

“And he has Kirk with him,” added Jack, his own grin faint but still there.

“Great,” drawled Cat dryly. “That makes two of 'em. What are they gonna do? Arrest them?”

Carl stopped what he was doing, said, “Probably.”.

“They mayor? The chief of police? All his cops?”

“If he has to. Cat. He's a Texas sher-”

“I know. I know. You keep saying that. So, he can handle it. Just like that?”

“Just like that.”~

And for the most part, that's just what happened. Team Crow never did get the details. All Kirk would say was some mumbling about the sheriff walking up to the barricades and telling 'em to break it up.

Twenty minutes later the Team had fire trucks and firemen and ambulances and police protection and demolition advisers the chief had brought in originally to stop them and all sorts of experts on local buildings like the jail. They even had structural plans and advice on how to blow it, and Carl and Cat did, in fact, move three of the charges a couple of yards.

Hattoy showed up in time to press the detonator personally, saying, “All my life I've wanted to kaboom one of these things.” This was just smoke, of course, to hide his adding another layer of his personal authority on the event in case of future hassle.

They blew it once, twice, three times, in layers. Then they blew the rubble. Then they blew it some more before the female emerged, rocketing upward in a hail of bricks and screeching. She popped on Adam's side and the priest came through once more, taking only two quick steps on the uneven surface before delivering a clean bisecting shot.

He didn't appear until a half hour before dusk, a fullthroated scarlet fountain of hatred and fury. His screams were ear-splitting. His flames were supernaturally bright.

But in daylight it didn't matter. Jack had seen it all before. He did get close enough to recognize the monster who knew his name before punching the crossbow through the burning chest. But there was nothing special about the shot. Or the end.

“When you're a vampire, Crow.. .” it had said.

Jack watched the ashes burn all the way down, then whispered, “Not today, little god.”

He stood there awhile, lit and smoked a cigarette before moving. When he finally turned away, toward the Team now milling with the sheriff and his people, the realization struck deep.

My God, that was close

And then: Why did I try to go inside? I almost killed everyone! What was I trying to do?

Today was three years, three months, and some-odd days of this madness.

Shit.

"Thank God Felix can shoot. .

Davette wore a khaki blouse and a khaki skirt and a light blue scarf Annabelle had found for her somewhere that highlighted her blond hair and rich golden skin. Felix was, quite simply, unable to look at her.

He was afraid of what he might say to her.

He was afraid of what he might do to her.

He was mostly afraid of the vampires, though, and it didn't matter if she had just lately come on board and it didn't matter that she was, technically, still a reporter doing a story-all that had long been forgotten. She was part of Team Crow now, sure-as hell. Team Crow was home.

He was afraid of what he might do for her.

So now, nine hours into a most un-Team-like victory party, he sat in the lone chair in the far corner of what passed for a suite in the cheap motel the ladies had found and did his drinking and chain-smoking alone.

Because Jack Crow was wrong.

This deal would not play anymore. Not like this.

Not with me.

Fuck 'em.

Everyone noticed, of course. They could hardly help it.

When their gunman was planted so hard in that one chair. When he smoked so incessantly, drank so ferociously. When he would brood so hard he seemed to strobe...

Sometimes it seemed that chair of his, that whole corner of the room, really, seemed to corridor away into the distance.

Sooner or later, it was going to get ugly. It had been heading for it since the last pile of ashes.

Felix rode with Cat in the motorhome on the way to the rendezvous with the women. He rode in silence, ignoring what little Cat had to say, until Cat finally turned in the driver's seat and looked at him.

Is he relieved? Cat wondered. Stunned? Maybe he's in shock or...

No! he realized suddenly. That's anger! He's furious.

And just then Felix had turned and looked at him and those dead eyes had bored deeply for just a moment. Then the gunman climbed out of his seat and disappeared into the back until they reached the motel.

Even for Annabelle, who was used to the endless waiting, this had been a tough one. Her tears of joy were a little brighter this time, her hugs of welcome a little tighter, her voice a little more strident. Davette, on the other hand, seemed possessed by a surreal glow of happiness at their survival. She took turns with Annabelle hugging everyone and blushing furiously when Cat, with a wicked grin, hauled off and gave her a long, wet, sloppy one.

All save Felix. He stood at the edge of it all, nodding curtly to the women and asking for his room key and mumbling something about wanting to take a shower right away.

He got his key and a tense moment before Father Adam announced that he wanted to have special services immediately-while everyone was still sober enough to pray, ha ha.

And Felix took part in this but the way he knelt and rocked and prayed, so fiercely radiating anger and fear... By the time the priest could quickly break it up they all felt sprayed.

Then there was a knock on the door and Sheriff Hattoy and Kirk and a few other deputies appeared for a little celebrating and Jack brought out glasses and their special schnapps and instructed the newcomers on the toast: “Here's to the great ones. . .” began Jack.

“There's damn few of us left!” finished the others and they all downed the schnapps and all, but Felix, laughed and asked for more. The gunman went to his room, taking a bottle of his scotch with him.

They partied without him, while the women desperately tried to whip up enough food fast enough to absorb just enough of the alcohol to make Annabelle's hypnotic debriefing possible later on. It was going to be close. Even for Team Crow, the boozing was heavy. The sheriff excused himself early. There had been a good reason why he had been late to their troubles, and that reason still existed. He had more work to do. He exchanged a quick private smile with Kirk before leaving his best deputy behind, as everyone had known would happen.

They partied gamely along some more and no one said anything about Felix not being there. And when the food was ready and he called from behind his locked motel room door that he wasn't hungry, no one said anything about that, either.

But everyone noticed. Everyone, that is, except Jack Crow. Jack refused to notice, thought Cat. Or maybe he's just too high on Felix to care. Jack perched on the edge of the sink while they ate and, master storyteller that he was, relayed every detail of the miracles his gunman had wrought. Carl had been outside during the fighting and the women hadn't been there at all and the three of them listened raptly to every word.

About the woman with the stakes in her, streaking and screeching about in the darkness with Felix's split-second marksmanship on her all the way.

About him, the way he seemed to levitate out of the elevator and stroll so casually toward them, about his catching the fired crossbow bolt, about his looking right at Felix and warning him about the gun.

“And Felix shot him anyway?” Carl asked.

Jack sipped from his wine and nodded. “Three shots. Hit 'im twice that I saw. Then it was just a blur until he grabbed the gun.”

“And crushed it?” Annabelle wanted to know. “Really?”

Jack nodded again. “With one hand. That's when Carl here opened the door and it turned toward the light for a second. By the time he had turned back around Felix had drawn his other automatic, left-handed, and he shot him right through the center of his goddamned forehead.”

Jack paused, lit a cigarette. "I think he would have killed at least a couple of us if it weren't for that. Hell, he could do that on his way past us out of the light. But not after that shot.

“Carl, our shooter is everything we could ever have wanted.”

And everything Davette had wanted him to be. She sat there, in the silence that followed, with her eyes welling happy, happy tears. She could not explain her joy, her sense of hope, any more than she could explain, or even fathom, this viselike hold he had on her.

But somehow, because he was so. . . so wonderful at this, it made it all seem okay. Even the jagged vibrations of his presence.

“Yep,” said Jack Crow, staring deep into his wineglass, “everything we could ever have wanted.”

Then he looked at the smiling Davette and grinned.

“Then how come,” popped Cat from amidst the others' concerned looks, “we're not all happy?”

Jack shook his head. "Aw, Cherry, give it a rest. Felix is just. .

“Where is be, Jack?” demanded Annabelle. "Why is he in his room? Even when he's here, he just... He looked at me like he hated me! Hated us all! He's not eating. He's there in his room drinking alone. He..

“Relax, woman!” Jack snapped. He stood up and towered over them. "Let me tell you kids a thing or two. Felix

Is...

Then the door came open and Felix was there, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, scotch bottle in hand. He stepped inside and stopped and looked at them, all of them, for a heavy silent moment, then turned curtly away toward the chair in the corner of the suite and planted himself there and drank some more.

Under jack's silent directions, they tried to party anyway. Jack whispered to Annabelle to drop the debriefing for tonight, concentrate on the celebration and the booze.

“Party, babe! You know!” he muttered grinning in her ear.

And they gave it a try, starting with the music. ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Roy Orbison, everyone in their tape library. It helped. They danced and laughed and giggled and drank too much and it went on for hours and hours and early on somebody in the next room complained, a trucker type in a bad sleepy mood, so Jack had the women haul his ass in through the doorway and drink a little drinkie and “Don't worry about being dressed, stranger,” he insisted, looking down at his bare chest and feet. “We'll find you a shirt and all the rest of us will take our shoes off! Race!”

And they all laughed and fell to the floor and Annabelle was the first to get her shoes off-in like one half a second. And Cat was the last-it took him three minutes of concentrated effort before he gave up and put his drink down and tried with both hands.

Then it only took him another minute and a half.

The trucker loved it and wanted to know if he could call his buddies who were just down the hail and Jack said, “Hell, yes! Let's go git 'em!”

And they did go “git” 'em, all five of them. Plus Doris, the blond at the front desk, and hçr boyfriend Eddy Duane who, Cat felt sure, should have by God learned to play the guitar backward by now. They also gathered in a couple named Henderson, who had come into town for a funeral earlier in the day and said they could use a wake. About an hour later a skinny bald man in his seventies, who was easily six-foot-six, knocked on the door and asked to join the party.

He produced a business card: “Mr. Kite, Layman Activist, The Church of the Sub-Genius.”

“It's the world's first industrial Church,” he explained to Father Adam.

“Industrial?” asked the priest.

“Right. We pay taxes and everything,” replied Mr. Kite.

“I'm not sure I understand. What is it you believe in?”

“Everything,” said Mr. Kite with a smile. “But mostly the free-market economy.”

So they all had another drink on that, for the benefit of Mr. Kite.

Felix sat stone still and staring throughout. He didn't speak, didn't get up, didn't acknowledge anyone. There was something so threatening about his somber posture that none of the strangers even tried to approach him. And inquires were put off by Team members.

Only Davette seemed unable to stay away. She got close enough to him to change his ashtray twice. And Annabelle thought she was going to speak to him a few times, almost on impulse. But she didn't and neither did anyone else

But Jack seemed happy about it all. Weirdly content in fact. Occasionally the Team would spot him standing off to one side, catching his party breath and grinning at Felix s back.

Does he know something we don't know? wondered Cat. Or is he just blind?

By three thirty the party was running out of steam for those with nothing to celebrate. The Hendersons, who had been trying to teach two of the truckers ~to dance and sing, had finally given up. Their only decent pupil had been a barrel-chested old man with “Pop” on his uniform who had actually learned a few steps of soft shoe in his heavy boots before collapsing from alcohol and years. Once that last person was off his feet, the sleepies began to creep in on all non- Team members. They could have reinvigorated for more

fun-Team Crow had its ways. But no one wanted them to stay.

Felix had started talking to himself.

Angrily, forcefully, furiously . .. but in total silence. His lips moved, his face warped in rage, the words spitting bitterly out, but not one sound came with them.

Jack gave Annabelle a look. She used her deft touch and less than five minutes later the revelers had been poured out and the door locked behind them. Then they stood, Cat and

Carl, Annabelle and Davette, Adam and Kirk, and Jack Crow, and watched. It was eerie. The music still played softly. The cheap overhead lights of the motel room reached Felix's corner only in shadows that played oddly on his working silent face.

Annabelle stood next to Jack. She sounded more concerned than frightened. “Oh, Jack! How much has he had to drink?”

Jack smiled softly down at her. “He's not drunk.”.

“Not drunk? I find that hard to believe.”

Jack shrugged. “Oh, he is drunk. But not drunk drunk. This isn't booze.”

“What is it?”

Jack paused a moment, thinking.

He seems so confident, Annabelle thought, looking up at him.

“What is it?” she repeated.

“Claustrophobia.”

“What?” Cat whispered suspiciously.

Jack laughed quietly, looked at them all. “C'mon, people. Let's all have a seat.”

And except for Davette, they did. She stayed fussing idly in the kitchen while the rest of them found a seat on the floor or sprawled on the couches. Jack took the only other easy chair and drew it up to face Felix's, about six feet directly in front of him.

Felix saw him, knew he was there. His lips went still. But he didn't look directly at him or anyone else.

“Davette,” Jack called out softly, “turn that off.”

She eyed him nervously, then smiled and stepped over and turned off the music. Very quiet, all of a sudden.

Then Jack leaned forward in his chair, propping his elbows on his knees and smiling pleasantly into his drink.

“Okay . . .” he said.

It took a couple of beats. Then the gunman's eyes riveted onto Jack's. Still staring, Felix took a sip from his bottle, lit a cigarette, leaned back in his chair, and spoke. Drunk as he was, his words were clear. Very cold, like very sharp ice.

But clear.

“You're out of this, Crow. It's blown. They know who you are. They know what you do. They know your name.”

“So?”

“So. Change your name, change what you do. Quit. Or every job from now on will be another trap.”

“What about the Team?”

“Same as before. But as the hunters again. Not the hunted.”

Jack grinned and leaned back in his chair. “You think I can do that now?”

Felix's smile was scary. “One of us can. Now.”

“So that's it. One of us.”

“That's it.”

Jack glanced at the others. “If they don't follow you. . . Form your own Team?”

Felix looked surprised. He frowned. “I hadn't thought about that.”

Jack's voice was hard. “I didn't think you had.”

“What the hell is.. . ”began Carl angrily.

“Quiet!” snapped Crow without looking at him. Then he relaxed, eyed Felix for a moment.

“Did it ever occur to you that we've finally got them on the run?”

Felix sneered. “Ever occur to you that you're not cutting it anymore?”

Jack held up a hand before any of the others could protest. He lit a cigarette, leaned forward in his chair once more.

“Yes,” he said simply. “Yes it has. I can admit that. Can you admit running out on the job you were born to do?”

“I'm not running out on...”

“Like hell you aren't!” snapped Jack. He stood up angrily, began to pace back and forth in front of Felix's chair.