Vampires (25 page)

Felix frowned at her alarm. “Sorry, Annabelle. But she said she had to sign the papers before she left.”

“Yes,” replied Davette slowly.

“Where were you going?”

Davette paused, looked at Jack Crow.

Jack nodded and answered for her. “. . . to California.”

“Yes,” said Davette.

“Yes,” repeated Jack. "That was the night you came

“To kill you. Yes.” She looked down, looked back up at him. “I'm sorry, Jack.”

He shook his head. “Not your fault. How long did it take you?”

“Three days.”

“You drove?”

"Yes. Almost straight through. We only stopped at all because I was so tired

She couldn't keep her eyes open but it was still too light for Ross to leave the trunk and tell her it was all right to stop. But she had to stop. She had to.

So she did, somewhere in Arizona, at a rest stop. In the shade. She pulled over and lay down for just a second to "rest her eyes.

When she awoke it was dark and Ross was shaking her awake to get moving and the couple in the Camaro convertible parked beside them at the rest stop were dead and drained, their lifeless eyes staring, a slack corpse's mouth hanging open over the driver's door.

She roared back onto the highway and, once more, Ross began to talk.

About being a vampire, about the trouble back in Dallas with the white giant. Something about invading another monster's territory without permission, something more about getting to stay as soon as he got this “Crow” person. Davette still didn't understand who this Crow person was and why they wanted to kill him. And she had seen so many murders, horrible slashing murders, already, that she found it hard to worry about anyone in particular. Every night someone else died. Names didn't matter.

Neither did any other details. Ross had always kept everything secret from her before, yet his wanting to let her in on this trip suddenly repulsed her. She didn't want to hear. She didn't want to know.

She didn't want.., anything.

She didn't even want to die. She was too tired.

She had thought about it, thought about stopping the car at some little town and going to a drugstore and getting sleeping pills and maybe a little vodka (maybe a lot) to wash it down with. But even that seemed too much trouble.

Too numb. Too lost.

So tired.

And then, on the last moonlit leg of the journey, up U.S. 1 along the northern California coast, he finally got her attention. She finally realized why he was telling her so much.

This Crow person was not just a person. He wasn't just another Victim or plaything. He was more. A lot more. Just a man, but a very powerful one.

He killed vampires.

And this thought, that someone existed who not only stood up to them, but fought them and won... ! It staggered her, it raced her blood and breath through her soul. She felt the stirrings of something deep within and long lost and she reached for it, reached deep down inside her until she could grasp it and identify it and.., and it turned out to be her. The her that once, so long ago, had been.

And then she remembered that this man, this Crow, was going to die, too, and she tried to hide it all away.

Because he would die. You couldn't stop these monsters.

So she went along and listened to his plan and did just what she was told, dressed up and put on her Reporter Face and straightened her extra-clean clothes and went up to that great mansion on the ridge over Pebble Beach and knocked on the front door.

And she met them and she liked them and she refused to notice she liked them and she confirmed that this Crow person, Jack Crow, it turned out, wouldn't be there until the next day and she went back and told Ross and he was furious and thought about killing them all, all the others in the house, before Crow came back, but...

But he couldn't afford to frighten Crow off. He couldn't afford to fail again.

But neither would he leave. Just before dawn he closed himself in the trunk of the rental car and sealed the seal he had devised that no one could possibly break alone.

And she lay down in the front seat and went to sleep expecting to help him feed the next night.

But then. . . but nothing, not really. Crow's car driving past her had awakened her and when she awoke she awoke to the fourth day without being bitten and enslaved and maybe, just maybe, she had some extra strength and will and hidden crying hope..

So she just got out of the car and went up to meet this fool who thought he could stop evil with his drunken little band and...

And she met him and he was, yes, special, but not that special-no one was special enough for this job. And she played reporter and he walked her through those empty rooms of his dead comrades'-was it seven? Yes, seven who had been insane enough to follow him-and he told her their stories and they were wonderful stories...

And then he'd said they were going and asked if she wanted to go along and then she'd heard that music from downstairs and, well, she...

She just went. She just did it.

She didn't know how she managed such spectacular courage.

But she suspected the music.

“What was that music playing downstairs?” she asked Jack suddenly.

“Downstairs? Downstairs when?”

“When we were in California and you asked me to fly back with you?”

Jack frowned. “Oh. When we were in the zoo.. . That was Stevie Ray Vaughn. Texas rock and roll.”

And she smiled. “Yes! Rock and roll. That's it!”

Cat, along with the others, found himself smiling at her smile. Because it was the first one in so long. But...

“But I don't get it. What's the music got to do with anything? Don't you like rock and roll?”

And she laughed. She really laughed.

“I love it. But Ross hated it. All vampires hate rock and roll.”

''You're kidding.

“No,” she giggled, sitting up straight. “He told me on that trip. All vampires hate it.”

“What do they like?” Kirk wanted to know.

“Opera,” replied Davette. “All kinds of opera.”

“Figures,” muttered Father Adam and they all turned and smiled at him.

“So,” finished Jack. "That was it. You just. . . ran. When you heard that music, you just . .

“I just did it. I didn't think about it. I just went.”

“And that's all?”

She sighed, looked at him. “That's all.”

And it was quiet for a moment while they thought about this, this sweet golden human made slave and a swine, about all that she had been and all that she had lost and all that had been done to her and...

And Carl Joplin stood up and stepped over to her and looked down and smiled and held out his huge chubby hands to her. She hesitated, then put her two small hands in his and he pulled her up out of her chair and his smile went wider and he said, “You're a good, good girl.”

Then he gave her a bear hug that almost hid her from view.

- The other smiles glowed upon them from all around the room.

Felix didn't know what he felt about all he had heard that night.

He was shocked? Yeah. Stunned and... repulsed? No. Not really. Not for her. Just stunned a bit. And dazed. Too much story. Too much data. Too much monster.

They really know how to rip up Life, don't they?

But how did he feel about her? How did he really...?

Say it, you stalling buffoon! Do you still... love her?

Yes, he thought at last.

And he smiled.

Now what, he wondered, am I smiling about?

The only other door to the room-the one to the bedroom used by the ladies-opened. It was Annabelle.

“Is she okay?” he whispered.

Annabelle first closed the door carefully behind her.

“I think she'll sleep,” she said. “You should try to do the same.”

Felix looked around at the empty room filled with smoke and overflowing ashtrays and half-empty glasses. The others had gone to their rooms.

“I'll just give her a few minutes.”

Annabelle smiling knowingly. Sometime during Davette's tale she had busied herself knitting some large multicolored whatever. She resumed her seat and picked it up again.

“You were wonderful for her tonight,” she said.

Felix shrugged. “Not hard to do.”

“Then what took you so long?”

“What do you mean?” he asked innocently. “I've only known her for-”

“Felix!” she intoned, sounding like everyone's mother.

He stopped short, grinned. “Yeah. Well, I'm not used to this falling-in-love-at-first-sight stuff.”

Annabelle grinned at him. “That's better.”

''And . .

“And what?” she asked.

He turned around and busied himself making a drink he didn't need.

“I was angry that she was with Crow.”

“What?” Annabelle gasped. "You thought that she and Jack were. . .

“Huh? Oh, no. Not at all. But. . .” He lit a cigarette and looked at her. “See, I've been waiting for my wife to come along all my life and, well, avoiding this kind of shit at the same time. Then I see her and there's Jack and. . .” He shook his head. “I shoulda figured I couldn't have one without the other.”

She thought he looked almost embarrassed. “She loves you, too, you know,” she said. He looked up. “You think?”

“I know so.” She eyed him carefully. “Don't you?”

He looked at her quickly, looked down, smiled. “Yeah.” This time he was definitely embarrassed.

“Figures,” he added, “the way her luck's been running.” And then they both smiled.

How weird you are, Felix, she thought. What a weird, dark, scary young man you are.

They were quiet for a while.

“Felix, what have you been doing all this time? Since Mexico?”

He shrugged. “I run the saloon.”

“All this time?”

He shrugged again. “The past couple of years.”

“And before that?”

But this time he just looked into his glass.

Annabelle eyed him carefully, a smile curling up.

“Felix, just how rich are you?”

He looked at her, surprised. “What makes you think I'm...”

“How rich?” she insisted.

He looked at her, relaxed, grinned. “Very.”

“Millions?”

He smiled. “Many.”

She nodded, almost to herself. “Rich, single, young, obviously well educated. .. Young man, what have you been doing all this time?” -

And he looked at her and had no answer. -But Jack Crow, at the doorway, did. “He's been waiting for me.”

“Sometimes, Jack,” drawled Felix lazily, “you sound just like you.”

And the three of them laughed.

Crow fetched himself a glass of ice water and sat down across from them and got right to the point: “What's it gonna be, Felix? You coming with us tomorrow, or not?”

Felix put his cigarette out and closed his eyes and rubbed them.

“I don't know, Jack. I guess so. You're going to Davette's house, right?”

“Got to. Got to try.”

Felix nodded. “I know. And. . . well, it's not like anyone's going to be there waiting for us. It's not another trap.”

“Not so far as I know.”

Felix nodded again. “Then I guess I'm in.”

“For tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“And after that?”

Felix lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly.

“No, Jack. No. Jack, it's not... it's just that I don't think you're a good deal. Sorry.”

Crow shook his head. “That's okay.”

But it hurt. Saying this was hurting Felix. And he wanted the other man to understand.

“Jack, it's just that. . . Dammit, they know who you are and they're gunning for you. And they're going to keep gunning for you. And you keep on doing this alone-” Felix stopped abruptly, looked down. "You shouldn't be doing this alone.

Jack Crow's voice was so tired and his eyes were so bright as he replied, “I know. But I can't get anyone else to help me.”

“Yeah,” Felix muttered.

And no one spoke after that for awhile.

Then Felix stood up, said good night, and left.

Jack watched him go and after he was gone he sighed and dragged out a cigarette and a light and leaned back wearily without lighting it.

He looks so tired, Annabelle thought. I've never seen him so tired.

And then she thought: I've never seen him like this at

And she felt the resentment for Felix welling up. Because Jack needed him so-they all needed him. Davette needed him. And Jack had been counting on him so much and he was so good at it and Jack was alone...

So alone.

“Poor bastard,” Jack muttered to himself.

“What?” she asked.

“Felix.”

“Felix?” she asked, amazed. “Why do you feel so sorry for him?”

Jack's smile was thin and grim. "Because here's this poor jerk who's... Hell, he's young and bright and, in his own way, plenty, plenty strong. And he can't do a goddamned thing but shoot. But he doesn't want to shoot. Doesn't want to be a shooter.

“So he doesn't do anything at all.”

Annabelle frowned. “Jack, you're not making me feel any better about him.”

He grinned. “But don't you see? Don't you see how he's trapped? Hell, he's always been-”

“All I see is you in a spot and a young.., young I-don't-know is too scared to help you.”

“Whoa, there, lady. It's not just scared. Besides, scared is smart. He-”

“Jack! Would you stop defending him?” she cried. He stopped, looked at her. “The more you take up for him, the less I like him,” she said with exasperation.

And he grinned again.

What is he smiling about?

She had a bad thought.

“Jack, is that what you're hoping for, that the vampires will stop scaring him?”

He shook his head. “Oh, no! They'll never stop scarring him.”

“Then what?”

“Sooner or later,” he whispered fiercely, “they're going to piss him off.”

The Last Days

Felix slept hard and woke up late.

He lay there a moment, staring at the ugly ceiling tiles that fit in just right with this ugly motel. Then he rolled his bare feet out onto the floor and sat up and thought: What if ~ie won't come with me?

After all, the girl had no family-save for that wandering Uncle Harley, was it?-and the Team had clearly become everything to her. She and Annabelle were tight, very tight. She loved Jack and she loved big Carl Joplin and Cat and...

Shit.

He went through his morning ritual and then he took a shower and then he sat naked and dripping on the edge of the bed and had a cigarette and thought: What have I got to offer her?

“Staying alive, for one thing!” he muttered out loud.

But it didn't sound as fine as he would have liked.

So he stopped thinking about it. He stubbed out the cigarette and put on some clean clothes and gathered all his other stuff together and sat it on the little card table provided hint.

Where his shoulder holster and gun were.

He looked at it a -second, then abruptly reached down and dragged the Browning out of its holster and it slid-as had every decent goddamned gun he'd ever known-so easily, so smoothly, into his palm.

He knew, or at least had come to believe, that this feeling was very rare. That most people never felt this natural with a firearm. Some people hated them and some who didn't couldn't see them and 'most always felt just a little awkward and...

But not him. Not ever. The Browning felt just like...

Just like the end of his hand.

My Lord! he thought wearily, with at least some trace of wry humor, what if it's all just as simple as that?

They were all being terribly cheerful when he got to the suite, but that was okay. Now that he had made the decision to go, nothing much bothered him anymore. He even liked it. Even liked them, sitting around that faded coffee table scarfing down take-out fried chicken, reeking of Team spirit and smartass remarks and just generally acting like the kind of people who got into this mess in the first place.

But. . . what the hell. They deserved a couple of grins. And Annabelle was there looking radiant as always. And she was there, dimpling and feeling safe. And, well, the chicken smelled good.

And then Father Adam's mass, after the meal-that felt okay, too. Felix had never even seen a mass before these people and now.., now it felt perfectly natural. Logical, maybe.

Felix's good mood remained for another twenty minutes, until they started War Planning and Davette's sketch of the basement in her Aunt Victoria's house started to look too damn much like the Cleburne Jailhouse.

Seems vampire Ross had done quite a few renovations to keep sunlight and prying eyes away-looked like a bloody fort down there-and Davette hadn't even seen it all.

“You're going to have to blow it,” said Felix, standing over them as she drew. “Just like the jail.”

“Can't,” replied Jack Crow calmly.

Felix stared at him. “What do you mean: 'can't'?”

Crow puffed on a cigarette and stared at him through the smoke.

“Blow up a mansion worth maybe four or five million dollars in the center of residential north Dallas? Shit, I'd have every Dallas police car, fire truck, and SWAT team and half the Texas Rangers on my ass in two minutes.”

Felix blinked. "Well, do what you always do-call 'em all up ahead of time. Have them there. Get authorization. I thought you knew people. .

“Not that many and not that well. They'd hang up on me if I told them I wanted to blow up a mansion in the middle of their city.”

“What did you do when you had one in a city before?”

“Never had one.”

“Huh?”

Crow grimaced, leaned back in his chair. “It's true. We've never had one inside a city, a major city, before.”

Felix looked at the others.

“It's true,” confirmed Cat.

Carl nodded. “Had 'em everywhere from upper New York State to Montana. But never inside a big city. Always in the country. Some little town. Or outside some little town, really.”

“They don't like large cities,” offered Father Adam, the historian. “Or at least they never have until now.”

Felix hated this. “Never been organized before, either.”

“We don't know how organized they are now,” objected Carl.

“They're 'organized' enough to lay traps for you!” Felix sputtered. “How organized do they have to be?”

And it was quiet for a while while everyone thought about this.

“How 'bout,” offered Carl slyly, “if we just take out one wall?”

“Huh?” said Crow.

“I could even muffle the sound some. Here.”

And he leaned forward and pointed to one of the outer walls of Davette's sketch. “It looks tough here. And it is, for a house. But you take out this one wall and all this structuring here, this support, these joists, will go. Hell, you could stand out in the garden and see the whole basement through sunlight. . .” And he turned and eyed the window. “If we get some sunlight.”

Felix followed his gaze to the window. The pane was covered in running sheets of rain. He hadn't noticed it before. But it was really coming down.

“When you say 'muffle,' ”Crow asked slowly, “just how quiet do you mean?”

“Well, it ain't gonna be what you'd call quiet, Jack. That can't be done with explosives. I mean, people outside will look up when they hear it, but.. .” He turned to Davette. “The place has got a wall around it, right? Pretty high?”

“Nine feet high,” she told him.

“And lots of trees and stuff?”

She nodded. “You can't see the house from the Street at all.”

Carl looked at Jack and Felix and raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“Looks to me,” offered Cat, with one arm around the deputy's shoulder, “like we have a Plan.”

“So we do,” pronounced Jack. “We go in there, set up the detectors and, if we get the readings, we let Carl blow the wall and we go in and get 'em. Questions?”

No one had any.

“All set?”

There were several nods.

But Felix was still staring at Davette's sketch.

“Felix,” Crow growled, “am I gonna have to ask if you're in or out every damned hour?”

Felix looked at him, started to get angry...

But Jack was right. In or out. Decide, dammit!

“In,” he said.

“All the way?” Jack wanted to know.

“On this one,” Felix replied, tapping the sketch with a fingernail, “all the way.”

“Well, thank you,” Jack growled with heavy sarcasm.

“You're welcome, Jack,” replied Felix calmly.

And for some damned reason that made everyone, Felix and Crow included, break up into laughter.

And then they kept laughing and kept laughing and they couldn't stop and Felix, tears running down his eyes and

wondering what in the world was so goddamned funny, turned and caught Davette's eyes and her laughter was so pure and healthy and warm...

“I guess we have our moments,” murmured Annabelle a few seconds later.

And Felix looked at her and thought: I guess you do.

An hour later they were on the road to Dallas, backed up in heavy interstate traffic snarled by a Texas thunderstorm leaning in from the north.