Walking Shadows (12 page)

Poor Gary stared forlornly out the window, maybe thinking that I had decided to never speak to
him again. It was more than that, though. All day he had been on edge and unhappy.

This killing had come no more easily to him than it had to me, even if he had done it more than
once before. Gary had not enjoyed this task or been indifferent to it.
I didn't want to be alone
afterwards,
he'd said. Perhaps he'd seen his own mortality in Alberto. Maybe he'd seen it when
he'd had to kill Gunther. Maybe killing just made him feel sick inside, no matter how compassionate
or logical the reasons for it. It had to be an intense feeling, for it to penetrate the habitually
dulled emotions of the undead.

"Gary."

He glanced warily at me.

"We're still friends. You don't get out of it that easily." The smile I raised was wan
but it brought a hopeful echo in his features.
Don't cry, Wilson. It won't help.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm absolutely certain. And I think…" I didn't want him to feel sick inside like
this. I wanted him to remember he had a choice, too. "You don't have to do this again, even if
they ask."

Gary owl-blinked solemnly. "I never wanted to, but the alternatives are always
worse."

"They found ways before you came along, Gary."

"They could hurt people. They could find people like Thomas to turn." He blinked.
"Or people like me."

But doing this is hurting you.
And vampires were not very good at thinking of new
approaches. Perhaps there was another solution. "Maybe you and I could think up something new.
Like a kit, or something." A euthanasia kit for vampires. A way of being humane to those who
wanted to die.

"A kit." He blinked again. "That sounds doable." Gary's relief was palpable.
"That could work."

I tried the smile again. It came out wonky. Instead, I leaned forward to kiss Gary's cheek before
sitting back in my seat.

"You're the worst best friend I've ever had, Gary Hooper." I tried for a light note in
the desperate hope it would keep me from bursting into tears. I didn't want to have to explain
them.

He gave me a funny look, like I'd said something comforting. "Sorry," was all he
said.

"Silly," I chided him gently, "I'm teasing."

"You're probably right though."

"No, I've had much worse friends. Charlotte Kovic stole my date at the Year 10 formal.
Before the first dance, even."

"Oh. Well. I promise never to steal your date," he vowed with a nonplussed expression.
Then he grinned. "If I'd known you, I'd have gone as your date. I wouldn't let anyone steal me.
Although," he added thoughtfully, "I can't dance at all."

"Not at all?"

"The Pride of Erin and maybe a waltz, at a pinch. My mum taught me for the high school
dance. The one partner I had on the night wanted to do the twist and I knocked her over. She wasn't
happy."

"I can't dance either. We could have been wallflowers together."

"Now that I
can
do." He snuck a grin at me, as though not sure of my response
"I have the shirts for it. Bright, you know. Like a flower bed," he explained further, to
be clear.

That made me laugh out loud. Despite everything that had happened this morning, we were going to
be okay, Gary and me. Gary's grin widened, displaying the merest hint of fang.

Provided those unknown slayers don't get him
.

Gee, thank you brain, for giving me 10 whole seconds of clear space before stuffing another
anxiety-inducing thought into the cavity.

Gary relaxed into his seat. He flexed his repaired fingers then tucked his hand hard against his
thigh.

"Thank you," he said after a moment, "for, um, I don't know; for putting me out.
When I was on fire."

"You are most exceedingly welcome," I said. I filed the slayers issue away for later,
though thinking of them and the botched job they'd made of Thomas made me consider this morning's
horrors in a slightly different light. "I think Alberto would be glad it was as quick as you
could make it," I said quietly.

"That was why he asked for me, you know," replied Gary gloomily. "I don't play.
Not like Magdalene does."

"Maybe we should talk about something else for a while."

"Like what?"

"The weather. The last book you read. Anything."

Another of those long, awkward pauses that punctuate our conversations. Then Gary said:
"What do you get when you cross a vampire with a blackmailer?"

"What?"

"Someone who really will bleed you dry."

"
What?
"

"Or this one. Knock knock."

I stared.

"Say 'who's there'."

"Who's there?" I echoed, bemused.

"Ghoul."

"Ghoul who?"

"Ghoul eee-ven-ing," he said, drawling it out like a cartoon vampire, "I've come
to suuuck your blooood."

"What are you doing?"

"Distracting you. I've started collecting jokes, to go with the rest of the
collection."

"Run out of movies and books on the subject, have you?"

"Hardly. I just wanted to be thorough."

"Right." As distractions went it was, indeed, distracting. I fished in my memory for
bad playground humour. "Have you got this one? 'Mummy, Mummy, the kids at school say I'm a
vampire.' 'Ignore them, son, and drink your dinner before it clots.'"

"That's terrible."

"And ghoul eee-ven-ing isn't?"

"It's how I tell 'em," he deadpanned, making me laugh again.

"How are you cataloguing these ones?" I asked, still laughing. We hadn't even finished
cataloguing the movies, music and books he'd amassed over the last 40 years.

"Mainly by topic." He counted them off. "Bats. Blood. Capes. Coffins. Fangs.
Ghouls. Movies. Religion." He nodded at me. "Yours will go under 'blood'. Can you write it
down for me?"

"When I get home," I assured him.

The rest of the long train journey was spent in telling each other jokes, not all of them
paranormal, but all relentlessly dreadful. It almost felt like business as usual when we reached
Southern Cross Station and Gary announced he had to make his report to Mundy.

"You won't have any trouble getting to him?" I had vague fears, I suppose, of rabid
slayers lurking at tram stops.

"It's just over the road," Gary assured me. In response to my puzzled expression, he
explained. With Mundy's place trashed and the Gold Bug a smoking ruin, the default meeting place was
- as it had apparently been for the last decade - the abandoned pub directly across from the
station.

The pub was now nothing more than a wall held up by touring band posters, behind which I'd always
assumed was an overgrown beer garden and a decaying bar. That it was now the emergency rendezvous
point for homeless vampires didn't surprise me in the least. I assumed pretty much any building that
had been vacant for longer than six months was a potential habitat for them.

"Be careful crossing the road, then."

His turn for the quizzical look, and then: "Do you want to come with me?"

"I'm pretty sure Mundy and I have had just about enough of each other for the time
being," I begged off. Besides, I had some ideas I needed to pursue. "Is there somewhere
else you can stay tonight instead of going home?"

"Sure," he said, shiftily, and I knew he was lying. Unlike the members of my own
family, he was a terrible liar.

"You can stay at my place if you like. Kate's not due back until tomorrow. We can think of
another plan then."

"Really, Lissa, I do have somewhere to go."

"Maybe. Will you stop in at least? I have some things to do, but I'll be home after
six." That gave me a good five or so hours.

"Kate's definitely not there?"

"Not until Sunday night, and she has Oscar with her so you're safe from him too."

"If you're sure."

"I am. See you then." I kissed him
au revoir
on the cheek and then he was gone.
Gary moved quickly when he wanted to.

Switching platforms from the country to the city services, I took a train around the loop to
Flinders Street Station and from there crossed Princes Bridge.

Princes Bridge is one of my favourite bits of road in the city. Besides the elegance of its
nineteenth century design, its antique lamps bear the city motto
Vires acquirit eundo
- 'we
gather strength as we go'. The sentiment gives me hope.

The Yarra River swirled its muddy way under the bridge and on to the sea. I followed the steps by
the Concert Hall down to its banks, and made my way behind the buildings to my apartment block.

It felt calming, centring, to be back in the heart of my city, part of its ordinary, daylight
life again.

Home. There was no place like it, and no need to click my heels to get there. The flat was quiet
without Kate or Oscar, but perhaps that was for the best. I dumped my bag on the sofa, peeled my
scorched shirt off and bundled it with a few other things into the washing machine in our little
bathroom. I showered in near-to-scalding water and too much soap before emerging and switching the
machine onto the long cycle.

While the suds washed away the physical traces of the morning's bad business, I stood drying
myself in front of our memory table, looking at the photos and mementos and thinking about everyone
Kate and I had lost. Nanna. Belinda. Paul. Daniel. Kate had added a family photo from the early
days, before Belinda had fallen ill. I hadn't been comfortable with that at first, until it came to
me one day that we'd lost our parents too, a long time ago.

I thought about everyone who had died in the last 24 hours. Who were these people who had killed
Jack and maimed Mundy and Thomas? I worried who they would target next, and whether Gary was really
safe, and why I imagined I could protect him, when two grown vampires had not been able to protect
themselves.

I don't want to think about death anymore
.

Into the satchel went my laptop and a large notepad. Then down I went to Swanston Street and onto
a tram past the cathedral, town hall and the Asian restaurants to the State Library.

On the steps, I paused to soak up a little more warmth from the day. The sun still shone and that
gave me reason enough to keep going. Sunlight and Kate and Oscar and books and my job and my friends
and Gary and the conviction that when my time came I wanted not to have wasted a minute of the days
I'd had.

Then into the hallowed halls of that magnificent library I went, to find out about a hypothetical
order of vampire slayers.

The State Library lacked most of the texts I believed I needed, but it was a good place to work.
I started with my laptop, hooking into the library's wireless internet access and hunting through
the sites I had already researched and bookmarked for Gary's records. Most could be dismissed,
focused as they were on fictional vampires and their relative hotness. I had put all of those under
a folder labelled 'Farce'.

Of greater interest were the academic sites devoted to exploring folklore and historical texts
where vampirism was referenced. The contemporary commentary treated it all like myth, but I was
getting better at intuiting which texts suggested the author had actually encountered the undead.

In the end, I could only find a dozen relevant essays, and these referred mainly to the same six
sources: two were from early 18
^th
century America, one was German, two Italian and one
Hungarian. The web translator I used wasn't terribly helpful but provided sufficient verbs, nouns
and adjectives to get the broadest possible gist.

I made notes. Periodically I searched the library catalogue to see if any salient texts were held
in the Rare Books collection or in another Australian library, with no joy. I shot some email
queries off to the academics concerned, inventing a research topic about "European Vampire
Folklore, the Australian Context and the Immigrant Experience".

The references were limited and sometimes downright obscure. The earliest American one dated from
1720, a peculiar church record that, the academic noted, spoke of 'God's wrath and vengeance through
His instrument Abraham, the son sacrificed by the father for this holy task'. A lot of paragraphs
were devoted to the strange way the Abraham/Isaac story was reversed in this reference.

At the end of several hours, all I had were rumours and conjecture. I hoped the answers to my
emails might be more useful.

At six, I found Gary waiting patiently at the security entrance of my building.

"How'd it go?" I asked as we waited for the lift. "Has anyone else been attacked
since we left?"

"Not so far." Not exactly heartening, but it could certainly have been worse.

The lift came and we headed up to the apartment. "I've been doing some research," I
told him. "I don't have much yet. I've got some ideas, though. Want to go over them?"

"Yeah. I've got a few hours till the last train."

"My offer stands, by the way."

"Thanks. I'll be fine."

I could argue that with him later. I waited while he crossed the threshold.

Gary read my notes while I made dinner, and we entertained ourselves over the meal with my
descriptions of the flavours that went with all the scents of Spanish chorizo and potato in spicy
capsicum and tomato sauce. His wistful expression at my luscious adjectives was sad. He was a man
who had, in his time, enjoyed his tucker. Offering him anything to eat now would be pointless and
maybe a bit cruel. His body couldn't do anything with it except chuck it back up, and that was
inelegant, at best.

"I might have some more stuff at my place," Gary said after dinner, leafing through my
notepad, "I've picked up some bits and pieces."

"Books?" I pricked up my librarian ears at the prospect of leather-bound books with
parchment pages and the smell of dusty old private collections clinging to the vellum.

"Some letters and stuff. They were Gunther's. Um…" Gary put my notepad on the
coffee table and tapped the cover thoughtfully with his fingers. "And some other people's.
There's not much. It's hard to read."