by P. N. Elrod
It took me a long second to recognize him because he was so completely out of place. He was taller than I remembered and a lot more animated, his pale face distorted by emotion, chiefly fear. But Dugan’s mouth was the same, with its built-in smile. He showed teeth in that instant, then I felt him bury a solid fist in my stomach accompanied by some short, sharp pops. His punch hurt. Continued to hurt. Far too much. Only after seeing the blood did I understand the meaning of the close-in pops and realize he’d shot me.
6
HE stared, wide-eyed, as my legs went out from under me. Gray mist clouded my sight. I fought it, grunting against the pain, reaching for him. He backed nimbly clear as I fully collapsed, shuddering into the mud.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Show me.”
Show him what? I had no breath for swearing but thought of several ripe words as I clawed at fence rails, trying to pull myself up again. The wounds were beginning to knit, but they burned like a fury, made movement difficult, thinking damn near impossible.
“Show,” he repeated impatiently. He kicked my hand, knocking it from the wood rail, then hooked his foot under my arm and flipped me on my back. I’d break his leg. Both legs. I’d break one now if he’d just let me . . .
He stood off exactly one pace too far, teeth showing, eyes bright, and aimed the gun at my chest. A revolver, small caliber, but large enough for the job.
“Wait—” I started.
“No.” He fired. Twice.
My last view was his exultant face as the gray mist abruptly wrenched me clear of the razoring agony.
Release from the burden of a body was the ultimate blessing. Until you shed it, you’re unaware of just how truly heavy and awkward it is being encased within clumsy, vulnerable flesh. The ease of nothingness, the simple floating . . . Here was I truly safe from all harm, all physical ills. But emotions were harder to cast off. Especially anger. I owed that son of a bitch.
I went corporeal as soon as I was able, rolling disoriented in stinking slush.
The pain was gone. Vanishing gave complete healing, this one faster and less tiring since I’d just fed. The shock was more mental than physical. Recovery from that would come from beating the hell out of Dugan. Except he’d left. He’d sprinted for the fence, topped it, and was just dropping to its street side.
Pushing up, I stumbled a few futile paces after, then went invisible again, seeking an easier method to give chase.
I rose high over the pens. In a way, I could fly, not like a bat as in Stoker’s book, but by simply willing myself in any direction. Because of a profound hatred of heights, I rarely did this. If I wanted a view of the city, I’d take an elevator to the top of the Wrigley Building and look through a window the same as any other sane person. For the moment, I was too pissed to be terrified.
The wind buffeted my amorphous self; there was no cold or warmth to it, never was in this state, just the force of the flow. It wasn’t too bad; I could hold in place with a little effort. The effort increased when I partially materialized. The more solidity to enable me to see, the harder it was to stay up, the more I wanted to vanish again. That’s a lot to juggle while trying to float forty feet in thin air. Really, really thin air. This was taking too damned long.
Rising and dipping on its current, I caught fast glimpses of the overall area, looking for movement in the grayness. The pens were like a huge crossword square, some of the boxes filled with livestock, others empty and waiting. Sounds were distant; all I heard were agitated cattle making commotion. I pushed toward the boundary line of the fence.
The bastard was fast. Dugan had made it across the street and was in my own car. I’d taken the keys, but he’d somehow gotten around that problem. Not bothering with the lights, he gunned it and took the first corner on two wheels. Though quick enough in this form, I couldn’t hope to follow. I let myself ease back to earth, went solid, and labored hard at not ripping one of the pens apart. Smashing things would have felt good, but there was no point to it; I had to think.
Dugan had seen everything. He must have been watching the whole time I’d fed. But how much did he really know?
I had to assume the worst. Anyone who’d bothered to hear even a garbled summary of Dracula would have enough to reach a fairly accurate conclusion about what it means when a man drinks blood right from a vein. If Dugan didn’t accept the reality of vampires, at the very least what I’d done made me some kind of repulsive lunatic to be avoided.
But he’d shot me, had been quite deliberate about it, had expected something out of it. “Show me,” he’d whispered, as though he’d known what would happen if I got a serious enough injury. That grin . . . Had he been wanting me to disappear? Apparently.
But did he think he’d killed me?
No answer to that one. His hurry to get away could have had as much to do with escape from discovery as escape from me. Until I learned more, staying out of sight seemed the safest course.
This time my shakes were not from hunger but from impotent rage and—goddammit—fear.
I went back to the pens to restore what had been lost in the shooting. Things might get busy; I needed to be prepared and drank my fill, drank until it hurt. The red flood made me sluggish, but the feeling wore off as I walked clear of the Yards area, seeking a phone, finally finding one inside a closed gas station.
No one would be in my office to answer, so I dialed the number for the lobby pay phone. After a lot of rings, Wilton hesitantly answered.
“It’s Mr. Fleming. I gotta talk with Escott. Get him. Now.”
Wilton sounded surprised I was on the line but made an admirable job of doing what he was told. Not too many moments later, Escott came on.
“Is there a problem?” he asked.
“I’ll say there is. Gilbert Dugan saw me going on a bender in the Stockyards.”
“What?”
I repeated the bad news, adding details about the shooting. Escott asked the same kind of questions I’d thought of, none of which I could answer. “I don’t know how he could have followed me. I was careful the whole way. I did enough turns to lose a school of lampreys.”
“Yet he departed in your car, not his own. Interesting.” He sounded thoughtful, which was annoying.
“What d’you m—oh, hell.” I didn’t want to believe it. “You think he was in my car the whole time?”
“It’s a possibility to consider. The only likely one at this point.”
“Son of a bitch.” And a lot of other colorful descriptives. Dugan could have hidden on the floor down behind the seat. Hell, he could have gotten the idea from me. Escott and I had talked openly of my cramped trip to the country hideout in front of him and the others, thinking them safely hypnotized. Why had Dugan risked it, though? Several reasons came to mind, and I didn’t like any of them. “I’m cabbing back to the club. Keep that Brockhurst bird under watch. Do whatever it takes, but don’t let him leave. He’s my lead to finding Dugan tonight.”
“I’d be glad to, but they’ve gone. About five minutes ago.”
I took a breath for another explosion, then stopped. There was nothing remotely foul enough to suit the situation. They’d have to invent a whole new language to cover it. “All right. Hold the fort ’til I’m there, then we’ll figure out something.”
“Should I relate any of this to Miss Smythe?”
“If she’s alone, yeah, she needs to know what’s going on. Keep an eye on her, would you? Bodyguard stuff, but not so’s she’d notice.”
“Of course.”
A call to a cab company got me a ride back to Lady Crymsyn. The driver gave the filthy state of my clothes a suspicious double take and balked at the stink, but I showed enough money to keep from being stranded. He wasn’t much for conversation, though I did catch him trying to use the rearview mirror to check on me. At this point, I didn’t give a damn. When we arrived, he got a decent tip and a whammy to make him forget how he got it.
I went in the back way, wafting invisibly through the st
age area to an empty dressing room. The mud stains on my pants weren’t beyond cleaning, but the coat was ruined from all the bullet holes and blood. The lead had torn right through my body and out. God knows where the bullets had ended up. Probably embedded in the thick wood fencing and the mud. I hadn’t thought to look.
My shirt was also a loss, front and back, but easily replaced. I kept spare clothes here in case I needed to sleep the day over or had an accident. The latter had been based on the possibility of a spilled drink, not my surviving a murderous assault by an armed lunatic.
I washed up in the small shower, accompanied by the band’s music filtering through the walls. Donning a fresh shirt, I had assurance that the evening was still going smoothly for the club. Adelle’s first set was over; she’d be on her break, perhaps out front with Roland, Bobbi, and the rest of her appreciative audience.
Then the romantic melody softened and slowed for a pause in the phrase, allowing me to clearly hear what was going on in the dressing room across the hall. There’s never mistaking that particular series of rhythmic sounds for anything else. Apparently Roland and Adelle were in the midst of an intense nonverbal reminiscence about their honeymoon some ten years past. It was definitely them; I recognized the voices—or rather the breathy groans and whispered endearments.
Oh, brother. I didn’t need this.
Eyes rolling skyward, I gave a long-suffering sigh and resolved to stop being such a naive optimist, thinking people would learn simple common sense without the benefit of a sock in the kisser. Roland had gotten fair warning about Gordy, and Adelle should have known better.
Later. I’d fix things later, the both of them, with or without Bobbi’s approval of my using the evil eye to do it.
I put on a spare suit, not my best, but more fitting than the white tuxedo still in its paper wrap from the cleaners, then vanished to float into the main room.
My heart didn’t work anymore, but it still shifted enough to lodge in my invisible throat as I glided toward the ceiling. Though a much lower height than I’d attained at the Stockyards, it seemed worse for being indoors. Materializing a little at a time in the shadows of the blackpainted rafters, I made my way to a row of hanging lights aimed at the stage and hovered there a moment, secure that no one would notice me behind their glare. From this vantage—and I hated having to look down—I spotted Escott. He was at Bobbi’s table, seated next to her and across from Faustine Petrova. Oh, brother, again. What a rotten time for her to show up.
Fixing the direction in my mind, I vanished and descended. Faustine’s accent was going strong as she related some story about Roland. I brushed close enough by Escott to give him a good chill, then swept toward the lobby, re-forming in the blind spot.
He was delayed a few moments, probably had to wait for Faustine to finish. His face was grim when he stalked toward me, and we didn’t say anything, just turned and marched up to my office and its privacy. Once on the other side of the door, I gave him the bad news about the Stockyards debacle with Dugan. My anger and fear returned afresh with the recounting, but I spoke in a calm tone while pacing around.
“Okay,” I said at the end. “Where do I find him?”
From the sofa, Escott lifted one hand in a throwaway gesture. “You don’t expect he’ll just wander home after such an adventure, I hope?”
“It’s a place to start. If not there, then I’ll find this cousin Brockhurst and track him from that angle. Dugan saw too much for me to let him run loose.”
“I’ve a rather unpleasant thought about that fellow . . .”
“Only one?”
“Indeed. What if prior to what he witnessed in the Stockyards he was already aware of your condition? The hypnosis . . .”
“It had crossed my mind.” I rested my duff against the solidity of the desk.
“From what you say, it seems he had a specific understanding of what you are.”
“Yeah. Like he knew what might happen when he shot me. Now he knows for sure. You’d heard or read about that kind of stuff, chances are others have, too.”
“Remote chances.”
“Not remote enough.”
Escott rose and took a turn pacing the room a couple times, visibly thinking, then sat at my desk, pulling out the phone book. “What good does it do him?”
“I don’t give a damn. I’m more worried about the harm it can do me.”
“To go to all that trouble and hazard, he’ll be after something. It’s one thing to read an ancient report about vampires by Montague Summers or labor though some lurid Byronic-style tale in a dime magazine from a drugstore, but quite another to come face-to-face with the reality. This assumes Dugan knew to connect the forced hypnosis of his gang to your specific aspect of the supernatural. Otherwise, he might think you’re a jumped-up stage mentalist.”
“So he reads a lot. It doesn’t matter what he knows about folklore or vampires or tap-dancing leprechauns so long as he’s shut down for good. Maybe no one would believe him if he started sounding off about me, but I sure as hell don’t want to go through the aggravation. I have to find him and make a serious try at putting him under so he can forget everything.”
Escott scribbled lines on some notepaper. “Here’s Dugan’s address. There are two A. Brockhursts listed. No way to tell if either is the man you want, but you can proceed to them if you’ve no success at Dugan’s home. How will you get there?”
“I’ll ask to borrow one of Gordy’s men. He’ll keep his mouth shut.”
“Your car. Will you report it as stolen?”
“I’ll have to if I want it back. If there’s a God in heaven, Dugan will still be driving it, but I’m not counting on that.”
“He may think he killed you.”
“I won’t count on that, either, but I’ll stay out of sight for the time being. Aw, hell . . . if I’m dead, I can’t report on the car.”
“Leave that to me. I can say it was taken from the parking lot and give Dugan’s description as the driver. It would be very convenient to have him red-handed for grand theft. He couldn’t wriggle so easily from that charge. Blast, what was his game hiding there in the first place?”
“To get information about me.” I’d thought it out during the cab ride.
“If he was curious about the hypnosis, he might have wanted to corner me alone for a little chat. He was carrying heat, either to force answers or put me out of the way. Or both.”
“Or shoot you to see if you’d vanish. Your trip to the Yards was a bonus for his collection of incriminating evidence.”
“Hey, I’m not the bad guy here,” I grumbled, mostly to myself.
“Rather determined of him to sit in your car on a chill evening in the hope you’d take a drive.”
Too determined, I thought. Was it a sign of his craziness? “He was near a phone earlier, though. Had to be waiting someplace else. Anthony got up twice to make calls before I left the club. I listened in on the second one when he told Dugan I was out of the main room. Maybe they knew about my regular runs to the night deposit at the bank, though I usually walk.”
“In which case, I’d recommend you make those less predictable.”
“No problem. If Dugan isn’t home to visitors, then I’ll locate Brockhurst. There was a girl in their group, Marie Kennard, who was chummy with him. Don’t know the names of the rest.”
Escott flipped pages. “There are several Kennards, but nothing under M. I can check things more thoroughly tomorrow.”
“Except I’m not waiting that long. Don’t know when I’ll be back. Can you help Bobbi close this joint?”
“Certainly—”
Someone knocked on the door. The hatcheck girl was there. “Got a message for you, Mr. Fleming.” She handed me an intricately folded bit of paper. Writing was visible on some sections. “Isn’t this the cutest thing? I never seen anyone do that to a note before. The man said it was gravely important. He said to be sure I said ‘gravely’ to you.”
I felt cold. “What did
he look like?”
“Nice. About as tall as you. Light eyes. Nice smile. High-class kind of gentleman. Well dressed.”
“He still here?”
“Came and went. In a hurry, y’ know?”
“Okay, thanks.”
She left. I shut the door and put the paper on the desk as though it might burst into flames. About three inches tall, it was shaped like a bird with a long beak and uplifted wings, and it looked fragile.
Escott frowned. “Origami,” he said.
“That Jap paper-folding stuff?”
“Yes. Apparently this was done to catch your attention.”
“Meaning I should read it right away.” I carefully demolished the bird figure, flattening the paper so we could both read the neat, block-printed lettering it bore.
Mr. Fleming,
You have my sincere apology for the unfortunate exchange between us earlier, but I deemed it necessary in order to confirm the full truth about you. I hope once you are recovered we might have a private talk. For that I will take precautions to ensure my complete safety, and advise you not to indulge in any reckless behavior against me. The consequences would, I guarantee, be absolutely disastrous to you. As a sign of my good faith, you will find your vehicle returned to its usual spot.
If a meeting is amenable, please signal by going outside to look at your car. Light a cigarette, then throw it into the gutter. Go back inside the club. I think you will be wiser than to try seeking me out.
You will be watched.
Yours truly . . .
He’d not signed it. No need for names.
“I guess this answers the question of whether or not he thought he’d killed me.”
“Bloody hell,” said Escott.
NOT having much choice or a brilliant idea to get out of it, I left by the front door, thoroughly checking every inch of the street and the surrounding buildings for any sign of Dugan. Nothing. No one loitering in doorways, no vehicles unfamiliar to the neighborhood, but he could be parked at a safe distance, keeping an eye on me with field glasses. It’s what I’d do.