"We were busy—" I began.
"—getting engaged," Lupé finished, moving her left hand so that the diamond in the antique ring caught the best of the dim phosphorescence from the television screen.
The room was suddenly still. Dr. Pretorius broke the silence as he informed Dr. Frankenstein that "science, like love, has its little surprises."
J.D. overcame his surprise first: "Oh, man! That's the bomb, wolf lady! Congrats!"
Then Deirdre launched herself out of the beanbag with surprising speed. "Let me see!" she squealed with enthusiasm. It was the best response I might have hoped for—even if her excitement seemed a notch too high to be unforced.
"You are going to have to get it resized," she said as she took Lupé's hand in hers to admire the ring.
"It's a loaner. Chris is taking me shopping for the real thing tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? That's a little short notice for me to plan security. How about—oh. I see. The storm." Deirdre nodded as she considered the weather's relevancy. Since my condition precludes going out between sunrise and sunset—at least not without risking spontaneous combustion—shopping was generally limited to the Internet or the Home Shopping Channel.
Some guys might be clueless but I knew two things for sure. You don't pick out wedding rings without your affianced. And you don't do it online or over the phone.
Apparently I did not need to connect the dots for Deirdre. "I'll speak with Archie and Marvin," she said. And looked at me: "What time?"
I shrugged. "Let's make it midmorning. If anyone's watching the house, they won't be expecting me to stir forth until late in the day."
"That doesn't give you much time for sleep," The Kid pointed out.
"Aw," I said, "how can I sleep on one of the most important days of my life?"
"Afterlife," Jenny's ghost whispered.
I pointedly ignored her.
"But this isn't science!" Frankenstein bewailed, "It's more like black magic!"
"You think I'm mad," Pretorius answered. "Perhaps I am . . ." Further dialog was muffled by the rumble of distant thunder.
"Besides, we don't know how long the front will last. Make hay while the sun doesn't shine, I say."
The Kid hit pause and The Bride of Frankenstein stopped its timeless story, literally freezing into a timeless moment. "Then you'd better flop before you drop, Big Daddy. We'll watch The Courtship of Eddy's Munster another night."
Deirdre pulled out her cell phone, all business. "I've got security arrangements to make. Shall we plan for a departure around ten-hundred hours?"
I looked at Lupé.
Lupé looked at me. Nodded. "Let's go to bed," she said.
I looked toward the window. "We'll have to get the other TV in before it rains."
J.D. shooed us toward the stairs. "I'll handle it. No point in cuttin' 'em off too soon. 'Sides, I think the Ally McBeal zombie episode is on next."
* * *
I was brushing my teeth and noticing how long and sharp they were getting when I caught sight of someone standing behind me. I turned from the bathroom mirror and looked at my dead wife who was looking very substantial for a ghost.
More than substantial, she was pregnant!
"Sorry I can't come to the wedding, Chris, but, as you can see, I'm in 'the family way.'"
I stared at her bulging belly. "What?" I tried to ask but couldn't articulate the question. "How? Who?"
"There is no father, darling. Unless it's you. I mean, you were always like a father to Kirsten."
My dead daughter was suddenly there beside Jen, her seven-year-old tummy swollen to third-trimester proportions. "Look, Daddy; Mommy and I are going to have the same birthday!"
My wife nodded. "You can be father to us both."
Kirsten grinned. "Nicky says we're gonna be sisters!"
Jennifer shook her head with a smile. "No, dear, I believe Dr. Dick said that we are going to have sisters."
"I—I don't understand."
Jen turned to me and her smile turned wistful. "I can't be with you for a while. Having a body changes things. And I suspect you will have to do all the remembering for both of us—all three of us—until we are old enough to remember with you."
She started to fade.
"What about my brother, Mommy?" Kirsten grasped her hand and started to fade, too. "Will Daddy save him, too? Will he save all of us?"
"Daddy can't save everyone. No one can. Let's just hope he can save himself . . ."
They were gone.
Once again a great dark hole opened up inside my chest where my heart used to be.
I fell into its deep blackness.
The darkness was ripped apart by a great flash of light.
I sat up in bed as the thunder crashed and boomed and shook the house.
I got up and made my way to the bathroom by the intermittent strobes of lightning licking around the edges of the windows' blackout shades and heavy curtains. Despite their brevity, each flash was brighter than a second's worth of sunlight. I wondered if I might not be more likely to combust on a dark and stormy night than on a bright and sunny day.
By the time I reached the bathroom, my sleep-numbed eyes were somewhat acclimatized by the billion-watt arcs of light outside: the overhead bulb inside barely dazzled.
I looked in the mirror at my dim reflection. Concentrating, I tried to strengthen the image in the glass. According to folklore, a vampire casts neither shadow nor reflection because he doesn't possess a soul. According to Dr. Mooncloud there are a number of mutations engendered in the brain by the necrophagic virus and one of the side effects is the telepathic ability to consciously erase one's appearance from other people's minds. Unconsciously, this extends to reflections in mirrors and even affects my own perception of self in same.
Since you can't trust what you see—or don't see—I opened my mouth and felt around.
No.
No fangs.
My teeth remained dull and straight and even. The parts of me that were turning into a monster remained hidden.
I could go back to bed hoping that the next dream would be more pleasant and less confusing.
I flipped off the light and padded back into the bedroom, pausing in the doorway as the next big flash of lightning revealed that the bed was doubly empty. Well, was it a wonder that neither of us could sleep through the night when we had pretty much slept through the preceding day?
I had finally told Lupé about the heart in the study. I didn't mention Dr. Pipt or his visionary email. She was in an odd mood to begin with and the subject of bloody valentines didn't help. Our love-making was curiously perfunctory for an engagement celebration and we both lay awake for at least another hour before sleep came.
I walked through the house now on the pretext of checking doors and windows against the storm. Everyone else was in bed. The back door was unlocked and Lupé was gone.
I went back upstairs and crawled between the sheets. It was a long time before I could fall back to sleep.
Longer than that before Lupé returned.
* * *
It was a dark and stormy day.
More perfect than I might have hoped for. Purple and green thunderheads rolled across the sky like massive dreadnoughts from an alien dimension. Even the continuous rumble of thunder sounded like the growling of cosmic engines. Occasional flashbulbs of lightning lit the clouds from within but it seemed safe to venture out, now. Even the rain had moved on, drawing shadowy curtains in the distant northeast.
It was 10:12 in the a.m. but dark enough to seem like twelve hours later as we walked into Thibodaux Jewelers. Archie and Marvin had security detail but, for once, I made them wait in the car.
It was a small stand-alone structure with single, front and back entrances. Both were easily watched from the Hummer, parked back from the side of the building. Deirdre wasn't happy about the breach of security protocol: she was still squawking at Marv over his cell phone as Lupé and I got out of the back seat. We walked around to t
he front entrance. Once again I was out in the open and unarmed but this time I had an excuse—you try walking into a jewelry store with a weapon, concealed or otherwise.
And besides, if you're not safe in a jewelry store where can you be?
I smiled for the first of three security cameras as the tinted glass door closed behind us, shutting out the artificial night outside and ushering us into artificial day.
According to Lupé, Deirdre wasn't really so unhappy about us taking one vehicle instead of two and she wasn't all that upset about being stuck at the house instead of accompanying us in the field. Lupè believed that the real issue for Deirdre was what we were shopping, not how we were going about it.
For some reason, Lupé wasn't happy either.
Though you certainly couldn't tell it from the expression on her face as she was greeted by the manager. She looked like a kid in a candy store. Rock candy, that is. Big, sparkly rocks with expensive price tags.
I slipped into automatic pilot mode, shadowing my beloved as the manager conducted her on a "lifestyles of the rich and debt-ridden" tour of the upper-end merchandise. Oh well, what did I care? I had plenty of money thanks to Vlad Drakul. And, as the lately elevated Doman of New York, there were certain appearances that needed to be kept up. My only job this morning was to show up, make the appropriate cooing noises, and write the check when the dust settled.
I was halfway through the process when the shop door opened and two more customers entered the store.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? These guys might.
They were dressed like Lamont Cranston's alter ego: dark trench coats with turned-up collars, wide-brimmed slouch hats pulled low over their faces, mufflers pulled up to their noses, gloves, firearms. The mufflers were a bit much, even for January: the weather outside was cool and damp, not cold and sleeting. The hats, however, saved the ensembles, making that whole '30s retro look mesh smooth and grooved, like the gears of a Jaguar XKR ZF-6. If they had opted for a pair of .45s, they could have been the penultimate poster boys for Pulp Frisson—The Kid would have thought he'd died and gone to heaven.
Unfortunately the Uzis upstaged the overall look, making the clothes more of a fashion faux pas.
Instinctively I closed the distance between Lupé and myself, moving to shield her from the intruders. The sales clerk looked up and raised a tray of rings for my inspection. "If you've got an alarm button under the counter," I told him softly, "you might want to push it now."
A single shot rang out and the security camera near the upper corner of the ceiling exploded in a spurt of sparks and a burp of smoke.
"If an alarm goes off," announced a gravelly voice, "someone dies."
One of the cloaked gunmen herded us to the far side of the showroom while the other fetched two more employees from the back rooms. It was professionally done. They secured the premises before turning their attention to the display cases of jewelry. One covered the five of us while the other shook trays of rings into a large satchel. No questions about opening a time-consuming safe in the back office, this was a speedy snatch-and-grab operation designed to get in and out in a minimal amount of time. Good news for us: in a few minutes they'd be on their way, we could hang around long enough to give our statements to the police and, if the cloud cover held for another hour or so, we could continue our little jungle-gem safari at the next jewelers down the road.
Lupé looked at me and mouthed something. What? Was she suggesting that we rush them? Wondering what had become of our security backup? I was wondering myself. The sound of the gunshot should have brought the boys running. Perhaps it was just as well it didn't.
Two humans with handguns against automatic weapons was a recipe for disaster.
Even unarmed, Lupé and I had a better chance. We were stronger, faster, and harder to kill with conventional weapons. For a moment I seriously considered making a grab for the nearest bandit.
But the moment passed quickly. Even if the odds were in our favor, there were innocent bystanders in the room who could easily be hurt or killed.
Or, more likely, serve as witnesses to the fact that we weren't quite human.
Nope, the logical course of action was to step back, let them do their thing, and then let the police do their thing. After which, we'd be free to do our thing.
Logic took a dive as the silent crook finished emptying the last of the display cases and his gravelly-voiced partner announced that they had decided to take a hostage with them for insurance. Funny, I hadn't heard them discuss the issue—maybe they were telepaths.
He pointed his Uzi at me. "You," he said, "you're coming with us."
I half-lowered my arms before his muzzle-enhanced sign language persuaded me to raise them again. "Robbery," I observed, "bad enough. Kidnapping? Far more serious crime. You might want to rethink—"
Lupé interrupted. "I'd make a better hostage."
"What?" There was an echo to my response as the goons with the guns chimed in.
"I'm a woman," she elaborated. "More emotional value as a hostage. The police are less likely to put my life at risk." She gestured without actually lowering her arms. "I'm smaller, weaker, more easily controlled. It makes more sense to take me."
"What?" I said again. "No." I knew that she felt safe in going with them. Once they were away from witnesses, they'd get the chance to see how weak and easily controlled a werewolf was as a hostage.
But I wasn't about to let that happen. "She's lying," I argued. "She has a black belt in karate and a photographic memory. I'm the better hostage." At least I wouldn't get overconfident while in close proximity to a pair of Uzis.
"He's lying," she countered. "He's depressed and suicidal. He'll force you to shoot him so he can go out looking like a hero."
I glared at her. "She's lying!"
She glared back. "He's lying!"
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Both of you shut up!" gravel voice shouted. "We're taking Cséjthe."
We both shut up and stared at him. How did he know my name?
It was beginning to dawn on us that the robbery might not be the main plan but only a bit of misdirection for something else—something like a kidnapping or assassination. And, with the dawn, the front door opened and two black women entered the store.
They were a study in contrasts. The first woman was immense. She wore a tent of gold lamé overlaid with a pattern of flowers done in iridescent greens and blues. A matching turban wobbled atop her head which was framed by a pair of gold, tinkling wind chimes that doubled as earrings. The outfit was so garish that I didn't recognize Mama Samm D'Arbonne until she spoke.
And almost not then.
"I'm just not comfortable walking around in public with all this cash in my purse, Pearl," she said in a voice that was louder than necessary for a personal conversation. "If these gennelmens would just take my check, I wouldn't have had to go to all this trouble of withdrawing the five thousand dollars from my account and carrying it around in public!" She patted a huge satchel of alligator patterned leather that hung from her left shoulder. I think it was supposed to be a purse.
"Pearl's" purse was much smaller—as was the woman, herself. The white clutch purse complemented her white top and green tailored skirt and matching jacket. "You should just keep your mouth shut, Luella!" she answered. Luella? "Nobody needs to know that you've got five thousand dollars in your handbag exceptin' you keep blabbin' about it! Leastways we're here, now. No one's gonna reach in and grab it now!"
I glanced at Lupé who looked back. "Pearl's" real name was Olive Purdue, my former secretary and now partner in my part-time detective agency, After Dark Investigations. She worked the day shift, now, and should have been in the office a half hour ago. Why she was here and doing this "Pearl and Luella" act with Mama Samm eluded me for the moment. Maybe I was back home in bed and still dreaming.
Mama Samm seemed to notice us for the first time. Her eyes grew wide and she screeched: "Oh my Je
sus! There's mens with guns! They're gonna rob me!"
As wide as her eyes were my eyes were probably wider: it was as if the serene and unflappable psychic's persona had been scooped out of her mammoth body and she was possessed by some evil spirit from the Amos 'n' Andy circle of Hell.
"Hush up, Luella!" Olive said. "I think they're here to rob the jewelry store. They're not interested in what's in your purse."
"Of course they're interested in what's in my purse, girlfriend! I got five grand in my purse! You think they gonna let me walk back outta here with all that money?"
"Not if you keep yakkin' 'bout it! So shut up, Luella!"
"Yes," said gravel voice, "shut up the both of you!"
The other cloaked robber, who had remained silent till now, leaned in and murmured something to his partner.
He shrugged. "Cash is cash," gravel voice answered. "You don't have to fence it. Besides, we're not bein' paid enough for this job anyway. Go ahead."
The silent partner strode over to "Luella" and yanked the bag out of her grasp. She tried to retrieve it but "Pearl" held her back. That was the most surreal part of this little impromptu sketch: the sight of Olive Purdue restraining a woman more than three times her body mass.
"Luella" started shrieking as the bandit stripped off a glove and plunged his hand into the cavernous depths of the leather shoulder bag.
"Shut! Up!" gravel voice demanded, waving his Uzi in a threatening manner.
Mama Samm shut up but the shrieking continued because the silent partner was no longer silent.
As he dropped the bag he appeared to sprout tentacles from the end of his arm. His hat flew off as he began to dance and whirl about. Now that I could get a good look at his face, it was obvious why he hadn't spoken before: robber number two was Archie, the other half of our security detail. His hand was obscured by a quartet of water moccasins who had sunk their fangs into his wrist, palm, and thumb.
Olive fumbled her clutch purse open and produced a .22 pistol. Mama Samm pulled two enormous hat pins from her turban and brandished them like meat skewers. "Drop the weapon!" they both shouted.
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