Behind him, Danny and Stephen were laboring to keep up. He didn’t hear them; he was scarcely aware of their existence. His eyes were set like the cross hairs of a bazooka’s sights on Rudy, less than thirty yards ahead and closing.
I got you now, shitheel, he thought, pushing even harder, feeling the distance between them diminish with every step forward, every thundering step. Twenty-five yards. Twenty. Fifteen, as Rudy passed the fireplug that marked the last third of the block. Ten, as Joseph passed it seconds later.
Five yards, as Rudy rounded the corner and limped frantically toward the stairs. Three, as Rudy stopped suddenly and brought his hands up to shield his eyes. Two, as Joseph lumbered forward, not aware that Rudy had been blinded by Armond’s ultimate closing gift: a cross of holy water, compounded by the rain to form a phosphorescent pool that spanned the width of the subway entrance. Then one yard. Then none.
Joseph roared, twirling Rudy around by one shoulder, and the vampire’s fist came around so hard, so fast, that Joseph didn’t even know he was falling until he smacked the sidewalk. The big man shook his head, trying to clear it; his peripheral vision caught a glimpse of Rudy looming overhead, lips snarling in the horrible face …
… and then Stephen rushed past him, not slowing, not braking, running full-tilt and straight into the vampire, who grunted with surprise and then staggered backwards, tripped over the top step, and tumbled end-over-end down the steps.
For a microsecond, it looked like Stephen would be able to stop. Then he, too, was pulled downward by momentum, plummeting after Rudy without so much as a whimper, the two of them vanished from view.
… and he was falling, he was falling, very much like a dream, the repetitiveness of the move smacking of unreality as he hit a step, bounced, hit a step, bounced, tumbling over and over all the while, a jagged gray continuum streaking by his face but never striking it as he rolled and bounced and tumbled and fell …
… and hit the floor on his left side, skidding several feet before breaking into a roll again that came to a stop when he hit the wall. He looked over, dazed, and saw that Rudy was next to him, propped up against the wall, looking like a man who’d just had the rug pulled out from under him.
Their eyes met.
And he was not seeing Rudy, he was seeing a monstrous white-face caricature of Rudy, a portrait of Dorian Gray made flesh, every sin clearly etched across the features in holy water firebursts of blistering horror, in the cross-shaped brand across the face that warped contusively above the broken nose, in the blackened bald spot where the hair had burned away at the crown of the head, in the roaring red fire of those inhuman eyes.
He heard himself saying I’m going to kill you and reached automatically into his messenger bag. He felt the heft of the cross in his hand. He felt it light up like one of those gag light bulbs that you get at novelty stores, the ones that run on batteries and glow at the push of a button. He felt the cross rise up out of the bag, so bright that even he winced reflexively against it.
He saw Rudy’s face peel back in terror, saw the vampire whirl suddenly and blunder to its feet.
He heard the footsteps hurrying down the steps.
He felt himself starting to rise.
Rudy took off in a stumbling run toward the turnstiles. The others were close behind him, but the rumble of an oncoming train overwhelmed them in his ears. It was coming from the staircase on the left-hand side. He veered that way, reaching the turnstiles and vaulting over them, landing awkwardly and teetering for a long dangerous second before moving on.
Stephen was next to hit the turnstiles. He barely heard the shouts of the guy in the token booth as he hurtled over the metal crossbar and raced after Rudy.
By the time Joseph leaped over the top, the guy from the token booth was on an intersect course with Danny. “HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!” the guy screamed, and Danny skittered to a halt.
“B-But …” he began.
“You gotta pay for all those guys, buddy!” the token vendor roared. His face was red, his nostrils flaring. Danny thought briefly of the subway slugs in his pockets, caught himself in the nick of time, and then flipped the man four one-dollar bills.
“Keep the change,” he said, and vaulted the turnstiles.
Downstairs, the train was thundering to a stop. Stephen saw Rudy round the foot of the stairs and head toward the front of the train. Stephen jumped the last six steps and took off after him, still clutching the cross.
He wanted to scream something … a threat, Rudy’s name, an oath to God … but it was all he could do to keep the breath pumping in and out of his lungs as he ran, limping drastically now, the tumble down the stairs finally catching up with him. He kept apace of Rudy, pushing as hard as he could but unable to gain any ground. The tears were starting to come; he cursed at them, tried to shame them away. They bided their time, waiting.
The doors opened. Nobody else was on the platform. Ahead of him, Rudy continued to run. Stephen pursued him.
All the way to the front of the train.
Joseph hit the foot of the steps and turned. Way down at the end of the platform, Rudy and Stephen were a pair of frantic bug-sized specks. He looked at them, knew that he wasn’t going to catch them, and stopped.
There was an open door directly in front of him. Joseph looked at it, looked at the train it was attached to. The beauty, the perfection of it, struck him in a single clear bolt of brilliance.
He smiled.
And stepped onto the train.
“D train to Coney Island,” the conductor’s voice came over the loudspeakers, a robot with a Brooklyn accent. “Watch the closing doors.”
They reached the front of the train, Rudy crossing the threshold of the furthermost door just as the conductor made his speech. A shudder went through the train as the doors slid mechanically shut.
Stephen was just a second too late.
“NOOOOO!!!” he wailed. His fist came up, pounded against the glass windows. He slammed his full weight against the doors. They refused to budge. “NOOOOO!!!” he wailed again, jamming his fingers into the space between the rubber lips that buffered the doors from one another. He pulled at them with all his strength. They refused to budge.
The train began to move.
“NOOOOOO!!!” he wailed, one final time. He fell against the door as it began to skid past him. On the other side of the window, Rudy was laughing and laughing and laughing. Stephen kept pace for almost thirty seconds as the train ground slowly forward. Then it picked up speed, and the metal door frame slammed into his shoulder, bouncing him back slightly and sliding away …
… and then the train was whipping past him, section after section coming by so quickly that the details began to blur and then vanish into the tunnel, while Stephen screamed impotently at the unfeeling metal and the unfeeling Fates that harbored evil and propelled it into the darkness like loving guardians …
A hand came down on his shoulder. He whirled, every single nerve threatening to leap out through his skin.
It was Danny.
Danny was laughing.
“Don’t you see it? Don’t you see it?” Danny yelled, pointing at the train, practically doubling over with the force of his laughter.
“See what?” Stephen screamed back hysterically. “What the hell are you laughing about?”
“It’s a D train!” Danny bellowed over the roar of the train. “D as in Downtown! D as in Death! D as in Decomposition … oh, man, don’t you see what’s going on?”
Stephen looked at him blankly, dumbly.
“This is the last stop in Manhattan, stupid! Don’t you know what that means? This train is going to Coney Island, man! This train is going over …”
But Stephen had already figured it out. He started to laugh. They laughed together.
And as the last car lumbered past them, they saw Joseph framed in the window of the back door. He appeared to be laughing, too, just before the darkness swallowed him.
CHAPTER 50
“Oh, you bastards,” Rudy chortled, his cold breath steaming up the window glass. “Oh, you bastards. You thought you had me. You thought you had ol’ Rudy nailed, didn’t you? You cocksucking bastards … oh, ho … oh, ho …”
The laughter was harsh and dry as dust. It was a nervous reaction, superficial and false; not even he was fooled by it. Underscoring it was a thick dark line of terror: the proverbial bottom line, he thought, giggling despite himself, transparent as before.
“But I got away, didn’t I?” Filling the air with noise, with his own mad babble. “Couldn’t get me, couldn’t catch me! Too fast, too fast for you, you bastards …” And for the first time, he realized that he could relax now, it was over, his enemies were back there at Grand Street with their thumbs up their asses, Stephen and the others …
Stephen. The memory slapped him across the face like a cold, sobering hand. Who would have thought that Stephen would turn like that, get crazy, try to kill him? Who would have believed it possible? Not me, Rudy thought. Never in a million years.
And Josalyn. That bitch. Josalyn almost did kill him with that fucking cross. He would never have believed that, either. It’s all going wrong, he mused bitterly. It’s all screwed up, and I don’t know why …
There was laughter, suddenly, behind his ears. Ancient laughter. Terrible, gleeful, mocking laughter that came to him from across an enormous distance, like a transatlantic phone call locking in with startling clarity. And a voice … ageless, timeless, infinitely evil … said I tried to warn you. I told you that they’d come. You were careless and arrogant, and now it’s all over. Too bad for you.
“No,” Rudy moaned out loud, his hands coming up over his ears to muffle the sound.
Yes, the voice said, behind his ears. Look at what they’ve done to you, Rudy. Look at where you are. It’s over. All over.
“YOU DID THIS!” Rudy shrieked, his fingers digging in and yanking on what was left of his hair. “YOU DID THIS TO ME!”
The ancient vampire just laughed, not dignifying the accusation with an answer. The laughter faded, grew faint and ghostly with distance. All over, the voice whispered, and was gone.
Leaving Rudy alone to stare at the window, vainly searching for a reflection that wasn’t there. It made him crazy. He put his fists through the glass, watching it disperse into a billion glittering shards that were caught up by the wind and sent tinkling against the wall of the tunnel.
All over, the voice echoed in his ears as he staggered back to the middle of the aisle and looked out the front window into the forever darkness of the tunnel …
They loaded Allan gently onto the stretcher and carried him out to the ambulance. The educated guess was that he had a concussion and multiple contusions. Jerome went along, his arm nicely bandaged. The ambulance sat on the street, its lights strobing and pulsing off the rain-slick streets. Josalyn sat with Detective Brenner and two uniformed cops who took turns looking at the shattered window and the vampire-hunting paraphernalia on the counter. A paramedic busied himself with the wound at her neck.
“That was really stupid, you know,” Brenner said, putting a match to his unfiltered Camel and then wearily shaking his head. “You should have called us when you first suspected.”
“You wouldn’t have believed us,” Josalyn maintained, blowing out smoke on an intercept course with the cloud that Brenner was forming in the air. “Ouch!” She winced and cast an irritated, weary glance at the medico. She fished a vial of holy water from her pocket.
“Here, use this … it’s great stuff.” The paramedic looked at Brenner. He nodded.
“We would have checked out this Rudy Pasko a long time ago,” he countered. “At the very least, we would have connected him with the disappearance of the two little girls and nailed him yesterday.” He slammed his fist down on the table and she jumped, caught herself, glued herself back down in her seat with her eyes boring sullenly into the carpet. “We would have had him before all … this … went down.” He gestured toward the broken window.
“What you don’t understand,” she said, her voice tight and controlled, her eyes still on the floor, “is that Rudy isn’t an ordinary human.”
“Don’t give me that …” he started to say.
“Rudy is a vampire,” she cut in, clipping each syllable off between clenched teeth. “What were you going to do: arrest him? If you know all about this case, you know what a monster he is! You …”
“Young lady, I have been scraping Rudy’s victims off the pavement for over a week now! And tonight was the worst, believe you me. Do you know how many dead people I had to look at tonight, Miss Horne? Do you know how many people would still be alive if you hadn’t tried this dumb stunt?”
“Do you know how many policemen would be dead if we hadn’t? And he’d still be out there!”
Brenner stopped cold on that one for a moment, sucked smoke, blew it out in a slow-motion cumulus cloud. His eyes tracked it as it wafted across the room toward the broken window.
“Do you have anyone else out there?” he said finally.
She glanced quickly at the switchboard, then away.
“Don’t play games, Miss Horne. I saw that one coming.” He leveled a paternal, almost kindly gaze at her and then continued. “Bring them in, please. Call them. Beep them. Whatever you do, do it. This has gone on long enough.”
“But they might get him …” she said, and her eyes went vague, and she saw Joseph and Stephen in matching pools of gore, splayed out like Allan and Armond and Claire and all the others … like Ian …
“Let’s not hold our breath on that, shall we?” he said, seeing through her, knowing that he’d won.
Josalyn nodded almost imperceptibly at him, acquiescing. Then she sighed and turned wearily to the switchboard, where she proceeded to punch in first Stephen’s number, then Joseph’s. She was tired. Very tired.
Get him, Joseph, whispered a voice inside her mind. Don’t let them stop you. Nail him down.
There was something wrong with the tunnel.
Rudy’s face was pressed to the glass of the front window, panting shallowly. The fear was building up inside him, inexorably squeezing and fusing his innards like a vise in the hands of an infinitely patient executioner. It had seemed that the train was rolling a long time without stopping; and when he first saw the light up ahead, he had assumed that they were finally coming to a station.
But he was wrong.
He was wrong, and the ancient vampire was right, and he knew it now. He knew it with one last glimpse of the dim light ahead: a light so faint as to be merely suggested, already too bright for him to bear.
I’ve gone all the way in, Stephen, he heard himself saying in a long-ago, faraway voice. I’ve gone all the way into the darkness, Stephen …
A scream, boiling up from the depths of his soul as he turned to run at last.
And you know what I found in there?
Running. Running madly. Toward the back of the train.
Know what I found in there? in there? in …the voice echoed madly.
Whimpering now, throwing open the door, running through it, running faster, toward the back of the train.
Found the other side.
Throwing open the door.
Found the other side, Stephen.
Running.
The other side, Stephen.
Throwing open the door.
Found the light.
And running.
Found the light at the end.
And running, and sobbing, and throwing open the door. Too slow.
The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, old buddy, old chum.
Too slow.
My friend.
Too slow, hating himself for being too fucking slow as he ran, madly, toward the back of the train.
And away from the light.
At the end.
Traffic was light on the Manhattan Bridge at six o’clock on a Wednesday morning. A few trucks and delivery vans, a few lonely motorists beating th
e rush: a mere foreshadowing of the traffic to come. It was a beautiful morning to be making the drive; the clouds were dispersing; the rain had left the air smelling crisp, clean, crackling with life.
And the sunrise this morning was absolutely breathtaking.
The center of the bridge began to tremble, and a low raucous thundering sound came up from out of nowhere to bury the noise of the six o’clock traffic. Only a few of the morning’s motorists were disoriented by the mounting rumble and shudder: all tourists and out-of-towners, at that. The rest of them naturally took it for granted.
Trains went over this bridge all the time.
The downtown D express to Coney Island poked its nose out of the tunnel and into the light just as Rudy boarded the third car from the rear of the train. By the time he reached the second-to-the-last car, one-third of the train was exposed to the sun. It was roundly bisected into light and dark halves before Rudy made it to the end of the car.
When the last door flew open, Joseph was waiting for him.
“NOOOO!” Rudy screamed. Joseph grinned wickedly at him, showing teeth. The messenger bag dangled from one massive hand. Joseph let it drop to the floor and kicked it.
“No weapons, bucko. With my bare hands. Right now.” Joseph dropped back against the rear door, bracing himself with spraddled legs, coyly motioning Rudy forward. “Come and get it, Rudy! I’m waiting for you!”
Nobody could have foreseen the speed with which Rudy raced forward at that moment: not Joseph, not Rudy, not even the ancient vampire whose whimsical joyride set the whole grim tableau into motion. Maybe it was a sudden burst of last-ditch survival adrenaline; maybe it was the fact that the train lurched to a sudden, grinding halt. Whatever the case, Rudy Pasko flew the length of the car as if he’d been fired out of a cannon, slamming into Joseph Hunter so hard and so fast that the glass starred and sagged behind the hunter’s back, threatening to give way altogether.
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