“Until you what?”
I paced, shrugged. “Woke up.”
“Woke up from what, though?”
I looked at her. “What?”
“Woke up from a dream, or from passing out after being bitten by a vampire?”
I stood there frowning at the floor, rolling it over. “She kept saying something about how they failed, now it was time to move on to the next part.”
“What next part?”
I shook my head. “I have no idea.”
Sylvie put down her coffee cup with a reflective gesture. “Were you scared?”
“Terrified.”
She nodded. “That’s all?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
Sylvie pulled up her knees, hugged them. “Maybe that’s not all you were feeling. You said you always considered The Count a good friend. A good person, even. A good vampire?”
I was pacing again, a little irritated now. “What are you saying, I was conflicted?”
“Maybe. Maybe a little disappointed, too. That The Count didn’t turn out to be what he seemed.”
“Possibly.”
“Maybe…even a little guilty?”
I stopped, gave her a sharp look. “Guilty?”
“Hey, I’m no psychiatrist. But maybe you felt it was somehow your fault your friend The Count had betrayed you. Not only that, but turned to Alicia, your sworn enemy.”
I studied her a moment. “What are you driving at?”
“That maybe you were also a little angry, because here were Clancy and Mitzi about to board a plane to Iraq and no one was helping you. That those thoughts clouded your judgment, didn’t allow you to see what was really going on. That you were part of the solidarity.”
I was staring absently at Sylvie’s magazine basket, a familiar yellow logo on the top issue. “Since when do you read National Geographic?”
She followed my eyes. “I don’t. Must be one of the girl’s magazines.”
I came back over to the couch, sat down, wheels turning. “Alicia was weak. I mean, she was incredibly strong compared to the average human, but not like before she was wounded by that fence. At times, when we were fighting, I felt I could almost…”
“What? Defeat her?”
I looked over at her. “Maybe. Almost.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I wasn’t strong enough. I’m not a…”
“Vampire?”
I played with it a moment. Then shook my head. “No. Dream or reality, it just doesn’t make sense. If The Count wanted me to join the side of the vampires, he had countless opportunities to do it from the moment we met at that costume part in KC. Why all the beating around the bush, pretending to be a Scout Master? Mitzi loved that guy…and she’s a vampire! Why bust in here, make a mess, then disappear and leave me here to…”
“To what?”
I shook all over with frustration, my anger finally taking over. “Goddamnit!”
My fist slammed the top of the heavy mahogany coffee table.
The coffee table exploded like canon fire.
Sylvie screamed, missiles of slivered wood flying past her.
Particles rained down like dirty snow.
We sat opposite of the unrecognizable ruins on the carpet between us, gaping at each other.
I looked down, held up my fist. There wasn’t a mark or bruise on it.
“…holy shit!...” from a wide-eyed Sylvie.
Things were quiet for a moment.
Then I felt my personality fading out and The Count’s stronger one taking over. He has an agenda, that much was obvious. And somehow it involved Sylvie. But I felt powerless to stop him, could only watch my body proceed from a distance. “Come here, Sylvie.” I felt suddenly like a giant, twice my height.
Sylvie pressed back into the easy chair, expression almost fearful.
I smiled. “Sylvie. For cripesake.”
She came to me cautiously.
I bent before her, took both slim ankles and lifted her straight up.
Over my head. She was like a feather.
She looked down at me breathlessly. “Jesus Christ, Ed…”
I nodded up at her. “It was real,” I told her. “It was a test. And it still is…”
* * *
I was pacing again, rapidly now all over the living room, chewing absently at my knuckle. Into the kitchen and back again, mind on overdrive, Sylvie’s head swiveling around from her easy chair to keep up with me.
“What are we looking for?” she pleaded.
“I don’t know. I’ll know it when I see it. Something here in the apartment…something they left behind?”
Sylvie craned about from her chair. “Why?”
“Part of the test. The Count gave me the physical part when he bit me, he somehow imbued me with his strength. But the mental part is just as important—maybe more important—and that part’s up to me.”
“Testing you for what?”
“For going up against Ivan.”
Sylvie’s gasp was almost a sob. “Ivan! Ed, no!”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense! Alicia’s too weak now. And The Count…well, The Count has his own reasons.”
Sylvie twisted around to follow me, running my hands over the mantle, looking under the furniture, rifling through the bookshelves.
“Ed, wait! You said you and Alicia fought—that they left the place a mess! Look around you! Everything’s neat as a pin!”
I nodded urgently, eyes flicking everywhere at once. “And I left out the part about what Alicia did to the twins! Talk about a mess! But obviously that was an illusion to spur me into fighting her!”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Ivan and Alicia were always in fierce competition for world domination! Nobody knew more about him that her, had more files, more spies, kept more dossiers! It wouldn’t surprise me if she was at the gallery party last night, slinking in the shadows somewhere, even at the auction! She knows her enemies top to bottom, even the caliph!”
“But Ed, the apartment! The twins--!”
“The girls are fine, you told me so yourself.. As for the apartment, these creatures can take an entire office building apart and put it back together again without a scratch quicker that it takes to tell it!”
I shook my head, laughing. “How could I be so stupid? Such an egoist! I knew the moment I woke up this morning I was different! I could feel it!”
My bare feet dug into the carpet suddenly and I whirled to Sylvie; stood there staring at her.
“W-What--?”
“I have the most intense desire right now to make love to you.” I tried to stop it from coming out of my mouth, but like I said, The Count had an agenda and my conscious played no part in it.
She started to smile—then frowned—then met herself somewhere between the two. “Just…make love?”
I tried to sound reassuring. “He didn’t turn me, Sylvie. At least I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so!”
“I don’t think The Count would do that. At least not before asking. He’d consider it…rude.”
She had a pale hand to her throat now, eyeing me uncertainly. “That’s…comforting.”
I shook it off, went back to casing the living room. “There has to be something here! Some clue they left! Think of it as a game! Everything look exactly the same but for one little thing out of order! And I’ve got to find it, Sylvie! I’ve got to pass this part if I ever want to see Clancy and that poodle again!”
Sylvie nodded from her chair, but her bare arms were crossed before the nightie now as if suddenly chill. “What time does the plane leave?”
I glanced at the clock above the mantle. “Midnight.”
I doubled my fists in frustration, stood in the middle of the living room legs apart, feet planted, swiveling from the hips at the walls around me. “It’s got to be here!”
“Maybe it’s in the twins’ rooms, or mine.”
I considered it, hearin
g the minute hand ticking in my head, knowing if Clancy got aboard that plane I’d never see her again.
On impulse, I dragged a chair under the ceiling light, stood on my toes and peered into the hanging glass fixture. Except for the bulb: empty.
“Ed?”
I hopped off the chair. I felt like I could have flown off.
Sylvie was staring at the magazine basket.
I was there like a duck on a June bug, like I didn’t have to think about it, like I brought the basket to me!
I picked up the National Geographic, glanced at the cover: an almost artfully ironic photograph of a terrible middle-eastern street battle. The copy: IRAQ’S BURDEN.
A blank envelope fell free, dropped from slick paper stock to Tower carpet, before I even had the magazine cracked…
TWENTY
If I’d been expecting a detailed file on the Iraqi Al Mansur, or a complex dossier on Ivan Kolcheck, I’d have been disappointed.
There was only one piece of paper within the envelope and the only printing on it was in hand-written architect calligraphy.
But the paper unfolded into seven long, creased sections that altogether made a skinny rectangle of more than thirty-four inches. They displayed a badly duped, barely legible blueprint schematic.
I spread it out on the kitchen table.
And breathed an epithet. “Jesus.”
“It’s an airplane,” Sylvie said beside me.
I grunted a single laugh, shook my head in awe. “No. It’s the Big Bunny.”
“The what?”
I’m no aviation expert but I’d put together a lot of Revell styrene models as a kid and I knew a 70’s era DC-9 when I saw one. But even by today’s private jet standards this baby spread out before us was an incredibly luxurious piece of aircraft. I’d seen photos of it, mostly its solid black exterior knifing through slick paper sunsets, but I’d never had a real peek at the fuselage interior until now.
“It’s the N9509B. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion in the sky. Apparently now owned by Al Mansur. My God, look at this thing!”
Sylvie bent closer. “I’m not exactly sure what I’m looking at...”
I pointed at an elliptical object aft. “See that? That a bed.”
“You’re kidding!”
“And this space here? That’s a Cinemascope projector. For the theater.”
Sylvie swept over the blueprints. “What’s this big area here?”
“A discothèque.”
“You’re putting me on.”
“This big area here is a powder room. For the bunnies.”
“They needed a powder room the size of my apartment!”
“He had a lot of bunnies.”
“What’s this?”
“Conference room.”
“And this thing next to the left engine?”
“The port engine. That’s a shower.”
She gaped at me. “There’s enough room in there for eight peop…” She trailed off and rolled her eyes. “…right. Eight all at once. I get it. No wonder your Iraqi friend wanted this thing—fit his entire harem just in the bath.”
I nodded, smiling excitedly despite the gravity of the situation. “The only thing missing was a swimming pool and bowling alley.” I’d wanted to fly in the Big Bunny all my life—what man wouldn’t?
“I assume it had a flight crew as well all the bunnies.”
“The bunnies were the flight crew. Just building the damn thing caused two of the largest manufacturers of aircraft to merge—Douglas and McDonnell. They had to create a special ‘stretch fuselage’ as I recall. Hef had her painted solid black, nose to tail.” I found myself chuckling. “Seems a little over-the-top today, I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Hey, it was the 70’s. The sexual revolution. Every college kid in America with his glands connected bought Playboy. My dad spent a lot on those centerfolds.”
“And by ‘spent’ you mean--?”
“Okay, laugh, but those old issues got a lot of boys through puberty. Good old Hef.”
“Ed, he was a dinosaur!”
“He was a visionary! Look at that plane! You don’t see genius?”
“If genius is a giant black flying phallus.”
“You’re just jealous you never got to be a bunny.”
“Right. Every young girl’s dream. So, what happened to good old Areole Airlines or whatever it was called?”
“Magazine sales dipped in the mid 70’s, he had to sell the plane.”
“To the caliph, apparently.”
“Looks like.” I straightened from the schematic, frowning. “That’s funny…I thought I read somewhere the Bunny was retired or scrapped or something. Is your PC up and running?”
“In my room.”
We changed rooms and I Googled ‘Big Bunny.’
Tapped a few more keys and started reading. “‘--plane completed and delivered to Hefner on January 27, 1969. Was originally based at Purdue where the aviation department of the University maintained it. Hefner sold the big DC-9-32 to Venezuela Airlines where it became the YV-19C. She was then put in storage for several years. In 1989 she was bought by Aeromexico and renamed ‘Ciduad Juarez’ where she was repainted for domestic Mexican routes. She was finally retired for good in 2004.’”
“Kind of sad,” Sylvie remarked. “So, I guess the Iraqi acquired it sometime after that.”
“Or simply copied it. They read Playboy in the middle east too, when they could get it.”
I sat back from the computer, chin on my knuckle, staring at the old photo of The Bunny on the screen, resting majestically on the tarmac in Amarillo, Texas for a Sonny and Cher concert.
“Ed? What’s the matter?”
I kept staring. “Something about the design of the plane. Looks different in the schematic…”
“Different how?”
“Not sure. Hold it a sec.” I trotted back to the kitchen, grabbed the foldout and hustled back to the bedroom PC, placing the paper schematic next to the screen. “Do you see it?”
Sylvie squinted closer. “See what?”
“Can’t really…maybe something about the ogive?”
“What’s an ‘ogive’?”
I sat back, shook my head. “Never mind. Maybe it’s not the original Big Bunny. Maybe caliph Mansur or somebody else made a copy of the aircraft.” I consulted my watch with a rising pulse. “Doesn’t matter. Obviously this plane or something very like it is waiting at the airport to depart for Iraq in twelve hours. And I’ve got get on board somehow before it does.”
“Without being seen.”
“Without being seen.”
“But what airport? O’Hara Field?”
I hadn’t really thought about it, but she had a point. “It must be. I don’t think even a Chicago private airport would be big enough to handle that goliath. The caliph undoubtedly has his own hanger, private ground crew. Probably greased Ivan Kolcheck’s palm to grease the mayor’s palm to arrange it, maybe as partial payment for the transaction allowing Ivan to set up shop in the middle east.”
“You’re saying the mayor of Chicago is a vampire?’
“Who knows? If Ivan’s successful it may be impossible soon to tell the vampires from the remaining humans without a scorecard. Unless you can smell them. And we need Mitzi for that.”
Sylvie turned her back on the PC suddenly and walked away reflectively.
“Sylvie? What’s the matter?”
She just stood there a moment looking down absently at her bed. “I was just thinking…do I really want a baby…do I have the right…to bring a child into a world of such horrors?”
“It’s a war, Sylvie. If the British has thought about that they’d never have held back Hitler. Of course you have a right to a child. In fact, I’d say it’s rapidly becoming a necessity. We’re going to need all the fool-proof humans we can get to fight this thing, male and female.”
She stood there with her back to me, shook her head slowly. “It’s like a bad d
ream…”
“Tell me about. Enough to make you not believe in God.”
She turned, gave me a quizzical look. “Really? I was thinking just the opposite.”
Again, she had a point. A good one. If all that Hollywood stuff about crosses and religious symbols was true…
“You may be right. We could be witness to the biggest conversion to Christianity in the history of mankind.”
She studied me a quiet moment. “Do you believe in God, Ed?”
I sighed, resisted glancing at my watch again. “I used to, as a kid in Sunday school. People went to church back then. But after college, I don’t know, I guess I just went along with it when religion became no longer vogue.”
“And now?”
I’d been thinking about it a lot, actually. “I don’t know. I think I really lost what faith I had one day watching a film about the Holocaust. How could a loving God ever allow such suffering, such implacable evil? But recently…”
‘Recently’ what?”
“…after 9/11 I went about privately professing my agnosticism. When that began to feel chicken shit, I guess I was a borderline atheist. The world’s great religions…all they seemed to do was drive men further apart, foster racism and hatred. ‘We have seen the enemy and he is us,’ you know? Then one afternoon I found myself in my cellar driving a stake through the heart of my former newspaper employer. Hardly a golden character, but a reasonably nice guy before the vampires got him. And I thought, kneeling there spattered in my boss’s blood, whacking away like an animal, I thought…”
“Thought--?”
“…I thought, maybe there really is an absolute evil. An irrevocable badness that, like a cancer, consumes its host with such blind intent it destroys itself. And then I thought…if there can be an absolute evil, then the ying and yang of it must be an absolute good. And maybe that’s God.”
Sylvie watched me with new eyes. “That’s pretty profound for a small town reporter.”
I shrugged. “But what I really thought was…I’ll be damned if these pricks are going to steal my poodle.”
“What about The Count?”
B007JBKHYW EBOK Page 20