AfterAge

by Yvonne Navarro

  "It's too fantastic," Louise finished for him. "Right?" He nodded reluctantly. "I know how it must sound, but I'm living proof that she's not a fake. She saved my life." Louise held up her hands. "But I wouldn't expect any of you to take my word for it. Just ask her."

  "And you think we can find her?" Perlman questioned.

  "Sure. She lives in St. Peter's."

  "There's no harm in trying," Calie said.

  “All right," Perlman said after a moment. "I'll go over there after—if—we get the new vampire settled. It's just that the concept is so irrational—"

  "Irrational?" Calie was smiling widely.

  Perlman looked flustered. "You know what I mean." He inclined his head toward Louise. "Or maybe you and C.J. can try to find her." Louise nodded as the group gathered their belongings. "Right now, it's time to put down." He gave them all a final, solemn glance. "I'm not a religious man, but if that brings you comfort and . . . belief, then remember our guys in your prayers tonight."

  Deceptions

  7

  REVELATION 6:17

  For the great day of his wrath is come;

  and who shall be able to stand?

  ~ * ~

  "So what's the plan?" C.J. asked. "It'd be pretty stupid to leave this door unlocked."

  "We're not going to," Alex said. "Deb knows where I am. If she shows up, and if she's . . . changed, she'll find her own way in."

  Great, C.J. thought. Deb knows where I am. Nothing like staying emotionally detached. They followed Alex inside and waited while he locked the door, then led them down a corridor to a stairwell door beside a bank of elevators. Another lock rattled and Alex swung the door open, its hinges making a loud and ear-stabbing screech. He gave them a grin that was still a little green. "My alarm. Ready to climb?" They started up without comment as he relocked the door then passed them, his legs conditioned to the stairs.

  "How much farther?" McDole panted.

  "Thirteenth floor" Alex tried to sound cheerful.

  McDole groaned good-naturedly as their flashlights made small, bobbing circles with each step. "So," Elliot said after a few more flights. "These stairs must've been a pain in the butt."

  "Not really." Alex's face was a gray and black shadow, his voice strained. "Normally it barely winds me. I figured the higher you were, the safer—especially with the vampires getting weaker. Here we go." Another door screamed in the darkness as though it had sand in its hinges. "Here's where I live, folks. Not much to see, I’m afraid."

  C.J. stepped through cautiously, looking left and right along a dim inner hall before walking soundlessly on the parquet flooring to a better-lit outer corridor evenly spaced with northern windows, making a mental note that he was leaving the only close location of a stairwell. "What's above you?" he called back to Alex. "Have you ever been upstairs?"

  "Yeah," Alex said as the rest joined C.J. "Nothing much different from here."

  "The doors?" McDole wondered.

  “All locked." Alex scrubbed at his face as they turned and moved toward the south end of the building. His eyes were bloodshot and watery with pain; he didn't look ready for a confrontation.

  “And there's no one else in the building?"

  Alex shrugged. "If there is, they're invisible or they move at night when I can't see them. I've never heard anything."

  "I hate to break up the conversation," said C.J., "but darkness is a-coming. We'd better pick our places."

  "C.J.'s right," McDole said. "Where would she expect to find you?"

  Alex stopped at the doorway to a small office and stood there unsteadily. "Here," he said at last. "She'd probably look here first."

  C.J. poked his head in and frowned when he saw the tiny office, bare except for a few miscellaneous items. "No way. There's no room in here to get clear if she—" McDole cleared his throat and C.J. blinked. "Uh—if we have to."

  "Where else?" Elliot asked. He and McDole both looked unhappy with Alex's information. "Someplace a little bigger?"

  "Yeah," Alex said. "Over here." They rounded another corner and found themselves facing the south wall. Heavy drapes covered most of the windows next to the bookcases; here and there Alex had cracked the material to let in the light.

  "This is better," C.J. said. "That office back there is a death trap."

  McDole turned from the windows and held up a clay pot. "Where did you get these flowers?"

  Alex swallowed. "Deb and I found them in Marshall Field's," he answered quietly. He pulled a chair from under a desk and sat heavily. "It doesn't matter."

  An uncomfortable silence fell, then C.J. clapped Alex on the shoulder and pointed at the ceiling. "Come on, guy. You ever been up there?"

  Alex twisted his neck upward. "I told you already. All the doors—"

  "Not upstairs, up there. In the ceiling." The teenager scrambled atop a desk and raised one of the large tiles in the dropped ceiling. "This is a great place to hide." C.J.'s voice was muffled by the layer of tiling as his hands groped overhead and found a hold. "I'm surprised you never thought of it."

  Alex stood with McDole and Elliot and peered at C.J. as he hoisted himself into the hole. "What're you going to do if the ceiling collapses?" he called.

  There was a few seconds of soft scuffling, then C.J.'s head poked out. "It won’t, as long as you make sure to put your weight where the supports are anchored into the main beams. Use your flashlight to find them." He glanced at McDole. "It ain't gonna be the most comfortable place in the world."

  "I think I’ll stay down here," McDole said. He eyed Alex and Elliot. “Alex can go up over here," he pointed to one spot, then another. "C.J., you position yourself there." He turned to Alex. "You're positive the doors will make a warning noise?" Alex nodded. "Okay, then, two people up, two down." He studied the office area carefully, then pointed to an alcove created by a couple of filing cabinets. "I'll stay here, and Elliot can hide in the secretarial station at the corner. We should be able to hear her come in"—McDole glanced at Alex to be sure—"and see her when she gets here."

  "Not much of a moon tonight," C.J. interrupted. "That'll be tough."

  "We'll have to make do. Switch on the flashlights only if absolutely necessary, and then only for a second or two. If something else sees it . . ." He didn't have to finish.

  "So we have her surrounded," Elliot said. "Then what?"

  "Then we grab her, I guess." McDole's words made Alex's face go white. "The idea is to take her alive, right? Maybe we can talk to her."

  C.J. let out a long breath. "Oh man, this is going to be a trick."

  "We can do it," McDole said firmly. "If we all work together. We have to be able to count on each other at every second. There's no room for backing out, okay, Alex? Hesitate and someone could die." Alex nodded curtly.

  McDole steeled himself. "Then everybody find your place and get comfortable." He looked at his watch.

  "Four minutes until sunset."

  8

  REVELATION 14:7

  For the hour of his judgment is come.

  ~ * ~

  Darkness.

  The last tendrils of light faded, drawing away all but a wisp of the day's warmth. This room, larger but unfamiliar, was closer to the outside walls of the building and the sweet pain of the sun; both he and the woman still felt its faraway kiss. Vic felt the micromovement of her skin as her eyelids opened, heard the whisper of her lashes in the blackness as she blinked. She paused, as though listening for something, and he tensed.

  When she screamed, he was ready for it.

  ~ * ~

  It took almost a quarter of an hour to soothe her hysteria. "It was only a dream," he murmured over and over, "that's all. Just a dream." The first nightsleep had been the worst for him, and for Deb, too; he tried to slip into her mind and help her through it, but he was a novice at creation and a bumbler at making decisions about other people's lives anyway.

  "I couldn't hear my heartbeat," she sobbed. "I couldn't find it!"

  "Shhhh, i
t's okay." Guilt weighed on him like a steel yoke and his lips pulled into a thin line. "It's okay," he said again, as though he were some kind of repetitious recording. She felt good in his arms, though he couldn't forget the lost heat of life within her flesh, now gone forever. But she was beautiful this way, too: her light blue eyes with faint traces of black-red lights dancing in their depths; china-white skin beneath the India ink spill of hair across her shoulders and down her back. The first time she fed, those stunning eyes would start a slow change to red, and eventually the once-sparkling blue would slip away for eternity.

  Cradled in his arms, Deb finally stopped her tearless crying. He should have known she wouldn't be afraid; inside was much the same woman who'd faced them in the Art Institute, defiant and brave, stubborn as hell. Her gaze flicked around the room and rested briefly on the pillbox, then she pulled away and stood, her lovely face glowing like a ghostly death mask. She picked up the pillbox and studied it, then closed her fist around it. "I'm hungry," she said softly. Her eyes grazed him, then slid safely to a point above his head.

  Vic hadn't expected her to ask so soon. "I can take you to food," he offered. He tried to take her hand but she stepped out of his reach.

  "Not that kind," Deb said. The fist clutching the pillbox made a hollow thunk as she smacked her breastbone. "I'm hungry here . . . Vic." There was the slightest hesitation as her memory supplied the new fact. "I want to hear the sound of my heart. I want to feel the rush of my own blood pulsing through my arteries. I want to be warm again!" She tossed the trinket at him and he caught it automatically, the cloisonné butterfly glimmering on his palm.

  He turned his back and stared stonily at the wall. "I can't help you with that."

  "Why did you do this to me?" she demanded. "You're not—" She stumbled, searching for the right word.

  Vic whirled. "What? Normal?"

  "Yes!" she shot back. "You're not like you're supposed to be! You don't like being what you are, so why did you have to make me like YOU?" Her voice was so full of anguish it was nearly a wail, and Vic fought the urge to cringe.

  "Because I was . . . lonely," he whispered.

  "You took my life because you were lonely?" The question was harsh and disbelieving. "I'd understand it better if you said you were hungry!"

  "I thought you might stay with me," he pleaded. "I thought we could be—"

  "What?" she asked. "A couple?" She turned away, her expression miserable. "Oh, I just don't believe this.”

  “They would have killed you, or worse," he said. "Better that than this."

  "You don't have any idea. There are worse things." He folded his arms.

  "Being one of the fat man's playthings at least leaves hope!" She rolled her eyes at his startled look. "It's as easy for me to see into your mind as it was for you to poke into mine."

  "It wasn't that easy."

  "And it never will be," she snapped, "not as long as I have one ounce of—can you believe it! I almost said life!" Her shrill laughter teetered on the edge of control.

  "Anyelet will want to know where Alex is," Vic told her quietly. "If she even gets a hint that he exists . . ."

  "I don't plan on meeting Anyelet." Deb tossed her head proudly.

  "What?"

  "I want you to let me go, Vic. Please," she said at his openmouthed stare. She tentatively touched his shoulder. "I don't want to stay like this. I'd rather die."

  "No, you wouldn't—" he began.

  "Yes I would," Deb insisted. She made a swiping motion and looked down at her body. "This is . . . I don't know. Dirty, somehow. This feeling, this Hunger—it's evil and you know it. All those people chained up. . ." She groaned. "Just . . . turn your back, all right? That's all I ask."

  "That's out of the question." His voice was hoarse with disappointment; when he started to reach for her, his hand was trembling and he squeezed his fingers shut instead.

  "I'm sorry, Vic, but I can't be what you want. I can't fill the emptiness inside you, or be the balm for all your horrible shame about Hugh." She stared at him, and this time it was Vic who pulled his gaze away. "I can't fix you."

  "But where would you go?" He looked terrified. “You can't change what you are, Deb." It was the first time he'd spoken her name. "At least here there's safety, and food, too, even if only when necessary."

  "I won't feed on another person." Her voice was so low he almost didn’t catch her words.

  "But you'll starve!" he exclaimed. "You'll end up like one of the outcasts, living in the subway—"

  "I won't let it come to that."

  Vic let his knees bend and lower him to the blankets on which he and Deb had slept. He ran his fingers over the soft surface, then picked up the little pillbox. Only one night; he'd been hoping for so much more.

  He closed his eyes, then dropped his face to his cupped hands and stayed that way for a long, long while, thinking about all the nights of eternity and about a woman whose courage would give her the strength to do what he couldn't face.

  She didn't say good-bye.

  9

  REVELATION 11:11

  Life entered into them, and they stood upon their feet;

  and great fear fell upon them which saw them.

  ~ * ~

  The night held a terrible beauty

  She'd never noticed it before and was loath to admit it, but the nightside had incredible advantages that seemed to exist for no other reason than enhancement. Night vision, for instance. At first, she'd assumed it was only to see things (people, her mind whispered snidely), yet the stars glittered like a spread of sequins on black satin, sprinkled from skyline to skyline. Never had she seen such a nightsky, even in open country. Scent, too, heightened to enable her to find prey; instead she concentrated on the other smells it brought: the damp smell of the river, the slight scent of green from the tiny buds on the trees, the dark stench of decay drifting up from Lower Wacker and the subways. She moved quickly in the middle of the street, avoiding the black pits of doorways and parked cars and the manhole covers that pocked the streets at regular intervals.

  The doorway to the Daley Center was locked, of course. The subway on her right and the parking garage on her left made her nervous, the danger of being attacked from two sides at once tripping alarms in her head. She circled quickly to the north, slipping by the yawning darkness of the garage so swiftly she was only a shadow among a forest of others. Glancing around carefully, she began to climb. At the fifteenth floor Deb stopped and peered at the ground; for a second she thought she saw something move, but at this distance even her eyesight couldn't clearly distinguish anything in the blackness a hundred and fifty feet below. Her fingers gripped the smooth metal effortlessly, clinging to the steel as though each were tipped by an invisible suction cup. She let one hand drop to her face, and dangling from the side of the building like an oversized bat, inspected it in the darkness. She could feel its massive new strength, ugly by its own purpose. There was a new emptiness, too—the ulcerous pain in her gut had been replaced by a . . . Hunger. But she had existed with pain in her belly for a long time in life, and she could do the same in death. She tried to see her reflection in the window glass and nearly lost her grip when vertigo slapped her; it passed as soon as she looked up instead of straight ahead, and she wondered if a fall from this height would kill her or simply leave her as a pile of fragmented, twitching bones. There was no other way in and Deb broke the window as gently as possible, trying vainly to direct the shattered glass to the interior of the building.

  Two floors below, she might find Alex. The mind block she had erected to avoid Vic's discovery of Alex's whereabouts had been an experiment with a new toy; now would come the true test of her will. She forced the fire door at the thirteenth floor, smiling ruefully as it screeched in the darkness. Was he even here? Surely not; the man would have to be as much a fool for staying as she was to think he actually had. Still, she followed the corridor, her shadow cutting through the strips of moonlight thrown by the sporadic break
s in the draperies. At the last corridor she stopped; suddenly she could smell him, his scent magnified a hundred times by the memory of their lovemaking only a few nights ago. The place smelled of other humans, too, and she raised a shaking hand to her forehead. What was she doing here? What did she really expect to happen? Would she talk to him? Her bitter laugh cut sharply through the room. It smelled like Alex had joined up with others; more likely he'd find a way to kill her. But that would be all right, too.

  She took two more steps and someone dropped out of the ceiling.

  She crouched and snarled reflexively, trying to back away before realizing someone else was behind her. "Deb?" Alex's voice was a mix of terror and longing; the sound of it filled her with more pain than she'd thought possible.

  Another voice, young and unfamiliar. "Alex, don't go near.”

  "Deb, look out!” Alex yelled. A third voice shouted angrily as something hissed viciously and leapt on her from behind.

  She rolled with it on her shoulders, whipping her head back and forth to avoid the talons trying to puncture her eyes. There was a lot of pain, stinging sensations that surprised her in a detached way; she really hadn't expected pain in this new existence. She got a hand twisted in a hunk of filthy hair and the thing snapping at her neck shrieked as she yanked its head sideways and wrapped her other hand around a bone-thin arm slick with disgusting fluids, jerking the creature away and flinging it to the floor. It was on her again in an instant, clawing at her arms and ripping at the clothing covering her skin. Deb struggled with it more out of annoyance than fear, knowing it was too weak to survive a true battle with her.

  Then it was—gone. Suddenly freed of its weight, she took a stumbling step backward and stopped. "Hey," she began, "where—"

  The screaming started.

  The beast was on top of someone else, a young man bellowing in agony as the thing chewed at his arm, wrist, wherever it could get a bite. Alex and two other men grappled it without success as the smell of blood filled the air and awakened a dark need that Deb ground her jaw against. She came up behind them and easily pushed the youngest one aside; he batted at her angrily before he realized who she was.