I heard a muscled thunk to my right and turned to see Alicia’s body spiral end over end before smacking the concrete rampart surrounding the edge of the roof. She struck the top of the ledge, seemed to balance precariously a moment, then toppled over the side into the night…twenty-six stories above downtown streets.
A figure came striding deliberately toward me through the smoke and flames—passing through the flames at some points. Ivan.
But the closer he got the more his stern, set features seemed to soften a fraction.
I was holding a young woman—a costumed witch with smoking hair—under her arms as he came up. He lifted her in one hand and tossed her after the other patrons away from the path of flames. He stopped before me, loomed high for a moment.
Then he grabbed me by the collar like a puppet and lifted me to eye-level.
He smiled unpleasantly. “Congratulations,” he said tonelessly.
My toes scrapped the top of the roof. “For what?” I gulped.
And I was sure he was going to toss me to the fire. Instead he brought me closer to his handsome, waxen face--amazingly free of smoke singes—inch-long fangs gleaming yellow in the firelight. “For knowing her first!” he hissed.
Then slowly, maybe regretfully, he set me back down on wobbly legs.
He nodded at my ash-smeared cheeks. “But a promise is a promise, yes?”
“NO!”
It came from inside my head again as a furry blur raced between us toward the far edge of the roof. Two pale and bleeding hands clung there to the outer edge of the concrete ledge, white fingers torn, nails cracked.
I started after Mitzi but steel fingers pressed me back. “Let it be,” Ivan commanded quietly. “She’s already dead...what sense in prolonging it?” Then he turned and pushed past me toward Clancy, watching us through a warbling curtain of red embers.
She stood quietly, as if resigned to the walls of flame closing around her.
“And stay away from this!” Ivan told me flatly over his shoulder.
He raised an indifferent hand, snapped his fingers once, and in a vaporous whoosh the entire conflagration vanished without leaving so much as a puff of lingering smoke.
The sudden night breeze was like a cool kiss from heaven.
Ivan reached out to Clancy. And, not even glancing my way, she took his hand.
They walked past me like the royal couple toward the bobbing belly of the chopper still humming at the end of the roof. I watched them grow smaller but didn’t attempt to follow. In the end—even if I stood a chance against Ivan’s kind of power (which I didn’t)-- it would have meet the death of me and perhaps Clancy as well. I saw them step up on the rampart, Ivan take her in his arms, and together they floated upward in the whipping wind from the spinning blades. Then I turned toward Mitzi.
When I got to her I could see my poodle had one of Alicia’s wrists clamped tight in her mouth, back muscles ropy under the drag.
I walked to the ledge beside her, looked over and down into Alicia’s painfully twisted but still-alive face. She looked like she’d been through a blender. I couldn’t believe she was still breathing, it had to be beyond torturous.
“Mitzi. Drop her, girl.”
She growled a warning and mental reply at the same time. “I can’t!”
I stood looking down at the once-lovely woman dangling below Mitzi’s insistent grip. “Mitzi, for God sake, she’s a vampire! The freaking queen of vampires!”
Mitzi shook her head stubbornly, causing the figure below to sway gently. “I just can’t, Ed! You don’t understand, she’s part of me!”
“I do understand! The bad part! Drop her!”
“No!’
“I’m commanding you to drop her, Mitzi! You’re my dog now!”
“I can’t!”
“Yes you can,” The Count said, appearing abruptly beside us.
Mitzi growled another warning. Alicia looked up with lidded eyes.
The Count stepped closer. “Ed is right, Mitzi…you must let her go.”
“Get away!” she growled. “What the hell do you know about it? You’re just a crazy old man!”
The Count smiled wistfully, sank down next to the dog on one knobby knee. “Well, you have me there, old girl. ‘Crazy’ is the word for me. Certainly not the man I used to be.”
“Go away!”
He leaned on his knee. “Mitzi, listen to me.” He lay a bony, long-fingered hand gently atop her corded back. I swear the muscles relaxed a notch. Still, Mitzi hung on.
“Mitzi, it’s like this. Sometimes we have to do the last thing in the world we want. Not because others say so--tell us it’s right or wrong--but because we know in our own hearts the reason. Look in yours, girl, and you’ll find the answer there. There’s nothing you can do for Alicia now. This was all preordained. How it was meant to be.”
Mitzi bit deeper. “How do you know that?”
The Count stroked her back. “Because I’ve seen it all before.”
Mitzi seemed to relax another notch. Alicia’s dangling form slipped an inch.
“There’s a wooden fence down there!” Mitzi cried in despair.
I looked over the edge again past the swinging woman. Sure enough, just visible under streetlights, I saw the very small—from here—but wicked teeth of the hotel garden’s picket fence, sharp pointed wooden slats aimed up at us like rows of stakes.
As if reading my thoughts, Mitzi pulled harder on the white wrist. But she was too exhausted to haul the woman over the lip. I felt a brief rush to assist her…but it passed quickly under The Count’s eyes.
“Listen to me, Mitzi,” he told her, “if you let go of her now…I promise to tell you something I’ve never told anyone. I promise to tell you who I really am.”
Mitzi said nothing.
“Only you, Mitzi. I’ll block out all other Readers. Even Ed here. It’ll be our secret. Our trust.”
Mitzi said nothing.
The Count leaned close. I saw his lips move.
Mitzi’s jaws dropped abruptly open. In astonishment, I think.
Alicia fell.
It took longer than I’d have thought.
And she had no strength left within her to counter Earth’s ancient gravity.
The pointed fence rushed up to meet her. Just before the pointed tops drove through-black dress and pale bosom, I turned away.
Mitzi cried out beside me with a sharp yelp of pain.
I turned to find her lying on her side in the blowing ashes. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
“Mitzi!”
I swept her into my arms.
I struggled to my feet, held the dog close, bent to the singed fur of her head
“Mitzi!”
I looked up anxiously. “Count! Is she dead?”
But except for the poodle and hundreds of snoring conventioneers, I was alone on the roof with the night sky and the fast-dwindling beat of the departing copter.
THE END
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