by Lee Killough
“Antrim.”
“Ah.” A quirk of her brow said more: Northern Ireland, not real Irish. “Well, still, what can I show you?”
He looked over the driving caps while Harry shifted impatiently, then finally gave her a shrug of regret. “I don’t see one that strikes my fancy today.” And followed Harry out.
In the courtyard beyond the arcade, Girimonte and Fowler wore expectant expressions.
Harry shook his head. “It isn’t her.”
“You’re sure?” Fowler said. “She matches the photo.”
“Just superficially,” Garreth said. “That is not the woman who attacked me.”
Fowler sighed, then shrugged. “Well, detective work often involves dead ends, I’m told...but I do apologize for bringing you on a wild goose chase.”
Girimonte pulled Harry aside and lowered her voice where only Harry should hear. Forgetting about vampire hearing. Garreth had no trouble hearing her. “You’re absolutely sure it isn’t her?”
“Garreth says not. I believe him. He looked very relieved when he saw her.”
“But because it wasn’t her or because it was her? And of course he’d say she wasn’t if he wanted to save her for personal vengeance.”
Harry frowned. “She didn’t show any sign of recognizing us, either, and even though Garreth’s changed, I look the same.”
“What’s your impression of her?”
Harry’s expression went thoughtful. “Well...as much as she looks like Barber, who I actually saw just the once in person and that was in the Barbary Now, not the brightest lit place, she doesn’t feel like Barber.”
“Feel?” Girimonte frowned. “You’re going on vibes?”
Harry hesitated. “I know what it sounds like but...Barber had this...charisma, like a force of nature, that made you want to be around her and do anything she asked. This woman doesn’t have that.”
Listening to them, Garreth almost missed the murmur of Fowler’s voice, catching only: “...a total loss.”
He focused on the writer. “I’m sorry. What?”
In the same low voice as before, Fowler said, “Our expedition is not a total loss, I said. I’ll show you why...but you’ll need to break away from the good inspectors first. It’s something Girimonte might use against you. Meet me at my car in, oh, ten minutes. I’m parked outside the Jefferson Street entrance.” Raising his voice, he wiggled his fingers at Harry and Girimonte and started away down the courtyard. “Ta-ta. I’m off to my appointment at City Lights. I apologize again for dragging you here.”
Harry and Girimonte headed the opposite direction, but now, with noon behind them, talking lunch. The thought, and the blood scents of passing shoppers, set his throat burning, reminding him how long it had been since that mug of blood Lien gave him. If only he had taken the time to make up a thermos of tea before leaving the house.
To block thirst, he focused on debating whether to meet Fowler and see what saved the trip in Fowler’s eyes. His gut reaction wanted to forget it, to believe Fowler’s imagination had just latched onto a small detail and blown it up to something major. But...if there really was something that could be used against him, maybe spun into proof of murder, he needed to know.
He slowed and began stopping at shop windows.
“You coming?” Harry called back as he lagged behind.
“Yes, sorry. Oh, wait.” He peered into a shop. “There’s a necklace Maggie would love. As long as I’m here, I think I’ll get it for her. I’ll catch up. Where are eating?”
“La Fiesta over on the next block. Do you want us to order for you?”
“I’ll do it when I get there.”
“Want to bet it will be ice tea,” Girimonte muttered.
He moved toward the shop door, but as soon as their backs were turned, he stepped behind an arcade pillar, waited while they turned a corner, then headed for the Jefferson Street entrance. Keeping to the shadow of arcades as much as possible to avoid the crush of direct sunlight and wishing the rain back, or a thick fog.
The route took him past Shamrock Tweeds again.
Where the male clerk stood in the doorway, looking around and frowning. Spotting Garreth, he raised a hand. “Excuse me! Can I ask you a question.”
Garreth stopped. “Sure. What?”
“You were in the store a little while ago. Do you remember Miss MacLean, who waited on you?”
“Of course.” As if he would forget her.
“Did you see her anywhere out here just now?”
Garreth shook his head. “I take it she stepped out?”
“I don’t know. She’s just not in the store.”
“In the john maybe?”
The clerk shook his head. “She’d tell me before going.”
“When did you miss her?”
“A few minutes after you left.”
Garreth felt his neck prickle. This probably had nothing to do with their visit there. Not being Lane she had no reason to run. Still... “How long has Miss MacLean worked for you?”
“About a year.”
Which did not make her sound like a plant. “And she’s been reliable?”
“Very.”
Surely it had nothing to do with him. “Well, if I spot her I’ll tell her to get back here.”
Instead of looking for her, however, the mental echo of his grandmother’s warning about an enemy close to him kept him looking over his shoulder. Though what, short of a sniper, could get to him in a busy public place?
Reaching Jefferson, he looked for Fowler...and spotted him sitting against a grey Citation with hands in his trench coat pockets.
As Garreth slogged through the sidewalk traffic toward him, Fowler straightened, looking pleased. “Jolly good. I hoped you’d make it.”
“So what is there Girimonte can use against me?”
“Nothing. But knowing what you are, here’s something I can use. ” Fowler pulled a small, spray-topped plastic bottle out of his pocket.
Garreth stared at it, alarms screaming. An enemy close to him: Fowler, not Girimonte! He turned and ducked.
Tried to duck. Only the weight of daylight dragged at him. Garlic mist caught him full in the face.
Chapter Thirty-one
In comparison to being sprayed with garlic, the turgid lungs of merely scenting it seemed no worse than a stuffy nose. His throat slammed shut, his chest petrified into unyielding stone. His vision went hazy red and blood thundered in his ears as his heart pounded into overdrive with the futile effort to suck in air.
Beyond the terror of suffocation he felt a hand patting his pockets while someone yelled at him...seemingly in German. A female voice asked a question.
“Nein.” Fowler, using a thick accent. “He chust needs his inhaler but has left it at our hotel. I get him back there and he vill be fine.”
A car door opened. Garreth tried to resist being shoved inside but all his body wanted to do was try breathing. He dropped into the seat and the seatbelt clicked closed.
“Be a good chap and don’t fight,” Fowler murmured in his ear. “You cannot possibly run or even call for help in your condition.”
The door closed.
Not run but maybe fall out of the car. Make a scene. Draw attention. He could last that long before passing out. Diving in the river around Pioneer Park when they thought little Tessa Schneider fell in, he held his breath for nearly five minutes.
Garreth groped at the seat belt...fumbled with the buckle.
Only to have his hand slapped away from it as Fowler slid in the other side of the car. “Naughty, naughty.”
The car gunned into life and pulled away from the curb.
Garreth’s chest felt ready to explode as his lungs screamed for air...until he was ready to escape into the unconsciousness he had been fighting off in the hope of a chance to escape. Unconsciousness that lurked, threatening...hazing his vision, numbing his hearing...but never came. Ayesha’s prophesy of endless suffocation without escape.
He fought a w
ave of horror. Endless did not have to mean eternal. When the garlic effect passed, his lungs would loosen up. How long that might be after catching a dose square in the face, he had no idea and tried not to think about. Instead, he blocked what pain and panic he could by replaying Fowler’s attack.
What could happen to him in a busy public place? This. Executed so slickly potential witnesses never suspected an assault, just saw a German tourist suffer an asthma attack and be helped into a car by his concerned companion. The precision argued planning. It also, chillingly, indicated practice.
Irina’s lack of enthusiasm for Girimonte as their killer came back to him, plus her mention of other murders outside of San Francisco. Thinking of timing, he realized the San Francisco murders began when Fowler arrived out here. That could be coincidence. But what was it Harry said, that a plot to frame him sounded like something out of Fowler’s books. Now he wondered how he had not given that serious thought. There must also have been signs he missed that Fowler knew what he was...making Garreth Mikaelian the same chump who let Lane lure him to his death in that alley.
So try not to get yourself killed again. This time it could be for real.
Belatedly he wondered where they were going. Beyond an impression of heading west, south, and up, he had been too preoccupied to pay much attention. Not somewhere quiet to kill him, at a guess...or at least not yet, if Irina was right about the killer needing him.
Something moved in his chest, a trickle of air, distracting him from checking the street. He fought the urge to suck in harder. Better to be satisfied with the trickle and hide his recovery. Wait for his chance at Fowler. He just needed a little more time.
Time denied to him. The car turned off the street. A grey expense of garage door rose in front of them. Fire licked at him.
Garreth shrank back into the seat away from it. What happened if—
“Worried what happens when you enter involuntarily without an invitation?” Fowler asked.
Of course the bastard noticed him flinching.
“Shall I show you?”
If he had breath he would have held it while the car rolled into the garage...then gasped in amazement and relief as the fire vanished.
Fowler shut off the engine and lounged back in his seat. “The result of entry through accidental or mechanical means, say whilst fighting or dropping through a skylight via parachute, I’ve had no opportunity to observe as yet, but as we see, being carried in, as it were, constitutes a non-verbal invitation. And, here we are, both comfortably in my safe house...leased from a college professor on sabbatical.” He climbed out of the car and came around to the passenger side. “Originally I intended it for Mada and me to catch up on old times in private, but it will serve for you, too. No one knows about it, so abandon all hope of anyone looking for you here.” He opened the door and smiled. “Ah, splendid. You’re trying to hide it from me, of course, but I can tell your breath is returning. Not enough to let you act against me, I assure you from experience, but sufficient for you to walk into the house instead of being carried. Out and on your feet then.”
From experience. Meaning he had definitely done this before. How many times? How often did it end in death for the vampire?
While being pulled upright, Garreth eyed the distance to a bare wall stud behind Fowler. A hard head-butt should slam Fowler back against it with enough force to at least stun him.
Garreth ducked his chin for the charge.
Only to jerk back upright and onto his toes in agony as Fowler sidestepped and jammed thumbs into the sides of his neck behind his jaw.
Fowler’s casual tone reached him through the pain. “Pressure points are exquisitely effective for producing compliance, don’t you agree? No doubt you have employed them yourself in your pre-vampire days. Now no more foolishness.”
He marched Garreth inside, down a hall back through the house, into a diningroom. Whatever the exterior architecture, the professor had gone Spanish Mission inside...white plaster walls; quarry tile floor; a big trestle table and massive chairs with thick legs and arms. One sat with its back against drapes. After taking Garreth’s ball cap, glasses, and windbreaker, Fowler secured him to the legs and arms of the chair with zip ties.
Garreth bit back a smile. Slipping out of these should be even easier than passing through a door. Just as soon as he had more breath and Fowler turned his back.
He worked on breathing while Fowler set his garlic bottle on the table and tore strips from a roll of duct tape, laying them out sticky side up. When Fowler reached for long, bare stems in a vase and pressed a pair onto each strip of tape, Garreth’s gut lurched. If those were rose stems, he had to act fast.
He jerked against the ties on his wrists.
Fast as a striking snake, Fowler snatched up the garlic bottle and gave Garreth a short blast.
The paralysis felt worse than the first time.
By the time air began seeping back in his lungs, he found duct tape and rose stems wrapped over all the zip ties. In addition, more tape secured him to the back of the chair...which had now been turned to face the wall. Opened drapes framed a large picture window with a sunlit view east over the city toward the bay. Gingerly he tested his bonds.
Fowler propped a hip on the window sill, arms folded. “You won’t slip through those.” He said it matter-of-factly. “I know how to restrain your kind.”
From experience, Garreth added mentally. The rose stems caused no pain...just pressure repelling him, like the matching poles of magnets. The same pressure he felt working around the rose bushes on Lane’s grave.
“You should be able to manage at least a whisper now. Try talking.”
“Why?” It came out as a weak wheeze.
“Because your continued life depends on answering my questions.” Still conversational.
The reason Fowler needed him? What questions?
“Actually, there is just one question: where is Mada Bieber? I know that out here you call your maker Lane Barber, but I prefer her real name.”
Suggesting Fowler had known about her a long time...and the talk about mother and daughter was a mere tale spun for sucker Garreth Mikaelian.
How long had he known about Lane? Maybe since that vacation in Nice? He mentioned having spied on her. Maybe he saw her with men she picked up. Perhaps saw her with his father. Fowler said she and his parents struck up a friendship. Garreth had a hard time imagining she had not taken advantage of that to seduce the father. So the spying son could well have seen them together and learned Lane was a vampire. And seen something more, maybe...something that caused this savage hatred of vampires and obsession with finding Lane.
“Did she...kill your...father?” he forced out.
Fowler stiffened, face hardening.
Garreth braced to be slugged or sprayed.
Instead, Fowler took a breath. Letting it out, his expression smoothed. “Clever-clogs. Yes, she drained him and, being on the beach, towed his body out to sea.” He said it without emotion. “And when I attacked her as she came back ashore, instead of killing me, too — I presume to avoid a second body — she made me forget it all.”
Deep down, though, he must have remembered something, Garreth reflected, or what else inspired those early horror novels.
“They never found my father.” Fowler stared past Garreth. “My mother and I spent thirty years wondering what happened to him.”
“Until the photos...made you remember.” Ignighting a hatred of Lane that included all vampires.
Fowler’s gaze focused back on Garreth. “Yes. So you see, you and I both want the same thing: vengeance. We should be working together instead of you protecting her. Don’t bother denying it.” He held up a hand. “It’s obvious, when nothing induces you to hunt her, not even her apparent attempt to stitch you up for murder. Which has forced me to resort to more...direct methods to obtain results. But we can avoid further unpleasantness if you will just tell me where to find her.”
No way. The even voice disturbe
d Garreth more than if Fowler snarled or yelled. What was it Evelyn said about the protagonists in Fowler’s books...stone cold under charm and wit. Alter egos for the author? The man who brutally beat that hooker and hustler, who twisted Holle and Ayesha’s heads backward. He doubted he could convince Fowler of Lane’s true death, but if he did, the information ended Garreth’s usefulness.
To stay alive, he needed time...without appearing to stall. A question of his own offered a possibility. “How can I? We’re not in contact.”
“Use your bloodlink.”
Garreth squinted at him. “Bloodlink?” Irina’s note mentioned being linked by blood but how did that apply here?
Fowler started to scowl, then nodded. “Ah. You don’t know. Of course...or you wouldn’t have needed to trace her to Kansas and lie in wait for her there. She just made and abandoned you. My...encounters with your kind may have thus far failed to locate her, but they have proven most educational.” He smiled. “How ironic that I know more about your nature than you do. Instruction, therefore, is in order.” He steepled his fingers. “The blood you received from Mada, that made you, links the two of you in a palpable manner.”
“Like a thread?” Or an apron string, Lane murmured in his head. How do you like that thought, lover...tied to me forever.
Not a thought he liked at all. He hoped fervently death broke the link. On the other hand, having Lane’s blood, he must also have Irina’s. Might the link stretch to her, too?
“How much does the link tell me? Where she is, or what she’s feeling?”
“Or let her know what you’re feeling, you hope?” Fowler smiled. “So you can warn her? No. It is only a compass.” His voice sharpened. “Now, close your eyes, concentrate, and feel for a tug indicating her direction.”
Garreth followed directions, trying to sense something. Hoping any tug came from his left, however, the direction of Holle House and Irina...not east toward Baumen and Lane’s grave. And...nothing. He felt only loosening lungs, easier breathing, and the rose stems repelling him, pressing him to the chair.
“Well?” Fowler said.