“Since 1888.”
“How the hell do you know?”
Paul hesitated. “My brother put it there,” he said.
“1888!?”
“Dennis—”
Dennis was beyond listening. His words tumbled out in partial sentences, struggling to make logic out of the most illogical things he’d ever heard.
“And when Justin pulled it out, it was just like in the old Bela Lugosi films, the old silent movies, the ones they show at the Pizza Parlor on Friday nights when the vampire—Cain’s a vampire?”
“Not originally. Just extraordinarily powerful. Powerful enough to break the barrier between the worlds.”
“Then what happened? You said he let something loose. Whatever it was changed him into a vampire?”
“No,” Paul said shortly. “It changed me.”
Dennis inhaled deeply and bunched his muscles tightly. The smell of sudden terror filled the car.
“Oh, shit,” he moaned.
“Dennis, this isn’t an old Bela Lugosi movie. Some of the old legends are right about some things, but they’re mostly wrong. What I am, in and of itself, isn’t good or evil, just like the power that can crash through worlds isn’t by itself good or evil. It can be either. It depends on what you do with it.”
The car flew silently down the dark highway, nearing the little town of Gray. Paul was a vampire but he was one of the good guys?
“Slow down,” Dennis warned. “You’re almost on top of the city limits.”
Paul lifted his foot off the accelerator and lightly tapped the brakes.
“Are you all right?” he asked. How lame, those words. Misused and overused and totally inadequate for most situations.
“I think I’m gettin’ there,” Dennis said. He sat straight and peered ahead. The old two story stores lining Gray’s oldest main street threw alternating shadows through the car windows. “After this light, there’s another one, right past the railroad crossing. Cross the tracks and turn left. Puts us on Highway 129 to Eatonton.”
Paul complied.
“Okay.” Dennis sat back. “We’re clear. You can speed up.”
The powerful engine of the sports car sent it surging forward as Paul shifted up.
Dennis bit his lip before he asked his next question.
“So if the thing changed you and not Cain, what made him a vampire?”
“I did. The next night. No human would’ve stood a chance against him.”
“And then your brother hid him in the cave where we found him and drove the stake through his heart.”
“Yes.”
“Paul, he said he was doing to Ria just what you did to him. That night. That he wasn’t leaving anything out. What did you do to him? Before?”
Paul’s lips tightened and he pressed the accelerator harder. The car surged forward.
Dennis sank back in his seat.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Johnny’d gotten a late start but he didn’t have any sudden voice roaring into his car and scaring him shitless. As fast as he was driving, he’d be dead if he encountered a deer taking a stroll across the highway. He wasn’t much worried about that right now. When he passed Gray and headed on toward Eatonton, he’d have to worry about it but he was by God making as much time as he could until then. He pulled into the parking lot of the barbecue place outside of Gray, parked, and fumed.
Damn it, where was Dr. Knight? He cranked back up and threw the car into reverse, narrowly avoiding ramming the Ford Explorer pulling up behind him. Charlie Knight got out, slammed the door viciously, and stalked up to Johnny’s window.
“Boy, I told you to wait on me!” Dr. Knight was furious. “Don’t you listen?”
“You were taking so long.”
“Get your ass in my car!”
Dr. Knight stalked back to the Explorer. Johnny, chastised but unrepentant, got in the passenger side.
Dr. Knight didn’t speak as he pulled back onto Gray Highway and sped toward the city limits. He still didn’t speak when he turned left slightly past the railroad tracks and increased speed.
“Dr. Knight—”
“Shut up,” he ordered shortly. “I have to concentrate. Easy to miss in the dark.”
“What?”
“This,” Dr. Knight said, slowing abruptly and swinging right with a bone-shattering bounce onto a dirt road forking off from the highway. He reached down and engaged the Explorer’s four-wheel drive.
“What the fuck?”
“Loggin’ roads. Going as the crow flies. Cuts off miles. Drives Don Billings crazy. He never has figured out how I get to the lake so damn fast.”
The Explorer bounced and rattled. Johnny double-checked his seat belt.
“Jesus!” He exclaimed. That bounce damn near sent his head into the roof. He grabbed onto the armrest for further insurance.
“That’s right, son, you better hang on. Ain’t never taken it this fast and never plan to again. So hold on.”
* * *
Cain caught himself again. Barely. The scent of the fool’s blood almost got him, but he needed the boy right now. The white doctor wouldn’t be watching his back, he’d be focused on his woman. This fool was necessary back up for the rear.
Cain threw the boy down and Justin crouched into a ball on the sofa. He wanted the power, the eternal life promised by Cain but his close inspection of Cain’s incisors brought home to him one important aspect of the transformation he hadn’t really considered. He’d die in the process. Maybe he should reconsider the pros and cons.
Cain resumed his pacing and then stopped, standing stock still in the middle of the rug.
Of course. He’d spoken to the white man by psychic transmission, purely by the power of thought. He hadn’t left a trail for him to follow, no scent, no actual voice echoes.
Shit. But of course, there was a good side to everything. His years-old nemesis was probably casting out, over and over, looking for a trail that wasn’t there. Cain spread his arms and cast out himself. Then almost instantaneously he reappeared. The walls shook under his roar. He’d been practicing his new powers for only six months, still learning their expanse and limitations.
And he’d just realized something Paul had known and worked around for many, many years. He had to know exactly where he was going to get there.
“Goddamn it! I doan got his trail, neither! I can’t find him! Motherfucker!!”
He raged through the room. He stopped in front of Ria’s body and kicked. The crack of snapping bone was loud as her rib cage splintered. Even in her unconscious state, she moaned. Behind him, Justin moved slowly, attempting to slip off the couch and slink out of the room. Slink out of the house, actually, and as soon as possible. Tonight he’d seen Cain in a different light. Time to reconsider the benefits of his continued association with the man. Definitely.
Cain turned at the whisper of Justin’s jeans sliding over the nubby material of the couch. His shiny blueprints of vengeance were shredding around him. The white man might not even find him tonight. The girl wasn’t going to live much longer and if he wanted her for his consort, he’d have to take her soon. Even if the white man wasn’t there to watch. And now this fool looked to be sneaking off.
Damn! Couldn’t trust nobody. Well. He’d serve as a nice appetizer before the main course.
* * *
Dennis brought the car to a halt some ways back from the cabin. He’d insisted on reclaiming the wheel when they hit the dirt roads.
“No offense, man, but you ain’t the world’s most experienced driver and these roads can be bad-ass mothers in the winter when nobody’s usin’ ‘em.”
Paul hadn’t protested. And Dennis had sure been right. If his kidneys had still been subject to shaking, they’d have shaken out.
“I can get closer,” Dennis said.
“I know where the cabin is now, I don’t need you any closer. Now you listen. I want you to stay here.”
“Here, goddamn it, here! You’d just be in my way!”
“But there’s two of them!”
“You can’t do shit against Cain, Dennis! And as for Justin, do you have a gun? A knife? Could you use ‘em if you did?”
“I could if I had to.”
“Maybe, if you had ‘em. But you don’t, do you?”
Dennis shook his head.
“And you’re not a ninja in drag, are you?”
Dennis shook his head again.
“Then stay here!”
Paul disappeared and left Dennis staring into the silent darkness.
Suddenly the darkness wasn’t silent anymore. The screams rolled out from the cabin, oddly neuter in gender. Definitely not Paul or Cain, which left Justin and Ria, but he couldn’t tell if the screams were masculine or feminine.
And why would Justin scream anyway? Suddenly Dennis remembered something. He got out of the car and ran down the crunching gravel of the road as fast his running shoes could carry him.
* * *
Paul materialized behind Cain’s back. Justin’s screams would’ve disguised an approaching elephant herd. Cain bent the boy backwards, his mouth approaching the vulnerable neck. Justin’s arms flailed wildly and something grayish white and speckled with blood waved in the firelight. A broken bone. Without thought, Paul made the medical translation. Compound fracture of the ulna, the point protruding some two inches out of the broken skin.
Paul didn’t know or care what Justin did to provoke Cain’s fury. It provided him his edge and he wasn’t wasting a minute of it. He cast out like a speed swimmer kicking away from the wall of a pool and materialized by the fireplace.
He reached into the fire for one of the smaller burning logs. He wasn’t depending on wood alone. He wanted fire, too. Then he saw her from the corner of his eye. Ria’s body, thrown in the corner. Broken and bleeding and burned.
Too late. Oh, God, too late. He almost started toward her but a cold, detached voice speaking from the base of his brain stopped him.
If she was dead, there was nothing he could do. And if she wasn’t, then she would be, very soon, unless he sent Cain back to the dark. He reached into the fireplace again, just as Cain, momentarily sated, dropped Justin’s body.
* * *
Dennis crept around the rear windows of the cabin toward the largest bedroom on the right hand side. His father kept a .38 pistol in the nightstand and always ignored Dennis’s pointed observation that the first thing any winter thief looked for was firearms. The cabin had never been vandalized until tonight though, and Dennis was the vandal.
He reached up, tore the screen off and smashed the glass of the pane. He thrust his arm inside to the window lock. God, it was stiff. The broken glass caught on the quilted sleeve of his jacket. Dennis jerked and scored a long gash across the back of his hand.
He didn’t have time to worry about it. He grunted and tried again and finally felt the catch give. The first thing he’d do this spring was spray all the goddamn window latches with WD-40. There. Finally.
He jerked the window open and climbed in just as the screams faded into nothing. He heard the hard klump of a falling body.
The drawer of the nightstand clattered to the floor when he jerked it open. Where the hell? There. His fingers identified the cold, oily feel of gun metal while his eyes adjusted to the shadows. Not loaded, of course. His father kept the ammunition on a shelf in the closet, like he thought any intruder would politely wait for him to retrieve the ammunition and load the gun.
Damn, his fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. Finally he grasped the fully loaded gun in his hand. He crept to the bedroom door.
Justin’s body lay in an inert heap on the floor. Cain’s gigantic figure moved silently toward the fireplace. There was something in his hands, but Dennis couldn’t make out exactly what. He moved toward Paul, who stared at something in the corner.
Oh, God. Ria’s body lay in the corner. Paul seemed to collect himself and reached into the fireplace, but he’d never make it. He’d never turn in time to avoid Cain’s great hands, raising over Paul’s back. In horror, Dennis identified the sharpened stake, aimed directly at Paul’s heart.
“Look out!”
Dennis fired. A flower of red bloomed on Cain’s back but Dennis knew better than to think the bullet had any more effect than a bee sting. But it did get Cain’s attention.
“What de fuck?” Cain swung his head around to check his rear and Dennis fired again.
Paul lunged for the fireplace and retrieved a burning piece of hickory. The flames scoring into his hands didn’t faze him.
Dennis fired again and again, until the chambers were empty. Cain’s body sprouted flowers of slowly spreading red from the ineffective bullets. He grinned at the boy.
“Worl’ jest full of do-gooders, now ain’t it? Well, you jest got to wait yo’ turn, boy.”
Dennis smiled. Paul stood behind Cain. He raised the flaming wood high, aimed between Cain’s shoulder blades. Cain’s words cut off and turned into a gurgling scream as the burning wood plunged into his back. The material of his shirt caught fire and blazed.
Cain tried to turn and pull away from the blazing, unsharpened stake but Paul moved with him, pushing harder, harder.
The scream increased in volume as the spurting red liquid spouted out of Cain’s back in geysers, sizzling as it came into contact with the flames. Finally, it peaked in an astounding crescendo. The end of the firebrand poked through the front of Cain’s shirt and still Paul pushed.
Why didn’t he fall? Damn it, why didn’t he fall?
“Paul!” Dennis shouted. “Let go! You’re holding him up yourself!”
Paul abruptly turned loose of the hickory and Cain’s body crashed to the floor.
“Oh, man!” Dennis breathed. “Oh, man!” He crossed the floor at a run to grab Paul’s wrists. “Your hands, Paul, your hands!”
The skin of his fingers was gone. Nothing remained but bare, blackened bones.
“Oh, God!” Dennis choked back a retch. “Com’ere, sit down.”
“It’s nothing,” Paul said. “Just give me a minute. Check Ria. I couldn’t feel a pulse point right now.”
“But what—”
“Just do it!”
Dennis dropped Paul’s hands with a half-sob and flung himself toward Ria’s body. The door crashed open. Charlie Knight and Johnny Bishop gaped, surveying the bloody, fiery battleground.
“Oh, shit!” Johnny pointed at Cain’s giant body. It lost substance before their eyes. The flesh flew off the bones in a flurry of small dancing motes that floated on the air and then disappeared until there was nothing left but a skeleton.
The still burning brand fell against a bare rib and sent streamers of fire into the rug. Johnny ran over and looked for something to give him a hand-hold on the wood that wouldn’t fry his hands. Paul knocked him back.
“For God’s sake, don’t!” he shouted. Dr. Knight came from the kitchen with a slopping dishpan of water and tossed it directly onto the flames.
The four rescuers stared down at the mottled bones of the skeleton, the blackened stake protruding from the ribs.
Paul flung himself towards the corner. His hands hovered over Ria, hesitant to touch.
“Paul, your hands!” Dennis exclaimed. “Your hands—” Dennis stopped and stared. “My God,” he said softly.
Paul’s hands were normal, clothed in new and unmarked flesh.
Dr. Knight joined Paul in the corner. “Oh, baby! Oh, God, Ria!”
“My fault.” Paul barely managed to push the words out. “My fault.”
Dr. Knight stared at him a moment, his expression unreadable, his eyes veiled.
“That skeleton. Cain?”
Paul nodded. “My fault,” he said again.
“Wastin’ time,” Dr. Knight said, and bent over his daughter, feeling carefully up and down her body. He sat back again. “Oh, Jesus!”
“Is she�
�is she dead?” Dennis asked softly. Johnny stood behind them, not speaking.
“Not yet,” Dr. Knight said, and stood up. “But she will be, very soon. Some of the rib bones are puncturing her lungs. I think one’s right at her heart. We’ll kill her for sure if we move her and she’ll die in the next few minutes if we don’t.”
Johnny finally spoke.
“There’s nothing you can do?”
“There’s nothing I can do. But Paul can.”
Paul raised his head, his eyes filled with horror.
“You don’t know what you’re saying!”
“Yeah, I do. I’m saying I want my daughter and you’re the only way I can have her.”
“No! I killed her already, I won’t do this!”
Dr. Knight reached down to grab his shoulders and shook furiously.
“You shut up! You get out of that goddamned hair shirt and stop feeling sorry for yourself! I don’t know how Cain got here but you didn’t resurrect him! And without you, nobody could have stopped him! Not the first time, not this time! So there’s no blame here. There’s only the next few minutes to decide if Ria lives or dies!”
“You don’t know what living like this is like! You don’t know how it hurts!”
“I know you survived.”
“Don’t you understand? That she’d never see another sunrise?!”
“But she’d see moonrise,” Dennis said. “Forever.”
Paul looked down. Then he picked up her hand and turned her palm upward. He stared down into the duplicate tracings of the lines of his own palm.
The lifeline didn’t disappear, it submerged and ran faintly under the skin, all the way down her palm, and then around her thumb and back, circling continuously.
He stared at her face, battered and swollen beyond recognition.
He heard a voice he’d never thought to hear again speak over his shoulder.
“God’s dark angels, son! Both of you!”
“Get out,” he said shortly. “All of you.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Paul walked out of the lake house half an hour or so after issuing his terse command. Ria’s body, drained of all blood, lay carefully arranged and covered on the couch.
Dark Series, The Color of Seven and The Color of Dusk (Books We Love Special Edition) Page 35