"Oh shit."
"What?" Betty climbed out the passenger side. She was as stiff and sore as Nick, but even more uncomfortable—her breasts were beginning to ache dully, as they filled with milk for Leon's next feeding.
"I don't have a knife."
She reached back into the car and hauled out her purse, rummaged through it unsuccessfully for a minute or so, then dumped the purse out across the 'Vette's hood (Nick winced), picked through the detritus for a two-blade-one-scissors Swiss Army knife, and handed it to Nick along with a packet of Wash 'n Dri's. "The small blade? At least?" she asked Nick, who nodded, wiped the blade, and tossed the used Wash 'n Dri back into the car.
Betty held out her left arm, palm up, and closed her eyes. Nick turned it palm down, wiped off the back of her hand with another towelette, gathered up a pinch of flesh along with the vein he had his eye on, and then actually pinched the pinch to distract her attention from the knife.
"Ouch." She winced, waited for more pain, but it was already over—when Betty opened her eyes, Nick was sucking from a wound at the back of her hand. She watched his down turned eyes, wondering if they would turn red like in his manuscript.
But even after Nick had ceased his sucking, expertly stanched the bleeding, and wrapped his red plaid pocket handkerchief around the wound, the whites of his eyes looked pretty much the same, as far as she could tell in the dark. He was grinning again, though, and shaking his head.
"What?" she asked. "What is it?" She had to ask a few more times, until it was more of a demand than a question; even then it took another minute before Nick replied.
"Good news and bad news."
"I'm not in the mood for jokes, Nick."
"That's too bad," came the answer. "Because Higher Power apparently is."
"Is what?"
"In the mood for jokes."
"What the hell does that mean?" she asked him, half afraid she already knew the answer.
"It means I'm not high."
He steadied her as she swayed. He thought he'd have to help her lie down there on the soft fall of maple leaves in the clearing, but she was made of sterner stuff than that. "So what's…" she began. Her voice failed her; she tried again. "So what's the good news?"
"The good news is, there's two vampires on our side now. I want you to wait here—I'm going to go in by the back door, and down to the cellar to get us some blood—I'll bring it back, we'll both get high, then we'll go get Leon."
"Why don't I just go with you?"
"I think I can sneak in—I don't know about two of us." He didn't think it was a good time to tell her that the reason he thought he could sneak in was that he was still a little high from the blood January had forced upon him earlier. "I'll be back in five minutes."
He left before she could protest again. In the parking lot he saw the empty Buick—the driver's side window was open. He reached through, opened the door, and popped the trunk and hood releases. The trunk was empty except for blood stains; under the hood the manifold was still warm—she couldn't have gotten here more than an hour ago, at the earliest.
Nick walked back around to the driver's door, reached in to take the keys out of the ignition, and saw the Star Trek thermos on the floor of the passenger compartment. A moment of hope—but it was empty. Leaving the Buick door ajar rather than risk the noise of closing it, he tiptoed past the cars scattered under the pines. There was only one open stretch; he covered it at a combat crouch, taking cover behind the board fence that enclosed the trash cans.
He peeked out. He was only a few yards from the back door—and, incredibly enough, only a few feet from what appeared to be a full Seal-a-Meal pouch of blood lying on the path leading from the doorstep. He darted over, snatched it up. There was another bag a few yards farther from the house—he grabbed that too, noticing a spattered, smeared, trodden trail of blood leading away from the back door.
Or towards it. But there was no time for forensics—Nick raced back up the slight incline towards the highway, tearing open one of the pouches with his teeth as he ran.
Betty had already followed Nick across the road and into the trees on the other side when the blood hit her. The first thing she noticed was how light her step had become—it was as if her body understood everything now.
And the woods had come alive as her senses sharpened. She could pick up the faint distinctive smell of the bark of the Jeffrey pines—some naturalists have likened it to pineapple, others to vanilla, but to Betty it was a piña colada forest—and she had absolutely no sense of danger as she ran, even when Nick was briefly out of her sight, for she could hear not only the twigs but the needles themselves being crushed under the soles of his boots as he preceded her.
Where have you been all my life? she asked, to the pounding rhythm of her steps. Where have you been all my life? She asked it of the world on blood; and in the voice of the wind, and the crackle of the pine needles underfoot, and the feel of the night air on her skin, the world responded: Right here all the time, Rev. It just took a little blood for you to notice.
Betty followed Nick through a small parking lot where a dozen or more cars were scattered at angles in the grove of sweet pines. "That it?" She pointed to the white car with the hood, trunk, and driver's door open.
"That's the one." He had lied to her earlier, in order to account for the fact that he knew which car to look for during their chase. He'd told her January owned the white Buick, figuring correctly that she didn't know enough about January to catch the fib. "She left her thermos inside—no sign of Leon."
"It just occurred to me, if I can hear pine needles crunching at fifty yards, can't they hear us from inside? Shouldn't we get going?"
"You're right." He took off in his running crouch for the back of the lodge again, zigzagging as if he were under fire, taking cover again behind the trash can corral.
Betty caught up to him, not even breathing hard. "How are we going to get in?"
"That door there leads through to the kitchen. Might as well try it—if they're watching for us we haven't got a chance in hell anyway."
"I suppose." Betty raised her head and looked around—her vision was as clear as if she were wearing infrared goggles. "Look, up in that pine! Do you see it?"
Nick followed her eyes—it took him a second to pick out the hunched gray figure of the screech owl perched high in the branches of one of the Jeffrey pines over the parking lot. "I see it," he whispered back.
"Do you think it's the same one from your… ?" She had started to say, from your book. Only it wasn't just Nick's book she was referring to, she understood now—truly understood, perhaps for the first time. It was Nick's life. His life on blood.
Hers, too..
The back door was unlocked. Nick turned the knob silently; Betty followed him down a whitewashed passageway that led towards a large darkened kitchen. Suddenly a door in the wall on their right burst open, and their way was blocked by a stout man in a wheat-colored linen suit and tan panama; the front of the coat was smeared with blood, as were the knees of the linen pants. "Nick!" he shouted; then, inexplicably: "Am I glad to see you! He's down in the cellar."
Nick answered carefully. "Who's down in the cellar?"
"Whistler. He's hurt—badly, I think. We don't know where January is."
"How's Leon?"
Augie looked baffled. "He's dead, Nick."
Betty moaned, and sank to her knees. Augie seemed to notice her for the first time. "You okay?"
Beyond words, she shook her head.
"You're the minister, right? Your baby's fine—Selene took him up to the nursery." Then Augie took in her bloodshot eyes. "I didn't know you were one of us."
Nick, equally stricken but still on his feet, found his voice. "I thought you said Leon was dead."
Augie's turn to be confused again. "He's been dead for years, Nick," he said cautiously, as if Nick had gone around the bend. "The bridge-he jumped—remember?"
And Betty dropped face forward onto the wooden f
loor of the corridor, like a Muslim at prayer, her shoulders heaving. At that particular moment, not even she could have said whether she was laughing or crying—not until Nick had dropped to his knees beside her: then they were both roaring with laughter.
Betty rolled over onto her back, pulling Nick down over her, showering his face with kisses. He collapsed onto her; they hugged and laughed and wept and kissed until Augie separated them like a pair of rutting dogs, grabbing Nick by the fleece-lined collar of his jacket and hauling him easily to his feet.
"Whistler's half dead, January's running around outside totally werewolf, and you're cracking up because Leon killed himself? Somehow I'm missing the humor here."
"The baby," Nick explained. "Our baby—his name is Leon, too."
"Oh." Then, as the larger picture dawned on him, "Oh! I'm so sorry—I didn't realize—you must have thought…" The stout man pulled himself together, touched the brim of his straw hat. "My apologies, Reverend. Come on, I'll take you up to your baby. Nick, why don't—"
But Nick was already halfway down the cellar steps. As the sound of his footsteps receded, Augie reached down to help Betty to her feet. She sprang up lightly—more lightly than she had in a good twenty-five years—noticing as she brushed off her overalls the heavenly smell of the pantry through the open door: bread and grain, chocolate and smooth-worn wood.
"Where is he?" she demanded of Augie—at the news that Leon was alive, that he was near, her milk had begun to leak, dampening the absorbent pads in the cups of her nursing bra.
The cellar floor was awash with blood—fortunately, most of it had been spilled, not shed. Whistler was barely conscious, his head in Selene's lap as she fed him blood from a bottle one sip at a time, a vampire's Florence Nightingale. He tried to sit up when Nick entered, but Selene pressed him back down with a hand at his chest.
"Shh. Rest until your strength comes back." She tipped the bottle of blood to his lips, then turned to Nick. "Leon's fine. He's up with—"
"I know. We saw Augie upstairs. Betty's with him." He squatted down beside her. "What happened here?"
"She hit him with that." Selene indicated the dented can of corn. "Then she grabbed as much blood as she could carry, and ran out the back—I just caught a glimpse of her on my way down."
"Girl packs a wallop," said Nick, leaning over Whistler, staring into his eyes. "Believe me, I'm the one who should know." He lifted Whistler's eyelids one at a time. "Both pupils equal and responsive. If I had a penlight… ?"
"Never mind that," said Selene. "Do you have a knife?" She indicated the bottle of blood in her hand. "This stuff's too slow."
Nick found Betty's Swiss Army knife in the pocket of his jacket; quickly, Selene opened a vein in her wrist and held it to Whistler's lips. He sucked greedily; Nick could see his color beginning to rise, even as Selene's drained. But she let him drink on, until Nick was afraid for her. "That's enough, Selene."
So earnestly had Whistler been sucking that his lips made a popping sound—thwup—as she tugged her wrist away. His eyes fluttered open again. "Nick. I thought that was you."
"In the flesh. How're you doing?"
"Little woozy. Give me a minute."
"Take your time."
"We don't have time." He struggled to sit up, failed, made it on the second try. "She has to be stopped."
No need to ask who. "I know," said Nick. "I'm going after her."
FIVE
In the alder wood where January stopped running, the leaves closed out the stars above her. She could smell the lake to her left, and moved towards it. A rail fence blocked her way; a tin sign the size of a license plate was nailed to a tree behind the fence. Private Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.
Something in the moment took hold of her. A warm marshmallowy feeling spreading outward.
"Set the Wayback Machine, Sherman!" "Right, Professor Peabody!" TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED... TRESSPASSERS WILL… TRESSPASSERS W… Of course. Piglet's grandfather. Trespassers W. Three years old, in her nightgown, in the trailer, on her mother's lap, being read to from Winnie the Pooh. January closed her eyes and arched her head back, smelled pot and Herbal Essence shampoo, felt Glory's long wild hair against her cheek.
She dropped the blood she was carrying and climbed up onto the fence, balancing herself lightly on the top rail as she reached up for the sign; the whole while she was experiencing the odd sensation of being Dorothy climbing into the cornfield to free the Scarecrow from his pole.
What was even odder, it was every bit as vivid a sensation as the memory she'd just had of being three years old on her mother's lap, and only a little less real than the feel of the jagged edge of the grateful old sign against her fingers as she tore it free.
She hopped off on the far side of the fence. Looking down at her hand, she saw she'd sliced open the inside of three fingers, and the ring-finger side of her pinky; the black blood was beginning to well. "Don't… even… start with me," she commanded her fingers, severally; her delighted bark rang out in the alder wood as the wounds closed themselves like night-blooming flowers.
The wood gave out abruptly on a small rocky beach. Her moan, at the sight of the vast shiny lake, was not unlike the breathy vocalized shudder that men sometimes produce at orgasm. She bent down tountie the laces of her boots, and tugged them off, then walked into the lake purposefully, feeling the cold gentle swell lapping at her ankles, knees, thighs.
Her shirt, sticky with blood, was clinging to her chest; she had to tug it away from her skin before she could pull it over her head. Then she took off her shorts and her panties. Satisfactorily naked now, she dove forward and swam a few strokes—it was easy, on blood, anyway—then rolled over. Floating on her back in the light of the stars, she watched her panties drifting away, filmy white like a huge jellyfish.
Her mother's face floated in front of her—the baby-blood told her it was only an acid-flash hallucination, but it comforted her nonetheless. "I love you, Glory," January shouted.
I love you too, honey, mouthed the phantom.
No longer afraid of drowning—no longer afraid of anything, now that she knew what was going to happen—January raised her chin. She could see Nick standing on the shore, holding one of her boots in his hands, peering out towards her. She rolled over onto her stomach, and struck out for deeper water.
It was a terrible thing, thought Nick, standing on the rocky beach a few properties north of Whistler's on the eastern shore of Lake Tahoe, to know what you have to do, and to be unable to do it.
Tracking January hadn't been all that difficult—her boots had been drenched in blood: he'd had only to follow the bloody prints as far as the trail through the alder wood. The no-trespassing sign on the ground caught his eye, the discarded pouches of blood by the fence told him where she'd abandoned the trail, and her boots showed him where she'd entered the lake.
He knew he had to go in after her—whether to bring her out or to make sure she never left it, he could not yet have said—but he couldn't take the first step, not even after she had turned her shiny white ass to the sky and begun swimming away from him.
Nick tore open another pouch of blood, poured the cool sticky liquid down his throat until he started to gag, then tossed it aside. He was already higher than he'd been at Midsummer—but not high enough yet, not high enough to go back into that black water. Calling to her to wait for him, he stooped to pull his boots off, but all the while that stupid nursery rhyme was going around and around in his brain.
Ring around the rosie…
He could barely see January anymore, but when he closed his eyes he could hear her splashing about fifty yards from the shore.
Pocket full of posie…
Off came the Levi jacket, then the jersey; when he tugged his jeans down, a semierection popped up into the cool night air. It was only from the blood, he knew. But what the fuck—he'd always said he wanted to die with a hard-on.
He stepped out of his jeans and waded into the cold black water.
Ashes, ashes, all fall down.
January floated, spread-eagled on her back. She was dead tired, hadn't the strength for another stroke. She'd closed her eyes; still she sensed the lake round about her, the bowl of mountains round about the lake, and knew herself to be at the center of the whole round world. Just to check, she opened her eyes: the sky was a starry black disk overhead, and sure enough, she was right smack in the middle of that, too.
When she heard Nick splashing towards her, she let her feet sink under her, and began treading water. "Stay back, Nick."
He was treading water about five feet away. "Don't worry, I'm not all that crazy about getting within swinging distance of you, either. But I never had any intention of killing you, January. That was all bullshit back there—I was just angry."
"So I took your baby, and now you're not mad anymore? Yeah, right, Nick."
"But you didn't hurt him, did you? Don't you think I can take that into account?"
Her purple hair was blacker than black, slicked back over her narrow skull, and her eyes round in their narrow sockets as water lapped at her chin. "Yeah, but how about Whistler? Did I kill him?"
"He was sitting up when I left—he said no hard feelings."
"I bet." With a cupped hand, she sent a playful splash of water his way. "Don't try to bullshit me anymore, Nick. I've had my baby-blood now—I found some in the cellar—and you know what? I don't think anybody can ever bullshit me again. If I go back with you, Whistler's gonna lock me in that cellar."
"I won't let anyone lock you in the cellar. But I won't let you just swim away, either. You know I can't let you do that."
She lowered her voice. It was quiet this far out on the lake; he could hear the liquid sound her hands made, paddling just under the surface.
"I saw my mom, Nick. I saw Glory. And she wasn't all drowned and ugly, either—she's just as beautiful as she ever was."
The World on Blood Page 38