by Ira Bloom
When Esme crept downstairs in the morning, Dr. Stein was already gone to the city to meet with the epidemiologist, at the university. She’d waited until she could hear Norm in the bathroom before making her move. Even tiptoeing about, Norman’s footsteps caused the floorboards to creak and complain.
It was still early. Esme shrugged into her coat and wrapped her scarf around her neck. She sat on the footstool by the entry and buckled on her snow boots.
“Where are you going, Esme?” Norman asked from the hallway.
Esme rose and reached for the doorknob. Norman was barefoot. If she scurried out the door he’d never catch her. “I’m going to the house to feed the animals,” she improvised. Anyway, she needed to retrieve her car. And she had to make preparations while she waited for Drake to leave.
“In this weather? It’s twenty degrees out there! The roads are all covered in ice. Wait a minute, then, I’ll drive you.”
“Norman, no. You can’t go with me.”
“Why not?” he demanded.
“Because I have to go get Veronica and Katy. I can’t tell you how I know, but you need to trust me. Drake is going into the city today, and if I don’t go in and get my sisters, something terrible is going to happen.”
“Is this something to do with Wicca? Because I don’t believe in it. I can’t let you go, it’s too dangerous even if Drake isn’t there. And how could you possibly know he’s going out?”
“He won’t be there,” she promised. “And it isn’t a Wicca thing, it’s a witch thing. I’m a witch, Norman. And it isn’t your decision to make. So, are you going to try to stop me?”
“No, not physically. But I’ll use all my powers of persuasion to try to talk you out of it. My dad’s on the way to the city right n—”
“It’s too late.” Esme cut him off. “By the time he returns, Drake will be back. If we wait until the next time Drake goes out, Ronnie will be dead. And everyone else. You heard your dad, vampires are too dangerous. There’s no way to fight them.”
“Look, Esme,” he argued. “You can’t walk all the way to the Hampstead Mansion with that big duffel bag. I’ll drive you to Long’s service station, and maybe on the way you can explain to me how you know it has to be today. How’s that sound?”
“Okay,” she said. Though she’d have to invent a reason. “My demon cat told me” wasn’t going to fly with Norm. Psychic connection with Ronnie? Something more along those lines.
“Good,” Norman said. “We’ll get Jackson to stake the place out, and he can tell us if Drake leaves, or if your information is not as good as you think it is.”
“Way ahead of you,” she replied, showing Norman a text. “He’s been there for hours. Listen, I have to send Wilson a text to go to my house and take care of the animals, like he did last night. They must be going nuts by now. He still has the keys.”
Esme started to send a text, but her phone suddenly vibrated. It was a new message from Jackson. “Jackson says ‘the Bentley is on the move.’ ”
“So. I guess your intel is good after all,” Norm said. “Unless it’s just a big coincidence. Shall we go?”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “But before we go in, I want to make sure Drake is at least an hour away, in case Zack calls him.”
Zack sat on the edge of Veronica’s bed with a bowl of cool water and a hand towel. Every few minutes, he dipped the towel into the water and wrung it out, then applied it to the girl’s forehead. Veronica’s breathing was shallow. Her face was pale as snow, her silky blond hair damp from perspiration. An hour before, he’d made Katy bathe her in ice-cold water, to no avail. Veronica was rapidly dehydrating. He’d been trying to force-feed her broth and noodles, but she’d been retching up every drop and more since early that morning.
“She’s so beautiful, don’t you think?” Katy asked. She was sitting beside Zack on the bed, holding his left arm, her head on his shoulder. “She’s sleeping.”
“She’s dying,” Zack countered angrily. Katy didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation. She just wanted to make out. It infuriated him. If Veronica died, he would harden his heart until he could never feel anything again.
“Don’t worry, Zack. She’ll be okay. Nothing can kill my baby sister. She’s too tough.”
Zack stood abruptly, violently shaking himself loose from Katy’s grasp. He marched to the door. “I’m going to get her some antibiotics.” He had hours before the Master returned. He could mesmerize the pharmacist at the Rite Aid easily enough. The Master had said they wouldn’t work at all, but he had to do something. Anything.
Norm’s SUV pulled up into the parking lot of Long’s Service Station on the corner of Hampstead Drive, where Main Street came to a T. The gas station was owned by Danny Long’s father, Rick. For the past three weeks, Rick had allowed Jackson to sit in his waiting room every day, drinking coffee and watching Hampstead Drive. If anyone went in or out of Hampstead Manor, they’d have to go through that intersection. The trees were dusted with a heavy white cover, and every once in a while Jackson watched a large clump drop from this tree or that, as the snow loosened up in the morning sun. The snow plow had been down Main Street, but hadn’t cleared Hampstead Drive. It was a dead end.
Norman and Esme entered the waiting room, decked out in boots, coats, scarves, and gloves. “Where’s Rick?” Norman asked, tossing Jackson the keys to his car.
Jackson caught the keys in one hand. “In the bay doing a lube–oil filter. Zack just pulled out.”
“So, do we go in now?” Norm asked.
Esme checked the time on her phone. “Drake’s not as far away as I’d like. But maybe I can get in and out before Zack gets back. It’s too good an opportunity to pass up. Listen, Norman: I’m not risking anyone else. I’m going in alone.”
“The hell you are. I’m not letting you go in without me.” Norm grabbed Esme’s arm with an unbreakable grip.
Esme conceded with little resistance. “Okay, okay. You can come. I was hoping you would, I was just trying to be noble and brave.”
“Sure had me fooled,” Norm said.
Jackson was weighing something in his mind, and Esme guessed it was chivalry versus fear. “I guess … I’ll go in with you?”
“We need you to drive us,” Esme said. “Then come back out here and stand guard. If either of them return, text me. It might give us enough time to get out.”
The look of relief on Jackson’s face was obvious.
Norm received a text on his phone. “It’s my dad,” he said. “I told him what we’re up to. He said he’s going to tell his source at Interpol in Lyon. At least if we get arrested or something, Interpol might be able to pull some strings. He also says if I can’t talk you out of going in, at least be careful and get out of there at the first sign of trouble.”
“Not without my sisters,” Esme said. “Now let’s roll.”
Esme, Norm, and the duffel bag went over the fence at the gateway as Jackson drove off, then the two hiked up the long driveway, careful to walk only in the tire tracks in the snow. At the front door, they met with a major obstacle. The wide, high double doors were made of heavy wood, with ornate, forged iron bracketing and a dead bolt that looked to be beyond Esme’s magical prowess. “I can get us in,” Norm said, “but I’d have to destroy the door.”
“Let’s go around the side and try a window,” she suggested. Better not to destroy the door, and clue a returning vampire to their presence.
The windows on the ground floor all had heavy iron security bars bolted into the brick facade. They walked around the side, looking for other ways in, mindful of the tracks they left, and the time. Behind the house, they found a service door off the kitchen. It was also heavy wood, locked and double bolted, but Norman didn’t think they’d find an easier entry. “Stand back,” he instructed, and kicked the door in. The wood of the jamb shattered with just one kick, and the door flew open. “My first felony,” he mentioned.
Jackson saw, through the window of the waiting room, the black
Mercedes turning wide onto Hampstead drive, fishtailing in the snow. The car evened out and sped up the road. Jackson took out his cell phone and texted Esme. Then he called, but the phone went to voice mail. He was equally unsuccessful reaching Norm. Jackson had a strong desire to follow the car up the road. He’d brave almost anything to see a fight as epic as Norman Stein versus Zack Kallas.
“This place is huge.” Esme looked around the main hallway. At the rear of the cavernous room were ornate curved staircases to a landing on the second level. There was a cut-crystal chandelier hanging from the thirty-foot ceiling. The room, for all its airiness, was dark and somehow gloomy. Heavy drapes covered every window.
According to Esme’s research, there were two three-story wings to the house, each with hallways full of rooms. She knew her sisters would be hidden underground, but she didn’t know where the stairs were. Behind a secret panel in the library? She reached out with her location spell, and wasn’t surprised to get nothing but a vague sense that they were below her. The spell had never even worked through walls, let alone tons of rock and earth.
The library was open, but empty. There were floor-to-ceiling bookcases on two sides. There were crown moldings and recessed windows and wainscoting and a hundred other fine architectural details in every room, but the library was especially ornate, with a massive fireplace set into a carved marble mantle. As Esme and Norman returned to the hall, they heard the front door open. Esme peeked out at the driveway through the drapes. “It’s the Mercedes.”
“Zack,” Norman said. “You keep looking for your sisters. I’ll take care of him.”
Traffic was crawling in Tuppelow. Three days before Christmas, and the shoppers were out in force. Drake Kallas was not the type to be annoyed by such things. The days of his past stretched endlessly behind him, and the days of his future stretched endlessly ahead. The sound system of his Bentley was superb, and the machine was a pleasure to drive. Cars jockeyed for positions to edge into the second mall exit, but Drake was content to listen to Maria Callas in her dramatic interpretation of “Casta Diva.” Drake had heard many coloraturas in his day, and tasted a few as well, so he considered himself a true connoisseur of opera. His cell phone rang and he answered, pausing the sound system. “Yes?”
The voice on the other end was raspy. “Drake Kallas?”
Drake didn’t recognize the voice, but he took it for one of the elders. The accent was entirely ambiguous, a culmination of dozens of languages and countless centuries to sand the rough edges off. “Yes? Do I know you?”
“They’re coming for your brides, Drake,” the voice purred. Then the line went dead.
Drake didn’t bother with the exit. He yanked the wheel to the left, cutting off a Toyota Camry, and went straight across the median strip. He gunned the engine when he regained the highway north, making his own lane with two wheels on the median, two on the road. He was doing ninety as he blew past traffic and left it all in his wake. The road was clear to Middleton. He judged he could be there in a little over an hour.
When he passed the last exit to Tuppelow, Drake phoned Zack at the house, and was annoyed when he didn’t answer the landline. Doubtless, the youth was in the cellar with the dying girl, and didn’t hear the phone upstairs. Zack’s cell phone, of course, was useless at the manor. There was no cell reception.
“Now the fun begins,” Kasha said, on the other end of the line.
Zack had barely closed the front doors behind himself when Norman Stein stepped into the grand hall. His heavy footsteps echoed thunderously. Zack handled it with aplomb. “Norman,” he acknowledged with a nod. He removed his scarf and hung it on the coatrack by the door, then shrugged out of his overcoat. “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have picked up some watercress for sandwiches.”
Norm stood in the doorway to the west wing, placing himself between Esme and the vampire. “Zack. I was hoping you’d show up. We have unfinished business.” Norm tugged his down-filled jacket off his frame and dropped it, taking a step. His duck boots squeaked on the wooden floor.
“Why are you here?” Zack asked amiably, dropping a small white paper bag from the Rite Aid pharmacy on the bench.
“We came to get Veronica and Katy.”
“What makes you think you’ll find them here?”
Norm advanced, covering the doorway like a runner taking a lead off first base. “We checked with all the other vampires in town and couldn’t find them, so we figured they had to be here.”
“We?” Zack asked.
Stupid, Norm told himself. “All of us,” Norm covered, throwing out a bit of confusion.
Zack sniffed the air. “Just you and Esme.” He was close enough to strike, given his vast advantage of speed, but still angling for position.
Norm took a step back, covering his door. He crouched, spreading his arms out by his sides. With his massive wingspan, the vampire couldn’t get past him. “How about you and I have a little rematch?” he suggested.
Zack laughed. “ ‘Fools rush in where angels dare to tread,’ ” he quoted. “Alexander Pope.”
“ ‘And the angels are all in heaven, but few of the fools are dead,’ ” Norm countered. “James Thurber.”
“I adore Thurber,” Zack confessed, edging for a strike. He removed his straight razor from his hip pocket and flipped it open. The steel gleamed menacingly in the thin light. “Shall we?”
Esme moved quickly through the hallway, opening each door with her recludo spell and checking for stairways. She’d been over the rescue plan a hundred times in her mind, but since Jackson had told her about Zack being out of the house she was improvising, and making stupid mistakes. She was distracted by thoughts of Norman. In all the scenarios she’d plotted through the night, she hadn’t considered that her friend could easily die. She wished she could help him, but she knew she’d be a liability: If Zack got around him somehow and grabbed her, Norm would do whatever the vampire said.
Kasha wasn’t lying about Drake, she was certain. Even if she got her sisters out, there was no place to hide from him. At some point, somebody would have to face him. But she couldn’t worry about that now.
Esme couldn’t shake the terror, for her sisters and for Norman. She’d had almost no sleep for four nights, and even with three cups of tea coursing through her system, she had not managed to reenter her state of clarity. She sprinted through the rest of the west wing. She had to keep her wits about her. She entered a south-facing room, the last on the hall. There were no drapes, only old leaded-glass windows, distorted with age. The sunlight streamed through, and the room was lit with prismatic light. A million little rainbows on the walls.
She drew a breath. Could it be a sign? She decided to take it as one. She focused her mind, stilled her terror, and calmed herself. She exhaled. Whatever happened, she would deal with it.
Zack lunged with his blade, supernaturally fast. Norman barely had time to swing his arm defensively in front of himself. It was only respect for Norm’s power that made Zack settle for a slash of the blade across the giant’s hand. Zack danced in and out, watching Norm’s two huge hands, slashing. The cuts he made on Norman’s arms and hands were superficial, but Zack had patience. Better to bleed the giant out a bit, until he lost strength.
Norm edged back and forth, but he was pinned. He couldn’t let Zack break for the door and Esme. When Zack moved in, Norm waved his hands about like a bear swatting at bees. Zack was everywhere and nowhere. The blade stung, but the pain wasn’t much for someone who’d had every kind of cancer in the book. It was a good, clean pain. Lot of blood, though.
The scent of Norman’s blood drove Zack into a frenzy, like a shark smelling blood in the water. It made him want to slash harder, deeper, more violently. He wanted to sink his teeth into Norm’s neck. He’d never tasted the blood of a male before. The Master disdained it. He lunged in, spinning, leaping over the giant’s shoulder, sweeping backhanded for the jugular with the blade. He almost got it, but Norman’s huge hand came crashing in
to him and Zack was thrown into the wall with a resounding crash.
Norm was on Zack in two steps, but not fast enough. The impact hadn’t hurt the vampire in the least. He was on his feet in a fraction of a second, never giving an inch of ground. It should have knocked the wind out of him at least, but maybe vampires didn’t use wind. What would it take to beat someone like this, to mash him up enough so he couldn’t get back up again, couldn’t harm Esme? Norman slowed his movement down a little. He needed to get his hands on Zack, but he wasn’t fast enough.
Zack danced about back and forth, showing some of the fancy footwork that had made him his high school team’s first-string striker. He went in high: Norman swept after him with his right hand, grabbing at the arm with the razor, but the fingers closed on empty air. Pathetic, Zack thought, drawing blood from the far shoulder, then tossing the blade to his left hand and slashing up across Norm’s chest. That one definitely did some damage. The giant was staggering. Time to finish him off.
Norm abandoned the doorway. Esme could be anyplace in the house by now. He edged around the hallway, toward the huge front doors. Zack was tireless. In addition to the blade, Zack punched and kicked him at will. His kicks, in particular, were brutal. Vampire soccer players, how does one prepare in life for such contingencies, with only a public school education? Norm was bleeding profusely from two dozen wounds. Most of them were superficial but too many were significant. He was losing blood, but he had more than most people.
Zack saw opportunity after opportunity as the giant weakened. He kicked hard at the right knee, watched it nearly buckle, then feinted in high to the left with the blade, only to spin low to the right, fancy feet flying, slip under the right arm, and backswing the blade at the giant’s left ankle. A quick hamstringing would end it fast, then he’d still have time to find Esme before the Master came home and beat him to a fine, bloody pulp. Norman managed to backhand him, not hard enough to do any damage, but enough to roll him end over end halfway across the room. The slash had cut into the back of the shoe, but Zack hadn’t drawn blood.