by Lynne Murray
But what’s this? A familiar scent. Mistress Kit’s perfume unraveling like a scarlet thread to the steps of a house. Hmm, old enough to have a basement or windowless closet. Up the steps and ring the bell. A man of simmering energy answers. Not young, but perhaps not so wise in some dangers.
He smiles when I say Kit Marlowe told me to meet her here. I spin a tale of looking for new lodging, mayhap a basement or windowless closet—the word has a special power for him.
“Staying in the closet is not the only choice, sir, even for a senior. Would you like to come in and wait?”
He invites me in. I am careful to leave no visible marks. His basement is secure, his mind disbelieves my very existence. This will do for awhile.
Chapter 65
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 28th continued
Bram Van Helsing showed up before sunset, carrying a huge duffel bag. He put it down inside the door to the front room. We hugged like old friends. “How is it going?”
“It’s scary. What did Larry tell you about the night I called him? “
“About what you’d expect.”
“He really wanted to take me to the local ER for a psych evaluation.”
“I might agree with him, if I hadn’t seen Sir John rise from the dead. So I’ve got an open mind, even if it was forcibly ripped open. Maybe I’ll be able to see these guys—and then persuade them to go away.”
“I hope so, but be very careful about looking at them.” I looked into his eyes. “That’s what killed Vi, and the vampires say the more attention you pay to them, the stronger they get.” I told him about feeling that they were draining me through the window.
“So the vampires can all see these things?”
“And most humans can’t. The vampires learn to block them out. Or at least that’s what Vi’s vampire lawyer says.”
“Her vampire lawyer?”
We sat in the garden on the stone bench for awhile and I filled him in on the first week of Vi’s vampire life.
“I brought a weapon that may work on your infestation, but I need a flat surface to assemble it.”
“Let’s go inside.”
“I remember these characters.” Bram said as Ariel and Sly ventured out to greet him, sniffing the duffel bag and wrinkling their noses at it. Bram reached down to scratch Sly’s chin. “How’d they get over here?
“Vi is afraid the Others will destroy the cats.”
“So now you have all these cats in this small cottage.” He laughed, and scratched both cats’ ears as they rubbed against his hand so he could do them in sequence.
“They really like you. Would you like the grand tour? The grounds are not extensive. This is the kitchen.”
“Nice touch with the duct tape around the curtains, by the way.”
“It made a lot of sense at the time.”
“The room just beyond the entryway must be your office.”
“How did you guess?”
“The couch has that therapeutic look to it.”
“There’s the bathroom further down the hall. We have to keep the door closed because that’s where I have got Vi’s feral female cats on lockdown for the moment, so they don’t sneak out “
“I need a flat surface to assemble this weapon.”
“So for a flat surface, you can use the desk in my office—it’s bigger than the table in the kitchen.”
Bram unzipped a duffel bag all the way around until it lay flat on the desk. Then he began to bring out and assemble parts. There was a hose and a fuel tank. The finished product looked lethal enough.
“I looked around for things that would kill vampires, and I put together some specs and got the local pyromaniac—Three Fingers Revere, over in the physics department at the U, to help me put it together. He gave me a crash course in using it.”
“Three Fingers?”
“Used to be Four Fingers, but he had a bad rocket season a few years back.”
Full dusk arrived and Mina buzzed at the door.
“Remember the woman I told you about the first day I met you? The one with the vampire fixation? Turns out she was right. She can see these things too.”
She hurried down the path as the first wave of Others poured out of what looked like a rift in the rain clouded sky.
“Do you see them?” I asked Bram as they surrounded Vi’s house.
“No. I don’t see anything.” He sounded disappointed.
“Okay. Please don’t try. It’s not a skill anyone wants to develop.”
“I think we can still use my flame shooter. When Larry said he couldn’t see your intruders, I thought about how we could get at them if I couldn’t see them either.”
I hustled Mina through the door and introduced her to Bram. She stared at him as he strapped on a heavy vest.
“Fire proof,” he said.
She looked at the flame shooter. “Can you see them too?”
“No, I can’t,” he said, pulling down the vest. “But in the vampire lore, which is all I have to go by, fire is one of the few things that totally destroys a vampire. Kris is going to direct my aim, all right?” He turned to me.
“Okay.” At that point I would try anything.
He handed me a duplicate vest. “Asbestos,” he said. “And here’s a fire extinguisher. Have you ever used one?”
“I have. I was the safety warden for fire drills when I worked at a clinic.”
“Great. Good to have experience if something should catch fire.”
“Or when.”
He gave me a grim look. “Do you want to try this or not? You’ll have to direct my arm to where they are.”
I sighed. “Okay, let’s try it.”
“Where are they?”
“Right outside the door. They sort of float and bump into it, but they can’t seem to come in without an invitation. We shouldn’t talk about them much because it makes them stronger. Let’s just do it. Mina. We’re going to step a few feet outside the door.”
Mina shuddered sympathetically.
Bram opened the door and we stepped out into the drizzly night. Vi’s back porch light was on and it illuminated the yard and cast huge shadows. The Others milled about, lit by their own faint luminescence. They seemed untouched by the porch light or the shadows.
I stepped up close behind Bram and used my arm to aim his flame shooter at the Others nearest us. It was an intimate position. I had to press against his back to move his arm to point at the creature right in front of us. If I hadn’t been terrified and trying to avoid the red eyes, I’d have been very aroused.
He liked it, too. “We’ll try this again—later without the asbestos vest, okay?”
“Okay,” was all I trusted myself to say.
Straight ahead several of the gray shapes bobbed in front of us.
“Directly in front of you, point blank range, about two feet away, between you and that tree.”
“Gotcha!”
“Go ahead.” I snatched my hand back. My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
Bram fired and a jet of flame roared out of the nozzle with an impressive whump!
The crowd of Others in its path instantly bobbed up several feet unharmed.
A small tree at the other end of the garden burst into flame.
“Stop!” I yelled. He put down the nozzle. I rushed over to douse the tree with the fire extinguisher. There was a lot of smoke in the damp air.
I caught a glimpse of Vi in the window. She looked sad.
Bram pulled off the Velcro straps of the flame shooter harness and came over to inspect the tree. “Did we do any damage?” he asked softly.
“Only to the tree.” Looking up from the charred, foam covered tree, I saw Vi and Edgar Morford emerge from the house to stand watching from the back stairs. A short, heavyset man in an old-fashioned suit followed them. Another vampire.
Chapter 66
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 28th continued
The vam
pire with Vi and Morford surveyed the scene as focused as a small hawk, despite his portly build. His slicked back brown hair and huge mustache made him look like a refugee from an antique 1880s tintype.
The Others now swooped down, unhurt, swarming around the house and garden.
The three vampires walked down the steps and waded through the Others as if they did not exist, although I could see Vi trembling. The hordes parted to let them go through as if pushed out of the way, and closed ranks behind them.
The man with Morford went directly up to Bram and nodded at the flame shooter he was still holding. “This can do a lot of damage. It could kill a living human or a vampire, but not the Others, as you see.” He inclined his head toward the swarming mass, without even turning to glance at it.
Bram nodded, “I actually don’t see them, but you’re telling me that this had no effect on them.”
Morford stepped forward. “This is Dr. Quiller. He’s one of our medical experts.”
“I’m Abraham Van Helsing.”
Morford and Quiller froze in their tracks and stared at Bram.
“Van Helsing, of the vampire hunting family?” Morford asked.
“Maybe.”
Morford and Quiller exchanged glances.
Vi walked around them to hold out a hand to Bram. “Hi.”
He took her hand in both of his. “Hi, Violet. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
It began to rain, and we stood for a moment. The rain cleared the smoke from the air, thoroughly wetting the torched tree. The rain didn’t seem to touch the Others—they moved through the night as if it did not exist. The rest of us, including the vampires, were starting to get wet.
“Let’s go back inside,” Morford said. “We need to talk without distractions.” That was as close as he came to mentioning the Others. I was pretty sure he didn’t mean the rain. “Just a minute—I’m worried about Mina being alone.” I went back inside the cottage, carefully closing the door against the eager horde. “There are two vampire community leaders here. They want to talk about strategy. You can come if you want, or stay here.”
Mina took a deep breath. “I want to go with you. I need to know what to do.”
Morford and Quiller paused when I told them Mina would come with us. The expressions even in the dim, rainy night made their opposition to the idea clear.
“She sees them.”
Quiller’s nostrils flared and he made a motion of his head like a dog scenting the air around Mina. “She is unbitten and should not be seeing what she sees.”
“The fact is that she does see,” I said. “So she deserves help--if you have any to offer.”
“If only we had,” Morford said. But Quiller bowed politely to Mina.
We all trooped over to Vi’s house. Bram and I stripped off the asbestos vests and left the damp fire shooter contraption in the kitchen. Soon we were sitting on the same couch where we had ended up kissing madly while Sir John drank Vi’s blood in the corner. It was less than two weeks earlier, but it seemed a lifetime ago.
Mina squeezed in next to Bram and me on the sofa. Morford took the wing chair near the fireplace and Dr. Quiller took the straight chair next to him. Vi simply stood, looking half confused until Bram got up and pulled her computer chair over from the desk to join the circle. He gestured to her, and she sat in it.
“Vi, your case is unusual but not totally unique,” Morford began. His eyes lighted on Mina. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”
“I’m just as scared of those things outside as you are. How can we stop them? “
“You have never been bit by a vampire,” Quiller said to Mina. It wasn’t a question.
“No, I haven’t,” Mina shuddered.
“When did you start to see the—things outside?” Dr. Quiller asked.
“About three days ago. I saw Lucy with them, floating outside the window of Hal’s house. Ever since that they—” She gulped. “Followed me.”
“Interesting,” Dr. Quiller said softly. “This Lucy—you fed from her, Edgar?”
“Sir John introduced us and gave permission,” Morford said, a little too quickly.
“Hal could see them, too,” Mina said. “And he told me Sir John never took his blood—he was really angry at him for that.”
“A normal vampire bite will begin the process of bonding between human and undead,” Quiller explained. “The living are human and the undead once were human, so there is no incompatibility. But these Others never have been human. When they feed, they kill. If interrupted, they will return to resume, and that begins a process of assimilation into their life form.”
“Cats are afraid of me now.” Vi stared at the carpet. “Hide from me.”
Morford looked down as if embarrassed. “Cats usually avoid vampires.”
I felt a surge of anger. “You knew this when you set up her legal documents. You knew her cats would avoid her when she became a vampire.”
“Ask Vi if she’d rather be dead.” His eyes flashed with annoyance.
We all looked at Vi. She didn’t seem to have heard the question.
“You called us. You wanted our help. She was already dead and primed with vampire blood when you called. She would have risen in three days and drained any human or animal she could find in the first throes of hunger. We protected you from that and set up the best arrangement we could.”
“It was the property, wasn’t it? Your foundation gets the property.”
Morford shrugged a little stiffly. “Her property remains her own for the moment under our law, and she needed some help keeping it under the laws of the living.”
“But you knew Vi’s cats would run away from her. The plan wouldn’t work.”
“It has worked. Vi is able to know her cats are well taken care of. Animals instinctively avoid predators, and some vampires see cats as appetizers. Where are the cats, by the way?”
“I am taking care of them—don’t worry about it.” After that appetizer remark, I wasn’t about to give him more information.
“You can continue to live in that cottage if you fulfill that condition of the trust. Vi, you can see your cats whenever you want. We never promised that your cats would continue to seek your company once you became a predator.”
“Hey, we have a life-threatening crisis here—shut up about contracts!” I waved my hand impatiently. “Vi is in trouble. She seems to be losing her words, her capacity to think and write. Is that a vampire thing?”
Even with us talking about her directly, Vi seemed to be ignoring the conversation.
Dr. Quiller shook his head. “Vampires have no limitation on our capacity to think and write—although our authors must remain in the shade.” He gave a rusty chuckle at his own pun.
No one else even smiled.
I was angry enough to take a step toward him, with no clear idea what I meant by it. “The only thing she lived for was the cats and her writing—now she’s losing both.”
“That is the least of what she will lose.” Quiller pointed towards the back of the house. “You have seen them?”
I shuddered. “Yes.”
“You looked into their eyes.” He turned to Mina, “As you did also. I can feel it in both of you like a splinter of poison in your hearts.”
“Eww,” Mina said.
Both of us were shaken, but Mina seemed overwhelmed, I reached out to squeeze her hand. “Tell us something useful.” I said. “You said you don’t know much—what do you know?”
“You two are among the few humans to have survived an encounter.” Quiller turned to me and looked me up and down with unnerving clinical precision. “Once a human has been vampire-bit, they are vulnerable to those creatures, who draw them in and drain their life force quickly unless the vampire master protects them at all times. Very few have the will and strength to break the connection once they have begun to drain a human. You are the first who has survived with mental facilities intact to tell us.” He turned his attention to examining Vi.
&n
bsp; I clenched my fists. I wanted to yell at him to let her alone. Bram put a restraining hand on my arm. I looked at him sitting next to me, our thighs almost touching. I took a deep breath. “How can you stay so calm?” I whispered.
“No worse than a particularly intense faculty meeting,” he said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Dr. Quiller knows as much as anyone living or undead about the Others.” Morford leaned forward to explain. “He was a man of science, and even to this day he uses a secure lab we have established for him to study the Others. It’s quite an honor to have him go out into the field to examine a victim. He doesn’t like to be taken away from his studies.”
“If you’re studying the Others, this would appear to be part of your studies,” I said to Quiller. I could feel Bram’s body tense beside me, and risked a glance. He had a neutral expression pasted on his face. I envied his composure.
Dr. Quiller drew himself up, frowning, as if making himself more formidable. “I should have been called in immediately.” He turned his glare on Morford.
“It was near dawn yesterday, Nehemiah. We called you at dusk today.”
“You two quit it! Look at Vi, she’s fading away! Isn’t there some kind of treatment for Vi, or way to keep the Others—”
“Hush!” Morford said loudly. “The more attention we pay to them, the stronger they get.”
I was losing patience, “I don’t know anything about this sort of entity—is that an acceptable way to talk about them?”
“If you must.”
“I do know from the scientific training I have had, that you can’t study something without examining it.”
Dr. Quiller’s face slipped into a serene expression that for some reason was more frightening than his frown.
“As to a cure—we have none yet. As to combating them—the reason we teach new vampires to ignore them is that is the best method. These—entities, as you say—can kill a vampire much more quickly than they kill a human. We can only accumulate enough life force to keep us going for a day or so, and unlike the living, we cannot restore it with food and rest. We spend the daylight hours dormant in our coffins, but then we awake, needing to recharge very soon. I have studied these—creatures—for over a hundred years. Usually they appear in small, isolated attack groups. I have never seen such a flock. Something is new here. Someone called them.”