by J. L. Doty
It adjusted Its glamour to that of the female paramedic, checked Its appearance carefully, then crossed the street and entered the ER.
“Back already, Jan?” one of the nurses called to It.
“Just need to pee,” It said in the female’s voice.
The nurse turned back to her work as It walked down the hall, chose the stairwell and stepped into it, adjusted Its glamour to that of a middle-aged woman in a dark, conservative skirt, a gray blouse and a white lab coat with a stethoscope around her neck. It shook out well-groomed, shoulder-length hair and examined Its image carefully for any flaws. It would have to check each floor for the scent of the Lord’s power, but that wouldn’t take long.
Pain medication always prevented Paul from sleeping deeply. It killed the pain and he could doze a bit, but it was a light, restless sleep, almost awake, almost asleep, both and yet neither. And when someone approached his bed and stood beside it, the almost-awake part of him realized it and struggled back to a modicum of alertness. He opened his eyes groggily and saw a pretty, young woman standing there, shoulder length auburn hair, dressed in a business suit that looked expensive, nice smile, a red blouse cut just a bit low with a black, lacy something showing above it. She held his chart in one hand, but was staring at him in an almost trancelike way. And there was something familiar about her. “You my doctor?” he asked.
She shook herself as if she had to make an effort to focus on him. She said something about her father that didn’t register. He grumbled a question at her and she said, “Yes. I’m Katherine McGowan. I believe my father’s a friend of yours.”
Katherine McGowan? McGowan? The name sounded familiar, and he had to think for a moment to place it: Walter McGowan, the old professor type who’d knocked on his door a week ago. Yes, now he remembered the fellow, the same fellow that showed up tonight in his apartment with Russian thugs with guns. Their leader? His daughter? Shit!
A flush of adrenaline cleared his head instantly. She said something about her cell phone, dug in her purse for a moment and retrieved it, then turned and headed for the hall, her high heels clicking loudly on the linoleum floor. She must be calling them so they could come and finish the job. He had to get out, get away and escape.
Paul slipped carefully out of bed on the side away from the door. His stitches pulled painfully as he crouched down in its shadow. He had a groggy recollection of the nurse telling him his clothes were on a shelf under the bed, but the shelf was empty.
“Looking for these, ye daft fool?”
He maintained his crouch behind the bed as he turned toward the voice, found another midget in a clown suit: different midget, though not so different clown suit. This midget looked to be the same size as the one from earlier in the evening. It wore similarly outlandish clothing in similarly outlandish colors, but this one’s nose was an inverted ski jump, almost like a parrot’s beak, and it stood there holding Paul’s bundled clothes.
“He ain’t too quick, Boo’Diddle.”
Paul glanced over his shoulder, found the midget from the street near his apartment standing behind him. The other midget said, “It appears he ain’t, Jim’Jiminie.”
Paul hissed, “Give me my fucking clothes, god damn it. Those maniacs are coming after me.”
The midget named Boo’Diddle handed Paul his clothing, spoke around Paul to the other midget, “Looks like he’s finally catching on.”
Paul peeked up over the bed; the pretty, young women was gone. He crouched back down, started pulling on his blood-encrusted clothing, realized the paramedics and ER staff had cut his shirt and pants to shreds. He had to tie pieces off to make it all work, was thankful they hadn’t cut his belt in two. Without that he wouldn’t be able to keep the pants on. The midgets tried to assist, hindered him more than helped, but he finally managed it.
McGowan marched into the hospital’s reception with Colleen behind him. She’d put away her shadows since a shadow walking around on its own would raise a few eyebrows. Katherine would be down in a matter of seconds, and using her to get past the receptionist would be easier than spelling the woman. But as he approached her he sensed a faint hint of magic in the air.
“Good evening,” the receptionist said in a dreamy, not-there voice that seemed badly uncharacteristic of this apparently formidable woman. He glanced at Colleen and she raised an eyebrow, confirming she too sensed something out of place.
The slightest touch was all he needed to confirm his suspicions. He leaned forward, held out his hand and smiled his most charming, handsome-older-gentleman smile. “I’m Walter McGowan, Katherine’s father,” he said, trying to make it sound more like an invitation for a date.
The woman blushed, smiled at him and took his hand. “Of course, pleased to meet you, Mr. McGowan.”
The instant her hand touched his he could sense the residual of the spell. He turned to Colleen. “Shit! She’s already been spelled.”
Colleen said, “Karpov!”
Paul remained crouched as he stepped out from behind his bed. Light from the hallway spilled through the open door of the ward and lit up the floor between the beds on either side, leaving the beds themselves in shadowed darkness. Paul felt exposed and vulnerable as he stepped into the light and tiptoed carefully up the length of the ward, the two midgets tiptoeing behind him. He passed one bed, then another, keeping his eyes on the open entrance to the ward. He couldn’t see down the hallway to either side, so he was moving blind, and he’d almost reached the ward’s entrance when he heard voices in the hall coming his way. He looked about desperately but there was no place to hide, so he ducked into the shadows behind the nearest bed. He didn’t dare look up over the bed, but the smear of light on the floor of the ward suddenly filled with moving shadows. He heard a woman’s voice say, “He’s in the last bed on the right, doctor.”
A man answered in a thick Russian accent, “Thank you. You can return to your station.”
Paul’s heart started hammering in his chest and felt like it was climbing up into his throat. He tried to crouch even lower and hold his breath as the shadows on the floor started walking down the ward. The three Russians appeared in silhouette only a few feet from him, first the old fellow, then the ugly blond and finally Joe Stalin, the two thugs carefully screwing cylindrical silencers onto the end of semi-automatic pistols. If any of them glanced even a little to their left they’d see Paul easily and there’d be no escape. But Paul and the midgets had ducked into the shadows behind the first bed on the left, while the Russians were focused on his bed at the far end of the ward, so his luck held and they passed him by.
He heard the older man say, “We won’t need the hardware. He’s already unconscious, so a simple spell will make it look like the hospital was at fault. Much cleaner that way.”
As they walked toward his bed all three of them had their backs turned his way, but that wouldn’t last once they reached his bed, so he took his chance when they were half way down the ward. He knew the moment he stepped into the light from the door he’d alert the Russians with his own shadow, so he stayed in the shadows near the beds as he dashed on tiptoe toward the entrance. When he reached the wall at the end of the ward he looked back toward the Russians. They were still walking away from him, so he sprinted at a shallow angle through the door and out into the hall.
His shadow momentarily darkened the ward and he heard a single, startled exclamation from one of the Russians, but as he pressed his back to the wall outside he heard no running feet coming his way so he guessed they hadn’t turned quickly enough to identify him as the source of the shadow. But he had only seconds before they discovered his bed was empty, so he turned immediately toward the elevators at the far end of the hall, only to freeze when he saw McGowan and the hippie woman talking to the nurse.
Jim’Jiminie snarled, “This way, hurry!”
Paul looked down at the midget, who hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “The stairway, you idiot.”
The two midgets ran back the way they’
d come, toward a red exit sign at the far end of the hall past the ward from which he’d just emerged. To follow Paul would have to pass in front of the ward, and he’d be exposed to the Russians again, but he had no choice so he ran after the midgets. As he passed the ward he glanced inside, saw the two young thugs angrily ripping the sheets off his bed, and the old Russian looking his way.
He kept running, heard shouts from the Russians in the ward, heard a shout from McGowan and the hippie-woman at the nurse’s station, tried to ignore it all as he ran for the stairwell. And then a door just in front of him opened and Katherine McGowan stepped in his way, her eyes wide with surprise and a gasp escaping her lips. He plowed head-long into her and they both tumbled to the floor in a tangled sprawl, overturning a wheeled metal cart in the process, medical supplies clattering loudly across the floor. Paul only managed to get to his hands and knees when Joe Stalin stepped into the hallway about fifty feet away. Paul instinctively rolled to one side just as Joe raised his gun and fired. The silenced gun popped like a muffled firecracker, and the bullet dug chunks of tile and concrete out of the floor next to Paul’s hand, kicking up debris that stung his face and arms painfully.
Paul reversed direction, rolled desperately the other way and took refuge behind the overturned metal cart, the Russian’s gun popping repeatedly, more chips of masonry splattering all over the hall, the cart jerking as bullets slammed into it. He caught a glimpse of old-man McGowan and the hippie running toward the Russian, probably to help him finish Paul. The two midgets had opened the stairwell door and were shouting for Paul to join them. Paul scrambled to his feet while Katherine struggled to her hands and knees, her tight skirt split in a tear almost up to her waist. She looked at the midgets with undisguised awe, looked back and forth between them and Paul, then at the Russians. She reached into her purse just as Joe Stalin raised his gun and aimed it straight at her face.
A flood of thoughts poured through Paul’s head. If she was working with them, why would Joe Stalin try to kill her, literally execute her with a bullet in the face at almost point-blank range? The metal cart wasn’t large, and Paul had adrenaline working for him. He lifted it, swung it in an arc and threw it at the Russian, realizing as he did so he didn’t have the strength to throw it far enough. But as it bounced in the hall in front of Joe Stalin it startled him just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the wall inches from Katherine’s face just as she pulled something out of her purse, spit on it and threw it up the hall toward Joe. It landed in the middle of the hallway, made a sound like a cork popping from a Champaign bottle, and a shimmering, translucent veil of something filled the hall from wall to wall. Joe Stalin fired his gun three more times, but when the bullets hit the veil they came to a stop in midair, moved forward at a snail’s pace for a second, passed through the veil then dropped to the floor of the hallway without any energy, bouncing on the linoleum with a faint plinking sound.
“Run,” Katherine shouted, struggling to her feet.
Paul reached down and hooked a hand under her armpit, heard some part of her clothing tear as he hauled her to her feet and dragged her toward the midgets, but she hobbled in a horribly uneven gate. She hesitated for an instant and growled, “Broke a heel,” kicked her shoes off and turned a really pissed-off look toward Paul. “Fucking Russians broke my Pradas. I’ll kill the bastards.”
She looked back up the hall, and the shimmering veil appeared to be dissipating. “Run, run, run,” she shouted. “The spell only lasts a few seconds.”
Paul’s feet got the message and she and he slammed through the stairway door together, the midgets barely a step in front of them. The midgets turned, put their shoulders into the door and slammed it shut. “We’ll hold the door,” they shouted in unison. The two of them leaned into the door, and Paul couldn’t believe what he was seeing, a couple of little men that, between them, couldn’t weigh a tenth of what Joe Stalin massed.
He shouted at Katherine, “They can’t hold the fucking door.”
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Of course they can,” she shouted back. “You know the power of the little people.” She grabbed his arm and started pulling him down the concrete stairs.
“The little people?” he demanded.
“Yes,” she screamed, for some unknown reason clearly exasperated with him. “Leprechauns. You know how powerful they are.”
“Leprechauns!” he shouted back. “Fucking leprechauns!”
She’d dragged him down a flight of stairs to the third-floor landing. “Yes. If they’re on your side then you’re no rogue wizard.” She hesitated, closed her eyes and shook her head. “Damn! My shield spell just expired. Those Russian maniacs won’t be far behind.”
As if to punctuate her statement he heard a loud thud from the floor above, the sound of a large man throwing his shoulder against the door. “Run,” both midgets shouted in unison.
“Spell!” Paul shouted as Katherine dragged him down to the second-floor landing. “Wizard! Leprechauns! You’re fucking nuts.” He yanked his arm out of her hands violently. “You’re all fucking nuts. I’m not going anywhere with a nut-case like you.”
Next to them the stairwell door on the second-floor landing opened without warning and a middle-aged, female doctor in a white lab coat stepped onto the landing. She gave Paul an odd, dreamy look and smiled at him longingly, as if they were lovers who’d just found each other after a long separation. “I’ve found you,” she said, wonder and joy coloring every word. She reached out and touched his cheek, and in her touch he felt that strange pull, the same pull he’d experienced in his apartment when the monster had gripped his throat. More through reflex than anything else, he resisted that pull and she jerked her hand back as if she’d touched a hot flame. Her eyes filled with pain, like that of a lover scorned.
Paul’s vision flickered as he looked at the doctor. She looked like a middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat, but then blink, and for the tiniest fraction of second he thought he saw something else. He was bleeding from a dozen small wounds and thought he might be close to passing out. But as he looked again at the doctor he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
Katherine demanded, “Who are you?”
“Oh, child!” the doctor said. She reached out and touched Katherine on the cheek in much the way she’d touched Paul, a loving caress more than anything else.
Katherine gasped and her eyes rolled back in her head as she swooned, then staggered into Paul.
Paul managed to catch her and kept her from falling. “What’d you do to her?” he demanded.
The doctor shuddered and let out a deep sigh, as if she’d just reached some sort of ecstatic high. “Nothing,” she said dreamily. “She must be hurt. I can help her.”
Joe Stalin! With the gun! Spraying bullets indiscriminately at them both. He’d heard of people being shot and not realizing it until they collapsed sometime later. Two floors above, one of the midgets—leprechauns—shouted, “We can’t hold much longer.”
“Follow me,” the doctor said, giving Paul a look of pleasurable anticipation. Blink, there it was again, and then just as quickly gone again, just a doctor, trying to help them.
Katherine could barely stand, her eyes fluttering dazedly. “Vama . . .” she said mushily, her words slurring as if she was seriously drunk. She leaned heavily against Paul as they staggered together behind the doctor onto the second floor. But Katherine resisted, fought against him as if she didn’t want to follow and said something that sounded like, “Va . . . pie . . . Ole . . . va . . . pie . . .”
The stairwell door closed behind them. Paul pressed Katherine against the wall, didn’t dare let her drop to the floor because he knew that in his own weakened state he couldn’t lift her again if he did.
She was covered with smeared blood, probably most of it Paul’s, so he couldn’t use obvious bleeding to locate a wound. He tried patting her down, looking for wounds. But he was no doctor and realized he was doing little more than feeling her up�
��a distant little piece of him thought he might enjoy that in a different time and place, as long as the feeling was mutual. He shrugged that off and snarled at the doctor, “Help us, god damn it.”
The doctor grinned, a look of rapt pleasure on her face. She stepped toward them and reached out smiling dreamily, acting unlike any doctor Paul had ever encountered.
Blink; she’d been something else, something dark and frightening that he might recognize if the image lasted for more than an instant, or if he had the time to think about it carefully. But just as the spooky doctor was about to touch him, Katherine suddenly jerked on his arm with renewed energy. She’d regained some coherency as she dragged them both away from the doctor and the stairwell. “Issss a fucking vampire,” she snarled. “ . . . old vampire, strong.”
Chapter 5: One More Time
Trogmoressh couldn’t believe Its luck. The Lord-of-the-Unliving had come to It, and brought along a young witch, and together the two of them were a sumptuous feast beyond imagining. It had tried to feed on the Lord, but he’d shown surprising strength and resisted. It had fed on the witch a bit, a small mistake since any feeding produced a certain sluggish indolence for a short while. And too, the witch was now alerted to Its true nature, was this moment dragging the Lord away from It. It would have to be more careful.
It watched the two of them struggle up the hallway of the second floor, followed leisurely and vowed to refrain from any further feeding until It could enjoy the entire banquet. And in any case, it was time to alter Its glamour.
“There’s something wrong here,” Colleen hissed as she and McGowan ran down the hall toward the Russians.