“No. I need blood from someone living. But I can’t do it.”
“Then bite me. Take my blood.”
“I couldn’t. You’d die. Or become like me. Worse than death.”
“Maybe there’s another way.” There was nothing she could do but watch as he went over to his worktable and picked up a sculpting chisel. He raked the blade of the chisel along his left palm to open a bloody gash.
He return to the bed and put his hand to her mouth. “Go on, take it.”
“Jim—”
“Emma, you can’t die. I love you.”
She suckled from his palm like a baby from her mother’s breast. His blood tasted even sweeter than Megan’s, because he loved her. He loved her and he had willingly given his blood to save her life. She let the blood fill her mouth and then swallowed. “I love you too,” she whispered before she passed out.
***
When she woke up, she felt Jim next to her, his body so warm and soothing. The studio was dark except for a dull orange glow that passed for moonlight in the city. In this light, Emma held up a hand to find it no longer skeletal. Her cheeks had fleshed out a little as well.
He’d done it; he had saved her life. As her nose twitched and the beast stirred, she realized he shouldn’t have. His blood had reversed the decay, but it would only be temporary. In hours—perhaps even by morning—she would need another hit. How long could they go on like that, with her using him like a wet nurse? Eventually he would run out of blood that he could safely give her while she would still want more—she would want it all, every drop in his body. Eventually the beast would take over, perhaps when she was asleep, and leave Jim as nothing more than a dried-out husk.
She couldn’t do that to him. She loved him too much for that. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his ear. He didn’t stir at this.
She crawled out of bed and crept over to his worktable. There she tore off a piece of his drawing paper to write him a note. There was so much she wanted to say, too much for one piece of paper. She settled for writing simply, “I have to go. I could never live with myself if I hurt you. Please forgive me.” She signed it, “Love, Emma.” Before she left, she took off her nametag and left it on top of the letter to remind him of their brief time together at the Plaine Museum. Then she slipped out of the door.
She got to the bottom of the stairs when she heard him call her name. This time she made sure not to trip on anything as she ran. Still she could feel him behind her, her legs not recovered enough to run at full speed.
There were plenty of places to hide in the old factory. Emma veered to the right, to conceal herself beneath a set of rusty stairs that led into a warehouse. She heard Jim pound up the stairs, his feet only inches from her head. She curled up almost into a ball, one hand clamped over her mouth, so he couldn’t hear her cry.
“Emma, where are you? Don’t do this. I love you!”
She said nothing to this; it was better this way. As she had written, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she hurt him. She loved him far too much for that. He would hurt for a little while, but in the end he would find someone else. He would forget all about her and she would rot away again, this time forever.
At first she didn’t pay any mind to the sound of helicopter rotors; in a city like Rampart City there were always helicopters around. It wasn’t until the rotors became deafening and centered over the factory that she became concerned. She looked up just as the entire factory became bathed in white light. Emma cried out and dropped to the ground, blinded.
A harsh voice announced over a loudspeaker, “Attention James Nathaniel Rizzard and any other squatters with you: this is the Rampart City Police Department. We have the area surrounded. Come peacefully or we will use force to remove you.”
“Oh no,” Emma whispered. Her first horrible thought was that she had somehow led the police here to Jim’s studio. They might have followed her after what happened with Dr. Dreyfus. Her second thought was that she had to do something to help Jim.
It was already too late for that. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs above her. She saw men in black body armor armed with machine guns. She might be a vampire and she might have survived that piece of metal through her right lung, but against dozens of heavily armed men she still might not be a match for them.
While she dithered, she heard Jim cry out in pain. She curled up on the ground as the men in black body armor dragged Jim down the steps. From the limpness of his body, she surmised that he was unconscious. Through the steps she watched them hurl him into the back of a van. Her heart pounded in her chest as the helicopter continued to hover overhead while the police searched the rest of the building.
By some stroke of luck, no one found her. After five terrifying minutes, the police van roared away with Jim inside. The helicopter broke off; the factory went dark again. Then Emma was alone.
She crawled out from under the steps, to wipe furiously at her eyes. Bad enough that she was a monster, but she was a coward too. She thought of the letter she had written to him. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but now he would be hurt anyway. Not if I can help it, she thought, her fists clenched.
Chapter 21
It didn’t take long for Sylvia to realize she’d made a mistake. The first sign was when she got to the highway to find it disappeared into what seemed like a solid black wall. The closer she came to this, the more solid the blackness appeared, until she stood right in front of it. When she stuck her hand against it, a surge of electricity ran through her, to cause her hair to stick up like the static electricity globe at the science museum back home.
She had little doubt that Tim Cooper had gone through the barrier. Him and that weird robot suit of his that had made a fool out of her in New Stockholm. Whatever he was up to, she would find him and bring him back to face charges: theft, possession of an unlicensed weapon, and assault on a police officer. When she got through with him, he would spend the rest of his life behind bars.
She stepped through the barrier. The same charge of electricity ran through her, only stronger this time. For a moment she worried she might have been electrocuted, but she quickly realized she was still alive. Alive and in another world.
On the horizon she saw a city as big as New Stockholm; most of the skyline seemed to be the same. At this time of night the city’s lights sparkled like stars while light pollution swallowed most of the real stars. From her best guess, the city was probably thirty kilometers away, way too far for her to walk.
She had to walk into the nearest town of Sharonville; there had been no cars on the road. Nor were there any cars on the main drag in Sharonville. For that matter, she didn’t see any people either. The place was like a ghost town. Sylvia shivered and thought of zombie movies she had watched as a kid.
As she passed a store called Home Depot, she saw her first sign of Tim Cooper. The front doors of the store were smashed and as she closed in, Sylvia saw a trail of destruction inside the store as well. That suit of his no doubt.
She didn’t see any sign of him inside the store. Stranger yet, no store security or police had arrived yet. A store this large would have to have an alarm, wouldn’t it? She shivered again and wondered if she had stepped into some kind of weird, apocalyptic world. There seemed to be plenty of life in Rampart City. That was where Cooper would go—and where she would go.
There was no IKEA in this small town, but she did find something called Wal-Mart. The store was closed, so she decided to borrow from Cooper’s playbook and hurled a rock through the front door. Inside she walked up and down aisles of groceries, clothes, and hardware until she came to the sporting goods section. There she found the bikes. A motorcycle or even a scooter would have been preferable, but a ten-speed would have to do.
Sylvia hadn’t ridden a bike since she was twelve, but as they said, it came back to her easily enough. She chose a sleek green bike and wheeled it along for two aisles. Then she saw the display of hunting rifles. She still had her pistol, but a
little extra firepower never hurt. She broke open the glass case and then picked up a 12-gauge shotgun. She strapped the shotgun to her back and stuffed a box of shells into her jacket. Then she hopped on the bike and rode it from the store.
No cars appeared on either side of the highway as she pedaled along the road. Once she got used to the weight of the shotgun on her back, it wasn’t too difficult. At least the pavement of the highway was smooth enough. As she neared the city, she wondered what she would find there. Would radioactive zombies have overrun the city? Would Tim Cooper still be alive?
When she thought of Cooper, she tried not to think of their kiss. He had been drunk and confused her with someone else, apparently the Sylvia Joubert who lived in this place. That was all there was to it. He was just another perp for her to bring in, nothing more. Still—
As she pedaled across an elderly suspension bridge, a sign welcomed her to Rampart City. Above the skyline of the city on the sign was a weird kind of stick figure with its arms turned down. What did that mean? She shook her head. She was here to find Cooper, not to see the sights.
The moment she was across the bridge, the bike disappeared beneath her, to dump her to the pavement. She did a complete somersault on the asphalt before she landed on her back. She realized the shotgun was gone. She looked around the pavement, but didn’t see it. For that matter, the shells had disappeared too. What was going on here?
A car screeched to a halt in front of her, to momentarily blind her. Despite that she couldn’t see, Sylvia recognized the woman’s voice as she asked, “Hey, kid, are you all right?”
“Charlotte?”
“You know me?”
“Not really.”
Sylvia’s vision cleared enough so she could see Charlotte Donovan in front of the car, dressed identically to Sylvia and with a cigarette in her mouth. “Need a lift?”
“Sure.”
***
Apparently the Charlotte Donovan in this world was a cop too. She was a captain from the badge she showed to Sylvia in the car. “Who are you?”
“Sylvia…Jones,” she said. She figured it would be better not to use her real name, which belonged to a dead woman here. Nor did she think it would be a good idea to mention she belonged to the New Stockholm Police Department, which didn’t exist here.
“Where you heading, Sylvia Jones?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I’m looking for someone.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“No, I mean I’m trying to find this guy named Tim Cooper.”
“He your boyfriend?”
“No! I’m…I’m a bounty hunter and he skipped bail. I think he came here.”
“Well, I could try running him through the computer.”
“That would be great. Thanks.”
Before Charlotte could do that, everything went dark around them. It wasn’t like a power outage so much as a complete eclipse—or like that black barrier outside town had fallen all around them, except Sylvia didn’t feel an electric tingle. The lights came back on a few seconds later. When they did, she saw Charlotte glare at her; a cigarette butt smoldered in the ashtray. “You know, it’s dangerous for a girl your age out here at this time of night. You could have been killed—or worse.”
“A girl my age—?” Sylvia lowered the sun visor and flipped up the mirror. In the mirror she saw a chubby face covered by a sheen of grease that proved to be a breeding ground for zits. She put a hand to her cheek and felt the zits there. She patted her hair, which fell now to her waist in a straight curtain that was unfashionably parted in the center. She tasted a metal tang in her mouth; she poked her tongue around to feel the braces she hadn’t worn since she was fifteen. Even her clothes had changed to a pastel pink T-shirt and black jeans with an elastic waist to accommodate a stomach bigger than Aggie’s had ever been. “What’s going on here? I’m not fifteen.”
“That’s right, you’re not. You’re only fourteen. That means you’re supposed to be in at eleven o’clock unless you’re accompanied by an adult. Or do you think the curfew doesn’t apply to you?”
“Curfew? Oh, right.” Sylvia remembered this conversation now. It was back during the awkward, chubby phase she had tried to expunge from her mother’s photo albums. At the time she didn’t have any friends in school, Mom was busy with two toddlers, and Daddy was going through his first bout of leukemia. When Mom screamed at her after she spilled a pot of spaghetti, Sylvia had taken off. She used what little money she had to take a bus into the city, where she figured she’d start over.
Detective Donovan had been the one to locate her and bring her back home. It was during this ride that Charlotte’s kindness had convinced Sylvia she wanted to be a cop. She went on a diet; she lost enough weight and gained enough muscle that she could pass the police academy. Eventually she had got her dream assignment—so she’d thought at the time—of being Charlotte’s partner. That dream had quickly turned to a nightmare that night on the docks.
The conversation went exactly as Sylvia remembered. Charlotte berated her, but at the same time she was gentle—at least for her. Sylvia knew her lines and injected them as needed. As this played out, she decided she must have blacked out, probably a delayed reaction from the fall. This must be a dream.
Charlotte put a hand on Sylvia’s shoulder as they turned the corner to Sylvia’s house. “I know you think things are bad, but from talking with your parents, I think you’ve got a great family there.”
“Nobody there cares about me anymore,” Sylvia repeated dutifully. She had certainly felt this at the time, lonely and jealous because she’d been the only child for so long and then had two much-younger sisters thrust upon her.
“Come on, kid, your parents love you. You should have heard your mom on the phone. I thought she was going to burst from crying so hard.”
“I don’t know—”
“Trust me, kid, you got a nice life there. Don’t throw it away for something stupid like a pot of spaghetti.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“That’s a girl.”
“Mom’s probably going to kill me when I get back.”
“I think she’ll just be happy to see you.” Charlotte pulled the cruiser into the driveway and parked. “Here you go.”
“You’re letting me go?”
“Sure. Just don’t let me catch you out here again. Otherwise I’m going to take you in. You got it?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now go in there and apologize to your parents. And give them a big hug, or else I might have to take you in.”
“I will.” She stopped on the front steps to wave at Charlotte before she pulled out of the driveway. Sylvia basked in that warm feeling for a moment; it had been good to see Charlotte again even if it was a dream or concussion fantasy or whatever.
She turned back to the front door and opened it. The moment she stepped across the threshold, she felt a wave of dizziness. The room seemed to swell around her. She reached out to brace herself against a table. As she did, she saw her reflection in the hall mirror and gasped.
She was no longer fourteen. From the braids, bangs, and freckles she figured she was about seven years old. She wore a stiff white dress with knee socks and glossy black loafers—her church clothes. She straightened to her full height; she wondered what scene from her life she would reenact now.
Another face appeared in the mirror. This one was a strange woman’s face. She had pale white skin, but the shape of her eyes and cheekbones had a distinctly Asian look. There was something familiar about her blue eyes, though. The woman’s face brightened as she smiled. “Hello, Aunt Sylvia. How nice of you to come.”
“Aunt Sylvia?”
“Well, you’re not really my aunt. The other Sylvia was. Or she would have been, if she’d lived long enough.”
Sylvia didn’t remember anything like this from her childhood. She must have gone beyond memories into some kind of nightmare. “I don’t understand,” she said. She hated how tiny and p
erky her voice sounded.
“I’m Renee Chiostro—Agnes’s daughter. Not your Agnes, the one from this universe.” Renee Chiostro waved her hand. “It’s all too complicated for your little mind, I suppose.”
“I’m not stupid.”
“I didn’t say you were. You just have a narrow view of the universe. Come, let’s sit down and talk.”
“I don’t want to.”
Renee clucked her tongue. “Now, Sylvia, it’s too soon for you to start acting so childish. Sit down, please. We have something to discuss.”
Since Renee was so much bigger than her, Sylvia didn’t see any choice but to do as she asked. She trudged over to the couch, hopped up, and tried not to focus on the fact that her feet could no longer touch the floor. Renee sat in a chair beside the couch; a tray of cookies and milk appeared on the coffee table. “Go ahead, they aren’t poisoned.”
“No thanks.”
“Oh, Sylvia, you’re disappointing me. Do you think I’d hurt my auntie?”
“I guess not.” Sylvia took a couple of cookies and a glass of milk. “What’s going on here? Am I dreaming?”
“No. You’re under my control. You see, I’m a witch.”
“You can’t be a witch. There’s no such thing.”
“Oh no?” Renee waved her hand again. A bouquet of flowers appeared in the air.
“Any magician can do that.”
Renee shrugged and then waved again. The flowers disappeared in a puff of smoke. Sylvia was about to say something when she felt something tight against her stomach. She looked down to see a gut pushed the seams of her dress to the limit. “Can a magician do that?”
“Hey!”
“You look so cute, like a miniature sumo wrestler. In fact—” Renee waved her hand again and Sylvia watched as her fat arms and legs turned brown. She leaned forward on the couch to see a rotund Asian girl with the turquoise pigtails of that other Renee.
Tales of the Scarlet Knight Collection: The Wrath of Isis Page 163