What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t quite go into a normal emergency room and tell them what was wrong with me. I doubted anyone at the Cleveland Clinic had vampirism as a specialty. Once again I was forced to drive the Olds one-handed. It made me thankful that it was an automatic.
The sky was still a light azure when I pulled out of the garage. The streetlights were just coming on. It was barely quarter after six, and the city was still wrapped with people. It was Monday afternoon, and the people, and the traffic, made me feel part of the world for a while.
It was too easy to become lost in the night. Too easy to feel alone. I missed the light.
I’d left the downtown area, and was driving past the Cleveland Clinic. Sam lived in University Circle, that’s where I was heading. I needed to see Gail, but my hand was becoming harder to ignore.
The base of my thumb had begun to discolor. It was only the color of a bruise, but in contrast to the blank whiteness around it, it was as livid as an open wound. I still felt nothing.
How was I supposed to deal with this? I needed to find out, before it became any worse. I pulled over and got out of the car next to a pay phone. I only knew one source of information who might know how to handle this. I called the number on Gabriel’s card.
I stood there, holding the receiver with my shoulder. It rang a few times, and then I heard the familiar electronic voice. “You have reached an automated voice messaging system. At the sound of the beep, speak your own name slowly and clearly. If your response is unclear or unacceptable, you will be disconnected.”
In response to the beep, I said, “Kane Tyler.”
Up until then it had gone just as before. But in response to my name, it said, “I am not able to respond to ‘Kane Tyler.’ ” It was my voice, complete with traffic noise in the background. The machine clicked, and I heard a dial tone.
“No ...” I hung up and tried again. I hoped that I just hadn’t spoken clearly enough for the machine to recognize me. I got the same response a second time, and a third.
I slammed the receiver down on the cradle. The bastard had cut me off. Damn Gabriel and his preoccupation with status. I could see his thinking. In his eyes, it wasn’t proper to for me to initiate a contact with him—and that was annoying as hell.
I looked at my hand. Annoying? It might be deadly. Fuck I wasn’t going to let them lose me that easily. People hung up on me all the time. I had something better. I had an address. That house of Gabriel’s held more than Gabriel, and somewhere there was someone who would talk to me.
“What about Gail?” I whispered.
I stood there on the curb staring at my hand. Snow fell, and when the snow touched my left hand it didn’t melt. I felt no pain, no cold. My hand didn’t even feel part of my body anymore.
I told myself that it had happened twelve hours ago, and the effects hadn’t spread beyond my hand. I doubted spending some time with Gail could make things worse; the damage was done.
I shouldered the receiver again and fished out another quarter. I called Sam’s apartment. The phone barely rang once when I heard Sam’s voice, “Gail?”
I stood there, frozen by all the possible evils that one word could mean. Gail wasn’t at Sam’s like she was supposed to be. Sam was worried, I heard it in his voice. That meant ...
I didn’t even want to consider what that meant.
“Hello?” Sam said.
I had to force myself to breathe so I could get the words out. “What’s happened, Sam?”
“Christ, Kane, why aren’t you at the motel?”
“Gail—” My voice sounded strangled. “Where is she, Sam?” I asked in a hoarse whisper. My breathing was so shallow that my voice didn’t even fog the air.
“She was supposed to drive here with the cop—”
“Fuck ‘supposed to!’ What in hell did happen?”
“She took her own car, Kane. I’m sorry.”
“My God, what kind of protection is that? How did—Where—”
“She slipped away from her cop. The only word was a message she left on my voice mail; she’s coming to see you.”
“How? She doesn’t know where I am—” I stopped. The phone slipped out of my fingers.
“Kane? Kane?”
“The motel,” I whispered. “She’s going to the motel.” Gail knew where I was supposed to be staying.
The receiver swung free as I ran back to the Oldsmobile. She knew about the motel. I needed to get there before she met anyone else who knew about that motel.
I raced back to the motel. I drove with my bad hand, pressing the palm to the wheel and steering by friction. I was making it worse, but I wasn’t giving up any of the time it took to drive one-handed. I sped most of the way there, slowing only when I actually saw a cop.
My mind was tumbling with ugly emotions, fear, anger, anticipated grief. I knew that if Gail was harmed, the person responsible would be torn apart at my hands. I tried to tell myself that she would be there, and fine, but Sam’s voice ... he knew I wasn’t at the motel, that meant he had been calling. She wasn’t there yet. Or she had been there already and—
The shift lever bent in my hand, and I tried to force myself to think of driving.
It was ten after seven when I skidded the Olds into the parking lot of the Woodstar Motel. The Olds threw a shower of snow across the parked cars as if it were a two-ton figure skater. The moment the car stopped moving, I grabbed the keys and dived out into the cold night air.
I looked at the lot, checking the cars. The Chevette, my car, was still there, buried up to the fenders. The Olds blocked it in now, parked cockeyed in the center of the parking lot.
Also here was Gail’s car. I knew it the minute I saw it. It was an ancient lemon-yellow Volkswagon Rabbit with an Oberlin College sticker in the rear window.
“Maybe she just got here,” I whispered.
I edged up on the Rabbit and placed my right hand on its hood. The hood was cold, and the snow dusted the car evenly. I looked back, up the street. I didn’t see Sebastian’s men. I looked toward the front of the motel, at the glass-fronted manager’s office, and saw no one inside.
There was nowhere left except my room.
I felt my heart beat, much too slowly for how I felt. I fished the motel key out of my pocket one-handed as I ran up the stairs. When I closed on my room, I slowed. I could see lights glowing around the shades in the window.
I inched toward the door, listening.
The TV was on in there.
Gail? Would she’ve been able to talk her way in? I looked down at the doorknob and saw the fresh scratches of a real amateur jimmying the door open.
When I saw that, I pocketed the motel key and drew the Eagle.
I took a deep breath and kicked the door open, leveling the gun at the room. The door slammed into the room, jingling broken hardware.
There was Bowie, on the bed, beer in his hand, watching the motel’s piped-in pornography. He looked at me and said, “And where the fuck did you go?”
I almost shot him right there. Instead I yelled at him, “Where the hell is Gail?”
Bowie looked as innocent as I suppose he was capable of. “Who?”
“My daughter, you bastard!”
He shrugged and sat up, chugging the beer in a way that made me feel sick to my stomach. “Why would I know?”
“Because you’re here,” I leveled the Eagle at him. “And if you don’t explain what you’re doing here, I am going to decorate the wall with parts of that skinny torso of yours.”
Bowie spread his arms wide and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Hold the phone, I was supposed to be helping you, remember? Doctor and all that.”
“What are you doing in my room?”
“Looking for you. You ran out on me and Leia. Where else do I have to look for you, huh?”
“You make a habit of jimmying the doors of people you’re trying to help?”
“Fuck it, Kane.” Bowie grimaced at the can, crushed it, and tossed it out the doo
r, through my legs. “Did I know what state you were in? You could’ve been catatonic on the floor for all I knew.” He shook his head and said, “Why don’t you come in here and put that cannon away?”
I looked at him and decided, even if Bowie weren’t completely sincere, he wasn’t immediately threatening. I holstered the gun and pushed the door shut with my foot.
The door closed crooked and left in a draft. Luckily, the latch still caught, even after the violence done to it. I leaned against it, and looked at Bowie, keeping my eyes averted from the mirror on the bureau.
Bowie had made himself at home. The remains of a six-pack littered the floor, and he had moved the TV away from the bureau so it sat at the foot of the bed.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I said. “Where’s my daughter?”
“I’m telling you,” Bowie said. “I. Don’t. Know.”
“Her car’s outside—”
“She never came here, man. I been up here almost since you slipped out on me....”
I looked for the phone, it wasn’t on the night table anymore. “And you haven’t picked up the phone?”
“They’re your messages. I was trying to keep a low profile.”
“Yeah, right. Where is—” The phone began to ring before I had a chance to ask. The sound was muffled, and it was hard to tell where it was coming from.
“Under the bed,” Bowie said.
“Under the—” I knelt and the phone was there, wrapped in a pillow.
“Too many calls, man.” Bowie explained. “The noise was distracting.”
I grabbed the phone out on the third ring, “Hello.”
I was expecting Sam’s voice. Instead I heard, “Dad?” “Gail? Christ, baby, where are you? You have no idea how worried I was.”
There was a pause as she took a breath.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Dad, I’m sorry, I think I’ve screwed things up.”
“Whatever it is, I forgive you. You’re all right?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Now where are you?”
“Bratenahl.”
“Bratenahl? You’re in Bratenahl? How did—” I paused for a while as it sank in. My employer, Mr. Sebastian, had an estate in Bratenhl. “Oh, no,” I whispered. “What does he want?”
“He said that you were just supposed to come down here. He wants to talk to you real bad.”
“If he hurts you—”
“He’s been nice, really.”
“Nice?” I shouted into the phone. “That bastard’s a goddamned drug-dealer. He kidnapped you!”
There was a long pause.
“Gail? Gail?”
“Look, Dad, I’m sorry. He didn’t kidnap me.”
“What?”
“They said that they’d give me a chance to see you. You weren’t answering your phone, and you already disappeared once. And you are working for him, aren’t you?” I could hear the tears in her voice. “I fucked up again, Dad. I’m sorry.”
“Shh. It’s all right, I’m coming down there, okay?”
I heard her sniff. “Okay. He wants you to come alone, with his car.”
“I’ll see you soon, baby.”
“Yeah, Dad. Love you.”
“Love you.” I waited to hear the click of a disconnection. Then I slammed the receiver back on its cradle hard enough to explode the phone’s plastic shell.
“You bastard, Sebastian!” I yelled at the walls.
“What’s going on?” Bowie asked.
“I’m going to see my daughter,” I said, yanking the broken door open. I left Bowie to his beer cans and his pornography.
18
The ride gave me time to think, not necessarily a good thing. Feelings washed over me in cycles: first anger, then black depressive guilt, then numbed fear, then rage again. It was very hard to hold my mind together. Whatever I thought about, I kept coming back to Gail, and what I had become.
I kept blaming myself for involving her in this. I had the sick feeling that somehow my job was responsible. I was, or I had been, a private investigator hunting missing children, runaways, parental kidnappings. How could I do that for a living without somehow dragging my own daughter in? I had seen Gail in every case I worked; that had been what destroyed my marriage....
My own obsession blamed itself for her involvement, as if my perpetual worry were a self-fulfilling prophecy.
God, I had entered this line of work because I thought it was safer. It was as thankless a job as being a policeman, especially in the custody cases, but it had been supposed to be better. The bullet that pierced my lung made me believe that working on the force was too reckless for a man with a family. So I took a job that destroyed the family that I was trying to protect.
Sebastian had hired me to find his daughter Cecilia. He had put me under surveillance, and I was certain that the cops who had tried to kill me were on his payroll. At this point I didn’t know what he was capable of. Now he had my daughter.
And I worked for him.
My vision blurred, fuzzing the streetlights. With all the strangeness going on in my body, I found the tears reassuring.
This had to stop, somehow. It was bad enough that Gail had run into the human part of this travesty. I had to do everything within my power to prevent her from becoming ensnared in the undead half of everything. It was a sick thing to think, but with Childe out there—with his cult out there—maybe being with Sebastian was the safest place for her.
It was nearly eight when I reached Bratenahl, a suburb of walled estates, gatehouses, and garages bigger than my house.
Sebastian lived in a Rockefeller-era mansion of gray stone. The cobbled drive was flanked by a pair of bronze lions gone white with frost. There was no gate barring the Olds as I followed the circular drive to the front of the house, but I noted more than a few anachronistic security cameras panning along the wrought-iron fence surrounding the property. The cameras hung from the eaves, poked out from odd bits of landscaping, and one even nestled in the arms of a century-old oak that dominated the lawn between the mansion and the gatehouse in front.
I pulled the Olds to a stop at the front door. The main entrance was a Gothic stone arch filled with a massive pair of oak doors, and flanked by an acre of leaded glass.
In ’77 I was a rookie, and I had busted Sebastian for a dime bag. Somewhere between then and now I had retired, and Sebastian had done five years at Lucasville. Now he lived here, the home of a millionaire with a few zeros to spare.
I opened the door and slid out, shoving my bad hand in the pocket of my jacket.
The massive doors opened, and Bishop and Mr. Gestapo stepped out to greet me. “Welcome, Mr. Tyler,” said Bishop. “Mr. Sebastian is eager to meet with you, finally.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything that wouldn’t sound like a threat. As choked by anger as I was, I still knew I didn’t want to antagonize anyone needlessly.
“The weapon, if you please?” Bishop held out his hand. I wasn’t in a position to argue. I drew the Eagle and handed it over to him. Bishop took it, gave it an admiring glance, checked the safety, and slipped it into his waistband.
Mr. Gestapo was much less polite. He held out a sweaty palm and said, “Keys.”
I looked at him, tempted to toss the keys at his feet. Again, though, there was little profit in antagonizing people right now. I dropped the keys into his hand.
“Come with me,” Bishop said. As he led me toward the massive doors, Mr. Gestapo drove the Olds away toward the gatehouse.
Bishop led me through a central hall dominated by a massive staircase. The stairs sat below tall windows that faced north, toward the lake. In daylight it must have been a seven-figure view, but right now the windows were blank, an acre of dead black broken only by the reflection of the chandelier.
Bishop took me along a broad corridor leading off the entry hall. He delivered me into a library that could have comfortably fit most of Childe’s apartment inside it. The
ceiling was eighteen feet high, and the fireplace, currently roaring away, could have doubled as a garage.
Sebastian stood facing away from me, the fireplace, and the door. He was looking out a set of French doors that opened up on a slightly lesser darkness than the windows in the entry hall.
“Sit down.” Sebastian’s voice was a perfect Midwestern null. The voice was at odds with the rest of him. He had dark curly hair, and swarthy Mediterranean features. He had the look of old-world Europe about him.
“Where’s my daughter?” I said.
“Where is my daughter? Sit down, Mr. Tyler.”
I sat down on one of two leather chairs facing the fire. I noticed the bullet holes in my shirt. I pulled my coat over to hide them. The damage to my trench coat was less obvious; the bullet’s damage was hidden in the midst of all the other damage I’d done to my coat.
“I’m looking for Cecilia,” I said. “My job, remember?”
I had to half-turn to see Sebastian, who remained staring out the windows. When I turned, I ignited a new ache in my left wrist, still wedged in the pocket of my jacket. I tried to adjust my body to ease the pressure on my hand. I didn’t try to remove it from my pocket.
“I’ve tried very hard to hate you, Tyler,” he said. It wasn’t what I expected from him. I felt the need to say something, but I had absolutely no idea what it could have been.
Facing out the window, fiddling with his hands, Sebastian talked on as if I weren’t quite there. “When you first turned me down, I tried to hate you. Your accusations, ‘How could something as evil as I, a drug dealer, be a decent father—’ You have no idea of the anger I felt. What I felt because I still needed you.”
“You’re not helping by taking Gail—”
Sebastian raised his head, as if he were talking to a bird perched on the transom of his door. “Am I? I’ve seen those tapes. Your daughter needs protection, as my own daughter needed protection.”
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