“This him?” the kid asked incredulously. “This the one they’re all bumping their gums about?” He turned to Montrose. “What’s the wire on this Joe? He’s still breathing!”
As if that was some kind of social blunder.
He turned back and peered at me, squinting his eyes. “He still has a heartbeat!”
“Which is mostly the point, I suppose,” Count Bubba replied.
Fafhrd made another urky sound. The Mouser was unconscious and silent.
“You gonna eat that or play with it some more?” the kid asked.
I dropped Commando Cruddie and glared at Montrose. “You didn’t tell me you were babysitting tonight.”
“Hey!”
“We don’t have time for this,” Montrose said. “J.D. meet Chris Cséjthe. Cséjthe, J.D.”
“Charmed,” I said.
“More’n I can say about you.”
“Now,” my undead doorman continued, “take a few swallows of blood before you fall over. . . .”
“I’m fine.”
“Casper the Friendly Ghost has more color than you,” he retorted. “And neither of us is keen on the idea of carrying you. What’s the matter? Squeamish?”
I nodded. “I knew this guy a dozen years back. I wouldn’t have let him handle my food then. What makes you think I would consider making him my food, now?”
The kid shook his head. “Besides being finicky about the torpedoes here, I think half-and-half’s problem is he ain’t got any teeth.”
“I’ve got teeth!” I said, baring mine.
“Not the pointy kind.”
He was right. Somehow in the grand melee and my subsequent flight, I had lost my prosthetic fangs.
Chalice had been standing there silently, holding the bloody scalpel by her side while we dithered. “Oh, for heavens sake!” she said now, stepping forward. She brought the blade up and touched it to the inside of her left forearm. “The BioWeb staff is required to take monthly blood tests and I can assure you that I am quite clean.” She drew the edge of the blade lightly across her skin and the red line in its wake quickly became a ribbon, then a spreading film. She raised her arm toward me and said, “Come on, Sam. Or Chris. Or whoever you are. We’re wasting time and I’d hate to waste any of this on the carpeting.” She tilted her head. “What’s the matter, don’t care for the brown sugar?”
My head was spinning—though whether from blood lost or blood being offered, I could not say. Instead, I said: “What’s the ideal woman?”
J.D. cocked an eyebrow.
“I’m a scientist, white boy,” she shot back. “I’m curious. And, as long as you don’t get greedy, I can spare a little. Besides, you told me, yourself, you haven’t got the saliva factor to infect me.”
I was in no condition to argue. I took her arm in my hands and bowed my head, bringing my mouth down to the cut. It was a terribly intimate act, and made all the more uncomfortable by the need to hurry and perform it in front of strangers. Chalice, herself, was nearly as much a stranger. All that was forgotten, however, as the first sip of blood entered my mouth.
It was more than drink, more than food.
It was the best sex I could remember and better than that.
It was speed and steroids mixed with honey and jalapenos.
It was molten sunshine seeking out the cold, dark regions of my innermost self.
All the way down to the cellular level I could feel a myriad of switches being flipped, the engines of life being revved.
A swallow and I could tell that my bleeding had stopped.
With a second swallow my head began to clear.
A third and I could feel tissue in my upper arm begin to re-knit. Not a lot but the healing process was already beginning.
A fourth and fifth were all I dared. I needed more for the process to quicken, for my strength and stamina to return to superhuman levels.
But I could not take the risks—the risk of delaying our escape any longer, of bleeding Chalice any further.
And the risk of losing my humanity, of feeding until she was utterly drained.
I raised my head and turned away as I licked my bloody lips. “Thank you,” I said, my voice uneven from the twin shocks of my wound and my quickened hunger. “We’d better go now.”
As we turned toward the door, Chalice balked. “I can’t,” she said.
Montrose and the kid looked puzzled.
“Báthory ordered her to come here and wait for her,” I explained. “She’s having trouble countermanding the geas.”
“If she was still tranced,” said the kid. “But get a slant on her peepers: she looks like she’s wide awake now.”
“Báthory must be reinforcing the command telepathically even as we speak,” I said. “I’ve seen this sort of thing before.”
“Then all the more reason to leave her behind,” Montrose said. “If Báthory has a psychic link with her, she’s not only a homing beacon but an open communications link, as well. She could listen in on everything we say; through her eyes, see everything we do.”
I shook my head. “I won’t leave her behind for that monster.”
The kid pulled out a pocket watch, popped the cover, and consulted the antique face. “Time to take it on the heel and toe. Past time. Would-a been easier while the joint was still jumping. Bet it’s a quiet riot downstairs, now.” He produced an old “police special.” At least it was special to the cops back in the nineteen forties. “Good thing you brought your own Roscoe; we may have to squirt metal on the run-out.”
I looked back at Montrose. “Where did you find this guy?”
“Don’t let the lingo throw you,” Montrose said, reaching behind the door. “He’s a solid back-up when he’s straight.”
“When he’s straight?”
Montrose retrieved Fafhrd’s nine and opened the door enough to let him slide to the floor. “Let’s continue this discussion in the stairwell.”
“I’m not leaving her!” My previous experience with Dracula’s mental control taught me the futility of trying to countermand an older vampire’s geas. There was, however, a chance that I could use my own fledgling powers of domination to put her to sleep and then carry her while she was unconscious.
If everyone would shut up long enough for me to concentrate.
“Ah, look,” said the kid, shoving the ancient .38 back inside his baggy jacket, “I got an idea.” He walked up to Chalice and stuck out his hand like an insurance salesman at a costume party. “Slip me some skin, babe, I’m J.D. and I’m your ticket outta here!”
As she tentatively extended her own hand, in turn, the kid looked up at the ceiling and exclaimed: “Holy crap! What’s that?”
I imagine we all looked up: I certainly did. There was nothing to see on the ceiling but we got an earful: the loud smack of a fist against flesh. An unconscious Chalice was sagging into the kid’s arms when I looked back.
Montrose caught my arm as I took a step toward them. “You wanted to bring her along. It’s the only way.”
“I’ll carry her,” I said.
“With that busted arm?” The kid hoisted Chalice over his shoulder. There was plenty of room: his jacket looked as if it used ironing boards for shoulder pads. “I got your frail. C’mon gate, let’s perambulate!”
I wasn’t happy about the arrangement but I didn’t have a better plan. And it was long past time to go. We exited the lab and hurried down the hall. Choosing an elevator was like playing Russian roulette—with most of the chambers loaded, as a single security guard could cover all the elevators on each floor. The stairs were a slightly better bet—but not by much. Since the back stairs were the logical escape route, we took the front.
Montrose stopped us just above the second-floor landing. “Vamp below,” he announced. “First floor.”
I reached for the silver-loaded Glock in my shoulder holster.
“Nice heater,” the kid observed. “Got a pillowcase to fit it?”
“What?”
�
��He means a silencer,” Count Bubba answered. “Fire that thing off in here and everyone in the building is going to hear it. Time to detour.” He reached for the door permitting egress to the second floor. It was a fire door and wouldn’t open.
The kid shifted Chalice’s center of gravity and kicked the door off its hinges.
“Oh,” I said, “that was nice and quiet.”
“Button yer yap,” the kid said, shifting Chalice to a better position. “There’s a bull down the hall wearing tin and packing iron.”
“Let me guess: a security guard.”
He looked at me as if I were slow. “That’s what I just said.”
Count Bubba stepped over the broken door. “They’re getting away!” he said. “Down the back stairwell! Hurry!” The mental reverberation was making my temples buzz. I stepped through the doorway in time to see the guard turn and start hurrying in the opposite direction.
“Nice,” I said. “I would’ve needed more time to convince him.”
“You’ll get better at it,” Montrose said, “if you live long enough.”
“And your odds would be better if we ditched the skirt,” the kid added.
“If I ditch anybody, it’ll be a certain hepbat,” I growled, “who needs his film noir projected where the moon don’t shine.”
He slid Chalice from his shoulder. “Wanna try me, Tepid? Come on, then,” he nodded at my dangling arm, “put up your duke.”
“Settle down, Beavis.”
“Hisst!” said Montrose. “The first-floor vamp is on his way up!”
The kid bent and moved Chalice away from the doorway. Both he and Count Bubba plastered themselves against the wall on either side of the door. All that was missing was some bait. What luck: I was available!
I started backing down the hall in the direction of the departed security guard, keeping an eye on the opening to the stairwell. As I moved, my shoulder bumped a projection from the wall: a fire alarm. I pulled it just as Báthory’s fanged goon appeared in the doorway.
The blaring of the alarm klaxon might be sufficient to cover the noise of gunshots now. I hauled the Glock back out but my companions were quicker. The kid stuck out a leg, tripping the vamp, and Montrose produced a sharpened wooden stake from a pocket in his overalls. Sixteen bars of “Dust in the Wind” and we were back in the stairwell, headed for the ground floor.
Pandemonium had ceased but it was still a disorganized circus. Cops were everywhere, gathering evidence, taking statements, and guiding a handcuffed Suann Cummings into the back of a squad car. Across the parking lot I spied detectives Ruiz and Murray standing between my car and the Nova, which was lopsidedly hiked up on a bumper jack with the rear tire missing. They were questioning a man in dark clothing and a watch cap.
“I’m going to have to bum a ride,” I said. “My car’s staked out.”
“My truck’s just down the hill,” Montrose answered. “I suggest we split up and J.D. will take Ms. Delacroix with him until we can meet up safely.”
I looked over at the kid. “No offense, Junior, but I’m not keen on leaving a living, breathing human in the custody of a vampire.”
“Hey, man, for a smoke chick she’s a real eye-grabber and I might have been tempted when I was alive. But I heard the dish: her blood’s too reet for my tastes.”
“So, you’re saying . . . what?”
Montrose interpreted. “J.D. has himself a nasty little habit. He prefers to mainline junkies. If they aren’t high, he isn’t hungry.”
“Your steroid buddies back there were more to my taste,” the kid added. “Too bad we didn’t have more time.”
“Well, it looks like there’s more where they came from,” I said. The man wearing the watch cap had turned his head and I got a better look at his face. It was Lenny. Lieutenant Birkmeister to you, Ensign Cséjthe!
The urge to whistle “That Old Gang of Mine” came and went quickly. “Louie” Lenny spotted us—more specifically, spotted me—and, for a long moment, it seemed that the jig was up.
One would think that carrying an unconscious woman toward the parking lot should elicit some response from the swarm of cops that were all around us. But, between the three of us, we seemed to be doing an adequate job of the old vampiric ability to “cloud men’s minds.” I doubted this little mental misdirection would be sufficient, however, once Birkmeister alerted Ruiz and Murray.
But he didn’t.
A long, searching look and he turned back to answer more questions from my detective twosome. The Chevy’s trunk was open but I couldn’t see if damning evidence still lay within. If it did, no one seemed particularly concerned with cataloging the contents.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” Montrose asked as we reached his pickup.
“Plan?” I hadn’t thought that far ahead.
“So far, we’re safe,” Montrose said. “You’re not. Nobody’s made us, yet.”
“Lieutenant Lenny just saw you with me.”
“If he’s human, it’s too dark and we’re too far away for a real description.” He turned to the kid. “Get her out of here, J.D. Take her back to my place. That’s where we’ll reassemble.”
The kid nodded once in agreement. Then he looked at me and grinned. “Now who’s babysitting?”
I couldn’t think of a suitable comeback even after he had dodged off into the darkness with Chalice Delacroix firmly balanced across his excessively padded shoulders. Instead I was thinking of Deirdre, still inside Erzsébet Báthory’s BioWeb fortress, surrounded by rings of armed and fanged security forces.
I had never felt so helpless.
“Cséjthe. Cséjthe!” Montrose waved his hand in my face. “Any reason to go back to your place?”
“My place?” I thought about Deirdre
“That’s the first place she’ll look once she knows you’re gone. If you need to grab something, it’s now or never.”
I thought about Terry-call-me-T whom I’d left on my couch like a complementary mint. I thought about Countess Báthory’s tastes for young female flesh. For Deirdre’s sake, I prayed that those tastes were confined to living rather than undead flesh.
I nearly pulled the door of the pickup off as I wrenched it open.
“Let’s go!”
Chapter Seventeen
Montrose’s face took on a satanic cast in the red-orange wash from the dashboard lights.
“Okay,” he said, “give. I’m doing this because Mama Samm asked me to. Reason enough, I suppose. But I might feel a sight better about risking my neck—not to mention a hundred and forty-some years of quiet, undiscovered residency—if you were to shed a bit more light on just what is really going on.”
“What’s going on?”
He shrugged. “You know. Genetics research, mosquito breeding labs, paramilitary freelancers, undead security, zombies. . . . I get the feeling that something just isn’t quite normal, and I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
“Hardy har,” I said.
“My military compadrés seem to be all lathered up about little gray men. Should I be adding flying saucers to my list?”
“I don’t believe the diminutive was invoked. There is military involved—although I suspect they’re either backroom or illegit. I think that’s what they mean by the gray men. Nothing extraterrestrial.” I sighed. “I hope.”
“Glad to hear that. It’s been a century and a half but I remember a couple of boys in our company had soldier’s hearts.”
“Soldier’s hearts?”
“That’s what we called it back then. Something would break inside. Disconnect. We’d say, ‘he has a soldier’s heart.’ During World War I it was called shellshock. World War II: battle fatigue. I’m not sure about Korea—I slept a lot during the fifties. Boredom, I suppose. Then it was delayed stress syndrome after Vietnam.”
“Soldier’s heart,” I said softly. “I like that.”
“Nothing to like about it,” he said grimly. “Especially when death doesn’t bring release. You die an
d find that you’re still lost, still crouched down in the cold and the dark. My boys need to go home, Mr. Cséjthe. Can you help us?”
Was there a Good Samaritan law for the deceased? My initial impression—once I learned that vampires actually existed—was that they were soulless killing machines, bereft of any semblance of humanity. Perhaps that was more a matter of “nurture” than “nature.” Cut off from the world of the living, forced to live as both hunter and hunted, their alliances would predictably turn from the living to the dead. But the depths of Pagelovitch’s concern for those he ruled in Seattle and now Montrose’s allegiance to his former comrades continued to surprise me. “I wish I could,” I said. “Honest to God—if there is one. But I can’t even help myself.”
“I thought you were Baron Samedi.”
“You and half the dead in this parish.”
“What do they want?”
“Justice.”
“For what?”
I stared into the darkness beyond the windshield. “I don’t know. There’s a teenage runaway—” I hiccupped a short, bitter laugh. “That is so . . . un-funny. Kandi Fenoli. She was raped, sodomized, and murdered. Her killer cut her hands off so her fingerprints couldn’t identify her. He either didn’t have the time or the smarts to consider her dental records . . .
“After her death she escaped from two different parish morgues and walked a hundred miles to ask me a question.”
“What was the question?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. We keep getting interrupted. Then there’s Chalice’s daddy.”
“Chalice’s daddy?”
“Never mind. Long story. Bottom line: I was supposed to protect his daughter and avenge his death.”
“I take it his death is connected to the gray men?”
I nodded. “I’m starting to think so, yes.”
“Suspicious circumstances?”
I thought about Delacroix’s last words as he dragged that vampire into the crematory oven. “I think he was telling me that he was murdered.”
“Murdered? As in after the fact?”
“The coroner’s report stated he succumbed to a heart attack with complications induced by severe influenza.”
Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II Page 27