Night Mask (27 page)

“Perhaps he never will, darling,” Jack replied.

“Perhaps you're right.”

“Such a pity,” Jimmi Lee said. “But it must be him.”

“Bad grammar, dear. But don't belabor the obvious. Shall we resume play, Leo?” Jack asked, as he lifted his Uzi. Leo hit the floor as the lead howled and bounced all around him.

Lani crawled over to Leo. “That's not possible... What you did. I saw it. He's
dead
!”

“No. But bullets won't kill either one of them.”

“What? What are you talking about? What do you mean?”

“Later.”

“Fuck later! They're not trying to kill us. I get the impression they want us to kill
them!
”

“Again.”

“
Again?
Again what?”

“Oh, my, sister dear!” Jack said. “I was right. He really is a bright boy. Just listen to them.”

“But the cunt is stupid as shit.”

Lani narrowed her eyes at that.

“It's time, Leo. You must know what to do,” Jimmi Lee said.

“I don't know what to do!” Leo yelled.

“Yes, you do, darling,” Jimmi Lee said. “You were born to do it.”

“Where were you born, Leo?” Lani suddenly asked. “You've never said.”

Jack and Jimmi Lee both laughed.

Leo stood up then, and faced the pair of loonies. Lani slowly rose to stand beside him.

“Yes, Leo,” Jack said. “Do tell us where you were born.”

“I don't know,” Leo spoke to the buckshot-mangled and bloody man. “I'm adopted.”

“Yes,” Jimmi Lee said. “We know.”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“We know many things that you don't know.” Jack smiled. “You bastard whelp out of a priest and a nun!”

Leo did not lose his composure. “None of us have the option of choosing our parents.”

Jimmi Lee giggled. She coyly covered her mouth with one dainty-looking hand. But Leo was of the opinion that hand was much stronger than it appeared. “Stop playing with him, brother. Tell him the truth. We don't have time for games.”

“Oh, very well. Our parents, whom you two got to know quite well during your snooping around back in New York—not as well as you think, but well enough—had four children. The firstborn was not marked to carry on. He was given up for adoption. Of the triplets, who were born some years later, only two were suitable to carry on the family tradition. One of them was given up for adoption. You see, Leo, you and Stacy Ryan are brother and sister.” His smile was grotesque.

“Hello, big brother,” Jimmi Lee said with a giggle.

“I don't believe you,” Leo said.

“Oh, it's true,” Jack said. “What reason would we have to lie? Do you think our coming here to La Barca was mere coincidence? Why not Los Angeles instead? It's much larger, and it would have been so much more difficult for the pigs to catch us. No, Leo. We have to use you and Lani in order to live.”

“Now, wait just a damn minute!” Lani said. “You're saying, I think, that you both are some sort of... immortals?”

“Ummm,” Jack mused. “Well, yes. If you wish to put it that way.”

Leo had been looking for the two remaining locals who had joined the Longwood boys. His eyes finally found them, sprawled in pools of blood behind a crate. His last blasts of buckshot must have caught them. He shifted his gaze back to Jack. “If you two are immortals, why weren't your parents?”

“Oh, they were,” Jimmi said.

“But you killed them!” Lani blurted.

“No, we didn't. They're alive and doing quite well, thank you.”

“But the police positively ID'd them,” Leo said.

“They ID'd them as best they could. It's rather difficult to identify someone without hands or a head.”

“Who were the man and woman you killed?”

“Transients we found on the road and brought to the house,” Jack said. “Throwaway people. They were of no significance.”

“Where are your parents?” Lani asked.

But Jack and Jimmi Lee would only smile at that.

Lani suddenly burst out in a fit of giggling as a wild thought hit her.

Leo looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses. “You find this funny?”

“I keep looking around for John Carradine and Boris Karloff to stroll in.”

“Oh, that's funny!” Jimmi Lee said, and laughed. Then she waved a hand effeminately and all humor left her. “Get on with it, Jack,” she said harshly. “We're running out of time.”

Jack's eyes turned cruel and evil as he stared at Leo. “Are you both ready?”

“Well, goddamn, man . . . whatever you are,” Leo flared. “Ready for
what?
”

“They're crazy,” Lani said.

“Hardly,” Jimmi Lee said, adding, “you stupid bitch!”

Lani jerked her 9 mm from leather and emptied it into the woman's chest. The force of the many hollow-nosed slugs knocked Jimmi Lee off her feet and to the dirty and bloodstained floor.

Jack stood unmoved by the sight. He smiled at Lani. “That, dear, was a very futile act.”

Jimmi Lee crawled to her feet. Her blouse was bullet-pocked and wet with blood. She smiled at Lani. “You really are quite proficient with that weapon, aren't you?”

Lani ejected the empty magazine and tried to insert a full one. Her hands were shaking so badly, that Leo had to take the weapon and click the full mag into the butt. The slide slammed home. He handed the weapon back to Lani. “Put it away. It's useless.” He looked at Jack. “We're good and you're evil. Is that it?”

“That's part of it. But you're not all good. You're a team. A combination of good and evil. We need that.”

“I'm evil?” Lani found her voice.

“Your grandfather was, back in Louisiana,” Jimmi Lee said, a disgusted look on her face as she held out her ruined blouse with her fingertips. “I paid a hundred dollars for this.”

“My
grandpere
was a kind, gentle man,” Lani said, slipping into a word of Cajun.

“Your grandfather was a
loup-garou,
” Jack said.

“That's a goddamn lie!” Lani flared. “My
grandpere
was no damn werewolf.”

“Oh, yes, he was. He prowled the bayous at nights, when the moon was full and blood-red. We know all about you. Your blood is dark and tainted.”

Before Lani could once more deny the charge, Leo said, “You don't want us to kill you. You could have killed us a dozen times over. But we're no good to you dead. You want to become
us.
”

“Oh, my!” Jimmi Lee said. “He is a bright boy, isn't he?”

“Well, now,” Jack said with a smile. “You almost completed the puzzle, Leo. You win the cigar.”

“How in the hell do you plan to
become
us?” Lani questioned.

“Well . . . I will admit that it is rather an awkward procedure, quite pleasurable for us. But the both of you will have some slight discomfort. However, we'll try to make this as painless as possible.”

“Fuck you both!” Leo said.

“Really!” Jimmi Lee said brightly. “Oh, goody. That can certainly be arranged.” She started to peel out of her bloody blouse.

“Figuratively speaking,” Leo quickly added.

“Shit!” Jimmi Lee said.

“That's how it's done,” Lani slipped the final piece of the puzzle into place. “Got to be. She was too damn eager to oblige, Leo.”

Jimmi turned mean eyes to Lani. “You're not quite as stupid as you first appeared, dear.”

“Hell with you, lady—Jim—whatever the hell you are,” Lani told her.

“No, dear. Not yet, for us. Hell is where you and your partner are going.”

Jack smiled. “Slipping into the vernacular of your relatives down yonder on the bayou, dear—why don't you just shuck out of them drawers and let's fuck!”

Leo jerked up his shotgun and blew Jack's face into a bloody mask of blood and shredded tissue, the force knocking the man to the floor. “Run, Lani! Go, damnit, go!”

But Lani wasn't about to desert her partner of so many years. She grabbed her shotgun and turned Jimmi's face into the twin of Jack's. “Now, we run!” she yelled, and the both of them took off for the open side door.

Jimmi Lee jumped to her feet and looked wildly around her. One eyeball was hanging down on her cheek. She paused long enough to jam the eye back into the socket and locate the running cops. She screamed and took off after them. Leo paused in his dash for the door and leveled his shotgun, shooting the woman four times in the stomach, chest, neck, and face; the shotgun jerked upward with each boom. She staggered and stumbled, but kept right on coming, covered with blood.

“She won't go down for me, Lani!” Leo yelled.

“This is no time to be thinking of sex, Leo!”

Street-hardened cops often develop a very wild and weird sense of humor.

Leo watched Lani make the door, just as Jimmi Lee came within swinging range of him. He reversed the shotgun and, using all his strength, hit her in the face with the butt of it. He hit her so hard the stock broke off. Jimmi's feet flew out from under her, and she hit the floor. Leo turned and jumped out into the welcome but waning daylight.

A dozen vehicles from the local PD, Sheriff's Department, and CHP were wailing up, as Lani and Leo ran to the front of the building.

“Circle the building!” Lani yelled, frantically shoving loads into her 12-gauge “Shoot anything that comes out. Use your shotguns and keep pumping the buckshot at them. Drive them back inside.”

Brownie and Gene Clark jumped out of their cars just as Anna was driven up, riding with Brenda and Ted; Connie and Frank were right behind them. “What the hell is going on?” Brownie yelled, just as Jimmi Lee came screaming out of the warehouse, the flesh of her face hanging down in bloody shreds and her throat and chest shot full of holes. Still, she kept on coming. “Good God in Heaven!” the sheriff yelled. “What the hell is
that?”

Lani put five loads of buckshot into the woman, knocking her to the ground.

“Keep the press out!” Leo shouted. “Shoot them if you have to, but keep them out of here. Don't let them film this.”

Jack staggered out of the side door and looked all around him. Half his head was missing, and he could only see out of his right eye. He spotted Lani and laughed.

Leo picked up a length of steel concrete reinforcing rod, about five feet long, and walked toward Jack Longwood.

“What the hell are you doing, Leo!” Ted yelled. “For God's sake, man, get back, get back!”

Lani dropped her shotgun to the ground and picked up a length of steel rod about the same size as Leo's. She joined him in his slow walk toward Jack and Jimmi Lee, who was rising to her feet. The brother and sister stood like some bloody monsters from out of a terrible nightmare.

Jack and Jimmi Lee both laughed and then charged the cops, screaming in some language that had been unused for thousands of years and was understood only by the undead.

Dozens of cops stood in silence and watched the unthinkable events play out before them.

As if they had been rehearsing for this moment all their lives—and they probably, unknowingly, had— Lani and Leo sidestepped the charge of the brother and sister and drove the steel rods into the chests of Jim and Jack Longwood, piercing the hearts. The brother and sister fell to the ground. They did not move. They were dead. It was over.

As much as it would ever be over for Lani and Leo.

Brownie was issuing no statements on the case other than that it was over. He would have an official statement after reading the reports from Leo Franks and Lani Prejean. When a network reporter insisted on a statement, Brownie walked out of the room, after having come perilously close to telling the reporter (Brownie couldn't stand the guy anyway) to go screw himself . . . with a Roto-Rooter.

About thirty minutes later, after Brownie read the preliminary workup sheets, he seriously thought he might be suffering a massive heart attack. When he had recovered, he shouted, “Leaping Jesus Christ!”

“He read the prelim workup,” Lani said.

“Holy Joseph fucking Mary!” Brownie squalled, his voice carrying all over the huge building.

“I do believe you're right,” Leo said.

“Great God Almighty!” Brownie screamed. “Werewolves!”

“I wonder if my granddaddy
was a loup-garou?”
Lani mused aloud.

“Ask your parents.”

“I believe I will.”

“Immortals!” Brownie shouted. “Demonic shape-changers!”

“At least you have parents to ask,” Leo said.

Lani touched his hand. “We just might both have bad blood in of us, Leo.”

“Holy shit!” Brownie finished the report. The volume of his shouting had not lessened.

Leo looked at his watch. “Thirty seconds to go.”

They both heard a door slam.

“Twenty,” Lani said.

“Get out of my way, goddamnit! Move that chair. Clear the aisle!”

“Ten,” Leo said.

“I want everybody out of the room adjacent to Leo's office! Move, goddamnit!”

“Now,” Lani said.

The door was flung open, then slammed closed. Brownie leaned over the table.

“Watch your blood pressure, Brownie,” Leo said.

“Yeah, boss, you look really terrible,” Lani said. “You want me to make you some chicken soup, maybe?”

Brownie glared at her. “You're a Cajun from Louisiana, for Christ sake. What the hell do you know about making chicken soup?”

Lani looked hurt. “I can make a gumbo.”

“The last time I ate a bowl of your gumbo, I squirted fire for three days. And don't change the subject.”

“What subject might that be, Brownie?” Leo asked.

“What subject?” Brownie shook the papers in front of the two cops. “This goddamn subject. Werewolves? Immortals? Stakes through the heart. I mean, come on now. You can't expect me to stand up on a nationwide TV and radio hookup and read this. Can you?”

“It's what happened, Brownie,” Lani said. “It's the truth. You were there the last few minutes. You saw enough to know we weren't dealing with mere human beings.”

Brownie relaxed and sat down. Leo got him a cup of coffee. He took a sip and sighed. “Jesus, what am I going to say to the press?”

“Brownie, you want us to falsify a report?” Leo asked. “All you have to do is say the word.”

“I won't order you to do that. I would never order a cop to do that.”

Lani looked at her copy of the prelim. “We can rewrite it and still tell the truth; we'll just leave a few facts out. But everything else will be the truth. As far as we know it. Sheriff, I . . .” She shrugged her shoulders and closed her mouth.

“I know, Lani. I inspected the warehouse. What else is there to say?”

“Nothing,” Leo finished it.

* * *

Lani and Leo worked up their reports and Brownie was satisfied and so was the press. The reign of terror was over. Now the cops could get back to the everyday routine of child abuse, elderly abuse, animal abuse, murder, rape, kidnapping, domestic disturbances, holdups, prostitution, gambling, gangs, hit and run, DWI, and drugs . . . all pretty mundane stuff.

Jack and Jim Longwood had been correct about at least one thing: their trail of blood set records in America that surpassed even that of Vlad the Impaler.

Connie and Frank turned the classified information about the elder Longwoods still being alive over to their superiors in the Bureau. If anything was ever done about it, that news never reached Lani and Leo.

Lani called her parents and inquired about her grandfather's background. Her mother told her never to ask again and hung up on her.

Stacy Ryan and Leo Franks could have sued for their share of the Longwood monies. They did not. Stacy continued to run KSIN, and Leo was promoted to the rank of lieutenant on the Hancock County Sheriff's Department, and Lani was promoted to sergeant.

At the insistence of Lani and Leo, the bodies of Jack and Jim Longwood were cremated and the ashes sealed in a concrete and steel tomb.

On the afternoon following the cremation and burial of Jack and Jim Longwood, Leo got a call at his office. Father Daniel from his flower shop back in New York State. Leo listened, said goodbye, and hung up.

“What?” Lani asked, after looking at the strange expression on her partner's face.

“The old Longwood mansion in Albany.”

“What about it?”

“It collapsed about an hour ago.”