Vampires (18 page)

“This is the game, Felix. This is it. I can't quit because I'm the symbol. They know my name. You can't because you're the best there is and that's the part you don't like!”

“Bullshit, Crow!”

“Is it? Is it? Hadn't thought about your own team, had you? Hell, no. If you had thought, which you by God didn't want to do, you'd have realized they wouldn't leave me and you would have to do it on your own. But you don't want to do that. You don't want to do it at all!”

Felix was out of his chair in a flash.

“You calling me a coward?”

And Davette couldn't take it anymore. Suddenly she was there, standing beside the two heaving chests, her voice that of a small child, a small doll.

“Don't . . .” she whispered, the tears already starting to pour, “. .. don't . . . please, don't.”

“I don't know what I'm calling you, Felix!” yelled Crow. “Because I don't know what the fuck you are!”

Felix's voice was stone. “Then try something.”

And they all thought the fight would start then and it should have, really. But a piece of Jack was also shouting at him. Leadership, goddammit!

And so he took a breath and backed off a bit and tried again.

"Felix, I can't quit just because they know my name. Is the next guy gonna do the same? That's all it takes. They know if they can find out who we are they can run us off? We can't. We're it. This is the game!

“Look. I'm sorry if this comes at a bad time in your life, Felix. But it always does, dammit!” And then Crow felt the anger spurt out and he lost it again.

“You're just gonna have to see if you're man enough to face it!”

And Felix barked, “Fuck off!” He turned to the others. "Fuck you all. .

And Davette's baby voice sighed, "No . . . no no...

And for a second they stopped and looked at her. But then Felix shook it off. He reached down and picked up his cigarettes and stuffed them in his pocket and stalked toward the door.

“Die, then!” he shouted at the room. "Die if you want to! Die for his ego or senility or whatever

Davette was chasing him, her arms held out. "Please please. .

“Forget it!” he stormed at her. “All of you, forget it!”

“You can't...” she pleaded and the sobs shook her tiny form.

But he could. He could do what everyone had known for hours he was going to do."

“I quit,” said Felix.

And Davette's voice came out strong and full and she cried out, "You can't! You don't know what they can do to people! You don't know what it's like. .. You. .

And Felix and Jack Crow looked at her together and together they said: "Whaat . .

Davette looked at the two of them, back and forth quickly. She hung her head. Then she reached down to the hem of her khaki skirt and took it in her fist and raised it up, exposing the perfect silken lines of her golden legs and the sharp heartache contrast of yellow panties..

and there, there high on her left inner thigh... Like the bite of a monstrous spider.

It could be no other kind of wound.

“Help me,” she whispered.

"Help me..

Fourth Interlude: The Victim

The Team stood stunned and staring at her and she tried to get it all out at once, all of it that she had wanted to tell them from the beginning, about what had happened to her and how she had really come to see them that day in California- but it just came out as sputtering tears.

It was Felix, of all people, who rescued her, taking her gently in his arms and speaking soft, soothing nothings. He led her to his chair and sat her carefully down and dragged up a chair for himself, all the time still murmuring reassuringly to her.

The others unfroze at last, Annabelle hip enough to fetch Kleenex and a glass of water, the men moving slowly, still more or less in shock, into seats of their own to listen. And it was kind of like the Inquisition, with them all circling about her suspicious and staring but she didn't mind. She deserved this. She deserved it for what she had done to them-or almost had done to them.

Because she hadn't come to do a story on them.

She had come to bring their killer.

She had left him in the trunk of that car she had been driving.

He was the fiend they had just slain, the one with the headband.

The little god.

His name was Ross Stewart and she had known him for ten years, since she was eleven and had taken Miss Findley's Dance Class for Young Ladies and Gentlemen.

Ross had been in the class. But he hadn't been a gentleman even then.

She started sputtering again. Felix leaned forward and took her hands in his and told her to relax, to relax and take deep breaths and start from the beginning. And she knew he was right, knew he made sense, knew she should do it that way, but now, looking into his eyes, closer to him than she'd ever been, she wanted to skip all that and

And get right to the meat.

Get right to the shame.

She felt compelled-obsessed, really-as she had from the very first time she had seen him, to tell him this. To have him know all about what she had done and what she had been made to do.

She wanted him to know everything. Every nasty detail. But she did what he said. She tried again from the beginning. Not the very beginning, when she was young, but from when it had really started. Last spring. Easter vacation. Religious holiday.

Her Aunt Victoria had planned a wonderful party for

her.

Aunt Vicky's house was the best-kept secret in north Dallas, a tiny, nondescript entrance on Inwood Road exploded, once inside the driveway, into a miraculous vision of a graystone mansion with multileveled terraces sprawling throughout the sculptured gardens and running brooks and towering trees that had tiny colored lights way up high in them, where the stars were. The party had spilled out over all the terraces and there was a band playing and people dancing and everyone was there, simply everyone she had grown up with, glittering and beautiful, the Sons and daughters of wealth and private schools, and you just knew by looking at them that it wasn't just the fortunes of the past represented here but the fortunes of the future certain to be made.

And Davette was the princess.

Because she really was beautiful, she knew that, and tall and blond and smart, too, editor of the university newspaper, and she laughed and talked and gloried in the attention, warm with friends when she wanted and unapproachable whenever she felt like it because Aunt Vicky had taught her that. You didn't really have to have that same conversation with every man.

But there were two details wrong and they nagged her. Her best friend, Kitty, had yet to show up. And Aunt Vicky was still abed.

Anyone else would still be “in” bed. But not Aunt Victoria, not in that huge three-hundred-year-old canopied bed in that immense bedroom full of all those beautiful chairs and settees and intricate knickknacks her brother, Uncle Harley, had brought home from around the world. The whole house was a treasure, but it was always this room, Davette had realized, that meant her aunt to her, meant romance and glory, which to Davette had always been one and the same.

She missed her mommy and daddy sometimes, so long dead now, but with Aunt Vicky and her brother, Uncle Harley, her rearing had been just as warm and loving-and a lot more fun. Uncle Harley, decorator to royalty, had shown her the world. And Aunt Victoria had shown her the ways of... the lady. Ways that made men sit up straight and turn their language soft and clean when she entered the room. A certain regal air-never haughty, exactly, but definitely, inevitably, superior. Reluctantly superior, as Aunt Victoria once confided to her.

Aunt Victoria had that look about her that made hard men wish for dragons to slay for her. Just for want of that twinkling smile.

But now she was ill and those beautiful lace bedclothes only made her seem more pale and less strong. She had received a few people, close friends who wished to look in on her, but she wouldn't leave her bed, wouldn't come to the party.

“Don't worry, dear,” she had cooed to her niece. “Have a good time, be a lady,” Then there was that twinkle. “Then come back and tell me every single detail.”

And they had laughed and kissed and Davette had gone back to her rooms, where she found Kitty, who was staying with her, sitting naked on the side of her bathtub and crying.

Over Ross Stewart.

Davette couldn't believe it. Ross Stewart? No-Class Ross, as she and Kitty had dubbed him and the name had stuck with him from sixth grade to high school graduation because it fit! It really fit!

“I can't believe it!” she blurted, shaking her head before catching herself and realizing how she must sound.

When she heard Kitty's sobbing “I can't either!” she knew they had a problem

Davette sat down on the edge of the tub and put her arm around her best friend in the world and tried to... to what, to console her? Because Davette didn't really understand how this was even possible and all she could get out of Kitty was, yes, she was ashamed at being with Ross Stewart, but, no, she had no intention of leaving him.

“I can't help myself,” she said, looking Davette straight in the eye.

And Davette had felt a cold, dark chill.

Now it was after ten P.M. and the party was in full swing and she still hadn't heard from Kitty and she was starting to fret. Maybe, she thought, Ross has changed. Maybe he really wasn't as bad as she had remembered. And she tried thinking back through her memories and images of him in a different light, in a more positive way.

But she wasn't having much luck. Ross Stewart had been just awful.

Good-looking, really, in a kind of decadent way. He had long black curly hair and he was tall and well built, she remembered. And smart, too, because he had made excellent grades and St. Mark's Prep, the brother school to her own Hockaday, was a very demanding place. No, Ross had no excuses for being the way he was, foul-mouthed and dirtyminded and totally without class. All the boys talked about sex all the time, of course. They were teenagers and that was practically their job. But Ross always talked about it a little too long, his jokes always a little more filthy, his leers always too damned piercing.

And the money, of course. Ross's family didn't have any, at least not the way most of the private school parents did. But that was no excuse, either. There were several students worse off than Ross and they were okay. At least they didn't go around so greedy all the time, talking about the prices of everything and dating the richest, most homely girls who had never before had such attention.

God, she remembered, he used to drive the girls' cars on dates! And once he even- “There you are, baby!” sounded a familiar voice. She sighed before turning around. She really wasn't up to this. But she was trapped. She turned around and smiled at her last high school boyfriend, football captain, senior class president, Taker of Her Virginity, Dale Boijock.

And also the most boring human being alive.

“How are you, Dale?” she said without enthusiasm. “I'm so glad you could come.”

Dale stepped forward and flashed his perfect smile and said, in a voice rich with meaning, “I wouldn't have missed it.”

And she thought she would die or run screaming from him or worse but she hung in there, talking small talk. She managed to get them walking toward the bar for some wine so she could keep running into other people and not be left alone to talk to Dale one-on-one.

Dale fought it, trying to get her off to one side to talk all alone. But he was getting quite a bit of attention, too, and enjoying it. Tall blond, beautiful blue eyes, a natural leader, a wonderful athlete-a Polish-American god was Dale Boijock. He bad been the Catch of All Catches in high school but he was so boring and how could she ever have slept with him?

Curiosity, of course. She did not live in Aunt Vicky's era and almost all of her friends had “done it,” many more than once, and here she was with the most eligible boyfriend around and she was just dying to know and it had been her suggestion.

He had been shocked. But he had come around.

At the motel he really was sweet and tender, treating her like a porcelain doll, and she had to face it, some parts of it were pretty interesting.

But somehow Dale had managed to make even those dull. And she knew, as he drove home, that she simply could not bear to be with him ever, ever again but she couldn't think of a graceful way to...

And then she had turned in the car seat and told him he was the best lover she had ever had.

He had laughed at that at first, of course. Then he had looked at her and saw she was serious and that tanned blond face had frowned and he had pulled the car over and the questioning had begun.

Looking back, she decided she had handled it just about perfectly.

Did he know him?

Who?

The other guy.

Well, she knew Dale knew some of them.

Some of them? There was more than one?

Well, yes.

Who?

Dale, I don't really think I could- How many, then?

How many? What difference could that possibly- She had taken a positively wicked joy in bashing his

pride. After she had strung it out a good half hour, she allowed him to force her to tell him the “truth,” that there had been somewhere between fifteen and an even dozen. She couldn't remember exactly.

Then he had leaned across her and opened the passenger door and ordered her to get out.

Trying desperately to keep a straight face, she had climbed meekly out of his car, closed the door behind her, and stood there, head down, her hands together in front of her, until the car screeched off.

On the way back home she had giggled quite a lot.

It really was a perfect solution. His pride wouldn't let him tell others about her and even if he did no one would believe it of Princess Davette anyway. And best of all, she would never be bothered by Dale Boijock again. And she hadn't been, for four long-years.

Until tonight. And this was looking grim. After four years of the Ivy League's worldly ways, she knew his attitudes had changed. She could tell by that look on his face. It could only mean one thing, his insistence at getting her alone to talk: He was going to, God help him, forgive her.