Blood of the Impaler (47 page)

"It is dangerous, Jer," Malcolm agreed. "It's very dangerous, because I could be completely wrong in this. But let's face it, we've passed beyond the point of being able to avoid danger."

Rachel gave her brother a sad but affectionate smile. "You're getting rather good at this, Malcolm," she said softly. "Very farsighted and very logical."

"Yes," he sighed, returning her smile. "I wonder if I'm finally developing a marketable skill!"

J
une passed into July, and July approached August, and neither Malcolm nor Rachel nor Jerry detected any occurrence that could be attributed to the vampires. They followed Malcolm's plans and spoke with each other daily at noon, when the sun was at its zenith, when they were most safe from Lucy Westenra and Holly Larsen and Quincy Harker. Rachel called Malcolm at eleven forty-five, Malcolm called Jerry at twelve, and Jerry called Rachel at twelve-fifteen. On a few occasions a phone would be out of order or would be being used by someone else, and the delays caused tension and anxiety; but always, eventually, somehow, the link was maintained. Daily reports in guarded phraseology, careful conversations in furtive, conspiratorial tones, were all that kept them together. No hint of their whereabouts was allowed into their phone calls, and no hints as to the activities of the vampires presented themselves at all.

Jerry Herman went to live with his aunt Lucille in Commack, Long Island. They had never gotten along well, and Jerry somewhat callously reasoned that, if there were to be danger, he would rather endanger her than anyone else he knew. He concocted a tale of fleeing from a loan shark's enforcer, and Lucille had a low enough opinion of her nephew almost to believe him. She generously allowed herself to be guided by the old family adage that home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

They do not have to lend you their cars, however; and each day at ten-thirty Jerry hopped on a bicycle and began to peddle along Indian Head Road toward Kings Park and the public telephone in the train station.

Malcolm looked up Tom Meloun, an old friend from New York University. Meloun was an avant garde sculptor who was eking out a living doing window displays in department stores while creating what he regarded as his real work in a large loft studio in New Haven, Connecticut, just across the Long Island Sound from New York. People came and went with bohemian abandon in Meloun's circle of friends, and one more mattress spread out against one more wall went virtually unnoticed. And the telephone booth in Campisi's deli was generally unoccupied.

Rachel chose the most secure of hiding places. The Episcopal Archdiocese of New York maintained a combination convent/secular retreat in Dutchess County, a place where the few remaining Episcopalian nuns in the United States could provide a place of meditation, introspection, and devotion to those women of the Anglican communion who sought an at-least-temporary refuge from the troubles of the world. Crosses, crucifixes, holy water, and consecrated elements abounded in this rural stronghold of the ancient faith, and Rachel felt so securely buttressed that she used the convent phone as her connecting link with her brother and his friend.

July came and went, and late in August Malcolm stood in front of the pay phone at Campisi's deli, glancing nervously at the clock that hung on the wall. Rachel was late, very late. Malcolm considered calling Jerry but forced himself to wait. The clock's minute hand moved from twelve to twelve-fifteen, and when the phone rang at twelve-twenty, he grabbed it possessively. "Hello?"

"Malcolm?"

It was not Rachel, and it took the startled young man a few moments to recognize the voice. "D . . . Daniel? Is that you?"

"Yes," his brother-in-law replied. Then he sighed heavily. "Come home, Malcolm. Come home before sunset, before any of them wake up."

"Where's Rachel?" he demanded.

"They have her, Malcolm, they have her," Daniel paused before adding, "And we have them!"

In less than a minute Malcolm was talking to Jerry Herman on the phone, and less than a minute after that he was speeding toward the ferry that would take him from New Haven to Port Jefferson, New York.

They have Rachel
. Daniel's words echoed in his mind.
And we have them
.

M
alcolm clenched his teeth as he patted the black athletic bag that he kept with him always, the bag containing the crosses and the garlic and the consecrated wafers and the consecrated wine that he had stolen from a church in New Haven. "This is it," he muttered. "One way or the other, this is it."

"Where do they get their clothes?" Jerry asked.

"What?" Malcolm was only half-listening to his friend. He was tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel, wondering what was causing the stop-and-go, bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Long Island Expressway. They were driving west at two o'clock in the afternoon, and the traffic should have been light. Probably an accident, Malcolm thought, or construction or something.

"I said, where do they get their clothes?" Jerry repeated.

"Clothes. Whose clothes? What are you talking about?" Malcolm's voice was brusque and irritable.

Jerry understood why Malcolm was being so curt. He knew that his friend was worried about his sister, and he was making conversation in the hopes of making the time pass. "The vampires," he went on. "Where do they get their clothes?"

"The Vlad Boutique," Malcolm muttered. "How the hell should I know? Who cares where they get their clothes. From their victims, probably, like Lucy did in England."

"That's not what I mean," Jerry said, lighting a cigarette and offering one to his friend. Malcolm declined with a curt shake of his head, so Jerry went on, "Remember that night in the cemetery? They took the form of fog, right, like the book says they can, right? So when they took human form again, where did they get their clothes?"

Malcolm gave him an angry glance. "Jer, you wonder about the damnedest things!"

"Do their clothes turn into fog, too? Do they, I don't know, knit clothes out of fog or something? Where'd your grandfather get that suit? He was in a hospital gown when he died, right? So where'd he get that suit?"

"You can't look for logic in stuff like this," Malcolm said, accelerating slightly, moving forward a few yards and then stopping again. "In the book, Dracula turns himself into fog and into animals, but he's always fully clothed when he reconstitutes himself. And Lucy turned into a wolf soon after I . . ." He paused, not wishing to remind himself of what he had done. "Anyway, when she changed back into her own form she was still wearing what was left of the dress she had been buried in."

Jerry frowned, considering this, and then said, "How can this thing get passed on from a man?"

"From a man? What are you talking about?"

"Well, Mina gave birth to Quincy, and her blood was flowing through his body for nine months, so it makes sense that she could pass it on to him. But how could he pass it on to your father or your father to you? I mean, how much blood can there be in a couple of sperm cells?"

Malcolm glanced over at him tiredly. "Enough, apparently!"

Jerry nodded. "Yeah, I guess. Most of this doesn't really make any sense anyway." He paused. "What about AIDS?"

"What?"

"
AIDS
. They drink blood, so what if they attack somebody who—"

"For Christ's sake, Jerry," Malcolm shouted. "They're already dead! How the hell can they get AIDS?"

"Hey, don't get so upset! I was just wondering."

"Well, cut it out, will you? I have enough on my mind right now without having to answer all these stupid fucking questions!"

"Okay, okay," Jerry sniffed. "Jeez!" He drummed his fingers absentmindedly on the dashboard and then looked down at the black athletic bag. As he distractedly pulled open the zipper, he asked, "You don't think Rachel's dead, do you?"

"I don't know," Malcolm sighed. "When Daniel said that the vampires had her, I just assumed they'd kidnapped her. I hope he didn't mean that she'd become one of them. I mean, if they killed her, that's what would have happened."

Jerry peered into the bag. "Whatcha got in here, Mal?"

"Weapons," Malcolm replied. "That is a homemade anti-vampire kit."

"No kidding?" Jerry began to rummage through the contents of the bag. "Great, great," he muttered. "Stakes, garlic, crosses, hammers . . ." Malcolm was rubbing his tired eyes as Jerry took a large silver flask from the case and unscrewed the lid. He placed it to his nose and sniffed it, and then, smiling, he placed it to his lips and took a healthy swallow. "Hey, this is good!"

"Hmmm?" Malcolm asked, still rubbing his eyes.

Jerry took another long swallow. "Spicy, though." He put the flask back to his ups and drained it. "What is this, spiced rum or something? God, this stuff gives me heartburn!"

"What are you . . . ?" Malcolm began, stopping when he saw the flask in Jerry's hand. "Oh, shit! Damn it, Jerry!"

Jerry Herman's eyes were bulging. He grasped his throat with one hand and his stomach with the other and began screaming, "God Almighty! God Almighty!"

Whatever had been holding up the flow of traffic ended just as Jerry began to thrash back and forth wildly. Malcolm was able to move from the center lane to the right and then off onto the shoulder of the road. After turning off the ignition, he reached over and grabbed Jerry, holding him tightly. "I know it hurts, Jer, it hurts like hell. But it'll pass soon, believe me. I know exactly how it feels, but you'll be okay in a minute. Just try to stay calm." He knew from personal experience that the horrible burning would soon subside into a localized pain, and then into just a general, feverish discomfort.

A half hour passed before Jerry was able to formulate a coherent sentence. "What the hell . . . what the hell . . . what was that stuff!"

"That was consecrated wine, Jerry. If you accept the teachings of the High Anglicans, the Catholics, and a few other churches, the blood of Christ was in that flask."

"But . . . but I'm Jewish!"

"It doesn't make any difference what you are," Malcolm said. "Consecrated wine is consecrated wine." Malcolm started the car and drove back onto the expressway. "It's the same thing that happened to me that day when I went to church with Holly and Gramps, before I understood any of this. And it happened to me again in Rome, a number of times, but then it was intentional."

"Intentional!" Jerry gasped, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "You did this to yourself on purpose? Are you nuts?"

"Not at all," Malcolm replied, accelerating to sixty and speeding across the border between Suffolk and Nassau. "Gramps explained it to me the night he told me the story of my ancestry. The sacrament is a counteragent to the blood I inherited from my great-grandmother."

"Why didn't you tell me, Malcolm?" Jerry demanded angrily. "I mean, good grief!"

"I didn't expect you to drink it, you know!" Malcolm shot back. Now that Jerry was over the worst of the effects, Malcolm's annoyance at him was coming to the fore. "I hope you realize that you just wasted a very valuable weapon in a very limited arsenal. Look at the effect it had on you, and you're only slightly polluted. Lucy, Holly, and Gramps are nothing
but
pollution. Think what we could have done with that wine! Poured it on them, thrown it at them . . ." He sniffed. "Damn it, Jerry!"

Malcolm's anger made Jerry angry himself. "Well, excuse me all to hell, Malcolm! You could have let me in on it, you know!"

"You didn't have to drink the wine!"

"You didn't have to keep it such a big secret, either! I mean, shit! I see some wine, I drink it. What the hell did you expect me to do, pour it in the goddamned gas tank?"

"Didn't you stop to wonder why I had a flask of wine in there with crosses and garlic and stakes? Are you really that stupid?"

"Stupid! Me, stupid? Who was stupid enough to bring Lucy back from the dead? Who was stupid enough to get his best friend mixed up in this crazy thing? Who was stupid enough to get his girlfriend killed and his sister kidnapped or worse?"

Malcolm's jaw clenched and he gripped the steering wheel more tightly, not looking at his friend.

Jerry immediately regretted his last remarks, and he fidgeted silently for a long while. They were passing the exit sign for New Hyde Park when he said, "Mal, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm really sorry."

Malcolm nodded curtly. "Skip it." He glanced over at Ferry, thinking,
he's as scared as I am. He's not only my ally, he's my best friend. He didn't mean what he said.

Even though what he said was true.

"You okay now, Jer?" Malcolm asked.

Jerry accepted the question as a gesture of peace. "Yeah, sure, I'm better. It still hurts, though."