Coven (24 page)

He’d set up an hour ago
with the telescope and Czanek’s receiver, expecting Sarah and the
German to repeat last night’s performance. But they’d never
arrived. The only activity to be seen in Sarah’s window was Frid,
the cat, which milled disinterested about the dorm room. Jervis
could hear it purring over the receiver. Every so often its
bottomless eyes seemed to gaze directly into the telescope, as if
it knew Jervis was watching.
God, I hate
that cat,
he thought.

But then he spotted motion in another
window. It only took a moment for him to realize it was the
Erblings’ room.

Jervis pulled his azimuth to the left and
focused in.

Then he froze.

Jeeeeeeeesus Christ.

Insanity. That’s what smiled back at him
through the telescope. This was not a voyeur’s cheap thrill. This
was insanity.

The unwatchable things he watched consumed
only minutes. The Erbling girls, naked, lay limp on the floor. A
naked guy, who looked just like Do Horse Willet, was fighting
another guy who looked just like Tom.

“
It
is
Tom,” Jervis muttered, eye pressed
to the barlow.

But why was Tom’s face gray and
sunk eyed? Furthermore, what was that lunatic scene? Most
bizarre of all was the woman who presided over this, a woman in a
black cape and sunglasses.

Now Tom was dragging Do Horse to the
bathtub. And the woman…

She’s eating him,
Jervis realized.

Jervis took his eye away
from the telescope, away from the crimson frenzy.
Illusion,
he
thought.
That’s all.
He finished a Kirin and rationalized.
Too much drinking, too little eating, and the mind plays
tricks on you.

He calmed his terrors with reason, convinced
himself that when he looked back in the telescope, he would see
none of the rampant madness he thought he’d seen. He would see no
murder, no cloaked woman, no blood. He would see normality.

He looked back into the telescope—

Jeeeeeeeesus Christ!

—
and saw Tom stuffing
handfuls of innards into a plastic garbage bag as the
black cloaked woman pushed a final clump of human brains into
her red smeared mouth.

—

CHAPTER 19

What time was it? The faintest dawn gathered
in the window. Birds chirped. It must be five or
five thirty.

Lydia slid carefully out of bed, slipped on
her panties, and padded about the dark room. It occurred to her
that she could put her clothes on and slip out right now, leave a
tawdry note like “Thanks for the good time, see you around.” How
would Wade react to that? It was too hard nowadays to judge the
nature of emotions—a litmus test would be so much easier. Her
cutoffs lay on the floor, her loaded derringer on the desk. Did
she, a rather dedicated police officer, want to get involved with
Wade, a rather undedicated student?

How could they be
compatible? They were opposite in so many ways. The physical thing
had been good; was she letting that fog her focus? This seemed
different, though. The sex aside, her heart deciphered itself:
she
did
want to be
involved with him. Even better, maybe she already was.

She heard footsteps in the hall. They
sounded stealthy.

Abruptly then, the doorknob jiggled.

But surely Wade had locked the door. Only
idiots leave their doors unlocked, she thought.

Then the door opened.

Lydia grabbed her gun and hid behind the
desk. A figure entered cautiously and took time to close the door
without making noise. Lydia made no details of the shape. It
crossed the room in silence and stopped at the foot of Wade’s
bed.

Was the figure deliberating? It stood still
a moment. Then, quickly, it began to reach for Wade.

Lydia snapped on the light and pointed the
.22 at the 5x zone of the trespasser’s torso. “Don’t move,” she
ordered.

A wearied face stared at her. Wade leaned up
from bed, squinting.

“
I don’t believe it,” the
trespasser said. “I’m being held at gunpoint by a topless
blonde.”

“
A topless
police officer,”
Lydia
corrected, but then she thought:
Oh my
God, it’s true! I’m practically nude!

Wade laughed. “Put away your heat, Annie
Oakley. He’s a friend of mine.”

“
Goddamn it!” she shouted.
Embarrassment flooded her. “Get him out of here! And quit
laughing!”

“
In the hall,” Wade said to
Jervis Phillips, who quickly scooted out. Lydia couldn’t
remember
ever
being this pissed off. “Sorry,” Wade apologized, and put on
his robe. “These things happen.”

“
Shit!” she yelled at
him.

Wade went out to the hall. Lydia quickly put
on her cutoffs and top. The conversation was easy to overhear.

Jervis sounded hesitant. “I saw something. I
know it sounds crazy, but I think I witnessed a murder. Over at the
girls’ dorm.”

“
You’re right, Jerv. It
sounds crazy. You been drinking?”

“
Of course. I guess I
passed out at the end of it, because it happened around two A.M. He
killed him.”

“
Slow down. Start at the
beginning.”

More hesitance. “I, uh, I was checking out
the dorm with a telescope; I wanted to see what Sarah was doing
with the German guy, but they never showed. Anyway, another window
was lit up, the Erblings’ window, so I, you know, I—” Jervis spoke
with caution, charting his words. “I saw a woman in black. She had
a guy with her. The guy was Tom.”

“
Tom?”

“
Yeah. And then the Erbling
girls popped up. That guy Dave Willet was with them, the guy
everyone calls Do Horse—”

Wade chuckled.

“—
and Tom killed
him.”

Wade stopped chuckling.

“
He killed him. Then he
threw his body in the bathtub. Christ, there was blood everywhere.
And then that woman came in, that woman in black. She…ate
him.”

“
The woman in black
ate
Do Horse?”

“
That’s right. You
should’ve seen it.”

“
And I guess she ate the
Erblings too, huh?”

“
No, no, but she did
something to them, knocked them out somehow. Something. Tom rolled
them up in a rug and took them out.”

Wade was chuckling again.

“
I know it sounds crazy. If
you don’t believe me, let’s go over there and check it out. I know
what I saw. It was Tom.”

Now Wade seemed to be hesitating. He didn’t
believe this nonsense, did he? “Tom’s car hasn’t been in the lot
for two days,” Wade mentioned. “And last time I saw him, he gave me
the slip.”

“
Wade, it’s true. I can
prove it. Let’s go over there.”

Silence.

Then Wade came back in the room. “Did
you—”

“
Yeah, I heard it,” Lydia
smirked. “Your friend’s a peeper, a drunk, and a nut. That’s three
strikes.”

“
I’ll admit he’s a little
off track; his girlfriend just dumped him, he’s been drinking
heavy. But he’s not the kind of guy to make something like this up.
Plus, there’s something else…”

“
What?”

“
It’s better if I tell you
later. Just trust me.”

What was he talking about? Was he nuts
too?

“
There’s no harm in looking
into it, is there?” Wade persisted, and got dressed. Lydia said
nothing, but she supposed he was right.

««—»»

She felt like a complete ass, knocking on a
student’s door at five thirty in the morning, but only for a
second. Her first rap on room 208 edged the door open an inch. The
doorknob was squashed, just like at the clinic. The latch bolt was
mangled, the strike plate half dug out—

“
Just like the clinic,”
Wade said.

Score one for Jervis the
Drunk,
Lydia thought.

The faintest ring of dust
clung in a circle on the floor, as might be left by a hastily
removed throw rug.
Hmmm,
she thought. The bed was sloppily made; guys made
their beds like that, not girls.
Hmmm,
she thought again.

The hamper was stuffed full of clothes.
Among the garments was a pair of men’s jeans. The jeans contained a
wallet. The wallet contained a driver’s license: David Ubel
Willet.

“
Believe me now?” Jervis
asked.

Lydia was stumped. “I believe you may have
witnessed a break in,” she replied. “I don’t, however, believe
you witnessed anything more than that.”

Jervis said three clipped words. “Bathtub.
Blood. Everywhere.”

The three of them squeezed into the
bathroom. They all looked down at the tub.

“
Where’s the blood?” Wade
asked.

“
Tom must’ve cleaned it
up,” Jervis was quick to answer. “There was so much, though. It
must’ve taken him an hour.”

“
Forget it, Jerv,” Wade
said. “The tub’s clean.”

Too clean,
Lydia thought. She’d had Jervis tote along her
field kit. From it she removed a tiny amber bottle with an
eyedropper cap. “This is a detection compound called Malachite
Reagent V; it reacts with protein components in hemoglobin. Blood
contains free protein electrons which bind to almost any surface.
You can wash off the blood, but you can’t wash off the
electrons.”

“
So if someone got murdered
in this tub,” Wade said, “the stuff in that bottle will prove
it?”

“
Yep. It turns turquoise on
contact.” Lydia let a tiny drop fall from the eyedropper into the
middle of the tub.

“
Nothing,” Wade
observed.

“
Wait.”

In a second, the drop turned turquoise.

Lydia sprinkled more drops around, all over
the inside of the tub, the ledge, the tiled back wall. They all
turned turquoise.

Jervis looked unsurprised. Wade looked
ill.

This guy’s not
bullshitting,
Lydia thought, and it was a
ghastly thought indeed. There’d been blood all over this
tub.

Blood. Everywhere.

««—»»

“
I instructed you to be
careful!” Professor Dudley Besser bellowed within the cove of
pointaccessmain #1. “I
told
you!”

“
I know, sir,” Tom
mumbled.

“
You left their wallets!
Their keys! Everything!”

“
It slipped my mind, sir.
We had to get out of there. It took me a long time to clean up the
mess the sister made. I mean, Christ, can’t they eat
here?”

Besser recessed back into the strangely
etched darkness. Inaudibly the labyrinth hummed, a vibration more
than a sound. The sisters had told Tom that it was the Supremate
thinking, but Tom had begun to doubt that, along with many other
things. Sometimes he wondered if there even was a Supremate. The
huge loving voice that sometimes filled his head seemed phony, an
overdone charade.

Besser’s disapproval drew crevices into his
bulging moonface. “This better not break before we leave. Who knows
what the Supremate will do?”

The premise was not a pleasant one. Tom
remembered the chasms he’d seen. He remembered the squat factories
whose winding winze belts hauled slabs of black meat.

“
I don’t want any problems
with your next task,” Besser said. “The Supremate needs a holotype.
Winnie and I have agreed; it shall be Wade St. John. This should
please you.”

“
It does, sir.”
You ain’t kidding it does!

“
We only have a few more
days; I want Wade secured in the unit hold well beforehand. He
works at the sciences center at nine A.M. Bring him in
today.”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
And let me emphasize that
the quality of your future within the family may depend on the
success of your remaining procurements.”

“
I understand that, sir.
You can count on me.”

Besser dismissed him, the moonface
disappearing into the egress. Tom followed the dimensionless
servicepass to the acclimationprepchamber. He didn’t need
directions; the labyrinth had its own sort of telepathic directory
called mindsigns. Ahead, one such sign read
EMWGUIDANCETRACKINGPOINT. Besser had explained it wasn’t really a
power plant but just a simple stabilization mechanism, like a keel
on a sailboat. The Supremate controlled it, along with everything
else, by instinct.

The next mindsign glowed in nonexistence:
GERMINATIONWARREN. Tom used the key around his neck and prolapsed
through the egress. This was some security system they had here; no
one without a key could escape the labyrinth’s solid walls, nor
could entry be gained by any outsider. The labyrinth was, fully and
ultimately, impenetrable.

Within the acclimationprepchamber, the
Erblings lay stretched on the levitationslats. Before
antirejectorybifertilization could be initiated, certain biological
changes had to be made. Tom knew the Erblings were conscious
despite complete paralysis. He grabbed two infusers containing
optimized doses of calciumdecimationliquefactor. All
fissionizationvessels needed proper softening before they could
safely disbirth their interspecielmetis units. Tom had wandered
around the biomaintenancegrowthaccelerationvaults once or twice,
and some of the things he’d seen down there were as big as sunfish!
The Erblings both jerked once when he activated the infusers
against their throats. The injection attacked only fossilized CaCo
compounds. Besser and Winnifred had taken blood samples from Lois
Hartley and Penelope, to ascertain the most effective
serum absorbability levels for humans. The Erblings would be
pudding in an hour.