On a Darkling Plain (38 page)

“It’s easy for you to be philosophical,” Judy said sourly. Despite the blood she’d just drunk, her voice sounded a little hoarse, as if the daylight beyond the curtains were drying her out. “It isn’t your home and your friends on the line.”
That’s all the more reason for you to show a proper gratitude for my help,
the giant Gangrel thought, annoyed, but he resisted the temptation to say it aloud. He realized that Judy didn’t really want to pick a quarrel with him. The suspense of waiting and the stress of their unnatural wakefulness were making them both irritable.

As he tried to think of a less provocative reply, something rapped sharply on the glass behind the drapes.

Lazio took a step toward the windows. “No!” Angus said. “You’ll scare it away.” He hastily rose and pulled on his long brown overcoat, tan kid gloves, sunglasses and sacklike hood. Judy donned a similar costume, simultaneously withdrawing to the shadows at the back of the room.

When Angus’ towering frame was completely covered, he pulled back the curtain. His first glimpse of the early morning sunlight both dazzled him and drove a lance of weakness and nausea through his body. For an instant his knees went rubbery, and he nearly stumbled. Behind him, Judy gasped in a hissing breath.

Squinting, Angus looked down at the ground. An inky black raven, its eyes bright and its head cocked, stood at the base of the French window peering up at him. He opened the glass door, and the bird flapped into the air and perched on his arm.

He stared at the raven, trying to make contact with its mind. The process was more difficult than it should have been: the sun truly had diminished his powers. But after a moment a parade of images and wordless concepts marched from the avian’s head into his own. “The birds have found Dracula,” he said, stumbling over the words; sometimes it w'as hard to speak like a man when he was telepathically linked to an animal. “She just killed three people in a diner near the courthouse.”

“But where exactly?” Lazio,asked.

“It’s a bird,” Angus snapped, releasing the mind link. “It can’t give me a street address. But its fellows will lead us to her. Come on!”

Half-running, he led Judy and Lazio out onto the dewy grass. For a second the light seemed to crash down on him like a torrent of molten lava, and then the pain grew somewhat less intense. The Brujah fell to one knee. Lazio tried to take her arm and help her up, but she wrenched herself away from his hands, scrambled to her feet, and strode on toward the black Cadillac with the tinted windows.

Lazio jumped into the driver’s seat and the two Kindred into the back, where they’d previously stowed their rifles. The raven, still riding Angus’ forearm, peered curiously about at the interior of the car. As the vehicle sped down the driveway, the justicar turned to Judy and murmured, “Are you going to be all right?”

“Hell, yes!” she said. “I knew I had the power to move around after dawn, but I never actually had to do it before. I just needed to get used to it.” Her voice softened. “You were right, it is kind of cool to see a blue sky again, even if the damn thing is making me sick to my stomach.”

Ignoring stop signs, red lights and speed limits, yielding to no one, Lazio reached the downtown area in less than ten minutes. Peering out the window, Angus saw that, as he’d expected, an unusual number of crows, sparrows, pigeons and seagulls were soaring and wheeling above the streets. “Stop the car!” he said.

Lazio obeyed. When, brakes squealing, the Cadillac lurched to a halt, Angus threw open the door. Judy tensed, possibly straining not to flinch from the unfiltered sunlight that streamed in.

Stepping out of the car, Angus sent up a silent call. A white-winged gull with a hooked yellow beak landed on his free arm, imparted its tidings, and took off again.

Angus swung himself back into the Cadillac. “Dracula’s heading east on Wood Street.” Lazio stamped on the gas; the sudden acceleration pressed the Gangrel back against the soft gray leather seat. “In a red car.”

When they spotted the serial killer her vehicle, a gleaming vintage Thunderbird with sharklike tail fins, was halfway down a block of upscale storefronts occupying the ground floors of five- and six-story buildings. The early morning traffic was still light, but even if there had been other red cars on that section of road, she would have been easy to spot. A number of birds were flying directly above her, frequently swooping down at her vehicle as if to point it out.

Smiling fiercely, looking more vicious than Angus could have imagined, Lazio pulled up even with the Tbird and then jerked the steering wheel. With a crash, the Cadillac sideswiped the murderess’ car, which then jumped the curb and slammed into a fire hydrant. Sparkling water sprayed into the air.

The vampires’ car began to spin. Turning into the skid, Lazio brought the sedan back under control and then to a stop. A few yards down the block, Dracula scrambled out of the Thunderbird; evidently the valet had succeeded in disabling it. She was still wearing her long, dark coat and beret; indeed, except for the blood now streaking the left side of her pale, oval face, she looked just like the image the manatees had conveyed to Angus.

So far she hadn’t reached for a weapon, but the Gangrel didn’t find that reassuring. She must have surmised that Lazio had hit her car because he knew who she was. If she wasn’t going for a gun, maybe she
did
have supernatural powers.

Employing their inhuman speed, or as much of it as they could muster in the debilitating daylight, Angus and Judy leaped out of the Cadillac and raised their rifles to their shoulders. Cawing, the raven flew off the Gangrel’s arm. The hunters’ guns were loaded with tranquilizer darts. They wanted to take Dracula alive, to make her tell who’d sent her to Sarasota.

The murderess gestured with her left hand. Though she was standing in shadow, the large emerald ring on her left hand flashed. The vampires tried to shoot, then Judy cursed when nothing happened. Both rifles had jammed.

“She’s a mage,” Angus said.

“She’s dead meat,” Judy snarled. She threw down her gun and charged Dracula. Wishing fleetingly that the Brujah weren’t quite so reckless, Angus pounded after her. Meanwhile, moving at merely mortal speed, Lazio clambered out of the Cadillac.

A single stride carried Dracula to the entrance of a trendy-looking women’s clothing boutique. The green stone on her hand glowed as she opened the door - which, at this hour, should have been locked — lunged through and slammed it behind her.

Running won’t help you,
Angus thought with the cold satisfaction of a predator closing in for the kill.
We’re faster than you, and we can smash down any door you lock behind you. In another minute we’ll have you.

The Thunderbird burst into yellow, crackling flame. The two Kindred instinctively recoiled, then, overcoming their fear, circled around the blaze toward the door through which Dracula had disappeared. Above their heads, something rumbled.

Startled, Angus looked up to see shards of the building’s brick facade hurtling down at him and Judy. He threw up his arms to shield his head, and then the rain of rock crashed over him.

Despite his supernatural strength, it hammered him to his knees, bruised flesh and cracked bones and, most terribly of all, tore his protective layers of clothing. Instantly his exposed flesh began to cook, filling the air with an odor of roasting meat. Terror yammered through his mind.

Grimly, exerting every bit of his willpower, he quashed the panic. Lurching to his feet, shedding chunks of brick, he turned to Judy. Her garments were torn like his, and for a moment she slapped frantically at herself as if her body had burst into flame. Then, evidently overcoming her fear as he’d quelled his own, she scrambled over the pile of ruddy broken stone, kicked the door to the boutique off its hinges, and raced on into the shadowy interior. He dashed after her.

The shop smelled faintly of perfume. Smiling mannequins clad in silk blouses and sequined gowns posed on pedestals. Dracula was nowhere in sight, even though the Kindred were still only seconds behind her.

“Where is she?” Judy snarled.

Angus thought it was a damn good question. Some of the reports of the murderer’s crimes suggested that she could become invisible. He didn’t intend to walk right past her and so let her get away.

He was no Toreador or Malkavian. In human form, he had merely human senses. But his animal forms had their own keen perceptions, and here, out of the sunlight, he could transform himself. It wouldn’t matter that his protective clothing would vanish when he did.

Smiling inside his hood, grateful to get rid of his encumbering garb even if only for a moment, he willed himself to change. Like communing with the birds or simply moving around, the shift was harder than it should have been, particularly now that he was injured and expending vitae to heal. Still, after a moment his garments melted away and a pelt of gray fur spread across his alabaster skin. His jaws extended into a muzzle and a tail sprouted from the base of his spine. Dropping to all fours, he became a wolf.

Suddenly vision was less primary a sense than it had been an instant before. The world was a web of enticing, informative aromas. Sniffing, he caught the smell of his companion, and then the odor of.a human female. The scent trail led to a blond mannequin dressed in a loose green floral-print dress, beaming at nothing in the rear of the shop.

Staring intently, head held low, Angus slunk toward the figure and Judy stalked after him. Rippling like the reflection of a moving object in a fun-house mirror, the dummy turned into Dracula. Her eyes wide, her bloody face finally looking rattled, she scrambled toward a doorway in the back wall. The short corridor beyond it appeared to lead to fitting rooms, a store room and an exit.

Angus and Judy charged. The mage gestured, her ring

51?ATARKUNCTHm

flared, and a portion of the ceiling groaned and caved in on the vampires. It wasn’t as damaging an attack as the avalanche of brick, but by the time they floundered clear of the mass of acoustic tiles, fluorescent-light fixtures and boards that had engulfed them, their quarry had reached the exit. She yanked open the door, admitting an excruciating blaze of sunlight, and dashed outside.

“Dead,” Judy rasped, clearly on the brink of frenzy if she wasn’t berserk already. “The bitch is dead.” Heedless of the daylight now, she charged toward the door.

In large measure, Angus shared her rage. Dracula was making him and his comrades look like fools, and no kine, witch or otherwise, could be allowed to get away with that. He almost scrambled after Judy before he remembered that he needed his clothing back. Snarling, resenting the extra seconds it was taking him to shift, he reverted to human form and then sprinted after the Brujah elder.

Plunging out into the sunlight, enduring another stab of pain, he found himself in an alley. Still visible, Dracula was standing about sixty feet away. Evidently she hadn’t had time to camouflage herself again, or was simply unable to do so. Perhaps, now that the vampires had defeated the spell once, it wouldn’t work on them anymore. The sorceress had struck a melodramatic pose, hands upraised and the gem in her ring glowing like a green sun as if, unable to shake the Kindred off her trail, she were drawing on every bit of her magic to annihilate them.

Midway between Dracula and Angus, Judy was dodging to and fro, trying to come to grips with the human woman. But every time Dracula clenched her fists, a wall of roaring flame erupted from the cracked gray pavement. Only the Brujah’s agility kept her from being caught in one of the blasts. Even so, as more and more barriers sprang into existence, she was gradually being imprisoned in a sort of blazing maze. Soon she’d have no more room to maneuver,

and then, no doubt, Dracula would incinerate her in a final conflagration.

Intent on her work, the kine apparently hadn’t noticed Angus’ emergence into the open yet, but he didn’t doubt that that would change if he rushed her. Then she’d trap him between walls of fire, too. And so, instead of charging, he lifted his eyes and silently called for aid.

Birds hurtled down from the sky at Dracula, pecking and slashing with beak and claw. Staggering, caught by surprise, she cried out, ducked her head and threw up her arms to ward the attackers off. A raven, perhaps the same one that had flown to Roger Phillips’ house, swooped upward, clutching the mage’s beret in its talons.

Taking advantage of Dracula’s distraction, judy managed to extricate herself from the walls of fire. Running at merely human speed now — apparently her wounds and the sunlight were taking their toll — the tail of her black leather trench coat flapping behind her, the Brujah dashed at her tormentor.

Angus charged, too. He felt parched and drained himself, but it shouldn’t matter. In another moment he and Judy would get their hands on Dracula, and then the battle would be over. No mere human, not even one who could witch down walls and draw flame from asphalt, could contend with their superhuman strength once they’d had a chance to bring it to bear.

Dracula cried out an incantation in a language that, to Angus’ ears, sounded like Hebrew. Her ring pulsed with light, and a whirlwind roared into existence above her head, scattering the attacking birds. And then, when Judy and Angus were only a second away from grabbing her, she thrust out her fists at them.

A blast of air smashed the Gangrel in the face, knocking him off his feet and sweeping him back across the pavement. The magical hurricane twisted his hood, blinding him, but he didn’t need to see to know that the wind was ripping the tears in his clothing wider. The fresh bursts of pain as the sunlight seared hitherto shielded patches of flesh were proof of that.

He scrabbled at the blacktop, trying to anchor himself, but he couldn’t find anything to grab. Somewhere behind him, Judy screamed, a shriek of agony audible even over the howl of the wind.

Whatever was happening to her was likely to happen to Angus if he couldn’t stop his helpless tumbling. Reasoning grimly that a few more holes in his garments scarcely mattered now, he attempted a minor transformation.