Pale Immortal (31 page)

That
was what he'd been smelling. Lydia. Lurking out there in the bushes. Not him. Not his leg.

Whew.

Lydia, who'd dangled from the rafters while her throat was slit and her blood drained and caught in a bucket.

Which reminded Graham of the important issue that had been nagging at him for quite some time.

Evan was in trouble. Evan needed help.

Drip, drip, drip.

The repetitious sound spoke to Rachel. A warning, but also an invitation, coaxing her deeper. Choices to be made. Wake up ... or go to sleep. Forever.

Sweet, soft, seductive whispers:
Join us. Stay with us.
So many mingled voices. Coming from inside her head, outside her head.

Nothing to be afraid of. Why had she ever been afraid?

She hadn't understood. People were afraid of what they didn't understand.

She opened her eyes for a final look.

A dark room. Flickering candles. She was naked. In a metal tub. Past physical discomfort, she didn't feel cold. She lifted her hand and, with the distance of an observer, watched the blood run down her arm and drip from her elbow, hitting the floor with a repetitious
splat.

So, that's what's making that noise.

Interesting.

She tried to pull her arm back in the tub, but couldn't. Her body wasn't her own anymore. Her hand fell, fingers brushing the floor.

Evan fought the weakness pressing him down. He looked at Alba, who sat cross-legged several yards away, hands resting on top of a high-powered LED flashlight, the battery box against his knee, the light directed away from Evan's face. Evan's confiscated Glock and cell phone were beside Alba on the floor.

"You may have most of the people in Tuonela fooled, but not me." Alba swung the light at Evan.

Evan's reflexes were slow; the ultraviolet brilliance connected with his pupils before he could raise a hand and turn away. A fresh wave of nausea and weakness washed over him.

"Nice that there's a disease to match your symptoms." With one hand Alba gave the word
symptoms
air quotes, then pulled the light away, aiming it at the floor. "I wonder how many people have used that before?"

"Come on, Alba." Evan swallowed and struggled to sit up.

Maybe if he acted even weaker, he could trick Alba into relaxing. "Your theory isn't anything new," Evan said breathlessly. "All the little kiddies in town have been threatened with me their whole lives. 'Go to bed; otherwise Stroud will get you.' 'Eat your breakfast if you don't want Stroud to come.'"

"But do they really believe it? I don't think so. I
know."
Alba nodded.
"I
believe."

"Okay, say I am a vampire. What then? I don't go around killing people." Evan glanced up at the rafters. "I don't hang them by their heels and drain their blood. We all have cravings and strange desires. Everyone has a demon inside him. We have to learn to control it."

"Why?"

Evan didn't know how to work this. Try to reason with him? Sympathize? Agree? He was playing for time, hoping Graham and Isobel could find help. "Why is it you need to gain immortality?" Evan asked.

"You're the expert on the subject. I think you already know."

He would try to engage Alba in conversation. He would watch for him to let down his guard.

"I'm guessing you're the one who dug up Manchester," Evan said. "For his heart. Maybe you already have immortality."

"His heart wasn't there."

So Rachel had been right.

"I made a visit to the old guy whose father buried Manchester," Alba said. "Someone else got there before me. Someone named Stroud."

Evan frowned. There were no Strouds in the area except his family.

"That's right," Alba said, reading Evan's thoughts. "Your old man."

Impossible. His father had always been adamant that they stay away from Old Tuonela. That they have nothing to do with the place. He would have had no interest in the body of Richard Manchester.

"You never knew, did you?" Alba asked.

"You are talking shit."

"You were sick. You were dying. And not far away was the possibility of eternal life."

"My father would never have done anything like that. My father is the most practical person in the world. He shops at Sears, for chrissake. He golfs."

"If you had the chance to save your son's life, even if a cure was remote, wouldn't you do it?"

Evan put a hand to his chest, where his heart was pounding, and imagined his father digging up the body of the Pale Immortal. It was ludicrous. Wasn't it?

"He made a broth of the heart, and you drank it."

When Evan was extremely ill, unable to walk, the pain in his head blinding, his parents had coaxed him to eat and drink many strange things. He never questioned what they were or where they'd come from.

The tea.

His mind recoiled from his own thoughts as he struggled to deny them.

The tin contained the ground-up heart of Richard Manchester.

The heart of the Pale Immortal.

Still he fought what was suddenly making too much sense.

Even if his dad
had
robbed the grave of the Pale Immortal, even if he
had
stolen the heart and fed at least part of it to Evan, that was the end of the story. Like someone who believed in charlatans in hopes of a cancer cure, that's all it had been. Ingesting a madman's heart had been his father's snake oil.

Yet Evan couldn't convince himself of his own ar- gument. He was different since he'd recently begun drinking the tea from the antique tin. Changed. Not completely changed, but he was undergoing a transformation.

Could he really be part human, part vampire? Part Pale Immortal?

No.

Yes.

Which meant Evan was the ransom. "You want
my
heart."

Alba seemed to forget that they weren't buddies, and Evan wasn't somebody Alba had charmed. He relaxed. He began gesturing with one hand, orating. Evan was no longer the enemy, but Alba's audience.

"I'm not making excuses for myself, but this was meant to be. There was a reason I ended up here, in Old Tuonela." Alba looked away and smiled to himself, at something he was envisioning.

Evan moved with lightning speed, swinging his leg, kicking the flashlight to send it flying across the room, the lens shattering. In the candlelight he hurled himself at Alba, knocking him over backward.

He had to take Alba down quickly before his own strength gave out. In a fraction of a second he had Alba's gun. Alba knocked it from his hand. The weapon spun across the floor and vanished through a crack in the broken boards. Alba scrambled after it.

Evan dove for his Glock, grabbed it, and swung back around. Alba was frantically trying to locate his weapon in the deep crevice. "Get up," Evan said.

Alba slowly and reluctantly pulled his arm from between the boards and got to his feet.

Keeping the gun trained on him, Evan glanced around the room and spotted a length of rope that had probably been used on Lydia. He made a slipknot. "Stand over there." Evan nodded his head at a rough-hewn support post.

Alba positioned his back against it. He was smiling. Why was he smiling?

Never taking the Glock off him, Evan used his free hand to lasso Alba's wrists behind the wooden pillar, pulling the rope tight.

Dried blood caked Alba's hands.

Whose blood?

Even slipped his weapon back into his shoulder holster, finished securing the rope, then retrieved his cell phone and punched 911.

"I need police and an ambulance," he said. He told the dispatcher who he was, where he was, then disconnected and looked at Alba. "You'll be in jail before morning." Now he had to find Graham, tell him an ambulance was on the way.

"I left a surprise for you back at my house." Alba was still smiling.

Fresh dread curled in the pit of Evan's stomach, and he thought of the blood on the man's hands. "What are you talking about?"

"I can't tell you; otherwise it wouldn't be a surprise, would it? You have to go there and see."

Rachel.

Instantly Alba became of little importance. Evan shifted his focus and stumbled from the church. He cut through the graveyard and snagged his toe on something solid and soft, falling to his knees.

A body.

Blindly, he felt the clothes and badge, the stickiness of blood, his fingers coming in contact with the neck. No pulse.

Evan straightened. With fresh urgency he jumped the low stone wall and sprinted down the lane. He could see Alba's house through the trees. The gate was chained and padlocked. He climbed the metal slats and dropped to the ground.

Up the front steps, turn the knob, throwing his shoulder into the door.

Locked.

He looked around, grabbed a chair from the porch, and smashed it against a window. With the chair legs he knocked out the glass to make an opening big enough to crawl through.

Inside, candles burned.

Blood on the floor. Blood on the walls.

A trail of white candles, dripping and smelling of wax, littered the room and led to the second floor.

He took the stairs three at a time, the candle flames sputtering out as he passed, the path before him lit, the path behind him dark.

"Rachel!"

Because he knew Rachel was the surprise. Rachel, who had saved him more than once. Who had put herself at risk. Rachel, whom he loved but could never have.

He hit the landing, and flew up the rest of the steps.

The area at the top of the stairs opened to three small rooms. The candles led to the right.

Evan's heart hammered madly, and he followed the flames, stepping into a large, sweeping room.

A path of candles reflected off the wooden floor. Moonlight fell through large windows.

The room was devoid of furniture except for a tub. An old-fashioned zinc tub, like the one in the photo he'd gotten from the estate sale.

In the center of the otherwise empty room, lying inside the tub, was a woman, her face turned away, one hand dangling over the side, blood pooled on the floor beneath her fingertips.

"No!"

He ran, skidding to his knees.

He picked up her limp hand. The wrist had been slit, long and deep. He turned her face to his.

Rachel.

Blue lips. Marble skin.

This couldn't be happening.

With a violently trembling hand he touched her face. "You can't be dead."

He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her body halfway out of the blood-soaked tub, gathering her to him. A sob tore from somewhere deep inside him—a loud, anguished cry of despair.

He was holding her close when he heard air leave her lungs. He pulled back and put an ear to her mouth . .. and detected faint breathing.

Another sound intruded. A sound that belonged to the world. A wailing siren, winding through the hillside, moving steadily closer.

Evan removed his coat, ripped two strips of cloth from the lining, and bandaged her wrists. Then he wrapped his coat around her, lifted her from the tub, and carried her down the stairs and out of the house.

Headlights bobbed as the ambulance jerked to a stop, leaving a vast space between the vehicle and Evan.

They were afraid of him.

Stepping sideways, averting his eyes, Evan moved out of the glare. "Get over here!" He kept walking with Rachel in his arms.

Two men stepped from the ambulance and approached with caution.

"She's alive, but she needs a transfusion. Do you have blood with you?"

"Plasma."

They got her in the ambulance. One of the EMTs started an IV. There was nothing more Evan could do.

Not here.

He turned and ran, back toward Old Tuonela, back to Phillip Alba.

His strength was increasing by the second, fueled by a rage his body seemed unable to contain. He had no awareness of getting from Alba's front lawn to the church. He burst through the door, flying across the room. He untied the man with two quick tugs. He grabbed Alba by the jacket, tossed him to the floor, then proceeded to punch him in the face again and again, finally pausing to survey the damage before he went in for the kill.

"I don't know why you're so upset." Alba wiped at his bloody nose. He looked at his fingers. "When people die in Old Tuonela, they aren't really dead. Can't you feel them all around us? Even the animals?"

It was true. Evan could sense them. All the dead killed by the Pale Immortal. And more recent ones. A girl. .. The girl who'd gone missing from Summit Lake.

"When I kill you," Evan said, "I assure you, you will be dead." With both hands he dragged Alba to his feet.

Alba reached into Evan's exposed shoulder holster and pulled out his Glock.

Evan didn't care; he swung.

Alba jumped away and squeezed the trigger.

Evan felt a stinging in his shoulder. He stumbled back two steps, then went for Alba again. Another shot barely slowed Evan down. "That's no way to kill a vampire. You should know that."

Alba scrambled to his feet and ran out the door into the darkness. Evan ran after him.

Outside, away from the candlelight, Evan had the advantage. He could not only hear Alba crashing through the underbrush; he could see the evil bastard.

He heard his own rasping breath. Something wet and sticky ran down his arm, but the rage in his head hadn't subsided. If anything, beating the shit out of Alba and now pursuing him had ratcheted it up two notches.

He'd wanted to kill the bastard with his bare hands, but he would settle for watching him die no matter how it happened.

Alba cut between decayed buildings, every so often turning to fire a shot in Evan's direction.

Birds sang out a warning of the coming dawn.

Alba ducked into a tall, weirdly shaped brick structure on the opposite end of town. It was listing to one side and looked as if a slight breeze would knock it over, leaving nothing but a pile of rubble.

The old flour mill.

Evan was on Alba's heels. Inside, Evan could see better, but Alba knew the layout.