The Falstaff Vampire Files (31 page)

Ned struggled for a moment, then stopped and stood with the rest of us. Watching figures made of insubstantial fog rip the gray bodies apart, devour their sleek gray skins and fight over pieces. Silver blood puddled on the ground and another group of ghosts crouched around the pools, running long, gray fingers along the ground to sop it up and devour it. Even with the Others Ned had brought, there were ten ghosts for every Other.

A yawning abyss opened in the sky above, in answer to some distress call from the Others.

“Do you see it?” I asked Vi.

“Yes,” Vi said faintly. “It’s a gate to the Others’ home.”

Now as the few surviving Others left intact struggled to reach it, dozens of ghosts got there first and blocked the escape route.

Ned began to sob openly. “I didn’t know, Mina. I thought you could send them away, not slaughter them. They killed her. They’ve killed them all. I would have rescued Lucy. But I couldn’t tell which one she was anymore.” Mina put her arms around him. He was so tall he buried his face in her hair and wept.

At last the rift in the sky to the Others’ realm began to close, and within less than a minute the night sky was perfect, as if it had never opened. The Hungry Ghosts turned to us.

“Wave the incense, ring the bell,” Mrs. Battle urged.

“Put the pork on the ground. Right here, on this citizen’s lawn. Open the lid. Push the incense sticks into the earth so they still burn,” Sir John commanded. “Now we must back away, slowly. They will take humans or even vampires if they can catch them from behind.”

We all felt the cold like a bitter wind as the Hungry Ghosts approached.

“Keep backing, slowly. Don’t turn away till we get further off.”

The fog thickened as the ghosts massed around the open containers of steaming barbecued pork until the container disappeared from view into clouds of mist.

We were starting down the hill now, away from the golf course, when Sir John paused. “Right now I need your lighter, Professor. When I say so, everyone turn and run as fast as you can.”

Bram struck his lighter as Sir John pulled a long string of red firecrackers from his pocket and held it out for Bram to light. The fuse sputtered and caught and Sir John threw the string toward the thickest of the fog.

“Now, run!”

The firecrackers went off with gunshot-loud explosions.

Bram grabbed my hand and we all turned and ran, except for Ned, who climbed on the bike and pedaled beside us. When we got as far as the next block, Geary Boulevard, Sir John called out to stop. We turned to look back up the slight hill.

The fog totally obscured the street, the golf course, and the fence. The rest of the night was still clear and still. The pork and incense were cut off from view. Then the mist slowly began to retreat back into the bushes and trees, into the manicured lawns that held their bodies and their still hungry spirits.

“Did the firecrackers scare them off?” I asked.

Sir John was still out of breath. “Distracted ’em, so they wouldn’t think to follow. Not sure how far they would get, but I didn’t want to chance it.”

Ned and Mina spoke quietly together. His face had the pale sheen of someone in shock. “Later we can go to my place and talk,” Mina said. Ned nodded. “Now we have to go with these men.”

“Can I come?” Ned still held his bike with one hand, but kept the other wrapped around Mina’s shoulders.

“Can Ned come too?” Mina asked the Bailiff.

The Bailiff laughed—a short bark. “No one ever asks to come to the Night Court, young man. You will share your friends’ fate if the verdict goes against them.”

“I don’t care if I live or die.”

“A useful attitude. You may accompany your friends.”

Sir John, Vi, Mrs. Battle climbed into the Bailiff’s van. The FVI agents had their own rental, and no one wanted to go with them. They followed us to where I had parked my car and fell in behind as I drove Mina, Ned and Bram, following the Bailiff’s van to Night Court.

Chapter 80

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes

September 1st continued

The van led us up
to the parking lot at Coit Tower on top of Telegraph Hill. Only a few cars remained in the lot at this hour, and I didn’t see anyone walking around. “Closed at 6:00 p.m.” was noted on the locked door to the first floor of the tower. The Bailiff led us around the curve of the tower to another, unobtrusive door labeled “No Entry.” It seemed at first like a janitor’s closet. But the Bailiff raised a trap door to reveal a staircase leading down. He led us, with FVI contingent bringing up the rear, down to an iron-barred wooden door set into solid rock.

The door was unlocked and opened into a small room, like a tiny semicircular amphitheater with perhaps 100 seats cut into the rock. The seats sloped down to face a paved floor that contained only a plain wooden table with an armless teacher’s chair behind it. The Bailiff closed the heavy door behind us with a tremendous crash and locked it from the inside.

In the first row facing the table sat a few vampires—one of whom was Edgar Morford. The Bailiff led us all down to sit in the first row off to one side. The FVI guys moved off a few seats, but within easy reach.

The higher rows were nearly full of spectators, a random sampling of a San Francisco crowd with a rainbow assortment of skin colors and dress styles, more men than women. Their utter stillness and they way they examined us as potential prey let us know that they were all vampires.

A tall, thin young man came in from a door in the wall behind the desk. He sat at the table. His complexion was the color of white candle wax, in stark contrast to his carefully combed, chestnut colored hair and the mutton chop whiskers that stuck out oddly from his narrow face. His eyes were pale blue and he wore half glasses over them as he looked down at a book that had been left open on the desk. He was dressed in a threadbare woolen coat with a plain white shirt, and trousers with suspenders. Abraham Lincoln would have been comfortable in the suit. The man’s expression was serious and reserved. Mrs. Battle whispered that he had been studying law in Virginia when he went off to the Gold Rush in 1849, and he had been turned into a vampire before he reached the age of 22.

Edgar Morford came up to Sir John and quietly asked if he could represent him. Sir John nodded.

A man came in through a door on the side leading Hal by the arm. Wearing his best gray suit and a blank, emotionless look on his face, Hal didn’t look around to see who else was there. Without meaning to, Mina and I exchanged a glance. I wondered if she felt the same mixture of anguish for Hal, and a shameful satisfaction to see him in some kind of custody. Not that we were much better off.

The vampire with Hal, whether he was another FVI agent or some kind of prosecuting attorney, pushed him forward as if he were a sulky child. “Tell the judge what you told us.”

Hal’s voice was flat. “I went to the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge at midnight. I invited the Others to come through the gate. Lucy fell and cut her knee and then the Others came.”

There was an audible gasp from the vampire audience.

“Were there other surviving witnesses?” The judge asked.

“There are two,” the agent said. “Lucy Westenra and Ned Harker-Poins, but we have not found them.”

Ned looked up, as if in a daze. “I’m Ned Harker-Poins,” he said, as if just discovering the fact. “Lucy is dead.”

Hal turned to meet Ned’s gaze. “Hi, Ned.”

“Hi, Hal.”

He gave no sign of registering Mina and me standing together with Sir John and Vi.

Another official in a blue outfit similar to the Bailiff’s came up and ushered Ned down to stand before the judge.

“You were there when Henry Roy called the Others through the Death Gate?” the judge asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who else was there?”

“Our friend Lucy was there. She fell and skinned her knee, and that’s when the Others got her. She went over to them over the past few weeks. Only she died tonight. I saw it.”

“Lucy?” Hal’s voice was stricken.

“That will be all,” the judge said to Ned. “Go back to your seat.” The second bailiff followed Ned to where he had been sitting.

“You fed from Lucy, didn’t you, Morford?” Mrs. Battle asked.

Bram whispered to me, “How can they tell?”

I whispered back, “I don’t know, but they can.”

That earned us a look from the judge that nearly stopped my heart. Bram squeezed my hand.

The judge turned his ire on Morford. “Unlike Sir John’s actions with Miss Violet here, you made no move to try to save humans you made vulnerable.”

Sir John took a small step away from Morford. The judge turned an equally severe look on him. “You, sir, must share the blame.”

I noticed everyone in the room winced at the word “blame.” A dangerous thing in this group.

“You brought this young fool along to the point where you should have brought him over or eliminated him,” the judge continued. “Now your human protégé has managed to unleash the Others. Who will pay for that error in judgment?”

“What if Sir John was responsible for finding a way to eliminate the Others?” Mrs. Battle spoke up.

“I’m as fond of Sir John as anyone,” the judge said, with what sounded like petulance. “He’s most amusing. But it hardly seems likely that he destroyed the Others.”

Sir John raised his head. “These deeds have witnesses.”

“They have indeed, Your Honor. Ask these gentlemen.” Mrs. Battle pointed at the Bailiff and two agents who had gone with us.

The Bailiff spoke up. “She’s right. We just saw two hordes of Others devoured by Hungry Ghosts at the golf course on Clement Street. So far as we know, the infestation has been wiped out because of Sir John’s action.”

There was a faint buzz of comment in the room, which the judge silenced with another nasty look. No need for a gavel here. Young as he seemed, his pale eyes made crystal clear that he would silence any disrespect of the court—probably permanently. Nothing like the threat of total annihilation to silence a room.

“Sir John, Violet and her human friends here took real steps to solve the problem,” Mrs. Battle said. “Edgar?”

Morford shuffled forward as if reluctant to speak. “Mrs. Battle is correct. My client, Violet Semmelweis, is recovering from an Other attack solely due to action on Sir John’s part, and quick thinking and ingenious treatment by Abraham Van Helsing, Kristin Marlowe, and their associates whom you see here.”

“Van Helsing!” The judge exclaimed. The name caused another stir in the room. “Vampire hunters helping vampires?”

“This gentleman is from the American branch of the family,” Morford said hastily. “He will testify that he has never hunted vampires, and indeed, he has befriended Sir John.” He turned to Sir John, who smiled, nodded, and put an arm around Bram and hugged him for the judge’s benefit.

Bram stifled a faint “oof!” at the energy of the gesture, but smiled, though his smile was a little sickly.

The judge was mollified enough to be curious. “You humans came up with a treatment to cure attacks by the Others?”

“And some ways to fend off Others when they attack,” I couldn’t resist saying.

The judge turned to me again with only a little less ice in his eyes—I realized I was the first non-vampire to say anything without being asked first. “Sorry, sir,” I apologized too late.

“The court has read Dr. Quiller’s report on these strategies,” the judge said. “This action is worthy of mercy in the court’s eyes.” He nodded to the Bailiff. “I will rule on this case now.”

The Bailiff raised his voice. “All stand for the verdict.”

Everyone in the room got to their feet.

“Leave this court and cause no more disruption. We may not be so lenient if there is a next time. Mr. Morford, inform the court of any other developments.” He took off his half glasses, folded them up and stowed them in a small pocket in his jacket. He swept the room with another searching look, and I realized the glasses were a formal ceremonial remnant of his humanity. “Also let us know of any further infestations.” He turned and left without another word.

The man accompanying Hal took him out through the door they came in by. As he left, Hal cast a mournful look at Mina, his eyes widening in surprise as he finally realized Mina and I stood together. I wasn’t sure where they took him. He seemed to be getting a lot more personal time with vampires, but I got the feeling it wasn’t giving him the power he had been seeking.

The Bailiff unlocked the door and led us up and out the tunnels to the surface.

As we walked into the parking lot with no more official escorts, Mrs. Battle said in a solemn, low voice that this was the best verdict we could have gotten. “Night Court verdicts are usually either instant death, or banishment to another country.”

“I’m kind of glad I didn’t know that going in.”

“They do let you choose the country you’re banished to—usually,” Mrs. Battle said with a wry smile.

I offered to take everyone home in my car, but it was clear we wouldn’t all fit. Bram suggested to calling a cab.

“No need to have our feast delivered, young man,” Sir John said. I realized that the meal he was referring to the cab driver. He turned to Vi and Mrs. Battle “Who will hunt with me tonight?”

The three vampires decided to walk down the Filbert Steps to go out hunting in North Beach.

“Fertile ground indeed,” Sir John said with gusto. “Wine-besotted lovers, disoriented tourists, blind-drunk sailors—marinated for our pleasure!”

As they left, Sir John pulled me aside to say, “’Twas not the time to tell you before, but only fair for you to know. Hungry Ghosts never stray far from their graves. No matter that they be unmarked graves.”

“So the only way to get the ghosts to kill the Others was to bring them there.”

“Indeed. If they had not followed us—” He let the words die out, and winked at me, bowed and held out a hand to Mrs. Battle and Vi. The three of them set off down the Filbert Steps to a vampire feast in North Beach.

Chapter 81

Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes