They Thirst (59 page)

"GET OUT!" he shrieked. "GET OUT!" He twisted away from her grasp, from the fangs that were coming down out from under her full, luscious lips, and raced back along the hallway. He burst through a door into the bathroom and locked it just before the beautiful vampire started battering on the wood. "Let me in!" she shrieked in a frenzy. "You little bastard, let me in
right now!"

There was a tremendous blow, and the door shuddered; wood began to split. The blows followed one after the other very rapidly now, and Tommy thought that Mr. and Mrs. Vernon were probably out there too, helping to batter the door down. A great crevice suddenly appeared in the wood; the door started to cave in.

Tommy realized he was still gripping the pack of matches. But what good were they? What could he do with them? He couldn't think; the noise outside was too loud. Then he flung open the medicine cabinet and was sweeping aside bottles of vitamins, cough medicine, and cold capsules. There was nothing he could use. Suddenly the door shattered, and they were on him, all three of them ravenous and fighting over him, trying to tear him to pieces. They started to drag him out of the bathroom.

His hand clutched a can of his mom's hair spray, which was sitting on the sink. As Mr. Vernon's grip closed on his throat, he shook a match into his hand and flailed out, trying to scrape it across the wall. He missed, and now Sandy was trying to grasp his arm, screaming shrilly, "HE'S MINE! HE'S MINE! IT'S NOT FAIR!"

Tommy reached out, almost popping his shoulder out of the socket, and dragged the match across plaster. It sputtered and flared, illuminating the sudden burst of fear in the vampires' eyes. Tommy knocked the cap off the hair spray can, got his thumb on the button, and pushed. Immediately he could smell sweet flowers, and the image of his blood-drained mother lying in the next room streaked through his head. He held the match up in front of the spray just as Mr. Vernon made a guttural animal noise and leaped for his throat.

A two-foot jet of flames shot out of the spray can. He heard Mrs. Vernon scream, and he stuck that blue torch right in her husband's face.

Mr. Vernon roared in agony as the flame hit his eyes. He staggered back out of the bathroom, he and Sandy fighting for an instant as they jammed into each other in the doorway. Tommy charged them, keeping his thumb pressed down. The vampires stumbled over each other, trying to get away. "Come on back and fight!" Tommy screamed at them. "Come on, you dirty bastards!" He forgot and released his thumb. The flame instantly went out. Sandy's eyes gleamed, and she started back along the hallway for him. Tommy raced back to the bathroom where the matches lay scattered on the floor. He struck another one and lit his torch again; this time he kept more matches clutched in his hand. Sandy stopped just beyond the bathroom door and immediately backed away. "We'll get you!" she hissed from the head of the stairs. "We'll come back for you, you'll see!"

And then they were gone, sweeping down the stairs and away.

Tommy couldn't lift his thumb for another minute. The flame went out, and he stood in the midst of a stinking swirl of smoke. He was trembling, but he was afraid to cry because he knew if he started, he couldn't stop. He was sure those things meant what they said—they
would
be back.

It was a long time before he could make himself go into his parents' bedroom. On the floor Tiger Eddie's voice still growled from the transistor radio. "Oh yeaaaaah, brothers and sisters, got some real fine news for you if you happen to be huntin' out Santa Monica way. Seems there's a whole bunch of 'em stuck out at the Santa Monica Airport waitin' on planes that never took off, can ya dig it? You be first over there and have yourselves some fun for Tiger Eddie, okay? Gonna be keepin' you up to date 'til sign-off time. Right now here's a fine disc from the Motels . . ."

Tommy picked up the radio and flung it against the wall. It shattered into small bits of plastic and metal. Then he stood and looked down at his parents' bodies, a sob trying to work its way out of his throat.

He began to cry, but he kept his finger on the hair-spray button.

The madman next door was singing again, trying to out-shout the wind. "Onnnn Christ the solid rock I stand . . . alllll other ground is sinking sand, alllll other ground isssss sinking . . . I see you out there! You stay away, you hear me!" There was die quick
crack
of a shot fired at shadows. Then silence except for a few hoarse sobs.

You'd better save those bullets,
Palatazin thought
They may not be worth much, but I'm sure they're better than nothing.
He was sitting on the floor beside the window, his back against the wall. Jo lay on the sofa, drifting in and out of a troubled sleep.

Gayle came back from the kitchen, eating a slice of ham. "You sure you don't want any more of this?" she asked him quietly. "It's just going to go bad in that fridge."

He shook his head.

"There's fruit," she said. "Some apples and oranges."

"No. I don't want anything." He watched as she stepped cautiously to the window and peered out. "You'd better get some sleep while you can," he told her.

"How long until sunrise?"

"About three hours."

Softly, she said, "When is that wind going to stop?"

"The storm's died a little bit," he said, "but I wouldn't suggest our trying to leave this house. There's no telling what we might run into. I think we're about as safe here as we could possibly be."

"Some consolation. What happens at dawn?"

"What do you mean?"

"I know the vampires go crawling back into their graves or holes or wherever, but what happens to us? Where do we go when the storm stops?"

Palatazin almost voiced his fears—that the storm had somehow been brought on by the vampires and would
not
stop, but would probably intensify during the daylight hours to keep the pockets of humanity isolated from each other—but he didn't. Instead he said quietly, "I want you and Jo to try to get out."

"Okay, I'll buy that. But what about you?"

"I'm going to finish what I began. I'm going to find a way up to the Kronsteen castle . . ."

"Alone? You're crazy if . .."

"Yes, alone," he said firmly. "And I may be crazy, I admit it. But who else is there to do it? And if it's not done—if it's not at least tried—then from now on every night will be just like this one. People hiding in the dark, waiting for the vampires. When they're finished here, they're going to sweep eastward, town after town, city after city. Los Angeles is now, for all intents and purposes, theirs. How long do you think smaller cities would last? How long before they reach Chicago and New York? I think there are already vampires in those cities, placed there by their Master as advance scouts. But I think they're waiting to see how successful these vampires are here before they begin massing their armies."

"Surely some news is getting out to the rest of the country!" Gayle said. "Surely . . . somebody out there knows . . . what's happening to us! Don't they?"

Palatazin shook his head. "I doubt it. Right now all they know is that the sandstorm of the century has hit L.A. Other than that, what could they know? How could the news get out? No, Miss Clarke, I'm afraid we're quite isolated, which, of course, is exactly what the vampires want."

She was silent for a moment, wincing as a gust of wind blew sand against the glass. She sat down in a chair, drawing her legs up underneath her. "Why did they choose L.A.?" she asked him finally. "Why begin with us?"

"I'm not sure. Oh, I have my theories, but . . ." He shrugged. "Los Angeles may be one of the largest cities in the world, but it's really a gathering of villages, many of them having no real contact or intermingling with any of the others. I think the vampire king has had . . . much experience in taking villages, and he began here because he recognized that fact about L.A. Also, he probably realized how isolated this city already is from the rest of the country, cut off by mountains and desert. And if you hear about strange goings-on in L.A.—for instance that Gravedigger thing—most people here and in other parts of the country tend to simply shrug and say, 'Well, that's life in Los Angeles.' Believe me, the vampire king has studied this city thoroughly, and he saw how he could take advantage of such attitudes. Also, to conquer a city of this size . . . think of the confidence that's going to give the vampires who are scattered all over this country, waiting for their Master's command. They're going to think they're invincible, that nothing can stand in their way. They may be right."

"How are you going to get up that mountain with those dogs standing guard?"

He looked at her and smiled grimly. "I don't know."

Gayle shivered. "Maybe I will try to get some sleep. God knows I need it. I'm going to go scare up a pillow and a blanket." She rose to her feet and started toward the stairs.

"Will you bring a pillow for Jo, too, please?" he asked her.

"Sure. Back in a minute." She climbed the stairs in the dark, her hand gripping the banister hard. She opened a door and peered in. It was a bedroom. There were a couple of pillows on the bed, but the blanket and bedspread had been kicked off. She gathered up the pillows, hurrying because the moan of the wind at the windows sounded so ghastly, when her heart gave a violent kick. She stared at the bed, an odd recollection ticking in her brain.

There were no sheets. Just as in Jack's apartment before she'd found him . . .

"Palatazin," she said. It came out as a dry, throaty whisper.

Something rustled in the room, shifting heavily. There was the muffled noise of ripping cloth.

"Oh, God," Gayle whimpered, one hand going to her mouth. "Oh, God, no, no, no . . ."

In the darkness the closet door began to open. Another movement caught her eye, and now she could see a cocooned shape writhing out from under the bed. It jerked and stretched and, with the soft tearing of cloth, a grasping white hand protruded, fingers clawing at the sheet. A body came tumbling out of the closet. It was the gray-haired man in the mantel photographs, his legs still wrapped tightly. He fought to get free, and slowly his gaze turned upon Gayle. His eyes flamed.

Gayle screamed. She backed out of the bedroom, and as she did, she saw a woman's head appear out of the other shroud. "WHAT IS IT?" she heard Palatazin shout from downstairs. "GAYLE?"

She started down the stairs, tripped and fell headlong before she could grasp the banister. When she looked back, she saw the man coming at her, a black tongue licking his lower lip. He reached down and grasped her arm, his grip colder than the dead of winter. His grinning sickle of a mouth gaped, and Gayle almost fainted with horror as the fangs began to close in on her throat.

Palatazin stepped to the foot of the stairs with Jo behind him. The vampire, its fangs a half-inch from Gayle's jugular vein, looked up, its eyes narrowing as it sensed that something was not right.

Palatazin flung out his arm with the bottle of holy water clamped in his hand and saw the droplets spray across the vampire's face. Instantly the vampire shrieked in agony, trying to hold an arm over its eyes. It let go of Gayle and scurried up the stairs. Palatazin followed, his face gone gray.

In the bedroom the vampire whirled to face him, and Palatazin could see the smoking holes where the drops of water had struck. The female vampire had almost kicked free from her shroud, and now she began to crawl across the floor toward the scent of hot blood. The male vampire hissed and leaped toward Palatazin. He stepped back, slamming against the wall, and flung out with the bottle again. A machine-gun slash of holes crossed the vampire's forehead, putting out one eye. The thing screamed and fell to its knees, writhing in pain as if it had been sprayed with acid. When Palatazin stepped toward it, the vampire leaped up, shuddering with fear, and crashed through the window on the other side of the bedroom in a silvery shower of glass.

The female vampire gripped Palatazin's ankle, pulling herself toward him. He poured a little of the water in the palm of his hand and flung it quickly into her face.

She howled and contorted, pulling free of her cocoon, both hands pressed to her eyes. Then she was up and staggering blindly, trying to find the window. When her hand closed on the glass fragments on the sill, she pulled herself up and over, falling out of sight.

Palatazin looked through the window, wind whipping into his face. He saw the two figures, still running, and heard the madman's strident cry, "Ye foul spawn of Satan I strike the blow of God." There were three quick shots, and the vampires disappeared into the storm. Palatazin was stunned; he'd had no idea the holy water would have that destructive an effect. His stomach heaved, dark motes spinning before his eyes. He could hear Gayle downstairs, babbling hysterically. When his dizziness passed, he looked at the bottle of holy water. It was a little less than half full now.
What was in this water that could've caused a reaction like that?
he wondered. There was a single drop remaining in the palm of his hand. He sniffed it, then licked it.

The water was salty.

Seawater?
he asked himself. Then perhaps the salt had an immediate, corrosive effect on the vampires' dead flesh? He didn't know why Father Silvera had brought him seawater, but he was decidedly grateful for it.