Vampire Blood (31 page)

She listened for a long time, silent, then said, “Thank you,” and hung up, eyes stunned, her body taut.

Jeff came up behind her and swiveled her around to face him. “What’s wrong?”

“Sheriff Samuels never reported in after his shift last night, and no one’s seen him. Like Clyde Foster, he’s missing.”

“Oh, my god. One of his leads must have panned out. Maybe he got too close,” Jeff mumbled, under his breath. “Or discovered something he wasn’t supposed to?”

“Last time I spoke to him he said he’d been gathering information for the FBI, if things didn’t get better. Said he was bringing them in to help.”

“Maybe,” Jeff said what she herself was thinking, “it got him killed, too.”

Jenny wandered into the front room without another word having decided what she was going to do. She was going to that theater tonight. Confront Michelson. She couldn’t believe that if those kids of his were killers, that he knew about it, much less sanctioned it.

What about Jeff? She didn’t dare tell Jeff what her plans were. He’d never go for it. He’d find a way to stop her, and she’d never discover the truth.

If Irene had killed her father and hurt her brother, she was going to pay for it. Damn if she wasn’t. Teenager or no teenager.

Jenny wouldn’t allow herself to linger too long on Joey’s other accusations. Instead she hid her doubts and fears and pretended they didn’t exist.

She waited until Jeff had fallen asleep on the couch. He’d tried to stay awake as long as he could, but his exhaustion finally had gotten the better of him. She knew why he’d started sleeping there again instead of in her bed with her. Closer to the door. Closer to the phone. He was scared.

A little after ten, she crept stealthily out of the trailer. Putting her car in neutral, she shoved it down the sloping driveway, grateful it was a small car. When she was sure he wouldn’t hear the motor, she started it up and drove down the narrow dusty roads towards town.

She’d thought about taking her father’s gun, but it would have meant going to her mother’s first, getting it and then being grilled about why she needed it. Jenny didn’t want her mother calling Jeff after she’d left, either, which is what she would do. Jenny had no doubt of it. Not only that, but she’d look pretty conspicuous slinking into the theater with a shotgun under her arm. Someone would call the police on her.

Anyway, she was sure she had nothing to fear from Mister Michelson. No matter what the evidence, she knew in her heart he wasn’t—couldn’t—be part of any of it.

She waited outside in her car until the crowd started filing into the theater for the showing of the featured film.

A film called
Near Dark.
She’d heard of it, a horror
movie about a gang of vicious young vampires whose existence was just one long killing spree.

Another coincidence?
she couldn’t help but ask herself.

It was a good thing Jeff wasn’t there because he’d have a conniption fit over what she was doing.

She watched the people shuffle in. Not a bad crowd for a late Thursday night. It looked like a normal one of happy moviegoers to her, going to a normal movie theater.

She had to admit that she was hoping, praying, that what she suspected would turn out to be the nonsense it seemed to be. Only an insane person could believe there were such things as eternal blood sucking undead, right?

She wasn’t insane.

She got out of the car and slipped into the side entrance. She never asked herself why she was being so clandestine, possibly if she had, she wouldn’t have gone to the theater in the first place.

Inside, she made her way down the hallway and inspected the lobby. Only a few stragglers, getting last minute sodas or chocolate covered raisins.

She could hear the music playing behind the screen in the auditorium, the advertisements and the coming attractions were just beginning. The aromatic smell of buttered popcorn lulled Jenny’s senses.

Everything was so normal. What was she thinking?

Annie Michelson was sentried at the auditorium’s main entrance next to the glass cases that held the snacks and candy. She was as lovely and eccentric as usual in a long silky gown, her hair neatly tied up in a braided bun at the nape of her slender neck. She was serving double duty. For a few minutes she’d accept tickets at the entryway then rush over to stand behind the cash register at the candy counter to take peoples’ orders for soda, popcorn and sweets. It was a good thing there wasn’t a large crowd.

She wasn’t smiling, and her movements appeared stilted.

Mister Michelson and the rest were nowhere to be seen. Jenny wondered who was selling the tickets out front. She hadn’t been able to tell from the car. Too many shadows in the ticket box.

Mister Michelson was probably up in the projection booth working with the equipment. He’d talked often enough of running the booth himself, saving on hiring a projectionist.

When Annie’s head was turned, Jenny threaded her way through the sparse crowd and hurried up the balcony stairs towards the new projection booth. On the way, she heard people commenting on how lovely the old place looked, how plush and classy. Pride at the work she and her father had done rippled over her and then melancholy that the experience had had to be ruined by everything since.

Mister Michelson had his back to her, peering out one of the portholes into the auditorium, when she opened the door at the top of the stairs.

She didn’t think at first that he’d heard her come in.

He pivoted and slid a hoop off a coiled black spool of film that lay flat on top of a round metal plate. He picked up the end of the film and began to thread it fumblingly through, over and around a series of rollers on a machine to his right. There was a strip of film crossing the space between the two machines already; in fact, there was film everywhere crisscrossing the lower spaces of the room near his knees, like a celluloid obstacle course. It surprised Jenny that though Michelson had said he was modernizing the projection booth, instead he’d equipped it as if it was still nineteen eighty. Rolls of celluloid film? Very strange.

He acted as if he wasn’t sure of what he was doing, and there was an audible sigh of relief as he flipped a switch, and the film actually began to move through its prescribed path of rollers and pulleys. By the noises and cheers below them, the movie had begun.

Mister Michelson was dressed in elegant evening wear, a dark jacket with tails, and a white shirt with lace at the cuffs. It looked odd among the machines. His golden earring glittered. His curly dark hair shone in the flickering lights.

It was then he acknowledged her perched at the top of the stairs behind him.
“Jenny?”
He turned slowly, and the face he exposed to her was one of misery. “What are you doing here? I warned you to stay away.”

“So that wasn’t a dream,” she said with a haunted smile. “Either time.”

“No.”

She studied him as she’d never done before. He was so pale, so perfect. His eyes glimmered like tiny stars. If she stared into them too long, she forgot ... herself. “Am I distracting you?” Her eyes tore away from his and came to rest meaningfully on the projector. She knew she should leave, that second, but her feet were glued to the floor, and her bones were putty. Shock. She’d wanted the truth, and now she was afraid she was going to get it.

“No. The machines won’t need anything now until the movie’s almost over.” He looked away from her, out one of the portholes. The movie had finished its credits.

“Jenny,” he warned on a sigh as the movie lights played mesmerizingly across his stone face. “Get out of here while you still can.”

“Not until you tell me what I came here to learn. Joey was attacked the other night at his restaurant. He nearly died.”

“I know.”

“He’s going to be okay, though.”

“I’m glad I got to him in time.”

“You
were
the one,” Jenny gasped. The hair on her arms stood on end as if the room had suddenly filled with static electricity.

“Yes.”

“I owe you.”

He brushed off her gratefulness with a curt gesture. “Then get out of here. Now. No more questions. Just go.” He slowly turned to look at her.

But Jenny plunged on breathlessly, unable to stop herself. “Joey said wolves attacked him ... and a woman with long blond hair.”

“Irene,” Michelson grunted hatefully.

Oh, no.

Jenny instinctively shifted away from him, her face draining to the color of fresh snow. She couldn’t stop the next words from escaping her lips. “Joey thinks—”

“What does he think, Jenny?” Michelson cut her off. There was something eerie about the way he stood there glaring at her. He acted as if he were angry.

“He not only is convinced about the wolves, but he thinks the wolves were ...
vampires.
Ridiculous, huh?”

“Oh, Jenny.” A doleful tilt of his head. “It’s true, and you know it, don’t you?” he whispered forcibly.

Jenny whimpered low in her throat. She couldn’t speak.

Mister Michelson fiddled with the film. His shoulders stooped as he let out a tortured sigh. “See these?” He pointed at the large horizontal circles that the film was coiling off of. “They’re called platters. It’s where you lay the film. You get a movie in maybe five, six, seven shipping reels like this one.” He tapped a square flat container.

Jenny followed his motions with her eyes, afraid to move.

“You use this makeup and tear-down table,” he walked past her and laid a slender hand on an odd-looking contraption at the other end of the tiny room, “to splice all the reels together into one huge one to make the complete movie.” He nodded at the tall apparatus that had all the rollers and threaded film on it. “This is called a tree. It feeds the film through and regulates its speed. There’s even an automatic failsafe right here,” he pointed, “that shuts down not only the platters but the projector itself if the film breaks.”

Fear had wound itself tight in Jenny’s throat, and she couldn’t swallow.

“It’s an efficient piece of technology, even if it is antiquated. I like the hands on that it gives me.” His face was doting as he gazed at the thing. “The Super Simplex S1 projector. That’s what they call it.”

Jenny listened, unmoving. She had the feeling she was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“It’s far better than the old reel-to-reel projectors we used in the thirties and forties. Did you know that in the early days we used to employ arc carbon lamps, complete with flames, to illuminate the images through the film and onto the screen? Horrible fire hazard, that’s what they were. Horrible. I remember them well from when I first opened The Grand here. This is much safer.”

“Irene’s a vampire?” Jenny hadn’t been listening to what he’d been saying.

Michelson arched a black brow at her. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you ... we all are, my dear. Every one of us.”

The film continued to click around the rollers and along its narrow path through the machines. The sounds of the movie in progress crested and hushed.

He reached out and took her hand. Jenny was too numb to put up a fight. “I never meant for you, or anyone you loved, to be hurt. I’ve admired you. It’s Irene. She wants you all dead. I can’t defy her, stop her, any longer. She’s far too powerful. The ancient ones usually are.” He let go of her hand. “It’s still not too late, Jenny. Irene and the rest aren’t here now. You still have a chance to survive if you leave
now.”

Hatred flared in her eyes. “Did your daughter kill my father and the Albers?”

“Yes.” No feeling whatsoever. “Though she’s not really my daughter, Jenny. The others, they aren’t my children, either. It was a ruse we used to pass for normal people. A normal human family. It helps against suspicious minds when the authorities begin to look for murder suspects.”

“All the people that have turned up missing?” Jenny’s eyes were widening in horror.

He nodded somberly. “Irene and her acolytes appetites are insatiable. They kill not only for the blood but for the sport of it.”

Monsters,
Jenny thought.

“Yes,” Michelson answered as if she’d spoken aloud. “They are monsters. Even among my own kind.”

He
read my mind.

Michelson met her shocked eyes.

The vertigo she remembered from other times swept over her, and her mind was bombarded with vivid, terrifying images. Vignettes of Michelson and the others merging one into the next. How he first met them. Irene. Annie. What they were. How they hunted. The blood and the killing... Jenny saw it all. Her face went rigid with fright.
Only insane people believe in monsters.

He shook his head at her and smiled enigmatically, showing his fangs.

Jenny felt fear drain her will and fill her mouth with cotton. She stepped back a little, her fingers trembling against her thighs. She couldn’t stop the involuntary cry from escaping her lips as the brutal reality sunk in. The movie noises covered it. No one had heard her, and no one
would
hear her if she started screaming for help. He could kill her, too, and no one would ever be the wiser. She muffled her next scream, covering it with her shaking hands.