Vampires (24 page)

Perhaps she would not have hated herself so had she known it would be the last time he would do this to her.

By 7:30, he had lain her in her bed, saying something about an errand he simply had to run. Even as she dropped off, she could tell he was trying to be too flippant. That this was more than an errand.

In her dreams she heard that other Voice again and again and again.

“That was the night,” said Jack Crow suddenly, “that he came up to Bradshaw and killed my men.”

“Yes,” said Davette quietly. “Only he missed you be-cause he got there too late. Pough got lost. And then... Well, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“What did Ross do to Pough?” Kirk wanted to know.

“He had bruises all over his face when he came back. And he limped.”

“Did Pough enjoy his pain?” asked Father Adam quietly.

Davette looked at him, surprised. “Yes. How did you know?”

The young priest shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Just a feeling” was all he said.

“What about,” asked Felix leaning forward, “the wound?”

“Yes,” added Cat eagerly. “In his forehead.. .”

“From the cross. . .” finished Carl Joplin.

“The Holy silver cross,” amended Father Adam.

“Yeah.”

“Oh!” sparked Davette, remembering, "It hurt him. It really hurt him...

He thrashed about on the silken sheets of the huge bedroom suite he had furnished deep in the basement, wallowing in pain and frustration. And it was impossible to restrain him, with muscles hard as a bronze statue come alive and hurting and.. . angry!

“DO SOMETHING!” he raged and they tried, Davette and Pough, they really tried, but the wound would not stop bleeding. The thick, heavy vampire mucus continued to ooze, rhythmically, with his panting dead man's pulse. And every time a new surge of matter pushed its way out, the monster howled and grabbed his head, or ripped the sheets with his long nails or tore one of his brand new tailored silk shirts from his chest or.

Or lashed out. At the walls, at Davette, or at Pough, who was either too stupid or too masochistic to step beyond his reach. The first time Davette went down was from bean struck by just the edge of his hand. That blow had sent her rolling onto the floor and from then on, 'whenever she saw the glob begin to form at the wound's opening, she would step quickly back while the vampire raged in 'agony.

But then she would jump quickly back onto the bed an sop up the stuff before it rolled heavily down his forehead and got into his eyes, because that seemed to hurt him more than anything else. When the mucus hit his eyes he would shriek!

Three hours at this and Davette was exhausted. More she was angry. At Pough, the slug who liked being hit, a herself, for being here at all, for the vampire Ross, who, uk the wicked infant he was, refused to accept the bill he'd run up.

She saw him differently now, in his pain, and her contempt was joyous. There was no seduction here, no hypnotic gaze, no Voice. His skin was no longer smooth cream but mottled, crinkled, paste.

The Undead, she kept thinking.

All those movies and all those stories I've seen and read in my life were fantasies. But this is so true. He is not alive He is Undead. He is Unhealthy.

He is scum.

Ross actually tried aspirin for the pain, a notion that Davette, in her newfound insight, found laughable, ludicrous almost beneath contempt.

You're dead, pig. You can't take aspirin, she thought.

But she said nothing as Pough fetched the bottle an

Ross tore the top of it open with a flick of his fingers and forced a half dozen of the dry 'white pills down his throat. She stood way back then, eyeing the ornate quarters for a receptacle. He had quite a few of those urns around against the walls but they were too heavy. At last she spied some awful, intricate, and expensive French washbowl-something on one of the side tables-and sidled over casually to pick it up while Ross lay frozen in his misery, staring straight up at the ceiling, his hands outstretched and talon-taut in the ragged sheets.

First he started to retch, his body warping on the bed as electrocuted. And when he finally vomited it was the most vile, fetid, loathsome. . . Decay! That awful smell of Death, rotting, sickly-sweet bile!

Davette dropped the washbowl to the carpet and staggered back from that smell.

“Ross, you fool! You're a vampire! You can only have blood!”

And the monster's eyes rolled back in his head, the pupils almost disappearing entirely, and his spine arched once more against the bed. But then his head snapped forward and his eyes were red and demonic and the fangs were there and he looked at Davette and hissed:

“Yesss!”

And she thought she was going to die.

But Ross's arm streaked out and his taloned hands clumped down on Pough's forearm and pulled it toward his jaws and Pough screamed when the fangs sliced the arteries and the blood began to spurt and Davette felt her scream coming as Ross aimed the stream not at his mouth but at his wound. And as the blood splashed and splattered across Ross's forehead Davette looked at Pough and saw his eyes go back, but not in pain. In ecstasy.

And her scream blew out from her soul and possessed her and she collapsed, still screaming.

It worked. The wound didn't heal. Not completely. But the opening shrank to little more than a large pinprick. It still dripped that clear viscous fluid. But a headband was all it needed.

And the pain was less. Not gone, but less. It no longer incapacitated him. It just made him a bit more cruel.

Ross had looked into her eyes and told her she was tired, sleepy and exhausted, that she would go to sleep and not wake up until midnight tomorrow night, and it was so.

He awoke her with his mind or his Voice-she wasn't sure-at the appointed hour. He was standing in her doorway, the light from the hallway silhouetting him. She could hear voices downstairs, many voices laughing and talking.

She didn't want to go.

“Ross . . .” she began weakly.

“Get dressed,” said the Voice. "Now. I'll be back for you.~~

And then he was gone.

She lay there a few seconds, then clambered slowly dizzily, out of bed. She was exhausted, beaten, drained. She hadn't eaten. She had slept too long. She wanted to die

She didn't know if she could get dressed.

“I'll help you,” offered a soft, silky, familiar voice

Kitty, even in the dim starlight from the terrace doorway, was incredibly beautiful. She was radiant, really, her features sharp yet soft, her walk lazy yet precise and sensuous. She was friendly and warm and obviously glad to see Davette and...

And a vampire.

“I'll help you,” she said again, this time all but cooing as she strolled forward and took her friend's limp shoulders. “I'll make you beautiful.”

And she did. She dressed Davette as one would a child. She fixed her hair and applied her makeup and never once turned on a light.

Davette simply sat there. Or stood up. Or raised her arms as told. She couldn't cry or disobey or think. She just let it be done.

And then she was ready and Kitty pronounced her beautiful and then Ross, who had reappeared at the doorway, agreed. Then the two of them took each of her arms and guided her downstairs.

On the long main staircase Davette managed to speak at last.

“Are you.. . going to make me a vampire?”

Ross's smile was satanic.

“No, my dear,” he replied pleasantly. “I'm going to make you watch.”

And when they reached the bottom of the stairway and turned in to the main living room filled with happy partying victims, Davette saw the plastic tarp had already been laid out.

She watched them feed from a far distance it seemed. The horror was too much, the screams of surprise and terror too piercing, the quantities of blood too enormous to accept. She didn't move, she didn't speak. She didn't respond, except to Voices. She wasn't there.

• But she noticed them swelling as they drank. Like ticks, she thought.

For their bodies did actually expand as they sopped the lives. And their eyes became dreamy and their voices, Voices, became slurred. There was too much blood for the two of them but they drank most of it anyway, gorging themselves and laughing about the presumed lives of the victims based on their clothing and personal effects and when they realized they simply could not drink it all, they laughed and rubbed it all over each other and Davette thought they really did look like serpents, entertwined and slimy with blood.

It was the same the next night. First, though, they had the orgy for the sheep, seducing them with Voice and Gaze, and the sexual tension was rich and thick.

But somehow carefully directed. One young couple in their twenties were somehow carnally separated. Ross had him -bound and gagged while the young wife rolled and clasped with a series of men on the floor in front of him, knowing what she was doing, weeping throughout, but unable to help herself, unable to stop the rich, luxurious orgasms from rocking her again and again.

Davette watched the young man, his eyes red with tears, as he went through the torture of his wife the rutting slut. She didn't know how they had managed to keep the feeling of sex from him, only that they so much enjoyed seeing his agony without having any idea as to what was causing his wife to behave like this.

Then Ross just let them go, without explanation, before the slaughter began.

“Let's see them work this out,” he said with a laugh as he watched their subcompact lurch away down the drive.

Davette wept silently. The two had been married less than three weeks.

And she thought, for a few brief moments, that it would have been less cruel to kill them. But that was before the night's slaughter began. Once she heard the new screams, she realized she was wrong. There was nothing worse than what she saw. Except, possibly, the vampires' pleasure in it all.

I cannot do this, she thought.

I cannot continue like this.

I cannot live like this.

And then she thought: So I won't. I know where Aunt Vicky kept her pills.

Davette lived because she overslept. She had no chance to sneak into Aunt Vicky's room to kill herself. Before she was half awake, Ross and Kitty and someone new, another woman, another vampire, a redhead named Veronica, were all in her room, rousing her out of bed to show her their new clothes. Vampire clothes.

They were all blacks and reds, the women's dresses trailing wisps of material to give the illusion of black widows, Ross's jacket and red ascot making him look just like a movie Dracula.

The three seemed to think this very witty. And they had a dress just like it for Davette. They also had victims on their way.

So Davette got dressed and went downstairs and listened to the three whisper among themselves and wondered what adolescent horror would come about in her home that night. The main living room had been just about transformed to Ross's specifications. It reminded Davette of these absurd outfits the four were wearing. If only the absurdity were not so vicious and macabre.

I've got to get away, she thought. If I can just get to the pills, and take them at dawn, it will be over before they can do anything about it.

So just smile, stupid. And go along with these monsters.

And then leave this all. Leave everything.

And she took a deep breath and braced herself. She could get through anything,' couldn't she? This one last night? Please? Only.., what have they planned to show me tonight?

As it turned out, they had to change their plans.

The vast eighteen-foot-high french doors to the grand terrace burst inward with a rush of air and electricity and a White Giant walked into the room.

At least that's how Davette thought of this great huge man, at least six-five and weighing close to three hundred pounds with huge shoulders and a massive mane of snow-white hair. He had the most piercing blue eyes Davette had ever seen. He was supremely confident, blazingly intent.

And a vampire.

“Ross Stewart,” he bellowed, “you have failed me. What will it be?”

Davette recognized the Voice from the other night.

Ross had stumbled to his feet upon the man's appearance. Davette felt rather than saw him try to draw himself up to his full height and power as the other vampire approached.

As she also felt him give in as the giant drew near.

“What is it,” he asked, with no Voice at all, “that you want me to do?”

The giant took one more step forward so that he literally towered over Ross.

“Finish it!” he roared. "Finish it! Kill him!

"Kill Crow . .

“So!” hissed Cat, and his smile was not a friendly one, “that's the guy!”

“Yeah,” rumbled Jack, sitting forward. “Who is it?”

“I don't know. They wouldn't let me know.”

“Any ideas?”

She shook her head. "No. Even when they had me sign the papers, they had tape over his name.~~

“What papers?”

“I don't know. He brought them with him. And he made Ross have me sign them before we left.”

Carl Joplin frowned. “You signed them without knowing what they were?”

Davette's eyes dropped as she nodded.

“Ease off, Carl,” said Deputy Thompson gently.

Carl looked at him, nodded. “Sorry, sugar,” he said to Davette, "I just keep forgetting..

“Well, how?” sparked Davette suddenly, her eyes bright and flashing. “What did you expect me to do, with four vampires in the room?”

It got very still. The Team sat stunned at this bristling defiance from this meek little broken...

And then Felix started to smile and so did Davette and then everyone laughed and Cat thought, My God, girl! How do you keep shining?

And everyone felt a lot better. Cat got up and fixed more drinks. Even Davette bad one. Only Felix declined.

Instead he lit a cigarette and looked at Davette. “Still, it's important about the papers. More legal documents?”

“Yes. Like the ones I did for Ross. Power of attorney, I guess.”

“How about a last will and testament?”

“It could be.”

“A death sentence.”

“What?” cried Annabelle. “What do you mean.”