Vampires (3 page)

He awoke first and got himself up. And then he got the other two up. And then he got the three of them through the gathering crowd down the three blocks toward the hospital before the ambulance met them halfway. He got them inside and got their blood types, and when they were all set and going to make it, he lay down and collapsed, his last thought:

I thought sure it was the leader.

First Intedude

The Man sat calmly, in regal white, waiting for his aide to compose himself. When at last he seemed in control, the Man smiled and nodded.

“Holiness,” began the aide, his voice rich with frustration and almost childlike pique, “this man Crow is a catastrophe.”

“Tell us,” said the Man.

“Holiness, the man arrived drunk. He was loud. He was obnoxious and profane. He insulted everyone in sight. He referred to the priests as eunuchs. He called the, sisters penguins. He attempted to engage one of the guards in a fistfight on the steps outside the private entrance.”

“Was there a fight?”

“No, Holiness. I intervened.” The aide sighed. "Forgive me, Holiness, but I almost wish I had not. It would have done that buffoon good to have been thrashed by the Swiss. .

“Our orders were very clear, we hope?”

"Yes, Holiness. And it was for this reason that I intervened. I received scant appreciation for my concern. Mr. Crow called me... me..

“Called you what?”

“Nutless.”

The Man sighed. “It is very difficult for you, my old friend. We are sorry.”

“Oh, please, Holiness. I am not complaining. I only. . .” The aide stopped and smiled with some embarrassment. “I suppose I am complaining at that. Forgive me, Holiness.”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“Thank you, Holiness.”

“We hear the man is injured.”

“Yes, Holiness. His entire right shoulder is wrapped in bandages. But he will not let any of our doctors examine him.” The aide paused, looked at the window at the far end of the ancient room. “He claims he is fine, Holiness. But he lies. I believe him to be in great pain when he moves.”

“He is indeed, my friend,” said the Man softly. “Even when he does not.” The Man smiled sadly. “Great pain.”

The aide was silent for several moments. Then: “Holiness, I know this Mr. Crow is of great importance to... But it would help greatly if-Holiness, can we not know who he is?”

“You cannot.”

"But Holiness, if we could just. .

“You cannot.”

The aide sighed once more. “Yes, Holiness.” He took a slow deep breath, seemed to rid himself of the concern, said, “All is in readiness. The dining room is prepared. American food, as your Holiness ordered, will be served.”

“Thank you. You have been very thorough.”

“Thank you, Holiness. The man Crow is already in the dining room, has been for”-he checked his watch-“almost fifteen minutes. He is already intoxicated, Holiness. Perhaps there would be a better time.”

“There will be no better time,” replied the Man in a voice of such infinite sadness and despair that the aide found he could not speak for a bit.

He made ready to go, kissing the ring. But at the door the aide paused. The Man could see how clearly the other felt driven to utter this last.

“Holiness, be very careful with Mr. Crow. He has much anger in his soul. And... I believe he hates you.”

The Man waited until he was alone before rising. Then he padded softly across the room to the side entrance. He paused before opening the door to his private dining room.

“So he does,” the Man muttered softly to himself. “And why should he not?”

Then he opened the door and went in.

Tapestries. A broad arched ceiling. A carpet over three hundred years old. A long, thin table with a single heavy wooden chair at each end. In the far one sat Jack Crow, one leg over an arm, a glass of wine in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

The Man nodded to the bows of the four servants-two on each wall and recessed like the paneling-and stepped easily to the center of the room. He waited.

“Well, there he is at last,” barked Crow. He stood ponderously, still carrying his glass and cigarette, and walked over.

The Man waited until the other had come within a few feet. “It is good to see you again, Jack,” he said easily. Then he offered his ring.

Crow stared at the ring with apparent bewilderment. Then he smiled. He put his cigarette in his mouth, transferred the wineglass from his right hand to his left, shook the hand holding the ring, and said, through cigarette smoke, “How the heck are you?”

Despite repeated and insistent orders, it was all the servants could do to restrain themselves.

The Man did not stir. He met Crow's piercing gaze without rancor. He smiled. “We are quite well, Jack. But I see you are injured.” He indicated the bulky bandaging underneath Crow's corduroy jacket.

Crow felt his arm absently. “Oh, it ain't much, priest, considering. Everybody else is dead. Except for Cat and me. Everybody else, though. The Team is dead. All of 'em.”

“Yes, Jack. We know.”

The two locked eyes for several seconds. Then Crow turned abruptly away, fucking an ash onto the carpet and reaching for the decanter of wine. “All dead. Everyone of 'em slaughtered.” He poured some more wine into his glass. Then he plopped back down into his chair and spoke with a voice blood-rich with bitterness. “So, tell me about your week.”

Crow became increasingly more profane, more insulting. He referred to the man as “Your Assholiness.” He put his cigarettes Out on whatever was nearby, the plate, the glass, the tabletop. He was loud. He was vicious. He was disgusting.

The Man said little, his mournful sadness filling his end of the small chamber. He was becoming more and more concerned about the servants, who seemed frozen into a comalike state certain to erupt in violence.

“All of you,” whispered the Man, his gaze taking in the four servants on both sides of the room. “Leave us now.”

It took them several moments to react. But they did, moving stone-faced and dry-hinged to the exits. Luigi stopped briefly before the door and looked back.

The Man smiled reassuringly. “We will call you if we need you.”

Luigi still stared.

“It will be all right, my friend,” added the Man gently.

And then they were alone.

“Now that's more like it,” cackled Crow. “Now we can get down to the serious drinkin'.”

He reached over to grab a chair from the wall and slide it over next to the Man. But he had trouble, first with his balance, then with the weight of the massive chair on his right arm. It seemed to bring Out something even darker than the bitterness and fury. Something deeper. Something worse.

He finally got the chair alongside the Man and banged down into it. Then he realized he was almost out of wine. He stared forlornly into the near-empty decanter in his lap.

The Man, still calm, still cool, said, “We have some, Jack,” and reached for the carafe by his plate.

“Fuck, no!” roared Crow suddenly, inexplicably. He half-rose to his feet. He shot out one hand to intercept the wine and with the other, his right one, his injured one, slammed the pontiff back into his chair.

Dead silence. Each man stared, wide-eyed in shock at what had just happened. Crow dropped the decanter onto the table. It shattered. Red wine began to flow around the plate and toward the edge of the table.

Crow tried. He really tried. He lurched crazily forward to stem the flow. He cracked his forearm down on the edge to dam it up. But nothing could stop the scarlet stream from spattering across the Man's milk-white, snow-pure robes.

And for a moment each simply stared, not at each other but at this.

And then Crow exploded. He leapt to his feet and roared and screeched, splashing the wine from the table onto the robes over and over again, roaring and roaring louder and louder as he sprayed it, yelling at the top of his lungs: “Take it, goddammit! Take it, you papist motherfucker! It's about time you got some of the goddamned blood!” and the Man just sat there, frozen in his chair, his eyes closed to the spattering drops covering his robes, his head, his face, and above him Crow still raged and roared and then.

Then was utterly silent.

The Man opened his eyes to the vision of the giant trembling above him, his hands and face and clothes covered with wine and fury and...

And agony.

“My son,” be whispered and his compassion was a thing alive. “Oh, my son.”

Jack Crow's face, rock-taut with ferocity, cracked in two. Then it began to melt. Tears welled up in his eyes and began to rush down his cheeks. His cry of pain was irretrievable and lost.

Then he was falling to his knees and sobbing, his massive arms snaking out to wrap around the other man's waist as a child's for safety and comfort and the old man held him and rocked him as the great shoulders shook with the great sobs that simply would not stop but went on and on and on.

“Oh, Father! It was so horrible!” whimpered the giant “I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!' he cried later and both men knew it was for nothing that had happened there this night. And later, when the giant was almost asleep and his voice was a dry cracking hiss pleading, ”God, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. . ." over and over the old man forgave him again and again and again.

And later, hours later, when they could not get their master to rise rather than disturb the sleeping giant curled into his lap, they thought it was his infinite compassion, his infinite love that kept him praying all this night for the soul of this great weeping beast.

But it was fear.

For the Man was certain that Jack Crow would be forgiven for his sins.

But who would forgive him for sending this poor soul out still again to face the monsters once more?

Jack Crow awoke with a start from some nameless horrible on the flight from Rome and beheld the angelic face of his newest team member, Father Adam, sleeping across from him.

He's a sweet kid, thought Jack. I'll probably get him killed, too.

Then he went back to sleep because any other thoughts were better than these.

“I need a vampire,” said Carl Joplin for the hundredth time. Cat burped and ignored him. Annabelle placed a soft white hand on Carl's great fat shoulder and said, “I know, dear.”

The rest of Team Crow had been at the bar at the Monterey Airport for four hours. One hour to get primed for the homecoming and the three more the plane turned out to be late. It was not a pretty sight.

Except, thought Cat, for Annabelle. She was always a pretty sight. Even when she wasn't. He propped his elbow very carefully against the edge of the bar, made a fist with his hand, put his cheek on it, and examined her.

He had known her his whole life and. . . Waitaminute. That wasn't true. He had known her six years. No. Seven years. Almost seven years, since before her late husband, Basil O'Bannon, had founded Vampire$ Inc. And anyway, she was still the same. Still pretty and still plump and still mostly blond and still forty-something or sixty-something years old-it didn't seem to apply-and still able to outdrink God.

Time to take a piss, he decided. He lifted himself off the barstool, careful not to get the toe of his boot caught on the railing like last time, and ambled off on his mission.

Carl Joplin looked up from rubbing his wondrous belly and said, “I need a vampire.”

“I know, dear,” said Annabelle.

“It's gotta be tested!” he insisted.

“I know, dear. We'll ask Jack when the plane gets in.” Carl snarled and sipped his drink. “Jack! Shit!” He was still mad at Jack and likely to stay that way. “Jack!” he repeated disgustedly.

Carl Joplin was the weapons man and the tool man for the team. He made the crossbows for Jack and Cat's wooden knives and everything else they took with them into battle, but did he ever get to go into battle? Hell, no! “Too valuable,” Jack would always say. Somebody had to be free and clear of the fight at all times to make sure the fight could go on. Carl could buy that. It made sense. But how come it had to be him every goddamn time?

But it was. Sure, he was a little overweight and maybe pushing sixty but that was no reason not to let him duke it out just once. Just one time, baby!

The detector was his best chance. Joplin had actually come up with a vampire detector based on the presumed electromagnetic energy of any object and/or critter able to totally absorb all sunlight. It was an ingenious gadget but it required a vampire to test it. Carl knew damn well they could never hope-or, for that matter, be so stupid as to try-to capture a fiend and bring it to him. Ergo, he would have to be there on sight to run the buttons and knobs the rest of the peckerwoods were too damned ignorant to follow in the first place. He'd get into it one way or the other, by God!

And in the meantime he went back to rubbing his great belly and snarling and refusing to see Annabelle's smile when he did it. Which reminded him: how come he was sloppy

drunk and she wasn't? How come she never was? Hub? Explain me that!

Cat, weaving his way back through the tables from the rest room, was wondering the very same thing. He had never in all of his whole entire life seen Annabelle drunk. And she drank as much as anybody, didn't she? Well, didn't she?

Did she? He thought back. Yup. She did. In fact, she was the one who had really gotten the serious stuff going with that schnapps shit. Waitaminute! Schnapps! She always drank schnapps! Maybe if I drank schna... Waitaminuteagain! I am drinking schnapps. I've been drinking it. That's how I got so polluted.

He plopped back down on his stool thinking: Mystery of the Universe!

“I need a vampire,” said Carl once again at Cat's reappearance.

“In a minute,” Cat finally retorted.

And they hissed at each other.

Annabelle smiled again. But not too much or she was certain she'd lose her balance, keel backward off the stool, skirts flying, and crack her head on the side of the bar like a ripe grapefruit.

And then, she giggled silently to herself, little purple butterflies would sparkle out.

She had never been so thoroughly plastered in her life. She doubted if anyone had. And the thought of actually being able to sit down and pee was her notion of heaven. But do women pee? Sure they do. No. They dew. Horses sweat, men perspire, and women dew. Right? No, that was something else.

But urinate sounded so dreadful. So unladylike.

And if she didn't risk weaving to the rest room in front of the men she was about to do something a lot more unladylike. Being a lady-setting the standard-was paramount. She bore the entire responsibility, she was quite certain, for Team Crow.

In a very real sense, more than she would ever fully comprehend, this was quite true. Annabelle O'Bannon was more than a simple regal beauty who kept her raucous men in line. She was their symbol for the rest of the world they were surely going to die trying to protect. She was why they kept going out to fight knowing damn well they would eventually lose. It had happened to everyone else. It would happen to them. But this way it wouldn't happen to Annabelle.

They didn't know this, her men. That is, they had never consciously voiced it, even inside their own heads. But it was so. It was so because she, Annabelle, was so. Just so.

She had that way with men only certain ladies and other magical creatures possessed. A way of making them sit down and eat their porridge or drink their drink. Of making them shut up and listen to someone else talk.

She could make them wear ties.

She also possessed the unique ability to actually stop violence, like the time she made Jack put that Harley down- and not on that poor moaning biker like he wanted.

None of this was getting her off the barstool and into the ladies' room. And she simply had to go. Then a thought occurred.

“Young man,” she called to the middle-aged bartender, “I'll have another.” Then she slid off the stool and landed, thank God, on both high-heeled feet and had weaved her way several steps toward sweet release before Carl and Cat could get over the shock.

The two men looked at one another. Another drink? Another-goddamned-drink? She was going to have another round and here they were, the two of them big tough guy Fighters of Evil trying desperately to focus on their cocktail napkins for balance, for chrissakes, and she's having another...

But what could they do? What choice did they have? It was awful and grisly to do it but the alternative was worse, giving in was worse.

Carl gulped, said, “Me too.”

The bartender, bright, sober, and sadistic, asked Cat, “Another all the way around?”

And Cat, his face gray and his life passing before his eyes, nodded dully.

Annabelle's timing was, as always, exquisite. She had made it almost out of sight while the men were occupied with machismo. She paused at the entrance to the bar and, with apparent unconcern, spoke back over her shoulder, “Young man,” she called sweetly to the bartender, “I guess not after all.”

All three men turned toward her, the bartender with hands full of fixings. “You don't want another, lady?”

Annabelle smiled. “I guess not.”

The bartender's annoyance barely showed. “You're sure?” he pursued.

She paused, seemed to take the question of chemical ~suicide seriously, then shook her pretty head again. “I guess not,” she repeated and then she was gone.

Her men all but leapt at the opening she had provided.

“I guess not, too.” “Me either, now that I think about it.” Both burst out in the rapid staccato of machine-gun fire.

The bartender stared at them, glanced at the rest of the lounge, which was completely empty, and sighed. Too good to be true, he thought. He'd known that just three people making his overhead for the day was too good to be true. But still, they'd almost made it.

Annabelle neither heard nor cared about any of this. She was too busy stamping her awkward path to the ladies room door, bashing it open with both hands and part of her hairdo, jerking herself awkwardly into a stall, unsheathing herself, and then reveling in one of those mini-orgasms reserved for those lucky creatures made in God's image.

Later she thought: I'm so tired.

It had been a busy two weeks for her. With Jack in Rome it was left to Cat and Carl and herself (meaning her) to handle all the arrangements. Contacting the next of kin had been easier than it might have been. Crusader types, she had long ago discovered, had a tendency' to be loners.

Except for Anthony. She had gone to San Antonio to tell Mrs. Beverley in person. When that sainted woman had opened the door and seen her she had known. The two of them had held each other and rocked and cried and rocked and cried for two straight hours, their minds filled with the rich memories of the sweet, handsome, brave huge black Anthony they had loved so, much. No loss, except of her husband Basil, had ever touched her so much. And she had known right then that when Jack's and Cat's time came-as it certainly would-that would be all for her.

She knew it was up to her to keep going. She knew that Carl Joplin, as amazingly competent as he truly was, would need her desperately. Would fail, probably, without her help.

She knew this and she didn't care. When Jack and Cat went, that would be it. Even the hinted image of that loss, -so wickedly brutal, so thoroughly devastating, was intertwined with one of herself sitting quietly in her room lining up the pills to swallow. Interesting enough, it bad never occurred to her that she might die another way. Vampires? She had never seen one, never wished to, and could think of no reason in the world why she ever should. That was the men's job. They were hers.

Later, of course, when the horror was roaring in on them, it would be different. But she couldn't have known that now.

Her thoughts turned to the move. They were leaving Pebble Beach and moving back home to Texas. To Dallas. They were going to miss their mansion with its view of the bay and the sculptured golf courses and the ocean fog rolling across the tops of the pine trees and, most of all, the miniature deer eating her flowers every morning.

She had claimed, loudly and often, that she hated the creatures and believed them to be a scourge of nature. The world, she insisted, would be better off if every single deer was burned at the stake.

“Bambi, too?” someone would invariably ask.

“Especially Bambi,” she would sharply retort. “That vile little mutt has only encouraged them.”

This fooled absolutely no one, of course. But still every morning she would put, on her sneakers and her one pair of blue jeans and her late husband's lumberjack shirt, tie her hair back in a scarf, grab her weapon (the back porch broom), and rush out to do battle. Everyone would race to the windows, even braving some truly monumental hangovers, to laugh and applaud and tap on the glass and just generally on the deer. Especially that one awful creature who was certain was the leader. So smug and cocky and sure self, it would actually stop eating and stand there, just

there and stare at her as she ran at it waving the broom, snowing not one ounce of fear until just before she could whack it, and then vault effortlessly over the ten-foot fence she had had especially constructed. The boys loved him and named him Bambi after that silly movie and- And.

And the boys...

The boys were all gone. The boys, her boys were all dead, all destroyed horribly and forever and...

And for a long time the only sound in the room came from the muffled sobs filling the tiny stall.

It was why they were moving. The Zoo, the nickname for the wing now holding seven unoccupied bedrooms, was empty. Empty and hollow and dark and sad. It had been the only post massacre order Jack had been able to manage. Near-incoherent with pain and rage and shame, his last comment before boarding the plane to Europe was to take everything home to Texas where they belonged.

Annabelle had thus been left with the project of packing everything up, flying to Dallas, selecting and buying another house (with room for Carl's workshop), and most difficult of all, sorting out the boys' belongings.

So many belongings. And such, such.. . boyish things. She smiled at that thought and wiped away another tear.

Because they were such boys. They were grown men, too. All of them. The youngest almost twenty-five, the oldest just over forty, older even than Cat, the second in command.

But they were such boys, too. Oh, she knew why. She did. She understood why. It was their job, the nature of it, the fear of it, the..

The certainty of it.

They weren't going to get married and raise children and grow old and pass away retired in some resort community. They were going to die. They were going to be killed by some desperate. lunge of talon or teeth, too fast for anyone to do anything to stop it. And then they were going to have to be staked and beheaded by the survivors who couldn't even use the funeral as a time to mourn because of it.

They were going to die. And soon. And they knew it. Every single one of them knew it. They were going to die.

And so they were kids. Her boys. She packed up so many toys. Video games and stereo sets and model airplanes and pinball games (everybody had to have his own machine) and hookah pipes and science fiction books and comic books, some of which were, inexplicably to Annabelle, in Japanese. (She could never understand that. None of the boys spoke Japanese, much less read it.) And then there were the stacks of porno books and magazines and she found it was apparently legal to actually entitle a magazine Fuck Me.

So much stuff and plenty of money for it-the Man saw to that knowing they- would never live to accumulate their own fortunes. And they spent it.

But what was appalling and, she admitted it, endearing to Annabelle was what they did with it all. All that healthy maleness and alcohol and fear pent up in even so large a place as the mansion made for an extremely vibrant household to say the least.