Vampires (31 page)

And saw him. Really saw him for what he was.

It was a long, polished, curved wooden bar that skirted along the edge of the rink. Weary shoppers could pause, hop up on a stool, and grab a quick one without breaking stride. And then they might sit there a little longer, watching the skaters. And maybe have just one more drink before trying to find Uncle Stan's birthday present. Maybe they would just stay until closing.

The vampire was at the far end of the bar to their left, standing there alone pretending to drink something clear on the rocks. A few feet to his right, sitting alone, was a young woman in her mid-twenties with long legs and auburn hair and a stack of shopping bags piled around her stool and no one to save her.

Because we're the only ones who know, Felix thought bitterly. And we can't do anything because it's dark and...

And what? What?

The deception is what got to him. Just walking up and ordering something and spotting his prey and getting away with it. He could have sat down next to anyone-but us. Anyone could have sat down next to him.

Hell, I could go sit down next to him now!

And do what? Nothing. Die, maybe.

But I could do it. And he wouldn't recognize me, either.

Felix didn't know why that notion so intrigued him.

But then the hunt started and no one thought. They just watched.

It happened so fast. It happened so smoothly. Suddenly he was just there, closer to her. And they were talking. And then she was laughing and then she couldn't take her eyes off him and Felix turned to see if Davette could watch this, knowing what she knew. But she stared just like the men.

And it Went on and on until Felix just couldn't stand it any longer.

“Get the car,” he told them.

Cat looked at him. “What are you planning-”

“Just get the car. Bring it around to.. .” He looked around. “Bring it around to that entrance over there. What is that? The west side? And wait for me.”

“Felix,” Cat began again. “Tell us what you're-”

“It won't hurt to find out where he takes her,” was all he would say.

They left. Felix stayed. And watched.

When the new couple, master and slave, stood up from the bar, Felix checked his watch. Nine minutes. Nine lousy minutes between life and death. It was like watching a slow-motion traffic accident.

Felix paid the tab and trailed along behind them. It carried all half dozen of her shopping bags in one easy grip. The girl was on its other arm, smiling and looking hypnotized up to its face as they made their way to the exit.

They walked out the glass doors and to the edge of the sidewalk and waited there, talking, as if for a taxi. Felix meandered on around to one side toward the Blazer, parked several yards away.

He got in and told Cat, sitting behind the wheel, to pull away and around a line of parked cars before they got noticed. Cat obeyed. By the time he had steered them back around to where they could again see the couple, the limousine was there.

It was a long black Cadillac and it pulled to a smooth stop at the curb in front of the couple. From the driver's door stepped a tall pale man wearing a chauffeur's uniform. He stepped to the door closest to the couple and opened.

Davette gasped when the tall, handsome, silver-haired man stepped out.

“My God!” she whispered. “It's him!”

“Who?” the men demanded.

“It's him!” she repeated and turned to Felix. “The man who sent Ross to kill Jack!”

Felix hadn't taken his eyes from the man. “Are you certain?” he asked her in a strange voice.

"I'm positive. It's him. He's the one. I saw him twice. I...,,

“What?” Cat asked.

She tilted her head, staring. “I don't know exactly. It's just that. . . Well, he looks so familiar. I mean, he looked familiar then. And he still does.”

Felix was still watching the silver-haired vampire as he got out of the limo, was graciously introduced to his procured victim, even more graciously-with many bows and flourishes-ushered everyone into the rear of the black car.

“Follow them,” Felix said.

“Felix!” said Cat excitedly, “if this is the guy, then he's the one who's been after us.”

“Well, Felix? Say something!”

“Just follow them, Cat,” the Gunman replied and his voice was too hard and too dry for further conversation.

They all went to far north Dallas, past the yuppie suburbs and into the sprawling countryside, with its sprawling golf course and estates, to a fortress.

It didn't look like a fortress, not to an untrained eye. It simply looked like a glamorous, incredibly expensive country home. It just happened to have a seven-foot-tall rock wall around it and a black iron automatic gate and a gatekeeper's booth. Hidden along the wall, where you could only see them if you looked for them, were electric wires, electric lights, and, Felix could only assume, penetration sensors.

A fortress.

The limo had already turned into the gate and Cat was slowing down as he passed the entrance when Felix barked at him: “Speed up! Speed up! Go past! Don't let them notice this car!”

“I just wanted to see the name on the-”

Felix roared at him. “Move, goddamn you, Cat! Move the fucking car!”

Cat blinked, obeyed, hit the gas. They sped quickly past the entrance.

“Now,” said Felix a mile later, “take us to the hotel.” And his voice was calmer but his tone-his tone was still

sharp ice. Cat and Davette exchanged a look but didn't speak throughout the trip. Felix sat alone in the back seat. He stared

-out the side window. He didn't move. But the pulse on the side of his neck throbbed rhythmically with the lights from passing traffic.

By the time they got back to the suite, Cat couldn't stand it anymore.

“Felix, dammit! If you had just let me see who it was!”

Felix eyed him with a scary calm. “Really?”

“Yes! Really. Just let me slow down enough to read the mailbox. Just let me get the bastard's name!”

Felix looked at him a moment, then carried his drink to a table next to the picture window that overlooked the lights of the city. He put the drink down without sipping it. And spoke.

“The bastard's name is Simon Kennedy.”

“Of course!” Davette cried. “'I know that name. I've heard that name.”

But Cat couldn't take his eyes off the Gunman's back.

“But you, Felix. You. . . you know him. Don't you?”

Felix turned slowly toward them and his eyes were hard to look at and his grin was a death-mask's grin.

“For fifteen years,” he hissed.

Gunman Felix never did actually start raving as he spoke of Simon Kennedy.

What he did was worse.

It was low and slow and chilling, a bitter, vicious, grinding, dull roar of a voice, rich and fat with venom.

It was terrifying.

Because they could see the mounting rage, the virulent agonized fury, bubbling up and up.

But never out.

He paced as he spoke, back and forth, back and forth, his face a tight gray skull, his eyes always distant and inward. Always dark.

Gunman Felix remembered the very first time he had been introduced to Simon Kennedy, remembered his face and his smile and his handshake. Remembered seeing him dance, for chrissakes, at debutante parties and charity balls.

Gunman Felix remembered his laugh.

"Very big social figure. Very prestigious to have him at a party. Very big deal. Because he was so smooth, you know. Smooth and polished and cultured. Very big into culture is our monster. Patron of the arts, they called him-probably still do.

“And all those people and all those kids are looking up to this pig, told to look and act and think like him and be gracious and smooth when you meet him. Young guys told to stand up tall and the girls straightening their gowns and touching up their hair as he comes down the bloody receiving line because everybody loves him, you see. Everybody thinks he's such a grand person!”

Gunman Felix turned and looked at them, at Cat and Davette, and his face was hard to meet.

“He just walks right up to them. Because they don't know. Right up to them and smiles and shakes their hands and talks to them and they talk back-just like he was real. Because they don't know!”

He walked away from them and spoke again, so low they could barely hear him.

“No one knows. But us.”

Gunman Felix was quiet for a while, pacing again back and forth, smoking furiously and inwardly boiling.

Cat and Davette exchanged a glance when they heard

his teeth grind. /

“Ha!” he shouted without any humor, and stopped abruptly.

He looked at them and his tone was reasonable and deeply wicked.

“Honey, when your aunt died and the medical examiner came over to take care of things for you-you ever met the guy before?”

Davette thought a moment. “I think so.”

Felix nodded. “Sure. At your level you meet everybody eventually. But did you know him? Did your aunt hang out with him?”

“Well.. . no. I don't think so.”

“So he suddenly drops everything and comes to your aid. I mean, she had lots of old friends, didn't she?”

“Yes. Of course. But-”

“But don't you see! Your Aunt Victoria committed suicide. An autopsy is automatic, by law. That M.E.-what a his name?”

“Dr. Harshaw.”

"Yeah. Harshaw. He gives her an autopsy-he's got to It's the law with all suicides. And he sees the marks. He sees the bites. And he knows what's what and. . . that's how they found Ross! Don't you see? Harshaw sees it's a vampire and he tells Kennedy. That's the only way a vampire can survive in the middle of the city. He owns the medical examiner. Owns him or one of his bitches does. Maybe he owns the poor guy's wife. . . It doesn't matter.

"The point is: he's strong. Strong and powerful and he knows people, and the people he doesn't know socially, he owns.

"That fucking house of his. That fort. No way to get to him there. Daytime, high noon-it doesn't matter. Think you can get through that wail? Through that Fort Knox front gate? And, even if you did, are you prepared to kill half a dozen security guards who almost certainly haven't got a clue as to what's what? Then the staff, of course. They'll try to stop you. Some of them know, too. And they'll really put up a fight.

"And by then, just how many SWAT teams and police choppers and Texas Rangers do you think will be surrounding you-shooting at you on sight-for trying to pull some terrorist act on the home of so prominent a man?

"A pillar Of the fucking community?

“Patron of the fucking arts.”

Gunman Felix sat down, abruptly, and turned to his watery drink and drank it dry and held out the glass for another. Cat took it from him and went to refill.

“Ha!” laughed Felix again..

and that awful laugh made them jump...

“Ha! I still get solicitations from him. Or some charity board he's on. You know?”

Davette jumped again at his look, nodded. “I remember him now.”

Gunman Felix nodded and smiled. “Yeah.”

Davette didn't like his smile.

“He had some favorite charity goodie, didn't he? Got something at the office in the mail along with a bunch of clippings.”

“Opera,” said Davette.

And he looked at her and his eyes went wide and his smile was too bright and tortured.

“Yes! Of course! Opera. Isn't it all just so wonderful?”

Davette didn't know what to say. Cat, standing there pale and staring, remembered the drink in his hand and banded it to the Gunman. Felix drank it dry in a single gulp.

"Yeah. Opera. Some big project about. .

And he stopped and looked at Davette and it hit her, too, and she looked back at him.

“The Opera House!” she whispered.

“Yes,” he replied. “The Opera House.”

And he looked over at the newspaper Cat had left crumpled on the floor, open to the Entertainment Section because they had been thinking about going to an afternoon movie.

Gunman Felix stood up and strode over to it and picked it up and rifled quickly through it.

“Ha!” he cackled when he found what he wanted.

And he came back and he leaned down to where Davette was sitting on the floor and planted the open newspaper on the rug beside her and punched his index finger into it so hard it went through the newsprint.

They looked. It was an ad. For the much delayed, greatly heralded, grand opening of the Dallas Opera House. One week from today.

“He'll be there,” whispered Gunman Felix and his voice was old dead wood. "He'll be there. And they will rush up to him and shake his hand and congratulate him and love him.

“And in return, he'll slash their throats and swell fat and thick on their blood.”

No one spoke for a few moments after that. Cat and Davette couldn't speak, could only stare at the maniacal grin sitting before them, relishing and cherishing and worming the pain deeper into his own soul. He seemed to take such dreadful delight in the crushing irony of it all.

“Yes,” he said after a while and he was much much calmer.

Impossibly so.

“Yes,” he repeated. "He could just walk up to people and talk to them. But they could just walk up to him, too Even somebody who knew what he was. He would not suspect. He would simply smile at them, like a big...fat. . . tick.

“He would be completely off his guard, wouldn't he?”

“Felix!” gasped Cat. "You can't mean. .

“Rock and roll, Cherry Cat. Isn't that what you always say?”

“You can't be serious!”

Gunman Felix just smiled and stared at the newspaper ad.

“Got to, Cat. Got to.”

CHAPTER 32

Oh! What a gala night! Oh, what an event! Everyone, simply Everyone, was there. What a pity it had to be in the summer, in this dreadful hot weather. But those workers had, just taken their time and those awful unions-everyone knew how they could be.

Yet it was done now. Finished and complete and shining and wasn't it simply marvelous! All those slopes and weird shapes? What was that architect's name? Doesn't matter, doesn't matter. The important thing is it's all done now and what an event we are having tonight. Everyone was there.

Even the streets were dressed for the event. With banners and streamers and a band playing both before and after the show, as all those people would be strolling out. And, oh, the cameras and the street all blocked off and the chairperson of the Opera Committee arriving in that two-horse carriage with the mayor and his wife and...

Oh, the street entertainers! Look at them! Aren't they cute? All those mimes and those jesters dressed in those cute, tight stripes with those hats with the bells on them. And even more fun were the period people, with those costumes like the opera itself, selling-what was that? Mead? Or some such thing? And meat pies. And turkey on a stick. And those two artisans, wearing that cute chain mail and selling those old weapons that were positively guaranteed to be authentic but shouldn't they have at least painted over the plastic parts, ha ha?

Pity about the opera part of it all. It was pretty, of course-beautiful, some of those costumes. But it was rather dreadfully long, wasn't it? Of course, operas are supposed to be long and one knows it's Great Art and all the rest, but still one wonders-perhaps if it was just a teensy bit shorter? And if we could understand what they were singing? Perhaps they should just speak some of it? But then it wouldn't be opera, would it?

Of course, it wouldn't have to be subsidized then, either, but not to think of that now, because it was over and everyone, Everyone, had woken up from their little naps and.. . Oh! The afterparties! All those delicious afterparties! Because this was such an Important Occasion, such a Cultural Milestone! Like New Year's Eve, wasn't it? With all the limousines and there goes the mayor in his little buggy and wasn't it so much nicer now that it was cooler and that hot sun had gone down? People didn't look quite so... wilted, somehow. One should never look wilted in a formal gown-how tacky! And the men, how handsome in their tuxedos. Oh, they always complain and gripe, but secretly, everyone knows, they love to dress up. And they really are so handsome. Nothing like black tie to make a man look distinguished, even those men who have-how shall we say it?-aged both in years and size? Both up and out? Ha ha!

Like that handsome silver-haired fellow just now coming down the steps, the one alone going between the new brass pillars that hold up the awning, going toward that limousine with that tall chauffeur holding the door.

What was his name?

“Kennedy!” barked Gunman Felix, coming around from behind his “authentic crossbow” stand.

The vampire turned and smiled and the crossbow bolt as big as a baseball bat shot right through the gleaming expanse of his starched white tuxedo shirt and splattered clear drops out the back and the umbrella barbs popped open and held it fast

And for just a moment, only Felix, binding the cable to the thick brass pillar, was moving. Everyone else was frozen, too startled to gasp. Unbelieving. This wasn't possible was it? Or part of the show? A trick? An assassination? Too surreal...

Even the monster stood as he had, staggered back a step, his arms flung wide by the impact, his redding eyes focused on the wooden stake piercing his blackened soul.

For just an instant...

Then the eyes went up and the mouth spread wide the fangs and, the howl began...

And Cat stepped in from the left and fired and his bolt plunged deep, crisscrossing the first, and as he scrambled to tie his cable to the other brass pillar, the monster...

detonated...

The howling, the ungodly, unreal howling shot through the crowd and echoed off the street and the maniacal frenzy was impossibly violent and crazed. Oh, God! The howling, screeching, tearing sound...

And the people watching who had first thought: murder. Murder! Murder!! ... now thought, What is this? What is that! It cannot be a man! It cannot be! Not that sound! An animal? What kind of an animal could...

Thrash and rip and screech and the hissing burst forth upon them and the first desperate evil wrenching-away shook the thick brass pillar and the second made it rock and creak and the awning above it sway and then the second cable was tied fast and the monster frenzied even wilder with the terror of being trapped and...

and the anger.

... the blazing fury...

... at this young man who presumed to attack a god!...

And instead of pulling away, the monster burst forward toward Felix.

And into his balloons.

They weren't water balloons that broke and splashed on his face and chest, that awful smell in its gleaming mouth.

They 'were gasoline. And they broke, one-two-three, across his front and soaked him and Cat already had the flare lit and he tossed it and it hit the rushing chest and bounced off, but not before...

The flames rushed up and out and around him, his clothes and hair and skin bursting with it, a flame that could not be that color, could not be that bright and cracklingloud and when the black glob finally spat forth, it was burning.

And nothing could have that evil, hell-wretched smell.

No thought of anger. No thought of vengeance. Not anymore. No more. The pain.., the pain! And it howled and warped into madness .and wrenched back and the pillars swayed and gave some and it wrenched some more, the screaming, the screaming, and the pillars started to buckle where they were bolted against the sidewalk.

NO! No! It can't get free!

The Gunman squatted and aimed and fired at the 'right knee and missed and fired again and hit it. And then the left knee and the howling! The howling as it crumpled, crippled and imploding with the agony, still wrenching itself back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster, screaming and screaming and the pillars...

The pillars broke free and it fell backward, rolling, and lay there for a second as two more silver bullets rammed into its chest. But then it was up, a ball of scrambling flame backing away, thudding into the side of the limousine and then crawling like a crab across the top into the street and.

And Gunman Felix fired again and again and again and, yes, there was an effect. It jerked and swayed with each impact...

But there was no stopping it. It was into the middle of the street now, scrambling, scrabbling away, the ends of the crossbow bolts sparking on the asphalt and...

We can't stop it! It'll get away and the flames will go out and it'll pull those stakes out.

Now! We've got to stop it now! Just for a few seconds! It couldn't take much longer.

The Blazer, the one Davette had sworn to stay hidden in two blocks away, was doing twenty-five when it vaulted across the sidewalk, thirty when it bounced across the curb into the street, and an even thirty-six when its front bumper slammed dead-center into the warping flames.