Walking Shadows (34 page)

Dread dragged at my heart. "Blood? Do you think he…?" The question hung there,
Gary failing to make the connection, and I had to finish what I didn't want to say. "Do you
think Abe bit Evan? Turned him?" I would have wished Evan dead before I wished that on him.

"No. He wasn't, you know, lively or anything. Just kind of… smeared."

Not much comfort there. "Have you told Magdalene or Mr Smith about this?"

Gary gave me a funny look. "No."

A brief respite from anxiety came with the answer, followed by deepening suspicion. "Why
not?"

"When you thought Evan was dead, it made you sad. I thought if he was still alive, you
wouldn't be sad any more. I was trying to find him, but Abe came here instead. I think he's tracking
you again."

"What? Why? How?"

"I don't know why they want you."

"Unless it's still to use me to get at you."

Gary did not look comfortable with that idea. "As for tracking you, he knows your scent now,
and he knows you hang around the city." I thought of the night I'd met Evan in the mall.
"He got to the city before sunset and he's been going all over, trying to pick up a fresh
trail."

"Where is he now?"

"He went round a side street and started climbing. I thought I'd take the lift."

"How did you know I was here? And if you tell me you could smell me I'm going to belt you
one."

"You're wearing that jasmine perfume," Gary said defensively, "And I heard you
talking on the balcony."

"You recognised my voice from the street?"

"Yeah." As though that was obvious.

"Have you seen him yet?" I had been darting looks all around throughout this exchange,
with no sign of Abe. He was pretty distinctive, and with the additional distinguishing feature of
being blood-smeared I would have thought impossible to miss.

"Not yet." Gary cocked his head, listening. Paused. Looked up at the ceiling.

A bright blue bank logo could be seen glowing at the top of a neighbouring building through a
long, wide skylight. Mostly, the glass reflected the warm candlelight and the golden brown of the
low-lit dance floor. I wondered, with a growing sense of wrongness, what was casting the black
shadow in the glass on the edge of the skylight nearest to me.

The shadow moved.

I started violently again, legs jerking against the table and spilling the untouched drinks.

The shadow crawled spider-like across the surface of the glass. Abe looked down at me, his
expression sly. Then he saw Gary, and the expression intensified into something hungry and wild. He
crawled on, towards the balcony.

Towards Kate and Anthony.

"Gary, get out of here!" I pushed past him while he was still staring upwards. As I
shoved, he turned and we staggered together onto the parquetry dance floor. I tried to push him in
the direction of the lifts but he stuck to my heels, following me to the balcony door. Where we
collided with Dad.

"Whoa there, kids," he held up his hands, "What's the hurry?"

Explaining would have taken several hours and a PowerPoint presentation. I tried to shove past
him and he grabbed me by the shoulders. "Hey, sweetheart." That's when I smelled the
alcohol on him.

"I don't have time for you."

"That's no way to talk to your father," Dad's hands tightened, hurting my bruises and
making me wince.

Gary's hand closed over Dad's right wrist and forced it ungently off my shoulder. Dad, gasping in
pain, snatched the other hand back as well.

"Ease up Gary, that's my Dad." I didn't like my father much right now, but I didn't
want Gary to break his tennis hand. Outside, I could see Anthony and Kate canoodling, but no sign of
Abe.

"You're hurting her, Mr Wilson," Gary said in a low, stern voice. He angled Dad firmly
aside, and Gary and I shouldered on through the crowd to the glass door.

"Kate, get inside, we've got trouble," I began urgently, thrusting open the door. Never
mind the fact they were mid-snog. Anthony gave me a look of mild surprise at the interruption. Kate
was instantly tense and alert.

Before I could elaborate, the aforementioned trouble swung nimbly from the eaves onto the balcony
beside us.

Kate half swallowed a shriek of fright and Anthony instinctively moved to stand between her and
the strange new arrival. A boy in dirty jeans and a tattered, blood-stained T-shirt. A bloodless cut
across his cheek was almost closed and the top of one ear was missing. His arm, I also noticed, was
peculiarly shaped. It can't have been straightened after the car accident and had mended crookedly.
Glancing down, I could see one of his bare feet was also twisted out of true.

Pity and revulsion made me feel sick.

Abe measured Anthony up speculatively before tilting his head to regard me and then Gary
frostily. The intensity of the look he gave Gary was terrifying.

I stepped towards Abe. God only knows what I thought I was going to do.

People around us were moving backwards. Their muttering turned from surprise into protest as
someone at the rear of the group pushed their way forward.

"I don't care whose friend you are, you fat bastard, you've got no bloody right."

Dad. Great. I didn't turn. More important things were happening.

"What the hell do you want?" Anthony, his voice a growl, also took a step towards Abe.
I could see him making the effort to ignore all the improbable peculiarities about the kid.

"I want
him
." Abe's eyes were fixed on Gary, a wild look on his face. He held up
a fist half-closed around a filled syringe.

"We've got to get out of here," Gary muttered urgently in my ear.

"I know that," I gritted back. "How?"

No more time. Abe leapt at Gary through the crowd. People stumbled over each other in the
attempt to not be in his way.

Swearing, I tried to both shield Gary and shove him towards the door, and succeeded only in
throwing us both off balance into the glass wall. I heard a crack and the glass rattled, but we
stayed on our feet.

Anthony dragged Kate out of the way and Dad snatched at Abe's hair. Dad, hardly a deterrent, was
swiped aside effortlessly, and crashed into the people pressed behind him. Abe whirled around,
looking for Gary, who was between me and the glass wall behind us.

A small wrestling match was taking place: me trying to stay between Gary and Abe; and Gabe trying
to switch our relative positions without causing me injury. His caution meant I was winning. Then
Abe lunged.

Gary planted his hand in the small of my back and propelled me out of the way towards my father,
who had regained his feet. I fell against Dad and sensed rather than saw Gary's brightly dressed
shape leap over our heads. Dad swore, Kate screamed, and the next glimpse I caught was of Gary
balanced high behind us, poised on the balls of his feet on the narrow iron bar that topped the
barrier. Impossibly well balanced, like a circus acrobat on a high bar. Only, of course, not.

He glanced up to the eaves, down to the street, looking increasingly startled. Abe took a swipe
at him and Gary danced sideways, slipped, tumbled, caught the bar, clinging now to the outside of
the barrier, his feet dangling 15 floors above the footpath.

"Gary!" I tried to go to him, grab his hand, but Dad had hold of me and wouldn't let
go. "Leave him alone!" I shrieked at Abe.

Abe tilted his head briefly in my direction. "I wish only to talk." The wicked syringe
still clutched in his hand did not bear out his assertions.

Gary was scrambling to get purchase on the concrete rim of the balcony. If he could get an
unflustered moment, he'd be able either to climb back up or pick his way down to the street, rather
than fall.

"I wish to talk," Abe repeated more loudly, redirecting his attention to Gary.

"I'm busy," growled Gary, wrapping a hand around one of the vertical bars and pulling
himself up.

"How did you do it?" Abe pushed forward.

"Bloody slipped." Both hands anchored on the bars, Gary swung his feet up onto the
concrete. It left him hanging awkwardly and he gracelessly managed to stand upright, still on the
wrong side of the barrier. He glanced up at the roof, down again.

"At the house," Abe clarified. "You entered without invitation."

The crowd behind us surged forward again, despite the fact that almost everyone was scrambling to
get as far away from the door as possible. From inside, an authoritative voice was issuing orders
for people to make way, calm down, let him through, but was apparently being ignored. The same
person's 'Hey!' of protest heralded the arrival of three figures, who burst onto the narrow space
remaining on the balcony.

"
There
you are," said Magdalene with great satisfaction, as though she'd been
searching for a favoured though badly behaved pet.

Moving faster than should have been possible, her white, plump hand was at Abe's throat. Abe
snatched at her hand, dropping the needle as he did so. It rolled away under a chair. Unable to
shift her hold, Abe punched her in the face instead.

Her head snapped back, but she did nothing more than grunt at the impact. Her grip on his throat
didn't change.

From either side of her, Smith and Giorgio emerged, and the three of them heaved ahead, forcing
Abe back onto the railing. My moment of wild confusion was replaced with the click of a solid
hypothesis. That bartender I recognised must have called the Gold Bug's number the instant he saw
Abe drop from the rooftop. Earlier, perhaps, when Gary had arrived. It would be so like Magdalene
and Mundy to keep tabs on him as well.

The inside voice of authority was sounding seriously aggrieved by now, and the crowd began to
thin as its owner slowly created order out of chaos. Ignoring the voice until it became an immediate
problem seemed the best option. I had other things absorbing my attention, foremost of which was
Gary's precarious position on the side of the building.

Hands gripping the top railing, Gary swung himself back onto the balcony as far from Abe as he
could get.

"He's very keen on bagging you next, Gazza," said Smith with a conspiratorial grin.

Gary didn't reply. He looked beyond Magdalene and her two thugs, with their tight grip on the
boy, to our family tableau. Anthony had put himself between Kate and Abe. Kate was staring at me in
horror. Dad still had his hands tightly around my arm, preparing, I assumed, to hold me back again.
Or maybe he just needed something steady to hang on to.

"Not here," Magdalene was saying. "It's too public."

"Don't fancy trying to get him into the lift," said Smith darkly.

Abe writhed, lashed out, caught Giorgio with a smack to the ribs, then kicked, connecting with
Giorgio's knee with a horrible crack. Giorgio howled with pain and all hell broke loose again,
ending with Abe wrenching free from Magdalene's grip. Before she could refasten her hold, Abe had
flung himself over the rim of the balcony.

The sound of a solid body hitting metal, the high-pitched tinkling fall of shattering glass, and
the blare of a car alarm followed.

Magdalene swore and leapt after him. Despite her solid build she balanced, like Gary had before
her, in a semi-crouch on the top of the railing.

"That's a nasty drop," she frowned, then grinned and jumped lightly back down and
strode into the club. Smith and Giorgio, who was limping badly, followed close at her heels.
"We'll get him outside," she said as they disappeared.

Gary was peering over the edge. "Looks like Abe's arm is broken again," he said to the
group at large.

I struggled away from Dad and tried to get high enough to see over the balcony, straight down to
the street. Abe had slithered off the heavily-dented roof of the car on which he'd landed and was
lying crumpled on the footpath, trying to rise. His left arm was folded beneath him at a disturbing
angle.

People were milling around him, offering help
- except for those filming the moment on their mobile phones - when Abe suddenly sat up. He wrenched
his strangely bent arm back into alignment. It was gruesome but there was no blood, of course.
Then, to the amazement of the rubberneckers, he stood up and ran.

He disappeared over the hill just as Magdalene, Smith and Giorgio reached the street. They
ignored all the panicking night-lifers and after a swift conference, departed rapidly.

Anthony and Dad were both looking at Gary in amazement.

"He wanted to kill you?" Anthony said.

"Yeah," said Gary, grimacing, "Though since he's been cleaning up the streets of
Melbourne one vampire at a time I suppose I shouldn't take it personally."

Oh great. The V word, right out there. I couldn't blame Gary. It had been a trying week, and
between his, Abe's and Magdalene's acrobatics, none of them were keeping their secrets too well
tonight.

My father found his voice, and it was filled with horror as he stared at Gary. "What
are
you?"

Gary sighed. "Fed up, mainly."

The crowd inside the bar shifted again, finally parting for aggravated officialdom to arrive in
the form of the previously-ignored club manager.

"Is everything all right?" he asked, working to achieve the hint of solicitude behind
the severity. Then the solicitude slipped. "What the hell is going on out here?"

"Nothing. It's nothing. We're all fine," said Anthony, his glance shifting between
Gary, me and Kate. He looked like he wished he had a lot more eyes, all the better to keep watch on
all of us at once. He was obviously in no mind to attempt an explanation.

The sick certainty gripped me that the night was going to be swallowed up with police and
unanswerable questions, and in the meantime Abe was out there being hunted by Magdalene and her
cronies. And Evan could be out there too, dying or dead in this stupid gang war.

"Nothing, huh?" The manager's jaw muscles twitched as he chose not to give voice to the
things he obviously wanted to say. After a moment, he said in a tight voice, "Is there anything
I can get you, Mr Ferrante? The bill, for instance? Or perhaps a taxi?"