Walking Shadows (40 page)

What could I say that wasn't inadequate or patronising? I pressed my cheek against his arm,
trying to convey my sympathy.

Gary sighed and watched the lines of light around the shed door. "I get worried I'll forget
things," he said at last. "I can remember everything from before I turned like it was
yesterday. But since then, so many days were all alike, they kind of bleed into one long fuzzy day.
It's been 40 years and sometimes I can't remember any of them.

"I think, that's why vampires all live mostly in the past, like Alberto, or mostly in the
present, like Magdalene. It's hard to remember the in-between times."

He crooked a faint sideways smile at me. "It's been different since I met you. Things happen
all the time, even little things. I write them all down so I'll remember. Spending time with you is
the nearest I get to living."

I laid my hand on his arm. He cast his gaze back to the outline of light. "That's going to
be me, one day, hoping it'll be quick."

And, bang! Like that, in the solar plexus. First breathless, then a surge of rage. "Don't
you say that! Not after everything we've been through this week."

He stared at me, and my rage was consumed by something worse and less controllable. All the fear
and grief collided and resolved into powerless, ceaseless tears.

"Don't you dare say that," I sobbed. "Don't you leave me now." I tried to hit
him and ended up grabbing a fistful of his shirt, clinging to it for strength to stand; to keep
going at all.

Gary's surprise turned to helplessness. "Not any day soon," he said in an attempt to be
reassuring. "I'm not ready yet."

"Good." I didn't stop crying, or let go of his shirt.

Slowly, as though not sure of the correct procedure, Gary patted me on the shoulder, then drew
his arm stiffly around me. I buried my face in his shirt and cried some more. His arm tightened
across my shoulder, and he brought his other arm up, the tentative hug accompanied by a slight
pat-pat on my back.

"It's all right, Lissa. I'm not planning anything."

My reply was muffled against the cloth. "You better not."

More pats. "Would you like a cup of tea? The kettle's boiled."

Ah, tea. The universal panacea. I sniffed and nodded. Stood back. I felt stupid and also wet. And
my arm was throbbing. Gary patted my shoulder gently again.

"No biscuits, I'm afraid. I dropped them somewhere last night when I was following
Abe."

I wanted a tissue, but my satchel and all its contents were spread all over Gary's back yard,
"Tea's fine."

"You're bleeding again. Do you want me to fix it?" He mimed spitting on a hankie.

"Not yet. I need a cuppa though."

Leaving him to make tea, I went to the bathroom. I blew my nose on some toilet paper. Blood was
spotting the sleeve of my stolen shirt and I pulled it up to check the wound. It looked pretty good,
considering I'd been shot.

I've been shot. Oh dear God, my life is so, so screwed up.

I fought the urge to have another cry. However you looked at it, weird as it was, my life was
still mine. I was alive and breathing, and glad for it. I could have been killed a couple of times
over in the last week, and all I had to show for it were some bruises and a small, puckered hole,
clean around the edges, bleeding slightly. If I was lucky, there wouldn't even be a scar by morning.

Rinsing carefully, I cleaned away the excess blood while hopefully leaving a residue of saliva to
complete the healing.

After peeing, I washed my face and hands. I would have liked to see exactly how terrible I
looked, but Gary didn't own any mirrors, on account of not particularly liking the dead-man-walking
reflection he saw in them. Anyway, I probably looked exactly like the freaked-out, shot-at,
tear-stained, exhausted librarian that I was. I made a half-hearted attempt to tidy my hair, then
gave up and returned to the kitchen.

A cup of tea was resting on the kitchen table. The usual array of textbooks, model plane parts
and sundry notepads had been shoved to one side to make room for me. Gary was leaning on the door
jamb, watching the backyard intently. I sat at the table and wrapped my hands around the mug. The
banality of a simple cup of tea helped to calm me.

"They're taking a while," he said, "Should I go check?"

"Have you heard anything?"

"The nail gun went off a few minutes ago. Seven times."

"Leave it a while."

He nodded briefly and a fraction of the tension in his shoulders seemed to dissolve.

I asked him to spit on the tissue I'd brought with me from the bathroom. He obliged and I dabbed
it on the bullet hole. The wound tingled.

Gary returned to his vigil at the back door. I rose to stand by him and watch a rectangle of
light open at the end of the dark yard. Evan's silhouette moved through it, and disappeared as the
shed door closed.

He met us at the door, looking sad and exhausted too. There was no mistaking the fact that I had
never seen Evan look so at peace, either.

"Do you have something I could wrap him in?"

"Sure." Gary left the kitchen.

Evan and I looked at each other, acutely aware that a whole lot more than a door frame stood
between us.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

Evan considered. "Free," he said. "We're both free, now."

"And physically? You weren't too great when I found you in that bathtub."

"On the mend. Abe was very conscientious about looking after me."

"Vampire remedies are very effective," I concurred, nodding briefly towards my exposed
upper arm. The wound was already much improved from ten minutes ago. Maybe I wouldn't have any
explaining to do to Kate after all.

Evan winced. "Seeing Gary cross that threshold drove Abe to the brink, I think," he
said in a tone of apology. "He was already doubting his purpose, and he saw no end to it. He'd
tried crossing a threshold himself before, you see, and failed. He couldn't even take the first
step."

"Oh?"

"There are stories in the family records. One is more of a fable, I suppose, but Abe says
once, early in his mission, he chased a vampire into a mosque. Abe watched her die from the
entrance."

"I see," though I wasn't sure I did. "And the fable?"

"That's from before Abe's time. Elijah Winterbourne, Abe's partner in the 1790s, found a
text in a library in Constantinople. It's the story of a vampire who enters a church, with the woman
he loves. He ends up killing her by drinking her dry, and wakes up, his humanity restored, beside
her body. Once he realises what he's done, he climbs to the top of the belltower and throws himself
off."

"That's a lousy redemption story."

"It's a good punishment story, though,' said Evan, "My experience is that those are
more popular with religious authorities."

"Screw that."

"Yeah." He agreed thoughtfully, "Screw that."

"Does your family have a lot of old records?"

"Three hundred years' worth. All scanned and stored on the hard drive of my
laptop."

"Which is gone now."

"Oh, no. When we left the holiday house, after Gary came for you, we put all the important
things in a luggage locker. My laptop, our passports…"

Gary reappeared and thrust a bundled bed quilt that smelled of mothballs past me.

"Here," he said, "What are you going to do now?"

"I'm not sure. Hiring a car will have to wait till morning."

"You can't carry him down the street."

"No," Evan agreed, "I can't."

"You should stay here till the morning," I suggested. They looked warily at each other.
"And not in the shed, either," I said to Gary.

Gary weighed the logic of the option with his very understandable dislike for Evan.

"I need to stay over too. If you don't mind, that is," I said. It was too late for
trains, too expensive for taxis. With Kate at Anthony's place, I didn't want to be home all by
myself. And I wasn't ready yet to leave Gary, after everything that had happened. Oscar, I thought
with a pang of guilt deadened by exhaustion, had been fed and watered before we'd gone Evan-hunting,
and would be all right alone for one night.

Reluctantly, Gary acquiesced to logic. After Evan returned once more from wrapping up Abe's body,
Gary showed him to the sofa in the living room.

That was it for sleep space. I was prepared to bunk on the floor in Gary's office, but he
diverted me to the generous armchair in his room instead. I hesitated at the door. I hadn't been in
this room since that first time, when I had been caught snooping in his private life.

"I'll be fine on the floor, really."

"It's a comfortable chair. I used to fall asleep in it back when I used to sleep."

"It's your private room, Gary"

"Don't worry." He ushered me in and insisted that I sit. There was room enough for me
to tuck my feet up. Gary shook out a crocheted granny blanket that was folded on the back of the
chair and settled it over me.

"Are you sure?" I still felt guilty and intrusive.

"I'm sure. Anyway,
all
my favourite things are in here." He smiled.

I smiled back. Then I slept.

Saturday morning, I awoke to find that Evan had gone. According to Gary, Evan
hadn't slept much, and had used the time to Google a local car rental. He left the house at first
light to be at the rental offices when the doors opened. Immediately on his return, Evan parked the
car discreetly along the side of the house and laid Abe's carefully blanket-wrapped body in the boot
before driving off.

Gary described it all very matter-of-factly, until it came to the placing of the body in the
car.

"Abe was so tiny. It's always like that, after the stuff we have for blood goes wherever it
goes. The bodies shrivel up into husks, the way spiders do. He hardly weighed anything. It's weird.
Undead for all that time and in the end, it's like he was hardly even here."

Gary was sitting at the kitchen table as he told me this, fiddling with half-painted parts of a
model plane. The pieces shattered. I stood behind him, my cheek against the top of his head, my
hands clasped in front of his chest. As usual, there was no warmth in him at all. He had no scent
that I could detect. No heartbeat. Technically dead, but oh, most definitely not
actually
dead.

"You're here," I said. "You make a difference."

The reply was a non-committal grunt.

"Don't give up," I said, arms still around him. "Evan said it.

No-one's ever done what you did and survived. You don't know how far it can go."

"I get the feeling I've reached the limit," he said quietly. "I walked into a
church and it nearly killed me. Properly."

"I know. But don't give up. There's a lot of space between walking into my house and walking
into a church for you to explore. And you don't have to do any of it alone."

He patted my hands absent-mindedly and then his fingers came to rest over mine. "Lissa, I've
made you some promises. I want you to make one too."

Apprehensive, I sat opposite him. "Go on."

"You've got to stop throwing yourself into trouble like you do. You're going to get yourself
killed, and then where will I be? I don't want to have to keep secrets from you just to keep you
safe. I don't even know why you do it."

"That makes two of us," I muttered. That was not entirely true.

I did it because I was afraid
not
to. I jumped feet first into all this horror, convinced
that somehow I could prevent all the awful things from happening; that maybe if I could save Gary or
Evan it would be like saving Belinda and Paul and Nanna. Part of me seemed to think that failing to
at least try would somehow betray the memories of those I'd already lost. Already failed to
protect.

Like I said before, people do stupid things thinking it gives them control.

With the many, many stupid things I'd done this week, the wonder was that I was still alive. My
impulsive, compulsive need to be there, to place myself between those I loved and harm, had brought
me close to sudden death more than once. Those I'd wanted to protect had almost died too - Gary in
the church, as well as Evan. How long before I led Kate to danger? How long before I got myself
killed and left her all alone?

No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn't save everyone. Not on my own, at any rate. There were
better ways for me to try, too. I could be there for my sister and not make her sick with worry all
the time. I could work with Gary to find out what kind of future he could have. I could look after
myself and build my own future, too.

"I'm sorry I've been so crazy," I said. "I just couldn't bear the thought of
anything happening to any more people I love."

Gary blinked. "Well, I feel that way about you too. And I bet Kate does, even more than
me."

"I promise you, Gary. I'll stop throwing myself in the line of fire in futile attempts to
control my life. I'll take better care of myself. And we'll look out for each other."

"Yes," he agreed.

"And no more secrets."

"None."

We sealed the deal with an emphatic nod, then I leaned across to kiss his cheek. He rubbed the
spot sheepishly for a moment before jumping up to make a fresh cup of tea for me.

I was reluctant to leave, but I had to get home before Kate or she'd worry. I also needed to
shower, change into some decent clothes, find breakfast and remember what a normal life looked like.
Kate needed some concrete promises from me, too, I decided.

Gary regarded me steadily. "I've got to straighten up this place," he said. "And I
don't want Kate mad at me again if you're not home and in one piece when she gets there."

My hero. Faces down Melbourne's oldest and crankiest vampire, yet scared of my sister. I laughed.
"Fair enough. I'll email this afternoon."

"Are we still playing pool tonight? With your friends from uni?"

On being reminded, my initial instinct once again was to cancel. Then I figured it would be a
positive step towards my life resuming normal transmission - and it delighted me that Gary wanted to
do it.