An Old Friend of the Family d-3 Read online

  Carol gave one of her little laughs. She had them in several styles, and this particular style, Walworth was slowly coming to realize, was derisive. She said: “You consider yourself relatively normal, darling?”

  “I guess I do, though I’m not proud of it.”

  “Anyway, two months ago is just about when we first met. And it didn’t take me long at all to convince you that vampirism really works.”

  “I mean, no one could have convinced me by argument. Demonstration was what did the trick.” The sensations accompanying her sipping from his veins were more diffuse than those of any other sex act he had ever performed, but nonetheless orgasmic. “And one of the points I like best is that we can alternate this vampire act with going at it in the more traditional ways. You never seem to take enough blood to leave me weak, or anything. One of these days, my love, we’re going to try both at once, and what a hit that’ll be.”

  “I think it’s time we got up,” said Carol, ignoring everything he had said.

  “I still don’t get just how you do it. I mean, make tiny punctures like this with just your teeth. I can see you’d have to have teeth like needles. It never hurts a bit and the holes are so small. But your teeth don’t look the least bit odd. I’ve had my tongue in there between ‘em too, not to mention—”

  “Don’t be gross.” Her voice cutting him off was cold, but then she winked. “I really do think it’s time we jumped up and got dressed.”

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “There are things to do tonight. Things are going to be happening.”

  “What things? Goddam it, you can answer me. How do you do the biting?”

  “Just like in the movies,” she said, and rolled out of bed on her side and started to pull on her dress. Nothing under it, of course; cold never seemed to bother Carol.

  “Movies?”

  “Vampire movies. Craig dear, don’t be dense. Now will you dress?”

  “If it’s that easy I ought to be able to do it to you too.”

  From the top of the green dress emerged green eyes, looking at him coldly. “I do not enjoy having my throat bitten,” Carol stated. “Anyway, tasting my blood would change you too fast. You are perfect just the way you are. I wish to enjoy you and use you just a little longer yet.”

  He stretched out with hands behind his head, thinking to himself how nicely his big biceps showed in this position. “You’re using me, huh? When are you going to get over your hangups about my mirrors?” The large glass on the nearest wall had been sprayed opaque, like a store window at Halloween; there were only a few scars in the ceiling to show where his overhead mirror had been taken down completely, at Carol’s insistence, before she would mount the round bed with him.

  “Sometime soon, I think,” she answered, seriously enough to surprise him a little. She was sitting in a chair now, gracefully putting on a shoe. “I think you’re ready.”

  “You do a good act about the mirrors,” he said. “Never explicitly explaining why. Just putting these out of action, and covering up the one in the lobby with that raincoat. Leaving it to me to make the connection with the fairy-tale vampires who won’t show up in a mirror.”

  Shoes on, Carol had stood and turned away to watch the sunset-reflecting clouds. “Big storm’s coming,” she remarked, as if to herself. Then she turned back. “Tell me more about the fairy-tale vampires.”

  “Well, you know. You do it well.”

  “I think I’d better be blunt,” Carol said. “When have you ever actually seen my reflection in a mirror? I really do want to have you around a while longer, and you’re not going to last unless you start to understand some things. In fact, you may not last out the night.”

  “What’s all this,” Walworth demanded, starting to get angry, “about how I’m going to be used?” She had never talked like this to him before; he realized now that some kind of crisis in their relationship was at hand. “If you’ve got any ideas about turning me over to that dumb Irishman as a kidnapper, forget them. You and King Kong are in this just as deep as I am, remember. If that kid ever identifies me as driving the car, your ass has had it too.”

  “Craig, don’t ever let Winter hear you call him that.” Carol issued the warning calmly but seriously, a stewardess telling you to put on the belt. “As for the dumb Irishman, as you call him, he won’t be coming around again. That was well played, darling. You do have talents outside of bed.”

  Walworth was still lying in the same position. “So, what’d you do? Pay him off? Kill him? I’d like to know about it. I mean, I’d really like to know, dearie, if you’re killing people and it might someday involve me. An hour later you were back here. Did you take him home and bite his neck?”

  Carol seemed to be considering her answer seriously. Meanwhile she was straightening her dress around her, fluffing out her hair. She did, now that he thought about it, have the habit of doing such things without mirrors. At last she said: “No, I haven’t bitten his neck. Not yet. Anyway, it’s not really the police you have to worry about.”

  “It’s not? That’s a pretty good one.”

  “No it isn’t, dear. It wasn’t the police who pulled off Gruner’s fingers.”

  “Obviously. I know who that was. Your psychopathic playmate Winter or whatever the hell you think I ought to call him. Who else does things like that? But if he ever comes after me, baby, he’s not going to get within arm’s length of me alive.”

  “It was not M’sieu Winter who did it, either. Please get up and dress.”

  “Why should I?” But there was a certain psychological disadvantage in nakedness when she stood there like a nurse, so before it could become a real issue Walworth got out of bed and started rooting for some clothes. He said: “You’re too smart to stick with a crazy like him. So why try to cover up for him with me, of all people?”

  “I am not covering up. It is just that I still need Winter for a while, or at least I would like to be able to use him.”

  “Just like me,” he mocked.

  “Exactly. So please, Craig, can you take seriously the warning I am about to give you? Whether or not you are arrested is almost of no consequence any more—”

  “Don’t pretend you’re crazy, baby! I know better.” He jiggled himself into his pants, pulled up the zipper.

  “—but there is a certain old man you must look out for, Craig. Of course he may not look like an old man when you see him . . .” Carol sighed prettily, a concerned nurse whose patient just will not co-operate. “I’m really not getting through, am I? I was considering sending Winter over to be your bodyguard for a while, but now I don’t think I’d better.”

  Walworth snorted, tucked his shirt into his pants. He decided to leave the shirt open halfway down the front. “Damn right you hadn’t better. What is all this shit, all of a sudden? `Don’t bother to worry about the cops, Craig.’ `You may not last out the night anyway, Craig.’ I’ll last out the night, baby. `Be nice to Winter, Craig.’ You’re setting up something. Hey, is this where you try at last to stick it to me for some money? Enchantress Cosmetics not making a profit after all?”

  There was an edge in Carol’s voice now. “Don’t give me any money, please. I probably have more than you.”

  “Hah.”

  “But do watch out for the old man. He is the one who pulled off Gruner’s fingers. He may well be coming after you tonight. I’m sure Gruner must have told him your name.”

  “And yours too, huh?” Walworth smiled, unable to concentrate enough to decide which shoes he ought to wear; this was really getting entertaining.

  “He knows my name already. He’s mentioned in the news stories, by the way, as a Dr. Corday of London. He’s called himself that before.”

  “Oh? So, who is he really, Al Capone?”

  “I see now you would only laugh like an idiot if I tried to tell you his real name, so never mind. Among other things he is an old friend of the Southerland family. And a very old enemy of mine.”

  Sitting on the
bed with one sock half on, Walworth paused. “You’re telling me, in this newly devious way of yours, that it’s not an accident after all that we picked the Southerlands.”

  “Not a bit of an accident.” Carol folded her arms. She was not a nurse any more; maybe the president of a company.

  “Now wait a minute. The object was, we were going to look for some new kicks, right? Pick out a family and just utterly destroy them. An ultimate kick, better than just a simple killing. Right?”

  “So it was presented to you at the time. So you thought you were presenting the idea to me.”

  “All right, say the idea was something you conned me into. Picking the Southerlands as the target must have been at random. Winter tore a page out of the Glenlake phone book—”

  “A selected page.”

  “All right, say you fixed that too. Then I pinned the page up on the wall myself, and you stood clear across the room and tossed the dart. Don’t tell me you could have hit a name on purpose from that distance. Hell, you couldn’t even have seen it. You were lucky to hit the page, even.”

  “I can do many things, Craig, that you would not credit as being possible. So can the old man. I think I may send Winter over, after all, when he gets back.”

  “I may not let him in.”

  Carol stared at him a long moment, different emotions contending in her face. Then it was as if she gave up. Fought to keep herself from dissolving in laughter, but had to yield at last. “Oh, Craig, Craig, but you are such an innocent! Haven’t you yet understood the first simple truth about me? And the man you know as Winter? We are vampires, dear. You’ve asked us both in here already. Do you think that you can now simply tell us to stay out, and we will?”

  Walworth stood up in his socks. He had a growing feeling of unreality, and if he thought about it, he would have to admit that fright was growing too. “I’ve got a gun. I tell you, I’ll blow that bastard Winter’s head off, right on my own doorstep if I have to.” The police would then come down on him for sure. His connection with the kidnapping would almost certainly come out, and he would be fighting in a courtroom for his life. Somehow he had always felt sure that, sooner or later, things would come to that.

  She was calm and almost pleasant again. “Go get your gun, Craig dear. Right now. I want to show you something.”

  He looked his uncertainty at her.

  “Oh, all right, never mind the pistol. It would probably only complicate things anyway. You’d think we had loaded it with blanks, or something. Just watch this.”

  And saying that, Carol disappeared, green dress and red hair and pink skin just swirling away to nothing. Not from a position where there was anything at all to hide behind: from right in the middle of his bedroom floor.

  PCP, Walworth thought at once. He’d seen the elephant tranquilizer hit like this before, with heavy hallucinations. Not on himself, of course. He’d never used it on himself. But now Carol or someone had sneaked it into his food or drink. Intending to get rid of him . . . no, not in his food, an injection, that was it. A mainliner right into the jugular, managed somehow by Carol when she was supposed to be drinking his blood. No wonder she hadn’t wanted mirrors around the bed . . .

  A spring-loaded panel in the wall near the head of his bed, a movieish gadget that no one would expect to come across in real life, delivered his .38 into his hand as he reached out and pressed the wood. He was reasonably sure that neither Carol nor Winter nor the maids nor anyone else who had been in the apartment recently knew it was there; it had been installed a year ago, and he hadn’t spoken of it to any of them—not even of the gun until just now. Nevertheless he suspiciously broke the revolver’s action open, slid the faintly oily cartridges one be one out of the cylinder and weighed them in his fingers, looked at them and tamped them gently back. Firing pin was in place too. He snapped the weapon shut, ready for business. The thing looked and felt awfully functional.

  From behind him, in the direction of the huge bedroom window, there sounded a brisk, light tapping, as of something very hard striking on glass. Even as Walworth turned it seemed to him that he knew already, in some nightmare-hatching inner corner of his mind, just what it was that he was going to see.

  Carol’s face hovered close outside the almost unbreakable glass, twenty stories in the air. Her feet were extended toward the lake. With lightly moving arms she swam, a great smiling fish in an immense aquarium . . . then she was gone again.

  “How was that?” her voice asked, once more from behind him, this time from in the room. Before turning again, he noticed that the night-backed glass showed him a half-reflection of the lighted bedroom—but not of Carol.

  He spun around again then, to face her across the wide, round bed. “Bitch.” His voice was low and murderous. “You stuck me with a good one, didn’t you?”

  “Stuck you?” She pretended not to understand. “I see you found your pistol. If you think it will protect you against Winter, or the old man, then fire it at me. Right now.”

  She sounded too eager. Whatever her game was, he wasn’t going to play it. He shook his head. But in his anger he moved toward her. He was expecting that when he got close enough she would try to kick him where it would hurt the most. He was expecting that and ready for it. But only when he swung his arm to club her with the pistol barrel did she move, and then only to lift her arm. Her little palm caught his forearm, and it felt like he had swung at a cast-iron statue.

  And almost before the pain of the impact had time to register, Carol had grabbed him by both elbows, picked him up, and spun him in mid-air like some casually victimized infant. She spun him once more, in reverse, and ended the mad ballet by throwing him contemptuously into a chair, which nearly tipped over as he landed. He sat there blinking at her stupidly, for the moment unable to do anything more.

  “You utter goddamned fool,” she said, and added something in the same withering tone, but in a language he did not know. She finished up in English: “I wash my hands of you.”

  His rage had reached the point where his body acted of itself. His arm came up and fired the gun point-blank. The sound reverberated, the smell of burn explosive stung his nose, the fruitwood table behind Carol leaped up against the wall and came down on its side. She stood there, icily contemptuous.

  At his elbow the phone was ringing.

  He debated whether to fire at her again. She waited, perhaps also debating something in her mind.

  Five rings, six.

  He reached out his left hand and picked it up.

  Winter’s voice, rough, excited, incoherent.

  Carol came near him and snatched the phone away. Walworth spun away out of his chair, not wanting her to touch him now, and afraid of what she might do if she did touch him.

  “Are you sure?” she said into the phone. What she heard from it then transformed her into a goddess of victory, standing tall with head flung back. “Are—you—sure—that—it—was—him?” Her lips looked rigid, driving the words like nails into the phone.

  The answer this time brought from Carol an outcry that sounded as if she had been hurt. But Walworth could see in her face that it was triumph. He backed away a little farther, sat down on the bed.

  “No!” she was saying into the phone now. He had never seen anyone so beautiful. In that case he should be kept alive—yes, yes, yes, alive, until later, when I can get to him. Later tonight. No, the gathering is at my place, within the hour. Leave him where he is, and come to my place. Yes, right away.”

  Very carefully she replaced the receiver in its cradle on the little table, near the bed. Walworth sat very still. A Carol he had never seen before looked down at him.

  “Maybe, darling, just maybe—you will survive the evening after all. And I suppose you had better, after all, watch out for the police. Until later, dear.”

  With that, Carol was gone again.

  As she disappeared, Walworth had been staring with fascination at a spot near the center front of the green dress. A small hole the size a
bullet might make was there, showing a glimpse of pink, undamaged skin.

  After a while, when he could begin to believe that he was really alone, he got up and looked at the fruitwood table where it lay on one side against the wall. A great splintered gouge had entered its top from underneath and emerged through the upper surface of the wooden top, where something had passed with tremendous force. Plaster had trickled from a small crater in the wall just behind where the table had been standing.

  Walworth, gun still in hand, walked to the front door of the apartment, where he made sure that the door was securely locked, chained, and bolted. The only other way in, unless you counted the sealed windows, was the service door in the kitchen. That was his next stop.

  Then he went into a bathroom, and in the mirror over the sink examined the small wounds on his throat. They looked no different from the marks Carol had left him with the other times. They could be needle punctures. They were needle punctures, and he was a fool not to have realized that fact the first time round, or anyway the second.

  Syringes capable of injecting drugs hidden in her teeth? It sounded like something from a crazy spy adventure. He had set down the revolver on the broad ledge beside the bathroom basin, and now he suddenly grabbed it up and spun around again, in expectation of hearing her contemptuous voice once more.

  But there was nothing. Now he hurried through the apartment shutting the drapes on all the windows. At times he ran from room to room, wanting to get them shut before he could be made to see her swimming out there once again.

  When he had closed the place up as much as he was able he went through it again, this time turning on all the lights. Why having more lights on should make him feel any better he didn’t know, but so it was.

  That accomplished, he still didn’t want to sit down, stand still, or close his eyes—he might hallucinate himself being grabbed up and tossed around again before he could get them open. After a few moments of dull mental vacuum there occurred to him the idea of calling one or two people he knew, bad-trip specialists, whose help he had enlisted in the past. Never before for himself, of course: he enjoyed watching people take drugs much more than he did taking them himself.