A Coldness in the Blood Page 17

  “No cops,” Andy echoed. He could still see the pallid, bloodstained features, the greenish, animal-like eyes looking up, sparking with a horrible energy, over the woman’s savaged throat. And something had gone wrong with that man’s, that stranger’s teeth … Matthew Maule, the wizard …

  “Andy!”

  “What?”

  “We’ve got through this so far. Don’t go catatonic on me!”

  “All right. I’m all right.”

  … something in the two horrible faces seemed transposed, as if Uncle Matt could be the dead and bleeding one, and the woman whose blood he drank was only sleeping.

  He had seen Uncle Matt’s fangs tear a woman’s throat, seen him drink her blood. Heard the sucking, gory swallowing.

  How could he possibly call the cops? How was he going to tell his father and mother what he had seen?

  Dad, and Mom. And Uncle John, and all the rest of the normal, loving family.

  And Uncle Matt. The world no longer fit together properly. Somehow it would have to be fixed.

  Beside Andy now, Dolly in a small voice murmured: “I can’t go home. Don’t dare go back to my apartment. That Dickon, damn him, he was one of them, he set us up for those … those …”

  He had all but forgotten about Dickon. That would never do. “You’re right, he must have.”

  “And he knows where I live.”

  “But not where I do.”

  Get away, somehow, somewhere. Get away, just to gain time to think. Stay with the girl, said Uncle Matt, speaking distinctly, with practiced enunciation through his bloody fangs, wherever she may go. Help her if you can.

  They had walked on half a dozen steps farther before Andy spoke again. “You said your grandfather left you two train tickets?”

  ~ 12 ~

  Vlad Dracula’s skirmish with the Crocodile had left him temporarily exhausted. But he had been well-rested when the fight began, and after it he recovered quickly. Once he had got his breath back (so to speak) the experience had a profoundly energizing effect. He was certain that another encounter with Sobek loomed, probably at no great distance in the future; and he knew that it promised to be the hardest struggle of his life. He was sure it would be concluded only when one of them was dead.

  On Wednesday night he had several times considered spending some time in search of Dickon, who had lately been doing a very effective job in keeping out of the sight of Mr. Maule. But Maule had little hope of succeeding in a search for the elder one just now, and he spent his time in other ways instead.

  On Thursday afternoon, having enjoyed a few hours of vitally important rest under the Forest Preserve wetlands, Maule emerged in man-form, under partly cloudy skies, and visited his apartment again. He listened with some hope to Andy’s phone message, which had been clocked in around midday. It provided him with the name and Chicago address of a student named Dolores Flamel, who, Maule supposed, was almost certainly the “Dolly” mentioned by hospital workers. Andy gave no indication that he meant to involve himself in the situation any further, and Maule saw no reason to expect him to do so—but he felt a shadow of apprehension all the same.

  Maule promised himself an excursion to County Hospital sometime on Thursday night, though he expected that by that time he would almost certainly be too late to get a look at the face of the recently deceased—a final disposal would already have been made. But an after-dark visit to the department of records might gain him access to confirming evidence, such as a postmortem photograph—in some places such likenesses were routinely kept on hand for at least a year.

  But all that could wait till later. Let the dead bury the dead. After hearing Andy’s message, Matthew Maule prepared to call on Dolores Flamel at dusk on Thursday.

  Traveling on foot, he arrived in the vicinity of her apartment building a few minutes before sunset. He was just in time to observe a young woman walking out the front door, accompanied by an astonishing double escort.

  The trio moved as if they had some definite goal in mind. Both of the men were very well-known to Matthew Maule; and he did not doubt for a moment that the young woman with them must be the very one that he was looking for.

  Maule was of course startled, and delighted, to have located Dickon so fortuitously. He might have swooped down and seized the old rogue at once, except for the fact that the third member of the group was Andy Keogh. Andy’s presence astonished Maule and kept him at a distance, watching carefully.

  His task of shadowing was made a little easier when he observed that the three were walking steadily in the general direction of Old Town and the burned-out building, and deduced that as their probable destination. But with Dickon very much on the alert, Maule found it impossible to get close enough to hear what the three were saying to each other.

  Forced to remain in man-form until the sun went down, Maule had to maneuver cautiously to keep from being detected and identified, remaining more than half a block behind the people he was following. Maule had a healthy respect for Dickon’s alertness and cleverness, if none at all for his character. The old coward kept looking anxiously back over his shoulder. But of course, in his case this was only normal and expectable behavior.

  As soon as the sun went down, Maule changed shape and began using alternately the forms of mist and bat. In this way he made his way gradually closer to the trio and finally managed to hear something of what Dickon was saying.

  What Maule heard them discussing, regarding Egypt, alchemy, and train tickets, among other subjects, made him all the more eager to seize Dickon and force some information out of him. But at the same time it became more important to learn just how deeply Andy might be involved.

  When the three people arrived at their destination, Maule, focusing his keen senses on the apparently abandoned building, soon realized that others, including several nosferatu and at least one breather, were waiting inside, in darkness and unnatural silence. The scene had all the earmarks of premeditated ambush.

  He felt at once relieved and disappointed that the one presence in which he was most interested was not on hand. There was no sign of the great Crocodile in Old Town this evening. Maule wondered whether Sobek had yet become aware of Dolores Flamel’s probable importance in the realization of his goal. Maule himself had now overheard enough to feel sure of it.

  But what was Dickon’s purpose in guiding the two young breathers here? Surely Dickon’s keen senses had informed him of the hidden gathering in the abandoned building. It began to appear likely that he was leading his two companions deliberately into an ambush.

  Maule was not at all surprised when Dickon, the unconditional coward, suddenly fled, evidently without explaining his actions to either of the breathers who had accompanied him to the scene.

  The watching vampire was somewhat surprised by Dolly’s daring, when the young woman made her way boldly into the building. He was not at all surprised, but more concerned, when Andy followed.

  Moments later, Maule was dropping out of the gray night sky as gently as a falling leaf, settling in bat-form on the intact portion of the burned-out building’s roof. From that position he was soon eavesdropping on Dolly and Andy and their captors as their ominous dialogue progressed.

  He heard Lambert and the other villains badgering her to turn over the list of names, and heard in their voices how utterly convinced they were of its existence.

  Twice, in the final minute or two before Maule actually intervened, he had been on the very point of doing so; but his determination to first learn all he could by listening held him back a little longer.

  Of course he considered it his duty to protect young Andy Keogh; but so far the young man had suffered no real damage, and it was certainly too late now to try to keep him out of the game entirely.

  It had crossed Maule’s suspicious mind to wonder briefly if he himself might conceivably be the true intended victim. There could be some Machiavellian plot afoot, to draw him into a vulnerable position by threatening his nephew. But the members of t
he ill-favored little mob in ambush were all strangers, or nearstrangers, to Vlad Tepes; Lambert’s was the only name he knew. It had to be something other than personal animosity against Drakulya that had brought them here.

  Crouching on his rooftop perch, poised to spring into action in a fraction of a second, he listened intently to Dolly’s near-hysterical but still courageous denials, Maule could bring to bear half a millennium’s experience of hearing and judging liars of all degrees of skill. Thus he found her responses not entirely convincing, while simultaneously admiring the fortitude that enabled her to give them. Whether her interrogators would reach the same conclusion, should any of them survive the night, he could not be sure. Of course he did not intend to let them have their way much longer.

  At the same time he had a keen desire to learn what connection these malefactors might have, if any, with Sobek. Listening, he quickly came to the conviction that these must be the very people the Crocodile found so irritating, so much like sharp stones under his feet that he was willing to pay for their detached heads.

  When the fight began, Maule made an effort to avoid destroying his opponents utterly. There were a few brief moments when he could easily have finished Lambert off. Instead he had stuck the villain in the stairway, wanting to keep him available for future reference, but somehow the miscreant had managed to wriggle free.

  Maule’s hope for a leisurely interval in which to interrogate Lambert was shattered when one of Lambert’s damned breathing auxiliaries had surprised Maule with a pistol, and even managed to wound him with a wooden bullet. From that moment on Vlad Dracula had been forced to concentrate primarily on his own survival.

  That objective was soon achieved. Very quickly the fight was over, and all who had taken part in the ambush were dead, or had run away—with the sole exception of one of the breathers, the woman who had fired the gun. In his own wounded weariness, Maule had needed her healing, strengthening blood more urgently than any information she might have been able to provide. And of course when her blood was gone, it was beyond the power of any man to force her to answer questions.

  Now Maule faced a new problem, the inextricable entanglement of Andy Keogh in this desperate business. Andy, by accident coming upon his adopted uncle and his uncle’s victim, had seen him raise his head from the woman’s throat, had most likely got a good look at the gore actually dripping from his Uncle Matthew’s engorged fangs.

  At that moment, caught up in the red haze of his own needs and passions, it had been impossible for Maule to ease the young man’s shock. He had instead seized the moment to pass on what his warrior’s instinct considered to be essential orders.

  Hastily concluding his emergency feeding, tearing himself away from the consuming pleasure as soon as he felt that his strength had been sufficiently restored, Maule had changed to bat-form, and in a few minutes caught up with Andy and Dolores as they fled.

  Twice before in his long life, Vlad Drakulya had been similarly exposed in awkward situations, stumbled upon accidentally by breathing friends who, until the moment of terrible revelation, had had no clue as to his real nature. On both occasions, the effect on the friendly relationship had been disastrous.

  Just what the effect was going to be this time, Maule found it difficult to predict. When Andy told his parents (as he inevitably must tell them) what he had seen, their failure to share his shock and horror must make them seem, to Andy, to be somehow implicated as well.

  Well, the problem of Andy Keogh’s sensibilities was an awkward one, but still it was quite minor, compared with the current challenge of sheer survival for all concerned. It would have to be dealt with later.

  Maule came down in bat-form, on a tree branch a full block ahead of the couple as they continued walking, and on the opposite side of the street. In the same instant that he slid to the ground, his cell phone and fingers regained solidity. In a moment he had tapped in the number of Joe Keogh’s home phone. The two men conversed hastily, Maule moving to stay behind a tree as Andy and Dolly drew near.

  Maule brought Joe up to date, then added: “If she and Andy stay together, it will greatly simplify our task of protecting them both. If they should separate, our task will become several times more difficult.”

  Joe’s voice turned querulous. “What’s this about train tickets? It’s the first I’ve heard of that. And how did he get involved with this girl, anyway? Who is she?”

  “You may take it as proven that she is the granddaughter of my late friend—I must accept some responsibility for your son’s involvement, though of course I intended nothing of the kind.”

  There was a long pause on the phone. At last Joe said: “We’ll talk about it later.”

  When the latest communication was over, Maule was able to take a minor satisfaction in the fact that tonight’s experience confirmed the results of certain earlier experiments he had carried out in private—it was entirely feasible to morph from one body shape to another with a cell phone in one’s possession. The latest generation of such devices were compact enough to participate smoothly in the transformation that a nosferatu body underwent on such occasions. In this the communications hardware merely conformed to the behavior of various other small items commonly carried in a vampire’s purse or pockets. It was the same, of course, for his or her shoes and other clothing. Maule was slightly disappointed, though not surprised, to find he was unable to use the technology when it existed only as part of the quantum wave-function that defined the vampire in mist-form.

  Now meditating on the use of his cell phone, and the struggle he foresaw in bringing his computer knowledge up to date, Maule wondered if would-be adepts at the beginning of the twenty-first century tended to employ computers in their efforts to accomplish the Great Work. It could be argued that loading pages of text of ancient and practically undecipherable books into one’s hard drive might be the magical equivalent of actually reading them. Also, would transmitting the contents electronically, into the ocean of surrounding spacetime, be the magical equivalent of reading them aloud?

  Of course it was always necessary to keep up with new technology; but he had also learned, long ago, that one had to be careful not to depend too much on the very latest inventions, which tended toward the unreliable. He could remember distinctly, as if it had happened only yesterday instead of in the middle of the nineteenth century, the first time he had sent a telegram. It was the same with his first ride in an automobile, some fifty years after that.

  His current foray into the wonderland of electronics was only the latest in a long series of similar efforts. Each had been necessary in its time, but each had brought only temporary respite from the rat race of ever-accelerating change. In a sense, his long life had become a prolonged childhood. As the world around him perpetually renewed itself, it had to be repeatedly reexplored.

  With Andy as his tutor, he had been concentrating on trying to get his digital cable system, described by its purveyors as state-of-the-art, to work. This included the possibility of obtaining from the cable company what was called a modem, and had led him into computers and the Internet, and explained the presence of a trustworthy young breather on the scene when the unfortunate events began to unfold. Of course that project would now have to be put on hold for the time being. Another grievance against the dastardly intruder. This one was comparatively minor, but it would not be forgotten.

  At one point, Joe’s silence on the phone had seemed to question whether he, Maule, should be wasting time and effort on such matters now, given the other problems that he faced.

  “But Joseph, it is necessary to keep up with change. Even, or perhaps especially, when the change is somewhat unwelcome. Looked at from one viewpoint, my life has been one long keeping-up. And now that the millennium clock has turned …”

  “I see what you mean.”

  The risk that Maule’s domicile might again be invaded by monsters and strange magic did not make him more sanguine about the electronic tasks he meant to accomplish when he
had the chance.

  Even with all intrusive magic drained and swept away, by means that Maule had learned from greater masters in the past, the new systems of technology were arcane and puzzling beyond all reasonable need. But he took comfort in the fact that the telephone, the radio, automobile and electric light, had all seemed difficult to deal with when they first appeared.

  Cell phone tucked away again, he continued to follow his quarry closely, trotting streets and sidewalks for several minutes in the form of a wolfish dog, and then reverting to a bat. To his relief, he was able to detect no further immediate threat hovering over the couple. Nor, when their searching eyes happened to focus on the dog, did they betray the slightest suspicion that it was anything but an ordinary animal.

  As minutes passed, and still there was no sign of his chief antagonist, Maule thought he could be certain now that Sobek was not going to put in an appearance in this neighborhood of the city tonight. Perhaps the Crocodile had chosen this time to rest, or even sleep—Maule preferred to believe that even self-proclaimed gods must rest sometime.

  Drifting in mist-form, Maule was able to work his way sufficiently close to the couple to hear Dolly’s confession regarding the list of names.

  Maule felt somewhat better about the situation, after what he considered the brisk little skirmish in Old Town. What chiefly worried him now was that Sobek, their greatest enemy, was still free and active. Once Sobek suspected that Dolores Flamel was in possession of the list of names, then she and anyone who might share her knowledge, including Andy Keogh, must stand in terrible danger.