A Coldness in the Blood Page 25

  Maule said that despite her flightiness, he had confidence that she would not actively betray him. “Besides that, if I give her nothing to do, she will think up her own ways of trying to be helpful. And that could be disastrous.”

  Uncle Matt was sitting beside Dolly now, and lightly hypnotized her once more as they rode. She readily reestablished the mental contact with Sobek—he was still in the water somewhere. “Muddy water, it seems to me.” But she could not tell what he might be thinking—supposing he was having thoughts.

  Having discovered a road map in one of the convenience pockets of the SUV, Maule held it out flat and open on the spread fingers of his hand. “Dolly, I want you to indicate to me which river Sobek is in now. You can point it out to me on the map.”

  Her right hand continued to clutch the monster’s detached scale. But her left hand rose slowly in the air, and then descended, forefinger pointing. Her work-shortened fingernail came to rest upon one small blue line. Her eyes had stayed closed, and it seemed that whatever was guiding her finger could not be her conscious mind.

  “So!” Maule was well-satisfied. “It is the Rio Grande. We may not need any of the water samples Connie is supposed to be gathering … which is probably just as well.

  “Upstream, you say, so he is evidently ascending the river, moving purposefully toward its source. Somewhere in that direction must lie the final statue. Our goal must be to follow him.”

  Joe Keogh thought that Maule looked and sounded disgustingly cheerful, for a vampire setting out in pursuit of a monster who enjoyed capturing and eating vampires. And Joe was wondering, silently so far, just what Maule thought they were going to do if they ever managed to catch up.

  As they headed back to the city Joe worked his phone. Calling ahead to his people at the airport, he directed that their plane be made ready to fly within a few hours.

  “I’ll tell you later exactly where … yes, I know you need to file a flight plan. We’ll work something out. And we’ll need to set up some reliable air-to-ground communication.”

  The party split up at the airport, John Southerland boarding the plane along with his brother-in-law. Joe had had a long hard day, beginning very early in Carmel, and planned on catching some sleep in the air.

  Before the SUV left the airport, Keogh’s associates on the ground had installed an ultramodern communications device on the console between the two front seats. And before heading out of the city again, Andy and Dolly stopped for massive hamburgers, fries, and coffee, while Maule caught a pre-sunset nap in the back of the SUV.

  Within an hour the SUV was heading north again, this time taking Interstate 25, heading out of the city toward Santa Fe, some sixty miles to the north. Within a few miles, the interstate diverged from the course of the Rio Grande, and they were plunged into a strange, stark landscape. At intervals around the far horizon there loomed distant mountains, and the cumulonimbus pillars of distant thunderstorms.

  Andy was driving now, while Maule talked with Dolly, telling her that the dreams Sobek was sending, cruel as they were, might be turned to her own advantage. By maintaining the contact Sobek had established, they could follow their great enemy to the great prize that must be his goal.

  Under mesmeric influence, Dolly once more made contact with the Crocodile. “He’s still going north.” Dolly’s eyes were closed, as she murmured: “I can’t see anything really, but I can feel it. There is water all around him still.”

  During the night Sobek left the Rio Grande, but within minutes after doing so he had entered some other stream. For some reason the Crocodile evidently preferred to remain in water as much as possible, as he continued in the same general direction.

  The sun had gone down, and the Santa Fe turnoffs had been left well behind. Maule was driving now, cruising the four-lane Interstate, the highway climbing in gentle curves through mountains that only he could see clearly in the night.

  The two breathers aboard were trying to get some normal sleep, but Dolly was soon awakened by her recurrent nightmare.

  When Maule questioned her gently she swore she could not remember much about the dream.

  “Except it had something to do with Egypt—and it scared the … can you help me? You’ve got to help me, Uncle Matt. These dreams are wearing me down.” She gave a little gasp. “Do you suppose he knows I’m anywhere around when I go—go spying on him?”

  “I doubt that.”

  “So why am I getting these—these … ?”

  “At some level, perhaps unconscious, Sobek may be aware, and is inflicting these visions as a defense. Or …”

  The vampire fell silent, suddenly lost in thought.

  “Or what?” asked Andy, now awake in the rear seat.

  “I was about to say, they might even be interpreted as a cry for help.”

  “A cry for help? From the Crocodile?”

  Uncle Matt only shook his head. Dolly had been sleeping in the right front seat, and now his pale hand stroked her forehead. He said: “I will give you as much protection as I can, without jeopardizing the contact. It is a dangerous burden for you to bear; but we must maintain the contact. Like many another burden, it is best disposed of by carrying it willingly.”

  Dawn on Sunday morning found the SUV cruising deeply into southern Colorado. Maule was an extremely skillful and practically tireless driver, particularly by night. He allowed Andy and Dolores to share most of the long summer daylight hours between them, while he huddled in the backseat, or between the backseat and the middle, curled up oddly on a dark plastic garment bag that crunched and crackled strangely when he moved.

  Sunday wore on. Waking at intervals, every hour or so during the day, Maule put Dolly into trance. Generally she reported that Sobek was still in water, though not in the same stream, and still moving north. Only once did she make contact with the monster as he was moving on dry land. “He seems to be walking on two legs now, like a man … but I think he’s only going a short distance … now he’s coming to another stream—can’t see it very clearly …”

  “Let me get out the map again, said Uncle Matt.” Fortunately, here in the West the streams were comparatively few, and comparatively small.

  Two or three times during the day, Joe Keogh in his aircraft made wireless contact with the party in Maule’s SUV. Joe’s plane had landed early Sunday morning at an airfield near Colorado Springs, and he and John were waiting there for further word from Uncle Matt on Sobek’s whereabouts.

  Andy said to Maule: “We’re going to need another map.”

  “At least one more. At our next stop for fuel we will obtain as many as we can.”

  Traffic thickened and slowed as the SUV drew near Denver, came near stopping as the highway dragged them painfully through the city’s congested heart. By Sunday afternoon the earthbound pursuers had made several stops for fuel and food. Maule met his own needs in his own way—at dusk on Sunday evening, in the woods beside a highway rest area well north of Denver, Andy watched the vampire catch a rabbit. Maule, standing a few yards away and with his back to the others, seemed to have somehow hypnotized the small animal into jumping into his hands. Quickly he raised it to his mouth. Only a few seconds later, the small, drained body was tossed away.

  The blood-drinking Andy had witnessed in Chicago came back to him strongly, sharp and clear. With a sigh of relief, he saw that Dolly was looking in the other direction, and had evidently noticed nothing disturbing.

  At dawn on Monday it was once more Uncle Matthew’s turn to sleep, curled on his handy bag of powdered native earth, nestled between the second and third seats of the SUV. There well-shadowed floor space offered a small nest where a lean man could sleep comfortably on his back with his knees bent, and a blanket or tarp thrown over him and his thin crackling cushion of magic earth.

  “Hope we don’t get stopped for anything,” Andy wished aloud. He could all too easily picture their guardian being rushed to the hospital by the first cop who saw him in his present state. What he had trouble pict
uring was what might happen after that.

  Dolly agreed. She also wondered aloud what the cops might make of the great spear, which still extended through the cabin, back to front. And that in turn reminded her of her shotgun, which she supposed was sure to one day get her into trouble—if only she could live so long.

  After mentioning her concerns to Andy, she suggested: “We could say we’re on our way to some kind of fantasy convention. Trade show? Don’t people have those kind of things?”

  “I think we’re on our way to a fantastic gathering, all right.”

  Later on Monday morning, with Andy driving, and Dolly in a trance, Maule was talking to them both. “I am sure the great beast still has the power to transport himself from one place to another by any of several modes of magic—but for the most part, he does not want to do so. By using rivers, he avoids what he must perceive as the difficulties and inconveniences of traveling overland … also, I believe he has several times employed some form of magic to carry him swiftly and invisibly from one stream to another. Where is he now?”

  Dolly’s small finger, nothing at all magical in its appearance, found the new blue line on the map. Wordlessly she frowned.

  Through the remainder of Monday, and into Monday night, they traced their enemy’s route. Overall the Crocodile’s progress was taking him almost directly north from Albuquerque, and by now he had come nearly a thousand miles. Sometimes upstream, sometimes downstream, but in general always north. He had visited the South Platte, the Missouri, the Bighorn.

  Looking at the road map, Dolly supposed that driving up to Montana from Albuquerque would have taken something like two days. But as long as the monster remained in the water he moved at a slow pace, only a few miles an hour, much slower than highway traffic.

  On the other hand, he kept going day and night, stopping only infrequently. Sobek seemed to need no sleep, and very little rest. And in going from one stream to another he could move at magical velocity.

  The SUV, thought Andy, could easily have raced ahead of their enemy—if only they knew where he was going. As it was, they made frequent stops, and endured long waits. Joe Keogh’s airplane had left Colorado Springs, but it was spending much more time on the ground, at one small airport or another, than it was in the air.

  The sun came up on Tuesday morning, and Andy realized that a week had gone by since the adventure started.

  Another day went by. It was on Wednesday, after several days of steady, tireless swimming and crawling for the Crocodile, and of driving or flying-and-resting by his pursuers, when Maule confirmed, questioning the hypnotized Dolly, that his enemy had now entered the Yellowstone, after leaving the Missouri River at a spot near Buford, North Dakota.

  Andy was struck by a new concern. “What if he goes on into Canada? Can Joe fly over into Canadian airspace?”

  “I can, if he cannot. But your father is looking into that. Wherever Sobek goes, we must pursue.”

  Now Dolly was sleeping no more than half an hour at a time, usually taking Maule’s favorite spot when he was not there, between the second and third seats of the SUV. She stayed awake no longer than two hours between her tortured naps.

  ~ 19 ~

  Joe had radioed his intention to land at the Billings airport, and suggested that the hunters ought to get together in that city for a face-to-face conference.

  Maule was agreeable. He and his fellow passengers in the SUV had now passed Custer’s last battlefield, and were keeping up with the flow of interstate traffic at eighty miles an hour. Billings was only a few miles ahead.

  On landing in Montana, Joe found himself reminded of Carmel—simply because this place was just so completely different. He had heard that Billings was the largest city in the state, with a population of around one hundred thousand, and it looked about as mundane and workaday as any city could be. There was an aging and moderately congested central area, with a strong beginning of modern sprawl taking shape to the west and south. A rim of rock nearly as sharp as a stairstep, perhaps two hundred feet in height, ran east and west across the northern part of the city. Logan Airport perched atop this shelf, while along the very rim a row of the city’s most luxurious homes were sitting like spectators on a balcony.

  The SUV had arrived in the city at about the same time, and Maule’s party had taken several rooms in a downtown hotel.

  Within the hour they were joined there by Joe and John.

  When Joe Keogh discovered that his son and Dolly were sharing a room, he gave his son a look.

  Andy shot back: “By this time, it would feel strange if Dolly and I didn’t share a room.”

  “Getting married sometime soon?”

  The young man’s anger flared. “Dad, we’re in two beds. We’re not sleeping together—staying together and trying to sleep would be more like it. After this last week, sleep is about all I can think of when I see a bed.”

  His father grunted something that sounded about half-sympathetic, and turned away.

  In truth, Dolly was beginning to seem to Andy something like a sister. The thoughts that came disturbing him when he lay down to sleep were actually of Connie, whose image in his mind combined a perfect woman’s body with all the exotic mystery of Uncle Matt … .

  In the grayness just before dawn, Connie reported in again to Maule, tapping on the outside of his window on the tenth floor of the hotel. When he let her in, she said that she was glad they had at last found reasonably comfortable quarters.

  In elegantly gloved hands Connie was carrying two small, mismatched glass bottles, each about one-third full. Hesitantly she began to report on her assigned mission of gathering water samples—it seemed obvious that she had managed to botch it up, and in fact was not sure from which source either bottle had been filled.

  Uncle Matt heard all of this with no surprise. Brushing aside Connie’s rambling excuses, he told her to forget about taking an inventory of rivers, and devote herself in earnest to finding Dickon.

  She brightened somewhat, setting down her two bottles with exaggerated care. “I can try that, Mr. Maule. You understand that I make no promise of—”

  “I want no promise, I want results. You seem to have no trouble in finding me wherever I go.”

  Connie hesitated. “Certainly you are very angry with Dickon now.”

  “I surely am. But if you are trying to save him, set your mind at ease; the wretch seems so good at punishing himself that I hesitate to interfere. Tell him this: I will forgo the satisfaction of revenge, if he will give me information. I want to know all that he knows of the last statue, the Stone, and the Crocodile.”

  Dawn had not yet broken when Connie was on her way again.

  Dolly’s first report after sunrise indicated the Crocodile was still progressing upstream along the Yellowstone, now within a few miles of Billings, and steadily approaching the city from the east.

  Sobek had determined that his long trek across the continent would soon be ended. Now and then, sometimes by day and sometimes by night, he emerged from one stream or another long enough to find food in the form of a cow or steer or sheep.

  In one case, an antelope, taken by surprise on the otherwise deserted bank of the South Platte, had not been swift enough to escape his open, lunging jaws.

  Now and then, in the vastness of open country well west of the Mississippi, he observed a human, or sometimes two or three. Not wanting to be distracted, he generally took precautions so they should not see him. He considered feeding on one or more of them, but he preferred to wait until he could satisfy his special fondness for vampire blood. The fact that vampires were so rare made them all the more desirable. It was a special craving that the Crocodile meant to fully satisfy quite soon.

  Sobek had come to rest in a deep pool in the cold mountain stream, pausing there because he was finding it increasingly difficult to know which way to move. His magic had brought him very near to the last statue, but its presence seemed to blanket a whole circle of a quarter of a mile or so in diameter.
Once he had moved within that circle, he had to wait a long time to know which way to move next.

  By now the Crocodile had given up his efforts to attract Dolly to him—she had become largely irrelevant, now that his private magic was leading him infallibly to the only Crocodile image that had not yet been destroyed, and so must inevitably contain the prize.

  Yet he had not entirely forgotten the young woman—and now he could sense dimly that she was not far away, and in fact very near to the great prize.

  Sobek could not remember how much time had passed since he had last had sexual relations with either beast or human. At certain dim and remote periods in the past he had frequently tried both, female crocodiles as well as women, but had failed to experience much real satisfaction either way.

  Of course he understood the reason for the failure. It was simply that his true mate would have to be a goddess, and no lesser being could truly satisfy him. It bothered him, sometimes, that in his worldwide wanderings he had never encountered another example of divinity. Not even in old Egypt, where their numbers had been almost uncountable. Perhaps when he had taken possession of the Stone he would return there, to the land of his birth, and this time his fellow deities would not avoid him.

  There were moments when he imagined himself using Dolly in that way, and then devouring her afterward. But he still could not quite decide whether that course of action would afford him the most pleasure or not. The truth was that, for either kind of union, the Crocodile much preferred the flesh of vampires over that of breathing humans, and she was not a vampire. For a time the Crocodile had toyed with the idea of somehow arranging for her to become a vampire—and then he would devour her, deriving maximum pleasure from the taste of her nosferatu flesh. Such an outcome would take some time and effort to arrange, of course, but the result ought to be well worth the wait.