Sallow House

by Phil Malone

  He staggered forward, faster than his quarry. All at once, Melody realized their weapons were gone. Where was Kolka’s gun, or Lucado’s sword? Not in their hands.

  Bleda caught them right when they reached the foyer. He seized Lucado by the back of his neck and smashed him face first into the wall. Lucado tried to keep his balance, hands scrabbling for something to hold on to. He collapsed to the ground regardless.

  Kolka tried to whirl around, tried to batter Bleda into submission with his fists. Bleda didn’t even seem to feel the blows. He shook Kolka hard, like an animal worrying its prey. Then his mouth opened, fangs gaping.

  Melody was on her feet before she even realized it. She closed the distance in half a dozen quick strides. Kolka’s wide, fearful eyes found her.

  She slapped Bleda’s arm, trying to make him drop Kolka. He half turned. The stake was in her other hand, and the raw, gaping bullet wounds in his chest stared her in the face. His heartbeat reached her ears.

  It was a good target, she decided. She plunged the stake in, ramming it home through the bullet hole, leaning all her weight behind it.

  Bleda’s shuddered, and he dropped the barely conscious homicide detective. Melody took a wary step back, waiting for him to retaliate. Instead, he sagged against the wall, eyeballing her, fangs sliding back into his upper jaw. He gasped like he couldn’t draw a breath.

  At first, Melody thought his eyes were filling with tears. Then a trickle of blood dripped down his cheeks, red and runny. Bleda sat, his back sliding down the wall. Beside him on the floor, Lucado flinched away.

  His hands came to rest in his lap, twitching slightly. His head tipped backwards, allowing the eyeballs to sink into his skull, and his lower jaw to sag open. Blood welled up in his mouth. He became a fountainhead, blood drops oozing through his skin.

  Melody helped Lucado to his feet and they both gave Bleda’s body a wide berth. The flesh melted off his bones, pooling in heaps all around him. Kolka stood in the front door, watching, transfixed. When he stepped to the side, Melody glanced out and saw the last thing she expected. Her father stood on the threshold.

  “Dad!”

  He stared at the spreading pool of slops, but his head jerked towards the sound of his daughter’s voice. She left Lucado leaning against the wall and ran to him, throwing herself into his embrace.

  It was slow in coming, though. His arms closed around her like he wasn’t entirely sure who she was. Again, his eyes found Bleda’s remains.

  Kolka took a few steps towards him. “Congressman. How did you find us?”

  Sanger’s eyes flicked up. “You called the police,” he said. “I have friends in the police department.”

  “They should be maybe five minutes behind you.”

  Glancing down, Sanger noticed Melody’s face buried in his chest. She was weeping. “I just wanted to know where my daughter was.”

  Kolka grinned. “If you want to take her home, that’s fine. She’s safe now. Hell, she’s a goddamn hero.”

  Melody barely heard him. Her father’s hand stroked the back of her head. “Hey, little song,” he said, prying her off him momentarily, “let’s go to the car, huh?”

  She nodded. A few steps away from the front door, Sanger paused and turned back. “Detective, will you wait here for just a moment? Let me get her settled and I’ll be right back.”

  “Take your time. I’ll be here waiting on the police, anyway. Oh,” he added, when they started walking away again, “Melody.”

  She looked over her shoulder.

  “You saved our lives tonight. Thank you.”

  They walked out to the street and kept going, half a block from the house. Melody started crying again when she saw her dad’s Mercedes. It looked so familiar, so mundane. She feared nothing would be the same after such a night of horrors.

  Her dad opened the passenger door for her and waited for her to climb in. Then he leaned towards her. “I’m going to talk to Detective Kolka for just a minute, okay? I’ll be right back.”

  Cheeks wet with tears, she smiled at him. He closed the car door and started back up the block.

  Exhaustion hit her suddenly. That thin ribbon of light along the horizon still wavered, a little brighter than it had been, but the sun wasn’t yet peeking above the trees. Overhead, night still reigned, though the stars were all hidden behind gathering clouds.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Lucado’s nose felt painful every time he touched it, but he couldn’t stop. The cartilage felt out of joint. He sniffed back another dribble of blood and glanced down at the soup of viscera and bone that had been a vampire just minutes before. It didn’t even make him sick.

  Kolka must have seen some awful things during his time investigating homicides, because he could also scrutinize it without retching. “Is this how they always die?” he asked.

  “Stake them. Cut their heads off." Lucado swiped the toe of his shoe through the sticky edge of the puddle. “This is pretty much what you get.”

  “I don’t know how you’ve survived doing this.”

  “Well, I only go after them during the day." Lucado couldn’t shake a sense of unease. The first vampire attack that night only happened because they knew who he was. They knew his name. If one knew, so did others. Bleda was proof of that. “I’m still going to need protection.”

  “You think there are more of them?”

  Lucado wrinkled his nose. After everything, Kolka could still be so naive.

  “Of course you do,” Kolka laughed. “Fine. We can discuss that after you tell me how I’m supposed to explain all this. This mess.”

  “Eh,” Lucado shrugged. “Just blame it on Sallow. There’s enough evidence of his murders in the house. This could be just another piece of the puzzle, as far as everyone else is concerned. Or tell them the truth. We can share a padded cell in Old Dominion.”

  “I’m sure it’s a very nice facility. Nevertheless, I’ll pass. Sallow it is." He stared at the remains. “I wonder if we’ll ever know what was really going on here.”

  “Put out an APB on Edgar Sallow. Maybe somebody will catch him, and you can get the full story straight from the horse’s mouth. Although it’s more likely that anyone who gets near him will end up bloodless and dead, and the throat wounds won’t look nearly as pretty as they used to." Lucado tapped the side of his neck, where his jugular vein thrummed with each exhausted heartbeat.

  “God, I hope not." Kolka sighed. “But this is his house, so he’s going to have to carry this one.”

  Lucado’s knee throbbed. His face hurt. The scratches and bruises all over his body made his skin feel tight and especially sensitive. “I need to find my sword cane. The sheath is still in your car, right?”

  Kolka laughed. “Old man, I don’t even remember. If that’s where you left it." He looked toward the street. There should have been sirens by now. At least Congressman Sanger was walking towards him, coming back up the driveway.

  “There he is,” Kolka said. “It’s been a long night for him, too. He looks really pale.”

  “Sallow?!" Lucado started up, glancing out the door. “Oh, you mean Sanger. He…” Lucado frowned. “He does look pale.”

  “Relax, Mario. They can’t all be vampires.”

  Intellectually, Lucado knew there was truth in what Kolka said. Even so, the hair on his arms stood on end. “Detective…” he said, backing away a few steps.

  Sanger looked at him with a blank expression, only about fifteen feet away and drawing closer.

  “Kolka, I think we should run.”

  Kolka frowned at him. He looked over just as light from inside the house caught Sanger’s eyes. They flashed, reflective.

  In his haste to get away, Lucado nearly slipped in Bleda’s remains. He rushed into the kitchen. His sword was in the back yard, he thought, somewhere that Bleda made him drop it.

  He still had time to look over his shoulder. Time enough to watch Sanger seize Kolka’s neck in both hands.

  Sanger never bother
ed to bare his fangs. But Lucado heard the sickening crunch of Kolka’s bones as Sanger twisted his head around. Then he got one last glimpse of Kolka’s accusing stare, face pointed one way, body aimed the other.

  There was no time to stop, and no time to grieve.

  Maybe, Lucado hoped, he knew the house well enough by then to find his way around. There were others ways out. If that failed, there were plenty of places to hide.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Sallow drove away from his house in a stolen TransAm he’d hidden on the next block, laughing as he went. The pain Bleda inflicted on him had started fading as soon as Melody and the others distracted him. Sallow could picture the lot of them, chasing each other around like cartoon characters in his labyrinth of a house.

  He felt it, too, when Bleda died. As if heavy, black storm clouds parted and the sun shone gloriously in a clear white sky. He didn’t realize how oppressive the weight placed on him by Bleda really was until it vanished. He could breathe again, he could stretch, laugh, relax.

  The feeling lasted for an hour, until he stopped somewhere north of Richmond to gas up his car. Trucks rumbled past on the highway. In the early morning, commuters visited the convenience store for coffee and doughnuts. They filled up their own gas tanks. He felt conspicuous with his amateur, homemade haircut, but none of them gave him a second look.

  Almost none of them.

  A brilliantly polished black Rolls Royce pulled into the station’s parking lot, circled the bank of gas pumps, finally pulling up beside him. The rear door swung open, and Sallow stooped for a better look inside, too curious to resist.

  He saw a beautiful woman staring back at him over a pair of dark glasses. A touch of eye shadow purpled her eyelids, and her long lashes fluttered lazily when she blinked. Long, wavy hair fell down across one eye until she brushed it aside and tucked it behind an ear. She wore red lipstick and an ankle length gown, slit all the way up to her thigh.

  Her eyes roamed from Sallow’s face to his TransAm and back. “Leave the car,” she said. “Mine far surpasses it.”

  She slid across the seat, making room for him. No woman like her had ever so much as given Sallow the time of day. But between the dark glasses, the dark windows, and her pale skin, he knew she was a vampire. He could even smell it on her.

  But he got in anyway. He felt compelled.

  It smelled of new car leather and lilies inside the Rolls. He shut the door behind him and settled into the comfortable seat. “You must be a woman who’s used to getting her way,” he said.

  She smiled. “Most of the time, yes.”

  “If I thought you could invade my skull the way Bleda could, I would have already torn your head off with my bare hands.”

  Her smile never wavered. “Maybe. But you are little more than a newborn, and I am stronger than I look. So maybe not. Where were you headed, Mr. Sallow?”

  Sallow wondered if Bleda had told many other vampires about him. This one had found him almost right away. He tried to keep a good poker face. “You know my name but not where I’m going. What else do you know?”

  “I know you abandoned that astonishing house of yours. It would be a shame to leave such a place. My friend Congressman Sanger was telling me about it over the phone a little while ago. You know his daughter, I believe. His wife too, if only briefly.”

  The poker face slipped a bit when Sallow raised his eyebrows. This woman knew pretty much everything.

  By then they were back on the highway, heading north. Sallow was trapped.

  When he didn’t respond, the woman placed her hand on his wrist, patting it lightly. “Everything is fine, I promise. My name is Gudit. Here, some of us are gathering for a meeting tonight. Why not come with me? I believe it will be worth your while.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “Then I shall take you directly back to the car you just abandoned. Hopefully it will still be there. I presume it was stolen.”

  “So?”

  “Nothing. Just come with me. Be one of us. All you have to do is live by a few rules we set down for everyone’s safety, and you become a part of our little community. You become protected.”

  “From who? People don’t scare me. Neither do vampires. And I’m not a big fan of living by anyone’s rules.”

  She laughed. “You would not be the only one.”

  “Then why have any rules at all?”

  “Well,” she said, leaning back against her seat, “that is precisely the thing that some of us are trying to change.”

  Sallow went to their stupid club meeting and met a bunch of other vampires in a whirl of introductions. They all seemed to take themselves very seriously. Some acted pleased to meet him, smiling and shaking his hand. A few behaved with indifference. One glared at him, cold eyes sunken into his ancient, puckered white face. Most of the names Sallow immediately forgot, but he remembered that one. Caligula.

  He half expected them to don crimson robes and hoods, and take him to some underground stone chamber for the vampire hazing rituals. Instead, they all sat around a table in somebody’s house, in suits or skirts, or business casual.

  Gudit gave him the necessary explanation as they made him sit in a chair behind her. “Every time a new vampire is made,” she told him, “they begin subservient to their master. The master sees through their eyes, speaks directly to their mind, and inflicts a painful retribution if they refuse to do as the master commands. It has always been this way. We are the creatures God has made of us.”

  The room murmured assent, though Sallow noticed that a few other vampires stirred uncomfortably. Like him, they sat in chairs pushed up against the wall, rather than having a seat at the table.

  “Over time, this connection fades,” Gudit went on. “One day, after years, decades, perhaps centuries depending on the vampire master’s age and strength of will, the connection dissolves entirely. At other times, the younger vampire outlives their maker, and the link dies. Just as you experienced, Mr. Sallow.”

  Napoleon rose from his seat, all smiles. Sallow knew him well, but neglected to mention anything about burgling his home, or stealing the stake that implicated Bleda in the murder of Sanger’s wife.

  “When Bleda died, you came into your own,” Napoleon said. He glanced towards the head of the table, where Caligula sat, scowling. “On these occasions, we dub the newly independent vampire with a name of their own. Your old life is over. Whatever humanity you once possessed is gone. You are one of us now.”

  Sallow offered a modest shrug. He said nothing, having never had much use for humanity. His own, or anyone else’s.

  Yet another vampire rose. He lifted a goblet in his hand, filled with warm blood tapped from the veins of a few captive human victims.

  “To the youngest of the damned,” he said, raising the chalice. “To Dragut!”

  The rest of the assembly rose and lifted their goblets as well. Caligula took longest of all, such that they almost drank without him. “To Dragut!” they cried, and drained their glasses.

  It sounded like a fine name to Sallow. To Dragut, he thought, and tasted from a cup of his own. He savored the warmth and richness of the blood as it seeped down his throat.

  He swallowed the last drops. And to many more drinks to come.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  They found Lucado the next morning outside a bank. He was huddled in the entry alcove, as far from view as he could get. The huge, heavy marble arch of the bank’s façade hid him in shadow, but the security guards that arrived in the morning to open the doors could hardly fail to miss him.

  At some point during the night, he had lost a shoe. Dried blood caked his nose, a rust colored smear in the wild, unkempt bristles on his cheeks. He was covered in scratches and his clothes were torn and filthy. When the guards tried to haul him to his feet, he resisted. He screamed and thrashed and bit one of them on the finger, refusing to calm down until they dragged him into open sunlight.

  “They can come from the sky!” he raved, until the
guards shrugged their shoulders and called the police.

  The officers that responded found Kolka’s card in his pocket. One of them called the number, spoke to someone on the other end, and hung up with a grim expression on his face.

  “You see?” Lucado said. “They’re not afraid of you.”

  They thought they would have to drag him into the back of the police cruiser, but Lucado hobbled towards it willingly. He kept muttering the same words, over and over. “It’s daylight now. It’s daylight.”

  It took the better part of the day to figure out what to do with him. No one suspected him of killing Andres Kolka, and they still didn’t know what to make of the wrecked cruiser and dead officers who tried taking him to the Old Dominion mental asylum.

  A woman spoke with Lucado briefly, trying to extract his account of the past twenty-four hours. She wasn’t another detective, but introduced herself as Assistant District Attorney Lana Betancourt. She wanted to assure Lucado that he wasn’t under arrest, and seemed desperate to piece together the events of the previous night. It didn’t matter. Nothing Lucado said made any sense.

  For hours, the questions continued. They asked about his family, his friends, anyone back in Connecticut he might contact. Lucado shook his head.

  “Just as well,” one of the detectives muttered to the prosecutor. “He’s going to have to testify at some point. No one kills that many cops and gets away with it.”

  Lucado giggled, and they both looked at him, frowning.

  “I can’t put him on the stand. Not in that condition.”

  When someone finally suggested sending him to Old Dominion again, Lucado went white and rigid. He stared at a clock on the wall, gripped the arms of his chair, and refused to budge. “It’s night,” was all he would tell them. “We can go in the morning. When the sun is up.”

  Kolka had promised him police protection, so that was how Lucado spent his last night as a free man. In a police precinct, surrounded by cops, by guns, by all those meaningless walls, all that useless hardware.