Companions of the Night

by Vivian Vande Velde

  "Take the box in back, would you, Kerry?" he asked in a perfectly level, perfectly calm voice.

  Kerry closed the cover and picked up the box, which was heavy but manageable. She stepped out of the way to let Ethan enter. Then—at the moment Ethan was occupied with dragging Marsala in after him—she turned, holding out her coat in a gesture that was an unwelcome reminder of the Rochester prostitutes. She felt the tug as Marsala took the gun from her inner pocket. By the time Ethan was settled behind the steering wheel, Marsala, next to him, had the gun in his own pocket, and Kerry was sitting in the backseat with Marsala's vampire-hunting kit.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ETHAN KEPT A wary watch on Marsala as he drove, no doubt ready to grab him if he tried to escape from the car, to shove him back if he lunged.

  Marsala, of course, did neither; and Kerry, hunched miserably in the backseat, realized she was too confused to actively hope for anything.

  Except that she could keep from crying.

  Which, the moment she thought about it, she couldn't.

  She bit her lip, trying to regain control, sure—at least—she was being so quiet no one would notice.

  "Kerry?" Ethan, spreading his attention between Marsala and driving, spared a quick glance in her direction. Then another. "Did he hurt you?" Before she could answer, he grabbed a handful of Marsala's jacket and shoved him so that his head bounced off the side window, saying, "If you hurt her—"

  "No!" Kerry said at the same time Marsala said the same thing "I'm all right," she insisted.

  She could see Ethan's skeptical reflection in the rearview mirror. He kept hold of Marsala until he had to downshift, and even then he let go reluctantly.

  And what was she supposed to make of that? She rested her forehead in her hand and didn't move until Ethan pulled the car into Marsala's driveway.

  "Out," he told Marsala, and he began sliding him across the seat and out the door. To Kerry he said, "Stay here."

  "No." Surely when Marsala had told her not to let Ethan separate them, he had been more afraid of getting separated from his gun than from her, but she couldn't just abandon him now. Marsala was on the side of right, she told herself as Ethan's blue eyes, surprised, turned in her direction. Remember Retina's house, she told herself. Remember Bergen Swamp. "If anybody looks out and sees me just sitting here, they'll get suspicious," she explained.

  "All right, then," Ethan said in a tone that was like an icicle melting down her jacket collar. "In that case, you can carry the box."

  Did he guess she'd betrayed him? Had she just failed his final test by not admitting it and begging his forgiveness? Don't be silly, she told herself. If Ethan suspected her, she couldn't imagine he'd waste time and effort with tests.

  They used Marsala's key this time and turned on the light that hung over the entryway stairwell.

  "Up," Ethan ordered.

  Kerry followed the two of them.

  "You like the idea of drinking my blood in my own house, vampire?" Marsala asked. "That's what the other one, the female, would have done, too. I tracked her. I followed her for two years before she led me to you, and I got to know her habits. She had a great sense of irony."

  At the head of the stairs, Ethan gave him a shove into the living room.

  "Or are you going to let the girl drain me? Is that how the transition is made, with the first kill?"

  Kerry set the vampire-hunter's box down at the top of the stairs, wondering if he was just stalling for time or whether he really believed that, as though the fact that she had helped him wasn't enough to convince him Ethan had never bitten her.

  "Nobody's going to feed on you," Ethan said. He backed Marsala up against the wall, holding him by the shoulders so that Marsala couldn't get to the gun.

  Why didn't he do it before? Kerry thought. In the car, in the driveway, going up the stairs? Not that she wanted to see Ethan killed, but she knew there was no other way.

  "I see," Marsala said. How could he remain so cool? Didn't he know how quickly Ethan could move? "We're just here because we're all good friends," Marsala said.

  "We're just here to make your death look like something else," Ethan corrected. He tossed a set of keys onto the coffee table. Kerry could see the Ferrari symbol: Regina's keys, to give the police a lead in her disappearance, even if the body was never found.

  "What's the matter?" Marsala taunted. "Don't you want to do it in front of the girl? Don't you want her to see you with my blood dripping off your fangs, smeared on your teeth and chin? Don't you want her to see what you are before you finish making her one of you?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Kerry"—she jumped at the suddenness of his calling her name—"there's a tape recorder in the box, under the stakes. Get it out and press PLAY."

  Ethan gave her a confused and worried glance.

  He hadn't known, Kerry saw. He hadn't guessed. He hadn't suspected. The thought had never crossed his mind.

  But it did now.

  "Do it," Marsala commanded.

  "No." Ethan didn't know what was going on—Kerry couldn't tell what Marsala planned—but he definitely needed to see which of them she'd listen to.

  "I'm sorry," Kerry said. She opened the box and lifted the tray out, exposing a portable AM/FM radio—tape player and the garlic she'd suspected all along.

  "Kerry," Ethan said uncertainly, spending a dangerous amount of attention on her.

  Kerry pressed the PLAY button.

  There was the hiss of the tape before the recording started, and Marsala said, "And now take out the gun."

  She jerked her head up. She had an instant of terror, supposing a second gun that she couldn't find, before she saw both men start to move. There was no gun. But with no way to know that, Ethan released Marsala and lunged toward Kerry.

  While Marsala went for the gun in his pocket.

  Kerry, still on the staircase, dropped to her knees and covered her head, knowing what woefully inadequate protection that would be against vampires or bullets.

  There were two shots, and Ethan cried out in pain, just as the music on the recorder started—loud classical music, perhaps the overture to an opera, just the kind of music to camouflage murder.

  Kerry forced herself to look up.

  She had been sure Marsala would aim for the head to inflict the worst damage. She was sure that she would look up to find Ethan dead or dying, but Marsala had shot him in the leg. The left leg, she noted irrelevantly, the leg opposite from the one that had been injured last time. Both bullets had hit him in the thigh. As Ethan tried to sit up, Marsala came closer and fired a third bullet into his right knee.

  Kerry covered her mouth to keep from crying out.

  Ethan doubled over, not making a sound this time. Marsala had a clear shot at his head if that was what he intended.

  But apparently that wasn't what he intended.

  "You," he said, motioning to Kerry.

  She had to pass by Ethan, who watched her but made no move to stop her.

  She remembered him saying that vampires didn't feel hot or cold the way humans did, and she told herself that he couldn't feel pain to the same extent that a human would, either As proof, she pointed out to herself that otherwise he would have screamed when Marsala's third bullet hit his knee. Surely his first outcry had been from startlement. She remembered how hurt and scared he had looked in the laundry, and how that had been an act.

  "I'm sorry," she said again.

  "Open the drapes," Marsala told her.

  She glanced at Ethan, who was looking from her to Marsala.

  "Do I have to say everything twice?" Marsala demanded.

  Kerry knelt on the couch to reach the cord that opened the drapes covering the picture window.

  "The side window, too. And the sliding-glass door in the kitchen. That's the main one. It faces east." Marsala checked his watch, then glanced at the tape recorder. "Come ... oh, long before Madame Butterfly realizes she's been betrayed, the sun is going to rise up over those trees and flood
this whole part of the house with all that lovely, cleansing light. How long since you've seen a sunrise, vampire?"

  Ethan met his smirk levelly and said nothing.

  Kerry crossed in front of him again to go into the kitchen, to open the drapes over the door that led from the kitchen to a small wooden deck in back of the house. Stop it, she wished at Marsala. There was no need to gloat and torment Ethan. She remembered, again, how Ethan had almost killed her at Regina's house. "I'm not going to hurt you," he'd promised. She tried to replace that image with the one from Bergen Swamp, when he'd been angry, but then he'd only kissed her neck. As in: Tag, you're it. So maybe he hadn't been angry after all. That one was too hard to figure out. Once again the thought of Regina's house forced itself into her mind. He'd held her slightly off to the side, so that she'd been pressed against his chest, but that was all, as though he was taking into account her age and lack of experience, or the fact that she'd helped him the night before.

  "Oh, you're quiet now," Marsala said to Ethan. "But we're going to need Madame Butterfly to cover your screams later."

  "Professor Marsala," she begged.

  "I take it," Marsala continued as though she hadn't spoken, "circumstances being what they are, that neither of you has ever witnessed a vampire's death by sunlight."

  Ethan briefly closed his eyes, then opened them again as though to say he could face whatever Marsala had to say.

  "Let me share my experience," Marsala said. He had to raise his voice because, on the tape, singers had now joined the orchestra. "I entered the female vampire's house at about noon. I expected that I would find her asleep in a coffin in the basement Imagine my surprise when I found her in an elegantly decorated bedroom, wearing a modest though alluring negligee, probably purchased at Kaufmann's or Lord and Taylor. Not the Halloween scene I expected at all. Still, I set my kit down." He indicated the box by the steps. "I arranged the stakes on the floor so she could see them when she awoke, turned on Madame Butterfly to allay the fears of neighbors who might otherwise be concerned by any unaccustomed noise, laid the crucifix down on her bosom, then gently opened the vampire's mouth and placed several cloves of garlic inside She stirred just the faintest bit then, but she didn't awake And then I opened the windows."

  What have I done? Kerry thought, seeing the relish with which he told his story.

  "First I pulled back the drapes. There were two sets of windows. I opened the drapes of one, then the other. She frowned, in her sleep. I could see the little line, here"—he indicated between the eyebrows—"as though she might have been having a bad dream. Perhaps remembering a victim's blood that didn't taste as sweet as she had anticipated." Marsala smiled into Ethan's look of loathing. "And then I pulled open the shutters. First one"—he gave a flourish with his hand—"and then the other. Of course, she started screaming as soon as the first was open."

  Ethan closed his eyes again.

  "Well," Marsala corrected himself, "she didn't actually scream at first, because there was all that garlic in her mouth. But she was spitting out the garlic and making these noises deep in her throat that would have been screams if she could have gotten them out, and she thrashed on the bed, but she couldn't get up. Because of the crucifix. Her skin became red ... oh, in seconds. She went from seriously sunburned to raw and blistered in the time it took her to realize what was happening and to clear the garlic from her mouth. She begged for mercy. Not for me to let her live—she knew it was too late for that—but for me to use the stakes or the hatchet on her. Do your victims ever beg for mercy, vampire? Did Joey? Don't"—Marsala made a gesture as though to cut Ethan off, though Ethan hadn't given any indication he was going to speak—"don't tell me you weren't the one to kill Joey. I know you weren't even in Brockport then. But surely you vampires discuss such things, don't you? 'Oh, I had such an interesting dinner the other night. First I won his trust, and then I ripped his throat out. My God, he screamed wonderfully.' Do you share vampire stories like that?"

  Ethan didn't answer.

  This isn't necessary, Kerry wanted to shout at Marsala. You don't need to do this.

  Marsala asked, "Or is one just the same as any other for you? She didn't ever mention him, did she? She probably couldn't even remember his name by the next morning, could she?" His fingers flexed on his gun.

  Kerry braced herself for the shot she was sure was coming, but Marsala gave another smile.

  "You can't goad me," he said. "You don't get off that easy." He took a deep breath. "So, she may not have known what I meant when I kept repeating, 'I'm Joe's father.'" He shrugged. "But I was everyone's father at that moment I stood there for everyone she'd killed over the years. I watched her skin blacken. And crack. And curl. And fall off. Did I mention the smell of burnt meat? Finally, the little gurgling noises coming from her throat stopped. And a while after that the body stopped twitching That was when I chopped off her head, to make sure she couldn't come back. There was hardly any blood by then. What there was, on the edge of my blade, boiled away in the sunlight. Then I closed the shutters and the drapes, so that the house would look the same as always. I rewound Madame Butterfly. We hadn't even got very far into it. Five, six minutes at the very most. I'm sure it seemed much longer for her." Marsala looked at Ethan appraisingly. "I imagine you'll take longer to die, with the weaker early morning sunlight."

  "Professor Marsala," Kerry said, "why are you doing this?"

  "I want the names of other vampires," Marsala said.

  It was, she could see, what Ethan had expected. "I was too eager to see the female vampire die," Marsala said.

  "Regina," Kerry corrected, fed up with this. "Her name was Regina." Which it may or may not have been, after all these years. "Professor Marsala, you can't do this. It's one thing to kill them to protect yourself, but you have no right to torture—"

  "I was too eager to see the female vampire die," Marsala insisted to Ethan. "The last thing I should have done was fill her mouth so that she couldn't talk. You will talk. And if you talk fast enough and if I believe what you're saying, I may give you one of the easier deaths she begged for." Marsala checked his watch. "Not a lot of time to make up your mind," he announced cheerfully. "Although no doubt you have an inner sense that's already told you that.... And perhaps I shouldn't have used the crucifix to hold her down, so that she could have thrashed even more."

  Beyond the look of pure hate Ethan was wearing, there was a flicker of contempt.

  Marsala saw it; Kerry knew he did. He smiled smugly as he walked past Ethan, leaving a wide clearance around the wounded vampire as he approached the toolbox where he kept his supplies. He set the safety on his gun and tucked it into his belt. "Let's see. If you do cooperate, which of these would you prefer I use? Understand, we won't have a lot of time for decisions at that point." He touched the point of one of the stakes to show that the pun was intentional. "And you probably won't be very coherent by then, spitting up your own blood and all. One of these? Or this?" His hand strayed to the hatchet. "Or this?" He picked up the silver crucifix and held it triumphantly in Ethan's direction.

  If he was expecting Ethan to cringe, he must have been disappointed. Ethan looked close to laughing. Which may or may not have been budding hysteria. But still he said nothing, which Marsala obviously found infuriating.

  "And what about you?" Marsala said, turning what Kerry was now sure was his mad gaze on her.

  "I'm very sorry I helped you," Kerry admitted, which she knew wasn't a smart thing to say, but she couldn't help it.

  The worst part was, she didn't think that had anything to do with what he said next: "How shall I kill you? I wish I knew if there was a way to reverse the vampire process."

  "She's not a vampire," Ethan said, his first words since this had all begun.

  Marsala held up his hands helplessly as though he hadn't even heard. "But who is there to ask whose answer I would trust?"

  "She's not a vampire," Ethan repeated more emphatically. "Either someone's a vampire or not. The
re isn't any transitional stage—"

  "Obviously the sunlight doesn't affect you," Marsala continued to Kerry. "And in any case, I'd offer you an easier death since this condition isn't your fault."

  "SHE'S NOT A VAMPIRE!" Ethan yelled at him.

  "You just let yourself get seduced by evil," Marsala said. "Just like Joey did. I wish there had been someone around to offer him an easy death." Marsala picked up one of the stakes and the mallet.

  Kerry, keeping her back against the hallway wall, slid away in the direction of the bedrooms.

  Marsala came after her.

  Behind him, Ethan tried to get to his feet, but his right leg buckled under him.

  Marsala whirled around, dropping the mallet as he reached for the gun in his belt.

  "No!" Kerry screamed as he shot Ethan yet again in the leg.

  Ethan dropped heavily to the floor.

  She came running up behind Marsala, with no other plan than to make him stop hurting Ethan.

  Marsala turned, and she found herself facing the gun in his right hand and the pointy stake in his left. Furious, she shoved him away from her.

  She heard the gun go off yet again. She was sure she'd been hit—how could he have missed at such a distance?—but so far nothing hurt, and he was tipping over backward: He had flung his arms wide for balance, and the first thing she thought was that he had missed after all. And the second thing she thought was that he'd walked backward into his toolbox. And after that there was no time for thought as he fell down the stairs, hitting his head at least three different times before the final crack on the slate floor of the entryway.

  It was no use going to check for a pulse. Kerry wasn't that familiar with dead people—Ethan and Regina excepted—but she knew Marsala was dead.

  My fault, she thought. Though she'd only intended to push him away from her, she had pushed him, not realizing how close to the stairs they were. She spared a thought to think that she was sorry she'd killed him, but she couldn't be sorry he was dead. She spared another thought to think that she was glad she was alive, and then she was scrambling in the kitchen to drag the drape in front of the sliding-glass door.