Dark Changeling

by Margaret Carter

  Chapter 21

  “LISTEN, BITCH, I'm through playing. You gonna cooperate?”

  Britt gulped and nodded. Peter marched her out the back door and inside the other half of the house. In the hall outside the bedroom he held the gun on her while unlocking the bolt with his other hand. He shoved Britt inside and slammed the door. She pounded on the panel with both fists until he'd turned the lock and walked down the hall.

  Roger lay on his back, eyes shaded with one arm, watching her performance. “You can stop now; he's gone.”

  Britt hurried to the bedside, pushing him back to a supine position when he tried to sit up. The first minute was a rapturous blur. Her hair was straggling down, her blouse and slacks were rumpled from being slept in, and she tasted like ham and cheese. She was beautiful. When she got a good look at him, tears of anger shimmered in her eyes. “Roger, how do you feel?”

  He forced a smile and tried to answer lightly. “Well, I'm feverish and nauseated, and my head hurts like the very devil—otherwise, just fine.”

  “You don't have to violate your human half,” she whispered fiercely. “I'll kill him myself.” She took off the windbreaker draped around her shoulders and spread it over Roger, then shifted to cast her shadow across his face. “At least I can—as Peter said—help you build up your strength. You aren't going to argue, I hope?”

  He smiled wryly. “I'm not arguing. Allow me to point out, however, that physiological processes aren't very intelligent. If I could keep anything down in my present condition, my body would probably respond the way a well-fed vampire's system usually deals with extreme stress—by falling into suspended animation.”

  “Oh—I forgot about that.”

  “I don't think unconsciousness would be a terribly useful tactic.”

  Britt clenched her fists in frustration. “But I can't stand this—I want to help you.”

  “You are helping. Beloved.” His fingertips traced the outline of her face as if seeking reassurance that she was real. “Actually, I'm too sick to feel hunger. But I wish I weren't so thirsty.” She looked confused. “Confound the imprecise English language. I mean I'm dehydrated.”

  “Yes, I should think so! Don't move, I'll get you some water.”

  He felt an irrational reluctance to let her out of his reach. She was back in almost no time, though. He sat up to drink the cup of water she'd brought, then laid his head in her lap. She readjusted the windbreaker, which helped a little. Her hand, usually so warm, felt strangely cool on his forehead.

  “Youare feverish,” she said. “That scares me; you're sup

  posed to be immune to sickness.”

  “This is a special case.”

  “We have to get you out of here,” she fretted.

  “Any ideas?”

  She glanced at the door. “I know you can't do anything about the deadbolt, but couldn't you rip the door off its hinges?”

  “Probably,” Roger said. “Looks like typically shoddy modern construction.”

  “Then why haven't you done it?”

  “Because it would take a little time,” he said. “What would our host be doing while all that racket was going on?”

  “I guess the same argument applies to breaking the window. Otherwise you'd have done it just to get fresh air. I like Italian food myself, but this is ridiculous.” She leaned over in a vain attempt to shade him more thoroughly. “Sorry, it isn't funny.”

  “And the higher the sun gets, the worse it will be,” Roger said.

  “Then we have to act soon, before you get any weaker. Say, you can still take him, can't you?”

  “Of course.” Roger decided acting insulted would demand too much effort.

  “It all comes back to the gun,” Britt sighed in frustration. “We need to distract Peter long enough for you to disarm him. Could you hypnotize him?”

  “Not a chance. He's too wary. If he were immobilized long enough, I might be able to overcome his resistance—in which case it wouldn't be necessary anyway.”

  After a moment's thought she brightened up. “How about setting the place on fire?” She smacked the mattress, raising a puff of dust.

  “In theory, an excellent plan,” said Roger. “You have the means to start it?”

  “Don't you?”

  “No, I didn't bother with anything but my car keys.”

  “First time I ever wished I smoked,” Britt said. “If I did, I'd carry matches in my jacket.”

  “I smelled cigarette smoke on Peter's clothes,” Roger said. “It's possible he may have overlooked a book of matches in one of these drawers.”

  “True,” Britt said. “Can't hurt to look.”

  “And after we get him in here?” said Roger. “He's still the one with the weapon.”

  “Can't you just try wrestling it away from him?”

  “Not when a bullet meant for me could hit you. And I don't care for the idea of being shot twice in one week, either.”

  “Too bad he cleared out all the deodorant and aftershave and so forth. Squirting something in his face would slow him down. All we have is water.”

  “I'd prefer sulfuric acid myself,” Roger said. When Britt started to get up to search for matches, he clasped her hand. “Colleague—beloved—if we don't get out of this—”

  “Don't be silly,” she said. “Of course we will. You have superhuman powers, remember?”

  He fixed his eyes on hers, silently conveying what words could express only in part. “I love you, Britt.”

  “I know,” she breathed. “Don't look at me that way when you can't follow through.”

  “I wish I could have been more for you.”

  “Stop using the past tense!”

  “Very well,” he said in the same solemn tone. “I wish I could be all you need. You've often complained of my inhibitions. If I had a sort of Bela Lugosi flair—”

  “Lugosi is overrated. Now, if you looked like Frank Langella—” Dropping the pretense of frivolity, she lay across him, her face hidden on his chest, and said in a rapid, fierce whisper, “Stop being obtuse, Roger. I didn't fall in love with a fantasy of vampirism; I fell in love withyou . I love everything about you, even the traits that drive me up the wall.”

  “That isn't logical.” He knew they had to stop before they drove each other into hysterics. He held her away from him. “We can indulge in emotional displays later. You were going to look for matches.”

  “Right.” Brushing tears from her eyes, Britt rearranged the jacket over him. At that moment they heard the deadbolt click.

  Britt leaped up. Too late—Peter, opening the door, caught her in the act. If nothing else, Britt's jacket covering Roger made the situation clear.

  Frowning, Peter swept the gun from Britt to Roger and back again. “You'll help me, huh? Sure!” He gulped rasping breaths between phrases. “You were in it with him all the time.”

  Britt folded her arms and glared back at Peter. Roger discarded the jacket and sat up.

  Peter's weapon hand jerked convulsively. “Hold it right there!” He turned the muzzle toward Britt. “You—get over here.”

  “I'm getting fed up with taking orders from this kid,” she told Roger.

  “In the circumstances you haven't much choice.” He tried to bridle his anger at his own helplessness. Encouraging her to fight would be unpardonably reckless.

  Britt slowly walked over to stand in front of Peter. “So the lady doc and you have a thing going, huh?” the young man said to Roger. “Great—just remember what'll happen to her if you get any ideas about jumping me. What you did to Alice—I can't do the same to your woman, but there's something else almost as good.”

  His meaning hit Roger harder than Alice's bullet had. Britt's stifled gasp made her comprehension plain. “Steady, colleague,” she told Roger. “He still has the gun. Maybe when he lets his guard down, we'll have a chance.”

  Roger choked back his rage. If Britt could maintain her self-possession under that threat, he could do no less.


  Peter prodded Britt's midriff with the gun. “Lay down!”

  “Certainly. Where?”

  “On the floor.” His chest heaved. “And I didn't say you could talk.”

  Britt lay flat on her back on the braided rug in the center of the room.

  “Get the pants off,” Peter said. Roger stood up. Their captor hadn't forgotten him, though. “I told you not to move!” Roger didn't sit down again, and the young man didn't insist.

  Britt unzipped her slacks and wormed out of them without getting up. “Haven't had much practice at this, have you?” she said.

  A deep flush spread over Peter's face. “Shut up!”

  Roger silently told Britt, “As much as I hate to say this, you'd better try not to antagonize him.”

  Peter's left hand fumbled with the fly of his jeans. Somehow he managed to keep the gun trained steadily on Britt at the same time. Roger resisted the impulse to close his eyes. Britt's fear and disgust reached out to him. For an instant he felt an urge to flee, block out her sensations. How could he bear to feel her being violated?

  Shame at his cowardice swept over him. He mentally embraced her. He felt her thighs roughly shoved apart as Peter knelt between them. The attacker's thick fingers hooked the elastic of her briefs and tugged them down. Britt stared fixedly at the man's nakedness. That bewildered Roger; he'd expected her to shut out the sight.

  “Can't risk missing any chance,” she told him. “I have to stay alert.”

  Her heart raced. Involuntarily she cringed when the tip of the erect organ brushed her inner thigh. “Roger, help me!”

  Somehow Roger knew it wasn't physical help she wanted. He opened his mind to her, to the innermost depths, and felt her delving down to grasp what she needed. Fueled by Roger's strength, she cast every atom of her fear and loathing at Peter like heat from a flamethrower.

  He reeled, though not quite losing his balance. His erection wilted instantly. With his left hand he slapped Britt hard across the mouth. The blow cut her lip.

  Her sudden pain and the scent of her blood threw Roger into a frenzy. He sprang toward Peter, forgetting the gun until he heard it go off. He lurched to a halt.

  * * * *

  BRITT'S VOICE sounded in his head: “It's all right, I—deflected—his hand. He missed.”

  She kneed Peter in the diaphragm and rolled away from him. The young man stumbled to his feet and waved the gun wildly between his two targets.

  Roger saw all this through a red blur. Rage intoxicated him as blood never had. Some rational corner of his mind recalled what he'd been taught about projecting illusions, and his anger grabbed that knowledge and channeled it like high-voltage electricity. He charged at Peter, pouring his power into the visible incarnation of his hate. Ravening tiger, flame-spouting dragon—no image could be too terrible to express what burned in him.

  He never knew what his opponent saw. Peter dropped the gun and stood paralyzed as Roger swooped down on him. Roger's nails—Peter may have seen them as the claws of a lion, the talons of a monstrous bird of prey—gouged the young man's throat. Blood fountained from the gash.

  Roger picked up the man and flung him at the window. It shattered. Good, some fragment of Roger's humanity noted—the cuts from glass shards would obscure the scratches on the neck. The body rebounded to the floor and lay still.

  Abruptly Roger's surroundings snapped back into focus. Britt was scrambling into her clothes. Peter lay in a puddle of blood, his body heat already seeping away. Suddenly the smell of fresh blood, sickeningly mingled with gunpowder and garlic, hit Roger. He staggered into the corridor and leaned against a wall.

  Britt put her arms around his waist. “I believe you enjoyed that.”

  “Immensely.” The realization of what he'd done struck him. He had gone berserk, like a monster from a nineteen-forties horror film. The man had invited death, all right; what devastated Roger was finding himself possessed by his fury, killing by instinct, almost by reflex. How could Britt stand to touch him?

  His vision grew fuzzy again. “I think—I'd better sit down.” He lowered himself to the floor. Britt knelt beside him, cradling his head on her breast. She displayed not the slightest revulsion. She behaved as if a neurotic half-human vampire were all she wanted in a lover.

  Gray patches gathered before his eyes. Somewhere outside he heard an amplified voice demanding Peter's surrender. “Oh, damn, I told Marcia to wait until noon,” he said. Then he fainted.

  * * * *

  WAKING UP IN the back of an ambulance gave him a bad few seconds of disorientation. Britt's mental touch stabilized him. Minutes later he was an unwilling guest of the community hospital's emergency room. Odors of sickness and disinfectant choked him, while his head pounded with a barrage of negative emotions from every side. Fortunately Britt was there, never letting go of his hand except when a doctor or nurse insisted.

  In a curtained alcove they fended off medical personnel while answering the questions of a bewildered Lieutenant Hayes. “I have to admit you two keep my life interesting,” said the detective, leaning against a vacant bed while a nurse took Britt's blood pressure.

  Britt described how Peter had summoned her. She bent the truth by claiming to have phoned Roger before driving to the Kovaks’ place. Roger then took up the narrative. Both glossed over the exact way in which Peter thought the two doctors had mistreated Alice. Instead they stressed the young man's belief that Roger had committed the murders.

  “That was really something,” the detective said, thoughtfully smoothing his moustache, “the way you threw Kovak into the window. Broke it.”

  “Violent emotion sometimes confers unusual strength,” said Britt. “Adrenaline, you know.” She wiped at the smear of blood on her chin.

  “The guy must have been a certifiable nut case,” the detective said. “Garlic all over the room! What was he afraid of, vampires?”

  “Perhaps,” said Roger at his blandest.

  Confronted by nothing but uninformative variations on the same answers, the detective tucked his notepad away and said, “I don't think you have to worry about criminal charges. Straight-forward case of self-defense.” Yet Roger glimpsed uncertainty in his eyes.

  “But don't leave town?” said Roger.

  Hayes returned his wry smile. “Not for a few days, anyhow. I'm sure somebody will be in touch with you.” He shook hands with both of them and left.

  A resident tried to persuade Britt of her need for a tetanus shot. She rejected it, along with antibiotics and a list of lab tests. Roger was equally emphatic in convincing the ER staff that his collapse had resulted from nothing worse than fatigue and hunger. That argument elicited an offer of orange juice, which he refused. His stomach would certainly revolt if subjected to that abuse. The resident walked off muttering to himself. Doctors traditionally considered other doctors the worst possible patients; why violate the stereotype?

  While Roger and Britt signed themselves out at the ER desk, a counselor from the rape hotline descended on them. Giving Roger a dubious glance, the woman pressed her card on Britt, appearing puzzled that Britt didn't show interest in her support. Roger admired the way Britt collected herself enough to say in a courteous tone, “I appreciate the offer, but we need to go home now. I'll be sure to call you later if I want someone to talk to.”

  Roger felt an irrational twinge of jealousy that she might want to share her pain with anyone but him.

  “Of course I don't. But that's no reason to be rude to the woman. Her group does good work.”

  At last free to go, Roger learned that Britt had talked Lieutenant Hayes into having his car brought to the hospital parking garage. She had driven her own, since she had no physical injuries. Outside, the temperature was dropping. Roger had overheard the ER staff mentioning snow predicted before midnight.

  The two of them went straight to Britt's apartment and showered together. Neither one found any erotic stimulation in this activity; emotional and physical exhaustion blotted out all other feelin
gs. They lay together on Britt's bed, the room converted into a dim cave by the heavy drapes. Hard to believe it was only about noon. Britt reclined on one elbow, looking down at Roger.

  “You did kill him.”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  The memory of the past few hours rushed in upon him. Fury welled up like bile in his throat. “God, I wish I could bring him back to life and kill him again—slowly!”

  “That kind of thinking is counterproductive.” Suddenly Britt began to tremble, clinging to him, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. Roger found himself crying, too.

  When they'd calmed down, he said, “When I—attacked—what did you see?”

  “You, of course.” She sounded puzzled. “You, defending me. What else?”

  “Peter saw—I don't know what. A monster.”

  Britt hugged him tighter. “That was inhim , not in you.”

  “I'm not so sure about that. Iwanted to terrorize him. I wanted to rip him to shreds. Britt, I killed a man.” Speaking the words aloud made the act real to him for the first time. “Not in rational self-defense. In a fit of rage.”

  “Reality test, Roger. Would you feel guilty if you'd had a gun and shot him to protect me?”

  “Probably not, at least not in the same way.” A dark wave engulfed him. “But you don't understand. Ienjoyed it.”

  “I was cheering you on, so what does that make me? That adrenaline surge is a human thing. So is the drive to strike back at somebody who hurts you. It has nothing to do with your vampire half.”

  “The way I felt, I could have torn him limb from limb and gloried in it.” The memory didn't stir any echo of that berserk exultation. Nausea roiled in the pit of his stomach.

  “Did it make you hungry? Did you want to drain him?”

  “Good God, no!”

  She laid her head on his chest. “Then your anger might have been sinful, but it was a human sin.”

  “There's one big difference. No ordinary human being can do that much damage without a weapon. What if, the next time, it's an ordinary mugger? Or someone who scrapes my car in the parking lot? Or simply a man who looks at you the wrong way? Do they deserve instant death, too?”