She was halfway to the Post Office before they noticed her.
"Hey, girl," one of them said, shading his eyes as he squinted into the glare. "Where you goin?"
"Just passing through," she told him.
The two who'd been stretched out on the steps were now on their feet, hands on hips, looking toward her and grinning.
"What's your hurry?" said a big-bellied one.
"No hurry," she said. "Just got places to go."
Joe watched them move out into the street to intercept her. What is she doing? he wondered. Has she gone crazy?
"Oh, I don't think so," said the first one. "I think you're gonna stop and visit."
Lacey was within half a dozen feet of them now. "Been there, done that. Hey, boys . . . don't you remember me?"
With that she reached behind her, ripped her pistol free, and began firing wildly, pulling the trigger as fast as it would allow. Joe saw the one with the shotgun take a round in the chest. His arms flew outward as the bullet punched him back. Lacey's second shot went wild but the third caught the fat one in the gut. The last Vichy was drawing his pistol when Lacey's fourth shot caught him in the shoulder, spinning him around.
Four shots, three hits, but she didn't stop there. She kept firing.
Joe leaped out from the alley and dashed toward her as she stood over the three downed men and pumped round after round into their twitching bodies. He reached her as the slide on her pistol locked back on empty.
He grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him. "Lacey! What—?" Then he saw the tears streaming down her cheeks.
"It was them, Uncle Joe," she sobbed. "I recognized them. They're the ones who—" She closed her eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath.
Joe glanced at their blood-splattered remains. "Lacey ... Jesus. . . are you—?
"I'm okay. That was for Enrico ... and me. Let's just get this done and get out of here, okay?"
Joe opened his mouth to speak—he figured he should say something—but his mind was blank. He settled for a curt nod. They could talk later.
Carole arrived then with her book bag full of stakes and hammers. She took one look at the bodies, then put her arm around Lacey's shoulders.
"It's all right, Lacey. You did the Lord's work."
Lacey irritably shrugged off her arm. "That wasn't any lord's work—that was mine."
Joe caught the flash of hurt in Carole's eyes and felt bad for her. Lacey's rough edges weren't getting any smoother. No time now to explain his niece to Carole.
He took the book bag from her and turned toward the Post Office. "Let's go-
He led the way up the steps. Once inside he looked around. Empty. Sunlight began to stream through the east windows.
"If there's a cellar, that's where they'll be."
Lacey pointed to a door to the left of the clerk windows. "I saw the woman and her entourage go through there."
The door was locked. No problem. Joe kicked it open. Another door, unlocked, opened onto a flight of stairs leading down into a darker space.
"We'll do as many as we can in the time we have," he said, reaching into the bag and handing out the flashlights. "But we do the woman first. From what I've seen, she seems to be in charge."
He didn't need a light of his own. The stairwell appeared well lit to him.
He hurried down to where the steps made a sharp right turn at the bottom into a dank, dusty space—
—and there they were. He could see all eight of them in the cool darkness, stretched out on an assortment of beds and cots. Like a dormitory in hell. If their daysleep was anything like his the past two nights, it was like death.
Joe looked around. Concrete walls, no windows, junk piled in the near-right corner. He spotted the woman's bed on the far side of the room next to the wall and immediately moved toward her. Even if they managed to stake only one this morning, he wanted it to be her—to send a message back to Franco that nobody he sent here was safe. Eventually he wanted Franco to know that not even he was safe.
"Hey," Lacey called from behind him. "This guy's awake."
"This one too," Carole said.
Joe had been so fixed on the woman that he'd paid no attention to her six guards, arrayed around her like spokes on a wheel. He looked down at the nearest and nearly jumped when he saw wide dark eyes staring back at him, sharp teeth bared in a snarl.
Joe didn't understand. How could they be awake?
"Forget them for now. The woman first."
He stopped at her bedside and found her awake as well. She lay on her back, staring up at him in fear and wonder.
"This is really creepy," Lacey said.
Joe had to agree. What was going on here? Unless.. . maybe the gunfire outside had roused them. At least none of them was able to get up.
No time to waste. He dropped the book bag on her abdomen and pulled out the heavy maul and one of the stakes. Carole stepped up beside him and played her beam over the woman, illuminating the corner of the room like daylight.
Joe lifted the stake. This wasn't how he'd expected this to go. He hadn't counted on his victims staring him in the face as he pounded stakes through their chests.
But this was no time for squeamishness. Steeling himself, he placed the sharpened tip against her chest, just to the left of her breastbone. He'd never done this before, but he imagined that was where the heart sat. As he raised the hammer, the woman hissed and grabbed the stake with both of her hands.
Joe jumped back in surprise, releasing his own grip.
"Dear God!" Carole gasped. "She can move!"
Joe recovered and snatched the stake back from her grasp. He broke her grip easily.
"But she's weak," he said.
A deafening blast echoed through the basement and Joe felt a stabbing impact, like a punch, in his back.
A shot!
Another blast as he half turned—another blow, this time to his shoulder.
"Get down!" he shouted to Carole and Lacey. "Way down!"
He feared the ricochets in this concrete box could be almost as deadly as a direct hit. He turned and found the shooter, the pistol wavering in his hand as he aimed another shot. Joe ducked to his left, darted to the man's side, and snatched the gun from his hand.
"Hey!" Lacey cried, popping her head up. She pointed to a guard near her. "This one's going for his gun too!"
"Get it!" Joe shouted. He turned and lunged for another of the woman's guards who was lifting his automatic, moving like someone in a slow-motion movie. Joe tore it from his grasp. "Get their guns! All of them."
He saw Lacey struggling with her guard. She had a two-handed grip on the barrel. Joe was just about to step in and help when she twisted it from his grasp. He turned and saw Carole pulling a pistol from another guard's belt before he could reach it. Joe disarmed two more, then stepped over to the seventh male, the one with the cot against the opposite wall, and found him unarmed.
"You!" Joe cried when he spotted his ruined left eye.
This was one of Franco's guards, the one who'd stripped him naked before taking him to his boss. What had Franco called him?
"Artemis!" That was it. "What are you doing here?"
The good eye widened. "You know me?" the vampire rasped.
That surprised Joe for an instant, then he remembered that his face had been changed by the sun. He wished he knew what he looked like.
He jabbed one of the pistols at him. "Too bad you didn't bring Franco with you. When we finish with the lady, you're next!"
This was perfect: the woman and Franco's right-hand man in one morning. He turned and stalked back toward the guards, snatching up a couple of machetes as he reached them. "Take their machetes too. Don't leave them with anything that can be used against us."
He tossed the pistols and machetes toward the foot of the steps. Carole and
Lacey did the same. He was most relieved to have the guns out of play. The bullets hadn't affected him, but Carole and Lacey's lives had been on the line.
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"A little help over here," Lacey said. Her voice sounded strained.
Joe looked and saw that the woman had turned over and was trying to crawl out of her bed. Lacey was struggling to hold her back. Carole leaned in to help.
As Joe moved toward the women, one of the guards rolled out of bed and landed on the floor in front of him. Another to his right did the same. Both started a slow-motion bellycrawl toward their mistress. Joe stepped on the back of the one in front of him and rejoined Carole and Lacey.
"They're coming for us!" Lacey said, an edge of panic in her voice. She was clutching the woman's right arm while Carole held the left from the other side of the bed. The woman writhed slowly in their grasp. "Let's do this and get the hell out of here!"
"Yes, Joseph," Carole said, calm but grave. "You haven't much time."
"All right, all right." Wasn't anything going to go according to plan?
He grabbed the stake and maul. No hesitation this time. He placed the point of the stake over the woman's writhing chest, raised the maul—
Lacey let out a yelp and released the woman's right arm. "Something just touched—damn! There's one here on the floor! He's trying to grab my leg!"
She half turned and began kicking at the guard who'd crawled to their feet.
Joe stared in shock, then looked around. Others were on their way, inching toward them along the floor. This kind of loyalty and devotion was almost unimaginable, especially in the undead.
"Joseph," Carole said. She had both the woman's arms now. "Do it. Now."
Joe nodded. In a single swift move he placed the stake and hammered it home. The heavy steel head of the maul drove the point all the way through the woman and into the mattress beneath. She writhed, kicked, spasmed, then stiffened and lay still.
Done. No time to waste. Move on. First get the guard by Lacey, and then—
"What the hell—?" Lacey said.
Joe looked down. The guard at Lacey's feet was writhing on the floor. The other five were doing the same. This lasted maybe ten seconds, and then they lay as still as their mistress.
Lacey nudged one with the toe of her shoe. "Dead. They're all__"
She looked up at Joe, her eyes wide. "Unk! This is what happened the other night, right upstairs. A bunch of undead guards—supposedly they belonged to someone named Gregor—they suddenly dropped dead, just like these guys.
It was right after we heard a boom and ..." She turned to Carole. "You told us you killed a vampire that night. Blew him to bits, right?"
"Right. But I never knew his name."
Lacey nodded. "I'll bet it was Gregor. You killed him across town, and his guards died upstairs in the Post Office. We killed this one, and her guards die a few seconds later. What's the connection? Is there some sort of spell that binds the guards to their masters? A life-and-death bond that connects them? Is that why they're so loyal?"
Memories of the Empire State Building flashed through Joe's head.
"When I mentioned to Franco how loyal his guards seemed, he told me it wasn't out of selflessness or personal regard for him—it was self-preservation."
"That was his word?" Lacey said. "Self-preservation? Well then that's it. That's how they bind their guards to them: if their master dies, they die."
Joe shook his head. "I've got a feeling it's something more than that. Franco mentioned a secret. 'A momentous secret we keep only to ourselves,' he said. If only—"
Artemis! Joe whirled and looked at the cot in the corner where he'd left the vampire. Had he died too? But his bed was empty. Where—?
"Look!" Carole said, pointing her flashlight beam at a doorway where a pair of legs were crawling through. "Someone's there!"
Joe hurried over, grabbed both ankles, and hauled Artemis back into the dormitory. He flipped him onto his back and stood over him.
"Not so fast, Artemis. We have some questions."
"Fuck you!" His voice was barely audible.
"Why did the guards die when we killed the woman?"
The vampire sneered up at him and said nothing.
Joe realized he had nothing to bargain with. Artemis knew he wasn't going to walk away from this, so he had no reason to tell them anything.
Lacey came up beside Joe and played her light over Artemis. "Can we bring him upstairs?"
"I suppose so," Joe said. "But why?"
She looked at him. "Sunlight."
Joe glanced from her to Artemis and saw the fear in his single eye. Joe grabbed his feet again and dragged him toward the stairs.
"Good idea!"
"No!"
Joe didn't have time for threats or deals. He hauled Artemis up feet first to the main floor. The vampire twisted away from the light and flung his arms over his eyes. Joe found the brightness uncomfortable but it hadn't reached the intolerable point yet. Pulling Artemis upright, he grabbed him by the collar and belt and walked him toward the front doors. The sunlight blazed through the glass like burning phosphorous.
"Now's your chance, pal. Speak or burn. What's the big secret?"
"Fuck you! I'll be just as dead either way!"
Damn him, he was right. And a dead vampire told no tales. He spun Artemis and shoved him into a shadowed corner where he curled into a whimpering ball.
Carole and Lacey stood in the cellar doorway staring at Joe.
"Any ideas, or do we just finish him and get out of here?" he said.
Lacey stepped closer to Artemis. She spoke slowly, softly. "Tossing him out in the sun will kill him. But what if just a part of him gets in the sunlight? What will that do?"
"Yes!" Joe said. Finally—leverage. "Anyone have a knife?"
Lacey whipped out a stainless steel pocketknife. "My butterfly's gone, but this should do. Someone tried to kill me with it."
Joe unfolded the blade and began slicing at the legs of the vampire's pants below the knees. He remembered how this creature had ripped the clothes from him a few long nights ago.
"What goes around, comes around, right, Artemis?" he said through his teeth.
He pulled off Artemis's shoes, then moved around by his shoulders.
"All right, ladies. Grab his feet and we'll move his legs into that patch of sunlight over there."
"No!" Artemis wailed.
"Joseph," Carole said, giving him an unsettled look. "Do we really—?"
"Please, Carole. Time's a-wasting, and this is one of the undead who manhandled me in New York."
Artemis directed his one fear-filled eye at Joe. "New York? Who—?"
"What? You don't recognize me? I'm the priest Franco tried to turn the other night. Only he failed."
"But that's—that's impossible!"
Carole still hadn't moved. Lacey stepped in front of her. "Let's go. I'll handle it."
She grabbed Artemis by both ankles. His feeble kicks lacked the power to free him. Together she and Joe dragged the lower half of his body into the light.
Immediately his flesh started to smoke and blister. Lacey made a disgusted noise and released his ankles. His screams echoed through the building.
"Okay! Yes! Please! I'll tell! Anything you want! I'll tell! Please!"
Joe pulled him back into the shadows. Artemis lay in a heap, writhing, panting, and sobbing, his hands hovering over but never touching the blackened, still-smoking flesh of his lower legs. Sickened by the sight, Joe turned away for a moment. He sensed Carole watching him but could not meet her eyes.
Finally he turned back and forced himself to kneel beside the vampire. He poked him roughly on the shoulder.
"What's the secret, Artemis? Why did those guards die when we staked the woman?"
"They were her get," he gasped. "When she died, all her get died, not just her guards."
"What's 'get'?" Lacey said.
Artemis sneered. "People she turned. When Olivia died, all of her get, no matter where they were in the world, died with her."
Joe knelt there, stunned. "I don't believe you."
"Believe it, priest.
It's the one thing we don't want the living to know about us."
"But you're telling me."
His smile was sickly. "What do I care? It won't matter to me, will it."
"You're telling me that anyone, anywhere, that she turned at anytime since she became undead, is now dead?"
"Yes. That's the big secret. That's why Olivia's guards did everything to protect their get-mother. Not for her sake. For their own."
Lacey squatted on the opposite side. "But that means that somewhere there's a vampire who's the ultimate source of this whole undead plague. If someone could get to him—"
Artemis was shaking his head. "No, cow. There may have been a single Prime millennia ago, but now there are many. We undead aren't immortal; it only seems that way. We age and die, but we last many centuries. Eventually rot catches up to everything, including us. It hits suddenly and over the course of a week or so we crumble to dust. But this kind of true death does not affect the get. In fact it enhances them. Only premature death kills one's get. Because we lived solitary existences for so long, we never knew about get-death. But when an ancient Prime figured it out, and started the practice of protecting getfathers, our numbers began to grow."
"Is Franco a Prime?" Joe asked.
Artemis nodded. "And my get-father." His eye narrowed. "You want him, don't you."
"Oh, yeah. If he goes, how many go with him?"
"Many. I can't give you a definite number, but every Nosferatu in the Empire State Building is his get. Not in the city, however. We've learned to mix gets within a region to avoid catastrophe. I hope you get him."
"Why?"
"I didn't want to come down here, but he made me. He hasn't treated me right since a certain unfortunate accident, and now, because of him, I'm done. Aren't I?" He shifted his gaze to Lacey and Carole. "You wouldn't consider . . . ?"
"Not a chance," Lacey said.
Joe held out his hand. "Carole?"
"Not a stake!" Artemis whined. "I don't want to be staked!"
Lacey made a face. "You rather be thrown out in the sun?"
"No! That's even worse! Look, can't you let me go? I've helped you. I've told you a valuable secret. I—"
Joe shook his head, as much to clear a creeping fog as to emphasize that survival was not one of Artemis's options. "We'll give you a choice: sun or stake. That's all you've got."
F Paul Wilson - Novel 10 Page 31
