“What?” Danny’s voice was a tinny squeak. “What’s going on?”
Josalyn bit down on her lower lip to keep it from trembling while she pulled herself together. “Rudy’s coming,” she said finally. “He’s on his way here. I don’t know how he found us, but he did, and he’s coming, and we need everybody out here now. Can you get here? Can you do it?”
A moment of silence, from the other end.
“Can you do it?” she repeated, forcing calm, keeping her voice level with the last remaining threads of her composure. If Danny didn’t answer, she was going to scream.
But it wasn’t necessary. Danny’s voice squeezed through the tiny speaker, sounding suddenly clearer, stronger. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll kill that bastard myself, if I have to.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. All the teeth in the world couldn’t stop her lips from trembling now. “Hurry. Please.”
“You got it,” Danny said, and hung up.
Josalyn just sat there, mutely, clutching the receiver. Which was a good thing, as Joseph called only a moment later, briefly complaining that every phone he hit for the last five minutes was out of order.
“Joseph and Stephen are on their way,” she informed Jerome a minute later. “Tommy’s gone. Something happened … I guess we’ll find out later.” She lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “And Danny’s coming, too. I don’t know what his story is, either.”
“And Rudy’s coming.” Jerome’s dark eyes were moist and frightened. They could have been her own; would have been, if the responsibility hadn’t been thrust upon her now.
Allan was down for the count. All the energy had drained out of him over the last twenty minutes. He’d been working on his fifth beer when it happened; it lay, half-empty, on the desk beside his folded arms, the head resting upon them. Everything … the beer, the tension, the endlessly stretching hours … had finally worn him down. And he was out: deeply, sonorously out.
They’d tried shouting at him, shaking him, sitting him upright. The best they could get was a mumbled whuzzizis? a blank ten-second stare from his bloodshot eyes. Then he was gone again.
“What are we going to do?” Jerome was asking. Josalyn shrugged, sighed, wiped sweat from her brow; she glanced over at Allan, back over to the door, and then up at Jerome again. He was dancing lightly from foot to foot. She looked at him quizzically, and he forced a grin, saying, “I have to wee-wee.”
“Well, for Christ’s sakes, do it now!” she yelled, managing a weak smile of her own. “And while you’re at it, fill up one of these empties with water. We can pour it on his head, if we have to.” Gesturing at Allan. “We have to be ready when Rudy gets here.”
We’ve got to be ready. Jerome nodded, grabbed up an empty, and hopped over to the bathroom. The door closed behind him. Josalyn watched, fighting down the icy chill inside her, clammy fist clenched around the base of the metal cross. We’ve got to be ready when Rudy comes. We’ve got to hold him until Joseph gets here. If anyone can kill him, Joseph can.
There was no choice in the matter, no question in her mind. Fate, the night, and whatever gods there were had chosen her as living bait for the final confrontation. She had to be ready. No falling to pieces, no running away, no passive acquiescence to the end. She would live, or she would die, but she would do them fighting.
Like Ian …
She winced, blinking back the image of him that was starting to form in her mind. She looked at Allan … the washed-out features, the dark and puffy eyelids in repose, the slack and gently snoring mouth … and a sudden wave of compassion stole through her. She wished that she could just let him sleep, awaken in the morning to a neat and happy resolution, unblemished by the horror to come. She wished that there were some way to spare him … to spare them all … from any further unpleasantness.
She closed her eyes, and Ian was there: his voice, his presence, very much like he was in the dream, long ago, saying it’s alright, he can’t hurt you, he can’t touch you now. She moaned, low in her throat, wishing that it were true and not just a dream brought on by the hour and the stress, wishing he were really there beside her …
There was a sound at the door.
Josalyn’s eyes opened. For a moment, she couldn’t see anything through the mist that clouded the glass. Then she spotted the red eyes, peering in through the window. The eyes like beacons.
That summoned her forward.
A tiny voice in the back of her mind screamed, NO! NO! DON’T LOOK AT HIM, FOR GOD’S SAKE, JOSALYN! Then the voice cut off, and her body went rigid, and her mind went completely silent of thought.
Come here. His voice, from the emptiness within. Come here, bay-bee. A giggle of glee. Oh, coochie-coochie-coochie, little baby, come to Daddy …
She rose.
Nice Poopsie.
A blank thing, sucked of will, Josalyn moved toward the door.
Pretty Poopsie.
The cross slipped, unnoticed, from her hand and clattered to the floor.
Nice …
Her empty hand closed around the doorknob, twisted it. She couldn’t hear the sudden howl of wind and rain, the flush of the toilet behind her.
When he took her in his arms, she couldn’t feel a thing.
Allan awoke in a cold, stinging sweat. His vision was bleary, and his head felt like it was packed full of mud; but an alarm had gone off, somewhere at the core of him, jolting him into sudden, sharp awareness. He stared at his folded arms, the switchboard, the wall. He remembered where he was. “Josalyn?” he muttered thickly …
… and the alarm went off again, strong this time, more shrill and incisive. He knew, before he turned, what he was going to see.
“NO!” he shrieked, riveted to his seat. Rudy grinned back at him, slick as a water rat, and then sank his teeth into Josalyn’s neck.
Something snapped in Allan Vasey’s brain. He jumped up, still shrieking, and broke into something between a stagger and a run. His hip slammed into the edge of the checkout counter as he rounded it. It didn’t faze him. He kept on coming.
Josalyn’s back was arched, her head thrown back. Rudy was making a thin sucking sound, her blood jetting into him, fainter than a whisper. Allan’s left hand found a handful of Rudy’s hair and yanked back sharply; his right hand grabbed Josalyn by the shoulder and ripped her away from the vampire’s arms.
“COCKSUCKER!” he screamed, rearing back with his right, still clutching Rudy’s hair with the other. He swung with all his strength, catching Rudy in the jaw. Rudy staggered backwards, looking stunned.
Then he smiled.
“Nice try,” he said, and attacked.
The bathroom door opened just as Allan slammed flat against the countertop, Rudy astride him. Josalyn just stood there like a mannequin, staring dully, as Rudy grabbed Allan by the beard and pulled his head back viciously.
Jerome yelled and rushed forward, grabbing Rudy in a headlock and trying to knock him off the counter. Rudy whipped his head around suddenly, raking his teeth along the soft underside of Jerome’s forearm. A black puckering chasm opened up in the dark flesh, and Jerome wailed like a dying baby.
It may have been the scream, or the fact that Rudy’s attention was distracted. Josalyn had no way of knowing. But she found herself standing there, staring, while Rudy rode Allan like a rodeo star and Jerome collapsed to his knees.
My God, she mouthed, no wind behind it. My God, my God. There was a dull throbbing pain in the side of her neck. Her hand went up to massage it, came away with a thin smear of blood. “Omigod,” she croaked, staggering back a step in horror.
Then her gaze fell upon the cross: on the floor, less than five feet away, where she’d dropped it. It shimmered faintly in the overhead light.
Slowly at first, then madly faster, she moved past the struggling figures and wrapped one fist around the cross. It seemed to pulsate in her hand like a living thing: warm and vibrant and deadly.
And then she was coming up behind Ru
dy, both hands on the cross, hefting it like a Louisville Slugger. She wanted to call his name, to make him turn, so that he would see her face when the moment came. But she didn’t want to blow her chance; if she did, they were all dead, and she knew it.
Rudy was mechanically pounding Allan’s head against the counter. The dispatcher’s arms flapped limply down either side; his legs were no longer even kicking. It occurred to Josalyn, fleetingly, that it might already be too late to save him. She thought about his twinkling eyes, his constantly burning pipe, his smile. She flashed back over the hours spent at his side, manning the phones, weathering disaster after disaster, sinking deeper and deeper into helplessness and despair and persisting despite it. She saw him in the moment that the call had come in about Armond and T. C.; she saw him comforting Doug, compassion burning in his eyes; she saw him on Bleecker Street, just outside The Other End, tight-faced as he gave his final goodnight hug to Ian …
All this, in the second before she swung forward with the cross and struck Rudy squarely at the base of the skull.
The world went white with pain. If a billion gibbering demons were set afire inside his head, their cumulative scream would have been no louder than the one that went off when the cross hit, knocking him forward, not even aware that his hands had slackened and set Allan free, not even aware that he was falling. He did a clumsy flip off the counter, landed on his neck with a sickening crunch that would signify a broken neck in a mortal man. There was no sight. There was no sound. Just a pain so intense as to be an abstraction, something beyond a nervous system’s ability to comprehend … something to stagger the mind of God.
Rudy scuttled backwards across the floor, howling insanely. He didn’t see Josalyn come around the counter, didn’t see the fixed expression of vengeance on her face, didn’t see the incandescent golf swing as the cross came around again, slamming upward into his face, breaking his nose, burning its shape into his flesh, lifting him off the floor and crashing him backwards through the storefront window.
And then he was on the sidewalk, in the rain; and though the pain still screamed through him like smelting iron, he could see Spring Street stretching out in either direction. Mindless, he struggled to his feet. His knees gave, cracked hard against the pavement. He didn’t feel it. Something else had taken over. He got back up and staggered east, his breath rasping like gravel down a chute, his dead heart pounding.
Staggering east, dangerously close to the first rays of dawn that threatened to cut through the dense cloud cover.
It was now 5:30, precisely.
Josalyn was tending to Jerome when the van pulled up, three minutes later. She had soaked a paper towel in holy water and was cleansing the wound, having already mopped up most of the blood. Her hunch had paid off: they were both amazed by how quickly the pain and swelling receded.
They weren’t quite so confident about Allan’s recovery. He wasn’t dead, but he was unconscious, and his breath susurred weakly between the pale lips of his chalk-white face. Josalyn checked for any visible wounds, found none. In a way, that scared her more than anything. She had wiped his brow with holy water, and then she had called for an ambulance.
So when the van pulled up, she half-expected a stream of paramedics to file through the door. Instead, Joseph and Stephen raced in, blankly staring at the destruction, Joseph’s mouth and fists working in a spastic display of frustration and rage.
“THAT WAY!” she hollered, pointing east. Her mind gave her a spitfire image of herself, decked out like a saloon maid in a cheesy Western, yelling they went thataway, sheriff! Head ’em off at the pass! But giggling was out of the question.
Joseph whipped around and headed back toward the van. Stephen hesitated, fidgeting like an eight-year-old who hadda go to the baffroom, a question molding itself across his face as he stared first at Allan, then Jerome, then Josalyn.
“NO, STEPHEN!” she bellowed, half-guessing the question, not really caring whether or not she was right. “JUST GET HIM!” She pointed a finger at the van like Jesus, directing the moneylenders to the door. Her gaze, when Stephen met it, was a bolt of crazy, imperative fire. He turned and ran, as much to get away from her as to try and find Rudy. She frightened him, in that moment, as much as anything he’d ever seen.
Josalyn watched Stephen disappear around the side of the van, saw it peel out and blast away a moment later. Then she looked down into Jerome’s eyes, saw her own dull shock reflected there. Then she looked away.
“We’ve got to tend to that neck of yours,” he said softly.
“I’m all right,” she said, turning back to him.
“No, you aren’t. Here. Let me.” He took a dry paper towel from the stack in her hand, emptied a vial into it, and gently held it to her wounds. It burned like a bastard for a few seconds, then began to feel very, very, good. Jerome’s touch was tender, like a woman’s. She didn’t try to stop him.
Presently, the sounds of the storm were cut by a siren’s distant banshee wail. Another joined it, then another. It’s almost over, she thought. A nameless emotion washed over her. She couldn’t have named it if she tried.
The sirens came nearer.
CHAPTER 49
“Figures,” Joseph growled, gunning the engine. “Every time, we just miss him. Did you notice that? Every time, we get there just in time to see ’em scrapin’ up another body, man. I can’t stand it.” Staring straight ahead at the road, dimly visible through the rain that pounded against the windshield and the pavement, he didn’t see Stephen’s eyes upon him. “But this time, we’ll get him,” he continued. “Cocksucker is not getting away this time.”
Stephen just looked at him, outwardly responding not at all. Part of him was still down in the generator room, hands drenched in the last black heart blood of the bag lady whose eyes had flown open at the second of impact and riveted on his, squirming with an evil life as yet unborn. Part of him was still down there in that undead abortion clinic, kneeling over the body, his hands still on the wood of the stake and the mallet, the full reality of the situation striking home at long long last.
She was already dead, his mind informed him for the umpteenth time. I didn’t kill her. I killed the thing that was going to take her over. I killed the monster. He needed to keep telling himself that, even though it was true, even though he already knew it. I killed the monster. He had to keep telling himself that, or he was going to go insane.
“Gonna get him,” Joseph repeated, paying no attention to Stephen, talking mostly to himself. He slammed on the brakes abruptly, skidding to a halt at the intersection of Spring and Bowery, blindly looking both ways through the fogged-up windows.
He didn’t even see the figure that raced up to the van until it started slamming against Stephen’s door.
“YAH!” Stephen yelped, flying sideways out of his seat and right into Joseph’s side. Joseph pushed him roughly back and said, “Roll down your window, dumbshit.” He could tell right away that it wasn’t an attack; even dimly seen, the figure pounding on the door looked nothing like Rudy.
Just then, the door flew open. Stephen’s screams stifled in his throat; Joseph leaped forward expectantly. Danny Young grinned in at them and started shouting hysterically, his long hair plastered to his skull, his glasses beaded up with steam and water.
“All right!” Danny shouted. “He’s right over there!” Pointing south down the Bowery, behind him and to their right. “Running like crazy! Are we gonna get him now?”
“Hop in,” Joseph said, already starting to roll. Danny jumped in and slammed the door behind him in one graceful motion, landing on Stephen’s lap as the van wheeled the corner and plowed down the Bowery. Stephen whoofed out air and struggled uncomfortably underneath.
They spotted him about halfway down the block, scuttling over the narrow concrete median strip, cutting over to Broome Street on the other side. “Son of a bitch!” Joseph howled, whipping the wheel around suddenly to the right, parking the van haphazardly at the curb. “Lock it up!”
he yelled, cutting the engine and pocketing the key in one swift motion, his door already opening, his bulk surging out into the street. Danny leaped out, Stephen scrambling after him.
Then they were running, the three of them, running catercorner across the Bowery and up to Broome, then around the bend and east. Overhead, a bolt of lightning like a neon chain saw sliced through the clouds; and halfway down the block, they saw him.
The sun! Rudy thought as the lightning shed its flicker-flash of brilliance. He half-expected to be fried in an instant, run the flesh-to-bone-to-ashes gamut that poor old Christopher Lee ran so many times in the old Hammer horror films. Then it was dark again, and he was still running, so he knew that it wasn’t over yet.
But he could already feel the sun, slowly baking its way into his skin. It felt like sunburn: a faint impression of heat that became a tingling and then graduated into burning pain. It was only starting to tingle now, but it would get much worse in a few minutes; and the wounds in his head, hands, and belly felt like somebody was poking them with red-hot tweezers. Even with the cool rain pounding down on him in freshets, the heat was getting worse.
Rudy whipped around the corner, off of Broome and onto Chrystie. Up ahead of him, at the end of the block, lay the subway entrance to the Grand Street station. He slowed for a moment, blinking back rain, searching for the arch above the entrance. His left heel landed on a formless wad of sopping cardboard. He slipped, almost lost his balance, waved his arms like a circus clown on a high wire, howling and cursing the pain.
That was when he saw the three figures racing down the street toward him.
“Jesus Christ,” he whined, and abruptly his tongue felt like a lump of burning coal. He shrieked, an inferno inside his head, and bolted down Chrystie Street like Richard Pryor in freebasing flames.
Behind him, the three figures were closing in.
Joseph was in the lead, teeth clenched, breath hissing warmly through them. He was a huge man, not built for speed … not since high school, in fact, had he been forced to do anything more than hustle across a street … but he was moving at a speed that would have surprised him if he thought about it. If he’d had anything but vengeance on his mind.
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