"I think I have to sneeze," said Selene.
"I'm sure such a powerful striga as yourself can manage to hold back a sneeze," Aldo replied. "And if you're not so powerful, who needs you anyway?" Awkward phrasing, sibilant s's—his California accent had evaporated entirely. He knelt at Whistler's side, placed two fingers at the side of the neck, feeling for a carotid pulse—there was none.
"Well?" Selene whispered.
Aldo rose to his knees, keeping the pistol trained on her. "He does appear to be dead, I'll give you that. But so did you, that first night."
"That was belladonna," she said.
Aldo was far from convinced. "And what did you use on him?"
"Here, I'll—"
"Don't move!" She had started to roll over. "Crawl back a few feet." She obeyed. "All right, go ahead."
The striga rolled over onto her back, then sat up, removed the sewing packet, pulled one of the pins out, showed it to him, then slipped it carefully back into the cardboard packet. "Curare," she lied. "Same thing I used on Mrs. Wah. She was dead enough for you, wasn't she?"
"But you also used it on the old man, and he woke up three hours later."
"I had graduated dosages. These are all the same, all fatal."
Aldo thought it over. "I think I'll blow his brains out anyway, just to be sure."
"Go ahead," replied the striga calmly, as Aldo placed the barrel of the pistol against Whistler's temple and cocked it. "But you'll be blowing off a hundred million bucks along with his head."
Aldo let the hammer back down slowly. "I'm listening."
* * *
"As my previous strigoi always used to say, if you can still count your money, you don't have enough yet. The last I heard, the Whistler trust was well into nine figures." Selene had, of course, guessed at the sum; Jamey never discussed his finances. She and Aldo were sitting in the middle of the dirt road under the wide and starry sky, leaning companionably against the front bumper of the Toyota. He had turned off the headlights before sitting down next to her with the pistol pointing toward her ribs.
"Half of it belongs to Jamey, the interest on the other half goes to Jonas. But when Jonas dies the capital reverts to Jamey, and when Jamey dies"—she looked down at the body lying at their feet—"officially, I mean, then the entire trust goes to his children, if any. As of a month ago, that would have been Cora. As of twenty minutes ago, it's Martha there." She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Aldo waggled the pistol in her direction.
"Calm down," admonished Selene. "We're talking a minimum of fifty million in the pocket right now. Are you with me so far?"
He waved the barrel of the pistol impatiently. "If you're about to suggest we knock off the old man and double our money, then I'm ahead of you. But what does it matter whether I put a bullet through this one's head or not?" He nudged Whistler's body with the pointed toe of his ankle-high boot.
"We're going to have to produce the body at some point. If he was obviously murdered, there are going to be questions raised."
"He's already been murdered, and there'll be questions in any event—the fires and all that."
Selene shook her head. "You underestimate your new striga. Take a look at his right hand."
Aldo leaned forward, lifted Whistler's limp arm, turned it over to examine the palm. The pin was still embedded in it; the skin immediately around it had turned a dark purple with a ragged blue corona. "So?"
"So sad," she replied. "Wealthy man, everything to live for. Goes off the deep end. Murders his wife and child, sets fire to the Greathouse to cover the murders. We can work out the details later, but that's reason enough right there for a man to commit suicide." She looked down coyly at the sewing packet in her fingers. "Of course there'll be questions. But if they find him dead from a poison found only in the Caribbean, where he last lived, with the rest of these pins in his pocket, they'll be why questions, not how. And certainly not who."
"And what makes you think the girl is going to cooperate through all this?"
"Leave the girl to me. We strigas have our methods."
Aldo's thermos was at his side. He shifted the pistol to his injured hand, unscrewed the cap of the thermos with his good hand, peered inside. Only a little left. He polished it off. No need to conserve—after all, he had two live vessels to work with. When he looked over at Selene again his brown eyes were dark with broken capillaries, but thoughtful. "We strigoi have our methods too."
It was cold there on the open hillside; Selene buttoned her blazer, for all the good that did. "That's why we'll make such a good team. What's on your mind?"
Aldo drew a few inches closer. "What would happen if she died?" he whispered. "After she'd come into the legacy, I mean?"
"Do you mean could she will us the money? No. The way the trust is written, it's either children or charity."
"But if Martha herself had a child, and then suffered an untimely demise? Who would get the money then?"
"The child, of course."
"All of it?"
"If Jonas was dead."
"And the father of that child? Whoever he might turn out to be? Would he be able to access all that money?"
"I don't see why…" Then, as if she'd just caught on: "Why you clever devil, you." They were still whispering. "I do believe he would. Whoever he might turn out to be. The question is, would he share it with his striga?"
"He might," replied Aldo, as she flipped the packet in his direction. He plucked it out of the dirt, leaned forward, and slipped it into the flap pocket of Whistler's denim jacket. "In fact, I'm quite sure he would. What's the age of consent in California?"
"Eighteen."
"And the girl?"
"Seventeen." Then she smiled. "But she's got a birthday coming up in February."
Aldo nodded, recapped the thermos, rose slowly to his feet. "Martha, my dear," he called, slipping the pistol into the waistband of his black slacks as he walked around toward the driver's side of the Toyota. "How would you like to make an old Romanian very happy?"
CHAPTER 7
« ^ »
Selene stood up slowly, a Beatles song going through her head. "Fool on the Hill." With the car lights doused, she could see all the way to the ocean on the far side of the highway. Whitecaps in the starlight. Behind her she heard the metallic click of the safety on Aldo's pistol.
"Who told you you could stand up?" he asked.
She knew without turning around that he had the gun pointing in the center of her back; she could feel a tingling between her shoulder blades. She sighed. "What's it going to take to get you to trust me?"
A derisive laugh. "How much did he trust you?"
"Not enough." She turned around carefully. Aldo was standing by the side of the Toyota; the pistol was now aimed at her heart.
"How do you mean?"
"He wanted to come after you by himself. Told me my job was to supply him with blood and keep my mouth shut."
"Clever fellow."
"Not clever enough, obviously." She threw her hands open wide; his finger tightened on the trigger. "Damn it, Aldo, we've got the chance of a lifetime here, but we've got to work together to make it happen. And to work together we're going to have to trust each other."
"I suppose you're going to tell me now that you trust me?" Another laugh.
"Of course I trust you—otherwise I wouldn't be here." She glanced over her shoulder toward Jamey's body. "And he wouldn't be there. So I'm asking you again, what's it going to take to get you to trust me?"
He took a step toward her, raised the pistol until she was staring down the barrel. "You're serious, aren't you?"
"As a heart attack," replied the fool on the hill. The stars froze overhead; behind her, Selene knew, the waves were poised in mid-rise, the breakers in midfall, the whitecaps hanging in the air like swirls of white frosting on a wedding cake. A lifetime passed in which nothing moved but the quivering black hole at the end of the gunbarrel. She had just about decided that she'd made the very last mista
ke of her life, a real doozy, when he lowered the pistol.
"In that case, I suppose I can think of something," he said—but the pause had lasted so long she couldn't remember for a moment what it was he was going to think of. Then it came to her: this madman standing in front of her, this arsonist, this kidnapper, this murdering vampyromaniac, was going to think of some way that she could prove herself worthy of his trust.
This should be good, she thought. This should be a real doozy too.
* * *
Doozy was not the word. There was no word. After Aldo loaded Whistler into the trunk of the rental car, he backed it the rest of the way up the winding dirt road with Martha slumped beside him in the passenger seat, sagging into the shoulder harness. Selene followed in the Jaguar and parked it next to the Toyota under the stand of cypress trees at the end of the road, then followed him on foot through the high grass. He had Martha over one shoulder and Jamey over the other; both bodies were limp.
Strange feeling, to be walking now over ground she'd seen from the air earlier that same day. Selene followed Aldo through the grass to the third cabin, and up two plank-and-cinder-block steps. Inside, he propped both bodies up against the far wall, heads lolling. Between them a battery-powered Coleman lamp cast their elongated shadows out sideways and sent Aldo's dancing crazily ahead of him across the dusty wooden floor. "Ready?" he asked.
Selene forced herself to smile. "As I'll ever be."
He smiled back. "Stand over there by the foam pallet. Start by removing your clothes—slowly. Not that I'm an ecdysiaphile."
"Not a what?" said Selene, taking off her blazer, looking for something to lay it down on, settling for the ice chest, then kicking off her sandals.
"An ecdysiaphile, one who enjoys watching strippers. I just want to make sure you haven't any more pins secreted about your person." He shook his head sadly. "Disgraceful, how little you Americans know of your own mother tongue."
"And amazing how much of it you know. Did you learn it in school?" Selene started to turn her back to him as she pulled her "Surrender Dorothy" T-shirt over her head.
"Don't turn around," he said sharply. "And keep your hands in sight at all times." Then, conversationally, as if they were on a first date, as she unzipped her jeans and peeled them down over her hips: "School? After a fashion; I studied at the Institut Limba Strain in Bucharest. And you?"
"Barnard." She stepped out of her jeans and stood before him in her see-through lavender panties and bra. "Shall I keep going?"
"What do you think?"
Selene reached behind her and unhooked the bra, then slipped the shoulder straps down and let it fall; she slid her panties down and stepped out of them. Now she stood before him naked, feeling the goosebumps starting to rise across her shoulders and arms; her nipples had puckered up into hard cones. Her shoulders slumped forward as her body turned shy, tried to draw in on itself. Then she remembered the magazines she'd seen in Moll's office, forced her shoulders back, thrust her chest out. "Well?" she said, shifting her weight to one leg, cocking her fist on her hip.
He looked her up and down. "You'll do. But let's make sure you haven't any surprises for me. Hold your hands out to the side."
She obeyed, raised her arms as if she were being frisked—which she was. He started at her hair, sifting through it with the fingers of his good hand as if he were checking her for lice. That was bad enough, but when he forced her mouth open, peered into it, stuck his fingers in and began feeling around gingerly, she started to retch.
He jerked his hand out of her mouth and stepped back. "If you're going to vomit, do it out there."
"Just a gag reflex," she said, swallowing hard. "Had it since I was a kid. Dentists absolutely hate me. Course, I'm not so fond of them either."
"I understand completely," said Aldo, pulling her hair back so that he could examine her ears. "At the Orfelinat—the orphanage where I was raised—we had to visit the dentist once a year. Care tort . . . open your legs a bit wider, would you? There, that's the girl… care tortureaza, we called him. The Torturer. If he found a caries"—he knelt down—"he'd pull the tooth." Aldo was now going through her pubic hair with his fingertips. "Unh-unh, keep 'em up." She'd let her hands drop to her sides.
"My arms are getting tired."
"Just another few seconds now." He ducked his head to the side, spread the lips of her sex gently, and peered up into her like a man looking under the couch for his cuff links.
It was all quite matter-of-fact and clinical, and yet at the same time it was a vicious and deliberately humiliating invasion of her body for which Selene swore to herself she'd make him pay. First, though, she forced a joke: "Sorry I forgot my speculum."
"Mmm-hmmm."
"We don't really keep razor blades up there anymore."
"Mmm-hmmm."
"DAMN IT ALDO THAT'S ENOUGH!"
He stopped. "I agree. Turn around."
"No way Jose."
"I have to—" He started knee-walking around behind her.
"You're not going to find—" She began rotating, arms held straight out, turning to keep him in front of her as he scrambled around on his knees trying to get behind her.
"—check out all the—"
"—anything up there!"
"—orifices."
"I quit," said Selene, stopping in midpirouette, lowering her arms deliberately and covering her ass with both hands—a ridiculous posture, but no more ridiculous than the dance she and Aldo had just performed. "Forget it."
"Pardon?" Aldo looked up.
"I said forget it. It's not worth it, teaming up with you." With as much dignity as she could summon up, standing there naked, holding on to her ass with both hands. "My mistake—you're obviously not the strigoi I thought you were. So you can just go ahead and kill me, then drag your sorry self back home and collect however much chump change Jonas is paying you to kill Jamey—even though I had to do it for you. And when that money's gone, and you're sitting around crying in your beer, you can think about me, and how much you could have had. Then you can stick your thumb up your own ass, if there's room for it with your head up there."
Aldo was on his feet in an instant. "I love it," he said. "You're going to do just fine in the next part."
"I can't wait."
She didn't have to. With a swipe of his foot Aldo knocked her feet out from under her; she fell backward onto the thin egg-carton foam pad. Luckily her hands were already behind her to break her fall, but it jarred the wind out of her nonetheless. When she looked up again, Aldo was standing over her holding a pillow.
"Fight me," he said. "Fight me as hard as you can, and if you're still fighting when you pass out, I'll let you wake up. If not, you're not the striga I took you for."
Then without further warning he was on top of her, had dropped with his full weight, sending the air out of her lungs with a rush just as she had realized what was coming and started to take a deep breath to fill them.
No fair, she thought irrelevantly as the pillow approached her face. Her mind jumped back thirty years. She thought of how Stan Kovic had once tried to crush the air from her too. Then she began to fight.
CHAPTER 8
« ^ »
Selene opened her eyes and took stock. Sore tailbone where she'd fallen on it. Egg on her forehead from skull-butting Aldo. Knocked him loosey-goosey—only for a few seconds, but it had been worth it for a gulp of air. Her hands sore from pounding on him, her heels from drumming them on the floorboards. Gingerly she rolled onto her side; Aldo was lying beside her on the floor next to the pad. Time to play the satisfied striga.
"How'd I do?" she asked.
"Not bad," he said, looking down with a goofy grin toward the wet stain at the front of his shiny black trousers. "I let you wake up, didn't I?"
"Aren't you going to ask me how it was for me?"
"Not my major area of concern, but all right: how was it for you?"
"Man, it was a ruuush."
He rubbed his forehead g
ingerly. "You did seem to—how do they say here?—to get into it."
"No shit."
"Next time I'll last longer," he said.
"Me too."
"Not if I've got two good hands. It was fun, though, wasn't it?"
"Oh, scads," she agreed languidly. Her real satisfaction lay in the knowledge that he hadn't even gotten his pecker out of his pants. She hoped their encounter would still count for the orgomantic prophecy.
Aldo propped his head up on his good hand, his elbow on the floor and his cheek resting in his palm. "You know, there are only three times in my life when I truly feel alive," he mused.
"Oh?"
"Yes. When I'm drinking blood, when I'm coming, and when I'm listening to Callas."
"Just Callas? Not other singers?" Selene's ignorance of grand opera was both wide and deep, but she wanted to keep a conversation going, and it seemed the least dangerous avenue of the three to follow.
"Just Callas."
"Really? Why just Callas?" Now Selene let herself shiver from the cold—not faking it, but not suppressing it either. "It's freezing in here—reach me my jacket, would you? Thanks." She draped it over her torso. "So why just Callas—is she that much better than all the others?"
"Don't know. Don't listen to any others."
"Then why?"
"It's personal; I've never told a living soul."
"Hey, if you can't tell your striga, who can you tell?" She reached into the pocket of her blazer, pulled out a green pack of Doublemint. "Gum?"
"Don't chew. Filthy habit—wait, let me see that."
"Oh for crying out loud, Aldo, are we going to spend the rest of our lives like this?" said Selene, reaching the pack toward him. "In the first place, I already offered it to you, and in the second place, it's going in my mouth."
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