The Magnificent Mile didn't look magnificent anymore. Beneath the declining sun, it looked empty of everything except spreading malevolent shadows. How much daylight was left? She watched the sky anxiously as they continued south; inside the front of her jacket Beau fidgeted, his dry little nails raking yet another throbbing furrow across her belly despite her heavy flannel shirt. Her chest and rib cage probably matched the striped pattern on the material.
The Vespa died just over the Chicago River and Louise was almost grateful. Next to finding shelter, she wanted nothing more than to get Beau out of her jacket and away from her raw skin. She set him down to pee and hopped up and down to get the circulation going again in her legs, blocking his way to the curb and the six-inch drop to the metal grating of the bridge, where forty feet below the water flowed a dull, quiet green. She still recalled how the City used to dump a hundred pounds of kelly green dye into the river before every St. Patrick's Day parade.
Louise scrutinized the buildings along the river's edge, then decided she would feel more comfortable if she were surrounded by buildings on all sides. In the direction from which she'd come was North Michigan Avenue and a jungle of never-to-be-completed construction sites interspersed with skyscrapers and smaller one- or two-story buildings, but southward and a little to the west were a myriad of huge buildings.
Her direction decided, she picked up Beau and started walking rapidly. It was interesting how differently she viewed the downtown buildings than she had in past summers, when she and friends from her Rogers Park neighborhood had often ridden the L train to the Loop to catch a morning matinee at the Chicago Theater. She turned west on Lake Street, glancing at the old theater as she crossed the cobbled width of State Street (that Great Street!). A few years before everything went crazy, a group of developers had renovated the theater and started booking some big names. The final headliner still screamed across the marquee: WHOOPI GOLDBERG—A MILLION LAUGHS! At street level a scarlet curtain covered the glass inside the ticketmaster's booth. What horrors he curled beneath the velvet seats inside?
Louise shuddered and Beau whined as she increased her pace, almost jogging. At Dearborn she went south again, leaving the elevated tracks and its dim stretch of street behind as she hurried away from the decrepit movie houses and low-slung buildings along Dearborn and Randolph, winding her way to the southwest high-rent district. By Monroe, Louise was running and she finally paused to catch her breath in front of a massive white skyscraper.
One Xerox Centre boasted bright white stone and looked as good a place as any. Louise felt herself sliding on the edge of panic as she realized it was past four—by now they should be inside and settled for the night. Buildings towered on all sides and the sky was thick with gathering clouds, another bad break. Rain would chill them good in the dropping temperatures and the cloud cover would bring an early dusk . . . and terrible danger. She stuffed Beau loosely back into her jacket and circled the building, but every door she tried was tightly locked. Dammit! She needed more time! Breaking the glass would be a fool's move, yet she didn't have time to devise a more subtle entrance. She had to find someplace quickly, and though they might unwittingly share it with sleeping vampires, any one of these skyscrapers was big enough to house both with a minimum of risk—if she could get in without leaving an obvious trail.
Beau was scrambling around the inside of her jacket like a caged rat and she resisted the urge to rap him on the nose. It was fear that was spooking him, the same fear that was making it impossible for her to think clearly. Jesus, what a mess they were in this time, that same ridiculous presumption that everything would work itself out backfiring on her yet again. Before now, her worst assumption had been toward the end of the month of disappearances a year ago, when she'd gone traipsing off to Elmwood Park to stay with her friend Cindi. Louise had spoken to the girl only the evening before, yet the small suburban bungalow where Cindi lived was unlocked and deserted, the house—the entire empty neighborhood—permeated with an ugly undercurrent of sleeping evil that had grown stronger with each flick of the clock toward evening. She and Beau had run out of light then, too, and that was the first night she'd learned to hide. Riding the eerily empty Metra train back to the city the next morning had only been the start of a daymare of discovering her mom and stepfather missing and their apartment a mirror of that same pervasive corruption, with the Chicago Police Department depleted to only a fraction of its former size and so overrun with disappearance reports that they could do nothing but advise her to call it in next week.
But there had been no next week for the city.
The clouds split for an instant, showing the deep, painful blue preceding sunset; Louise knew there was no more time to waste. She turned, heading west toward the last feeble daylight sliding behind the skyscrapers. Her stomach knotted angrily; there was food, a few tools, and an all-but-useless gun in her backpack, but there was no time to eat. There was a hunger far worse that she didn't want to experience. At Clark she went north again, remembering the older government buildings in that direction. They had windows that could be forced open with her hammer and screwdriver, then closed up again with a few nails. City Hall had a high-level first she might be able to reach. She forced herself to jog and conserve energy that might be needed later, though the adrenaline in her blood was making her ears ring. A lifetime ago she'd read an animal-rights pamphlet on people in the Philippines who strung captured dogs from trees before killing them, claiming the adrenaline made the meat taste better. If that was true and her luck ran out, she'd make a tasty treat for some bloodsucker tonight.
Louise was swerving across Madison when something went wrong with her feet and she fell. She had a split second to realize that her rubber soles had caught the edge of some sort of street grating, then her hands shot forward and one knee came up to break her fall. There was no chance to turn; to keep from crushing Beau her hands took most of her weight, like dropping face-forward into a brutal push-up. Agony flared as a hundred tiny metal teeth bit deeply into her palms and fingers, then she was rolling sideways, back onto the cold concrete in a fetal position as she cradled her shredded hands. There was a faraway stinging in her knee and a hard ache in her shoulder joints, but it was nothing compared to the pain pulsing up her arms. Inside her jacket Beau gave a frenzied bark and dug a fresh furrow across the side of her left breast, his scrabbling paw slicing bare skin when it slipped into her shirtfront.
Louise groaned and sat up, fumbling with her jacket zipper so Beau could climb out; when she saw her hands, she almost sobbed aloud. In the last ten seconds their situation had plummeted to desperate. Both her hands were a mass of split, bleeding cuts, the deeper ones along the base of her palms dripping with blood. Even if she found someplace within the next quarter hour, the bloodsmell alone would leave an easy trail. The pain was enormous and she shook her head and tried to think around it. There was an extra shirt in her pack; she could wrap—
Beau jumped from her lap and took off.
For a second Louise just sat, staring dumbly as the dog scrambled up Madison, wondering how he could even see where he was going. Then she panicked. That silly mutt was the only thing she loved in this world; she blotted out the pain, clambered to her feet, and chased after him.
"Beau, heel!" Five feet and new pain rammed her, this time from her knee, a minor stinging that rocketed into a throbbing jolt every time her weight shifted to that leg. Louise didn't care; that dog meant everything. She'd crawl after him if she had to. If Beau heard he gave no sign, and Louise was still stumbling behind him when he ran full-tilt into a small riser of stone steps. He yelped and stopped, his watery eyes blinking as his old body panted with exertion. Louise snatched him up with blood-soaked fingers, then collapsed on the stairs.
"Are you crazy?" she gasped. "Where were you going?" Hysteria edged her voice as she hugged him. Beau’s tail wagged furiously; he yapped and wiggled again, but this time she held him close as she checked the darkening street. She felt like a bleedi
ng piece of meat in the midst of piranha-filled waters; in only fifteen minutes the fish would begin to bite. But defeat didn't fit into her life, and she hung onto the dog and pushed unsteadily to her feet. Around her were lots of small shops at street level—risky, but better than out in the open. In the heavy dusk she could see LaSalle off to her right, while directly behind her—
—were the doors to St. Peter's.
There was no time to weigh options. She scooted up the steps, wrapped bloody fingers around one of the ornate handles and pulled. Unbelievably, the door opened on silent hinges and she stepped through, moving quickly past the dim foyer into the main room. When the door swung closed behind her, the abrupt blackness almost made her cry out. She took a few tentative steps instead and one wet hand found the cold and not-at-all-comforting side of a wooden pew. Fading light still shone through the vividly stained glass windows above, as though an immense kaleidoscope were suspended just out of reach. In a few seconds she could make out the vague shape of a huge cross at the altar.
Ten more minutes would bring total darkness. Louise's only experience with a church had been months ago, when she'd explored St. Ita's on Broadway and found it filthy and desecrated, the altar smeared with dried waste, the icons torn from the walls and smashed. She'd had no way of knowing if that ruined place of worship could still offer shelter, and hadn't risked staying in another of the huge, dark buildings that dotted the cityscape. If the church in which she now stood could not protect her, she was doomed.
The weak light from the stained glass windows four stories above changed visibly as darkness fell over Chicago. Nestled in her arms, Beau was quiet and calm, a good sign. Feeling her way pew by pew up the aisle, Louise slid stiffly onto the front bench, feeling the deepening cold seep into her butt and the backs of her legs immediately. The temperature had dropped drastically and she set Beau on the floor for a second and eased off the backpack; a little fumbling and she drew out a blanket and pulled it around her shoulders. Now it was time to wait; her hands were tacky with blood and the smell surely surrounded her. Ultimately, if the night beasts could enter St. Peter's, they would find her no matter where she hid. She reached toward her feet, searching the darkness for Beau.
There was a quick scraping in the black void in front of her and a match burst into sudden, blinding light.
"Welcome," said a childishly sweet voice, "to the House of God."
The Hunger—
Life in the Land of the Dead
15
REVELATION 1:18
I am she that liveth, and was dead;
and, behold, I am alive for evermore
~ * ~
Anyelet opened her eyes and the oceans of the world were made of blood. She stood at a pulsating shore and gazed upon the red vastness even as need rose in her body and her mouth began to fill with thick saliva. In a moment her fingers had undone the iron clasp at her neck and the velvet cape fell to the sand like a sheet of black oil. The air, heavy with bloodsmell, played across her collarbone and breasts, caressing her bared skin with a lover's icy, intimate hand; waves of blood swelled and ebbed before her, leaving wet, crimson shadows in front of her feet.
Anyelet’s deep red hair whipped heavily in the wind but the piercing gaze never blinked. Eons ago those eyes had been clear green; time had deepened them to a black so dark they seemed like twin pits within skin that glowed white in the deep dusk, the veins beneath blue-smudged trails of emptiness. She ached with fierce Hunger as she stepped forward, easing her foot into the hot bath of fulfillment as her lips parted in anticipation.
The sole of her foot met cool, dry sand. Anyelet looked down impatiently and saw the ruby liquid receding, as if the traitorous moon had suddenly pulled in the tide. She tried again, and again, but with every foot she gained the ocean receded an equal distance.
She closed her eyes and concentrated. Cold and beautiful, Anyelet spread her arms wide and felt power course through her as she reached, her mind's eye picturing her fingers locking as she enfolded mankind into her deadly grip. Her pain bled to agony, the collapsed arteries and veins becoming razor-studded snakes twisting within her body. Her eyes flew open and she gazed over the world she had so easily conquered, now a withered, dried-out sphere bearing no trace of the oceans of plenty she had envisioned. Fresh fever surged and her back arched, crushing the imaginary world against her chest until it began to disintegrate. Still her fingers would not open. She threw back her head and screamed as bits and pieces of the globelike form cascaded down her breasts and rib cage, then began to stretch and re-form against her rigid torso. It had been an eternity since she'd felt fear, but terror returned easily to her memory as her hands finally unclasped.
Too late. There was no escaping the starvation-blackened arms that now trapped her. The form was taking shape, smothering her in its foulness as she beat at it with fading strength, the creature sucking away her energy in great, thirsty gulps.
Anyelet gagged helplessly and her head lolled, exposing her throat and its trail of barren arteries. Loathing filled her as this nightmare being opened a pus-encrusted mouth in which two rotted fangs slid forward.
No! she howled frantically into its mind. There is no food for you here!
Hideous laughter rang in her ears. The beast's head shot forward with a speed that she had never possessed and the cracked lips fastened greedily on her neck around its filthy teeth.
Anyelet's stomach convulsed as the artery in her neck gorged and blackness began to radiate from her throat. Despair enveloped her as she realized her captor wasn’t feeding.
It was pumping its filth into her body.
~ * ~
Night had arrived with arms open, like an old friend bringing comfort.
With it came The Hunger.
Anyelet's fingers stretched, opening like the petals of a black-red rose, the sharp nails dragging along the underside of her satin quilt, an old habit that soothed her and made her feel secure. She thought briefly of the nightmare, then dismissed it. She didn't need a portent to know the situation was harsh, but with Siebold's assistance things should slowly improve. She flung the quilt carelessly aside and rose, moving to light a couple of cut-glass oil lamps. The last of the sun was sinking below the horizon; even through these stone-and-steel walls she could feel its fading heat still trying to sear her flesh in her place of rest. She smiled complacently. The sun would never set its golden sight upon her again.
The lamps spread a rich glow as she scanned her closet. Her gaze stopped on a magenta silk pantsuit, an outfit Rita had found at Marshall Field's. Seeing Anyelet in it would please her dark companion and she pulled the suit from its hanger and tossed it on the bed, then let the floral nightdress in which she'd slept drop to the floor. Naked, she crossed to the woodstove in the center of the room, a huge, windowless storeroom in the subbasement of the Merchandise Mart. She could hardly wait for spring and the rising temperatures that would finally warm the ice in her body. The stove, vented only to keep smoke from permeating the room, did a passable job until about two hours before she woke each evening; now its surface was barely warm. No matter. Rita would arrive soon, and wrapping in the covers was worthless since she had no body heat to build beneath their surface.
Anyelet turned at a slight noise and saw Rita glide into the room. Beneath a striking copper robe, the taller woman's skin gleamed like polished mahogany in the lamplight as she crossed to the stove and tossed in a bundle of prefabricated logs. That done, Rita swept a hairbrush from the nightstand and stepped behind her. Anyelet's eyes closed contentedly as Rita began to pull the brush through the red spill of her hair. A log crackled as warmth began to rebuild. Behind her, Anyelet felt Rita finish and lay the brush down, then move to stand in front of her. Opening her eyes, she met the depthless dark brown of Rita's almond-shaped gaze. The tight cut of Rita's hair emphasized her sharp cheekbones and full lips; four-inch daggers hung from her ears and followed the long line of her neck to the jutting ridge of her collarbone.
&nb
sp; Rita spread her fingers wide and drew her hands through Anyelet's hair, combing it back from her temples to her shoulders. She stopped for a moment, then eased her fingers down to rest just above the swell of Anyelet's breasts. Rita, normally so sharp-tongued, spoke for the first time since entering the room.
"Is there something else I can do for you?" The offer was tempting. The pleasure Rita could bring was almost excruciating and the coldness that ached between her thighs eased at the thought.
But The Hunger was agony.
Anyelet sighed. "Maybe later, Rita. I must have food."
Rita nodded and stepped away, returning with the billowy pantsuit. A few minutes later the two women stepped into the blackness of the outer corridor, neither bothering with a light as they made their way along its length.
Five floors above, the Damned began their nightly screams.
16
REVELATION 2:23
And I will kill the children with death.
~ * ~
The child screamed his rage at the steel-bound walls that held him prisoner, then threw himself at the vault-like door.
Neither walls nor door acknowledged his tantrum.
In his other life, Tommy Gilbert had not been a particularly bright boy. That he had survived this long in his new existence could be attributed to his youth—now everlasting—and the fact that as a child he focused on instinct rather than intellect. The dark hours had been his friend ever since the Saturday night he and his twin had awakened to Mom and Dad—mysteriously absent all day—standing over them with hellish, hungry grins. Amos was smarter but never very healthy, and as their mother drained the smaller of the sons she had carried in her womb, so too had she drained away his life—permanently. Though Tommy had loved Amos after a fashion, he'd felt nothing but disdain the following evening to discover his brother had become only stiff, decomposing flesh. Forgotten now, at the time there'd been a cry of envy from deep in the darkness that had swallowed Tommy's soul.
AfterAge Page 7
