How the hell’d he get the drop on Shades? Nobody ever got the drop on Shades, not even when he was alive, and certainly not in the fifty years since he got vamped.
“You’ve got twenty seconds to tell me why you’re followin’ me, mate—and make it good.”
Heathcliff put his game face on and bared his fangs. “You ain’t from around here, man, so maybe you don’t know who you’re messin’ with.”
The blond dude smiled. “Less a case of ‘don’t know’ as ‘don’t care.’ Especially if it’s you two amateurs. Ten seconds.”
“Ain’t me an’ Shades I’m talkin’ about, honky, it’s Reet Weldon.”
“And who’s Reet Weldon when he’s at home?”
“The baddest cat on the block, m’man. You mess with us, you mess with Reet, and don’t nobody mess with Reet. You wanna suck blood in this town, you talk to Reet, you dig?”
“Sorry—not much for digging.” He let go of Shades.
Shades, though, was a cool cat. He landed on his feet, put his hand to his throat, and glared up at the blond dude.
The blond guy smiled. “Look, mate, I’m not big on crowds these days. I also don’t give a toss about your local politics. I’m just here to see the Ramones and have a little fun. So sod off, all right?”
Shades, his voice a little hoarse, said, “Don’t work like that, fool! Now, you comin’ with us to see Reet, or you goin’ down, you got it?”
“Goin’ down, eh? No problem.”
With that, the punk leaped over the railing of the fire escape. Heathcliff ran to the side to keep from getting landed on.
The punk rolled on the ground and came up kicking—got Shades right in the stomach.
Heathcliff couldn’t really follow what happened after that, even though he was in the fight. Both in life as a bouncer at the Cotton Club in the 1930s, and in unlife as a part of Reet’s bloodsucker bruiser squad, Heathcliff had been in plenty of rumbles, but he’d never seen anyone move the way this vamp did.
Now Heathcliff understood why this cat came back to CBGB’s—it wasn’t because he was too stupid not to return to the scene of the crime, it was that he didn’t care. This was one bad mother. But that just made Heathcliff more determined. We have got to get this cat on the payroll. Not only would it make things better in the organization, but Reet would handsomely reward the vampires who brought this dude in to him.
The fight carried its way down Stanton and around the corner into Freeman, right up until the blond dude tossed Heathcliff into Shades. Heathcliff fell to the sidewalk, but Shades rolled and tumbled over to a pile of lumber that had been tied up in front of an apartment building.
Shades smiled, baring his fangs. He brought his fist down on one of the two-by-fours, smashing it to splinters, then picked two of the bigger splinters up. He tossed one to Heathcliff, who caught it with his left hand.
The vampire just laughed. “So you’ve got toys to play with now?”
“We warned you, man,” Shades said.
“What, that you’re a couple o’ tossers? Worked that out on my own there, mate. This dance has been fun, but I’m gettin’ bored. Can’t believe the Slayer hasn’t turned you two to mulch already.”
Shades snarled and charged, the improvised stake raised over his head. The blond dude just stood there until the last second and dodged to his right, reaching up and grabbing Shades’s wrist with his hand, then yanking it down and slamming the wood into Shades’s chest.
A second later, Shades was dust.
Heathcliff couldn’t believe it. He and Shades had been running together since before John F. Kennedy got shot. They were the team supreme, the dynamic duo, the cats who had it going on—where did this fool get off staking Shades?
Snarling and screaming to the night sky, Heathcliff ran right at his friend’s killer, intending to do unto him what he did unto Shades.
The last thing he saw was the punk honky laughing; the last thing he felt was a hunk of wood slamming into his rib cage.
* * *
Spike dropped the sliver of two-by-four to the still-wet pavement and pulled out a cigarette. Not a bad night, he thought happily. Tangled with the Slayer, saw the Ramones rock the joint, and killed two tossers. A fella could get used to this.
Lighting the cigarette, he looked up at the rooftops. “Enjoy the show, pet?”
Nobody answered, but Spike didn’t care. He knew the Slayer had been watching the entire fight, just as he knew that the two tossers who followed him so sloppily and fought him so poorly had no clue that she had been tailing all three of them. She was predictable, that one, but talented. Putting on his posh accent for the first time in a long time, Spike had put a call through to Nikki’s Watcher’s answering service and, all a-twitter, breathlessly informed this Crowley bloke that the Feast of Pohldak was tonight and that Sheep Meadow was the hot spot of choice. Sure enough, there was the Slayer in Sheep Meadow, ripe for the picking.
The fight that followed was a good one. Would’ve been Spike’s last, too, if he hadn’t done the recon—he was ready for the thrown stake.
Definitely gonna enjoy this one till I put her down.
He took a long drag on the cigarette, then headed back to the Bowery. The night was still young, and the fight had made him hungry.
* * *
Bernard was playing Connect Four with Robin when Nikki returned to the flat. The doorman called to let Bernard know she had come in, and one elevator ride later, she walked in the door.
The first thing she said upon entering was, “Why’s he still up?”
Robin, who had just beaten Bernard and flipped open the hinged plastic bar that released the game pieces with a clatter, got up from the dining-room table and ran to hug Nikki’s legs. “I’m sorry, Mama, I made Crowley let me stay up. I wanted to make sure you’s okay.”
“Under the circumstances . . . ,” Bernard started.
Nikki nodded. “Yeah, okay.” She got down on her knees. “But just this once, okay? It’s way past your bedtime.”
“I know,” Robin said in a small voice. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, baby boy, it’s been a rough night.” She pulled Robin into an embrace. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”
Bernard stood up. “I’ve already made up the guest room for him.”
“Thanks.” After shrugging out of her coat and tossing it onto the couch, Nikki took Robin’s hand and walked with him to the hallway that led to the guest room (as well as Crowley’s bedroom and the bathroom). That hallway was off the large space that served as both dining room and living room—the half near the small kitchen had the dining-room table where Bernard and Robin had been playing their game; the other half contained the sofa and two easy chairs. All available wall space in the entire room was covered in bookshelves that were full to bursting with tomes that ranged from the very ancient to the only slightly ancient—plus the occasional Dorothy L. Sayers novel thrown in for good measure.
While Nikki tucked Robin in, Bernard occupied himself by hanging her leather coat up on the rack, alongside his own coats and jackets that had lain dormant since March. He put on a kettle for tea, finished his cigarette, and began putting away the Connect Four game. The water was boiling by the time Nikki came back out.
“He was never going to sleep until he knew you were safe.” Bernard switched off the burner, talking to Nikki through the shuttered window that allowed the kitchen’s occupants to see the rest of the flat. “Thankfully, I had that game from the last time he stayed over, since I don’t think he’s quite ready for chess. Obviously your fight with William was a rough one.”
Nikki sighed. “You got that right. He’s goin’ completely by Spike now, by the way—least according to him.”
“Well, either way, you didn’t stop long enough after dropping Robin off to tell me much about this Spike fellow, except that he was tough to kill.” Bernard poured the boiling water over the leaves in the teapot.
“Tougher. I ain’t tangled with a vamp this rough
since Dracula.” She fell more than sat on Bernard’s couch. “Sorry for beating it so fast, but once it stopped raining, I wanted to try to track him down.”
“Did you?”
She nodded. “I saw Heathcliff and Shades makin’ the rounds, lookin’ for Spike.”
Bernard placed the teapot, two mugs, two spoons, a strainer, the sugar bowl, and a creamer onto a tray and brought it into the living room, placing it on the coffee table in front of the sofa next to the pile of books he’d been flipping through prior to Nikki and Robin’s arrival. “On Reet’s behalf, one presumes?”
“Yeah. Spike dusted ’em for their troubles.”
That brought Bernard up short. “Really? Interesting—I would have thought Spike would want to ingratiate himself with the local vampire populace. That’s his usual modus operandi—generally as a prelude to taking over said populace.”
“Well, the only thing on that cat’s mind right now is takin’ me down. Maybe later he’ll make a play for Reet’s rackets, but for now? Nuh-uh.”
Bernard placed the strainer on one of the mugs and started pouring. “Yes, but Reet isn’t likely to give up just because two of his henchmen were killed.”
“No way. And those two’ve been with Reet a long time. He ain’t gonna take kindly to them bein’ dusted.” She leaned forward as Bernard moved the strainer to the other mug and poured. “We gotta be able to use that.”
Before Bernard could ask what Nikki meant by that, the phone rang. “Excuse me,” he said as he got up and walked over to the phone unit in the wall next to the kitchen. “Hallo?”
“Bernie, it’s Arthur. I may have something for you.” Detective Landesberg’s phone call was apparently being made from a public pay phone, given the street noise that was clearly audible behind him. “At least, I hope it’s something for you, ’cause I’m not sure this is something I want to handle.”
“What is it, Detective?”
At that last word, Nikki looked up sharply. Bernard mouthed the words calm down at her, which just prompted her to snarl and continue fixing her tea.
Landesberg hesitated. “I’m down at Pier 88. A luxury liner just pulled in after a trip from England—except nobody disembarked. Harbormaster got a little cranky, so he sent someone on board to see what was what.”
Again Landesberg hesitated, so Bernard prompted him. “And what did he find?”
“A whole lotta corpses. Some had their necks broken, some were stabbed in the heart, one was disemboweled, a few had slashed throats—and four of them, including the captain, were dead from exsanguination through bite marks in the carotid artery.”
A vampire bite. “I’m assuming the constabulary isn’t attributing this particular massacre to the Son of Sam?” Bernard asked dryly, by way of getting Landesberg to be more forthcoming.
“Nope. And we checked the passenger and crew manifest—everyone’s accounted for except for one passenger. The name she gave is Anne Boleyn.”
Bernard snorted at the obviously fake name. “So nice to see that the luxury liners are screening their passengers.”
“Yeah. I checked out her cabin—it’s full of dolls. I mean, full. My niece doesn’t have that many dolls, and she cleans out Toys ‘R’ Us every Hannukah. Some nice ones, too—I’m kinda surprised she left them behind.”
Damn. Damn, damn, damn. “I see.”
“Look, Bernie, I know this is a bloodsucker. It’s gotta be, I mean—nothing human would do this, right?”
“I should hope not.”
“So any vamps you know fit this description?”
“One or two. Thank you, Detective, I’ll be in touch.”
Before Landesberg could say anything else, Bernard hung up the phone.
Nikki was stirring her tea. No doubt she had put in enough sugar to kill an army of diabetics, as usual. “You were talkin’ to that detective, and you used the word ‘massacre,’ so I’m assumin’ that wasn’t good news.”
“Hardly.” He rejoined Nikki on the couch and took a sip of tea, in the vain hope that it might warm him—or at least comfort him. It did neither. “Based on Detective Landesberg’s description of the carnage he has witnessed, not to mention the stateroom occupied by the likely perpetrator of said carnage, I would say it’s very likely that Drusilla is in town.”
“You sure?” Nikki asked.
Bernard nodded. “Unless there’s another psychotic British female vampire with a fetish for dolls who’d have reason to come to New York, yes, I’m sure. She’s Spike’s sire, and the two have been inseparable for as long as anyone’s been able to keep track of them—though, to be fair, we haven’t been as successful at that as one would like. But from what accounts we do have, the pair of them are as devoted to each other as two demons can be.” He picked up one of the books from the coffee table. “There’s one particularly vivid description in the Watchers’ archive from a decade and a half ago about a massacre at an orphanage in Vienna that the two of them perpetrated—killed two Watchers in the process, which, sad to say, is why we have such a vivid description.” Bernard set the book back down and sighed. “The only thing that surprises me is that she left the dolls behind. I suspect the heat of the moment, or the fear of being discovered, caused that.”
“She wasn’t necessarily alone, neither,” Nikki said in a tight voice.
Recognizing the source of that concern, Bernard quickly said, “Darla was not with her, of that you can be sure. We had two Watchers in Milan, and one of them reported that Darla’s still there.”
“One of them?”
Bitterly, Bernard said, “Yes, and he’s sure because he witnessed Darla feeding on the other one.”
Nikki winced. “I’m sorry, Crowley.”
He waved it off. “That’s all right—you’ve other things to be concerned with. Drusilla will try to find Spike, and she’s likely to leave plenty of corpses in her wake. Add Reet’s interest to the equation—”
“And we got us a bloodsucker bloodbath.” Nikki took a sip of her tea and then smiled. “So if we’re stuck with it anyhow, let’s do it right.”
Now Bernard frowned. “I beg your pardon?”
“Reet’ll want revenge on Spike once he finds out what happened to Heathcliff and Shades.”
“If he finds out.”
Nikki’s smile grew wider. “Any reason for me to keep it a secret?”
That got Bernard to smile as well. “I see your point.”
Standing up, Nikki said, “Reet’s boys found Spike pretty quick, they can probably find this Drusilla chick, too.” She walked over to the coatrack. “ ’Specially if I tell ’em where to look.” Putting on the coat, she said, “Looks like my night ain’t done yet.”
Also rising, Bernard said, “Good luck, Nikki.”
Nodding, Nikki left the flat.
Bernard took another sip of tea, then set it down on the coffee table. He walked to the hallway, the hardwood floor creaking under his feet. The second bedroom had been converted into a study. Like the living room—and, if it came to that, the bedroom, the hallways, and even parts of the kitchen and bathroom—it was lined with bookcases, and it was here that Bernard kept his most important books. It also contained a daybed, and when he slowly opened the door, he saw Robin asleep in it. The boy was tossing and turning, and Bernard feared for the dreams he was having. Robin had witnessed his mother in action before, but it couldn’t have been pleasant—especially with an unfamiliar bed in the equation.
But it couldn’t be helped. Spike had somehow learned Nikki’s name, and it was only a short journey from there to her place of residence. Bernard just hoped that Spike hadn’t learned the name and/or location of Nikki’s Watcher.
If he has, he’ll find me a tougher opponent than most.
Closing the door, Bernard went back out to the living room. He loved being a Watcher, but he wished that the watching involved less waiting.
Be safe, Miss Wood, he thought as he lit another cigarette and poured himself some more tea.
Chap
ter Eleven
New York City
July 10, 1977
1:30 a.m.
About time my luck started changing, Charlie thought as he got the final hole card from the dealer—a young man with a large Afro, wearing a frilled tuxedo. He had given Charlie the nine of clubs, which matched up nicely with the other two hole cards he’d been dealt from the start—an ace and a jack of clubs—and the other two clubs he had in front of him. This gave him a flush, which was much more impressive than the three of a kind the other players probably figured he had, given the way he was betting. Not that it was totally off base for them to think—he actually did have three jacks. The way Charlie saw it, Lee had at least three kings—he couldn’t have had a fourth one, because Clyde had one showing before he folded—and Pete was probably just bluffing.
This flush is guaranteed, he thought as Pete raised the bet by a hundred dollars, which Lee then raised another five hundred. Charlie calmly called; Pete stared at his cards for a while, then took a long drag on his cigarette and stroked the big feather that stuck out of the brim of his hat. Charlie kept his poker face on, but inside he was smiling—Pete only stroked the feather when he was bluffing.
Pete finally raised another five hundred. Lee studied his cards while puffing on his cigar, and then threw in another five hundred to call.
Confident in his ace-high flush, Charlie put in five hundred to also call. He didn’t even hesitate, even though calling this bet would leave him with only fifty in chips. He leaned back and lit another cigarette of his own.
The dealer said, “Gentlemen, flip your cards.”
Smiling broadly, his gold tooth showing, Charlie said, “You got the other king, don’tcha, my man?”
Lee nodded. “Yeah.”
Charlie flipped over the ace, jack, and nine. “Well too bad, sucker, ’cause I got me an ace-high flush.”
Giving Charlie a smile of his own, Lee calmly flipped over his other king—and the pair of fours he had to go with it. A full house, which beat a flush.
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