"Yeah." A blink, and an expression like he had lost everything he'd ever had in the world. His shoulders hunched. "You know I'd never hurt you. Don't you?" he said quietly.
Swallowing hard, I nodded. I couldn't make myself speak. Gary hadn't done this thing on his own. I had helped him.
"I," he faltered, "I didn't want you to know about that. You weren't supposed to. You shouldn't have been there. I made a mess of it." He looked out of the window, his brow furrowed. After a long, long moment, he said, "I get it, if you don't want to spend time with me anymore."
Another swallow against the sour taste at the back of my throat. I did not for a moment think that Gary would ever harm me. This thing with Alberto had not been a cold-blooded killing. It was nothing like Magdalene's casual euthanasing of Thomas, and it was not Angela Priestley's murders of revenge.
The shock was easy to understand. Talking with Gary beforehand, carrying out Alberto's wishes had offered an awful logic, to make sure he didn't do worse things. The fact of the killing was much more raw and terrible.
Unravelling my fear was a little harder. It wasn't Gary I was afraid of. So what made me cringe inside?
I'm afraid of the way death comes so easily even to people who are not supposed to die.
Death had always clung to my life like chewing gum to hair. This was the first time I had ever actively participated in it.
I don't want killing things to come so easily to me.
And that was the root of my fear, and my shame. I had done this thing, thinking it would be, well, not easy but that it wouldn't matter in the way that the deaths of people I loved had mattered. Alberto had threatened murder to get his way, and helping him die had seemed a simple option. He was already dead, after all - surely killing the dead was just finishing the job, unpleasant and ugly but ultimately the natural order and… and…
The urge to crawl out of my own skin and leave it behind with the things I'd done, seen, heard, smelled today, was abrupt and overwhelming. I wanted to rip out my soul, if I had one, and scour it with a wire brush until no trace was left of my choice to be part of even a willing death.
It should have happened as Gary had planned it. I'd have had a lovely day wandering around Ballarat's art galleries and bookshops. Met Gary later and wondered why he was even more socially awkward than usual, and he wouldn't have told me. He'd have come home with me on the train and we'd have arranged to see a film together on Sunday.
Belatedly, I stifled that thought process too. I haven't played 'I wish things were different' since Belinda died and everything went to hell. My new approach, I reminded myself, was to make things different using the life I had to hand.
There was no escaping what I had done. All I could do was choose differently for the future. Death mattered, regardless of whose death it was, and not my choice to make, ever ever ever.
Poor Gary stared forlornly out the window, maybe thinking that I had decided to never speak to him again. It was more than that, though. All day he had been on edge and unhappy.
This killing had come no more easily to him than it had to me, even if he had done it more than once before. Gary had not enjoyed this task or been indifferent to it. I didn't want to be alone afterwards, he'd said. Perhaps he'd seen his own mortality in Alberto. Maybe he'd seen it when he'd had to kill Gunther. Maybe killing just made him feel sick inside, no matter how compassionate or logical the reasons for it. It had to be an intense feeling, for it to penetrate the habitually dulled emotions of the undead.
"Gary."
He glanced warily at me.
"We're still friends. You don't get out of it that easily." The smile I raised was wan but it brought a hopeful echo in his features. Don't cry, Wilson. It won't help.
"Are you sure?"
"I'm absolutely certain. And I think…" I didn't want him to feel sick inside like this. I wanted him to remember he had a choice, too. "You don't have to do this again, even if they ask."
Gary owl-blinked solemnly. "I never wanted to, but the alternatives are always worse."
"They found ways before you came along, Gary."
"They could hurt people. They could find people like Thomas to turn." He blinked. "Or people like me."
But doing this is hurting you. And vampires were not very good at thinking of new approaches. Perhaps there was another solution. "Maybe you and I could think up something new. Like a kit, or something." A euthanasia kit for vampires. A way of being humane to those who wanted to die.
"A kit." He blinked again. "That sounds doable." Gary's relief was palpable. "That could work."
I tried the smile again. It came out wonky. Instead, I leaned forward to kiss Gary's cheek before sitting back in my seat.
"You're the worst best friend I've ever had, Gary Hooper." I tried for a light note in the desperate hope it would keep me from bursting into tears. I didn't want to have to explain them.
He gave me a funny look, like I'd said something comforting. "Sorry," was all he said.
"Silly," I chided him gently, "I'm teasing."
"You're probably right though."
"No, I've had much worse friends. Charlotte Kovic stole my date at the Year 10 formal. Before the first dance, even."
"Oh. Well. I promise never to steal your date," he vowed with a nonplussed expression. Then he grinned. "If I'd known you, I'd have gone as your date. I wouldn't let anyone steal me. Although," he added thoughtfully, "I can't dance at all."
"Not at all?"
"The Pride of Erin and maybe a waltz, at a pinch. My mum taught me for the high school dance. The one partner I had on the night wanted to do the twist and I knocked her over. She wasn't happy."
"I can't dance either. We could have been wallflowers together."
"Now that I can do." He snuck a grin at me, as though not sure of my response "I have the shirts for it. Bright, you know. Like a flower bed," he explained further, to be clear.
That made me laugh out loud. Despite everything that had happened this morning, we were going to be okay, Gary and me. Gary's grin widened, displaying the merest hint of fang.
Provided those unknown slayers don't get him.
Gee, thank you brain, for giving me 10 whole seconds of clear space before stuffing another anxiety-inducing thought into the cavity.
Gary relaxed into his seat. He flexed his repaired fingers then tucked his hand hard against his thigh.
"Thank you," he said after a moment, "for, um, I don't know; for putting me out. When I was on fire."
"You are most exceedingly welcome," I said. I filed the slayers issue away for later, though thinking of them and the botched job they'd made of Thomas made me consider this morning's horrors in a slightly different light. "I think Alberto would be glad it was as quick as you could make it," I said quietly.
"That was why he asked for me, you know," replied Gary gloomily. "I don't play. Not like Magdalene does."
"Maybe we should talk about something else for a while."
"Like what?"
"The weather. The last book you read. Anything."
Another of those long, awkward pauses that punctuate our conversations. Then Gary said: "What do you get when you cross a vampire with a blackmailer?"
"What?"
"Someone who really will bleed you dry."
"What?"
"Or this one. Knock knock."
I stared.
"Say 'who's there'."
"Who's there?" I echoed, bemused.
"Ghoul."
"Ghoul who?"
"Ghoul eee-ven-ing," he said, drawling it out like a cartoon vampire, "I've come to suuuck your blooood."
"What are you doing?"
"Distracting you. I've started collecting jokes, to go with the rest of the collection."
"Run out of movies and books on the subject, have you?"
"Hardly. I just wanted to be thorough."
"Right." As distractions went it was, indeed, distracting. I fished in my memory for bad playground humour. "Have you
got this one? 'Mummy, Mummy, the kids at school say I'm a vampire.' 'Ignore them, son, and drink your dinner before it clots.'"
"That's terrible."
"And ghoul eee-ven-ing isn't?"
"It's how I tell 'em," he deadpanned, making me laugh again.
"How are you cataloguing these ones?" I asked, still laughing. We hadn't even finished cataloguing the movies, music and books he'd amassed over the last 40 years.
"Mainly by topic." He counted them off. "Bats. Blood. Capes. Coffins. Fangs. Ghouls. Movies. Religion." He nodded at me. "Yours will go under 'blood'. Can you write it down for me?"
"When I get home," I assured him.
The rest of the long train journey was spent in telling each other jokes, not all of them paranormal, but all relentlessly dreadful. It almost felt like business as usual when we reached Southern Cross Station and Gary announced he had to make his report to Mundy.
"You won't have any trouble getting to him?" I had vague fears, I suppose, of rabid slayers lurking at tram stops.
"It's just over the road," Gary assured me. In response to my puzzled expression, he explained. With Mundy's place trashed and the Gold Bug a smoking ruin, the default meeting place was - as it had apparently been for the last decade - the abandoned pub directly across from the station.
The pub was now nothing more than a wall held up by touring band posters, behind which I'd always assumed was an overgrown beer garden and a decaying bar. That it was now the emergency rendezvous point for homeless vampires didn't surprise me in the least. I assumed pretty much any building that had been vacant for longer than six months was a potential habitat for them.
"Be careful crossing the road, then."
His turn for the quizzical look, and then: "Do you want to come with me?"
"I'm pretty sure Mundy and I have had just about enough of each other for the time being," I begged off. Besides, I had some ideas I needed to pursue. "Is there somewhere else you can stay tonight instead of going home?"
"Sure," he said, shiftily, and I knew he was lying. Unlike the members of my own family, he was a terrible liar.
"You can stay at my place if you like. Kate's not due back until tomorrow. We can think of another plan then."
"Really, Lissa, I do have somewhere to go."
"Maybe. Will you stop in at least? I have some things to do, but I'll be home after six." That gave me a good five or so hours.
"Kate's definitely not there?"
"Not until Sunday night, and she has Oscar with her so you're safe from him too."
"If you're sure."
"I am. See you then." I kissed him au revoir on the cheek and then he was gone. Gary moved quickly when he wanted to.
Switching platforms from the country to the city services, I took a train around the loop to Flinders Street Station and from there crossed Princes Bridge.
Princes Bridge is one of my favourite bits of road in the city. Besides the elegance of its nineteenth century design, its antique lamps bear the city motto Vires acquirit eundo - 'we gather strength as we go'. The sentiment gives me hope.
The Yarra River swirled its muddy way under the bridge and on to the sea. I followed the steps by the Concert Hall down to its banks, and made my way behind the buildings to my apartment block.
It felt calming, centring, to be back in the heart of my city, part of its ordinary, daylight life again.
Home. There was no place like it, and no need to click my heels to get there. The flat was quiet without Kate or Oscar, but perhaps that was for the best. I dumped my bag on the sofa, peeled my scorched shirt off and bundled it with a few other things into the washing machine in our little bathroom. I showered in near-to-scalding water and too much soap before emerging and switching the machine onto the long cycle.
While the suds washed away the physical traces of the morning's bad business, I stood drying myself in front of our memory table, looking at the photos and mementos and thinking about everyone Kate and I had lost. Nanna. Belinda. Paul. Daniel. Kate had added a family photo from the early days, before Belinda had fallen ill. I hadn't been comfortable with that at first, until it came to me one day that we'd lost our parents too, a long time ago.
I thought about everyone who had died in the last 24 hours. Who were these people who had killed Jack and maimed Mundy and Thomas? I worried who they would target next, and whether Gary was really safe, and why I imagined I could protect him, when two grown vampires had not been able to protect themselves.
I don't want to think about death anymore.
Into the satchel went my laptop and a large notepad. Then down I went to Swanston Street and onto a tram past the cathedral, town hall and the Asian restaurants to the State Library.
On the steps, I paused to soak up a little more warmth from the day. The sun still shone and that gave me reason enough to keep going. Sunlight and Kate and Oscar and books and my job and my friends and Gary and the conviction that when my time came I wanted not to have wasted a minute of the days I'd had.
Then into the hallowed halls of that magnificent library I went, to find out about a hypothetical order of vampire slayers.
The State Library lacked most of the texts I believed I needed, but it was a good place to work. I started with my laptop, hooking into the library's wireless internet access and hunting through the sites I had already researched and bookmarked for Gary's records. Most could be dismissed, focused as they were on fictional vampires and their relative hotness. I had put all of those under a folder labelled 'Farce'.
Of greater interest were the academic sites devoted to exploring folklore and historical texts where vampirism was referenced. The contemporary commentary treated it all like myth, but I was getting better at intuiting which texts suggested the author had actually encountered the undead.
In the end, I could only find a dozen relevant essays, and these referred mainly to the same six sources: two were from early 18th century America, one was German, two Italian and one Hungarian. The web translator I used wasn't terribly helpful but provided sufficient verbs, nouns and adjectives to get the broadest possible gist.
I made notes. Periodically I searched the library catalogue to see if any salient texts were held in the Rare Books collection or in another Australian library, with no joy. I shot some email queries off to the academics concerned, inventing a research topic about "European Vampire Folklore, the Australian Context and the Immigrant Experience".
The references were limited and sometimes downright obscure. The earliest American one dated from 1720, a peculiar church record that, the academic noted, spoke of 'God's wrath and vengeance through His instrument Abraham, the son sacrificed by the father for this holy task'. A lot of paragraphs were devoted to the strange way the Abraham/Isaac story was reversed in this reference.
At the end of several hours, all I had were rumours and conjecture. I hoped the answers to my emails might be more useful.
At six, I found Gary waiting patiently at the security entrance of my building.
"How'd it go?" I asked as we waited for the lift. "Has anyone else been attacked since we left?"
"Not so far." Not exactly heartening, but it could certainly have been worse.
The lift came and we headed up to the apartment. "I've been doing some research," I told him. "I don't have much yet. I've got some ideas, though. Want to go over them?"
"Yeah. I've got a few hours till the last train."
"My offer stands, by the way."
"Thanks. I'll be fine."
I could argue that with him later. I waited while he crossed the threshold.
Gary read my notes while I made dinner, and we entertained ourselves over the meal with my descriptions of the flavours that went with all the scents of Spanish chorizo and potato in spicy capsicum and tomato sauce. His wistful expression at my luscious adjectives was sad. He was a man who had, in his time, enjoyed his tucker. Offering him anything to eat now would be pointless and maybe a bit cruel. His body couldn't do anything with
it except chuck it back up, and that was inelegant, at best.
"I might have some more stuff at my place," Gary said after dinner, leafing through my notepad, "I've picked up some bits and pieces."
"Books?" I pricked up my librarian ears at the prospect of leather-bound books with parchment pages and the smell of dusty old private collections clinging to the vellum.
"Some letters and stuff. They were Gunther's. Um…" Gary put my notepad on the coffee table and tapped the cover thoughtfully with his fingers. "And some other people's. There's not much. It's hard to read."
The idea of genuine texts almost made me salivate. "I know some archivists who could probably make something of it."
"I've read what I could. I don't think there's much there."
"Worth a look though."
"Sure."
The source of his reluctance was unclear to me, especially since he'd been the one to raise the subject in the first place. Before I could ask he made for the door.
"Anyway," he said, "I should get that train."
I wouldn't let him go without a hug. He hesitated, then gave me a gentle squeeze back. He always seemed afraid to hold me too tight. Either he was so unused to hugs he didn't really know what to do with them or he was genuinely concerned that he could break my ribs if he got too enthusiastic.
"Be careful," I told him, "Call me when you get home."
"I don't have a phone."
"I put Skype on your computer, remember?"
"Aaahhh." By which I figured he'd misplaced the instruction sheet I'd printed out for him.
"Email me, then, as soon as you're in."
"You sound like my mother," he said, but he was grinning, more relaxed.
"Yeah. Well. So what?" All flummoxed by the comparison.
"So nothing. I'll email."
"You better." I reached out and ruffled his hair, because the way he pulled faces and tried to straighten his fringe afterwards was funny.
To look at us, you'd never think we had killed someone that morning.
CHAPTER 10
The email confirming his unmolested arrival came in a little before midnight. It was constructed in Gary's usual technology-challenged fashion, with manually inserted returns in odd places. On the plus side, the text was refreshingly grammatically correct, with perfect punctuation. It was like getting a letter from Nanna.
Walking Shadows Page 9
