Todd’s shoulder throbbed in dull waves. He wanted to stroke the wound, but that would bring attention to it, so he forced his hand to stay at his side. The woman’s words had sunk in slowly, and not all the way. “So who are the bad guys? Drake’s people or Purcell’s?”
“They’re vampires, for chrissake.” She rapped her knee with a small fist. “You can’t trust any of them. Purcell wants to hunt you folks down for sport and Drake’s only opposed because it might draw attention to his beloved Babylon. You want my best guess about what happened tonight?”
Todd could feel D.B. nodding.
Mona lit a cigarette found in a robe pocket and leaned back. “I’d say Drake figured the sensible thing would be to wipe out everyone before Purcell pulls another stranger off the highway. Destroy any chance of you people spreading whatever you might have seen or heard. Bury the bodies where they’ll never be found, and maybe in the process put a scare into all the obstinate young vampires.”
She balanced her cigarette on the rim of her iced tea glass, stood and began to move excitedly about the small room. “It’s cold logic from Drake’s point of view. Purcell’s faction is getting too strong for direct confrontation, so Drake proves he’s still got it by ripping into a bunch of clueless daylighters. Low risk, high probability of success.”
“Or so he thought,” D.B. said, a grin nearly breaking through.
“They’re getting old,” said Mona.
“He got none of us and we took out one of his best lieutenants.”
Lieutenants, for chrissake. To Todd, they sounded like kids playing war games. He figured it was pretty easy sitting on your ass discussing vampire politics and military strategy when you didn’t have monster spittle coursing through your bloodstream.
“So why’d you help us tonight?” he asked the woman.
She thought about it for a very long time. “I’ve hated the bastards ever since they killed Frank, but I kept it to myself. That’s why I didn’t come out of the office the time that cop who works for them—”
“Marty McConlon,” Todd and D.B. said together.
She nodded. “Him. He’s the main one. Anyway, one day couple months ago McConlon asks me for a key to Carl Haggerty’s room when Carl was bunking with the other black guy at the time. Doyle something. Or something Doyle. I gave it to him—what else could I do? Never said a word. Let everyone think the poor guy had taken off when I knew different.” She took a tiny sip of tea. It must have mostly been ice water by then. “I was paralyzed, like everyone else. A lot of us have lost confidence in Drake’s ability to protect us, but we’ve not tried saving ourselves. When I revved up that chainsaw, though…”
She stared dreamily into the distance as she groped for words she couldn’t seem to find. Then she shook her head sharply, ending the search.
The silence gave Todd too much time to think. His numb mind was drifting into dark places he didn’t want to go.
Mona said something else, rescuing him from those crevices. Todd was suddenly aware that he was alone with the woman. He heard D.B. noisily splashing urine wherever the bathroom was located.
“What?” he asked blankly.
“I asked if you told your wife about it. At least she should know, don’t you think?”
“She knows about the rats,” he answered too quickly.
“I’m not talking about that.” She stared at him, seemed to wait him out.
He stared sullenly back until she dropped her gaze.
“Alright,” she said. She seemed on the verge of saying more, but D.B. returned.
“Todd, you and me better make sure no one’s fallen asleep and that the perimeter’s still secure.”
His friend was still playing war games, but for once Todd was glad to do as directed.
Outside, he smelled fresh cut grass again, and tobacco smoke and the brackish swimming pool water. He watched late-season fireflies, the most desperate of bachelors, send out weak pick-up signals, and saw cigarette embers in the clean night air. He heard the comforting murmur of human voices and thought of his wife and little girls locked away, safe from the vampiric night.
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, he told himself, an exuberant thought that seemed to lead nowhere.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Darby and Paul shared whispers till dawn, Tuck fast asleep on the mattress they’d dragged into their bedroom.
We can’t go through with it, she kept insisting. Not after hearing what happened to the previous owners of their home.
It’s exactly because of the McConlons that we have to stay with it, he’d replied. The slaughter had proved what vicious, merciless—and relentless—creatures they were up against. Drake and his people weren’t going to forgive and forget, no matter what promises the Highsmiths were told.
But that was night talk. At daybreak, with the sun peeking in the window spaces that hadn’t been covered with bedsheets during the night, things looked different. Not better, but maybe more manageable.
Paul kissed his wide-awake son ferociously and told Darby to lock the door behind him. She seemed better in the first light of day. Like him, more resolved. She hadn’t wanted him to leave, but understood his need to see the Sundowners before they left for work.
“Be careful,” she told him.
The front lawn winked with dew. The orange morning light bathed the town in a pattern of light and shadows that resembled dusk, and yet unmistakably reflected daybreak. The town looked new and innocent in first light, but Paul knew how deceptive appearances could be in Babylon.
He hoped to find a pot of strong coffee brewing at the Sundown Motel.
At first glance, the place looked as still and serene as the early hour suggested. But as the silver Lexus padded up the long drive, Paul spotted Tonya Whittock leaning against a second floor railing and following his progress with binoculars. He watched as she made an arm signal. Seconds later, the big old guy, Denver, tilted a scoped rifle at him in an expressionless salute from his station under the stairs to the second floor. And as the Lexus drew to a stop under the carport in front of the office, the gaunt Sundowner with the ponytail and bad teeth sidled up to the car from nowhere and indicated with the anachronistic cranking motion of one hand that Paul should roll down his window. Since the man’s other hand rested a heavily taped baseball bat on his bony shoulder, Paul was quick to power it down.
“Hi. Where ya going?” The man leaned in and flashed a broken-toothed grin.
Paul said, “Where’s D.B. and Todd?”
“We had us some excitement here last night,” he said cheerfully.
“Thanks, Pete. Good job.”
Caught by surprise, the man with the ball bat jumped at the voice. Not exactly a natural as a perimeter guard, Paul thought.
It was D.B. coming around from behind his bat-wielding sentinel. He said, “Paul, why don’t you leave your car here and come visit us in the office?”
He was greeted by a blast of overly cool air. The pastel room was small, but comfortable even with the presence of four people even before he and D.B. added to the congestion. Three sat at a table in a dining alcove, as if waiting for him. The plump but pretty blond woman, Joy Dunbar, gave him a tight smile and murmured greeting. Her husband scowled, as usual.
“Everyone remember Paul?” D.B. called out.
More murmurs. Mugs of coffee and bran muffins sat in front of them, mostly untouched. The black guy with the furrowed forehead glared at the food, but it was obvious that his thoughts were elsewhere. It did not look like a party in progress.
A petite woman in her late thirties was the only unfamiliar face. Throatily, she said, “I’ll get you some coffee.” Her attractive, heart-shaped face framed a pair of dark eyes and perfect lips. The few careless strands of gray added striking emphasis to her styled hair.
Paul took the metal folding chair that D.B. found and squeezed into a corner between Joy and the guy glaring at the muffins.
“Carl Haggerty,” the black guy said gruffly, by
way of introduction.
“Mona Dexter. I’m your hostess,” the attractive woman supplied. Already returning from the adjoining kitchen, she set a mug in front of Paul. Despite her soothing tones, her hand shook enough to set off a ripple wave of coffee spill. “Shit. Sorry.” She hustled back to the kitchen and wiped up the spill with a paper towel. “There’s cream and sugar on the table.”
Dexter, Paul thought. He’d heard the name.
“We’re all a little wired after last night,” D.B. explained.
“The bastards attacked us,” Carl said. “Caught us by surprise but didn’t do no major damage ‘cept rat bites. We got one of ‘em though. Got lots of them, actually, but only one stayed dead. Mona taught us how. Word of advice: don’t piss off that lady.”
It made little sense that way, but Paul got them to backtrack and tell a story he was able to piece together from the morsels of it thrown his way by everyone at the table.
“Purcell,” he said, nodding, when everything seemed to be out. “I learned all about him last night.”
The motel owner shook her head. “Whatever you learned was off-track. It was Drake’s people coming at us.”
“That’s impossible,” Paul said.
Her face hardened at the challenge. “I saw the body before I decapitated him. It was James Chaplin, one of Drake’s oldest friends. Trust me, it was old people out there.”
As heads nodded in vigorous agreement, Paul’s mind reeled, his thoughts going ninety miles an hour and getting nowhere. “But I was with Drake last night.”
All eyes fastened on him.
“Miles Drake and his daughter Tabitha came to my house. We talked through the night and he told me everything.”
If he’d proven he could fly, he couldn’t have startled them more. All around the table he saw open mouths and troubled eyes.
“You were with him,” Mona repeated. “And he told you everything.”
Paul gave them the quick version. Even heavily edited for time, it took nearly a half hour.
“Jesus Christ,” said D.B. when it was finished.
Paul took his first bite of muffin. It had long ago cooled, so the pat of butter he placed on it just stared at him. His coffee had achieved room temperature, making it equally unpalatable.
Unexpectedly, someone laughed. A low, humorless sound.
Todd Dunbar had remained silent from the moment Paul had joined them. He looked terrible, his face pale, eyes bloodshot. His hair was dull and tangled, whiskers bluish on his bloodless cheeks. He sat hunched as if in pain or chilled.
Without looking up, he said, “So you’re sitting there bonding with the master vampire while they’re climbing all over our asses.” He chuckled. “Our hero.”
“I can’t believe Drake would do that,” Paul sputtered. “He was trying to keep the peace. Maybe he didn’t know what the others were up to.”
The firecrackers, he thought, but shoved it aside.
“He better have known or we’re in even worse trouble than we think we are,” Mona said. “Those old guys, Chaplin and the others, are Drake’s most loyal followers. If even they’ve abandoned him, there goes the balance of power that’s the only thing keeping us alive right now.”
“Sounds like it’s already gone if both sides now want us dead,” said D.B.
Paul studied his unfinished muffin. He could feel the others waiting for something from him.
“Next time you want to be a bigshot, why don’t you make sure you’re talking to the right guy,” Dunbar said, still glaring at the table.
“Hey, he just tried to help,” said D.B.
Paul pushed his cold coffee out of the way. “I don’t know what happened last night,” he admitted, “but I still think it’s important we stick with Drake. At least he’s more rational than Purcell.” He looked directly at Dunbar. “Or are you forgetting what happened behind the post office?”
“Drake’s a vampire,” reminded D.B. “That means there are definite trust issues involved.”
“We can’t trust a goddamn one of them,” said Mona.
Paul sat in stunned silence, forced to confront an ugly truth. Drake had ordered the annihilation of the Sundown community even while chatting in the Highsmith home. He’d done it to eliminate the possibility of the town’s secrets getting out, and would unhesitatingly do the same to Paul’s own family if he ever felt the need and found the opportunity.
After a stunned, helpless moment, Joy Dunbar leaned in to Paul and said, “The vampire’s daughter. You said her name’s Tabitha. Right?”
Paul nodded absently, still lost in thought.
She tore off a bit of muffin with her fingers and brought it delicately to her mouth. “There’s a Tabitha at the Complex, where I suppose I work now. Doesn’t seem like a real common name.”
She had Paul’s full attention now. “Tell me what she looks like.”
“I only caught a glimpse. Someone called her name while I was waiting to be interviewed. Tall and kind of plain. A little plump. Probably late forties, not too personable. It’s her, isn’t it? I can tell by your face.”
Paul thought a moment. “What time does she get in to work in the morning?”
“I wouldn’t know that. I just saw her for the first time. It was after five last Friday evening.”
“It’s Tabitha Drake,” Mona said, nodding. “She works in the Water Department, which shows how brazen Purcell’s people have gotten. They’re filling bogus jobs right under the nose of Drake’s own daughter.”
So what time do you think she gets in?” Paul pressed.
Mona shrugged. “The Complex opens to the public at nine. So then or before. Why?”
Paul didn’t know why it was important, but he filed it away.
“Your life should get real interesting now that Drake has spilled his guts,” Dunbar said. Looking up briefly, his eyes seemed to twinkle with something approaching amusement. “At the motel here, we only had an inkling that something ain’t right and look what he did to us. What do you think the odds are he’s gonna let you just mosey on out?”
Paul stood so fast that his chair folded up behind him. He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and stared at the ‘No signal’ message.
“The town didn’t get electricity until the rest of the country had it and it would have been suspicious to go without it any longer,” Mona said. “Cable TV keeps getting promised. So when you think we’ll have our first cell phone tower? Forget about the Internet.”
Paul traced a phone cord on the floor back to the top of a bookcase. He reached it in three strides and almost immediately resorted to the stereotypical reaction in old movies, repeatedly clicking the phone button while shouting “Hello?” into the mouthpiece.
He came slowly back to the table, unfolded his collapsed chair and sat. “How long have the lines been down?” he asked, dead calm.
“They cut them during the night,” Joy replied.
“The Santana family and good old Dukey and a few others left us at dawn. We heard gunshots minutes later,” said Dunbar. “A lot of them. So you see, it just keeps getting better.”
Paul closed his eyes and tried to make himself ignore the black spots of panic blossoming behind his lids. It didn’t work. “Gotta get to Darby,” he said as he jumped up, again knocking over his chair.
A pair of hands grabbed him and braced him to a standstill.
Wheeling, he snarled, “What the hell—?”
D.B. immediately unhanded him but held up a single finger that stopped Paul in midsentence. “Your wife’s okay. You don’t have to worry about her.”
“She’s all alone with our son. I never should have left them.”
“The vampires are sleeping,” D.B. said.
“Yeah? What about the daylighters who work with them?”
“Daylighters,” Todd snorted. “This guy speaks the language, don’t he.”
“They won’t do anything on their own,” Mona said. “If Drake wanted you dead, he’d have done it last night
when he had his followers attack us.”
“And when he was hobnobbing with you,” Dunbar had to add.
Paul felt his muscles slacken slightly. “What about those under Purcell’s control?”
Mona shook her head. “I doubt that he knows what Drake told you, so there’s no great urgency on his part. His attention’s on us right now.”
“So who cut the phone lines?” Carl asked.
They all stared at Mona Dexter, waiting. When she spoke, it was into her coffee cup. “The police, maybe. Or the old people just before they attacked.” She looked up suddenly and let her eyes flit from face to face. “You can’t trust any of them. That’s what I’ve been telling you. The only thing we even marginally have going for us is that some of Purcell’s followers still fear Drake. At least for now. They won’t go out of their way to antagonize him until they get stronger.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Carl. “We’re caught in the middle of a fucking vampire war.”
Now there was a comforting thought. But before Paul could fully explore the ramifications, the door from the office blew open and the bat-wielding sentry with the bad teeth staggered in, gasping for breath.
“What’s up, Pete?” D.B. asked crisply.
“Better come out. We got trouble.”
Chapter Forty
“You folks okay? We got reports of gunfire in the middle of the night. Someone said it sounded like a war out here. Hate to think anyone got hurt.”
Marty McConlon’s easy grin didn’t match his words of concern. Neither did his response time. He leaned on the driver’s door of the cruiser that had pulled up under the canopy in front of the office, just behind the Lexus. Stepping out of the passenger seat was the young cop, Barry, who’d intercepted Paul at the Municipal Complex days before. He stared at the Lexus, his face full of thought, but said nothing.
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