It seemed to be working, Todd thought. Highsmith’s eyes were wide, his words of comfort fast, jerky, breathless. He was in constant motion, his eyes flicking to the black windows while his tennis racket hand fanned the air.
Freddie Brace joined them. “Umm.” He flicked a thumb over his shoulder, a strange, set expression on his face. “There’s someone at the door for you.”
Highsmith stared at his friend. “For me?” he asked stupidly.
Freddie shrugged. “It’s your house.”
Todd found an attractive middle-aged woman waiting for them at the back door. Highsmith reluctantly let her into the kitchen and swiftly shut and locked the door behind her. She stood by a built-in desk against a wall. She met each of the three men with a dazzling smile and said, “Now isn’t this a fun surprise?”
She nudged a stool with a sandaled foot and sat. “You know, Paul, all this is really more hassle than it’s worth.” The smile never leaving her lavender eyes.
Highsmith put his weight on the work island in the middle of the sprawling kitchen. When his friend extended an arm and a hesitant smile to the woman, Highsmith blocked the handshake with the tennis racket.
“Easy, Fred,” he said softly.
“Honestly,” the woman said, her eyes glittering. “Why would you be such a crank, Paul? I’m only being friendly.”
She peeked over Highsmith’s shoulder. “Hi, I’m Savannah Easton,” she said to Todd. “I got Paul and his lovely family this home. Nice, isn’t it? A steal at the price. Right, Paul?”
“You’re dead,” Highsmith said.
She slipped off the stool with a bemused expression and tapped her foot repeatedly on the floor. “Do I sound like a ghost, Paul?”
“Worse than that.”
The woman laughed. It had the lusty tinkle of someone who enjoyed a cigarette and a drink, a naughty remark and the occasional night out. It wasn’t a vampire’s laugh at all, but Todd wasn’t fooled.
“Stay away,” he murmured, once more drawing her attention.
“I never did get your name,” she said coolly.
He grinned. Couldn’t help it. Just a go-for-broke response that he couldn’t have held back any more than the words that he knew were going to be coming from him. “I’m one of you.” He heard Highsmith suck in his breath in shock and fear and that made it all worth it. “So I know all about you sick fucks. For instance, I know that Purcell’s clan just attacked the Sundown a few minutes ago and killed one of them.”
He heard a gasp from behind him, but didn’t turn to see. He already knew who’d made the sound.
“You must be the lovely wife,” said the vampire, looking beyond him.
When had Joy entered the room? Todd kept his glance straight ahead as his eyes glistened with burning tears. He hadn’t wanted her to find out like this, although he hadn’t come up with a better place and time.
He cleared his throat and brought his mind around again to the thing in the kitchen. “Go tell Drake he’s up against one of his own kind now and I’m twice as pissed as Purcell.”
Her lavender eyes flitted to each of the four people in the room with her. “Oh, sweetie, you didn’t know,” she said to Joy, the trickle of a smile contrasting with the pity in her voice and eyes. Then she shifted eye contact. “I came to deliver a message, Paul.”
Highsmith started and stopped. It seemed to take him some time to find his voice. Finally he got out, “Hurry up. And then leave.”
“You can’t control this situation. Miles is in charge, and he’s always two steps ahead of you, Paul. Don’t try to change what can’t be changed. Get out and get on with your life and don’t look back.” She gave him her warmest smile, then turned her attention once more to Todd. “Ah, the places you’ll go.”
“Get out of here,” he said, ending it in a predatory growl that he hadn’t expected.
“Certainly,” she said, and then eyed Joy one last time. “Obviously the two of you have much to discuss.”
Todd could feel the focus of the room shift to him as soon as Savannah Easton was gone and the door had been relocked. He could hear Joy’s harsh breathing and a silence so complete from the two men it was almost in itself deafening.
He turned to Joy, his arms opening for her, but she stayed where she was.
“I suspected,” she said. “But…”
Todd remembered how he’d spent the day dodging sunlight, and the troubled glances he’d gotten from Mona Dexter and Kathy Lee. He wondered if he’d actually fooled anyone.
Joy crossed the room and hugged him tight to her. “We’ll handle it,” she said. “Together.”
He felt a single tear slip from his eye, follow the contour of his nose and fall into his wife’s hair.
She steered him into the family room where he was joined by Highsmith and Brace. He told them everything. Left nothing out. When he got to the part about his consciousness being able to float away, Highsmith frowned.
“That’s what Savannah meant about Drake always being two steps ahead of us. But if that’s the case, how were we able to take the vampires by surprise this afternoon over the Winking Dog? Why didn’t they know we were coming?”
Todd licked his dry lips. “It wasn’t much different for me,” he said. “I saw my family about to get attacked out on the highway, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about it but watch. I think they’re virtually paralyzed while they sleep. They see—but can’t act. The only reason I came out of it before dawn right now is that I’m still in the…” he shrugged.
“Transitional phase,” Highsmith murmured.
“Yeah. Whatever.”
Highsmith’s face blanched when told of the highway ambush. Todd also described how the Sundown had been attacked again, this time by Purcell’s crowd, and how Tonya Whittock had been killed.
“I couldn’t warn her either,” he said dejectedly.
Then Highsmith told the Dunbars what he and Freddie were up to. He did it by whispering and by scribbling notes that were quickly burned with Todd’s cigarette lighter—just in case they were being eavesdropped upon by the unseen.
It was suicidal, Todd thought of the plan. But the most terrifying thought of all was that what Highsmith proposed was the most sensible plan they had.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“The best time to travel,” said Paul, “is just before dawn.”
He’d used that line for the first time in hushed conversation with Darby, after his night-long meeting with the vampire Drake. Then again to Todd and the others after their visit by Savannah Easton.
The best time to travel is just before dawn. Trying to convince himself, is what it sounded like to his own ears.
“You got the stuff?” Freddie asked. Also not for the first time.
Paul shrugged, but to bring attention to the black backpack riding between his shoulder blades.
“Well then?” Freddie stood, slightly stooped, a knife grip ridiculously sticking out of the front of his pants. The lawyer had fashioned a sort of sheath from a checkered dish towel, apparently so he wouldn’t castrate himself. He seemed impatient to begin their horrible little adventure, but came across as nervous, fidgety.
“Four more minutes,” said Dunbar, glaring at his leather watchband from his position on the staircase. Joy sat beside him, stroking the back of his neck as if her plump hands could draw out the worse-than-fatal disease coursing through his bloodstream.
Dunbar’s face was totally devoid of the terrible slashing injury to his cheek from the day before.
With the Internet out of his life, Paul had gotten reacquainted with newspapers. From yesterday’s local edition he’d found that the sun was due to rise at six fifty-eight today, and figured that the safest time to start out on their risky mission was about ten minutes before dawn. His working theory was that the vampires would be off the streets by then since they couldn’t afford to cut it too sharp. Purcell’s daylighters, on the other hand, wouldn’t be up yet. He hoped.
Thus, their window o
f opportunity opened in about four minutes.
“Question,” Freddie said. He absently rested a hand on the wooden hilt sticking out of his waistband. “Is dawn defined as when the top of the sun pops into view, or does it actually have to be light out?”
Paul rolled his eyes, said, “Let’s do it.” Sounding unbelievably macho. Hell, he almost fooled himself.
He took in the Dunbars, still perched on Paul’s stairs. “We’ll be heading out now,” he said. “You’re welcome to stay here, you know.”
Todd stared at Paul for several seconds as his wife’s fingers drummed the back of his shoulder. “We need to borrow a car.”
“Take the Lexus. The keys are on the counter by the kitchen door.
Todd gave him a small, tired smile. “A Lexus. I’m finally moving up in the world.”
No one even tried to laugh. The silence felt more sad than fearful.
Paul squatted to get on eye level with the couple on the stairs. “If anyone knows a cure,” he said, “it’s Drake.”
Todd waved a hand as if dismissing hope. He’d argued earlier against the plan. “We’ll talk about it later. You sure you don’t need my help?”
“Even two’s too many,” Paul replied. “That’s what I tried telling Freddie, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“Just wait till you get my bill,” said the lawyer.
Paul had a hard time admitting it to himself, but he was thankful that his friend had insisted on going along. As the time drew nearer, more doubts had arisen. Could he actually do what had to be done?
He stood and took in Freddie. His gray windbreaker looked stiff, his jeans too blue and sharply creased, like he’d just bought the outfit to look appropriately attired for hunting vampires in the sticks. Then there was the hand towel-sheathed steak knife sticking out of his pants.
“Okay, Van Helsing,” Freddie said. “Your Jonathan Harker awaits.”
Paul was glad he’d worn a jacket. It was autumn out there, the early morning air crisp and clean. They moved like cockroaches down the street, avoiding the pools of light thrown by street lamps and lit front porches. Paul tightened every time a dog barked and he avoided glancing up at a sky already purple and gray with the first hint of dawn.
What if his theory was wrong? Their window of opportunity one-way glass with Freddie and him on the wrong side of it. His mind kept replaying the gory scene from the apartment over the Winking Dog, the room running red with Jamey Weeks’ blood.
He shuddered, walked faster.
“Hold up,” Freddie wheezed. “I’m a semi-reformed smoker.”
That troubled him, too, the fact that his friend insisted on playing it for laughs like he was in some sort of movie instead of reality life or death. He wasn’t even sure Freddie believed Paul’s version of events. It sounded at times like he was only humoring him. That could get them both in trouble.
Paul waved for complete silence as they hit Middle View. His backpack felt like it was already raising welts on his shoulders, and they still had blocks to go.
Crenshaw was the easternmost of six streets that made up Babylon’s preferred neighborhood. The street they needed—Drake, naturally—was two blocks away. They all ended in cul-de-sacs, only Middle View intersecting all six. Rather than risk discovery by dogs and early risers—or retiring vampires, for that matter—they had to head up Middle View, hang a left and cut back down Drake. Judging by the address, the house they sought should be nearly parallel with Paul’s own.
Opportunity’s window seemed to have remained open so far. The shops and businesses catering to the night trade were as dark and shuttered as the daylight businesses that were still hours from opening. Their footsteps echoing ominously, they scampered for storefront cover whenever they saw a shadow they didn’t like in the pre-dawn light.
Drake was an older street than Crenshaw, its tall century homes sitting behind massive trees on lawns steeped in acorns. Here, too, most of the windows were dark, unlit.
Paul kept tight hold of a torn scrap of paper with the number he’d already memorized: the vampire’s street address. He’d plotted aloud a few complicated tricks for securing the information without use of the Internet. There were ways, he’d told Darby, nodding wisely.
“Have you tried the phone book?” she’d asked.
He’d given her a patient chuckle. “Vampires don’t exactly list themselves, Darb.” But he’d sneaked a peak anyway and found a Miles Drake residing at 532 Drake Avenue.
“That one,” he whispered now, clutching his friend’s arm and pointing out a house with lights burning in first-floor windows.
It stood three stories high, a light-colored clapboard colonial with dark shutters, an attached garage to one side and a porch that wrapped around a corner. The porch invited guests with wicker furniture that wore striped cushions. There were flowers spilling from window boxes and clay pots set on the steps.
Every effort had been made to tame the front yard of its green overgrowth. Beds of petunias and violets and prickly rosebushes had been planted, and wood chips spread where too much shade from the ancient giant oaks had thinned the grass. Pine trees immense with age patrolled the property’s back and side perimeter.
“It’s nice,” Freddie said, as if surprised after all he’d heard.
Despite the gardening touches, the cumulative effect was of wilderness winning the struggle. The two men chose a nest of needles under one of the side yard’s towering pines to watch the sun rise behind them. Paul gingerly extricated the backpack from his tender shoulders and laid it carefully on the soft ground between them.
“What do you think?” Freddie asked, whispering.
Paul knew he was talking about the handful of lit windows they’d both seen before the sun’s orange glare hit them.
“It’s the daughter, I’m pretty sure,” said Paul. “She should be taking off for work soon.”
“How do you know she lives with him?”
Paul had to proceed carefully here. “I don’t, but where else could she live? The phone book lists five Drakes, but no ‘Tabitha’ or ‘T.’ She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring and everything about her screams lifelong spinster. Small town like this, what’s the point in having an unlisted number? And Miles Drake must rely on trusted daylighters to care for him and watch his back. He brought Miss Congeniality along when he called on me. She seems like a virtual servant of the old man, so she’s the logical choice of house partner.”
Or at least it sounded good as it was coming out of his mouth.
Freddie took his time with it. “But if the daughter works conventional hours, she can’t be of much use to him during the day. How do you know he doesn’t have someone else sitting up with him while he sleeps?”
Paul didn’t like the question. He shifted, dug a deeper trench for himself in the loose, rich soil and needles under the tree. He tugged out his cell phone—at least its digital timepiece still worked—and reported the time to be eleven after seven.
“I don’t know everything for a fact,” he finally admitted. “But it seems to me by recent events that their survival skills have dulled after a century of peace and harmony. Not that they’re not still deadly, but I think they’ve missed a trick or two. Drake might continue to live with a daylighter, but more out of habit and an expectation of being served than any real need. I don’t think he thinks he needs round-the-clock protection.”
A squirrel chattered crankily at them from high overhead.
“Everyone around here is like that,” he continued. “They feel too safe, too smug. For instance, I haven’t seen a single home security system. They don’t worry about burglars because in Babylon, they’re the badasses. Or used to be. Who’s gonna mess with them?”
Freddie cleared his throat. “That was going to be my next question. How are we going to break in? You think they’re going to just leave the door open for us?” He paused, then said, “I just realized, I experienced my low point as an attorney when I uttered the sentence, ‘How are we going to br
eak in?’”
Paul laughed quietly with him, then said, “It might not be easy. We might have to break a window in back or something.”
Freddie gave him a nervous look. “So you haven’t given that part much thought.” He got no response. After a moment, he said, “Guess we’ll know soon enough if there’s someone with him. And how soundly vampires sleep. Soon as we break the window glass.”
“Don’t worry. They’re groggy during daylight hours. I don’t think there’ll be anyone else there, and I doubt that Drake will do more than toss and turn.”
Paul wondered if he would have made an investment for a client with as little solid research as he’d put into his current venture. Then he had to admit to himself that he’d done just that. Many times.
Freddie chuckled. “You ever think you’d be doing something like this?”
It was a welcome interruption. “What do you think?”
That conversational thread had nowhere to go, so they lay there in silence and their own thoughts. Paul couldn’t shake the feeling that Miles Drake might be watching them right now. Or at least that his…spirit…for lack of a better word, hovered invisibly overhead.
Forget it, he told himself. That would either be a factor in what they were going to do, or it wouldn’t.
But what he couldn’t forget was what Todd Dunbar had told him earlier about “seeing” Tonya Whittock being slaughtered by Purcell’s crew. Paul had instinctively accepted the morbid news, maybe because he needed to believe the rest of Todd’s vision—that Darby and Connie had escaped the daylighters. That his wife and son and daughter were alive and safe.
But he couldn’t shake his guilt about Tonya. He hadn’t even thought about including her in the caravan leaving Babylon. He could defend himself as having used cold, rational sense. They couldn’t save everyone without a convoy drawing the attention of even the town’s most witless cop, but that didn’t make him feel any better now. Every decision he’d made had repercussions, and he seemed not to have properly thought through the ramifications of any of his actions.
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