by Lynne Murray
It broke the spell enough for me to yell to Ned, “Grab Lucy’s other hand.”
When Ned and I each took an arm, we could drag Lucy to her feet. The gray, floating shapes flowed off her and trailed along around her. We began to run, stumbling, half-carrying, half dragging Lucy between us. The tide of gray creatures parted to let us through and closed ranks behind us. I didn’t have to look back to know they followed us.
Chapter 43
Hal Roy’s spoken notes
silver flash drive/voice recorder
August 13th continued
The things couldn’t seem to get in the car with us.
I made a suicidal, spectacularly illegal U-turn trashing a couple of the moveable orange cones that functioned as the Bridge’s center divider and landing in the southbound lane with a squeal of tires. Miraculously we didn’t get broadsided by the midnight Bridge traffic, most of it going faster than forty-five miles per hour. I expected to hear police sirens, but we seemed to be invisible except to the army of floating gray monsters.
They trailed us to the house. Again something stopped them at the door, but they clustered around the windows. I shut all the curtains.
Mina was still mad at me, so it was no problem to let Lucy sleep in my bed.
Ned slept on the sofa till dawn, then left muttering something about deadlines. Later he called to say that by daylight the creatures were nowhere to be seen outside my house. He was gone all day too, which was good, because I got a call to go to Washington. Another contract was opening up.
There wasn’t much time. If Sir John didn’t have a better idea, I would have to take it. But if he refused to bring us over, maybe Lucy could. She certainly seemed able to get the Others’ attention.
Lucy slept all day. Ned came just before sunset and we stood looking at Lucy, sprawled on my bed naked. I cleaned and bandaged the cut on her knee. For all those scary teeth, they hadn’t drunk her blood, but she had strange marks all over that leg and on every patch of skin that hadn’t been covered—which was a lot considering how short she wore her skirts and how low her necklines.
“You’ve been sitting looking at her all day.”
“Not all day. But from time to time.”
“You are such a degenerate. I am so glad you didn’t marry my sister, Nell.”
“She wouldn’t have been open to the vampire life. I never told her. I did tell Mina, and now she’s mad at me. Anyway, the marks are getting fainter.”
We both leaned forward to examine the worst of the bruises that had blossomed on Lucy’s knee, all around where she had scraped it. It was a weird one—gray with overlapping circles of smaller circles.
“It’s like a chrysanthemum pattern.” Ned leaned close to look.
“I’ll leave the flower concepts to you, artist boy. It looks to me like a sucker pattern. Like a bunch of suction cup marks.”
“Yeah, I can see that too. But when those creatures were swarming all over her they didn’t bite her and drink her blood like the other vampire did.”
“Mr. Morford.”
“Is that his name? I never knew it. That was one of Sir John’s rules.”
“He’s my aunt’s lawyer.”
“No wonder Sir John didn’t want you to meet him.”
“Morford’s gay, you know. Did he seduce you?”
“He only drank my blood, no more than that.”
“And was it better than sex.”
Ned cleared his throat. “Yeah.”
“Well, I have to believe you, because Jack is blocking me from that.” I realized I was grinding my teeth when I said it.
Ned sighed. “Has Lucy said anything?”
“No. She never quite woke up. The wound was pretty clean already. Her knee healed so quickly. I was worried about some kind of venom in the blood.”
“I thought that was the point. Vampire venom. Live forever, all that shit.”
“Yeah, but I was thinking of Sir John or some other vampire in his group.” I told him what Morford had said me.
“And you didn’t mention this before you took us to the Bridge like fools?”
“I thought Morford was trying to scare me away from the other vampires. I just have to find a way in.”
“Those things on the Bridge last night won’t help.”
“No. I don’t know what the hell they are.” We both stared at Lucy for a minute.
“So they didn’t seem to be taking much blood, she’s not waking up, and they left those marks on other, exposed parts of her body. Do you think we should take her to a doctor?” Ned’s voice was anxious.
“Did you notice that none of the cars that drove past us seemed to even see those creatures?” I asked. “How can we explain what made the marks on her?”
“Maybe they can treat her even if we don’t know what made the marks. We have to do something.” Ned said with unusual tenacity. Usually he just went along with what I said.
“Look, Ned, I get that you care about her, but I don’t think Lucy would want us to look for medical care till we know what’s happening. She does have all those vampire bites.
“How do you know what Lucy would want?”
“All right, you perverts, just stop talking about me like I’m not here.”
Ned and I both jumped. Lucy had opened her eyes. In the dim light of dusk they glowed faintly red. Her voice was husky with a buzzing kind of quality, as if she was on the edge of laryngitis. “I have had dreams that you would not believe.”
“Tell us, Lucy.” I sat on the edge of the bed, and after a moment, Ned came and sat on the foot of the bed.
“I was scared when they were all piling on top of me, but once they started feeding on me, it was—well, it was terrifying and then it was glorious.”
“Better than the vampire bloodletting?” Ned asked hoarsely.
Lucy turned her face to him. “Way better,” she whispered. I could feel a strange throbbing between them, as if the vampire had linked them so intimately even I could feel it.
“So it was different from when Morford took your blood?” I asked, as much jealous as curious.
She stared at me. “Who’s Morford?”
“Hal says that’s the tall, skinny vampire’s name,” Ned told her.
“You guys met him when he drank your blood, but he never told you his name?”
Lucy put her hand on my arm. Her hand was very cold and it trembled a little. “Sir John said we couldn’t tell anyone, and he hardly even talked to us when he did it—it was really sexy, though. We never knew his name or how to reach him, and we had to keep quiet, or he wouldn’t keep taking our blood.”
Something about Lucy at that moment radiated power. Either Ned or I would have done anything she asked.
“The other vampire, the one you call Morford, he just took his fill and let go. Those things on the bridge—they would have taken me forever if you hadn’t dragged me away. I don’t think I would have minded. It was a great way to die.” She opened her eyes again and smiled. Her teeth looked a little red too, perhaps a trick of the light. “Look out there.”
She pointed toward the window. I had closed the curtains, but not all the way. Usually I don’t draw the curtains at all. On the second story no one could see in. My bedroom windows overlooked Sutro Park on two sides and the ocean in the back.
Through the gap in the curtains I could see a horde of the gray creatures massing around the window, huge red eyes staring in hungrily. Lucy tried to get up to go to them. Ned grabbed her to hold her back, and I leaped over and pulled the heavy curtains totally shut.
The room fell into darkness. The only illumination was—My God! Lucy’s eyes were glowing red. The irises were almost neon red, and the whites of her eyes were pinkish. Suddenly I was afraid of her. I turned on the bedside lamp.
Lucy subsided back on the bed and Ned sat next to her, leaning against the bedstead. I went back to sit with them.
“So, what’s your plan?” Ned folded his arms.
“We need to go
to Sir John and give him one last chance to help. Maybe knowing he has competition would move him. If not, there are others who have no such scruples.”
None of us mentioned the horde outside.
Chapter 44
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 13th
My doorbell rang a little after it got dark. I was more sensitive to the lack of light since Sir John had entered our lives. I didn’t want to think about him possibly savoring Vi’s blood at this very moment.
I went to the gate. I hadn’t been expecting anyone.
It was Hal. Maybe he had come to return my mother’s picture. He had brought along a tall, thin man in his thirties with a mass of dark black hair and a full beard, and a thin, very pale blonde woman who might have been any age from fifteen to forty, with pale eyes so visibly bloodshot that they almost seemed red.
“Wait!” Mina came running up the sidewalk behind them.
Hal turned back to face her. “Mina, I was going to call you later!”
“But instead you decided to take all your friends to see Kristin. You said you weren’t seeing her anymore.” Her voice was harsh with anger.
The last I’d heard from Mina was the irate phone message firing me as her therapist. Then all hell broke loose in the vampire department. I hadn’t got back to her, not that she wanted to hear from me, but I should have at least sent a note saying that I was sorry and I hadn’t known she was seeing Hal.
“All right, let’s take it inside.” I opened the gate so everyone could come in off the street into the garden.
“This is Lucy.” Hal gestured to the delicate blonde woman, who wavered from one foot to another as if drunk or drugged. The tall, wild-haired young man he introduced as Ned.
Mina stepped in close to Hal. “I was going over to your house to try and patch things up when I saw you taking off with Lucy and Ned—and here you are again.”
“We’ll have to talk later, Mina, this is an emergency.” Hal turned to me. “We need to see Sir John. I know he’s here.”
Vi must have been watching at the window. Before I could dial my cell phone she came out the back door with Sir John on her heels.
Instinctively everyone turned to Sir John. He nodded politely to each visitor. “Hal, at last I meet your lady, Mina.” He bowed deeply. Mina was cowering away from him in a way that made clear she didn’t want him to touch even the tips of her fingers.
“What have we here?” Sir John moved close to Lucy. She favored him with a cheerful smile.
Her teeth were pink, as if stained with blood, and he examined her closely. She had an odd rash on her face and neck, even her arms and hands—a pattern of gray circles too sharp for normal bruises. Could she be tattooed on every visible inch of skin?
“Lucy, where have you been?” Sir John asked.
“With the Others.”
The word was like a physical blow to Sir John. He turned around to scan the entire yard. “Hal! Young fool, you drew blood and called them. No one else would be so rash.”
“Finish her, Jack. If you bring her over, she can bring me and I won’t have to go back to the Others.”
I had never seen Sir John so solemn. “And you saw the creatures, Hal?”
“Yes.”
“Yet no vampire has drunk your blood?”
“No.”
“I never thought it possible.” He shook his head, “You know so little that you think they will let her go simply because I put my fangs to her?”
“You wouldn’t help me, so I tried that another way.”
“Brave Hal, to use your girlfriend as bait.” Sir John’s voice rumbled with contempt.
Mina had been following the argument back and forth like volleys in a tennis match. “So now Lucy’s your girlfriend too?” She hit Hal on the arm. “Hal, look at me. You’re sleeping with Kris, Lucy—how many girlfriends do you have?”
Sir John turned to her, as if relieved to find something to smile at. “Nay, lambkin, the number is too high. Don’t strain yourself with counting.”
Mina raised her hand to slap him. She was too far away to connect, but he ducked away and circled back to where Lucy stood.
“What happened to her?” I didn’t know what Lucy had been exposed to, but it looked bad.
Hal turned to me with anguish in his eyes. “I didn’t know this would happen, Kris. How could I know?”
Lucy stared at Sir John in fascination. “I know you. But—I forget.”
“The girl’s not right, Hal,” Sir John said in a stage whisper.
Lucy took a staggering step to one side. Vi went to catch her and I followed, taking her other arm. We guided her to sit down heavily on the bench a few steps off the gravel path through the garden. Wild-haired Ned followed and sat next to her, putting a protective arm around her shoulders
Sir John turned to Hal. “I cannot fix this. You do her no favor to offer her eternal life. Her mind’s a snap away from gone. Then what?”
“You could at least try to make her better.” Hal looked around at the rest of us, perhaps seeking allies. Ned, holding the swaying Lucy on the bench, looked as if he were about to cry.
“Suppose I do as you ask?” Sir John said. “The vampire life is not for the frail. The Others would have her at the first dark fall. Indeed, they nearly have her already.”
“Couldn’t you could teach her to fight them, if you brought her over?”
“Look at her. You see how she is. If she had to live by her wits, she’d be fried in the sun within a week. I learned the hard way not to bring the weak-minded into this half life. Do you think the Others will be so kind? Did you ask them? Did they answer you?”
Hal’s bluff faltered. “I don’t think they can talk.”
“So you have learned that much. You know nothing of them. You think she can make you a vampire—who teaches both of you then?”
A noise in the bushes caught my attention, and the burglar-mask faces of two raccoons appeared briefly, beady eyes intent as they waited for a safe opportunity to attack the two garbage cans next to the gate, and clean up any leftover cat food from the feral cats’ bowls.
Then the rustling turned into thrashing in the bushes. A tremendous snarling and squealing erupted nearby.
“That doesn’t sound like the raccoons,” Vi said uncertainly. She went to the back stairs and hit the light switch for the back yard floodlight. The garden was bathed in a harsh glare.
A crouching, disheveled woman faced off a female raccoon who had tucked her two half-grown pups behind her. The guttural growls came from the woman, not the raccoon.
Then she lifted her head, squinting against the light, and turned toward us. She said something low and guttural that I didn’t catch, and strutted over to Sir John with a flirtatious twist to her face.
She wore a long, ragged shift like a nightgown with a man’s coat jacket over it. Her feet were bare, her hair a long, tangled mass that might have been red if it were clean. Her face still held some charm under the coating of grim. She seemed a starved street urchin scarcely into her teens, but as she drew closer the light from the house and cottage windows revealed eyes as old as the grave and sharp with madness. We all instinctively moved away from her.
She came close to the bench where Vi stood near Lucy and Ned. Before anyone could say a word, she leaped at Vi and clasped her around the neck, her mouth half buried in Vi’s scarf, snarling and biting through the cloth. She snarled again, turning her head to track the mother raccoon, who was taking the opportunity to run for the bushes with two pups tight on her heels.
I took a step toward the woman who was holding Vi, half strangled. She raised her head and for a timeless moment our eyes met. Hers were so dilated that they looked black, hyper alert.
“Doll! Let go!” Sir John’s voice boomed a command before he got to her physically. All of us flinched at the sound. The woman let go of Vi so quickly that she stumbled. I stepped up, grabbed Vi’s arm and pulled her away. Sir John stepped between us and stood
over the now crouching woman. “Where did you sleep last?” His tone was firm but gentle.
The woman’s answer, an incomprehensible growl, contained words. Sir John spoke to her in some form of English—an occasional word sounded familiar. But it was a dialect beyond my understanding.
Whatever she said displeased Sir John. He demanded something that must have been, “show me,” although I couldn’t understand that either. Over his shoulder to us, he said, “Wait,” with that same unmistakable command voice.
He followed her, both of them squeezing through the hedge where the raccoon had gone.
We waited, all in shock. I deposited Vi back on the bench next to Lucy, who hadn’t seem to register most of what just happened. Ned stood up and moved behind the bench, putting his hands on Lucy’s shoulders. He motioned me to sit down with Vi and Lucy. I didn’t argue. I perched on the edge of the bench next to Vi, who was shaking.
“Did she bite you?” I whispered.
“No, but she would have if he hadn’t stopped her.”
Mina put her hands on her hips and marched over to Hal, who looked at the ground.
“That was Doll,” Hal said at last. “Sometimes Jack and I would go find her out on the street preying on the homeless. This is the worst I’ve seen her.”
Sir John came back alone several minutes later, looking grim.
“She has a dark hole to hide in when the sun comes up. She stays with a group of men she can feed on. They think they use her, but she only lets them live so she can feed. She’s been lifting her skirts and taking men’s coins since before your country was a gleam on the horizon of the first exploring sailor.”
“You called her Doll. Is she Doll Tearsheet from Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth play?” I had to ask.
“The same, or as near as makes no matter.” This time he did not smile at my tone of awe, but turned seriously to Hal. “You wonder, young man, why I will not bring you over to this half life. Look at Doll. Six hundred years ago she was a young, contentious girl with a lively laugh and hair like a sunset. No dowry, no husband, too wild for the nunnery. Nothing she could do but whore.” He sighed. “Where else would a soldier meet his love, but a bawdy house? Her own wit sparred with mine as few could. We parried words and kisses. We parted. She heard of my death, but when they changed me, I came back for her. I found her dying from disease a needle’s worth of your medicine could cure. I saved and damned her in a moment with one kiss.”
