by Lynne Murray
“You told Luther to get a paid escort?”
“Now Kris, I didn’t specifically recommend that he pay for sex. But I told him that since he intended to stay married, the least he could do was offer lots of goodies, like dining at the finest restaurants, fun day trips to the wine country. In the gay community a man in a similar situation might use code words like ‘generous member of the millionaire club’ or ‘financially secure and enjoys finer things in life.’”
“And you say he took notes?”
“We talked tactics. I think he should be upfront from the beginning and focus on his strong points. I said he could say, ‘friends say I’m distinguished looking,’ because he is. Not bad, really—sort of a silver fox type. I hope I didn’t scare off your client.”
“Hey, you may have solved his problem. Lately his therapy has degenerated into him complaining about how his personal ads aren’t working.”
“Some times the man-to-man thing is useful. It balances out with some of your other clients, like Tammy, who couldn’t wait a week to see you and then came in and wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“She’s a little scared of men.”
“Ya think?”
“I told her she could call me if anything serious came up, and she hasn’t, so this should just give us another thing to consider next session. Thanks, Larry.”
“Glad to help.” He paused. “So, Kris, how are you doing on the hallucination front?”
“No hallucinations at all now. Thanks, Larry, for being there for me the other night.”
When I checked my email again, I was startled to find that my anonymous suitor Mr_Latte had changed his ad. It now read: “Financially secure, married man, wishes to share the finer things in life.”
He had emailed me to say he changed his ad, after getting some advice—and I was pretty sure where he got it. He suggested that if I was interested, once I was recovered sufficiently from my grief we might get together for dinner at one of San Francisco’s finer restaurants, or even consider a fun day trip to the wine country.
Hmmm. I wrote him, saying that my personal life had taken a sudden turn and I was no longer looking for companionship. I wished him luck.
Chapter 71
Mina Murray’s journal
red digital voice recorder August 29th
Weird things never happened after dawn, so I was beginning to view work as a refuge. I had several voicemail messages from Hal since he left for Washington and I went to stay with Kris. Each time he said he couldn’t get a callback where he was and he’d keep trying until he reached me. Finally he called and I answered.
“Mina, how are you? I keep missing you. I was worried.”
“Are you in DC, Hal?”
“Yes, I’m filling in for some people here. I decided not to take any of the overseas projects. But I’ll be staying here for awhile, cleaning up some loose ends.”
“They followed me home, Hal.”
There was a short silence. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Did those things follow you to DC?”
“No.” His voice suddenly changed. “No, they didn’t. I’m sorry, Mina. You can’t know how sorry. Look, I’ve got to go. I just wanted to see if you were okay. Stay safe. I love you.”
“Hal—” But it was too late. The line went dead.
On impulse I dialed Ned. At first I got his voicemail, but he must have been screening calls, because he picked up the phone. “Mina, how are you? I was worried about you.”
“I just talked to Hal.”
Ned paused. “Oh, what did he say?”
“He’s staying in DC for awhile.”
“Oh.”
“The night before he left, I saw Lucy floating outside the window—with those gray things. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Have you seen them?”
“Yes.” His voice sounded infinitely weary.
“And do you have your own contingent? Did they follow you home, too?”
“Mina, I know Hal wanted to protect you from those.”
“Which is why he left town. You didn’t answer my question, Ned. Do you have the same things around your house as Hal has?”
“Yes.”
“I think I know how to get rid of them.”
“Does Hal know about it?”
“I didn’t have time to tell him. He apologized and hung up and he’s not accepting calls. But I can tell you, if you want to know.”
“You really have a cure for them?”
I told him.
“It can’t be that simple.” He didn’t believe me.
“Fine, then. Live with them.”
“How do you know all this?”
“We discovered it by accident, but so far it makes them go away. One lady that nearly got killed by them seems to be getting better. It might help Lucy if she’s not too far gone.”
Ned’s voice was filled with pain. “She’s too far gone, Mina. I’ve been over to Hal’s place to see her with them, and she looks more and more like them every time. Last night I couldn’t even pick her out. I don’t know if I want to send them away, because I keep hoping one of them will be Lucy. I might even, you know--” he paused. “Let them drain my life out, just to be with her.”
“I’m so sorry, Ned.”
“She never liked me as much as she liked Hal. I think she’s still part of the mob that swarms over his house every night. I try not to go, but I always end up there.”
“Be careful, Ned.”
He didn’t answer for a moment, but I could hear him taking a deep breath at the other end of the line. “Mina, there’s one thing you should know about Hal.”
“What?”
“He’ll use you if he can, and he lies about everything.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. It hurt too much. “Do you think he lied about those things following him to DC?”
“I don’t know, but if he thought they’d help him, he’d buy them a first class ticket.”
Chapter 72
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 29th
The moment the sun slipped under the horizon, my phone rang. It was Dr. Quiller.
“Miss Marlowe, I may not be able to meet with you tonight. After I wrote to you last night, I acted on impulse and went to see Violet for myself. She said you gave her both onion and garlic. I wondered if it might be the antibiotic properties of those.
“The myth of garlic repelling vampires is untrue. So I had no reason to study these things. The vampire venom that gives us eternal life kills all infection, so when the human researchers developed penicillin in the 1940s, I paid very little attention.” He paused, and his voice took on a defensive tone. “I qualified as a doctor in the 1850s, and I became a vampire during the Civil War. My specialty now is vampire burns from exposure to sunlight, water retention from leaky coffins, that kind of thing. But if the Others can be repulsed by onion and garlic, stronger antibiotics might be useful.”
I mentioned the enzyme that combines with water to make sulfuric acid, thinking that as a medical man he should know that,
“Interesting.” His tone was dismissive as if he had made up his mind already. “Some experiments are in order,” he said
I didn’t like the sound of that—experiments on whom or what? “Do these kinds of infestations happen often?”
“They are rare. But, as you have observed, highly disruptive.”
“Um, you know sulfuric acid can be pretty dangerous, maybe even to vampires.”
“Please allow me to be the judge of what is dangerous to vampires.”
He hung up. So much for the Victorian courtesies. He didn’t seem too concerned about dangers to humans. I was just as glad to not be seeing him at his lab.
As soon as I hung up there was a knock at the door and Vi stood there. I was so glad to see her that I impulsively reached out and hugged her. Bad idea. She was cold as ice. She stayed outside the door, at arm’s length.
&n
bsp; “I need you to give me a formal invitation before I can come in, Kris—make it specific to me, just to be safe.” She looked around for a second and both of us smiled to see no signs of the Others.
Her face was redder than it had been, and her eyes were clearer.
“Violet Semmelweis, you are welcome to enter.” Even with no visible swarm, I wasn’t about to take any chances. “You want to go into the office and sit down?”
“There’s no time. I need your help.”
“To do what?”
“Come with me to Quiller’s laboratory.”
“Oh, he just called and asked me not to come.”
“That’s why we need to go now, while he’s not there. Please come now. We can talk about it on the way.”
Except that once we got in the car, she didn’t want to talk about it. Her face was grim. I drove.
We parked near Forest Hill Station, and she led me to the same maze of corridors that had brought me to Morford’s office. Vi took a different turn in the underground maze. No marble floors and office doors here, just walls and floors painted battleship gray. I was lost by the time we arrived at a steel door.
Vi punched in a security code to a keypad, and the door clicked open. We went down a concrete stairway that led to another security door then down-sloping tunnel. Behind that was a modest set of rooms with literally no decoration. Bare pipes overhead and concrete floor. It smelled of animals. I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.
“Don’t look—” Vi began.
“—in their eyes. I know. Oh, my God.”
Most of the cages were glass boxes occupied by gray blobs of substance with round, red eyes. They were all sizes. A set of tables held cases small enough to hold mice, and a few more for slightly bigger animals. A really big one in the corner held a gray blob that was nearly as large as a human. They had few identifying features, and I didn’t dare examine them too closely for fear of getting hooked. They did not look happy. “What are they?”
“Others in embryo,” Vi said grimly. “They once were mammals of some kind—too small for humans. Dr. Quiller has been trying to treat them, but he admitted he’d had no success. I was the only one who ever got better—maybe because of Sir John’s blood and the onion juice.”
She paused in front of a set of regular wire cages. Only one was occupied. A normal-looking, thin gray cat with orange eyes stared out at us. “He’s a vampire cat,” Vi said. “I just wanted you to see.” She looked around. “Usually there are attendants.”
I looked at my watch. “Can we leave now?”
“In a sec. We’ve got to work fast.” She cast another look around the room. “What the hell,” she said, and snapped the lock off the cage as if it were a toothpick. She reached in and pulled the cat out.
“Here, hold him for a minute.” Vi put the cat in my arms and reached into her coat pocket to pull out her sprayer of onion juice. Then she saw the cat sniffing the pulse points on my wrist and up along my arm with interest. She stopped, reached out and moved the cat’s head away. “No, no. No biting. We’ll find some mice later.”
The cat looked at her steadily and did not return to sniffing my arm.
The lab had five cages filled with Others in various stages of metamorphosis. Vi sprayed onion juice into the air vents of each of the cages and the small Others, who all resembled caterpillars with huge staring eyes, shrieked, and each one vanished with the popping sound that had grown familiar.
She took the cat back from me and slipped him under her jacket, tucking her blouse around him and into her jeans to support him. It made her look somewhat pregnant. An audible purr rose up in the quiet room.
We left immediately, walking upwards this time. The tunnel was deserted, but when we got to the first landing Dr. Quiller suddenly stepped in front of us. I hadn’t seen him approach—he seemed to have simply appeared in our path. Short and upright, he wore the same immaculate tweed suit and huge mustache. He radiated power that was almost visible, like the air trembling on a hot day.
“What have you done?”
“What I had to.” Vi was an inch or so shorter than Quiller, but her iron resolve met his power aura with a palpable feeling of engagement.
“The animal under your jacket is our property. He has to be returned to the lab. We still need to perform experiments to make sure that we have a weapon we can use.”
“No more cats, Dr. Quiller.”
Quiller’s eyes glinted dangerously. “Who are you to tell us what to do and what not to do?”
Vi fixed her eyes on his, and they began to radiate redness like red hot heated metal.
I had to turn away a little from it, but Quiller felt the full impact. I looked out of the corner of my eye and saw him stagger, and then fall to his knees. Veins stood out in his neck and forehead as he tried to break the eye contact.
“No!” he screamed. He shuddered all over.
I took a step away from Vi, pierced with terror by the glowing in her eyes.
His eyes still locked on Vi’s, Quiller fell down to lie on the grimy concrete walkway. Vi finally released him from her gaze.
The only sound was Quiller’s labored breathing, and that unearthly purring from the gray cat under Vi’s sweater. It took Vi several breaths to come back to herself. I kept my eyes down on Quiller’s pitiful frame.
“Dr. Quiller.” Vi’s voice was soft, but more sibilant than usual, as if it were coming from beyond her. There was a sort of echoing buzz in her words. “Dr. Quiller, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he whispered, barely audible.
“Leave the cats alone. We will find a neutral place where you can test my blood. You will never use a cat or a dog, or a mammal, again. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Because neither of us wants to have the conversation again. If you disobey me, I will send you where you can observe the Others firsthand.”
“No, please.”
“Do you doubt that I can do it?”
“No.”
“Good. Now do you agree to leave the cats and other animals alone?”
“Yes.”
“I will know instantly if you disobey me. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“If you find another vampire cat, you will let me know, and I will claim it. If you find a cat that has been attacked by the Others, let me know, and I will treat it. Do you agree?”
“Yes.”
“Then we understand each other.”
“Yes.”
“Will you be able to get home, or can we help you to get to safety before dawn?”
“Help.” His voice was faint.
She helped him up as if he were a sack of feathers. They were close enough in height that she could support him with her arm around his waist and his arm around her shoulder. I held open the doors for them as we took our tortuous way back up to the surface and to the car, where she gently settled him in the back seat. I drove and Quiller whispered directions to an old Victorian on Laguna and Pacific. We helped him up the steps, held his hand while he worked the key in the door. The place was jammed with ornate Victorian furniture, with lacy doilies on every chair and legions of gilded doodads on every flat surface.
We settled him in his ornate bronze coffin on a pedestal in a back bedroom.
“He probably decorated that place back in the 1870s,” Vi commented back in the car.
I drove her home, half expecting to see some kind of vampire police force following us, but none did. The cat popped his head out of her jacket, looked around a little, and then snuggled back in.
“Was the cat on his way to getting like those caterpillars?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was too.”
“How are you going to save him?”
“I already let him drink my blood when I went to the lab to scout it out. I also rubbed him down with onion juice. He hissed when I did it—living cats hate onions, too--I think they’re toxic to them. But this guy licked it of
f his fur, and now he’s better. I’m going to keep giving it to him and taking it myself, just in case. I think this little guy was a vampire before Quiller got him. Some vampire brought him over and then either got killed or maybe they just dumped him. Even after death some people are irresponsible. If I can stop Quiller, things will be at least a little better for the animals.”
“I’m totally with you on that.” But I wondered what we might have got ourselves in for.
When we reached the house, we both saw.
The Others were back.
Chapter 73
Kristin Marlowe’s typed notes
August 29th continued
The Others swarmed around the house in greater numbers than before. Several broke off from the main swarm and crowded around the car.
“Keep your head down.” Vi said.
“I know, maybe we should run.”
“Walk fast, but be careful. If you fall and cut yourself, they can kill you faster.” Walking from the car to the house seemed to take forever. Vi kept the cat close under her jacket, and finally we got inside. A few followed us in. I gasped to be in the same room with them.
Vi shook her head. “Don’t say a word,” she whispered. “That just makes it worse.” She picked up her onion juice primed plant mister and zapped the creatures floating nearest her. They did their silent shriek and vanished, tearing a hole in the air right in the living room. She cast around for more victims and found that the place was now clear.
“Wait here.” She went down to the basement with her new cat. “There you go,” I heard her say to him. “You can sleep with me in this nice coffin.”
I could hear the purring all the way up the stairs.
From the back yard I heard a hose-squirting sound and the whump of Others being hit and ascending into the odd pink cloud rift in the sky. Vi came to stand beside me.
“Wow.”
Bram and Mina were standing just outside the doorway of the cottage with water cannons. They were both sighting and hitting the Others with great effectiveness. They might have cleared the garden easily if there hadn’t been such a horde out there.
