999

by Al Sarrantonio

  Danny kept his own silence for a while before breaking it. “But soon,” he said. “The tests should be as soon as possible.” He didn’t have the energy to explain himself.

  The bone man agreed and rang off.

  Louisa noted his evident distress and gently seated herself on the mattress beside him. “Don’t worry, sweetie. No matter what happens with the doctors, I’ll take care of you. I’ll see that nothing else happens.”

  “Gonna shoot Ifetayo if it turns out she’s put the juju on me?” he said, half serious.

  “Yes,” she answered, sounding completely serious. “She can’t hurt you.”

  “Relax,” he said, trying to affect some healthy bravado. “It isn’t your job to be my bodyguard.”

  “But I love you,” said Louisa. “I love you so very much.” She hesitated. “Don’t you love me too?”

  It was his turn to hesitate. “I like you a lot,” he said. “I’m really grateful for everything you’re doing.”

  “But you don’t love me?”

  He heard an edge in her voice. “I probably will,” he said. “Give me some time.”

  She did not sound placated. “Don’t wait too long, Danny.” She got up and walked across the hall to the smaller bathroom. The door closed behind her. Danny thought he could hear her crying. But when she finally came back out, her face was dry and she was smiling.

  “We’re going out to eat,” she said. “To celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?” he said. “I’m not exactly in a good space for going out.”

  “Celebrating our love,” Louisa said. “And don’t you worry about a thing.” With that, she put clean socks and running shoes on his feet. Dressed in boxer shorts, he allowed her carefully to maneuver his arms through the sleeves of his long trench coat.

  “Anybody checks, they’ll think I’m a pervert on the way to a schoolyard,” he said.

  “Trust me.” She led him down to the car and drove him to a very dark restaurant where they could sit in relative seclusion to the side of the dining room. With her help, he ordered soups and puddings and coffee. The dishes lined up like little soldiers, each with a thick straw extending up toward his mouth.

  He didn’t expect to like the experience. Getting out cheered him, he discovered.

  The glow started to dissipate once they returned home. The caller ID indicated that Ifetayo had called. “Don’t phone her back,” Louisa said.

  “This is my house,” Danny said. My rules, he almost said. When he gingerly dialed Iffie’s number, he got a “this number is not presently in service,” intercept. “I should drive over,” he said. “It might be important.”

  “No,” Louisa said. “You can’t do that.”

  “Will you drive me over?”

  “No.”

  He heard the anger in her voice, and backed off. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “No,” she said. “Never.”

  They talked little more before he decided to go to sleep.

  Ifetayo did not come to him in his dreams.

  Danny awoke hearing—and feeling—the bones of his toes snapping. The little toes twitched, convulsed, broke like twigs being trampled underfoot. Then the next in line, as the pain grew, right up to and including the big toes. Both of them.

  Crack!

  He screamed at the dream.

  It was not a dream.

  The small bones in the arch of his right foot began to vibrate, then to bend under internal pressure. He remembered tugging the wishbone at childhood Thanksgivings and Christmases. The pain was intense. But it was multiplied by the ripping, crunching sounds, noises of destruction that arrowed right to his gut. He doubled up on the bed and tried to reach his feet, to massage them the way he used to soothe charley horses. It did no good—he couldn’t make his arms work.

  All those tiny bones destroyed themselves as he cried out.

  Then Louisa was there with warm towels to wipe his sweaty face and to lay wet wraps across the savage pain in his feet. “There now,” she said. “It will be okay. We’ll manage the pain.”

  “Why?” he said, mind blurry with the tortured electricity from his feet and shoulders. “Why why why why …” He stopped when he was out of breath. It didn’t take long.

  “She won’t hurt you again,” Louisa said.

  The meaning came through to him finally. “Who? Ifetayo?”

  “Of course.” Louisa continued mopping his forehead. “Now try to rest. Just breathe through the pain. You won’t be able to walk for a while. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of everything. I love you.”

  A thought came to him. “Weezie, that thing Iffie left on the porch yesterday. The one you put in a safe place? I think you better destroy it.”

  “I already did, lover,” she said reassuringly.

  “Good.” He shook his head. Words swam in his head and it was hard to articulate them in his throat. “I never believed in black magic.”

  “You don’t have to,” Louisa said. “It works anyway.”

  He began to sink away from consciousness, trying to elude the pain from which he’d begun to think there truly was no escaping. Louisa said something he couldn’t quite make out. “What?”

  “The river Styx is deep and wide,” she said. “So much hate flows there.” Then it was as though she’d switched channels. “The cats are out of hiding. I fed them. They like me.”

  “What do you …” He didn’t find out what she meant. Blessed unconsciousness arrived first.

  When he awoke again, Danny could barely move at all. Louisa sat beside the bed with a cup of hot coffee brewed and ready. She carefully helped him sip it.

  “I’m afraid your legs aren’t doing so well,” she said.

  “They hurt like my shoulders,” he whimpered.

  “You’ll be staying at home for a while,” she said sympathetically. “I’ll make sure you’re all right.”

  “We don’t have to drive over to see Ifetayo,” Danny said.

  “Damn straight,” she replied. “Wouldn’t do much good anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She didn’t answer. “That woman hated you,” Louisa said. “The effigy I destroyed? The one she left? That was to make you impotent. I guess she figured it was poetic justice.” Louisa sighed. “But she had no right.”

  Danny tried to raise his head to look at her. His fingers crawled along the top of the blanket like crippled spiders.

  She glanced down. “Careful,” she said. “Any more mischief and things could happen to all ten of those, even the thumbs.” Then she grinned sunnily. “But I told you, I can take dictation. You’ll do fine.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” he mumbled. His vision suddenly irised in on something new crowning the bureau behind her. It was his picture in an antique metal frame. Something else leaned against the frame. It looked like a Ken doll wrapped tightly in monofilament—so much stranded bondage it could have been cocooned for the winter. Those tight bonds looked as though they were pulling the doll’s limbs out of true, contorting them into unnatural positions. The arms, legs, hands, there the bonds stretched the thickest and tightest.

  The meaning started percolating through his bleary, pain-shot mind. Weezie loved him.

  As though reading his mind, she said, “Danny, I’ll love you forever. I couldn’t let her injure you. There was no way. I’ll take care of you always. Count on it.”

  This was a delirium he knew he would not wake from.

  It was hard now to hold on to anything secure. But he knew something beyond all else as he stared up at her serene smile.

  Love will always triumph over hate.

  Always.

  Steven Spruill

  HEMOPHAGE

  I find it fitting and highly pleasing that Steve Spruill and F. Paul Wilson have provided this hook’s two vampire stories, because, when I met them, a long time ago in a publishing galaxy far, far away, they were the best of friends (they still are, and not too long ago collaborated on a novel, Nig
htkill), each turning out wonderful books for the Douhleday Science Fiction line I’ve already mentioned ad nauseum (see headnotes for Wilson and Lustbader).

  Since those days of tiny advances, Spruill has done just fine for himself; he is the author of thirteen novels, the last five of which have been Literary Guild selections. A trilogy based on the fascinating characters you are about to meet was completed in 1998; it consists of Rulers of Darkness, Daughter of Darkness, and Lords of Light.

  “Hemophage” is set between the last two novels. In Spruill’s own words (which I happen to agree with): “It gives us a glimpse of the powerful and complex creatures who just might be the reality behind the vampire myth.”

  The first whiff of blood, as the elevator doors parted, was rather like rose stems steeping in a vase, and then the carnal undertones hit, making Merrick’s throat crawl. The cage settled a prodding inch, but he held fast, staring out at umber carpeting, gray wallpaper chased with silver. In the box of light from the elevator, dust motes swirled, telling him of people hurrying back and forth. No one visible from in here, though. He could press “Close,” tell the uniform in the lobby he’d left something in the car, and get back home to Katie where he belonged. But the corpse had already become part of him, atoms from her veins soaking with each breath into his own capillaries.

  Merrick let go and stepped into the hall, his palms prickling where the handrail had dug in. Behind him, the light narrowed and vanished with a thump, leaving the pallid flush of twenty-five-watt sconces, too far apart. They do like it dark. One of them could slip through here with no fear of being seen, even if a tenant suddenly stepped out. …

  Merrick’s jaw clenched. Damn the lieutenant, wouldn’t take no, just a quick look, please. He couldn’t know what he was asking.

  Another uniform waited at the open door near the end of the hall. Glare from a flashbulb backlit him as he held up a hand. “This is a crime scene. If you’ll just turn around—”

  “I’m Merrick Chapman.”

  The cop straightened and blushed. “Yes, sir—sorry. I thought you’d be older.”

  You thought right, son.

  A tiny entrance foyer gave way to a narrow hall on the left and a compact living room straight ahead, the parquet sketched with Persian carpets. A recliner in the corner drew his eye and he knew at once it had been a favored place. Plant stands spilled lacy fronds on either side and a pole lamp behind cast perfect light for reading. A romance novel lay open on the floor, spine up, bright plumage spread. Two evidence technicians on their knees worked around the chair with gloved hands.

  “Lieutenant!”

  Des, behind him. Turning, Merrick was startled at how much weight the man had gained, the glints of white in the ebony hair. Still a sharp dresser, but none of the Masai motifs he’d once favored in his braces and ties. Just a black silk blazer, now, white shirt and charcoal pants, a uniform of responsibility.

  “Lieutenant, yourself.”

  “You’re looking good, Merrick. Damn, rub in some Grecian Formula and you retired yesterday. ‘Course, then we’d have to account for me.” He cast a rueful look at his belly. “Thanks for coming. I owe you. Hell, I owed you before.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Des.”

  “Right. It was some other Merrick who twisted arms to get me his old job.”

  “Still think it was a favor?”

  “Sure as hell beats sitting stakeout and bumping chairbacks in the squad room. And I can still get out of my nice office when I want.” He glanced over his shoulder, down the narrow hall, nothing remotely like want in his face. “Stepansky catch you on the way in?”

  “The guy at the door? What’d you tell him, anyway?”

  “Just your name. Good kid, bucking for detective, hangs around our guys at the watering holes, listening to the war stories. You still hold the record for closing homicides, you know.”

  Merrick felt an uneasy surprise. People at the department were still talking about him? But what did it matter? He didn’t have that much to hide anymore.

  Des held out a pair of latex gloves. As Merrick pulled them on, images flashed through his mind of skin marbled with lividity, staring eyes, other blood, dark and fragrant, no two scents ever quite the same. For a second, he thought again of fleeing, far too late.

  “She’s in the bathroom,” Des said.

  Merrick followed down the narrow hall, glimpsing a tiny bedroom to one side, bed neatly made under a country quilt. The bathroom was big enough, pink and green tiles from a fifties remodeling. She lay in the tub, eyes closed, lips parted, as if she’d dozed off. Her plain face would have been prettier in life. The blood in the water half obscured her body. Merrick looked and there it was, beside the tub near her shoulder—a chef’s knife with a long, sharply honed blade now gleaming with blood. Des fished out an alabaster forearm. The slash was deep, running down the wrist, not across. Bending closer, Merrick examined the wound, dizzied by the intoxicating smell. His throat locked and then he was able to swallow. He dipped a hand into the water.

  Stone cold.

  Nerves tightened along his spine, but he said, “What makes this murder?”

  “Don’t you think the water should be darker? I’ve seen four or five bathtub suicides and you usually can’t make out the body, unless an arm stayed out to bleed on the floor. And the wrist—no prion. How’d she know to make that cut? She’s not a shrink. She sold vacations in a travel agency.”

  “Note?”

  Des shook his head.

  Merrick looked at him. “You testing me, Des?”

  The lieutenant grinned, and for a second the years dropped away.

  “I’m sure you noticed,” Merrick said, “that the blood on the knife is still drying, which means this isn’t even an hour old. So why is the water cold?”

  “Exactly. No one would get into a cold tub to slit their wrists. Whoever did this didn’t count on her landlady letting herself in to return a curling iron.”

  Shutting his eyes, Merrick envisioned a tall figure that looked like a man slipping down the dim hallway toward this apartment. Or maybe climbing up the brick outside to a cocked window. He saw the woman sitting in her chair reading, looking up, maybe, as she felt a change in the air. But she wouldn’t see her killer because he would be reaching out mentally, finding the capillaries in her retinas and pinching off the blood flow to create a blind spot that her mind would then paper over with the familiar, safe contours of her apartment. Next he would dilate her jugulars, dumping the blood from her brain, catching her as she fell. He would barely feel her weight as he carried her to the bathroom in arms that could lift a truck, hands that could smash through a wall. She’d had no chance, none at all, because vampires weren’t real. Actually, this woman probably had seen her killer, but only in the deepest phosphors of her brain, where no expectations exist to fill in the blind spots. Novelists had dragged forth images of the blood eaters, distorted by their fevered imaginations, and Hollywood had thrown these distortions up on the screen, and ironically, being revealed in the false light of myth had only made the secret of the ages more secure. Yes, we know about vampires, and the thing we know best is that they are fiction.

  Okay, no cross or wooden stake would have saved this woman, but an alarm linked to a camera might have. How long had the hemophage who’d been here tonight passed among humans, taking what it needed—two hundred years, a thousand? Had it roamed, in the dead of night, the trampled fields of Hastings and Waterloo, drinking the blood of the dying? How many bodies had it left in the woods, where the teeth of other animals would erase its own? Now you could nail a killer from a hair or a trace of his blood—provided he was human. But if it was an auto accident, a house fire, a missing person, a suicide, you didn’t even look.

  “What I want to know now,” Des said, “is where’s the rest of the blood? It sure as hell isn’t on the floor. And it’s not inside her, either, she’s white as Wonder Bread. Do you think he could be back—our vampire killer?”

&nb
sp; Our vampire killer.

  “I assumed he was dead,” Des mused. “In fact, I had this theory that you killed him.”

  Merrick gave him a sharp look.

  He held up his hands. “Hey, I’m not accusing. But you spent night and day hunting the vicious bastard, and then you stopped and he stopped.”

  Merrick saw the vault in the ground out in the Virginia woods, the rows of cots in the commons for those too weakened by lack of blood to move anymore. He saw Abezi-Thibod, Balberith, Procel, lying there in the indigo half-light, white hair fanned on the pillows. The faces of dead pharaohs, until you saw an eye glitter with hatred. Others screamed and pounded behind the iron doors around the commons, where he’d put the fresh captures, and where, at last, he had put Zane.

  Nausea spiked up his throat. He should never have come here. The nightmare was over, must stay over.

  “Oh, you went through the morions,” Des said, “for a few months after the last killing. But you’d never have retired if you’d thought he was still out there. Or so I hoped.”

  “You think I would catch him and, instead of bringing him in, just kill him?”

  “Your secret would have been safe with me.”

  Merrick felt a weight in his chest. Judge, jury, executioner.

  Des looked uncomfortable. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve never known anyone with more integrity. I knew all along it was probably just wishful thinking. I did keep screening VICAP for years after his killings stopped, to see if they’d start up somewhere else. They didn’t. And this sure isn’t the same MO. The killer thirteen years ago was flaunting it. This …” Des looked at the corpse in the tub and swallowed. “This is sly, Merrick. Whoever did this never meant to be discovered—we only caught it by dumb luck. But the missing blood means I’ve got to consider our boy from thirteen years ago. How many crazy sons of bitches are tipped enough to think they’re vampires?” Des shook his head. “Where’s the rest of her blood? And don’t tell me he drank it.”