by Lee Killough
Her brows rose at him. “Why do you want to use the bomb shelter? You know we have members and friends prepared to take guests.”
He nodded. “But I have charge of a newborn vampire in hysterical, violent denial. When I stopped here yesterday I was on my way to prevent her reanimation. Unfortunately I was too late.” He took a deep breath. Here came the sticky part. “She’s wanted by the police.”
Lovings frowned. “You want us to aid a fugitive?
He winced inwardly. That did not sound promising. “Yes, ma’am...because there’s a greater danger involved.”
She sat back, elbows on her chair arms, fingers tented. “Go on.”
At least she had not summarily thrown him out. With the lie-detector eyes boring into him, he told the story from the moment Maggie spotted the van, all the time sweating at the thought of the car sitting in the parking lot, locked but with the girl inside unattended. Lovings listened, her expression going grimmer by the moment and the tented fingers changing to arms folded across her chest. A definite negative posture. Despite that, Garreth plowed on.
When he finished she sat eyeing him for a long minute before speaking. “A two thousand year old vampire doesn’t reach that age by calling attention to himself.”
So she doubted his story? “Maybe he isn’t that old. That’s just what he claims. We can’t be certain he’s even a vampire. If he isn’t, he’s likely drunk my blood and a fatal encounter with law enforcement will turn him into one just like it did the girl. Whatever the situation, he needs to be taken out of circulation.”
She nodded. “I agree.”
“His age and whether he’s a vampire affect how I have to deal with him...” Garreth leaned forward over the edge of the desk. “...so I need to see what I can learn in California. At this stage the girl isn’t much of a risk. She ought to stay out cold for at least twenty-four hours...which is time enough for me to fly to California and--”
“Hold it!” Lovings straightened in her chair. “Despite the legal risk, I’m willing to let the two of you use the shelter for a day or two, while you help this girl come to terms with her change of life. But I will not warehouse her! She isn’t luggage you can store, nor am I a jailer. If you leave, she goes with you!”
The thought of flying with the girl, or driving cross country, chilled him. Control would be a nightmare! “May I leave her at least long enough to buy her some clothes? Right now she’s wearing a hospital gown and raincoat and you can see the problem with leaving her in the car in a mall while I shop.”
Lovings nodded. “Yes.” She stood. “We don’t want witnesses seeing you carry in what looks like a body, so bring your car around to the back.”
Behind the building a ramp sloped down to a roll-up door on the basement level. Standing at the open door, Lovings motioned him in. The garage looked built for trucks. The space dwarfed the Porsche. But that gave him plenty of room to maneuver with the girl hanging over his shoulder.
Lovings led the way through a basement past shelves of office supplies, the dusty corpses of old computer monitors and keyboards, and cartons of needles, test tubes, and blood collection bags waiting to be used in the donation room upstairs. “Your presence won’t be general knowledge so always come in this way. I’ll loan you a remote opener. Using the door shows up on the security panel at the receptionist’s desk but Laura will be told you’re down here. She knows about life members.”
She unlocked a door nearly invisible in a dim corner under the stairs. An exterior that looked like distressed wood with peeling varnish opened to reveal steel bulkhead construction. Beyond it a long set of steps led down to a second door opening into a narrow room with shower heads along one side and hooks on the opposite wall. The door at the end opened into the shelter.
Garreth laid the pallet and girl on the lowest of a triple-decker bunk. “This is quite a setup.” Far more elaborate than the one in San Francisco...three roomy barrel vaults, with plenty of soil and concrete over them.
Lovings shrugged. “For all the good it would have done. With the SAC base here, we’d have been almost ground zero.”
“I see it’s still cleaned and provisioned.” He pointed at cartons of canned goods stacked in the vault that also had a cooler door in the partition halfway down its length.
After a moment she shrugged again. “The bear may be only sleeping.” She handed him the garage door opener and the door key. Conical depressions on sides and edges of the shaft instead of a saw tooth edge guaranteed it could not be copied at the local convenience store. “The phone over there has speed dial entries for all our extension numbers. If you need something during the night, call Doug Curtain at 05. He’ll be on duty all week end. Right now, when you go out, call Laura or me, and then let us know when you’re back.”
“I’m on my way out now. I just need to know where to find a garden store, mall, and Laundromat.”
Following her directions, he hunted up the Laundromat, and while his clothes washed, he wondered about finding a mausoleum after all. Except he had no guarantee she would sleep for twenty-four hours and he shuddered at the thought of her waking with him half a continent away. And what if checking out California needed more than a day? No, without someone to watch her, he had to take her along.
Playing on her inexperience and insecurity gave him his best chance for control. She must have other buttons he could push, too. To find them, though, he needed to know more about her.
He brought in his computer case and dug out the fax copies of the National Clearinghouse photos, sorting through them to the sullen face of Rebecca Newman. The accompanying data told him little except that her father Edward Newman had reported her missing from Crow Ford, Montana, in January two years ago. Garreth frowned. January? Good weather produced plenty of runaways, but what impetus sent this girl off in the middle of winter?
He switched on his phone and called home phone number given with the information on Rebecca.
A woman answered. “Living Word Parsonage.”
Parsonage? Garreth whistled soundlessly. “Then Edward Newman is the Reverend Edward Newman?” Even more religion in the girl’s background than he expected.
“Do you need to talk to him?”
“I’m not sure. Who am I speaking with now?”
“I’m Marian Newman.”
Presumably Mrs. Newman. Who would be best...the mother or the father? He sent a trial shot to test the reaction. “Rebecca’s mother?”
“Ed!” The scream almost made him drop the phone. “Have you seen her!” He pictured her clutching the receiver in both hands. “Is she all right? Dear Lord, is she all right?”
In a surge of sympathy, mixed with anger at the girl, he imagined how many hours in the past two years Marian Newman had spent agonizing over where her daughter was and what was happening to her. At least he did not have to inflict the anguish he had on other mothers when the answer to that question was No. “I’ve seen her. She’s alive.”
A sob came through the phone, and a whisper clearly not meant for him. “Thank you, dear Lord.” And then, also not to him, “It’s a man who’s seen Rebecca!”
A rich tenor voice came on the phone. “I’m Edward Newman, Rebecca’s father. Who are you, sir? And where’s Rebecca?”
“I’m sorry but I can’t tell you. Please hear me out,” he said as Newman started to protest. Garreth had put his story together while dialing their number. “I’m the director of a shelter for runaways. Our ultimate goal is returning these kids home, of course, but most immediately we want them off the street.”
“Well of course, but--”
“And while some need just encouragement to contact their parents, others are too full of anger or fear to even mention home to them in case it makes them take off again.” His washer stopped. Holding the phone with one hand, he transferred clothes to a dryer with the other and fed in quarters. “Rebecca is one of the latter, and while I’m encouraged by the fact she carries Blue Steel Perdition tapes with her, I won’t
tell her I know her real name or that I’ve contacted you. I won’t tell you where we are in case you can’t stop yourself from coming after her. Going home has to be her idea.”
“Wait.” Confusion filled the voice. “If she didn’t tell you her name how--”
“I check every new resident against the National Clearinghouse files, and I know you used to be in Blue Steel Perdition because of the resemblance between her and you in the album photos. We even met once, though I doubt you remember the officers who arrested you at the Mark Hopkins in San Francisco. Which one of the band were you?”
After a hesitation, Newman said, “Teddy Rivers.” His voice turned heavy. “That was our last gig before Doug Wayne OD’d, and I almost did.” Somewhere in the background Marian Newman mumbled something unintelligible and Newman sighed. “Not wicked, Marian. We were just young and wild and stupid.” He grunted. “You know, after I walked out of that hospital I didn’t think about the band for over twenty years. As far as I was concerned, I’d left it all behind, changed my name, become a new man. But we’re fools to think the past is dead.”
“Does the band have something to do with why your daughter ran away?”
“Everything to do with it.” He paused. Garreth pictured him organizing his thoughts. “Marian found a Perdition Bound tape in Rebecca’s room in a case for a spiritual album. I’ve always banned rock music from this house. Look what it did to me...and how Rebecca reacted when Marian confronted her. Rebecca grabbed the tape and started screaming at her mother to stay out of her room. When Marian tried to take the tape away again, Rebecca slapped her and locked herself in her room. Even when moving to a new church made her unhappy, Rebecca never behaved like that before.
“Marian called me home. Rebecca still had the door locked. She shouted that if rock music was evil so was I because I made that album. She accused me of being Teddy Rivers. I didn’t try to deny it. I regret much of what I did, but I won’t lie about doing it. It shocked Marian, of course, because she didn’t know about the band. I wanted to forget it so I’d just told her I ran away from home as a teenager and lived a wild life until I found Jesus. That night at church I confessed everything...my past, and my rebellion in not acknowledging it. I begged forgiveness from my congregation. Then we destroyed the tape to symbolize my renunciation of all I had been. The next morning Rebecca was gone, along with Marian’s grocery money. She left a note saying: You had your fun. Now I’m going to. Whatever you did, think of me doing twice as much. I hate you. PS: I’ll send back the money when I can.”
In the background Marian Newman sobbed.
The note sounded like the normal histrionics of a teenager, but the PS surprised him. If he did not know where she ended up, he would have found it even encouraging...conscience amid her anger. “Did she repay you?”
“Yes. About four months later a money order arrived from Billings. We called the police there. I even went down and searched the city for her. Without any luck.”
Interesting. She claimed to hate her father but carried his albums. She lied and stole and seduced for the albino but repaid money she took to run away.
At the other end, Newman was talking to his wife again, voice chiding. “Marian, Valerie isn’t wicked either, just--”
Garreth started. “Valerie?”
“Rebecca’s best friend. We later learned that after they found the Perdition Bound album at a garage sale, she showed Rebecca how hide it and some other rock albums they bought.”
“...to smoke, too,” came Marian’s angry voice.
So Raven called herself by the name of a friend. Did she use pieces of her past, too? “Did you ever live in Kaffley, North Dakota?”
“That was my previous church.” Newman’s tone said the question surprised him. “We’d moved here to Crow Ford just that spring.” His voice went pleading. “Look, I promise not to try seeing Rebecca until she’s ready but can’t you tell me where she is, or give me your name and phone number so I can call you to check on her?”
Regret pricked Garreth. “I’m sorry. I’ll have to call you.”
Disconnecting, he grimaced. He hated doing that to them, much as he needed the information they gave him. It must be like glimpsing their daughter behind glass with no way to reach her. At least they knew she was alive and believed her to be in good hands. Whether that was true or not.
With his clothes clean and potting soil from the garden store stashed in the car, he headed for the mall Lovings suggested. While he had paid no attention to the size of the clothes in New Prospect, he knew Raven’s height and weight. An adult male buying a young girl’s clothes based on those figures, however, might seem suspicious. So he approached a clerk at the GAP with: “I’m trying to get on the good side of my girlfriend’s daughter. She likes your store so I thought I’d buy her something from here. She’s, oh, about this tall and maybe as small around as that mannequin. What size jeans do you think she wears?”
It cost him the price of the jeans, but armed with size information, an imaginary shopping list, and a story of a niece’s lost luggage, he finished outfitting her at J.C. Penny. Everything purchased with one of his new, non-Mikaelian, credit cards. Guessing shoes size being a crap shoot, he bought sandals. Any other footwear had to wait until she could try them on herself.
Which presented a problem. Even when he felt confident of handling in public, every law enforcement agency in the country was on the lookout for her. At least he had not given Sechrest the picture in her billfold, so any distributed image had to come from the convenience store security tape. But there would be a picture. How did he keep her from being recognized?
A wooden zebra in the window of a home decorations shop gave him an idea. Camouflage. Okay...back to shopping.
Returning to the shelter, he found Raven still sleeping soundly. He expected it, but still felt a relief. After tossing the bags onto the top bunk above the girl and hanging up a suede blazer he bought for himself, he set about cutting open the end of the air mattress he bought, pouring in potting soil, and sealing the slits with duct tape. It made a crude pallet, but one like this served him for months in the beginning. It would do until they acquired a quilted pallet for the her.
He tossed the mattress onto another top bunk, hauled himself up after it, and let himself sink into its comfort. He better sleep while he had the chance. Once the girl woke no telling when he might be able to relax again.
The familiar, welcome lift of pressure woke Garreth. Stretching back into consciousness, he noted the fact, and wondered idly how far underground daylight continued to register.
The sound of movement cut through his speculation. Peering over the edge of the bunk he watched the girl crawl out of her bunk and stare around in confusion. She ran her hands down the raincoat. A bulge slid under her upper lip. Her tongue exploring her front teeth, he guessed...feeling the points of the fangs coming in. Her breathing quickened as her expression turned to one of trapped-animal panic. Garreth braced himself, expecting her to try bolting for the door. Instead, she backed against the bunk, whimpering, and slid to a huddle on the floor, head buried in arms hugging her knees.
Her terror brought a rush of memory of his first days.
“I’m sorry, kiddo.” Meaning it for now. He dropped to land beside her. “This isn’t a nightmare you can wake from.”
Her head snapped up at his voice. “No!” She jumped to her feet, breath pumping ever faster.
“Raven.” Garreth caught her eyes. “Stop. Hold your breath.”
She froze.
“Good girl.” He held her eyes. “Now listen to me. Just listen. Nothing can change what you’ve become. But--listen to me,” he repeated as she whimpered again. “You’re still you. Just, well...a mutation. Not undead. Not eternally damned. I’ll prove it to you. And I’ll teach you what it takes to survive if you’re willing to learn. Because if you aren’t willing, you won’t survive. Most humans think vampires are myths. Others know better, and some of those want to hunt us down and destro
y us.”
She stared saucer-eyed at him.
Did that mean he had sufficiently impressed her to keep her at heel for a while? He broke eye contact and turned away. “Are you thirsty?”
Of course she was. At the edge of his vision he saw her swallow.
But when he opened the cooler she recoiled. “I won’t drink blood!”
Having been where she was, he almost read her thoughts, the desperate twist of logic telling her that being repelled by blood meant she was not a vampire. “Have some tea, then.”
She grimaced. “I don’t like tea.”
He still lit a burner on the propane stove and filled a small pan from the single tap in the sink. “Try it. Warm liquid soothes the throat and helps the hunger pangs...though those won’t be really bad for another day, not until your teeth are fully--” He spun at her intake of breath and caught her eyes again. “Raven! Keep calm.”
She sat down shivering on the edge of the bunk. “What is this place?”
“A bomb shelter.”
She scowled. “Don’t you stay anywhere that isn’t underground? Since when do people have bomb shelters. Where it is anyway?”
“Omaha.”
“You bastard!” She jumped up. “You’re taking me back to that podunk town you’re from...aren’t you!” Now she bolted for the door.
He caught her around the waist in two strides, pivoted, slung her into the nearest bunk. “Settle down! We’re in Omaha to catch a plane for San Francisco.”
Bewilderment replaced anger. “San Francisco?”
“We’re going to see just how powerful your master is.” He turned back to the stove. “Three years ago he was arrested there for buying crack.”
“No way any cops laid a hand on him!” And they were back to anger.
“We’ll see.” When the water came to a boil, he poured it over a tea bag in a mug from the shelf of dishes and handed it to her. “Here.”
