by P. N. Elrod
Evan could have complained about being invisible again, because they were talking as though he weren’t in the room. In a way, he wasn’t.
The drug in his system took him a few steps further along to oblivion and he swayed a little. I got to him just in time and swept him up before he hit the floor. By now he was utterly limp, a deadweight in my arms as I carried him to his room and put him onto the bed. The coverings were still unfinished from Sally’s interrupted housekeeping lesson. Only a few hours ago the world had been normal.
The doctor came in and took his pulse. “Help me with the blankets,” he said. “I want to keep him warm.”
I pulled the bedclothes out from one side and folded them over Evan, then added a crumpled quilt that had been thrown over a chair. “He gonna be all right?”
“He’s got enough stuff in him to keep him out for some hours yet. Ask me then. Has he a relative or friend who can come with him to the hospital?”
Adrian, perhaps, if I could find him. He was in only slightly better emotional shape than Evan, but perhaps having something to do might help him. “I’ll see.”
Brett was trying unsuccessfully to pump Blair for information and barely concealed his annoyance at my interruption.
“I’m taking Miss Smythe home, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Right.” He looked at the young cop and told him to clear me with the others, then returned his attention to Brett.
Bobbi had reheated the coffee and was pouring some for Reva when I came down. Both had heard the scream and both had questions on their faces. The answer seemed inadequate to the experience.
“He’s going to the hospital,” I told them. “I thought Alex would want to go along.”
“I’ll find him,” Reva volunteered, and gave her hot cup to me.
I looked at it stupidly, wondering what to do. A faint smile ghosted over Bobbi’s face and she took the cup back.
“Can we go home yet?” she asked.
“As far as I know. I want to talk to Charles.”
“He can call you at my place.”
It sounded good to me. I told the cop on duty where we were going and walked out into a blinding burst of light.
Reporters. Of course. The kid with the camera knocked out the used flashbulb, quickly replaced it, and yelled at me to look at him. I spun Bobbi around and hustled both of us back into the house.
“Damn. Where’s the back way out of this dump?”
The cop pointed and we followed his direction, but two reporters were waiting in the alley behind the house, kicking idly at the spillage from the garbage cans and smoking. It was a hell of a way to make a living and at the moment I was hard pressed to believe I’d been one of them only a month or so back.
“Let’s just go on,” said Bobbi.
But I dug in my heels, feeling the anger surfacing and badly needing to do something about it. “Wait here a minute, I’ll take care of them.”
She nodded and let me go out the battered screen door. They were on me like flies on fresh meat, shouting questions over each other and threatening to bring more people in with their noise. I held up a hand and achieved a pause in the barrage.
“Okay, fellas, one at a time.” I pointed to the older one. “You first. Come over here so you can see what you’re writing.”
“That’s fine, I just wanna know who’s talking.”
He backed me over to the door, where we could make use of the light from the house. His crony hung close enough to listen, his notepad ready and pencil poised over it. I ignored him and froze onto the older man’s eyes.
“I want you to stand very still and not move for five minutes. You won’t see or hear anything during that time and you won’t remember me.”
It helps when they’re off guard. His partner’s cigarette sagged in puzzlement, but it only lasted as long as it took for me to give him the same instructions. I went in for Bobbi and we walked past them, two improbable statues on display in a dank setting.
Bobbi was all wide-eyed. “They’ll burn themselves—”
“Good point.” I went back and thoughtfully removed the cigarettes from slack mouths, dropping them into a handy puddle.
“You … I mean, you hypnotized them?” she asked. “You really hypnotized them?”
“It comes with the condition.”
“That’s just like in that book.”
“No, that’s just like me.”
“Do you do it a lot?”
“Not often.”
“How do you do it?”
“Beats me. Watch where you step, sweetheart.”
We picked our way out of the alley and came up to my car from behind. It was across the street from the house and as yet had not been noticed. I opened the door and slid across to the driver’s side. By the time Bobbi was in I had the engine going and shifted it into first. We took the first corner right and headed for her hotel.
“Poor Sandra,” she whispered. I only just heard her above the low rumble of the car. I took a hand off the wheel and covered hers briefly. It felt very small and cold.
“You want to stop somewhere for a drink?”
“No, I just want to be home. I want my own things around me.”
It was a natural reaction to head for the safety of one’s own nest. We said nothing for the rest of the trip. The silence held until I unlocked her door and turned on the living-room light. She was spooked and I obligingly checked all the rooms of her apartment before she took off her jacket and sat down. A brief raid on her liquor cabinet produced a medicinal shot of brandy, which she gratefully accepted.
“You all right?” she asked.
“I was wondering the same about you.”
“I’m just scared and shaky.”
“It’ll pass.”
She nodded absently and went into the kitchen to put her empty shot glass in the sink. When she came out she didn’t settle back on the couch with me again, but wandered around the room touching and straightening things. Blair’s words about death following her floated annoyingly through my mind.
She poked at some nonexistent dust on her Philco and rubbed her fingers clean. “I think I’ll get out of this stuff and have a shower. Will you keep me company? Talk to me?”
“Anything you want.”
I watched her take her clothes off, her movements unselfconscious and automatic. That fist gripped my gut again as I thought of the young girl I’d killed. She’d been the same way.
While the water hissed on the other side of the protective curtain Bobbie and I talked of God knows what, about anything except what had happened tonight. She shut the water off and I handed her a towel.
“I guess there is an advantage to short hair,” she murmured, dabbing at the damp ends the shower spray had caught. She dried off and I helped her slip into her white satin robe. She tied off the belt and put her arms around me, resting her head on my chest. Her skin was warm and smelled pleasantly of soap. This lasted a minute and she broke away to go back to the living room.
She curled up on the couch, tucking her bare feet under the folds of the robe.
“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I said.
Her eyes dropped. “I’m trying not to think. It’s what I feel and I feel guilty for feeling it.”
I shoved some magazines to one side on the coffee table and sat on it to face her. “I know what it’s like.”
“I know you do. Were you scared when it happened?”
“What? Tonight?”
“No, back then … when … when they killed you.”
This wasn’t what I had expected.
“I’m scared, Jack. I’m scared of dying and I thought if you could tell me about it ….”
She’d watched them carry Sandra out and had seen herself in that long basket.
“Tell me what scares you,” I said.
“All of it. I’m afraid it might hurt or take days and days, but mostly that it won’t make any difference, that I’ll just not be here and no one will notice. I know y
ou would, and Charles, and some of my friends, but the world will go on and I won’t be here to see it. I don’t want to be left behind. I don’t want to leave you.”
“You won’t.” But my heart was aching, already. With care and caution I could live for centuries, but Bobbi … I shied away from that agonizing thought.
I moved to the couch and cuddled her into my arms. Maureen and I had faced the same decision, though the circumstances had been very different. I’d chosen out of love for her, not fear of my own mortality.
As though reading my thoughts, Bobbi said, “I love you, Jack. I can’t bear the thought of leaving you. That’s what scares me the most.”
“What did you say?”
“I love you, I don’t ever want to leave you.” She turned to look up at me, her hazel eyes searching mine for a response. “The only other thing that scared me was telling you that, but after tonight I knew I had to.
“You were afraid of telling me …”
“It’s an important word to me and everything that goes with it is I lightening—at least for me.”
That was true; it was frightening and exhilarating and the best and the worst all rolled together, and I’d been afraid to say it, too. We could go to bed and make love, but say nothing about it before, during or afterward. It was ridiculous.
“You don’t have to be frightened,” I said, my voice shaking. “At least you don’t have to be frightened to love….” And for the next few minutes everything got gloriously, radiantly incoherent.
Bobbi lay contentedly back in my arms, her breathing normal again, her eyes sleepy. “Are we awful?” she asked.
“How so?”
“To do this after poor Sandra—”
“It’s normal. You get close to death and you want to reaffirm life. That’s why a lot of babies are born during wars.”
“What we do doesn’t make babies.”
“The instincts are still there, though.”
“According to you it doesn’t make vampires, either.”
“Not unless we exchanged blood. Your famous book at least got that right.”
“Stop picking on my book.”
“Okay.”
She was waking up a little, one hand stroking the spot on the vein under her jaw where I’d gone in. “That’s been on my mind, you know.”
“Exchanging?”
“We talked about it before.”
“I remember.” We’d talked about it, but not nearly enough. It was a hard subject for me to open up on.
“You said that’s what Gaylen wanted, but you didn’t want to give it to her.”
“She was insane. It didn’t show, but part of me must have known. That’s why I didn’t want to do it.”
“What about to me?”
“How do you feel about it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I know enough yet to tell you.”
“That’s a good answer.”
“It’s not easy for you, is it?”
I drew a breath and sighed. “It’s just at times all I see are the disadvantages. My life is limited in a lot of ways, ways I’d never thought about until it was too late.”
“Like what?”
“For one thing, I miss socializing over food, and I’m really beginning to hate mirrors. Sunlight blinds and paralyzes me, and if I don’t sleep on my earth I have the most god-awful dreams. Going to the Stockyards is a real pain. I often leave it till late so I don’t have the cattle smell on me all the evening and can wash it off when I get home.”
“Did she feel the same way?” She was referring to Maureen.
“She let me know what to expect, but she never complained, except about mirrors whenever she bought new clothes.” But Maureen had had decades to adjust to things and I was still grass green. Maybe in time …
“Then why did you want to change?”
“I loved her.”
“Don’t you believe I love you just as much?”
“Yes. I see what you’re getting at, Bobbi, but you need to know there are no guarantees. We could do it, but it might not work.”
“And then again, it might. I don’t see it as a promise or even as insurance, but it is hope. That’s all I really want, Jack, just that piece of hope.”
I thought long and hard about it for maybe two seconds. She had a serious decision ahead, though I was sure she’d made up her mind already. When I’d talked things out with Maureen, I’d been the same. I’d loved her and we both wanted the hope in the background of our lives that it would continue. Now I loved Bobbi and life was repeating itself.
“Look, you need to see exactly what it’s like for me. I want you to know the worst of it, and then if you still feel the same—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I want to take you to the Stockyards. I think you need to see what it is that I have to do every few nights.”
“You want to show me how you eat?”
Things twisted inside. “I don’t eat, Bobbi. I open up a vein in a live animal with my teeth and drink its blood.”
She shifted around a little and crossed her arms, prepared for hostilities. “Are you trying to put me off?”
“I’m trying to give you an idea of what it’s like to live this way.”
“And painting anything but a rosy picture about it. Don’t you think you’re being too hard on yourself?”
“Well, I—”
“And passing that attitude on to me is hardly fair to either of us.”
“Uh …”
“Exactly,” she said. “Now, how about some straight honesty? Is what you do really so horrible? What happens to the cow after you’re through with it?”
“Well, nothing. I don’t drain them dry, you know.”
“I didn’t know, but I’m not too surprised or you’d have to have a hollow leg. As for the cow, she hangs around in a smelly pen until driven to the slaughterhouse, then some guy smacks her between the eyes with a sledgehammer. Depending on how she’s processed, sooner or later she ends up on my dinner table. Does that make me better than you just because I pay to have someone else do the dirty work?”
I’d thought the whole business out before, but had never applied such logic specifically to Bobbi. She had me cold and she knew it. She smiled as the dawning finally broke on me.
Somehow things didn’t seem so hard, after all.
8
WE spent a little more time talking and decided to postpone our Stockyards visit for some other night. Bobbi was physically and emotionally exhausted and I wanted her to sleep on things. My own trip there could not be put off, though. I was getting nerved up and had to concentrate on simple tasks—indications that I badly needed my long drink. After seeing her to bed, I drove straight over.
I’d purposefully overfed last time and it had bought me an extra hunger-free night. The tiny amounts I took from Bobbi also helped to some degree, but were really insufficient to maintain me. Earlier, when my lips were on her throat, it had taken a conscious effort on my part not to go in a little deeper. The temptation had certainly been present, and this time it had been very difficult to end things and pull away. When hungry, my body only knew that blood was blood, whether acquired by feeding off cattle or through sex with Bobbi. The very real possibility existed that I might lose control and continue taking from her past the point of safety. To prevent that, I wanted to be well supplied from a less fragile, more bountiful source.
Again, I parked on a different street from my last visit, ghosted in, and did what I had to do. Bobbi’s logic floated through my mind as I knelt and drank. Talking things over with her made one hell of a difference; tonight was the first time I admitted to myself that I enjoyed the taste of the animal’s blood. It is different from human blood, like the difference between milk and champagne: one nourishes and the other leaves you high as a kite. Tonight I’d had the best of both.
The feeling lasted until I was back on the street again and walking to my car. I was walking, seeing things, thinking t
houghts, and Sandra Rob-ley was dead, her inert body awaiting its turn for the autopsy table. Some bastard had shut her down. God knows why; there’s never a good reason to be a victim.
I got in and drove half a block on an impulse. It paid off. The lights of Escott’s second-floor office were glowing. Parked near his door, just behind his own huge Nash, was one of the newer Lincolns. It was really too late for him to be interviewing clients, so his visitor was probably connected with the murder investigation in some way. I shut down my motor and softly approached the building. Beneath his window, open to catch the night breeze, I could listen in on their conversation.
“… anything, absolutely anything at all, I would be very grateful to know about it.”
“Do you wish to retain my services, then?” Escott asked.
“Inasmuch as you are connected with this … this terrible business.”
A drawer slid open. “Very well. Here is my standard contract. It’s fairly straightforward. I cannot make you any promises, and in a case such as this I am under strict limitations. If I should find evidence pointing to a specific person’s guilt I am legally bound to turn it immediately over to the police.” He sounded extremely formal and was uncharacteristically discouraging, an indication he was not happy with his latest employer.
“You mean you think Alex did it?”
“I have no opinion one way or another, I merely follow a line of inquiry until all questions are answered.”
I lost the reply, because by then I was walking up the covered stairs to the office. Two raps on the frosted glass of the outer door seemed sufficient to announce me, and I was inside, matching interested looks with Leighton Brett. His big frame and expensive clothes made him look out of place in the institutional wood chair opposite the room’s equally plain desk.
He was puzzled by my showing up, but it shifted into acceptance when Escott greeted me and explained I was an associate.
“I thought you were a writer,” said Brett, turning it into a friendly jibe.
“Only on my days off. This is what puts bacon on the table.”
“Mr. Fleming was the one who originally called me in,” said Escott.
“I’m glad he did, you were the only one there talking any sense.”
