Vampire$

Vampire$ Page 24

The detectors said: no vampires.

But they had been there.

Felix, wearing full chain mail, with halogen cross blazing on his chest, and with Browning drawn and cocked, stepped carefully through the shattered door of Carl's workshop and gazed about at the destruction.

Good Lord! Maybe they are gods!

Equipment was strewn everywhere, upside down, lying on its side, crushed. Workbenches were shattered. Heavy wooden packing crates lay tossed about like so many child's blocks. Parts of the ceiling hung almost to the floor, with wiring wrapped around it like a spider's web.

That clear sticky goo the monsters used for blood was everywhere, on the floors, on the walls, dripping from the ceiling and from pieces of splintered crossbow bolts. The puddles ran in a vague pattern, like a funnel. The wide end was by the doorway, where the concentration was the least. But as Felix, with the others moving quietly behind him, moved forward across what was left of the room, the vampire blood grew thicker and thicker, with huge splotches there an there and there, where a crossbow bolt had split an overturn chair. By the time they reached the far end of the room, by the time they reached that barricaded closet, the goo was so thick on the floor it was slippery to walk.

Carl Joplin had made them pay.

They found his body in the closet.

He was huddled, crumpled, beaten, slashed, in one small corner.

Too small, Felix thought, for that great body.

Jack's face in the halogen glare was unnerving. He was pale and drawn too tight and Cat, poor laughing Cat, looked a lot worse.

Surprised! realized Felix. They look so surprised!

I suppose, he thought next, that they thought Carl would always make it. Because they kept him in the rear. Because...

Because they loved him so much.

Damn.

Quiet in here, he thought next. No one talking. Everyone moving so slowly and carefully. Only the sounds of the storm whistling through, and even that had finally begun to abate.

There was a smear of that black bile the monsters spat when injured by his elbow on a broken countertop. Felix started to find something to wipe it off with, but stopped.

Let them come back. Let them come back and see this.

It was left to Felix and Father Adam and Kirk to take care of the body. Jack and Cat had left to stand outside by themselves in the rain. Adam brought the other two together and explained to them what had to be done to the body. That it must be staked and beheaded and that there really was an ancient Church ritual of interment that covered it all.

Felix was repulsed and sickened and... what? Scared? Certainly wired. His chest thumped and his thoughts went everywhere but to what he was doing as they loaded the tortured corpse into a canvas body bag on hand for just this purpose.

And the entire time some small sparking furious part of him was shouting up from his soul, Well, Felix! Is this enough? What does it take to set you off?

But mostly, he was numb.

He found himself watching young Father Adam, as they bound up and carried the body out into the rain. He knew the priest had been the one that kept the Top Secret Vatican records on Team Crow. And he wondered how he felt now.

One thing to read about it. Another to see it. Another to have them tearing at your own throat.

Cat and Jack stood still, side by side, the outlines of the great house they would now never live in rising starkly up behind them against the gray clouds and lightning. They looked... smaller than before.

They loaded Carl into the motorhome and Jack came' over and told them that he and Cat would take the Blazer and go to the hotel and tell Annabelle and Davette. And it was quiet again as they contemplated this grinding task.

"You want us to meet you there?" Felix asked him. Jack shook his head wearily. "We're going to the bishop's. We're all going to the bishop's." Then he paused and took a deep breath and glanced, sideways, almost warily, toward the shattered workshop door. "See you there," he said at last and Felix thought his voice far too thin for so big a man.

Then Cat and Jack climbed into the Blazer and were gone.

Damn, thought Felix, watching their taillights disappear. Damn.

Because he knew what they were thinking, he about their guilt and those horrible goddamned pictures cause he was having those same crushing visions.

Of poor Carl Joplin hearing his detector going off knowing it was too late to get away and then desperately trying to barricade the door and then packing his weapons into the closet and then barricading that up, too, and none of it, absolutely none of it, doing any good.

And then alone in that closet it would be impossible wouldn't it, not to hope? Not to think, not to dream, not pray that the others would be coming to save him?

And what did he think when he knew it was too late. Did he hate everyone? Did he forgive them?

Did he forgive me?

Would he now? If he had the chance?

Damn.