Vampire$

Vampire$ Page 26

"Rome," said Felix and the entire table went silent.

"Rome," he repeated. "We've got to get to Rome."

And they looked at him like he was some rude interloper but he really didn't give a shit. He appreciated the meal and the bishop's hospitality and he knew damn well everyone had needed this restful few hours in this great house.

But dammit! It was time to face the facts. The vampires were still out there.

Still looking for them.

Still monsters.

Felix turned to Adam. "Can the Church get us there? Right away?"

Adam blinked, stared at him, looked to Crow, who was sitting across from him.

Crow sighed and looked down at his empty plate. He looked tired.

"Okay, Felix," he said softly, "let's talk."

He pushed his heavy chair back from the bishop's grand table and stood up. He looked at the others around the table.

"Let's all talk," he said with a wan smile and motioned them to follow.

Felix hesitated, suspicious, then stood up with the rest of them - including the bishop - and followed Crow into the Common Room. The bishop took his customary chair, a great embroidered something that looked like a throne. Jack sat in a big leather piece beside him. Felix remained standing next to the great hearth. The rest of them took seats around the huge pile of Team equipment piled up in the center of the room. They had brought it with them along with Carl's remains. Crossbows and crossbow bolts and pikes and spare pistols and several cases of silver bullets. The stack was a mess because that's the way they had loaded it into the motorhome and that's the way they had brought it into the house because there hadn't really been enough room in the motorhome to store it the way they had - far from Carl's body.

But somehow that had seemed important at the time.

When they were all settled and cigarettes were lit and attendants had found the necessary ashtrays...

"All right, Felix," began Jack Crow, "let's hear it."

Felix paused a moment, trying to read Jack's eyes. Was there a challenge in there somewhere? Anything?

Whatever.

And he got down to it:

They were being hunted. They didn't know who was hunting them or where they were. All they had was a clue that somebody had taken over Davette's house and even if that was correct... If that was correct, they still didn't have enough people to take the target.

"I would have no idea whatsoever how to blow that wall the way Carl planned. Does anybody else know explosives that well?"

There was a pause before they all shook their heads.

Felix nodded, satisfied.

"And it would be suicide to go down into those shadows away from the sunshine. Remember the 'god' in the Cleburne Jail?"

He didn't wait for an answer.

"This Team has had it. No place to run, not enough firepower to fight, no place to hide - but one. Rome. We have got to get to Rome. And I mean: now."

It was quiet after that. Uncomfortable and quiet and all eyes were on Jack Crow but it was the bishop who spoke next.

"If you will forgive me," he began with a kindly nod toward Jack, "I think this young man is right." He moved quickly to soothe his own words. "I don't mean to intrude, Mr. Crow, I assure you. But I have tended people all my life and many of them were soldiers and... And you - all of you - must take rest."

And all eyes went back to Jack and then there was more silence, long heavy silence, before he suddenly nodded.

"Okay," he said quietly.

Too quietly for Felix. "What?" he asked leaning forward.

Jack looked up at him and his eyes were dead. "I said 'okay.' Rome."

Felix nodded. Nothing more.

"Fine," said the bishop, sounding relieved. "In the morning Father Adam and I will call..

"What about tonight?" interrupted Felix. "And while I'm at it, don't you think we oughta get a move on? It's full dark and they know we know the bishop, don't they?"

The bishop smiled and rose up from his chair.

"I shouldn't worry, young man. I should think being within these walls would cause them great pain."

It did. It hurt.

Even here, from the far edges of the grounds, the wretched torment from that ghastly stained-glass glow blew racking agonies through the Young Master's temples.

And the beasts... The beasts did not form at his gesture, did not close about him at his shining will. No. They circled and keened and stepped their dead souls' weight from foot to foot with only the sweet smell of their decay and his own blissful memory of it to recommend them.

But they would obey him.

They would obey the Young Master on this, his premier solo task from the Great Master himself. They would obey.

Despite the pain.

Despite the searing misery of the Monster's temple.

Because they were hungry.

Hours and hours they are risen this day and the thirst was rich and clasping their brute selves and they would obey.

They would obey if he must fling their rotting forms through those agonized windows.

"Beasts!" he shrilled to them, filling his own mind with the volume of his determination.

"Children!" he sang out mote and his thoughts penetrated them and they turned to him.

And he strode forward, ignoring the greater agony of this nearness, forward step after step, until he halted and raised a long beautiful pale hand and one shiny black nail and pointed at the shadows on the windows and spoke out loud and in his will:

"Food!"

"Food!!"

"Fooood!"

The collective hissing rose and broke happily upon his Young Master's ears.

"Foooood..."

Felix was feeling pretty good just before it all caved in.

He had gotten what he wanted from Crow. Given Jack's listlessness, that hadn't been so hard, and he had felt some pangs about ramrodding everything past the mourning leader, but Felix figured none of that made a bit of difference if he could keep someone alive long enough to bitch about it later.

He had them up and off their butts and getting ready to move. The bishop and Adam had called Rome, had gotten transportation, had arranged all the passport difficulties. Getting back into America was going to be interesting, but that's what voter-registration cards were for.

Frankly, Felix looked forward to seeing 'em try to keep Annabelle out.

All in all it was looking good. Better, even, than he had expected. For a change had come over the Team once it had dawned on them that it was over. A sense of grudging relief had come about, slowly at first, but after less than an hour, even Jack had given into it: Because, dammit, it was a relief to get down off your guard and know that rest was coming.

That vise-tight concentration, that desperate focus, was loosening up.

There were even some jokes as the men gathered together and organized their stack of weaponry and at one point Crow had looked around at the smiles on the faces and then turned to Felix and said, "Okay, Gunman. Okay."

He hadn't said any more than that. But everyone had known what he meant.

You're quite a dude, Jack, Felix thought admiringly.

But he had been too hep to say anything out loud.

Looking good, thought Felix. And he glanced over to where She sat, talking quietly with Annabelle and the bishop. Just that was enough for Felix.

She would live.

Yeah. Looking good.

And that's what they were doing, all fiddling and talking about the Common Room, with its wall of stained glass and beautiful furnishings and smiles, when Felix asked Cat about something that had intrigued him:

Carl's wooden stake.

"We've all got one," Cat told him. "We had this Belgian kid working with us a couple of years ago. Raised a carpenter. He carved them for everyone."

"Everyone? You've got one, too?"

Cat eyed him carefully. "I do."

Kirk, loading silver bullets beside him, grimaced.

Cat noticed and grinned. "You guys want one?"

"I think I'll pass," replied the deputy.

Felix was studying Cat. "Do they all say the same thing?"

"No. We all have something different. Mine's even shaped different, it's flat, like a paddle."

"What does it say?"

"My name."

"Is that all?"

"No. It says something else on the other side."

"What?"

"I don't think you're ready for it."

"Try me."

Cat's grin widened. "Okay. It's the answer to the question: 'How do you like your stake?'"

"Huh?" said Kirk.

"What does it say?" Felix wanted to know.

Cat's eyes were devilish. "Medium Rare."

They had begun to laugh when the first of the stained-glass windows just blew into the room whizzing glass like shrapnel into the furniture and the far walls and then that smell - that smell of decay - and Felix thought, Oh, my God, my God! They're here!

And he got to his feet and spun toward the sound and dragged out the Browning and for just an instant all was calm and eerie and... and impossible, because they had just been sitting here, just sitting here laughing and talking and ready to go, to get out of this, out of all of it.

And they all were there, frozen with surprise and dawning fear, their mouths open and their eyes wide, frozen and unbelieving and so tired. And then the beast who had burst within them as if thrown through the window shook its shaggy head and reared up from its place on all fours in front of the window and those blood-red eyes shone on them and the black mouth opened those glistening fangs and it hissed...

Felix raised the gun to fire as the second window exploded and the glass flew again and there were screams and then another explosion and then another and the whole wall of stained glass collapsed into the room and the smell was there and the brutes were clambering through with their dead rotting skin through the broken glass and shattered window frames and the hissing, the hisssssing filled the house of God and their air and Felix felt spears of pain on the side of his neck and then the blood running down and he knew the glass, the fractured, flying glass, had got him and he fired at something through the crashes of debris just as the next screams began.

It was... who? One of the bishop's men... Bryan? Was that his name? One of the monsters had crashed through on top of him and now was on all fours above him, like some slavering undead bear, and Bryan screamed and cried and tried to pull himself out from under and the brute held him there, fast, with one rotting hand on his chest and Bryan screamed again and again and scrambled desperately backward, flailing his hands and feet but he could get no traction on that beautiful thick carpet and the beast above him...

Did nothing.

None of them were moving! They seemed stunned and stunted and almost paralyzed and two or three of them were holding their heads with rancid hands. Hurting. Hurting.

But there were so many! So many of them!

"It's this place," cried the bishop. And he rose up and strode forward, the robes of his office swaying out around him, and he grasped the great cross about his neck and held it aloft.

"This place!" he shouted triumphantly. "They cannot bear the House of the Lord!"

"Get them back!" roared Jack Crow.

Felix turned to see what Jack was saying and saw them, saw the women, saw her! The women were here - she was here, My God My God!

"Get them back!" roared Crow again. "Cat! Adam! Move 'em back!"

"Where! Outside?"

"No!" shouted Felix. "Put them... put them in the entry hall and close it...

"Yes!" echoed Crow. "And lock the doors and... Cat! Get the Blazer! Move it!"

And that's when Bryan lunged backward and the black nails at his throat tore the skin and the red blood welled out and the dead bear awoke and his gray lips spread wide and the fangs started down.

Felix and Kirk fired simultaneously and the monster flipped backward from the impact, howling and screeching those awful sounds and the others, the others! So many of them! They woke up too! They lunged toward them - And the bishop. The bishop roared back at them!

"Back! Back, you children of Satan! Back and be purged!"

And he walked toward them, holding the cross in front of him like a goddamned pistol or something and they shouted at him to stop, to come back with them, to fall back, but - The one that got him was so huge. It had long black hair and grimy coveralls and it came from the bishop's side - he never saw it - and those huge dead arms fell like trees on the cleric and embraced him and squeezed him and...

And Felix couldn't get a shot! The bishop was blocking the shot!

The bishop didn't scream. He snarled with fury and twisted around in that death grip.

"In the name of Christ!" he roared into those dead, red eyes, into those greasy, slick fangs, and he shoved the cross into that peeling face...

And it burned it! It burned it! Steam spewed out and the stench of the burning flesh swam through the air and...

And from where came that impossibly bright light arcing from where the cross smote the flesh?

The ghoul howled with pain and thrashed its burly head and tried to duck back from that acetylene cross.

But it would not let go of the bishop.

Instead, it squeezed. Spasmodically, monstrously, it clamped tighter its beast arms and the bishop wailed as his insides were vised together but he never let go of the cross, never stopped jamming it into the burning face, never stopped cleansing him.

Even as he died.

"No!" shouted Kirk, aghast, leaping forward. "Let him go, you filthy..."

"Kirk!" cried Felix. "No! It's too late to - "

But the deputy didn't listen. He took one more quick stride. Then two. And he was within a yard of the death grip when the ghoul, still in agony from the dead bishop's cross, had finally had enough. It jerked backward and threw the bishop's limp form away, his arms as thick as branches flying outward from his body and his right forearm bashed full on into the deputy's forehead...

And crushed his skull...

And snapped his neck...

And Kirk turned and looked with astonishment at Felix and then the gunman saw/felt the light go out behind the eyes.

And his strong young body slumped lifeless to the floor.

Felix was still staring, wide-mouthed and unbelieving, at his dead comrade when something crashed hissing and snapping into him from the blind side. They went careening over sideways into a side table and Felix heard the table legs splinter and crack and he ended up propped against the tilted tabletop but these were only minor distant details beside the spitting decay smell of the ghoul grabbing and hissing at him and Felix managed to twist about and jam his left hand into the throat under those snapping jaws and then he was eye to bloody eye with the monster and...

Those eyes burned red and primal and they wanted him. Those slick gooey fangs snapped for him. And he began to lose his grip as the gray skin at the zombie's throat slid away under his fingers and the hissing increased and the monster had him by both sides of the head and it leaned hard down to reach him, his throat or his cheek or his eyes and the pupils were almost sideways with some impossible glint.

Supernatural, Jack Crow had told him.

And the gunman wrenched his pistol under the monster's chin and emptied it.

BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM-BLAM

The monster warped and howled with each impact, spitting black decay and pain, but it still held him and those claws on either side of his head jerked with his pain and cracked the gunman's head like a thunderclap against the tabletop and Felix... lost it.

The concussion, the impact... Am I dead? he wondered, as all became fuzzy and indistinct and the shattering sounds and shrieks of battle faded down.

Or just dying? Or knocked out or...

The black man lay a few feet from him, twitching and shivering. Not dead, but not coming.

And the vaguely conscious part of Felix thought this was very good.

And then he thought he should maybe find his gun and:

Here it is, in my hand.

And then he reached around and got a new clip-he knew how to do that. He knew how to change clips and he did and then he held the newly loaded gun in his lap and felt very proud and he felt the blood from his head injury flowing down his neck and he saw the other monsters had come to also, understood that they had been only temporarily stunned by the silver bullets.

And by God's House.

The bishop is dead, thought Felix.

Kirk Thompson is dead too, he thought next.

Soon I will die, too, won't I?

But I still have my gun and what I will do is: I will shoot them when they come near me and it will not stop them but it will hurt them and that is better than nothing and...

And so he lay there, stunned, against the overturned table, and watched them come for him.

And saw Jack Crow save what was left.

He saw it from a long way off, it seemed, as though Jack and the monsters and even the rest of the building, were far, far away. But he still saw it. And what he saw, even from the end of his conked tunnel, was amazing. Jack Crow did things Felix couldn't imagine being done. He did things no one else but Jack Crow, Crusader, by God, Jack Crow, could have done.

He was everywhere at once. And had to be. The other goons had arisen at the same time as the black man at Felix's feet, and though they were slow and ponderous and unthinking, there were too many of them. And they were so hungry, reaching for him, lunging at him, grisly fingers grasping and clawing and - And Jack Crow bashed 'em back. He emptied his crossbow and emptied his pistol and grabbed up a handful of pikes and laid into them. He bashed them, he spitted them, be carved them with splintered ends. There was no one else:

Adam guarded the women in the entry hail. Cat was out bringing up the Blazer. Felix lay almost comatose against the shattered table. For the next few crucial minutes there would be no one else to hold them off but Jack alone.

And Jack didn't seem to give a shit. He went after them with a ferocity that Felix, even stunned as be was, could hardly believe. It was like some sort of grotesque juggling act. Jack would slam two of them down somehow, but by that time two more would have arisen again, spitting and hissing and reaching for him. And he would slam them down again, spear them with the pikes or shoot them through their faces or once, just flat bust them in the mouth with his fist.

He's incredible, thought Felix. He's bigger than life.

And then he thought: I've got to get up! I've got to do something!

But then Jack was there, beside him, speaking softly but quickly: "C'mon, buddy. We've gotta move. C'mon!"

And then be turned and kicked the black man full in the face, the one with nine silver bullets in him, who had only now started to rise again.

"C'mon, Gunman," said Jack, lifting him with surprising gentleness, to his feet.

Pain seared through Felix's skull when his head came loose from the table and he saw Jack wince in sympathy but they didn't stop, they got Felix up and they got him moving and the pain began to clear his head and then they were in the entry hail and the women were there, Annabelle and Davette, huddled together against a wall and dammit if Annabelle didn't manage a smile for them.

And then Jack and Adam were closing the huge sliding oak doors to the living room and dragging some antique side table across the marble to barricade it. The other doors were already closed with other furniture stacked against them. Only the massive front door, standing open to the returning rain, was free.

"Your head," said a small voice.

Felix turned and saw Davette, her hand frozen in midair where she had started to reach for his wound.

"I'm all right," Felix managed to say.

And she nodded vaguely and stepped back to Annabelle and Felix thought: Move, Felix! Wake up!

And he shook his head for more pain and gritted his teeth and looked down at the Browning still in his hand and...

And it helped. Some.

"Where's Cat?" Jack wanted to know.

Father Adam shook his head. "Haven't seen him. Do you think..."

Jack was at the front door, looking warily out into the night.

"Do I think what?" he barked.

Adam swallowed. "We haven't seen any masters. Maybe they couldn't come in here. Maybe they're..."

And he gestured out the door.

"Oh, shit!" sighed Jack.

And the dead grasping hands began scratching at the sliding oak doors.

Jack looked at the doors, saw them start to lean inward with the weight and thirst of the dead.

"Well, we can't stay here. Maybe..."

Bright headlights framed the door and there was a loud crunching noise as Cat vaulted the Blazer up the front steps and came to a skidding stop on the wide front landing of the great home.

"Whenever ya'all are ready!" he shouted through the driver's window.

Jack herded everyone out and the Blazer doors were yanked open. Jack took the wheel. Annabelle sat in the passenger seat beside him. Felix sat in the back seat behind her, gun in hand.

And that's where he was when they bounced down the steps and over the curb and onto the street and were racing half a block away and a streak of movement appeared from the right and something slammed into the side of the Blazer and breaking glass slashed through the interior and the Blazer tilted up crazily on two wheels before bouncing back down on all four wheels, skidding wildly on the slick pavement, side-swiping a parked car and coming to a stop in the middle of the road.

The grasping talons through Annabelle's shattered passenger window finally woke Felix up. He lunged over the front seat and jammed the automatic into the Young Master's face and jerked the trigger three times.

The monster's face disappeared back out through the window and then reappeared, hissing and spitting and shivering, two holes in its moon-pale skin, the clear blood pulsing out with the black spitting mucus from the mouth and...

And Jack tried to move the Blazer but the engine had stalled and then it wouldn't start in Drive, so he had to work the gearshift and...

And the fiend lunged back at them, back at Felix, the source of his pain, and Felix fired again and again and the head snapped back once more but...

But one of the talons still grasped the edge of the doorway and the whole damned Blazer shook with the monster's pain and fury and Felix leaned way out over Annabelle's seat and out the window and twisted his body around and saw the monster, hunched against the side of the vehicle, and it looked up at him, hissed and spat at him, and Felix shot it through the right eye and it vaulted back and lost its grip on the Blazer.

The engine roared to life, Jack tromped on the gas pedal, and they were off.

They could see the creature through the back windows jerking itself to its feet in the middle of the road. Felix, still hanging halfway out the window, managed to shoot one more time.

The Blazer didn't slow for several blocks while Felix clambered past everyone to the rear of the truck bed to be ready to shoot again. But nothing came. No monster sprinted after them through the rain.

"Relax, Jack!" called Felix at last from the rear. "No one's coming."

But Jack kept his foot down hard.

"Where are you going?" yelled Felix, irritated by the careening car.

"Hospital," said Crow without turning around.

And Adam took Felix by the arm and pointed. He looked where he was told and saw her, saw Annabelle, slumped across the Blazer's console. Cat was frantically dabbing at her throat with a shirt. But the blood, from a dozen wounds of exploded safety glass, poured thick across her still features.