Vampire$

 

Felix led the way up some back stairs to a small one-bedroom apartment and office with a huge picture window of one-way glass overlooking the bar. Felix sat down at his desk with his back to that window, chain-smoking and listening with stony silence as Jack spoke the tale of Vampire$ Inc.

His only discernible reactions came from his face, already thin, which seemed to stretch into a death mask's gauntness, and from his eyes, already piercing, which became uncomfortable to meet.

Watching him all the while - for no one could take eyes from his steaming intensity - Annabelle could not pin down her feelings. She recognized Felix easily from Jack's story. The laugh lines were there from the happy drunk who climbed Mexican trees.

And so was the helpless acuity of a man vised so tight he'd had to gun down four friends and a stranger at a kitchen table for a principle.

Eerie, she thought. I don't know whether to run screaming into the night or pull him into my lap and cuddle him until he can sleep.

Something else bothered her. His few looks away from Jack were at Davette. Everyone else he had dismissed with his first glance. But his face, that rock face, kept coming back to the young journalist. His face did soften, Annabelle thought, when he did this. But damn well not enough for Annabelle.

Not nearly enough.

When Jack had finished, all were quiet for several seconds. Then Felix reached forward and stubbed out his last cigarette. He spoke in a harsh, rasping, bitter voice:

"Get out."

"Take your band of merry men and your fairy tales and your" - he glanced briefly, painfully, at Davette - "your... siren... and any other reasons you've got to get me to do more killing and get the fuck out!"

Team Crow, save for Jack, sat in collective stunned silence. It was absolutely the very last reaction they had expected.

No one had ever turned them down before.

Carl Joplin opened his mouth to speak, to protest, but Felix stood up quickly, cutting him off.

"Now!" he thundered.

They left. Without anyone saying a word, they left, Felix by then standing in the center of the room glaring ferociously at them as they went.

Save for their limo, the street was all but deserted. Jack tapped lightly on the glass and the dozing driver scrambled out to open doors. But for a moment no one moved to get in. They just stood there looking at the night.

"Well," offered Carl at last, "he was pretty weird for us anyway."

Jack looked at him and laughed. "Are you kidding, Joplin?" He laughed again. "The man is ours!"

All eyed him warily.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, O Great Leader," said Carl. "But wasn't that a 'no' he gave us?"

"I'll correct you," added Cat. He turned to Jack. "It was, in fact, about the firmest goddamn 'no' I've ever heard."

The other three, Annabelle, Davette, Adam, nodded without speaking.

Jack laughed again.

"He's ours, I tell you. You know what he'll do? Next time I see him - "

"You're going to see him again?" asked Annabelle.

"You think that's wise?" added Davette.

Jack grinned. "Got to. He doesn't know how to reach us. Anyway, next time I put it to him he'll demand something outrageous. Money, probably. A hundred grand or the like." He nodded to the driver who walked around and got behind the wheel. He waved the others into the car. "I'll agree, we'll shake hands, and then he's in. C'mon."

They obeyed. Reluctantly, suspiciously. When they had all gotten situated, Cat finally spoke up for the rest.

"Bwana? Are you sure we're all talking about the same dude?"

Everyone smiled.

"How," Annabelle wanted to know, "can you be so sure, dear? I mean about the money and the rest. Why didn't he just ask for it tonight?"

He smiled warmly at her. "He was bluffing tonight. Hoping we'd all go away. When it doesn't work - which he knows damn well it won't - he'll just make it tougher on me out of spite. He needs the money as an excuse to give in to himself."

Everybody thought about that for a second.

Finally, Cat asked, "Are you sure we're talking about the same dude?"

"Let me tell you something, old buddy," replied Jack before anyone else could speak. "More than you, more than me, that man was made to do this job."

He paused, sighed. "Poor bastard." He looked at the driver. "Hit it."

If anyone noticed Davette's furious blushing or triphammer heartbeat they didn't say anything. Thank God! she thought. Because she couldn't explain it either. But Lord, what a tug...

Thirty minutes later Felix still stood as he had when they had gone, stiff and silent in the middle of the room.

Why can't I cry? he thought. And then he thought: I should be allowed to cry.

It isn't fair.

He had doubted not one word Jack Crow had told him.

That a world existed where vampires really lived was no surprise at all. A world of evil incarnate gnawing men only made sense.

What surprised him was how long it had taken for that world to finally find him and drag him inside.

It's not fair, he thought. I wanted to do something real.

Lord; but she was beautiful.

Jack Crow, lying sleepy-drunk in the huge bed of the suite's master bedroom, felt oddly content.

He felt for Felix. He really did. But no more than he did for himself or for Cat. And besides, he'd really meant it when he'd said Felix was made for the job.

Funny, he'd thought of Felix a lot in the years since Mexico but almost never in terms of the killing. It was as if that part of Felix, that killing part, had been kept under the surface. Or in his dreams. Or something.

He rolled over on his side and scrunched his pillow better. He loved these pillows. Not the usual hard-as-a-rock hotel pillows. Made to last a lifetime and probably float until help came. "Ladies and gentlemen, should we experience turbulence and the hotel begin to sink, your flotation device is found under your bedspread..."

Ha. Yep, Felix was the right move. Silver bullets was the right move. And for the first time he was able to think back to the night of the massacre with something less than bone-grinding anguish, something more than impotent horror. Now it was something like: Gotcha, bastards. Gotcha! Right where I - And then he remembered for the first time... No, not the first time. He'd always remembered that. But he'd never thought of it, never really seen it, but it had happened, not once but three times. God! Three times it had done it. Three times! Three times!

The fiend roaring out of the motel and them jammed in the sheriff's truck - Three times...

And hauling ass down the highway leaving David and Anthony and the priest and the slaughtered whores and it had come down the highway after them - Three times..

And it had caught them, actually caught them, and leapt onto the goddamned truck and then had done it again before it smashed through the back windshield and he'd blown that hole in its face.

Three times.

The vampire had called his name three times.

Jack Crow sat up in bed and his face was pale in the dark and he trembled and sweated and was as scared as he'd ever been in his life.

The vampire had known his name.

It had known him.

It knew me. Hell! It... It.

It knows me. It's still alive!

His eyes darted to the curtained window.

Does it know where I am?

And he sat there, for hours, trying to think how such a thing could be and what it meant and... and.

And I don't even have my crossbow. It's at the house.

But even if I did, what difference would it make? It's night.

It's night and dark and you can't kill them at night anyway.

At least, no one ever has.

But what if it comes for me right now? What if it comes for all of us? Cat! And Annabelle! Oh, God! Annabelle.

He started to get up and race into the other rooms and gather everyone up and they could run, get out of the hotel and - And what? And go where? With what plan? He lay back down in the bed and did an amazing thing, something only one of his breed could have done. He thought: I'm tired and drunk and I will not think about this now. Fuck it.

Then he rolled back over on his side and went to sleep.

And the next morning, right on cue, the phone finally rang.