Authors: Lee Killough
Garreth tore his vision from that to go check out the cake. Half of it had been sliced up, but enough remained to recognize a castle. Cake slices and punch bowls with skull-shaped cups flanked it, while a generous buffet spread down the table next to it, tended by a cowboy and French maid.
The music ended in cheers from the dancers.
Nat and Charly came over to him, panting a little. “Quite a bash, huh.” Nat raised his voice to be heard. “Try the punch. The orange, not the blue; it’s unleaded. The eyeballs are edible and not bad tasting. I think this will count as the wedding of the year, and probably acquire mythic proportions in memory.”
Charly laughed. “Exactly what Naomi, mother of the bride, is afraid of. Look at her.” She pointed at a table across the dance floor. “That has to be the stiffest upper lip in history. She’s been planning the perfect fairytale wedding since Julie was born and I’d love to have been a fly on the wall the day Julie announced her and Jason’s plans. I have it on good authority Julie delivered that news with an ultimatum to cut off Naomi’s histrionics: my way or the highway...threatening to elope.”
Garreth followed the direction of Charly’s finger, but instead of the bride’s mother, he saw Mary Catherine Haas and Anna Bieber at the next table. Oh, yes, last week she said something about making a wedding present. “How is Anna Bieber related to the couple?”
“
She’s Jason’s great-grandmother,” Nat said.
“
Then you’re related to Anna, too?”
“
Only by marriage. Her son Jacob married my father’s sister Alicia.”
The DJ picked up a mike. “Now, folks, radio Z-O-M-B-I brings you music directly from the Mos Eisley Cantina! Please secure the safety on your weapons before entering the dance floor.” Music started again, this time the bar music from
Star Wars
.
Charly grabbed Nat’s arm. “I love this. Come on, twinkletoes. Dancin’ time!”
They charged back onto the dance floor.
Garreth circled around it to Anna’s table. “Good evening, Anna. So this was the wedding you mentioned. Do Julie and Jason like the flannel sheets?”
“
Very much. Let me introduce you around...if you can hear me. Everyone, this is Garreth Mikaelian, the young man who came hunting his grandmother. You know Dorothy and my sister Mary Catherine. This is another daughter Emily, and Martina, wife of my son Edward, and Leona, wife of my son David. And this is someone I think you’ll be especially interested to meet...my daughter Mada.”
His pulse leaped, thoughts ricocheting from amazement — Lane still came, and early! — to panic over how to handle her here, in a crowd with her family. Until he saw where Anna pointed. Then his gut plunged in dismay. He stared across the table at a total stranger...at a ruined face, stretched so much by face lifts no elasticity remained, only a tight mask looking more like plastic than skin.
Mada was not Lane.
“
She decided to surprise us by coming for the wedding. Isn’t that nice?”
His face felt frozen into stone. Smiling used all his will, so did keeping his voice normal. “Very nice.” Somehow he also forced out a polite greeting to the woman.
Not Lane
. The words reverberated in his skull.
She nodded, murmuring a reply lost in the din of music and voices.
At a loss what to say or do next, he retreated...held his radio to his ear and shouted at Anna, “I’ve got to go. You all enjoy the reception.”
In the car he leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. “You’re totally screwed up,” Serruto had said. He was...but where did he go wrong? His mind churned. The shark’s tooth and postmark led him here. That was Lane’s picture in the high school yearbook and in Anna’s photo album. How could Mada not be Lane?
Someone rapped on the passenger window. He looked over to see Mada outside. Though he just wanted to get the hell away, he ran down the window. “May I help you?”
She smiled. “I’m hurt, Inspector; don’t you don’t recognize me?”
The voice jolted him like electricity. Lane’s voice! He peered more closely at her. Those were Lane’s eyes in that travesty of a face.
Before he could find his voice, she climbed into the car. “Didn’t you come all this way to find me? Now you have. Where do we go from here?”
17
Lane’s question had a simple answer...San Francisco, so she could stand trial. But he found himself saying, “That’s an interesting makeup job.”
She sniffed. “Well, I can hardly come home looking eighteen, can I. The old-face prosthetics used for movies don’t look real in everyday light. Faking a bad facelift works, though. People don’t want to look too closely. I didn’t recognize you, either, until Mama introduced you. I could hardly believe it when she told me about you showing up in Baumen, let alone her bombshell that you had joined the local police. I had to come home and see for myself. How did you find Baumen?”
“
I’ll tell you all about it on the way back to San Francisco.”
Her forehead twitched in a movement that without the restricting prosthetic might have been raised brows. “Are we going back to San Francisco?”
He made his voice flat. “I’m arresting you for the murders of Mossman and Adair, and my attempted murder.”
She laughed. “Really? Point one, I did not try to kill you.”
“
Yes you did.”
She considered...shrugged. “Well, yes, I did...but then chose to let you live.”
“
You left me bleeding to death.”
“
Not to a permanent death.”
Anger flared in him. “You
knew
what would happen to me!”
“
Of course. Point two, Inspector...how will you take me back?”
He frowned. How did she think? “There’s a warrant for your arrest. Extradition will be arranged and you’ll — “
She hissed, interrupting him. “Are you that dense? I mean, by what means will you force me to accompany you and how will you imprison me: rose stem handcuffs? A cell with garlic on the bars? May I remind you that anything used against me hurts you equally, if you can even convince your law enforcement colleagues to agree to such nonsense.”
He stared at her. What an idiot he was...so focused on finding her he never considered the problems afterward! He could not just let her walk away, though. There must be a way to handle her.
That fish symbol torn from Mossman’s neck suggested an answer. “Maybe I can wrap your wrists in a rosary.”
She snorted. “Superstition.”
Superstition? Before she snorted, Garreth caught the beginning of a flinch. The crucifix Anna wore, another on the wall of her livingroom wall, and that picture of the Virgin Mary in the diningroom told him Lane had been brought up Catholic...and her involuntary flinch said its symbols affected her.
“
Open your eyes, Inspector. You can’t arrest or try me. Our kind are beyond the reach of mere human laws.”
“
No.” He shook his head. No one could be beyond the law. Without law there was only chaos.
Opposing feelings warred in him...his belief in justice against the obvious impossibility of following proper procedure. He must violate the latter to accomplish the former, and that itself violated what his badge said he stood for. He would not be acting with proper authority.
His radio crackled. “
Baumen Seven,
” Doris said, “
see Mr. John Haffener, 723 Prairie Circle, about vandalism
.”
Reflex made him respond... “10-4.”...but he hesitated with his hand on the ignition key. How could he take the call and still deal with Lane?
“
I believe you’re being paged,” she said. “Since I’m sure you don’t want me out of your sight, why don’t I ride along.” She buckled her seat belt.
I Ching
echoed in his head.
The maiden is powerful. Beware.
She obviously saw his uncertainty. Her lip curled. “How paranoid of you. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to try something in my hometown, where everyone sees everything? Where my
mother
would know about it? I won’t foul her nest. I don’t even hunt here.”
He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. “How do you eat?”
“
In Hays. Even during the holidays there are young men around the college campus eager to pick up an attractive girl and demonstrate what superstuds they are. I wear my own face there, of course.”
“
Do you kill any of them?”
Her eyes went cold. “You can be so tediously one-track. No, I don’t kill them. Hays isn’t that far from home. Now, let’s talk about something more interesting...like the senses.” She leaned her head out her open window and blew. The steam of it swept away behind them. “Fairy wreaths my cousin Vicky used to call this. I think the temperature’s near freezing.”
He thought so, too, feeling the tires want to slide at a stop sign.
“
I used to hate cold. Now it doesn’t bother me. I’m not crazy about heat, but can certainly bear it better than before. Don’t you find that true? And doesn’t the world have so many more odors since crossing over? Isn’t it also wonderful being able to see in the dark?”
Questions he truthfully had to answer
yes
, but admitting it aloud felt like a trap. He drove in silence past the stadium to Prairie Circle.
The vandalism became immediately obvious...a smashed jack-o-lantern halfway up the driveway with a dark substance spreading from it toward the street. He got out. “Are you going to wait in the car?”
Lane smiled...more a grimace with that face. “Of course. We have so much yet to talk about.”
Her amiability raised the hair on his neck. She must have something in mind for him.
The maiden is powerful
.
Trying to guess her plan, Garreth barely listened to the victim while they surveyed the driveway. His flashlight showed the substance as red; his nose identified it as paint. Latex, he thought, squatting down and picking at one edge. It might just peel off, especially with damp concrete under it.
Then a name Haffener said rang a bell in his brain, Marvin Jacobs. He stood. “Two weeks ago Mr. Jacobs was the victim of vandalism, too. Someone scratched ‘bastard’ on the hood of his car outside the Cowboy Palace.”
“
I don’t know anything about that.” An answer that came too quickly.
Garreth caught Haffener’s gaze and violated his freedom from self-incrimination. “Why did you key Jacobs’ car?”
“
There was a set of golf clubs at an estate auction I wanted to bid on. One was supposedly signed by Jackie Gleason. They were scheduled to sell about two o’clock...only Jacobs talked the auctioneer into putting them up an hour earlier, before I got there, and bought them himself. And bragged about it at the Cowboy Palace.”
It sounded like their beef went back farther than the golf clubs. Whatever the origin, it needed to stop before escalating any farther. “I’ll talk to Mr. Jacobs and see if he will admit to painting your driveway. If so, I could arrest you both for vandalism but do you really want the embarrassment of going to court? I think you should offer to pay for repairing his paint job, and I will have him come tomorrow and clean your driveway. Then I want this...feud done with. I don’t want to see either of your names on this type of complaint again, understood, or I won’t hesitate to haul you downtown...in handcuffs...in full view of your neighbors.”
Haffener winced.
So did Jacobs when Garreth obtained an admission of guilt there, too, and presented him with the same threat of public humiliation.
“
I see you employ our very useful hypnotic ability,” Lane said after Garreth returned to the car and sat writing up his preliminary report...the final one to be typed at the office.
He wrote on without replying.
“
How about sex?” she said. “Ah, I see you have discovered the joy of vampire sex. Isn’t it interesting we still blush. We’re honey for flies, and what sex as humans ever compared to what it’s like when we’re hungry?”
The purr in her voice rasped at him. He laid down his clipboard and slapped the car in gear, pulling away from the curb with a jerk. “Your point?”
“
Isn’t that obvious? Look at all we are...our superiority, our abilities. Why would anyone want to be a mere human when they can be...us.”
“
Because family and friends are worth more.” He made no attempt to hide his bitterness. “Now I’ve lost them. Every moment with them is a lie. Which isn’t a problem for you, is it, since you never cared about anyone except your mother.”
“
None of them except her ever cared about
me
,” she said coldly.
“
So you probably asked to come across.”
She snapped, “Yes!”
“
How did you find a vampire?”
Lane smiled. “Irina found
me
...Vienna, July, 1934. It really wasn’t the place to be that month with Hitler’s putsch and Dollfuss’s killing, but Matthew said as long as the cafes and museums stayed open what were politics to us. This exquisite woman sat down sat at a table next to us that evening and started flirting with Matthew. Naturally I went over to tear her face off.”
That sounded familiar. “Like you attacked Claudia Darling?”
In his peripheral vision she blinked. “Who?”
“
Your 1942 assault victim.”
Lane sniffed. “Oh, that slut. I should have killed her. You know what she did after getting me arrested?”
“
Got you fired and then blackballed around North Beach. She told me.”
“
You’ve
seen
her? Well...how is the little bitch these days?”
“
Matronly and rich.”
Lane laughed. “Whereas I am anything but matronly and am
very
rich.”
His skepticism must have shown on his face.
Her forehead twitched. “Oh, yes, I am. You can learn a lot during pillow talk about making your money grow, especially with a little vampire encouragement. Which brings me back to Irina. Garreth, park somewhere so we can talk face to face.”
“
Eye to eye?”
She sighed. “You
are
paranoid. We’ll sit back to back if that makes you feel — no, not here! Turn right.”
Into the cemetery, not St. Thomas More’s parking lot. So she disliked being even in the vicinity of a church?
“
Let’s go to the War Memorial,” she said.
A tall granite obelisk in the middle of the cemetery with cannons on its left and right pointed at the obelisk. Erected in 1920 to commemorate the Great War, which everyone optimistically assumed would be the Last War.
He steered into the cemetery, radioing Doris his location, and parked at the Memorial’s island. Swinging out of the car, Lane strolled through the mist toward the obelisk. He climbed out, too, but remained beside the car.
Her voice came back to him. “Irina looked up at me with big violet eyes and said don’t be angry, join her for tea. Suddenly I wasn’t angry. Matthew and I did join her. Later she came back to our hotel with us and suggested we have a threesome...which Matthew accepted eagerly, of course. I don’t have to tell you how fantastic it was. But the most amazing part came after she told me to go to sleep and she and Matthew went at it again by themselves. I didn’t sleep — maybe she was in too much hurry to be sure of me — so I watched them...and I saw what she did. She doesn’t bite the neck, where the marks show. She prefers — let’s just say she gives a whole new meaning to the term ‘cocksucker.’”
Garreth cringed.
As though seeing him, Lane laughed. “I’m joking. That would be like drinking from a sponge with a soda straw. She goes for the femoral artery. The moment those fangs came out, I knew what I’d been born for! She tried sneaking away, thinking we were both asleep, but I ran after her and asked her to bring me across. She refused, then said she could help me be a happier human if I would agree to be her companion and run her daylight errands. I accepted though I didn’t believe I could be happy as a human. She said don’t regret you’re not cuddly; think of yourself as an Amazon queen. She taught me how to move, how to dress, bought singing lessons. I appreciated it all, but it wasn’t enough and I kept begging to be brought across. Finally I wore her down. Then, suddenly...” Lane’s tone went acid. “...she turned into this old lady, acting every bit her four hundred plus years. Nagging me just to drink, not kill, because that attracts attention.”
“
It does.”
“
Not if you make the kills look the work of a psycho or wild animal or cult, which I did. But she got so angry she threatened me, and might have tried destroying me if we hadn’t gotten separated in Warsaw when Hitler invaded.” She paused. “Blitzkrieg isn’t just a word when you’ve lived through it.”
“
I can imagine it was terrible.”
“
Not really.” She ran her hand down the engraved names on the obelisk. “You know what this represents?”
“
Bravery. Grief. Lives cut short. Wives widowed. Children orphaned.”
She snorted. “No...it represents a feast! Think of all the blood. I took my time leaving Europe. With so much death, no one noticed a few more bodies.”
Bile rose in Garreth’s throat. “All you see in humans is prey?”
“
Of course. That’s all they are to us; that’s all they can ever be.”
“
Not to me! I’ve never drunk a drop of their blood!”
“
You drink only animal blood?” She came back to stand on the far side of the car, staring mockingly across it at him. “That’s bad nutrition.” She ticked her tongue. “If you’re injured, it affects your recuperative powers.”
He carefully focused beyond, not meeting her eyes. “I refuse to prey on people!”
“
How righteous!” Her lip curled. “I notice you have no scruples, however, about cozying up to my mother to get to me.”
That stung. Heat crawled up his neck and face.
“
My
mother
!” Her voice flattened to a hiss. “It almost makes me sorry I didn’t break your neck in that alley.”
“
Why didn’t you?”
“
You bit me.”
He blinked. She sounded as though that explained everything. Then he remembered his thoughts while reading
Dracula
, noting the difference between Dracula and Miss Lucy and how Dracula gave Mina his blood in return, but not Miss Lucy. “You mean receiving vampire blood does make a different kind of vampire than someone who’s just bitten?”
She applauded. “Very good. You’ve got a functional brain after all.”
“
Why does it matter?”
“
My research leads me to conclude it involves a virus.”
He remembered the medical books on her shelves. “There’s a vampire virus? Like rabies.”
She rolled her eyes. “Not like rabies. Yes it’s carried in the blood and saliva and passed on through a bite. That’s the only similarity. Ours is a retrovirus. A healthy immune system destroys the amount of virus in a single bite, but if some survives, because of repeated bites or a weak immune system, it invades the cells and waits until the immune system collapses due to extreme weakness or death.” Lane’s eyes gleamed as she warmed to her subject. “Then the virus activates...takes command of the host and modifies it to serve the virus’s needs, which of course are those of all life forms: survival and reproduction. Mere reanimation appears to need very little virus, because biting a subject long enough to drain him provides enough for that. When a subject receives a massive infusion of virus, though, higher brain functions are restored. Creating the likes of you and me.