Blood Red (42 page)

Kelli woke up from a deep sleep feeling invigorated. She hadn’t enjoyed a good night’s sleep in over a week. Her body desperatelyneeded it and so did her mind, so it was like heaven when she awoke fully rested.

Erika was on the phone when she stepped into the kitchen. Breakfast was ready; cereal and milk, and not just any cereal but generic corn flakes. They tasted like paradise.

No coffee made, so she hit the Mountain Dew stash she’d picked up on the way over. Erika had helped herself to two already.

While her temporary roomie stayed occupied, she went off and showered. Erika had all the sorts of shampoos and soaps that were advertised on TV and Kelli tried everything that was outrageously expensive. Erika was a wonderful girlfriend, but she’d stolen Mountain Dews and therefore had to suffer. When she was done, Erika helped her dye her hair a brilliant flaming red. It was a temporary dye but it looked a lot better than she had expected it to when it was done and dried and styled.

They were supposed to go to school, but played hooky instead. Marie and Rita showed up later in the afternoon and they all reclined in silent luxury while eating too much comfort food and watching a stack of rented horror movies to get them in the mood for the night to come.

Kelli put on the Elvira costume and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She barely recognized herself. Normally it was sweaters and jeans or a skirt. This showed a lot more flesh than she was comfortable baring. On the other hand, it showed off her cleavage nicely.

“Screw it. You only live once.”

After that, she put on the tattered robes of the zombie costume and successfully managed to hide the scandalous black outfit beneath it. She still preferred the zombie look, it was safer, but for once she would let herself go a little. What the hell? It hadn’t killed Erika yet.

Soon enough they were all ready to go and it was just a matter of waiting patiently. School wasn’t even out yet and they weren’t supposed to get started until five.

It was going to be a busy day. But she hoped it would be an exciting one.

She had no idea.

Ben drove, looking at Maggie out of the corner of his eye. She was staring out the front windshield and from time to time chewing on her lower lip.

He went back to paying attention to the road when a tractor trailer honked at him. He’d been drifting.

“You okay?”

“No. Okay isn’t on the menu right now, Ben.”

He nodded and took a right onto Van Buren Avenue.

It was the priest thing that was bothering her. He was certain of it. When he realized that most of what they were saying was going over his head and that a lot of it was stuff he shouldn’t even hear, Ben had pulled his invisible stunt and left the two of them to talk.

“Why the churches?” Maggie had asked. “Why the priests and ministers?”

Ben wasn’t stupid. He could figure out what she meant. He doubted sincerely that she’d gone to synagogue to study for a comparative religion course she wasn’t even taking, and he knew good and damned well that Tom had to have had reasons for questioning her being inside for too long.

Soulis had merely smiled. “Because faith causes us troubles. I don’t really know that I believe in God, Maggie, but I know that those with a powerful belief in him can inconvenience me. If their faith is broken, they are no longer a threat.”

“So you had me . . . cause a crisis of faith?”

“They sinned in the houses they raised to their god and they did it willingly. Most men do not like to admit their sins. Most hide them and keep doing what they’ve always done, even if they know they should seek absolution.”

“You’ve put too much thought into this.”

“More than you know.”

He pushed his thoughts away from the conversation.

“You’re not a monster, Maggie.” Ben spoke the words softly, knowing she would hear them.

She laughed. “Don’t be so sure.”

“So, okay, you have to drink blood now and then. There’s ways to work that out.”

“I don’t want to think about it.”

They drove in silence for a while. Maggie’s face reflected her warring feelings. He wanted to make it better, but had no idea how to do it. He was still a little off balance about the whole thing himself.

“He made me a freak.”

“He’s a freak.”

“Yeah, the same kind.”

“Maggie, you’re still the same person. There’s got to be ways around this.”

“Yeah, when I eat them I can leave their bodies in the sunlight and hope no one finds them.” She was justifiably bitter. Her hands clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed as she thought about the situation.

He was about to answer when they pulled up to the front of the complex. Detective Boyd was standing in front of his apartment. Holdstedter was near him.

“Shit!”
Maggie hit the dashboard with her open palm. She left a very small dent.

“Calm down. Get some sleep. I’ll handle these guys.”

“Hi, Ben. Maggie.” Boyd was looking tired.

“I didn’t see your car.”

“We had a little mechanical trouble.” He pointed to a Mercedes Benz. “So we have to take Danny’s piece of shit.”

“He’s just jealous, because I have a car.” Holdstedter was looking at Maggie. She was looking at the ground.

“Was there something I could help you with?”

“Well, actually, yeah. We wanted to ask what you know about Jason Soulis.”

Maggie wasn’t looking at the ground anymore. She was looking at Ben and then at Boyd.

“What would you like to know?”

“Mostly, I want to know what he’s doing here in town and whether or not he’s got anything to do with the disappearances.”

“I just met him last night.”

He looked over at Maggie. “Do you know him very well, Maggie?”

“Not very well at all.” Her voice was tiny and hurt.

“Well, we figured we had to give it a try. Saw you go by his place last night.”

Maggie looked up at Boyd and studied him very carefully. He looked back with the same intensity. Ben couldn’t decide who to stare at, and it seemed Holdstedter was in the same boat.

“You might want to look into him.” That was all she said before she went to her apartment.

The two detectives stared at Ben after she had vanished from sight.

“Was it something we said?” Holdstedter was looking perplexed and tired.

“She’s having a bad day.”

“Sympathies on that. If you think of anything, please let us know, okay?”

“Will do.”

“Ben?”

“Yeah?” He looked back at Boyd.

“She’s someone special to you?”

“Yeah. Sort of.”

“Watch out for her. She looks like she could use a vacation.”

He nodded and waved as the two cops walked off.

Black Stone Bay was at odds with itself. There were a lot of parents who actually paid enough attention to consider keeping their children inside on Halloween.

There were people who had vanished of late, a lot of them, and the fire at the fraternity house was another thing to consider. There had been no talk of arson, but there had been rumors spreading in only one day. There were people talking about Satanism and cults, orgies (which was partially true), and human sacrifices. Naturally any fraternity that had a reputationas blackened as the Phi Chi house must surely have been up to something bad.

People look for excuses sometimes.

Still, it was Halloween. Despite the fears or even because they added a certain thrill to the day, no one decided to keep their children locked away. There were several groups planning on taking the children around town and keeping them safe.

Throughout the town, the stores made sure they were properly decked out, and the run on pumpkins continued. School let out and the children did what they do every year and ran home to spend the next hour making sure they looked just so in whatever they had to wear.

Kelli Entwhistle and her friends were in place by a quarter before five in the afternoon. There was no need to drive anywhere, because they’d been given the Cliff Walk homes to handle. The kids in the area were likely to get some exceedingly large amounts of candy, if the previous year was any example.

The other girls were dressed in baggier clothes, with their party outfits concealed or not worn at all. Erika had painted herself white and was going with the ghost motif; she had enough white clothes and wasn’t afraid to layer herself against the cold. Maria was done up as a witch and wore the same costume she’d have on later, with a shawl and black pants. Rita was dressed as a black cat, complete with painted nose and ears.

The kids were a little bit of everything. There was Sponge-Bob SquarePants, Superman, Spider-Man, a fairy princess, a homemade devil costume, and a ghost—who latched on to Erika like iron onto a magnet.

She checked off the names and kept her mouth shut when it came to reading Avery’s and Teddy’s off the list. What was supposed to be ten kids was actually seventeen. She didn’t mind.

Everyone had flashlights, and there were plenty of bags for goodies. By a quarter after five, they were ready to start knocking on doors.

Maggie woke up to the sound of someone knocking on her door. She didn’t want to get up, but it was very insistent knocking.

She opened the door, took one look at Ben and felt her mood lighten. He was painted up as a clown, complete with a psychedelic wig. His red nose flashed off and on, and the hobo pants were preposterous.

He was holding out a costume for her, too. She would have expected him to be offering her a fairy princess outfit with the way he looked at her sometimes, but no, it was a clown costume. This one sported baggy pants and oversized shoes. There was also a bright blue wig.

They stood silently for almost a minute before she finally stepped aside and let him in. “Why are you doing this?”

“You need to smile.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. No Maggie the student. No Maggie the vampire or anything else tonight. You get to be . . .” He read the label on the outfit “Chuckles the Clown.”

“Okay, so where are we supposed to go?”

“Bar hopping.”

“I don’t really do the bar scene, Ben.”

“Yeah, because, really, I’m there all day and every night, looking to get drunk and get laid.”

“I don’t know about this.”

“Just get dressed. You can worry about it later.”

She took the costume and walked back toward her room. “Fine, but I want the rainbow wig.”

“I dunno . . . that’s a pretty cool wig.”

“No rainbow wig, I stay home.”

“Rainbow wig it is.”

She was ready twenty minutes later, complete with enough pancake on her face to completely hide every feature she had except for her eyes.

They hit the first bar, O’Malley’s Irish Pub, at ten minutes until six.

Boyd woke up from his nap at six fifteen. When neither of them could keep their eyes open anymore, they crashed. Just to save time, and because his place was nicer, they both passed out at Danny’s place. Danny had a comfortable couch.

He woke his partner by throwing a sofa cushion at him and telling him to get his lazy ass out of bed. Danny was good enough not to shoot him with the pistol Boyd knew good and damned well he kept under his pillow. It was nice to have a partner he could trust.

Danny forgot about the shower he normally liked to take and got dressed.

They were on the road by six twenty-five.

At six-eighteen in the evening, the last rays of the sun were completely gone from the sky.

At six twenty-three, Jason Soulis looked around the vast cavern under his home and smiled.

“Go,” he said softly. “Go and feed.”

In two weeks’ time, he had brought his experiment to the end of its first stage. Now he would see how well the second progressed.

They rustled in their new clothes, a sarcastic gift presented by him to his children. Black costumes that trailed dark streamers and shredded capes.

The sounds were crushed by the weight of the ocean as they found the entrance to the cave and swam deep into the bay.

Black Stone Bay was awake and the night was young. On street corners and in bars, down long stretches of roads littered with homes, the people who loved to celebrate Halloween walked and played and partied.

At the edge of the Cliff Walk, the waters seethed against the thrusting black teeth that ate the waves as they came in.

One old couple was walking along the side of the Cliff Walk when the vampires made their way out of the cave.

Lionel Woodruff and his wife Cecelia were not fond of Halloween. They’d enjoyed it when they were younger and when their children were still living at home, but that had been a long time ago.

These days they only wanted to be left alone to enjoy their remaining years in relative comfort. Between his arthritis and her angina, it was always a challenge to stay happy, but they managed well enough. The night was young but it was dark, and the fog that seemed to spring from the very edge of the cliffs made it darker still. They were the first to see the black shapes that came out of the water and crawled up the side of the cliff as effortlessly as smoke.

The wet, pale faces and dead eyes of the vampires were the last things either of them saw.

The fog came first, in a thick wet wave that swept over the shore of the bay and into the town proper at a maddening speed. There was nothing subtle about the stuff; it was overwhelming.

The houses along the Cliff Walk were works of art, every one of them an architectural accomplishment that had cost preposterous amounts of money even when they had been built, and were now so expensive that the taxes alone would have ruined a lot of lower-income families. The fog buried them completely as it rose and moved ashore.