Fatal Bargain (7 page)

Ginny regarded him stonily. Then she turned on the radio, put the volume where she liked it, and said, “Somebody’s having a party at that horrible old mansion. The Mall House. Maybe he decided to crash that.”

Her date sighed with pleasure.

He did not come to a full stop at the end of the little housing division road. He looked swiftly both ways and, instead, accelerated through the stop sign and let his tires scream as he turned left.

Ginny sighed. It was going to be a long night.

And all for a brother.

When you got right down to it — who needed him?

Lacey could not stop hearing the scream.

Even though she knew that Zach must have hit the ground by now, must be crushed flat against it, she could still hear the scream.

Zach! she thought numbly.

Bobby and Zach were the kind of boys to whom nothing bad ever happened; they were inoculated against trouble from birth. Their lives went smoothly, their complexions went smoothly, their relationships went smoothly.

And now look. Zach was dead or broken. Bobby was catatonic.

In the silence of the tower room, into the muffled panting and weeping of the five left standing there, came a new sound.

A rhythmic series of thuds.

Steps coming up the stairs.

Lacey’s heart roared like a locomotive.

The vampire had not made noise before. Whose step was so heavy? Perhaps a real person was walking up those stairs.

Could it be the police, coming to see what was going on? To find out who had screamed? Were they about to be rescued?

Was it some horrible, drug-crazed murderer escaped from an insane asylum?

Lacey could not bear to look at the door, but neither could she look away. It was as though her eyes no longer belonged to her, but were ruled by some other force.

Be the police! she thought, and prayed, and begged. Please be the police. Please save us! Please end this! We don’t deserve this! We want to go home! We want our mothers! We —

Through the door came the vampire.

His cloak swirled and his stench rose up.

Under his arm was the burden that gave him weight.

Zach’s body.

“A
VAMPIRE?” REPEATED KEVIN JAMES
. He actually began to laugh.

“Don’t you laugh at me,” snapped Mardee.

“I can’t help it.
A vampire
?”

Mardee pulled back from him. The creep. To think that she was alone with this idiot. Nothing, nothing in the entire world, was more maddening than somebody who laughed at you. Mardee pulled her lips together in a furious pout. She folded her arms over her chest. “Yes,” she said. “A vampire.” Kevin laughed again, and louder.

It was a Land Rover.

The car thief grinned widely. Some of his teeth had rotted, and some were missing.

Somebody had already stolen the Land Rover once, obviously, or it wouldn’t be here. Some fool who had not had the foresight to drive it out of state or provide a closed garage. Some beginner who had tucked it here until morning.

Well, come morning, it would not be here.

Land Rovers. That whole class of vehicles made the car thief laugh. Big, high, tough SUVs, bought exclusively by weak and wimpy suburbanites. Big strong SUVs for difficult terrain and steep grades, which would never go anywhere except a parking lot.

And loaded. These babies always had a great sound system. Air-conditioning. Televisions. Last summer he even got one that had a mini fridge in it.

The car thief felt around the cracks of the doors. In the complete dark it would not be easy to break in.

He did not think he had ever been anywhere as dark as this.

Although he was rarely afraid — he preferred to scare others than to be scared — the car thief felt a prickle on the back of his neck.

It was not fear. It was not some sixth sense.

It was an actual touch.

Fingers brushed his neck.

The car thief bit back a scream and whirled, ready to strike back.

Nothing was there.

He was left trembling, his knees jellied.

He hated that. It made him deeply angry that anything could frighten him.

Nothing was there, he told himself. And yet that outraged him. He did not make things up! He did not get scared of the dark!

His hands went back to feeling around the door. His hands were trembling and sweaty. He ground his teeth together, to get rid of the debilitating fear.

And again, gently, exploring, lifting the long hair that lay against the neck of his T-shirt, came the touch. Something was actually feeling the back of his neck, imitating exactly the way he was feeling the car.

He whipped around for a second time, and this time he struck blindly into the air, making fists, fighting it.

But nothing was there.

It must have been the tip of a branch. A wavering end of one of these dead trees. It had, actually, felt dead. Even though it had moved, touching him.

The car thief ran his bare hands through the air, as one feeling for a spiderweb. But he encountered no branch, no web that could have touched the back of his neck.

Instead there came a new sensation. A smell. A smell like raw sewage. It rose up around his ankles as if he were sinking into some terrible hole.

He grabbed at the only thing available. The door handle of the Land Rover. He gripped that faint silvery shine.

And the door opened.

The Land Rover was not locked.

The car thief grinned.

“Let’s go get some ice cream,” said Kevin. The entire evening was so weird. He kept laughing. Who would ever have thought you could have a first date like this? Who could he even tell about this?

“Your sister is in there with a vampire, and you want to have ice cream?” said Mardee. She was outraged.

“If my sister were in there,” Kevin pointed out, “she would have said something by now. She had to have heard your scream.”

Mardee looked at him in astonishment. “I didn’t scream,” she said.

The vampire carried Zach like a grocery bag. Set him on the floor like a loaf of bread.

Mildly he said to the others, “This is wasting time, you know. Not that I didn’t appreciate the effort, dear boy,” he added. “It was most interesting. And the scream — quite well done. I like a good scream.” The vampire reflected on this. “In fact,” he said, “I am a connoisseur of screams.”

“In that case,” said Lacey, “you will get absolutely nothing from us but silence, you dirtbag.”

“Lacey!” hissed Randy. “Don’t call him names. It’ll make him angry.”

Lacey stared at Randy incredulously. What possible difference could it make if the vampire was angry? His teeth were just as sharp.

In the mournful voice of a school principal yearning to retire, the vampire explained that they had disregarded his directions. It really was time for them to begin their important decision.

“Buzz off,” said Lacey. “Are you all right, Zach?”

Zach sat up and brushed himself off. The tower room was quite light. The vampire was giving off the phosphorescence again. Zach looked around in a daze. He looked down at his fingers, which had been peeled away from the sill, and his legs, which had not been broken against the ground below.

“You caught me,” he said to the vampire. “You saved my life.”

The vampire said sympathetically, “You had an assignment to complete, as you recall. This is not homework. You may not skip it and average your grade. Tonight you will choose.”

Zach closed his eyes. He had not closed his eyes when he was falling. But the knowledge that he had accomplished nothing, that he was still here, that he still faced one chance in six — it was too much to look at. So he closed his eyes. With his eyes still closed he said, “If you were going to save me, why did you peel my fingers away from the sill to start with?”

The vampire was insulted. “I would never do a thing like that,” he said.

“Then who did?” said Zach.

“I don’t suppose anybody did,” said the vampire. “How would it have benefited your companions to do that? The sill was slick and you had a poor grip, that’s all. It was a poor plan to start with.”

Roxanne stared at the vampire. She had seen him. With her very own eyes. She had watched him send Zach plunging to the ground.

“Let us return to the primary consideration,” said the vampire.

“No,” said Lacey. “Dry up and blow away.” She glared fiercely, as if she actually expected this third-grade curse to accomplish something. The vampire merely looked at her with more interest than he looked at the others, so Lacey quickly looked away again. She happened to look toward Randy.

Poor Randy was losing his grip. Perhaps it was because he was the only boy who had not yet attempted escape. Perhaps he felt a manly duty to hurl himself in some outward direction, but there were none left.

Randy was pulling things out of his pockets and fondling them like lucky charms. He had his keys in one hand; he had a Bic pen, which he continuously capped and uncapped; he had a disposable lighter, whose slick plastic side he stroked with his thumb; he had several quarters, which he tumbled from one palm to another.

Bobby seemed marginally more aware than he had been, but he still wore a fogged and stunned look.

Sherree was sitting in a little ball, hugging her knees to her chest, rocking back and forth.

Roxanne appeared to be trying to scrape through the floor with her fingernails.

Lacey was furious with the vampire. Who was he to do this to them? She whirled back to face him. When Lacey was angry, she screwed up her face so that all her features met in the center, wrinkled and sharp. “We do have things to discuss, actually,” said Lacey, glaring. “We will begin with your character. Or lack of character. I demand to know why you do terrible things like this to innocent people.”

“I don’t do anything terrible.” He was affronted by the accusation.

“It isn’t nice to kill people.”

“This is nature,” explained the vampire. “Nature is built on the laws of birth and death. Predator and victim. Hawk and mouse.”

The six were not happy with that metaphor. Even Bobby in his daze flinched. No one ever wants to be the victim or the mouse.

“But I don’t kill anyone, if you need details,” said the vampire. “No, you see, after the…event…we will call it an
event
…you will be very tired. There will not be much left of you. Not much personality. Not much energy. Not much for people to bother with. You will become a shadow of your former self.”

They cherished their characters. They were proud of their personalities. They liked who they were.

A shadow of that? Not much left? Nothing for other people to bother with?

“Perhaps,” said the vampire, his voice like chocolate, dark and slippery, “to hasten the final ending, each of you should present a defense to the others. Each of you should explain to the other five why he or she should — or should not — be the choice.”

“That is sick,” said Lacey sharply. “We are not going to lower ourselves to your level.”

Randy said nervously, “I’m not so sure you’re right, Lacey.” It seemed to Randy if the vampire had all the facts, he might make the choice himself. That would be so much easier. Randy felt he was carrying enough guilt. It was his fault they were here at all. He did not want to carry more. On the other hand, he did not want to be the choice.

“We are not going to let you have anybody,” Lacey informed the vampire. “You may as well face that, you hairball. We didn’t come here to be your choice.”

The vampire definitely did not like being called names. His snarl seemed to cross the room, independently of his cloak and form. His teeth overlapped, as if he were biting his own chin, and his upper lip twitched like a dog guarding a back door.

Sherree began to make dog noises herself, whimpering and moaning.

“You came here for adventure,” the vampire pointed out to Lacey. “I am giving it to you.” His snarl turned into a caricature of a smile. “Never wish for anything,” he whispered joyfully. “You just might get it!”

“You may leave now,” said Lacey imperiously. “And don’t come back.”

The vampire ignored her. He met the eyes of each of the other five. “One of you will be given to me by the others,” he said gently. “And that is that. However long the night, however difficult the choice, you will complete the assignment.”

Roxanne had completed every assignment of her life.

Roxanne had been well organized since first grade, and always knew what chapter they were on, and which outline was due on Friday, and which quiz would be given on Monday.

And Roxanne intended to complete the rest of her life as well. This was her senior year! She had college out there, and a yearbook. A prom, and a future. She couldn’t be letting some vampire suck her life away.

The vampire disappeared. He did not seem to go out the door, but simply faded slowly. You could not tell whether he was still in the room or not. Roxanne counted to one hundred before she began prying at the floor again.

Roxanne saw her dreams turn into reflections in a cracked mirror. Roxanne moved on to the third floorboard and yanked.

The house was full of its own noises. Its shutters banged, and its roof clattered. Its porches creaked, and its shingles curled. Roxanne’s noise blended into the fabric of the night. And whatever was below her made no noise of its own. Instead it made a smell. As if the vampire were not enough of a stink, a new one rose from between the floors.

“Shut up!” said Mardee fiercely. She hated Kevin now. She could not believe she had thought spending an evening with a boy would be fun. Boys. Ugh. They were disgusting. They laughed at you. Lives were in danger and what did they do? They suggested ice cream.

Kevin put his hand tightly over his own mouth, making a gag from his palm, pantomiming absolute silence. Behind his palm he grinned insanely. He was really having an excellent time. Weird. But excellent.

The laugh that had so angered Mardee, however, continued.

From out in the yard, and from up in the tower, separate laughs spun through the fetid air.

One laugh was as high-pitched as a broken piccolo.