The Legacy of Lehr (19 page)

As he stalked down the corridor, Wallis sighed and glanced wistfully at Lutobo. “You know, you could have asked me to take him out, Captain,” she said. “I had a hypo all ready. Then we could have sent him on to Shannon for a nice mind-wipe. I won't say it's strictly legal, but Mather and I would have backed you all the way.”

Lutobo snorted, almost smiling.

“You're going to back me anyway, Doctor. Didn't you know? Any legal repercussions that may arise from this investigation will fall on the two of you. All that Imperial clout ought to be good for something besides bullying a starliner captain.”

“It is,” Wallis said, controlling her own smile. “Believe me, it is.”

Meanwhile, on the deck just below, one of their killers stalked his next victim even as they spoke. Grim and purposeful, he lurked in the shadows near the entrance to the Fourth Level Gymnasium, watching until just the right quarry should come along. He was weakened from his interrupted attack on Phillips; further debilitated from the wounds sustained in the slaughter of the Lehr cat. But it was not long before his ideal victims emerged: two young boys, laughing and talking and paying scant attention to where they were going and who or what came near them.

They were not on guard. They were children, the older no more than nine standard years of age, neither of them schooled in reading the subtle signs of being
prey
. They did not notice the figure coming at them from a side passageway until it was too late.

It was almost too late when their attacker swooped out in front of them in a swirl of blue fur, golden eyes glowing with fanatic purpose in the shadow-folds of a hooded cloak. It was too late when hands reached out to seize both boys—the younger by the wrist, the older by the throat, a mere touch stunning all voluntary movement, dulling perception, numbing will. It was far too late as their captor drew the older victim closer in fatal embrace, murmuring alien words in a harsh, discordant tongue before sinking pointed teeth into a helpless, upturned throat.

Nor could the younger boy even try to escape—for all volition, all ability to react, had been obliterated by the merest touch of that hand that held him captive. Still quivering in that grasp, the younger boy could only watch his companion pale and die, not even able to flinch as their attacker dropped his lifeless first victim to the carpet and turned to draw the second into that same deadly embrace.

And only a few corridors away, Doctor Shivaun Shannon paused near the elevator to calm a trio of agitated passengers. The man was white-faced with tension, the two women babbling almost incoherently that they all surely would be murdered in their beds before the ship made her next port.

Shannon listened politely, dispensed reassurance and a tranquilizer capsule to each, and had just continued on toward her office when a woman's shrill scaream shattered the air.

“What was that?” one of the passengers asked with a gasp.

Shannon bolted for the source of the cry with only a muttered “Pardon me!” but a steward and a security guard reached the scene before she did. The guard even caught a glimpse of the presumed murderer fleeing around a far turn in the companionway. While the steward called for an emergency team and tried to give aid to the young victims and a hysterical woman who apparently had raised the alarm, the guard sprinted off in pursuit, only to skid to a confused halt as he nearly ran into a hulking figure in a dark cloak.

The figure reached out for him, though, and its touch paralyzed the guard, bringing him to his knees, head bowed to touch the figure's boots. Through his pain, the guard was dimly aware of the figure bending over him, but he could not summon the will or the strength to raise his head and look.

“You have seen no one. Do you understand?” whispered a voice at his left ear.

“I—I—” the guard managed to stammer. He could feel the speaker breathing close to his neck and caught the stench of blood on the other's breath.

“You will remember none of this,” the whisper continued. “You tripped and fell, and that which you were pursuing eluded you. You remember nothing of what you saw.”

Something cold touched the side of the guard's neck then, lingering briefly over the pulse point, and then fire radiated sharply outward from that point, quickly filling his head with such agony that he lost consciousness. When he came to, footsteps were pounding down the corridor around him and someone was pausing to ask if he was all right. He picked himself up dazedly, wondering what he could have tripped over to nearly knock himself out, and headed back toward the source of all the confusion in the vicinity.

Shannon and a steward were bending over a hysterically sobbing boy of seven or eight when the guard arrived. A whey-faced male passenger had covered the still body of a slightly older child with his jacket, and another tried to comfort the weeping woman who had found them. Two more from security came and tried to begin clearing the area of morbidly fascinated passengers. Deller arrived with a med tech and an emergency kit, briefly glanced at the still body under the jacket, then signaled the tech to begin seeing to the other passengers. He crouched beside Shannon and began running a scanner over the hysterical child in her arms.

“Miraculously enough, I think he's just shaken up,” Shannon murmured, trying to rummage one-handed in the medkit while she continued to hold the child against her and rock him soothingly. “Let's give half a cc. of Suainol, all right? There, now, hon, you're going to be just fine. You're safe now. No one is going to hurt you. Just relax, sweetheart. It's all over now.”

The boy did not flinch as Deller administered the drug; and gradually, under Shannon's ministrations and the gentle compulsion of the tranquilizer, his sobbing diminished and words began to become distinguishable.

“The b-b-boolim b-b-bit Laije!” the boy stammered, shuddering as the fright overcame him again. “I saw it! It bit Laije on the neck and m-made him bleed, and there wasn't anything I could do!”

“The
boolim?
” Shannon asked.

“A boolim! A boolim!” the child shrieked. “It hurt Laije! It made him bleed, and then he wouldn't move!”

The last word was choked off by a hiccup and a bout of coughing, and Shannon exchanged a troubled glance with Deller as she rocked the child closer.

“What's a boolim?” Deller whispered.

Shrugging, Shannon turned her attention back to the child. “There, now, honey, it's not going to get you. Don't worry. Think back before the boolim. Forget about the boolim for now. Tell me what happened. Where were you going?”

“L-Laije and I w-were playing f-f-floatball in the gym,” the boy said, his sobs subsiding a little as the drug became more insistent. “When we came out, we—we were just walking along—and all of a sudden th-the boolim grabbed us, and I couldn't get away, and neither could Laije. It had Laije by the neck. And then it came and—and—”

“What did the boolim look like?” Shannon asked, glancing aside momentarily as a guard knelt to listen. “It can't get you now, honey. Try to remember what it looked like.”

The child swallowed, his voice becoming smaller. “It was big and black—”

“How big?” Shannon asked. “Bigger than me?”

One teary eye looked up at her, and then the boy nodded. “B-bigger. And it had big, black wings—I think—and there was blue inside the wings—and—and when it touched me, it hurt, and—and—I couldn't move, and neither could Laije. And then—and then—”

“Go on. What happened then?”

“Then it bit Laije! It had big yellow teeth, and—and there was blood on its mouth when it finally let him go—and he wasn't moving!”

“Did it come after you, then?” Shannon insisted.

The child yawned and nodded sleepily, his answers becoming automatic. “Uh-huh. The boolim grabbed me, and it was going to bite me, too. I could see its teeth, and Laije's blood—but then it ran away.”

“It ran away,” Shannon repeated, mystified. “It was going to bite you, but it ran away?”

The boy managed a sleepy nod. “Just like Laije,” he murmured. “Only—it didn't. I think …”

“What do you think?” Shannon prodded, as the boy started to drift off to sleep.

“I think … it was … afraid.…”

“Afraid?” Shannon breathed, though only Deller and the kneeling guard heard the echoed word. “Del, what do you make of that?”

Deller shook his head. “It's a fantastic story. Do you think it's all true?”

“Well, I'm sure he thinks it is.” Cradling the sleeping child close, as much in comfort to herself as to him, Shannon narrowed her eyes as if trying to recall something. “Del, do you have any idea what a boolim is?”

Deller shook his head. “Sorry, Shivaun. The boy is an Al Kaffan, though. I checked his ident tag while you were questioning him. It sounds like some fairy-tale reference. Maybe boolims are what Al Kaffan parents use to threaten their kids with if they don't behave themselves.”

“I'll check that angle,” Shannon agreed. “In the meantime, I want you to take our young friend back to the office for a thorough going-over. Locate the boy's parents and have them meet me in my office. Ditto for the dead boy's parents. I need to—”

She had started to pass the sleeping boy into Deller's arms as she spoke, but as she gathered him up, she froze in midsentence and midmovement to stare in shock at a length of stout, pale-metallic chain that had fallen across her hand from around the boy's neck. A jewel-studded ident tag dangled from it, and Shannon had the sudden, certain suspicion that neither the tag nor the chain was steel or any other base metal. All at once everything started to make sense—of a sort.

“Silver!” was all she whispered, as she finished giving the boy into Deller's keeping and rose to go and find Mather Seton.

CHAPTER 10

Silver. She could not help remembering what she had read concerning silver and vampires, and what the Setons had told her, but she was not about to risk Deller's ridicule by mentioning her suspicion to him. Removing the chain from around the boy's neck—at least the jeweled ident tab bore no cross—Shannon murmured a vague excuse about wanting to run the boy's medical records, then fled for the nearest lift as fast as she dared. She punched the call button and fidgeted as the indicator light crawled toward Deck Four.

The whole thing was incredible, too ludicrous for a trained scientist even to consider. She knew that things were not always what they seemed, that evidence could easily be misinterpreted, yet she could hardly ignore what apparently had happened. The boy's attacker seemed to have been frightened away by the silver chain in her hand. That might be coincidence, but tradition had always associated silver with the warding off of evil beings—such as vampires.

But surely there could be no such things as
real
vampires, and certainly not aboard a sophisticated starliner like the
Valkyrie
. And even if there were, it was ridiculous to suppose that such creatures would be repelled by such superstitiously recommended objects as crosses, or garlic—or silver.

Silver. The chain seemed to burn in her hand even as she thought about it, and she poured it back and forth between her two hands nervously as she waited for the lift.

Yet, if not the silver chain, then what had saved young Nikkos Vedarras? For that was his name, she saw from the ident tab. Why were there not
two
pale, bloodied bodies lying in the corridor behind her, instead of one? Was it possible that there really
was
a vampirelike being aboard the ship—with B-positive type blood that carried odd factors—and that it
did
fear silver?

The lift still had not arrived—it appeared to be permanently stuck at Deck Three—and in growing irritation, Shannon jammed her override token into the appropriate slot. The indicator began to move almost all at once, the doors soon opening on several surprised passengers.

“Sorry, ladies and gentlemen: medical emergency,” she told them as she pushed aboard and pressed the button for the hold level, ignoring someone's muffled protest in the back as she priority-keyed that as well.

She would return to Seton first, she decided. She was not sure what to do with her new knowledge, now that she had it, but Mather Seton would know. Besides, Captain Lutobo and Wallis Hamilton probably were interrogating possible suspects even now. What if they should find the murderer and then themselves be attacked? They did not know to protect themselves with silver—if, indeed, that was a deterrent to the being they were seeking. And if he or it had the physical strength to rip the bodies of his victims as he had—

She darted between the opening doors as soon as the lift came to a stop and raced to the outer door of the hold to press her palm against the ident scanner. When the door sphinctered, she ducked through that, too, only to be caught for a breathless instant in a tangle field. Someone switched it off almost before she had time to feel its power, but she was breathless and still staggering a little as the Ranger named Peterson caught her under one elbow.

“Commodore Seton! Where are the captain and your wife?”

Mather, who had been conferring with one of the ship's security officers just inside the security room, looked up and then stood as he saw the expression on her face.

“What's happened?”

“Another murder and an attempted murder, two decks up.” She leaned across the terminal to punch up a communications circuit. “ComNet, this is Shannon. Please locate the captain for me, as quickly as possible. He may be on Deck Two. This is an emergency. And Smitty,” she added to the security man as she motioned for Mather to draw a little to the side, “keep on that until they find him, would you, please?”

At his nod of assent, she led Mather even farther from the console.

“You've discovered something,” Mather guessed, raising an eyebrow in question as Shannon took his hand and put a mass of warmly glowing silver and jeweled ident tag into his palm. “What's this?”