The Saint-Germain Chronicles (27 page)

“Perhaps.” He shook off the, despondency. “I’ll take the west side of the trail and you take the east. We should be able to do all the cabins in half an hour.”

Harriet was on the floor of a tool shed near the stable. There were savage discolorations on her throat and wrists, and one of the rips in her skin still bled sluggishly.

“Good God,” Madelaine said in disgust. “Hasn’t that man any sense?”

“The evidence is against it,” Franciscus said wryly. He bent to pick up Harriet. “She’ll come out of it, but I think we’d better hold her in the Lodge. There’s a room behind my… workshop where I’ve got a bed. Jorry Fitzallen can check her over.”

“And what will he say?” Madelaine asked, not able to conceal her anxiety.

“My dear, Jorry Fitzallen is a Kiowa. He will be very circumspect. Last year there was a shamanistic killing which he attributed to snakebite, which, if you stretch a point, was true.” He carried Harriet easily, as if she were little more than a child. “You’d best make sure that there is no one on the trail. I would not like to have any more rumors flying than we already have to contend with.”

Jim Sutton had turned first pale, but now his face was flushed and he stammered as he spoke. “If I get m-my hands on that b-bastard…”

“You will endanger yourself and Harriet needlessly,” Franciscus said sharply. “It won’t work, Jim. It’s much better that you stay with Harriet—she will be grateful, you know—than that you waste your energy running around the hills looking for this man.”

The room off what Franciscus called his workshop was spartanly simple. There was a narrow, hard captain’s bed, a simple writing table, and a chair. On the wall were three paintings, two of unremarkable subjects and talents, one, clearly by a more skilled hand, showed a rough-visaged Orpheus lamenting his lost Eurydice.

“This is yours?” Jim Sutton asked as he glanced around. Now that the shock of seeing Harriet had lessened, he was intrigued by his surroundings.

“Yes.”

“It’s damned austere,” he said uncomfortably.

“I prefer it,” Franciscus responded.

“That
Orpheus
looks something like a Botticelli,” he remarked after staring at it a little while.

“It does, doesn’t it?” Franciscus drew the single chair up to the bed where Harriet lay. “Come, sit down. She’ll be awake by sunset. I’ll have Frank send in an occasional double Cruzan.” He waited while Jim Sutton reluctantly sat down. “I would recommend that you open the door only to me and Mr. Rogers. It’s true that Lorpicar hasn’t been found, but there is a possibility”—he knew it was, in fact, a certainty—“that Lorpicar may try to find Harriet to… finish what he started.”

Jim Sutton’s eyes were too bright. “I’ll kill him,” he vowed.

“Will you.” Franciscus looked at the reporter. “Harriet needs your help. Leave Lorpicar to me.”

“You?” There was polite incredulity in his expression.

“I know what I am up against, my friend. You don’t. And in this instance, a lack of knowledge might be fatal.” He bent over Harriet, his dark eyes keen. “She will recover. I don’t think there will be any serious aftereffects.”

“God, I hope not,” Jim Sutton said quite devoutly.

Franciscus almost smiled. “I’ll send you word when we’ve found Lorpicar. Until then, if you want to stay here, fine. If you’d rather leave, it would be best if you let Mr. Rogers know so that someone else can stay with Harriet.”

“Then she isn’t safe yet?” he said, catching at Franciscus’ sleeve.

“She, herself, is not in any great danger. But Lorpicar is another matter, and he may still try to reach her.” He wanted to be certain that Jim Sutton did not underestimate the risk involved. “Harriet is all right now, but if Lorpicar has another go at her…”

“Oh, shit.” Jim rubbed his face. “The world is full of psychos. I swear it is.”

Franciscus said nothing, but before he closed the door, he saw Jim Sutton take Harriet’s unresisting hand between his own.

There was little conversation at dinner, though Kathy had outdone herself with the food. Guests drank more heavily than usual, and Nick Wyler had offered to stand guard on the porch with a shotgun, but Mr. Rogers had quickly put an end to that idea, much to the relief of the other guests. By the time the dining room was empty much of the fear had been dispelled, though Mrs. Emmons had declared that she would not sleep a moment for fear she would be the next victim.

Frank kept the bar open until eleven, and Mr. Franciscus sat at the harpsichord in the lounge, playing music no one noticed. But even the most intrepid guests were touched by fear, and the last group bought a bottle of bourbon and left together, taking comfort from the drink and familiar faces.

“You going to bed, Franciscus?” the bartender called as he finished closing out the register for the evening.

“In a while. Don’t mind me.” He was playing a Scarlatti sonata now. “Turn off the lights when you go.”

The bartender shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

Half an hour later, Franciscus sat alone in the dark. The harpsichord was silent. The last pan had rattled in the kitchen some time before and the tall clock in the lobby sounded oddly muffled as its St. Michael’s chimes tolled the quarter hour.

An errant breeze scampered through the lounge and was gone. Franciscus waited, alert, a grim, sad curve to his lips.

There was a soft tread in the dining room, the whisper of cloth against cloth, the quiet squeak of a floorboard.

The lounge, at an oblique angle to the foyer and separated from the lobby by an arch, was not touched by the single light that glowed at the registration desk, and the soft footfalls turned to the lounge from the dining room, seeking the haven of darkness.

When the steps were halfway across the room, Franciscus snapped on the light over the keyboard. It was soft, dispelling little of the night around it, but to the black-cloaked figure revealed on the edge of its luminescence, it glowed bright as the heart of a star.

“Good evening, Mr. Lorpicar,” Franciscus said.

“You!”

Franciscus watched the tall man draw back, one arm raising as if to ward off a blow. “You’ve seen too many Hammer films,” he remonstrated gently.

Milan Lorpicar chose to ignore this remark. “Do not think to stand in my way.”

“Far too many,” Franciscus sighed.

Mr. Lorpicar had been treated with fear, with hysteria, with abject adoration, with awe, but never with amused tolerance. He straightened to his full, considerable height. “You cannot stop me.”

“But I can, you know.” He had not moved from the piano bench. His legs were crossed at the ankle and his neat black-and-white clothes were relieved by a single ruby on a fine silver choker revealed by the open collar of his white silk shirt. Short, stocky, compact, he did not appear to be much of a threat, and Mr. Lorpicar sneered.

“You may try, Franciscus.” His posture, his tone of voice, the tilt of his head all implied that Franciscus would fail.

The muted sounds of the lobby clock striking the hour caught the attention of both men in the lounge.

“It is time. I cannot stay,” Mr. Lorpicar announced.

“Of course you can,” Franciscus replied. He had still not risen, and he had maintained an irritatingly civil attitude. “I can’t permit you to go. You have been a reckless, irresponsible barbarian since you came here, and were before, I suspect. But you need not compound your mistakes.” A steely note had crept into his voice, and his dark eyes regarded the tall man evenly. There was no trace of fear in him.

Mr. Lorpicar folded his arms. “I will not tolerate your interference, Franciscus.”

“You have that wrong,” Franciscus said with a glittery smile. “I am the one who will not tolerate interference. You’ve killed one person here already and you are trying to kill another. I will not allow that.”

With a terrible laugh, Mr. Lorpicar moved toward the arch to the lobby. “The woman is in the building. I feel it as surely as I felt the power of night at sunset. I will have her. She is mine.”

“I think not.” Franciscus raised his left hand. He held a beautiful eighteenth-century dueling pistol.

“You think that will stop me?”

“Would you prefer crucifixes and garlic?”

“If you know that, you know that bullets cannot harm me,” Mr. Lorpicar announced as he started forward.

“Take one more step and you will learn otherwise.” There was sufficient calm command in Franciscus’ manner that Mr. Lorpicar did hesitate, regarding the shorter man with icy contempt.

“I died,” he announced, “in eighteen-ninety-six.”

“Dear me.” He shook his head. “No wonder you believe all that nonsense about garlic and crucifixes.”

Now Mr. Lorpicar faltered. “It isn’t nonsense.”

Franciscus got to his feet. He was a full ten inches shorter than Milan Lorpicar, but he dominated the taller, younger man. “And these last—what?—eighty-four years, you have learned nothing?”

“I have learned the power of the night, of fear, of blood.” He had said it before and had always found that the reaction was one of horror, but Franciscus merely looked exasperated.

“God save us all,” he said, and as Mr. Lorpicar shrank back at his words, he burst out, “Of all the absurdities!”

“We cannot say… that name,” Mr. Lorpicar insisted.

“Of course you can.” He sat down again, though he did not set the pistol aside. “You’re a menace. Oh, don’t take that as a compliment. It was not intended as one.”

“You do not know the curse of this life-in-death.” He made an effort to gain mastery of the situation, and was baffled when Franciscus laughed outright.

“None better.” He looked at Mr. Lorpicar. “You’ve been so involved with your posturing and pronouncements that you have not stopped to think about what
I
am.” He waited while this sunk in.

“You walk in the daylight…” Mr. Lorpicar began.

“And I cross running water. I also line the heels and soles of my shoes with my native earth.” He saw the surprise on Mr. Lorpicar’s features deepen. “I handle crucifixes. And I know that anything that breaks the spine is deadly to us, so I remind you that a bullet, hitting between the shoulder blades, will give you the true death.”

“But if you’re vampiric…” Mr. Lorpicar began, trying to frame an appeal.

“It means nothing. Any obligation I may have to those of my blood doesn’t extend to those who do murder.” It was said pragmatically, and for that reason alone Mr. Lorpicar believed him. “You’re an embarrassment to our kind. It’s because of you and those like you that the rest of us have been hunted and hounded and killed. Pray don’t give me your excuses.” He studied the tall cloaked figure at the edge of the light. “Even when I was young, when I abused the power, this life-in-death as you call it, I did not make excuses. I learned the folly of that quickly.”

“You mean you want the women for yourself,” Mr. Lorpicar said with cynical contempt.

“No. I don’t take those who are unwilling.” He heard Mr. Lorpicar’s incredulous laugh. “It isn’t the power and the blood, Mr. Lorpicar,” he said, with such utter loneliness that the tall man was silenced. “It is the touching. Terror, certainly, has a vigor, but it is nothing compared to loving.”

“Love!” Mr. Lorpicar spat out the word. “You’ve grown maudlin, Franciscus.” He heard the chimes mark the first quarter hour. “You can’t do this to me.” There was a desperate note in his voice. “I must have her. You know the hunger. I must have her!”

Franciscus shook his head. “It’s impossible.”

“I want her!” His voice had grown louder and he moved toward the arch once more.

“Stop where you are!” Franciscus ordered, rising and aiming.

Before he could fire there was the crack of a rifle and

Mr. Lorpicar was flung back into the lounge to thrash once or twice on the floor.

Aghast, Franciscus looked toward the lobby, and saw in the dimness that Jim Sutton was standing outside the inconspicuous door to the workshop, a .22 in his hand.

“How long have you been there?” Franciscus asked after he knelt beside Mr. Lorpicar.

“Long enough to know to aim for the neck,” was the answer.

“I see.”

“I thought vampires were supposed to melt away to dust or something when they got killed,” Jim Sutton said between pants as he dragged the body of Milan Lorpicar up the trail toward cabin 33.

Franciscus, who had been further up the trail, said quietly as he came back, “One of many misconceptions, I’m afraid. We can’t change shape, either.”

“Damn. It would be easier to lug the body of a bat up this hill.” He stood aside while Franciscus picked up the dead man. It was awkward because Mr. Lorpicar was so much taller than he, but he managed it well. “I don’t think I really accept this,” he added.

“There aren’t any more occupied cabins from here to 33,” Franciscus said, unwilling to rise to Jim Sutton’s bait.

“What are you going to do?” he asked, giving in.

“Burn the cabin. Otherwise there would be too many questions to answer.” He wished it had not happened. As much as he had disliked Lorpicar himself, and abhorred his behavior, he did not want the man killed.

“Why’s that?” The reporter in Jim Sutton was asserting himself.

“Autopsies are… inadvisable. There’s too much to explain.”

Jim considered this and sighed. “I know this could be the biggest story of my career, but I’m throwing it away.”

They had reached the last, isolated cabin. “Why do you say that?” He shifted Mr. Lorpicar’s body. “The keys are in my left hip pocket.”

As Jim retrieved them, he said, “Well, what the hell? Who’d believe me anyway?” Then stood aside and let Franciscus carry Mr. Lorpicar into his cabin.

“How’d that fire get started in the first place—that’s what I want to know!” Ranger Backus demanded as he and four volunteers from the Lost Saints Lodge guests stood around the smoking ruin of cabin 33.

“I don’t know,” Mr. Rogers said. “I thought that Mr. Lorpicar had been out of the cabin for two days.”

“You mean this is the fellow you had us looking for?” The ranger was tired and angry and the last thing in the world he wanted on his hands was another mystery.