Vampire Blood (35 page)

She nodded.

He held out his right hand, palm up and opened. “Give me the box, Jenny, and you finish reading that book. You’re the speed reader here. See what else can help us, while I go find that gasoline. Then we have to get out of here.”

She closed and handed him the box, her head bent over the book again, her face screwing up in concentration.

Jeff left the attic silently.

It was after one by the time she and Jeff had loaded everything, including themselves, into the station wagon and headed back to the theater.

The old car hadn’t wanted to start and had delayed them even further. They’d discussed using Laurie’s car instead, but decided, in the end, that she and Joey would need it themselves if they had to flee the area.

It was raining hard by then, thunder and lightning roaring across the slate skies. They couldn’t see more than three feet ahead. The windshield wipers kept sticking on the downswing, and Jeff had to keep stopping, going out in the downpour to get them going again.

“Damn old junk heap,” he kept grumbling, kicking it in the tires every time he had to go out in the rain and fix it, trying to hide his mounting desperation.

They weren’t two miles away from the farmhouse, and had stopped for the third time to attend to the stubborn wipers, when the old station wagon finally gave out. No matter what Jeff did, he couldn’t get it going again.

“Damn!
I don’t believe this!” he cursed, jumping back into the car, looking more like a drowned rat than a man. “It won’t start.” He pounded the steering wheel in frustration, lowering his head into his trembling hands.

Jenny thought, at first, he was crying.

“Jeff?” she touched his wet head, shivering with the knowledge that time was running out, and they were still miles away from their destination. Long miles.

He turned his face toward her, looking old and weary. “It won’t start, so what do we do now? We’re in the middle of nowhere with a broken down excuse for a lousy car, and it’ll be dark in a few hours.”

“We get out and walk, run,
if we have to.” She watched the rain as it battered the car’s open hood.

They really didn’t have any other choice.

“Through the woods would be the quickest way I know. I’ll lead. There’s an old path I used to take to town when I was a kid. I bet it’s still there.” She gathered the two cans of gasoline and slid out of the car, merging into the heavy rain like a ghost into the mist.

After gathering the bundle of stakes, and stuffing the rest of the paraphernalia into his pockets, Jeff followed resignedly, trudging through the clinging mud, cussing loudly, and dodging wind-whipped branches.

The rain and mist were a miasmic veil hanging low over the forest. It was like walking through mushroom soup. Every couple of seconds, a bolt of lightning would light up the wet woods, like a stage lit with lights, and momentarily blind them.

Jeff had his army jacket on, for the pocket space, and Jenny had a thin green windbreaker on. Both were drenched in seconds.

It could have been worse; at least it wasn’t any colder.

In a few hours it would be dark, and if they didn’t get to the theater first and kill
them,
night would come, and they’d be the hunted again.

Jeff had a strong premonition that they wouldn’t get a second chance if they messed this one up.

They’d be dead.

As they mucked through the endless dripping woods, his footsteps seemed to be saying what his mind didn’t want to hear. “Don’t have much time ... don’t have much time ... you’re gonna die, ha, ha, ha.” Over and over.

Shut up,
he growled at them, as he slipped in the mud for the fourth time, and Jenny had to help haul him to his feet.

Perhaps this hadn’t been such a damn good idea. He was no vampire killer.
Damn.

Ahead of him, Jenny seemed to be able to hear his thoughts. “You can turn back anytime, Jeff,” she said in a weak voice he could barely hear over the hard rain.

He let go of everything he was lugging, grabbed her arm angrily, and spun her around. Right in her face, he said through clenched teeth, “I told you, I’d never let you down again, never run out on you, now didn’t I, Jenny? Where you go, I go. I damn well meant it.” His eyes burned. He yanked her to him and kissed her so hard she could barely breathe. His hands snuck under her jacket and encircled her, bringing her closer. His hands inched upwards.

She finally pulled away, her eyes both warm and scared. Then she laughed. “Here we were traipsing through a swamp in a downpour, on our way to kill vampires and blow up a movie theater, and you’re thinking about sex,” she teased him.

Then they both were laughing. He picked up the stuff he’d dropped, and two of his free fingers connected with hers as they continued their journey.

Chapter Eighteen

September 13

It was a grueling trek, and when they finally made it to the theater, the stormy afternoon was almost like night. The cloudburst hadn’t abated, and both Jenny and Jeff were exhausted to the bone, soaked and trembling.

Jeff had no trouble breaking in the back entrance of the theater. He used some little wire like gadget that jimmied the lock, and they were in.

“Your street friends taught you that, too, huh?”

“Yep.”

He slipped the gadget into one of the large pockets of his jacket, the pocket that didn’t have the wooden box, the hammers and the book in it, and picked up the stakes from where he’d laid them at his feet.

Jenny tread on his heels into the theater, hanging on to his coattails like a terrified child, listening to the spooky silence. Everywhere they stepped they left water spots.

Inside it was as dark as a crypt.

They sprinkled the gasoline from one of the cans over everything as they went. Jenny tried not to dwell on what had occurred there on her last visit, but the disturbing images haunted her, and she couldn’t shake them.

Her childhood memories of the place had been forever obliterated and replaced with the hateful truths she’d seen downstairs. If it hadn’t been for her righteous anger and hunger for revenge, she didn’t think she could have stood it.

The beauty of the place eluded her for the first time. The red velvet carpeting reminded her of blood, the opulent curtains and gleaming wood everywhere of the inside of a plush coffin.

All those stories that Maude had hinted mysteriously at so long ago, and all the things Michelson had revealed and she’d seen ... just how many people had died in this place? The disappearances. The fire long ago.

It was malevolent, like them. Evil. Why hadn’t she sensed it before as Jeff had.

Just last week they’d been working here every day with
that
below them; a few weeks ago, her father had been scraping paint and making jokes. It made her sick. Because of this damn theater, her father, her mother, the Albers, were all
dead,
and Joey had been turned into a scared, beaten shell of a man.

Maybe she and Jeff would be its next victims.

None of them would have been put in jeopardy if she hadn’t stopped by this cursed place that night all those weeks ago ... if she never had met the Michelsons.
It was all her fault.
That was the real reason she was back now. To pay that debt.

Soon the pungent scent of gasoline saturated everything: the engulfing aroma of buttered popcorn and chocolate, the newly shampooed smell of the carpets and the sharp scent of Windex.

Jenny had wandered close to the shimmering mirrors on one wall. She avoided looking into them too closely. Mirrors in a darkened room gave her the creeps. There always seemed to be more in them than her muted reflection.

Jenny.

Almost against her will, her eyes rose to the muddied glass. There were phantom people wavering deep inside it, watching and gesturing at her. She quickly looked behind her. There was no one around. She stood alone. She rotated back to the mirror.

They kept coming. Scores of them. Spectral figures emaciated and wispy in the mirror’s dark shadows, crowding their horrible faces up against their side, staring at and ogling her. Like a whole other nightmarish world of lost souls captured, embedded eternally, in the theater’s mirrors. In the theater.

Jenny reeled away from the ghoulish specters.

Jenny.

It was the Albers. George with his butchered face and Maude in her pretty, bloodied, summer dress. The pain and yearning in their haunted eyes twisted a knife deep in Jenny’s guts. They were weeping, reaching out to her ... but the Albers were dead.

Then Jenny’s eyes, filling with tears, roved over the other ravished faces. There was Sheriff Samuels. Guess he never got a chance to meet with the FBI. Clyde Foster. Other people from town. Friends. Her mother and her father, their eyes so full of fear, as if they didn’t understand where they were, or why.

“Mom ... Daddy ...” Her heart froze.

“Jeff!” she cried out in terror, and there he was, his arms going around her, pulling her head to hide against his chest. “Did you see
them,”
she whispered, her shoulders shaking,
“in the mirror?
”

Jeff studied the mirrors over her shoulder. “Jenny, what are you talking about? I don’t see anyone. You scared me half to death ... the look on your face a moment ago ... are you okay?”

Jenny spun around. The shadowed mirrors were empty again. “Oh, God,” she mouthed, still in a state of shock. “They’re gone, Jeff. The people in the mirror. The Albers, Mom and Dad, and all the rest. I saw them! I swear it. They were waving at me. Trying to get my attention. Trying to tell me something.”

Jeff enfolded her into his arms, calming her, as they hunkered down in the corner at the top of the stairs to the basement. “I hate this place,” he admitted. After a while, his lips brushed against her ear, “We have to go below now.”

She wanted the theater to burn to the ground. Every brick and stick. With all
of
them
in it, but she also wanted to get out alive with Jeff.

Just burning the place up, Jeff had explained, or even exploding the top floor, might not guarantee that the vampires in the basement would be destroyed. They had to go below and make sure
they were down there in their coffins. Then they somehow had to strategically blow up the building from
down there.

He tugged the flashlight from his pocket and beamed the light directly ahead of them so they wouldn’t trip. Their only hope was to slip in and out as swiftly as they could. Unheard and unseen.

If they weren’t able to do that, they had the crucifix gun from the vampire kit, the stakes, gasoline to douse the vampires with and homemade torches to set them afire. After that, they’d burn the whole place to the ground.

He took her hand firmly in his, and together they descended back into hell.

Jenny’s heart was sledge-hammering in her chest. Her hands were so clammy with fear she could hardly hold on to the remaining can of gasoline Jeff had given her to carry. She felt like she was going to throw up.

They came to the entrance of the long corridor, musty and full of spider webs, which branched off to the larger rooms where the coffins and the cages were, and halted.

Those awful hours in that stinking cage, the terror, the pain ... her mother, beaten and weeping in her arms, going into convulsions ... the sobs of the other prisoners.

Jenny’s body was betraying her and she couldn’t stop trembling, as if someone had dunked her in a tank of icy water. It was embarrassing, but she couldn’t stop it.

A noise. Something falling, something crashing somewhere
above
them.

Jeff shut the flashlight off immediately, leaving them to grope in the tarlike blackness.

It had to be one of them.
Upstairs
already.

“Maybe the storm’s brought them out earlier than usual,” Jeff’s voice leaked out, small and nervous, as if he were only talking about bugs or something. It wasn’t a comforting thought.

Another scraping noise and Irene’s demon like laughter echoed around them.

They were trapped.

“Oh, my God, they’re
awake,”
Jenny choked out the words, gripping Jeff’s hand like a vise, trying not to let her mounting fear paralyze her.
“We’re too late.”

“Come on! We have to find a place to hide,” Jeff urged.

“They read minds, Jeff. There’s no hiding from them.”

“Then don’t think. Try to blank your mind,” he instructed under his breath. He grabbed the can of gasoline from her, opened it and sprayed its contents behind them as they went. “If we’re going to die, by God, they’ll go with us.”

They ran into the room with the cages. The enclosures were empty, except for the decaying bodies. The stench hit her, a live malignant presence. The room was candle lit, and Jeff snuffed them out as he rushed by them.

In the adjoining rooms, the coffins gaped open, untenanted.

Jeff shoved Jenny down behind a stack of boxes, diving in after her. They squatted in the silent darkness, listening. Waiting.

They didn’t have long to wait.

“It’s over. You’d better come out. You’re right, you can’t hide from us.” Irene’s voice drifted to them in their hiding place. “I’m glad you dropped in, so convenient. I told Michelson you’d be back. I know your kind. Righteous and avenging.”

Jenny could feel Jeff’s hand touch hers, clammy, cautioning her not to move or speak.

Seconds passed.

“You want to play games?” Irene’s voice had turned hostile.

Jenny screamed, and before Jeff’s disbelieving eyes, she was sucked from his side and catapulted over the boxes. She landed with a sickening thud and another scream, fuller of hatred than hurt, on the other side.

Jeff charged, bellowing in anger, out of his hiding place, a stake and hammer ready in his hands. He stopped dead in his tracks at what awaited him and dropped them listlessly to the floor.

Irene had Jenny by the throat, ten feet above the ground. Jenny’s hands flailed helplessly at her captor, her eyes filled with fear and loathing as she continued to struggle and kick at the thing that had her in her grasp.