She sat up, followed his pointing finger.
A bird was hovering in the air above the desert at approximately the spot where the ranch was located.
'It's a phoenix,' Ralph said, his voice quiet and filled with awe.
It was.
Tracy stared at the bird. It was huge, the size of a small plane, and totally unlike anything she had ever seen. It seemed to glow from within, radiating a diffused white light that brought into extraordinarily vivid clarity every feather, every talon, every detail of the creature's majestic body. The bird looked more real than real, a three- dimensional being in a two-dimensional world. There were colors in its plum age that she had never seen before, that were not variations on black or white or blue or yellow or red, colors that wet not part of the known spectrum. : ..: /
'Are they having some kind of laser show?' Ralp asked. 'Is that what this is? I don't remember readin anything about it in the list of events.'
She ignored him. It wasn't a laser show. It was a bird, A real bird.
An honest-to-God phoenix. She re ache across her sleeping bag and grabbed the strap of her can corder case. She unzipped the vinyl bag and took out that camera. She wasn't sure there was enough light for her to shoot, and she knew instinctively that there was no way this magnificence could ever translate to videotape, but she had to try.
She aimed the camcorder at the bird, pressed down o the 'Record' button, and began to speak for the beneit of the mulddi,r--ecdonal microphone. 'It is about nine thirty, and we are in the desert outside the Rocking Ranch in Rio Verde ..'
Jamped do the narrow dirt road that led to highway, refusing to look in the rearview mirror, concentrating solely on the portion of the road before them that: was illuminated by the headlights. Sally Mae lay huddle against the passenger door not moving, not speaking, n even whimpering.
They had passed no other vehicles, had seen nota lights or headlights, andJanine wondered if they were the only ones to have escaped. How many people were at the ranch right now? Fifteen employees, maybe.
About twenty five guests. , I Could the vampires have killed forty people?
She pressed down harder on the gas pedal, but the car was just heading into a turn and the vehicle fishtail wildly in the dirt as the road curved. Janine held hard to the wheel, struggling to maintain control, straightening out only after almost swerving into the adjoining ditch.
Ahead, her high beams reflected off the bullet-riddled face of the stop sign that stood at the edge of the highway. They'd made it!
She slowed down, the car bumping over the serrated steel of the cattle guard that separated the dirt from the asphalt.
And the car stalled.
Died.
No! Janine pumped the gas pedal, trying to will the car back to life, but there was no response, and the vehicle rolled back a few feet on the slight incline.
'Start, you piece of shift' Janine was screaming at the car and crying at the same time, tears blurring her vision as she turned the key in the ignition and heard only a series of impotent clicks. Sally Mae, still huddled in the corner, made a low, incoherent sound of abject terror. 'Shut up!' Janine yelled at her. She turned, slapped the woman hard across the face.
And saw movement through the passenger window. 'Help!' The windows were closed, there were no lights on the empty highway, no ears, no trucks, but she screamed anyway, a raw panicked shriek that threatened to permanently damage her vocal cords. 'Help!' She pumped desperately on the gas, turned the key.
The monster was coming.
He lurched toward them out of the darkness, an over tall man in a frayed out-of-date suit, face rotting from the inside out, decay pushing through the thin layer of skin on the forehead, cheeks, and chin. He staggered around the front of the car, through the twin beams of the head lights, and around to the driver's side asJanine continued to frantically turn the ignition key. He grinned, revealing dirty bloody teeth. His bulging eyes looked downward from her face to her abdomen.
He knew she was pregnant. He could sense it. BiHe would eat the fetus,
'Don't morel' Janine screamed, though Sally Mae had not moved at all.
'Stay in here! The door's locked[ He can't get in'
A fist punched through the window, shattering the glass!
She did not even have time to cry out as strong fingers closed around her neck and yanked her outside, through the broken window, into the cold air of the night.
The hotel room was shitty. It was supposedly the best that the town had to offer, but despite the bland pleasant clean lines of the accommodations and the reassuring presence HBO and CNN on the television, there was something set ond-rate about the room, as though it was straddling that line between adequate and shabby and was leaning clearly toward the latter,
But Rossiter didn't care. He felt good, charged, mot alive than at any time since he'd left the Academy an happier than he'd been since he'd come to this hellisl state.
This was big.
He'd known it in the back of his mind when he'd co related the figures on the computer, but it had been cox firmed when he'd met the Oriental girl and he grandmother, This was big, not in a pulp-novel Melvi Purvis G-man way, but in a manner that was far more profound.
He was not just catching criminals.
He was fighting the forces of evil.
He had not talked with Engles when he'd told Robert he would--he'd spent that time severing des with the stale police and kicking those dipshit lazy-assed bastards off that case--but he had called his supervisor and left a bri message on his answering machine, providing just enough description to keep him out of trouble with protocol. He' then immediately called Washington and, after some necessary phone bullying that led him quickly up the chain of command, had made a full report to James F. Watley, head of the Bureau's Western Division. It was foolhardy, perhaps--he knew how crazy all this sounded. But he'd written his speech out beforehand, and he was an old hand at making the implausible plausible, and he believed he had successfully demystified the more fantastic aspects of this situation until it fit foursquare into the Bureau mold.
Nevertheless, he was surprised that Wadey did not nail him on several points, and he wondered if perhaps another department or team within the Bureau was working on a connected project. Or if a think tank somewhere had already postulated the existence of vampires.
Or if the director was simply writing him off as a loon. Whatever the reason, Watley's low key and reasonable reaction to his unreasonable hypothesis caused him to change his plans. He had intended to ask for backup, but had decided against it then and there. It was a dangerous decision, and an obvious violation of regulations, but he trusted the old Chinese woman. She'd come in on target so far, and there was no reason to believe she would steer them wrong as they approached the stretch.
He didn't want to share the glory with some Johnnycome-lately. This was his baby and his alone.
Fuck Wadey. Fuck Engles. Fuck everyone. When this was over, he would report directly to the Bureau chief. He would be able to write his own ticket. He sat down on the bed, watched a few moments of a comedy showcase on HBO, then switched to NBC, ABC, CBS, and, finally, an independent station. There was an old movie on. A monster movie.
What did they used to call that in the sixties? Serendipity. sue awoke and, for a moment, did not remember where she was. The contours of the the furniture the room were wrong, tings unfamiliar, and the bed was facing in the wrong direction. Then she saw her grandmother next to her, getting up, leaning against the backboard of the bed, and events of the previous evening returned in a rush.
Her grandmother glanced calmly over at her. ' dreamed last night of the black church.'
Sue nodded, feeling cold, remembering the dark and returning images of her own sleep-bound travels. 'I did,
DID '
'It is there that we will find the cup hugirngsi. That is there it lives.' the words were spoken with certainty, and Sue sat up, Taking off the blanket wrapped around her. She had ex pacted to feel different, to feel .. .
