Wolves of the Calla

on, but not that night. I watched. And I started to see a kind of dark blue light, first just around the younger man, then around both of them. It was like no other light I'd ever seen. It was like the darkness I felt sometimes on the street, when the chimes started to play in my head. Like the smell. You knew those things weren't there, and yet they were. And I understood. I didn't accept it-that came later-but I understood. The younger man was a vampire.'

He stopped, thinking about how to tell his tale. How to lay it out.

'I believe there are at least three types of vampires at work in our world. I call them Types One, Two, and Three. Type Ones are rare. Barlow was a Type One. They live very long lives, and may spend extended periods-fifty years, a hundred, maybe two hundred-in deep hibernation. When they're active, they're capable of making new vampires, what we call the undead. These undead are Type Twos. They are also capable of making new vampires, but they aren't cunning.' He looked at Eddie and Susannah. 'Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?'

Susannah shook her head. Eddie nodded.

'The undead in that movie were zombies, utterly brain-dead. Type Two vampires are more intelligent than that, but not much. They can't go out during the daylight hours. If they try, they are blinded, badly burned, or killed. Although I can't say for sure, I believe their life-spans are usually short. Not because the change from living and human to undead and vampire shortens life, but because the existences of Type Two vampires are extremely perilous.

'In most cases-this is what I believe, not what I know-Type Two vampires create other Type Two vampires, in a relatively small area. By this phase of the disease-and it is a disease-the Type One vampire, the king vampire, has usually moved on. In 'Salem's Lot, they actually killed the son of a bitch, one of what might have been only a dozen in the entire world.

'In other cases, Type Twos create Type Threes. Type Threes are like mosquitoes. They can't create more vampires, but they can feed. And feed. And feed.'

'Do they catch AIDS?' Eddie asked. 'I mean, you know what that is, right?'

'I know, although I never heard the term until the spring of 1983, when I was working at the Lighthouse Shelter in Detroit and my time in America had grown short. Of course we'd known for almost ten years that there was something. Some of the literature called it GRID-Gay-Related Immune Deficiency. In 1982 there started to be newspaper articles about a new disease called 'Gay Cancer,' and speculations that it might be catching. On the street some of the men called it Fucksore Disease, after the blemishes it left. I don't believe that vampires die of it, or even get sick from it. But they can have it. And they can pass it on. Oh, yes. And I have reason to think that.' Callahan's lips quivered, then firmed.

'When this vampire-demon made you drink his blood, he gave you the ability to see these things,' Roland said.

'Yes.'

'All of them, or just the Threes? The little ones?'

'The little ones,' Callahan mused, then voiced a brief and humorless laugh. 'Yes. I like that. In any case, Threes are all I've ever seen, at least since leaving Jerusalem's Lot. But of course Type Ones like Barlow are very rare, and Type Twos don't last long. Their very hunger undoes them. They're always ravenous. Type Threes, however, can go out in daylight. And they take their principal sustenance from food, just as we do.'

'What did you do that night?' Susannah asked. 'In the theater?'

'Nothing,' Callahan said. 'My whole time in New York- my first time in New York-I did nothing until April. I wasn't sure, you see. I mean, my heart was sure, but my head refused to go along. And all the time, there was interference from the most simple thing of all: I was a dry alcoholic. An alcoholic is also a vampire, and that part of me was getting thirstier and thirstier, while the rest of me was trying to deny my essential nature. So I told myself I'd seen a couple of homosexuals canoodling in the movies, nothing more than that. As for the rest of it-the chimes, the smell, the dark-blue light around the young one-I convinced myself it was epilepsy, or a holdover from what Barlow had done to me, or both. And of course about Barlow I was right His blood was awake inside me. It saw.'

'It was more than that,' Roland said.

Callahan turned to him.

'You went todash, Pere. Something was calling you from this world. The thing in your church, I suspect, although it would not have been in your church when you first knew of it.'

'No,' Callahan said. He was regarding Roland with wary respect. 'It was not. How do you know? Tell me, I beg.'

Roland did not. 'Go on,' he said. 'What happened to you next?'

'Lupe happened next,' Callahan said.

NINE

His last name was Delgado.

Roland registered only a moment of surprise at this-a widening of the eyes-but Eddie and Susannah knew the gunslinger well enough to understand that even this was extraordinary. At the same time they had become almost used to these coincidences that could not possibly be coincidences, to the feeling that each one was the click of some great turning cog.

Lupe Delgado was thirty-two, an alcoholic almost five one-day-at-a-time years from his last drink, and had been working at Home since 1974. Magruder had founded the place, but it was Lupe Delgado who invested it with real life and purpose. During his days, he was part of the maintenance crew at the Plaza Hotel, on Fifth Avenue. Nights, he worked at the shelter. He had helped to craft Home's 'wet' policy, and had been the first person to greet Callahan when he walked in.

'I was in New York a little over a year that first time,' Callahan said, 'but by March of 1976, I had…' He paused, struggling to say what all three of them understood from the look on his face. His skin had flushed rosy except for where the scar lay; that seemed to glow an almost preternatural white by comparison.

'Oh, okay, I suppose you'd say that by March I'd fallen in love with him. Does that make me a queer? A faggot? I don't know. They say we all are, don't they? Some do, anyway. And why not? Every month or two there seemed to be another story in the paper about a priest with a penchant for sticking his hand up the altar boys' skirts. As for myself, I had no reason to think of myself as queer. God knows I wasn't immune to the turn of a pretty female leg, priest or not, and molesting the altar boys never crossed my mind. Nor was there ever anything physical between Lupe and me. But I loved him, and I'm not just talking about his mind or his dedication or his ambitions for Home. Not just because he'd chosen to do his real work among the poor, like Christ, either. There was a physical attraction.'

Callahan paused, struggled, then burst out: 'God, he was beautiful. Beautiful!'

'What happened to him?' Roland asked.

'He came in one snowy night in late March. The place was full, and the natives were restless. There had already been one fistfight, and we were still picking up from that. There was a guy with a full-blown fit of the dt's, and Rowan Magruder had him in back, in his office, feeding him coffee laced with whiskey. As I think I told you, we had no lockup room at Home. It was dinnertime, half an hour past, actually, and three of the volunteers hadn't come in because of the weather. The radio was on and a couple of women were dancing. 'Feeding time in the zoo,' Lupe used to say.

'I was taking off my coat, heading for the kitchen… this fellow named Frank Spinelli collared me… wanted to know about a letter of recommendation I'd promised to write him… there was a woman, Lisa somebody, who wanted help with one of the AA steps, 'Made a list of those we had harmed'… there was a young guy who wanted help with a job application, he could read a little but not write… something starting to burn on the stove… complete confusion. And I liked it. It had a way of sweeping you up and carrying you along. But in the middle of it all, I stopped. There were no bells and the only aromas were drunk's b.o. and burning food… but that light was around Lupe's neck like a collar. And I could see marks there. Just little ones. No more than nips, really.

'I stopped, and I must have reeled, because Lupe came hurrying over. And then I could smell it, just faintly: strong onions and hot metal. I must have lost a few seconds, too, because all at once the two of us were in the corner by the filing cabinet where we keep the AA stuff and he was asking me when I last ate. He knew I sometimes forgot to do that.

'The smell was gone. The blue glow around his neck was gone. And those little nips, where something had bitten him, they were gone, too. Unless the vampire's a real guzzler, the marks go in a hurry. But I knew. It was no good asking him who he'd been with, or when, or where. Vampires, even Type Threes- especially Type Threes, maybe-have their protective devices. Pond-leeches secrete an enzyme in their saliva that keeps the blood flowing while they're feeding. It also numbs the skin, so unless you actually see the thing on you, you don't know what's happening. With these Type Three vampires, it's as if they carry a kind of selective, short-term amnesia in their saliva.

'I passed it off somehow. Told him I'd just felt light-headed for a second or two, blamed it on coming out of the cold and into all the noise and light and heat. He accepted it but told me I had to take it easy. 'You're too valuable to lose, Don,' he said, and then he kissed me. Here.' Callahan touched his right cheek with his scarred right hand. 'So I guess I lied when I said there was nothing physical between us, didn't I? There was that one kiss. I can still remember exactly how it felt. Even the little prickle of fine stubble on his upper lip… here.'

'I'm so very sorry for you,' Susannah said.

'Thank you, my dear,' he said. 'I wonder if you know how much that means? How wonderful it is to have condolence from one's own world? It's like being a castaway and getting news from home. Or fresh water from a spring after years of stale bottled stuff.' He reached out, took her hand in both of his, and smiled. To Eddie, something in that smile looked forced, or even false, and he had a sudden ghastly idea. What if Pere Callahan was smelling a mixture of bitter onions and hot metal right now? What if he was seeing a blue glow, not around Susannah's neck like a collar, but around her stomach like a belt?

Eddie looked at Roland, but there was no help there. The gunslinger's face was expressionless.

'He had AIDS, didn't he?' Eddie asked. 'Some gay Type Three vampire bit your friend and passed it on to him.'

'Gay,' Callahan said. 'Do you mean to tell me that stupid word actually…' He trailed off, shaking his head.

'Yep,' Eddie said. 'The Red Sox still haven't won the Series and homos are gays.'

'Eddie!' Susannah said.

'Hey,' Eddie said, 'do you think it's easy being the one who left New York last and forgot to turn off the lights? Cause it's not. And let me tell you, I'm feeling increasingly out of date myself.' He turned back to Callahan. 'Anyway, that is what happened, isn't it?'

'I think so. You have to remember that I didn't know a great deal myself at that time, and was denying and repressing what I did know. With great vigor, as President Kennedy used to say. I saw the first one-the first 'little one'-in that movie theater in the week between Christmas and New Year's of 1975.' He gave a brief, barking laugh. 'And now that I think back, that theater was called the Gaiety. Isn't that surprising?' He paused, looking into their faces with some puzzlement. 'It's not. You're not