contentment and satisfaction. Obediently and rather gracefully she settled her considerable weight into the chair— the chairs looked very comfortable, her companion thought, given the materials of their construction. Next she allowed him to tuck robe and dry towel around her, her face now looked a trifle pale. The air in the natatorium, even here close to the windows, was comfortably warm, and he saw no cause for concern.
'I feel fine,' she remarked, as if she found the fact somewhat surprising. 'I don't understand what—what happened just now, but I do feel fine.' Then, with a note of faint alarm: 'Where are you going? Must you go?'
Standing behind the chair, he patted her shoulders and stroked her hair, with very genuine regard and tenderness. 'Alas, I must go. And you must stay here for a time and rest. A restful time.' His voice was growing rhythmic, soft, hypnotic. 'Sleep now for a time, my love. Stay away from your apartment, and from mine, for an hour at least—there.' With a final careful glance at the throat of the already sleeping woman—really nothing to be seen there, at least not without a close examination—the gentleman took his silent, swift departure.
His strength had been restored by feeding, and the last traces of the drug were fading from his circulation. With the onset of night, he was no longer restricted to man-form. In order to avoid being seen by several approaching exercise enthusiasts—the fewer people who saw him anywhere tonight the better—he chose to drift in mist-form to a stairway. Then, leaping on four wolfish feet, he darted upstairs to the level of his own apartment.
Clothed in his native shape of humanity once more, he stalked a corridor. The startling sight of the battered front door of his apartment, which obviously had been broken in, then rather clumsily propped back into place, elicited a silent curse. A moment later he was inside, and a moment after that he had materialized just behind the back of an armed breather, who stood holding John and Angie at gunpoint.
The grip of his two hands, left and right, fell on the gunman's elbows. Bones snapped and crumbled with the pressure. It was done quite silently, and with a minimum of fuss, though so painfully that the breather lost consciousness on the spot.
A moment later, the young couple who had been facing the wrong end of the gun collapsed upon a blood- spattered sofa in relief.
Mr. Maule surveyed them with concern—the ruin that surrounded them could wait. Angie was wearing one of his robes and, to judge from the way she clutched the garment together in the front, most likely nothing else. Both she and John were spattered and stained from head to foot with blood, most of it surely not their own. John was dressed as Maule had seen him last, but he had obviously been through a lot since then.
Maule approached Angie. Her eyes closed and she slumped. Gently he examined her, opening her robe with a physician's brisk impersonality, observing the wounds on throat and thigh. To John, who hovered anxiously, he spoke reassuring words in answer to an unspoken question: 'She is in no danger of being changed. Not unless she should be bitten again.'
Maule closed the robe with the tenderness of a mother caring for a child. Then he laid his pale hand on Angie's forehead. A moment later her eyes opened wide.
'What's happening?' she asked, and sat up, almost energetically.
Mr. Maule spoke to her, and to her lover, words of further reassurance. Then he listened with sparkling-eyed approval to the tale they stammered out, about their fight with two drugged vampire rapists.
After that he had a couple of gentle questions for his young allies, following which he left the invader's gun with them in the living room, and chose to spare their tender sensibilities by carrying his prize catch, the still- breathing gunman—whose name they said was Stewart—into his bedroom, behind a closed door, for interrogation. In Maule's bedroom the signs of violent disturbance were as bad as in the living room and hall, a discovery that did not soothe his temper in the least.
When he emerged from the bedroom ten minutes later, leaving the door open, he was alone, once more neatly garbed in fresh street clothes, and looking thoughtful. Angie and John, both somewhat recovered by now, met him in the living room, where they had been examining the machine that the attackers had used to break in the front door.
The appearance of this device now suggested to the old man some abandoned relic of the fitness room downstairs. Essentially it was a long lever, which when braced firmly on the floor outside a door could exert terrific force, over a short distance, to force the barrier in. Maule had heard of police, firemen, and several enterprising bandits who used very similar devices.
Maule advised his allies to barricade the door as firmly as possible after he was gone, using whatever furniture they could move. Then they were to rest, and eat. He spoke with peculiar emphasis to Angie, looking steadily into her eyes, once more touching her forehead with his fingers. Under his influence she brightened visibly. A touch of color came to her cheeks, and more life into her voice.
Stony-faced, the old man laconically assured them both that the atrocity of rape was going to be avenged.
They accepted whatever he said, nodding in agreement, not saying much. He could see that they were both almost worn out.
He asked them: 'Have you heard from Joseph?'
Angie cleared her throat. 'Not since—since before the vampires came in.'
'I am concerned about him, and I am going out now to look for him. Where is this Southerland condominium that has been mentioned?'
John told him and handed over a key. 'What about you? You're recovered completely?'
'I am.'
'Thank God!' said John fervently. Then he looked as if he wanted to ask for details; but in a moment he had thought better of the impulse.
In any event, Mr. Maule, a gentleman to his fingertips, would not have dreamt of revealing his liaison with Mrs. Hassler. Briskly he changed the subject.
'If I understand the position correctly, the only
'We won't call them, then. Unless we have to. Where are you going now?'
'Out. To look for Joseph, to help him if he needs help. It is hard to be more specific.'
John nodded as if he understood. 'What about—?' He jerked his head in the direction of the bedroom hallway.
'My prisoner? Gone, completely gone. There is no need to concern yourself.' And Maule, after pausing to provide himself with a trench coat from the front closet, moved on. Angie saw him, with a sense of wonder that would never be quite the same again, exit by the half-inch gap at the side of the propped-in-place front door.
Well, Maule thought as he progressed in man-form down the corridor, passing his neighbor's door, he would deal with the situation regarding Mrs. Hassler when the time came. Selling his condominium and moving elsewhere was about the least of the problems he could foresee in an interestingly crowded future.
* * *
Angie, a little pale and weak now that the first effects of Mr. Maule's bracing counseling were wearing off, and the last of the draught reasserting itself, thought she could feel herself developing an alarming tendency to faint. Against this she struggled bravely.
'God, I need a bath. But I'll fall asleep in the tub.' She giggled lightly, a faint echo of hysteria.
'Try a shower, then. I'll fix you some soup.'
'That sounds good. It sounds great. Oh, John? Uncle Matthew recommended iron tablets. He said there're some in our room's medicine cabinet.'
On emerging from her shower Angie explored, on a hunch, the farther recesses of the guest bedroom's closet, which was deeper than she had thought at first. The effort turned up a modest collection of women's clothing, all new and discreetly packaged in protective garment bags. Angie found jeans and a pullover that fit.
Then she went to the kitchen, sat down, and ate some soup. John, sitting across from her, related how he had spent some of her shower time fortifying the apartment against a repeat invasion, wrestling and wedging some heavy furniture in place against the broken door. The enemy had left their door-breaking gadget in the living room, so John felt reasonably confident that they were not going to come smashing in quite so suddenly a second time.
