mother’s footsteps padded off down the hall, the closet door slid open a crack and he could sense (or actually
‘What now?’ Callahan said, and his voice was not his own at all. He was looking at Barlow’s fingers, those long, sensitive fingers, which lay against the boy’s throat. There were small blue blotches on them.
‘That depends. What will you give for this miserable wretch?’ He suddenly jerked Mark’s wrists high behind his back, obviously hoping to punctuate his question with a scream, but Mark would not oblige. Except for the sudden whistle of air between his set teeth, he was silent.
‘You’ll scream,’ Barlow whispered, and his lips had twisted into a grimace of animal hate. ‘You’ll scream until your throat
‘Stop that!’ Callahan cried.
‘And should I?’ The hate was wiped from his face. A darkly charming smile shone forth in its place. ‘Should I reprieve the boy, save him for another night?’
‘Yes!’
Softly, almost purring, Barlow said, ‘Then will you throw away your cross and face me on even terms-black against white? Your faith against my own?’
‘Yes,’ Callahan said, but a trifle less firmly.
‘Then do it!’ Those full lips became pursed, anticipatory. The high forehead gleamed in the weird fairy light that filled the room.
‘And trust you to let him go? I would be wiser to put a rattlesnake in my shirt and trust it not to bite me.’
‘But I trust you… look!’
He let Mark go and stood back, both hands in the air, empty.
Mark stood still, unbelieving for a moment, and then ran to his parents without a backward look at Barlow.
‘Run, Mark!’ Callahan cried. ‘Run!’
Mark looked up at him, his eyes huge and dark. ‘I think they’re dead-’
Mark got slowly to his feet. He turned around and looked at Barlow.
‘Soon, little brother,’ Barlow said, almost benignly. ‘Very soon now you and I will-’
Mark spit in his face.
Barlow’s breath stopped. His brow darkened with a depth of fury that made his previous expressions seem like what they might well have been: mere play-acting. For a moment Callahan saw a madness in his eyes blacker than the soul of murder.
‘I’m going to kill you,’ Mark said.
He was gone, like a dark eddy of water.
Barlow seemed to grow taller. His hair, swept back from his brow in the European manner, seemed to float around his skull. He was wearing a dark suit and a wine-colored tie, impeccably knotted, and to Callahan he seemed part and parcel of the darkness that surrounded him. His eyes glared out of their sockets like sly and sullen embers.
‘Then fulfill your part of the bargain, shaman.’
‘I’m a
Barlow made a small, mocking bow. ‘
Callahan stood indecisive. Why throw it down? Drive him off, settle for a draw tonight, and tomorrow -
But a deeper part of his mind warned. To deny the vampire’s challenge was to risk possibilities far graver than any he had considered. If he dared not throw the cross aside, it would be as much as admitting… admitting… what? If only things weren’t going so fast, if one only had time to think, to reason it out -
The cross’s glow was dying.
He looked at it, eyes widening. Fear leaped into his belly like a confusion of hot wires. His head jerked up and he stared at Barlow. He was walking toward him across the kitchen and his smile was wide, almost voluptuous.
‘Stay back,’ Callahan said hoarsely, retreating a step. ‘I command it, in the name of God.’
Barlow laughed at him.
The glow in the cross was only a thin and guttering light in a cruciform shape. The shadows had crept across the vampire’s face again, masking his features in strangely barbaric lines and triangles under the sharp cheekbones.
Callahan took another step backward, and his buttocks bumped the kitchen table, which was set against the wall.
