On the floor were several overstuffed chairs, in two clusters, between which was set a long dining table complete with chairs and a large china cabinet that stood against a wall. The chamber was divided by an enormous breakfront, a good thirty feet long and about eight feet high. Hanging carpets at each end made it an effective wall, splitting the chamber in two.
“That's where that went,” murmured Byng.
“What?”
“That long thing. That was in that hotel, the Larabee, that was torn down about ten years ago.”
Ah. Sure. It had been behind the hotel bar, loaded with liquor bottles and glasses. I'd seen it at more than one fight call.
“That sure as hell didn't come down that little elevator,” said Borman.
Good point. That implied fairly easy access to the main entrance.
“I thought Toby said it was beautiful,” said Byng.
“Well,” I whispered, “it was dark, and he was probably stoned.”
The main point, though, was that there was nobody home. At least, not in this half of the chamber. The music was louder in here, as well. Almost too loud.
“Where is he?” asked Sally, underscoring the point.
“Best bet,” I said, very quietly, “is the other half of the chamber.”
It looked as though there were two logical paths to whatever lay behind that looming old breakfront, one around each end.
“Two around the left, two the right,” I said. “Be fast, but don't make any noise.”
“Be vewy, vewy quiet,” said Sally. “We are hunting wampires.”
We all smiled at that. It helped.
Byng and I went right, Sally and Borman left. We crossed the chamber by moving as close as possible to the walls, skirting the furnishings in the middle. Byng and I reached our end of the breakfront first.
Gun in hand, I took a deep breath, gently moved the edge of the hanging carpet aside, and stepped through.
THIRTY-THREE
Thursday, October 12, 2000
05:46
Inside, there were three separate rooms, of a sort. Tall, maybe six and a half foot, walls with openings in the middle. Cubicles, right out of an office supply catalogue. These were a dark, uneven red. I stepped closer to the nearest one. It looked to me as though it had been sloppily spray-painted. I heard Byng come through behind me.
The rooms seemed to be raised on old wooden cargo pallets.
It was much quieter in this area, the music being muted by the intervening carpets.
I heard a click to my left, and looked toward the sound. Borman and Sally were just rounding their end of the breakfront. They apparently had heard it, too, as all four of us froze for a moment.
There was a hollow metallic sound, barely audible above the music. Like somebody striking two large pots together.
“Please don't,” said a quavering, contralto voice. “I didn't tell anybody, please don't, please.” It wasn't a scream, or a yell for help. It was in an eerily normal, almost conversational tone of a woman speaking to someone in the same room. It was Huck.
I heard a deeper, male voice that seemed to reply, but couldn't quite make out the words. But he laughed. Nothing demonic or anything of the sort. That would have been easier to take, I think. This laugh was kind of quiet, polite almost. He was amused.
We all started to move at once. It was impossible to tell which of the three rooms the sound had come from, so each pair took the one closest. We had him trapped, I was sure.
Byng and I won. I stepped into the room on my right, and saw a workbench with wide, sheepskin straps that were restraining a supine Huck, and a man clad only in running shorts standing near her.
I pointed my gun at his back, and said, “Freeze.”
Things just sort of stopped at that point. In that instant, I took in the fact that there was a transparent length of surgical tubing leading from the side of Huck's neck into a stainless steel basin on the floor; that there was a forceps clamping the tubing off; that his hand was on the forceps; that the tubing was secured to her neck with a tape wrap.
He froze, exactly what I'd told him to do. Looking at his back, I could see his shoulder muscles twitching. I remember thinking that he had great definition.
I moved to my left, toward Huck's head, keeping my gun pointed at him. I felt Byng come in behind me.
“Cover him from there, Byng,” I said. “He moves, shoot him.”
“Yep,” said Byng, sounding very matter-of-fact.
“Your bullets,” said Dan Peale, with an excellent upper class English accent, “cannot harm me.”
There was something very disconcerting about the way he said that. Calm, informative, with absolutely no doubt in his mind. He didn't turn.
“Step slowly back away from her,” I said. “Don't make any sudden moves. We don't want to put that theory to the test, do we?… ”
He was obedient. As he began to step back, slowly, he very deliberately squeezed the forceps, and then released it. Blood flowed instantly from Huck's neck, down the tube, and into the basin. Before I could stop him, he continued his motion by raising his left hand, and almost casually flipping the forceps over the back wall of the cubicle. Then he completed his step back from her.
Huck started to make gasping sounds, and strained at her straps. Dan Peale made a series of hissing noises, sucking air deep into his lungs, and forcing it out. Ventilating. He turned his head, farther than would have seemed normal, and I saw his face for the first time.
Dan Peale had a longish face, with pronounced musculature at the jaws. Dark hair and dark brown eyes. No facial hair except the eyebrows. And fangs, nearly an inch long, made more prominent by a wide, predatory grin. Even knowing that they were prostheses, they were startling. There was a smear of blood on his lips and chin.
I'd never seen him before in my life, but I felt I knew him.
“Put your hands behind your back,” I said. “Now!” I had to get to that tube…
“Bleeding… ” came from Huck.
Dan Peale grimaced and hissed again.
I reached down without taking my eyes from Peale, and got my left hand on the tube. I fumbled and felt the warm liquid running over my hand. Now the tube was slick, and I couldn't get a grip on it without looking down. I glanced at it for an instant, got a purchase, and squeezed it as hard as I could between my thumb and forefinger. It greatly reduced the flow, if not cutting it off completely.
“Cuff him,” I said to Byng.
Dan Peale had a fine sense of timing. Byng, out of his view, had glanced down at his holster, as he put his gun away so he'd have both hands free for using the cuffs. I had relaxed just a tad, having succeeded in nearly stopping the blood pouring from the tube in Huck's neck. And Dan Peale just lifted his knees, dropped way down, straightened abruptly, leaped up onto Huck's table, and jumped over the back wall of the cubicle. One, smooth motion, and he was gone.
I got off one shot, and thought I might have hit him.
I dimly heard a “Hey!” from outside. Borman. I had been nearly deafened by the sound of the shot.
Byng, taking the best action he could, jumped back through the door, and took off around the back of the little room. I saw Sally and Borman going by, and I hollered “Sally!”
I looked down at Huck. “We'll get you out now,” I said.
She was gulping shuddering breaths, trying to hold still. Her eyes were wide, and I don't think she understood a word I said.
