Was he trying to shut her up? Or was he trying to explain his own actions? The vampire depended on him. The monster couldn’t have gotten this far without Geistdoerfer. Maybe he wanted her to understand him. To forgive him.
Unlikely, she thought, but she kept that to herself.
“Can I turn on the radio?” she asked. Music might drive the darkest thoughts out of her head.
“I don’t see why not,” Geistdoerfer said. “Just keep it low.”
She nodded, then glanced down at the Buick’s dashboard. The radio was original to the car and not very sophisticated. She switched it on and a little rock music came out, mostly swamped in static. She tried fiddling with the tuning knob. The first station to come in clearly was a Christian talk channel, and she switched away again almost immediately. She didn’t want to hear about how she was going to burn in hell for eternity, not when death was so close. She eventually found a station playing classical music.
Something light and happy. Caxton didn’t know enough about classical to say who the composer might have been.
“Mozart,” the vampire announced, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “By God. I know this piece. I heard it played in Augusta once, at a Christmas festival. How…is there a music box in this vehicle? Yet it sounds so rich, like a full orchestra playing.”
She didn’t understand what he was asking. She didn’t want to speak unless her fear sounded in her voice.
“Just a bit after your time, I think,” Geistdoerfer said, “a man named Thomas Edison invented a way to capture sound out of the air and record it on a wax cylinder. Later they developed a way to then transmit those sounds across great distances.”
“Like the telegraph?” the vampire asked.
“A similar principle. Though it requires no wires.”
The vampire was silent awhile. Then he said, “There’s so much changed. The lights burning on this road, you see them? This would have been impenetrable darkness, in my time. All the world outside our little fires was darkness. You’ve pushed that back so far I don’t think you two can even imagine it, now.”
“You have so much to teach us,” Geistdoerfer announced.
The vampire didn’t seem up to giving a lesson just then, however. He didn’t speak again until they left the Turnpike.
It wasn’t much farther to the museum. They passed through the sweeping green lanes of Fairmount Park, where streetlights studded the gloom, then rolled into town beneath the high wall of the old state penitentiary. Philadelphia was a city of discreet zones, districts that had their own specific characters. It felt more like a collection of small towns than a metropolis. The neighborhood that housed the Mutter Museum was one of the more unusual sections.
The streets were not busy that night, though crowds gathered outside of pubs and small restaurants. The vampire kept his head down, invisible to anyone casually glancing through the car’s windows. Outside of a brewpub a couple of college-age boys hooted at them, but they were just admiring the Buick, not questioning its occupants.
Caxton wheeled down Twenty-second Street, passed the College of Physicians building, then ducked down an alley toward a small parking lot enclosed by buildings on three sides. There was no attendant; if you wanted to park there you were expected to fold up a five-dollar bill and tuck it through a slot near the exit. Only a couple of other cars stood in the lot.
Caxton pulled into an empty space and then shifted into park. The Buick’s engine thundered in complaint for a second and then died down to an idle. Her arm muscles twitched as she switched off the car and laid back in her seat. Her body wanted to cramp up into a single knot. She felt a horrible urge to just lie down on the seat and close her eyes. To accept whatever was coming.
It seemed the vampire wasn’t going to let her do that. “Miss, if you please, get out first.”
“Don’t try to run away,” Geistdoerfer added.
She let her head fall forward for a moment, slumped on her neck. She rubbed at her eyes. She couldn’t seem to master the bodily coordination to open the door. But then she did. She got her legs out, stretched them, lunged up with her torso until she was standing in the parking lot. Her body twanged with tension and fear, but she was standing up. That was what you did, when faced with an impossible situation. You kept going.
She climbed out of the car, but before she could even think of running the vampire was behind her, clutching her wrist in his hand. The grip was light, though she knew it could tighten without warning, and if it did it could crush her bones.
“We should really get inside, away from the madding crowd,” Geistdoerfer insisted. He took a step away from the car and they all heard the sound of fabric tearing. The professor looked down and Caxton did too. She saw that his bad arm had gotten snagged by the tail fin of the Buick and that his sling had torn.
“It doesn’t matter,” Geistdoerfer said. “I’ll fix it later.” His face was a mask of pain. Had he injured himself on the tail fin? He started to walk toward the museum, rubbing at his ruined wrist with his good hand. “Come on,” he said.
The vampire didn’t move. Caxton had no choice but to stand still.
There wasn’t much light in the parking area. Just a few overhead lamps that left plenty of shadows. Still she could see a trail of small drops of blood, round and flat, following Geistdoerfer wherever he went.
Blood had stained the torn end of his sling and as she watched it gathered there wetly, formed a hanging dome of shiny red. Then it detached and slid off to spatter on the oil-stained ground.
The vampire held her arm tight. “I’ve had to smell his life for hours now,” he told her. His voice was a low dusky growl. The purr of a big cat just before it pounced on a zebra. “I’ve sat next to him and smelt it, and held back as best I might.”
Caxton didn’t move. She knew what the sight of blood could do to a vampire. “He’s your only friend in the world,” she said. “Please, don’t—”
“I’ll need strength for what I’m to do here.”
Then he was off like a shot, closing the distance between himself and Geistdoerfer in one quick leap.
Caxton was dragged behind, held fast by his soft grip on her wrist. She fought and kicked and tried to pry his fingers loose with her free hand, but it was no use. It was like fighting against an industrial vise.
The vampire didn’t waste time tearing sling and sleeve away from the professor’s arm. He just bit right through the layers of cloth and deep into the flesh beneath, his teeth grating on the bones. Geistdoerfer screamed, but the sound didn’t get very far. The professor’s eyes glazed over as pain and shock took him, as the vampire tore and rent at his skin and muscle and sucked out his blood. For a moment it looked as if Geistdoerfer would die quietly, almost peacefully. Then his body started to shake, his limbs seizing in a convulsion of pain and horror. His eyes were blind by then, but his mouth kept working, his lips trying to form words. Caxton couldn’t decide what he was trying to say.
When it was done, when the last drop of blood had been sucked from his body, Geistdoerfer looked paler than the vampire. He hung limp and quite dead and the vampire stood holding them both, live woman and dead man, like a child playing with two mismatched dolls.
The beast’s eyes burned in the darkness then. His body rippled as if it were made of pale fog and a breeze was coursing through him. His emaciated frame seemed to swell as if the stolen blood had filled him up, distended him. When it was done he looked almost human. Or at least as close as he was ever likely to get.
He dragged the two of them over to a Dumpster in the alley and threw Geistdoerfer’s body inside without further ceremony. Caxton wasn’t surprised. Vampires and their minions held no reverence for human death. When the body was disposed of he dragged her to her feet and finally let go of her. She didn’t even think to run. With the blood in him the vampire would be even faster than before. Stronger.
Much harder to kill.
“She’s here,” he said. “Miss Malvern.” He wasn’t looking at her for confirmation. He had his head up as if he could smell the other vampire on the air. “She’s quite close. You did well, my friend, to bring me here.”
It was then, of all times, that Caxton’s cell phone chose to ring.
36.
