Vampire$

everything he saw.

But he did not speak.

He hated the job, of course, and he hated the place and he hated the Plan and he hated the sight of his pair of Brownings lying there beside him waiting to be strapped on and he hated the… earnestness… with which the rest of the Team went about it all.

But mostly he hated the sight of Jack Crow stalking about giving orders and inspiration and knowing this guy in charge was clogged tight with that suicidal half-wit philosophy about… about what? “Everybody’s-got-to-go- sometime-so-how’s-about-right-now?” or some such obscenity.

But he did not speak.

He just hated and smoked and boiled.

He also feared, but he was too angry at Crow to realize that, too furious and disgusted with that crap Crow had spouted at him by the locomotive. Bad enough having to do this shit and probably die doing it, but to have the goddamn boss start jamming this juvenile Code of Half-Ass Karma at him…

As far as Felix could tell, Crow’s philosophical foundations consisted of: “Oh, well, what the Hell!”

But still, the gunman did not speak.

What was the point… The job was on. The war was moments away and they were all going to fight in it, himself included, and nothing Felix could say now was going to stop it or save a fucking soul.

And then he heard it: “Rock and roll!”

And they were going inside.

Past the great glass double doors taped black against the sunlight with even that tiny notch they’d cut for the cable covered with black cardboard flaps and the rest of the inside also dark and cool and dry from the air conditioning — he hadn’t realized how hot it had been outside — but in here it was like a soft, dark tomb with every window taped up to be sure they came out of the elevator and Felix understood why Jack had decided to forget those damn gas masks and that gas because it was already tough enough to see in here even with the spotlights set up at every angle they could think of and all of them, Jack and Cat and Father Adam and Deputy Thompson and even Carl Joplin, gathered in front of the surveillance monitors Carl had set up at a little coffee table in the lobby so that Jack could see them while he worked the elevator and…

And it got very quiet and still with them just standing there for an instant, breathing in that air-conditioned air and watching those dark monitors.

“Hit the lights,” said Jack calmly, “and let’s see what we can see.”

And the lights downstairs in the cells came on — Felix had no idea who flipped the switch, had no idea of the source of any other movements but his own and Jack’s and whoever was standing dead inside of that tiny tunnel which had become his vision — and the cameras swept slowly back and forth showing the rows of bunked cells.

And no one was in them. They were empty.

For just an instant, Felix felt an exquisite thrill of relief until Carl Joplin lifted a chubby finger to one of the screens and pointed to an unmade bunk in the corner.

“There, I think,” he whispered. He moved his finger to another bed beside it, also unmade. “And there.”

Felix stared at the screens, unbelieving, and then back at the others’ faces, glowing in the lights from the screens, and then be looked back at the screens themselves, back at the two unmade bunks, and then he saw those outlines in the mattresses and knew the beds were unmade because someone — or something, goddammit — was still lying in them.

And his fear rose and swirled up his spine.

“I don’t get it,” whispered Kirk. “I mean, I understand it’s vampires and all that. Can’t see ’em in mirrors and stuff. But what about their clothes? We oughta be able to see their clothes! I mean, it’s a scientific fact that…

“Deputy,” said Father Adam, from just off his right shoulder, and Kirk turned around and looked at the priest.

“Deputy,” Adam repeated softly. “‘science’ can be helpful.” He gestured to the screens. “And we use it all that we can. But,” he whispered firmly, looking into the other man’s face, “this isn’t really about ‘science.’”

And the deputy eyed him a beat or two before nodding and looking back to the screens and Felix felt another chill rise and twist within his guts because he hated, absolutely goddamn hated when the priest sounded so sure because he was always, always, right and about then Jack leaned over and around the screens for one last look, at the aquarium, sitting blood-filled and ready inside the elevator.

Then he flipped a switch and the elevator doors closed and they all heard the groaning clunking as the elevator started down. It seemed so loud! It seemed loud enough to wake the—

“There!” cried Carl Joplin, and his stubby finger thumped the screen again and moved away and Felix saw. Streaks, outlines, ephemeral… drifting… but with a purpose, with a pattern and direction and Felix could see them sometimes, really see them when they would move and then pause and for just a brief half second he could see them, see their outlines, see their expressions!

And they were smiling.

“I guess,” offered Cat with a very dry throat, “they smell the blood.”

And just then all turned to the last monitor, the one that showed the inside of the elevator cage, empty save for the bright-red aquarium and just then the elevator came to a stop and the doors opened and the streaks — there were three of them, clearly three, one man and two women — moved down the row of bunks toward the elevator and…

There! In the elevator screen they saw one of them appear and they could all tell, somehow — out of the corners of their eyes, sort of — that it was one of the women.

“Carl!” whispered Jack Crow harshly. “Get outside and get ready.”

“Right,” Carl whispered hard in return and he was gone.

Jack looked at the others.

“Get in position.”

And they all moved back from the screens to somewhere — Felix was too numb to really tell or remember where — the others were somewhere over there to the right of the elevator door somewhere and he and Jack were supposed to stay here on the left.

He thought. He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t…

“How many do you want, bwana?” Cat asked.

Crow looked up at him and his face was hard. “Get to your spot, Cherry.”

Cat hesitated, looked at the screens, looked back at Crow. “It’s just that… you think we can handle more than one?”

Jack eyed him a moment. “Whoever comes up with it. Get moving.”

Cat hesitated again, then nodded and left, the glare of the spotlights glinting brightly off the polished shaft of his pike.

And then, from a desk on the other side of the booking counter, just visible through the huge black grille that rose from the top of the counter to the ceiling, a phone began to ring.

At first they just jumped. Then they turned and looked at it. Then they realized just which phone it was and then…

One of the downstairs screens, the one showing the guard’s station just beyond the wide-open barred gate leading to the elevator, showed a wall phone. The receiver was off the hook and banging in the air and sometimes Felix could see the outlines and sometimes he could not but he knew who it was, knew it was the man.

The vampire was calling them.

“Suspicious sonuvabitch,” muttered Crow but Felix didn’t really hear him. Felix was staring at the other screen, the one showing the open elevator and the aquarium full of blood that appeared to be all but boiling.

“God!” he whispered almost silently.

But Crow heard it and looked and the two of them sat there in silence as the outline-image of her came and went, came and went, as she threw her open mouth at the blood, sloshing it against the glass, and even as a