Vampire$

mumbling something about wanting to take a shower right away.

He got his key and a tense moment before Father Adam announced that he wanted to have special services immediately — while everyone was still sober enough to pray, ha ha.

And Felix took part in this but the way he knelt and rocked and prayed, so fiercely radiating anger and fear… By the time the priest could quickly break it up they all felt sprayed.

Then there was a knock on the door and Sheriff Hattoy and Kirk and a few other deputies appeared for a little celebrating and Jack brought out glasses and their special schnapps and instructed the newcomers on the toast: “Here’s to the great ones…” began Jack.

“There’s damn few of us left!” finished the others and they all downed the schnapps and all, but Felix, laughed and asked for more. The gunman went to his room, taking a bottle of his scotch with him.

They partied without him, while the women desperately tried to whip up enough food fast enough to absorb just enough of the alcohol to make Annabelle’s hypnotic debriefing possible later on. It was going to be close. Even for Team Crow, the boozing was heavy. The sheriff excused himself early. There had been a good reason why he had been late to their troubles, and that reason still existed. He had more work to do. He exchanged a quick private smile with Kirk before leaving his best deputy behind, as everyone had known would happen.

They partied gamely along some more and no one said anything about Felix not being there. And when the food was ready and he called from behind his locked motel room door that he wasn’t hungry, no one said anything about that, either.

But everyone noticed. Everyone, that is, except Jack Crow. Jack refused to notice, thought Cat. Or maybe he’s just too high on Felix to care. Jack perched on the edge of the sink while they ate and, master storyteller that he was, relayed every detail of the miracles his gunman had wrought. Carl had been outside during the fighting and the women hadn’t been there at all and the three of them listened raptly to every word.

About the woman with the stakes in her, streaking and screeching about in the darkness with Felix’s split- second marksmanship on her all the way.

About him, the way he seemed to levitate out of the elevator and stroll so casually toward them, about his catching the fired crossbow bolt, about his looking right at Felix and warning him about the gun.

“And Felix shot him anyway?” Carl asked.

Jack sipped from his wine and nodded. “Three shots. Hit ’im twice that I saw. Then it was just a blur until he grabbed the gun.”

“And crushed it?” Annabelle wanted to know. “Really?”

Jack nodded again. “With one hand. That’s when Carl here opened the door and it turned toward the light for a second. By the time he had turned back around Felix had drawn his other automatic, left- handed, and he shot him right through the center of his goddamned forehead.”

Jack paused, lit a cigarette. “I think he would have killed at least a couple of us if it weren’t for that. Hell, he could do that on his way past us out of the light. But not after that shot.

“Carl, our shooter is everything we could ever have wanted.”

And everything Davette had wanted him to be. She sat there, in the silence that followed, with her eyes welling happy, happy tears. She could not explain her joy, her sense of hope, any more than she could explain, or even fathom, this viselike hold he had on her.

But somehow, because he was so… so wonderful at this, it made it all seem okay. Even the jagged vibrations of his presence.

“Yep,” said Jack Crow, staring deep into his wineglass, “everything we could ever have wanted.”

Then he looked at the smiling Davette and grinned.

“Then how come,” popped Cat from amidst the others’ concerned looks, “we’re not all happy?”

Jack shook his head. “Aw, Cherry, give it a rest. Felix is just…”

“Where is he, Jack?” demanded Annabelle. “Why is he in his room? Even when he’s here, he just… He looked at me like he hated me! Hated us all! He’s not eating. He’s there in his room drinking alone. He…”

“Relax, woman!” Jack snapped. He stood up and towered over them. “Let me tell you kids a thing or two. Felix is…”

Then the door came open and Felix was there, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, scotch bottle in hand. He stepped inside and stopped and looked at them, all of them, for a heavy silent moment, then turned curtly away toward the chair in the corner of the suite and planted himself there and drank some more.

Under Jack’s silent directions, they tried to party anyway. Jack whispered to Annabelle to drop the debriefing for tonight, concentrate on the celebration and the booze.

“Party, babe! You know!” he muttered grinning in her ear.

And they gave it a try, starting with the music. ZZ Top, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Roy Orbison, everyone in their tape library. It helped. They danced and laughed and giggled and drank too much and it went on for hours and hours and early on somebody in the next room complained, a trucker type in a bad sleepy mood, so Jack had the women haul his ass in through the doorway and drink a little drinkie and “Don’t worry about being dressed, stranger,” he insisted, looking down at his bare chest and feet. “We’ll find you a shirt and all the rest of us will take our shoes off! Race!”

And they all laughed and fell to the floor and Annabelle was the first to get her shoes off — in like one half a second. And Cat was the last — it took him three minutes of concentrated effort before he gave up and put his drink down and tried with both hands.

Then it only took him another minute and a half.

The trucker loved it and wanted to know if he could call his buddies who were just down the hail and Jack said, “Hell, yes! Let’s go git ’em!”

And they did go “git” ’em, all five of them. Plus Doris, the blond at the front desk, and her boyfriend Eddy Duane who, Cat felt sure, should have by God learned to play the guitar backward by now. They also gathered in a couple named Henderson, who had come into town for a funeral earlier in the day and said they could use a wake. About an hour later a skinny bald man in his seventies, who was easily six-foot-six, knocked on the door and asked to join the party.

He produced a business card: “Mr. Kite, Layman Activist, The Church of the Sub-Genius.”

“It’s the world’s first industrial Church,” he explained to Father Adam.

“Industrial?” asked the priest.

“Right. We pay taxes and everything,” replied Mr. Kite.

“I’m not sure I understand. What is it you believe in?”

“Everything,” said Mr. Kite with a smile. “But mostly the free-market economy.”

So they all had another drink on that, for the benefit of Mr. Kite.

Felix sat stone still and staring throughout. He didn’t speak, didn’t get up, didn’t acknowledge anyone. There was something so threatening about his somber posture that none of the strangers even tried to approach him. And inquires were put off by Team members.

Only Davette seemed unable to stay away. She got close enough to him to change his ashtray twice. And Annabelle thought she was going to speak to him a few times, almost on impulse. But she didn’t and neither did anyone else.

But Jack seemed happy about it all. Weirdly content in fact. Occasionally the Team would spot him standing off to one side, catching his party breath and grinning at Felix’s back.

Does he know something we don’t know? wondered Cat. Or is he just blind?

By three thirty the party was running out of steam for those with nothing to celebrate. The Hendersons, who had been trying to teach two of the truckers to dance and sing, had finally given up. Their only decent pupil had been a barrel-chested old man with “Pop” on his uniform who had actually learned a few steps of soft shoe in his heavy boots before collapsing from alcohol and years. Once that last person was off his feet, the sleepies began to creep in on all non-Team members. They could have reinvigorated for more fun — Team Crow had its ways. But no one wanted them to stay.

Felix had started talking to himself.

Angrily, forcefully, furiously… but in total silence. His lips moved, his face warped in rage, the words spitting bitterly out, but not one sound came with them.