Vampire$

“And what did he say?” asked Father Adam.

Davette looked at him and she half laughed, half cried, and shook her head. “He just laughed and reached down and jerked me high into the air way over his head with one hand and…”

“And what?”

“And let me see his teeth..

“And then, at last, you knew?” asked Jack.

“I don’t know what I knew. Then. But I knew an hour later. You see, he carried me downstairs, in my nightgown, and threw me into my car and then he got in behind the wheel and started driving.”

He drove to a part of Dallas Davette had never seen. She had heard about it, read about it, seen the police reports on the local news. But she had never been here in deep south Dallas, mostly black, mostly miserable, full of hookers and rival street gangs and crack dealers and fractious racial politics herded together by terrified and outgunned police. The faces through the whizzing car windows seemed alien and menacing and the streets seemed seedy and tense as a shaken fist.

Ross pulled the car into a crowded and littered parking lot alongside a place called “Cherry’s” whose neon sign lacked an “r” and part of the “h” but still blinked spasmodically through the heavy gloom. The parking lot was full of people, mostly men and all black, standing around in little groups of twos or threes or sixes talking and smoking and passing bottles back and forth. A group of four were standings in the parking space Ross had selected. He pushed forward into it anyway, honking and lurching the great Cadillac bumper toward them. They leapt out of the way, one dropping his bottle, only just avoiding the car.

“What the fuck’s wit you?” cried the largest, a huge black man with a great broad-brimmed hat and what Davette believed was a least two pounds of gold jewelry.

“Parking my car,” snapped Ross as he stepped out. “This is a parking lot.”

Then he stepped quickly around the car and opened Davette’s door and lifted her, literally, out of her seat and onto the Cadillac’s roof. She was still wearing her nightgown and she struggled to keep its dainty ends from fluttering in the heavy breeze. Ross sneered at her efforts, then turned back to the four blacks.

“Want to make something of it?” he asked them.

And when they hesitated, too amazed to speak, he added: “niggers?”

As she spoke this next, the Team heard her voice change. As she had spoken of her own fall, Davette’s tone had been rich with shame and fatigue and hatred. But now it became tinged with awe. Awe and fear and something else.

Resignation? wondered Felix. As if, now that she thinks back on it, they really are unstoppable?

Shit.

And she tried to explain, to describe what she’d seen. The might of him. The surrealistic animal force of the vampire among mortals.

When they heard the “nigger,” they surged at him as one, as if choreographed. Ross had just laughed and then reached forward and snatched them up, just snatched them like they were dolls, like they had handles on them — on their stomachs, even. And they had screamed when he snatched them, crushing their bones with his fingers, collapsing their organs, they had screamed. And then he had laughed again and shaken them and at first they fought, stiffly blurring, but then they just flopped obscenely from side to side and he just — tossed them away. And the sounds when they hit, against the other cars, against the cinderblock wall of Cherry’s were almost as bad as their screams.

The crowd formed immediately, some there to “teach this honky motherfucker.” Two, three, six maybe, tried. Ross laughed and casually bashed them from side to side with the backs of his hands. Davette couldn’t stand it and she turned away after the first two and Ross noticed and spat “WATCH!” at her in that Voice and for just an instant, everyone — fighting or watching — froze while she meekly obeyed. Then they came out of it and rushed him again and he slapped them as before.

Then a short man circled in darkly, looking serious and unintimidated and wielding a huge knife. Ross looked at her and smiled and then turned back to him and opened his arms wide for the charge and it came and Ross did nothing and the blade rose in a quick glinting thrust from below, splitting the chest to the hilt.

Ross grunted — Davette could tell it pained him — but did nothing else. Except smile. The black man went wide-eyed but hung tough. Instead of running, he just jerked the blade out and slammed it home once again. And again Ross grunted.

And smiled.

Then he leaned over the little man and opened his mouth wide and the fangs were there flashing in the neon and he… hissssed…

And the man with the knife fainted dead away.

The crowd melted off after that, save for a handful of men standing at the entrance of the club. One of them, Davette suspected, was the owner or at least the manager. She saw the pistol he had hidden behind his thigh, saw him trying to decide if he dared use even that.

Ross saw it, too, and laughed harsh and point-blank at him. The man stared numbly back.

Then Ross laughed again and his look took in all who were left to watch, at the front door, in the parking lot, biding around the edges of the neon.

“So,” he boomed harshly, “you want me to move the car? This car? Very well!”

He strode quickly around to the front of the Cadillac, reached down and grasped the huge chrome bumper. He tensed, strained, then lifted the car to his chest. Then he took four powerful strides forward and the rear wheels, still on the ground, whined and treaded thick black rubber oft the asphalt and, just like that, the Cadillac was unparked. When he dropped the front of the car it bounced and Davette, still on the roof, was kicked sideways into the air. But Ross was there, as she slid to the ground, to catch her so easily.

And that’s when she realized the knife was still in his chest.

He sneered down at her. “Well?” he Voiced at her.

She knew what he wanted. She took a breath, forced herself to grasp the handle, and tugged. The knife came immediately into her hand, as if being also pushed from inside. And there was no blood. Just a clear, sticky mucous something.

The knife clattered to the asphalt.

Ross snorted and shoved her inside the car. Then he went around to his door. There were still three people remaining, too stunned to move.

“Well, niggers?” cried Ross happily.

No one moved, spoke, died.

Then they drove away in silence.

And it stayed silent, almost all the way home. Davette was too overcome to speak, too astounded, too shattered by what she had seen. This wasn’t just little Ross turned sexy. This was much, much more. Much, much worse. This was black magic. Evil. Oh God! Save me!

And she cowered over against her door waiting to die.

Only…

Only she knew that he wasn’t going to kill her. Not here, anyway. Not right now. And…

And his stomach was hurting him, she thought. He rubbed it, hard, as he drove, constantly kneading it with his free hand. And the thought of this, the dream of his vulnerability, was like the tiniest slice of hope.

Hope for what, she didn’t know. She only knew that he could be hurt and she couldn’t take her eyes off his kneading and that’s when he spotted her doing that and snorted with disdainful fury and jerked the Cadillac to a skidding stop on the side of the freeway, grabbing her with his right hand and dragging her across the seat to him and with his left hand ripping his shirt open and — And the wound was closed.

“It itches, you stupid little mite!” he barked shaking her head with a handful of her hair. “It doesn’t hurt! It itches!”

And then, when she just stared blankly at him, he reached up and grabbed the rearview mirror and tore it lose from the front windshield. He slammed her cheek up next to his and held the mirror in front of her eyes and…

And he wasn’t there.

She could feel him, his hand in her hair against her skull, his cheek pressing into hers — she could see that, she could see the impression his cheek was making