It was a long black Cadillac and it pulled to a smooth stop at the curb in front of the couple. From the driver’s door stepped a tall pale man wearing a chauffeur’s uniform. He stepped to the door closest to the couple and opened.
Davette gasped when the tall, handsome, silver-haired man stepped out.
“My God!” she whispered. “It’s him!”
“Who?” the men demanded.
“It’s him!” she repeated and turned to Felix. “The man who sent Ross to kill Jack!”
Felix hadn’t taken his eyes from the man. “Are you certain?” he asked her in a strange voice.
“I’m positive. It’s him. He’s the one. I saw him twice. I…
“What?” Cat asked.
She tilted her head, staring. “I don’t know exactly. It’s just that… Well, he looks so familiar. I mean, he looked familiar then. And he still does.”
Felix was still watching the silver-haired vampire as he got out of the limo, was graciously introduced to his procured victim, even more graciously — with many bows and flourishes — ushered everyone into the rear of the black car.
“Follow them,” Felix said.
“Felix!” said Cat excitedly, “if this is the guy, then he’s the one who’s been after us.”
“Well, Felix?
“Just follow them, Cat,” the Gunman replied and his voice was too hard and too dry for further conversation.
They all went to far north Dallas, past the yuppie suburbs and into the sprawling countryside, with its sprawling golf course and estates, to a fortress.
It didn’t look like a fortress, not to an untrained eye. It simply looked like a glamorous, incredibly expensive country home. It just happened to have a seven-foot-tall rock wall around it and a black iron automatic gate and a gatekeeper’s booth. Hidden along the wall, where you could only see them if you looked for them, were electric wires, electric lights, and, Felix could only assume, penetration sensors.
A fortress.
The limo had already turned into the gate and Cat was slowing down as he passed the entrance when Felix barked at him: “Speed up! Speed up! Go past! Don’t let them notice this car!”
“I just wanted to see the name on the—”
Felix roared at him. “Move, goddamn you, Cat! Move the fucking car!”
Cat blinked, obeyed, hit the gas. They sped quickly past the entrance.
“Now,” said Felix a mile later, “take us to the hotel.” And his voice was calmer but his tone — his tone was still sharp ice. Cat and Davette exchanged a look but didn’t speak throughout the trip. Felix sat alone in the back seat. He stared out the side window. He didn’t move. But the pulse on the side of his neck throbbed rhythmically with the lights from passing traffic.
By the time they got back to the suite, Cat couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Felix, dammit! If you had just let me see who it was!”
Felix eyed him with a scary calm. “Really?”
“Yes! Really. Just let me slow down enough to read the mailbox. Just let me get the bastard’s name!”
Felix looked at him a moment, then carried his drink to a table next to the picture window that overlooked the lights of the city. He put the drink down without sipping it. And spoke.
“The bastard’s name is Simon Kennedy.”
“Of course!” Davette cried. “‘I know that name. I’ve heard that name.”
But Cat couldn’t take his eyes off the Gunman’s back.
“But you, Felix. You… you
Felix turned slowly toward them and his eyes were hard to look at and his grin was a death-mask’s grin.
“For fifteen years,” he hissed.
Chapter 31
Gunman Felix never did actually start raving as he spoke of Simon Kennedy.
What he did was worse.
It was low and slow and chilling, a bitter, vicious, grinding, dull roar of a voice, rich and fat with venom.
It was terrifying.
Because they could see the mounting rage, the virulent agonized fury, bubbling up and up.
But never out.
He paced as he spoke, back and forth, back and forth, his face a tight gray skull, his eyes always distant and inward. Always dark.
Gunman Felix remembered the very first time he had been introduced to Simon Kennedy, remembered his face and his smile and his handshake. Remembered seeing him
Gunman Felix remembered his laugh.
“Very big social figure. Very prestigious to have him at a party. Very big deal. Because he was so smooth, you know. Smooth and polished and cultured. Very big into culture is our monster. Patron of the arts, they called him — probably still do.
“And all those people and all those kids are looking up to this pig, told to look and act and think like him and be gracious and smooth when you meet him. Young guys told to stand up tall and the girls straightening their gowns and touching up their hair as he comes down the bloody receiving line because everybody loves him, you see. Everybody thinks he’s such a grand person!”
Gunman Felix turned and looked at them, at Cat and Davette, and his face was hard to meet.
“He just walks right up to them. Because they don’t know. Right up to them and smiles and shakes their hands and talks to them and they talk back — just like he was real. Because they don’t know!”
He walked away from them and spoke again, so low they could barely hear him.
“No one knows. But us.”
Gunman Felix was quiet for a while, pacing again back and forth, smoking furiously and inwardly boiling.
Cat and Davette exchanged a glance when they heard his teeth grind.
“Ha!” he shouted without any humor, and stopped abruptly.
He looked at them and his tone was reasonable and deeply wicked.
“Honey, when your aunt died and the medical examiner came over to take care of things for you — you ever met the guy before?”
Davette thought a moment. “I think so.”
Felix nodded. “Sure. At your level you meet everybody eventually. But did you know him? Did your aunt hang out with him?”
“Well… no. I don’t think so.”
“So he suddenly drops everything and comes to your aid. I mean, she had lots of old friends, didn’t she?”
“Yes. Of course. But—”
“But don’t you see! Your Aunt Victoria committed suicide. An autopsy is automatic, by law. That M.E. — what’s his name?”
“Dr. Harshaw.”
“Yeah. Harshaw. He gives her an autopsy — he’s got to. It’s the law with all suicides. And he sees the marks. He sees the bites. And he knows what’s what and… that’s how they found Ross! Don’t you see? Harshaw sees it’s a vampire and he tells Kennedy. That’s the only way a vampire
