Wolves of the Calla

knew the gunslinger well enough to understand that even this was extraordinary. At the same time they had become almost used to these coincidences that could not possibly be coincidences, to the feeling that each one was the click of some great turning cog.

Lupe Delgado was thirty-two, an alcoholic almost five one-day-at-a-time years from his last drink, and had been working at Home since 1974. Magruder had founded the place, but it was Lupe Delgado who invested it with real life and purpose. During his days, he was part of the maintenance crew at the Plaza Hotel, on Fifth Avenue. Nights, he worked at the shelter. He had helped to craft Home's 'wet' policy, and had been the first person to greet Callahan when he walked in.

'I was in New York a little over a year that first time,' Callahan said, 'but by March of 1976, I had…' He paused, struggling to say what all three of them understood from the look on his face. His skin had flushed rosy except for where the scar lay; that seemed to glow an almost preternatural white by comparison.

'Oh, okay, I suppose you'd say that by March I'd fallen in love with him. Does that make me a queer? A faggot? I don't know. They say we all are, don't they? Some do, anyway. And why not? Every month or two there seemed to be another story in the paper about a priest with a penchant for sticking his hand up the altar boys' skirts. As for myself, I had no reason to think of myself as queer. God knows I wasn't immune to the turn of a pretty female leg, priest or not, and molesting the altar boys never crossed my mind. Nor was there ever anything physical between Lupe and me. But I loved him, and I'm not just talking about his mind or his dedication or his ambitions for Home. Not just because he'd chosen to do his real work among the poor, like Christ, either. There was a physical attraction.'

Callahan paused, struggled, then burst out: 'God, he was beautiful. Beautiful !'

'What happened to him?' Roland asked.

'He came in one snowy night in late March. The place was full, and the natives were restless. There had already been one fistfight, and we were still picking up from that. There was a guy with a full-blown fit of the dt's, and Rowan Magruder had him in back, in his office, feeding him coffee laced with whiskey. As I think I told you, we had no lockup room at Home. It was dinnertime, half an hour past, actually, and three of the volunteers hadn't come in because of the weather. The radio was on and a couple of women were dancing. 'Feeding time in the zoo,' Lupe used to say.

'I was taking off my coat, heading for the kitchen… this fellow named Frank Spinelli collared me… wanted to know about a letter of recommendation I'd promised to write him… there was a woman, Lisa somebody, who wanted help with one of the AA steps, 'Made a list of those we had harmed'… there was a young guy who wanted help with a job application, he could read a little but not write… something starting to burn on the stove… complete confusion. And I liked it. It had a way of sweeping you up and carrying you along. But in the middle of it all, I stopped. There were no bells and the only aromas were drunk's b.o. and burning food… but that light was around Lupe's neck like a collar. And I could see marks there. Just little ones. No more than nips, really.

'I stopped, and I must have reeled, because Lupe came hurrying over. And then I could smell it, just faintly: strong onions and hot metal. I must have lost a few seconds, too, because all at once the two of us were in the corner by the filing cabinet where we keep the AA stuff and he was asking me when I last ate. He knew I sometimes forgot to do that.

'The smell was gone. The blue glow around his neck was gone. And those little nips, where something had bitten him, they were gone, too. Unless the vampire's a real guzzler, the marks go in a hurry. But I knew. It was no good asking him who he'd been with, or when, or where. Vampires, even Type Threes— especially Type Threes, maybe—have their protective devices. Pond-leeches secrete an enzyme in their saliva that keeps the blood flowing while they're feeding. It also numbs the skin, so unless you actually see the thing on you, you don't know what's happening. With these Type Three vampires, it's as if they carry a kind of selective, short-term amnesia in their saliva.

'I passed it off somehow. Told him I'd just felt light-headed for a second or two, blamed it on coming out of the cold and into all the noise and light and heat. He accepted it but told me I had to take it easy. 'You're too valuable to lose, Don,' he said, and then he kissed me. Here.' Callahan touched his right cheek with his scarred right hand. 'So I guess I lied when I said there was nothing physical between us, didn't I? There was that one kiss. I can still remember exactly how it felt. Even the little prickle of fine stubble on his upper lip… here.'

'I'm so very sorry for you,' Susannah said.

'Thank you, my dear,' he said. 'I wonder if you know how much that means? How wonderful it is to have condolence from one's own world? It's like being a castaway and getting news from home. Or fresh water from a spring after years of stale bottled stuff.' He reached out, took her hand in both of his, and smiled. To Eddie, something in that smile looked forced, or even false, and he had a sudden ghastly idea. What if Pere Callahan was smelling a mixture of bitter onions and hot metal right now? What if he was seeing a blue glow, not around Susannah's neck like a collar, but around her stomach like a belt?

Eddie looked at Roland, but there was no help there. The gunslinger's face was expressionless.

'He had AIDS, didn't he?' Eddie asked. 'Some gay Type Three vampire bit your friend and passed it on to him.'

'Gay,' Callahan said. 'Do you mean to tell me that stupid word actually…' He trailed off, shaking his head.

'Yep,' Eddie said. 'The Red Sox still haven't won the Series and homos are gays.'

'Eddie!' Susannah said.

'Hey,' Eddie said, 'do you think it's easy being the one who left New York last and forgot to turn off the lights? Cause it's not. And let me tell you, I'm feeling increasingly out of date myself.' He turned back to Callahan. 'Anyway, that is what happened, isn't it?'

'I think so. You have to remember that I didn't know a great deal myself at that time, and was denying and repressing what I did know. With great vigor, as President Kennedy used to say. I saw the first one—the first 'little one'—in that movie theater in the week between Christmas and New Year's of 1975.' He gave a brief, barking laugh. 'And now that I think back, that theater was called the Gaiety. Isn't that surprising?' He paused, looking into their faces with some puzzlement. 'It's not. You're not surprised at all.'

'Coincidence has been cancelled, honey,' Susannah said. 'What we're living in these days is more like the Charles Dickens version of reality.'

'I don't understand you.'

'You don't need to, sug. Go on. Tell your tale.'

The Old Fella took a moment to find the dropped thread, then went on.

'I saw my first Type Three in late December of 1975. By that night about three months later when I saw the blue glow around Lupe's neck, I'd come across half a dozen more. Only one of them at prey. He was down in an East Village alley with another guy. He—the vampire—was standing like this.' Callahan rose and demonstrated, arms out, palms propped against an invisible wall. 'The other one—the victim—was between his propped arms, facing him. They could have been talking. They could have been kissing. But I knew—I knew —that it wasn't either one.

'The others… I saw a couple in restaurants, both of them eating alone. That glow was all over their hands and their faces—smeared across their lips like… like electric blueberry juice—and the burned-onion smell hung around them like some kind of perfume.' Callahan smiled briefly. 'It strikes me how every description I try to make has some kind of simile buried in it. Because I'm not just trying to describe them, you know, I'm trying to understand them. Still trying to understand them. To figure out how there could have been this other world, this secret world, there all the time, right beside the one I'd always known.'

Roland's right , Eddie thought. It's todash. Got to be. He doesn't know it, but it is. Does that make him one of us ? Part of our ka-tet ?

'I saw one in line at Marine Midland Bank, where Home did its business,' Callahan said. 'Middle of the day. I was in the Deposit line, this woman was in Withdrawals. That light was all around her. She saw me looking at her and smiled. Fearless eye contact. Flirty.' He paused. 'Sexy.'

'You knew them, because of the vampire-demon's blood in you,' Roland said. 'Did they know you?'

'No,' Callahan said promptly. 'If they'd been able to see me—to isolate me—my life wouldn't have been worth a dime. Although they came to know about me. That was later, though.