AfterAge (24 page)

Gregory frowned. "That's true, it’s huge. We should use more hunters or it'll take all night to search the building."

Anyelet considered for a moment, then made a negative motion. "That won't leave enough to guard the humans. Five will have to be enough."

"If we don't have enough, a human could escape," Rita offered.

"That's a chance we have to take," Anyelet said. She glanced at each of them. "Let's go."

The small group followed her from the building obediently, with no bickering or teasing among themselves. Gabriel had always been a dangerous, brooding kid and Anyelet liked that; his youth and speed, which far surpassed the others', would be valuable tonight—besides, his name amused her immensely. It would have been nice to linger under the cloud-laden skies, go to the lakefront and watch the waves pounding the rocks edging the harbors. Anyelet smiled at the snowsmell on the wind, knowing it would help the hunt. Still, she'd never cared for the colder temperatures and had been toying with the idea of moving her group and the humans south, where the weather was not so bitter and it would be easier to keep her stock of food warm and healthy.

Gregory moved in front, leading them south on Wells Street, over the river and its siren call of certain death, all five of them warily scanning the darker blackness of lower Wacker Drive. Here even Vic kept a keen watch, recalling the occasional discovery of severed heads and scattered limbs that were all that remained after a vicious attack by a pack of outcasts. Moving steadily southeast, Anyelet marveled at the cold, empty beauty of the city. Had someone suggested two years ago that she would someday walk the streets of Chicago and find them vacant, she would have laughed. Yet here it was, her fantasy . . .

Backfired
.

In a few more minutes they stood on Michigan Avenue, gazing at the stone lions adorning the main steps of the Art Institute. Anyelet had never visited this magnificent place; how much like the blasé hometowner she had been—and still was! While she and her entourage grew placid on the blood of a few sadly overused humans, hundreds of undetected men and women perfected survival skills and plotted ways in which to kill Anyelet and her children. And, of course, there were the outcasts. If she fed them, would they regain their lost sanity? Doubtful; she was surrounded by instability and unfaithfulness. If her plans did not succeed, if the human women could not carry to term and her food stash died off, would her soldiers grow hollow-bellied and slip away, seeking their meals among the rats and birds?

And what of herself?

It was an unthinkable end.
She
had initiated the change that had brought this city, this country, this
planet
, to its knees, a victory unequaled by anyone in the history that had been so painstakingly recorded in the now-moldering history books. Because of her, Anyelet, the some booms of jets no longer split the atmosphere, the rancid smell of garbage was simply a bad memory, and the surface of the moon would never again feel the footsteps of man.

Because of her
.

Who could battle so great a power?

Anyelet gave a mental snort and looked contemptuously at the stone facade of the Art Institute. No one. She had reigned before and would again, beyond when even the massive blocks of this building were reduced to unanswerable mysteries.

"Let's go in." She started to climb but Gabriel's voice stopped her.

"There are other doors where it won’t be so obvious."

She cocked her head. "Where do you suggest?"

“Over there." Gabriel led them around the northern corner of the building and indicated a dark metal door at the bottom of a flight of disused steps. "If we use this, chances are a human won’t notice."

"What difference does it make?" Rita demanded.

"It will if we don’t find anyone and have to come back," Gabriel pointed out.

"
If
we can get in without ripping it apart," Gregory commented.

Anyelet turned to Vic. "What do you think?"

He came forward and peered at the door, which was fitted closely into a metal frame and would have normally pushed open from the inside. There was no outside handle, but his fingers quickly found the three covered steel hinges on its left edge. Each gave a screeching protest as he cracked it apart and forced the concealed pin free; the noise was shocking in a darkness devoid of even the sound of breathing, like the clatter of falling silverware in a quiet restaurant. He tugged on the jutting fragments until the door grated out of its frame and lifted it aside, then scanned the opening. When he spoke, he made no attempt to lower his voice. "I don’t think this door's been opened in at least five or ten years. This looks like some kind of storeroom."

"Keep your voice down," Anyelet admonished softly. Hidden by the darkness, her eyes narrowed at his carelessness.

"Assuming there's someone
to
hear," Gregory whispered. They moved inside and began picking a path around dust-covered obstacles. "We might be chasing the ravings of a senile old man."

"Someone lives here, all right." Gabriel's tone was barely audible. "Now that we're inside, I can
smell
her."

"A woman?" Anyelet wasn't really surprised. Her scouts occasionally found females, most strong and unbelievably cunning. She herself had proved to be mankind's most unconquerable adversary. If the woman could breed, Anyelet would be even more pleased.

From Anyelet's right, Rita's muttering confirmed her thoughts. "I'm sure Siebold will be glad to hear that. More
meat
."

Anyelet jerked. What was that? A charge, a
feeling
from . . .
Vic
. Even in the coal-black storeroom, with its filthy piles of jumbled crates and mounds of tattered canvas throws, she could see the giant vampire waiting by a pair of rusty elevator doors with his iron-hard arms folded. Had it been anger? Seldom could she catch the private thoughts of her own kind without their knowledge, and it was unnerving to know that this monstrously sized night creature hid an emotion so intense it was literally
leaking
out of him. She would have to watch him closely.

"How will we get upstairs?" asked Rita.

"Well, since the stairs are obviously blocked"—Gabriel pointed at a pile of debris nearly as high as the ceiling—"we'll use the elevator shaft. Unless you want to move all this stuff."

"Let's not waste any more time," Anyelet cut in. "This building is huge. It may take all night to find her."

Gabriel's eyes were impassive. "I doubt it." He raised his chin and his nostrils flared wide. "She's been here a long time and her scent is very strong. I think we'll catch her within, say, a half hour." He grinned, showing the long, thin fangs of a nightwolf.

Anyelet nodded at Vic, who turned and began prying at the elevator doors. More noise, this time a loud groaning, as though the elevator doors themselves were trying to stall Vic's intrusion. Anyelet ground her teeth; surely anyone inside had fled by now! They could only hope the size of the building would muffle this overabundance of sound. One last scream and the doors yielded, the shaft stretching away to a cold, damp nothingness.

"Well, isn't this handy," Rita grumbled. "Just like the old days."

"You expected an operator to push the button for you?" hissed Gregory.

Anyelet made a soft snarling sound and both fell into a nervous silence. "Climb," she commanded. Already Vic was hauling himself up, muscles working smoothly, and Anyelet reached for one of the cables, adjusting her grip around the slick, oily surface. She began climbing easily, Vic's movements overhead making the cable strum in her hand. The others followed one by one, the thick strands of steel vibrating beneath their weight, causing echoing metal whispers as they crawled up its length like mutated caterpillars.

Anyelet bent her head back to Gabriel. "How far?" Her carefully modulated voice carried eerily in the shaft.

“Next floor up," he murmured.

Above them, Vic paused. "This is as far as we go," he said quietly. "The elevator's blocking us and I can't get a good enough hold to push it out of the way."

"This'll do," Gabriel said.

Vic put one foot on the thin ledge running around the shaft and pried at the closed doors with his free hand, widening them enough to crawl through. Anyelet was out in an instant, crouching cautiously next to the elevator and scanning the foyer. The others streamed from the shaft like a pack of slick cats, then milled uncertainly, waiting for instructions as Anyelet sighed in exasperation. These were not hunters—they were
children
, uneducated and undisciplined. Was it laziness? Or abundance? Abruptly she knew just how Hugh had survived: mind and reason gone, the old man functioned on instinct alone, that wonderful, inexplicable sixth sense that was—
normally
—so heightened in those of the night.

Only Gabriel appeared to have retained a semblance of the valuable skills accompanying his immortality. Now he lifted his nose and sniffed, turning in a slow semicircle before moving down a short hall on their right to a closed glass door. "Through here," he said. "I can smell her clearly." Rita stepped up to examine the door, a double glass barrier with metal bars for handles through which a heavy chain and steel padlock had been threaded and locked from the opposite side. The doors parted just enough for her to slip a hand through the opening and grab the chain.

Anyelet nodded, knowing that some sacrifices had to be made. "As quietly as possible."

Rita began to apply a slow, steady pressure; fifteen seconds later, the chain hung in two pieces. Rita's mouth twisted in contempt as she lowered the pieces to the floor without so much as a rattle. ”A fool's effort," she whispered.

"I think they count more on being able to hide," Gregory said softly. "The bigger the building, the better."

Gabriel grinned, his red lips stretching to show fangs as clean and white as a puppy's. "Not this time. Come on." They followed, matching his pace through mazelike corridors and galleries, past dead-end alcoves that seemed to go on forever. Paintings and statues flowed past, a thousand objets d'art representing mans past and the permanently frozen present.

"Gabriel”—Anyelet's voice was barely audible—"can you still follow her scent?"

"Yes," he whispered. His red-blue eyes flickered with anticipation and he put a cautionary finger to his mouth. Another door yielded and he led them down again, following a striking staircase to and through an unlocked pair of doors marked with a plaque bearing the words ARTHUR RUBLOFF AUDITORIUM. His nostrils spread and he forced air into his nose. His expectant leer faded.

"She's not here," he said, not bothering to lower his voice. "Otherwise these doors would be locked from the inside." He pointed to a length of chain and several heavy padlocks pushed against the wall.

Vic bent and fingered the high-quality steel. "They won’t be a problem," he commented. He stepped inside and the rest shambled in behind him; immediately their footsteps echoed through the large room. Anyelet admired the woman's choice—even knowing the room would amplify noise wouldn't help them move quietly.

"But she's been here recently?" Anyelet looked around, noting the raised stage and the upholstered seats tilting upward for several stories at a dizzying angle.

"Probably last night," Gabriel responded.

"Maybe she's not coming back." Rita didn’t need to be specific, and Anyelet rubbed her tongue across her fangs as she considered the odds.

"We'll check again tomorrow night," she decided. "Just to be sure."

"Be careful not to touch anything," Gabriel instructed. “You can bet she knows every detail of this place."

"I found where she sleeps," Rita called. She had pulled aside a fold of the heavy draperies at the farthest end of the stage, revealing an alcove no bigger than a closet. Inside was a cot bearing a heavy sleeping bag and blankets, a small cook stove, and a few other things, including a chemical toilet that made Anyelet chuckle.

"Check this out." Gabriel carefully lifted the spill of blankets between the cot and the floor. Beneath it they could see the well-oiled gleam of a shotgun stock. Anyelet looked to Gregory, but the former accountant shook his head. "It'll be the first thing she checks if she comes back. Weapons are like security blankets to humans."

"What if we just take out the bullets?" Rita asked.

"Shells," Gregory corrected. “And no way. She'll clean and reload it. Anything different and she'll be long gone before we even wake up. We'll have to leave it."

Anyelet frowned. "That's a tremendous risk."

Gregory spread his hands. "What are the odds she'll return and bed down for the night without going over her gun? Personally I think we'll lose her if we screw around with it."

Anyelet studied the Winchester thoughtfully "The firing pin—"

"Forget it," Gabriel interrupted. "She'll break it down to clean it. Let’s face it—it takes a smart human to last this long. There's nothing we can do about the gun."

Anyelet nodded reluctantly. “All right. Let's get out of here. Make sure to leave everything the way it was, no slipups. And keep the gun in mind tomorrow night."

They filed toward the exit, disappointment robbing them of conversation. Anyelet was looking in the other direction when she sensed rather than saw Vic's lightning movement as he plucked some small trinket from the plastic record crate that served as a nightstand next to the cot. For a moment she was stupefied—he must know his act would likely make tomorrow night's foray useless! Her first instinct was to snatch it from his pocket and demand an explanation, but she squelched the impulse. What was happening? She had lived centuries by herself; existing on common sense and a fierce need for self-preservation, two things blatantly lacking in the obnoxious and sloppy children she had borne. At first the loss of bits and pieces of her army had seemed negligible, but now each betrayal represented a larger percentage, an unraveling of her already-shaky hold over these rebellious offspring. Her lip curled scornfully; perhaps it would be best to kill them all and simply start over. In the end, she needed no one but herself.