AfterAge (31 page)

He flung himself to the floor just as a black, tattered creature resembling a man-sized bat clawed and clung its way across the window directly outside the spot in which Alex had been standing only a second earlier. Was it the same one that had terrified them the night before, checking its territory like a starving wolf? Alex had no intention of tapping on the glass and asking.

Alex lay with his face and hands hugging the icy floor.
Jesus!
he thought as his heart whammed in his chest.
If this is what I'm going through, what's happening to Deb?

REVELATION 12:4

And the beast stood before the woman for to devour her.

REVELATION 22:12

And, behold, I come quickly . . .

~ * ~

Well, this is a fine mess
, Vic thought in disgust. He extricated himself from the unconscious woman's legs and stood; the thick, offensive smell of gunpowder crawled up his nose and he waved an ineffective hand in front of his face. Gregory's corpse, now a headless lump of slowly melting flesh, still twitched a few feet away, and already Gabriel was scrambling across the stage, his expression a study of slavering eagerness.

"Just stay the fuck away!" Vic snarled. Rita staggered down the aisle, screeching and ricocheting from one side to another like a pinball being slapped about by mechanical flippers. Her once darkly exquisite face had taken an upward slug in its cheekbone, destroying her right eye and ear and leaving pieces of her skull an exposed and dripping horror. Her head had a new and impossible shape that now sloped toward the front of her gore-encrusted blouse.

"What do I look like?" Rita whined and clutched at Anyelet. The Mistress pulled away in distaste and hurried toward Vic and the woman, leaving Rita to moan against a velvet-covered seat, hardly glancing at Gregory's body. "Is she dead?" Anyelet asked. She nudged the woman with one toe.

"No way." Gabriel was panting outright. "Can I do her?" His lips stretched and saliva trailed in glistening strands from his top to bottom teeth like a sparkling spider web.

"Kill her!" Rita's scream rose from the seats below. "Kill her and leave her for the sun!"

Anyelet ignored them both and nodded at the weapon that had killed Gregory. "What is this thing?"

Vic picked it up. "Some sort of semiautomatic shotgun, I think. Never saw one like it before." He lowered it back to the floor. "Pretty damned effective." He looked at Anyelet. "What about Gregory?"

"Leave him," she said flatly. "I've no time for dead meat."

“And the woman?" Gabriel asked again.

"
Kill
—"

"Shut up!" Anyelet snapped. "I'll make that decision!”

“What's to decide?" asked Gabriel. "You want to breed her?"

Vic tensed. The woman at his feet was far lovelier than anyone at the Mart; what would she do when Howard tried to rape her? Howard might kill her trying—and then, of course, there was the mutilated Rita, still keening in the background like an old woman. He cleared his throat to regain Anyelet's attention. "Don't we need to replace Gregory?" he asked. "There's only a few of us left." He couldn't believe his own suggestion, yet how could this woman, who had fought so valiantly to survive, be shut away and used like some weekly menu selection?

Anyelet studied him thoughtfully. "Perhaps we
could
use some new blood." Her black gaze slid briefly in Rita's direction.

"All
right
!" Gabriel swiftly buried his fingers in the woman's curly hair and yanked her head back, exposing her white throat with its richly filled arteries. Vic's huge hand shot out and covered Gabriel's wrist in a crushing hold. Gabriel yelped and released the woman; her head thumped to the floor and she gave a soft moan as Gabriel cried, "Hey!"

Anyelet glanced at Vic sharply and he released Gabriel. The younger vampire rubbed his wrist in bewilderment. "What the hell's your problem?"

"I just thought the Mistress might want to . . ." Vic couldn't bring himself to say it and a play of thoughts crossed Anyelet's features, then she smiled slyly.

"No. I think she should be
yours
, Vic."

"Why him?" Gabriel protested.

Anyelet cut him off with a glare. "Because that's what I
want
." She smiled again. "I think Vic could use a companion."

Companion?
It was something Vic had never considered and his eyes sought the woman collapsed at his feet. Impossible—she'd probably despise him as much as he despised Anyelet. Yet . . . she might enjoy the new "life," as had hundreds of thousands of others. He shied away from the threat of Rita's ugly temperament and remembered instead the lonely nights in the echoing, empty Mart and on the city streets before the outcasts had become such a danger. Could the time stretching ahead be shared with someone?

He had to try it.

Vic picked her up in one smooth movement, feeling her warm skin and already regretting that it would soon be as bloodless and cold as his own. The life within her ebbed and swelled with each heartbeat, her pulse surging against the insides of his arms. Gabriel's envious stare and Rita's more vicious one followed him as he quickly carried his burden down the steps and out of the auditorium, grimacing and averting his eyes from Rita; the wreckage of her face was indescribable and far too great to ever heal. Following Anyelet's instructions, Gabriel swung the woman's weapon over his shoulder, then went to help Rita; in another few seconds, the group joined him at the Columbus Drive exit. Outside the locked doors the snow gleamed, white and unbroken beyond the driveway overhang. Gabriel gave one set of doors a petulant kick and they shattered; in vies arms the woman mumbled something, trapped in her own ominous dream.

"Unless you want her screams to draw every outcast for miles," Anyelet commented, "I suggest you get her to the Mart as quickly as possible. Gabriel will run with you in case you're attacked. Rita and I will follow."

Gabriel frowned. "What about the outcasts?"

Anyelet’s smile was a dull red slash in the night. "They don't dare challenge
me
."

Gabriel nodded and looked at Vic. Without bothering to speak, Vic held the woman close and began to run.

~ * ~

It was done.

Vic would have liked to have thrown up, but there was no way his body would allow him that cleansing luxury. He'd learned a lot during the melding of minds as he'd feasted, the least of which was her name—Deborah Nole—and more important, that she'd had a lover as recently as last night, a man called Alex. Still, even as her human body died, she'd fought the meld and kept his location so buried within her that Vic couldn't get to it, and the
will
such resistance entailed was beyond his comprehension. Now she slept beside his own sated and lazy form. He'd forgotten the feeling of fullness, of
completion
, that changing someone brought; it left in him a desire for more, and he hated it, and hated himself, too, for sacrificing the life of this splendid, strong woman on the oh-so-vague chance that his loneliness might be eased the slightest bit. He told himself that he was saving her from worse—Siebold—but what was Vic himself, really? Only another rapist, of a more unspeakable kind. At least in death she would've found whatever eternal peace awaited humankind. Now she simply had . . .
hell
.

And what of Deb's lover, Alex"? The determination with which she'd protected him even in death told Vic that the woman sleeping unwillingly within his arms, her porcelain-pale flesh forever chilled, would probably detest him from the instant she opened her eyes and felt The Hunger.

Vic sighed and pushed a curl of blue-black hair off her forehead. It was a waste that her sky-blue eyes would turn eventually to black, though at least the bruises his bloodkiss had left on her neck would be faded by dawn. Deborah Nole had never even opened her eyes. What a shame.

He would have liked to have seen her soul before it turned to the nightside.

~ * ~

Three A.M.:

In an alcove of St. Peter's, her face a shining, hopeful oval in the dimness, Jo knelt before the rack of votive candles. She'd lit them all half a hundred—as she'd voiced her prayers for Deborah Nole, and now they flickered like the winking red eyes of tiny nightthings, forever seeking freedom from their metal cradles.

Like Deb
.

Deborah Nole had died an hour ago. Jo had known when it was happening, had felt the life-force drain as surely as her own knees felt the stone floor at the foot of the altar, helpless and bound to the church by a Will not her own as her neck experienced the agony of the beast piercing the other woman's neck. Now Deb, too, was bound.

Jo rose and stood before the basin at the foot of Christ's statue, a stone bowl that had in its time held Water that had kissed the heads of thousands of babies as it cleansed them of original sin and sent them on their way to Jesus. It still held the True Water, and always had; while Jo washed with and drank river water, this basin filled sometime each day of its own accord. Jo drew her hand gently across the width of the basin just below the Water's surface, leaving a tiny, bubbling wake. The church was cold tonight, as was the world beyond its protecting doors; the True Water was always body temperature.

She looked beseechingly at the marble face of the Savior and He gazed back without comment, His expression at once stern and compassionate. Once Jo had seen a music video in which the statue of the Son of God had come to life at the kiss of a prayerful young woman. But there would be no frivolous miracles in the real House of the Lord.

The battle approached.

REVELATION 6:8

And power was given unto them to kill with hunger,

and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

~ * ~

Two hours since sunup.

Alex pressed a hand against the cold window at the juncture of the south and east corners of the building. Was the glass really warmer? Or did it just feel that way because he so desperately wanted to get over to the Art Institute? He stared at the plaza below and sucked his breath in with disappointment. The tracks of his night visitor were still clearly defined, even from the thirteenth floor. When the edges started to blur and the first small puddles of moisture spotted the white-covered concrete, then he could go. He cracked his knuckles and grimaced; did "watched" snow ever melt?

Alex forced himself to eat, though the combination of heated water and instant oatmeal looked and tasted like badly mixed wallpaper glue, the powdered coffee like the oven-burned spillover of cheap TV dinners. Both scalded his tongue; neither drove away the ice in the pit of his stomach. At least thirty minutes had passed when he lifted his eyes from the study of an old carpet stain. Wasn't it actually warmer in the room? He pushed to his feet and went to the window, then grinned. Small circles of wet sidewalk finally poked through the snow, like muddy paw prints across the plaza's white blanket. His watch said only eight-thirty or so; by afternoon the rest of the snow would be gone. If he left now, any tracks of his own wouldn't matter.

~ * ~

He'd been so sure the doors would be unlocked as promised that he hadn't even brought a tool as simple as a crowbar. But they weren't unlocked, and now Alex stood on the concrete steps amid his own trampled footprints and considered the problem. He'd knocked but gotten no response; maybe he was simply too early. Alex shivered and stamped his feet, leaving wet dots on the stone veranda. He certainly wasn't doing any good here, and he was freezing his butt off besides. Better to walk around the building and pump up some body heat, he decided, go down to the south gardens, then around to the rear and Columbus Drive. By the time he got back, she'd be up and waiting.

He started out and tried rehearsing what he'd say when he saw Deb. She was ferociously independent and he didn't want to be too pushy; Alex was reluctant to admit how insecure he really was, how much he
craved
company. Perhaps

Alex wanted to swallow but his throat seemed to be trying to work around a chunk of chalk that had lodged at the base of his tongue. In front of him was the Columbus Drive entrance and overhang, its length relatively clear except for a sprinkling of blown-in snow. In front of the doors was a sparkling sunburst of fractured glass. His gaze swept the walkway and halted where the overhang no longer protected the sidewalk from the weather; a riot of melting footprints lasered into his vision like the harsh
pop!
of an antique camera flash.

He ran, slipping and stomping, through the wrecked entrance, backtracking along the trail of black blood and stench until he found the open doors of the auditorium, still reeking of candle soot and gunpowder accented by the unbearable smell of slowly rotting meat. Machete in hand, Alex picked his way down the aisle, gazing dully at the softball-sized holes torn across the seats and small chunks of decomposing flesh, finally prodding a soggy mess he assumed had once been a vampire.

"Good for you, Deb," he muttered hoarsely. A small cot peeped from behind a shredded length of drapery on the stage and he glimpsed metal beneath it; when he pulled it out he found a fully loaded Winchester. He sniffed the barrel; whatever Deb had used to fight, it wasn't this shotgun. He swung it absently over his shoulder and wandered among the seats until he was satisfied that Deb's body wasn't stuffed in some forgotten crevice in the huge room. Then, numb and empty, he simply . . .