Black Magic Woman (2 page)

Mitch made a show of looking at his watch. "Day ain't done yet," he said. "Shit, it's just past three o'clock."

"Yeah, and another hour it'll be just past four, then five, then six, and pretty soon after that the fuckin' sun'll be going down and it's gon' start all over again."

Mitch didn't say anything to that. But after a while, he asked, "Why'nt you just leave, man? Clear the fuck out like half the folks in town already have, seems like."

"Cause Jolene's in there, that's why. She's in there somewhere—with
them.'"
He was staring across the street at the Goliad Hotel, all two stories of it, and the hatred in his eyes was like a living thing. After a few moments he asked, "How 'bout you? Why you still hangin' around this shithole?"

"You seen what they did to my daddy. You was there when we found him."

"Yeah," Hank said softly. "Yeah, I was there."

"Folks say now he was one of the lucky ones, 'cause they killed him right out. Didn't… change him." Mitch gave a laugh that held no humor whatever. "Lucky, my ass. Ain't nobody deserve that kind of luck, no sir, and I ain't leavin' till I get back at them fuckers, somehow."

"Yeah, quite a few folks got scores to settle with the leeches. Good thing, in a way, 'cause without them, I couldn't have raised the money for them fuckin' experts, who was supposed to fuckin'
be
here—"

"Hey, what's that?" Mitch said suddenly. He was staring off to the left, where Main Street merged with Route 12.

Hank looked that way, his eyes narrowed against the glare. After a moment, he spat another wad of 'baccy juice. "Nah, that ain't nothin'. I hear tell them old boys travel around with a couple of semis, along with some four-wheel-drive jeeps and I don't know what all. Make a regular convoy out of it." He gestured up the street with his head. "That dust cloud ain't big enough for more than one vee-hicle, and it's just a car, most likely. Some damn tourist missed the highway turnoff, or somethin'."

Hank was right about it being a single car, as was proved a few minutes later when the dark blue Mustang pulled up in front of Emma's Cafe. But he was wrong about everything else.

The man who got out was tall and lean, with black hair and a heavy beard growth that looked like it needed to be shaved twice a day. He wore lightweight gray slacks and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled back a couple of turns to reveal strong-looking forearms. His sunglasses were the style made popular by those
Men in Black
movies, but he had the good manners to take them off before addressing Hank and Mitch. "Howdy," he said with a nod. He didn't smile, the way strangers usually do when they're about to ask for directions.

Hank and Mitch returned his greeting but said nothing more. The stranger did not seem bothered by their silence. He didn't come across as hostile or challenging, but there was a quality of stillness about him, as if he could have stood there all day and half the night, waiting for something to happen. It was the kind of patience you see in some hunters, the ones who always bag their limit no matter what's in season at any given time of year.

Finally, Mitch said, "Lost, are ya?"

The stranger seemed to consider the question seriously before shaking his head. "Not if this is Lindell, I'm not." He looked more closely at them. "And not if you boys are Hank Dexter and Mitch McConnell." His accent showed he wasn't local, but it didn't mark him as a Yankee or anything like that. Instead, he sounded like a Texas boy who had gone and got himself some education somewhere.

Hank sat forward suddenly, bringing the front legs of his chair down with a bang. "You ain't Jack—"

"No, I'm not," the stranger said. "Jack has a whole crew he works with, as you fellas probably know. And all of 'em are bogged down right now in one hell of a mess over in Waco. Way I hear it, what was supposed to be a simple job has turned out to be a major infestation, and Jack and his crew are about up to their ass in bloodsuckers."

The stranger twisted his head to the left and gave the Goliad Hotel a good, long look. Then he turned back around. "But Jack made a commitment to you folks, and he's a man keeps his word. So he gave me a call. Asked me to come on over and see if I could help out with your situation here."

"All by your lonesome?" Hank didn't bother to keep the scorn out of his voice. "And just who the fuck are you?"

"My name's Quincey Morris," the stranger said, not saying it as if he thought it would mean anything to them. And it didn't.

"You work for Jack, do you?" Mitch asked.

"No, I'm sort of an independent contractor," Morris said, smiling a little. "And it so happens that I owe Jack a couple of favors. Big ones." He glanced at his watch, then up at the sky. "But time's gettin' on while we're jawin' here, and there's a lot to do before sundown." He raised his thick black eyebrows. "I assume you fellas are still interested in doing something?"

"Bet your ass, we are," Hank said, and came to his feet at once. "Let's get to 'er."

"These are branches of wild rose," Morris said. "They've been demonstrated to have a binding effect on vampires—or leeches, if you like."

Mitch peered suspiciously at the bundles. "What's that mean—'binding effect?'"

"Well, for example, if you put one on a vampire's coffin, he can't leave it, even after dark. Has to stay inside."

"So, what, you 'spectin' us to go in there—" Hank made a head gesture toward the Goliad, "and put these things on a bunch of coffins? Are you fuckin' crazy?"

Before Morris could reply, Mitch said, "Mister, what he means is, we know a couple fellas went in the Goliad after this all started, lookin' to settle things with the leeches. Broad daylight an' all—they wasn't stupid. But they didn't come out again, neither."

Morris shook his head. "No, I wouldn't go in that place, day or night, and I wouldn't ask you fellas to do it, either. They've probably got booby traps, deadfalls, who knows what other devilment set up inside there. But, see, the binding effect of wild rose works in a number of ways."

He broke a bundle and picked up one of the branches. "Put this across a door and fasten it there, a vampire can't go out that way." He pointed across the street, at the front entrance of the Goliad. "Like that door over there, say."

Hank and Mitch were looking at Morris now with more interest than they had shown since his arrival.

"You take another branch," he went on, "put it across a window, and no vampire is gonna leave through that particular window, long as the branch stays in place."

Morris gestured at the contents of the Mustang's trunk. "Like you can see, I brought lots of wild rose branches with me— enough to seal up that hotel tighter than Huntsville Prison, at least as far as vampires are concerned. But I'll need you fellas to help me. I picked up some carpenter's staple guns, and I expect you know where to scare up a ladder or two."

After staring inside the trunk for a couple of seconds, Mitch scratched his head in puzzlement. "So what are you fixin' to do—keep the fuckin' leeches bottled up inside the Goliad forever? That dog just won't hunt, Mister. Sooner or later, these rose bushes of yours is gonna start to rot, and then—"

Morris held up a hand, palm out like a traffic cop. "That's not what I had in mind, not at all. I don't figure to keep the vampires penned up indefinitely. I just want them confined for three days—well, three nights, to be precise."

"Yeah, okay, say we can hold 'em for three days and nights," Hank said. "What happens after that?"

Morris told them.

Even though well used to people, the animals were skittish. This may have had something to do with the new sights and smells confronting them, but it probably owed a lot more to the enraged howls and screeches that were coming non-stop from inside the Goliad. The men were bothered less by it than the cows were—after all, they had been listening to that insane cacophony for the past two nights.

Mitch checked all the knots, then joined the other two men in the middle of the street. They were both looking toward the Goliad.

"Sounds kinda like a loony bin during a earthquake, don't it?" Mitch said.

"It's worse now'n last night," Hank observed.

"Sure it is," Morris said. "They're hungrier tonight. That was the whole point, remember?" He peered at his watch in the uncertain light of the street lamps. "I make it 5:06. How about you fellas?"

Hank checked the luminous face of his Timex. "Prid near, I'd say."

Mitch just nodded.

"Better get in position, then," Morris said. He looked at Hank, who was drawing a big hunting knife from a sheath at his belt. "You sure you're okay with this part of it, podner?"

"Reckon so," Hank told him. "I worked in a slaughterhouse for a while, when I was younger. Ain't fixin' to enjoy myself, but I'll get it done."

"All right then. You fall back to Emma's when you're finished, and Mitch, you'll let him in. Then the two of you are gonna uncork the bottle, right?"

"That's a big ten-four," Mitch said. He looked at Morris closely for a long moment. "You take care now, y'hear?"

"I was plannin' to," Morris said with a tight grin, and turned away. As he jogged off into the night, he called over his shoulder, "Remember the Alamo!"

His butcher's work done, Hank ran for the front door of Emma's. Mitch let him in, then closed and locked the door again. Each of the double doors had a big glass panel in it, and those panels now bore a large cross, done in black paint. The same holy symbol had been painstakingly applied to all the windows in Emma's—and to every door and window along Main Street, as well as every structure in a two-block area. "That business about vampires having to ask permission to enter a dwelling the first time is bullshit," Morris had said. "But what you hear about the effect of crosses, now that's the truth. The gospel truth, you might say."

"You done good, podner," Mitch said, as Hank wiped his knife blade off on a napkin.

"Bet them cows don't think so," Hank said, his breath coming fast. "He said two minutes, right?"

"Yeah, more or less. Better check your watch—you got the one glows in the dark." They had left the lights off inside Emma's. Crosses or no, they had no desire to call attention to themselves during the next few minutes.

It seemed to Mitch they waited half an eternity, while the pandemonium coming from the Goliad seemed to double its crazed intensity, and then double again. Finally, he heard Hank say, "All right, I reckon it's time."

They felt around on the floor for the objects they had left there earlier: two metal tubes, which until recently had been legs of one of the cheap cafe chairs. Around each tube was now tied the end of a length of 150-pound test fishing line. Each thick black filament ran under the door, over the sidewalk, across the street, and right up to the front door of the Goliad Hotel. Both of the lines were knotted securely around the branch of wild rose that was stapled across the hotel's double front doors. One fishing line would probably do the job, but two was safer. "We can't afford any mistakes," Morris had told them.

"We take up the slack first," Hank said tensely. Each man began to roll a tube in his hands, which pulled the loose line in under the door and wound it around the tube. In a few seconds, both lines were tight, exerting tension on the branch of wild rose across the street, along with the big staples that held it in place.

"Okay, then," Hank said. "Slow and steady."

They braced their feet and began to pull, then harder, then harder still. Suddenly, the lines went slack again, which told Hank and Mitch that they had succeeded.

The branch of wild rose was now gone from the Goliad's front doors.

Nothing happened for a long time—two, maybe three seconds. Then the doors of the Goliad burst open like the floodgates of Hell.