Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (41 page)

Cory didn’t like where any of this was going.
It felt like there was a block in his mind and they were steadily
chipping away at it, revealing some unspeakable darkness beyond. It
was the kind of block he was sure he would have been able to remove
himself if he wasn’t scared wittless about what he would see behind
it.

“Yes,” was all he said in response.

“Do you want to know how we knew all that?”
Dancer asked.

Actually he kind of didn’t, but he nodded
anyway.

“Tell us, Cory,” Fancy said. “Who was in the
cage on your right?”

Cory opened his mouth to answer but had to
stop when he remembered that he didn’t know. Down in the darkness
names hadn’t meant anything. Even nicknames had little meaning,
except perhaps for any meat-inspired nickname Pig might decide to
bestow on him on any given day.

“Can you at least describe the person?”
Dancer asked.

Again he couldn’t.

“What about across the aisle from you?” Fancy
asked. “It wasn’t that far. Did you ever talk to any of them?”

“Do you know what any of them ever looked
like?” Dancer asked. “Besides the woman who helped us all
escape?”

He didn’t even bother trying to answer. They
already knew what he would have said.

“Okay then,” Fancy asked. “So who was in the
cage on your left?”

“Pig,” Cory said immediately, although he got
the odd feeling that it was somehow not right.

“He wasn’t,” Dancer said. “Do you know how I
know that?”

Cory shook his head.

“He couldn’t have been in the cage on your
left,” Dancer said, “because he was in the cage on
my
left.”

“Except that’s not right either,” Fancy said.
“He was in the cage on my left.”

“For the last year we’ve been talking to any
vampires we can here in Fond du Lac,” Dancer said.

“And every single one has said the same thing
when we asked,” Fancy said.

“No matter which cage they were in.”

“No matter what their placement ever was
along the aisle.”

“No matter which side they were on.”

They said the last sentence together. “Pig
was always in the cage on their left.”

Cory stared at them. “He… he wasn’t
there?”

“When that woman freed us, all of a sudden
Fancy was the one that came out of the cage on my left,” Dancer
said. “I’d never seen her before.”

“And I couldn’t have told you who was on my
right,” Fancy said. “All I ever knew was that she mumbled to
herself while I was the one talking to Pig.”

“I don’t understand,” Cory said. “If he
didn’t exist then how come every single one of us still saw
him?”

“You saw him just before you were attacked,”
Fancy said.

“The son of a bitch showed up to us right
before the Dusters came after us, as well,” Dancer said.

“Wait, they came after you?” Cory asked. “You
never said anything about that.”

“That’s because two sets of eyes are better
than one,” Dancer said.

“Just after we tried to get you to come with
us they were poking around the tunnel area,” Fancy said.

“We saw them first,” Dancer said.

“But we probably wouldn’t have if we’d been
alone,” Fancy said.

“Because Pig was trying to distract us,”
Dancer said.

“The vampire that survived in Lakeside
Park?”

“He saw Pig too.”

“We’re betting that every single vampire
killed by the Dusters saw Pig just before they were murdered.”

Cory blinked several times as he tried to
understand what they were getting at. He didn’t know how it was
possible for a person who apparently was just a figment of
everyone’s imagination could cooperate with real people in a plan
to kill vampires.

No, not a figment of your imagination
,
Gramma said.
Not like me. You can recognize me for what I am. No
one could recognize him. He was actually in everyone’s brains,
telling them the horrible things he’d seen beyond the door, saying
there was no chance for escape, no hope. Saying to every single one
of you that you needed to just let go and let the so-called
“combination” take you
.

Cory’s mouth dropped open and he tried to
articulate the horror that suddenly came to him, but FancyDancer
already understood the connection.

“The thing beyond the door was talking to us
the whole time,” Fancy said.

“Tricking us,” Dancer said.

“And it’s still doing it.”

“Whatever happened to it, wherever it
went…”

“It’s still alive somewhere deep
underground.”

“And it’s the one in charge of all this.”

Cory finally forced himself to talk. “It’s
the thing that wants all the vampires dead.”

“No, not all vampires,” Fancy said.

“Just the ones that escaped,” Dancer said.
“The fruit that went bad.”

“Lynn and the Dusters are our replacements,”
they both said at once. “It’s trying to grow brand new fruit for it
to eat.”

They spent the
better part of the next hour discussing what, if anything, they
needed to do about the Dusters next. Cory wanted nothing more to do
with any of them. Given what contact he’d had with them so far he
couldn’t imagine any good that could come in searching them out
now. If he had his way all he would do was stay in hiding and hope
that all of this would end soon.

“Is that really what you want though?” Dancer
asked.

“The combination or whatever it was behind
that door, it’ll do the same thing to them that it did to us,”
Fancy said.

“Not that I would have much problem with
that,” Dancer said. “Screw them for killing so many people.”

“But I don’t think that’s the kind of thing
you
would want,” Fancy said to Cory. “Not deep down, at
least.”

Cory had no choice but to admit that was
true. He didn’t know who most of the Dusters were except they had
killed humans and vampires so they could achieve their nebulous
goals. And he would have no trouble killing the two that had
attacked him in that alley now if it was in self defense, no matter
what reservations he’d had earlier. Lynn was a much more
complicated problem, considering there was still a part of him that
wanted to listen when she said she needed him despite the evil
things she had done.

The one thing he didn’t think he was prepared
to do, though, was let them suffer the same fate that all the other
vampires had.

“I still don’t see why we should try to stop
them if that’s what they really want,” Dancer said.

“You can’t be serious,” Fancy said.

Both of them looked startled for a moment
that they had disagreed on something. After a few seconds of
staring at each other, though, they seemed to be on the same page
again.

“We don’t actually know for certain yet
they’re working with the combination voluntarily,” Fancy said.

“And if they are they probably don’t know
exactly what it’ll do to them,” Dancer said.

“And even if they did,” Cory said, “we can’t
let them continue killing in order to do this.” Both of them looked
at him like they hadn’t expected him to say anything so proactive,
and Cory was just as surprised at himself.

Why
? Gramma said.
You’re a good
person at heart, no matter what you’ve been trying to tell yourself
for the last year
.

But it was one thing to think of himself as a
good person and another thing completely to actually be that
person. For the last year he knew he had been hiding, not from the
combination or the guards no matter how much he had tried to
convince himself, but from himself. He didn’t want the
responsibility of his own actions and he had most certainly not
wanted any responsibility at all for others. But while he’d been
refusing to deal with himself here had been FancyDancer, not
letting what had happened to them keep them from some kind of life.
They’d even been doing everything they could to try reaching others
that had gone through the same thing. He looked at them in all
their bizarre binary weirdness and was ashamed of himself.

Then it’s time to do something about
that
, a voice inside his head said. For the first time in days,
however, he wasn’t sure if that voice belonged to Gramma or to
himself.

“Then what exactly are we going to do about
these assholes?” Dancer asked.

“And where would we find them?” Fancy asked.
“Would they go back to this Lynn’s apartment and stay there even
after they see that you’re missing?”

“I don’t know,” Cory said, but he didn’t
think so. Until Lynn had shown him her true colors the Dusters
hadn’t met together at her apartment. Although it had looked like
they were doing some kind of ritual tonight there had to be another
place where they’d met before this. Try as he might, though, Cory
couldn’t think of Lynn mentioning any place that she frequented
other than the apartment. “Maybe we need to find some other way to
get them to come out into the open.”

“Wait. I think I know what you’re going to
say,” Fancy said.

“And that’s a very bad idea,” Dancer
said.

Cory had to agree, and it was his idea. He
actually wanted nothing to do with this plan. He had a hard enough
time letting another person touch him or even approach him. The
absolute last thing he ever wanted to do was…

“Use one of us as bait,” Cory said. The words
came out a lot more timid than he had intended.

Nobody said anything for half a minute. This
wasn’t the kind of thing they needed to discuss the details and
reasons. They all knew the how and why. The Dusters still had a
number of vampires they needed to eliminate, and three of them were
right here in this room. They had no idea if the Dusters were out
there right now killing more of their kind, but Cory and
FancyDancer at least had the advantage of knowing what the Dusters
were doing. If they could lure at least one of the Dusters out and
capture him or her then they could find the rest before they could
kill any more.

Of course Cory knew right away that this plan
was as dangerous as they came. The three of them together could
probably overpower one Duster no matter what weapons they had,
maybe even two. Counting Lynn, though, there had been three on the
night Cory was attacked, and they knew that there had to have been
more than one that killed Jane No-Last-Name. It didn’t seem likely
that this single-Duster would come out to do the job alone.

“If we do this then we need to figure out
where,” Fancy said.

“And we need to get them to know where we are
in order to lure them into the trap,” Dancer said.

“I think I know the answer to both of those,”
Cory said. “Lynn knows the general area I tend to hang out. If
they’re looking for me, it’s going to be in the downtown area.”

Both Fancy and Dancer got where he was going
at the same time. “The tunnel into the Retlaw’s parking ramp,”
Fancy said.

“It’s the perfect place for an ambush,”
Dancer said.

“One of us can stay down at the end of the
tunnel,” Fancy said.

“And the other two can wait on top of the
parking ramp and see everything that’s going on below.”

Cory nodded. They didn’t need to explain the
rest to each other. The two on top would drop down and take out the
attackers when or if they came, but that left whoever stayed down
below in a precarious position. He was pretty sure he knew which
one of them that was going to be.

“It can’t be Cory that acts as the bait,”
Dancer said.

“No, of course not,” Fancy said. “It has to
be one of us.”

For a moment Cory was sure he had heard them
wrong. But they were both so solemn and, to Cory’s shock, worried.
He didn’t think he had ever seen them with such a lack of
confidence before.

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Cory said. “Why
can’t I be the bait?”

“Because you’re been through too much
already,” Fancy said.

“We couldn’t force you to be in that position
again,” Dancer said.

He wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved
or insulted. He certainly hadn’t wanted to do it, but the way they
talked made it sound like he wouldn’t even be capable of it. Did it
make him a coward if he let one of them do the most dangerous part
instead of him? Or perhaps it just made him incompetent. He was
about to argue with them—more out of wounded pride than any hope
that they would concede and let him do it—but they cut him off.

“Besides, we have something that would make
us better bait anyway,” Dancer said.

“What’s that?” Cory asked.

“You ever notice how connected we are?” Fancy
asked.

Cory didn’t say anything for fear it was a
trick question.

“Well it goes deep,” Dancer said. She stood
up and turned around so she couldn’t see Cory.

“Hold up a number of fingers,” Fancy told
him.

He raised an eyebrow but held up three
fingers where Fancy could see them.

“Two,” Dancer said.

“Uh…”

“Try again,” Fancy said. Although he was
decidedly more doubtful, this time he held up four.

“Four,” Dancer said.

They did it six more times just so Cory would
be sure. Out of the eight total times they tried Dancer got the
number wrong only three times. Cory could have chalked that up to
pure luck, but twice he had tried to throw them off, holding up all
ten of his fingers once and none at another time. Dancer got both
of those right.

“That’s actually our best percentage yet,”
Fancy said.

“Usually it’s more like fifty percent,”
Dancer said.

“Whatever there is between us is getting
stronger,” Fancy said.

“I’ve never asked,” Cory said, “but what
exactly is the deal with you two?”

“Not a fucking clue,” Dancer said.

“Another one of those vampire things that
must be in the rule book we never got,” Fancy said.