J.L. Doty - Dead Among Us 01 - When Dead Ain’t Dead Enough (8 page)

He heard the older man say, “We won’t need the hardware. He’s already unconscious, so a simple spell will make it look like the hospital was at fault. Much cleaner that way.”

As they walked toward his bed all three of them had their backs turned his way, but that wouldn’t last once they reached his bed, so he took his chance when they were half way down the ward. He knew the moment he stepped into the light from the door he’d alert the Russians with his own shadow, so he stayed in the shadows near the beds as he dashed on tiptoe toward the entrance. When he reached the wall at the end of the ward he looked back toward the Russians. They were still walking away from him, so he sprinted at a shallow angle through the door and out into the hall.

His shadow momentarily darkened the ward and he heard a single, startled exclamation from one of the Russians, but as he pressed his back to the wall outside he heard no running feet coming his way so he guessed they hadn’t turned quickly enough to identify him as the source of the shadow. But he had only seconds before they discovered his bed was empty, so he turned immediately toward the elevators at the far end of the hall, only to freeze when he saw McGowan and the hippie woman talking to the nurse.

Jim’Jiminie snarled, “This way, hurry!”

Paul looked down at the midget, who hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “The stairway, you idiot.”

The two midgets ran back the way they’d come, toward a red exit sign at the far end of the hall past the ward from which he’d just emerged. To follow Paul would have to pass in front of the ward, and he’d be exposed to the Russians again, but he had no choice so he ran after the midgets. As he passed the ward he glanced inside, saw the two young thugs angrily ripping the sheets off his bed, and the old Russian looking his way.

He kept running, heard shouts from the Russians in the ward, heard a shout from McGowan and the hippie-woman at the nurse’s station, tried to ignore it all as he ran for the stairwell. And then a door just in front of him opened and Katherine McGowan stepped in his way, her eyes wide with surprise and a gasp escaping her lips. He plowed head-long into her and they both tumbled to the floor in a tangled sprawl, overturning a wheeled metal cart in the process, medical supplies clattering loudly across the floor. Paul only managed to get to his hands and knees when Joe Stalin stepped into the hallway about fifty feet away. Paul instinctively rolled to one side just as Joe raised his gun and fired. The silenced gun popped like a muffled firecracker, and the bullet dug chunks of tile and concrete out of the floor next to Paul’s hand, kicking up debris that stung his face and arms painfully.

Paul reversed direction, rolled desperately the other way and took refuge behind the overturned metal cart, the Russian’s gun popping repeatedly, more chips of masonry splattering all over the hall, the cart jerking as bullets slammed into it. He caught a glimpse of old-man McGowan and the hippie running toward the Russian, probably to help him finish Paul. The two midgets had opened the stairwell door and were shouting for Paul to join them. Paul scrambled to his feet while Katherine struggled to her hands and knees, her tight skirt split in a tear almost up to her waist. She looked at the midgets with undisguised awe, looked back and forth between them and Paul, then at the Russians. She reached into her purse just as Joe Stalin raised his gun and aimed it straight at her face.

A flood of thoughts poured through Paul’s head. If she was working with them, why would Joe Stalin try to kill her, literally execute her with a bullet in the face at almost point-blank range? The metal cart wasn’t large, and Paul had adrenaline working for him. He lifted it, swung it in an arc and threw it at the Russian, realizing as he did so he didn’t have the strength to throw it far enough. But as it bounced in the hall in front of Joe Stalin it startled him just as he pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the wall inches from Katherine’s face just as she pulled something out of her purse, spit on it and threw it up the hall toward Joe. It landed in the middle of the hallway, made a sound like a cork popping from a Champaign bottle, and a shimmering, translucent veil of something filled the hall from wall to wall. Joe Stalin fired his gun three more times, but when the bullets hit the veil they came to a stop in midair, moved forward at a snail’s pace for a second, passed through the veil then dropped to the floor of the hallway without any energy, bouncing on the linoleum with a faint plinking sound.

“Run,” Katherine shouted, struggling to her feet.

Paul reached down and hooked a hand under her armpit, heard some part of her clothing tear as he hauled her to her feet and dragged her toward the midgets, but she hobbled in a horribly uneven gate. She hesitated for an instant and growled, “Broke a heel,” kicked her shoes off and turned a really pissed-off look toward Paul. “Fucking Russians broke my Pradas. I’ll kill the bastards.”

She looked back up the hall, and the shimmering veil appeared to be dissipating. “Run, run, run,” she shouted. “The spell only lasts a few seconds.”

Paul’s feet got the message and she and he slammed through the stairway door together, the midgets barely a step in front of them. The midgets turned, put their shoulders into the door and slammed it shut. “We’ll hold the door,” they shouted in unison. The two of them leaned into the door, and Paul couldn’t believe what he was seeing, a couple of little men that, between them, couldn’t weigh a tenth of what Joe Stalin massed.

He shouted at Katherine, “They can’t hold the fucking door.”

She looked at him as if he was an idiot. “Of course they can,” she shouted back. “You know the power of the little people.” She grabbed his arm and started pulling him down the concrete stairs.

“The
little people
?” he demanded.

“Yes,” she screamed, for some unknown reason clearly exasperated with him. “Leprechauns. You know how powerful they are.”

“Leprechauns!” he shouted back. “Fucking leprechauns!”

She’d dragged him down a flight of stairs to the third-floor landing. “Yes. If they’re on your side then you’re no rogue wizard.” She hesitated, closed her eyes and shook her head. “Damn! My shield spell just expired. Those Russian maniacs won’t be far behind.”

As if to punctuate her statement he heard a loud thud from the floor above, the sound of a large man throwing his shoulder against the door. “Run,” both midgets shouted in unison.

“Spell!” Paul shouted as Katherine dragged him down to the second-floor landing. “Wizard! Leprechauns! You’re fucking nuts.” He yanked his arm out of her hands violently. “You’re all fucking nuts. I’m not going anywhere with a nut-case like you.”

Next to them the stairwell door on the second-floor landing opened without warning and a middle-aged, female doctor in a white lab coat stepped onto the landing. She gave Paul an odd, dreamy look and smiled at him longingly, as if they were lovers who’d just found each other after a long separation. “I’ve found you,” she said, wonder and joy coloring every word. She reached out and touched his cheek, and in her touch he felt that strange
pull
, the same
pull
he’d experienced in his apartment when the monster had gripped his throat. More through reflex than anything else, he resisted that
pull
and she jerked her hand back as if she’d touched a hot flame. Her eyes filled with pain, like that of a lover scorned.

Paul’s vision flickered as he looked at the doctor. She looked like a middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat, but then
blink
, and for the tiniest fraction of second he thought he saw something else. He was bleeding from a dozen small wounds and thought he might be close to passing out. But as he looked again at the doctor he saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Katherine demanded, “Who are you?”

“Oh, child!” the doctor said. She reached out and touched Katherine on the cheek in much the way she’d touched Paul, a loving caress more than anything else.

Katherine gasped and her eyes rolled back in her head as she swooned, then staggered into Paul.

Paul managed to catch her and kept her from falling. “What’d you do to her?” he demanded.

The doctor shuddered and let out a deep sigh, as if she’d just reached some sort of ecstatic high. “Nothing,” she said dreamily. “She must be hurt. I can help her.”

Joe Stalin! With the gun! Spraying bullets indiscriminately at them both. He’d heard of people being shot and not realizing it until they collapsed sometime later. Two floors above, one of the midgets—leprechauns—shouted, “We can’t hold much longer.”

“Follow me,” the doctor said, giving Paul a look of pleasurable anticipation.
Blink
, there it was again, and then just as quickly gone again, just a doctor, trying to help them.

Katherine could barely stand, her eyes fluttering dazedly. “Vama  . . .” she said mushily, her words slurring as if she was seriously drunk. She leaned heavily against Paul as they staggered together behind the doctor onto the second floor. But Katherine resisted, fought against him as if she didn’t want to follow and said something that sounded like, “Va  . . . pie  . . . Ole  . . . va  . . . pie  . . .”

The stairwell door closed behind them. Paul pressed Katherine against the wall, didn’t dare let her drop to the floor because he knew that in his own weakened state he couldn’t lift her again if he did.

She was covered with smeared blood, probably most of it Paul’s, so he couldn’t use obvious bleeding to locate a wound. He tried patting her down, looking for wounds. But he was no doctor and realized he was doing little more than feeling her up—a distant little piece of him thought he might enjoy that in a different time and place, as long as the feeling was mutual. He shrugged that off and snarled at the doctor, “Help us, god damn it.”

The doctor grinned, a look of rapt pleasure on her face. She stepped toward them and reached out smiling dreamily, acting unlike any doctor Paul had ever encountered.

Blink
; she’d been something else, something dark and frightening that he might recognize if the image lasted for more than an instant, or if he had the time to think about it carefully. But just as the spooky doctor was about to touch him, Katherine suddenly jerked on his arm with renewed energy. She’d regained some coherency as she dragged them both away from the doctor and the stairwell. “Issss a fucking vampire,” she snarled. “ . . . old vampire, strong.”

Chapter 5: One More Time

Trogmoressh couldn’t believe Its luck. The Lord-of-the-Unliving had come to It, and brought along a young witch, and together the two of them were a sumptuous feast beyond imagining. It had tried to feed on the Lord, but he’d shown surprising strength and resisted. It had fed on the witch a bit, a small mistake since any feeding produced a certain sluggish indolence for a short while. And too, the witch was now alerted to Its true nature, was this moment dragging the Lord away from It. It would have to be more careful.

It watched the two of them struggle up the hallway of the second floor, followed leisurely and vowed to refrain from any further feeding until It could enjoy the entire banquet. And in any case, it was time to alter Its glamour.

“There’s something wrong here,” Colleen hissed as she and McGowan ran down the hall toward the Russians.

The two young thugs were taking turns throwing their shoulders against the stairwell door as she and McGowan skidded to a stop next to Karpov. McGowan ignored her and started shouting at Karpov, and of course the Russian shouted back. The hospital, like many hospitals, had been built at the intersection of two ley lines. She pulled power, lots of it, fed it into her words as she threw
voice
at all of them.
Stop, now, I command it.

The two thugs froze in place and blinked dazedly, while McGowan and Karpov, more powerful and less vulnerable, merely hesitated. Karpov shook off the effects of her
voice
and snarled, “Don’t use those Druid tricks on me, woman.”

The ley lines were still flooding her with power. She glared at him, took a step forward and let him see some of that power trickle out through her eyes. He took an involuntary step back as she said, “Something doesn’t add up here. Didn’t you see the little people?”

The two older wizards looked at her uncertainly. She added, “There were two of them, helping the young man. The little people wouldn’t be helping a rogue who traffics in demons.”

McGowan and Karpov both tried to speak at the same time. She threw the
voice
at them again.
Silence.

Karpov’s lip curled up in a snarl, but he held his tongue. She said to him, “You made this mess so you clean it up. I’ve spelled a nurse and two orderlies on this floor, so no one’s yet called the police. Clean it up and make sure they remember none of this. Walter and I’ll try to find Katherine and the young man.” Karpov started to say something but she cut him off. “And if he is a rogue, we’ll help you kill him. But no more guns until we know why the little people are helping him. Agreed?”

Karpov hesitated.

“Wizard’s oath,” she growled, “or one of us dies here and now.” With the ley lines feeding her power she knew she could take him, and he knew it too.

Karpov looked as if he’d just swallowed a mouth full of sour milk. He snarled, “Agreed.”

Karpov watched McGowan and Colleen run back toward the elevators. He turned to Alexei, swung as hard as he could and caught him in the side of the head with a roundhouse slap that probably hurt his hand more than the young fool’s face. “You idiot,” Karpov said in Russian.

Vladimir stepped back, clearly hoping his boss’ anger would stay focused on Alexei.

Alexei lowered his eyes and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Karpov. I didn’t mean to shoot the place up, or to anger the Druid.”

Karpov slapped him again and growled, “That wasn’t for shooting the place up  . . .” He slapped him again. “ . . . or angering the Druid, you idiot.” He slapped him again, and Alexei was smart enough not to protect himself. “That was for missing when you had the rogue in your sights.” He slapped him again, and though it hurt his hand it yielded considerable satisfaction.

Karpov held out his hand. “I gave her my oath. No more guns.”

Alexei looked at the open hand for a long moment, then, pouting like a recalcitrant child, he reluctantly placed his gun in Karpov’s hand. “Good,” Karpov said. “Now use your hands.”

Alexei frowned.

He’d never been a thinker, so Karpov helped him out. “I gave my oath no more guns, but I didn’t promise you wouldn’t kill him with your bare hands. While Vladimir and I clean up this mess, go find the rogue and finish this.”

Alexei thought those words through carefully for a few seconds, then smiled happily, almost eagerly. He looked down at the trail of smeared blood leading into the stairwell. He’d have no trouble tracking Conklin.

“Vampire!” Paul shouted. “What the fuck are you talking about? She’s a god damn doctor.”

They found another stairwell at the far end of the second floor hall, ducked into it and stumbled down the concrete stairs. Katherine stopped on the first floor landing and leaned heavily against the banister breathing rapidly, gulping for air as if she’d just run a mile. “That’s no doctor. That’s a vamp, an old one.” She looked at him, looked in his eyes, and he made no attempt to hide his disbelief.

“You don’t understand any of this, do you?” she asked.

Paul was bleeding from a dozen new wounds where chips of masonry, ripped up with considerable force by the bullets, had punched shallow holes in his face and arms. He was probably carrying a few bullet fragments also, and rolling on the floor of the hospital dodging bullets had torn out all his stitches and opened all the old wounds. He hurt, and he was scared, and there was no way to explain away all he’d seen in the past several hours. But he still wasn’t going to buy into this bullshit about spells and vampires. “I’ll tell you what I do understand,” he growled. “I understand there’s no such thing as vampires, and witches, and spells and leprechauns—ok, midgets in clown suits but no leprechauns. You people are just fucking nuts.” Paul’s own words reminded him of his visions, and that he too was fucking nuts.

Still struggling to catch her breath, she growled, “That vampire fed on me.”

He demanded, “What happened to Count Dracula in a tuxedo?”

She shook her head. “That’s for the movies. Real vampires don’t suck blood, they suck life force. They suck the very essence out of their victims. They feed on their souls.”

He shook his head, didn’t want to hear any of this shit. But she grabbed him by both shoulders, pushed him against the wall, looked unflinchingly into his eyes and continued relentlessly. “Ok, time for
Vampire Basic 101
. A demon from the Netherworld, Secundus or Tertius caste—Primus caste don’t need a human body—possesses a live mortal, feeds on its essence until there’s only a faint spark left, leaves that spark untouched, which must be a forever living hell for its victim. Over time the demon’s nature warps the body into a disgusting, human-sized bat thing. It’s not any kind of vampire like you’ve ever heard of in stories. It’s a demon from hell, but we call them vampires because they feed on humans—human souls actually.”

It sounded too much like the monsters that climbed out of his mirror.

“Listen to me,” she snapped angrily. “Our lives depend on this.

“Now if the vamp is stuck in the Netherworld and can’t feed on mortals, it remains a wasted, bat-thing. But if it gets loose on the Mortal Plane—usually because some idiot sorcerer summons it without the proper protections—we call that a rogue—then it can feed on humans, and in doing so it gains power. Feed on enough humans on a regular basis and it gains enough power to cast a glamour and look like us, maybe live for centuries among us, feeding on us. But its real body is still that disgusting bat-thing. Never forget that. No matter what it looks like to your eyes, it’s really that monster.”

Paul tried to wrap his mind around such alien concepts. “And that doctor upstairs is one of these old vampires?”

The door in the stairwell on the floor above creaked open. “Shit,” she said and grabbed him by the arm. “For some reason it’s after you. Don’t look in its eyes. Don’t let it touch you.”

He started to tell her it already had, wanted to tell her about the
pull
he’d felt, but before he could say anything she pulled on his arm painfully and dragged him out into a hallway on the first floor. Guiding him down the hallway she spoke as they limped down its length. “If you have to face it remember your one advantage: it can’t just kill you then feed; you have to be alive while it consumes your soul.”

Paul knew the two of them made an odd sight, her skirt and blouse torn badly, both smeared with blood, most of it Paul’s, she weakened by the vampire feeding—he couldn’t believe he was believing this crap—he weakened by blood loss and pain. He wondered if either of them could walk on their own, if the only way they managed to remain standing was by leaning heavily on each other, limping together through the halls of the hospital and leaving a trail of blood smeared on the floor behind them. The receptionist at the front desk looked at them fearfully as they staggered by, hurriedly picked up her phone and started punching in numbers.

They stumbled out into the dark of the wee hours of the morning. Her knees started trembling and he realized she was about to collapse, and in the odd position in which they supported each other, leaning heavily on each other, the only thing he could do was wrap his arms around her in a lover’s embrace to hold her up as her knees gave way.

She smiled up at him. “I like you too, Mr. Conklin. But is this really the right time or place?”

He felt his face flush and she laughed. “You’re blushing.”

He eased her over to a concrete bench to one side of the hospital entrance and lowered her onto it carefully. She reached into her coat pocket, pulled out one of those little black, plastic car-alarm things, pressed a button on it and a car in the parking lot nearby flashed its lights and honked its horn. “My car,” she groaned, almost pleading. “We have to get to my—”

Looking up at Paul her eyes suddenly widened and focused on something behind him. Thinking it must be the vampire, he pushed her over into the bushes behind the bench, trying to push her to safety. He spun to face the vampire, but a big meaty fist slammed into his cheek  . . .

He didn’t recall going down, didn’t recall the act of falling, didn’t recall the time it took to go from full upright to prone. One instant he was standing there as Joe Stalin’s sledgehammer of a fist closed on his face, and the next instant he bounced painfully off the concrete bench and onto the sidewalk in front of it. Head spinning, cheek throbbing, ribs aching, he rolled over and saw Joe standing over him. The big Russian reached down, grabbed him by the tattered remnants of his shirt and lifted him like a child’s doll.

A fist slammed into his ribs, another into his face and Paul went down again. Joe Stalin stood over him, drew his foot back to give him a good kick, but Katherine landed on his back screaming like a banshee, legs wrapped around his waist, one arm around his throat, the other swinging a rock the size of a baseball.

Paul crawled painfully to his feet as Joe spun around blindly, swiping ineffectually behind his own head trying to dislodge her, while she slammed the rock into his face and head. Paul waited until Joe’s spinning brought him around one more time, then kicked him as hard as he could in the balls. Joe grunted, stopped spinning and bent forward into a crouch, Katherine still riding him like a cowboy on a rodeo bull. She raised the rock one more time and slammed it into the side of his head. He curled up and crumpled like a deflated balloon. Katherine rode him down and hit him one more time in the back of the head with the rock.

Her legs were tangled in Joe’s so Paul helped her free them, then helped her struggle to her feet. The ground beneath Paul swayed and he staggered away from her drunkenly, staggered toward the concrete bench. He had to sit down before he fell down, but as he turned to do so he saw two identical Katherines standing over Joe Stalin, who lay between them groaning. One Katherine kicked Joe hard in the head and he stopped groaning, then the two Katherines looked at each other and their jaws dropped. Both Katherines wore the same torn and ripped suit, torn and ripped stockings, torn and ripped coat and blouse exposing a black lacy chemise, blood trickling from identical cuts and bruises on their faces, makeup smeared and hair in wild disarray, with bits of twig and bush tangled into it. It occurred to Paul that seeing double meant he had a serious concussion, but then he realized he wasn’t seeing double Joe Stalin, or double anything else for that matter.

The two Katherines backed warily away from one another, one toward the hospital entrance, the other toward the bench and the bushes. Both turned to Paul, said in identical Katherine voices, “It’s the vamp, throwing a glamour.”

Blink
; the image of the Katherine standing in front of the hospital entrance did that strange little flash of something not quite real. Behind her, Paul saw McGowan and the hippie-woman inside the hospital running their way.

The Katherine in the entrance took a step toward Paul and both Katherines said, “Let’s get to my car.” They both turned and pointed to the other and said, “Don’t trust her, it’s the vampire.”

The Katherine in the entrance took another step toward Paul, reached out carefully toward him and said, “Trust me, Paul.”

The Katherine near the bench cringed back and said, “Don’t let it touch you.”

Paul looked at the Katherine in the entrance;
blink
, and again
blink
, and again
blink
. And with her hand only inches from his cheek he had it, the image in the
blink
, the black, leathery bat-like thing.