Blood of the Impaler (34 page)

Rachel looked at him, surprised. "Another problem? You mean, besides our condition?"

He nodded. "Before we left England, Lucy bit my friend Jerry. She trailed us to Rumania, and she made him drink her blood."

Rachel recoiled from the words and sank back into her chair. "Lord, have mercy!"

"She followed us to Rome. I told Gramps on the phone that she took Dracula's remains from me. You knew about that, right?" His sister nodded numbly. "Well, when we were in Rome, she forced Jerry to help her come here, to the United States. She promised him that she would free him if he helped her."

"And he believed her?"

"Yes."

Rachel shook her head. "The fool. The poor fool."

"Rachel," he said slowly, "I don't think you're following me. Dracula's remains are here in our country." She stared at him blankly. "Don't you see? She's after us,
he's
after us, after you and me and Gramps. Do you remember what he told our great-grandmother, Mina? He said that he spread his revenge out over centuries. That's what this is all about. He's been gone for a century, but he's still after us."

Holly coughed softly, breaking into what had become a private conversation. "Excuse me. I think I'll go upstairs and visit Mr. Harker, if you don't mind. I think the two of you should discuss this alone."

"Certainly," Rachel said. "His room is the first one at the top of the stairs." As Holly turned and began to ascend the steps, Rachel turned to her brother and said, "You cannot marry that girl, Malcolm."

He nodded. "I know. We've already broken up. I just brought her home tonight because I thought Gramps might want to say hi to her."

"That's good," Rachel muttered. "This has to stop with us. It has to end with our generation. There can't be any others. Do what I did, Malcolm, at least use the same idea. Find yourself a girl who doesn't want children, or one who can't have any. Get yourself sterilized—"

"Rachel," he interrupted, "listen to me. There's more." He outlined the effects that close proximity to the remains had engendered, told her of the dreamlike visions he had been experiencing. He did not mention the girl in Rome. "It's as if the blood itself were a living entity," he concluded, "something with its own life, its own existence separate from me. Do you understand what I'm trying to say?"

She frowned. "I'm not sure."

"That's why Lucy came to the United States! That's the real reason she stole the remains from me. She wants to bring the blood to full, I don't know, full wakefulness, full consciousness, something like that. If she can, then you and I and Gramps will be like robot arms of that dead creature. Dracula will continue to exist, in us, through us."

Rachel seemed to grow angry and frightened simultaneously. "That's unspeakable! That's horrible!"

"Yes, it is," he agreed, "and we have to be ready for it and be prepared to fight it. We have to find Jerry, that's the first step. As soon as I take Holly home, I'm going to go out looking for him. We have to get him to tell us where Lucy is sleeping during the day, where she's hidden the dust of the Count. We have to find her, kill her, then scatter the remains. Once we've done all this, then the only danger remaining will be the blood in our veins. And when we die, it will die with us. But we have to be careful, we have to be ready."

Rachel absorbed all of this in silence, reflected upon it, and then nodded. "What do you want me to do?"

"You have to make the house vampire-proof. Crosses and garlic on all the doors and windows. If you can get holy water from Father Henley, get some. If you can steal some consecrated wafers and consecrated wine, steal it."

"Malcolm!"

"Rachel, we can't worry about offending religious ethics, not now. God will forgive us for any sacrilege, I'm sure He will. It's Satan we're fighting here, remember."

She seemed unconvinced, but she did not press the point. "And you? What will you do?"

"As I said, I'm going out to look for Jerry. I think he left Rome the day before Holly and I did. That means that he and
Lucy have had enough time to find her a resting place where she'll be safe during the daytime. They haven't had enough time to do anything else. You have to see to the security of the house immediately, before she tries to get in; and remember, she can't enter unless someone invites her in. That's one of the barriers against them that we can exploit to our advantage."

"Where will you look for him?" Rachel asked.

"I'll start at the Strand, the bar where he and I work." Malcolm paused. "Used to work, probably. We extended our vacation so long that we've probably both been fired. If he isn't there, drowning his sorrows, I'll check his apartment, his mother's apartment, the other places where he hangs out. I can think of dozens of places to check."

"Well," Rachel rose to her feet in her customary businesslike manner. "We'd best be about it, then. Go up and visit with Grandfather for a while, Malcolm. I'm going to the vegetable store and buy some garlic."

As Rachel left the house, Malcolm walked up the stairs toward his grandfather's bedroom.
If I'd only left everything alone, he thought as he pushed open the bedroom door. If only I hadn't been so damned sure of myself, so damned cocky. Jerry wouldn't be in trouble, Lucy wouldn't be here, wouldn't even be "undead" again. Gramps probably wouldn't be ill, Daniel wouldn't have left Rachel, and Holly wouldn't have left me. Great job, Malcolm. Real good work
.

He entered to find Holly sitting on the side of the old man's bed, whispering to him softly. He heard Quincy's feeble voice mutter something so low as to be unintelligible, and Holly responded to the words with a soft ripple of laughter. Malcolm felt almost as if he were intruding upon something private, but he knew that much as his grandfather liked Holly, and much as she might like the old man in return, there was no future for Holly and Malcolm, no future for Malcolm and anyone.

He walked forward and sat down on the other side of the bed. "Hiya, Gramps," he said, feigning cheer.

Quincy took his hand and squeezed it weakly. "Hello, boy. I'm glad you returned in one piece."

"Just barely," he said, laughing. "How are you feeling?"

Quincy replied with a very slight shrug. "I've lived a long life. I have no complaints."

"Oh, don't talk like that, Mr. Harker," Holly said. "You're going to be fine."

"Of course you are," Malcolm hastened to agree. "My stupid little escapade has just upset you, that's all. I'm very sorry about that."

Quincy smiled and nodded, not in agreement but in dismissal. "I have to rest awhile, boy. You take your girl home, and come back to visit with me later. All right?"

"Sure, Gramps. You get some sleep. I'll see you later." Malcolm led Holly from the room and closed the door behind them. As they descended the stairs, he asked, "How do you think he is?"

She shook her head. "I wouldn't admit it to him, but he's right, Mal. I think he's reached the end of his time. My grandmother died of old age when I was a little kid, and she looked and sounded like he does now."

Malcolm shook his head. "My fault, like everything."

"Not everything," she said. "It's really Dracula's fault, just as Rachel said."

They left the house silently. Malcolm locked the door behind him. As they walked from Granville Place toward Austin Street; they did not touch. They were no longer
a
couple, and each self-consciously observed the proprieties of their new situation. As they drew closer to Burns Street, Holly said, "I could use a drink, Mal. How about you?"

"Sure," he said, switching her suitcase from his right hand to his left. "I was going to go to the Strand after I took you home anyway."

"Looking for Jerry?"

"Yeah. Gotta start somewhere."

"Well," she said, "I'd like a drink, whether he's there or not."

They continued on down Ascan Avenue past Burns Street and lapsed once again into silence.

When they entered the Strand, they saw Jerry Herman sitting at the end of the still-uncrowded bar, staring morosely into a half-empty glass of beer. Malcolm and Holly walked over to him and seated themselves on either side of him. He turned his head slowly from Malcolm to Holly and back again, and then he started to cry. "I'm sorry."

Malcolm nodded, placing his hand on Jerry's shoulder. "I know, Jer. I understand."

"She said she would take her blood out of me. She promised."

"Of course she did, Jerry," Holly said. "And you know she wasn't telling the truth, don't you?"

He nodded, allowing his head to sink downward toward the bar top, seeming almost to double over in his misery. "She laughed at me. After I got her here, I asked her to keep her end of the bargain, and she just laughed at me."

Malcolm sighed. "Jerry, what has happened to you is my fault, not yours. Don't reproach yourself. You can't trust these creatures. We've all learned that the hard way."

Jerry Herman grabbed Malcolm's arm and held it hard, gripped it with an intensity born of fear. "What am I gonna do, Mal? What am I gonna do?"

"The first thing we're all going to do is have a drink," Malcolm said, motioning toward the bartender—his replacement, in all likelihood, he thought glumly—who stood near the cash register. "Bourbon for me and my friend, and another beer for him. Give me a beer, too." He glanced over at Holly. "Wine?" he asked.

"Scotch on the rocks," she told the bartender. "A double shot, please."

Jerry wiped away a tear and said, "Holly, I'm sorry I left you guys like that. I mean—"

"Jerry, forget it," Holly said. "You don't owe me an apology. I'm . . . well, I'm not involved in all this anymore, anyway."

Jerry glanced from Holly to Malcolm, started to comment, thought the better of it, then turned back to the beer glass he clutched in his hand.

After a few moments, Malcolm asked, "How did she get here? I mean, how did you manage it?"

"Well," Jerry began, "it wasn't all that difficult. It was
just something that she couldn't do by herself, because she realized that she didn't understand what was involved. She knew she needed a passport—"

"Sure she knew," Malcolm commented. "They used passports in the nineteenth century, too."

"—and so she got one from somebody she killed. She hung around in nightclubs and places like that around Rome, listening for American accents. Eventually she picked someone out who looked a little like her, knocked her off, and took her passport."

"Jesus, don't they check those things out?" Holly asked. "I mean, if somebody gets killed and someone with the same name shows up at the airport with a passport picture that doesn't look like them, wouldn't the police—"

"Holly," Malcolm said patiently, "do you realize how many people fly in and out of Rome every day? It's got to be tens of thousands. And they check passport photos and stuff like that much more carefully when you're entering a country than when you're leaving it."

"Well, then," she protested, "at Kennedy—"

"She didn't go through customs," Jerry said.

"Of course not." Malcolm nodded. "What did she do? Turn into mist?"

"I don't know. All I know is that she disappeared when we got off the plane and was waiting for me when I went to get the luggage."

"And the jewelry box with the remains in it?"

"With the luggage." Jerry sighed. "God knows where the boxes of dirt are."

Malcolm frowned. "For something as important to her as she seemed to think it was, she didn't seem to take any precautions. That's odd."

"No, it isn"t, Jerry said
. "You don't know her, Mal. She's,
I don't know, like a little kid somehow. She doesn't think too clearly, not the way a . . . a normal person would. I don't think it ever occurred to her that she had to guard the dust from anyone, as long as you were still in Rome."

"And where is it now?" Malcolm asked. "And where is she?"

Jerry sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. As soon as we got out of the airport, she took the jewelry box from me and started laughing at me, calling me a stupid fool and telling me that I'd never be free of her." He started to cry
again. "She just left me standing there. I didn't know what to do, where to go. I didn't want to go back to my apartment. I just wandered around for hours, and then I came here. I've been here ever since."

Malcolm considered everything Jerry had said. "So we can make a few assumptions. The two of you got here at night. About what time?"