The Mall of Cthulhu (24 page)

Laura wiped her face and watched as Ted and his girlfriend raced around the mall atrium, Cayenne pumping her fist every time one of the cultists went down. Laura marveled at Ted's agility—he faked out and dodged the security guards ably—but, more than that, she marveled at his decisiveness. She watched him move and couldn't understand how this guy who had been so lost in real life, so unable to choose a direction that he'd attached himself to her like a remora, could suddenly transform into this dynamo of purpose in a crisis. He wasn't hesitating, he wasn't stopping to think, he was just doing what needed to be done. Laura had been able to do that, finally in Franklin Park, but by then it was already too late.

Laura had to pause the video to cry as Ted completed his final decisive act on earth, vaulting the railing to the atrium and doing a cannonball into the rift in time and space that was in the middle of the mall. She cried for two minutes, then held back the tears just so she could punish herself. She unpaused the video and made herself watch the horrible, cringe-inducing part—as people ran around and screamed, a female FBI agent came in with gun drawn. You could see it in the way she moved—she was terrified and confused—she had no plan, she looked tentative. She walked to the railing, saw the rift knit itself up, and looked completely lost, completely befuddled. Big, strong, cool, Agent Harker was panic-stricken and ineffectual. After watching this video more times than she could count, she decided that this particular part was the worst—one of the cultists walked right past the stunned agent. She could have grabbed him, she could have at least beaten the crap out of him, and every time she watched it, even though she knew it was crazy, she willed the little figure on the screen to reach out, to take a swing with the butt of the pistol, to do something to stop the guy who was walking right past her . . . and, for the millionth time, her little avatar on the screen did nothing. She was a total waste, and the fact that she'd later dealt out some rather severe punishment to three of these guys did nothing to lessen her contempt for the idiot on the screen with the perpetrators walking past her.

Laura turned the laptop off and hung her head.

She breathed deeply and tried not to think about Ted and how much she missed him. She thought about her current mission, about killing vampires, about how she was going to be the scourge of the undead for decades to come, and every time she sent one of those bastards screaming to hell, she'd get right in their foul, unclean faces and say, "That's for Ted, bitch!"

Her reverie of violence and death had nearly flushed the sadness from her system when a voice from two seats away said, "Sad movie?"

Oh, great. She turned to glare at her interlocutor and saw that it was the woman sitting two seats away. She was a very attractive woman about five years older than Laura with shoulder-length chestnut hair and an expensive suit. Laura decided not to bite the woman's head off, but instead said, "Yeah. It's . . . I just lost my best friend."

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry," the woman said. "And it's probably really annoying to have somebody in your face when—I'm sorry, I just . . . I felt bad because you looked so sad, and I know I should have just kept my mouth shut, but, I mean, I know about sadness, which is why I wanted to say something but which is also why I should've known enough to keep my mouth shut and mind my own business. Listen, I'm really really sorry. I'm going to shut up and leave you alone now."

"No, that's okay. It's kind of nice to get outside of my own head. I actually need to stop watching that. So my best friend—" she paused briefly as she said this, wondering when she'd ever told Ted that he was her best friend—"anyway, my best friend just died. What's your story?"

"Sole survivor of a car accident on prom night. They still show the footage in drivers' ed classes. I was as drunk and stupid as everybody else, but I was hanging out the window vomiting, and so I got thrown and got away with a broken clavicle and a concussion. Everybody else was in pieces."

Laura was silent for a moment. "Jesus. That's horrible. I . . . I mean, I know what that's like—" and she felt sudden empathy with Ted's desire to tell everybody everything, because she wanted to say, yeah, I know about carnage, but instead she said, "I survived a fire unhurt in college. Twelve people died."

The other woman looked at her, shook her head, and didn't say anything. Laura reflected that this was pretty weird for air travel small talk. She realized, briefly, that grief must still be screwing her up.

Laura spent the next hour talking with Elaine, who worked for Gillette and was going to Procter & Gamble headquarters in Cincinnati to try to save her job after the merger, or to try to convince her new bosses that she was indispensable, or something. Laura just volunteered that she had a new job in law enforcement.

When they parted at the rental car counter, Laura had Elaine's card with her cell phone number on the back and the information that Elaine was staying at the Westin.

Laura drove up the highway to Cambridge, Ohio, which was lined with little crosses marking car crash fatalities, wondering if Elaine had been hitting on her or was just looking for a friend. She decided that Elaine had definitely been hitting on her. She pondered this—Ted would have told her to go for it, and she might simply have to honor Ted's memory in this way. Of course, this led her to thinking about Ted, which led her to another crying jag. She just couldn't stand the fact that Ted was either dead or trapped in an eternity of torment, and she was doing nothing—well, she might get to kill a vampire and she might have sex with a stranger, both of which were activities that Ted would have approved of mightily, but she wasn't doing anything to help him, if he could even be helped at this point. He'd faced down an eternity of damnation for her, and she'd done nothing for him, at least not when it counted, not when it might have mattered. She'd even given back the book that held the key to opening the rift again, so there was no way she could even hop through to check to see if he was dead . . . .

Laura was just driving through the campus of Cambridge University of Ohio when she slapped her forehead. Really, how could she possibly be so incredibly stupid? What the hell did she get that Summa Cum Laude for, anyway? She didn't need the book! She didn't need to wait for Marrs to upload anything onto the department servers! She could try to get Ted back as soon as tonight!

Laura spent the day wandering around the campus, not really finding anything out. She kept looking at her watch, wishing the day away so that she could go to Cincinnati and get her job done.

That is to say, her job getting Ted back, or at least checking to see if he was still alive. Her job of investigating the killings in Cambridge would, she supposed, have to wait.

But what if somebody died (or worse) here while she was in Cincinnati on what amounted to personal business? Oh hell, it was worse than personal business, because she'd be putting the entire population of the Cincinnati metro area at risk, and she didn't know the figures, but she imagined Marrs would tell her that Cincinnati was even more populous than Providence, so she was actually being several times more irresponsible.

She tried to stop thinking about trans-dimensional search and rescue and start thinking about the undead killers right here. She felt torn, and she had no idea where to start in finding out if this killer was actually a vampire. Well, according to Marrs, the slayings had been two weeks apart, and it had only been five days since the last one. So maybe Drac Junior would hold off for another nine days, in which case, Laura's desertion wouldn't be such a big deal.

But would she? Despite the fact that Marrs labeled her an expert, she knew nothing about vampires, really, except that they existed and how to kill them. She supposed this gave her two significant advantages over most people.

She flashed her badge and asked random students if they had seen anything scary, if they felt threatened, if there was anybody acting suspicious. The only thing she was able to conclude from this was that the students in Cambridge University's honors program considered the rest of the campus a bunch of meathead alcoholic date-rapists, and those not in the honors program considered the honors students to be whiny, superior pains in the ass.

This might be interesting from an anthropological standpoint, but it was pretty much a dead end from a vampire-hunting perspective. The sun was sinking in the sky, and short of arming herself and walking around hoping to be vampire bait (and she hadn't been to the motel to check on the stakes yet), Laura felt like there was very little she could possibly do to help.

She trudged up Cambridge's main drag, past the bars and pizza places, and as she approached her rental car, parked outside of the Suds & Suds bar/Laundromat, she saw a familiar face going into Tower of Pizza.

She thought that must be Becky Barnham, the teen star who was always smiling that heavy-lidded drunken smile from the tabloid covers in the supermarket. Did she go to Cambridge University of Ohio? Why hadn't Marrs told her? She remembered the Senator's daughter detail from years ago and thought she might have just come across a crucial lead, though she didn't really understand exactly what it meant. Once before the vampires had been targeting a high-profile young woman, or else had just happened to be in the same place as one. If that wasn't just a coincidence, then maybe they were after Becky Barnham too. She had one more thing to do before she could go look for Ted—she hoped that if Ted were still alive, her delay didn't cost him his life.

She turned and walked into Tower of Pizza, a loud, bright place with red formica booths and fluorescent lights. As she walked over to Becky Barnham's table, two large, burly men in black t-shirts, one white, one black, suddenly appeared in her path.

They didn't speak. They just looked at Laura.

"Okay, fellas, I've got a badge here, which I am going to reach into my bag to ge—" She saw the white guy get kind of twitchy and immediately said, "No no, you know what, here, you reach into my bag and get the ID." She handed the bag to the white guy, leaving the black guy, obviously the calmer one, to look at her. The guy dug Laura's ID out of the bag, showed it to his partner, and then they nodded at Laura.

"Thanks," she said, and walked over to Becky's table.

"Ms. Barnham—Laura Harker, FBI; I wonder if I can ask you a few questions."

Becky Barnham looked up at Laura with annoyance all over her face. "I don't know—can you?"

"Heh-heh. Yeah, look, I'm investigating the murders here, and I'm just—I wonder if you can tell me if you've joined a sorority."

Becky looked at her like she was the single stupidest person on earth. "Bids go out at the end of freshman year," she said. "I couldn't join one yet."

"Okay, great. Uh, are you expecting any bids?"

Becky gave Laura a long look that communicated clearly that she had thought it was impossible for Laura to get any stupider, but she'd just proved her wrong. "Uh, yeah? Like twenty?"

"Okay—is anybody—I mean, I understand that you're being recruited pretty aggressively, but is there anybody that you think is going to extraordinary lengths to recruit you?"

Becky took a bite of pizza, chewed, and looked at Laura. "I mean, not to be too conceited, but I am famous. They all want me. But I guess maybe the Omegas want me even more than the other ones."

Laura's heart jumped. It couldn't be—could it? Even if the same person, or vampire, or whatever were masterminding things, they would have chosen a different sorority this time—wouldn't they?

"Okay—just one more question, and then I'll get out of your substantial hair." Becky looked at Laura blankly, and Laura was glad to see that Becky was, in fact, too stupid to know she was being made fun of. "Have you been to any afternoon teas at the Omega house? Or pancake breakfasts for charity? Anything at all that's taken place during the day?"

Becky bit a slice of pizza and chewed. "Not that I can remember. But, I mean, I don't really like to go to the daytime events anyway—it's like a lot easier for people to get pictures of me from far away during the day. You know?"

"Not a phenomenon I'm personally familiar with, but I do understand what you mean. Well, thanks for your time!" Laura extended a hand, and Becky just looked at it like it might have just been used to pick up feces, and Laura walked away.

"Nice kid," she said to the bodyguards as she passed their booth, "real sweetheart."

The black guy shook his head just slightly and said under his breath, "You should see her when she's mad."

"I hope to never have to see her again," Laura said, and kept walking.

Behind her, she heard the white guy squeak out, "Take us with you!" in a falsetto.

The sun was beginning to set. Laura had basically no evidence, but she was sure in her heart that the Omega house was a vampire's nest. She called Marrs, who told her to wait until daylight and then get into the house and look around. If she was right, she could just open up some shades and dispose of them all without the stakes, and if she was wrong, well, hopefully she wouldn't get caught, and if she did, he'd have very little difficulty getting her out of a breaking-and-entering charge.

So tomorrow was her day for vampire slaying. Fantastic. Ted went in at night, armed only with a can of gas, a Zippo, and an axe, Laura's mind reminded herself, and she considered again the incredible courage he'd shown. Well, it was time for Laura to show some courage herself. She was going to get Ted back dead or alive, or die trying.

As she drove to Cincinnati from Cambridge, Laura wondered if she were doing the right thing. She knew what Marrs would say about putting the population at risk, about how her responsibility to the public had to outweigh her loyalty to Ted.

Except it didn't. Laura didn't know if there was a God—it seemed kind of hard to believe, given all the evil shit that seemed to be wandering the earth. But, then again, maybe things did happen for a reason. Though it might have cost him his life, would anybody but Ted have been able to crack the whole Cthulhu Cult thing? Would anyone else have been able to stop it? So maybe God, or whoever, had put Ted in the path of the Queequeg's shooter. In which case She would understand that Laura owed it to him to get him back. And if She did exist, and She was working in the world, would She let Cincinnati be destroyed because of Laura's love for her friend? Well, then, She was probably just looking for an excuse to wreak destruction anyway, and if Laura didn't open the door, She would probably find some other way to destroy the Earth.