Vampire Dreams (Bloodscreams #1) (21 page)

“You trust this thing?” asked Magaffey, his knuckles white where he hung onto his seat. He was staring straight out the front where the bubble glass had been smashed, ripples and lines leading from the hole in a spider's web pattern.

Magaffey had been telling the truth about the helicopter. It had no doors, but there were rents and tears in the metalwork, even in the hinges that had once held the doors on. Someone or something had done battle with the machine. An image of his grandfather going at it with a sledge hammer popped into his mind, but some of the marks didn't compute as signs of a madman wielding an oversized hammer.

The helicopter circled Stroud Manse like a bird of prey. Magaffey said, “Enough time wasted, Abe. I'll direct you now.”

“Lead on, Doctor.”

The helicopter groaned with the sound of a disturbed animal waking from a long sleep. Stroud gave her full throttle, however, and soon she flew with a gentle touch. Stroud found himself having fun as he maneuvered upward, then left. They were soon out of sight of Stroud Manse.

Everything was somehow in working order, despite the gashes, rips, and battered condition of her outer hull, and despite the wind that whipped through the all but open cockpit. Abe allowed for the additional drag. As they neared the caves, Abe found they were following the silvery ribbon of the Spoon River below. In his mind he tried to relate the condition of the bird to those wartime relics he'd seen in Vietnam. He had seen helicopters with twisted metal supports and even damaged rotors manage to get home safely, but he still wondered about the torn hinges and missing doors. What kind of strength could have managed this feat?

“There! There it is!” said Magaffey, suddenly alert and agitated and pointing to a stand of dead trees that flourished with bare branches atop a knoll along the river. As they honed in on the place, Stroud saw that it was a barren rock, hardly a weed capable of life at the top. But it was surrounded by woods on all sides.

“Going to be a tight landing.”

“Can you do it?”

“Believe so.”

The approach required a wide swing in from the left. On approach, a pocket of upsurging wind swept them into an unwanted tilt. He had to fight the air for control of the craft. The struggle reminded him of his short-lived experience with helicopters on the police force. Up drafts in the city were a constant threat. In a moment, however, he was setting her down gently atop Magaffey's caves.

“We'll need a few items from the back,” shouted Magaffey over the rotor as it wound down.

Stroud dared not ask what items the old man wished to have. He simply followed and observed as the old man picked his way over cable, boxes, rope, picks, and spades that littered his way to the three coffins. Magaffey stopped at the tool chest and inspected it for items he'd need. He reached into the dust on the floor and pulled out a crowbar, placing it beside one of the coffins. He pulled out a cross-shape tire iron and held it up to the light, humming and saying, “This should do nicely.” He pulled forth a claw hammer and then a screw driver, tossing it to Stroud. From a hook overhead he pulled forth a tattered old brown leather bag that was filled to the brim with the same metal stakes Stroud had found in the secret room in the manse.

Stroud, frowning, held one of these up to the light filtering into the helicopter. “What're we going to do, stake a claim? Pitch a tent? Start an archeological dig?”

“These stakes were made special by your grandfather. At their centers, son ... Doctor Stroud ... there is a shaft of pure silver.”

“Silver, really.”

“Help me pry the lid off one of these coffins.”

“Doctor Magaffey--”

“Please, Stroud.”

Stroud shook his head but bent to the work, realizing for the first time by the effort that the box was not empty. It was weighted down quite heavily. “Hold on, Doctor Magaffey.”

Magaffey loosened his grip on the crowbar. “What is it?”

“What's inside these boxes?”

“Just earth, dirt.”

“Dirt ... you have any idea how damned heavy dirt is? No wonder liftoff was so rocky. Look, you want to tell me what's so special about three boxes of dirt?”

“This earth came from consecrated ground, earth that has never been desecrated, earth your grandfather had blessed and purified by the Holy Father in Rome.”

“The Pope?”

“It was one of his weapons against the monster.”

“What'd he do, throw it in the vampire's eyes?” Stroud once more had become skeptical.

“He laid people like Mrs. Ashyer onto this earth and it somehow began the healing process to bring them back.”

“Back from the cave that we're going into?”

“Back from the dead, damn it! Now, can we carry on?”

They readied the coffins, loosening each, and true to his word, Magaffey showed Stroud with a flourish that all that each held was ordinary dirt. “Sterilized, of course. Neutral. No organism can regenerate in it. It is not anything like your ordinary cemetery earth.” The old black man lifted and sifted the earth in his hands like an old pirate enjoying his booty. Stroud watched this action and the look of determination on Magaffey's face before he asked a question.

“No microbes, nothing?”

“As inert as moon dust. It's a real disparaging thing for a creature that is lice-ridden and carries disease and leeches--”

“Leeches?”

“Yes.”

“What sort of leeches?”

“A worm ... eyeless, white ... just like the one you had on yourself earlier. Your grandfather had several in formaldehyde in jars.”

“I've seen no such jars,” said Stroud.

“Ananias sent several out to labs where there were friends he could trust, for study. But here, let's dig around a bit and maybe ... maybe...”

In a moment, rummaging about the tattered boxes and paraphernalia, Magaffey came up with a vial of yellow-brown liquid. Beneath the liquid floated an imprisoned white maggot the size of a man's pinkie. It looked like some ancient life form specimen frozen in time.

“According to Ananias's findings, this little beast has the capability of keeping your blood and mine running freely, as it nibbles away at any attempt the human body makes at healing by way of coagulation about the wound. It doesn't create the wound, mind you, it merely keeps it free of interference so that the true wound-maker doesn't have any difficulty syphoning off what it wants in the way of your blood, Doctor Stroud.”

He involuntarily shivered at the recollection of the live one on his throat, feeding at the wound. He then realized fully, for the first time, what Pamela Carr was. He told Magaffey his suspicions and the old man had no difficulty accepting them.

“So, are you still worried about her safety and whereabouts?”

“Whereabouts, yes. As for safety, yes, also--mine.”

“Take up some of those stakes, in case we need them. And come along. Who knows, we may find Miss Carr, yet. Oh, and bring the tire iron.”

Stroud picked up the dusty, tattered bag of the silver-core metal stakes, the hammer, and the tire iron. He noticed the crucifix around the old man's neck as he allowed it to dangle atop his shirt now.

“Do you think that will help?”

“Can't hurt. As for you, use the tire iron. It forms a large cross. If you are threatened, hold it out firmly at any attacker. Bring the shovel. We'll need it.” He himself lugged the pickax over one shoulder.

Stroud was beginning to wonder what he'd gotten himself into. “Why didn't they just take Bradley's body, if all of them are vampires? Why the charade at an autopsy by Banaker and a funeral parlor once over?”

“Appearances, don't you see? Banaker has built an empire from the remnants of his father's legacy here in Andover. His father was somehow superior to others of his kind, able to mix in with humankind on a level never before achieved. They somehow have learned to withstand the light of day, for instance. The white worm cannot, perhaps, thus its numbers have dwindled, but it has found living quarters on their bodies, in their orifices. But Banaker learned the secret to combating the sun's rays, how to cast a shadow, a reflection, all in order to go unseen and unnoticed among us. What mayor, what doctor only seen by the community at night could possibly inspire confidence over curiosity?”

“Medicine, research, the Institute,” said Stroud.

“Exactly. While they're superficially studying sickle-cell anemia and all manner of human disease, they are in fact financing vampire research which has culminated in a bone marrow cocktail that acts as a substitute for preying on the likes of you and me.”

“But then why the massacres? The attack on my grandfather, and against the children, Bradley, his wife?”

Magaffey shook his head. “The substitute doesn't work for all their numbers, perhaps? Perhaps a sect of them, a splinter group, wants raw meat? A wolf among the sheep? A rogue vampire among Andover's sedate crowd? I don't know. But I do know they are here, and they are infiltrating at an alarming rate.”

“If even a fraction of this is true, then my ... grandfather did not die a madman?”

“Ananias Stroud was one of the sanest men I ever knew, up to and including the end.”

“And he died of wounds inflicted on him by ... by this thing that lives in these caves?”

“The wounds, yes ... the last time he took the helicopter out, as I told you.”

“Let's go.”

They had to climb down and the going was slow and difficult for Magaffey. Dawn had turned into day; it was nearing eight-thirty. Birds were aflight, some crows cawed in the distance, an angry swallow screeched inches from them, protecting her nest just overhead.

At the water's edge they heard the slap of beavers at work and Stroud thought he saw his favorite of the animals dive beneath the surface of the Spoon--an otter. Life surrounded them as they came full turn at the bottom of the bluff and stared into the gaping mouth of one of hundreds of openings dotting the bluff. It was like an enormous sponge, holes of every size and shape leading into its black depths, creating a maze of unfathomable proportions. Swiss cheese came to mind, and wondered how the cloth of sand, so tattered and riveted with air could possibly hold the weight of the bluff, the enormous trees, the helicopter and the two men who'd moments before set down upon it.

They stepped into the stifling darkness where not so much as the passing breeze entered, their lungs quickly filling with a mordant, choking stench.

“Smell it?” asked Magaffey.

-16-

Dr. Oliver Banaker was furious with his son, Dolphin. The talk had netted neither one of them a thing. Dolph had now destroyed Pamela Carr. How Banaker knew this was unimportant, he just knew. It came in flashes, as if he could sometimes see what Dolph saw. At first the visions coming to him in his resting time were discarded as a vampire's nightmares, but as they grew in intensity and feeling, so, too, did the message that the images he was receiving were telepathic, as if forced on him from another psyche. Dolph wanted a confrontation; Dolph wanted him to catch him and reprimand him, much as a human child might. At first it all seemed too incredible, too senseless that his loving son would crusade against him in an attempt to bring him down.

Pam. Dear, sweet, dumb Pamela Carr had let him down, but Dolphin Banaker had betrayed him.

Where in god's name was she? She'd been due back hours before, and he had waited with mounting impatience in the enormous, gray concrete fortress of the Andover Mausoleum, which stood over a maze of underground tunnels here in the Andover Cemetery. It was here, at the mausoleum, that his kind could come together in a relaxing atmosphere, to not worry about keeping up their guards, to spend some hours without fear of detection. The crypts made convenient beds, coffins filled with pires at rest and sleep; not that they couldn't sleep in the coffins in their basements, but there was something about the vampire nature that made it imperative at times to be close to the dark recesses of caves and the graveyard shadows here. They were, after all, a gregarious lot, given to feeding in packs, but there was also a spiritual side to them which hungered for the old ways, the ancient practices, the haunts of the ancestors, and the mausoleum provided this along with its sanctuary from the human community at large.

The gravediggers, the cemetery custodian, they were all vampires, and they kept things tidy and secretive here. They were largely responsible for the network of underground tunnels that'd been dug below the cemetery, radiating from the mausoleum at its center, a kind of escape hatch against a day when they might be discovered.

Banaker had worked tirelessly, like his father before him, to place pires in positions of authority, and easy access to blood supplies, from policemen to paramedics to priests and funeral parlor people. Except that they weren't people.

So many vampires now wore white lab coats that it was almost humorous to think that the colors they preferred they could only wear here, at the mausoleum, so as to fade in with the night and the shadows. But by day it must be the uniform of the profession. Daylight had once made it necessary that all vampires go about their work during the dark hours, but with Banaker's perfectly remarkable pharmacy of genetically altered blood elixir, all that reliance on night was a thing of the past. And yet there remained a magnetism about the midnight hours that lured them out, and so Banaker had created the town's first and only mausoleum. It was a place of refuge and contemplation and vampire dreams.

Almost three hundred vampires now wandered in and out of the cemetery and its mausoleum on any given evening, secluded as it was by topography and the fearsome superstitions of the humans who rarely came here in the night. When they did, there were the doors of the mausoleum and the tunnels to scatter to.

The only human who had seen through the veil of secrecy Banaker had wrapped his people in was now dead, but the man's grandson was alive, and he lived in Stroud Manse.

Had Stroud somehow overpowered Pamela? Had he seen through her charade? He was a shrewd antagonist, like his grandfather, no doubt, and quite knowledgeable about vampires, possessing the capability and the know-how to destroy them. Banaker shivered as he surveyed the cemetery where pairs of vampires wandered about the stone slabs and trees, some finding comfort in one another, sharing intimacies. It was difficult and draining for him to use his ancient power of telepathy, but he concentrated on Pamela and her whereabouts, making a concerted, powerful effort to 
see
 her and what she was doing and who she was with.