Vampires 3 (19 page)

And then Storm turned his head slightly and caught my eye and something very close to a chill coursed through me. He gave me a half smile and nodded and held my eyes for a half a second. He squinted a little and then he turned back to the next girl, smiling brightly at her, as well.

What the hell had that been about?

I didn’t know, but there was nothing more to see here on the second floor. I had just turned toward the escalator, when I stopped short and almost gasped.

Almost, but I kept my composure.

It was her, Veronica the Vampire Slayer.

Chapter Nine

It was as if I was staring at a ghost, something that might not really be there, something phantasmagorical and ethereal. But she was there, in the flesh, real as hell, and she was heading up the escalator to the second floor.

After I got over my initial shock, I processed what I was seeing. Veronica was wearing a long blond wig and a long flowing white dress. She might have even gone unnoticed had I not spent the long drive up to San Francisco memorizing every detail of her face.

And so, despite the wig, and the distance between us, I immediately recognized the strong jaw and her challenging eyes. The blond girl was tall, too, as tall as Veronica would have been.

It was her; I was sure of it.

And so far, no one else seemed to notice.

She stepped calmly up onto the very escalator I had planned on using, and as she slowly ascended, I saw that she was sporting a guitar case strapped to her back. I seriously doubted there was guitar inside.

I considered my options. There weren’t many, so it didn’t take long. I could find the closest policeman, convince him that the guitar-wielding blond was a delusional psychopath. Or just follow her up myself.

I decided on the latter. I was, after all, a man of action.

As she continued to ascend, I picked up my pace and just as I reached the escalator, a very large elderly couple stepped on before me. Damn. Veronica reached the top of the escalator and made a right. She flashed me a view of her strong profile, and then she was gone, out of my line of sight.

Double damn.

It was at that moment, as I was about to impolitely push through the elderly couple in font of me, that an icy chill coursed through me. I shivered as goosebumps rippled along my forearms.

Someone was watching me.

I glanced around for the source of the feeling. I didn’t have to look long. Below, staring up at me from behind the table draped with the red tablecloth, a squinting James P. Storm was watching me ascend.

I shivered and looked away.

* * *

She was gone. Or, rather, I had lost her.
Shit.

At the top of the escalator, I hung a right and moved quickly through an area of low tables and oversized gift books. The third floor, like the other two, was laid out in a perfect square, with the center open. A low glass wall gave shoppers a view of the floors below. From up here, I could see the book signing taking place below, with a clear view of James P. Storm smiling and talking pleasantly to a young reader. The winding line of humanity looked a little like the Great Wall of China.

As calmly as I could, I checked each row and aisle for signs of the girl. I made a full circuit of the top floor and soon ended back at the escalator landing, with no sign of Veronica anywhere.

I stood there, confused. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe I had imagined the girl. The third floor seemed darker than the other floors, and quieter, too, since all the action was taking place on the floor below. Still, there was a handful of people up here. The elderly couple that had blocked my ride up the escalator were holding hands and laughing and moving slowly down one of the aisles. A man and woman were sitting together cross-legged in an aisle, reading. An elderly man was flipping through a magazine, sitting in a reading chair. A young man holding a laptop case strolled over to the brass railing and looked down, a bemused smirk on his face.

I continued scanning. As I did, my heart thumped once in my chest, then twice. Hard.
Something was going to happen. I could feel it. Either that, or I was going to keel over and die right here of a heart attack.

So where the hell had she gone?

The bathrooms were all downstairs on the first floor. Up here, there was only a single Employees Only door, with a keypad.

Maybe she had the code.

I doubted it. Confused, I began systematically searching each corner of the upstairs, one after another, and when I got to the fourth and last corner, I found it.

The guitar case. Leaning against the far end of a bookcase. Hidden unless one ventured deeper into the corner, as I had done.

I hurried over to it, opened it. Inside was a blond wig and a white dress and no guitar.

“
Ah, hell.”

* * *

As as I ran out from behind a tall bookcase, the first person I saw was the young guy with the laptop case. He was still standing near the railing, on the opposite side of the room. I noticed he was no longer smiling bemusedly. Instead, he was unzipping the case and pulling something out from within. It was most certainly not a laptop.

No. It was a small, stainless steel crossbow.

And the young man wasn’t a man.

It was Veronica.

* * *

She had, of course, cut her hair in a boyish way and was wearing men’s jeans and t-shirt, both of which had been hidden beneath the long white dress. Enough of a disguise to temporarily throw me off, especially since I had been locked on to finding a blond girl in flowing white dress.

“
Veronica?” I shouted. “Stop!”

She had just rested the weapon on the brass railing, when her head snapped up. She scanned the area, spotted me from across the open space. She frowned, and then went back to her crossbow, squinting along its sights and ignoring me.

Now I was running, not as fast as I would have liked, and certainly not very gracefully. I barreled recklessly around the first corner, dashed down an aisle crammed with reading glasses and cheesy-looking Velcro book covers.

Veronica was now on my right, carefully taking aim. Ignoring me completely.

The overweight old couple looked up, startled, as I swept past them. I dodged a low wooden bench at the last second. Back in the day I would have hurled it. Now, it was all I could do to just avoid it and not fall flat on my face.

Already I was gasping for air.

“
Veronica, stop!”

But she didn’t stop. Instead, she was taking careful aim.

I turned the final corner. Now she was directly in front of me, about thirty feet away, ignoring me completely. The metallic crossbow gleamed brilliantly. I realized too late that she could have just as easily turned the weapon on me. If she did, there was nothing I could do.

I also realized that I was now holding my own gun. I had no intention of using it, but maybe it would help convince her to stand down.

“
Stop!” I shouted. “Or I’ll shoot!”

Yes, I actually said that. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even acknowledge me.

Instead, she pulled the trigger.

Chapter Ten

The bolt burst from the crossbow.

I whipped my head around in time to see James P. Storm, who had been looking down and signing a book, reached up without looking and snatch the crossbow bolt out of the air.

I gaped, dumfounded.
That did not just happen.

Storm looked curiously at the bolt, and then calmly looked up at us. Other people looked, too. No doubt they saw two people standing at the railing, one holding a gun, and the other holding a very medieval-looking weapon.

And that’s when someone screamed.

* * *

Utter chaos ensued.

People were now running in every direction. But Storm didn’t run; in fact, he hadn’t moved. He continued sitting there, staring up at us, holding the crossbow bolt.

A mob of people passed briefly in front of him, screaming hysterically. When they cleared, he was gone.

This can’t be good.

* * *

I had just turned to Veronica, had just reached out a hand to grab her, when I found myself flying backwards through the air. Yellow light burst through my skull as I crashed hard against an immovable bookcase. I crumpled in a heap, and might have blacked out for a few seconds.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that Veronica was gone. Amazingly, I was still holding my gun. I stumbled to my feet and searched the area and found her silver crossbow and a single bolt. I retrieved both just as the two policemen rounded the corner and approached me fast. I slipped the small crossbow and bolt into my jacket pockets.

“
What the fuck is going on up here?” asked one of them. He was breathing hard, but not as hard as I had been.

My head was still groggy. Veronica was gone, and I wasn’t sure what the hell to tell these guys. I still had no clue how I suddenly came to be flying through the air.

“
I saw someone up here,” I said. “Someone with a weapon.”

“
And who the fuck are you?”

“
I’m a P.I. hired to find—”

“
Never mind. Where’s the shooter?”

“
No clue. Someone...hit me from behind.”

“
Stay here,” said the first officer. “We’ll be back.”

They dashed off and spread out, quickly searching the upstairs. They convened back at the escalators a few minutes later, conferred with each other, and then headed back down to the second floor mayhem.

As they had searched the upstairs, I noticed one had checked the “Employees Only” door. He had opened it, looked around inside for a few seconds, and then reemerged and continued on. Obviously he hadn’t found what he was looking, but what he hadn’t noticed was that the touchpad had been completely torn off the wall. Where it was, I had no clue, but it was gone.

With my head still throbbing and a fantastic pain in my right shoulder, I lurched forward toward the storeroom door.

* * *

With people still shouting below, I drew my gun and opened the “Employees Only” door.

The room was indeed a storeroom. I could smell dusty books and someone’s lunch. A microwavable pizza, perhaps. The room probably doubled as a break room, too.

It was also quite dark. I flipped on a switch.

The back room was, in fact, a longish room, separated by another door. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Now only a few muffled sounds reached me from the craziness outside. I still felt woozy, but I powered through it.

I continued through the long room, holding my gun out before me.

The storeroom probably looked like a thousand other bookstore storerooms. Boxes and books everywhere. Broken bookshelves. Dusty display cases crammed in one corner. A circular Formica table sat near a glowing vending machine and a microwave.

I headed deeper into the room, listening hard. I heard nothing unusual. No sounds of a throat being torn open.

At that thought, I reached inside my jacket pocket and withdrew the stainless steel crossbow and silver bolt. I goofed with the thing for a few seconds, until I finally knocked back a bolt, thus arming the contraption.

At least, I hoped it was armed.

I cautiously stepped through the second doorway, a doorway which was devoid of an actual door, and into what I assumed was a second storeroom. I reached around the corner and flipped on another switch. More books, more broken equipment. Shelving everywhere. And something in the far corner.

Another door?

It was easy to miss, especially if you were a cop hurrying through here and wrongly assuming no one was inside. The difference being that I
knew
someone was hiding somewhere inside this storeroom.

The door appeared to be blocked by some boxes. But that could have only been an optical illusion. Indeed, the closer I got, the more clearly I saw a narrow path that led through the boxes and to this back door.

I stepped between the boxes, onto the narrow path. The door was directly in front of me. It was also partially open. From within, I heard some very strange sounds.

And if I had to guess, I would guess that someone—or something—was feasting hungrily.

I moved quickly through the narrow corridor of boxes, and as I did so, the sickening noises grew steadily louder from behind the door.

Without slowing or hesitating, I raised the crossbow, and kicked open the door.

* * *

The small room was mostly dark, but there was enough light from the single dusty bulb behind me to see inside.