And she was there.
She was no longer naked, but that didn"t help any. She had found a beautiful white dress.
Almost like a wedding dress.
It bared her arms, and emphasized the perfection of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the slimness of her waist. She didn"t look evil. She looked...
angelic, floating outside the window, elegant in drifting, filmy white.
He tried to tell himself that he had seen this scene before in a thousand movies, the seductive beauty staring hungrily at...
A meal.
"Oh, Mary," he said miserably. "Jeremy, I"m so scared."
"You"re dead, Mary," he forced himself to say dully.
"No, I"m here, and I need your help. Please, Jeremy. I won"t hurt you, I swear. I"m just afraid. I can"t go, Jeremy. If I go, I"ll die.
You have to let me in, keep me with you, keep me safe."
She was a vampire, he told himself. She had always used him, and now she wanted to do it again, only this time she wanted his blood. She wanted his life.
"Jeremy?"
She said his name, then nothing more. Could vampires cry? Evidently. Huge tears appeared in her eyes, trailed down the pale contours of her still beautiful face.
"Don"t cry, Mary."
"I"m so afraid. I"m being called...I"ve been ordered.... Help me, Jeremy. Keep me with you. Keep me here, with you."
He didn"t know if her whisper created his insanity or if he actually believed her, but he opened the French doors. He reached out, and she joined him on the balcony. She should have felt cold, he thought, but she didn"t.
He took her tightly into his arms. She hugged him in return, then leaned against him and kissed his lips. She was shaking. He felt the pressure of her lips against his throat. Felt them quivering.
His heart slammed. This was it. He had never been able to resist her. And now he was going to die for it.
13.
N ight had fallen, and the moon rode high. Crimson.
Bleeding.
A strange instinct made Jessica hurry for her own home, certain she should have been there already. She had to get there, and quickly-and be on her way out again even more quickly.
Night had come. The night. And she rued the fact she hadn"t realized before that it would happen so quickly. She should have known. She should have believed the sky, known that a bad moon was rising.
Hurry, hurry, hurry, her senses warned her.
Hurry where?
The question throbbed in her mind. Why wasn"t instinct giving her an answer? Logic told her it might be a cemetery, but which one?
She glanced at the sky as she drove. Bad moon, yes, and yet not quite the Demon Moon. Not quite that full moon that rode the sky in pure, brilliant red, bathing the entire night with blood. She would have thought that when it came, it would be under the Demon Moon, but it was bad enough even without that.
As she pulled into the driveway, she felt a shock, like an electrical jolt. Just as she had known that her office had been invaded, she knew that the sanct.i.ty of her home had been breached, as well.
She exited the car, staring at the house, then closed her eyes and felt the chill of warning.She burst through the front door. Stacey was there, staunch and prepared. She was dripping wet, and Jessica knew she had doused herself with holy water. She held a gun, and Jessica knew the bullets were specially crafted with wood mixed into the silver.
She cried out when she saw Jessica. "I could have shot you!"
"But you didn"t," Jessica said. "I taught you, and I trust you."
"Honestly, Jess, I"ve never been so afraid. I keep thinking someone"s here."
"Someone is here," Jessica said, then added instantly, "Where"s Jeremy?"
"Upstairs in his room. It"s completely protected. I checked."
Jessica was already bounding up the stairs. "Yeah, protected against everything-but Jeremy himself."
She tore down the hall past Bryan"s room and her own. She threw open the first guest room. Nancy, half asleep, began to rise.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Nothing, go back to sleep," Jessica told her.
She burst through the door of the next room.
And there they were. Jeremy and Mary. Embracing on the balcony.
In a fury, Jessica rushed forward. She seemed to glide like an avenging mist across the floor. Before she could reach Mary, Jeremy thrust the vampire behind him.
"No! She didn"t do anything to me, I swear! And I didn"t let her in. If you"re going to kill her, you"ll have to kill me first."
From behind him, Mary said, "Please. He"s telling the truth. I didn"t hurt him."
"Look." Jeremy bared his throat, tipped his head from side to side. His skin was unmarked.
Jessica knew she shouldn"t be hesitating. There was no time.
Stacey burst into the room behind her and let out a horrified gasp. Hand shaking, she raised her gun.
Jessica set a hand on her arm, stopping her from shooting.
"Your veins, Jeremy. Show me your arms."
He rolled up his sleeves and did so.
There were still ways, she reminded herself. But she knew Jeremy wasn"t lying, that he would die for the girl. And maybe, just maybe, they could use her, even-somehow-save her.
"Stacey, get her something," Jessica said.
"What?"
"You heard me," she said softly.
"How can you trust-" "Because I have to believe in something," Jessica said. "Please...hurry."
With that, Stacey disappeared, racing down the stairs.
"You"re not going to stake her, are you?" Jeremy said, his voice a whispered prayer.
"I haven"t killed anyone, I swear," Mary said. "Almost, but...I was stopped. And then...well, then I stumbled on a cat...and there were a few birds. I tried for a Rottweiler, but it was too ferocious. I"m...I"m really hungry, but I didn"t hurt Jeremy, and I won"t hurt Jeremy. I swear I only came so he could stop me," she said in a whisper.
"Stop you from what?"
Mary hesitated, pale, beautiful and wide-eyed.
"From what?" Jessica repeated with harsh authority.
"The feast. The feast that"s supposed to take place tonight. I"ve been called to be there, but I"m afraid," Mary said.
"Where?"
"The cemetery," Mary whispered.
"Which cemetery?"
"We are called there first," Mary said, as if distracted, trying to put thoughts together in her own mind. She set her hands to her skull, pressing it. "It will be my first, the Master says. He says I"m his, and once I"m there, I"ll know...the truth of what I am, the truth of what I can have and the truth of his law. From the cemetery, we"ll be taken to a haven on the river."
"Which cemetery?" Jessica demanded again.
Stacey burst back into the room, a plastic soda bottle in her hands. Jessica took it, holding it out to Mary. The girl"s face puckered into a frown, and at last she dared to step out from behind Jeremy.
"What...what is it?" she asked.
"O-positive," Jessica snapped. "Now, which cemetery?"
When Mary finally offered the information, Jessica gave a few orders-the most important being that Mary was to be confined to one area.
Then, she was gone.
Bryan made it a point not to make an appearance, not at first.
He stayed at a distance after arriving. Oaks dripping Spanish moss lined the sidewalks along the streets that bordered the cemetery. The city always made an attempt to illuminate the places where danger might skulk, where the dregs of society too often sought to prey upon the unwary. But even as he stood across the street, just watching, one of the streetlights burned for a moment of brightness, sputtered, then died.
He waited, very still, eyes adjusting to the shadows. He could already sense movement inside the cemetery. Shadows moved furtively. Grew large, faded.
He heard the sound of laughter, quickly suppressed, and he shook his head, d.a.m.ning the foolishness of those who were so easily seduced by the raw edge of a little s.e.x or a little danger. Frustration filled him. Time and again, he"d been so close.
And time and again, he had lost the battle in the attempt to salvage the innocent.
Or, he thought wryly, those who were innocent of that particular brand of evil.
The gates loomed tall, wrought iron with Victorian arches and the sense of elegant and faded decay so common in the area, both beautiful and sad. The wall was stone, crumbling in too many places.
With a deft leap, he scaled the wall. He was instantly struck by the miasma in the place, something unusual even for a city of the dead, where the elegant above-ground mausoleums housed their burden of humanity long gone. He followed a narrow, overgrown trail past the grandiose memorials, slipping from the shadows of one to the next, deep into the growing darkness. It was one of the largest cemeteries in the area, filled with dark alleys between tombs forgotten over time and trees that had all but grown through stone and slab as their roots crushed and cracked it. Here, broken angels seemed to weep.
Against one of the tombs, he saw a shadow, already lurking, waiting.
It was a girl. She had dressed to look like the infamous dominatrix; her boots were high, her skirt short. There was something a little off about her clothing, though. It was a good imitation of the contemporary but held traces of a not so distant past. Her hair was dyed many colors, cut short and styled in the fashion of the heavy-duty punk era.
"Hey," she whispered from the darkness. She grinned, stepping from the shadows to accost him. "I like that outfit. It suits you.
You"re here for the gathering, huh? You"ll have fun. It will be the wildest thing you"ve ever done." As she spoke, she glided closer and closer to him. He smiled in welcome. She came close, reaching out a hand, sidling up to him.
"Want to get started right away?" she whispered huskily. "Here, now...no waiting? I"m ready. I"ve been waiting for someone like you. Hey. What"s the matter?" She giggled. "I can make you want me in a matter of seconds. In fact, believe me, I"m the wildest dream of men-and women, for that matter." Her giggle rang out again. "I"ve made them all die for me. Come on, just give me a chance, one little kiss...."
"Not in this lifetime or any other," he a.s.sured her.
"Trust me," she whispered, and this time, there was a sibilance in her words that hadn"t been there before. Her tongue flicked out and she rose on her toes.
He knew her intent. He had seen it time and time again. He smiled, watching her move closer.
She nuzzled against him, then opened her mouth.
A shred of the red moonlight touched her fangs. They dripped with antic.i.p.ation.
As she leaned in for his throat, he drew the stake from beneath his coat. He had thrust it deep into her chest before she even knew what had happened.
She let out a little cry and stared at him in fury, then disintegrated right before his eyes. Pieces of bone and ash lay at his feet.
"Sure. The wildest dream. Or nightmare." he murmured softly. He wondered how many more were here, and decided it was going to be a bad night. He had a sixth sense that warned him when vampires were near, and it told him that there would be plenty here tonight, emboldened by the Master, many drawn from their lives deep in hiding. There were so many kinds. Those who had adapted well to the modern world of instant communication and technology, those who dined on the blood of beasts, as most men dined on their meat. Those who wanted nothing more than to survive, pretend to lead normal lives...
But tonight all were here, heeding the call of the Master. He was a ruler reminding them of what they were, convincing them of their power, that the word was there, that human beings were their cattle.
There was no such thing as a good vampire.He lowered the brim of his hat, ready to move on.