Blood Walk Part 30

He whirled. The girl in the car had regained consciousness. He slid back down beside the vehicle and stretched out in the muddy water where the girl could see him. "Take it easy, miss. I'm a police officer."

"Get me out, please!"

Not even vampire strength could move this car, the way it had wedged into the ditch. What might moving it do to the girl inside anyway? He had no way to a.s.sess her injuries.

"There's a wrecker on the way, miss. We'll have you out in a few minutes."

"No! Please, I want out now! My legs and back-this thing!" She began thrashing, pounding at the steering wheel pinning her.

"Don't move! It's important that you lie still and wait for-"

But panic left her deaf. She continued fighting, and screaming. And up near the fence, the bubbling of the other girl's breath grew worse.

"Miss. Miss!" G.o.d, if he could only catch this girl's eyes. Where the h.e.l.l was Duncan? He needed help. Grabbing the girl's arm, he shook it. "G.o.dd.a.m.n it listen to me!"

Miraculously, her screams softened to whimpers. But she continued pushing at the steering wheel and would not look in his direction.

He lowered his voice soothingly. "What's your name, honey?"

It seemed an eternity before she answered. "Kim." The nails of her other hand dug at the wheel. "Please, please help me."

"Kim, listen to me. I know you're scared but you'll be all right if you just lie still and wait for the wrecker. Will you do that while I go help your friend?"

"Sheela?" The arm in Garreth's grip jerked. "Oh, no! Where is she?"

"She was thrown out of the car." He let go of the girl's arm. "That's why-"

"No!" Her fingers clamped around his wrist.

"Kim, don't worry. I'm not going far, just up the bank. Your friend-"

"Don't leave me!" Her fingers dug in with fear-driven strength.

The gasps by the fence became gurgles.

His heart lurched. Tearing loose from the girl in the car, Garreth scrambled backward and clawed his way up the slippery ditch to the fence. Lying on her side no longer helped.

He groped for his radio. "Baumen,where's . . . that . . . ambulance !" The girl needed immediate suction to clear her airway.

"En route. It should be there any time."

The girl's breath gurgled.

Garreth stared down at her in anguish. His own breath rasped through a throat closed tight. Below, her friend in the car continued to scream in hysteria. "Any time" would be too late. "Any time" now she would be dead, drowned in her own blood.

She choked.

Unless he did something.

He bit his lip, and grimaced at the p.r.i.c.k of his unextended fangs. No. Rain washed down his face and splashed on the slicker covering the girl.

The injured cow grunted, each cry punctuated with a thrash of its legs.

Garreth pushed sodden hair out of his eyes. No, he could not do that. He would not touch human blood. Must not.

Desperately he peered toward town, but no emergency-vehicle lights showed through the rain.

The girl choked again.

His gut knotted. He should not touch her, and yet . . . if he did not, she would die.

"All right!" he shouted, though at whom Garreth had no idea. Fate, perhaps, or Lane's ghost. "Allright. Just this once."

He knelt at the girl's head, lifted her chin, and crouched over her. His mouth fastened over hers, sucking. He would spit out the blood, would- Then it filled his mouth.

Every cell of him screamed in joy. The hot, salty-metallic liquid flowed over his tongue with a richness animal blood never had.

A richness his instincts had been craving since the moment he woke in the San Francisco morgue. Garreth could not turn away and spit. Something else s.n.a.t.c.hed control of him. He swallowed.

The blood burned like fire in his throat, but a fire that cooled, not seared, soothing the other fire of thirst. And from it warmth spread outward through the rest of him, warmth and a crackling surge of energy. All awareness of the rain, the mortally injured cow, and the screaming girl in the car faded to the distant edge of perception. Garreth sucked and swallowed again, and again, ravenously, greedily relishing every drop.

Then, also dimly, he became aware of a siren wailing, rising above the cries of the trapped girl.

The chest of the girl at his knees heaved, drawing in a convulsive breath.

A hand touched Garreth's shoulder. "We'll take over now."

Fury boiled up in him.No, not yet! He clung snarling to his prey.

The hand pulled at him. "Mikaelian!"

The sound of his name ripped through the thing controlling him. Garreth suddenly saw what he was doing. In horror he flung away, jumping up and backing until the fence stopped his retreat. Barbs p.r.i.c.ked him but he barely felt them.Animal! Is this the way you serve and protect, feeding on a helpless girl?

One of the ambulance attendants glanced up from examining the girl. "You've got her airway clear. Good work."

Good work? Garreth grimaced bitterly. They had no idea how he had done it, or that he had taken such pleasure in the act. A pleasure that part of him still felt, savoring the taste lingering in his mouth. That part of him also pointed out with some smugness that for the first time since he entered vampire life all hunger had been satisfied.

Red lights flashing on the highway toward town caught his eye. The wrecker. That reminded him of the car in the ditch.

The girl in it was still screaming. He hurriedly slid into the ditch and lay down beside the car again to reach in and catch her hand. "Kim, honey, it's all right. I'm back."

To his ears the rea.s.surances he murmured at her sounded inane, but perhaps all that mattered was the sound of his voice and being touched by someone. The girl calmed. He made no attempt to leave again, just lay holding her hand, the two of them alone in the rain and cold and mud. Thank G.o.d the wrecker was coming. The water in the ditch felt deeper, and the girl's hand had gone icy.

Then abruptly the solitude vanished. The ditch swarmed with people: the wrecker crew, one attendant from the ambulance, a deputy sheriff from Lebeau, the town north, and a tall, beefy man Garreth recognized as Dell Gehrt. Someone put the cow out of its agony.

Garreth continued holding the girl's hand through the jolts and b.u.mps of winching the car up on the shoulder and while it was cut apart to free her.

Finally the ambulance screamed away with its two patients. Garreth collected his slicker from where it had been pulled off the girl and slipped back into it to protect the seat of his car from his messy uniform, then leaving the deputy to finish up at the accident scene, he headed back to town.

7

Garreth had never been so glad to finish a shift. Despite the energy from the girl's blood, exhaustion dragged at him as though the sun has risen.

Doris Dreiling's plump, motherly face peered at him with concern over the top of the communications desk. "Are you all right?

You look like you could use some fortified coffee."

That meant brandy in it. She kept a bottle in her desk-against regulations-for just such occasions. Lien used to meet Harry and him at the door with rum-laced tea, he remembered wistfully. What a lifesaver that had been sometimes. Now - He smiled wryly.Now I'd have to have Doris drink the brandy and take the shot from her. "Thank you, no. I'm fine."

"How are the girls?"

The girls. He sighed and peeled off his slicker. "The one from the car just has a broken ankle and some broken ribs. For which she can probably credit her seat belt. The other one . . ." He grimaced at the blood and mud smearing both sides of his slicker. It would have to be washed thoroughly before it could be worn again. "They don't know yet. She might have brain damage, or never regain consciousness. X-rays showed a severe skull fracture with fragments in her brain. The helicopter from Fort Riley picked her up a few minutes ago to fly her to the KU Med Center for surgery."

Mud crusted his equipment belt, too. And probably filled his holster and gun. He dropped it all on the floor to deal with later.

Right now- He sat down at a desk and rolled a form into the typewriter to start on his reports.

A key clicked in the back door. Duncan stamped in. "G.o.d what a miserable night. Doris, sweetie, would you consider making up a thermos of your fortified coffee to go. Jesus!" He stared at Garreth. "You're a mess, Mikaelian. It must have been some fun up there."

Garreth typed on without looking up. "Where were you? I could have used some help."

"Sorry. I was on the way when I got a flat, and by the time I changed the tire, you didn't need me anymore. I could hear on the radio that the ambulance and wrecker and a deputy sheriff were there. So, kind of tough out there on your own, is it . . . even for the Frisco Kid?"

Garreth stiffened, anger flaring in him. The smug tone told him there had been no flat. It was merely Duncan's alibi for not backing him up.

He looked up, and either the anger showed in his face or his eyes reflected the light because Duncan retreated several steps.

Garreth made no attempt to follow, however. He just said with deadly quiet, "I think the question is the ethics of letting personal differences between officers jeopardize civilian lives. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to finish this paperwork and go home."

Bending over the typewriter again, he saw by the flush rising in Duncan's face that the shot had hit dead center. But as Duncan slammed out of the office, Garreth wondered unhappily whether he had solved their problem or only made it worse.

8

Rather than mess up the inside of his car, he left the ZX in the City Hall lot and walked home. What did being wet a little longer matter? Halfway to the Schoning house he realized he did not really want to go home. What would he do there but think about the accident and remember the taste of the girl's blood?

He turned south at the next corner. Minutes later he walked up the main drive of Mount of Olives Cemetery. Obelisques and other ornate headstones of the older graves near the gate bore names like Dreiling, Pfeifer, Pfannenstiel, and Wiesner. And Bieber.

Garreth pa.s.sed them all, striding on until he reached a grave on the far west side which bore no headstone or name, just a metal stake with a laminated card reading:Unknown male d. 11/24/83.

Garreth knelt beside it. How small a grave it seemed for so tall a woman. Not that much of Lane remained after the fire. He began pulling the new spring growth of dandylions and other weeds sprouting in the gra.s.s around the edge of the plot. The rain- softened earth made the task easy; even dandylion taproots came up. Garreth still worked carefully, avoiding the thorns of rose bushes on the grave.

The memory of Maggie's voice whispered in his head. "This is crazy, Garreth. The man was a cop hater. He tried tokillyou and Ed Duncan. Yet you look after his grave like your mother is buried there. Why ?"

A lot of people wondered the same thing, Garreth knew. "He was also someone's son," he had replied for Maggie's and everyone's benefit.

New leaves showed on the canes of the rose bushes planted on top of the grave. Soon there would be buds, then, hopefully, a profusion of blossoms. Blood red American Beauties. What more fitting for Lane?

Thinking about her here, he usually pictured not the vampire, the killer, but Mada Bieber, the child she had been . . . angry and tormented, her unusual height and quick temper making her a pitifully easy target for the ridicule of other children. He ached for the child and for all she might have been if hatred had not driven her to beg Irina Rodek for the vampire life as a way to wreak revenge on the humanity she despised. He talked to the woman, though.

"You would have laughed seeing me tonight," He carefully worked a weed free, making sure he had its roots, too. "I can just hear you: 'See, lover; that's what this life is about. Human blood is what we'remeantto drink. They'reour cattle, not the four- legged kind. So stop being so stubborn and unnatural. Stop trying to be human and join your people .' You'd like me to become like you." He jerked out a dandylion. "It would mean you'd won after all."

With her rich, mocking laughter echoing in his head, he continued cleaning the grave until growing light and a sudden drag at him announced dawn. Garreth sighed. Time to go, before he fell asleep on the cool, inviting earth, or early-bird citizens saw him and wondered why one of Baumen's finest was running around looking as though he had wallowed in a pig sty.

He might already be too late for the latter. The sound of running footsteps carried across the cemetery. By the time Garreth managed to push to to his feet, a man in sweats appeared out of the drizzle up one of the paths. So intent was his effort, though- blowing steam at every step, face grim with eyes focused inward-that he pa.s.sed close enough to touch without ever seeing Garreth.

Surprise made Garreth call out. "Good morning, Mr. Fowler."

The writer started violently and flung around white-eyed, then let out a gusty breath of relief. "It's you, Officer Mikaelian. You gave me a bit of a turn. Disheartening, isn't it? We think we're such civilized, rational beings and then something appears out of nowhere in a cemetery and we jump right out of our b.l.o.o.d.y skins."

"Yet you chose to run through the cemetery. Isn't it a cold, wet morning for exercise?"

"Yes, well, I suppose, but I'm British, aren't I?" Fowler smiled wryly. "I'm used to weather like this. And I've been addicted to running since Alistair Cooper."

Garreth blinked. "Who?"

"A spy character of mine who used marathon running as a cover. I started running to learn what it feels like." He peered at Garreth. "What about you? Surely it isn't part of your normal patrol to be out here dressed and looking that way. If you don't mind a personal observation, you look like h.e.l.l."

"It's the way I always look when I've been walking in the rain after pulling sixteen-year-old girls out of what's left of their car."

Fowler sucked in his breath. "b.l.o.o.d.y shame. I keep a flask in the car for myself after a run on a day like today. You're welcome to a nip."His gaze slipped past Garreth as he talked. Garreth turned but saw nothing except Lane's grave. His chest tightened.

"Something wrong?"

Fowler blinked. "What? Oh. No, nothing. The rose bushes just caught my eye. You know that's how legend says you keep a vampire in his coffin."

Garreth hoped his start looked like surprise and not guilt. "I thought you used garlic or drove a stake through his heart."

"That's all the cinema shows, yes," Fowler said, and snorted, "but real vampire lore says to drape the coffin or grave in mountain laurel or roses. The thorns supposedly have magical power against vampires."

Garreth kept his face expressionless. "I'll remember that."

Fowler circled around him to lean down and touch the new green growth on one bush. "The wordvampire is Balkan in origin, of course, but vampires aren't. They can be found mentioned as far back as Babylonia under the nameEkimmus. The Greeks had them, and the Chinese." He turned to lift a brow at Garreth. "Your Irish forefathers had them, too."

Dearg-due. Yes, I know.It still hurt remembering Grandma Doyle hissing the term at him. "Interesting. I take it you're into vampires?"

Fowler smiled. "It's purely professional interest. I used to write horror novels. But what a fool I am, nattering on when you're standing there looking positively frozen. Why don't you come back to my car for that nip. Then I'll give you a lift home."