Undead - One Foot In The Grave Part 10

She shrugged off her robe and I tried not to stare. Her suit was a white one-piece that contrasted nicely with her dark skin. Although her figure lacked the architectural extremes that the Doman's dancers had displayed the previous night, she had a lean, muscled physique that seemed every bit as distracting.

"Which is a euphemism for what?" My voice hardly squeaked at all.

"Finding people like you and bringing them in." She unlatched the right arm support on her wheelchairand swung it down and out of the way.

"I thought half the uproar was because there are no people like me."

She held up her arms. "I'm beginning to think so, too."

I let that one pa.s.s as I bent down and lifted her out of the chair.

This time there was no car crash, no pumping adrenaline, no gathering crowd to distract me: even with augmented strength, I could tell that Lupe wasn't light. In fact, she was darned heavy for a woman her size. Not that there was anything wrong with her size: I stand six-feet-two in my stocking feet and I've always preferred tall, long-limbed women. Jenny had been the only exception- "What's wrong?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Am I too heavy? You suddenly looked very unhappy."

"Not unhappy," I lied, "just thoughtful."

"About what?" One brown arm remained around my neck, the other hand turned my face to look at her. "I am too heavy, aren't I? That's what you're thinking about."

"Not too heavy," I said, shrugging my shoulders and rehefting her in my arms. "It's just been a while since I held anyone like this."

"Oh. Oh, I see." Her eyes said that she did, indeed, see. "Well, there's no need for you to pretend chivalrously: I am heavier than I look. There's a reason for it."

"Muscle tissue is denser than body fat," I said. "A woman in your shape should weigh more-" I suddenly realized that I was just standing there, holding her in my arms, and making no move toward the pool.

Was it happening again? I was aware of an odd discomfort at her nearness, a physiological response that seemed to be building as I held her in my arms. . . .

But it wasn't quite the same as my reaction to the dancers the night before.

"Nice try, but it's more than a matter of muscle to body fat ratios," she said.

"Okay, I give. What's your secret?"

"Taj says it has something to do with the shapeshifting/ma.s.s paradox."

I forced my legs to move and took her over to the shallow end of the pool. "Ah, of course it does." I dipped my toe in the water. It felt warm.

"Yeah? Well, we don't understand it as well as you pretend to. Vampires and lycanthropes present opposite ends of the same problem: neither group tends to weigh what their body ma.s.s would indicate.

Weres tend to be heavier than the norm for their size, whether in human or animal form. And our ma.s.s seems to shift along with our change in form: we lose it and then regain it inexplicably. Our resident physicist is going nuts trying to figure out how it can be possible without negating half a dozen laws of reality."

A series of half-circle steps descended into the pool and I began wading down into the water. "I take it that vampires tend to weigh less than a human their size should?" She nodded. "And what about ma.s.s when they turn into bats?"

She snorted. "Oh, you've been watching too many horror movies. Vampires can't turn into bats!"

"They can't?"

She shook her head.

"Huge, batlike creatures, then?"

She shook her head again.

"Wolves?"

"Nope.""Mist?"

"Look at me," she warbled, "I'm as helpless as a kitten up a tree. . . ."

Errol Garner was probably spinning in his grave. "No mist, huh?"

"Huh-uh."

"Well, dammit, what can I turn into?"

"You could always walk around the corner and turn into a convenience store or something."

"b.u.g.g.e.r. If I can't shapeshift, what's the point of being undead?" I was in up to my waist, now.

Reluctantly, I lowered her into the water. "I was really looking forward to being able to fly."

"Oh, you'll be able to do the next best thing," she said. And then ducked beneath the water.

"Next best thing?" I asked when she came back up for air a minute later.

She pulled her hair back into a silky black cable that dribbled water between her shoulderblades.

"Did you ever wonder why vampires fancy all those caped outfits?"

"Well-"

"Hang-gliding!" she laughed.

I just looked at her.

"Seriously. A vampire's ma.s.s and weight are such that a couple of square yards of fabric, the proper tailoring, and a good breeze occasionally a.s.sisted by elevation of a castle parapet or a second story window-well, a lot of folks would swear afterwards that they saw you flying."

"A few might even swear that you turned into a giant batlike creature," I mused.

"I think you get the picture." She submerged again, surfaced by one of the ladders along the side, and began swimming laps back and forth across the width of the pool.

Interesting.

I stood and watched, enjoying the warmth of the water as it swirled around the lower half of my body, enjoying the flash of toned arms and legs cutting the water before me. For a moment I was tempted to join her, to try to match her, lap for lap.

But I was tired. New nightmares seemed to be replacing the old and I hadn't slept soundly in my new bed. The water seemed to sap my strength further, its warmth making me surprisingly drowsy. I moved to the side of the pool and hoisted myself up and out.

The cooler air quickly revived me and I walked down to the diving board at the deep end of the pool. The board was only a couple of meters above the surface of the water, which was just as well, as I hadn't gone off any high-boards since those long-gone college years.

As I climbed the short ladder I looked up and saw Bachman in the observation gallery, one story up.

She smiled so I waved. It wasn't much of a wave, but then it hadn't been much of a smile, either.

Jackknife? Backflip? I walked to the end of the board and decided to make the first dive an ordinary, head-first, try-not-to-miss-the-water affair. After I'd gotten the feel of the board, not to mention my own reflexes, I'd try something fancier.

The board was unresponsive. Or maybe it was my reduced ma.s.s that made it seem stiff and unyielding. In any event, I was slightly off balance and I cut the water more like a spatula than a knife.

Warmth enveloped me again and I slid down through its enfolding weightiness until I touched bottom.

And there I stayed.

I had always required extra poundage on my weight-belt when I went scuba diving, so I figured my reduced weight and ma.s.s would make me even more buoyant now.

I figured wrong.

I reached for the surface, scooping at the water with my hands and kicking off the bottom. I barely moved.This was not good: I hadn't taken a particularly deep breath going in and already my lungs were requesting more air. Panic was kick-starting my adrenal glands and riding them around my body like a couple of circus motorcycles in a round steel cage. I started scrabbling at the water like a marionette on rubber strings.

No good.

Fatigue eventually overpowered my hysteria, bringing the tranquility of exhaustion. Finally, I just stood there on the bottom of the pool, in the middle of the deep end, and looked around.

I could make out a frothy line of churning water off in the murk toward the shallow end. I wondered how long it would take Lupe to notice I was gone.

Think, dammit! My lungs were on fire and my vision was starting to fuzz around the edges.

Walk! I could walk up to the shallow end of the pool! But a few bouncing steps brought me to a steep incline that was too slippery to negotiate. I looked around. It was getting harder to see: the light seemed dimmer, now.

There! Maybe ten feet away. . . .

I turned, angling toward the side of the pool and moving farther into the deep end, again. Walking was difficult: I had to reach out and claw at the water as if tunneling through gelatin and bounce off my toes and the b.a.l.l.s of my feet. The result was a slow-motion gait that belonged in an old, fifties, men-on-the-moon sci-fi movie.

Slowly, I turned; step by step, inch by inch. . . .

By the time I reached the side I couldn't see anything at all. I had to feel my way along like a blind man searching for the opening in a wall. Except I wasn't searching for a window or a door.

My chest bucked and heaved, trying to draw air into my aching lungs: despite all conscious resistance, I knew I would be breathing water in less than a minute. Trying to concentrate past the fear, I stood on tiptoes and bounced.

Nothing.

Move down a foot and try again.

Just flat, smooth concrete.

Maybe it's out of reach.

Try again.

Can't even tell if I jumped that time.

Feels like I'm dissolving: legs turning to water.

Hard to keep arms above my head.

Jump.

Something there.

My hand closed on a rung.

I had found the ladder.

As I pulled myself up and out of the water, Elizabeth Bachman leaned down. "Now you know why vampires don't like to cross running water." The brown cat with the two tails was crouched beneath a deck chair some ten feet behind her, watching me with wide, golden eyes. I turned my head and observed Lupe still swimming back and forth across the middle of the pool.

"Thanks . . . for sounding . . . the alarm," I gasped.

She smirked. "I wanted to see if you could make it out on your own."

"And a good . . . thing, too." I used the looping railings on the ladder to pull myself upright. "If you had . . . rescued me . . . I would have . . . been forever . . . in your debt."

It was obvious from the expression on her face that she hadn't thought of that.I stayed in the pool for a while longer.

My philosophy tends toward the idea of getting right back up on the horse that throws you. But I stayed in the shallow end because my philosophy doesn't include confusing nerve with stupidity.

Besides, I wanted to wait until my legs stopped shaking before trying to walk out in front of Garou and Bachman.

While I experimented with my newfound lack of buoyancy, I watched Damien quit the hot tub area and move to a rack of weights near the far side of the shallow end. He removed his sweats, stripping down to a pair of gym shorts, and started in on a series of stretches and warm-up exercises. It was hard not to stare: Schwarzenegger and Stallone had better physiques, but you could only come to that conclusion after thinking about it for awhile. And, in regards to everything else, the vampire was better looking.

"You continue to surprise me," Lupe said as she steered her wheelchair beside the edge of the pool.

"I would've expected you to be the type to stare at Deirdre, instead."

I looked down at my own body. "I think I'm jealous."

"Yeah, me too." She put her hands to her bosom. "He's got more cleavage than I do."

"That," I said, "is a near steal from Groucho Marx."

Her smile turned into a look of confusion. "Gotta go," she said, putting her hands to the secondary wheel rims.

"Hold on, I'll take you back."

"No. I need the exercise." She flexed her arms. "Good for the shoulders and the pecs." She flexed her smile and rolled away with an unseemly degree of haste.

Bachman was already gone, so I climbed out and fetched my towel. Drying off, I wandered over to the weight area.

"You like to lift?" the vampire asked affably as I approached.