Undead - One Foot In The Grave Part 23

We exited the bus and I followed Suki up to the front door where Lupe was already waiting.

The doorbell didn't sound like a foghorn, no gargantuan butler answered the door, and the owners didn't look anything like the cartoon creations of Charles Addams. Susan Satterfield was a buxom redhead whose youthful enthusiasm and friendliness belied the fact that she was about to enter her fourth decade. Her husband, Jim, had curly, sandy-colored hair and a laid-back demeanor that was affable inits own way. In fact, he seemed deceptively serious-minded at first.

It didn't take long to discover that they were marvelous hosts, adept at making one feel comfortable and devoid of the need to impress anybody. They were children of the sixties with its inherent values, educated in the seventies, and successful in the eighties; all of which they had retained and brought with them into the nineties with the joie de vivre that comes from being well-centered and unpretentious. And nurtured a wee bit, Suki explained sotto voce, by having won the state lottery a few years back, as well.

Like the poem "Vagabond House," their home was a three-story treasure trove of antiquities, a museum of knickknacks from around the world, and a gallery of exotica. It was obvious before we reached the end of the hallway that the quick tour would take hours-if we were allowed to ask questions: days.

We entered what would have been the drawing room in another, bygone age and found Dr.

Mooncloud.

She sat half-swallowed by an overstuffed armchair with her left leg in a cast and propped on an ancient ottoman of leopard skin and with legs of filigreed jade. Her head was bandaged and one eye still drooped a bit in a lake of purple and red flesh. There was a surprising resemblance to one of the African ceremonial masks that adorned the wall behind her.

She was not alone. A pale man in a dark suit sat in a caneback chair adjacent to hers.

"Lupe! Suki! Chris!" She struggled to rise, but it was clearly a lost battle before it even began. The girls converged, hugged. I hung back and smiled. And wondered.

Wondered about Bachman's and the general's belief that there was a turncoat in the Doman's household. Did that put the finger of suspicion on Lupe since Mooncloud was out of town and essentially out of commission at the time of the raid? Or had she arranged things long distance?

Wondered if they were both guilty but not particularly good at this double agent business as both had suffered heavy losses this past week.

And wondered if this was a good time to make a run for it.

"And you are Mr. Csejthe?" The pale man rose from his chair and extended a hand so white as to be practically indistinguishable from his shirt cuff. "My name is Smirl. Dennis Smirl." His hair was dark, shot with strands of silver, and I figured him for the mid to late forties.

I shook his hand. "I'm Chris Csejthe." I also noticed his impeccable tailoring and how it came surprisingly close to concealing the bulge under his left armpit.

"Mr. Smirl is from Chicago," Mooncloud said. The pale man suddenly had Suki's and Lupe's full attention.

"Perhaps we should all sit down," Susan Satterfield suggested.

"Something to drink?" her husband offered.

It was an interesting collection of stories we had to tell each other.

Smirl explained how the New York enclave had been interfering in Chicago's business dealings these past two years and how there were rumors of a new Doman running affairs in the Big Apple. Lupe followed up with recent attacks on Seattle, and then Mooncloud and I took turns trying to define my part in the current equation. Which brought us around to the Kansas City a.s.signment and why we were all here.

"We tracked it for several days, never quite catching up to it," Mooncloud said. "It's fast. But the reason we were having trouble isolating a pattern and narrowing the search grid turned out to be handlers."

"Handlers?" Smirl asked.

"Black limo and at least three people a.s.sisting. New York boys. We also picked up some information on a separate day team operating out of the old HoJo up on the bluff, above the river.Apparently they were investigating the whereabouts of one Victor Wren, but we were spread too thin to check them out beyond that."

I felt a peculiar p.r.i.c.kling sensation at the nape of my neck. "Who's Victor Wren?" I whispered.

Mooncloud shrugged.

"Handlers complicate a trackdown," Lupe was saying. "A rogue generally leaves a trail because it's new to the undead lifestyle . . . has no resources. . . ."

"The handlers have been covering the spoor," Mooncloud added. "Eliminating whatever bodies may have acc.u.mulated-and, believe me, there will have been bodies with this one."

"What is a rogue doing with handlers?" I wanted to know.

"This one's different." Mooncloud's face looked haunted. "We're not tracking a newly created undead this time. This one has been a vampire for a long time. Maybe a very long time. I think New York provided handlers because this one isn't quite human."

"You sure about the New York connection?" Smirl asked.

Mooncloud nodded. "I recognized my opposite number."

"Dr. Cutler?" Lupe was incredulous. "But he's not a field operative, he's strictly research!"

"Apparently he's doing some field research this time around." Mooncloud shifted her cast to a more comfortable position. "I didn't recognize the other two, but Luis identified them as vampires."

"What happened to my brother?" Lupe's voice was calm but anguish leaked from her eyes.

"It was two nights after we finally tracked them to the old River Quay area. They were using an abandoned warehouse for a nest."

"Certainly fits the New York MO," Smirl murmured.

"Luis had the scent. I was loaded down with the whole AV rig and packing two crossbows, c.o.c.ked and ready. Ditto for Liz-minus the rig, of course. She was supposed to hang back-wait for my signal.

I was waiting for Luis to get in position. Something went wrong. I don't know what she saw from the other side-maybe they were tipped off, heard us or something-but she went crashing in before either of us were ready."

She shook her head. "It was a mess. Cutler's human, so we didn't waste time on him. Luis took down a vampire and I shot another and the rogue."

Suki leaned forward, an expression of uncharacteristic intensity on her face. "How did you know that it was the rogue?"

"The other two wore suits and-I don't quite know how to say this-looked normal. But the other guy . . . whoo! He was a nightmare! Tall, thin, almost spidery-and dressed in black from head to toe.

His face was, well, distorted in some odd way. He looked feral-wild, and barely restrained-and, in the brief opportunity I had to observe him, I got this uncanny feeling that his handlers had their hands full."

"But you shot him?" Lupe demanded more than asked.

Mooncloud nodded. "Could have sworn the bolt caught him square in the chest. He went down like he'd been poleaxed. A moment later, he was back on his feet, holding the b.l.o.o.d.y bolt in his hand. He started for me, but Luis finished the first vampire and intercepted him. The other one had Bachman down.

I didn't see her discorporation because he was blocking my view and I was a little distracted at the time, trying to rec.o.c.k the first crossbow. The next thing I knew, he was up and coming at me. Knocked me down before I could get the quarrel in place. If it hadn't been for Luis. . ." She shivered.

"Tell me about Luis-?" Lupe was unwavering in her pursuit of her brother's fate.

"The rogue killed him," Mooncloud said simply. Only there was something that wasn't simple in the way that she said it.

"How?" Lupe was relentless.

"It doesn't matter how. He died bravely. He saved my life. And we must decide how to proceedfrom here."

"No!" Lupe's fist came down on the chair arm and there was a sharp report as wood cracked from the force of the blow. "I want to know how he was killed! It is not so easy to kill a werewolf and I want to know if they were carrying!"

I looked at Suki.

"Silver bullets," she whispered.

"I don't know," Mooncloud said. By now it was obvious to all of us that she was being evasive.

"Then, how did he die?" The blood from the Latino side of Garou's ancestry was in full evidence now.

"I don't really think that this is a good-"

She was on her feet. "I will look at his body and learn for myself, then!" She turned and took two steps.

Smirl was up and had her by the arm with surprising swiftness and she swung around, growling. The metamorphosis had begun and, as she raked her fingernails across his face, they were already becoming claws. He refused to release her arm, even though the left side of his face was hanging down to his collar in ribbons.

"Ms. Garou," he said quietly, seeming to take no notice that a portion of his jawbone was visible through the spaghetti spill of flesh. Curiously, there was no blood yet. "Dr. Mooncloud has her reasons for sparing you the details."

"I don't want to be spared the details!" she snarled, peach fuzz matting into dense hair along her arms and up her throat. "He was my brother! Do you understand? I have to know! I can't walk away and go on with the rest of my life not knowing!" Her voice became more guttural as her face began to elongate.

"I've got to know!"

"Sit down and promise me," Mooncloud demanded, "that you won't try to look at your brother's remains."

"Sit down," Smirl echoed mildly. The muscles in Lupe's captive arm bunched and the shoulder seam parted in her shirt but the man from Chicago refused to relinquish his grip. "You're right: you have a right to know. And so I will tell you. But you will sit down. You will control yourself. And you will have to be content with what she chooses to tell you because you will want to remember your brother the way he was. Not the way he is now."

Slowly, she lowered herself back down into her chair. As he released her arm, her skin resurfaced amid the dissolving fur and her teeth retracted back into smooth, white uniformity. Smirl reached up, gathering the shredded flesh into his fingers, and pushed it back into the gaping wound in the side of his face. There was still no blood, and the white strips of skin and tissue seemed to melt back into a contiguous whole like a sculpted expanse of pale vanilla pudding starting to set. He sat back down, and it was as if his face had never been touched.

I leaned over and murmured to Suki: "Vampire?"

"No," she whispered, "why do you ask?"

I shrugged. Maybe I'd pursue it later. Maybe I'd decide to forget the whole thing and go get quietly drunk.

"Lupe. . ." Taj Mooncloud took her hands in her own, "there is no way to mince words and still satisfy you on this. The rogue-it tore your brother apart." It was painfully clear that she meant this in the most literal sense.

I got up as Lupe began to cry and wandered to the far side of the room. There were display cases containing shrunken heads, a monkey's paw, a purported unicorn horn, helmets, keys, skulls, charms, amulets, totems, talismans, and other occult and exotic bric-a-brac. There was even an honest-to-G.o.d Egyptian mummy."Imhotep."

I turned and looked at Jim Satterfield, who was standing at my shoulder. "Excuse me, but you're what?"

He smiled and shrugged. "Im-ho-tep. We named him after the original mummy-the one in the old Boris Karloff flick."

"I thought it was Kharis or something like that."

"Those were the later movies. Kharis and his deathless love for the Princess Anaka. Lon Chaney, Jr.

did two or three in the forties, maybe the early fifties, as well. He's remembered for the Wolf Man but I think he was an even better Mummy."

What could I say to that? "A boy's best friend," I mused.

"It's authentic," he said, looking as if he should be wearing a cardigan and smoking a pipe. "We have several consignments of Egyptian antiquities. That bowl right there contains genuine Tanis leaves that we handpicked ourselves in San Al-Hajar Al-Qibliyah, the ancient site of Pi-Ramesse, in the Egyptian delta."

"Tanis leaves?"

"For the elixir of life. You know: three leaves to keep the heart beating, nine for movement-never more than that-and boil them in the sacred urn. . ."

"The sacred urn."

"Right. And over in that display case is the Scroll of Thoth."

"Scroll of Thoth?"

"Containing the magic words that enabled Isis to raise Osiris from the dead."

"Oh, that Scroll of Thoth."

"It's an authentic copy. The one next to it is an authentic translation of the text."

"An 'authentic' copy?"

He nodded. "Got it from a dealer in Egyptian antiquities."

I squinted at the spidered calligraphy. "Oh, Amon Ra! Oh! G.o.d of G.o.ds," I read. "Death is but the doorway to new life. We live today, we shall live again. In many forms shall we return. . . ."

"Enough." Taj Mooncloud was suddenly by my side, wobbling on her crutches, one hand grasping my arm.

I looked at her. "What?"

"You don't know what you're messing with. Leave it alone."

I looked at the scroll. I looked back at her.

"It contains Words of Power," she murmured.

I bit back a smile. "For heaven's sake, Taj, it's only a tourist's souvenir," I said in low voice. "There must be thousands of these things sold every year-read by thousands of people."

"Ordinary people," she qualified. "In the hands of a shaman this could be something quite different."

"Oh, and am I a shaman, now?"

"We don't know what you are. You have your own confluence of power. Perhaps you could trigger other Powers. Perhaps not. It is best to err on the side of caution and let sleeping G.o.ds lie."

There was no point in arguing. I helped Mooncloud back to her chair. The scroll had to be a second-rate souvenir. Likewise the mummy. Even though it looked genuine, Egypt hadn't permitted the sale or export of its cultural treasures or antiquities for many years. It was highly unlikely that a midwest couple living in the Kansas City suburbs could be harboring a genuine Egyptian mummy. But then I would have calculated higher odds against said couple hosting a werewolf, a semi-vampire, and a Chicago gangster whose real name was probably Gumby, under the same roof.

Behind me I heard Mrs. Satterfield saying: "Are you sure you want to leave so soon? We have extrabeds. . . ."

"We're wasting moonlight," Suki said as I turned around.

Mooncloud had just sat down and was once again struggling to leverage herself out of her chair with her crutches. Smirl stood and helped her up. "I appreciate your hospitality and handling the arrangements for Luis's remains. But we dare not let the trail grow colder by another night."

Jim Satterfield nodded. "Is there anything else we can do to help?"

"Cross your fingers," answered Mooncloud.