They Thirst Part 26

But what if it doesn't? What if this b.a.s.t.a.r.d gets so big and wild it whirls all the way across the mountains and into L.A.?

Impossible, he rea.s.sured himself. Los Angeles might get a little grit, but they needed the winds to blow off their smog cover anyway. Nothing to worry about.

He stared at that phone for a few seconds more, looked out the window at the lizard-hide sky, and returned to the Mike Shayne mystery he'd been reading before he'd heard the grate of sand against gla.s.s.

EIGHT.

Gayle Clarke pulled her Mustang up to the curb on Romaine Street and stared at the house with the black crucifix painted on the front door. There was a word written underneath it in a foreign language. Some of the windows were painted with crosses, too-the house looked like some kind of weird church. She glanced at the mailbox: Palatazin. Reluctantly she got out of her car and walked up the porch steps to the door. The black paint was new; she could see where it had dripped. She knocked on the door and waited.

It was almost one o'clock. It had taken her two hours to get out of her apartment, then she'd driven over to Pancho's and forced herself to eat two tacos before driving up through Hollywood. She wore clean denims and a light blue blouse; her face was scrubbed and, if not exactly infused with a pink glow, much healthier-looking than it had been this morning. There was still a gla.s.sy, shocked look in her eyes that wouldn't go away. Behind her, wind swirled through the trees and hedges along Romaine, making a noise like barely restrained laughter.

The door opened, and Palatazin looked out at her. He nodded and without a word stepped back to allow her in. He was wearing gray slacks and a white pullover s.h.i.+rt that showed his belly in its full splendor; he looked oddly vulnerable, just another human being when not seen from the other side of a captain's desk at Parker Center. His eyes were dark and troubled, and when they locked with hers, she felt the skin at the back of her neck p.r.i.c.kle.

He closed the door, locked it, and motioned toward the sofa. "Please sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? Maybe a c.o.ke?" She could still taste the tacos, and now her stomach was doing flipflops. "Uh ... a c.o.ke would be fine."

"All right. Just make yourself comfortable." He disappeared toward the rear of the house, and she sat looking around, her purse in her lap. It seemed to be a cozy house, much warmer than she would have thought. It smelled vaguely of onions and potatoes; probably some kind of foreign dish he favored, she guessed.

There was a rusted metal box on the coffee table in front of her.

"So you're Gayle Clarke," someone said, and Gayle looked up into the icy eyes of a gray-haired woman who stood gazing at her from across the room. She was pretty with high, sharp cheekbones, but now the flesh was stretched tight to give her face a hard, masklike appearance. "You're the one who wrote such awful things about my husband."

"I didn't write anything-"

"Are you denying your trashy paper said he ought to be fired?" Her eyes flared.

"Maybe it did, but I don't write editorials."

"Oh. Of course you don't," Jo said with a bitter edge."Do you realize the strain you've put on my Andy? You and all the rest of the filthy papers in this city?"

She came forward a few steps, and Gayle tensed. "Well, you got what you wanted.

You can be happy now." Her lower lip was trembling, and now tears of anger were beginning to dance in her eyes. "Why did you want to hurt him?" she said quietly. "He never did anything to you . . ."

"What's this?" Palatazin said, coming into the room with Gayle's drink. He looked at Jo in bewilderment, then at Gayle. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Gayle said. "Your wife and I were just getting . . . acquainted." He handed her the gla.s.s and picked up the morning Times from where it lay in a chair. "Have you seen this, Miss Clarke?"

"No." She took it from him and looked at the front page. The headline was about the Mideast situation, the talks breaking down again. But another story just above the fold caught her eye. The headlines said "Bats Kept Coming," Says Shaken Officer. There was a shorter kicker line above it, Six Die At Parker Center. "What's this?" she said, looking up at Palatazin.

"Read it." He sat down in the chair and folded his hands before him. "Those men who were killed were my friends." His eyes seemed almost black. "When you're finished with that, I'd like you to look through the clippings in that box on the table."

Gayle read the article, feeling Jo Palatazin's gaze burning into her skull.

"This says a suspect in the Roach killings got away. Is that right?" Yes.

"A suspect? Or the Roach himself?"

"It was him," Palatazin said quietly.

"My G.o.d!" She looked up sharply. "What is this all about? What's with the crosses scrawled on your doors and windows?"

"In time," he said. "There's someone else coming to join us. He should be here soon."

"Who?"

"A priest from East L.A. named Silvera."

"A priest? What's this going to be, a confession?" Jo said coldly, "I think you're the one who has sins to confess . . ."

"Please," Palatazin said, and touched his wife's arm. "She's a guest in this house, and she was very kind to come."

Gayle opened the metal box. When she saw what the clippings were about, she felt as if she'd been kicked in the head. She looked through them for a few minutes, her hands beginning to tremble.

There was a knock at the door. Palatazin answered it, and Father Silvera stood there staring darkly at the crucifix painted on the front window. "Come in, Father," Palatazin said. When Silvera entered the house, he instantly caught the same odor Gayle had smelled. He recognized it as the aroma of garlic. Palatazin introduced Jo and Gayle, and Silvera sat down on the sofa.

"Thank you for coming, Father," Palatazin said. "I appreciate your driving all this distance. Can I get you a cup of coffee?"

"Yes, please. Cream and sugar."

"I'll get it," Jo said; she glared once more at Gayle before leaving the room.

"Did you bring what I asked, Father?" Palatazin asked quietly, leaning forward in his chair.

Silvera nodded and reached into his coat. He brought out something wrapped in white cloth and handed it to Palatazin. "Just as you asked," he said. "Now I'd like to know what you need it for, and why you called me since there are maybe thirty Catholic churches within a five-mile radius of this house." Palatazin was stripping away the white cloth. Inside was a small corked bottle holding about two ounces of clear liquid. "I called you," he said, "because I thought you would understand the . . . gravity of the situation. You were in that tenement building in East L.A. You saw the bodies being carried out. I hoped you'd-"

"I see," the priest said. "So that's what this is all about-your belief in vampires. That's why you've painted crosses on your doors and windows. That's why you felt you needed a vial of holy water. Mr. Palatazin, I don't wish to seem . . . condescending, but I'm afraid vampires should be the least of this city's concerns. I still don't know what was wrong with those people, but I'm sure it's strictly a medical question and not one of vampirism." He glanced at the girl beside him, who was going through some clippings from a metal box. Her eyes were glazed and she didn't even seem to realize he was sitting there. Did I break my gasoline budget for the week for this? he asked himself.

"I suppose you've called Mercy Hospital to check on those people?"

"Yes, I have."

"Then let me tell you what you found out. Absolutely nothing. I called Mercy this morning, and I was shuffled around from doctor to doctor until a press relations man told me no information was being given out about these cases. Is that what you were told?"

"Roughly," Silvera said. "But what does that prove?"

"This is not a matter of proof!" Palatazin said, his face flus.h.i.+ng with sudden anger. "This is a matter of knowing! I know, Father! I've spent my entire life in their shadow, and now that shadow has fallen over this city!" Silvera nodded and rose to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my parish."

"No! Wait, please. You can't stand there and tell me you didn't feel the presence of evil in that tenement! You're shutting your mind to it, Father!

You don't want to believe because you know that if you do, you'll realize how nearly hopeless this situation is and that perhaps you're not strong enough to face it!"

Silvera looked at him sharply. "There are many evils in this world, Mr. Palatazin. The heroin pusher, the childbeater, the homicidal maniac, the killer . . . as you well know. I think we both have enough work to do without . . .

inventing more evils." A chill suddenly rippled through him as he remembered the blood-written graffiti on the tenement walls and the strange, almost transparent eyelids of those stricken people. Can you really-logically-explain those? he asked himself.

Gayle was fixedly staring at Palatazin. She looked up at the priest. "Father," she said, "he's . . . he's right."

"What?"

"I've seen them. He's right. They do exist, and they're here in L.A." She told them about the Sandalwood Apartments, the figure squirming beneath the bed, the dark things in the courtyard, and her own narrow escape. When she had almost finished, her voice cracked like a thin pane of gla.s.s. "I was afraid," she said.

"I was . . . scared to death, so I locked myself in my apartment, and I didn't want to come out. I think I knew it would just be a matter of time before they found me . . ." She looked up. Jo was standing behind her husband, holding a cup of coffee on a tray. Gayle's eyes were wide and fearful. "They are here," Gayle told the priest.

Silvera's mouth had tightened; he seemed to have aged ten years in the last few minutes. He glanced over his shoulder through the window at his car. Wind stirred the trees across the street. How easy it would be to leave this house, get in the car, and drive back to East L.A., pretend he'd never heard any of this, pretend he hadn't walked into that tenement with its living corpses jammed under beds and in closets. Pretend this evil did not exist. Easy? No. He felt himself poised on the point of an irrevocable decision. Slowly he looked back into Palatazin's face.

"Sit down," the policeman said. "Please." Silvera took the coffee from Jo and drank most of it down in one swallow, wis.h.i.+ng it were laced with whiskey. Jo pulled a chair up close beside her husband and sat down, as did the priest.

"How could you be so sure?" Silvera asked. "How did you know?"

"Because my . . . father is one of them," Palatazin said with an effort. "No, not my father. What used to be my father. I was born in a village called Krajeck in northern Hungary. There the people recognize and fear the vampir. They don't fully understand how the vampir comes to be, or why G.o.d allows such an evil to walk the face of the earth, but they know enough to mark their houses with crucifixes and garlic. They know that Satan gives power and unholy life to the vampir, just as G.o.d gives life to all the good things of this world. The vampir can never be satisfied. They will forever be thirsty, not only for human blood but also for land. Possessions. Power. They want to rule the earth, and I'm afraid that if this city falls, they will be well on their way to ama.s.sing an army large enough to take it. I'm not talking about three or four or fifty or even a thousand vampires, Father. I'm talking about millions of them. If Los Angeles falls to them, they will have increased their army by more than eight million. And no country on earth can withstand a force like that. You ask me how I can be so sure? I was given the ... opportunity to see them work. I know their signs, their track. I see them on the move everywhere now, and very soon they'll attack in earnest, going from house to house, street to street, all across L.A.

Krajeck fell to them when I was a child, and I've seen the same things happening here that prefaced that terrible night." He looked at Gayle. "That wave of vandalism in some of the cemeteries, for instance. The vampir needed native soil. They must sleep secure from all sunlight when the transformation from corpse to living dead is complete-"

"Just a minute," Silvera interrupted. "What do you mean by 'transformation'?"

"The creatures we saw in that barrio tenement were neither corpses nor vampir" Palatazin said. "They'd been bitten and drained and protected from the light as much as possible, though in that transitory stage I don't think the sun is as painful to them as it is later. When the last of their humanity dies within them, they awaken. Some sooner than others, I think. And they awaken thirsty. When they drink their first blood . . . then they're complete." He glanced over at Gayleagain, then back to the priest. "Somewhere in this city, somewhere close to their Master, they must be hiding by the hundreds. It would have to be somewhere secure from both sunlight and intruders. I think it's probably in an abandoned building . . . possibly a warehouse or factory. Someone would have to lock them ' away at dawn and return to let them out at dusk . . ."

"A human?" Gayle asked.

"Yes. I don't know what part Roach-Walter Benefield-plays in this, but he could be the human p.a.w.n used by the vampir king."

"The king?" Silvera's eyes narrowed. "You mentioned something about a master. Is that the same thing?"

Palatazin nodded. "The vampires see their master-their king or maker or whatever you choose to call it-as a kind of savior figure. He commands their respect and loyalty, and they will do whatever he says."

"All right." Silvera shrugged. "Supposing I believe all this about vampires and caskets and kings. How can you be so certain they're being commanded by anyone?

Couldn't they exist without a leader?"

"This is simply my opinion," Palatazin said, "but I think they need a strong guiding hand, an intelligence to lead the collective body. If the vampire king is destroyed and there's no one able to take his place, the resulting confusion might cause them to fight among themselves or to make mistakes. They might stray too far from their hiding places, for instance, and the sun might catch them out in the open. I don't know. But I want you to think about this: If the vampires feed just once every night-creating others of their kind by totally draining them and instilling that terrible hunger-then they're doubling in number every twenty-four hours. Some of them may feed three or four times in a single night.

Again, I don't know. I'm speaking from things I've read and from the legends of my homeland. But of one thing I am certain-if we hope to stop them, we must destroy the king."

There was a long moment of silence in which they could hear the wind hooting around the house. Gayle peered uneasily out the window at the scudding gray clouds.

"Destroy," Silvera whispered. His throat felt dry, and he couldn't think beyond the memory of that graffiti in the alleyway just outside his window-Follow The Master. "How?"

"I'm not sure," Palatazin said grimly. "I can only suggest the methods used in Hungary, stakes and decapitation. The stake must pierce the heart, and decapitation both rids the vampire of his hypnotic gaze and . . . prevents regeneration."

"Regeneration?" Gayle asked sharply. "I thought they were like . . . ghosts or something."

"No. Unfortunately, they're very solid. They can be wounded, but if they haven't fed for a while, they won't bleed because evidently the blood is absorbed quickly into the tissues except for a reservoir within the heart. When they've just fed, their victim's blood would seem to circulate through the veins, and in that case they'll bleed until their regeneration ability heals the wound. I don't know whether they all have that power or not. I remember ... in Krajeck, when my father touched me after he'd come back from Mount Jaeger. He was so ...

terribly cold. I think human blood warms them, keeps them supple and young in a way we can't understand. Whatever it is, it's the devil's work. Hungarian tradition suggests that they fear fire as well, and their eyes may be their weakest point. Blinding them would make them momentarily helpless, though whatever other senses they might have I dare not imagine."

"You talk about them as if they're another race altogether," Silvera said.

"They are. Their powers are superior to ours. They can move faster, and they're stronger as well. They can live forever as long as they can feed on human blood." He looked from Silvera to Gayle and back again. "G.o.d made mankind," he said. "And Satan made the vampir." Silvera leaned back. He was working the knuckles of his hands, aware of the spreading numbness.

"Please believe me," Palatazin said. "I know they're here."

"It's all so ... strange. I mean, people have learned to scoff at such things. Anyone in this day and age who says he believes in vampires is, forgive me, considered insane . . ."

"The world may change, Father. But you and I both know that Evil remains constant. I think that for many years the vampir have worked quietly in this country, taking a village here, a town there. All very quietly. Now they want much more, and they feel strong enough to reveal their existence to the world, knowing it will soon be too late for us to fight back."

"Fight back," the priest repeated, his brow furrowing. "How do we? If you're right-and I'm not ready to say you are-what do we do?"

"We find the vampire king," Palatazin said. "And we do it quickly."

"Jesus!" Gayle whispered.

Palatazin's gaze darkened. "I think I know where their master may be hiding. There's a castle up in the Hollywood Hills somewhere that once belonged to a horror-film actor named Kronsteen. He had the thing brought over from Hungary, and I imagine the vampire king would find it to his liking."

"Orion Kronsteen?" Gayle said. "I remember reading about his murder, back in the early seventies, wasn't it? My boyfriend Jack-" She stopped herself, her face going pale. "A ... guy I used to go with was ... a doc.u.mentary filmmaker. He wanted to do a film on the homes of old movie stars, and I think he mentioned something about that castle. It's supposed to stand on top of a cliff, isn't it?

I think Jack . . . my friend said he drove up there a few years ago. He may have spent the night, knowing him . . ." She smiled painfully, her eyes clouding over. Which surprised her, because up until that moment she'd never really admitted to herself that she cared anything for him. Her smile began to slip.

Too late now, kid, she told herself. No amount of caring would change him back from what he became.

"Kronsteen's castle," Palatazin said. "That's where I have to go, though G.o.d knows I don't want to. If there was any other way ... but there's not. So now I have to ask you the question, Father. Will you go with me?" Silvera tensed. An avalanche of thoughts began to tumble through his brain, gathering force and speed. I'm not ready to believe this but-Madre de Dios-what if it's true? I've got to tell the people in my parish, I've got to help them get to safety. How can I make them understand? Stakes, caskets, vampires hiding in a castle? Surely this is some kind of wild nightmare! Help him. You should do as he asks. No, my parish comes first, I'm dying. I need time, so much time.

What should I do? I don't want to die. Oh, G.o.d, I don't want to ...

"I would like to go today," Palatazin said, "while there's still light. If you choose not to go, then I have another thing to ask of you. But in any event, I'll understand your decision."

Silvera realized the palms of his hands were cold with sweat. What if this man is right? he asked himself. I've never been afraid of anything, never! No, he heard the calm voice echo at the back of his brain. No. You're afraid of dying before your time. You're afraid of that cold, dark place where G.o.d is going to send you because you've done nothing for Him in this world but chase some dope pushers and squeeze a few hands because that was expected of you. You weren't called to the priesthood; you drifted into it after everything else in your life went bad. So what is it going to be? I... I'm going to have to say no," he said, trying to keep his hands from shaking. "I have the people of my parish to think of. If you're right, I'll have to find some way to ... protect them. I'm sorry."

Palatazin looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded. "All right." He stood up, opened the closet door, and brought out a cardboard box filled with short wooden stakes. "I bought these this morning," Palatazin said. "Ash stakes, two feet long. There are two dozen. I also bought a good strong hammer. I don't know if I'll ever get to use them, but... I'd like you to say some words for me.

Just... whatever you can. Will you do that?"

"Yes. Of course." Silvera stared at the cardboard box. Then he said, "I'll pray for you." Palatazin nodded, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes.

Silvera bent his head and began to pray out loud, asking G.o.d to guide Palatazin's steps and to s.h.i.+eld him from danger. But as he was praying, he was writhing inside. He felt as if his soul were shrinking, and very soon there would be nothing left at all. He suddenly thought of himself years ago, a punk kid in the drunk tank at the police station in Puerto Grande, a cramped place with obscene drawings on the walls and puddles of urine on the floor. He and two friends had been thrown in there, stinking drunk on tequila, after a fight with some sailors at the Navegar Club down on the docks. The sailors went to the hospital.

But there'd been another man in with them, an old man in tattered, dirty clothes with scabs all over his face. He had moaned for most of the night, twisting and turning in his bunk as if fighting off something that was coming down from the ceiling to smother him. Toward morning Silvera, a brash teenager with needle marks on his arms and a hunger for violence, realized the old man was dying.

He'd sat on the floor, one of his eyes black and swollen and several teeth loose, watching that old man fight death. It was a brave struggle but a hideous mismatch. Silvera had found himself wondering where that man had been, what he had seen of the world, who he'd loved, and what he'd done. Across the cell Silvera's friends slept, snoring like young bulls. He'd crept closer to that bunk, listening to the old man's hoa.r.s.e mutterings as if they were radio transmissions from another world. ". . . he knows he should pay me that money, all of it like I asked . . . what am I gonna do? . . . sure, sure, amigo, you and me gonna tear this port apart . . . now, that Giselle is a fine piece of a.s.s, take your money and give you the best... the best... ohhhhh s.h.i.+t, that stuffll f.u.c.k your head up ... said I was gonna kill that b.a.s.t.a.r.d ..

dolphins. I love to watch them dolphins when they come flying up from the water . . . anchor's f.u.c.ked up, won't hold a rowboat . . . WATCH THAT CABLE,