The vampire files volume.., p.36
The Vampire Files, Volume Five, page 36
part #11 of The Vampire Files Series
The story was little more than a thin rewrite of yesterday’s edition, but this time had names. Someone had traced the car’s owner. The police wanted to question underworld figure Gordy Weems about the incident. He’d love that.
Kroun read the piece through and snorted. “They don’t know anything. This guy got it all wrong.”
“It happens. For you it’s better if they don’t have the facts.”
“You used to do that, didn’t you? Reporting?”
“Yeah. About a thousand years ago.” I dropped into my chair, putting my feet up on the table.
“I hope that’s a joke.”
It occurred to me that he didn’t know my real age, either. I was thirty-seven, but looked a lot younger. I felt a brief, smug grin stretch my face.
“So how long have you been like this?”
Just the question I wanted to ask. “You first.”
“Uh-uh. You.” He went past me to peer out the front window, pulling the curtain open just a crack, perhaps checking for the first changes that marked the coming dawn. You couldn’t always trust a clock.
“Happened a year ago last August,” I said.
“When you came to Chicago?”
“Yeah. Slick Morelli and Frank Paco did the honors.”
They’d murdered me—a slow, vicious process—but I’d gotten some payback in the end. Slick was dead and Paco raving in a nuthouse God knows where. There was a lesson in that mess someplace about picking your enemies carefully, but I didn’t like thinking about it.
“Morelli and Paco?” Kroun sounded like he’d met them once upon a time. “What’d you do to get noticed by those two?”
“Nothing I want to talk about.” And he would know it already. He’d spent time with Gordy, who knew all the dirt about my Undead condition and how it had happened. Kroun would have used hypnosis to pick Gordy’s brain clean about my death, so what was his game asking me? Probably to see if the stories matched. Suspicious bastard. I could get annoyed, only in his place I’d have done the same. “What about yourself? How did you buy it?”
He didn’t answer, closely watching something outside. The only reasonable activity at this hour might be someone leaving for an early job or the milkman making his round.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Car’s stopped in front of the house.”
Now what?
“You know a big colored guy? Well dressed? Drives a Nash?”
Oh, hell. “What about him?”
“He’s coming up the walk. Looks pissed, too.”
“Let him in.”
“It’s your door, and I’m no butler.”
The man outside began ringing the bell and pounding. I tiredly boosted up.
Kroun stepped into the entry hall. “Oh, yeah. He’s pissed. I’d stay to watch, but—”
“Upstairs. Third floor. Keep quiet.”
He went quick despite the limp, not making a lot of noise, though I couldn’t hear much over the racket. He ducked from view at the top landing, stifling a cough.
I got the door. “Hi, Shoe.”
Shoe Coldfield filled a very large portion of the opening, his anger making him loom even larger. Before I could say anything else, a word of explanation, an invitation to come inside, he slammed a fist of iron into my gut.
2
HE had an arm like a train. All the breath shot out of me. I folded and staggered and kept my feet only by grabbing the stair rail with one flailing hand. It wasn’t as bad as it might have been for anyone else. I didn’t want a second helping, though.
Coldfield’s dark face was darker than normal, suffused with barely controlled rage. “You know why I’m here,” he rumbled. Volcanoes reach that kind of deep pitch before they blow.
Took an experimental sip of air for speech. “Oh, yeah.”
“Why the hell did you do that to him?”
“How’d you—”
“I got people who work at the hospital. One of them saw Charles brought in looking like he’d been worked over by a bulldozer and called me. They wouldn’t let me see him. Took one look and knew I wasn’t a relation. I tracked down the ambulance drivers and got them to talk. What the hell did you do?”
I’d grown a thick hide over my ability to feel guilt over some of the more objectionable things I’d done in life, but it was no protection now. I was in the wrong, and there were consequences to face.
“Charles and I had a fight—”
“The hell you did! What about?”
The words got stuck long before the halfway mark. The situation was edging close to being a reprise of my fight with Escott. Sweat popped out on my flanks.
“What?”
I shook my head. There was no way I could tell Coldfield what I’d done that had infuriated Escott enough to beat the crap out of me—and then my going bughouse-crazy out of control and returning the favor. All I could do was thank God that I’d stopped short of murder. I couldn’t remember much about the fight, but the aftermath was clear and sharp, especially those frozen-in-lead moments when I thought Escott was dead.
“What?” Coldfield loomed again.
“Charles was pissed with me about something and we got into it. It’s not important now.” Favoring my middle, I straightened, knowing what was coming. No way out.
“Goddammit, you put him in the hospital!” Coldfield piled in a rain of gut-busters, grunting from the effort. He was in on my secret. Had been for a while. He also knew about the ugly business with Hog Bristow, what the bastard had done to me. For all that, Coldfield didn’t pull a single punch.
And I took it.
He finally knocked me ass flat on the floor. I stayed there, not quite keeling over.
“Talk to me, you sonovabitch!”
He wasn’t going away. Come sunrise he’d probably continue beating on my apparently dead body to make sure I had more damage than Escott.
I raised one hand in surrender. Seemed like too much trouble to stand. He’d just put me back again. It hurt to draw breath to speak. Took a minute to get enough air inside to do the job. “Look…you once socked him for his own good…didn’t you? You got fed up?”
Coldfield nodded slowly. “What about it?”
“This time it was my turn. He did his damnedest to pound some sense into me. Nearly took my block off.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I heal fast, remember?”
“And then what?”
“I wouldn’t listen. So Charles kept at me…until I hit him. That’s where the ambulance came in. I’m sorry, Shoe. I didn’t mean for it to go that way. I’d take it back if I could.”
“You can’t.”
Bowed my head. “No. I can’t.”
He made no comment, but I could still feel his anger. He wanted to hurt me and make it last.
I used the stair rail to pull to my feet. Damn, but he’d caught me good and hard, without brass knuckles, either. If he was like that with bare fists…
He laid in again with enough force so I’d remember not to forget. I dropped all the way, curled, and stayed there, gasping. Pain. More than I expected. Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d ruptured something. I wouldn’t vanish to escape and heal, though. That’d be spitting in his face. I’d take what he dished out and like it.
He stooped into my view and his voice went low, and for a chilling instant I glimpsed what was inside him that made him the boss of one of the toughest mobs in the city. “You ever cut loose on Charles again, I will kill you.” He knew exactly how to do it, too.
I believed him.
“We clear on that? You understand me?”
“Yeah,” I said, talking sideways because my mouth was mashed against the floor. “Never again. Promise.”
Coldfield left, slamming the door hard enough to shake the house. A moment later he gunned his car, shifted gears, and roared away.
Good thing he was a friend or we might have both been in trouble. I don’t take this kind of crap from enemies.
Another moment or three passed, then the stairs creaked as Kroun came down. He squatted on his heels next to me, hands clasped loose in front of him, and tilted his head. “You okay?”
Now that was one goddamned stupid question. And he wasn’t a stupid man. I eyed him. He was concerned, just not one for mother-henning. “I’m great. Tomorrow I sell tickets to the real show.”
“Huh.” He got the message. It was none of his beeswax, but he almost smiled. “And he knows about you, too?”
“Yeah.”
“F’cryin’ out loud, put it on a billboard, why don’t ya?”
“Okay.”
A moderately long look from him, followed by a dismissive headshake. “I can’t find soap.”
Soap? While I got pulped he was looking for soap? What kind of a loon was he?
“Try the second-floor bath,” I mumbled.
His eyes went wide. “You got two johns in this joint?” My getting a beating was nothing to sweat about, but a house with two toilets knocked him right over.
Actually there were three. Escott had put in a bath all to himself just off his bedroom, which was overdoing things, but it was his house, after all. I didn’t say anything as Kroun was already impressed, and mention of more would be pretentious. As a kid back on the farm in Ohio, I’d been told not to brag about our three-seater outhouse lest the neighbors think the Flemings were getting high-hat above themselves with extravagance.
“What was his problem?” Kroun asked, rising as I slowly found my feet again.
I checked my middle. Carefully. Oh, yeah, that hurt. A lot. At least Coldfield hadn’t used wood. A baseball bat would have done some truly life-threatening damage on me, but then I’d have fought back. “Nothing to worry about.”
“I’m not, but why’d you let him do it?”
“He had to work off steam. And he had a point to make. That was my way of listening.”
Kroun thought that over, looking at me the whole time. “You,” he concluded, “are crazy.”
No reason to deny it. Tonight I happened to agree with him.
“Who was he? Looked familiar.”
“Shoe Coldfield. Heads the biggest gang in the Bronze Belt. He’s best friends with Escott. He was in that grocery store we walked through to visit Gordy the other night. You may have seen him there.”
“Gordy said Coldfield was looking out for him. What’s the angle?”
“It never hurts to have someone like Gordy owe you a favor.”
“So I’ve heard. Is that what this is about? You wanting me to owe you a favor?”
“Huh?”
He stared a second. “Ahh, never mind.” He went upstairs, dodging into the hall bath long enough to grab soap from the sink, then continuing up to the third floor. Soon water was running in the pipes, making its long journey up from the basement heater tank.
When I felt like moving again, I checked my ribs, but Coldfield had focused on the softer target of my midsection. He’d inflicted ample bruising and spared his knuckles. The man was a smart thinker when it came to his brand of mayhem. Everything still hurt, and I stubbornly held on to it as though that would somehow help Escott.
I hobbled into the kitchen to blink at the clock. If he rushed things, Kroun could get cleaned up and make it to bed before dawn. I could take my time.
I made sure the front door was bolted, checked the back again just because, then vanished, sinking down through the kitchen floor. Once solid again in my hidden alcove the bruising and pain were magically gone, but I was tired, very tired.
The small table light next to my cot was on, so I didn’t reappear in fumbling blackness. I’m a vampire who’s gotten really allergic to the dark. I didn’t used to be that way; but, after the crap I’d been through since my change, anyone would want to leave a lamp burning in the window.
No windows were in my artificial cave, but that was fine, what with my allergy to sunlight. Kroun had a right to be concerned about avoiding it, but he could manage. Things had to be a lot better for him in this place than wherever he’d hidden after the big boom. Did he have a supply of his home earth with him? I’d not thought to ask.
Damn, I didn’t want to think about him and what to do with him and all the attendant complications concerning his apparent death. But the problem would be hanging around like an unpaid bill when I woke again, no way out of it. The mess Kroun had come to town to clear up was worse than before.
Derner—following my orders—had the right story to give to the New York mob bosses about Kroun’s demise, but the details might not satisfy them. They were told that Kroun had been killed in the car explosion, then the man who rigged the bomb was in turn killed by me in a shoot-out. Very tidy. Too much so.
“They won’t swallow that goldfish,” I muttered, shrugging from my suit coat and prying off my shoes.
It would get out that there was no body in the destroyed car. The bomb had been big, but not so much as to wholly obliterate its intended target. Unless Kroun did something, New York would only send another man to find out why and then bump me. I’d gotten myself noticed by the wrong people one too many times. The idea of getting clear of town for a while was tempting, but that would leave Gordy holding the bag.
My other option was just to get it over with and let the mob do the hit. Let them think they’d executed me, then they could go home satisfied. Easy enough. I’d survived such attacks before. The problem with that was I’d not be able to go back to my business again. Just getting the legal papers to a new name forged would be a pain in the ass. I had friends, family, a club to run, things to do, and I needed to be able to do them as myself, Jack Fleming.
I stretched flat on the cot, loosening my belt, and felt gravity tug me toward the center of the planet. Illusion. The pull was really from the spread of earth under the protective oilcloth. This was my portion of the grave I’d never gone to, a tiny scrap of peace in the red chaos, protection from the insanity of my subconscious. My body seemed to weigh a ton; the feeling was surprisingly pleasant.
If I could hypnotize that next mobster into forgetting his job all would be well, but even thinking about using one of my evil-eye whammies made my head buzz like a too-crowded beehive. The last time I’d employed that talent had damn near exploded my brain. Deep-down instinct said another attempt would kill me. My nights of pretending to be Lamont Cranston and clouding men’s minds like the Shadow were over.
Kroun was not crippled in that area, though. I could probably talk him into fixing things, especially if it meant his own safety. If I were him, I’d be cooperative and willing to try.
Only he wasn’t me.
Who the hell is he? I wondered—my last thought as the rising sun swept me into the dreamless abyss for the day.
KROUN
GOD, my chest hurts.
Not as bad as before, but it was like a hangover that wouldn’t quite give up and leave.
The through and through Gabriel had taken was healed; he could tell that much because the itching deep under his knitted skin had almost stopped. It still felt as though pieces of himself had torn loose and were wriggling their way back into place again. What wouldn’t fit kept trying to migrate up his throat. If he was careful not to breathe or move fast, it wasn’t too bad. But just when everything seemed settled, the internal prickling would rise, crest, and set him off hacking like a lunger on his last legs. Gabe was damned bored with it.
He climbed the stairs slowly, hoping there would be no more visitors to make things exciting. He went to what Fleming called the guest bath, twisted the sink’s left-hand tap, waiting, waiting, waiting until the water ran hot.
Gabe stared at the mirror over the sink. His faded, near-transparent reflection stared back. The ones like Fleming had no reflection at all. How did he get by without being able to see himself? Shaving must be an ordeal.
On the other hand, he could disappear and get well again anytime he pleased. Gabe would have given much to have that; it would have saved him a lot of pain the last couple nights.
Leaning close, he checked his tongue and eyes, didn’t find anything of interest, then scratched his chin and neck. Yeah, a shave would be good, but have to wait. No razor. Did he need a haircut? If he could grab his hair in the back then it was too long. Gabe ran a hand over his head. Yeah, half an inch there at least. Time for a trim, get rid of the singed areas.
The ridge was still there of course—the one in the bone on the left side of his skull. It marked where the bullet that originally killed him had gone in. And stayed. That small piece of metal allowed him to discern a remnant of his presence in mirrors.
His head hurt. Not like when it first happened, but bad enough, aggravated by the latest calamities. People had tried killing him yet again, and he didn’t like the violent reminder that not so long ago someone had actually succeeded.
He also didn’t like thinking about how many other people wanted him dead. One fewer to their numbers, but still—
I’d trusted him. Goddamned Mitchell. Goddamned bastard. I should have seen that coming.
It wasn’t as though Mitchell had intentionally shot Gabe tonight at the girl’s flat, but he had planned the bomb for the car. What a dirty way to kill a man.
Too bad only Fleming got to have all the fun of beating the hell out of—
Jack Fleming. Now there was one crazy noodle. One minute trying to be helpful, the next letting himself get pulped flat in his own house. What kind of a screwball was he? He seemed to know all the ropes about being a—Gabe stumbled over vampire.
Ugly word.
He’d read up on it, of course, and other details had just come to him from God knows where. Northside Gordy had filled in more blanks, but getting the firsthand knowledge from a guy who’d actually been through the same mill was much more useful. Getting it without raising too many questions was the problem. Fleming was curious and had only begun to start with the snooping.
Reporters. They’re incurable.
Gabe was inclined to shed him fast then get lost, but Fleming might come looking, full of good intentions. With the whole of Gordy’s organization on the hunt, Gabe wouldn’t stay lost for long. He’d have to handle this carefully, keep the man on his side until a real exit could be managed.
