"I'll pay it," said Brainard. He started to pull his coat collar up, covering the back of his neck. Preston behind him pulled it down again.
A moderate snow was falling. "They say," said Smith, "that sometimes the whole park gets snowed in for days."
"No tourists in sight anywhere," said Preston from the rear. "No rangers. Nobody here but us. We're waiting, deadbeat."
He burned Brainard again.
And then, suddenly, they were not alone. The figure of a bearded man, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, was standing at the edge of the woods. And then purposefully approaching the occupied vehicle, passing the empty Pontiac.
Brainard made a little sound, almost too faint to be called a groan, deep in his throat.
"What the hell now?" remarked Smith.
Drakulya stopped some twelve or fifteen feet in front of the car. He stood there motionless, hands in pockets. His lips moved and he was saying something.
Smith ran a window partway down, and the voice of the man standing outside could be heard plainly. "Mr. Brainard, patience. You will shortly be free to leave."
At those words Brainard made a convulsive effort to open his door. The man behind him grabbed him by the collar and pulled him forcibly back into his seat. Then Preston opened his rear door and got out of the car, which resettled itself on its springs with the removal of his considerable weight.
"Get lost, punk," fur-collared Preston told Mr. Strangeways. "Go chase the squirrels somewhere. This is a private conversation."
Brainard gave a desperate cry for help, a cry he choked off when the man in the driver's seat beside him jabbed him with an elbow.
Drakulya looked from Brainard's captor behind the windshield to the other who stood in open air. "Mr. Smith, I presume? And Mr. Preston? I see it is too late to urge you to allow this man to leave the Park unharmed. Well, I suppose I must make allowances. I hesitate to interfere in the collection of a just debt. So may I ask—"
"I already told you once," interrupted Preston. "I told you nice, go chase a squirrel. You wouldn't listen. Okay." He strode forward purposefully, heading straight for Mr. Strangeways.
At the last moment, just before he reached his goal, a frown as of puzzlement appeared on Preston's face.
Then he reached out for the waiting Strangeways. But the grip he wished to obtain had been pre-empted. Mr. Strangeways already had him with both hands by the front of his furred jacket, and a fraction of a second after that Mr. Preston squawked aloud, in sheer surprise that his body had so rapidly become airborne. He made a shrill noise for such a large man. And for a mere breather he was quite well-coordinated, able to execute a kind of dance step in middair, a doomed attempt to regain balance that had, alas, already been lost forever.
His body, carefully aimed, smote with considerable force the front end of the occupied but motionless vehicle. In the first phase of the impact, the flying man's legs struck the hood. A fraction of a second later his bulky torso crashed into the sloping windshield. Strong glass caved in, but did not shatter. The hurtling body glanced from the deeply slanting surface, mounting almost straight up into the air for a distance of several car-heights before coming down on pavement covered with, so far, only a very inadequate padding of new snow.
Even before Preston's body had undergone this secondary impact, Drakulya was standing beside the driver's door, pulling it open. Incautiously Mr. Smith had neglected to fasten his seat belt, a fact which did not escape his caller's notice.
Taking the back of his second subject's neck firmly in one hand, and with the other seizing the steering column just below the wheel, Mr. Strangeways brought the two together with an effort that approached the maximum force he could exert.
A fraction of a second later he was recoiling in startlement, and hissing his annoyance as he realized that this part of the exercise would have to be done over again. His effort with the steering column had only succeeded in popping an airbag, leaving Mr. Smith hardly worse than disconcerted, rather as if a shotgun loaded with cream puffs had been fired in his face. Smith tried to wave his arms, and let out a rabbit-like squeak that some listeners might have found comical.
But Mr. Strangeways still had him by the back of the neck.
Intent on concluding this distasteful business, the bearded man recovered his aplomb with commendable speed for one of his advanced years. The airbag had already deflated itself, and a second try with neck and steering column produced the desired result.
Brainard, though physically almost intact, required help to leave of the battered vehicle.
"Thanks. My God, how can I thank you?"
"You have just done so. That is sufficient."
"I didn't see either of 'em watching the hotel. I thought I'd take a chance… now Cathy's back, I didn't want her getting messed up in my troubles."
After advising his client to try some snow on his burned neck, Strangeways methodically but quickly went through the pockets of Brainard's tormentors. Preston, sprawled in the snow, still breathed, but painfully, and the examiner judged that that condition would not persist for long. In Smith it had already passed. Strangeways also rifled the more obvious places of storage in their car, looking for anything that might connect them with Brainard.
He found nothing in that line, but did collect almost five thousand dollars in cash. Considering this the spoils of war, Strangeways handed it, in the form of an untidy bundle, to Brainard before sending him on his way.
"Some of that's my own money. They took it away from me just now."
"You may have the rest," the rescuer said.
"Can I pay you something, for your help?"
"Decent of you to offer. But no, thank you. The weather is turning bad. I advise you to drive carefully."
"Thanks." Brainard gingerly scooped more snow onto the back of his neck. "God, maybe my luck is turning at last."
When Strangeways arrived back at the hotel suite, Joe Keogh asked him if he had seen Brainard.
The bearded man nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When last I saw him he was driving peacefully toward the main exit from the Park. I have little doubt that he will be well on his way before the worst of the storm arrives."
"What about the people who were after him?"
Strangeways looked at his well-kept nails. "Also on their way."
After a pause Joe asked: "Still after Brainard?"
"No. They had taken a different direction… careless, improvident men. I doubt that they have managed to get far. The roads are becoming treacherous." He made a sighing noise, faintly reptilian. "For the careless, accidents are almost inevitable in such conditions."
"Oh," said Joe, with finality. He had known the other for many years. After a moment he said: "Oh," again.
"Joseph?" the other asked him mildly.
"Yes?"
"Are a great many automobiles now equipped with airbags?"
"Most of the new ones, I guess."
Drakulya nodded thoughtfully. "Now I must rest. All this activity by day is wearing, even in weather so beautifully gray—I can see why my compatriot Tyrrell was so drawn to this country, dangerous as it is for us."
"Why?"
"The sun, Joseph. We, our kind, are much concerned with its presence, absence, and intensity."
"With avoiding it, I'd think."
"Yes, of course. Only with the full bulk of a planet between our bodies and the sun are vampires entirely shielded from all of the potentially harmful emissions and effects. Though it is still my contention that we may depend on some emission from the sun, as yet unknown to science, for much of our true nourishment…
"But also we have no trouble in grasping the idea that something really odd might be expected to happen when the sun strikes directly, for the first time in a billion years, upon the freshly shattered surface of some deep rock.