Reality cut the thought short. “One problem. Travel takes money, which I don’t have.”
“I do, blood of my blood,” Lane crooned in his ear.
He felt as if someone jabbed him with an electric prod. It jumped him sideways away from her. “Is that what you expected by letting me live…a companion? There is no way in hell that is ever going to happen!”
“What a pity.” She smiled at him. “Or maybe not. You want two things, you say: justice and death. I can give you one…you dumb mick!” Fast as a striking snake, she grabbed the front of his jacket and drove her knee into his crotch with a force that lifted him off his feet, then hurled him to the ground to lie curled in blinding agony. “I’d kill you right now except people have seen me with you and I won’t shame my mother. But you’ll have that death you want before the night is out.” She ripped his radio off his belt and strode away, calling back from the mist, “Consider yourself a walking dead man.”
Duel
1
Garreth struggled to stand, to pursue Lane, but could not even make it to his knees, only continue to huddle gasping and cursing…at himself as well as her. Dumb mick, all right. Damn right the maiden was powerful. When the hell was he going to get that through his thick skull. He had been kneed in the nuts before, but never with vampire power behind the knee. After this, he reflected, the pain of passing through a door qualified as no more than discomfort.
What felt like hours later he managed to drag himself up the car door and climb in. To sit huddled over the steering wheel. Despite how he hurt, he needed to concentrate on his next move. The lady of ice and steel was out there planning how to kill him. Possessing his radio enabled her to track him and pick where to attack. Being aware of that, however, he knew when to watch for her. The radio might even prove an advantage, luring her to him. By which time he hoped he had a way to deal with her.
Belatedly he became aware of his car radio…Doris calling his number. From the anxiety in her voice, she had been doing so repeatedly. “Seven, respond!”
He thumbed the mike button and tried to make his voice normal. “Seven Baumen.” Not succeeding. He sounded more in Maggie’s vocal range.
Doris shot back, “Seven, do you need assistance?”
Duncan radioed, “What’s your twenty?”
“The cemetery. I’m 10-4.” That came out better. “I lost my radio and just returned to the car after failing to find it. Do you have something for me?”
“Come pick up a radio first.”
Since Doris saw how he limped up the hall to the radio rack, he gave her a quick lie. “I was in foot pursuit of a skeleton and Grim Reaper and tripped and landed astraddle one of those narrow old tombstones. I’ll be fine. What’s the call?”
Duncan had taken the one originally intended for him, but now they had a mother anxious because her fourteen-year-old daughter, who was supposed to be home from a Halloween party at ten, was now almost an hour late.
On the way there, Garreth swung by his place for a quick drink of blood. By the time he reached the call address — a block and a half from the high school, he noted — he walked normally.
“I may know where your daughter is.”
They drove to the gym with the mother shaking her head. “You think Cici crashed the wedding reception? I’ve brought her up with better manners than that.” But when they stepped inside, she said, “Oh.”
“Do you see your daughter?”
She pointed at a Wonder Woman and mini-skirted witch dancing to “Witchy Woman.” “That’s her and her girlfriend Tanya.”
Garreth made his way onto the dance floor and tapped Cici’s shoulder. “It’s midnight for you, Cinderella, and probably you, too, Tanya.” He pointed at Cici’s mother by the door.
The two girls exchanged looks of utter disgust and humiliation but left with Cici’s mother. Though to Garreth’s amusement, Mom seemed reluctant to go.
Before leaving himself, he had the French maid from the buffet table cut a slice of cake for Doris that gave her a whole section of castle wall with a window. Turning toward the door with it tucked in a small box the French maid produced from under the table, he met Anna’s daughter Dorothy.
“You should have come in when you brought Mada back,” she said. “You missed her singing.”
Lane came back here instead of lurking out in town tracking him by radio?
“I never realized how good she is. She sang that song that ends with: ‘These precious days I spend with you.’ Jason and Julie and almost every other couple were hugging and kissing, tears in their eyes. Then she brought the house down with that song Peggy Lee sings, ‘Fever.’”
After hearing her sing in San Francisco, then almost snare him into her Grand Tour, Garreth believed it. “Maybe she’ll sing again. Where is she now?”
Dorothy glanced around. “Around somewhere. After singing she started going from table to table visiting. I’ve never seen her so…friendly.”
A strategy to establish her presence here, he bet. While the reception remained in full swing, and it looked a long way from winding down — even the glimpses he had of Anna and Mary Catherine across the dance floor caught no evidence of them folding soon — everyone would assume Lane was somewhere in the room. But if he planted a suggestion for the crowd to call her for another song, could she appear?
“Baumen Seven.”
So much for trying that.
Doris wanted him to check out a possible prowler at Hammond’s.
On the way he dropped off her cake, but only nodded acknowledgment of her beaming delight as he thought ahead to the greenhouses. Yes, all that glass made a tempting target for vandals tonight. It also made an excellent site for Lane to ambush him.
Nerves strung tight, he worked his way around the buildings and through the bushes behind them, with his radio turned down to a whisper, peering into the mist for any movement. Listening hard for breathing, footsteps, for a whisper of branches moving unnaturally. Sniffing the air for Lane’s perfume. He saw no indication of either Lane or prowlers; smelled nothing suspicious; heard only Doris sending Duncan to a Country Club Drive address for reported vandalism. Then as he neared the front of the greenhouses again, he heard shrieks and a roar of exhaust pipes up 282. Scott and company still out and about.
Back in the car and able to relax, he radioed, “No contact.”
“Now you have a 10–47 in Golden’s parking lot entrance.”
Collisions could be expected tonight if people did not drive carefully. At least this one reportedly involved only property damage, no injuries. It was probably too much to expect the accident to involve Scott and his Trans Am.
At the Golden Bowling Alley, Garreth found not only no Trans Am but no accident at all…and no sign of vehicles that could have been involved in one. His nerves snapped taut again. The drivers might have left after examining examined their vehicles and deciding the damage was not worth involving the police…or wanted to avoid being brethalized. Or maybe Lane made the call to lure him here…even though he saw no way for her to ambush him. The mist did not reduce visibility enough to keep him from seeing her sneaking or charging toward him.
Still, climbing out the car to examine the ground at the parking lot entrance for skid marks or broken glass, he watched for her. On the car radio, Duncan reported no vandalism at the Country Club Drive address.
A crank call…or one intending to isolate him by sending his backup to the other end of town? If so, Lane made no use of the opportunity. Nothing came out of the mist at him but a Toyota Corolla leaving the parking lot.