Stephin stepped to the base of the hill. "It came to my attention several months ago that my behavior had become reckless, inadvisable. What seemed at first to simply be poor decisions began to look like a subconscious plan. I was scouting my own executioner. When I heard all these boys had concocted some fantasy of a mysterious female vampire, I thought the end was near. They obviously would not let it stand, being assaulted by someone like me. But now look at them," he said, his gaze falling on both Victor and Doug in turn. Victor wasn’t moving at all.
Sejal was cold. "That night I met you, you said you were observing. Observing me, perhaps, but also Jay, isn’t it? He lives nearby."
"Yes. Trying to get people motivated. Doug wanted to kill the head of his vampire family. He had only to realize who that was. How is Jay?"
"You don’t care," said Doug, trying again to stand. His breathing was labored, and his arms gave out from under him.
"I suppose neither of you would believe I do," Stephin told them.
"Victor left his mom a note…" Doug whispered. Sejal could barely hear. "I get it now…He wasn’t here to kill you ’cause you’re gay, just an asshole."
"I’m sorry," said Stephin to Sejal, "what was that last bit? Our Doug seems to be losing steam."
"He said you’re full of shit," Sejal hissed. "These boys are better than you think."
"What a comfort. So. Your champions seem to be down for the count. Are you going to kill me yourself? Here."
He tossed Sejal the tree branch stake. It landed out of reach but rolled a few feet in the crackling leaves. Sejal watched it with a sick feeling.
"Is this why you brought me here? Am I your plan B?"
"Brought you here? My dear, I haven’t made you do a thing. I only planted the merest suggestion in your mind. But, no, frankly, you were only meant to be here to assuage my ego. I’m just vain enough to want a witness."
Sejal looked from the stake to Doug. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. Alive or dead. She satisfied herself that he was still breathing as Stephin continued.
"You have to strike very hard. I wonder if you have the strength. And the catch is, for all my dreams of oblivion, I don’t believe I’ll go without a fight. I may just let you do it. Or I may take your little stick and snap it along with your neck." He gave an embarrassed smirk. "I honestly don’t know."
"Don’t do it," groaned Doug from the ground. "I’ll get him. I screwed this all up, but I’ll make it right."
"Yes, there’s an idea. Put all your faith in Doug Lee. What could possibly go wrong?"
There was a lot to occupy her mind, but in truth Sejal was most taken with another figure who had just appeared on the lip of the bowl, a thickset man in an army coat with something in his hands. He slid down the hill behind Stephin.
"Make up your mind, dear," Stephin said, walking toward her, "or I’ll win. I’m a monster, a murderer, and I’ll be worse — I can feel it."
The vampire was close — thirty feet away, maybe twenty.
"Will you run?" he asked, still closer. "You can’t run. I’ll CATCH YOU. PICK UP THE STAKE, SEJAL, I’M—"
His whole frame shuddered, and he halted, mouth slack. Eyes heavy. With his long fingers he touched at the sharp tip of a cone, a cone at the end of a shaft, a shaft of wood that had emerged from the center of his chest.
"Finally," croaked Stephin, and he dropped. Behind him stood the man in the army coat, holding a gun Sejal had seen on TV.
"If he’s a murderer, it’s justifiable," Mike breathed, and tried to make sense of these people in the park. These vampires.
"There’s so many," he whispered with rising panic. "They’re everywhere."
There was the one he’d killed, and then the vampire boy there, on the ground, and maybe another one a little way off. And a fourth, on her feet — wearing a vampire dress. Saying something.
Mike couldn’t hear anything over his own heartbeat, and the scratch of his hands against his coat as he fumbled for another whippit, and a new stake to reload. Then he raised his Redeemer and sighted the vampiress down the barrel.
Doug had been bracing to come between Stephin and Sejal. He was sure of it. But Stephin was gone, and now there was a man, a familiar man with a gun. He saw what was about to happen and forced himself to his feet as the gun hissed and fired.
In another story he might have slapped the stake away, plucked it out of the air and returned it to sender. Or the stake’s coarse point could have found his shoulder, or his arm, but it didn’t.
How could it?
What could it find but his heart?
36
The fall
THROUGHOUT the frigid early morning Sejal sat at Doug’s side. His eyes were closed, he lay on his back, there was a wooden stake in his chest. His breath came like smoke signals. Like empty word balloons.
The vampire hunter, trembling, had keeled over, thrown up on the hillside, and fled. As he ran to his wood-paneled coffin of a car, she thought he called back, "This is his fault," but she wasn’t sure. Doug struggled up into consciousness, gasped for air, and went under again.
Next Victor woke, or, rather, a wolf awoke and stepped out of his clothes. It shook its head and coat and strode silently over to where Doug lay and where Sejal sat. She glared at it, her body balled up like a fist. But the wolf just nosed at Doug’s arm and sniffed the air.
"I can’t take him to a hospital, can I?" she asked the wolf. "Could they help? They will find him out." And then she wondered — should he be helped? Would it be better for everyone if he were gone? No. No, no, no, she thought. She would pluck this wish out by the roots, tear it to pieces.
Victor hung his sleek head and waggled it. It might have been an answer to her question. Then he loped up the hill, and with distance his twitching tail and white legs flickered and then slipped like a nightmare into the sleeping neighborhood. Sejal wondered if she’d see him again. She’d read too many fairy tales to expect a happy ending for the wolf.
The sky had brightened to a sort of tarnished silver before she rose and looked at the distant houses. She’d run to one, a friendly one — that one, trimmed with pink and yellow. She’d pound on the door and explain to whomever answered that her friend in the park had a stick in his heart. Then she heard Doug speak.
"Oh yeah," he whispered. "Forgot."
"You keep passing out," she said. "You wake up, look at the stake, pass out again. But shouldn’t you be dead? I thought a stake through the heart was supposed to kill you."
"It seems like a good…" wheezed Doug, "guess to me."
What Doug didn’t need right now was morals. What he didn’t need was to be taught a lesson, to be put in his place. What he needed was less stick in his heart. Still, Sejal heard herself say "I think…I think sometimes you think you’re the hero of the story, and sometimes you think you’re the victim. But you’re not either."
"That’s…going to change," said Doug, and he tried to lift himself again. He failed. Sejal thought he might have fallen back into unconsciousness, but he rasped, "You know what I think? You know what I bet…Dracula thought…when they stuck that knife in his chest?…I’ll bet he thought…Why me?"
"I have to go get help," said Sejal. "I’ll come back with help."
"No…no, please stay. It’s going to be fine…I’m going to be…fine. The head of the family is dead."
Sejal stayed where she was. She stared at the stake.
"It’ll…just work itself out…like a splinter," Doug said. "I’ll have to hide it…for a while…with — with—" He began to laugh, then to cough smoke like an old train. "Christmas lights. I’ll tell people I’m a Christmas tree holder."