Another half an hour passed. Mark was about to gather his belongings and give Stella their prearranged signal to call it a night when the cook snuck back out of the kitchen and placed another full glass in front of Stella, again not meeting her eyes when she tried to thank him.
The hairs on the back of Mark’s neck prickled. Random generosity wasn’t unheard of, but something about the man’s furtive movements bothered him. Besides which, the man was supposed to be working in the kitchen, not watching customers.
While Mark was trying to work it out, Stella drank down the Coke and left enough money on the counter to pay her check. Then she stood up and wobbled, as if she’d lost her balance. Mark’s eyes narrowed. Vampires, at least vampires as old as Stella, didn’t lose their balance.
Their plan had been to leave separately, with at least five minutes between their exits, so Mark stayed put, despite his consternation. What was Stella playing at anyway? Trying to look more available by pretending to be drunk, even though all she’d had was Coke? Cokes, he corrected. Two of which had been given for free by a man who was acting decidedly odd. “Jesus!” Mark whispered. The bastard had put something into Stella’s drinks!
He shoved his things into his briefcase, threw money onto the table, and headed for the door. He stopped by the car, hoping Stella had used her key to get in, but when she wasn’t there, he tossed the stuff into the trunk and grabbed a tire iron.
He slowly walked through the parking lot, checking for Stella’s scent, and caught it leading out across the field in the direction of the chicken barn. There was another scent mingled with hers, the strong sweat from the truck stop cook.
They’d lured out their predator, and in normal circumstances, Mark would have had no doubts about Stella’s safety, but the way she’d been weaving as she went out the door worried him. He couldn’t have been too far behind, and he was moving with the speed even a young vampire could muster, but he couldn’t see them, and he quickly lost the scent.
Had his nose misled him? Had the man gotten Stella into a car or even met up with a confederate? Where were they? He was alone in a field, with nothing in sight but the truck stop behind him and the chicken barn before him, when he realized where they had to be. He ran toward the barn.
As he got closer, he heard talking and recognized Stella’s voice, even though it was slurred.
“Where are we? Who did you say you were anyway?”
“Just a friend,” a man’s voice said, and Mark guessed it was the cook. “I thought you might need a place to sleep. See, there’s a bed here.”
“It smells funny.”
“That’s just the chickens. If you lay down, you’ll be asleep in no time, and it won’t bother you anymore. Here, let me help you take your shoes off.”
Stretching up, Mark could peer into the window of the room where Stella and the man were, and even from the outside, he knew the smells in that room had nothing to do with chickens. While he watched, he saw Stella’s eyes drift shut, and she slumped to the floor.
“That’s my girl,” the cook said, and reached for her.
Mark had seen enough. He ran around the building until he found the door. It was locked, but he shoved his shoulder against it, splintering it. More chickens than Mark had ever seen at one time fluttered wildly, clucking and shrieking and making even more protesting noises as he ran through them to get to the door that lead to Stella. The man had heard him coming, of course, and was waiting behind the door as Mark burst in. Mark had been expecting it and dodged at the last minute, which was enough to deflect the knife thrust from his back to his arm.
Unfortunately it was the arm with the tire iron, which slipped from Mark’s grasp as he whirled around to face his attacker.
It took Mark only an instant to take in the scene, the man standing in front of where Stella lay sprawled on the bed. He was about to launch himself when a hand moving so fast it seemed to appear from nowhere latched itself onto the killer. Between his legs. Gripping his genitals.
He crumpled with a sound that would have been a scream if he’d had enough breath for it.
Stella went down with him, still squeezing. The expression on her face had nothing to do with the nymphet she’d been pretending to be and everything to do with a vampire.
“All right, you son of of a bitch,” she said. “Tell me who Jane Doe is before I rip your prick off!”
“I don’t know,” he wheezed.
“Are you telling me you don’t know one of your victims is buried in the Spivey family plot?”
“I know she’s there, but I don’t know her name. I don’t know any of their names.”
“You lying sack of shit,” Stella said, squeezing harder. “You kept her clothes, didn’t you? I bet you jacked off in them. There must have been something.”
“Nothing. I swear. Only a little money.”
“Tell me!”
The man’s face was starting to change colors.
“I don’t think he knows,” Mark said.
She didn’t let up.
“Stella, he doesn’t know. Trust me—no man is going to let you keep doing that if he has any way to stop you.”
For a long moment she still didn’t react; then, with a last squeeze, she let go. The man rolled into a ball and whimpered.
“Are you all right?” Mark asked.
“Of course. You know drugs can’t affect me.”
“I wasn’t sure,” Mark admitted. “You’re a very good actress.”
“What about you? That bastard stabbed you,” Stella said, and Mark finally noticed that his arm was bleeding freely. “Does it hurt?”
“Quite a bit, actually.”
Stella stepped over the killer, touched the blood with one finger, and brought the finger up to her mouth. Then she gave Mark a kiss that almost made him forget the pain.
“You’re welcome,” he said breathlessly. “What do we do now?”
“First we take care of your arm,” she said, and leaned over to start lapping at his wound. Not only did it stop the bleeding, but it felt damned good, too.
With that done, Stella dragged the killer from the floor, grabbed his chin to make him look her in the eyes, and bespelled him so thoroughly he’d have laid still for her to finish squeezing his balls off, if she’d asked him to. Then she told him exactly what he was going to remember about this night. How he’d drugged the girl at the truck stop and brought her to his nest, meaning to rape and kill her the way he had the others. But the girl had fought back, gotten in a lucky blow, and left him unconscious on the floor. Meanwhile Mark did a bit of stage decoration, leaving threads from Stella’s clothes on the bed and dropping the princess necklace on the floor. Then they picked up the tire iron and made their way out through the still-agitated flock in the barn.
Their next stop was the pay phone outside the truck stop, where Stella called the police to tell them who had attacked her and where. When they asked who she was, she hung up.
Mark already had the car running, and they lost no time in taking off, driving away just as the first police car arrived, siren blaring.
Despite the lingering pain in his arm, Mark was feeling pretty pleased with himself. “What do you know? We solved the case.”
“No, we didn’t. We still don’t know who Jane Doe is.”
“But we did catch a serial killer. Nancy Drew never did that, I bet. Not only will he not kill anymore, but now they’ll find his other victims. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Of course it does. I’ve been thinking of all those mothers who must have been wondering what happened to their daughters. It’s made my coming home worthwhile. I just wish we could have found out who Jane is. Her mother needs to know, too.”
They were quiet for a few miles.
Then Mark said, “Stella, about coming home. Why now?”
“I told you. For my birthday.”
“You’ve never come back for your birthday before, and eighty-two isn’t a particularly meaningful birthday.”