"Then I'm no detective," she said.
The bats from the mausoleum streaked by overhead, squeaking furiously, their leathery wings flapping moistly.
Jessie picked up the shovel and began to take it apart as he talked, to repack it in the satchel. "I'm aware that you're not as quick in these matters as I am," he said. "No one would expect you to be; you've not had the experience I have." He was pleased that their roles were now returning to a moderated equilibrium that he could cope with; he no longer felt so damn foolish. "Don't you see, though…. We've got enough evidence to go to Galiotor Fils, enough stuff for him to bring charges against the maseni embassy officials. From here on out, it's all up to the police and the courts. They'll find out what really happened to Tesserax, and why such an elaborate cover-up was done. All we have to do is get the facts to Galiotor Fils."
From the darkness behind Jessie, a familiar, rasping voice spoke: "However, in order to do that, Mr. Blake, you will first have to get out of this cemetery alive."
Jessie turned, bringing up his flashlight as Helena raised hers, pressing back the shadows where a dozen vampires stood not five yards away. Their eyes glittered brightly in the twin beams of the hand torches, and they were all smiling.
The fiend in charge of the group, the tallest and handsomest of the lot, was Count Slavek, the bloodsucker who had almost illegally bitten Renee Cuyler only a brief night or two ago.
"The bats we just heard—" Jessie began.
"Us," Slavek said.
"Jessie?" Helena asked. "What are they going to do with us?"
"Nothing," the detective said. Slavek laughed.
Jessie said, "Unless you want to be converted to the life of the undead, a vampire can't touch you, Helena. That's the law."
"Ah," Slavek said, "but when all is said and done, the law is nothing but a piece of paper."
"Ignore that piece of paper, and see what happens to you," Jessie said. "An official stake straight through the heart, a quick conversion to a pile of lifeless ashes."
Slavek took a step forward; his comrades followed after him in a sussuration of flowing capes.
"Slavek, it isn't worth breaking the law over someone like Renee Cuyler, especially when I was right and you were wrong."
Slavek advanced another step.
The pale-faced bloodsuckers behind him spread out on both sides, in a semi-circle. They all leered at Helena.
"This hasn't anything whatsoever to do with Renee Cuyler," Count Slavek said, "Oh, she was a tasty little piece, to be sure. But the world is just full of tasty little pieces — like your Helena, for example, who is one of the tastiest little pieces I've ever seen, bar none." He grinned wickedly at her.
"Oh, fuck off," Helena said.
Slavek winced; male vampires were not accustomed, in their male chauvinistic society, to hearing such talk from women. He looked back at Jessie, trying to regain his composure, and he said, "I would not nurture any grudge because of Renee Cuyler. She was a little bit empty-headed, anyway. You understand, I prefer empty-headed wenches to your average smart-assed college girl…. But I have my limits: a minimum IQ of 105 being the bottom of those limits; a top IQ of 120 being the other end. Anyway, Blake, this is no private vendetta."
"Then, what—"
"I've been sent here to stop the three of you from messing around in the Tesserax affair. Your hell hound companion will be restrained through the talents of several sorcerers who have been watching you since you first entered the cemetery."
"I knew it!" Helena exclaimed.
"Meanwhile, both you and your lady friend will be — ah, converted to the life of the undead," Slavek finished. "And may I say, I am going to enjoy munching on this gorgeous child's neck — and, later, on other things which also appear delectable indeed."
"Jessie, stop them," Helena said, from the other side of the open grave.
Jessie said, "Run!"
Chapter Twelve
Blake had broken the collapsible shovel into two pieces, and now he used these to divert Count Slavek's attention. He threw the spade section at Slavek's face, then tossed the handle hard at his ankles. As the vampire put up his arms to ward off the blade, he stepped backwards and got his legs tangled hopelessly in the whirling handle. He cried out, stumbled clumsily to the side, fell onto his back, thoroughly confusing his fanged comrades..
Jessie turned as soon as he had thrown the second piece of shovel, not waiting to see what it would do. Without bothering to scoop up his flashlight, he leaped across the open grave, grabbed Helena's hand and started running — not in any planned direction, just away.
Brutus ran ahead of them, taking enormous strides, leading them purposefully toward the main cemetery gate. He could have headed for one of the walls and phased right through, Jessie knew, but he had chosen to stay with them. Jessie remembered that it had been the hell hound's touch which had changed him from stone to flesh in the sculpture garden at Millennium City…
The sound of wings grew behind them.
"Faster!" Jessie shouted.
Helena gripped his hand more tightly and increased her pace to match his, issuing not a word of objection.
He looked at her as they entered an open aisle where there were no granite obstacles to beware of, and he saw that she was holding up quite well. She didn't seem terrified, merely frightened, biting her lip and straining to get all the speed she could out of her fine, long legs. Then he saw the flashlight that she carried in her other hand, and he relized it was proof of his own terror that he hadn't noticed, until now, that it was on and that the bright beam danced across the earth directly in front of them, pinpointing their position for Slavek and his pack.
"Helena!" he shouted.
Still running, her breasts shoved out like twin ornaments on a new fluttercar, her yellow hair flying out behind her like a tailfin pennant, holding tightly to his hand, she glanced sideways at him.
"The flashlight!"
She didn't get what he meant.
"Throw the flashlight away!"
She held up the hand torch, slowing down and thereby forcing him to slow as well, looked wonderingly at the instrument for a moment, then realized what he meant. She pitched it away, to her right. The beam whirled crazily, a spinning yellow lance that shaved paper-thin wafers of darkness off the bulk of the night, then struck a large tombstone and shattered.
They picked up speed again, running as fast as they could, the grass treacherously damp under them.
Still, they could hear wings flapping behind them — and the shrill cries of many tiny creatures: bats.
Ahead, Brutus slowed and came to a full stop, his long tail straight up in the air, his pointed ears thrust forward, the long hair down his neck and back bristling.
In a moment, they were up with him.
"What's the matter?" Jessie asked. His heart was pounding so loudly in his own ears that he could barely hear his voice.
"A sorcerer," the hell hound growled.
"Where?"
The hound pointed with his snout.
The magician was an old man, quite tall and thin as a rail, his long fingered hands raised before him as if he were about to cast a spell or a charm; his gray, frizzled beard fell nearly to his waist, ruffled by the night breeze. He stood directly before the main gates in a pool of unnatural, cobalt blue light that seemed to radiate from the man himself. He was dressed all in black robes decorated with crimson quarter-moons and silver stars. He also wore a peaked hat of the same fabric and design.
Brutus said, "He's a danger to both of us. He could cast a spell on the two of you…. And he could dissipate my soul, if he wanted to, and if he didn't care about breaking the law." Clearly, the hell hound was recalling his own treatment of Zeke Kanastorous earlier in the day — and perhaps regretting it just a little.