"Then we don't go out the main gate," Jessie said.
"We better go somewhere, and damn fast!" Helena said, pulling their attention back to the aisle down which they had just run. "Slavek will be on us in a minute."
It came sooner than that.
Behind them, screaming bats swooped out of the darkness, small, eager shadows that swelled rapidly, cancerously into huge-winged, semi-amorphous creatures that posed a more serious threat than they had in their tinier form. Their dark and wizened faces, once pinched and vicious, fleshed out, turned first yellow and then white, deathly white, like expanding balloons losing their deep color. Their claws changed into hands — human hands with wicked nails that gleamed with reflected moonlight Their scrawny legs lengthened, and the transformation into human form was completed.
A rush of cold fog rolled over them, as if drawn toward the vampires, and Helena stepped closer to the detective.
"This way!" Jessie cried.
He turned and ran toward the ravine, from which the fog had come, down between the two round hills on which the major portion of the maseni cemetery was built.
"But it's so dark down there!" Helena protested, running along beside him, her breath now making little white clouds before her.
"I know."
The fog was thicker now, and it got nearly impenetrable as they fled.
Brutus said, "And vampires see better than you two — especially in the dark."
"I know," Jessie repeated.
Behind: shrill bats. The vampires had taken to the air again.
"But if we run far enough," Jessie said, "we'll find the back gate. They might not have guarded that."
"Wishful thinking," Brutus growled. But that was the extent of his sarcasm. He loped out ahead of them, down into the darkness and the cool mist that hung in there like a giant shroud among the stones.
Chapter Thirteen
Tombstones loomed out of the fog, like rotten teeth chewing marshmallow candy. Jessie and Helena, still holding hands, weaved left and right to avoid the obstacles, staggering dangerously on the treacherous expanse of short, wet grass. They could no longer hear the shrill, inhuman cries of the vampire bats behind them, but that might be only because their own breathing was so labored that it effectively covered over all of the other night sounds.
At the bottom of the hill, as they dug in their heels to keep from plunging into a row of stones that sprang out of the fog immediately before them, Helena said, "Jessie, wait."
"What?"
"I have to rest."
"I thought you would," Brutus said. He appeared out of the syrupy, shifting mist in front of them, only his glowing red eyes visible like puddles of phosphorescent blood in the darkness. "I found some large markers over this way," the hound said. "They'll shelter you from any accidental aerial observation."
"You're a dear," Helena said.
"I know," the hound replied.
He turned and preceded them across the bottom of the ravine to a line of seven-foot stones and funereal statuary which threw even more intense shadows on the wall of night.
Helena went to the widest of the stones, which was cut deep with maseni letters, and leaned against it. She bent over and rubbed painfully at her thighs. "Not only am I going to have huge biceps from digging open that empty grave — I'm going to have big, knotted, muscular legs from all of this goddamned running around."
"We'll love you anyway," Jessie said.
Brutus said, "I like husky women."
High above, out of sight, the night popped with an animal wail. It struck down on the mist-shrouded graveyard like a note from a precision-made, tiny, silver horn.
"Passed right over us," Brutus said.
"This time, yes," Jessie said. "But not for long."
Helena stood up and moved away from the alien headstone, one hand on each of her buttocks, as if she were holding them in place while she tried a few experimental steps. "I feel better, now," she said.
"Let's move, then, before—"
From the darkness close at hand came a moaning sound, an agonized lowing that made their flesh crawl. Deep, gravel-throated, it had not issued from a human being, but from some other sort of creature, surely as large as a man, or larger.
"What was that?" Helena asked.
It was naggingly familiar, but Jessie finally said, "I don't know."
The moaning came again.
And with it came the sound of something shuffling along the grass, something quite large, barely able to lift its feet, brushing the dry, fallen palm fronds away in front of it.
"Let's get the hell out of here," Helena said. She hugged herself and shivered responsively as the beast cried out again.
Jessie didn't hug himself, but he did shiver, because he fancied that he heard, in the depths of that pitifully inhuman voice, a wet and cold and genuine agony, a despair that was limitless and, though inhuman, touched something in himself.
"This way," Brutus said.
The hound turned, his enormous tail flowing out behind him, and loped swiftly toward the second grave-spotted hillside, across the floor of the narrow ravine, disappearing into the inky, fog-smeared night, making not a sound, leaving them alone.
They had taken only two quick steps after him when something huge rose up on their left, beside Helena, a lighter darkness against the black curtain of the night. It shuffled out from between two of the high maseni tombstones, moaning loudly, a vicious cutting edge to its voice now, reaching for Helena with a pair of monstrous, cancerous-looking, misshapen hands.
She gasped and grabbed for Jessie, just as he grabbed for her.
The monster lumbered forward like a surging ameboid mass, out into the open, towering over them. At that moment, the storm clouds parted a bit and let through a brief stream of moonlight that illuminated the scene for a second or two before darkness rolled in as deep as ever.
The beast recoiled from the splash of light, then groaned and came at them again, backing them against another row of giant stones.
"Jessie, what is it?" Helena asked, breathlessly, her hands held out before her, palms flattened as if she were trying to push the beast away.
"Mabel?" Jessie asked.
Helena said, "What?"
"Mabel?" Jessie took one tentative step toward the thing, as Helena held desperately to his arm, trying to drag him back beside her.
The beast stopped, its mottled black-brown hulk shifting and changing, growing knobs and protrusions, then losing them as concavities took their places and other protrusions formed elsewhere on its hide, expanding and contracting like a sackful of lively eels.
"Is it you, Mabel?" Jessie asked, stepping closer, not quite so frightened as he had been moments ago.
The Shambler said, "I go by that name, yes. But I can't place who you might be, sir."
"I think I'm losing my mind," Helena said.
Jessie said, "Not at all. Mabel's a hostess at the Four Worlds, downtown."
"Hostess?" Helena asked.
"She's the night hostess. She has to hide during the day."
"I'd disintegrate, otherwise," Mabel said.
"Haven't you ever seen her at the Four Worlds?" Jessie asked.
"No," Helena said. "And I go every Saturday, usually."
"Mabel doesn't work weekends," Jessie said.
"I have weekends off, for the children," the Shambler agreed.
"Children?" Helena asked.
"She terrorizes them," Jessie said.
"Her own children?"
"No, no," Mabel said. "Just children in general — anyone's children so long as they'll give me a contract."