“Yes, sir.”
Behind them another car at the stop sign honked for them to move. They did.
A few minutes later Jack pulled off the famous 17-Mile-Drive and onto a side road that climbed and curved up the side of a bill overlooking the Pebble Beach Golf Course and beyond, the glittering blue of Cannel Bay. Down below had been mostly cottages, but up here astride the ridge were the great estates, walled and spread-out and beautiful, with their towering pines and tennis courts and postcard courtyards and flower-eating deer. The home of Team Crow was one of the grandest atop the ridge, a huge multiwinged tudor mansion set back far from the road, with a five-car two-story garage, a Japanese garden in the rear surrounding a steamy heated pool, and eight acres left to play in.
A true palace, thought Jack as he negotiated around a parked car and started up the drive. And incredibly, it had felt too small.
But that was before.
Don’t think about the phone.
Cat and Annabelle were craning their heads to look behind them.
“Is that her?” she asked.
Cat nodded. “I think so. Looks like her car.”
“What are you talking about?” Jack asked.
“It’s Davette,” Annabelle replied. “I think she fell asleep out front waiting for us to pick you up from that late plane of yours.”
“Want me to run down and get her?” Cat asked.
“No!” blurted Annabelle firmly.
Jack glanced at her, surprised, as he pulled the truck to a stop in the empty carport. “I thought you liked her.”
“I do. But we leave in six hours and I want to put you under first. After that you can talk to her.”
“Put you under.” Jack sat cringing behind the wheel as a wave of misery flushed through his system. Put me under, hypnotize me, make me remember back, remember everything that just happened — two weeks ago? Yesterday? Go back there and remember everything and make a tape of that same everything because any one detail might mean the difference later on. Nobody knew shit about vampires and they had to learn, had to, had to… Anthony! Oh, God! I don’t want to go back there again!
Adam spoke up from beside him. “Haven’t you made that last tape yet?”
And Jack’s memory scrambled desperately to help him.
“Sure I have,” he insisted, looking pale into their faces and feeling sweaty and lost. “Haven’t I?”
“No” was all Annabelle said in reply and it was gentle but it was also firm and that meant she loved him and understood even, but he was going to have to do it anyway.
Jack closed his eyes and let the wave pass.
He hadn’t thought back once. Not specifically, not in detail. Not once.
Not awake.
“How come you know about the tapes?” Carl asked Adam, and his voice sounded suspicious.
And that woke Jack up. Leader again. Depend on me. Rock and roll.
Jack turned in his seat and faced Carl. “This is the kid who keeps track of the tapes for the Man. Been doing it for three years.”
He noticed Cat was also leaning forward with interest, eyeing the man who, he had suddenly learned, knew all his secrets under fire and fear.
But all Cat said was “Oh,” and leaned back.
“Okay,” said Jack, yanking the door open. “Okay,” he said again, more quietly, to Annabelle.
And then they were all clambering out and reaching for bags and starting up the walkway to the front door.
“Six hours, huh?” Jack asked no one in particular. “You’ve moved everything already?”
Annabelle was cheery. “You actually could have flown straight to Dallas, if we could have gotten hold of you to tell you. Carl just has the one load left.”
“Weapons,” Carl offered, walking along beside him. “Crossbows and the like. Gonna have to truck ’em to Dallas tomorrow. Stupid F.A.A. feds! Scared to death a closed crate of medieval weapons is gonna take Pan Am to Cuba.” He laughed. They both paused on the front step. Jack thought he could already hear it ringing. He tried smiling along with Carl as the others gathered in a bottleneck before the door. Somebody was jingling keys.
“Funny thing,” Carl was saying. “If it was guns, something they’re already scared enough to know something about, they wouldn’t mind so much.” He paused, laughed again. “We oughta be using guns.”
Jack Crow, stepping numbly along with the others into the empty grand foyer, thought: Guns.
And then he thought: guns? Guns! Guns!
“Guns?” he all but shouted.
All turned toward him, surprised, alarmed, worried.
“What?” Carl asked him.
“Guns!”
“Guns?”
Jack hugged him and yelled: “Yes, goddammit! Guns! Hot Damn! Guns! Don’t you see?”
“Guns?”
“Rock and roll!”
Chapter 5
Surrounding the bar, surrounding the last of the booze, surrounded by Jack Crow’s obvious glee, they played his little guessing game.
Carl evinced irritation. Annabelle tried to look bored. Cat was amused. Adam was just as bewildered as he had been since Rome. But Jack—
Jack was having so goddamn much fun that nobody really cared.
He’s back, thought Cat to himself.
And when he spotted the misty affection in his comrades’ eyes, he knew they were feeling the same.
“Look,” Jack began again, propping his boot on the railing behind the bar with a thump that echoed in the now-empty room. “It’s just a matter of putting the pieces together.”
He stared at their blank faces. He somehow managed to smile while still grinning.
“All right, class. We shall begin again,” he said and they did.
And this time they began to see.
“…and the bullet hole from the sheriff’s gun — in his forehead, remember? It was already closing, right? And it was trapping the blood from Hernandez’s silver cross gash, right?”
No one spoke.
“Right?” repeated Jack.
“Right,” Cat responded slowly. “Well?”
“Well, what, goddammit?” growled Carl.
Cat suddenly sat forward. “The gash hadn’t healed…”
“From the cross…” continued Adam.
“From the holy silver cross,” Jack corrected.
“But the bullet wound was already closing!” Carl jumped in, seeing it all now. He stood up from his stool and slapped the flat of his hand loudly on the top of the bar.
Jack was grinning mischievously. “You see it, don’t you?”
Carl looked disgusted. “I see it, all right. I just don’t believe it.”
And then Cat saw it. He moaned. “I don’t believe it either,” he said. But now he, too, was starting to grin.
Annabelle looked lost. “If somebody doesn’t tell me what’s happening pretty soon…”
Cat leaned close to her against the bar. “A cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-yo fucking Silver!”
And everybody, save Annabelle, laughed. She looked downright angry. “Would someone please tell me what’s going on?”
“Silver bullets,” said Father Adam. Then he paused and, with a nod toward Jack, amended, “Holy silver bullets, blessed by the Church.”
“But I thought silver bullets were for werewolves,” Annabelle asked.
“They are,” replied Adam calmly.
Too calmly, thought Jack. He held up a hand to cut off the questions all had turned to ask the young priest. “No!” he barked firmly. “No! I don’t even want to know, Adam.”
Adam smiled, eyed his glass.
“You hear me?” Jack insisted.
“I hear you.”
Jack turned to Carl. “Can you pour the bullets?”
Carl grinned smugly. He sat back down. “Sure, I can pour them. But can anybody here shoot except me?”