Chapter 10
David and Amy were smoking a joint when Chris came in.
"Put that out, you too! You want to get arrested?"
"You'll turn us in?" David mocked him "You are such a good citizen that you would turn in your own sister."
Chris slapped him. "When you are living under my roof you'll not smoke the stuff. And watch how you speak of my sister."
"You invited us here, didn't you?"
"It was a mistake. I thought you might have changed. I was wrong."
"You didn't change, either. You are still the same hypocrite who makes a living looking through keyholes, and selling what you know to the FBI and the CIA so that they can run a better police state."
"Chris, what's holding you?" Sabrina's voice came from the other room.
""They are smoking pot in here."
"We have no time now. Come here a moment."
Chris left the drink he was holding on the table and went to meet Sabrina.
"Do you think that he will come back for the drink?" David wondered aloud. "Let's see what happens."
He dropped a pill on Chris's drink.
"David!" Amy protested.
'He's been asking for it. And don't go around telling him what I did."
Chris came back and swallowed the rest of his drink. Amy tried to speak, but David dug cruelly his fingers in her arm.
Sabrina and Elmer went over the timetable. "We let them have part of the money how, to keep them interested. This way they'll be sure to come back to see you car burning. "she explained to him.
"Must we junk it? It is a good one."
'You must if you want to save your neck. Then we will get you a new face."
"You'll make sure that the body found inside will be identified as me?"
"Of course."
"Where do you get the body?"
"We could claim and unclaimed corpse in the coroner's office, but in this case it is best if Angelique made one out of whole cloth. It wouldn't be the first time she did."
"I'd like to hear about that."
"Later. Now we have to go meet your friends."
"Do we really have to?"
"It is going to be all right. I'm coming with you, and I have a gun. Chris will also be covering us."
"Do you think that's enough?"
"Sure. I got to fix myself before we go."
Sabrina adjusted he peroxide wig and opened further the collar of her dress.
"Do I look slutty enough to be a girlfriend of yours?"
"Yes."
"It's a bitch having to do your makeup in the car... but there is no helping it. We have to hurry."
"Should we leave a note for Barnabas?"
"I don't see the point."
"Is Chris really there?"
"He's trotting along."
Chris tried to keep a steady pace. It wouldn't do to get overtired. He still had plenty of time to reach the meeting point.
He shouldn't have had that last drink, he thought. Generally it was a bad idea to drink before turning into a wolf. But David had upset him so...
Well, he'd have to control the dizziness. After all, it wasn't the first time it had happened to him, and he had handled himself well.
He felt tired. He should take a short rest. There was a pond nearby; the sight of water made him feel thirsty.
He drank. And as he did, he felt an oppression over his chest.
He ran a few feet, and he had to stop. There was a bell ringing in his ears, and his lungs felt like stabbed with needles.
He lied down to make the pain subside.
"Cannot lie down here" he thought. "have to make it to the rendezvous point."
He got up. A flash of color exploded behind his eyes. and the needles became knives, until the pain forced him to take human shape again.
Flies buzzed in front of him, and they shot lights at his eyes. The bells kept assaulting his ears mercilessly. He was in the middle of a swarm of maddened wasps...
He was in human form, when the ground broke opens. The gap turned into a mouth, ready to swallow him. He backed away from it. A tree branch hit him on the cheek, and then it curved to form a noose around his neck.
He changed into a wolf again... the lights blinded him.
To human form... the noose would not let him breathe...
To wolf...to human...he changed again and again...He couldn't escape the light and the pain. He changed back and forth unable to stop. Screams of pain escaped him. He lashed at the killer trees, and the wasps, and the lights...he tried to grasp anything that he could tear up...
"This is the spot" Sabrina said to Elmer.
"If you say so." Elmer parked the car, and sat back, waiting.
"Stop acting as if you were going to your execution."
"Why not? This may well be it." Elmer took a last drag out of his cigarette. "I got right to a cigarette and a blindfold."
"Nobody is going to kill you. My plan is going to work."
"Damn!" Elmer shook the empty package of cigarettes in his hand.
"What is it?"
"I just smoked my last cigarette. Do you have any on you?"
"Didn't Willie keep you supplied?"
"I left them behind at Barnabas'"
'Logical."
"Don't you have any?"
"Why should I? I don't smoke."
"Look in your purse. Maybe you'd find one there."
"There is nothing in my purse."
"Please look."
Sabrina rummaged through her purse. 'Nothing here" she said.
"How about the glove compartment?" he opened it and ran his hand inside kit.
"There are no cigarettes in this car."
"What about the floor" Elmer managed to slide down, and kept looking.
"What are you doing?"
"Maybe one of them rolled off.".."
"You'd put one in your mouth after it's been down there?"
"I need one."
"Here, have some chewing gum"
Elmer shook his head... I could fly back to a shop and buy some...
Sabrina laughed. "You are not overly subtle. You want to run away. Come, have some chewing gum. It'll help."
Elmer swallowed the chewing gum.
"You are not supposed to swallow it. Just keep it in your mouth, keep your tongue busy...
Elmer sank down on his seat, the picture of despair.
"You know what you have to do?"
'Yes, We meet them. I act trusting towards them..."
"Then I go hysterical and cause some confusion before you can say where the money is."
"They might pull guns."
"Then make sure they point away from me. Chris falls on them. We make sure their tires are shot. We run away in your car. Chris puts on your coat and slips in the driver's seat and you follow them through the air. If you think it is close to dawn. Call me and I'll have Angelique take over.
"You make it sound so easy."
"Stop acting up. You'll live through it. You won't be any less alive tomorrow than you are today."
"Lady." Elmer managed some dignity in his words. "the kind of life I have may not be much. But it is the only one I got. The fact that I have to spend days in a coffin does not mean that I want to spend nights there, too. You act as if it is nothing to put me in the crossfire."
"I am putting myself and my husband in the crossfire, too."