PART 3
PREY
Chapter 10
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"(Burke's) missing. But they'll find him and he'll come back, and everything will be just the way it was before."
-Vicky Winters, October 1967
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October 21, 1971 - Thursday
Downtown
Veronika let herself into her clinic before the sun rose.
She wanted to be away from her sisters. She wanted privacy. Connie had told her of Roger's phone call of the night before, and she wanted to speak to him without her sisters overhearing. But the office phone was already ringing as she let herself into the unlit office space. The fluorescents flickered their way to a solid white glow as she sighed and lifted the receiver.
"Come to me," Roger said in a flat voice. "I'm at the Old House. Come quick. Bring your medical kit. Bring it all."
He hung up.
She ran out of the clinic and sped to the estate.
In the sitting room, Barnabas and a stone-faced Elliot sat in postures of blank collapse. Roger slowly scrubbed his face with one abstracted hand as they narrated their experiences of the past ten hours.
Last night both Julia and Angelique had unaccountably vanished. While Elliot had quickly located Angelique, she had not allowed him into her room. When she did not respond to calls early this morning at her locked bedroom door, he had gone outside and rounded the cottage until he reached her window. He removed the mesh screen, broke the glass and carefully hoisted himself inside. Elliot found Angelique unresponsive and pallid as death, laid out on the floor beside her bed. She had managed to put on her nightclothes. There were two ragged puncture marks in her throat.
At the Old House, Barnabas had first made certain that Julia wasn't slumped inside her awkwardly parked car. He walked through the house, shouting for her. He and Willie Loomis had prowled every inch of the grounds with flashlights, to no avail. Back inside, while Willie brewed a pot of tea, Barnabas paced. He didn't want to bring in the sheriff—what if this disappearance was an entirely innocent medical matter? It was possible. Julia could have encountered someone needing help, brought them to the Old House for some reason, then realized an ambulance was needed. She could have ridden with whoever it was to the hospital. Why then no word? He hurried to the telephone, grateful at last that he had agreed to its installation, and rang Collinsport Hospital.
They had not seen Dr. Hoffman since the afternoon previous.
He'd phoned Windcliff. No, Julia hadn't been there for about ten days, and would serve her next on-staff rotation in mid-November.
Beside himself, he had searched the entire house again; this time opening every secret aperture in the house, yanking up rugs to access hidden trapdoors, getting on hands and knees to feel along the bottoms of murky closets, prying into cramped storage areas that never saw use.
This time, in the black dark of a bedroom closet, Barnabas' hand closed upon an ankle.
"She'd hidden herself," he said in an aching voice. "Either that, or the monster threw her into the closet once it was done with her ..."
Ashen, Elliot raised one hand to stop him. "Don't think that. Barnabas, I believe each woman was attacked at Collinwood and then withdrew to hide herself. They either fainted or specifically wanted to curl up and sleep after what had befallen them."
Elliot looked shell-shocked. One hand continually roamed over his stubbled face. He had never seen Barnabas looking worse, his face a greenish-gray. Behind the agony in his eyes was the smoking rage Elliot himself was feeling. As he stared, Barnabas caught his gaze and told him, "When we catch this creature, you and I will flip a coin to see which of us gets the honor of beating him to death."
Upstairs, Veronika had examined a nervy and defensive Julia. Gazing at her hectic eyes, Dr. Liska tried to assess her objectively. Yes, there was a wound on her neck, a double puncture, but could it not be some sort of insect bite? No, Julia was not herself, but could there not be a dozen explanations for the disturbance?
She asked Julia outright whether something had bitten her throat. "Of course not," Dr. Hoffman had replied in a rapid staccato, eyes darting everywhere. While the women were talking, Barnabas strode into the room uninvited and purposely yanked open the drapes, causing Julia to screech and fling her arms over her eyes.
Her other patient had been silently adversarial. The beautiful Angelique said little and looked at no one, forcefully pinching and smacking the doctor's hands when Veronika tried to touch her. And then Angelique startled her with a warning that if she interfered, she would be sorry.
"Interfere with what?" Veronika asked, watching her closely.
For the first time that morning, Angelique lifted her ethereal eyes to the doctor. "Us," she replied evenly.
Now Willie, along with Garvey Craig, Collinwood's live-in handyman who had been hastily summoned to the Old House, remained uneasily watching over the subdued women.
Examinations concluded, Veronika rejoined the men downstairs and sat as Roger spoke.
"They're both going to have to go to the crypt with Elizabeth," he was saying in a rusty voice. "The monster responsible has to be destroyed immediately. Now. There isn't a moment to lose."
"The crypt?" Veronika asked in dismay. "You mustn't do that, and you must free Elizabeth at once. This nonsense has gone far enough."
Barnabas rested his face in his hand. Elliot wrenched himself from his chair to walk back and forth.
"Well?" he grunted. "What is the doctor's diagnosis?"
Gathering herself, Veronika put a hand against her mouth for a minute, then lowered it and addressed her listeners.
"I know what you want me to say," she told them in a low voice. "I can't say it. I cannot tell you that a vampire did this. Vampires do not exist.
"They cannot exist," she continued. "You are telling me that a deceased human with rotting intestines, lifeless limbs and a dead brain, is taking himself here and there around town biting people's necks for the blood that gives him life.
"What life? A dead thing has no desires or compulsions. It does not wander about looking for something to drink. It can go nowhere, drink nothing, including blood.
"I do respect the fact that all three of you have seen things in Collinsport that I have not. I also respect Julia's deep experience. She is a maverick in medical circles. But Julia has imbibed too much of this—whatever it is7—group hysteria you all seem caught in. In straight terms of science and medicine, the thing you describe cannot exist in this world."
She templed her hands before her and weighed her words carefully.
"All three women have puncture marks on their throats. There have been overnight personality changes. I find Julia light-sensitive, displaying symptoms of migraine. And Barnabas, you had mentioned to me that the two of you had an upsetting conversation last night."
"Oh, we did," Barnabas answered, his unblinking eyes on Veronika. "Concerning two murdered kids who had had their bodyweight in blood sucked out of them, if I rightly recall. Yes, I do believe Julia was a trifle upset."
"I also noticed Julia looking emotionally wrung out after hearing Burke's ordeal in South America."
Elliot came to stand almost threateningly over the doctor. "Then we are to understand," he said, trying to control his voice, "that these women suffer from migraine and emotional distress. I see." He crammed his fists angrily into his trouser pockets. "It is a triple case of the vapors."
"Elliot," Roger warned.
"We have to track it down right now, and destroy it," Barnabas said for perhaps the fourth time, "at once. Let's go. We have known of this threat for 48 hours. These depredations must proceed no further."
"Leave us, Veronika," Roger suddenly suggested, still speaking without any inflection to his voice. "If you cannot accept what is going on here then I don't know how to convince you. I imagine that you have patients waiting for you at the clinic."
This nettled the doctor.
"Do not chase me from the house," she said softly. "I wish to help you."
"Do you?" said Elliot.
"I could go so far as to say that it is an animal bite," Veronika said cautiously, "but chances are that it's something else. I don't see what sort of animal could have bitten the women without their realizing it and defending themselves, because if it is a bite, it's a large animal. But I don't see how it can be a bite. I can give you a hundred explanations for those wounds that are grounded in scientific fact.
"Contact dermatitis, for example. Each woman came in contact with something at Collinwood and is having a vigorous allergic response. People do scratch at itches until the skin opens, sometimes. What we're seeing could be an auto-immune reaction to some type of virus. Let's test their blood."
Barnabas gave a pained laugh. "Just try getting blood from them. They'll fight you to the death."
"What else, doctor? What other diagnoses can you offer?" Elliot invited.
"Shingles," she ventured. "Lupus. I've seen—"
"Three overnight cases of spontaneous lupus."
"Elliot, let her speak," said Roger dully.
"What in the name of God is lupus?" Barnabas asked.
"Dr. Liska," Elliot said tiredly, almost kindly, "this is not shingles, or lupus, or leprosy. These marks are not the visitation of a gargantuan breed of mosquito and they're not some really aggressive type of freckle.
"These are bites from a human mouth, and you know it."
"I do not know it."
She faced him squarely, but something inside her began to quake as she registered the anguish in his tired gray eyes. He tried one more time.
"You say the creature we describe cannot exist in this world. Those were your exact words, and you have the entirety of modern medicine to back you up. We respect that. But you're in the wrong world.
"This world goes where medicine does not. It concerns cursed beings. This is where we put down our textbooks and accept the lessons of hundreds of cultures through millennia, who have had truck with demons."
"Catch up, Veronika," Roger begged her suddenly. "We need you. Liz and Julia, and Angelique. Please. We cannot keep losing people."
Veronika's hands tightened on the arms of her chair as a memory stirred. Where had she just heard a demon mentioned?
Something walks up on you, something that shouldn't be able to walk on two legs …
Our ancestors knew damn well that demons exist ...
Let's just say that there are beasts that no one discusses because no one can. And they like to bite.
With a shock, she realized Rafael had said these things to her. He, too, had tried to reach her, illuminate something for her which he knew she couldn't see.
Veronika drew herself up.
Was she wrong about this?
Were three vampire attacks staring her in the face?
In the crypt, the ladies were largely silent.
It was warm there and the cots were soft, blankets plenteous. But space was now at a premium.
Jealousy had flooded Elizabeth when she understood that two others had also been gathered by the Master. But she had been the first, the favorite! There was no undoing that! As Julia and Angelique were herded into the crypt, she watched Angelique hiss blasphemy at the wet-eyed Elliot, and smiled when Julia turned and struck Barnabas in the face with such violence that he staggered backwards against Roger.
The women had drawn together in one corner, eyeing the men with hatred.
Penned up here like cattle! Elizabeth thought. Stupid Roger actually thought he could hide her from the Beloved. If she could only get her hands on him, sniveling behind the other men, she'd have ripped at his face and throat with her hands until he fainted.
Barnabas' idea had been to protect the women from further harm by putting crucifixes everywhere, even inside the room that held them. The holy articles were placed in each corner of the room as the women screamed in unison. Elliot had also decided, after consulting his library on the occult, to lay thick lines of rock salt on the floor in front of the entrance and where there had once been window openings. This would supposedly keep the crypt inviolate.
The women waited until they were shut up once more and the men gone, and then they acted.
There was an empty corner with no cot standing in it. The three removed their shoes and fitted one hand inside a shoe. They crawled on the floor and, with gritted teeth and exclamations of repulsion, carefully pushed all the crosses into that corner in as tight a pile as they could make. Then they retreated, breathless.
They took stock of themselves and decided that Julia didn't need her suit jacket. Balling it up to use as a makeshift sweeper and again crawling, they pushed the rock salt as best they could into the corner where the crosses reposed. They took turns, going over the rough floor again and again.
When the work was finished, they composed themselves to wait.
Julia found herself approaching Angelique.
The expectant mother sat on the edge of her cot, leaning back on straight arms, palms flat on the coverlet.
"Perhaps you should sleep," Julia suggested, though sleep was impossible at this hour. It wasn't yet sunrise, and that meant that the Master could appear at any moment.
Angelique looked pensive and gorgeously disheveled. Julia sat down beside her. They did not look at one another.
"Julia," Angelique said, "what do you think has happened to this baby?"
The question hung in the dark-gray air.
Ordinarily, the women had no use for one another; and here they were in competition for the vampire's attentions. But Julia was a doctor, and Angelique a first-time expectant mother in potentially disastrous circumstances.
"I hadn't thought," Julia lied. Privately, she had wondered.
Could the baby be affected by what Angelique was experiencing? There was no hematological reference available on the planet to address this situation. The baby's blood system was entirely separate from the mother's, but what exactly was the placenta allowing through, apart from food and oxygen? Was the vampire virus going to be passed like an infection, or would the environment of the womb shield the child? As long as the child itself was not bitten, was it not safe? Or was vampirism of a nature so uncanny that its transmission to a fetus couldn't be guessed at?
Julia was having difficulty thinking since the Beloved had claimed her. She found herself struggling to recall the barest medical precepts.
"I wanted this baby," Angelique went on. She looked serene, but Julia watched a tear well up and catch in her lower lashes. "I belong to the Beloved now, and there is nothing greater than that. But—I wanted this child."
"Is your due date in February? How many weeks are you?"
"The baby is due in late January. I am at twenty-six weeks," the other woman said in a faded voice.
Julia tried to imagine how Elliot must be feeling at the moment but gave up. It wasn't interesting. Then Barnabas' face flashed into her mind, his deep shout of agony when he had discovered her last night and realized what had happened. She remembered how he had grabbed her against himself, nearly bending her backwards as he wept. His tears dripping onto his hands as he phoned first one place and then another for help.
Had Julia ever loved Barnabas? She couldn't remember, and what did it matter?
The women sat together. If they were capable of prayer, they prayed that the Beloved would come.
The morning air was crisp and cool. The sun rose, and light penetrated the drawn shades and the glass panes of the long windows of the Old House, but hardly anyone noticed.
"Which is it?" Barnabas asked his friends. "All of us are now ferociously motivated to stop this thing. Who is the vampire?"
Roger said, "Devlin was at Collinwood last night. Not Jansing or Castlewold. The other suspect in the house was Tisa."
For once, Elliot did not spring up in defense of his niece. Veronika tensed at the mention of Burke's name, but did not speak.
"Burke was there," Barnabas agreed, "but I watched with my own eyes as he left the house. And before he left, I saw Julia enter the kitchen, and I saw Angelique right there in the foyer speaking with Elliot. Devlin would have to be astoundingly agile to get both women in the short amount of time between his apparently leaving and our realizing that the ladies were missing. No, it's not Devlin."
"Is it not?" Roger asked softly. "Did you happen to be holding a stopwatch last night, Barnabas? Did you plot out how long Devlin was supposedly gone before Angelique turned up missing or before Julia's car disappeared from the drive? If he is the monster, he's going to have supernatural strength and ungodly speed.
"And now he has survived not only a plane crash, but death-defying perils in South America," Roger continued, getting a little louder. "Oh, Elliot summarized the story for me. That's some superlative endurance, by heaven! And if any of it's true, why, Burke seems to be the one man out of a million who could have withstood it all. And what does that indicate?"
"Roger, that's ridiculous. Burke was not making up his story," Veronika said tiredly. "I saw the whip-marks on his back, and they weren't figments of my imagination."
Veronika didn't seem to realize that she might be proving Roger's point. And the other meaning of her words seemed to glance off the men; it was as though each was connected only peripherally to the conversation, each isolated in his own shock.
But Elliot's mind involuntarily recorded Veronika's statement. She'd seen Devlin's naked back, had she? Under what circumstances? A medical exam, or something else?
Veronika's cheeks went unexpectedly pink. Elliot recorded that fact also, without realizing he was doing it.
"The other person in the house was Tisa," Barnabas said, not looking at Elliot. "By the wildest stretch of imagination I suppose that Burke Devlin could have done this thing, but now let us look at Tisa.
"She's been at Collinwood since Monday. Monday night to Tuesday, the children were killed. On Tuesday, Hallie claimed that Tisa lunged at her and tried to bite her. David found Tisa semiconscious on the floor upstairs, blood running down her chin. That evening, Elizabeth was bitten.
"The following evening, Tisa went to the Blue Whale, where a man paid her some unwanted attention and she responded by wounding him in the neck.
"We have tried to pursue Jansing and Castlewold, and I strongly believe that Lars Castlewold is the vampire. But Tisa has not been challenged by us or in any way questioned. And yet, she resides here in the house."
Barnabas sat forward in his chair, his hands hanging loosely over his knees. "Forgive me, Elliot," he said compassionately. "But I can't rid myself of the image of Tisa striking out at Hallie as if to bite. What possible explanation can we come up with to diminish the horror of that? And she did attack Henry Cabot and leave him with punctures in his neck."
"For God's sake," Elliot cried out, "Tisa defended herself with the corncob skewers from her dinner plate, not with her teeth! The man was forcibly trying to take her from the bar! Do you see Henry Cabot sick in the crypt? Additionally," Elliot continued, his eyes sparking fire as his argument gathered strength, "both Julia and Veronika diagnosed Tisa with emotional trauma, nothing more. So she has gone the rounds with two physicians who saw nothing wrong with her other than mental exhaustion!" He threw his hands in the air. "Tisa should never have become a nun, but she wanted it so much, and the disappointment and regret are devastating to her. Leave my niece alone. I, I—" Elliot hesitated.
"Yes?" Barnabas encouraged him after a moment.
"I will bring her the cross myself," Elliot said in a haunted voice. "In front of you all. A vampire cannot look upon the cross of God without screaming in pain." Suddenly, he looked so terrified, so bereft, that Barnabas caught his breath. Elliot simply sat there with one hand to his mouth.
"Are you all right, Elliot?" Roger asked after an uneasy silence.
"I have something to ask Dr. Liska," Elliot muttered. He lifted troubled eyes to her. "Dr. Liska, Veronika, listen to me, please, and tell me what you think.
"Angelique is pregnant. I need your medical expertise. Just for this next minute, drop all the constructs and so-called facts and step over the boundary with us. Just for the sake of this conversation, vampires are real. Now, in your estimation, what are the chances that ... that my child and Angelique's will be permanently damaged in these circumstances? If a vampire's corruption now flows in Angelique's veins? Would we have to ... we won't have to ..." he stopped, his face a sick white.
Roger gave a cry of distress.
"You mean, will we have to kill the child? No, Elliot," Barnabas said hoarsely. He looked wildly from one to the other. "Never in all of our reading have we heard of anyone being born a vampire. It isn't possible. The creature would not age; it would remain an infant. No vampire could live that way, so it wouldn't happen! It's sheer nonsense."
After a second, Elliot covered his eyes with his hand.
Veronika got up and sat beside him, taking his other hand in hers.
"All right," she said gently, "I will meet you here on this question. A body has miraculous defenses when it comes to protecting the fetus it carries. It will even rise up against itself to defend the life inside the womb. Look at hyperemesis gravidarum, where pregnancy causes a woman unending sickness until delivery. That is torture. Yet her body will submit for eight or nine months and not eject or attack the fetus that makes it sick. And Elliot, you know that the blood circulation systems of mother and child do not touch. Everything that I know of life tells me that a child in this instance would be unaffected."
"She's right, Elliot," Barnabas said faintly from the other side of the room. "She has to be."
Elliot grabbed Veronika's hand hard, and brought it to his lips.
Unbeknownst to herself, Veronika took for granted that Burke Devlin was no longer a suspect.
But Roger was thinking. He sat with his mouth pressed shut, staring out the French windows, and thought.
Devlin was in the house last night, and last night two victims were taken. What happened the first time he came to Collinwood? I threw him out. For revenge, he returned and bit Elizabeth.
He will displace me in the affections of my son.
I can see him creeping up on Veronika.
Something happened to him while he was in South America, and it turned him into a vampire.
If Devlin is the one doing these things, I'll kill him myself.
If they didn't get coffee, they were all going to collapse. Roger steered Barnabas and Elliot before him into the kitchen of the Old House. Veronika did not join them, but remained in the sitting room, thinking.
Was it possible?
What had she really seen today?
The women with dual holes in their necks, as if someone had placed a tiny drill against their skin and turned the device on. The marks were round and perfect, though Angelique's were slightly ragged. Why ragged? Had she been scratching at them?
Of course, that must be the answer.
Without realizing it, Veronika gritted her teeth.
Open your eyes and look, she told herself. You fought your professors doggedly whenever you thought they were being hasty or short-sighted in diagnosis. Whatever became of your questioning mind?
Why not lend her support to these men who were so sure of what they were facing?
The answer smote her at once.
Because if I encourage them in any way in this mad venture, someone is going to get killed. And Barnabas, Roger, or Elliot, or all three, will go to prison.
The morning sped past.
Veronika went back to the clinic. Trying not to think of the women in the crypt, the men sat dejectedly in the drawing room of Collinwood as an anxious Harry and Tish tried to get them to eat.
In the horror of last night's happenings, Elliot had forgotten his niece's plans to leave Collinwood today.
Before anyone knew it, there was a terrific banging at the front door. Warily, Roger answered.
There stood Lars Castlewold.
Lars blinked at him, and Roger frowned in annoyance.
"And who are you?" he blurted, never having seen the scout up close.
"Tisa is expecting me," the young man said tersely. "I'm here to get her and I'm not leaving without her—so let me in."
Elliot and Barnabas had hurried into the foyer at the sound of loud voices.
"Mr. Castlewold!" Elliot exclaimed. Eyes narrowing, Roger looked anew upon the stranger.
He saw a man of perhaps thirty, dark-eyed and muscular, obviously ready for a fight.
"Let's be peaceable about this," Lars suggested, both hands raised in a calming gesture, but there was warning in his tone. "She called me. Said she's being made to stay here against her will. She's coming with me."
"What rot!" Roger shouted, angry that any guest would dare claim to be Collinwood's prisoner, as Elliot tried to push his way forward. Barnabas held him back.
"She called you?" Barnabas asked in confusion. All he could think of was the call of the vampire that sang in the blood, summoning the creature it had enslaved. (He had forgotten about telephones; he often did.) Was Tisa the vampire? Had she summoned Castlewold, her servant and defender? Had he been wrong about Castlewold himself being the beast?
Lars's eyes blazed with the heat of heroism; he had obviously worked himself up for this confrontation. Gone was the cheerful young talent scout of two days before. He now dropped his arms in a guarded position slightly held out from his body, fingers spasming, like some old-fashioned gunslinger ready at any moment to seize a pistol from his hip.
There was a sudden bump and flurry from above, and a breathless Tisa arrived on the upper stair landing.
"Lars!" she cried.
For a second, the entire scene struck Barnabas as ludicrous. Romeo was preparing to fight the grumpy house of Collinwood for the hand of this freaky little Juliet.
He wanted to bellow with laughter.
But swiftly, other feelings burgeoned. It was still likely that Castlewold was the demon who had injured Julia and Elizabeth, and who had now mesmerized Tisa into captivity. Had he gotten Tisa with none of them noticing? But how is it he could bear daylight? Which had compromised the other?
His mind ached.
Tisa clattered down the stairs.
Surprising Barnabas, Elliot gently tugged himself free and took a step backwards.
"Welcome, Lars," he told the young man soberly. "Cross the threshold."
Lars looked at him, suddenly uncertain. He did not move. Tisa scuttled to his side.
"Look," the young man warned, "the thing is done, can't be undone, so there's no need for the household to get into an uproar. She has chosen of her own free will, and she's coming with me."
Barnabas felt his nerves leap. Was Lars declaring by that statement that he was the vampire?
"Leave my house!" Roger cried, pointing dramatically at the skating coach.
Barnabas saw Elliot slowly reach into a pocket.
Of course. Elliot had a cross! The young people now would finally be presented with the cross!
Barnabas quickly reached up to his own collar, dragging at it, to pull free the chain he himself wore from which a cross hung.
"Come in," Elliot repeated, and Lars did.
They all stood there, glaring at one another.
"I don't understand what's going on," Roger said in exasperation. He stared back and forth from Elliot, to the couple at the front door. "You don't still think it's either of them when we have Devlin, do you? They're right here in the daylight and the sunshine, how do we explain that?"
"What?" Lars asked. He raised his eyebrows as he regarded Roger. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Lars," Elliot said, staring raptly at the young man, "I have something for you, which we neglected to give you the other day at the restaurant."
"Whatever it is I don't want it," Lars spat.
Elliot drew out his cross.
An earsplitting scream ripped through the foyer, jolting the men, but it wasn't Lars who screamed.
It was Tisa.
She whirled away from the object and smashed her face into Castlewold's chest, clawing at him like a banshee scaling a tree.
Barnabas jerked in horror. Tisa was the vampire, not Lars?
"Dear God, no," Elliot moaned, sagging on his feet in shock. "Merciful Christ, no."
"You'll pay for that," Lars vowed, grasping the writhing young woman to his body. "It's not enough to torture her with talk about dead kids and ghosts, but you have to chase her around the house with that, too!" He shoved Tisa behind him.
The men stood in astonishment as Tisa writhed and screamed behind Lars' sheltering body. As if she had just been electrocuted, she leapt and screamed and wrenched her head back and forth as Lars tried to shield her from them.
It was astonishing.
Roger was now all attention, convinced. He stood beside the shattered Elliot, a huge gold cross clenched in his fist. He held it before the hockey scout.
"What about you?" Roger challenged. "How is it that you can endure exposure to the cross? If she's bitten you, young man, you're doomed! Don't you understand?"
Lars stared at Roger, and his face suddenly suffused with blood.
"You—" Lars gasped. "Listen, man, what we do is not your business! That is private bedroom stuff! What do you think this is, The Scarlet Letter?"
Elliot summoned all his inner strength and stepped up to Lars. Tisa was the demon; now they would see whether Lars were her slave or just a confused suitor. If he was under demonic influence and the cross touched him, he would retreat in a frenzy of loathing.
"Allow me to touch your flesh with this cross," Elliot told him softly. "Call it a social experiment."
Barnabas looked from one to the other; something wasn't right. Elliot looked haggard, but Lars only seemed scandalized; his eyes narrowed.
"You want to touch my flesh?" Lars cried. "Old man, I noticed you checking me out in the restaurant the other day, and I'm just not interested! You're not touching me, thanks very much!"
Thrusting his doubt aside, Barnabas quickly swung forward to flank Elliot.
"Theresa Jean!" Elliot roared, "get away from him!"
"No!" Tisa shrieked, clinging all the more wildly to Castlewold.
"I'm taking her and we're going!" Lars sputtered.
At that, Barnabas leapt with gritted teeth and slapped the cross onto the naked skin of Lars' exposed forearm—the arm curled around Tisa.
Lars gasped at the smack of the cross on his skin.
No reaction. Nothing happened.
"Right, what the hell was that supposed to do?" Lars cried, looking almost comically perplexed. "I'd heard that things were daffy in the house on the hill, but you folks are living in a goddamned Ken Russell movie! I think you three need a psychiatrist up here pretty quick."
Barnabas backed away, appalled and uncertain.
"Mr. Castlewold," Elliot said, reversing immediately, "you are in danger. Get away from Tisa, now. Believe me. Tisa, love, I'll do anything I can for you …" Elliot trailed off in a strangled voice. "Roger, Barnabas, quickly! Put a cross around his neck!"
"Like hell!" Lars shouted, his hair falling into his eyes. "I won't accept the thing!"
"Why not?" Barnabas yelled.
"Well," the young man yelled back, half laughing in exasperation, "If you REALLY have to know ..." and thrust Tisa gently to one side, jerked open the collar of his shirt, and exposed his neck and upper chest.
On a worn leather cord, resplendent against the dark fur of his chest, reposed a glistening Star of David.
The men were silent.
"Does that cover it?" Lars cried. "Have I passed the Collinwood religion test? Or is Kosher meat not the right kind? God Almighty," he breathed, "what is the matter with you folks?"
Elliot felt a wave of utter terror. Tisa had largely kept her face averted as they had threatened her lover with the cross. But he was now beyond suspicion. His heart plummeted to his shoes. If Tisa went off with Castlewold, the man was doomed.
But … Elliot caught himself. Castlewold wore the Star of David. That meant he was protected! And if he were the kind of Jew who never removed the Star, Tisa could not have come anywhere near him without shrieking in agony! She'd have forced him to remove it. Then it was possible, it was possible …
"Sweetheart," Elliot choked out to Tisa, his heart in his throat, "come say goodbye to me before you go off with Lars. You love him, and I understand that. Kiss me goodbye."
"Elliot," Roger warned.
Tisa sniffled and slowly disengaged herself from Lars' arms. The face she turned to her uncle was shiny with tears and slightly swollen. She stared at him, doubtful.
"Uncle Elliot," she warbled, "I don't understand you. Why are you persecuting me? How can you be so mean? Why are you waving crucifixes at us? Don't you know that after the convent, I can't bear it?"
"Never happen again. I'm saying goodbye," her uncle replied softly over the lump in his throat as he worked to lure her to him. "Come to me, honey."
Roger and Barnabas tensed. Elliot was taking a stupid risk.
She slowly made her way toward his outstretched arms, and then, silently, Tisa sank into Elliot's embrace. She pressed her face into his throat, closed her eyes.
Before anyone could react, Elliot swept her against him, clasped the back of her head, and pushed the cross against her cheek.
They sat in the drawing room, huddled on couches and chairs, trying to recover from what had just taken place in the foyer.
"Two down," said Elliot. "The way is clearer."
"Yes," Barnabas responded, fingering his sherry glass.
"I wish you'd just told me about it all," Tisa said plaintively, pressed against Lars' side on the sofa. "For the past few days, I thought I was going crazy all over again. Here I am in Collinwood for a rest—and then I heard you, Uncle Elliot, discussing murder and zombies with your friends. I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to listen, but I eavesdropped because I wanted to know what kind of person you'd become. And I felt this wasn't a safe place for Hallie to stay, if you want the truth. I thought of contacting some agencies to find another place for her to live.
"Then, in bed at night, I asked myself whether I'd really heard what I heard. Had I just imagined it? Was I that crazy?
"And then I fell in love with Lars the second I met him, and we decided in here yesterday that we want to live together. I want that more than anything," she said huskily. "It's happened quickly, I know, but it's like there's a clock in me ticking double-time.
"Being in the convent was indescribable. It was like you'd killed yourself and now you were stuck in purgatory with no escape. Finally I decided to break out. I've been trying hard to come to life again, get away from all that death. I want to forget convent living as fast as I can. I'd so much wanted to be a nun," Tisa cried, "but actually being one was nearly the opposite of what I'd expected! So much cruelty. I need to get it out of my system. Crucifixes upset me so much just now that seeing one almost literally makes me ill."
Barnabas regarded Tisa, whom he'd only seen briefly the night before. The girl was beautiful, with bewitching gray eyes and glossy brown curls. She was a little strange, but he understood she'd had a breakdown. He wondered what sort of anguish she must have experienced in a convent, pledged to a rigid life that didn't suit her. Elliot had told Barnabas that the Order had insisted upon Tisa being a teaching nun, and that Tisa had hated it. The revolt she'd felt in her soul must have been harrowing.
"But you have suspects?" Lars pressed, interested. "Now that you've stopped thinking it's Tisa and me? You think you might know who's responsible for killing those kids and attacking Mrs. Stoddard and Dr. Hoffman?"
Elliot pinched the bridge of his nose. Roger rose and paid a second visit to the liquor cabinet.
"We have a few others in mind, yes," Elliot affirmed. He directed his eyes to his niece.
"Tisa, under the circumstances, you must wear the cross until this pestilence is at an end. Can you understand that?"
After a second of silence, she raised her chin.
"I don't have any trouble with it," she told him. "I don't mind a small, plain cross. If it's around my neck I won't have to look at it all the time. I just have to keep away from crucifixes and church services until I feel better. I need a break from anything that will remind me of the convent. A lot happened to me in Philly that you don't know about. The older nuns abused us physically and emotionally. I had a ghastly time. Maybe some of it was my own fault, but that's neither here nor there. I do still love God, even though I'm not Sister Mary Timothy anymore." She gave Elliot a faint smile.
"Remember when I chose my religious name? A nun chooses it to indicate that she's leaving her old life behind. Little did they know that your real first name is Timothy," Tisa laughed, "and that I was taking you with me. Joke's on them. I guess I wasn't nun material from the very beginning."
Elliot lovingly smiled on her.
Barnabas felt drained. He slumped in his chair, a sense of thanksgiving in his soul for Elliot's sake. Tisa wasn't the monster. Neither was Lars, and both of the young people were safe.
That meant that the vampire was either Kim Jansing or Burke Devlin. He still couldn't make himself believe that Burke was at the heart of this terror. He couldn't envision it.
Jansing, then. Jansing the unseen.
They'd deal with him immediately. It was daylight, which meant the monster slept. Maybe. Others had seen Jansing by day. Either way, this time they'd go to the studio and by God, they'd get in, even if they had to hack down Roger's precious hallway door.
And yet, the thought tickled the back of his mind.
He realized with astonishment that each time Burke had appeared, it had been after sunset. Just like himself when he had been undead.
The night Burke came for drinks at Collinwood with Dr. Liska to be reacquainted with Julia and himself.
The night Burke had come to Collinwood with David to tell about Brazil.
Seemingly never moving by day …
Roger was looking fragile and pale as paper. During the altercation in the foyer just now, he hadn't known which way to look, who to fix on. His certainty had sheared from Devlin to Castlewold to Tisa.
Now the couple was exonerated.
That left Devlin.
To Roger's mind, Jansing was a negligible player in the concern. Perhaps he had lied about where he'd studied art, but who cared? Roger felt that Kim had a dignified bearing about him that would quail at the suggestion of vampiric shenanigans. He hadn't made any trouble this week in his cannery studio. Roger was ready to write him off entirely.
By contrast, Devlin had certainly been in town in 1967, when Collinsport was plagued with a beast who had drunk the blood of cattle. There had been some strange blood business going on, if he remembered rightly, that Dave Woodard had been investigating. That summer there had been reports of young women being stalked by the madman who had presumably kidnapped Maggie Evans. Even David had been affected, blathering nonsense about monsters watching him, bats attacking him. They'd had to call in a psychiatrist.
Hadn't all the terror ceased as soon as Burke had departed for South America?
Had Burke been a vampire even then?
Yes, Devlin was the monster. With two suspects now erased from the ledger and two left, they were inexorably closing in on Burke.
Barnabas and Roger stowed Tisa's few possessions in the back of Lars' car. Most of it was still in the shopping bags she and Angelique had carried into the house the night before.
"We want to leave Collinsport," Lars explained, "but we won't be far. I can't go any distance from the rink, since I'm contracted here for some weeks, eh? But we can find digs in a nearby town—Northbury, maybe, or Lembruck." His dark eyes spoke understanding for Elliot's concern. "Nothing's going to get Tisa. I'll protect her with my life."
Tisa smiled at her uncle. "I'm going to be fine," she told him.
A hundred worries and objections assailed Elliot, and he wondered briefly if this is what it felt like to be a parent.
"Humor an old man," he told them. "Wear the cross without fail, and you, Lars, your Magen David. Never take it off. I know it sounds like something out of a Hammer Film, but Collinsport is a place where supernatural phenomena has made a home. It won't be for long. Once we have purged this evil, the innocent can walk the streets of Collinsport freely again, without fear."
Tisa laughed. "With truth, justice, and the American way," she told her uncle. "You sound like an episode of Superman."