Under Darkness Part 23

She nodded and led me into a large, opulent one, all white tile and marble. The red bag of blood looked like a wound when I pulled it out of my backpack and laid it down on the sink. I reached for a gla.s.s with a paper doily covering its top.

"No," Audrey said as she sank down on the closed toilet seat as if her legs wouldn't hold her up anymore. "Just open it, please."

I did and handed it over. She poured it down her throat I prepared a second, holding back the urge to lecture her on the need to take care of herself. She drank the second pint more slowly while I disposed of the empty plastic blood bag in the trash. I was sure the cleaning staff had found stranger items tossed away than that.

When Audrey was finished she stood and went to the sink. She ran the cold water and splashed it on her face. Her cheeks were pink now; the trembling in her limbs had disappeared.

"Let me introduce you to Shally," she said, glancing up and catching my eyes in the mirror.

"Who does he think I am?" I asked.

"A spy," she said.

Between Cormac's blabbing to most of New York's vampire community during our last mission and Audrey's revelation to Khan, I might as well walk around with a sign saying, Hi, I'm Daphne. I'm a spy Hi, I'm Daphne. I'm a spy. Didn't anybody-besides Darius-know how to keep a secret anymore?

Audrey opened the bathroom door. Khan was off the phone and looking worried. She introduced us as he walked over and stuck out his hand to take mine in both of his, holding it as he said, "Thank you. Thank you for bringing her transfusion. I didn't know about her hemophilia. I have been desperately worried. She should have told me."

I disengaged my hand. "I'm sure she would have when she got to know you better," I said.

Audrey came close to Khan and he put his arm around her, drawing her close. He kissed her temple. "Are you feeling better?" he asked.

She looked at him with doe eyes. They seemed to forget I existed. "Yes. Much," she murmured, lost in his gaze.

I cleared my throat. "Well, I'd better get going," I said.

Khan snapped out of his trance. "Wait. I know, urn, that you are, um, working with the American government. If you don't mind, I need to ask you a few questions."

I stiffened a little. "You can ask. I don't know if I can answer you," I said.

"Of course. I understand. Can we all sit down, please?" Khan said. He had on a short-sleeved pullover, and I could see that his arms were muscular. He wore khakis. His feet were bare. When he smiled, as he did now, his teeth were very white. His manner was charming. He was an elegant man.

I perched on the edge of a chair. He and Audrey sat close together on the couch.

"Audrey told me a body had been found," he said. "A mate aboard the Intrepid Intrepid."

I nodded.

"I have called my uncle in Islamabad. Please understand, I had been a.s.sured that as long as the Americans agreed to a peaceful exchange, no one would be hurt. The way it was put to me, my help in the matter would help prevent bloodshed, prevent a major jihad from taking place."

"I don't think anyone, not even your uncle, could guarantee that, Mr. Khan," I said.

"I am beginning to fear you are right," Khan said. He looked up at me as he hugged Audrey closer to him. Their emotions for each other were so strong I could sense them. I could almost see them.

Khan took Audrey's hand in his as he said to me in an earnest voice, "I am not an extremist. I am a Muslim, and like most Muslims I am a peaceful man. I have never hurt anyone. I don't share the beliefs of the Wahhabis. I find them abhorrent. And I don't hate America. It is a great country.

"Now I feel as if my honor is on the line here. I cannot condone a terrorist act. I cannot be part of it." He looked at Audrey, rea.s.suring her as much as he was speaking to me.

I looked at the two of them. It made me sad. Their love couldn't have a happy ending, no matter what happened.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Khan, that you are caught up in this thing," I said. "I hope it doesn't end in bloodshed. If you are serious about preventing it, I can only encourage you to let us know-let Audrey know-if you hear of anything that might help us find the s.h.i.+p. Now I really have to go," I said, standing.

Khan jumped up. "Of course. Of course. I will do everything I can. I swear to you."

Only he wasn't speaking to me. He was speaking to Audrey. I let myself out of the hotel suite, leaving them wrapped in each other's arms, afraid for them both.

At eleven thirty I buzzed Mickey. He came to the apartment to help me get my Harley downstairs and out into the street. His rheumy eyes narrowed when he saw what I was wearing. Gone were the Stuart Weitzman mules. Gone was the teeny little cami.

On this hot night I wore my leather biker jacket-with a Kevlar vest underneath. My Beretta Tomcat Laser Grip was in a shoulder holster. I had on the Frye boots, with a knife inside one and a small .22 strapped to my ankle in the other.

"Not that it's any of my business," the old Irishman said, "but you look like you're going to war."

"Something like that," I said as we pushed the bike out into the hall.

We rolled it carefully to the service elevator. "More Orangemen, like the other night?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

Mickey was quiet until we got in the service elevator and the doors closed. "Where's the boyfriend? He going too?"

"He's going to meet me. And yeah, he's going too."

Mickey said nothing after that until we got to the first floor. "He watching your back?"

"You'd have to ask him," I said as we got the bike out on the street. I stood there and strapped on my helmet.

Mickey shook his head in disapproval. "Don't sound like you have much of a plan."

"Don't worry, Mick. I have friends." I got on my Harley Electra Glide. It felt good beneath me. I felt good on it. I hit the starter and the engine roared. I gave Mickey a salute and zoomed off down the block toward Broadway, toward whatever waited for me there.

Chapter 20.

"And we go,And we drop like the fruits of the tree,Even we,Even so."-George Meredith, "Dirge in Woods"

I heard the Harleys before I reached them. I bet even Mickey could have heard them, since my apartment building was only two blocks away. Filling up the curb lane on Broadway, stretching from corner to corner, a hundred vampires revved up their motorcycles. To casual bystanders they appeared to be outlaw bikers, human, of course, like a new production of The Wild One The Wild One, with Rogue playing the Marlon Brando role.

The ground vibrated with the thumping of the engines. The noise alone would const.i.tute a nuisance. I figured somebody would call the cops. We didn't have much time to get the h.e.l.l out of there.

I rode up next to Rogue, who was at the head of the pack with Cormac, Audrey, and Cowboy Sam. I kept scanning the group for Darius. So far he was a no-show, and my misgivings were growing.

Rogue nodded h.e.l.lo to me but kept speaking to someone on his cell phone. I figured it was the Laundromat's Martin or Gerry over at the park. The two and a half acres of Strawberry Fields stretched from Seventy-first to Seventy-fourth streets. We were only a few blocks away. All we needed was the signal that the vampire hunters were making their move.

Cormac pushed his bike up next to mine. "Everything's set. Your mother even has ambulances and medics standing by."

"What for? We get hit with a stake or a bullet, no medic can stop a vampire from turning into dust."

"Not for any of us. Must be she wants to interrogate the vampire hunters who get wounded."

Rogue kept his gloved hand raised in the air, visible to all under the streetlights. A minute pa.s.sed. Then two. I kept watching for Darius, checking out the long line of bikes, two and three deep, that ran the length of the block.

All the bikers looked antsy, impatient to get to the fight. It crossed my mind that if Darius had informed Opus Dei of our plan, maybe the vampire hunters wouldn't show. My heart began to sink, rapidly turning to stone.

Then I saw a lone rider coming down Broadway. Hope leaped up inside me. The bike came closer. The rider wore no helmet, no jacket either, just a T-s.h.i.+rt with the sleeves ripped out. His blond hair streamed back behind him.

Rogue saw me staring and, turning his head away from the phone, asked, "Who's that?"

"My guy," I said.

He laughed. "Rambo, it figures."

"Why?"

"He's riding a customized panhead chopper, probably a cla.s.sic Vaughs and Hardy."

I gave him a blank stare.

He snorted at my ignorance. "Easy Rider. You picked yourself a wild one, all right."

Darius reached us, spitting asphalt as he did a controlled skid to line himself up with me. Big grin on his face. "Hey, sweetheart. Told you I'd get here in time."

"I didn't know you had a bike," I said. Or that you had a lot of experience riding one Or that you had a lot of experience riding one.

"I didn't. Where did you think I was tonight? I had shopping to do. A ring," he said, and winked, "and proper transportation to deliver it."

"Oh," I said in a brilliant retort.

At that moment Rogue's hand dropped. He gunned his engine. The rest of the bikers followed his lead. The rumbling grew, thudding like the beating of a great heart, stirring my blood. Like a single living thing, the dark ma.s.s of bikes and riders pulled out into the street.

Careening around the corner of Broadway, a hundred motorcycles on the move created a din that echoed off the buildings and filled the air with a raucous noise. Our armada charged across Seventy-second Street. The dark entrance to the park lay ahead, framed by stone pillars, shadowed by trees, and dimly lit, like the great, gaping maw to h.e.l.l.

Once we were inside the park's walls, Rogue's bike jumped the curb, leading the way off the street and onto the gra.s.s, racing toward the vampires under attack and fighting for their very existence.

Suddenly, straight ahead, I could see them, most fighting hand-to-hand with the huge vampire hunter brutes who had come from the direction of the West Side and seemed to be advancing in waves. Not ninety. Not one hundred. At least three hundred of them, moving forward like army ants, stoked to kill their ancient enemy.

We were outnumbered easily two to one.

Acting according to plan, we resisted the urge to ride directly into the fray. Instead, like the gadfly Jeb Stuart encircling McClellan's huge army with his doughty band of rebs, we looped around behind the hunters, making a noose we hoped to hang them with.

Then, after we got into position, our fight began. I drove my Harley a few yards toward the foe before halting it on the gra.s.s. Parking it was going to be tricky.

I had rehea.r.s.ed everything in my head. I had to be thoroughly prepared if I wanted to get out of this and see tomorrow. I had brought a metal plate in my saddlebags. I twisted around and got it, put in beneath the bike, and pushed the kickstand down with my foot.

Success. The kickstand landed on the metal, not on the soft surface. I couldn't let the bike fall over, or I was going to be totally screwed. Even I couldn't pick up six hundred pounds alone.

Now I jumped off quickly. I left on my helmet. I pulled my gun from my shoulder holster, and, using the bike for cover, I aimed the Tomcat at the fighting ma.s.s before me.

The red laser picked out my targets. I pulled the trigger. Crack. Crack. Crack Crack. Crack. Crack. One after another the brutes went down.

I had no intention of being a hero; I just wanted to eliminate as many of the vicious killers as I could. I stayed back from the hand-to-hand combat as the Laundromat teams fought for their lives. My role was as a sniper, and my gun was a better weapon than my fists.

Darius had no such restraint. He rode past me toward the thick of the fighting. My heart longed to call him back. But my head knew this was what he had been trained to do. As a SEAL, Darius had been one of America's elite soldiers, battle-hardened and without fear.

I saw him jump off the bike, pull a combat knife from his belt, and run toward a vampire on the ground in dire trouble, a stake descending toward his heart. Then the fog of war moved in. I saw Darius no more.

After that I thought of nothing but my mission. I kept firing, carefully, deliberately, letting my laser beam find the enemy one by one.

In the sky above me the vampires designated to transform and carry out an aerial attack swooped and plummeted toward the vampire hunters. The air vibrated with their clicks and high-pitched whistles, like fighter planes in a dive. I heard screams. I smelled blood. Not daring to take the time to look up, my mind devoid of conscious thought, I fired on.

Then I got a crawling sensation up my spine, a tingling at the base of my neck; the hairs on my arms stood up. I heard a noise coming close behind me. I swiveled in time to see one of the dark thugs advancing, a stake in his hand. I fired at point-blank range. I fired again directly into his face, which disappeared in an explosion of blood and brains.

Then I was struck from the side, bowled over, a body on top of me. My gun flew out of my hand. I tried to push the monster off of me, his bulk squeezing the breath out of me. I saw the sharpened stake in his hand. I gripped his wrist with both of mine, shoving backward with all my strength.

My arms shook with the effort. My back was pressed to the ground. My opponent had the advantage. I saw the ending of everything coming toward me in the ice-pick tip of that sharpened wood.

Then suddenly the vampire hunter arched backward with a terrible cry. I saw a hole in his forehead turn to black and blood before he writhed and hit the ground. I sprang to my feet and looked around for my rescuer.

With a start I saw an old man standing behind me.

"Mickey!" I cried out, and in that second the old man, his long-barreled gun extended in his outstretched hand, crumpled to the ground. I ran to him. I could see the blood spreading on his s.h.i.+rt. "Mickey!" I screamed, and knelt beside him, getting my arm under his neck. "Mickey! How did you get here?"

He opened his eyes and looked at me, a smile on his lips. His voice was weak, but I could hear what he said. "Easy to follow you. All that noise. Somebody had to watch your back." Then he slumped in my arms.

"Medic!" I screamed. "Medic! Over here!" A young man came running with a medicine case. "He's one of ours, but a human," I cried out.

The medic felt Mickey's neck for a pulse. He nodded at me. "He's alive. We'll get him out of here." I nodded, and the breath I had been holding came out of me in a whoosh.

I whirled around and frantically searched the ground with my eyes. Then I saw my gun, which still lay on the gra.s.s, and scrambled for it. I picked it up, regained my position behind my bike, and started firing again-until I heard the sound of sirens wailing through the streets of the city.

While it seemed as if we had been fighting for a very long time, it had probably been just minutes. Now we needed to get out of there before the cops arrived. Vampires didn't have the option of getting arrested. By the time day dawned they would be unprotected and die.

Vampires and vampire hunters both began to scatter. I mounted my bike. I went to hit the starter. Then I stopped. Not twenty feet in front of me a vampire hunter on the run stopped too. Smaller than the others, though dressed the same, the hunter looked at me with hate-filled eyes.

I recognized her at once. It was not a face I'd forget. She had tried to kill me before. And I had seen her with Darius. In his band. In his arms. It was Julie, his lead singer-his fellow spy and formerly his lover.

I raised my Beretta Tomcat. The laser beam hit her dead center between the b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the surest target I could find.

"Daphne, no!" A hand grasped mine and pointed the gun toward the ground. Julie shot me a look, anguished but filled with loathing, and ran.