Dark Changeling Part 12

She projected a flare of resistance, instantly quenched. "So now you believe they exist?"

They had argued that point too much already. "Introduce me to them."

She slumped in his grasp. "Only fair, I guess. Listen, Roger, I can't do it on my own. But I suspect, from the way my advisor reacted when I mentioned you, that the elders do know about you already. I'll contact my advisor and pa.s.s on your request."

"Tonight."

He sensed her complete surrender. "Yes, tonight."

* * * *DRIVING AWAY from the motel, Roger shook with pent-up frustration. Sandor, d.a.m.n him to h.e.l.l, had been right about one thing. Roger's body, accustomed to regular "doses" of human blood, was in violent revolt.

I can handle it. I've abstained longer than this many times.

That reminder didn't ease the burning in the throat and the cramps in his stomach. For an hour he drove the crisscrossing back roads of the county, ignoring speed limits. He almost hoped for a confrontation to discharge his aggression, but, ironically, no radar trap netted him. Finally he returned to Annapolis and parked downtown at the city dock. He knew resorting to a casual pickup so near home was dangerous. For once, though, need overpowered caution.

It didn't take long to find a solitary woman who responded to his practiced seduction technique. Together they walked away from the crowded, brightly lit tourist district to a thicket of trees on the Naval Academy campus, where Roger lulled her into a sensual dream. He drank deeply and went home satisfied.

HE OPENED HIS eyes upon dense gray fog. He lay, not in bed, but on mossy ground. Above him spread the branches of a decaying, hollowed-out tree. Alice Kovak stepped out of the fog, a b.l.o.o.d.y hole gaping in her neck. She raised a pointed stake in her clenched hands. He tried to leap up. Someone held both his arms pinned to the ground. Looking wildly from side to side, he saw Sylvia at his right, the woman he had just drunk from at his left. The woman's neck, like Alice's, bled copiously.

"Why?" he tried to scream. The word came out as a faint whisper. "I didn't do that to you."

"He's lying," Sylvia growled. "He's a traitor-kill him!"

The stake swept down to pierce his chest.

ROGER WOKE TO the ringing of the phone. For once he welcomed the interruption. He checked the clock. He'd gone to sleep between four and five a.m., and it was now six thirty.

When he answered the phone, Sylvia's voice said, "All right, I made that call, and I'm waiting for an answer. I should hear before tonight. Want me to come over then?"

"Yes, please do." The dream was already dissolving, except for a confused miasma of guilt and terror.

"I can hardly believe what my advisor told me." Sylvia sounded almost childlike in her excitement. "He said I'd be getting a call from Lord Volnar."

Her awed tone reminded Roger of the way his late mother would have spoken about an audience with the Pope. "I gather that's something special?"

"Lord Volnar is-well, you'll find out. He spent a lot of time with me when I was growing up, almost a co-advisor, but he's very busy, and I hardly ever see him now." Roger didn't need empathic contact with Sylvia to guess that she had, in human terms, a crush on Volnar. "I never expected him to take a personal interest in you. Roger, there must be something important about you that I've never suspected."

Roger discounted that suggestion. Sylvia was jumping to conclusions with little more data than he himself possessed. Besides, even if true, "importance" wasn't necessarily a good thing. In this context, "important" could mean "dangerous." Roger didn't dare a.s.sume this Lord Volnar's att.i.tude toward him would be favorable.

* * * *"LORD VOLNAR will contact you sometime in the next few days." Sylvia paused to lean against a tree, absent-mindedly shredding a pine cone. She and Roger were strolling together in the woods behind his townhouse. "I can't say exactly when. He's the oldest of the elders; he has his own way of accomplis.h.i.+ng things."

Roger glanced up at the moon through the branches, inha-ling deeply the sharp evergreen scent and the richer smell of moist leaves.

"You seem relieved."

"I am! You can't imagine how glad I am to have this whole mess off my hands."

"Just like that?" said Roger, irritated at her readiness to dump her trouble with Sandor onto him. "What will you do now, run away again?"

Sylvia gave him a tolerant half-smile. "You can't goad me into throwing another temper tantrum at you. My guardian said I should have known better than to overreact to your confused behavior, so I'm going to be reasonable if it chokes me."

"Thank you," he said acidly. They resumed walking.

"As for leaving, he thinks I should, right away, but I can't take the idea of-well, yes, running again. So I'll hang around for a few weeks first. After that-well, I pa.s.sed through a quiet little town near Albuquerque where I could really enjoy living. I may try that for a year or two."

Exasperating as she was much of the time, Roger felt let down at the thought of losing Sylvia's company again. "Well, I wish you luck."

"I have a special reason for staying here the next couple of weeks. I could go back to the Nevada headquarters for this, but somehow I don't want to accept anybody at random for my first time."

"What are you getting at?" He noticed Sylvia's aura fluctuating, and her scent held a musky undercurrent he hadn't sensed before.

Was she ill? From the remarks she'd dropped, Roger thought vampires were immune to disease.

"I have something to ask you." She paused, turning to face him. In the silence between them the rustling of hidden animals and the chirps of crickets stirred the air. "d.a.m.n, this is hard to say. Any other male of our kind would take it as a routine favor, but you grew up with human beliefs about body functions."

"For all you know, I'm not your kind. Did it occur to you that your Lord Volnar might want to get rid of a human being who endangers your race by behaving the way I do?" Roger had not formulated the theory this way before, but now that he did, it sounded chillingly plausible.

Sylvia shrugged off the suggestion. "I'll worry about that later. The point is, there's no one else in Maryland except Neil, and I'd rather die." She reached up to twist a spray of leaves off a tree branch. "What I'm getting at is that I'm about to enter my first estrus. I recognize the symptoms I was taught about. It'll hit soon, within a week at most."

Stunned, Roger said, "You're asking me to-"

Sylvia nodded. "Mate with me. You don't have to worry about pregnancy, because the first heat period is never fertile. I've got to have somebody, I won't take Neil, and better you than a human male-Ilike you."

He cut her off. "Out of the question. Look, Sylvia, even if I didn't have-stuffy as it may sound to you-moral reservations, I don't-" he evaded her eyes. "I told you haven't been capable of e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n for almost twenty years."

"Oh, don't worry, that's normal. If you really are one of us, you will be when the time comes."

Flus.h.i.+ng with embarra.s.sment, Roger didn't pursue that point. Sylvia's nails grazed his cheek, coaxing him to meet her pleading gaze.

Sensing what it cost her to make the request, he didn't have the heart to refuse outright. "I'll think about it. I can't make any such decision until I know more about this race you claim I belong to." That answer contented her for the moment. Declining her invitation to hunt, he left her gliding among the trees, nostrils flared, every sense extended in search of warm-blooded prey.

ROGER STARED IN shock at the second page of Monday morning's paper. The headline shrilled, "Vampire Killer?" What-ever sense of well-being lingered from Sat.u.r.day night's feast instantly crumbled to dust.

"A woman identified as Ellen Soames, age 22, was found dead early Sunday morning on the steps of the Naval Academy Chapel...."

The story went on with the customary sensational drivel about peculiar throat wounds and ma.s.sive blood loss. Roger skimmed it, thinking of the woman he had left drowsing on the gra.s.s near the chapel. She'd been about the right age and had given her name as Ellen. No possible doubt. He hadn't lacerated her neck, much less left her bleeding to death.

He knew who had. So Sandor's call hadn't been a bluff; he meant to pursue his revenge. And an effective one-it occurred to Roger that this crime, unlike the first, endangered him. Someone might remember seeing him with the dead woman.

Roger silently d.a.m.ned his own carelessness. His undisci-plined appet.i.te had thrown another victim into Sandor's clutches. How long would the persecution continue? Roger had a night-marish vision of patients staggering into his office with bleeding wounds several days a week. Neither his career nor his sanity would long survive.

Lingering to mull over the article made him later than normal in getting to work, but Britt intercepted him anyway. While he poured a cup of the double-strength coffee Marcia had made for him, in a pot separate from the weaker brew the two women favored, Britt said, "I lucked into a pair of tickets for the Bach Meistersingers at St. Anne's Sunday night. Want to go with me?"

"Very well." He'd done so once before and enjoyed the music, as well as enjoying Britt's company entirely too much.

"And relax, I won't bite," she whispered, following him into his office.

He guessed the tickets were partly a pretext for Marcia's benefit. Sure enough, as soon as Britt had shut the door behind her, she changed the subject. "I heard about that patient of yours who was attacked Friday," she said without preamble. "Terrible thing, especially hitting so close." He heard more speculation than sympathy in her voice.

"How did you hear?" So far as he knew, the police hadn't released Alice's name to the local media.

"I have a friend in the State's Attorney's office," Britt said. "And have you seen this morning's paper? Another woman was a.s.saulted the same way over the weekend-only that one died."

"I don't want to discuss it," Roger growled, pretending to be engrossed in unpacking his briefcase.

"Well, I do," Britt said, leaning against his desk, arms folded, "and who better to listen than you? I have some ideas on the subject that might interest you."

"I doubt it." Confound it, why wouldn't she take rudeness for an answer?

"Did you know there were two similar killings in Baltimore within the past ten days?"

Roger flinched. Now that she mentioned it, he recalled noticing headlines about such crimes. "I try to avoid reading that sort of thing."

"They present some intriguing angles."

He raised his eyes to hers, strongly tempted to use the hyp-notic force he'd sworn never to inflict on her. "Can't you grasp that I don't find the incident pleasant to dwell on?" "No use evading it," she said. "Physician, heal thyself. I pre-scribe a long talk over lunch."

If he didn't agree, she would give him no peace and might become actively suspicious of his reluctance. "All right, lunch. Now, I have a patient in ten minutes. Will you please let me get to work?"

IN THE UNGLAMOROUS milieu of a bargain steak house, Britt unfolded her speculations while Roger nibbled halfheartedly at what the menu optimistically called prime rib. "As soon as I saw the report about the murder on the Academy, I remembered those Baltimore crimes. The m.o. is too similar for coincidence."

"I never suspected you had such low tastes. This is worse than dabbling in the occult."

"Insults won't sidetrack me, so don't bother," she said, etching a grid in her swordfish filet with the fork tines.

"Your hypothesis is that it's the same criminal. What about it?"

"This morning I called my cla.s.smate from Johns Hopkins in the State's Attorney's office and blackmailed some information out of him." She hesitated before adding, "Off the record and confidential, of course."

"Of course." Roger felt a tingle of excitement along his nerves, despite the threat to his own security.

"My friend says the name 'vampire killer' isn't just some journalist's fevered fantasy. All the wounds were made by human teeth, only not quite human. There are anomalies."

"What are you getting at?"

"What would you say to fractures on some of the victims, apparently made by bare hands, but requiring abnormal strength? Or some unidentifiable organic compounds in the saliva found in the wounds?" She gleefully speared a chunk of fish and savored it while waiting for his reaction.

Roger kept his voice even, though anxiety squeezed his lungs. "Sorry, I can't bring myself to contemplate the facts with your enthusiasm. I prefer to view this kind of pathology from a distance-in textbooks."

"But is it pathology?" He gave her a sharp look. "Think, Roger! There are only two possible explanations. Either the at-tacks were made by a psychopath, a blood fetis.h.i.+st, possibly one who imagines himself to be a vampire, or-"

"Well? What's your alternative?"

"Are you ready for some extreme Jungian mumbo-jumbo?" She leaned toward him across the table. "A real vampire."

He struggled to disguise his alarm as indignation. "Come on, Britt! This time you can't be serious."

"As Hamlet says-"

"And don't quote that tired line about 'more things in heaven and earth.' How can you possibly support this ridiculous notion?"

"The post mortem findings I mentioned-"

"Inconclusive," Roger said.

"But highly suggestive," she retorted. "Oh, I don't mean a walking corpse. Something anomalous and unknown to science, though.

And I'm determined to meet this 'vampire.' My friend will give us first crack at whatever consultant work the State's Attorney needs done. If the criminal is what you think, just a Jack the Ripper variant, he'll make a once-in-a-lifetime case study. And if he really is a unique mutation or even something inhuman-" "What would you do? Administer a battery of Rhine tests for clairvoyance?" The vision of Britt running standard psychological tests on a caged vampire struck Roger as almost humorous. If anyone could do it, she could. He wondered what Sandor would see in the Rorschach cards.

"Don't you understand?" Her eyes shone, her lunch forgot-ten. "Vampirism implies much more than paranormal abilities. It implies immortality. Can you imagine what it would mean to live for centuries as I am now? No aging, no mental decline, perpetual growth and discovery?"

"Britt, don't you see that if vampirism were a fact, it couldn't be like that at all?" He inwardly shuddered at the thought of Britt putting herself within reach of Sandor's claws and teeth in search of nonexistent "immortality." "If vampires existed, they'd have to fit into the natural order. Their life span wouldn't be transferable. You might as well expect a mosquito's bite to give you the power to fly."

"We'd never know without investigating, would we? And I'd give a lot for that reward." Shoving her plate out of the way, she leaned on her elbows, gazing into his eyes.

"As an investigator, your blatant bias disqualifies you. Youwant this nonsense to be true-G.o.d knows why-so you over-interpret a few ambiguous data."

"Humor me anyway," she said. "I can't help wondering whether Alice had a special reason for coming to you, other than just happening to be in the neighborhood. Can you shed any light on that?"

How did Britt strike so close when she was shooting blind? No wonder she'd developed an interest in parapsychology; her own intuition verged on ESP. Formulating a reply, Roger felt as if he were crossing a turbulent stream on slippery rocks. "She has always been difficult. Because of the radical mismatch between her and her family-her father and brother, particularly, vacillate between overprotection and criticism-she's become overly dependent on me. They don't understand her; I do. You know how common it is for a lonely patient to fantasize a unique relations.h.i.+p with her therapist."

Britt nodded impatiently. "What I'm most anxious to find out is whether Alice told you anything about her attacker that she might have forgotten to mention to the police."

Roger returned Britt's intense gaze and lied. "Not a word. She was barely conscious."

"Nothing? One of the paramedics thought he heard her say something about 'glowing eyes.'"

Pain lanced through Roger's forehead. "Probably delirious."

"Well, I had to ask," she sighed.

He tried once more to make her see reason. "Look here, Britt, even if there were real vampires with contagious immor-tality, would you want to live for centuries on those terms? Avoiding the sun and subsisting entirely on blood?" The question reminded him of the inadequacy of the meal he was trying to eat, and he disgustedly pushed it aside.

She said with a half-smile, "There could be compensations."

ALL AFTERNOON Britt's thoughts drifted from her patients' dream-work and behavioral quirks to her lunch conversation with Roger. Curse the man, why did he react so negatively to the sub-ject of the murders? Britt had trouble believing that Roger's attempt to keep her away from the topic sprang solely from the trauma of a patient collapsing in his living room.

Shutting her office door behind the last patient of the day, Britt smiled at the memory of Roger's skittishness that night at her apartment. She mentally relived their brief kiss, reinforcing her determination to demolish that wall he hid behind. What underlay that ridiculous argument about mixing professional and personal relations.h.i.+ps? He had no h.o.m.os.e.xual tendencies; of that she was certain. He hadn't reacted to the kiss like a man who wasn't interested, but rather a man who was scared silly. Of what?Britt paused for a quick visit to the office suite's washroom. She stared at her green eyes in the mirror.Of me? Come on, he's not the type to run screaming in panic from a strong woman. On the way out, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a carton of yogurt from the miniature refrigerator wedged beside the sink. Instead of going home, she planned to brave the beltway traffic for a visit to the University of Maryland in College Park.