Vampire - Deep Midnight Part 30

Alfredo threw up his hands. "Mrs. Henley comes and goes like the wind."

"Yes, but she had invited a group of us over, and she wasn't there. And she didn't show up at the party last night. I'd like you to find out what has happened to her."

"I will find out what I can about your friend," he said. "And as to the contessa . . . she has contributed huge sums of money for orphaned children throughout Italy. She helps finance large groups of poor Europeans, just so that they can see the wonder of Venice.

She is generous to a fault."

"I'm accusing the contessa of nothing. I'm merely saying that I believe something bad is going on, and that if it doesn't stop, many people might die."

"I will take your words to heart," he told her.

She rose, wondering if he meant what he said, or if he was mocking her. She was determined to talk to Roberto Capo, no matter how difficult it might be. It was aggravating to have to wait another day, but she didn't intend to say anything more to Alfredo Manetti.

She thanked him and left the station.

As she entered the lobby of the Danieli, the concierge called her to say that he'd received a message for hen Roberto Capo had called the hotel and wished to meet her. He had left an address for a trattoria where she could find him until seven-thirty or eight.

She glanced at her watch. It was just five, but she decided to leave right away.

The concierge brought out a map and showed her how to reach the address, suggesting that she might want to take a water taxi, since it was a bit of a walk. She didn't mind walking, and according to the map, she could take a side calle or two and stop by Tiff's, knock on the door, and see if by chance Tiff would respond today.

She thanked the concierge and headed back out.

Five o'clock, and it was already getting dark, she noted.

In front of the hotel, she stood still for a minute, listening. All she heard was the chatter, laughter and the occasional shout that rose on the promenade. A vaporetto had pulled in at the dock; there were plenty of people out and around.

She remained still for several more seconds and realized that she was listening for the sound of wings, for hisses and whispers on the air.

There were none.

At Tiff's, she pounded on the door and waited ten minutes, knocking again and again.

Tiff made no appearance.

At last giving up, Jordan decided to start her walk to the trattoria.

At first, she ran into people here and there. The festivities for Carnevale were beginning to wind down; though some people still wore costumes, headed to private parties or events, more and more people were wearing street clothes, and seemed to be going about their daily business.

As she came closer to the area where she was to meet Roberto, she realized that she was encountering fewer and fewer people. Once again, as she followed the map, she crossed over one little bridge after another.

There were fewer shops.

Fewer lights.

She realized uneasily that it had grown very dark; the night came on quickly in Venice in the winter. The evening was chill, and clouds were pa.s.sing over the moon.

"It may snow again," she told herself out loud, and realized that as she was speaking she was growing afraid.

She stared at the map again and started across another little bridge. Something looked familiar here.

She realized she was heading in the same direction she had come when she followed the dottore and ran into Salvatore D'Onofrio and saw the beautiful, but decrepit, old church.

Just then, she found herself halting in the center of the bridge. What there was of moonlight fell upon her here.

On either side of the bridge, the buildings seemed to melt into shadow. She swallowed hard, turning.

Down the narrow ca.n.a.l, she could see another bridge. And standing in the center--just as she was standing-she could see the caped figure of a dottore. He seemed highlighted in moonlight, and all around him, the world seemed to be in shadow.

She wondered if she imagined the figure.

It beckoned to her. She felt her heart thundering. Instinct warned her that she should run along, but she stood still, just feeling the slam of her heart against her chest.

Then the dottore turned, and seemed to float across the bridge, cape flying behind him.

She did hurry then; she started to run. As she came across a shadowed walkway, a hissing sound seemed to surround her ears. She told herself that it was the sound of her own breathing.

She sensed the strangeness fluttering around her, as if a dozen birds flew by, close to her ears, twittering, whispering .. .

She tried to read her map while running. She burst from the shadowed walkway to a dark piazza, with lights here and there.

Looking down an alley, cast in an eerie mist of shadow and light, she could see the old derelict church. Again, she stood still, afraid of the church, and yet tempted to walk toward it. More than tempted; she felt a pull . ..

She looked at the map. The trattoria was to her right.

She was going to come back to the church. But though she was impelled to go in that direction, something stronger bid her away.

She saw the lights of the small trattoria casting a glow upon the path ahead of her.

She started toward it, rounding the little angle in the street that would bring her to the entry.

In front of it was a medieval archway between very old buildings. Before she could reach the shadowed area below the archway, she saw Roberto Capo on the other side. He was shaking his head in a frenzy.

"Don't come! Don't come-go! To your left again as you head back, there's a vaporetto stop! Go!"

Suddenly, she was certain that she heard wings; a flurry of wings, alive with whispers and hisses. The shadows beneath the archway seemed to extend, like a black, viscous liquid, coming after her.

Shadows! she protested mentally. Shadows, changing beneath the moon!

But Roberto had told her to run.

The shadows were stretching in the other direction as well. Suddenly, they seemed to sweep over Roberto Capo, encompa.s.sing him as a giant wave of ink-black sea ...

Or like the wingspan of a great ebony bird.

She turned and ran.

As she did so, she dropped her map. She didn't pause to pick it up. She didn't look back.

She felt that the ink-black shadow wings were following, close on her heels, and she had to escape them before ...

There was a feeling of glacial cold at her nape. As if an ice-encrusted finger of pure bone had thrust out from the darkness and touched her, as if it would creep around her throat like a vine, hold her, pull her back .. .

Heedless, half-crazed with fear, she turned left as he had suggested.

And then, like Lot's wife, she turned back. A dottore stood there, in the calle where she had been, between her and the archway where she had seen Roberto.

She stood still, startled, watching.

The dottore lifted his mask. His face remained in shadow. He reached into his pocket for something.

A knife? Was he a psychotic, hidden behind a mask, running through Venice, his cape flying behind him like some modern-day Jack the Ripper?

He did not draw out a knife. He'd reached into his pocket for cigarettes and a match.

She stared, remotely thinking that she would see his face, that it would be important to do so, when he lit the match.

The match flared; he lit the cigarette. She could not see his face, for he bowed his head as he cupped his hands around the match.

No knife.

Yet somehow, he seemed more dangerous than if he had pulled out a machete. There was a carelessness in his movements. He did not need a large weapon to torture, destroy, commit murder. She could run, and it would not matter, because he could catch her, no matter how fast she tried to flee . . .

She pulled in a ragged breath, fighting for reason, for sanity, for movement She started to back away, then stopped dead.

There was a new menace.

Behind her.

She saw nothing, felt a second shadow approaching from behind. Around her, above her, in a strange cascade, darkness, deeper than night, seemed to be overtaking her. Terror, unlike anything she had ever known, a.s.sailed her. She was paralyzed where she stood, trembling violently, unable to do so much as open her mouth.

She saw the darkness soaring over her then.

She watched it, certain that the dottore saw it, too.

He did. He backed away, as if from her.

She heard, as if in echo of Roberto Capo's warning, "Run!"

She ran.

And as she did so, she mocked herself. She was running like an idiot from shadows.

No, from the dottore in the street, from a menace of evil stalking the streets of Venice, the innocent, the unwary.

She burst upon a broad calle; the vaporetto stop was right before her. People milled there. Families, tourists, business people. Dear G.o.d, she could hardly breathe! Her lungs were killing her, her calves felt as if knives were stuck in them. If her heart pounded any harder, she would go into cardiac arrest.

Because of a man in a dottore mask who had paused to light a cigarette!

He had just been a costumed reveler, a tourist in love with Carnevale, one of the dozens of people who chose the dottore costume for dress-up . . .

She could think rationally now as she paused, breathing hard, joining the group at the vaporetto stop. Everyone looked normal. Unafraid. They talked. A woman excused herself as she stepped around Jordan to rejoin her group. Jordan realized that she had shoved her way right into the center of the crowd. Did fear create fear? Was she doing this in her own mind? What had she actually seen?

A man in a dottore costume, lighting a cigarette.

But what about Roberto Capo, shouting at her, warning her away?

A vaporetto arrived. She got on, realizing afterward that she didn't have a ticket, and she didn't know where it was going.

Luckily, the vaporetto was crowded. No one asked her for a ticket. After it first stopped somewhere she couldn't begin to recognize, she asked a man in her faulty Italian if the boat went to the area of St. Mark.

"Si, si," the man told her. "A Hotel Danieli."

She thanked him. As the vaporetto made other stops, as people got on and off, she found that she was doubting her own sanity again. It was like going to a well-made horror movie. While the film was rolling, you were transfixed, caught in the fear. Then, when the credits rolled and the lights came on, the smell of popcorn and the sounds of conversation caused the fear to slip away. She almost wished that she could hold on to the feeling; perhaps then she could make some sense of it.

But she had seen Roberto Capo. And he had told her to run!

The vaporetto at last pulled up to the dock at the Danieli. She walked up to the hotel, then paused on the street. There were so many people out. They all seemed fine. Was she the only one in the entire city concerned about the fact that a severed head had been found floating in a ca.n.a.l?

She asked for her key, but before she could head to her room, she saw that Ragnor was sitting in the lobby, reading a newspaper. There was an empty coffee cup in front of him. It appeared that he had been there for some time.

He saw her and folded his paper, frowning and rising. As she walked over to him, he demanded, "Where the h.e.l.l have you been?"

She arched a brow at his tone. "That's really none of your business."

"Your cousin has been worried sick."

A small twinge of guilt a.s.sailed her.

"They were sleeping. I went out."

"I was worried."

"I'm sorry. But I didn't see you either." She felt a flush of warmth spreading through her, being near him again. To her he had lost none of his attractiveness, even though last night dispelled any physical mystery they had between them. If anything, intimacy had made him more appealing.

But she hadn't elected anyone as her guardian, and as much as she liked being close to him, there were other mysteries still not solved. She didn't want him knowing that she had been to the police, nor did she want to share her strange experience of the night. She was a wary moth, drawn to the flame. So tempted, so impelled, and yet so aware of the fire.

"Have you had dinner?"

"I should check with Jared and Cindy."

"They ate and went up to bed."

"This early? When they were so worried about me?"

"I told Cindy that if you didn't appear soon, I'd go out and find you. But give their room a call. She'll want to know that you're back." She left him and called. Cindy answered the phone; she sounded exhausted.

"What's wrong?"