Blood Walk Part 52

They walked, following the paths winding through the garden. Irina said nothing more for nearly five minutes, then with a sigh: "I talked to people who knew my friends. They could tell me little, but they did say that shortly before each death, my friend had talked to a tall, fairhaired man. One had mentioned to a companion that man asked for a red-haired woman who traveled with Irina Rodek in years just before Second World War. It was obviously Mada, or Lane, as she calls herself here. That is why I came to San Francisco, to warn her, and to warn our friends against talking to anyone asking for Mada."

Garreth felt as though a fist sunk in his stomach. "Was the man an Englishman?"

She whirled to stare up at him. "I don't know. No one I talked to had spoken with him personally." Her eyes narrowed. "There is an Englishman Leonard said is working with your police friends, the one who came with you to Foundation offices yesterday afternoon."

"Julian Fowler." Quickly, he told her everything about the writer. "But . . . I don't know that any of it means anything. There's no obvious motive for him killing anyone, and certainly no proof against him."

Irina pursed her lips. "If he were a hunter, hatred of us would be sufficient motive, but this man has a specific quarry."

"Madelaine Bieber," Garreth said. "He's very open about it. Would he be if he wanted her for more than the book he claims to be researching?"

Irina smiled thinly. "If he's clever. Hunter who killed my friends has shown himself very clever." She paused. "I think we need to know something about this Englishman."

Garreth nodded. "The library should have entries on him in books likeContemporary Authors ."

Irina pursed her lips. "I know better source which will not raise our killer's suspicions if he manages to follow us. Come. My car is parked by Stow Lake."

7

Irina headed her little Honda north.

"Do you have much trouble renting cars and hotel rooms?" Garreth asked.

She snorted. "Of course not. I refuse to suffer inconveniences of being a minor. My papers identify me as twenty-one and when necessary I can make up to look the age or older. I suppose I should be thankful that devil Viktor did not see me at thirteen or fourteen. Ah, here we are." She pulled over to the curb.

Garreth blinked dubiously at the building before them. "How do we find biographical information on Fowler at the Philos Foundation?"

"Is simple. Watch."

Irina swung out of the car, climbed the steps to the porch, and rang the bell.

"May I help you?" a voice asked.

Irina looked up. "I would like to come in."

Now Garreth noticed the small, round eye of a camera winking at them from the roof of the porch.

"Does your mother know you run around at this hour of the night?" the voice asked chidingly.

"Natalya Rudenko knows everything I do. Open door, please."

The door buzzed. Irina pushed it open. Yelling a greeting to a face that appeared at the top of the stairs, she led the way to Holle's office and unlocked the door. "That is to make us look normal. This, too." She switched on the light.

For the first time he saw her in color. She had violet eyes indeed . . . deeply, richly purple as pansies. Except when they reflected ruby red.

She switched on the computer to one side of the desk and sat down at it. Her fingers raced across the keyboard . . . calling up a communications program, Garreth realized, reading the screen prompts.

He eyed her in surprise. "You know computers?"

Without looking up, Irina replied, "Is a matter of necessity, as is learning to drive an automobile and fly an airplane. Altering electronic records is becoming only way to change ident.i.ties. Hasn't Mada taught you-" She glanced up then, and sighed. "No, of course not. Is like her to bring you into this life and abandon you without bothering to teach basic survival skills." She turned back to the keyboard and typed rapidly. "Mada avoids use of advanced technology anyway, an att.i.tude which will undo her eventually.

One cannot cling to era of one's birth. When this problem of vampire hunter is solved, we must see that you're given proper-ah, there's what I want . . . a literary database." She typed some more, then turned away. "Searching out and transmitting data will take a while. Several fresh units of whole blood have been 'discarded' in shelter refrigerator. Shall I go after one?"

He stiffened. "I don't drink human blood."

She eyed him. "So I see." Irina paused, then added, "One can survive on animal blood to a point, but never well. We need human blood. That's why you're always hungry."

"A little hunger is better than treating people like cattle." As the words came out, Garreth winced. G.o.d that sounded self- righteous.

Irina regarded him with amus.e.m.e.nt. "Is that what you believe we do . . . that we are all like Mada?" She sobered. "No. Think.

How could we have survived all these centuries and faded into mythology if-" She broke off."Nichevo. Never mind. I understand your feelings. Truely. Few of us enter this life by choice. When I realized what I had become I despised Viktor with such pa.s.sion that I, too, swore I would never treat people as he did and never drink human blood."

"You mentioned him before," Garreth said. "Is he the vampire who-"

"Yes. Prince Viktor." She spat the name. "Some called him Viktor the Wolfeyed. I was sixteen, and much plumper, when he saw me in Prince Yevgeni's household. My mother was a kitchen servant there. She would never say who my father was, but I have always felt he must have been a boyar, quite possibly prince's younger brother Peter. Sometimes I envied his legitimate daughters, but not usually. They had to live confined toterem in house and go veiled in street."

Garreth blinked in astonishment. "Russian women lived like that?"

She smiled faintly. "Five hundred years ago, yes." Her eyes focused past him. "My freedom cost me, however, when it gave Viktor chance to see me. He had his men abduct me one day on way to market with my mother. I didn't knowhe was responsible, of course, not until three nights later, three terrible nights of abject terror, waiting for what I knew must appear sooner or later. For years peasant and servant girls had been vanis.h.i.+ng, then reappearing days or weeks later as walking dead.

"I was almost relieved when Viktor came out of dark with his fangs bared. I fought him, biting and scratching-my mother's father was a Mongol, after all-and though he still overpowered me and drank, was not before I tasted his blood first. Second night he came, I was hiding behind door. I hit him in face with a stool and escaped." Irina smiled wryly. "Unfortunately was winter. I froze to death before I reached home." The smile faded. "I woke in snow. You can perhaps understand my feelings when I discovered cold no longer bothered me and realized why."

Garreth sucked in his breath. Oh yes, he knew.

Irina focused on him. "Only my hatred of that devil kept me from throwing myself on a stake. I swore to destroy him."

The words reverberated in Garreth. He thought of Lane's grave. "Did you?"

Her teeth bared in a wolfish grin. "I am a Mongol's granddaughter, remember. At home I resume my life, claiming I could not remember where I had been. Pretending to be still human was difficult-agony when I went to church-but thought of vengeance helped me endure pain. At night I spied on Viktor, studying his habits and his house until I knew when he was vulnerable and how to reach him. Then I pretended to recover my memory. I denounced him. Prince Yevgeni gathered a hunting party at Viktor's house. I led them to cellar where he slept by day and persuaded prince to let me drive in stake."

"They didn't suspect you of having become a vampire?"

She smiled grimly. "I had sworn on an icon that I escaped before he fed on me . . . most difficult thing I have ever done. Was like putting my hand in fire. That convinced them, but I took no chances anyway. While prince was beheading Viktor and burning body, I helped myself to as much gold and jewels as I could carry from that devil's treasure room and ran away to Moscow."

"Where you gave up your vow of not drinking human blood?"

He winced at the edge on his voice-he had not intended to sound judgmental-but she shrugged. "Where rashness of youthful pa.s.sion gave way to reality and necessity. Garreth, feeding does not have to be an act of-"

The computer beeped.

Irina spun her chair back toward it. "Finally. Several references, too. Very good." Before Garreth had time to read the list on the screen, she tapped a key.

The printing convulsed and vanished. The drive light flickered for several minutes. When it stopped, the computer beeped again. Irina tapped more keys.

CONNECTION BROKEN, the screen announced."Now let's see what we have."

At her tap on another key, the printer spat into life. Paper spewed into the receiving basket. Irina ripped it off and after skimming the readout, handed it on to him. "You will find this interesting."

The database had found and sent them three items: an entry fromContemporary Authors, and article on Fowler from theWriter's Digest magazine, and an interview that had run in Playboy several years before.

According to the biographical data inContemporary Authors, Fowler had been born in London in 1939 to Margaret Graham Fowler, the daughter of stage actor Charles Graham, and Richard "d.i.c.kon" Fowler. Fowler's father, who worked for British Intelligence with the French Underground during World War II, died in France late in 1945 of a broken neck sustained in a fall.

A ripple ran across Garreth's neck hair. Fowler said his parents met Lane in France shortly after the war. That could not have been long before the father's death.

He went on reading.

Fowler's mother remarried and Fowler spent the rest of his childhood shuttling between boarding school and his actor grandfather. He enrolled at Oxford, but instead of studying history, began writing horror novels and after selling one two years later, quit college to write full time. A few years later he switched from horror to thrillers. His first American publication came in 1972.

Garreth glanced back at the line about Fowler's father. His skin p.r.i.c.kled again. "A broken neck."

Irina glanced up at him through thick, dark lashes. "Interesting, yes? Read farther."

TheWriter's Digest article talked only about writing discipline and how growing up around his grandfather had provided an atmosphere rich in imagination. Garreth went on to thePlayboy interview. A few questions into the article one leaped up at him.

"Playboy: In a BBC interview several years ago you stated that you began writing as an act of exorcism. That's an interesting reason to write. Would you care to explain for your American readers?"

"Fowler: Yes, of course. When I was six a savage dog attacked my father. He fell from a cliff trying to escape from the beast and was killed. As a child I could never accept that. How could a mere dog kill my father the spy? It had to be some monster responsible. His death haunted me for years. I'm not sure what made me turn it into a story and write it down, but eventually it became my novelBlood Maze.In it a boy witnesses a werewolf tearing his father's throat out. No one will believe him so he vows that when he grows up, he will find and destroy the werewolf. As a grown man, he fulfills that vow.

In a sense, the same happened to me. By writing about destroying the instrument of my father's death, I laid his ghost. I went on writing horror novels for a while, of course, because I knew I could, but eventually I switched to thrillers. The horror novels were exorcism, the thrillers a kind of memorial. In a sense, each spy hero is my father. "

Garreth felt for his own throat, tracing the scars where Lane's teeth had ripped through the flesh.

"See this question also," Irina said, pointing.

"Playboy: If your characters are symbols for people in your life, who is the tall woman who appears as Chatelaine Barbour inBlood Maze,Tara Brenneis in Mind's Eye,and Magda Eberhardt in Our Man In Hades,to name a few of her incarnations? When she appears, she is always the beautiful seductress who turns traitor. "

"Fowler (with a rueful laugh): I'm afraid I'll have to take the Fifth on that one, as you Americans say. I don't fancy being sued for slander. Suffice it to say she was an older woman I fell madly in love with years ago and who spurned me for the callow youth I was. No doubt it's unsporting to make her the villainess, but . . . she keeps popping up when I need one."

"Lane," Garreth said. A beautiful seductress betraying the hero over and over . . . as she had turned on Fowler's father? "I could have sworn there was no anger when Fowler talked about his childhood meeting with Lane. I didn't hear any bitterness or resentment, absolutely no hint of hatred. Can someone hide his feelings that well? He'd have to be one h.e.l.l of an actor." A h.e.l.l of an actor, too, to come into the squadroom Wednesday morning looking like the most disturbing thing on his mind was a hangover, which had to be a pretense as well.

"He may be mad," Irina said. "Or both."

Fowler would have to be riding the edge of a crackup carrying his obscession around buried that deep all these years.

Irina turned off the computer and stood. "So . . . now we must catch this Englishman and deal with him."

Garreth stiffened. "Shoot him, you mean, like you were going to shoot me last night? No." Garreth shook his head. "I won't-"

He broke off, but finished the sentence silently:won't kill again. The fact that taking Lane's life had, in the end, been a matter of self-defense made no difference in the wrongness of it.What gives you the right to judge me? Lane had flung at him that Thanksgiving night. He needed no second face haunting his dreams. "There's been enough killing."

The violet eyes reflected red. "How can I convince you how deadly and ruthless vampire hunters are. They are . . . driven . . .

blindly self-righteous, so positive we are evil that they see nothing but their 'cause'. Like berserkers, nothing stops them but death."

"Criminals disregard the law, too, but we punish them through the system. How can you sneer at hunters for being self-righteous if we arbitrarily set ourselves up astheir judges?"

She sighed. "Ah, your law again. What do you suggest, then?"

It furthers one to appoint helpers, I Chinghad said. Garreth took a breath. "First we need proof Fowler is our killer, and since the killer has to be watching me, and now you, we can't be involved or he'll realize we're on to him. We need help, human help, official help . . . someone who can find probable cause and enter Fowler's hotel room to search it. We need Harry."

8

Irina said, "You realize you are risking more lives than yours and mine."

Garreth nodded.

The two of them sat at the kitchen counter with pewter tankards of blood, his horse blood from his thermos, hers from a unit of human blood she had brought from the Foundation. He buried his nose in his tankard in an effort to block out the tantalizing scent leaking toward him from hers. Thirst scorched his throat.

He distracted himself by thinking about Fowler. Where was the writer now? Watching the house, they had to a.s.sume. To keep Fowler from suspecting he was now the hunted, Garreth had come home from the Foundation on foot, with a stop at the police stables to fill the thermos. Irina had followed later, parking her car several blocks away and approaching the house through the back yards.

An anxious voice said, "Garreth, you shouldn't be out-who is this?"

He looked around at Lien in the kitchen doorway. "Meet Irina Rudenko." Then he noticed Grandma Doyle behind Lien.

Introducing her, too, it occurred to him that Irina was also his grandmother of sorts.

A rap sounded upstairs. "Garreth!" Harry's voice called.

Lien glanced up. "I'll say I let you out."

Garreth shook his head. "I have to tell him everything anyway. We need him."

She studied his face for a moment, then sighed and nodded. Moving around the work island, she reached up into a cupboard for a bottle of brandy.

Grandma Doyle stayed near the door fingering the Maltese cross around her neck as she eyed the girl.

Irina smiled. "Mrs. Doyle, you have nothing to fear from me." She held up the tankard. "As you see, I have my breakfast."

Grandma Doyle's expression became accusing. "You're the one responsible for the creature who did this to me grandson."

The smile faded. "To my regret, yes. Even one as experienced as I can be a fool."

Harry came thumping down the stairs and through the doorway from the hall. "Lien, see if you can-Garreth?" He plowed to a stop, staring in open-mouthed, almost comic disbelief. Garreth felt no desire to laugh, however. "Your door is bolted on the inside."

Here it came. Garreth's gut knotted. He took a deep breath. "Yes. I don't have to open doors to go through them."