Thorn

Chapter Twenty-Two

The half-ruined building into which Judy and her three companions were urged at gunpoint was evidently very old. The door was shielded on the inside with a blackout curtain, in the form of a sheet of dark plastic; once that barrier had been passed, Judy, Bill, Pat and Helen emerged blinking in the white glare of a Coleman lantern set on a rough table. They were standing in a large room, walled with old brick in bad repair. Judy could recognize the soft-looking light brown that she had recently learned to identify as real adobe. Three temporary cots had been set up along one wall. More sheeted plastic was suspended overhead, to protect the beds and other contents of the room from the effects of what must be a leaky roof.

"Sit down. Here," ordered one armed man, pointing to the open space in the middle of the hard-packed earthen floor. "Hands behind you when you sit. Then nobody move."

The four of them sat down. And nobody moved, or spoke. One man passed behind them, tying wrists. He was quick about it. It was as if he had had cords ready for some job like this, and had been practicing.

Hasty glances to right and left assured Judy that her companions were looking pretty sick. She herself was not quite as scared as they appeared to be; she had an inner certainty that help of a most effective kind was on its way. Judy was sure that he now was aware, at least dimly, of her presence here, near the very thing that had already drawn him so powerfully, and he was coming, at great

The trouble was that Judy could not be at all sure of how far he had yet to travel, or how long it would be until he got here.

As soon as four pairs of hands had been tied, the tallest of the masked men, the one who gave the orders, got the prisoners to stand up again and then went along the line going briskly and impersonally through all their pockets, and dumping out Pat's knapsack as well. Judy could see from the corner of her eye that the searcher took no money from Bill's wallet. He appeared to be chiefly interested in ID's, which he looked at and then put back. But Bill's car keys did disappear into the tall man's pocket.

This quick search completed, their chief captor stood in front of them, looking at them for a moment. "Ralph," he said abruptly then, "better get the Jeep out." And he tossed one of his henchmen the two sets of car keys he had confiscated. "It'll take some towing to get both their vehicles around the hill and under cover, but we'll have to do it, now we've come this far. Ike, you go along and give him a hand. Cover up the tire tracks. I can manage here."

The other two men went out of the room by a side door that led into some sort of hallway. A minute later Judy could hear an engine starting, as if the Jeep the men had been told to use were parked in some attached garage or shed, with no closed doors between. Gradually the sound of the engine moved away.

"Sit down," said the ski-masked man who still remained. The four sat, a movement made awkward by bound hands. The Coleman on the table emitted a faint hissing noise, and sent out its glare. The masked man set down his shotgun, where he could reach it easily and at a careful distance from the others, leaning against a stack of crates that appeared to hold foodstuffs. Then he said: "Well, people. We've got some things to talk about, before I can let you go."

He certainly has no intention of doing that, thought Judy to herself. Whatever was going on here . . . had something to do with that painting. The painting, the old painting showing some woman . . . it was still wrapped in rough cloth. And now Judy could tell there was clear plastic around it too. And it still leaned against a rough adobe wall in darkness—within a few feet of where she was sitting at this very moment.

Judy opened her eyes with a start. But the sound she had heard was only the wind, scraping a pine branch lightly along the building's ancient roof.

The standing man had turned his head toward her at her motion. Now slowly he turned back to the girl who had introduced herself as Helen. She was the one getting most of his attention.

The man said: "A little bird tells me your name is Helen Seabright. How come you're carrying car keys but no license, no money, nothing else?"

Helen shook her head. She didn't look especially frightened now, Judy realized. Dazed, but almost eager, as if she would like to hear the answer to that question herself.

"I know you too," Helen answered. "You're Gliddon. I don't think anyone ever told me your first name."

"You called me by that name outside. I'd like to know why. Also, I want to know just what the fuck you're doing up here at midnight, talking about a radiophone."

Helen was unperturbed. "I know you have one, in this building. Back in the other room where the stove is. I've seen it."

Gliddon whistled softly under his mask. He said no more. He stood there looking at them all until the other two men came back from their task of moving and hiding vehicles. It took them the best part of an hour.

* * *

Galvanized when his household alarm shrieked that a locked door somewhere had been opened, Ellison Seabright jumped to his feet and hurried at once toward his bedroom, to check the master security console and to arm himself with a Luger that he kept there. Stephanie, with whom he had been arguing in the breakfast room, for once caused no interference, but fell silent and came along. She had to step lively to keep up with him. He could still move quickly, Ellison told himself, when there was good reason to do so.

Puffing, he entered his bedroom and switched on the light over the security console—the sun had gone down a little while ago and the house was full of gathering dimness. From a table drawer beside the bed he grabbed his weapon. Gun in hand, he saw the console's indication that the intrusion had been in the garage.

He grunted at Stephanie and started out of the room. She followed. They both understood that there could be no question of calling the police.

When Ellison poked his head into the garage, one of the doors was still standing open to the thickening night, and the inside lights were on.

The Subaru was gone.

Ellison looked around, then closed the door to the outside and turned off the lights. He glared at his wife. "You—" he began, sure that whatever had happened was going to be her fault. Then he led the way at a quick walk back to the room where they had left the boy asleep. The young visitor, or intruder, was gone.

Ellison switched on another light. "He's taken our car," he said. His wife did not answer, and he glared at her. "Well, hasn't he?"

Stephanie gave him back a strange look. "I don't know. It may not have been him who did it."

"No?" Ellison was suddenly aware of the gun still in his hand, though it was hanging motionless with muzzle pointing down at the carpet. "There was no one else in the house." At that she looked more peculiar than ever. "Was there? Was there? Stef, why did you do it?"

His wife only sighed, a sound blending weariness and impatience. "Oh Ellison. Do what?" For some reason she had never adopted any diminutive or nickname for him. Sometimes in the past he had wished secretly that she would do so.

The gun like a great weight seemed to pull his arm down toward the floor. "Don't pretend to be stupid. You guided him out of the house for some reason—"

"I was with you when the alarm went off."

"—and you arranged somehow to give him the keys to the car. You may have done a lot of damage to important plans, plans that you don't begin to understand."

"I don't begin to understand?"

"Did it worry you so much, that I might decide to have him killed? Your own daughter was killed and you got through that." Then Ellison thought to himself: I shouldn't have said that.

"Ellison. I didn't help him. I didn't know he was going to leave. I didn't want him to leave until it could be decided what to do about him. If he had any help it came from someone else. And you don't have to be so secretive, about your plans to sell the painting secretly and make a fortune, you and Del. Del's told me about that. Or your own bombing scheme. Del wasn't too happy about that one." She paused, sniffing. "Oh my God," she said.

"What?"

"Don't you smell it?"

"What?"

"Very faint, but it's there. The perfume Helen used to like to use."

"Stef, this is very stupid. You're trying to distract me. There was no one else in this house, and someone helped that boy to get away and steal my car. He couldn't have done it without help. Even if he'd found the keys, how could he have avoided the other alarms?"

"I'm not trying to distract you, Ellison, I'm trying to explain something. But I suppose I ought to leave it to Del. Oh God, don't you know anything of what's going on?"

That stopped even Ellison, for a moment. "Now just what in hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I wish you'd put that gun away. There are no burglars. It'll be better if Del explains to you himself. When was the last time you talked to him?"

"I haven't seen him since the kidnapping setup, and the last time he called was days ago. It bothers me when he calls, though he keeps assuring me that the phone here isn't tapped by anyone. How can he know that?"

"Oh." Abruptly Stephanie was almost smiling. "He now has ways of telling, about things like that."

"That's exactly what he said. I don't understand what it means, and I don't like it. He's taking too many chances."

"He did tell you that he means to come here tonight?"

Ellison was astonished. "Of course, he told me. I didn't know he'd let you in on it too. He talks too much. And that's another thing, his coming here. When I asked him how he knew the house wasn't being watched, he just laughed. He wouldn't even discuss it."

"If Del says it's all right, then it's all right, Ellison. Believe me."

"Why? Will you answer that simple question for me?"

"Del," said Stephanie, in a new voice. Ellison spent a moment trying to make sense of this as an answer, and then realized that it had been a greeting instead. She was looking over his shoulder.

Beyond a doorway, in the dimness of the next room, towered a figure as tall as Ellison himself, almost as broad. It certainly looked like Del, though Ellison could not at first make out the face in the dim light. It looked like Del, but something had been changed—but it was Del, it was so like him to stand there like that, listening, not saying a word until he was discovered.

Ellison cleared his throat. "I didn't hear you come in. How did you get here? How do you know the house isn't being watched? What if—"

The figure came toward them, moving with Del's walk into the light. Del's face, undoubtedly. But vastly changed, young, lean, no longer sagging in cheek and jowl, under a full head of crisp brown hair.

Del looked at least thirty years younger than when Ellison had seen him last. How? Plastic surgery? More than that. But what?

"Del. You're . . . you're . . ."

"Ellison. You're you're you're." Del's rejuvenated voice mocked him, while Del's young face smiled. "You're you're you're. Still as much of an idiot as ever."

Then the smile, changing as it moved, was turned on Stephanie. "All this ringing on the radiophone would seem to indicate something serious. I was coming anyway, so I thought I'd just come over instead of answering." Del's manner was supremely confident. "What's it all about?"

Stephanie took a step closer to Del, reaching for his hand. "I'm so glad you did. There was a boy here. Ellison thinks maybe he was one of the kids you . . . who was at the house in Phoenix once. The boy kept asking for Annie. Said he knew that Annie was here, and he didn't want to go away. Now he's gone, and so is one of the cars."

Del's forehead creased in a mild frown. He glanced up quickly at the ceiling. "Did you—?"

"No, I haven't been up there. I don't know if she's there now or not. And I haven't talked to Ellison about her being there. I've been waiting for you to do that."

"A wise decision," said Del.

Ellison raised his voice. "Will someone kindly inform me what is going on here, under my roof?"

"Close under your roof, old man," said Del. His young face looked so strange, so strange. It wasn't, it couldn't be, simply makeup or anything like that. It brought back authentic memories. This was really the way Del had looked, thirty, forty years in the past.

Del asked Stephanie: "Did this boy give a name? What did he look like?"

"Short, blond hair, very young." Ellison couldn't remember the name, but Stephanie did. "He said his name was Pat O'Grandison, something like that."

"Ah," said Del. "Yes. She talked about him, before she decided she was going to be Helen. I suppose she's gone with him. But I'll go up and take a look."

And with the last word, Del disappeared. Just like that, from the middle of a lighted room. Ellison found that he had raised his own arms, and like a sleepwalker was groping through the empty air where a moment earlier his rejuvenated brother had been standing.

And was standing again. Del's powerful young hand, materializing in mid-air, casually warded Ellison's groping arm out of the way.

"She's not in the attic now," said Del to Stephanie. "The earth and everything looks undisturbed." His light frown had solidified but did not seem to dent his confidence. "So the two of them apparently took off together. They're both crazy so I'm going to have to check up on what they're doing."

Stephanie said: "She was wearing Helen's perfume again."

"Oh, she's completely settled in as Helen now, in her own mind. I don't know how she justifies to herself sleeping in the attic all day, and occasionally flying out through the wall at night and enjoying a drink of blood. Not the way Helen should act, certainly not in Annie's dream of the home-sheltered adolescent. She may be five hundred years old, I don't know, but inside she's still a little girl wanting to be loved."

Ellison groped his way to a chair and sat in it. He looked at the gun still in his own hand and wondered for a moment what it was doing there. He tried to frame questions that he could ask and that would do him some good, but got nowhere in the attempt. The crafty suspicion suddenly sprang to life: his wife and his half-brother were conspiring to drive him mad.

The spark of suspicion had no sooner been ignited than it sprang up in a roaring blaze.

He looked up, keeping his face calm. Understanding seemed to grow. "You're not really Del," he announced his sudden insight. No one could shed, really shed, thirty or forty years. Stephanie had murdered Del, after all, and had found this young man who looked like him. Could Del have had a son who looked this much like him?

Del's young face looked at him, and away again, contemptuously. "I'll see you in a little while, then," the youth said to Stephanie. "Can you manage things here?"

Stephanie was clinging to him impulsively. "Don't go yet. Del, change me now, tonight. You said you would, as soon as you were changed yourself. Now you're all set. I don't want to go on like this, with him, another day. Not another hour if I can help it. You can't imagine what it's like. Take my blood once more. Change me."

"Oh, I can imagine. But, as I say, I'm going to be busy for a while. If she heads for the painting again tonight there could be problems. Gliddon's out there, and his men, and they don't imagine that there are any such things as vampires. I'm not quite ready to be rid of them all just yet."

To Ellison, listening, the whole conversation had become utterly insane, incomprehensible. Yet it was perfectly plain to him from looking at the two of them just what was going on. What had happened between his wife, his wife, and the giant young demon-figure that somehow looked like a young Del.

Now Ellison watched as the young man who looked like Del took Stephanie by both arms, and kissed her softly on the forehead. He said, in his perfect imitation of Del's young voice: "I will. I'll change you. You'll be young forever too. But you have to understand that when that happens, it will make a difference between us. No more lovemaking. It doesn't work between two vampires, you understand. Then we'll just be—friends. So I don't want to rush things. I love you just as you are."

Stephanie gave a wild cry. "You don't want me any more. I can see it. You're through with me now. And, my God, I gave you my daughter for your games. You've had both of us and used us up. Helen's dead, and I'm—now you want to leave me with this, this obscene old lump of fat—"

Ellison was not conscious of getting to his feet, or of saying anything, though he could hear his voice. And the gun in his right hand rose levelly and seemed to go off by itself. He had at last got Stephanie's full attention. She stood up very straight, and gazed at Ellison with wild and unbelieving eyes. Then her hand caught at the seventeenth-century Spanish shawl and at her breast beneath. And then she fell.

Ellison held the gun up higher now, and shifted his aim. And now he was looking straight down the long Luger barrel, at Del's eyes, excited but unfrightened, that gazed straight back at him.

"You haven't learned a thing, have you old man?" said Del. Ellison fired, but somehow Del was not falling, though he winced as if with pain. Anger and triumph were in his face and he was moving rapidly toward Ellison, reaching out for Ellison with young powerful hands. The Luger fired and fired again, and Del came on unharmed.