John Steakley - Vampire$

For a few seconds, no one moved. Then Cat took a deep breath and reached for the door.

“Don’t do it, Cat,” Felix told him.

Cat hesitated, then ignored him. Both he and the priest climbed out. Felix got out, too, and stood on the sidewalk glaring at the both of them.

This was bullshit!

“Have you ever thought how Jack’s gonna feel if you go down, too?”

Cat’s grin was thin. “At least he’ll be alive to hate me.”

“No, he won’t,” snapped Felix cruelly. “None of you will.”

“Felix,” said Adam slowly, “we just can’t let a Jack Crow die like this.”

“Oh! You can’t. Thanks, God.”

Adam just shook his head and the two of them started across the street.

Then Cat stopped and looked back.

“Tell me this, Felix. You’re so sure Jack wants to die. If he lives through tonight, you think he’d be happy? Or would he just do it again tomorrow?”

When Felix didn’t answer, Cat smiled again.

“He’s down, now. Annabelle… But he’ll come back if he can get the chance.”

Cat smiled again and waved.

“Don’t worry, Gunman. We’ll get a taxi.”

And then he and Adam tripped across the street to the hotel entrance.

Ouch.

Felix stood there a long while, watching them enter the lobby. Then he lit a cigarette. Then he looked at the Blazer, at Davette sitting behind the wheel. Then he got inside and closed the door and stared straight ahead.

Ouch.

Davette started the engine and they pulled away from the curb a few yards to the light and stopped again.

Ouch.

“Felix…?” she began.

But be shook his head.

Ouch. Ouch!

Because hadn’t there been a moment, lying there on the bishop’s rug, when he’d just wanted it over with? When he wished Jack would just give it up and let them get him? Stop prolonging the inevitable?

Wasn’t there?

Wasn’t there a moment like that? And wasn’t he glad Jack had kept it up?

Shit.

Shit!

“Pull over.”

“Felix! You can’t—”

“Pull over,” he repeated and his voice was hard.

“Felix! Please…” she urged. But she began pulling the Blazer to the curb.

“I know,” he said harshly. “I know, I know I know! ”

And this time his disgust was all for himself.

He got out of the truck. An elderly couple, both black, were staring at a window display of garish, cheaply made leather shoes.

Is this the last store I’ll ever see?

He looked at Davette. He shrugged his shoulders.

“Did you know I love you?”

She smiled grimly, nodded.

He nodded back, shook his head, and sprinted across the street to the hotel.

The polished bronze doors opened smoothly, almost silently, onto the twenty-first floor and…

Ha! There in the thick, rich carpet — the impressions of chain-mailed boots! The Two Stooges were here!

If he had laughed — and he almost did — it would have been a wild, broken cackle.

Felix had never known such fear.

Such anger.

Such… disgust.

He knew his face would frighten a passing stranger.

He knew he was going to die.

He knew he was never going to see Her again and he knew he couldn’t have Her unless he went ahead.

He knew it was madness.

It was out of control.

Two ways into this prestigious hallway. The fire stairs at one end, the half-open oaken double door to the Governor’s Suite at the other. He glanced briefly toward the fire stairs, then strode boldly along the footprints in the carpet and pushed the suite’s door open all the way and then just stood there and waited for something to happen.

But nothing did.

Not going to be that easy, eh? Fine.

He stepped into the room.

Magnificent room. Antiques and imported carpets over polished hardwood floors and fifteen-foot ceilings and flowing diaphanous curtains pushed in from the steaming terrace breezes. The terrace ran the length of the L-shaped living room and there, at the far end of the huge room, in the dim light from the downtown high rises, were Cat and Adam, crossbows in their fists, crouched down next to the open french doors.

Felix almost laughed. He almost shouted out to them.

But he didn’t. Instead he looked to see what they were seeing.

It was easy. There was another set of french doors by the front entrance, right next to him, also blowing hot the diaphanous curtains, also pale against the lights from the towering downtown buildings, also open to the terrace where, less than thirty feet away, closer to Felix than Cat and Adam or the safety of the fire stairs sat Jack Crow.

On a stone bench.

Talking to a vampire.

Felix stepped closer and felt the disgust welling up, swelling up and through his eyes and out the top of his head. By God! but it was beautiful.

He had forgotten how beautiful they were.

It was young and thin and blond and tall, lazing confidently and casually against the four-foot walled railing, the lights from some glass tower delicately illuminating his stark yet smooth and precious features. White shirt and black pants and black leather boots. Not the same outfit as the little god in Cleburne. But close enough. The same grimy elegance.

The same shoddy, sexy, decadent, beautiful…

Fuck you, little god. Fuck you and all the rest of you.

And fuck you, too, Jack Crow, for talking to it.

Talking to it. Like it was human. Like it was only half bad. Like it was misunderstood or “two-sides-to-everything” and not a crushed, smeared, cockroached soul.

And then he saw the crossbow Jack had hidden.

It was down behind the bench on which he sat, propped up against some huge potted terrace tree, and Felix really did almost laugh this time, at the puny, pitiful, all-destructive self-deception of it all.

Felix read it all, now. Saw it all. The whole sad script.

What was Crow going to do? Just wait up here with arms flung open, yelling “Bite me!” into the night? Oh, no. Gotta at least pretend you’re going down nobly, don’t you, Warrior Jack? Gotta make believe this is a Something, right? A Something, a last ‘bold thrust’ instead of the seamy suicide it really is.

And he almost left right then. He almost left Jack Crow to his paltry, sickening, disgusting little Passion Play.

Ha!

But what about the Two Stooges? All crouched down and ready to rush up and save him and ensure that three, rather than just one, get swept to ugly, ugly hell. Can’t leave the Two Stooges, can I?.

Especially since I’m the goddamn third one?

Out of control.

He heard his heart and he could see his pulse, throbbing through the thumb wrapped death-grip tight around the Browning.

Madness.

But a lovely night, he thought. If a trifle warm.

Then he crossed his hands, with the Browning, behind his back and kicked the french doors open all the way and stepped out onto the terrace just as loudly as he knew how.

“Hey, you! Little god! Is it true your dick doesn’t work anymore?”

Silence. Then surprise from those piercing eyes, then understanding of what was said.

Anger flashing his way.

“Felix!” shouted Jack. “Felix, no! What are you doing?”

“It’s not just him!” popped Cat, stepping out onto the other end of the terrace.

“Cat!” yelled Jack, stricken.

“It’s all of us,” added Father Adam, joining Cat.

“No!” whispered Jack weakly. “No… no…”

“What is this?” flashed the monster. “Am I to be trapped here?”

And then he smiled that cocky, beautiful smile.

“Hey!” snapped Felix with his own smile. “Tell me about your dick.” And then, in a conspiratorial tone: “Can’t get it up, right?”