Throat (42 page)

“Hey, what did I do?” he said.

Donne turned on him aggressively. “What
haven’t
you done, don’t you mean? When have you or your kind ever had to hide? When were you ever not in control of the entire planet? When—”

“I thought you said they were human,” Sagan said to me.

Donne lunged at him and I lunged at her. We collided with Sagan wedged between us.

“Enough!”

Lena was there, pulling us apart.

“We are forgetting something,” Lena said when things had calmed down.

“What?” I said.

“What you intend to do in the … daylight.”

“Oh. Going to find Wirtz while he’s sleeping, you mean?”

Lena looked dismayed. “I cannot tell you how dangerous that would be. Perhaps not to you personally—”

I swore. “Me personally? He’s coming to kill me personally. I would say that’s pretty dangerous, wouldn’t you?”

“You misunderstand,” Lena said. “I am speaking of the
Sonnen
 … as a whole. You know my feelings about provoking the
Verloren.
”

“They’re monsters, Lena. If you keep running from them, if you never fight back, you know what will happen—”

“We have no choice,” Lena said.

“Neither do I.”

Driving back to the Space Center, I took a cloth Sagan offered and held it against the knife cut in my throat.

“This has been a very, very weird night,” he said, patting my leg.

“You can say that again,” I said.

“This has been a very, very weird—”

“Jerk.” I punched his arm. “What was that ‘I thought you said they were human’ crap?”

He let go of the wheel briefly and stretched. “Just trying to keep it light. Are you okay?”

“Watch the road. I feel okay. Well … I’m scared.”

“Me too,” Sagan said. “You think she’s right? Lena?”

“I don’t like thinking about stuff like this in the middle of the night,” I said. “It’s too strange.”

“No joke, you really want to do this in the morning?” he said. “Break into a dead man’s apartment to kill a vampire?”

“Don’t you?”

He was silent while I watched stripes passing under the Jeep. “Do you like them?” I said. “The
Sonnen
?”

Sagan ran a hand through his hair. “Vampires. What’s not to like?”

Nine-thirty in the morning. I had slept, but only fitfully. Everything had a foggy air of unreality.

The apartment complex was a good bit nicer than the one I was used to: tennis courts, a little waterfall that splashed down into the pool, brick instead of vinyl siding. The parking lot was mostly empty; everybody had already gone to work. I could see the building right in front of us, the one from my
Auge
vision where Wirtz was hiding.

I was holding a mini-sledgehammer from Home Depot, feeling ridiculous and terrified at the same time. We had gotten the stake from a big real estate sign I had uprooted and shaved to a sharper point with a hatchet.

Sagan had a wicked-looking Japanese sword lying across his lap—something his great-grandfather had brought back from World War II.

“This is insane,” he said.

“You’re right,” I said.

“I still say we should call the police.”

“And tell them what? That I saw a guy murdered in a vampiric vision last night? And then they find the guy, and where does that leave us?”

Had last night even really happened? I put my hand on my neck. The fresh cut Lena had made was already mostly healed. The light
of day and the green garbage cans in the hall where the buildings joined together made all that stuff seem imaginary, impossible.

But I recognized those wooden stairs, worn smooth in the middle by years of feet. I could see the jogger’s door, though I couldn’t read the number from this angle. The white plastic shades on his windows were pulled. That’s the way all of the windows in the complex looked. Like they all were hiding something.

“Here are our options,” I said. “I go up there and check and nobody’s home, and it was all just a weird, whacked-out vision—”

“Or … the kitchen is covered with dried blood and there is a vampire sleeping it off,” Sagan said.

“Wirtz would have lapped that up.”

“Good God, Emma.”

I turned to face him. “Look, the first thing I’ll do when I get inside is get some light coming through those windows. Then what can he do?”

“Kill you?”

“Not funny.”

“I wasn’t meaning to be funny. What if he’s waiting for you and gets to you before you can get the curtains open?”

“Then I should break in through a window. Establish a beachhead of sunlight. What could be safer?”

“Leaving.”

“He’s so close, Sagan. Do you realize this spot is only a little over a mile from the Space Center? He knows what he’s doing. This might be my only chance to catch him before he catches me. What would you rather do, face him when he’s trapped and helpless or wait for the big showdown with a vampire at full strength?”

“Neither.” Sagan looked at me a long time. He held up the Japanese sword. “And this is for …?”

“The head. That’s what Anton said. The stake is just to hold him down. Then you chop off the—”

“You’re serious?”

“I have to be,” I said.

We parked as close as we could. Got out and went up the stairs. The door at the top was smudged around the knob from use. The number was 218.

I was wearing rubber dish gloves. I looked around before seeing if the door was locked. Nobody in sight. The far end of the outdoor hall was a balcony that hung over a grassy slope. It would be a simple jump, even for Sagan. But I knew that was ridiculous. No way Wirtz could follow us out here: there was far too much light.

“I don’t like this,” Sagan said.

“Hush.”

I put my hand on the knob … cold, even through the glove.

I turned it slowly … very slowly. It clicked and held firm in my hand.

“Locked,” I said.

“We could knock.”

I raised my fist and Sagan caught my arm, swearing.

“I was kidding!” He let go. “Wait.”

“What?”

“A pretty nasty image just popped into my head.” Sagan pointed at the peephole. “Wirtz could be looking at us right now. Ready to jerk it open and yank us in.”

I shaded my eyes against the light. “He’d get toasted if he did that.… Look at the angle of the sun.”

I walked to the opposite balcony.
Shoot
. There was another door there. Another apartment.

“What?” Sagan said.

“I was hoping there were windows on the back side, but there’s another apartment there.”

“So?”

“So somebody might see me scaling the wall on the front of the building. You’ll have to keep a lookout.”

I walked back down the stairs with Sagan behind me. I edged along the front, looking at the wall. I needed something to hang on to. No spider hairs in the palms of my hands, thank you.

I was pretty sure I could bound my way up there, get my fingers in a crack near the top. Even if I missed the crack, what was the worst that would happen? If an eighty-foot fall couldn’t kill me, a twenty-foot one would be like stubbing a toe.

I stuck the handle of the mini-sledge in my belt. For once I was thankful I had hips, or my pants would be down around my waist. “Give me the stake.” Sagan handed me the stake and I tried sticking it in the other side of my belt. “It’s too tight! It won’t fit.”

“Whew. Let’s go,” Sagan said, acting like he was turning around.

I undid my belt, then redid it just tight enough to keep the stake from slipping out. “That’s better. Okay, if you hear a lot of noise after I go in, yell for help,” I said. “Wirtz would be surrounded with nowhere to go.”

“Surrounded by who? And you’d be just as dead. I’ve got a ridiculously bad feeling about this.”

I was running toward the building.

I made the jump easy enough and clung to the side of the wall like a fly. It wasn’t hard at all to lower myself hand over hand in the brick mortar cracks down to the jogger’s front window. Except the stupid stake kept digging into my back. I adjusted it and peered through the cracks in the plastic blinds.

Nothing.

But my eyes should have been able to see inside. Something was blocking the light.

I felt a long swallow rising in my throat. “Here we go,” I whispered.

“Be careful!” Sagan said. “When you get in, unlock the front door!”

“I will.”
Just as soon as I know it’s safe
. “Is everything clear?”

“If I lie, will you come down?”

“No.”

The screen had to go first. I didn’t want to just rip it out if I didn’t have to, but all the little white tabs you were supposed to pull were on the inside. Finally I managed to wedge my thumbnail through the glove between the edge of the screen and the window jamb. I pulled and the screen resisted, then finally came loose in my hand.

“I had to bend it a little,” I said to Sagan, dropping it to the ground. “See if you can fix it.”

“Don’t worry about that! Just hurry.”

The window was locked; I could see the latch was still in place.
Going to have to break it
, I thought. Holding on with the toes of my shoes and one hand, I used my other hand, lifting gently on the frame, then harder until the wood splintered and the latch tore loose and dropped inside the apartment.

So quiet
. My heart was trip-hammering. I wondered if a vampire’s super-hearing worked as well when he was asleep.

Calm down. If he reaches out here to pull you in, he’s fried
.

A dark blue blanket was hanging over the opening. I touched the blanket and drew back my hand with a little shock. There was something solid and heavy behind it, holding the blanket in place.

Great
. It was set up like an alarm system.… If I pushed the solid thing over, Wirtz would hear the crash and come running.

I put my hand against the solid thing
—whew
—it wasn’t a body, but instead something that felt hard with an edge to it, like an overturned table.

I leaned in and put my ear to the blanket, listening. Still nothing. Okay …

I got my hand against whatever it was and started slowly moving it back, as soundlessly as possible. It took very little effort. The whole time I was pushing, I watched the edge of the blanket moving farther and farther away from the window opening. Expecting any second for Wirtz’s leering face to thrust itself into view, stopping my heart.

There
.

At last the blockage was far enough away for me to slip inside. I pulled my hand back and the blanket came with it, until it covered the window again. I thought about jerking the blanket down, but the table would still be blocking most of the light and the vampire might hear the blanket coming loose.

I also hated the idea of sliding around the edge of the blanket—leading with my head, of all things.
He’s waiting right over there, Emma
.

I compromised and pulled the blanket down slowly. Very slowly.

Something was holding it at the top.… There was a lot of resistance—it had been threaded through a curtain rod.

I was right: I was looking at the top of a table—a wooden kitchen table with thick white tiles in the center.

“Hurry!” Sagan hissed below. “A truck is turning in!”

I put my fingers on the edge of the table and with paralyzing
slowness slid it sideways. The room looked empty. I got my foot over the sill and slipped through.

Just a living room. A white leather chair and white leather sofa, both cheap and slightly cracked. No pictures on the walls—guys can be so spare—but at least there was a single drooping rubber plant in the corner. A little shelf held a Walmart stereo; skinny arms of wires ran out to black speaker boxes perched in the corners of the ceiling.

I could see everything in here so easily, it made me wonder how dark it really was. Somebody strong had pushed the table over here from its nook in the kitchen.

I took a couple of steps across the carpet, the very same carpet where I had seen the vampire push the jogger down. The kitchen was empty. The floor looked like it had been mopped.…

Licked
.

The apartment had an odd smell … not a closed-in, musty smell … but of something different. Alive, but nothing that smelled human. Again I felt that lump rising in my throat.

I shoved the table over all the way and sunlight came through.
Good
.

The layout of the apartment was simple. The front door opened onto the living room, with the kitchen off to one side with a single hall going into the back. Apparently there was more than one room back there. Let’s see, one had to be the bathroom, so the others were probably two bedrooms.…

I took a step into the kitchen, taking infinite care not to make a sound. But to a vampire’s ears? Might as well be an elephant tiptoeing around in here.

I really didn’t want to look in the sink, but I did.… Nothing but dirty dishes. But that wasn’t the source of the strange smell.

Kitchen to my right, living room to my left. I took a step into the hall. Four doors ahead of me. No, five. The one at the end of the hall was probably a linen closet.

I took another step, blood pressure rising. I looked behind me: the living room, now bathed in glorious, delicious morning sunlight, made me feel stronger. I raised the mini-sledge and pulled the stake out from my belt. Took another step forward in a low defensive crouch.
I’ve got you cornered. What are you going to do? Drag me into the back bedroom and …