Blood Walk Part 26

The arrow came free in a spurt of blood . . . and fear. The arrow confirmed his a.s.sailant's ident.i.ty. Among those plaques on the Bieber dining room wall were several for excellence in archery. The arrow also told him how vulnerable he was to her. Its metal point had been broken off and the shaft sharpened in hurried, rough knife cuts. An arrow, Garreth realized with sudden chill, throwing it aside, was essentially a wooden stake.

He pressed the jacket against his shoulder, using the thick pile lining to soak up the blood, and scooted toward the car door.

The car would protect him. He could also use it to escape.

Then a sharp hiss sounded above the engine and the rear of the car sank. Garreth swore. She had put an arrow in a rear tire.

No matter; he could still drive. Tires were replaceable. He reached for the door handle.

Heels rapped on the concrete of the driveway, approaching the car. Garreth froze. The moment the door opened, she would know what he intended to do. Could he open it and throw himself in faster than she could circle the car? He licked his lips. He would have to try.

He reached for the door handle again.

"Don't move, lover," came a whisper. "Stay very still."

To his horror, her voice dragged at him like daylight. He wanted to obey. Grimly, he fought the power of it, fought to reach for the door handle.

The heels tapped closer, circling the rear end of the car. "You're weak. You're hurt, poor baby. You want to curl up and wait for the pain to go away."

No. Move, you stupid flatfoot. Move!But his body, shocky from pain, blood loss, and hunger, would not listen to his mind.

With all his will pus.h.i.+ng his hand toward the door handle, the hand still fell back.

Lane appeared around the car. She held the bow with another arrow nocked, the bowstring half drawn.

Could two play the power game? Panting in gasps of pain and with the steam of his breath fogging his vision, he stared hard at her. "You don't want to shoot me." He crouched, presenting as small a target as possible, protecting his chest. He poured his will at her. "Put down the bow and arrow. Lay it down."

She continued drawing back the bowstring. "Good try, but it won't work, lover. I've had more practice. Now, sit up," she crooned. "Give me a good target so it'll be over quick."

No. No!his mind screamed. His body slowly, inexorably straightened.

She smiled. "That's a good boy."

Desperately he fought to look away, fought to think of his pain, to become angry, but nothing worked. She held him, pinned him with her eyes like a b.u.t.terfly specimen.

A second floor window opened. "Is that you, Garreth?" Helen's voice called.

Lane's gaze s.h.i.+fted fractionally.

Free! He flung himself sideways.

The bowstring thrummed again, but this timeshe was late. The arrow clattered across the paving where he had been.

"Garreth?" Helen leaned out.

Like a shadow, Lane leaped for the shrubbery.

"Garreth, what's going on!"

He scrambled to his feet. "Stay inside where you're safe."

Lane was headed east. Garreth blocked out the pain in his shoulder and raced after the fading sound of her footsteps.

Vampires healed fast, he reminded himself. The bleeding had stopped; the pain should disappear soon, too, then. In any case, he had no time to bother with it. He must catch Lane.

He saw only glimpses of her between trees, shrubbery, and buildings. His vampire hearing let him follow the sound of her flight, though. Minutes later he saw Maggie, too, headed west on Oak with light bar flas.h.i.+ng. Helen must have called in about him.

Between the medical center and the hospital lay only open lawn. There he saw Lane clearly, but could not gain on her. Still well ahead of him, she raced past the doctors' offices and across the street into a yard. On the other hand, he was staying with her.

Three blocks later, approaching downtown, he remained just over half a block behind. Then she dodged north behind the Prairie State Bank. When he reached the alley entrance, she had vanished.

Obviously she had pa.s.sed through the rear door into one of the buildings along the alley. The question was, which one?

The Prairie State Bank had no alley door but the library on the back side of the block did. Might she have gone in there? He could imagine her lying in wait among the stacks.

He touched the door-wrench-and stood on a landing, between short flights of stairs leading down into a bas.e.m.e.nt and up behind the circulation desk on the main floor. Garreth grimaced. The pa.s.sage had renewed the lessening pain in his shoulder. With an effort, he ignored it and sniffed the air. It smelled of dust and paper and the musky odors of humanity which had been sinking into the walls and tables since Carnegie money put up the building. Traces of glues carried up from the bas.e.m.e.nt. There was no fresh blood scent, though. Then it occurred to him that he had noticed no blood scent all the time he was with Lane. It would make sense that vampires could not scent blood in each other; they were not potential food sources. But he smelled no trace of her spicy- musky perfume, either.

He held his breath and listened. There were only the creaks and sighs of an aging building, and for a few minutes the roar of the furnace . . . no footsteps, no hiss of breathing. No Lane.

Wrench.Pain sliced through his shoulder again. Garreth grimaced as he peered up and down the alley. This constant aggravation of his wound was going to make the search a really fun one.

Would she have gone into one of the stores? The main sections were all lighted and their interiors visible from the street, but back rooms and office s.p.a.ce would not be. J.C. Penney lay closest.

Wrench.

But this time triumph helped him forget the pain. She was here . . . somewhere! The scent of her perfume hung fresh among the stale fading odors of daytime occupancy. The entire main floor stretched before him with no sign of her, but he could not see it all.

Clothing racks sat close enough together to use for cover.

He dropped to a crouch behind one so he could not be seen, either, and listened for any sound which should not be here.

Nothing. Only the normal building creaks. The household goods section lay downstairs. Could she have gone there, or up to the offices on the second floor? His hand itched for a gun, though he knew it would be useless. Old habits die hard. He had had one on every other building search like this.

Running, crouched, for the stairs up to the offices, he wondered why she had come in here. It was not as though she were a simple fugitive who wanted just to hide so she could escape.

The scent of her perfume in the stairway faded halfway up. Garreth continued the climb just to satisfy himself that she had not come this way. He smelled no trace of her in the upper hallway.

Downstairs, plastic hangers rattled.

Garreth raced down the steps on tip toes, cat-silent. Just in time to see a figure carrying a bundle under one arm vanish at the rear door.

Lane had changed clothes, to running shoes and a dark blue man's work coverall. Her hair was all pushed up under a dark stocking cap. The bundle must be her own clothes, then, wrapped up in her jacket.

He ran for the door, too, then hesitated. Outside metal rang softly, like the lid of a trash dumpster being stealthily lowered . . .

or someone crawling across the top. Garreth had a sudden mental image of Lane crouching atop the dumpster in wait for him.

He quickly considered his options. Opening the door would set off alarms. Try going through low and rolling? Not having tried it before, he could not be sure that was even possible.

He turned away and moved from rack to rack for the front door. Better to go around and head her off.

A glance out the window from the cover of the last rack showed him the street was clear.

Wrench!

He leaned back against the door, clutching his shoulder and breathing through clenched teeth. That had been the worst one yet.

It took most of a minute for the pain to subside to just a fierce throb.

"What's this-drinking on the job?" a voice sneered. "An outrage."

Garreth looked up to see a familiar blue van coasting to a stop opposite him and the Dreiling boy leaning across to the pa.s.senger window. He made himself stand up and let go of his shoulder. "A little late for you to be out, isn't it, Scott?"

"Oh, I'm on my way home right now, officer. Gee, I hope the chief doesn't see you patrolling without your hat on, and without your gun, too. I didn't know cops ever took their guns off."

Snickering, the boy pulled back into the driver's seat and gunned the van away. Garreth glared after him.Laugh on, punk; one of these days I'm going to have your head.

Something brushed his face. He looked up . . . snow, not the feathery flakes of Monday but small and hard, rattling against the paving and store windows like icy grains of sand. He raced through the rain of it around the end of the block for the alley.

Each step of the way, he tried to put himself in Lane's place, to guess where she might go next, what her plan was. She had one. Her route, into Penney's first for a change of clothes, indicated that. But what it might be, he had no idea. Maybe just to keep him running until he wore down too much to resist. The way he felt, light-headed, nauseated, shaky, that would not be much longer.

Garreth reached the alley in time to see her at the rear door of the library. A moment later, she had disappeared.

"d.a.m.n."

An ear against the door brought him the whisper of footsteps running up steps and away across wooden floors. At least she was not trying an ambush just inside. Steeling himself, he pressed against the door.

Wrench!

He made himself keep moving, but the effort brought a cold sweat, the first Garreth could remember since the alley in North Beach. His right arm felt heavy and numb. And ahead of him among the stacks, he heard the light dance of Lane's feet.

Her whisper carried clearly through the silence. "This is a nice place to play hide-and-seek, don't you think, Inspector?"

He leaned against the end of a stack. "Let's talk."

"What's the matter? Haven't you found a weapon to use on me yet? Too bad, lover. You should have tried the hardware store.

I think they have hammers and wooden stakes. Sport and Spinner up the street have bows and arrows. We could be armed equally . . . except those arrows have metal points, which can't hurt me, and I'm probably a better archer than you are."

He moved along the ends toward the sound of her voice. He stopped long enough to talk. "I had a chance to think while I was lying there in the bandstand and you're right, I can't beat you. So I want to join you."

"Would you join in the spirit of the hunt, though? I think not. You're too much like Irina . . . cautious, worried about human feelings and that they'll discover what you are."

While she talked, he moved again, following her voice. If he could get close enough, perhaps he could surprise her and grab her bow. But even as he formed the thought, he realized she was moving, too. By the end of her speech the sound of it came from somewhere above and behind him.

On top of the stacks? Garreth flattened against the books and peered up, hoping to catch some sight of her. "I thought you cared about your mother, at least, and wouldn't foul her nest."

"Don't worry, lover; I won't." Her voice was moving, coming closer. "Do I look like Mada Bieber to you?"

Not in her true face and new clothes. He backed away, around another stack. "Then you're not worried about the questions that'll come up if I die?" A weapon. He needed something to defend himself with. "People know we were together and that we had a disagreement which ended with you taking off with my car."

A book. At least it might deflect her aim. He chose a moderate-sized one from the nearest shelf.

Her laughter floated around him. "No one will ever connect Mada Bieber with your death." Suddenly she was there, arching above him as she stepped from the top of one stack to another. She knelt, nocking an arrow. "I promise they won't:"

He threw the book and dived sideways. She pulled back to dodge the book and he scrambled up around the cover of another stack.

Lane laughed. "Run, rabbit, run. Catch me if you can."

She vaulted off the stacks, but instead of coming after him, sprinted for the rear door. Cursing wearily, Garreth followed.

This time the pain of pa.s.sage nearly knocked him to his knees. Only stubborn determination and anger kept him on his feet. Did she want to kill him or not? She could have managed it in there if she had really tried, but she seemed to be just playing with him.

To torment him first?

Too late he happened to think that she might try to ambush him, but she did not. She was running across the street toward the alley in the next block south. He staggered after her.

Engines roared on Kansas Avenue. Across the intersection raced a blue van and a red pickup jacked high on its axles. Another engine rumbled to the other side of Garreth. Headlights flashed across him. Above the glare of the lights, he caught a glimpse of a lightbar.

He dived across the street for the alley.

The patrol car braked and swerved after him, fishtailing on the snow crystals. "Mikaelian," Ed Duncan's voice called. "Are you all right?"

Garreth swore and kept moving. "I'm fine. You go after the Dreiling kid."

The car pulled up alongside him and halted. Duncan jumped out. "Maggie said someone took a shot at you with a bow and arrow and you were on a foot chase after-"

"I said I'm all right! Get out of here; I'll handle it!" Garreth shouted.

"Maggie said one of the arrows had blood on it."

"d.a.m.n it! Will you get the h.e.l.l out of here!"He shoved Duncan toward the patrol car.

"Imperialist pigs!"

The hoa.r.s.e scream startled both of them. They spun in the direction of the sound.

Lane leaped squarely into the headlights of the car, an arrow nocked, bowstring drawn. "Is death to all bourgeois yankee dog pigs!"

Duncan clawed for his gun. The bowstring sang. With a scream, Duncan went down, hip impaled by the arrow.

Lane streaked away up the alley. Garreth hesitated, torn between her and the wounded officer, then started for Duncan's car.

"No, you go after him," Duncan gasped. "I'll call in. Take my gun."

Garreth left the gun. Afterhim . Yes, with her height and those clothes Lane did look male. The voice had been hoa.r.s.e enough for a man, too. Suddenly he understood her confidence that she would escape suspicion, and why she had been playing with him.

She had been waiting for another officer, someone to be a victim and a witness to the fact that a crazy foreigner was shooting police officers in Baumen.