“Dad dead,” Doc muttered, starting the painful journey from dark to light. “Not dead, Dad? Who did Dad dead? Blues for Father Death.” He opened a pale, rheumy eye. “By the Three Kennedys! It’s wandering Melmoth, looking as though he sits now in the black ferry across the Styx.”
“Bastard’s chilled, if that’s what you mean, Doc,” Mildred said, straightening from the side of the one-eyed man. “And Ryan here came close to joining him on the last train west. But he’ll make it.”
Doc touched a gnarled finger to his nose, bringing it away streaked with blood, wiping it with the sleeve of his antique frock coat.
Between them, Krysty and J.B. eased Ryan into a sitting position. Already his face was resuming a normal color, and his breathing was steadier and less harsh, though the long scar that ran from the corner of his right eye down to his mouth still stood out brightly.
Gradually everyone in the chamber was making his or her own recovery from the rigors of the jump.
Dean looked down at Melmoth’s shriveled corpse. “How did he get in? When I went under, he wasn’t in here with us. Someone let him in?”
“No,” Krysty replied. “Just as I slipped into the dark I was sort of aware of someone trying to get in. Must’ve made it in the last second or so. If he’d tried to open the door when the jump was already going on Gaia knows what might have happened.”
“Think there’s probably a sec lock on it,” J.B. said. “No way of testing it.”
“Hey!”
Everyone looked around at Dean’s exclamation. The boy was staring down at Melmoth.
“What is it, dear laddie?” Doc asked.
“The vampire’s sort ofsort of rotting. Like dying’s speeded up.”
Krysty stayed at Ryan’s side, but the others moved to join Dean, looking at the white-haired corpse.
“Darknight!” J.B. exclaimed softly. “You’re right, Dean. Look at him go.”
Alive, Melmoth and his brothers and sister had looked deathly pale and emaciated. Dead, he was shrinking away toward nothing. His ruby eyes had turned milky and were beginning to suppurate in their bony caverns. The skin across the honed cheekbones was so taut it was already splitting, opening up like tiny lips, showing the whiteness of bone beneath. The lips had peeled back from the slightly pointed teeth, cracking at the corners. The gums were receding, and several of the teeth were visibly loose in their sockets.
The vampire’s fingers were curling into claws, the strong nails tearing deep gashes in the skin of the palms that wept a colorless ichor.
“Stinks,” the boy said, pinching his fingers over his nose. “Can’t we get him out of here before he rots into a puddle of dirty water?”
“Soon as Ryan comes around we can think about a move,” J.B. told him.
“Air seems good, John.” Mildred sniffed at it.
J.B. nodded. “Yeah. Fresh. Not the usual stale stuff. Mebbe a part of the redoubt’s opened up.”
Doc had picked up his beloved ebony swordstick, gripping it by the silver lion’s-head hilt and tapping the ferule on the floor. “I would most certainly appreciate the chance to breathe in some cool and dry air. I think that we’ve had a little too much of the warm and damp recently.”
Krysty looked up at the old man. “I have this idea that people tend to relish what they knew while growing up. Like you had in New England. Same for me. I wish I could sample the kind of air we had when I was growing up in Harmony ville. Like honey.”
Ryan moaned quietly and lifted his right hand as though he were trying to knock away a persistent skeeter.
“Boss man’s coming around,” Mildred said. “Should be fine in a few minutes.”
Ryan opened his eye.
Chapter Four
“You think the jump killed him, Mildred?”
“I do, Ryan. We know that all four of them were sickly. That’s why they wanted the boy and all of us to freshen up their genes and revive their blood.”
“And Melmoth got this far. Far enough to try and chill me. Then died.”
“Looks that way. If Krysty hadn’t come around when she did, he might’ve done it, too.”