The chill was up to Jessie’s hips.
“Brutus, can’t you stop them from doing this?” the detective asked. “Can’t you go for the sorcerer’s throat?”
The hell hound said, “I’d love to. But I’d have to get off Willie to do that, and then he’d be up and after you; he’d knock the crucifix out of your hands anyway.”
“Jessie, no!” Helena cried.
He knew exactly what had caused her terrified exclamation. The chill had reached his own shoulders. In a moment, it would travel down his arms, would affect the hand that now held the crucifix.
“Soon,” Slavek said, clearly thinking of Renee Cuyler as he stared at Helena’s breasts and then slowly upward to her slim neck.
The chill reached Jessie’s hands.
He watched his fingers open.
The crucifix fell to the floor.
Screeching with delight, Slavek started forward.
“Stop where you are! Police!” The voice came from the broken windows, behind the vampires and the two werewolves.
Jessie looked up and saw uniformed men leaning into the room, holding long-snouted guns. They opened fire on everyone, attackers and victims alike. Some of the weapons were narcotic pin guns, these to affect the humans; others were garlic oil pistols that spat out droplets of fluid from which the maddened vampires withdrew like vipers from the mongoose. He saw Slavek leap across two rows of coffins and flatten himself, in terror, against the far wall, and then he slumped forward into unconsciousness as the narcotic darts had their effect on him…
Chapter Fifteen
The low, waffled ceiling was white, the walls a soft blue. The only furniture was the comfortable but narrow bed on which he lay. The room had no windows and only the single door which was wide and padded to resist damage. It all had the look of a prison of some sort. The light source was a recessed panel in the ceiling, protected by a sheet of plexiglass. As Jessie sat up on the edge of the bed, he saw that the floor was the same pleasing shade of blue as the walls. It was every bit as clean and as spotlessly shiny as everything else in this place.
Standing, he felt slightly woozy and weak, as if he hadn’t eaten in a day or so. Indeed, as he recalled the events which had led up to his incarceration, he realized that this might easily have been the case. How long had he slept, dreamlessly, in this room? If he had been hit by several narcotics darts from the police weapons, the cumulative effect could have kept him out for as much as twelve hours.
And what of Helena in all that time?
And Brutus…?
“You’re awake, are you, Mr. Blake?” a voice asked, from behind the light fixture in the center of the ceiling.
He looked up, squinting at the soft glow. “Who’s that?” he asked.
“Just the prison computer,” the voice said. “One of my duties is to keep an eye on the inmates and welcome them when they wake.”
“I’m in prison, then?”
“Oh, you needn’t be so down-at-the-mouth, sir,” the computer said. It sounded as if its voice tapes had been recorded by an old maid school teacher from Altoona. “You aren’t in the prison proper, but in the protective-custody wing.”
“I see. And the others?”
“They’ve been put in a special subterranean prison vault, in padlocked federal coffins with samples of their native soils to sustain them until the sun sets and they can be questioned.”
“I didn’t mean the vampires,” Jessie said. “I’m not at all interested in them right now. But what about my secretary, Helena? And what about my business partner—a hell hound named Brutus?”
“Oh, they’re fine, sir, fine,” the computer said. “They’ve been ready to meet with the proper officials for some time now; we’ve all been waiting for your revival.”
“I could have been given drugs to counteract the narcotics. I could have awakened much earlier.”
“Well,” the computer said, “certain arrangements had to be made anyway, before anyone could talk to you. So it was just as well that you slept.”
“What time is it?”
“Seven in the evening, sir.”
“I slept the entire day away?”