Page 25 of The Undead

There were a few people lingering outside, selling something or nothing or everything, and at the far end I saw Adam and the other man disappearing into a little dark alleyway. No one noticed, too used to the sight to comment on it.

I walked past the alley, then flattened myself against one wall and took a careful glance into the darkness.

For a long moment, I couldn’t see anything, and then the moon slid out from behind the clouds and bathed the night in cold clear radiance. The alley revealed itself in sharp gray lines. Adam and the younger man stood there, Adam with his back to the wall. He took the other man’s shoulders in his pale, strong hands and pulled him close, then carefully tipped the man’s head to the side to expose his neck.

There wasn’t anything sexual about it, oddly enough. I’d expected—I didn’t know what I’d expected, but not this quiet surrender. Adam opened his mouth, and the glint of his teeth was pale in the moonlight just before he touched them to the exposed skin of his victim’s throat. The man didn’t flinch, didn’t move. As Adam drank, he slid his hands down to a position where he could support the man’s weight, but that didn’t seem necessary; after a time—how long? seconds? minutes? It seemed impossible to know—after a time Adam raised his head and clamped his fingers over the dark patch on the man’s throat.

“Thank you,” Adam whispered, barely loud enough to carry to my ears. “You won’t remember anything but what you expect to remember. Go back on home now and lie down.”

The man looked at him for a moment, then turned and walked past me out of the alley. I pulled my head back and rested it against the rough brick. I was breathing too fast. It was one thing to know something, it was something else again toseeit in goddamn unliving black and white.

Adam stood there in the alley for a while longer, head tilted back so that the moon’s reflection filled his glasses. He seemed—peaceful. Not at all the predator I’d expected and feared. There hadn’t been violence in what I’d witnessed, or urgency. To draw a comparison, I’d expected to witness rape but instead I’d watched a seduction that was almost sacramental in its intensity.

Adam lowered his head and looked directly at me. I froze.

“Don’t run, Michael. It won’t make any difference.” His words this time didn’t have the force of command. Maybe it was his distance from me, maybe it was my own terror. I back-stepped and then turned and ran, shoving aside two handholding lovers and one male whore who grabbed at my arm. I heard nothing behind me, but then I wouldn’t.

I made it to my car and squealed out into traffic. As I sped past, I caught a glimpse of Adam’s composed white face as he stood on the curb and watched me. His hands were in the pockets of his jacket, and he looked like he had all the time in the world. I supposed that was true. I sped down the street toward Love Field Airport, and after the first blush of fear faded I slowed the car to a more reasonable speed. By the time I reached Mockingbird, I was almost calm. I rolled the window down to catch the breeze and cool the sweat beading my skin, and waited for the light to change.

A blue convertible rolled up next to me. Adam Radburn turned his head and looked at me with a strange half-smile on his ice-white face. I stared at him in transfixed shock, then whipped the wheel to the right and burned rubber onto Mockingbird. Far too fast, again, speeding past the sex clubs and x-rated video lounges as if Dallas didn’t own a police force, and in my rearview mirror I saw the Mustang take the corner at a leisurely pace and swing in behind me.

Home. If I went home I’d put Maggie in danger too, and I couldn’t do that, I had to go somewhere with people. Lots of people. I hit a freeway and shot downtown. Nothing crowded enough, and the Mustang was very close.

The lights of the Texas State Fair glittered in the distance like paradise. I could lose him in the late-night traffic, if I was quick and lucky. I pulled off the freeway and into the tangle of cars and pedestrians. The Mustang exited with me, but couldn’t keep the pace in the traffic. I turned off and shut my lights down, then stowed the car in a lot with a few others and watched while the Mustang cruised past. Adam didn’t look my way, just scanned the traffic ahead. I breathed a shaky sigh of relief and jumped as somebody leaned down outside my window. A big man, mean-looking.

“Three dollars,” he demanded. I looked blankly at him. “Three dollars for the lot, man, or move your car.”

“I’ll move it,” I promised. “I’m just waiting for somebody.”

“Yeah, I heard that before. Three bucks.”

I passed it over and sat there listening to the engine click as it cooled. Adam’s Mustang had passed out of sight. I sighed and turned the key.

Nothing happened. I tried it again, panic touching me again, and heard absolutely nothing. Not even a dick. I prayed to the automotive gods and tried one last time, but it must have been deity’s night off, because the car remained steadfastly dead.

Adam’s Mustang didn’t make a reappearance. I’d have to call for a tow, which meant getting to a phone—which meant crossing the street to the fair. I got out and locked the car, then darted through the traffic to the gates.

As I counted out the money for the fair ticket, Adam Radburn stepped into the arc lights about fifty feet away, hands still in his pockets. I dropped the bills and bent to pick them up again. When I straightened, he was gone. As soon as the clerk gave me the ticket, I raced through the turnstile and took the promenade at a run. The midway was where most people were, and that was where I intended to stay until I could call for help. Someplace where I wouldn’t be alone.

And then I saw him in the shadow of a darkened ride. I slowed, stared, and then ran on. He set out after me at a slow walk as I passed under the brilliant glittering bulbs of the midway and was swallowed up in the crowd.

The smell of the fair always hits me first: com dogs struggling with pretzels, cotton candy, and nachos for supremacy. The smell of a few thousand people rubbing shoulders on a humid night. The smell of exhaust from the freeways. The noise hits next, screams and shouts and distant throbbing music. That night, though, none of that registered at all. The fair might as well have been a two-dimensional projection around me, because only one thing was real and immediate: Adam. He followed me at a careful distance, but he did follow. I bought a string of tickets and headed for the attractions.

The lines for all the rides were long, and I didn’t dare stop moving long enough for him to get close; I knew how he could manipulate me at that range, and I didn’t want to give him the chance. There was only one attraction that didn’t have a line, and I ran for it; I passed two tickets to the attendant and disappeared inside.

After the relative darkness outside, the shock of the House of Mirrors was blinding. I stumbled into one of the mirrors and realized that, naturally, the “minors” weren’t glass—they wouldn’t last long if they were, clumsiness and vandalism would see to that—but that the smooth metal felt good against my burning skin. I felt my way cautiously to the center of the maze, then slid down to a sitting position. The mirrors were positioned to give me a good long warning if anybody came after me, which was abjectly comforting. I stretched my legs out and tried to breathe steadily, but it wasn’t easy even after my heartbeat slowed.

It had definitely been a stupid idea, following a vampire. Jesus, what had I thought I could do? Die. Just die, and that’s what I was going to do unless I thought of a way out of this.

“It’s okay,” I told myself aloud. The words seemed deafeningly loud against the mirrors, weirdly accompanied by the bass rumble of conflicting rock ’n roll from the rides on either side. There wasn’t any other sound. Evidently the House of Mirrors didn’t much appeal to fairgoers tonight.

Was that a footstep? No. The wind rustled discarded cups, that was all, nobody was coming, I’d see them if they tried—

Adam Radburn didn’t cast a reflection.

The memory hit me with dizzying, nauseating certainty, and I scrambled up to my feet. The mirrors suddenly seemed like the reflective walls of the morgue, not a defense; I plunged further into the maze, but I ended up in a long straight corridor with no exits and only a flat reflection of myself at the end.

As I stared at my surprised, flushed, sweating image, I knew with a frisson of fear along my back that Adam was behind me. There was no reflection in the mirror I faced, but he was there, all right. I turned and looked at him.

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