Page 47 of The Undead

“Nurse,” I murmured aloud.

“Mmm. Not according to Dan’s sister. She was a lot more concerned with my mental history than my ability to read a treatment chart. Well, it’s over and done with, he’s at peace and so am I. Do you like the house?”

“Very nice.” I sucked more air in and got a mouthful of poisonous fog spewed from a passing truck. Well, it couldn’t kill me, could it? “Where are we going?”

Four words in a row. I was definitely improving.

“I have to make a quick visit to a friend. You can stay in the car if you like, I won’t be long. I’d prefer not to take you inside, if you don’t mind—kind of disturbing when your eyes glow like that. I guess it takes time to master the tricks, doesn’t it? I never knew Adam when he was—young; since I’ve known him, he’s always known how to blend in. It’s scary, sometimes. I forget that he’s …”

Sylvia’s lips tightened on some private memory, and she pretended to be occupied with the sparse traffic on the freeway. A flare of red and blue lights in the distance distracted us both—police, pulling somebody over. The thought finally crossed my mind that I’d have to be careful about being recognized, particularly by any of Maggie’s old cronies. They wouldn’t believe what they were seeing, of course … unless they took a good, long, sober look …

The lights strobed to a stop behind us with a dark-colored sedan in the hot spot. Sylvia relaxed a little and brushed a loose tendril of hair away from her forehead.

“Adam’s different,” she said softly. “I’ve never really understood how different until now—until seeing you like this. I never knew Adam any other way, but now I realize he must have been human once, must have loved, been loved, had a life. I never asked him, you know. And he never told me.”

“What do you know about him?” I asked. My eyes were still focused on the flashes behind us. “Where did he come from?”

“I met him one night when I was trying to kill myself,” Sylvia said simply. I turned to look at her. Her face was quiet and serene, only a few lines tightened around her eyes to betray her pain. “I was young and stupid, Mike. I came back from nursing in Vietnam and found out nobody much cared where I’d been as long as I didn’t bleed in the street. I was going to cut my wrists—but there was Adam, and when he looked at me it was like looking into the heart of a fire. He lived; he lived so hard that he made me want to live, too. So I did.”

Something passed across her eyes, something old and still perversely fresh. Painful.

“Anyway, all I know of his past I got from William shortly after that. When I checked myself into Bridge Road Hospital.” She didn’t say what she’d checked in for, but she didn’t have to. I could see the faint pale scars on the inside of her wrists. She’d checked herself in to deal with her demons.

“William?” I echoed, interested as much by the dark undercurrents in her voice as Adam’s tantalizing history. Sylvia was silent for a moment, hands clenched on the steering wheel, and then she shook her head.

“I don’t know his other name. Just William. He ran the hospital, at least unofficially, and it was his private hunting ground, at least until Adam arrived,” she finished very quietly. I could tell we were scraping over old wounds by the tremor in her lips, the wet memory in her eyes.

“William’s a man?” I guessed. Wrongly.

“Not any more than you are, now. He’s a vampire. After we—left the hospital, William came for Adam, but he didn’t find him, so he settled for me. Me and my family.” Sylvia’s voice was even and factual, but her pulse was skipping under the pressure of memory. Bad memory. “By the time Adam got there my father and sister were dead, but so were William and his vampire friends.”

“Adam killed them?”

Her eyes cut to me, green and oddly luminous, like the dashboard dials in front of her. No expression disturbed her face.

“No,” she answered calmly. “I did. I’d do it again.”

“Vampire hunters,” I murmured, remembering Adam’s words some unthinkable time before, when I still breathed. Sylvia shook her head and smiled without any humor at all.

“In a sense,” she agreed. “It happens, Adam tells me, though not very often; William and his pet vipers weren’t normal, even for vampires. They hunted for sport—and for revenge. In Adam’s case, revenge, I think. I never asked.”

They’d killed her family, and she’d never asked? I blinked slowly, absorbing that, and thought about what that would have been like. To have had your family killed because of someone you loved … no, perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know.

Looking at her, at the slim capable strength in her hands, I wondered how she’d killed three vampires all by herself. And my mind sheared away from that image, suddenly squeamish and uncertain.

Sylvia took an exit and turned the car further downtown, toward the haphazard rat’s nest of lights that rose into the darkness. The streets were mostly deserted this time of night, except for a few brisk-walking late business workers and people huddling at bus stops like coveys of ground birds. The homeless took whatever shelter they could find, crowded into alcoves and cold marble stairs, piles of rags and dark desperate eyes. I breathed in to say something and caught the scent of unwashed bodies and decaying clothes. It almost—almost—drowned out the sweet call of blood beating underneath.

Sylvia slid the car in to the curb and braked. She turned the engine off and reached down for her purse, not looking at me; only when she stepped out did she bend over and meet my eyes directly.

“Wait for me,” she said, giving each word the force of a command. I nodded. She hesitated another minute, reading my face, and then turned and went up the steps.

Above the door was a sign that saidSEVENTH STREET HOSPICE. I knew about the place, by reputation at least; it was one of the few places in the city that took exclusively terminal cases, mostly AIDS, for what was euphemistically called “maintenance.” I’d always thought of it, when I thought of it at all, as an anteroom to a mortuary.

Well, I’ve never claimed to be the next Albert Schweitzer.

The minutes rolled by, silent and unnoticed. I leaned my head back and watched the moon drift above the car veiled in cloud-rags, made small and plain by the gaudy carnival lights of downtown. A woman of indeterminate age shuffled behind the car, rooting in the gutter for treasure. She was dressed in layers of trash bags and mismatched sweaters; when she saw me watching, she scuttled away with something held tight in both hands. I hoped it was some banker’s wallet. I hoped I’d been imagining things when I saw it move, but I didn’t think so; I hadn’t seen many wallets with long twitching tails.

A car pulled up behind me and killed its lights. Nobody got out. I stared idly in the mirror and let my mind wander. Sylvia seemed to be drawn to tragedy. She’d been suicidal when Adam met her (saved her?) and then she’d encountered vampires of the kind that I couldn’t quite stand to imagine—and she’d won. Then her friend had died of AIDS. Now another was dying. How much pity and love could any sane person give? I had been in the healing field for more years than I wanted to think, and the only way I’d been able to keep my sanity was to cut myself off from the pain, the futility. I got no sense from her of disconnection. Sylvia let herself feel, and feel deeply. I wasn’t sure if that was a sign of sainthood or insanity.

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