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He was dead. I dropped him and stepped back. Talking to me!
Talking to me during the kill? Asking me who / was? Piercing theswoon?
"Oh, you are so full of surprises," I whispered. I tried to clear myhead. I was warmly full of blood. I let it stay in my mouth. I wanted topick him up, tear open his wrist, drink anything that was left, but thatwas so ugly, and the truth was, I had no intention of touching himagain! I swallowed and ran my tongue along my teeth, getting the lasttaste, he and Dora in the truck, she six years old, Mommy dead, shotin the head, with Daddy now forever.
"That was the fifth killing!" he'd said aloud to me, I'd heard him.
"Who are you?""Talking to me, you bastard!" I looked down at him, ooh, theblood was just flooding my fingertips finally and moving down mylegs; I closed my eyes, and I thought, Live for this, just for this, forthis taste, this feeling, and his words came back to me, words to Dorain a fancy bar, "I sold my soul for places like this.""Oh, for Godsakes, die, damn it!" I said. I wanted the blood tokeep burning, but enough of him, hell, six months was plenty for alove affair between vampire and human! I looked up.
The black thing wasn't a statue at all. It was alive. And it wasstudying me. It was living and breathing and watching me under itsfurious shining black scowl, looking down at me.
"No, not true," I said aloud. I tried to fall into the deep calm thatdanger often produces in me. Not true.
I nudged his dead body on the floor deliberately just to be sure Iwas still there, and not going mad, and in terror of the disorientation,but it didn't come, and then I screamed.
I screamed like any kid.
And I ran out of there.
I tore out of there, down the hall, out of the back and into thewide night.
I went up over the rooftops, and then in sheer exhaustion slippeddown in a narrow alley, and lay against the bricks. No, that couldn'thave been true. That was some last image he projected, my Victim;he threw that image out in death, a sweet vengeance. Making thatstatue look alive, that big dark winged thing, that goat-legged. . . .
"Yeah," I said. I wiped my lips. I was lying in dirty snow. Therewere other mortals in this alley. Don't bother us. I won't. I wiped mylips again. "Yeah, vengeance; all his love," I whispered aloud, "for allthe things in that place, and he threw that at me. He knew. He knewwhat I was. He knew how...."And besides, the Thing that stalked me had never been so calm, sostill, so reflective. It had always been swelling and rising like so muchthick, stinking smoke and those voices . . . That had been a merestatue standing there.
I got up, furious with myself, absolutely furious for having fled,for having passed up the last little trick involved in the whole kill. Iwas furious enough to go back there, and kick his dead body and kickthat statue, which no doubt returned to granite the instant thatconscious life went completely out of the dying brain of its owner.
Broken arms, shoulders. As if from the bloody heap I'd made ofhim, he'd called up that thing.
And Dora will hear about this. Broken arms, shoulders. Neckbroken.
I went out onto Fifth Avenue. I walked into the wind.
I stuffed my hands in the pockets of my wool blazer, which was fartoo light to look appropriate in this quiet blizzard, and I walked andwalked. "All right, damn it, you knew what I was, and for a moment,you made that thing look alive."I stopped dead still, staring over the traffic at the dark snow-covered woods of Central Park.
"If it 珪 all connected, come for me." I was talking not to him now,or the statue, but to the Stalker. I simply refused to be afraid. I wasjust completely out of my head.
And where was David? Hunting somewhere? Hunting ... as hehad so loved to do as a mortal man in the Indian jungles, hunting, andI'd made him the hunter of his brothers forever.
I made a decision.
I was going back at once to the flat. I'd look at the damned statue,and see for myself that it was utterly inanimate, and then I'd do whatI ought to do for Dora梩hat is, get rid of her father's corpse.
It took me only moments to get back, to be going up the narrowpitch-dark back stairs again, and into the flat. I was past all patiencewith my fear, simply furious, humiliated and shaken, and at the sametime curiously excited梐s I always am by the unknown.
Stench of his freshly dead body. Stench of wasted blood.
I could hear or sense nothing else. I went into a small room whichhad once been an active kitchen and still contained the remnants ofhousekeeping from the time of that dead mortal whom the Victimhad loved. Yes, just what I wanted under the sink pipes where mortalsalways shove it, a box of green plastic garbage sacks, just perfect forhis remains.
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