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"You serious?" I asked.
"Of course I am. What could be more secure? Now we've work todo. We can't have any mortal connections with this. We're going todo all this toiling ourselves.""Ah!" I gave a disgusted sigh. "You mean wrap all this and moveit?"He laughed. "Yes! Hercules had to do such things, and so haveangels. How do you think Michael felt when he had to go from doorto door in Egypt slaying the First Born of every house? Come on.
You don't realize how simple it is to cushion all these items withmodern plastics. I say we move it ourselves. It will be a venture. Whynot go over the roofs.""Ah, there is nothing more irritating than the energy of afledgling vampire," I said wearily. But I knew he was right. And ourstrength was incalculably greater than that of any mortal helper. Wecould have all this cleared out perhaps within the night.
Some night!
I will say in retrospect that labor is an antidote for angst andgeneral misery, and the fear that the Devil is going to grab you by thethroat at any moment and bring you down into the fiery pit!
We amassed a huge supply of an insulating material made withbubbles of air trapped in plastic, which could indeed bind the mostfragile relic in a harmless embrace. I removed the financial papers andthe books of Wynken, carefully examining each to make sure I wasright about what I had, and then we proceeded to the heavy labor.
Sack by sack we transported all the smaller objects, going over therooftops as David had suggested, unnoticed by mortals, two stealthyblack figures flying as witches might to the Sabbath.
The larger objects we had to take more lovingly, each of us totingone at a time in our arms. I deliberately avoided the great whitemarble angel. But David loved it, talking to it all the way until we reachedour destination. And all this was slipped into the secure rooms of theOlympic Tower in a rather proper way through the freight stairways,with the obligatory mortal pace.
Our little clocks would wind down as we touched the mortalworld, and we would pass into it quickly, gentlemen furnishing theirnew digs with appropriately and securely wrapped treasures.
Soon the clean, carpeted rooms above St. Patrick's housed awilderness of ghostly plastic packages, some looking all too much likemummies, or less carefully embalmed dead bodies. The white marbleangel with her seashell holy water basin was perhaps the largest. Thebooks of Wynken, wrapped and bound, lay on the Oriental diningtable. I hadn't really had a chance to look at them, but now was notthe moment.
I sank down in a chair in the front room, panting from sheerboredom and fury that I had had to do anything so utterly menial. Davidwas jubilant.
"The security's perfect here," David said enthusiastically. Hisyoung male body seemed inflamed with his own personal spirit,When I looked at him, sometimes I saw both merged梩he elderlyDavid, the young strapping Anglo-Indian male form. But most of thetime, he was merely starkly perfect. And surely the strongestfledgling I had ever produced.
That wasn't due only to the strength of my blood or my own trialsand tribulations before I'd brought him over. I'd given hirn moreblood than I'd ever given the others when I made him. I'd risked myown survival. But no matter?
I sat there loving him, loving my own work. I was full of dust.
I realized that everything had been taken care of. We had evenbrought the rugs last, in rolls. Even the rug soaked with Roger'sblood. Relic of the martyred Roger. Well, I would spare Dora thatdetail.
"I have to hunt," David said in a whisper, waking me from mycalculations.
I didn't reply.
"You coming?""You want me to?" I asked.
He stood there regarding me with the strangest expression, darkyouthful face without any palpable condemnation or even disgust.
"Why don't you? Don't you enjoy seeing it, even if you don'twant it?"I nodded. I'd never dreamed he would let me watch. Louis hated itwhen I watched. When we'd been together last year, the three of us,David had been far too reticent and suspicious to suggest such athing.
We went down into the thick snowy darkness of Central Park.
Everywhere one could hear the park's nighttime occupants, snoring,grumbling, tiny whiffs of conversation, smoke. These are strongindividuals, individuals who know how to live in the wild in the midstof a city that is itself notoriously fatal to its unlucky ones.
David found what he wanted quickly梐 young male with askullcap, his bare toes showing through his broken shoes, a walker in thenight, lone and drugged and insensible to the cold and talking aloudto people of long ago.
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