Part 33 (1/2)

”I could hardly see five feet in front of me,” he said. ”I walked right past the car before I realized where I was. But there's one blessing. Our friend with the rifle can't see either. How's the boy?”

”He was awake a few minutes ago,” Jo said. ”He says his name is Tommy.” Palatazin came over beside the sofa and looked down at him. ”Do you think he's going to be all right? He's so pale!”

”You would be, too, if you'd taken a bullet across the back of your head.” She lifted the cold washrag and felt his forehead for perhaps the twentieth time in an hour. ”He doesn't have a fever, but I wouldn't know whether he had a concussion or not. At least he was coherent when he spoke.” Palatazin nodded, his brow furrowed in concern, and then turned back to the window. He was glad this boy was alive, of course, but now he was responsible for the life of one more person. What was going to happen to them after he'd gone? Taking them with him was out of the question. If Jo protested, he would remind her that she'd almost died in the storm last night, and having to keep three other people together out there would be more than he could handle. He gravely doubted his own chances of making it across Hollywood. ”The car's completely covered over now,” he said to Gayle. ”The dunes are piling up almost as tall as the house.”

”And you still think you can make it up to the Kronsteen castle?” He didn't look at her. ”I have to try.”

”It's over four miles! If you say you can't see more than five feet in front of you, how the h.e.l.l will you even know where you're going?” Palatazin motioned toward the gun and shoulder-holster lying across the back of a chair. ”I want you to keep that. I'm going to leave you the rest of the holy water, too. If I get up there . .. when I get up there ... I won't need anything more than the hammer and stakes. I think the vampire king is somehow controlling this storm. When he dies, I think the storm will blow itself out to sea. Until then it's going to circle over the city and possibly get worse before nightfall-”

”Wait a minute!” Jo said, rising from her chair. ”Do you think you can climb up that mountain alone?”

”You're staying here, Jo. All of you are. Don't argue because the decision's been made.”

”Like h.e.l.l it has! We'll take a vote on it!”

”No, we won't!” he said angrily. ”Yes, I'm going up alone to the Kronsteen castle. You and Gayle and the boy are staying right here. You'll have the holy water and the gun. I suggest you go down to the bas.e.m.e.nt after dusk and lock yourselves in. Save the holy water as long as you can. If you have to use the gun, aim for the vampires' eyes. With any luck and the help of G.o.d, I can reach the castle much faster than if I had to take care of the two of you and an injured boy .-. .”

”We can take care of ourselves!” Jo said. ”You won't have to worry about us!”

”You're staying here,” he told her, his voice stern.

”The Kronsteen castle? Orion Kronsteen's castle?” Palatazin looked past Jo. The boy sat up from the sofa; he still looked dazed and weak, but his voice was clear. ”Is that where you're going?” the boy asked.

”That's right,” Palatazin said. ”How are you feeling?”

”Better, I guess. My head keeps ringing.”

Palatazin smiled and walked over to the sofa. ”Young man, you should be grateful you have a head. If that wound were perhaps a fraction of an inch deeper, you might not. Tommy, is it?”

”Yes, sir.”

”Tommy what?”

The boy started to speak, but then his eyes seemed to lose their focus. He winced and shook his head. ”Tommy . . . Tommy . . . Ch . . .”

”Take your time.” Palatazin glanced quickly at Jo, then back to the boy. ”Do you remember anything of what happened to you last night?” Tommy closed his eyes. He was trying to look into the funhouse mirrors that stood along the distorted corridor in his mind. There was a girl in one of them, a very pretty girl with long blond hair. She was reaching out for him and smiling, but suddenly her smile turned hideous, and he could see the glistening fangs slowly protruding from her jaws. That mirror abruptly shattered. There was a fire burning in the next one, but he couldn't bear to look into it. The mirror after that rippled with darkness; there seemed to be figures in it, chasing after him, getting closer and closer. There was someone with a chain, shouting.

The mirror cracked with the same loud sound he remembered hearing before he'd slid down a sandy maw into the belly of a toadish, squatting monster. ”Can't think,” he said. He backed out of that corridor and opened his eyes. ”My head hurts too much.”

Palatazin reached down and picked up the backpack. ”You were wearing this.”

”Uhhhh, sure! I know that! From the Scouts. My dad used to take me when we lived in ... in ...” The chain of dim memories suddenly collapsed. Tears sprang to his eyes.

”Your father? What happened to your parents?”

”Can't,” Tommy said very softly. ”Can't.” Palatazin realized they were probably dead, or worse. He could see the pain etched across the boy's face so he put the backpack down on the floor. ”It's okay,” he said. ”You don't have to remember just this minute. My name's Andy. I guess you must be hungry, huh? I think we can find you something from the refrigerator if it hasn't all gone bad by now.”

”There are some cans of Vienna sausage in the pantry,” Jo said. ”And sardines.”

”Ugh,” Tommy said. ”I don't think I can eat anything just right now anyway, thanks. My stomach doesn't feel so good.” He looked up and held Palatazin's gaze. ”Why do you want to go to Orion Kronsteen's castle?”

”Because of the vampires,” Palatazin said quietly. ”I suppose you do know about them?”

”Yeah.” Another mirror shattered in Tommy's head. He'd seen vampires in the movies. No, no, that wasn't right. They were here in L.A., and one of them looked like the blond girl in tight denim cutoffs who'd lived across the street.

Her name was . . . Sandra . . . Susie . . . something . . .

”I don't know how many there are now, but I'm sure they number in the thousands.

They're trying to take over this city, Tommy. Somehow they brought this sandstorm here and they don't want any of us to get out.” His eyes had gotten very dark, reflecting the state of his spirit. ”I think their leader is hiding up in the Kronsteen castle. Someone has to find him and kill him before sundown, or ... what happened last night will happen again, only ten times worse. There are probably other vampires hiding there with him, and they're all going to have to be destroyed.”

”You? You're going to do it?”

Palatazin nodded.

”I know all about the castle!” Tommy said excitedly. ”Last year Famous Monsters-that's a magazine-did a story about it. Forry Ackerman and Vincent Price toured it on the tenth anniversary of Orion Kronsteen's murder! They took a psychic up there and everything! She said she could feel his ghost walking around-”

”That's fine,” Palatazin said, ”but-”

”They had a lot of pictures of the place,” Tommy continued, ”and a diagram that showed most of the rooms. A couple of months ago my ... dad ...” He frowned suddenly, memories streaked through his brain and vanis.h.i.+ng into darkness. He tried to grasp some of them before they were gone. ”My dad ... drove me up there on a ... Sunday afternoon, I think. We couldn't go all the way to the top because there was a ... chain and a No Trespa.s.sing sign across the road. But I... remember seeing it through the trees way up in the distance.” He blinked suddenly, as if startled. ”A blue Pacer! My dad drove a blue Pacer!” Images started to come back to him, like bright red explosions in the blackest of all black nights. A stucco house on a long street lined with similar houses. The flaring of a match, illuminating hideously pale faces. A concrete mastodon struggling to free itself from a lake of tar. A grinning dark-haired boy standing over him. Someone else-another boy, larger than the first one-staggering backward, falling into that clinging black ooze and screaming.

Tommy felt cold sweat on his face. He said, ”I think . . . something bad happened to my mom and dad. I think I left them because ... because ... there were vampires and . . .” His face suddenly crumpled. Whatever had happened was too terrible for him to think about.

Palatazin put his hand on the boy's shoulder. ”It's over, son.” Tommy looked up at him grimly, his face streaked with tears. ”No, it's not. The vampires got my mom and dad. I know they did! You're going after the king vampire, aren't you?”

Palatazin nodded. He knew he'd never seen any harder, more determined eyes than those in the face of this skinny boy.

”He's the one who holds them together,” Tommy said. ”If you can kill him and the ones around him, the others won't know what to do. They'll be too disorganized to think for themselves. That's what happened in Midnight Hour, the one where Orion Kronsteen played Count DuPre. Professor Van Dorn found him in the abbey ruins and . . .” His voice trailed off. ”But that was just a movie, wasn't it?”

he said softly. ”That wasn't real at all.”

”I'm going to have to use your backpack, okay?” Palatazin said after another moment. ”To carry the stakes.”

Tommy nodded. Palatazin dumped everything out of the pack and started putting the stakes in. ”The matches and the spray can,” Tommy said. ”You can make a torch out of them.”

Palatazin thought that over and returned them to the pack. He stuffed six stakes into the largest pocket, and three more in the others. There was barely enough room for the hammer.

”You won't be able to find him so easily,” Tommy said. ”He'll be hidden, probably down in one of the bas.e.m.e.nts.”

Palatazin looked up and frowned. ”One of the bas.e.m.e.nts?”

”There are two. That place has more than a hundred rooms. It'll be easy to get lost once you've gotten inside. You might not even be able to find your way out again.”

Palatazin glanced over at Jo. She looked dazed, and he didn't know how much more of this she could take. Outside, the light was a thick, dusty amber. He looked at his watch and saw that the crystal had been cracked and grains of sand clung to the face. He remembered checking it when he'd awakened from two hours of sleep just after sunrise, and now he thought he must've broken it in getting the stakes out of the car. The frozen time was ten-fifty.

”I can help you get in and out,” Tommy said. ”You won't be able to kill all of them. If the others find you, they'll tear you to pieces.”