The Spinoza Trilogy (8 page)

Veronica was now on my right, carefully taking aim. Ignoring me completely.

The overweight old couple looked up, startled, as I swept past them. I dodged a low wooden bench at the last second. Back in the day I would have hurled it. Now, it was all I could do to just avoid it and not fall flat on my face.

Already I was gasping for air.

“Veronica, stop!”

But she didn’t stop. Instead, she was taking careful aim.

I turned the final corner. Now she was directly in front of me, about thirty feet away, ignoring me completely. The metallic crossbow gleamed brilliantly. I realized too late that she could have just as easily turned the weapon on me. If she did, there was nothing I could do.

I also realized that I was now holding my own gun. I had no intention of using it, but maybe it would help convince her to stand down.

“Stop!” I shouted. “Or I’ll shoot!”

Yes, I actually said that. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even acknowledge me.

Instead, she pulled the trigger.

Chapter Ten

The bolt burst from the crossbow.

I whipped my head around in time to see James P. Storm, who had been looking down and signing a book, reached up without looking and snatch the crossbow bolt out of the air.

I gaped, dumfounded.
That did not just happen.

Storm looked curiously at the bolt, and then calmly looked up at us. Other people looked, too. No doubt they saw two people standing at the railing, one holding a gun, and the other holding a very medieval-looking weapon.

And that’s when someone screamed.

* * *

Utter chaos ensued.

People were now running in every direction. But Storm didn’t run; in fact, he hadn’t moved. He continued sitting there, staring up at us, holding the crossbow bolt.

A mob of people passed briefly in front of him, screaming hysterically. When they cleared, he was gone.

This can’t be good.

* * *

I had just turned to Veronica, had just reached out a hand to grab her, when I found myself flying backwards through the air. Yellow light burst through my skull as I crashed hard against an immovable bookcase. I crumpled in a heap, and might have blacked out for a few seconds.

When I opened my eyes, I saw that Veronica was gone. Amazingly, I was still holding my gun. I stumbled to my feet and searched the area and found her silver crossbow and a single bolt. I retrieved both just as the two policemen rounded the corner and approached me fast. I slipped the small crossbow and bolt into my jacket pockets.

“
What the fuck is going on up here?” asked one of them. He was breathing hard, but not as hard as I had been.

My head was still groggy. Veronica was gone, and I wasn’t sure what the hell to tell these guys. I still had no clue how I suddenly came to be flying through the air.

“I saw someone up here,” I said. “Someone with a weapon.”

“
And who the fuck are you?”

“
I’m a P.I. hired to find—”

“
Never mind. Where’s the shooter?”

“
No clue. Someone...hit me from behind.”

“
Stay here,” said the first officer. “We’ll be back.”

They dashed off and spread out, quickly searching the upstairs. They convened back at the escalators a few minutes later, conferred with each other, and then headed back down to the second floor mayhem.

As they had searched the upstairs, I noticed one had checked the “Employees Only” door. He had opened it, looked around inside for a few seconds, and then reemerged and continued on. Obviously he hadn’t found what he was looking, but what he hadn’t noticed was that the touchpad had been completely torn off the wall. Where it was, I had no clue, but it was gone.

With my head still throbbing and a fantastic pain in my right shoulder, I lurched forward toward the storeroom door.

* * *

With people still shouting below, I drew my gun and opened the “Employees Only” door.

The room was indeed a storeroom. I could smell dusty books and someone’s lunch. A microwavable pizza, perhaps. The room probably doubled as a break room, too.

It was also quite dark. I flipped on a switch.

The back room was, in fact, a longish room, separated by another door. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. Now only a few muffled sounds reached me from the craziness outside. I still felt woozy, but I powered through it.

I continued through the long room, holding my gun out before me.

The storeroom probably looked like a thousand other bookstore storerooms. Boxes and books everywhere. Broken bookshelves. Dusty display cases crammed in one corner. A circular Formica table sat near a glowing vending machine and a microwave.

I headed deeper into the room, listening hard. I heard nothing unusual. No sounds of a throat being torn open.

At that thought, I reached inside my jacket pocket and withdrew the stainless steel crossbow and silver bolt. I goofed with the thing for a few seconds, until I finally knocked back a bolt, thus arming the contraption.

At least, I hoped it was armed.

I cautiously stepped through the second doorway, a doorway which was devoid of an actual door, and into what I assumed was a second storeroom. I reached around the corner and flipped on another switch. More books, more broken equipment. Shelving everywhere. And something in the far corner.

Another door?

It was easy to miss, especially if you were a cop hurrying through here and wrongly assuming no one was inside. The difference being that I
knew
someone was hiding somewhere inside this storeroom.

The door appeared to be blocked by some boxes. But that could have only been an optical illusion. Indeed, the closer I got, the more clearly I saw a narrow path that led through the boxes and to this back door.

I stepped between the boxes, onto the narrow path. The door was directly in front of me. It was also partially open. From within, I heard some very strange sounds.

And if I had to guess, I would guess that someone—or something—was feasting hungrily.

I moved quickly through the narrow corridor of boxes, and as I did so, the sickening noises grew steadily louder from behind the door.

Without slowing or hesitating, I raised the crossbow, and kicked open the door.

* * *

The small room was mostly dark, but there was enough light from the single dusty bulb behind me to see inside.

And what I saw was something out of a nightmare.

James P. Storm was in there, hunched over Veronica, his face buried into her torn and bloody neck. Veronica’s eyes were closed and she could have been dead.

As Storm turned reluctantly away from her neck, I shot him with the crossbow.

Had he been any further away, I’m certain I would have missed. But, in this case, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Or a vampire in a coffin.

As it was, the small arrow whipped through the air and plunged deep into his chest, exactly where I assumed its heart was.

What happened next still gives me nightmares to this day.

James P. Storm leaped back, staring down at the bolt protruding from his chest. He gripped the fletchings and pulled.

The bolt came out, along with a geyser of black blood that splattered the small room and turned immediately into steam. Indeed, the bloody hole in his chest gushed steam as well.

He stumbled backward and collapsed against some shelving, and as he hissed and steamed and bled, I ran over to Veronica and dragged her across the floor and out the door. I ripped off my jacket, wadded it up, and used it to plug the gaping wound in her neck.

With the jacket pressed firmly against her, I watched in horror and fascination as James P. Storm continued to hiss and steam. He looked at me confusedly, opened his mouth to say something, and then pitched forward onto his face.

Chapter Eleven

I was sitting in Detective Sparks office at the Central Station on Vallejo Street.

He and I had gone over and over the events at Borders Books and Music. He didn’t like my answers and had only grudgingly started to wrap his mind around the fact that something very strange had indeed gone on in his city.

He rubbed his eyes and drank some more coffee and stared at me for a long minute.

“
So you really think this thing was a vampire?” he asked.

“
I think this thing was a monster. But call it what you want.”

“
A monster?” he said.

“
It killed her parents and tried to kill her. It had its face buried in her neck and was drinking her blood. And when I shot it with the arrow, it turned to dust before my very eyes. What would you call that?”

“
A long night of drinking.”

“
No one was drinking, detective.”

“
The Crime Lab analyzed the remains. Human DNA. They’re telling me that these remains are at least a hundred and fifty years old. They’re still testing them.”

I said nothing. What the hell was there to say to that?

Sparks said, “And you shot him with a silver arrow?”

“
Yup.”

“
And he just started smoking?”

“
Like a chimney.”

“
He say anything?”

“
I think he was too busy smoking and dying,” I said.

We were silent some more. Veronica was in the hospital. Apparently, she was going to make it. Gladys and her husband were on their way up to be with her. At least Veronica had someone.

“So what am I supposed to do with all of this?” asked Sparks. He waved at the reports on his desk.

“
You’ll think of something,” I said. “It’s why you make the big bucks.”

“
They don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

“
So am I free to go?”

He nodded wearily. “I’ll be in touch, Spinoza. We know where to find you.”

“Lucky me,” I said.

And left.

* * *

It was late evening, and I was sleeping fitfully in my office when someone knocked on the door.

I had been dreaming of my son, of course. Once again, we were in the forest and I was holding his hand, only this time his hand wasn’t charred. This time it was healthy and alive and soft and warm, and my little boy was looking at me with joy and love in his bright eyes.

This is different,
I remembered thinking in my dream.
Something is different.

My son nodded and swung my hand and I sensed great peace from him. He nodded again and laughed and squeezed my hand. I sensed something else. I sensed that he wanted me to move on. I had been about to ask him
how
when the knock came again.

My hand went automatically under my arm, gripping my pistol. I was a little jumpy these days after my run-in with the vampire.

“It’s open,” I said, reluctant as hell to release the image of my healthy and happy son.

Veronica opened the door and stepped inside. She was wearing tight jeans and a tank top. A far cry different than the loose-fitting boy jeans she had been wearing a week earlier at Borders. Her dark hair was still cut boyishly short and even from here I could see the red scarring around her neck. Her torn throat had needed a lot of stitches. I didn’t see any stitches now. She seemed pale and sickly and not as confident as she had been in her pictures. No surprise there, since she had nearly had her throat torn out.

“Can I talk to you?” she asked.

“
Sure.”

She shut the door behind her, turned, and sat across from me in one of my client chairs. I released my grip on the pistol.

“I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than she looked.

Despite myself, my old shyness returned. I forced myself to power through it.

“Well, it was drinking your blood,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”

“
Where did you learn to shoot a crossbow like that?”

“
Maybe I was Robin Hood in a past life.”

She grinned, and seemed about to rub her neck, but stopped herself.

I asked, “So he really was a vampire?”

“
Of course.”