Undead to the World (24 page)

He nods, but says nothing.

It’s been a long night, and we all need to get some rest. We work out a rotation for
standing guard with Charlie taking the first watch, and then Cassiar and I try to
sleep. I take the couch, he takes the bedroom.

It seems like I just closed my eyes when a pounding on the front door jars me awake.
I raise my head and look around blearily. “Charlie? Cassiar?”

Charlie steps out of the bedroom, wearing only boxers. Galahad starts barking excitedly.
“Where’s Cassiar?” Charlie asks.

“You tell me—I just woke up. Is that him outside?”

Charlie looks out the spyhole. “No, it’s—hey, I recognize her. It’s Xandra.”

The name means nothing to me. “Well, the sun’s up, so I guess she’s not a pire. Let
her in, let’s see what she wants.”

I get to my feet as Charlie opens the door. Alexis charges in, teary streaks of mascara
trailing from the edges of her black-rimmed eyes. She’s all punked out today: ripped
jeans with fishnets underneath, combat boots, Sex Pistols T-shirt, denim vest covered
with band buttons and held together with safety pins. “Jace,” she says, her voice
a sob, “you gotta help me!”

I shoot Charlie a quick glance. “Find Cassiar. And put some clothes on.” I motion
for Alexis to sit.

“This guy doesn’t
own
any,” Charlie growls, and stomps off.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“It’s Neil,” she says, sniffling. “The sheriff arrested him. They think he
killed
somebody!”

“Who?”

“I don’t know! Stoker just came and dragged him away in the middle of the night! And
Neil—he just—” She breaks down again. I let her cry it out a little before I sit down
next to her on the couch and put an arm around her. “What about Neil?” I ask gently.

“He’s been acting so
weird
! He just—he won’t eat, he sleeps all day, he’s so pale … I thought he had some kind
of drug problem, but he doesn’t even seem high!”

“How
does
he seem?”

She shakes her head miserably. “He hardly touches me. He disappears in the middle
of the night. And he’s …
meaner.
It’s not like him at all—he’s such a nice guy, you know? But that’s not the worst
part. The worst part is
crazy.
I don’t even know if I should tell you.”

“It’s okay. I know crazy, remember?” I give her what I hope is an encouraging-and-not-crazed
smile.

“It’s what happened when Sheriff Stoker came to arrest him. He just laughed and said
he wasn’t going anywhere. I thought the sheriff was going to threaten him with his
gun, but he didn’t. He threatened him with something
else.
”

“What was it?”

“A cross. He pulled this stupid silver cross out of his pocket and held it in front
of him, and backed Neil right into a corner. Neil looked angry and terrified and—and
his eyes went all red, and the sheriff made him put the handcuffs on himself, like
he didn’t want to get too close to him—” She bursts into tears again. “I don’t
know
,” she wails. “I mean, I know how it sounds, but that’s
crazy
! And I didn’t know what to do or where to go and something made me think
you
could help, I don’t even know
why
—”

“Take it easy,” I say. “Look, you’re not going to be able to help Neil if you’re this
upset, right? So just calm down.”

It takes a minute, but she gets herself under control. I find a box of Kleenex and
hand it to her, and she wipes her eyes and blows her nose.

“I get it,” I say. “You’re confused and scared and want to know what the hell is going
on. Well, what’s going on is so convoluted and bizarre I can’t really explain it,
but here’s what you need to know. Yes, Neil is … exactly what you think he is. And
he’s not the only one. You know what I’m talking about, right?”

“Vampires,” she whispers.

“Yes. And—believe it or not—werewolves, too. Which, once you’ve wrapped your head
around vampires, isn’t that much of a stretch, right?”

She’s staring at me, not blinking, trying to see if I’m kidding or out of my mind.
I meet her gaze as evenly and sincerely as I can. “The two groups are about to go
head-to-head, Alexis. Two gangs, same turf.”

“So Sheriff Stoker’s a
werewolf
?”

“I’m not sure.” I consider telling her about the cult but decide it’s too much to
hit her with all at once. “He’s in the middle of things, but I don’t know whose side
he’s on. What you need to know is that this town is now very, very dangerous; the
best thing you could do would be to leave.”

“I can’t. The roadwork crew has the highway shut down and nobody can get out.”

Charlie returns, now dressed in khaki pants and a white button-down shirt. “Cassiar’s
gone. Must have taken off during his turn standing watch.”

“Who’s Cassiar?” Alexis asks.

“A friend,” I say. “I hope.”

“Let’s say I believe you,” Alexis says. “If Neil’s a vampire, who turned him into
one? And who’s a werewolf?”

“We don’t know for certain,” I admit. “Except for a few people. Jimmy Zhang and Phil
Isamu, for instance—they’re both vampires. Well, Phil
was,
anyway.”

“He got better?” she asks, a pathetic gleam of hope in her eye.

“He got deader. Believe me, that’s a good thing.”

“Who else?”

Charlie’s giving me the “are you sure you want to do this” look, but I plunge ahead
regardless. “Brad Varney and Don Prince are both going to be hairy and howling at
the first full moon. Vince Shelly and Ken Tanaka would round out their little unbarbershopped
quartet, if both of them hadn’t met unfortunate accidents involving things that are
either very sharp, very silver, or both.”

“Uh-huh.” She looks a little overwhelmed, and I’ve only touched on the actual situation.
“So all of these people were bitten?”

“That’s the traditional way, yeah—”

“So why don’t I
know
about this? How can all this
biting
be going on without anyone
noticing
?”

“Because it’s not being done in the traditional way—not the werewolf part, anyway.”
I point to one of her exposed shoulders. “That little red dot on your arm—you got
an innoculation recently, didn’t you?”

“What? Yeah, I got a flu shot from Pete—my dad made me go. The whole family got them—”

Her eyes go very, very wide. “Oh, no,” she whispers.

“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “I think Doctor Pete was infecting his patients with the
lycanthrope virus. Vince Shelly had a mark just like it on his shoulder.”

Oddly, the news that she’s now a werewolf-in-waiting calms her down. “This is why
he was acting so weird toward me,” she says wonderingly. She touches the innoculation
mark with a single index finger, like it’s an on/off button she can press. “I was
feeling it, too, only I thought I was just angry at him.…”

“Pires and thropes don’t generally make good couples.”
At least not where I’m from.
“But there’s a solution. Kill the alpha wolf—the one that’s doing all the infecting—before
the first full moon, and none of the people bitten will transform.”

“Kill Pete? But he’s
family
!”

“It may not come to that. Doctor Pete might be the alpha wolf, but he might not.”
I’m thinking of the attack in Doctor Pete’s clinic—if he were the alpha, why didn’t
he transform and defend himself against the Gallowsman? No, it makes far more sense
for somebody else to be the alpha, somebody with a more aggressive, take-charge personality.
Don Prince fits that description, as does Mayor Leo, but both seem too obvious to
me. I’ve got someone else in mind, someone who’s only a minor thug here but a lot
more ambitious in his natural habitat.

Tair.

If so, then he’s really here in the flesh; he’s not just a memory-implant imposter.
But if the person I know as Terrance is actually Tair, then who is Doctor Pete? Did
Ahaseurus manage to isolate each personality in a different body?

That actually makes sense. Tair as the alpha—powerful, aggressive, ruthless—with trustworthy-but-thoroughly-brainwashed
Doctor Pete secretly infecting people until he’s dragged into the bowels of the earth
by the Gallowsman.

Sure. Unless Ahaseurus decided to be tricky and set things up the other way around.
Hide the alpha inside Doctor Pete’s unassuming, helpful facade, while parading Terrance
around as a big fat red herring. That works, too.

Either way, they may have both been taken off the board: one locked up by Stoker,
the other abducted and possibly killed by an evil creature the cult summoned.

I just don’t know.

“We need to search Doctor Pete’s place,” I say.

“I might be able to get us in there,” Alexis says. “I know where he hides a key. He’ll
be working in the clinic downstairs, though—we’ll have to be real quiet.”

“I think we can handle that,” I say. No way am I going to tell her about what happened
to Dr. Pete, not unless I have to. She’s got enough to deal with already.

“All right,” says Charlie. “We search the doc’s place. Then what?”

“Depends on what we find. If he’s the alpha, there have to be traces of thrope presence
around. If not—” I shrug. “Then we go to plan B.”

*   *   *

I leave Charlie with Alexis, out in the parking lot of the clinic. She tells me where
to find the key—under a cement planter beside the front door—and I let myself in.
Even though it’ll screw up my plans, part of me is hoping I’ll find Doctor Pete inside.

No such luck. His apartment is empty, the movie he was watching still on pause: an
old western, just like he said.

But he was lying about something else.

He has a woman living with him. Hard to believe he managed to keep that a secret in
a town this size, but anything’s possible if you’re motivated enough. I find high
heels in the closet—more than one pair—along with women’s clothes and some accessories.
From the styles I’d guess she’s going straight to work from here; from the sizes I’d
put her at around six feet tall and maybe a hundred and forty pounds. A big girl.

The medicine cabinet is more revealing. She takes good care of her skin—lots of creams
and lotions, all of them natural and unscented. No sunscreen, though, which seems
odd considering the weather we’ve been having lately. She favors pads over tampons.
She shaves her legs on a regular basis.

And she’s a werewolf.

The fridge is what clinches it. Meat, meat, and more meat, with nary a fruit or vegetable
to be found. It pretty much tells me that they’re both thropes, or at least they’re
eating like they are. It could be that one’s the alpha and the other’s merely been
bitten—the carnivorous urges kick in even before the first transformation. It’s also
possible neither one’s the alpha and both of them are just bitees, since I don’t find
anything like telltale bits of fur or claw marks on the furniture.

I wonder who the woman is. The last female I saw Doctor Pete with was the new school
teacher, Athena Shaker, but none of these clothes would fit her. I don’t find a comb,
but there’s a brush beside the bed; the hairs caught in it are distinctive and easily
identifiable. She’s black.

Sure. Except there aren’t any black women in town.

I go back downstairs and get in the car. “So?” Charlie asks.

“So Doctor Pete has an African-American girlfriend. Or maybe just African, I don’t
know—but whoever she is, she’s practically moved in with him.” I realize I sound a
little jealous, which is embarassing and irrelevant. I move on. “She might be the
alpha, or it could still be Doctor Pete. No hard evidence either way.”

Alexis looks disappointed. “So what do we do now?”

“Plan B,” I say. “We break Terrance out of jail. Assuming he’s still there…”

*   *   *

“Tell me again,” says Charlie, “why this is plan B. Because it seems like it should
be considerably further down the alphabet.”

“Because,” I say, crouching down in the backseat, “we need Terrance for the
second
part of the plan. Even if he isn’t the alpha, he’s still Doctor Pete’s identical
twin.”

“And if he
is
the alpha?”

“Then we’ve got him exactly where we want him.”

“Sure. Because cozying up to a killer thrope is much better than leaving him behind
bars.”

“He’s not doing us any good in there, is he?”

“He’s not doing us any
bad
in there, that’s for sure.”

“He may not even
be
there. Which is something we need to know, and anyway, shut up.”

We’re not in Charlie’s car anymore. Too conspicuous. Instead we’re in Isamu’s junky
old Toyota, which was parked next to the diner with the keys in it. We’re across the
street from the police station with the engine running, while Alexis is inside trying
to see Neil. There’s no guarantee that Stoker will let that happen, but the fact that
Alexis is the mayor’s niece gives us a little leverage; I’m hoping that the threat
of a major, dramatic breakdown will be enough that he’ll give in just to keep her
happy. I coached her carefully beforehand, and she seemed to understand exactly which
buttons she has to push. I have faith in her.

We’ve been waiting for half an hour. Enough time for Alexis to cajole, threaten, and
sob her way inside, enough time for her to talk to Neil and get him up to speed. His
relationship with Alexis may be rocky, but I’m willing to bet he’ll kiss and make
up awfully quick to get out of a jail cell.

Charlie and I are here to make sure he’s got somewhere to go. It’s mid-morning now,
the autumn sun bright and warm overhead, not exactly what a pire wants waiting for
him. The thunderstorm that threatened my life yesterday is still there, lurking on
the horizon and flickering with the odd flash of lightning. I’ll bet if I tried to
leave town it would get a lot closer real quick.

The door of the police station—hastily repaired with plywood and two-by-fours—opens,
and Alexis comes out. She doesn’t walk directly to the car, going the opposite way
instead and circling around the block. She jumps into the back seat a few minutes
later.