Twilight Fall

Hatred ballooned inside John. He felt like going in after him and grabbing the self-righteous bastard by the throat, and shaking him until his false teeth popped out of his mouth.

A dirty hand touched his arm.

"Let it go, man," the drifter said. "He ain't worth spending a night in the drunk tank." He sized up John with speculative glance. "There's some good places to sleep down by the dock, if you're looking."

"I'm not drunk, and I have a place to sleep." Still glaring at the windows of the sandwich shop, John reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. "Here." He gave the drifter Cyprien's credit card. "You can use this at any ATM. The pin number is seven-four-one-two. I think it's got a five-grand limit."

"You for real?" The drifter took the card as if it were made of solid gold. "It ain't stolen, is it?" He immediately tried to hand it back. "I don't want to get busted."

"It's not stolen." John felt better, lighter. "My sister has a rich boyfriend. He gave it to me, but I don't need or want his money."

"If you're sure." The drifter stuffed the card down the front of his grimy trousers, and then offered his hand. John shook it. "Thanks, man. You're a walking saint." With a quick glance at the sandwich shop, the man reached into the garbage can and retrieved a partially eaten slice of pizza. He grinned at John. "I can't resist pepperoni and mushrooms. My favorite." He began to munch on it as he wandered around the side of the building.

John heard a siren drawing close and walked down a block to where he had parked the rental. He ducked inside and waited until the patrol car passed, and then started the engine and drove off.

John went down to Cannery Row and parked the rental by a small movie theater. He had enough money left in his wallet to buy a ticket, and went in to sit in the back row of the theater. When the film started, he slouched down and closed his tired eyes.

Back when they lived on the streets in Chicago, John had learned how to sneak into movie theaters. He'd stand out of sight by the ticket booth and wait until a large family bought tickets. He would scoot out, leading Alexandra by the hand, and walk in right behind them. Nine times out of ten the usher wouldn't check the number of tickets given to him, and would assume he and Alex were part of the family group.

Movie theaters were good, safe places to sleep. In between shows, John would take Alex into the restroom, and keep her there until the ushers were finished cleaning the aisles. Then he would return for another two-hour nap.

Sometimes just before the show started, he pretended he'd left something in the front seats, and scout around for any buckets of popcorn or boxes of candy wedged in the seats: the ushers always missed those. Once he found an unopened box of SnoCaps. Alex's favorite candy. He would have let her eat the entire box during the next showing, but by then Alex had learned that treats were precious. She'd carried the box around for a week, eating the candy one or two pieces at a time.

Sweet, sweet boy. Thin, bloody fingers caressed his cheek, his chest, his cock.

He opened his eyes to look up at the petite blond woman. She had returned to the bedroom they had locked him in, but now there were no guards to stop her.

Did you miss me? She had changed out of her ball gown and now wore a yellow silk negligee that did more to reveal her body than conceal it.

John knew what she wanted. Leave me alone.

I don't believe I'm going to do that. Elizabeth smiled as she fingered the bandage Alexandra had put on the side of his throat, and then ripped it off. They say you were a priest. I find that very arousing.

She had taken the thin braids out of her golden hair, the ends of which brushed against his chest as she straddled him. She rubbed herself against him, her smooth brow furrowing when his body didn't respond.

You deny me?

The stink of mildew and damp wood filled John's head, promising to take him back to the alley behind the produce warehouse. Where he had slept with Alexandra one night when he was eight years old, in a small fortress he had fashioned out of moldering fruit crates. Where the rats had prowled after dark, furtively looking for any fresh meat.

No. John couldn't go back there again.

Then give me what I want. She ground her crotch over his.

She repulsed him, but he feared the memory of the rats more. He seized her waist and rolled over with her, yanking up the transparent nightgown and baring her pelvis.

Elizabeth scowled and pushed at him. Get off.

John knew she had Kyn strength, and in the next moment fully expected to feel himself flying across the room. But she didn't use it against him as she pushed. She was only going through the motions; her eyes gleamed with excitement.

John felt his blood turn to ice as he realized what she wanted him to do. It didn't arouse him, and it didn't frighten him. It enraged him.

His hands wrapped around her neck. He shook her like a doll. You think you can make me rape you? he shouted. I'm not an animal.

Oh, but, sweet boy, you are. Elizabeth undulated beneath him, her lips pouting. We know everything you've done, how you've forced yourself on other women, and you loved every moment, didn't you? Shoving yourself into them, making them take it, making them do those dirty, dirty things to you.

He slapped her. Shut up.

The blow split her lip, spilling blood onto her chin before the cut instantly healed. She gave him a gory smile. Those things you wanted her to do to you.

No. John shook his head, releasing her and desperately trying to scramble away, but her hands became manacles around his wrists.

She smiled. Didn't Alexandra want to do them?

Horror destroyed the loathing and lust inside him, and then Elizabeth was pulling him down, her bloodied mouth wide, her lips peeling back from her fangs—

Mister.

"Mister."

"Mister."

John jerked awake, startling the usher standing over him.

"Theater's closing, mister," the young boy said. He looked at John's face and retreated a few steps. "You gotta go now."

"Sorry." John pushed the sweat-soaked hair out of his face and forced his tired body out of the folding seat. The usher followed at a safe distance until John staggered out of the theater and into the night.

John didn't dare go to sleep after that, but drove around the empty streets of Monterey for hours, the radio in the rental car turned up loud enough to keep him from thinking.

Fog slowly rolled in from the bay and swaddled the apartments and cottages and mansions in damp, white mist. John passed an ancient VW Bug, its battered, rusting body still bearing some faded remnants of the psychedelic art a stoned hippie had hand-painted on it forty years ago. In the space next to it a red Maserati gleamed, a sleeping demon on wheels, its vanity plate reading. 2FAST4U.

That made curious sense to John. Everything was happening too fast.

He drove up to the small military base on the hill above town and parked outside the gates. In a few hours, a lone bugle would pierce the air at oh-six-hundred, rousing the soldier-students from their dorm rooms. Some would walk down the steep hill to have breakfast in town, while others wandered into the chow hall, where they practiced in low voices the tongue-twisting dialogues for their Arabic-, Russian-, Korean-, and Chinese-language classes.

But for now the linguists at the Presidio and the owners of the VW and the Maserati slept, safe in their beds, assured that all was as it should be, and the world would continue, as it always had, to spin day into night, night into day.

None of them. John was sure, would dream of rats, or rape.

At last the time came to go up into the hills. John drove up as far as he could on the dirt road, and then took his case out of the back of the rental and went the rest of the way on foot. He waited at the lightning-struck tree he had chosen as the meeting place. A few minutes later, a limousine pulled off down on the dirt road below him. John waited until he saw his sister, her lover, and their bodyguard step out before he turned on his flashlight.

"Johnny?" Alexandra called, shielding her eyes with her hand as she started up the incline.

For a moment John thought he saw a little girl, her small hand taking a SnoCaps out of the box, her baby teeth nibbling carefully at the nonpareils. Then his vision cleared, and he saw Alexandra, the woman in the green silk dress.

No, not a woman anymore. A vampire.

They came, his sister, and her lover, and their bodyguard, and stopped a few yards away. Their wariness didn't make him angry, only wistful. Once his sister would have run to him to throw her arms around him and babble a thousand questions. Now, after all that had happened, she kept her distance, her hand curled around Michael Cyprien's. He didn't have to see her face to know her eyes would be as guarded, her expression as shuttered, as his own.

The scents of lavender and rose twined together, taunting him as much as seeing his sister's fingers threaded through Cyprien's.

It was the way things had to be. That John had in large part caused the rift between them, all for the sake of the calling he had abandoned as worthless, didn't make the estrangement any easier.

"The security guards will be driving by here in five minutes," he said. "We'd better move."

Cyprien said something in archaic French to his bodyguard, who returned to the limo. To John, he said. "Phillipe will see to the guards."

John didn't like Michael Cyprien. He had never wanted anything to do with the Darkyn, not after they had taken his sister from him. But the Brethren had to be stopped, and there was no one else he knew with the power and resources to do so. Officials from the real Catholic Church would never believe him without evidence, and the order had infiltrated their ranks with so many imposters that it was impossible to know whom to trust.

"You look like shit." Alexandra said, releasing Cyprien's hand to walk close to her brother. She sniffed. "You smell worse. When was the last time you had a meal or a bath?"

He couldn't tell her that he couldn't remember. "I've been busy."

John guided them along the old trail he had found during his first visit to the place, and around the crumbling adobe to the first of the underground entrances. He pulled away the mat of dead weeds camouflaging it, and took the tire iron out of the case he carried.