LOOKING UP at the house of Stephin David, Doug couldn’t imagine why Victor had come here. It was just a rusty birdcage, and an old crow, and two hundred years of crap. Still, there was no doubt he’d arrived. His smell was in the air, and the front door was just slightly ajar.
Doug stepped onto the porch, grimaced at the groaning boards, and slipped inside. The entry hall was more spartan than before—the stacks of books were gone, and the only remaining detail was that conspicuous portrait on the wall, no longer covered with drapery. Doug paused. It was a Civil War soldier, the same as when he’d stolen a glance during his first visit. Now that he had a chance to let his eyes linger, the soldier looked a bit like Victor. More so the longer he stared. But a small brass plate on the frame said CORPORAL THOMAS NORTH.
He passed the tree branch to his left hand and wiped his clammy right hand across his shirt. Then came the strains of floorboards above. And, if he remained still and listened keenly, voices. A low voice first.
“It was easy. You were a Nancy. You’re a Nancy now. Or what would you kids say? A bitch?”
“Shut up. You had no right.”
“Nonsense. You know what we are. It gives me the right. I’ll do it again.”
Doug crept toward the stairs slowly, holding his weight only on the outside edges of his feet.
“You can’t keep ruining lives! I should…stop you.”
Doug started up the stairs.
“You? You cannot stop me. A pretty little thing like you?”
The stairs were noisy.
“Wait,” said the voice that was almost certainly Victor’s. “What was that?”
Shit, thought Doug.
“That,” said Stephin, “is probably your friend Doug Lee. Why don’t you invite him up?”
Doug held the branch behind his back. There was a cacophony of squeaks and groans, and Victor appeared at the top of the stairs. Clothed, for a change.
“What are you doing here, Doug?” Victor hissed.
“What are you doing here?” Doug said, and braced himself against the banister.
Victor studied him a moment. “Is that a wooden stake?”
No sense hiding it anymore, then. Doug brought the stake out in the open.
Victor nodded. “Do you want to stop being a vampire?” He’d been wondering just this for weeks, but when Doug spoke his answer still surprised him.
“Yes.”
Victor waved him forward. “Then come on!”
It was the best invitation Doug was ever going to get, so he lunged up the steps and swung his weapon high toward Victor’s chest. But standing on a lower step put him at a disadvantage. Victor deflected Doug’s arm to the side, both boys lost their footing, and two entangled bodies came tumbling down the stairs.
On the ground floor Doug collected himself but couldn’t account for the stake. He couldn’t even remember dropping it.
Victor coughed, still on his back. “What are you doing? Not me! Stephin David!” He tried to get to his feet, but Doug pushed him off balance again. Victor’s back hit the wall, the portrait of Tom North came down on his head. The glass shattered.
A creaking upstairs told Doug that Stephin was now on the move. And so was Victor. He scrambled backward to the front door. Doug went at him again, but this time Victor found his footing and hit him, hard. Everything went red. Doug felt and heard a door slam right between his ears. He staggered and took a few halting steps backward. Glass crunched under his heels.
“I’ve been punched by a vampire, an Indian girl, and a panda,” he mumbled. “I should be a video game.”
He took two deep breaths and charged again. A moment before Victor tossed him over backward and through Stephin’s front door, Doug questioned the wisdom of rushing a varsity football player, and as he lay at the bottom of the porch steps he silently congratulated himself on his insight.
He was acupunctured all over with splinters. Victor came to the door, breathing hard. Doug was counting on this—he was full of convenience store blood, but Victor was running on empty.
“Stop it, Doug! I didn’t kill Jay! Stephin David probably did it—he’s a seriously bad guy!”
“Very bad.” Stephin’s sonorous voice tolled behind Victor. Victor scrambled forward and turned, and both boys could see the man was holding Doug’s lost stake. “Did anyone drop this?”
Victor made as if to grab it, but Doug grabbed Victor and dragged him down the porch steps into the street. The boys traded punches and the fight lurched across the street and into the park.
Doug could feel an itching in his gums. Victor’s fangs were bared, too. Victor got under him and threw Doug up against the thick branch of a tree. There came the cracking of wood, maybe ribs, and when Doug picked himself off the ground there was a sizable piece of tree next to him.
Victor was on his back, winded from the effort. Doug took the tree limb over his knee and snapped it in two. Then he went after Victor, swinging, but Victor clambered away, tottered at the edge of a hill, and went down.
Nearly half Clark Park was given over to a huge natural bowl, the length of a football field, which had once been a millpond. Victor tumbled into the basin and Doug came tumbling after.
“I’m sorry, Victor,” Doug huffed, “but you’ve gone bad. And I need a do over for these past few months.”
“I didn’t hurt—” Victor began, but Doug clubbed him with the tree limb. Victor reeled and collapsed.
Doug breathed, light-headed, and tried to focus on the limb. It was thick for a stake, and it wasn’t sharp, but hadn’t Stephin told him all the old movie tropes weren’t really that important? He stood over Victor with the branch like a great spear, and heard a faint voice calling his name.
“Doug! No! Don’t do it!”
Looking up, Doug could see two people had joined them in the basin. Stephin, and Sejal.
“Sejal?”
She was running toward them from the other side of the bowl, dressed like the heroine of some dark story. His story, maybe.
“Don’t do it, Doug!” Sejal shouted again. “I do not know what Victor has done, but he didn’t hurt Jay.”
Doug went to her, his head swimming.
“You’ve got to leave here. This is a very dangerous…” He struggled to finish, but dropped to the ground by her feet.
“Your back,” said Sejal. “You’re bleeding.”
“Didn’t know…”
“Well, this has been a super evening,” said Stephin. “It’s nice to see you again, young lady—I assume you’ve remembered our little chat.”
She scowled at him. “You could have just killed yourself, you know.”
“Suicide is ungrateful. And my life is not my own.”
“And so you make vampires of boys like Victor. The sorts of boys who you think will want revenge.”
“Hmm…” Stephin began, his hands folded in front of him, holding a spike of wood. “I’ll volunteer that my selection of Victor was a little more complicated than that, but you’re essentially correct.”
Stephin stepped to the base of the hill. “It came to my attention several months ago that my behavior had become reckless, inadvisable. What seemed at first to simply be poor decisions began to look like a subconscious plan. I was scouting my own executioner. When I heard all these boys had concocted some fantasy of a mysterious female vampire, I thought the end was near. They obviously would not let it stand, being assaulted by someone like me. But now look at them,” he said, his gaze falling on both Victor and Doug in turn. Victor wasn’t moving at all.
Sejal was cold. “That night I met you, you said you were observing. Observing me, perhaps, but also Jay, isn’t it? He lives nearby.”
“Yes. Trying to get people motivated. Doug wanted to kill the head of his vampire family. He had only to realize who that was. How is Jay?”
“You don’t care,” said Doug, trying again to stand. His breathing was labored, and his arms gave out from under him.
“I suppose neither of you would believe I do,” Stephin told them.
“Victor left his mom a note…” Doug whispered. Sejal could barely hear. “I get it now…He wasn’t here to kill you ’cause you’re gay, just an asshole.”
“I’m sorry,” said Stephin to Sejal, “what was that last bit? Our Doug seems to be losing steam.”
“He said you’re full of shit,” Sejal hissed. “These boys are better than you think.”
“What a comfort. So. Your champions seem to be down for the count. Are you going to kill me yourself? Here.”
He tossed Sejal the tree branch stake. It landed out of reach but rolled a few feet in the crackling leaves. Sejal watched it with a sick feeling.
“Is this why you brought me here? Am I your plan B?”
“Brought you here? My dear, I haven’t made you do a thing. I only planted the merest suggestion in your mind. But, no, frankly, you were only meant to be here to assuage my ego. I’m just vain enough to want a witness.”
Sejal looked from the stake to Doug. She couldn’t tell if he was awake or asleep. Alive or dead. She satisfied herself that he was still breathing as Stephin continued.
“You have to strike very hard. I wonder if you have the strength. And the catch is, for all my dreams of oblivion, I don’t believe I’ll go without a fight. I may just let you do it. Or I may take your little stick and snap it along with your neck.” He gave an embarrassed smirk. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Don’t do it,” groaned Doug from the ground. “I’ll get him. I screwed this all up, but I’ll make it right.”
“Yes, there’s an idea. Put all your faith in Doug Lee. What could possibly go wrong?”
There was a lot to occupy her mind, but in truth Sejal was most taken with another figure who had just appeared on the lip of the bowl, a thickset man in an army coat with something in his hands. He slid down the hill behind Stephin.
“Make up your mind, dear,” Stephin said, walking toward her, “or I’ll win. I’m a monster, a murderer, and I’ll be worse—I can feel it.”
The vampire was close—thirty feet away, maybe twenty.
“Will you run?” he asked, still closer. “You can’t run. I’ll CATCH YOU. PICK UP THE STAKE, SEJAL, I’M—”
His whole frame shuddered, and he halted, mouth slack. Eyes heavy. With his long fingers he touched at the sharp tip of a cone, a cone at the end of a shaft, a shaft of wood that had emerged from the center of his chest.
“Finally,” croaked Stephin, and he dropped. Behind him stood the man in the army coat, holding a gun Sejal had seen on TV.
“If he’s a murderer, it’s justifiable,” Mike breathed, and tried to make sense of these people in the park. These vampires.
“There’s so many,” he whispered with rising panic. “They’re everywhere.”
There was the one he’d killed, and then the vampire boy there, on the ground, and maybe another one a little way off. And a fourth, on her feet—wearing a vampire dress. Saying something.
Mike couldn’t hear anything over his own heartbeat, and the scratch of his hands against his coat as he fumbled for another whippit, and a new stake to reload. Then he raised his Redeemer and sighted the vampiress down the barrel.
Doug had been bracing to come between Stephin and Sejal. He was sure of it. But Stephin was gone, and now there was a man, a familiar man with a gun. He saw what was about to happen and forced himself to his feet as the gun hissed and fired.
In another story he might have slapped the stake away, plucked it out of the air and returned it to sender. Or the stake’s coarse point could have found his shoulder, or his arm, but it didn’t.
How could it?
What could it find but his heart?