I parked the car in a no parking zone in front of the Maritime Museum, a beautiful Art Deco building in the shape of a ship. Between it and the water was a small beach, which I crossed on my way to the pier. There was a gate across the entrance, with a lone security guard in a kiosk staring at a tiny television set. Keeping to the shadows, I slipped around the gate and walked as quickly as possible down the pier while trying to keep my footsteps light on the old wood.
The Balclutha loomed in the darkness, its towering masts outlined against a gauzy purple sky. I stopped in front of the empty bench, filled with disappointment. Somehow I’d thought he would just be there, sitting on the bench, as easy to find as the ship itself. I squinted up at her as she rocked gently in her berth, trying to marshal my new powers of vision to locate a shadowy figure lurking on the deck, remembering a trip around Cape Horn that was lost now to any human memory.
As I stared at the creaking hulk, thinking I’d never realized before that there are so many different shades of black, I felt him at my side. The awareness of his presence was followed by his scent. Its sweet, haunting fragrance overwhelmed the odors of saltwater and tar that blew in on the breeze. I didn’t turn, not wanting to see anger or rejection on his face. If I stayed just like that I could imagine that at any moment he would take me in his arms and tell me he felt the same as I did, that he couldn’t bear to be without me.
Then I heard his voice, soft in my ear. “I told you not to look for me, but I see you didn’t listen.”
I spun around to face him, ready to leap to my own defense, but stopped when I saw him. Eric had changed. His long copper hair was cut short, stopping just above the collar of the dark, button-down shirt that he wore, topped with a heavy overcoat. His face was tired, and lines had appeared that I’d never seen before. Even his eyes looked darker, azure instead of cerulean, the color of a cold Northern sea, forbidding and opaque.
“I shouldn’t have gone to Nicolai, I shouldn’t have taken the knife. I could have prevented Kimberley’s death, I could have done so many things if I’d just trusted you, but I was a coward. I was afraid of what might happen to me. But then I realized I didn’t care what happened, as long as I could be with you. I’m ready now, Eric.”
He was silent, staring out at the ship, his hands in his pockets. He seemed to have forgotten I was there. Finally I reached for his arm.
“Eric, did you hear what I said?”
He shrank from my touch. “Angela, I am the cause of your troubles, not the solution. Please, let me go. Tell me you’ll never try to find me again.”
“No, that’s not going to work. We’re connected now, whether you like it or not.”
Eric looked at me then, searching my eyes. Finally he sighed, and a slight smile lifted his lips. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“Why did you send me that information about Tangento?” I asked.
He took my hand and we walked down the pier. Eric showed no concern for the security guard, but why should he? If the guard caught him he would be the unfortunate one, not Eric.
“I’ve told you that in my human life I was religious. I believed in good and evil, that virtue would be rewarded and evil punished in the afterlife. I’ve since learned that this is not the case. The afterlife is a convenient myth for those who think life is too short. In this world goodness goes unrewarded and evil exists unchecked. My very existence is proof of this.”
There was no sound except the slap of waves against the pier. The vibrant city was dark and silent. “As I have lived these many years among humans, granted with the dubious gift of reading their minds, I found evil lurking unchecked to an extent that surprised even me. At first I despaired, but eventually I realized that perhaps my maker, whomever that might be, had not forsaken me entirely. Perhaps there was a reason for my existence, some great cosmic scale to balance out.”
A spark lit up his eyes, lightening his dark countenance. “I was able to dedicate my life to a cause, and to live within certain parameters. This made it all somehow more bearable.”
“What cause? What parameters?”
“These are the parameters.” He held up his pointer finger. “One: I will only feed on those people who have evil in their hearts.” He added his middle finger. “Two: I will stop acts of evil whenever possible, wherever I find them.” He lifted his ring finger. “And Three: When One and Two are no longer possible I will kill myself.”
“So that balances everything out?” I asked.
Eric shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But I already told you I’m too cowardly to just kill myself.”
“So where did I fit into this plan?”
Eric looked uncomfortable. “Sometimes I find the need for a human accomplice.”
“So you were trying to make me into a vampire, like Nicolai said, so I could be your accomplice?” It was a struggle not to burst into tears in front of him. The thought that he was using me as some part of an elaborate plot, rather than wanting me as his companion for life, was like a knife to the heart. And I knew now, literally, what that felt like.
“No, I was not trying to convert you, although I’d be lying if I said the thought never crossed my mind, especially after I realized how special you are. But I was trying to use you, my dear Angela.”
“What does that mean?” I was amazed that he had found something even more painful to say.
“In order to avoid arousing suspicion myself, another trick I have learned over the years is that by injecting just enough venom into certain humans, I can insinuate myself into their thoughts, then guide their actions toward my intended goal.”
I felt sick. “You were trying to control my mind?”
“In the beginning, yes. In fact, Lucy was my first accomplice. That is why you saw the image of Lucy and me on the couch in her apartment. Lucy was involved with the coven, which made it easy for me to approach her. They were an ideal cover for me.”
I rubbed my hands together. It was getting very cold out here. “You don’t seem very upset about her death,” I said. “More like you lost your best hammer.”
“I deeply regret what happened, but please don’t expect me to become emotional over the death of one individual. Death is like breathing to me. It’s always there.”
“So Lucy died, and you took me as second choice?”
“Not exactly. I had already decided Lucy was not suitable, because she, ah, she…”
I said it for him. “She fell in love with you. She broke up with Les over you. She told Les she was going to be with you forever.”
“Yes. At the time she died I was trying to extricate myself from her. I had Moravia tell her not to come to the club anymore.”
“And you also had Moravia and Suleiman invite Kimberley and me to the club?”
“Yes, I wanted to look for some other potentials. But then once again things didn’t work out as I had planned.”
“I wasn’t what you were hoping for?”
He brushed some hair off my cheek, causing the tingle that happened every time he touched me. “You were more than I was hoping for, Angela. I’ve never told a human being any of this. You are the first.”
He slid his hand down my arm and into his pocket, then took a step back.
“That is why I had to break away from you. I decided to let go of the ‘project’ I had in mind, and you with it, because I realized that these women had died because of their involvement.”
“If her death had nothing to do with vampirism, then why was Lucy’s body drained of blood?”
He made a derisive noise. “You and I both know it wasn’t a real vampire who killed Lucy. But we do make convenient scapegoats. I assumed that it was her boyfriend Les, that it had nothing to do with Tangento and what we were trying to accomplish. It wasn’t until you and Kimberley were attacked that I realized how dangerous things had become.”
“But Eric, the vampire venom, I can’t be hurt, can I? I mean, I’m converting over…” My fingers found their way up to my neck, feeling for a scar that wasn’t there.
“Once the venom exchange stops, the symptoms fade. How quickly, I don’t know, because the gene is obviously very strong in you. But as I have no intention of giving you any more venom, you will become vulnerable again, it’s just a matter of time.”
“But Eric, I’ve changed my mind. I want to be converted. We’re going to finish what we started. You wanted to take down Tangento, right?”
Eric closed the space he created between us. He grabbed my arms and exerted just enough pressure to make me remember seeing him throw a two-hundred-pound man like a rag doll.
“Did you hear a word I said to you?” Eric hissed. His lips drew back and I saw a hint of the famous fangs Suleiman had mentioned at our first meeting. Cold fear clutched at my stomach, but as quickly as they appeared they were gone. The pressure from his hands eased. “Go back to Steve’s, lock yourself in for a few days, and by the time you come out I’ll have taken care of everything, in my own way.”
“Eric, how can you say that to me, after all you’ve said about fighting evil? I want to help you, I want to bring these guys down!”
“No!” Eric shouted. My mouth snapped shut and I backed away.
“We are going to let this go! Two people have already died because of me. I am not going to let the woman I love die as well! I can’t protect you, Angela. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. You will let this go, Angela. You will obey me!”
My fear was swept away. I ran to him and threw my arms around his neck. I closed my eyes and concentrated on projecting my words into his mind. After a moment I felt his arms encircle me. His head fell against my shoulder and I stroked his hair.
Yes, I love you, Angela. And that is why I must leave, don’t you see?
“No, I don’t see! I don’t see at all.”
Eric took one step away from me, and then another. His face became a mask, with his true feelings hidden behind it.
“Yes. That was also my failing when I was human.”
He took another step back and the shadow of the ship enveloped him. “Good-bye, Angela. We shall not see each other again.”
The police took the Caution tape off my door and let me back into my apartment on Friday morning. I went straight to my room and took down my suitcases from the top shelf of the closet. I planned to pack up as much as I could of my clothes and books and take them over to Steve’s. I’d stay there until I found a new apartment, unless I decided to move out of the city. Right now I was too wounded and shell-shocked to be able to think long term. I wanted to leave San Francisco, but there was my mom to think about, helping her through whatever might happen with her cancer. But whatever I did, I knew I wasn’t going to live here anymore, and I wasn’t going back to HFB.
I had packed about half a suitcase when that now familiar feeling of daytime exhaustion came over me. I pulled the blind and lay down on my bed. As I had done so often in the last few days, I had another long cry. It seemed that every time I slowed down I started to cry.
The phone rang. There was no one I wanted to talk to, so I let the answering machine pick up. It was a telemarketer calling for Kimberley. Obviously the telemarketers didn’t know yet that she was dead, although death was probably not a criterion they would recognize for putting a person on the Do Not Call list.
Poor Kimberley. She had been lucky in so many ways, blessed with good looks and wealth and privilege. Yet she had been miserable. Her parents had lavished her with gifts, but they hadn’t given her the one thing she really needed—their love and approval. She had been forced to use thievery and deceit to get ahead at work, because she couldn’t trust that her own talents could carry her anywhere. Instead of marrying Barry Warner, as her parents hoped she might, she had blackmailed him into getting her a position that she could have earned by hard work if she’d had the self-confidence to attempt it.
Blackmailed him…
I sat up in bed, fully awake and alert, my mind racing. I had tried to find Eric after he left me at the Balclutha, but the pathways to him were shut down like a mountain road in the winter. Suleiman and Moravia hadn’t seen him. His office was locked. The Tangento case, too, had closed up like a clam. When I called Dick at work he said that Barry had put everything on hold and gone back to Texas when he heard about Kimberley.
But for Kimberley to blackmail Barry she must have had evidence. And the evidence had to be somewhere. Kimberley hadn’t expected to die, she wouldn’t have had time to hide or destroy it. Maybe it was somewhere in the apartment. It was a long shot, but worth a try.
I tiptoed into Kimberley’s room. All the paramedic paraphernalia was still strewn around the floor, but the mattress was missing, taken as evidence by the police, for which I was grateful. I looked under the bed and saw a stray earring and some dust bunnies. Her nightstand held a vibrator, eyeshade, earplugs, a bottle of Xanax prescribed to her mother, and a little book called 365 Daily Meditations. I pulled the drawer out and looked behind it at the unfinished wood. I searched her dresser, pawing through panties and bras stacked in Lucite boxes.
Kimberley’s closet smelled of roses and cedar, with a rainbow of clothes evenly spaced across the rods. I pushed the clothes aside and there it was: a large envelope with the HFB logo thumbtacked to the back wall. Amazed at how simple it had been to find it, I shook the contents onto the box spring. Arrayed across Kimberley’s dust ruffle were several photographs, a videotape, and some folded sheets of paper.
The first photo I picked up was of a young Asian girl with broad cheekbones and long dark hair, dressed only in a miniskirt, lying sprawled on a bed with a single sheet crumpled underneath her. I’m not a great judge of age in adolescent girls, but from the budding breasts she couldn’t have been more than twelve. She wore an expression of sad resignation, her turned-down mouth looked as if it had never smiled. Her eyes were open, the irises milky and clouded. Her neck was encircled with a ring of purple and red bruises. There was a scarf tossed to the side of the bed, partially hidden by the sheet. On the back of the photo someone had written, “Jinda, Thaniya Road, Bangkok,” in handwriting I didn’t recognize.
There were several more photos, all the same but heartbreakingly unique in that each was of a different girl. All were naked or partly so, all had been strangled, and all were photographed alone in a bed in some godforsaken dump. I went to the window and took some deep breaths to clear my head, but I knew I would never be able to wipe those images away, not if I lived forever.
I picked up the videotape and walked into the living room, my steps heavy, like a witness at an execution. After a few moments of scratchy darkness, an image sprung to life. I watched in silence for five minutes, but it seemed like an hour. The sound was almost worse than the picture, the grunting, pig-like sound of the man and the high thin screams of the girl. It was the first girl, I recognized her big eyes and broad rosy cheeks. The man was Barry Warner.