Lou got a call before Max could show him what she had on the CD, and then he managed to avoid her for a couple of days-hell, she wasn't even sure why, unless he was doing some research on his own.
Finally she caught him by waiting for him at his apartment after his shift. And then she sat him down and made him look at his computer while she manned the mouse and showed him the vampire files of the organization known as DPI.
When they finished, Lou looked as if Max had popped him between the eyes with a two-by-four. He sat there blinking at the computer screen long after she had closed the file and removed the CD from the drive.
"Do you think if you stare at Bill Gates' brainchild long enough you'll find your way back to that logical world where everything makes sense?"
He glanced at her vaguely.
"Believe me, it doesn't work. I spent a couple of hours staring at the Windows logo myself after I saw what was on that CD. It didn't help a bit."
"It's nuts. It's a prank."
"The man I saw outside the fire that night was no prank, Lou. He was real. And he dropped the CD and the ID badge. That place, that so-called research center-it was for research, all right On vampires."
He shook his head.
"I never told you what happened the next morning. The morning after the fire."
"Something happened the next morning?"
"I had an envelope delivered to my front door."
His brows rose now as he studied her. "What was in it?"
"Photos. My friends, Jason Beck, asleep in his bed, and Stormy in her own shower. And there was one of my mother, in the parking garage at work. It had been taken that morning."
"Any note?"
She shook her head. "No, he called instead."
"He called you?"
Maxine nodded. Lou was getting riled now. She had known he would. He was the most laid-back guy on the planet until someone he cared about was threatened or harmed. Then he got damned dangerous. And he did care about her, even if he was too dense to realize it.
"The same guy you saw that night?"
"I think so, yeah. I mean, it had to be him."
"What did he say to you, Maxie? Did he know you took those things?"
She shook her head slowly. "Nope. But he knew I'd seen him there. He made it clear that he could get to my friends and my mother at will, told me to forget I'd ever been there, that if I so much as mentioned seeing him or being in that place the night of the fire, he would find out and make me regret it."
"He said he'd hurt your mother."
She nodded. "And I believed him. I still do. And I kept the tape of that call, Lou. You can hear it for yourself." She was nothing if not prepared. She took the tape out of the envelope, popped it into Lou's machine and let it play.
Lou muttered a string of cuss words under his breath. When the tape finished, he said, "I need a beer."
"I could use one myself." She left him sitting where he was-on the edge of his camelback couch, elbows braced on his knees-walked into the kitchen and opened his fridge. As she had expected, it was well stocked. All the beer, coldcuts and cheese a man could eat. A few bottles of ketchup, mustard, salsa, hot sauce and horseradish. Horseradish? She took out two long necks, twisted off the caps and carried them back into the living room of the three-room apartment. She handed him a bottle, then flopped onto the couch beside him and took a long drink from her own.
Lou was looking at her oddly as she swallowed.
"What?"
He shrugged. "Never saw you drink before."
"I've been legal for years, Lou."
"Sure. I just never think of you that way."
"I hadn't noticed," she said, loading on as much sarcasm as the words could carry.
He was quiet for a long moment, sipping his beer, studying her sipping hers. Made her feel damned self-conscious. Finally he set the bottle on the coffee table, no doubt adding a fresh new water ring to the collection that had accumulated there. "You must have been scared half to death, Max."
She shrugged, took another gulp. "It shook me up some, yeah."
"You should have told me about this."
"And what could you have done, Lou? File a report? This guy worked for some offshoot of the CIA, Lou. The C-fucking-IA."
He sighed. "Even if that's true-"
"It's true. And if I'd told you about it, he would have known. If you had filed a report, he would have known, and maybe you'd have been getting threats, too-or worse."
He sat back a little. "You were protecting me." He said it deadpan.
"Not just you. Myself, my mother, Stormy and Jason."
"And me."
She shrugged, looked away, because it was true. "Maybe I just don't trust cops."
"I know you don't trust cops. But you trust me."
She smiled just a little. "Yeah, and you trust me, too, don't you?"
He pursed his lips. "You're sharp. You don't lie, and you're damn tough to lie to. What's not to trust?"
"You trust me," she insisted. "So trust me on this. There's not a passably sane person in the entire civilized world who believes vampires exist. But if they don't, then why does the government have volumes of research on them? Why does it know them by name and have life histories on so many of them? This is real, Lou. They exist."
He shook his head. "I can't wrap my brain around that one, Maxie."
"You will. Hell, it's taken me the better part of five years. Unfortunately, you don't have that kind of time."
He glanced at her, and she knew he was wishing she wouldn't finish the thought, but she had to.
"Lydia Jordan's friend was killed by one of them, Lou. There's no getting around that."
He shook his head slowly. "She was more than a friend. And you can't tell Lydia about any of this, regardless."
"Why not? What's the point in keeping this secret?"
"I don't know what the point is, but there has to be one, or the government wouldn't have gone to so much trouble to do it!"
She widened her eyes and bobbed her head at him.
"Hell, Max... just let me think, okay?"
"Fine." She polished off her beer, leaned back on the couch and absently reached for the newspaper strewn on the coffee table, picking it up, leafing through the sections. She picked out the magazine section, which she always read first. She flipped it open, paused and shook her head. "Speak of the devil."
"What?"
Sending Lou a lopsided smile, she held up the page so he could see the article's title. "Vampire Thriller Garners Coveted Nomination."
He rolled his eyes, shook his head. "Figures."
She licked her lips as she began to skim the article about the film and the reclusive screenwriter, until she got to the short synopsis of the story, and there she paused. "Uh... Lou?"
"I'm still thinkin'."
"Yeah, well, think about this. Wasn't one of the names on that CD-ROM 'Dante'?"
He glanced at her sharply. "I think so. Why?"
She licked her lips. "Maybe we'd better take another look at the file on that one. And, uh-then we ought to think about going out. Maybe even catching a movie."
In the theater, the story, a prequel to the earlier two films, unfolded on the silver screen. A young man, a Gypsy, lay on the ground. The makeshift bandage was torn and bloody. But there was no longer any pain, and his strength was returning. More than returning, it surged in him, singing in his veins like a thousand violins. He tore the bandage off, balled it up and threw it to the ground beside the rest of what had been his shirt. He stared at his Aunt Sarafina. Her black eyes gleamed in the night, though there was no light for them to reflect. And he saw more now than he had seen before, as if he were seeing her through new eyes now. How he'd ever missed something so obvious before, he couldn't imagine.
Sarafina was not human. Her skin was too smooth. No pores, no flaws. Her lips were too dark, and her eyes had that glow, that luster, as did her hair. There was something else. Involuntarily, instinctively, he tipped his head back and, without sniffing, he smelled the scent on her. Something pungent and exotic, like a mingling of sex and blood. Her scent.
"Your scent, too," she said softly, her voice a rich combination of tones in harmony, not one flat pitch as he had always believed voices to be. It was as if he had never truly heard before.
Then his wonder faded as he realized she had been reading his thoughts. His eyes widening, he turned from her, started off through the woods.
"And where do you think you're going, Dante?"
"Home. Back to the village. Where I belong."
"You can't go back there now." She didn't follow him. She stood where she was, and since she wasn't shouting, he didn't understand why he could hear her so clearly, just as clearly no matter how far he walked from her. "You're outcast now, just like me."
"You lie!" he shouted, and he ran faster and faster.
As he approached the village, the young man was surprised that he heard no music. It was their last night in this camp. In the morning they would move again. All the items they could pack had been packed. Tonight there should be a huge fire, with music and dancing, and stories of past adventures told with excited anticipation of what new ones might lie just ahead.
Instead, there was silence. He heard the fire crackling, smelled it long before he should have. But of voices, there were almost none. Mere whispers now and again, and the gentle brush of fabric as his people moved around the camp.
He emerged from the trees and paused to stare at his family. The Grandmother knelt near a large boulder, grinding herbs with her mortar and pestle. His cousins didn't run or play but instead sat around watching her, their eyes damp, shoulders slumped. The men were grouped together at the far end of camp in a huddle of angry faces, muttering quietly in a way that made Dante wonder who had angered them. They looked as if they were plotting violence. The women were clustered around the tent belonging to Dante and his mother. And beyond them all, he could hear his mother's soft, broken crying coming from within the tent.
He was drawn forward, into the light of the flames. "Mother?" he called. "Everyone, what has happened?"
Heads snapped up fast, eyes widening and turning in his direction. He heard his mother say his name on a ragged breath, and then she was pushing her way through the women as she emerged from the tent.
The Grandmother stepped into her path, putting herself directly between them. "Stay away!" she commanded Dante, and she held her hands up, forefinger and pinky extended, hissing as she poked the sign at him repeatedly. "Stay back, I say!"
Dante blinked at her in shock. "Grandmother... what's wrong with you? It's me, it's Dante. What... ?"
His mother pushed the older woman aside then and came closer. "Is it really you, my son? Dimitri said you were killed. Shot dead when you tried to steal a goat."
"If you lied to us about such a thing... " The deep-voiced threat came from Dimitri's father.
"I didn't lie! I saw it, I tell you. He was shot, both barrels of the old man's shotgun."
"You weren't even there!" Dante said, instinctively denying the tram. Knowing somehow that if he admitted what had really happened, his family would believe him to be some kind of demon. A vampire, just as Sarafina claimed he was. But it wasn't true. It wasn't!
"I followed you, Dante." Dimitri's eyes were narrow on him now, untrusting, perhaps even afraid. "I knew you were out for adventure. I planned to join in when the old man came out. I saw him fire. I saw you fall."
"And then you ran, didn't you?" Dante asked, grasping the idea like a drowning man clutching a limb. "Admit it. You heard the gun, and you ran and left me there to die."
"I ran." Dimitri lowered his black head in shame.
"You see?" Dante forced a nervous smile as he glanced at his mother and the Grandmother, and then at the men who were gathering around. The women had gathered their children and were standing as far from him as possible. So many huge brown eyes on him. "He didn't stay long enough to see that the man's shots never hit me. Only frightened me, so I fell down. I was not even hit, much less killed."
Several of them glanced toward Dimitri for confirmation. His head came up slowly, and he stared at Dante. "I saw the blood. You are as a brother to me, Dante, and I love you, but I saw the blood."
Dante shivered, knowing how frightened Dimitri must have been to witness such a thing. He looked for support from the other men but found only suspicion in their eyes. And several of them were not even there, he realized.
"Turn around, Dante," the Grandmother told him. "Let me see your back."
"You'll find nothing there."
"Turn!"
One did not disobey the Grandmother. Dante turned, praying he had managed to wipe all the blood away, wishing he could see his own back. Everyone looked. He craned his neck to look over his shoulder at them, saw his mother inspecting him closely. "There is no wound," she said. "And I see no blood, only there's so much dirt it is hard to be sure."
"Why can you not take my word?" Dante asked. "Dimitri was mistaken. Mother, you wept for me when you thought I was dead. Can you not rejoice for me now that you see me alive?"
She stared at him, hope lighting her eyes. Trembling, she lifted a hand toward his face, and he closed his eyes as he awaited her warm touch.
The forest beside him came alive as men emerged from it, the men he'd noticed missing from the crowd before. When they saw him, they gaped as if seeing a ghost, and Dante shot a look at his mother.
"We sent them out to bring your body home to us, Dante," she explained.
"Tell us," the Grandmother commanded. "What did you find at the farmer's shack?"
The oldest of the group, Alexi, lifted his hand from his side. A ball of material was in it, and as he unfurled the mass, Dante realized what it was. He could do nothing to stop Alexi from holding it up for all to see. Dante's shirt, a hole rent in its back, strips torn away, the entire thing soaked in drying blood.
"The farmer was dead," Alexi said softly. "Two holes, right here." He used his fingers to poke himself in the throat, and young Dante remembered seeing his aunt, Sarafina, drain the old man by biting him there.
"Nosferatu!" the Grandmother shrieked, tugging Dante's mother behind her and jabbing her fingers at him again. "Leave us, demon! Go your way and leave us!"
As one, the entire village pulled away from Dante, moving nearer the fire. He shook his head, lifting a hand toward them in appeal. "Please! I am not a demon! I am just as I was before. I am Dante." He found his mother's eyes in the crowd. "I am your son!"
"My son is dead." The words were low, deep, reverberating with pain.
"No!"
"It was Sarafina, wasn't it, boy?" the Grandmother asked him. "She came to you as you lay dying. She passed her curse on to you. Didn't she?"
"No!"
The Grandmother spat on the ground. "We shall see, young devil. For the sun rises soon. Our Dante's soul will find peace when your body burns!"
Dante's mother spun toward the east, and she stared off into the paling sky. Then she raced to him, put her hands on his chest and pushed at him. "Go, Dante! Go now. I cannot bear to lose you twice."
"Mother? I don't-"
"Go! Cover yourself!"
"You do him no favors, child," the Grandmother muttered.
Then Dante felt something he had never felt before. A heat, searing from somewhere deep within him as the first rays of the sun pierced the sky, shooting like arrows from the horizon, stabbing him deeply and burning there. "Ah!" He clutched himself, gritted his teeth. Thin spirals of smoke began to rise from his flesh.
"Run! Into the woods. Find shelter!" his mother screamed.
The burning was unbearable. Dante turned, and ran. The trees offered relief, but only for seconds as he lunged headlong, deeper into the forest, seeking shelter from the sun, his heart breaking, his mind racing, but all of it secondary to the searing pain of his burning flesh. He dove into the first cover he saw, a pile of deadfall, and burrowed deeper, pulling leaves and brash over and around him as he dug to the very bottom of the mound.
And then he sat very still, waiting for the pain to ease, waiting. He had to think. He had to understand why this was happening to him.
But his head was suddenly heavy. Far too heavy, and his eyes, though tear-filled, were closing. He fought to stay awake. God, how could he sleep when his entire world had just been turned on its head? But there was no resisting this sleep. In fact, it didn't seem at all like falling asleep. It seemed, he thought, panic gripping his heart, like dying...
Morgan got up and ran from the theater. Dante, who had been watching the events of his own life play out on the screen in a state of utter disbelief and increasing anger, saw her go, and he rose slowly and followed her. She had done this. Somehow that woman knew his secrets. And she had told the entire world.
She was going to have to pay. Tonight.
Lou had read the entire DPI case file on the alleged vampire who went by the name of Dante before they managed to find a theater still showing the flick mat Mad Maxie was so hot on seeing. It had been released a couple of months ago, but now, with a Best Screenplay nomination, a few places were showing it again. Maxie managed to locate one while he read, and then she came and read over his shoulder, since it was two hours before the next showing.
So they both were fairly up on the bullshit in the file as they sat in the theater. Which meant mat he knew, and he knew that she knew, that what was playing out on the screen was pretty much an adaptation of several key parts of the file. Not as dry, of course. Goddamn riveting, actually.
But the high points were the same. Gypsy kid, shot for stealing a goat, transformed into a vampire by an exotic aunt who never aged. Right. The fiction on the screen was cold hard fact, according to this crackpot government agency. The only difference was, the film was slanted in sympathy with the creature. He came off as wounded and lonely, cursed and hunted. The files made him sound more like a vicious animal that needed putting down.
Lou knew damned well he would never convince Max that both versions were bullshit. Not now.
"Now do you see what I'm talking about, Lou?"
He walked beside her, back up the carpeted slope out of the theater. Someone bumped into her, jostled her, and he automatically grabbed her upper arm. "All I see is that your top secret information seems to be not so secret after all."
"If that were the case, it would be public knowledge. Some investigative reporter would be all over this stuff."
"What, you didn't see the latest Enquirer? I'm sure they covered it. Right next to the baby they found inside an uncut pumpkin, still on the vine, and the rash of alien abductions in Upper Butthole, Nebraska."
She sneered at him. "If it were public knowledge, it would make the Times."
"Um-hm."
"Lou, this is real. We've got the same set of facts from two separate sources now. This woman, this screenwriter, she knows more about this than either of us. We've got to talk to her."
He led her to his car, put her in it and got behind the wheel. "I don't want to talk to you about this anymore. Tomorrow morning, I'm gonna call in a few favors."
"No."
"I have a buddy who works for the CIA. Low-level guy, but still...he'll know who to ask about this...this DPI garbage."
"Lou, no."
"I'm a cop, Max. I'm not swallowing a bit of this. It isn't in me to swallow it. Not without proof."
She caught his face between her flattened palms and turned him to face her. She was close to Mm. So close he could feel her breath on his mouth. It smelled like hot buttered popcorn and was every bit as tempting.
"Don't tell anyone. Lou, please. It's too dangerous."
He looked at her. She had those huge green eyes, and right now they were scared. He didn't see Mad Maxie Stuart scared very often. When he did, it meant something. Damn, he just wished she wouldn't get so close. Sighing, he lifted a hand and tousled her short red hair, moving her face away from his in the process. "Okay, all right. Fine. I won't say anything."
"And we'll try to trace the screenwriter. Morgan De Silva. And just talk to her."
He sighed, pulling the car up in front of Maxie's house-slash-office. "I'll think about it."
"I'll do it with you or without you, Lou."
"Now, listen, Maxie, you be patient. Give me a few days to sort through all this." He waggled a finger at her, father-like. "And not a word to Lydia in the meantime. Understand?"
"Not a word to Lydia about what, Lou?" a voice asked.
He swung his head around and saw Lydia herself standing on the other side of the car. She had apparently been waiting for Max to get home.
"Come on inside, Lydia," Max called, getting out of Lou's car and heading toward her house. "I'll explain everything. See you later, Lou."
"But... "
"Bye, Lou," Lydia said, sending him a smile.
Lou gave his head a quick shake, wondering how the hell he had managed to lose control of the situation so quickly. "Listen, Lydia, whatever she tells you is pure conjecture. You gotta know that up front."
Lydia rolled her eyes at him and joined Max, walking up the steps to the front porch and across it toward the door.
"Don't either one of you do anything without calling me first. Understand?"
Maxie looked at him over her shoulder, sent him a wink. "Of course we won't. Wouldn't be any fun without you."
Then she opened the door, and the two of them went into the house.
Lou went back to his car. But he didn't go home. He went back to the station instead, because that was where he kept all his business-related phone contacts. He looked up the number of his CIA buddy and gave the man a call. As vaguely as he could manage, he asked his friend to find out what he could about an alleged secret CIA unit known as DPI.
Then he drove back to Maxie's house and parked outside to watch the place for the rest of the night.
