"Welcome news, on the face of it. Yet somehow I find it ominous."
"What's going on?"
Maule brought him up-to-date as completely as possible in a few sentences. "And now I think we had better return, swiftly, to my apartment."
Joe was ready in a minute. "What about John and Angie? Are they still coping with all this?"
"As well as can be expected."
"And where the hell is this Valentine Kaiser now?"
"That is what I am trying to find out."
In another minute they had descended to an underground level of the building, a buried garage where a car, belonging to the Southerland company, was available to Joe. Maule, to be on the safe side, conducted a swift search for bombs and other unpleasant surprises before allowing Joe to touch the vehicle.
Then they were on their way. As Joe drove, the two men continued to compare notes.
Joe explained the course of evasive action he'd employed, using taxis and the subway briefly, to get from the Art Institute to the Southerland condominium before nightfall. Since he'd been holed up he'd called the overseas phone numbers that could have put him in contact with Mina Harker, but so far he'd only been able to leave messages.
Maule nodded in approval. In turn he explained to Joe some of the essential facts about the drug with which he and now two other vampires had recently been poisoned: What happened to breathing people when they swallowed the stuff, what happened to vampires when they bit those breathing people, and how he himself had been able to recognize the taste, although it was disguised by garlic, before he had taken enough to disable him for a long time. Luckily he had been able to regurgitate some of the blood he had already swallowed.
Then Maule related how he had induced Angie to take a dose of the same drug when it looked like she was going to be captured.
"Clever move," Joe admitted.
"Yes—because it worked. I myself have tasted the Borgia sugar at least once before, in the year 1492. I must tell you about that sometime. It will be in the next book."
"I'm looking forward," said Joe absently.
"I wonder," Maule murmured thoughtfully, "where the man now calling himself Kaiser obtained his supply? The question opens interesting possibilities, but for the time being we can leave them open."
"You know him under some other name?"
"Indeed I do. As Cesare Borgia. When there is time for leisurely discussion I will speak to you about him."
Vaguely Joe thought he could remember hearing the name of Borgia somewhere. Something in history, something villainous. "I don't suppose it makes any difference to the present situation."
"No, I think not."
Discussion moved on to the enemy's general strength and capabilities. Of course one always had to allow for possible miscalculation in such matters; but by now Maule thought he could be fairly sure that the ranks of Borgia's auxiliaries had been drastically depleted One vampire woman dead, fallen this morning to Joseph's wooden bullets. Two more nosferatu gallantly eliminated by John and Angie in Maule's apartment. One breather, Mr. Stewart, even more recently departed. There was at least one more vampire woman remaining, besides Valentine himself, the lady Joe had seen up on the maintenance floor. And an indeterminate number of breathers also; but Maule thought those would pose no problem once their master had been rendered inactive.
Maule came back to the remaining enemy vampire woman. "From your description, Joseph, I think I know her. There are not that many vampires currently in the world, you know, and most of them I think are known to me in one way or another. I expect she will pose no danger, once her leader has been rendered harmless."
"And how are we going to do that?"
"I am not yet sure. What apartment number is he in?"
Joe provided the information.
They drove into the tall building's underground parking facility, fortunately now emptied of most of its daytime users. Joe had no difficulty in finding a space.
"I must say, Joseph, that the absence of the man you know as Kaiser seems to me increasingly ominous. We had better first look in on John and Angie before we set out to attack the enemy."
"Sounds like a smart idea to me."
Mr. Maule felt a special responsibility for those two young breathers. They had been his guests when hell began to envelop them, and he had plans to hold a strict accounting with the man responsible for that onslaught. Of course, if the villain was who Maule thought he was, that accounting could hardly be as strict as it really ought to be.
They reached Maule's battered door, and Joe tapped on it and called. To his relief, and Maule's, Angie and John were still snugly and safely fortified within. They reported having seen nothing of the enemy since Maule's departure only minutes ago. The hunters urged the breathing couple to stay where they were and hold the fort.
John, when he heard of Maule's and Joe's planned expedition, volunteered at once to come with them.
"You think you're going to leave me here alone?" Angie snapped at him. Red spots showed in her anemic cheeks.
Maule regretfully refused John's request, with an appreciation of what it took to make it.
"You have borne quite enough of the burden of combat, so far." He smiled faintly. "I should feel deprived if I were not allowed to have a turn."
Then Maule and Joe Keogh proceeded to the eighty-ninth floor, the level of Kaiser's apartment.
"I take it you are still suitably armed, Joseph?"
"You waited until now to ask? Damned right I am."
A few moments later, Joe was ringing Kaiser's doorbell, standing squarely in what ought to be the viewer's field of view.
"Who is it?" The suspicious voice on the speaker sounded like that of the young woman in the surplus field jacket.
"Me. Take a look."
"What the fuck d'you want?" Now she sounded outraged.
"Let me in and find out." He could only hope they didn't realize the old man was up and running at full strength again.
A moment later, bolts and locks were being undone.
As soon as the door began to open Joe stepped in and called out in a loud voice words in Latin, words that he'd burned into his memory years ago.
Confronting him in the sparsely furnished living room, gaping at the way he'd yelled, were the young field-jacket woman and an overweight, hairy man, a breather too, who held an automatic weapon ready in both hands.
"What'd you say?" the man with the gun demanded sharply. "Was that a name?"
"It was," said the old man, coming out of thin air to stand some six or eight feet to Joe's right. He ignored the Uzi now suddenly leveled at him and in polite tones posed a couple of questions for the youth who aimed it. "Where is Valentine Kaiser? What orders has he given you?"
The potbellied one stood playing with his weapon, a finger on the trigger. "Up my ass. Ya wanna look?"
As far as Joe could tell, he himself was the first one in the room to start moving. He jumped before anyone else, as soon as the contemptuous vulgarity had registered. Because no one was going to get away with talking like that to the old man, not in this kind of a situation. It just wouldn't work. A photofinish camera would have caught Joe somewhere between a standing position and the floor, just at the moment when the old man, having taken time to think things over, started moving too. But still Joe's reaction, like those of the other breathers in the room, came much too late and in fact he needn't have bothered.
The Uzi, finger on the trigger or not, never fired. Instead it was wrenched out of its owner's hands with a force that might have harvested a finger or two with it and should have produced a yell of pain.
But the potential yell never had time to get started. The automatic weapon came right back to the man who'd lost it, the curved steel bar that formed the stock driving right into his face, thrust at him by the old man's one-handed grip on the barrel. Why bother to use two hands to swat a fly? The sound of the impact, metal gunstock crunching flesh and bone, was to stay with Joe for a long time. The man who had once owned the Uzi went down in his tracks. There would be no need to worry about his getting up.