I’ll have to try to outrun them, Frank thought, knowing how hopeless that would be but knowing also that he had no other choice. Take turns, cut back and forth in all these streets, try to lose them. He kept staring at the rearview mirror, not breathing, mouth open in fear, and back there the police car... stopped.
Green light ahead. Frank took the right turn, then the next left, then another right. Bobbing and weaving, losing them any way he could. He kept going, switching back and switching back, all on empty streets in that darkest time of night just before the dawn, no traffic, no pedestrians. Stay off the highway, that was the thing, find the direction to go downtown, get undercover some—
Sirens, off a ways. Looking for me!
A skinny little black girl in a huge bloodred T-shirt ran out of nowhere into the glare of his headlights, waving her arms at him, showing him her tear-streaked terrified face. She was barefoot, and at first he thought she was ten years old, some little kid, attacked, gang-raped, something, and he instinctively hit the brakes, but without completely stopping.
She grabbed the passenger door handle as it went by her at about five miles an hour, snatched it open, leaped headfirst into the car with the door banging against her legs, and Frank, startled, tromped the accelerator again. She pulled herself in and up, knees on the floor, arms on the seat, her pleading wide-eyed broken-jawed face staring up at him, the door imperfectly closed and rattling as he accelerated, fleetingly afraid of an ambush situation, and he saw she wasn’t what he’d thought. She’s a grown-up woman, he realized, staring down at her, ugliest thing I ever seen in my life.
“Mister, take me away from here!” she cried, with some kind of click-clack accent in her words; not like a spade at all; those mushmouth brothers on the inside. “I’ll do anything you want,” she begged, “but take me away from here!”
24
Susan woke from a nightmare to a worse nightmare, sitting on her chest, its claws puncturing her breasts, its red eyes gleaming at her as she screamed. It opened that hooked mustardy beak, and its breath was so foul that even in her terror she had to consciously try not to be sick.
“Susan,” it said, in a husky croak, like a dog that had learned how to talk, and its narrow tongue, forked at the tip, flashed out and back, as though already tasting her blood.
I’m dreaming! But she knew she wasn’t.
A forepaw reached out, one gray-green talon touched her nose as though in play, and fire seared through her body from the touch. She shrieked, her own breath as hot as sulphur in her lungs.
“Suuuu-san,” it crooned, and increased its weight, suddenly and terribly; then was almost weightless again. “Who have you met recently, Suuuuu-san?” it asked, the red eyes sparkling as though it hoped she would refuse to answer. Would refuse at first to answer. Would refuse for as long as possible to answer. “Who have you met? What are you doing together?”
Andy! she thought, but didn’t say, and thought again, it’s a dream, and the thing suddenly looked up, as though startled, and bolts of white light shot out of its eyes.
No; into its eyes. From everywhere, from nowhere, the white light made two long thin cones, stilettos, two narrow blades plunging into the demon through its open eyes, filling it like milk, the white glow inside pulsing through the scales and fur of its body, swelling it, the demon’s mouth yawping wide, dislocating its own jaw, the forked tongue frantically flapping as though caught in a springe and trying to escape desperately from that mouth, that body.
The white light seared the body of the demon from the center, burning and charring, and the monster writhed in furious pain, pressing down on Susan’s body and then leaping into the air. Great huge gray-black wings sprang from it, filling the room, beating wildly, stripping the walls of pictures and mirror — the mirror showing nothing — the demon curling in on itself in the midst of its thumping wings, trying to bite through itself to that tormenting light that slashed and destroyed deep within.
Count Dracula sat quietly in the wooden chair beside the window, right leg crossed over left, hands crossed calmly in lap as he watched the battle proceed in the middle of the room. Susan, battered by terror and pain, roused herself half upward, blood seeping from the long claw-tears on her breasts, and stared at this new horror.
Dracula turned his head, faint sparks of static electricity springing from him as he moved, and smiled at Susan, showing her his blood-smeared fangs. “So you are that important to him,” he said amiably, in no particular accent. “You are the very linchpin of his plan.”
The words made no sense, it was as though they were a part of the torture. Susan stared at her tormentor in this new guise, and he turned his attention back to the madness in the air, where the fury of the wings had slowed, the struggle had been decided. The demon sagged from its wings, which fitfully shook, creaking like old leather.
No, not the demon; the husk of the demon. Susan understood that all at once; the demon itself had fled from that battlefield and now sat calmly watching from the sidelines, amusing itself.
But so did the opponent understand, whoever or whatever that might be. Abruptly, the chest of that ghoul-gryphon tore open and light poured into the room, blinding Susan, who, as she flung her hands to her face, saw the Count Dracula apparition cease to be. Gone.
In the semi-darkness behind her hands, eyes squeezed shut but nevertheless seeing through her lids and her hands, seeing the bones in her hands from the intensity of that light, Susan felt it all change. A great billowing tenderness enfolded her. The light lost its terrifying incandescence, became soft, soothed her, settled and calmed her in the bed, removed all pain and fear, caressed her brain, and she slept, dreamless and full.
The alarm sounded. Her eyes snapped open. What a horrible dream! But it was so real!
She sat up, unable to believe anything, neither that it had been real nor a dream. There were no wounds on her breasts. The pictures and mirror were in place on the walls. A faint scent, like burning tires, hung in the air.
25
Jurisdiction was the word they used. They talked over Li Kwan’s head, or past his ears, as though he didn’t speak English, or it didn’t matter if he did. They used the word jurisdiction, and they smiled and smacked their lips and raised their jaws at one another, as though he were a juicy steak that only one of them could enjoy.
For four days they moved him around, from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The Star Voyager’s crew had turned him over to uniformed men from the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, who took him in a car across New York — so familiar, from all the photos, all the films, but so desperately foreign — to an office building and upstairs to a large room with a mesh cage in it. They put him in the cage, and fed him one meal, and then New York City policemen came and took him away to a recognizable prison and put him in an isolation cell, and there he spent the night. Next morning the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a turn at him — and another cell, in another location — and then the Secret Service, and then the New York City police again. And back to Immigration. And occasional brief incomprehensible appearances before various judges, who muttered at the officials and paid him no attention at all. And so on.