Amy Jo looked a little doubtful, but Rudy grinned and rubbed his palms together as if they'd already been greased. "We can do that."
"And, uh," I motioned to their costumes, "I'd rethink the vamp-smoking biz. The one you were after wasn't put off by crosses. Most others keep tougher goons than you around to guard their sleep. Why don't you go arrow straight and, uh, open a liquor store or something?"
"Wow," said Amy Jo, "how did you know?"
Because you are me and Evie minus college and Granny May. The words sat, silent on my tongue. I just looked at her, and when her eyes narrowed I knew she had me pegged. "You're a Sweep, aren't you?"
I shrugged. "I'm not familiar with that term."
"Like a chimney sweep. You dust vamps and get rid of the ashes. Dust people too, I'm betting," she said, nodding wisely, like an old Chinese monk.
I accepted her metaphor, despite her ignorance of what actually happens when a vamp goes bye-bye for good. "Yes," I said, "I do." I let her see in my eyes what all my victims had seen in their time. She was already a tough old bird, though I wouldn't put her age past 22, but I backed her up a step. "Someday you might even be as good as me, if a vamp doesn't rip your throat out first. Of course, Junior there might not appreciate that." I motioned to her belly. "There are Moms, and there are Sweeps, Amy Jo. You can't be both."
I stopped, mentally kicking myself for falling into lecture mode. Either she was smart enough to figure it out for herself, or she was too damn dumb to waste my breath on.
"Throw the room key on the bed," I told Rudy, too tired to be polite anymore. He fished the card out of his back pocket and laid it on Vayl's crumpled comforter.
"We'll be taking the stairs down." I motioned them out of the bedroom. "You come too," I told Bergman when he caught my eye.
He nearly leaped out of our way as we moved to the entry way, a nervous gazelle smelling predator in all directions. To give him credit, however, he didn't rush to his ride once we reached the parking lot. He stood slightly behind me as Rudy and Amy Jo boarded their beige Chevy Van, circa 1975, and pulled away. Even from a distance I could see Amy Jo talking into her cell phone, hopefully reporting Vayl's final demise.
"Come on, Bergman, lets get you that blood sample so you can get the hell out of here."
"So Vayl's okay?" he asked as we took the elevator back upstairs.
"Of course. If you've taught me anything, it's to be perfectly paranoid when it comes to securing sleeping quarters. He's snoozing in the basement."
"What're you going to do now? I mean, now that the bad guys know where you're staying?"
I shook my head as we exited the elevator and reentered the suite. Trashed by trailer trash. How poetic. I started picking up junk and throwing it into a pile. "Find the one place in Miami that won't show up on these jerks' radar." Bergman frowned heavily as he helped me clean up. After a few minutes he squared his shoulders and said, "I know just the place."
"You do?"
"Yeah. Actually, I'm staying there."
I swallowed my spit and it went down the wrong tube. Through the coughing fit that followed I said, "Are you… inviting us to stay with you?"
Bergman nodded unhappily. "I figure it's the patriotic thing to do."
"You figure rightly. Thanks!"
Boy would Vayl's jaw drop when he heard this one. Bergman's privacy, sacred to him as the Torah, had bowed to the needs of two of the Agency's most notorious members, I'd have to choose the right time to tell him. Definitely after he'd climbed off the top of the toilet paper cabinet upon which he now roosted.
After our little confrontation the evening before, I'd expected him to complain when I'd stomped into his room and demanded that he change sleeping quarters so I could leave him during the day without worrying. But he'd just shrugged, grabbed a pillow and followed me to the darkest corner I could find. I'd covered him with a tarp and disguised the lump he made by placing a row of paint cans along the top edge of the cabinet.
"Sorry," I'd said as I'd turned to leave, knowing he was laying in enough mildew to start a spoor factory.
"It is fine," I heard him say, "there is little a hot shower cannot cure."
What a guy. Too bad he'd been mostly dead for centuries.
Chapter Eighteen
Bergman and I sat on a couple of overturned five gallon buckets in the basement of Diamond Suites, waiting for night to fall. Any minute now Vayl would stir, and he probably wouldn't appreciate the audience, but Bergman's unspoken sense of urgency had rubbed off on me. We really needed to get out, before Aidyn and Liliana caught onto our scam and resorted to something more dependable than southern-fried assassins. Like a bomb.
The last vestige of light left the basement. Yeah, creepy. Bergman and I flicked on our flashlights. Somehow that made it worse. And it was no consolation to know there really could be monsters hiding in the shadows between the boiler and the storage closets. I'd been eyeing the edges of Freakoutland for maybe a minute when I heard a huge, gasping gulp that made me jump up and overturn my bucket despite the fact that I'd been expecting it. When the muttering started, however, I relaxed. The Vayl-shaped plastic on top of the cabinet in the furthest corner of the basement creaked as he started to move, his complaints getting louder as he remembered where he was. With our flashlights trained on his location, we were mesmerized by the sight of a vamp dressed in blue plastic. We watched him struggle to escape seemingly endless yards of tarp while paint cans dropped off the cabinet's edge like gumballs from a faulty machine. Still enmeshed from the knees down, Vayl flopped off the cabinet before we realized he needed a hand down, falling fast and hard like a penguin who hasn't bought the whole flightless scenario. Somehow he recovered, so quickly his movements were a dizzying blur, and landed on his feet.
"What are you doing here?" he grumbled, giving Bergman a slight nod to acknowledge his arrival.
"Waiting for you," I replied. "Need some coffee, do you?"
"No." He looked pointedly at my neck and, this is embarrassing, but I'm pretty sure I blushed. Nonetheless, I barreled on.
"Bergman needs a day to find you a willing donor—"
"I told you, I can find my own donors," he snapped. He took a minute to regroup. "I am sorry. Waking is never pleasant for me. What I meant to say…" he stopped, took inward stock and started over, "What I now realize is that I do not need any donors, not tonight anyway. I woke with the same longing as ever, but without the need. Last night… the blood I took last night was more… potent… than I realized."
I cleared my throat. What do you say when you find out your blood is really filling? It's not a manwich, it's a meal! Nope, not going there. "Um, we need to get out of here as soon as possible." I gave Vayl the short version of Rudy and Amy Jo's adventures and my distraction theory. I also told him about my visit with Cassandra. His immobile face registered actual shock when I mentioned the Tor-al-Degan.
"So you've heard of this thing?" I asked.
"I have. I do not know how it was vanquished the last time someone brought it forth, but I know many died trying."
"Well, look, Assan's goon said there was a ceremony tomorrow that seemed to involve the Tor-al-Degan, Assan, the senator, and possibly Aidyn. If we're lucky the Raptor will show up too and we can bowl a strike." I went on, "I figure we eliminate Assan tonight after we get the details we need to crash their party and," like the hero and heroine in a really fine melodrama, "foil their plans."
"I agree. But we must anticipate what other distractions they may throw at us to keep us from accomplishing that."
Right on cue, my phone rang. It was Cole. "Lucille? My building's on fire! The pictures, they're burning!"