Page 68 of The Undead

To my surprise, he smiled.Smiled.

“Okay,” he acknowledged gently. “I’m not going to flight you, Mike; I’ve got other problems, as you well know. She’s yours. You’d better keep her under control.”

He shrugged me off so easily that I knew he’d been fiddling with me the whole time, letting me overpower him, letting me believe I’d won. He could have broken every indestructible bone in my body. Adam sat down again in his chair. Maggie still gripped her Automag as if it were the last bit of reality in the world. In a way, for her, I suppose it was.

“Vampire?” she asked me, doubtful. I sighed and spread my hands. “No way. No friggin’ way this is for real.”

But she kept looking—at Adam, at me, at Adam again—and in the growing silence I saw her shake her head slowly.

“Shit,” she said. Her voice was flat with shock and dry half-hysterical humor. “All these years, and I have to lose my mind now. My dead fucking husband … a vampire …”

“I,” Adam said, impatient, as he stood up, “am going to find Sylvia. Mike …”

He studied us for a minute, then shrugged, as if to say he didn’t quite know what to do with us. To be honest, neither did I. Maggie did, though; inadvertently, Adam had just given her something tangible and real to latch on to. A mystery. Maybe even a crime. Her eyes cleared and focused.

“What about Sylvia? She’s missing?” She tried not to say it too gratefully, I’ll give her that much. Adam just looked at her.

“Somebody’s got her” I told Maggie, and reached out to touch the slick golden braid where it lay on her shoulder. I pretended not to notice the flinch. “An old enemy of Adam’s. Another vampire.”

“Great. Assuming they’re real, and I’m not batshit, they’re crawling out of the woodwork. What do we do, then? Where do we look?”

Unexpectedly, perhaps, it was my idea that popped out.

“Find Foster,” I blurted. They both looked at me. “Look, I think Foster’s being manipulated, played by William. Somebody’s been feeding her information about you, Adam. She knows too much, hates you too much. Who else could it have been?”

“Why would Foster work for him? She’s a fanatic, but she isn’t stupid. She thinks I’m—”

“The son of Satan? The devil’s disciple? Just guessing here, but you and William can influence humans in other ways than erasing inconvenient memories, can’t you?” I held Adam’s eyes, and knew that I was right. “Adam, he’s made her believe he’s fromGod.”

Adam closed his eyes. Unexpectedly, he began to laugh; it wasn’t a nice laugh, didn’t have anything of amusement in it. The sound of it made me think about gray institutional walls.

“God. Oh, yes, he’s from God all right. Christ who died for our sins … and his sacrament is blood. That does make terrible sense, doesn’t it?” Adam opened his eyes. They were blazing. When his voice came again, it was only a faint thread of sound. “I’ll introduce them both to God.”

“We need Foster’s address,” I pointed out. Maggie shook her head.

“Not you. I’ll get it—it’s in my case notes, I think. We’ll pay her a little late-night visit.” When I looked at her, she was pale but steady. “Jesus, I can’t believe I’m doing this. This is crazy.”

“Yes,” Adam nodded. His eyes were still weirdly bright. “And so am I, Maggie. Don’t get in my way.”

“I wouldn’t think of it,” my wife snapped back. She took out her 9mm and ejected the dip, checked it, and slammed it in. Her smile was brilliant and false. “Let’s do it.”

Great. I looked from one to the other—Maggie, bright and breakable; Adam, held together by rage and barbed wire. What a team.

“One for all, and all for one,” I said. Adam smiled thinly and walked toward the door. Maggie, trapped, finally looked at me. I saw the jolt go through her, but she didn’t look away.

“Michael—” she began, then stopped. I held my hand out to her, not demanding, and she finally reached out and took it. “Jesus, Mike, I’m not believing this. I wanted you so badly, bow do I know I’m not—”

I pulled on her hand, gently, and she came to wrap her arms around me. It was seductive, that warmth. I had good reason to be afraid of it—but something melted away under that warmth, some terrible black tension I hadn’t even been aware of until it was gone. Maggie’s heart beat against my chest, giving me life, giving me back something I’d thought I’d lost forever.

“God is merciful,” she murmured, half to herself, and pulled away. My skin felt the colder for her absence. Maggie laid the back of her hand against my face and then turned to follow Adam, who’d already gone outside.

I’d been wrong about God. He did listen—and sometimes, however obliquely, he did answer.

“I need to go home to get Foster’s address,” Maggie informed us, all business, as she slid behind the wheel of my Volvo. I hadn’t noticed, in the rush of emotion before, but she still moved gingerly, and the scar on her forehead was still red and puffed. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. In short, she looked like a cop. “There are some other things I need, too—things I’d better move to a safer place. Nick’s been getting suspicious of the questions I’ve been asking.”

“Nick?” That was Adam, leaning forward in the narrow back seat. Maggie put the Volvo in gear and rolled away from Sylvia’s house. Curtains fluttered in the neighbor’s house (Hey, Marge! There’s more of ’em! Must be some kind of commune over there!). Maggie’s lips tightened, then relaxed.

“Guess I’d better start at the beginning. Remember Angelo, Mike? He and Nick never got along real well. When Nick and I showed up to throw a scare into the stupid punk, Angelo got all twitchy and tried to kill me—only he wasn’t trying for me, he was after Nick and I got in the way. And Nick was definitely not pleased. I got to thinking in the hospital and decided to go keep an eye on Angelo’s room, and that’s when I saw Nick get the cop on Angelo’s door to take a walk. Nick let in a guy in a lab coat. When he came out, all hell broke loose—crash carts, doctors tripping over each other, nurses. And there’s old Nick, gee, I don’t know what coulda happened, nobody went in or out … I was just giving my buddy a break …” Maggie stopped talking. Her hands pressed and relaxed on the steering wheel as she stared out at the night. “There’s old Nick, all covered up with Angelo’s blood. And when I told him—”

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