Part 20 (1/2)
”When? What year?”
”I was twenty-five or -six.” He struggled to remember. ”I opened the store in 1908, she would come and buy books and talk. She was so beautiful...” His voice was softer with the memory. ”She would talk with me. I dreamed about her. She was so beautiful.”
What had he been like back then? The brittle body might have once been wiry, the seamed face once smooth. There had been a firm chin and dark eyes and skin; yes, to a woman he might have been handsome back then.
”Were you her lover?” I had to keep from touching him or he'd shake off the trance. Jealousy was foaming up inside; I couldn't touch him or lose control of myself.”I loved her. She was so-”
”Were you her lover?” Stay steady.
His eyes were wide, blind, searching inward for an answer. ”I... don't know.”
”What do you mean? How can you not know?”
”I was, in my dreams. I loved her at night in my dreams. She would kiss me.” One of his hands stole up to his neck. ”She would kiss me. G.o.d, oh my G.o.d...”
I turned away. I never meant to hear this. ”Stop.”
He became quiet, waiting and unaware while I mastered myself. There was no point in hating him, no point in condemning Maureen; not for something that had happened nearly thirty years ago. She'd loved Barrett and Braxton and then me.
Were there others? Had she indeed loved me?
”Braxton... did you take... did you ever kiss her in the same way?”
”No.”
It was something.
”She wouldn't let me.”
Oh, Maureen. Yes, it was something. He hadn't been that important to her. She'd been lonely and needed someone to hold and touch, if only in his dreams. That was it and that was all.
”When did you last see her?”
”Which time?”
I made a guess. ”The first?”
”A year after we met. She never said good-bye; the dreams just stopped, I forgot them. But she came back.”
”When?”
”Twenty years later? Twenty-two? One night she walked into the shop. I knew her instantly and I remembered it all. She hadn't changed, not aged a single day, but I- she didn't know me, not until I said her name. I was frightened, I knew what she was, what she had done to me and what I would become unless-” He relived his fear quietly, the only outward sign of the inner turmoil was the sweat that broke out on his face. His heart was racing.
”Unless what?”
”I wouldn't be like her, feeding on the living, sucking men's souls from them. If I killed her first, then I would be free. I could die free of her curse. I began to hunt her.”
”When? What year?”
”In 1931.”
So this was the man. She'd run from him, leaving me standing in an empty room, a scribbled good-bye note in one hand and the life draining from my eyes. Five years of hurt, doubt, anger, and fear because this foolish man thought she wanted his soul instead of the warmth of his body when he was young.
”Did you find her?”
”No, but I found out about you. I knew what she'd done to you, but if I tried to help, you wouldn't have believed me. Your only hope was the same as mine-to kill her-but then you died first and now you're one of them. I'm sorry I couldn't have saved you.”
It was pointless trying to explain it to him. Whether Maureen lived or died didn't matter; we'd exchanged blood, and hoped. She'd loved me, and had expressed it by giving me a chance for a life beyond life so we would always be together. But then something had gone wrong.
”Do you know what happened to her? Do you know where she is?”
”No.”
”Are you the only one? Are there others hunting her?”
”Matheus, he believed me, he knows.”
”Who else?”
”I don't... the old woman, she must know.”
”Gaylen? The old woman here?”
”Yes. She knows something, she knew back then-”
”What do you mean?”
Something b.u.mped against the door.
”I asked, but she wouldn't-”
b.u.mp. ”Hey, open up.” A vaguely familiar voice, but not Matheus.
-tell me. She wanted- ”Come on out, Fleming.”
”-life to live-” ”The kid says you're in there.”
”Cheated. She was sick-”
”Who was? Of what?” The other voice was distracting, and I was losing the thread of Braxton's talk.
”-strong... frightening. I told her my story, but it was you she-”
”Fleming, it's now or I scrag the kid.”
What the h.e.l.l? I yanked the door. He was in a long coat, which changed him enough from the last time, so from a distance he was unrecognizable when he stepped off the elevator, looked at his watch, and walked away. A long coat, which was all wrong because it was only mid-September and still mild. But he wore it because that made it easy to walk into a building with a sawed-off shotgun concealed under it. He shouldn't have been here, he was supposed to be in a parked Ford waiting for Mrs. Blatski.