Part 23 (1/2)

With all his weight behind it, he rammed the thing into my chest and blood shot up and out. My body shook and bucked as if with seizure, hands clawed, legs kicked.

A terrible suffocating weight settled on me, crus.h.i.+ng and smothering out the life.

He pushed once more and the shattering, engulfing agony negated all thought and effort as a dying animal's shrieks filled the building; ugly, frightening screams that shook the walls and went on and on until there was no more air for the lungs to push out. The mouth hung uselessly open, and the last echoes hammered down the stairs and were finally lost in the darkness below.

Chapter 10.

FIRE.

BLACK FIRE.

Black fire you can't see or hear or smell, only feel, and by then it's too late. It's caught hold and is consuming everything.

Searing black fire that fills the chest from the inside out, until it should explode from the heat and end things forever, hut doesn't. The silent body lies inert, enduring and somehow still conscious. Death is too far away for sanity to remain.

Gaylen's chair wheels grinding over the flooring, Malcolm's steps fading... crunch, b.u.mp, and they were in the elevator. The door was pulled shut and they began to descend. He would load her into the truck and they would go somewhere else.

Somewhere... Bobbi... They'd pulled her out-their voices said as much in the distance...

Move. Move something.

Bobbi had seen their faces, they couldn't afford to let her go. Gaylen would never take that chance.

But she had promised. She had- Did a finger twitch? Or was that imagination?

My hands had only found movement at the end, when the wood stake plunged into me. The right one found direction, clawing to pull it out, and the left had convulsively torn through part of the steps. It was still there; damp river air curled around my fingers.

Doors slammed shut. The motors started, gears s.h.i.+fted, and they rumbled into the street.

Try to move.Nothing. The body was still and dead, the brain was just taking a little longer.

The cold was creeping slowly up my legs-cold and then numbness, something familiar and unpleasant. It was what had happened when I tried to stay awake past sunrise to see what it was like. I fought the numbness and clung to the pain. If I gave in and let the sleep take me now I would never wake up again.

Move.

Nothing.

Nothing at all for an infinity.

Alone in the dark with the pain and the cold and the fear for Bobbi. Would it be quick for her? Would they let her go?

Foolish thought.

Numbness from feet to knees. In a few hours it would reach my burst heart and smother the black fire raging there.

A soft crunch, conducted up through the stairs. It repeated and resolved; grit trapped between shoe soles and the flooring. Probably Malcolm returning at last to get rid of the body. I hadn't heard the truck coming back; must have blacked out for a while. I thought unhappily of the dirty river water closing over my head.

Sc.r.a.pe, scrunch. Pause. Not Malcolm, he wouldn't be so cautious. A tramp, then.

He was in for a nasty surprise when he got to the top landing.

Numbness from knees to waist. Death was taking me an inch at a time and moving faster than I'd thought. Soon the ice and nothingness would flow over my brain...

Move, d.a.m.n it, move.

Someone breathing softly, listening at the foot of the landing below me, heart pounding, antic.i.p.ating possible danger from above. Maybe he'd spotted my left hand poking through the underside of the steps and was having second thoughts about coming the rest of the way.

The first thin tendrils of cold streamed into my vitals like a dusting of snow off a glacier.

Heart thundering now, lungs taking short drafts of air, and then a long one as he came up the last flight and stopped because now he could see me. I heard in his voice some fraction of the agony that was holding me so helpless. *Jack... Oh, my G.o.d...

Oh, my dear G.o.d...” tried to speak, tried to move, but the slightest flicker of an eyelid was too much. The thing piercing my chest held me frozen. I could not tell him that some part of me was still alive.

Then Escott's hand closed around the stake.G.o.d, yes, pull it out.

He pulled once, twice, then stopped because the gurgling sob that came out of me startled him. Coming back to life was almost as bad as dying. The third tug did the job, and it sc.r.a.ped between the ribs, shook the breastbone, and finally came free.

Blood welled up coldly in the wound, quenching the fire there, and the body shuddered as the numbness retreated a little.

His hands went under my arms and he eased me from the stairs until my body was level, slowing the downward flow of blood I couldn't afford to lose. My eyes were open now.

He looked worse than I felt, with his paper white face and new lines formed by the horror of what had been done to me and what he had had to do. I'd read a lot of nonsense about vampires, but there was truth to the stories about those killed; when the end came, it came violently and loud, and mine had been no different. The walls of the stairwell were splashed with gore, and from the dampness soaking into my clothes, I knew I was lying in a pool that had formed on the floor below the steps.

The cold was coming back and I tried to tell him about it, but couldn't draw the breath to do so. Thanks for coming, Charles. It's too late, but thanks all the same.

Maybe you can track them down before they kill Bobbi.

My eyes rolled up and the dark closed in. *Jack!”

The lids twitched. They were so heavy. At least this time it wouldn't hurt.

He was doing something, making short, choppy movements above me. ”Stay with me, Jack. d.a.m.n your eyes, stay with me.”

Fingers forced my lips back. He pulled my teeth apart and the first drops seeped into my mouth. I gagged, fighting him.

”Stay with me,” he hissed.

It was hardly more than a taste, enough to seize my attention, but not nearly enough to do me any real good. I couldn't let him risk himself.

”Stay...”

I turned my head away or tried to, but his other hand grabbed my hair and held me in place.

”Stay...”

Then I accepted it. Fully.