Vampires. Maxine Stuart's own twin sister-the award-winning, supposedly deceased screenwriter everyone had been talking about a few years back-was alive and well. Or undead and well.
And according to Max, vampires were very well depicted in her sister's films. They were not Stoker's murderous monsters or Whedon's soulless demons. They weren't even immortal. Not really. They could die by several methods, including incineration, blood and starvation. But they did have souls, feelings, and they were fully capable of every so-called human emotion.
Mary got so caught up in learning everything about Michael what he was and what that meant, that she spent the entire day talking with Maxine, Lou and Stormy. They pulled out DVDs of Morgan DeSilva's vampire films, played them and narrated, answering Mary's questions while making judicious use of the pause function In between films, they told her tales of their own encounters with vampires in the five years since they'd first opened their agency. Mary lost track of how many times they told her their lives had been saved by one of the undead. They lamented that she couldn't meet Morgan and Dante to see for herself what they were like, but the couple were vacationing in Ireland, looking up one of Dante's oldest and dearest friends while they were there.
By the time she'd heard all they had to tell her, Mary was convinced that her instincts had been on target. There was no need for her to run away from Michael. There were issues the two of them would need to address. God, there were more challenges to this new relationship than she could even begin to think about now. But he was exactly what he'd told her he was, exactly what she had known in her heart he was all along. He was the man she loved.
They were all in the comfortable living room, in that private section of the house now. The last video had ended, and the stories had wound down. Maxine had left the room briefly, and she returned now with a file folder in her hands which she offered to Mary. "I think you should look at these records" she said. "This is just what's official. I have no way of knowing what he's done since he crossed over, but once I saw this stuff, I had no doubt about Michael Gray's character. I don't think you will, either. Not that you seem to anyway. But you said you wanted to know everything. Did you even know how he came to be shot?"
Shaking her head slowly, Mary opened the folder, skimming its contents. It held commendations, testimonials and a 1928 newspaper report headlined, Death of a Hero.
"There was a shootout between Capone's gang and a rival gang," Lou Malone said. And when she detected the catch in his voice, she remembered that he'd told her he had been a cop for twenty years before retiring and joining Maxine in this business.
Maxine sat down beside him, put a hand on his shoulder. It was a loving touch. He patted it with his own; a friendly gesture.
"A seven-year-old kid, confused and scared by all noise, ran into the cross fire. Michael Gray ran out of a perfectly good covered position, into the storm of bullets, threw himself on the kid and acted as a human shield. The kid got nicked, nothing serious. Gray took nine bullets.
He went silent then, his lips pressed tight.
"A man like that doesn't turn bad," Stormy said. He changed, physically, from a dying mortal to a powerful vampire. But inside, he's still the same guy. The hero cop who died saving a little boy."
Maxine nodded. "The official reports say that his wife, Sally, shot herself with Michael's service revolver the night after his death. I've been doing some digging, and rumor has it that he went to her after he was changed over. Told her what he was. She freaked out and blew herself away, right in front of him."
"Oh, God." Mary had tears streaming from her eyes now. She reached out to clasp Stormy's hands. "Thank you. Thank you all. I can't tell you how much you've helped me."
"Glad to hear it," Stormy said. She glanced at her watch, then shook her head. "We've been talking forever. Why don't you join us for dinner and then we'll-"
"What time is it?" Mary asked. For the first tie she realized how long she must have been here, in the company of these people. Three movies, hours of conversation-and the sky beyond the windows was already growing dim. "Oh, no."
"What's wrong?"
"I... I promised Michael I would be there when he came home tonight. If I'm not-he's going to think-"
"Look, we'll call him," Maxine began.
"I have to go. I have to be there." She surged to her feet and ran for the door over the protests of the others. She couldn't bear the thought of Michael returning home an not finding her there. He would assume that, like his wife so long ago she couldn't deal with what he was. And it was the furthest thing from the truth.
Maxine looked at Lou as the Jag squealed out of the driveway and out of sight. "She said the killer was dead. And Dunst agrees with that, right?"
"She also said Michael Gray sensed she was still in danger," Lou said, and he pursed his lips looking up at the sky. "Moons gonna be full tonight."
"You're right. We'd better follow her. But it's going to be damned tough to keep up with her, given what she's driving and the way she's driving it."
"Then we'd better hurry."
"I'll try to reach Michael Gray," Stormy said, as Lou and Max ran to the car. "I'll let him know what's going on, where she is, just in case."
Michael emerged from the crypt at sundown and crept through the cemetery as the darkness gathered, until he reached the woods at the rear. Once on the bath, out of sight, hidden by the trees an the night itself, he pushed for speed. But instead of feeling closer Mary with every step, he only felt an eerie, ever-growing sense of emptiness. He knew before he even saw the vacant spot in the driveway that she wasn't there.
Mary was gone. She'd taken his car, and she'd left him.
He wasn't even surprised. Gut-wrenchingly disappointed, but not surprised. He ran around to the rear of the house, down the slope to the beach and searching the shoreline as if he expected to find her out there. But he didn't find her, and he had known he wouldn't.
He hadn't sensed any doubts from her as she'd made love with him all through the night. He hadn't tasted her fear in her blood. She hadn't fallen apart, hadn't been driven insane to the point of taking her own life, the way his wife had when faced with the knowledge of what he had become. Foolishly he had let himself believe that wouldn't change when she had time to mull it over by the cold light of day. Obviously it had.
He stood there on the shore as the waves washed up over his feet and the self-pity washed up over his soul. But not for very long. As the upper curve of the huge, silver moon crested the horizon and its light trickled toward shore on the rippled mirror of the ocean, he stopped feeing sorry for himself immediately. The beam of moonlight pierced the veil of his pain with the shattering reminder that tonight might very well be the last night of Mary's life.
He didn't panic. He'd been a cop for too long to panic. Instead, he ran for the house while his mind sought order within chaos. Where the hell could she be? How the hell could he find her in time? He tried sensing her but she was either too far away or entirely closed off from him due to fear or revulsion or both.
A phone was ringing when he entered the beach house. And it wasn't his. It took him three full rings to realize it was her cell. Dammit, she'd been so eager to get away from him that she'd left her phone behind. As well as all her other belongings, he noted as he surged into the gust room and snatched up the phone.
"Mary?"
"No, I'm sorry," a man's voice said. "Is this Michael Gray?"
"Yes, who is this?"
"This is Officer Dunst. I've been working Mary McLean's case and the Tommy Campbell murder. I just got off the phone with an investigator who's been working with Mary. And I told her I'd contact you right after I phoned Mary. Is she there?"
Michael's head was spinning. "No. She left the cell phone behind. I don't know where she is."
"I might. Mr. Gray, Mary spent most of the day in Easton with those investigators, and now, if all is as it should be, she's on her way back..."
So many questions shot through his mind. He managed to ask them one at a time. What investigators? Where were they located? What time had Mary left? Was she alone? He made rapid notes cutting the officer off every time he tried to interject anything extraneous. He had no time for narrative.
Once he knew Mary had left half an hour ago from a place two hours north on Route 1, he started to hang up the phone.
"Wait, Mr. Gray. There's more. The reason I was calling in the first place."
"Make it fast. I have to get to Mary."
"The body we found in Tommy Campbell's apartment-it wasn't him. He apparently killed a vagrant, then burned the body to make us thing it was him. We also learned that Tommy had a twin sister who died in a car accident at the age of ten. She bled to death. They couldn't find a donor in time to save her. She had the antigen, Gray."
"Tommy's still alive," Michael said softly. "And he's after Mary."
"I'm gonna take Route 9. You take Route 1. She could have gone either way."
Michael disconnected, walked rapidly from the house into the garage, hit the button to open the overhead door and swung one leg over the eat of his bike. Seconds later he was speeding through the night toward Mary.
And the moon kept on rising.
Mary drove the Jag for all it was worth, not an easy task on a highway that meandered through scenic areas and small towns and had posted speed limits all along the way. She never touched the break petal... not until she passed another car that was off the road sitting at a cockeyed angel with one door open. A person was lying in the road, and she just barely managed to swerve and miss him. Then she skidded to a stop on the roadside, slammed the Jag into Reverse and backed up to the accident.
She was reaching for her cell phone to dial 911 before she remembered that she'd left it at Michael's place. Hell. She got out and ran back to the victim. A young man, lying very still, face down.
Kneeling beside him, Mary touched his shoulders gently. "Hey, hey, are you all right?" No response, but he felt warm. She pressed her fingers to his neck and felt a pulse beating there, strong and steady. "Come on, wake up now. You have to wake up." She knew better than to move him, but damn he was lying in the road. Another car could come along and...
He moaned and rolled very slowly onto his back.
"Wait, maybe you shouldn't move just yet. Hold on now." Then she saw his face and felt the blood drain from hers. "Tommy?"
He smiled very slowly and punched her in the belly. Pain lanced her and she jerked backward, her hands going instinctively to her middle. Warm wetness coated them, and she looked down to see that he had a knife clutched in his fist. He hadn't punched her. He'd stabbed her.
"T-Tommy? Why? God, why?" She tried to get to her feet, stumbled, but managed to get upright. She managed two staggering steps towards Michael's Jag, and then he had her by the hair, pulling her backward as the blade plunged into her back.
A cry was driven from her lungs.
"You should have checked in with the police today, Mary. They finished the autopsy-found out that the body they found in my bed wasn't even mine."
Pain racked her, and she fell to her knees again.
"They had to wait for the autopsy or they would have told you that sooner. But it doesn't matter. I'll be in a new town, using a new name, by this time tomorrow."
He came around to stand in front of her, his knife, dripping wit blood, still in his hand. She forced her eyes upward, away from the blade, to his face. Beyond his head, she saw the full moon rising ever higher in the sky. "Why Tommy? Just tell me why?"
"You mean your precious vampire lover hasn't told you by now? About the vampire hunters? People who dedicate their lives to eradicating his kind from the planet? No?"
"But... but I'm not... not a vampire."
He smiled. "And you never will be. See, that's the beauty of doing it my way. I take your kind out before you can ever become like them. It's way more efficient."
'It's murder."
"To hell it is. You aren't going to live much longer anyway. Most of you never live to see thirty." She frowned, shaking her head in confusion. "What, he didn't tell you that, either? It's a handy little side effect of having the kind of blood you have, Mary. You get weak, you get sick and, unless they transform you, you die."
She closed her eyes. He crammed the knife into her shoulder, and her eyes flew open wide again with her scream.
"I'll admit, you probably had a few more years in you. But what the hell, now or later, it doesn't make any difference. All that matters is that I prevent any more of them from being made. You oughtta thank me, Mary. I'm about to save your soul."
She was fading fast. He eyes fell closed again, and she thought of Michael, wished to God she had let him tell her his story instead rushing off to find out for herself. She loved him, and yet she'd given in to her need to know all. What hadn't she trusted her heart?
She knew what was coming next. She had read the autopsy reports on this man's other victims. He would stab her repeatedly, and then he would hang her by her feet and slit her throat while she was still alive, so that everyone one of blood would drain from her body.
"Why do you hate them so?" she managed.
"Why? Because they could have saved my sister," he told her. "But they didn't. Not one of them came around to help her when she needed it. If she couldn't live, then I'm gonna make damn sure none of you do."
He stabbed her again, in the side this time. She barely felt the pain, though. She was already losing consciousness, and she whispered a prayer of thanks for that.