The Season of Passage Read online

  'What garden was she going to?' Terry muttered.

  'Mr Hayes?'

  'Where in the country? Wyoming?'

  'Don't you know? She told me she was going with you, Mr Hayes. That you were going hunting together. You like to hunt, eh? There's a sport I've always loved.'

  'Did she say anything else?'

  'Not that I remember offhand. Is the hunting season open in parts of Wyoming?'

  'It is now,' Terry said. 'How is Major Thompson doing?'

  'He's alive. I suppose he's a little better. But his condition is still listed as critical. I'll tell him you were concerned about him if I get a chance to talk to him.'

  'Thanks. Thanks for the information.'

  'You bet.'

  Terry set down the phone and walked across the park to his car. Lauren had known he would call. She had intentionally left behind the clues to her destination. She would be at the cabin, and she wanted him to meet her there.

  Terry came to a decision. He came to it quickly and without further internal debate. He would meet her in Wyoming. He was afraid of her. He was convinced she would kill him, or worse. Yet he felt he had to go. Maybe all the books were wrong. Maybe she could be saved. He would have to try. He was sure Chaneen would have been proud of him.

  Terry drove to the bank and withdrew his savings, a whopping $4,657.13. From the bank he called the airport. His timing was off. He had just missed a plane to Casper, Wyoming. The next one didn't leave till 4:56 p.m., arriving in Casper at seven. He reserved a rental car to be ready for him when he arrived. It was a three-hour drive from the airport to his cabin. It would be dark when he got there.

  Terry left the bank and drove to a Catholic supply store. There he purchased a rosary, a couple of crucifixes, a Bible, and a blue vial designed for storing holy water. He went to a church next and filled his vial with sacred water and asked the priest in the confessional booth to bless his paraphernalia. He knew he was being foolish but he figured he may as well play all the numbers on the table, just in case.

  He had bought silver crucifixes.

  He stopped at a sporting goods store next. He was going to meet Lauren at the cabin and sprinkle her with holy water and tap her lightly on the forehead with his Bible, and the demon would pop out of her stomach and melt into purple gook at her feet. That was one plan. Or else he was going to hypnotize her and lead her through a rebirthing session, where she got rid of the stress from her trip to Mars. Then again, maybe all he had to do was kiss her once and she would turn back into his loving Princess. He was going to save her, God willing. He had already decided that.

  He had also decided he was probably going to have to kill her. At the sporting goods store, he studied the handguns, until the beer-bellied warrior behind the counter informed him that he would have to wait a minimum of three days before he could pick up a revolver or a pistol, even if he paid cash for it today. Terry let himself be led to the racks of shotguns and rifles. There the warrior began a lengthy discourse on the advantages of one weapon over another. Terry interrupted and said he wanted the gun the police most often used when they were up against a nasty criminal. Ten minutes later he walked out of the store with a pump action Remington shotgun and two boxes of forty-gauge steel pellets. The man had assured him that all he had to do was tell the airline he had the shotgun stored in his luggage, and fill out a brief form, and he could take the gun with him to Wyoming. But Terry didn't have any luggage, and so along with his gun and his shells, he bought a fine leather case to carry his equipment, at an exorbitant price. He charged it, what the hell. He would probably be living in a coffin when the bill came in.

  Terry drove to the airport and parked his car. He had four hours to kill. Leaving his shotgun in the trunk for the time being, he ate lunch in the airport cafeteria. He had a hamburger - rare. He put garlic powder on it, along with his lettuce and tomatoes. He was in a sick mood. He had always been kind of sick in the head, he supposed, but he had never wanted to hurt anybody. He looked around the busy cafeteria and realized he had eaten there the day he had flown up to see Lauren and Jennifer, just before Lauren left, for Mars. It was amazing how life turned in a circle, he thought, and how the circle eventually spiraled downward into nothing.

  Terry had to put a hand over his eyes to stop passersby from seeing his tears. He was a crybaby. He doubted Lauren had ever cried on Mars, whatever had come her

  way. He tried not to think about what she had gone through to become what she was. He tried to console himself with the idea that there must be something beyond the circle of their lives. The gods. The stars. Chaneen. He would have given anything in the world to have Jennifer sitting by his side right then. He would have given the world. More than his fear for his own life, and Lauren's life, he worried that the thing in Lauren was going to take the world, and suck it dry.

  Terry finished his hamburger and entered a phone booth. He did not engage the video system. He placed two calls.

  The first was to Kathy Johnson.

  Her story came out only after a long and halting conversation.

  Her night had been worse than his own.

  Kathy had taken Terry's advice and gone to stay with her parents. She didn't give them a reason. They were happy to have her, if only for the night. They didn't suspect anything was wrong. Lorraine did. Lorraine was a full telepath when it came to Kathy's state of mind. Lorraine was home for the week from her latest mental hospital. She knew Kathy was upset about Gary and that it had something to do with demonic possession. Lorraine actually said that. She followed Kathy from room to room, trying to get her to play Monopoly. She really got on Kathy's nerves. Kathy ended up having to pop a couple of Valium to keep from hitting her. She had picked up a fresh prescription that evening, after leaving Edwards Air Force Base.

  Eventually the household went to bed, including Lorraine. But Kathy couldn't sleep. Gary was on her mind. She tried calling Terry in Houston but couldn't reach him. She got up and checked all the doors and windows in the

  house. They were locked. In the living room, she turned on all the lights and sat down and tried reading Time magazine until she felt drowsy.

  Then something happened. But she was not sure whether it really happened, or whether it was just a dream. She might have fallen asleep on the living room couch and had a nightmare. She remembered hearing a noise at the front door and sitting up with a start. The lights in the living room were still on. Only now they shone with a red glow. The title of the magazine lying on her lap was still Time.

  Only now it had a picture of Mars on the cover.

  I got up and went to the door. My body felt heavy. I thought I had taken one too many pills. But I can't say I felt scared. I remembered Gary and all, how evil he had acted. I knew it might be him. But I wasn't afraid. I thought that I might have misunderstood him. He was famous. He was a hero. He had probably had to make difficult decisions on Mars. He might have had to decide, for example, to kill someone. But that did not necessarily make him evil, not if he acted in the line of duty. He was a sexy guy, I thought. Sexy guys did kinky things. I could get into it, if that's what was required of me to be with him. Suddenly I did want to be with him, more than anything else in the world.

  I heard a noise on the other side of the door. It sounded as if a big strong man was rubbing his naked legs against the door, rubbing oil deep into his flesh, deep into the grain of the wood. There was a rhythm to the slippery sound. It slowly pulsed up and down, like long and carefully administered strokes, in and out of my mind. I pressed my body to the door. I could feel the warmth of the oil seeping through the wood. I wanted to be apart of the rhythm, to join with it. I pressed my hips into the door. It was there I felt the oil the most, the warmth. It was a sticky heat. It was itchy.

  But as I scratched myself on the door, the itch got worse. Like the pulsating noise, though, it was not unpleasant. It was tolerable as long as I thought about Gary. It never occurred to me that I should open the door. It did not seem necessary. I just
thought of Gary's eyes, the last time I had seen him, when he had said he would visit me.

  I took off my robe and nightgown. I didn't need them. They were beginning to annoy me. I returned to stroking the door with my hips. I loved it. The surface of the door felt to me like the skin of a man who had just emerged from a hot pot of grease. It was smooth. It was delightfully erotic.

  Only the smoothness didn't last, not down between my legs. The itch there got even worse. I moved faster and faster to try to get rid of it, but it wouldn't go away. It began to hurt. I don't know why I didn't just stop. I couldn't stop. I realized I had my eyes closed. I couldn't even open them to look down and see what I was doing to myself. I couldn't get Gary's eyes out of my head. But I finally forced them open.

  'Then I stopped stroking the door. The wood was smeared with my blood. I realized I had dozens of dark splinters stuck in myself. I was bleeding. The pain was terrible. I screamed, then I fainted.'

  Kathy's father had woken her up at three in the morning. She was lying naked by the front door. She had only one splinter stuck in her skin, near her crotch. Her father didn't seem to notice her nakedness; he was terribly upset. Her mother appeared to be having a heart attack. Kathy threw on her robe and dashed upstairs. Her mother was pale, gasping for air. Kathy called for an ambulance. It was there in under five minutes. It was only while they were riding to the hospital that they realized that Lorraine hadn't woken up. The doctors at the hospital didn't know what was wrong with her mother. They thought it was a heart attack, but not all her symptoms lined up. However, the woman improved when she was placed in an oxygen tent. By sunup she was in stable condition, although they were keeping her in intensive care.

  Kathy returned home at about eight o'clock. Lorraine was still in bed. Kathy went to her room to wake her up. She had a hard time getting her sister to open her eyes, and then when Lorraine did wake up, she slashed out at Kathy with her fingernails and slit open Kathy's lower lip. Don't bother me, bitch. Kathy didn't know how to respond. The violence was uncharacteristic of the new Lorraine; they hadn't fought in over two years. While Kathy was standing there holding her lip together, Lorraine laughed and said Gary would be coming back again tonight. That was all she said. She wasn't interested in the fact that her mother had almost died during the night. She went back to sleep. She was sleeping now.

  That was Kathy's story, more or less.

  She wanted to know what was going on.

  'You were outside in the sun today,' Terry said. 'Did you get burned?'

  'No. I went to the hospital twice. I didn't get burned, though.' She asked in a frightened voice, 'Why should I get burned?'

  'Are you having trouble breathing?'

  'No.'

  'Do you have any marks on your throat?'

  'No.'

  'Are you bleeding anywhere?'

  'Terry! Why are you asking these questions?'

  'Are you bleeding?'

  She hesitated. 'I'm on my period.'

  'Did it start in the middle of the night?'

  'Yes.'

  'Should it have started?'

  'No! Stop it. My mother's the one who's sick. Wait. Where are you? You sound like you're in an airport.'

  'I am in an airport.'

  'Are you coming to California? Fly out here. I'm going nuts.'

  'I can't, not right away.'

  'You have to. I don't know what happened last night. I don't think it was a dream. I don't have sick dreams like that. I think Gary was there. Why did you ask me if I had any marks on my throat?'

  'I don't know. It's nothing.'

  'Are you saying there were vampires on Mars?'

  ' Yeah,' Terry said dryly.

  'Stop that! There's no time for it. What have you found out about Gary and Lauren?'

  'They're vampires. For lack of a better word.'

  Kathy was silent for a moment. 'Tell me what you know, Terry. Don't make anything up.'

  He told her about his meeting with Lauren, his talk with Herb, his analysis of Lauren and Gary's characteristics. Then he did something he never thought he would. He started to tell her about Jennifer's story, the entire chronicle of the Sastra and Asurian war. He told her about the rings, Jennifer's ability to stick her hands in fire, and Chaneen. Yeah, he told her that Jennifer had been Chaneen, the loveliest of the offspring of the gods. He heard Kathy moan on the other end of the line. He assumed she thought he was crazy. But she had been listening with an open mind. Recent experiences had cracked her so wide open all that she wanted to know was how to make it end. She wanted the bottom line.

  'Is this stuff real?' she asked when he was done.

  'Who knows? Of course, it's not real. It can't be. But it explains the puzzle. If you're asking whether I believe it, you're asking the wrong person.'

  'Who am I supposed to ask? Lorraine?'

  'You might.'

  'I can't even wake her up.' Kathy paused. 'You don't think she's a vampire, do you? Christ. Why did you tell me all this stuff? You've got to come here. You've got to rescue me.'

  'I can't.

  'You keep saying that. Why can't you?'

  'I have to rescue Lauren first,' he said.

  'No! If what you said is true, she'll kill you.'

  Terry took a breath. 'I have to see her. I love her. It's funny in a way: after all I've seen and read, I can't imagine her hurting me.'

  He was lying, naturally, but not entirely. He firmly believed Lauren was capable of killing him, or of turning him into a blood-sucker. But he also believed that, when he confronted her again, the unexpected would happen. Kratine's gate would open up and the planet Mars would swallow him. Or else a ray of Chaneen's light would shine down from heaven and he would float into the stars. The feeling was so strong it could have been a premonition.

  'Don't worry about me,' he continued. 'You have to take care of yourself. Listen to me. Get out of the house. Gary knows where you live. Go somewhere else. Go to a hotel. Buy some candles. They're afraid of fire. Light the candles and put them in the windows of your hotel room. Put a few by the door. Don't let anyone in after dark.'

  'What about Lorraine? What if Gary comes back for her?'

  He didn't want her taking Lorraine along; the witch might help Gary find Kathy. 'Gary's not interested in Lorraine. He was only interested in you before he went to Mars. Whatever's inside him, it still reacts to Gary's memories.'

  She didn't believe him. 'What about my mother?'

  He rested his tired head against the door of the phone booth. 'I don't know. I just want you to be safe. Promise me you'll leave.'

  'Promise me you'll stay away from Lauren. You won't, I know it. I don't know what I'll do. I might go to the police.'

  'Good luck,' Terry said.

  Kathy considered. 'What was Jennifer like? I mean, you told me about her before, but could she really have been magical?'

  That was one thing he did know. 'Yes. Jenny was magic. She was wonderful.'

  The airport speakers announced his flight. He told Kathy he had to go. They agreed to talk the following day, if they could. Kathy told him she loved him before she hung up. He told her he loved her. He had to have someone left to love.

  Disguising his voice and using the same phone - once again, with only the audio engaged - he called Herbert Fry's parents. Herb's mother answered.

  'Hello?'

  'Hello. Mrs Fry?'

  She sniffled. 'Yes.'

  'Mrs Fry, please listen to what I have to say. Do not hang up. For reasons I cannot explain right now, I can't identify myself. But I have something important to tell you about your son's death. Herb did not commit suicide. He was murdered. Someone forced him to swallow those pills. That is a fact. Do not believe the police, no matter what

  they tell you. They don't know what's going on. The person who murdered Herb is still at large. But this murderer is not to be blamed. She's sick. It's important that you understand that, so that you will not feel bitter toward her. It is my responsibility to find h
er. I will find her. I will see that she receives help. I'm sorry I can't elaborate. This is a matter of high national security.'

  'My boy didn't kill himself?'

  'No. Once again, I know that for a fact. He was murdered.'

  'But who is this?'

  'I was a friend of your son. Please don't ask me anything else. You can still be proud of your son, Mrs Fry. He was a brave man. He was a good person.'

  Terry hung up before she could ask more. The speakers called his flight for the second time, but he still had a few minutes. He ran out to the parking lot and got his shotgun and case, and his bag of Catholic goodies. He had no trouble checking his gun, once they had punched his name into a computer and seen that he had no felonies on his record. Hurrying to the boarding gate, he saw white roses on sale in the airport shop. He remembered that Pastel had given Chaneen a bouquet of white roses. Vampires were supposed to be afraid of them. He swung into the shop and bought a dozen. The salesgirl wrapped the stems in moist paper towels, which she surrounded with snug-fitting plastic. She wanted them to stay fresh. She asked who they were for.

  'My fianc6e,'he said.

  The girl smiled. 'That's sweet.'

  Terry boarded the jet with the flowers in his arms. The flight was half empty, and not long after lift-off he was able to stretch out on three empty seats. He was exhausted. He fell immediately into a deep dreamless sleep. He awoke

  only when the jet was preparing to land in Casper, Wyoming - just in time to see the sun sink below the horizon.

  FORTY

  Seventeen-year-old Daniel Floyd knelt in the thick grass of the cemetery beside the tombstone bearing the inscription: Jennifer wagner, 1992-2005. He set down his tools on the ground. The sun had just set. The western sky was a dull orange, shot through with tunnels of violet. A full moon was rising in the east, touching the tops of the trees that lined the cemetery with a silver glow. There was enough light to work by.

  Daniel assembled his tools: a steel file, a water-filled canteen stolen from the personal belongings of the late Professor James Ranoth, an ancient crossbow from Daniel's own collection of exotic weapons, and a single shaft of rock-hard cedar wood. He stared at the latter. There would only be time for one shot.