An Old Friend Of The Family (Saberhagen's Dracula Book 3), Fred Saberhagen [best large ereader .txt] 📗

    “Maybe, darling, just maybe—you will survive the evening after all. And I suppose you had better, after all, watch out for the police. Until later, dear.”

    With that, Carol was gone again.

    As she disappeared, Walworth had been staring with fascination at a spot near the center front of the green dress. A small hole the size a bullet might make was there, showing a glimpse of pink, undamaged skin.

    After a while, when he could begin to believe that he was really alone, he got up and looked at the fruitwood table where it lay on one side against the wall. A great splintered gouge had entered its top from underneath and emerged through the upper surface of the wooden top, where something had passed with tremendous force. Plaster had trickled from a small crater in the wall just behind where the table had been standing.

    Walworth, gun still in hand, walked to the front door of the apartment, where he made sure that the door was securely locked, chained, and bolted. The only other way in, unless you counted the sealed windows, was the service door in the kitchen. That was his next stop.

    Then he went into a bathroom, and in the mirror over the sink examined the small wounds on his throat. They looked no different from the marks Carol had left him with the other times. They could be needle punctures. They were needle punctures, and he was a fool not to have realized that fact the first time round, or anyway the second.

    Syringes capable of injecting drugs hidden in her teeth? It sounded like something from a crazy spy adventure. He had set down the revolver on the broad ledge beside the bathroom basin, and now he suddenly grabbed it up and spun around again, in expectation of hearing her contemptuous voice once more.

    But there was nothing. Now he hurried through the apartment shutting the drapes on all the windows. At times he ran from room to room, wanting to get them shut before he could be made to see her swimming out there once again.

    When he had closed the place up as much as he was able he went through it again, this time turning on all the lights. Why having more lights on should make him feel any better he didn’t know, but so it was.

    That accomplished, he still didn’t want to sit down, stand still, or close his eyes—he might hallucinate himself being grabbed up and tossed around again before he could get them open. After a few moments of dull mental vacuum there occurred to him the idea of calling one or two people he knew, bad-trip specialists, whose help he had enlisted in the past. Never before for himself, of course: he enjoyed watching people take drugs much more than he did taking them himself.

    Could he keep his head on tight enough, talking on the phone, to keep the helpers from suspecting that this time he was the one who needed help? He had damn well better be able to. He wasn’t at all sure what they would do once they learned that this time, for a change, he was the one climbing the walls.

    At the first number he tried a woman answered, with the information that the man he wanted to talk with was out. Walworth left his number with her, asking that the man call him back, trying to sound as calm as possible. He punched out his second number, and the woman he wanted had just answered when there came the sound of the buzzer at the service door, back in the kitchen.

    “Hang on a minute,” he said into the mouth piece, and set the receiver down and tiptoed in his socks back toward the kitchen. On the way he observed that the gun was still, or once more, in his hand. Maybe the gun wasn’t real right now, either. But he held on to it anyway. Silently he put his eye to the see-through on the back door, choking back his fear. Nothing, but nothing, was going to surprise him this time.

    Or so he thought until he looked.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

   A sudden pounding on the front door jerked Clarissa into wakefulness. She had dozed off on the sofa, as it seemed to her only a moment before, despite the television set playing on the other side of the room, the book in her lap that she had been trying to start to read, and even her own unsettled thoughts.

    She was alone in the house. About an hour ago, before the early December darkness fell, her angina had come on again. Not bad enough, she thought, to warrant calling the doctor. But still her last nitroglycerin tablet had been needed to ease the pain; with so many other matters to distract her lately, she had neglected to replenish her supply. So Judy, bless her, had volunteered to get more, and had gone off in her little car. There was no trusting the drug store these days to deliver anything, particularly in weather like this.

    The pounding on the door came again before she had got herself up from the sofa, and was echoed by a chiming of the doorbell. Clarissa, straightening slowly, muttered something, belting up her robe. Her heart was beating faster with the surprise awakening, but for the moment at least there were no pains in her chest. That at least, she told herself, was something. She was now on the brink of real old age, no doubt about it, and shortly she was going to have to hire a companion, or else persuade Lenore and Andrew to try to make a go of it again with live-in servants. It wasn’t fair to Judy to depend upon her so much for the care of