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

thought I could be there for the end.” Carol’s voice suddenly became a whisper of concentrated hate. “So much effort, so much time. Even you can’t begin to realize …and now, to miss the end at last.”

    “Take off, then. Enjoy. I’ll talk to the people till you get back. Explain to Lady Wanda when she gets up.”

    “No.” Carol was regretfully decisive. “This conference is too important. I must be here for all of it, if I can. I must be unhurried, in control of everything. There must be no doubt in any of their minds that I am now in control. That the future is going to be what I say…Poach, what about the Southerland family?”

    “They were all out somewhere, except the old woman. I put her out. It don’t look to me like any of the others will get home tonight, the way it’s snowing. If they do, well, they’ll move the old bastard one way or the other, and that’ll be it. Cops’ll buzz around for a while, but the body’ll be gone to nothing before they get a good look at it.”

    “Tell me again about the fight. I want to hear it all.”

    “Well. I looked in all the closets and everywhere as I went through the house, see? Then I got to this room in back, and I knew right away. There it was, a big stone coffin like the one I found out in the cemetery.”

    “It must have been earthenware of some kind, to provide the home earth. Clever. We must remember that for future use ourselves. Go on.”

    “Anyway, I just knocked it over and he rolled out on the floor. I got the stake in before he even got his eyes open. That opened his eyes for him! He managed to stand up, and we thrashed around a lot, but it wasn’t really a fight. He didn’t have a chance—right through the chest. Nailed ’im there like a bug.”

    When Carol spoke again her voice was low. “I suppose it was for the best.”

    “Suppose?” Poach’s voice did not really show anger; rather it was as if he would have shown anger if he dared. “In the two years since I met you, you been drummin’ it into me, how I gotta kill him quick if I ever get the chance. How dangerous he is. Also how much you hate him. So I thought it worked out just perfect. I got ’im but I didn’t finish ’im. I give you the chance.”

    “Yes, you did the right thing. You have done very well.”

    “You don’t act too happy.”

    “Ah, dear Poach, don’t sulk. It is just—can you imagine what it is like, to hate someone for four hundred years? You cannot, you are not yet a century old. After such a length of time, there is something like love in it.”

    “Love?” The tone was crude, incredulous. What had been near anger was near-laughter now.

    Carol’s voice lashed at him. “Remember your place, my man. What you were when I found you. What you are and will be still depends on me.”

    Poach mumbled something.

    “What?”

    “Yes, my lady. I didn’t mean…”

    “See that you don’t.”

    The door to the storeroom opened without warning, and Carol was looking in at him. She was wearing a kind of green jumpsuit now, a fancy party coverall, and she smiled at Joe enchantingly. Then her eyes moved beyond him, just as a faint noise came from that direction.

    The dead woman had got out of her box and was standing beside it in her white gown, plainly visible in the brighter light from the apartment. She stretched luxuriously. There were traces of something dried around her lips, and she licked them with a perfectly pink tongue…

* * * * * * *

   …When he could hear the distant voices chattering again, he knew again where he was, he refrained for a long time from opening his eyes. He didn’t want to see the walking dead. He thought about the sensations of numbness in his feet and hands. That he could assess them so carefully meant that he was awake now, didn’t it? Before, he had been drugged. The woman in the box must have been only a drugged dream.

    Joe opened his eyes, though, when heard the door again. It was a smiling Leroy Poach, hanged in 1934, attired now in black evening dress, come to take Joe to the toilet. This prophylactic attention was actually just about in the nick of time.

    “Wouldn’t want you to be messy when we bring you out, cop.” Poach was quite jovial now, despite his crusted forehead crease. It looked like a days-old wound, cared for and then forgotten. “Nice and clean and fresh is the idea. You’re gonna be the piece de resis-tahnce at the party tonight. Know what I mean? Not yet you don’t. Wouldn’t believe me if I told you, either.”

    While being carried to the bathroom and back he could hear Carol and other people chatting, off somewhere in other rooms. He could see no one but Poach. The apartment was still mostly in darkness. There were lamps but no one had bothered to turn on more than a very few of them. Rusty water ran into the toilet when it was flushed, as if the fixture hadn’t been used in a long time.

    Back alone in his chill room, bound as securely as before, Joe thought he could hear more people arriving. There were more voices, and the voices were getting somewhat louder, as they tended to do at any party. And now Joe imagined that he could hear them talking Latin. At least he might have called it Latin, if he had been forced to take a guess.

    Latin was bad, because