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

    “No, Morgan! I did not mean to dispute your authority in this. It’s nothing to me, really. He—he whom you call the old man is nothing.”

    When Morgan spoke again, her voice had grown even more light and cheerful. “Then enough business, I think, for the time being. Would any of you care for some refreshment?”

    Maybe if a man had to, if there were nothing else, he could break ropes with his arms. Even if his arms were numb. If he really gave it all…

CHAPTER TWENTY

   As soon as the couple that Kate had seen descending through the air were out of sight, she flew again. This time she landed on the roof of the building into which they had somehow vanished. There she crouched in woman-form again, straining all her senses to locate Joe.

    She knew he was very near now, somewhere below her, somewhere inside. His presence felt strongest when she approached a certain window. When she hung her head and upper body downward from the edge of the roof this window let her see into a large, unfinished room or area of some kind in which workmen’s tools and building materials lay scattered. Joe was still not visible. But, as Kate looked into this window, her attention gradually became centered on a door at the far side of the unfinished space. It was a plain door, with a glass upper panel, leading to some kind of small, dark room beyond. Gradually she understood that Joe was there.

    The window she was looking through was barred with heavy metal-and-wood grillwork, and wired with electrical alarms. But these gave Kate no trouble. Once inside, she moved straight across the empty, unfinished space, solidifying her body again as she came to the glass-paneled door. Joe, doubled over and bound, lay on the floor inside it, amid a confusion of stored boxes. His eyes were closed and he was motionless. But she was certain he was not dead.

    Wanting to keep her senses at maximum alertness if she could, Kate did not pass through the closed door but retained her solid form and gently tried its knob. It was not locked, and swung smoothly outward. She rushed in silently to Joe’s side—

    She willed to rush to him—

    The threshold, or something in the air above it, caught her like an invisible, impalpable steel net. She could feel no solid barrier opposing her, yet she was unable to reach even a finger into the room.

    Kate shifted forms. The solidity of her body gone, she tried again. The doorway was impervious as before.

    In woman-form again, she stood just outside the open doorway, biting her nails and trying to think. The old man had said something about this. The room that she was trying to enter was living quarters, part of someone’s dwelling. He had said it would be impossible now for her to enter any such space uninvited. Listening to the old man, back in the mausoleum, she hadn’t really understood or believed what he was trying to tell her. Now—

    She must rouse Joe, get him to call to her, invite her in. But she could hear other voices now, including the voice of Poach, just beyond the storeroom’s inner door. They would certainly hear her if she called to Joe.

    Again and again she pressed her body, in alternate forms, against the barrier. But it was like a breather trying to go through a wall. She tried urgently to force her thoughts into Joe’s mind. But his stupor was too deep.

    If only the old man were here. But even he would not be able to drive his way in uninvited.

    Six feet away from her, she could feel Joe’s life gently ebbing.

    There were tears on Kate’s face. She would have sobbed or screamed, but those in the apartment must not hear her.

    The old man had told her something else. That whatever powers any human being could seize beyond nature came from the will, not through diabolism or magic. That if the will were strong enough, very little in this world need be impossible. That if—

    Kate closed her eyes. She stood on the threshold, leaning forward. But she was not pushing any longer. That had proven useless. This was something else.

    Is this what it means to pray? she wondered briefly. And then she ceased to think at all about what she was trying to do, or what was happening to her. Her self was entirely forgotten. There was only Joe, and his need, and the help that had to reach him, somehow.

    Prayer, or giving birth. Or could they sometimes be the same—

    —and something, some agony, was over. Kate came to herself lying face down on the concrete floor. Air, cold and unaccustomed, was filling her lungs with repeated pain, and it took a great effort to manage this labored, almost sobbing breath in silence. The birth, some kind of birth, was over, and the thin cry floating in Kate’s mind was not a baby’s but her own, unvoiced. She saw that she was lying halfway across the threshold. She crawled forward, arms trembling with sudden weakness, the weakness of the newborn. With fingers that suddenly seemed almost powerless she began to work to remove the cords holding Joe’s hands. He was still alive. His breath and hers were mingling in the air.

    She whispered his name. That, or the tugging at his arms, made his eyes open presently. His eyes saw her, and yet they did not see; his mind had not reacted to her presence yet.

    In her new relative weakness she was not going to be able to carry or drag him very far. So he was going to have