A Question Of Time, Fred Saberhagen [best fiction books to read .TXT] 📗

      Intent on concluding this distasteful business, the bearded man recovered his aplomb with commendable speed for one of his advanced years. The airbag had already deflated itself, and a second try with neck and steering column produced the desired result.

      Brainard, though physically almost intact, required help to leave the battered vehicle.

      “Thanks. My God, how can I thank you?”

      “You have just done so. That is sufficient.”

      “I didn’t see either of ’em watching the hotel. I thought I’d take a chance … now Cathy’s back, I didn’t want her getting messed up in my troubles.”

      After advising his client to try some snow on his burned neck, Strangeways methodically but quickly went through the pockets of Brainard’s tormentors. Preston, sprawled in the snow, still breathed, but painfully, and the examiner judged that that condition would not persist for long. In Smith it had already passed. Strangeways also rifled the more obvious places of storage in their car, looking for anything that might connect them with Brainard.

      He found nothing in that line, but did collect almost five thousand dollars in cash. Considering this the spoils of war, Strangeways handed it, in the form of an untidy bundle, to Brainard before sending him on his way.

      “Some of that’s my own money. They took it away from me just now.”

      “You may have the rest,” the rescuer said.

       “Can I pay you something, for your help?”

      “Decent of you to offer. But no, thank you. The weather is turning bad. I advise you to drive carefully.”

      “Thanks.” Brainard gingerly scooped more snow onto the back of his neck. “God, maybe my luck is turning at last.”

* * *

      When Strangeways arrived back at the hotel suite, Joe Keogh asked him if he had seen Brainard.

      The bearded man nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact. When last I saw him he was driving peacefully toward the main exit from the Park. I have little doubt that he will be well on his way before the worst of the storm arrives.”

      “What about the people who were after him?”

      Strangeways looked at his well-kept nails. “Also on their way.”

      After a pause Joe asked: “Still after Brainard?”

      “No. They had taken a different direction … careless, improvident men. I doubt that they have managed to get far. The roads are becoming treacherous.” He made a sighing noise, faintly reptilian. “For the careless, accidents are almost inevitable in such conditions.”

      “Oh,” said Joe; with finality. He had known the other for many years. After a moment he said: “Oh,” again.

      “Joseph?” the other asked him mildly.

      “Yes?”

      “Are a great many automobiles now equipped with airbags?”

      “Most of the new ones, I guess.”

      Drakulya nodded thoughtfully. “Now I must rest. All this activity by day is wearing, even in weather so beautifully gray—I can see why my compatriot Tyrrell was so drawn to this country, dangerous as it is for us.”

      “Why?”

      “The sun, Joseph. We, our kind, are much concerned with its presence, absence, and intensity.”

      “With avoiding it, I’d think.”

      “Yes, of course. Only with the full bulk of a planet between our bodies and the sun are vampires entirely shielded from all of the potentially harmful emissions and effects. Though it is still my contention that we may depend on some emission from the sun, as yet unknown to science, for much of our true nourishment…

      “But also we have no trouble in grasping the idea that something really odd might be expected to happen when the sun strikes directly, for the first time in a billion years, upon the freshly shattered surface of some deep rock…”

      “Who can say, Joseph, what would happen then? Perhaps most likely nothing. On the other hand, I can visualize strange possibilities…”

      “And Tyrrell was thinking along those lines when he came here.”

      “I am sure it was not idly, merely by chance, that he came to settle here in sun country, as it is called; on the contrary, anyone coming here as a vampire would require a strong reason.”

      “Connected with Darwin, maybe?”

      “With life, Joseph. Connected with nothing less than life itself.”

Chapter Sixteen

      Lying side by side in bed, almost silent and almost motionless, Jake and Camilla had clasped hands, his left holding her right. Both were listening intently to the normal noises of late night in the Deep Canyon. Something that sounded almost like a coyote was howling in the distance. Through the open window of their bedroom there drifted, reassuringly, the work-sounds made by the old man, demonstrating that he was on the job as usual.

      Neither Camilla nor Jake was anywhere near sleep, though hours had passed since either of them had whispered a word. The night had been hell, any kind of sleep all but impossible. Sleep had become nearly impossible anyway in recent nights, with neither of them able to guess when their demonic master might appear suddenly in their darkened bedroom, demanding the blood, the life, of one or both of them.

      Both Camilla and Jake were nearing the last stages of physical and mental exhaustion.

      Jake could only thank God that Tyrrell had not intruded on them during the night just past. There was no working timepiece in the cottage. Until the sun actually rose the breathers had no choice but dumb endurance of the fear that the vampire had somehow discovered their plan. No relief from their suspicion that the satanic Tyrrell was only toying with them, that he would appear to confront them in the last hour, or perhaps even the last few minutes, before dawn. Jake kept going over and over in his mind everything that Tyrrell had said to him yesterday, every change of expression on the vampire’s face—had Tyrrell guessed?

      One of the windows of the bedroom was on the east side of the house. Jake lay staring at the edge of the curtains, wondering for a long time whether the sky was really, at last, starting to lighten in that direction, or whether he was deluding himself with hope. When he was sure that the night was really fading, he reached out a hand silently and squeezed