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

    The streets through which Morgan led them were still empty of other people; superb lighting shone on untracked snow. Another block east, thought Joe, and they’d be on Michigan Avenue. Joe wondered if Morgan had a goal in mind or was simply fleeing. “They’re sticking close together,” he commented.

    “As long as they do,” said the old man, “I have no wish to encounter them without your stout support. Though they are perhaps gaining a little on us now, I think they will run out of gas, as I believe the saying goes, before we do.”

    Joe tried to speed up a little. Police officer needs assistance. It would be a busy day in Communications. All furloughs canceled. Sorry, captain, I just couldn’t make it in, there were these vampires I had to hunt…

    Kate appeared to be doing fine. She walked with the long wood knife swinging in her hand.

    “Corday, I said some things about you before. I’m sorry. What do your friends call you, if it’s any of my business?”

    The old man shot him a glance. “Your apology is thankfully accepted. I am comfortable with the name you know me by.”

    “Good enough.” Morgan had certainly called the old man something else, something that Joe could not now recall. Well, he certainly wasn’t going to push the question. If any reason other than gratitude were needed, he could well believe that there had been a grain of truth in Morgan’s warning.

    They were now gaining slightly on the enemy.

    “You are doing excellently,” the old man complimented Joe. He turned to Kate. “And you.”

    “I feel fine,” Kate answered. “I wonder a little myself at how good I feel.”

    “This fortunate reserve of strength is doubtless a residual benefit of your recent life as a, shall we say, non-breathing human. When the life of your attacker who walks ahead of us is ended, weakness may come upon you temporarily. But then it should be about time for all of us to rest, hey?”

    “Is it certain that I’m going to—to stay—this way?”

   “It has been my experience that miracles do not reverse themselves. You will remain a breather. As long as that is what you truly want.”

    The pursuit emerged abruptly from between buildings onto Michigan Avenue, as wide as some city blocks were long. Joe had never counted its traffic lanes, but all of them were completely buried now. Here and there cars, trucks, buses were entombed too. There was as yet no sign of snowplow resurrection. On every lamppost were festoons promoting Christmas commerce. Michigan was kept free by law from projecting signs of any kind, and the lines of its varied buildings stretched dreamlike to right and left, framing a cathedral aisle of clear snow.

    There came a raucous buzz from somewhere, on ground level, nearby, getting closer faster.

    Joe was first to identify the sound, and the first to react. Spear ready, he floundered out into the deep snow near the middle of the boulevard, prepared to defend his position there. He called out for help, and Kate and the old man were right behind him.

    The snowmobile snarled round a corner behind Joe, and turned speedily in his general direction. Facing Poach and Morgan with his spear level, he heard it pass a few yards behind him, going north. Morgan snarled at Joe, but her chance of intercepting and seizing a conveyance had been blocked. There were two people on the vehicle, and one called out something cheery on seeing folk in evening dress out for an early morning romp. The words were lost in the engine noise, and shortly the engine itself was fading into the distance.

    After a long pause, Morgan turned silently toward the east side of the street, and once there headed north. Poach kept with her, stumbling more noticeably now. Joe wondered if he might be faking greater injury than he felt.

    Above the city’s lights the sky was changing subtly and at intersections Joe could see the sky to the east, above the lake, there it was no longer dark so much as blank. He looked at his wristwatch, but what he saw conveyed no meaning to his worn mind.

    Stoplights blinked out an elaborate ritual, timing nothing.

    “Do you think they’ll go into a building?” Kate suddenly wondered aloud.

    The old man shrugged. “We could follow. They do not really want to seek a general involvement of the breathing world any more than I do. That would be ultimately bad for all of us. Our branch of the human race has the habit and tradition of settling its own affairs.”

    “I just thought,” said Kate, “if they keep going east much farther—”

    “Yes?”

    “They’ll wind up out on the ice. On the lake. That’s considered very dangerous. When people do that the police sometimes bring out a helicopter and pick them up, right, Joe?”

    “Ah.”

    “Fortunately,” said Joe, puffing steam, “all the copters in the city are going to be very busy today doing other jobs.”

    And still Morgan led them north. Going north would also, in time, bring them to the curving shore. Ahead, the gray canyon of buildings in which they moved came to an abrupt end. There, at Oak Street, Michigan Avenue melded with the Outer Drive and with a delta of lesser arteries. There the park began, and the beach. And, inland, the rank of tall apartment buildings in one of which Craig Walworth lived. “It’s just hit me,” Joe announced. “They’re trying to get to Walworth’s place.”

    Corday nodded. “That seems quite probable.”

    “You won’t be able to get in there to get at them. If I’m beginning to understand how these things work?”

    “Your new understanding is in general correct, I think.” The thin lips smiled faintly.