12

The late show ended around eleven. They walked out of the theater into an overcast night that although chilly, smelled of spring . . . damp earth and hints of green. Clean smells, free of any blood scent. Garreth drank them in.

"Did you like the movie?" Maggie asked.

"Of course. It's a good flick." He lied, but how could he tell her the truth, that movies were always difficult at best, sitting there drowning in the smells of blood from other patrons, tortured by thirst and sometimes by deadly whiffs of garlic which left him suffocating, the air in his lungs hardened like concrete. Tonight, too, one of the blood scents had carried the sour flavor of disease. Its touch set him itching. But most uncomfortable had been the painful chords the movie rang in him as the big-city detective hid in the alien culture of a rural community. Detective John Book had one big advantage, though, which Garreth envied. When it became clear he did not belong, at least that cop had another world to return to.

Garreth had parked in the next block. They started to cross the street . . . only to stop short at the wail of a siren. A Jeep wagon painted with the sheriff's star shot past them from the side street and into the parking lot of the courthouse across from the theater. The stocky driver vaulted from behind the wheel to race into the two-story Law Enforcement wing of the courthouse.

Maggie stared after him. "That's Tom Frey."

The undersheriff. The hair twitched on Garreth's neck. "I wonder what the trouble is."

Serious discussions of their relationship could wait. As one, they changed direction toward the courthouse.

Both the Bellamy PD and Sheriff's Office shared the wing. A broad counter with glass and metal grilling along it partitioned the main office. Behind it Tom Frey's black Amerind eyes glinted grimly as he glanced from a walrus-mustached PD officer to a tall, lean man who looked as though he belonged on horseback working cattle—Sheriff Louis Pfeifer.

". . . heard the trouble buzzer," the officer was saying, "and ran down from the jail, only as I came out the stair door, someone hit me from behind. By the time I could get up again, this turkey had fished the car keys out of my pocket and was dragging Emma outside with him. He had a gun. I called Wes in 512 on the radio right away and he's tracking them. They're headed northwest."

The sheriff spun. "Tom, get on the horn to the Russell and Rooks SO's, then call our deputies. Have them spread out north and west, but keep back. We don't want Emma hurt."

The undersheriff reached for a phone.

"Can we help, Sheriff?" Garreth asked.

The tall man looked around through the glass at them and smiled. "Who says there's never a cop around when you need one? Our dispatcher's been kidnapped. Why and how he got past the counter, we don't know. Give me your radio, Clell."

The PD officer lifted it out of the case on his belt. Pfeifer handed it to Maggie through an opening in the glass. "Head toward Schaller and help 512 keep track of that car."

Garreth and Maggie raced for the ZX.

As they reached it the radio crackled with alerts issued by the Russell and Rooks SO dispatchers for the Bellamy PD car carrying a male of unknown description and a female which the dispatchers described.

Then another voice said, "512 Bellamy. Subject is headed north from County 9 at Droge Corner."

"Lincoln Street takes us out to 9," Maggie said. "But I don't know where Droge Corner is."

With no siren or lights to clear the way for him, Garreth drove carefully as far as the city limits, then stamped the accelerator. "Watch for anything that looks like a corner."

"That ought to be fun in this dark." Maggie tightened her seat belt.

A harsh male voice came on the radio. "If that pig following me comes anywhere near, I'll kill this bitch."

A woman yelped in pain.

Garreth's headlights caught a sign with names and distances to various farms. The top name read: Droge.

"Garreth—" Maggie yelped as they hurtled past.

He was already hitting both gas and brake and hauling at the steering wheel to spin the car in a one-eighty turn. He gunned back for the corner, reached it still accelerating, and somehow still made the turn anyway, wheels screaming, gravel from the new road scattering beneath his wheels. Maggie whooped like a banshee.

"572, turning east five miles from last turn."

"Get away from me! I'm warning you!"

Garreth swore. He had not noticed his mileage at the turn. "How are we going to know which corner it is?"

"Relax," Maggie said. "These roads are section lines, remember, exactly one mile apart."

She counted crossing roads; he concentrated on keeping the car on theirs and, when it came, making the turn without piling them into a heavy stone fence post at the corner of the field.

"I see them!" Maggie hissed.

He did, too . . . small ruby points of light far ahead, and two more points half a mile beyond those. The farther lights swerved and vanished.

"572. Turning north—"

Maggie hit the transmit button on the hand radio. "We have you. 512."

"You've got one last chance to get away from me or this cow dies."

A female voice came on moments later. "Bellamy SO. Fall hack, 512."

The tail lights grew larger and brighter as Garreth gained. He watched them swerve into a turn. He followed, and shortly after that, drew up alongside.

"Roll down the window, Maggie." When she did, Garreth shouted across to the Bellamy officer, "Drop back and mark that corner. I'll follow him from here."

"Orders are—"

"He won't see me, I promise." He shut off his headlights as he passed the PD car.

Maggie gasped.

The road stretched before him in a distinct gray ribbon, as though through twilight. On it ahead of him, growing ever brighter, shone the tail lights of the stolen police car.

Maggie clung to the radio. "I can't see a thing. How can you?"

He hesitated only a moment before answering. "I never told you but I'm a werewolf."

"Terrific. I've been dating a fruit loop." The car fishtailed and she swallowed audibly. "How fast are we going?"

"I'm afraid to look."

Her stream of language had to come out of her father's oilfield days.

The lights ahead swerved off onto another road, then another and finally into a lane which consisted of two wheel ruts with a grass-grown center. Far up the lane, perhaps half a mile, Garreth made out the blocky shapes of buildings, one tilting crazily.

He down-shifted to slow the car, then stopped with the hand brake to keep the brake lights from giving their presence away. "Maggie, I'll follow on foot from here."

"On foot! Garreth, you can't—"

He climbed out. "Take the car and go back to wait at that last corner for the others. I'll leave my jacket on his fencepost to mark the lane. Get going."

"Do you have a gun?"

"Of course." He patted his ankle holster, and before she could protest further, took the radio from her, peeled off his sport coat, and dropping it over the fencepost beside the gate, sprinted up the lane after the fading lights of the car. His breath swirled thick and white around him in the chilly air.

The lights vanished.

Garreth stretched his stride. Had they gone over a rise? Around a corner? He had almost reached the buildings. He slowed, still looking around for the car. The lane led on past. Could the kidnapper have continued?

No, voices carried on the night wind, whispers so low no normal ears could have heard them . . . a woman's, frightened and weeping, a man's hissing angrily. "Stop whining, you bitch, or you're dead."

Garreth tilted his head, testing for direction of the sound. The house with its multiple doors and windows gaping empty, or in the dark cave of the tilting barn? A car could be hidden from sight in there. The barn, he decided. The wind brought him scents of human blood and sweaty fear mixed with the odor of moldering hay.

Circling behind the house, he climbed through two barb wire fences to the rear of the barn. The windows, empty of glass, were high and small. The doors had been blocked up some time in the past. Garreth nodded in satisfaction. The kidnapper should feel himself safe from the rear, then. The sealed door gave no protection from a vampire, though.

He pressed against the door. Everything in him wrenched sharply, then he stood inside between disintegrating stacks of hay. A tall, rawboned man with a heavy thatch of dark, wiry hair sat against the bales in a position where he could watch the lane. Beside him huddled the dispatcher, a short, plump woman in her late thirties, held down by an arm twisted behind her back.

Now what? Garreth plucked at his mustache. As soon as he revealed his presence, the man would open fire. The trick was to make sure he did not shoot his hostage first.

But what would happen if the kidnapper shot and hit him? Theoretically, if a vampire could pass through a door, an object could pass through him without harm. Wooden stakes excepted. Theoretically.

There was only one way to learn. Watch the idiot cop put his head in the lion's mouth.

Laying the radio on a hay bale, he stepped forward. "You're under arrest, turkey."

The kidnapper whirled, the muzzle of his gun flashing fire.

He shot well for having only sound to aim at. A small, wrenching pain lanced through Garreth's chest. Reflex brought his hands clutching at the point of pain, but a moment later he realized he felt nothing else, no weakness, no bleeding.

The kidnapper fired again, and once more Garreth felt only that single small pain similar to the one of passing through doors. Good enough. He grinned—"Try again, turkey,"—and charged.

Cursing, the kidnapper tried to empty the gun, but had time for just two more shots before Garreth reached him. Wrenching the gun away, Garreth rapped the butt across the side of the kidnapper's head. The man dropped in his tracks.

Beyond him the dispatcher huddled on the floor. She had to be terrified, hearing the gunfire and collapsing body but unable to see who had gone down.

Garreth spoke before touching her. "Emma, it's all right. You're safe. I'm Garreth Mikaelian, Baumen PD." Then he picked her up.

"Mikaelian. You're 407." Burying her head against his shoulder, enveloping him in a smell of blood and terror-sweat, she burst into tears. "What an idiot I am. When he went down in the waiting area, I thought he'd fainted. I didn't even think; I just opened the counter door and ran out. Of course it was a trick. He grabbed me around the neck and dragged me back inside the office. He demanded the keys to the cells, to get his brother out, he said. I pretended to be getting them and hit the button that rings an alarm at the guard's station up in the jail. I knew Clell Jamison had just brought someone in and was up there, too. The bastard figured out what I'd done, though, and he dragged me over to the stair door and hit Clell when he came down. Did he kill him?"

"Jamison is fine."

Garreth led her back to where he had left the radio. "Mikaelian to Bellamy S.O. Situation resolved. Hostage unharmed."

In minutes the old farmyard had filled up with cars and flashing light bars, representatives of law enforcement agencies in three counties . . . police, sheriff and deputies, highway patrol.

His ZX was there, too, and Maggie, throwing her arms around him, drowning him in the smell of her blood. "You took him by yourself? Are you all right?"

"Of course." He slid away from her so she would not smell the powder burns on his shirt. "He fired a couple of shots at me but he's a lousy shot in the dark." Luckily the powder burns did not show up on the black turtleneck. "Do you have my coat?"

She handed it over. "Are you sure you're all right? There are holes in your shirt."

"Front and back. Yes, I know. I had to crawl through two barb wire fences." Smiling, he carefully buttoned his coat across the holes.