Dudley Doesn’t Need a Wooden Stake
The alley was quiet as we made our way back. The gate behind Roan’s mansion was closed, but as I inspected the latch, I saw there was no lock. I could open it just fine.
“Why isn’t there a lock?” I asked Dudley.
“It’s probably a sign Roan doesn’t do this sort of thing all the time. If he did, there would be locks on the gate and the shed windows. He’s doing this specifically to avenge Schroder. It’s not his regular entertainment or business.”
“Is that a good sign?”
“No. If he’s usually a well-behaved vampire, he could have friends in high places who back him as a moral blood drinker.”
I shuddered. That was a bad sign.
The yard was empty behind the shed now. All the cars were gone.
“Let’s just try the front door,” Dudley said as he walked past the window to the shed and opened the door.
Once inside, we could see the carpet spread out over the entrance to the cellar. Dudley stooped to roll it up while I held my gun at the ready. Once it was off the trap door, I could see there was no light coming from under it. Dudley swung the door open into blackness.
Dudley took out his gun and motioned that he was going down first. “It’s dangerous to turn on the light, in case someone in the house sees it,” he cautioned. “Stay at the top of the stairs, so you can alert me in case there’s trouble.”
I did as I was told and watched the doors. My heartbeats ricocheted around my ribcage, but Dudley came right back up and said, “It’s empty.”
“What?” I exclaimed, not bothering to keep my voice down.
“They must have either taken London into the house or driven her away in one of those cars. Let’s check the house.”
I was going to have a heart attack. This whole situation was so much worse than I envisioned when I struck out to save London tonight. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t experienced enough to protect London.
I peered down the stairs into the blackness and wondered if Dudley could make up for all that I wasn’t.
Through the eighty percent shadow, his face looked tired and strained.
“All right,” I said, throwing my lot in with him.
***
The mansion wasn’t as big as I thought it was—not by half. Dudley and I searched the place as best we could without going inside. Who knew? Maybe there was another secret trap door that led to another pit of misery. If there was, we couldn’t find it from the outside. In any case, we gave up looking at around five.
Regardless of the time, I called my parents. Annoyed, they said London had called them and told them she was going to stay with her boyfriend for a day or two so she wouldn’t be home. I asked them if they had his address or phone number and of course, it turned out they were too dumb to ask. They didn’t think anything was wrong.
Now I was sitting on Dudley’s couch with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I didn’t smoke or drink coffee. I was just trying to look normal in front of Dudley who was drinking a cup of coffee and smoking heavily.
He ground out the last fragments of his cigarette and leaning across the table, took mine. “I know you’re shocked, but try to pull it together,” he said before taking a long drag.
Actually, I was so tired I could hardly think straight. I had only ended up at Dudley’s because I fell asleep in the cab we took when we left Roan’s. Dudley couldn’t take me home under the circumstances, so he brought me to his place instead. He didn’t try to carry me into his apartment. Instead, he shook me until I was conscious enough to walk in by myself.
Dudley lived in a nice place. The long living room’s huge windows viewed the west. Two leather sofas with a coffee table between them faced a large screen T.V. at the end. As for the rest of the apartment, I hadn’t seen it yet.
I wanted to pass out, but Dudley wanted to talk and who was I to deny him? I didn’t think he was the type to talk.
“Are you scared?” he asked hoarsely.
“Not really,” I answered truthfully, but I might have been too exhausted to realize the ramifications of everything that had happened. “I was sort of worried about my parents at first, but after I talked to them on the phone, I don’t think there’s much danger.”
“Probably not. No matter how I think of it, I just don’t think Roan is an animal. The way his place was set up just didn’t make it look like he was. Did you see the table he had London on?”
I nodded, but I felt sick.
“Well, vampires who do that sort of thing for a living—”
“For a living!” I blurted, whipping my head toward him.
“Well, yeah. Vampires might not need to eat to live, but they want other things—beautiful surroundings, travel, vehicles, clothes, and other luxurious items. They can’t just sit around and wait for wealth to come to them. Vampirism generally makes ordinary-looking people look beautiful. Death can do that to people, but that doesn’t mean making them vampires will make them any more resourceful. Lots of them aren’t better at making money after death than they were before it. They were weasels when they were alive and they’re still weasels after they’re dead. Most vampires are made the way we saw tonight, except if Roan did it as a regular thing, he would have had better equipment for strapping London down. Since he’s a gentleman, we’re going to have a harder time.”
I paused and I let what he told me sink in. Even though I lived with London for eight years, I really didn’t know anything about vampires at all.
Dudley lit a new cigarette and the smoke in the room got thicker.
“Are you worried about your mother?” I asked.
“No more worried about her than you are about your parents. Like I said, I think Roan is a gentleman, which means he’s not going to bust into my mother’s house and point a gun in her face or rip her throat out with his fangs just to watch her die. If he gets in touch with her at all, he’ll do it in a civilized fashion. He’ll probably just ask her where I am and he’s probably enchanting enough to charm the diamonds off a snake’s back. However, it might take him a while to find her. She’s not going by the last name of Crosswood anymore, either. There’s no point in his injuring our parents to get to us, as long as he isn’t too impatient—which I doubt he is. He seemed extraordinarily controlled compared to some of the whack jobs I’ve seen.”
“What do you think he’ll do to us when he finds us?” I asked shakily.
“He probably won’t do anything to you if you tell him I was the one who killed Schroder,” Dudley said, looking at me with an even gaze.
It was at this moment that I realized what he suggested wasn’t what he feared would happen. It was his recommendation of what I should do.
“That wouldn’t be fair,” I said.
“It would be the truth,” he countered. “I was the one who killed Schroder.”
“But you wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for me.”
“Look,” he said—interrupting my train of thought. “I appreciate the sentiment, but my motive is only to keep you safe until I kill him.”
The confidence in his voice took my breath away, but if he was so sure of himself, why was he on the verge of setting off the fire alarm with all those cigarettes in the ashtray? I asked him as much.
“I’m just worried this won’t be the end of the track. I kill Schroder, then I kill his twin, then someone else shows up looking for revenge, like their long-lost younger brother, and it goes on and on. I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen for eight years. I’d like to have an end to it.”
I yawned. All that made sense. “But what about London?” I asked. “Do you think we’ll be able to get her back after you kill Roan?”
He looked away. “I’m afraid the two things aren’t necessarily related. If she’s with Garth, he’s probably more than capable of finishing the transformation of all six of the other members that were started tonight and killing her in the end without Roan’s help, if he’s not dumb enough to keep adding members. Roan may have even washed his hands of London already and he’s just waiting to check on her information before he makes it official.”
“So?”
“So tomorrow, I’m going to talk to Marshall and some of my other sources to see if I can find out anything useful about Roan.”
“What do I do?”
“You find an address for Garth.” Dudley paused and looked at me earnestly. “And if Roan finds you in the meantime—you tell him I killed Schroder.”
I couldn’t answer him. I turned my head away, reached up, and flicked off the lamp above my head.
“Promise me you’ll do it,” he persisted and for a second I thought his voice sounded desperate and grating.
“No. I’ll do what I think is right at the time.”
Dudley sucked in his breath and I lay down on the couch with my back to him. When I heard him leave the room, I pulled a throw blanket over my chest.
I was going to go to sleep. Whether I liked it or not.