Chapter Thirty-Three

The dining room was filled with the clicking of blasters being cocked. Ryan had the SIG-Sauer in his right hand, pointing it at the ceiling, holding up his left hand. "Nothing sudden!" he shouted.
"He's got Dean," J.B. said calmly. "Arm around his neck in a choke hold."
"Let him go," Krysty called, "or you all get to be real dead real soon."
"That which has never been alive can never truly be dead," Elric replied.
Though Ryan was secretly convinced that his damaged sight was gradually returning, he could still see nothing but a faded blur of movement and color all around him. None of it made any sort of sense.
"Tell me," he shouted to his companions. "Tell me exactly what's going down."
"They got no weapons," the Armorer said. Ryan could almost taste the doubt in his old friend's voice. "Woman and the old man and Elric are close together, around Thomas. He's got Dean off the floor, holding the boy in front of him."
"Hurt?"
Krysty answered him. "No. Shaken up. Can't speak. Thomas has him real tight."
"But you've got clear shots at the other three?"
"Yeah."
Ryan felt the short hairs prickling at his nape. Something was very wrong. Unless the members of the Family were total crazies, they would all be dead in moments. At that range there was no possibility of any of the bullets missing their mark.
"Something's wrong," he said very quietly.
"I feel it too, lover." Krysty was right at his side. "This makes no sense."
"Let's just take them," Jak said. "Can't be easier. They want chilling, we give chilling."
"Yes, young man," Melmoth whispered. "Give us chilling. In some ways it might even be a mercy and a kindness. Try shooting at us and see what happens."
"They haven't got body armor on," J.B. observed. "So it's not that."
"Are we drugged?" Doc's voice betrayed his bewilderment. "Some sort of hallucinogenic? Are they playing with our minds, showing us some kind of virtual reality that they control?"
"None of those things," Thomas said. "And you must make your minds up quickly what you intend to do. Or the boy will suffer and that is not our wish."
"Then let him go." Ryan was turning his head from side to side, trying to make some sense out of the shapes that flickered and danced at the edges of his seeing.
"No. He is the key. You are all the lock. Now, if you have done with your empty talking, we shall take Dean with us to our rooms on the top floor. You will all come back here at breakfast tomorrow morning, and we will begin the new regime where you offer us your essence in return for keeping the lad alive. Simple, is it not? So simple."
"Want me to open fire, Ryan?" J.B. sounded as though his usual confidence had been eroded.
"Can you take out Thomas without hurting Dean?"
"Sure. Range is twenty feet. Thomas is well over six feet. Leave me plenty of target."
Ryan still hesitated. What was the factor that he didn't understand?
"One moment."
"What is it, Melmoth?"
"I guessed that we would need to make a small demonstration for you. You are far more insistent than those dumb wretches in the ville."
Mary spoke to Krysty. "You must describe carefully to Ryan what is happening. It's important that you all fully understand what is going on."
"Elric is taking up a knife, lover, from the table. Steel carver."
"He threatens Dean, then chill him."
"He's not. Holding the knife in his right hand and baring his left arm. Rolling up the sleeve to the elbow."
"Watch carefully," Thomas said. "So far you've seen nothing."
Krysty continued her running commentary. "Edge of the knife touches his skin. Now he's Gaia!"
"Has he cut himself?" Ryan asked. "Sure it's not a trick knife?"
"Let young Jak come and make another cut, Elric," Thomas said. "So there shall be no doubters."
He paused. "But take care, outlanders. The neck of a boy like little Dean is so fragile and accidents happen so easily, don't they?"
"There's some blood, lover," Krysty whispered. "But very little. The cut was deep. I saw the lips, white as snow, then the crimson seeping from inside."
"Going cut now, Ryan," Jak said.
The tension in the room was so strong that you could breathe it in with the fumes of the guttering lamps.
"He's made a gash about a hand's breadth long, down the arm." Krysty's voice was tight with tension. "Same thing's happened. Some blood but not much. And Gaia! The first cut's already healing itself."
"We are almost indestructible," Melmoth said. "A bullet will make a hole. We are not superheroes who can't be harmed. But it is only with grave difficulty that we are killed."
"There was tall Boaz who was crushed in a logjam, down in the river that winter's flood," Mary said. "His body was smashed to pulp."
"And dear Clementine in that fire." Melmoth's voice dropped. "Just charred sticks were left. Not even we can resolve ourselves from such a fate."
"Now both the wounds look healed," Krysty said.
Jak dropped the knife, letting it clatter on the table. "No trick, Ryan."
Mildred was closest to the door, and she had an irrational desire to turn and run out of the dining hall, out of the mansion on the cliff, to run into the surrounding bayou and run and run until she could run no more.
She fingered the tiny gold crucifix around her throat, hardly aware she was touching it, when an idea struck her.
"Vampires," she breathed to herself, so quietly that not even the sharp-eared Family heard her.
Mildred quickly took the cross on its narrow chain from her neck and gripped it firmly in her right hand, advancing toward Melmoth, closest of them, who turned as he saw the stocky woman walking doggedly toward him.
And he laughed at her.
"I curse you, Satan!" Mildred called, every eye in the room turning to her. "With this holy cross of blessed Jesus Christ I banish you back to the black shadows of the deepest pit in the purgatorio."
"She got her crucifix?" Ryan asked.
"Yeah," Krysty said. "Just like in those old horror vids and books. But"
"But what?"
Melmoth answered his question. "But this is real life and fiction is fiction, Ryan Cawdor."
"And the cross is the cross, you blasphemous pile of shit!" Mildred shouted, holding the tiny gold cross before her, raising it toward Melmoth Cornelius like a laser weapon.
He began to slowly give ground across the room, before her anger, backing away toward the shadowy corner where there was a large glass display case filled with porcelain, crystal and items of jewelry.
"See how the force of evil falls before the force of light," Mildred said exultantly. "The old stories were true, friends, all true."
"I'm afraid, Mildred," Melmoth said, reaching the cabinet.
"I see that."
"No, let me finish. I was going to say that I was not afraid of your totem, Dr. Wyeth. It holds no more terror for me and for my brothers and sister than any child's bauble."
"It is a crucifix."
"No." He took something from the case. " This is a crucifix, Doctor."
Mildred gasped. Even in the dim light of the darkened room, the crucifix that Melmoth had withdrawn from the cabinet glowed with its own brilliant light.
It looked to be very old, perhaps sixteenth century. The racked figure of Christ was gold, set on the cross of heavy lustrous silver. The whole thing was set with rubies and diamonds, emeralds and onyx, chalcedony and amethysts.
It was eighteen inches long and was one of the most beautiful things that Mildred had ever seen.
And Melmoth the vampire was holding it calmly in his long-nailed right hand.
"You see how little I fear your precious symbols of Aramaic superstition, Mildred."
Melmoth lifted it to his lips and kissed it. Then put out his long serpentine tongue, like a white worm, and licked the rough surface of the crucifix, touching the fetid tip to the thorny crown of Christ.
Mildred's right hand rested on the butt of the ZKR 551 target revolver, and at that moment she was as close as she had ever been to shooting a man down in cold blood and hot rage, though Melmoth Cornelius was not truly a man.
Melmoth held the cross between his cupped hands in a gesture of mock piety. "If only you could see the sporting tricks that sister Mary gets up to in her own private room with this pretty toy, Dr. Wyeth. I think even you would be convinced that it does not frighten us."
A long silence followed the disgusting demonstration of the Family's power, which was broken finally by Ryan. "You've made your point," he said. "We'll stay as long as you like. Just let the boy go. Let Dean alone."
Thomas, his smile shining through his words, said, "I think not. We have not lived close to a hundred years by being stupid, Ryan. And to let you have your son back would be the same as opening the main doors and giving you fast horses to ride away. No, the boy will live with us for a time."
He moved his hand from Dean's mouth, allowing him to speak. "I'll be all right, Dad. Be a hot pipe with them. Don't worry about me."
"Sure."
Thomas yawned, his mouth opening so wide they could all hear the sinews cracking in his jaws. "Well, this has all gone as we hoped it would. As we knew it would, outlanders. Remember that we have no wish to harm any of you. That would be against our own best ends, wouldn't it?"
Melmoth was already leaving the room, heading for the stairs that would eventually take them up to their attic rooms. "Tomorrow we will have worked out a detailed plan for when we will need each of you."
Mary followed him. "Once we have gone, Norman, you may raise the lights so that our guests can see properly to enjoy their meals. I look forward to starting the osmotic process with you all. Especially with you, again, Ryan. The idea of reconnection is thrilling."
Thomas and Elric left together. Ryan could hear the sound of his son's feet dragging, reluctant, across the echoing hall.
The door closed behind them.
"Well, now you know, people," Norman chirped brightly. "Could be worse, believe me."
"How?" Ryan asked, the single syllable as cold as Sierra meltwater.
"Well, the Family could have chilled you all. Last night. You saw what they did to that silly-billy of a filmmaker. They all have dreadful strength. Even Melmoth, and he's weak as a kitten compared to his usual old ways."
"Some of them have died," J.B. pointed out. "So they can be chilled."
The butler shook his head slowly. "Even the mightiest sequoias will fall eventually in the deeps of the forest. But if there is nobody there to hear the thunderous crash, is there any sound at all?"
"Don't play fucking Zen games with us, you preening little shit!" Mildred walked toward him, her beaded plaits swinging. "Don't come on with 'What's the sound of one hand clapping?' and 'How when is now?' and all that crap! You serve what must be one of the most perverse and vile families in the whole of Deathlands and doing your chirpy and amusing little gay act with us doesn't By God, it doesn't make you winsome, Norman."
Her shout echoed around and around the vaulted gallery at the second floor.
"Well, pardon me for living!" the butler exclaimed.
"Living and partly living," Doc stated. "Have you opened the door to the secret garden and taken the path least traveled? By the Three Kennedys, but what a pathetic whining bastard you are, Norman."
"Well, you can whistle down the pussy's well for food for all I care." Norman glowered at them. "You'll see, as well. See I'm right. It could be much worse."
Ryan heard the door open and close again. "Might be worth scavenging into the kitchens. J.B., mebbe you and Jak could go see what you can beg or borrow or steal."
"Sure thing," the Armorer said.
"After we've eaten, then all meet up in our room for some serious planning. Krysty, could you and Mildred and Doc turn the lamps back up?"
"Sure, lover. The sight of the Family in any kind of light's poor as anything."
Mildred came around the table and laid her hand on his arm. He could feel her tension and anger. She lowered her head so that her mouth was close to his ear.
"Anything you want to tell me, Ryan?"
"Like what?"
All around the huge room he could hear Doc and Krysty turning up the wicks. And he could definitely see the patches of shimmering, golden light.
"Like, whether you think your sight might possibly be creeping back, Ryan?"
Krysty heard her and whirled. "Ryan! That true?"
"Mebbe."