“Where are you going?” Solange said. “Maybe we should just wait at the airport for the weather to clear.”
“And when might that be? Damn it, where’d this storm come from?” He switched on the windshield wipers to clear away the sand; the glass was pocked and scratched in long arcs. He could see tiny glints of bare metal showing through the paint on the hood. “A sandstorm? Christ!” He took the freeway ramp at fifty, tires screeching. Another blast of wind hit the car, almost wrenching the wheel loose from Wes’s grip. The sky had turned amber.
Oh, God, he thought, night’s coming fast! “We’re driving to Vegas,” he said, trying to picture the serpentine twistings of the L.A. freeway system in his mind: Veer off onto the Santa Monica Freeway, curve north through the downtown district to the San Bernardino Freeway across East L.A. and Monterey Park, Interstate 15 out past Ontario. He’d drive to Vegas as if they were being chased by all the demons of Hell. Even Vegas might not be far enough away. Maybe they should just keep driving east and never look back.
Solange turned on the radio and searched for a station that wasn’t drowned out by static. At the far end of the dial, she caught the faint sound of a newscaster’s voice. “Today the president announced…gas rationing…members of Congress…denied…Los Angeles businessman…found guilty…tremor felt as far as Sacramento…and registered four on the open-ended…the National Weather Service advises…”
“Turn that up,” Wes said.
Solange did, but the crackle of static was overpowering. “…traveler’s warnings extend as far north as Lancaster-Palmdale and to the south as…Weather Services advises all drivers…” Static squealed and chuckled, then the station was gone.
The Mercedes was rocketing through downtown L.A. Solange saw that the tops of several of the taller buildings—the Union Bank, the twin black Bank of America monoliths, the silver cylinders of the Bonaventure Hotel, the looming Arco Plaza—were shrouded in a shimmering golden mist. Sand was being blown in sheets back and forth ahead of them across the freeway; wind roared past the car. When she looked at Wes, she saw a slight sheen of sweat clinging to his face. He glanced at her and smiled grimly. “We’ll be fine,” he said, “as soon as we make it to Interstate 15 and start heading through the mountains. They’ll cut this wind down to a…”
His eyes riveted on something in the road, and he slammed on the brakes. There were three cars locked together in the middle of the freeway. He felt the Mercedes begin to slip to the left and realized with a start of terror that the sand had covered the highway like ice. He quickly turned into the skid. The tangle of wrecked cars loomed up ahead, one of them with a red taillight still blinking. As the Mercedes swept past them, still skidding, Wes heard the loud grinding of metal, and the car pitched sideways, but then they were in the clear, and the car snapped itself steady. He increased the wiper speed, but now he could barely see where he was going. On the right side of the freeway, a car had smacked into the guardrail, and Solange thought she saw a body hanging out of the driver’s door. But then they passed, and she didn’t look back.
Not much time left, she thought. And went cold.
They crossed the sand-glutted ditch of the Los Angeles River and began to pass over the crowded houses and buildings of Boyle Heights. Wes switched on the air-conditioner because the temperature had risen sharply in the last five minutes. The air was stifling, and it was hard to draw a breath without tasting grit. They passed an overturned car that was burning fiercely, the flames fanned by the sweeping wind.
And then a dark brown cloud that seemed to shake the earth with its fury filled the sky, rolling forward like the dust kicked up from the heels of an advancing army. It engulfed the Mercedes, completely blinding them and smothering the windshield with sand. The wipers died under its weight. Wes cried out and steered the car to the right, his heart hammering. A pair of headlights came flying from his rearview mirror, and then a car spun around and around in front of them and disappeared into the dense curtain of sand.
“I can’t see, I can’t see!” Wes shouted. “We’re going to have to pull off and stop, but Jesus Christ, I don’t even know where I am!” He tried to graze the right guardrail, but he couldn’t even find it. The engine coughed and stuttered. “Oh, Jesus,” Wes whispered. “Don’t go out on me now! Don’t!” Coughed again. He stared at the lurching rpms on his dash gauge. “Got enough sand in the engine to choke a fucking camel!” he said. He pumped the accelerator as the Mercedes gave a last gasp and went dead. It rolled perhaps ten yards and then stopped. Wes squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles cracked. “No!” he said. “NO!”
With the end of the air-conditioner, the air had instantly become as stale as the inside of a desert tomb. Wes turned on the ignition but the air that came through the vents was searing—it seemed to be sucking oxygen out instead of letting it in. Wes wiped his face with the back of his hand and stared at the shining beads of sweat. “So,” he said quietly. “Here we sit.”
They were silent for a long while, listening to the taunts of the storm and the dry rasp of sand on metal.
“What time is it?” Solange finally asked.
He was afraid to look at his watch. “Almost five,” he said: “Maybe later.”
“It’s going to be dark soon…”
“I KNOW THAT!” Wes said sharply and was instantly ashamed. Solange looked quickly away from him out the window, but she couldn’t see anything because the currents of sand were too thick. Wes switched on his emergency blinkers and prayed to God that any car coming up behind them would see the lights in time. The soft click click click sounded like a sepulchral metronome, ticking away the few breaths of air they had left. Wes could see Solange’s profile—delicate, stoic, sad. “I’m sorry,” he said softly.
She nodded but didn’t look at him.
Hardy to Laurel: This is another fine mess you’ve got us into! Wes felt a grim smile spread across his face, but it faded quickly. The car was still shuddering under riptides of wind, and now the windshield was almost completely covered. Wes could taste sand every time he inhaled; it gritted between his teeth. “We can’t just sit here and…” he let his voice trail off. “We can’t. But, Jesus! How long would we last out there?”
“Not very long,” Solange said quietly.
“Yeah.” He glanced at her and then away. “I guess those sheikhs who bought houses up in Beverly Hills feel right at home in this, huh? They can just open up their two-camel garages and hit the trail. If they can find the trail. Hmmm. I could do some material on that—a nice five- or six-minute bit about Arabs buying up Beverly Hills. I can see the signs on Rodeo Drive—Chez Saudi, serving camelburgers around the clock. If you can’t eat ’em, we’ll sew you a nice coat…oh, shit.” He’d suddenly gone very pale; he’d felt the presence of Death every time he took a shallow breath and sucked more grit into his lungs. He gripped the door handle and barely managed to stop himself before flinging it open. Uh-uh, he told himself. No way. I sure as hell don’t want to die, but I’d rather go slow than fast any old day. He forced himself to release his grip and sit back.
“I haven’t been very good to you, have I?”
She said nothing.
“I’m a taker,” he said, “just like all the rest of them. Shark, barracuda, piranha…all those predatory-fish metaphors apply. I think I just wear a slightly better mask than most of them. Mine doesn’t slip often because wearing a mask is what I do for a living. It has slipped, though, and I don’t like what lies under it. Maybe the cops’ll be along pretty soon. Maybe we can get towed out of this mess, huh?”
Solange looked at him. There were tears in her eyes. “I’ve seen behind your mask. There’s a Bantu saying: You are what you are when you awaken. Before you open your eyes, before you swim up out of sleep, that’s the real person. Many mornings I’ve watched you, and I’ve seen you curl up like a little boy needing protection or love or just…warmth. I think that’s all you ever really needed. But you mistrust it. You push it away and look f
or it somewhere else, and so you never really find it at all.”
He grunted and came up with a line from “Sheer Luck.” “‘Elementary, Dr. Batson. Deucedly clever, what?’ Shit! This fucking storm’s not going to stop. I’ve never seen so much sand without a bottle of Coppertone in my hand and a transistor radio beside the chair.” He told himself to start taking shallower breaths, maybe then she could get more air that way. “That’s where I’d like to be right now. The beach at Acapulco. How’d you like that?”
“It would be…very nice.”
“Damn straight. That’s what we’ll do when we get towed in. We’ll make reservations at the Royal Aztec…” He stopped speaking as the car shuddered again.
“You’re the best of them all,” Solange said. “No one was ever any better to me than you are. I will take care of you—if I can.” Then she hugged herself close to him, and he held her very tightly. He kissed her forehead, tasting her honey-pepper flavor, then listening to the moaning winds. He was starting to strain his breath through his teeth.
And around the stranded car the wind whispered like the voice of a little girl in a dream Wes had had a couple of nights ago. Come out. Come outside and play with me. Come out, come out…
…or I’ll come in…
ELEVEN
Palatazin brought the Falcon to a halt. “Wait a minute,” he said, staring up through the windshield; the wipers were turned to full-speed, the headlights on bright. “I thought I saw something.” What he thought he’d seen was a huge, dark shape up there amidst the rocks and trees through a quick break in the swirling, amber clouds. Now there was nothing, just sand spinning against the glass.
“What was it?” Gayle leaned forward from the back seat. “The castle?”
“I’m not sure. I just saw it for a second before the clouds closed up. I couldn’t tell very much except that it was big and way up on the mountain. It might’ve been a couple of miles from here, I don’t know. Wait! There!” He pointed. The clouds had broken again, and for an instant they all could see it quite clearly, its high turrets standing against a darkening gold sky. From this distance it looked to Palatazin much like the ruins atop Mount Jaegar. Yes, he thought. That’s the place. That’s where he’s hiding. At that height the vampire king would have an unobstructed panorama of L.A.; he could gloat as the lights went out in house after house. The castle looked as sturdy and impregnable as any fortress Palatazin had ever seen in the mountains of Hungary. Seeing it was one thing, he thought, reaching it was quite another thing entirely. The cold knot of tension that had formed in his stomach suddenly expanded, sending out chill tendrils into his arms and legs. He felt pitifully weak and frightened out of his wits.
“The wind’s getting worse,” Jo said in a tight, strained voice.
“Yes, I know.” Sand had been spinning across the road for fifteen minutes now, and Palatazin could see piles of it collecting in pockets between rocks. Higher up the clouds tumbled over each other like great yellow dogs hearing the dinner whistle. They closed again, sealing off the Kronsteen castle. The Falcon’s engine gave out a sudden wheeze and a tremble, and Palatazin revved it a couple of times. He looked at his watch and saw with horror that it was twenty minutes after five. With these thick clouds rolling in, darkness would fall within thirty minutes. The nagging thought that they would not make it to the castle in time now rang out in his brain like a clear clarion of warning. “We’re going to have to turn back,” he said finally.
There were no objections. Now the trick was finding a place to turn around. He drove on, conscious of the aged engine’s sputtering. Suddenly a wall of wind came roaring through the scrub trees to the right, parting them like a comb through hair. It hit the car like a bulldozer, forcing it toward the rocky lip of the road. Palatazin fought for control. Jo screamed as the car shuddered to the left-hand shoulder and started to totter over the edge; she could see toy houses with their red roofs below and toy cars scattered on black and gold ribbons. Nothing moved down there for as far as she could see.
Palatazin slammed the gearshift into first and wrenched up the parking brake. The wind roared on, carrying wild, twisting coils of sand down into Hollywood. Very carefully Palatazin put the Falcon in reverse and backed away from the edge, slowly releasing the brake.
“We’ll have to go up to find a place to turn,” he heard himself say. His voice was dry and thin. “Neither one of you should’ve come. I was a fool to let you.” He climbed further, looking for a cut in the trees or rocks that he could back the Falcon into. The storm was steadily worsening; another quarter-mile up the terrain was completely covered with blowing sand. It reminded him of the blizzards that had roared through Krajeck, particularly the storm that had been moaning outside the night his father had come home. A thought struck him like a blow to the temple, Did the vampires have any measure of control over the weather? If they did, this freak sandstorm would be an effective way to immobilize the city’s population. It would cut people off from each other, keep them confined to homes or offices. Planes wouldn’t be flying, and the sea would be thrashed into a frenzy as well. And driving? Palatazin realized they might not get down off this mountain alive. If the winds didn’t take them crashing over the edge, if the sand didn’t choke off the engine, if darkness didn’t fall too soon…He could feel the castle crouched above them, perhaps less than a half-mile away along this twisting, sand-slick road.
Something huge and gray suddenly leaped up onto the hood, its snarling face pressed close to the glass. Gayle said “Jesus!” and Jo grasped Palatazin’s arm. The thing looked more wolf than dog, but he could see the nail-studded collar and the tags around its neck. Its thick coat was full of sand, its eyes yellow and fierce. Over the sound of the wind, Palatazin could hear its low, menacing growls. The message was obvious. Palatazin saw other dogs slinking on the road ahead—a boxer, an Irish setter, a few mutts. They all shared the same glazed expressions of ferocity. So, he thought, the vampire king has made sure his fortress is well protected. Even if we could reach the castle, we’d be mangled by these dogs when we got out of the car. When Palatazin slowly drove on, the wolf-dog howled with rage and started scratching at the glass; it snapped repeatedly, as if trying to bite Palatazin’s hands on the steering wheel. In another moment he saw a space on the right large enough to turn the Falcon around in. The wolf-dog stayed crouched on the hood, its baleful eyes glowering into Palatazin’s until the car was turned back down the mountain. Then it leaped off and disappeared with the rest of the pack.
The Falcon chugged like a weary locomotive, winds buffeting it from all directions. Once the engine rattled and quit, and they were rolling down to Hollywood, but Palatazin kept trying the key and finally it caught again, wheezing like an old man with emphysema. He raced the darkness back toward Romaine Street, threading his way across Hollywood and Sunset Boulevards—both dotted with stranded cars—and finding some streets blocked by wrecks or dunes. The Falcon crossed a deserted Santa Monica Boulevard and made it about three more blocks before it staggered and stopped dead. Palatazin tried the engine several times, but now the battery was groaning. Sand filled the engine. They were stranded almost five blocks from the house, and night was falling fast.
The interior of the car was already stifling. “Can we run for it?” Gayle asked softly.
“I don’t know. It’s five blocks. Not so far maybe. Maybe too far.” He looked at Jo and then quickly turned away. Sand was already covering the windshield, sealing them in. It was as if they were being buried alive. “It’s a long way,” he said finally.
“What about these other houses?” Gayle asked. “Can’t we ask for shelter?”
“We could, yes. But do you see any lights? Any life? How do we know we won’t be stepping into a nest of vampires? How do we know some other poor souls won’t mistake us for vampires and try to kill us? My house is protected with the garlic and the crucifixes. These are just…waiting for invasion.”
“So what do we do? Sit here and suffocate?”
r /> “…or suffocate out there?” Palatazin pointed out. “The wind will slow us down. You’ll get more sand into your lungs than air, just like this car did. Just like all these other cars did. But no. We definitely cannot stay here. The vampires won’t be hampered by the storm because they don’t breathe. So…” He looked at Jo again and smiled weakly. “Shall we flip a coin?”
“Hell no!” Gayle said. “I’m not staying here!”
Jo shook her head. “We try to make it back.”
“All right then.” Five blocks, he thought. God, what a distance! He was going to have to leave the stakes, mallet, and holy water in the; trunk; there would be no way to carry them. No, he had to have the holy water at all costs. He took the keys out of the ignition and shrugged out of his coat, handing it to Jo. “Keep that up to your face,” he told her. “Both of you, remember to breathe through your mouth with your teeth gritted. I’m going to get something out of the trunk. When I knock on your window, Jo, I want you to step out and grasp my hand. When you touch me, knock on Miss Clarke’s window, and she’ll take hold of your shoulder. Then we’ll start to move. I doubt if we’ll be able to see very far out there. If one of us loses the others, don’t move from where you are. Just keep shouting and cover your face with your hands. Okay?”
They nodded.
He started to open the door and then stopped. The car vibrated with the force of the wind. He got the trunk key in position so he wouldn’t waste precious seconds fumbling. “All right,” he said. “I’m going.” He sat there for a few more seconds, then he stepped out of the car.
A blast of oven-hot wind seemed to suck him out. He got the door closed and pulled himself along the side of the car, his lower face tucked into the crook of his left arm. He couldn’t even take a fraction of a breath without sucking in sand. A crosscurrent of wind hit him behind the knees, knocking him to the ground. He began to crawl, his face flayed raw. He pulled himself around to the trunk, got the key in, and twisted. The trunk shot open. He found the cloth-wrapped vial and used the cloth to shield his mouth and nose, putting the vial in his back pocket. Then he struggled around to the other side of the car. The wind and sand nearly dragged him down.