A Matter Of Taste by Fred Saberhagen (ebook pc reader TXT) 📕

      Never mind, for now, the girl he was being forced to leave behind. He had to get away, to survive, if he was going to be of any help to anyone.

      He had emerged on the north face of the building, well into (he last daylight hour of a gray and misty, violently windy day. Steel and glass were slippery in their dampness, and the wind tugged at him erratically. He was going to need all of his diminished strength to keep himself from falling.

      He started down, feeling his way from one infinitesimal toehold and handgrip to the next.

      Tentatively he essayed a shape-change; but he could tell in an instant that it was not going to work. Daylight lingered still, and traces of the subtle drug persisted in his flesh. He was frozen in man-form. Well, then he would have to climb down in the shape of a man. He had managed more difficult feats in the past.

      Not much more difficult, though. And not often.

      The sides of the building, while extremely steep, yet deviated from the vertical by a few degrees, a deviation that very gradually increased toward the ground. Perhaps there were even a few breathing mountaineers who’d find the feat within the range of possibility. However that might be, a fearless though desperate vampire ought to be able to make the descent, clinging to damp and slippery glass and steel, where no merely breathing human would be likely to survive.

* * *

      Back in Mrs. Hassler’s apartment, John Southerland roamed from the front door to the rear, and back again. Both of the sentries were holding their positions. Something was up, something was going on over there at Uncle Matthew’s. John couldn’t actually see Uncle Matthew’s front door from Mrs. Hassler’s viewer; all the doors were slightly recessed from the corridor, which just cut off his view. He could see with certainty that Maule’s door was being steadily watched, or guarded, and he was becoming more and more firmly convinced that the watcher was nosferatu. Probably it was the figure’s abnormal stillness most of the time.

      Could it be the police? John doubted it. At this stage he had to assume that such continuous surveillance must be hostile.

      Minutes passed that seemed like hours. To his dismay, the unfamiliar vampires—the more John looked, the more certain he was of the classification of the watchers, front and back—maintained their vigil with perfect patience.

      John fretted, and thought, but he considered he had no choice but to stay where he was for a time. If these newcomers were friendly—that was a possibility, if Joe had ever gotten through to Mina Harker—then someone ought to be coming along soon to let him know what was going on. The chance that they were friendly did not seem great enough to require serious consideration.

      Should he try to call Joe again, leave another message to bring him up-to-date? Not yet, not with Mrs. Hassler listening. Maybe in a little while.

      Mrs. Hassler, quietly but thoroughly enjoying the excitement, had a suggestion.

      “Tell you what, young man. I’m planning to go down for my daily swim shortly—did you know we have a pool on the forty-fourth floor?—and I’ll look over the man in the front hall as I go. You know, casually. If I discover anything about him that I think you should know, I’ll call you from down there at poolside. So if my phone rings, answer it.”

      “Thanks. I’ll do that.”

      John hesitated, wanting to warn his helpful hostess to be careful. But at the same time he was desperate for information. In the terse bits of conversation he’d shared with Mrs. Hassler, he’d been gradually elaborating somewhat on his and Angie’s original story. The scenario as it now stood was based on certain unwelcome relatives of Mr. Maule having chosen this awkward time—awkward for unspecified reasons—to pay him a visit. Whether Mrs. Hassler believed this half explanation or not, she obviously loved the accompanying intrigue.

      John’s hostess retired into her bedroom, to emerge some five minutes later wearing a one-piece swimsuit half-covered by a kind of cape or robe, modestly concealing most of her heavy legs.

      “Ta ta, young man. See you soon!” And with an almost flirtatious wink she was gone, fearlessly out the front door. John, holding his breath at the viewer, nerving himself to rush out and try to help her if need be, saw her exchange brief neighborly smiles with the vampire sentry and march briskly on, her gay cape swaying.

* * *

      Angie, alone and terrified in Uncle Matthew’s bedroom, could feel her brain whirling giddily from the unknown dose he had prescribed and administered.

      Another hard blow came at the bedroom door, and she cried out in a low voice, knowing that with the next impact the lock was going to give way.

Chapter Eleven

      My revival in the deepest habitable level of that Italian earth-crevice, amid the ruins of that ancient Etruscan burial vault, was a slow process. Stubbornly my dazed senses refused to focus upon the problems at hand. My hands and knees trembled, and my brain and body ached until I was reminded of the mornings following the worst drinking bouts of my breathing days.

      And my memories on awakening, memories of those hours just before I had lost consciousness, were bizarre indeed—even for a vampire. What had that incredible, devilish, half-grown girl really said about me to her brother? If her remarks had indeed included the words I seemed to remember, then the children of Rome must be vastly more sophisticated than any I had encountered elsewhere.

      Well, I was still relatively new to the vampire profession. In the process of becoming accustomed to my new lifestyle, I had begun to believe that we nosferatu possessed complete immunity to such attacks. But the latest evidence showed that to be a dangerously optimistic view.

      Whatever the cause of my helpless lapse into unconsciousness, one thing was certain, that my sleep had not been a normal one. Looking back from the century in