Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

quivering, out of the shed and through the passage that led to the other shed where the Jeep ought to be parked. The Jeep was there. Gliddon wedged the encased painting into the back seat, then sprang into the driver’s seat and started the engine with a roar.

      The Jeep bounced out of the shed and away into darkness, following a route that twisted among dimly visible boulders and over tiny hills. Next Gliddon headed down into a breakneck ravine that took long minutes to work through, at walking speed, even with the four wheel drive. At the bottom end of this ravine a small stream murmured almost invisibly. Otherwise the night had grown quiet; so far, there was no pursuit. Tires splashed, and then the Jeep was working its way uphill again. Gliddon drove out of the rough at last on the old road, not far from the point where the punks’ cars had been stalled. Only a few more miles and he’d be on highway. Then he’d head south. He had in mind a place or two where it ought to be possible to steal another plane.

      He felt it was safe to use the headlights now. As soon as they came on they showed him a solitary figure ahead, walking along the primitive road in the same direction he was driving. This figure too was small and slight, but it had on a shirt, and its hair was light in color. As the Jeep slowly overtook it from the rear, it turned. The pale eyes did not squint in the headlights. Numbly Gliddon recognized Pat O’Grandison’s dazed, childish face and bloody mouth.

      But Gliddon had begun by now to regain his nerve. He was able to believe again that the world was manageable. If tonight’s events hadn’t beaten him yet, there was no way they were going to.

      It wouldn’t really be practical to try to finish someone quickly by running over them, on this twisting, humpy, low-speed road. Especially not on a night like this, when people who had looked finished kept coming back.

      Calmly watching the Jeep approach, the kid stuck out his thumb, hitchhiking. Well, why not? Gliddon saw that somehow, and it was against all sense, the kid had even managed to pick up and repack the knapsack that Gliddon had emptied onto the earthen floor during the search.

      Gliddon slowed the Jeep, meanwhile feeling with one hand for his pistol. It was gone. He must have dropped it somewhere. Never mind, there were plenty of other ways. But he’d rather not delay for a killing until he’d got a few more miles on his way.

      He stopped the Jeep beside the waiting boy. “Want a ride, kid? Get in.”

      The kid didn’t even appear to recognize Gliddon. “Thanks,” he acknowledged, and got in quite calmly, just as if this were afternoon on the Interstate somewhere. He slipped out of his knapsack and dropped it on the floor, after noting that the back seat was pretty well filled with a huge package. “I’m headed for California.”

      “Me too,” said Gliddon, and eased the vehicle ahead, tires gripping the edges of an old rut, scraping around a rock. Maybe, just maybe, his luck was starting to turn a little for the good.

* * *

      In the weeks since he had succeeded in inducing the girl to transform him into a vampire, Delaunay Seabright had reveled in the new keenness of his senses, among other things; and he had discovered that they remained most usefully acute when he retained the form of man. Thus it was that he was walking on two human feet when he moved stealthily into the aircraft shed. In the shed there was much more light than his eyes now needed, an electric glare streaked with shadow, spilling from a battery lantern that someone had dropped and left on the dirt floor.

      The Cessna was almost at the opened doors. It looked wrecked, with its cargo compartment door standing open and one blade of its wooden propeller broken to half its length. But Seabright gave that little attention. Directly in front of the plane, the figure of a lean man dressed in black, turned in profile to Seabright, was down on one knee. The man, head bent, was giving his full attention to something on the earthen floor. Seabright could not see his face at first, only his white and bony hands, sifting the dry dust.

      Even though Seabright continued to advance into the shed, one step and then another, the kneeling man did not look up. Surely anyone of even moderate alertness would have by now sensed his presence … then with a quiet shock the realization came that the kneeling man knew Seabright had entered the shed, but simply did not care.

      Seabright advanced yet another step. He now had, or thought he had, an understanding now of what his dark-garbed visitor was, if not of who. For some time now Seabright had known it was practically inevitable that sooner or later he must encounter one or more of the Old Ones—that was how he had thought of them, when in private thought he had made his plans. It had taken him years of research into the ancient and the arcane to convince himself of the reality of vampires, and to be able to recognize, however belatedly, that the girl called Annie was what some of the old books called nosferatu. He was not at all sure what the others, when and if he met them, would be like. Surely they were not all mad, as the girl had been. In his heart Seabright expected that they would prove to be not all that essentially different from breathing people—manageable, for the most part, by someone like himself, once he had grasped what really made them tick.

      He would not submit to being ignored, and now he moved forward yet another step. First he would make sure that his own credentials were established, and then…

      The kneeling figure in dark clothing at last