7

REVELATION 3:10
I will keep thee from the hour

of them that dwell upon the earth.

~ * ~

"Up and at 'em, Beau," Louise told the little dog. "Time to move out." Beauregard's ears perked, though the cataract-filmed eyes never wavered. She scratched the tiny graying head, wondering how much he really heard.

This morning's hotel was the top apartment of a four-story walk-up in East Rogers Park in the fancier section along Sheridan Road just north of the park, not far from where she'd been a student at Senn High School. New sunlight blazed across its front room through the triple picture windows; the chilly air was warming and old Beau crawled from her lap and stretched unsteadily, working the stiffness from his pencil-thin legs. Copying him, Louise crossed her arms and massaged the night tension from her shoulders, then stared out the windows at the Lake Michigan shoreline and the calm, deep waters. Two miles south there would still be ice chunks bobbing in the colder waters of Montrose and Belmont Harbors, but if the weather stayed warm, the ice would disappear in another two days . . . she smiled. Warm weather at last! More important than that: shorter nights, longer days. More hours in which to . . . what? Louise shook her head and wandered back to the bedroom to gather her sleeping gear from the dusty bed. It would take another twenty minutes to pack up and haul the furniture away from the front door so they could leave.

Breakfast was a can of peaches for her and a packet of burger-like dog food for Beau. It wasn't until she automatically carried their trash to the kitchen that she realized they'd shared the night's hideaway with a corpse.

The peaches tried to come up but Louise locked her throat until the urge passed, then opened her clenched fist and dropped the garbage in the wastebasket. The dried-out body, curled in a fetal position, was crammed into the space between the refrigerator and stove by the back wall. Either the eyeballs and lids had rotted away or cockroaches—those indestructible insects—had feasted before moving on to a fresher kill. It was impossible to tell what had killed the person or whether it had been a man or woman—something Louise didn't care to know anyway. What counted was that they'd been lucky: the corpse had stayed a corpse.

Her scalp tightened at the enormity of her carelessness—in her haste to find shelter, she'd barricaded herself and Beau in an apartment she hadn't checked thoroughly, only glancing hurriedly through the rooms before dusk. Her luck had held—this time. Being trapped with a bloodsucker was unthinkable. How could she have done this?

Her legs carried her back to the bright front room before they began shaking. When she sank onto a once-plush leather sofa, Beau tilted his grizzled face toward her, then padded across the carpeting until he bumped her ankle, where he curled up with a contented snuffle. But even the comforting sunlight couldn't overthrow the knowledge of the cadaver one room away. The kitchen, she now realized, had no windows. She had stupidly not seen the body to begin with; it was even more unlikely she would have noticed it had it been intentionally covered by something to block out the sunlight, and she was alive this morning only by the wildest of odds—Jesus! She and Beau had developed a pattern this last year: wake, eat, and wander, always looking for better things to eat and better places to sleep. They stayed put only during the heavy snows when footprints made travel impossible. In the small buildings they frequented, it could be easy for the vampires to pinpoint the prolonged presence of warm flesh, so they moved on. And on. Easing into a comfortable routine with the coming of spring's longer hours and the thinning vampire population, Louise had pushed the travel time to the limit the last couple of weeks, stretching each day as far as she could.

Then . . . last night. How many other bodies hadn't she noticed over the last month?

She stared moodily at her roughened hands. Long-fingered, pianist's hands, her grandmother had always said. What would the old woman say now? These thin fingers had sewn canvas sleeping bags, hammered ten-penny nails and learned to load a rifle, even once used an ax to sever a night creature's head—back, she thought in disgust, in the days when she'd checked their sleeping quarters more carefully. Perhaps the constant running had become too much and she had developed an unconscious death wish . . . still, she'd strangle the dog and put a bullet through her own head before she'd become food for one of them.

Her gaze traveled to the bony wrist beneath her baggy sweatshirt. Maybe she and Beau just needed a rest, somewhere safe to call home for a couple of months. Or . . . why not? A home to safeguard over the summer and hibernate in during winter, when the frigid temperatures and snow— the earth's tattling white carpet—left no alternative but seclusion. A place in which to fatten up and where poor old Beauregard wouldn't have to bump into different furniture every night. But where? Louise rose jerkily and went back to the picture windows. From there, it was easy to see the city sprawling to the south through the glass, the hundreds of trees in Lincoln Park still bare of the season's coming growth. With each block the buildings grew, from small brownstone flats to the bigger buildings holding twenty-four, then forty-eight apartments, until the tall condominium complexes crowded along the curve of the Drive. Her eyes followed the sweep around the lake, then stopped on the far-off cluster of skyscrapers fringing downtown. Her brow furrowed.

Downtown. . . . Maybe the place she needed was in one of those huge office buildings, in some lawyer's suite with a thousand windows to let in the light, a newer one where the sealed glass was practically unbreakable. She and Beau could sleep in the center at night, where they couldn't be seen if one of those creatures crawled up the side of the building—or could they even climb that high?

The possibilities seemed suddenly endless: walls of windows; up as high and safe as she wanted. There were even sporting goods stores in the north loop, which meant easy access to supplies and warm gear. She looked again at her grimy, improbable survivalist's fingers, then back at the skyscrapers sitting silent sentinel over the city. Each past month had been a bleak little eternity; now, hope finally flared. If she, of all people—seventeen-year-old Louise Dorsett and a feeble dog almost as old as she was—had lived, maybe others had, too.

Nothing was impossible, right?

God knew that was certainly true.