Midnight Mass

A foul miasma of rot engulfed Joe when he opened the door. The stairwell was well lit but the space beyond the door was dark as a tomb.

How appropriate, he thought.

His night vision was extraordinary but it wasn't up to this, so he stepped through and found a light switch on the wall. The hallway was strewn with office furniture. He began searching room to room. The first two were filled with somnolent get-guards stretched out on mattresses and futons, but Franco was not among them. He looked down the hall and saw a form stretched out before a doorway. Could be a dead victim, but if it was a get-guard . . .

It was. That could only mean Franco was inside. Joe picked up the pistol and machete at the guard's side and tossed them down the hall. Then he tried the door. Locked. He reared back and kicked it in.

There, in the center of the otherwise empty room with boarded-up windows, a four-poster bed sat like a ship becalmed on a still dark sea.

And in that bed .. . Joe recognized the big blond hair and mustache, the sharp angle of the nose. A burst of fury like nothing he'd ever experience took hold of him. He wanted to run down the hallway, find that machete, and start hacking away at this worthless cluster of cells. But no killing blows. Just slicing off small pieces, one at a time . . .

Joe shook it off. These dark impulses were getting stronger. Had to stick to the plan.

"Franco!" he shouted as he stepped over the get-guard. "Franco, I've got something to show you!"

Franco lay on his back in gray silk suit pants and a glossy white, loose-sleeved shirt that reminded Joe of a woman's blouse. Slowly he pivoted his head toward Joe. His eyes widened in surprise as his lips formed the word, Who?

"We'll get to that in a minute."

He lifted the big vampire onto his shoulder, something that would have been a back-wrenching task a week ago; but now, with his semi-undead strength, he found it easy. Franco struggled but his movements were weak, futile. The get-guard at the door clutched at him as he passed but didn't have a prayer of restraining him.

Joe moved down the hall, kicking in each door he passed, shouting, "Hey! I've got your daddy and I'm going to send him to his final reward. Try and stop me!"

Back in the stairwell he started up the flight to the Observation Deck but stopped halfway. He put Franco down and let him slump on the concrete steps.

"Who are you?" Franco rasped.

"Am I that easy to forget?" Joe said. "It was only a week ago—a week ago today, as a matter of fact."

He heard something scrape against the concrete under Franco. He flipped him over and saw the leathery tips of his wings struggling to emerge through the slits in his shirt. Joe pulled off his backpack and unzipped it. Rays of bright white light shot from the opening.

Blinking in the glare, Joe reached in and found the foam-rubber padding Carole had duct-taped to the lower end of his silver cross. Even through the padding he felt its heat. Averting his eyes he pulled out the cross and slammed it against one of the emerging wings. A hiss of burning flesh, a puff of acrid smoke as Franco writhed and let out a hoarse scream. Then the other wing— with the same results.

He returned the cross to the back pack and zipped it. He blinked to regain his vision; when it cleared he looked down at Franco's back. The wing tips were now smoldering lumps of scar tissue. He turned as he heard the door from the eighty-fifth floor hallway swing open. Members of Franco's get-guard began to crawl into the stairwell.

Good.

He grabbed the gasping, whimpering Franco and turned him onto his back. The vampire stared at Joe's face, his expression terrified and confused.

"I'll refresh your memory, Franco. You allowed something called Devlin to lunch on me." Joe's anger flared again as he recalled his terror, his helplessness, and the searing pain of having his throat ripped open. "Remember?" He heard his voice growing louder. "Told me I'd soon be just like him. Remember? " He grabbed Franco by the neck and drew his face close. "Remember?"

He was shouting now and he wanted to rip Franco's head off.

No. Not yet.

He looked down and saw that the get-guards had reached the steps and were crawling up, their progress slow, tortured.

"Come on, guys," he said. "Move it. I haven't got all day."

Damn right. He glanced at his watch. He had maybe twenty, twenty-five minutes before he became as weak as they.

He turned back to Franco and saw that a light had dawned in the undead's eyes—realization, but not belief.

"The priest?" he whispered in a voice like tiny claws scratching stone. "You? No ..."

"Yes!" Joe heard the word hiss out like escaping steam. "The priest. Killing me wasn't good enough. You had to condemn me to an eternity of depravity, rob me of every shred of dignity, undo every scrap of good I'd done in my entire life. At least that was your plan. But it didn't work."

"How?" The word was an exhalation.

"I'm not even sure myself. All I know is this is how it works out in the end: I lose, but you lose too."

He flinched at a deafening report and the spang of a bullet ricocheting off the concrete above his head. Another shot and this time the bullet dug into his hip with a painful sting.

He stood and faced them, spreading his arms. "Go ahead. It won't matter. I'm one of you."

Not true. He'd never be one of them, but no reason they shouldn't suffer some confusion and dismay in their final minutes.

More shots. Most were misses because their weak, wavering hands were unable to aim, but a few hit home. He jerked with the impacts, felt the heat and pain of their entries, but it was nothing he couldn't bear. Finally they gave it up. He smiled at the alarm in their faces.

He turned to Franco and lifted him in his arms. "Let's go."

"Where?"

"To see the sun. Don't you miss it? We're too late for sunrise, but it promises to be a beautiful day."

Franco grabbed Joe's shirt and pulled on it. A feeble gesture. But Joe was surprised to see a nasty grin stretch his thin lips.

"You idiot! Devlin was my get! That makes you my get as well. When I die, you die!"

"I know," Joe said, returning a grin he hoped was just as nasty: "I'm counting on that."

Franco's jaw dropped open. "N-no! You can't! You—"

"I can. Because I don't want to exist like this."

Joe pushed through the door at the top of the steps and emerged into the green-tiled atrium by the elevators. Sunlight, searingly bright, blazed through the huge windows of the enclosed observation area that lay a few steps up and beyond. Only a six-foot swath, no more than two feet wide, penetrated the atrium.

I'm here. I've done it.

Amazing what someone can do when they don't care if they live or die, he thought. But they can achieve so much more, achieve the seemingly impossible, when they're looking to die.

He forced himself to look at that swath of direct light. That was where Franco would meet his end, sealing Joe's fate as well. But first he'd wait for the get-guards to arrive. He wanted as many as possible on camera when Franco bought it.

CAROLE . . .

Carole's stomach clenched as she stared at the monitors. "What is he doing?" "Just what he said he would," Lacey replied. "Getting as many get-guards onscreen before he pushes Franco into the sunlight."

"But there's a whole stairwell full of guards. Too many of them. He's letting them get too close. Why doesn't he have the cross out?"

"What can they do? After that display in the stairwell they know they can't shoot him."

"But they have those machetes."

"So? They can barely lift them. Don't worry, Carole. He's got them beat." Carole wasn't so sure. A lucky swing from a machete could sever an Achilles tendon, or worse, a higher swing could catch Joseph's hamstrings. He wouldn't be able to stand then. He'd go down and they'd swarm over him. One of them might be strong enough to behead him ...