"Close the door, will you?"
When she heard it close she turned and held her bloody finger up to his lips. "Here," she whispered. "I know you need it."
He turned his head and stepped back. "No!"
Lacey stepped closer. "I thought we settled this last night!" she hissed. "This is something you need and something I want to give. Don't do this, Unk. I'm already cut and bleeding." She pushed her finger toward his mouth. "Take what you need."
With a groan he grabbed her hand and pressed her finger to his lips. He sucked hungrily for an instant, then pushed her hand away.
"Enough!" The word sounded as if it had been ripped from deep inside him.
"You're sure?"
He looked away and nodded. "Look . . . I'm going out. I need to do some reconnoitering, see if I can locate a nest or two."
"Want us to come along?" She opened the medicine cabinet and found a tin of Band-Aids.
He shook his head. "Better if I do this alone. I'll be less noticeable solo." He glanced at her, then away again. "Lend me the car keys."
"Carole has them."
"Can you get them for me?"
"Just ask—"
"Please?"
Lacey bit back a remark. She wrapped a Band-Aid around her finger and returned to the front room.
"Is everything all right?" Carole asked. Her eyes darted from Lacey's face, to her bandaged finger then to her eyes again.
"He needs the car to go hunt up some targets. Where are the keys?"
Carole fished them out of her sweatsuit pants pocket. "Alone?"
"He thinks it'll be better that way."
Lacey took the keys back to the bathroom. "I don't understand you," she whispered. "I thought we straightened this out last night."
"We didn't." His voice was barely audible. "I said we'd see."
"Okay. We've seen. And it was quick and simple. Now tell me, why wouldn't you get keys yourself?"
"Because ... because Carole's in there. One look at me and she'd know."
"So?"
"Let's just drop it."
"No. Tell me."
"Because . . . because I can't bear being in her presence after doing this. I feel so ... so diminished." He squeezed her hand. "Got to go."
You poor, poor man, she thought, staring at him. You've got it bad, don't you. And this is tearing you apart.
He squeezed past her and stepped into the front room. He turned right, heading for the rear of the bungalow.
"Good-bye, Carole," he said in a choked voice without looking at her. "I'll be back around sunrise."
Lacey leaned against the sink until she heard the back door open and close, then she returned to the front room. "Carole," she said. "We've got to talk."
JOE . . .
Standing in the deep moon shadows, he watched the church from afar, listened to the hymns echoing from within, saw the daylight-bright glow gushing through the open front doors, and yearned to go inside.
But that was not to be. The huge crucifix hanging over the sanctuary and the dozens of crosses on the walls—crosses he'd helped fashion with his own hands—would blind him now, make his presence there an ongoing agony. That part of his life was over. The simple comfort of kneeling in a pew and letting the cool serenity of the church ease the cares and tensions from his soul would be forever denied him. And as for saying Mass . . .
The longing pushed a sob to the back of his throat but he forced it down. In his other existence he might have felt tears running down his cheeks, but they remained dry. The undead don't have tears. Their hair doesn't grow. They don't progress or regress, they simply are.
He was about to turn away when movement to his right caught his eye. His night vision picked out a figure—balding, with a ripe gut bulging over his belt—leaning behind a tree.
Joe, it seemed, wasn't the only one watching the church.
He bent into a crouch and moved a few yards closer. He caught the flash of a Vichy earring.
Not surprising that the undead would want to keep an eye on the church. They had to be furious and more than a little unsettled by these defiant "cattle."
With a start Joe realized that they might be watching for him.
Of course. Franco had expected him to rise from the dead in the rectory and start feeding on the parishioners. He must know by now that that hadn't happened. He'd want to know why. Never in a thousand years would he guess the truth.
Franco had to be baffled. His beautiful plan had gone awry. More than awry, it had gone bust. He had to be furious.
Joe cradled the thought, letting it warm him, feeling the best he'd felt all night.
He found a place between a couple of waist-high shrubs where he could watch the watcher without being seen. He settled onto the ground. Despite his lightweight shirt and shorts, the damp earth and cool breeze didn't chill him. He felt perfectly comfortable. Extremes of temperature didn't seem to bother him.
What else wouldn't bother him? He had much to learn about, this new existence, this altered body he'd be wearing into the future.
The future . . . what did that mean anymore? How long could he exist? Would he go on indefinitely like the true undead? And beyond that hazy future, what of his salvation? What of his soul? Did he still have one?
The possibility jolted him. What if his soul had departed after Devlin had torn him up? Was he an empty vessel now, marked and doomed to wander the earth like Cain, offensive to the sight of God and man?
Joe shifted his gaze to the dark blotch of the graveyard to the left of the church. He could almost pick out Zev's grave among the shadows.
Zev, he thought. Where are you, old friend?