Blood Pact

through his hair. "And what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

    "It's a line from a children's book. I used it to describe him last spring, when we met.”

    "Great, just great. You're taking a literary trip down memory lane and Fitzroy's buggered off." He took another step toward the door, then changed his mind, whirled, and stomped back to her side. "Vicki, that's it. We're out of here." Feelings of betrayal outweighed worry and concern. "If Fitzroy's able to go running off like some kind of bloodsucking avenging angel, he can manage without us around and . . .”

    All at once, he realized she wasn't listening to him. Which was, in itself, not particularly unusual but her expression, pointed fixedly down the flashlight beam, was one he'd seen on her face only once before, about an hour and a half before when they'd opened the metal coffin and Donald Li had opened his eyes.

    The flesh between his shoulder blades crawling, he spun around.

    Standing in the doorway, was a parody of a man.

    She had told him to rescue Donald. She had not mentioned the people standing beyond the box, so number nine ignored them.

    He shuffled forward.

    Celluci's right hand came up and sketched a quick sign of the cross. "That girl, the witness the night the boy was killed, she said that he was strangled by a dead man.”

    The creature continued to shuffle forward, the stink of it growing with every step.

    A sane man would run. But his feet and legs refused to obey. "This has got to be the thing that killed the boy.”

    "Odds are good," Vicki agreed, her voice sounding as though she'd forced it through clenched teeth. "So what are you going to do? Arrest it?”

    "Oh, very funny." Without taking his eyes off the lurching obscenity, he moved sideways until his shoulder came in contact with hers; the warmth of another life suddenly important. "What do you suppose it wants?”

    He felt her shrug. "I'm afraid to guess.”

    It arrived at the isolation box and reached out for the latch.

    "Fuck that!" Barely aware he was moving, Celluci charged forward. After what they'd gone through to save Donald Li, after what Donald Li had gone through, he'd be damned if he'd let the kid be dragged back into the ranks of the undead. Ranks of the undead . . . Jesus! I sound like the cut line on a made-for-TV movie. He rocked to a halt at the end of the box and bellowed, "Go on!
    Get away from there!”

    It ignored him.

    "God damn you, I said get away!" He didn't remember pulling his gun, but there it was in his hand. "Just back away from the box!
    Now!”

    Finally recognizing some sort of threat, it turned its head and looked right at him.

    * * *
    Get Donald. Don't let anything stop you.

    Number nine stared at the man by the box. The voice had held command, but the words had not been words he had to obey.

    Don't let anything stop you.

    The words were not enough to stop him. The man could be ignored.

    He turned his attention back to the latch, trying to get his fingers to close.

    The worst of it wasn't the grave-gray of the skin, lips and fingertips greenish-black, nor was it the line of staples across the forehead or even the obvious signs of the triumph of decay. The worst of it was that there was someone in there, that not only an intelligence but a personality existed within the ruin.

    Trembling violently with horror and pity and revulsion in about equal proportion, Celluci braced his gun with his left hand and, whispering a "Hail Mary" through dry lips, pulled the trigger. The first shot missed. The second creased the back of the creature's skull with enough force to spin it around and throw it over the stainless steel curve of the isolation box. He never got the chance to fire a third.

    The blow caught him just below the shoulder, knocking him into the trio of oxygen tanks lined up under the window. He lost his grip on the gun, was vaguely aware of it skittering away across the floor, and saw Vicki charging around the end of the box, flashlight raised like a club.

    Vicki had watched Celluci advance on the creature with a curious detachment. It was as though, when she'd seen it appear in the doorway and realized both what it was and what it wasn't, an overload switch had been tripped and she could no longer react, only wait. Her mouth had moved in response to comments made, but her mind had been disconnected. After the last few days of constant internal turmoil, charges and countercharges and just general hysteria, the peace and