About twenty minutes later, the light in Debbie's room clicked on. I knocked softly on the gla.s.s with my bare knuckles, then knocked again a little harder.

Footsteps approached.

Debbie opened the curtains a little and stared out, confused. It took her a few seconds to look down and notice me. When she did, she almost collapsed with surprise.

"Open the window," I said, mouthing the words clearly in case she couldn't hear me. Nodding, she dropped to her knees and shoved up the lower pane of gla.s.s.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. "What are you holding on to?"

"I'm floating on air," I joked.

"You're crazy," Debbie said. "You'll slip and fall."

"I'm totally safe," I a.s.sured her. "I'm a good climber."

"You must be freezing," she said, spotting my feet. "Where are your shoes?

Come in, quick, before you -"

"I don't want to come in," I interrupted. "I climbed up because... well... I..." I took a deep breath. "Is the offer still on?"

"What offer?" Debbie asked.

"The offer of a kiss," I said.

Debbie blinked, then smiled. "You are crazy." She laughed.

"One hundred percent crazy," I agreed.

"You went to all this trouble just for that?" she asked.

I nodded.

"You could have knocked on the door," she said.

"I didn't think of that." I smiled. "So how about it?"

"I suppose you deserve one," she said, "but quickly, okay?"

"All right," I agreed.

Debbie stuck her head out. I leaned forward, heart beating, and pecked her lips.

She smiled. "Worth coming up for?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. I was shaking, and it wasn't from the cold.

"Here," she said. "Here's another one."

She kissed me sweetly, and I almost lost my grip on the wall.

When she moved away, she was smiling mysteriously. In the reflection of the dark gla.s.s, I saw myself grinning like an idiot.

"See you tomorrow, Romeo," she said.

"Tomorrow," I sighed happily. As the window shut and the curtains closed, I climbed down, delighted with myself. I practically bounced back to the hotel. I was almost at the door before I remembered my shoes. Hurrying back, I retrieved them, shook the snow off, and shoved them on.

By the time I got to the hotel, I had regained my composure. I opened the door of my room and entered. Evra was watching TV. He was focused on the screen and barely noticed me coming in.

"I'm back," I said, taking off my coat. He didn't reply. "I'm back!" I repeated, louder.

"Um," he grunted, waving distractedly at me.

"That's a great att.i.tude," I said. "I thought you'd be interested in how the night went. I'll know better next time. In the future, I'll just -"

"Have you seen the news?" Evra asked quietly.

"It may surprise you to learn, young Evra Von," I said sarcastically, "that they don't show newsreels at the movies anymore. Now do you want to hear about my date or not?"

"You should watch this," Evra said.

"Watch what?" I asked, irritated. I walked around behind him and saw it was a news program. "The news?" I laughed. "Turn it off, Evra, and I'll tell you about - ".

"Darren!" Evra snapped in a very unusual tone. He looked up at me, and his face was a mask of worry. "You should watch this," he said again, slowly this time, and I realized he wasn't kidding.

Sitting down, I studied the TV screen. There was a picture of the outside of a building on it, then the camera dissolved to an interior shot and scanned around the walls. A caption told viewers that the photographs Were from stock footage, which meant they'd been filmed sometime in the past. A reporter was babbling on about the building.

"What's the big deal?" I asked.

"This is where they found the bodies," Evra said softly.

"What bodies?"

"Watch," he said.

The camera came to rest in a dark room that looked the same as all the others, held on the scene for a few seconds, then dissolved back to a view of the building's exterior. The caption told us that these new picture had been shot earlier that day. As I watched, several policemen and doctors came out of the building, pushing stretchers, each of which held a motionless object covered by a body bag.

"Are those what I think they are?" I asked quietly.

"Corpses," Evra confirmed. "Six so far. The police are still searching the building."

"What does it have to do with us?" I asked uneasily.

"Listen." He turned up the sound.

A reporter was talking into the camera now, live, explaining how the police found the bodies - a couple of teenagers had stumbled over them while they were exploring the deserted building as a dare - and when, and how the search was progressing. The reporter looked pretty stunned.

An anchorman in the studio asked the reporter a question about the bodies, to which she shook her head.

"No," she said, "the police aren't giving out names, and won't until the relatives of the deceased have been notified."

"Have you learned any more about the nature of their deaths?" the anchorman asked.

"No," the reporter replied. "The police have blocked the flow of information.

We only have the early reports to go on. The six people - we don't know if they're men or women - appear to be victims of a serial killer or some sort of sacrificial cult. We don't know about the last two bodies brought up, but the first four all shared the same bizarre wounds and conditions."

"Could you explain once again what those conditions were?" the anchorman asked.

The reported nodded. "The victims - at least the first four - have slit throats, which seem to be the means by which they were killed. In addition, the bodies appear - and I must stress that this is an early, unverified report - to have been drained of all their blood."

"Possibly sucked out or pumped dry?" the anchorman suggested.

The reporter shrugged. "As of the moment, n.o.body can answer that, except the police." She paused. "And, of course, the murderer."

Evra switched the sound off but left the picture on.

"See?" he said softly.

"Oh, no," I gasped. I thought of Mr. Crepsley, who'd been out alone every night since we arrived, prowling the city for reasons he wouldn't reveal. I thought of the six bodies and the reporter's and anchorman's comments: " drained of all their blood."

"Possibly sucked out or pumped dry."

"Mr. Crepsley," I said. And for a long time I gazed in silence at the screen, not able to say anything more.

CHAPTER TEN.

I paced furiously around the hotel room, hands clenched into fists, swearing angrily, Evra watching mutely.

"I'm going to kill him," I finally muttered. "I'll wait for day, pull back the curtains, drive a stake through his heart, chop his head off, and set him on fire."

"You don't believe in taking chances, do you?" Evra tried to joke. "I suppose you'll scoop his brains out, too, and stuff the s.p.a.ce inside his head with garlic."

"How can you make jokes at a time like this?" I howled. Evra hesitated. "It might not have been him."

"Come off it!" I barked. "Who else could it have been?"

"I don't know."

"The blood was sucked out of them!" I shouted.

"That's what the reporters think," Evra said. "They weren't certain."

"Maybe we should wait," I huffed. "Wait for him to kill another five or six, huh?"

Evra sighed. "I don't know what we should do," he said. "But I think we should have proof before we go after him. Chopping a person's head off is kind of final. If we find out later we were mistaken, there's no going back. We can't glue his head back on and say, 'Sorry, all a big mistake, no hard feelings.'"

He was right. Killing Mr. Crepsley without proof would be wrong. But it had to be him! Those nights out, acting so strangely, not telling us what he was doing - it all added up.

"There's something else," Evra said. I glanced down at him. "Let's say Mr.

Crepsley is the killer."

"I have no problem accepting that." I grunted.

"Why would he do it?" Evra asked. "It's not his style. I've known him longer than you have, and I've never seen or heard of him doing anything like this. He's not a killer."

"He probably killed when he was a Vampire General," I said. I had told Evra about my conversation with Gavner Purl.

"Yes," Evra agreed. "He killed evil vampires, who deserved to be killed. What I'm saying is, if he did kill these six people, maybe they had to be killed, too.

Maybe they were vampires."

I shook my head. "He gave up being a Vampire General years ago."

"Gavner Purl could have persuaded him to join again," Evra said. "We don't know anything about the Vampire Generals or how they work. Maybe that's why Mr. Crepsley came here."

It sounded halfway reasonable, but I didn't believe it.

"Six evil vampires on the loose in one city?" I asked. "What are the odds against that?"

"Who knows?" Evra said. "Do you know how an evil vampire behaves? I don't, maybe they form gangs."

"And Mr. Crepsley wiped them out by himself?" I said. "Vampires are tough to kill. He'd have no problem killing six humans, but six vampires? No way."

"Who says he was alone?" Evra asked. "Maybe Gavner Purl was with him.

Maybe there's a bunch of Vampire Generals in town."

"Your argument's getting weaker by the second," I commented.

"Possibly," Evra said, "but that doesn't mean I'm wrong. We don't know, Darren. You can't kill Mr. Crepsley on a hunch. We have to wait. Think about it and you'll see I'm right."

I calmed down and thought it over. "Okay," I sighed. "He's innocent until proven guilty. But what should we do? Sit back and pretend nothing's happened?

Report him to the police? Ask him straight to his face?" "If we were at the Cirque Du Freak," Evra mused, "we could tell Mr. Tall and leave it in his hands."

"But we're not at the Cirque," I reminded him.