The Vampire Murders: 10/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
The cries had come from the back of the store, and as they neared the location, it was obvious that the source was somewhere on the other side of the door labeled "Employees Only". Henderson pulled out his ID and pushed his way inexorably through the crowd.
"Police! Let me through!"
The crowd parted slowly for him, and Perry followed in Henderson's wake as he forced a path into the hallway beyond. People were bunched in front of the manager's office, and when Perry and Henderson arrived, Perry at once identified the screamer. A young woman was seated in a chair, her face in her hands. On the carpet, in the entrance of the manager's office lay a man.
Henderson dropped to one knee beside him and rested his fingers on the skin of his throat -- right beside, Perry noted with a shudder, two small punctures in the skin.
Henderson got to his feet.
"Dead?" Perry asked.
The police inspector nodded curtly and took out his phone once more. "This is turning into a really bad evening," he remarked.
**********
And now, Part 10:
Lois instinctively moved behind the heavy armchair as the door to her prison began to slide open.
She expected to see Brunner and his thugs waiting outside, but although the man standing in the doorway seemed somehow vaguely familiar, she couldn't quite place him. She and the newcomer looked at each other for several seconds, Lois striving to recall where she had seen him before.
He was a short slender dark man of indeterminate age -- not young, not old -- dressed in slightly worn jeans and a green shirt with the Cost Mart logo on the left breast. A light jacket hung open over it. His skin was brown and his hair and eyes were obsidian-black. The memory of the Native American crypt flashed through her mind, but with it came the awareness of how silly the whole idea was. A Native American vampire? Come on, Lois, let's get real! An employee of Cost Mart was real, and probably far more dangerous to her life and liberty than any vampire that ever lived. Or didn't live. Or whatever.
The man's eyes crinkled and his somewhat forbidding aspect was suddenly erased by an unexpectedly attractive and disarming smile. He held up empty hands as she eyed him distrustfully from her position behind the chair.
"Am I speaking to Miss Lane?" His voice was a deep baritone, and surprisingly pleasant, with the faintest hint of an accent, although she couldn't quite identify it.
"Yes."
"You needn't fear me," the newcomer said. "I am here to set you free. Come quickly. There is a great deal of excitement going on above stairs. If we move swiftly, you will be away before anyone discovers your absence." He stood back, indicating that she should exit into the hallway.
Lois hesitated, but there was really no choice. She could stay and face Brunner and his thugs, or take a chance with this guy, whoever he was.
"Who are you?" she asked, not really expecting an answer.
"You may call me a friend." From beneath his jacket, the newcomer produced her purse. "Who I am is unimportant, but I am no friend of Mr. Brunner or of his minions. Come. There may not be much time."
Lois picked up her coat from the back of the armchair almost absently, and stepped cautiously out into the hallway, still not completely certain that this was a good idea. But staying in that place wasn't any better, she pointed out to herself. Brunner certainly had no intentions of letting her go alive. Of course, this guy might be the thug that he'd given the job of disposing of her, but at least this way she had a fighting chance. In that room, she had none.
The wall slid shut behind her with a faint, final click. Well, whoever this guy was, she was committed. She couldn't go back in, no matter what. Not that she wanted to. Standing in the hallway, she watched her presumed rescuer warily.
The man had stepped back and now he glanced cautiously in both directions. "I suggest you put on your coat. The snow is still falling." He presented her with her bag as she slipped the item of clothing on. "You will need this. This way, if you please." Turning, he led the way down the corridor in the opposite direction from which she had come, hours before. Lois dithered for a split second and then followed. After all, what choice did she have?
The path her rescuer took led her down through several intersecting hallways and around numerous corners. Trying to keep track of the route left Lois slightly bewildered, but after the fifth -- or was it the sixth? -- turn, her guide stopped before a wide double door, similar to the doors on the storage rooms that she had investigated earlier on the floor above. He twisted the knob, and Lois could have sworn that she heard the snap of a breaking lock. The door swung open at his touch, showing an unlighted room beyond.
"Your way out is through here." He produced a flashlight. "Come."
She hesitated and then with a mental shrug, followed the stranger into the room. Her guide turned and carefully closed the doors, leaving the room in darkness, except for the circle of illumination provided by the flashlight.
It was a storage room. Wooden crates were stacked against one wall, almost invisible in the dimness.
"This way." He led the way directly across the room to the opposite wall, where another door broke the concrete surface. Lois's rescuer turned the very ordinary knob and pushed the door wide. Darkness met her gaze and he trained the light through the aperture. Lois discovered that she was looking out into the smuggling tunnel that she and Clark had explored the night before. Her guide stepped through the door and led the way into the tunnel. The door closed behind them.
It took only four or five minutes and they reached the ladder that led to the outer world of the Cost Mart parking lot. They paused, and Lois's mysterious acquaintance smiled, showing a flash of very white teeth that gleamed like milk in the pale illumination of the flashlight. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Lane. Go now, and may fortune be with you, but do not forget that for which you came."
"What --"
"The men of this place deal in dreams and death," he said. "Dreams for the lost." His obsidian eyes met hers, and he laid a small, plastic package in the palm of her hand. "Give this to your flying friend. Tell him he must seal up the tunnel, and stop the ones who use it. If you do not, great evil will be released upon your city."
He stepped back, indicating with one hand that she should ascend the ladder. "Take this," he said. "You will need it."
Lois found herself accepting the flashlight. "But, where are you --"
Her rescuer took another step backwards. Lois glanced up the ladder at the faintly lighter circular opening, through which occasional snowflakes drifted. She turned to look back at her companion, but now no one stood there. He had vanished silently into the dimness of the smuggling tunnel and the light failed to reveal him anywhere.
Her spine prickling, Lois hurriedly dropped the packet into the pocket of her coat, put a hand on the chill, damp metal of the ladder and stepped quickly onto the bottom rung. From the depths of the tunnel, she heard a soft laugh, and somewhere, the faintest flutter of what might have been wings.
**********
The snow was indeed coming down, Lois discovered, as she emerged into the open. The surface of the parking lot was inches deep in half-melted slush. Within a very few minutes, her feet were soaked and chilled. And fifteen minutes later, after a fruitless search for her car, she succumbed to a mild attack of nerves, as well as temptation and annoyance. She was tired, cold and definitely creeped out by the events of the last several hours. Especially, for obvious reasons, the last half hour. She kept fighting the urge to look over her shoulder, expecting to see a slender, dark man with the blackest eyes she had ever seen, and an unbelievably white smile.
She closed her eyes, shoved her hands into the pockets of her coat and took a deep breath.
"Help! Superman!"
The swoosh of the arriving superhero was the most welcome sound she had heard in hours. She opened her eyes to see his red boots hit the ground in front of her. Was it her imagination, or was there a trace of anxiety in his expression?
"Lois! Are you all right?"
"Yeah." The sense of relief made her feel almost light headed. She leaned backwards rather limply against a battered, blue Ford and pulled her coat tighter around her torso. "I shouldn't have called you, but I can't find my car, and --"
"Your car is over at Centennial Park," Superman said. "Henderson has had the whole Twelfth Precinct looking for you. Everybody has been looking for you for hours. Where have you been?"
Lois shivered. "Could you take me home?" she requested, mortified that her voice had begun to shake. "It's been a very long, weird day."
"I think I should take you to the Twelfth Precinct," Superman said. "Henderson found a body in the manager's office in Cost Mart, and his men found two more in the park, not far from your car. Where have you been?"
"A body?" Lois said faintly, fixing on the first part of the sentence. "He said there was a lot of excitement going on above stairs."
"He?" Superman asked sharply.
"The guy who rescued me," Lois said.
"*Who* rescued you?" Superman asked.
"I don't know," Lois said. "He didn't tell me his name. But he gave me something to give to you." She removed the plastic packet from her pocket and laid it in his hand. It was filled, she saw now, with a fine, white powder.
Superman looked at it and his eyebrows snapped up. "He gave you this? Where did he get it?"
"He said I shouldn't forget what I came for," Lois said. "He said the people there deal in dreams for the lost, and death. I thought that was a funny way to say it, but --"
"Sort of, I guess," Superman said. "He was right, though. I'm pretty sure this is almost pure, uncut heroin."
Lois nodded soberly. "I figured it was probably something like that." She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "Things didn't go quite like I expected tonight."
"Let's get you inside," Superman said abruptly. "You can tell me what happened when you feel better." He reached out to scoop her into his arms and leaped into the air. Barely five minutes later, he was setting her on her feet in the lobby of the Twelfth Precinct.
**********
William Henderson lowered his cell phone from his ear and glanced at Perry White. The editor of the Daily Planet was, Henderson saw with amusement, taking quick notes on a notepad that he had apparently appropriated from the office of the murdered man. Once a newsman, always a newsman, Henderson thought. Perry hadn't lost his reporting instincts simply because he had graduated to editor of the most prestigious newspaper in Metropolis a decade before. He moved over to the editor and got his attention.
"Got a call from my office," he said. "Superman just showed up at the Precinct with Lois. She's all right."
Perry blew out his breath in a gusty sigh. "Did they say what happened?"
"Nope. Nobody's had a chance to interview her yet. You want to take off and find out?"
Perry shook his head. "I'll stick around until the kid from the office gets here. You're sure that's Brunner?"
"We'll get an official identification later, but, yeah -- his secretary says it's him, and she should know." Henderson resisted the temptation to jam his hands into his pockets and kept his expression carefully blank.
"Drained of blood --" Perry lowered his voice. "I don't believe in vampires, but this almost makes me have second thoughts."
"Yeah." Henderson shrugged, and then nodded toward the hallway. "I think your man is here."
Perry followed his gaze, noting the latest transfer to the evening shift, Harry Williams, had arrived. "Over here, Williams!"
Williams hurried over to Perry and Henderson. "I got here as fast as I could, Chief."
"Yeah. I've got the background. Stick around 'til they're finished here." Perry glanced at Henderson. "Mind if I get my keys back now?"
"Huh? Oh." Henderson produced the keys to Perry's car. "Here you go. I'm glad Lane's all right. If she knows anything about this business, I expect to hear from her tomorrow."
"You will." Perry turned to Williams. "Bottom line: that's the manager of this Cost Mart in there. Secretary found him dead on the floor of his office. Looks like he's been drained of blood."
Williams eyebrows rose almost to his hairline and Henderson saw him swallow convulsively. "Has this got something to do with that vampire story floating around?"
Perry grunted. "Your guess is as good as mine. Just get the facts for the Planet. Remember. Hard facts, Williams. Not sensationalism. I get enough of that from Ralph."
"Yes, sir." The man stiffened almost to military attention, Henderson noted with dry amusement.
"See you later, Bill." Perry nodded to Henderson and departed. Henderson turned back to his people. This evening was turning out to be a pain in the rear. Now all he needed was to come face to face with a real vampire or something. How would he be supposed to report that?
Dismissing the bit of mordant humor as foolishness, Henderson turned back to his job. Whoever had murdered his men might very well be behind the murder of the Cost Mart manager. He intended to find out who that somebody might be.
**********
tbc
