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  “Well,” I said with a shrug, “recording is one thing and hypnotism is another. But, I suppose it can’t hurt to try. I’m not entirely sure that you can hypnotize a vampire.”

  “Of course you can.” His voice held no doubts.

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself, Sam.”

  “I am sure. From the story you told me, it’s obvious that it’s possible. It’s just a matter of finding the proper method.”

  The room he showed me to was utilitarian. It had a small bed, unmade, but with bed clothes folded and set off to one side. The only other piece of furniture was a chair sitting in the corner opposite the bed. The room’s most noticeable feature was its lack of windows with none facing to the outside and none in the door facing toward the hallway. Once the door was closed I would be completely safe from sunlight.

  “Sam,” I said with a sigh of relief, “this is absolutely perfect. Thank you.”

  Sam looked around and laughed. “If this is perfect for you, Deirdre, I’d sure hate to see what you consider substandard.”

  I laughed with him. “Perhaps perfect is not the proper word. Safe springs to mind and right now that is more important than decor.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Sunrise is close now.” I sat down on the bed and pulled off my boots. Then I stretched out on my back and closed my eyes.

  I heard Sam moving around the room. First he closed the door and locked it, then he pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. The pages of his notepad rustled and he clicked the pen several times, then scribbled on the paper, testing the ink.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “I’m here and ready. Is there anything else I need to do?”

  I shook my head on the pillow. “Watch,” I said, “and listen. If I attempt to leave the room, you can try to stop me. But not to the point of danger to yourself.”

  “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

  “Not if I were aware of it, no. But these visions have been very powerful. I can’t vouch for your safety. If it’s a choice between me and you, save yourself.” I gave a chuckle at those words; Larry was not the only one with a flair for the melodramatic. “Then again, I may just fall asleep and all of this will be for nothing.”

  “Even so, I’m sure it will not be a disappointment. How many doctors have had the opportunity to witness a vampire at rest?”

  “If you had asked me that question three years ago I could have told you very few. But given what I’ve learned since then, that number is probably more than you think. The question really is how many doctors have known what they were witnessing?”

  “That is always the question, Deirdre. Recognizing what the eye sees is more than half the battle.”

  “Shrink talk?” I gave him a quick smile.

  “Common sense.”

  I shivered and he moved out of his chair quickly, deftly unfolding the blanket and covering me, before I had even realized I was cold.

  “Your comfort is important if the hypnotism is to succeed,” he explained as he settled back down into his chair.

  “Ah, thank you.”

  This particular section of the hospital was totally silent. The lack of windows helped alleviate the sounds from outside and the corridors outside the door were deserted. The only noise I could hear was Sam’s breathing, quiet and controlled. And far from being a distraction, his presence was a comfort. I felt my body relax further.

  “Sunrise is close,” I whispered, afraid to break the spell of the silence, “I can feel it now.”

  Consciously, I made an effort to reach my mind out into the dawn. And felt the scream of pain slowly rise up within me to escape into the blinding and burning light of the sun.

  Chapter 22

  I woke to total silence. Sam slept soundly in the chair next to me. I sat up and looked around, tossing off the blanket. With no windows and the door closed I had no way of knowing whether it was an hour past dawn or before dusk.

  Quietly, I reached over and turned his wrist gently so that I could read his watch, but even this touch woke him up. His eyes popped open and he gazed around in confusion, blinking his eyes until he saw my face.

  “Morning,” he said, standing up and rubbing the back of his neck, tilting his head from side to side until the bones cracked. I winced at the sound.

  “Is it morning? I can’t tell. This room is very effective.”

  He looked at his watch. “I should have said ‘evening,’ I suppose, since it’s going on seven right now. And I know it’s not the morning. You talked for almost an hour this morning after the sun came up and you didn’t really settle in until well after eight.”

  “What happened?”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  I shook my head. “No, not really. I remember the sun rising. And then nothing until just now.”

  “Interesting. Especially since I didn’t tell you not to remember. Fortunately, I got it all on tape. And I think I might have even gotten some details that will help. But,” and the look he gave me was sad and distant, “don’t ever ask me to do this for you again. I found out things I didn’t want to know.”

  He didn’t answer my questioning look, but paced briefly around the room. “I guess you can’t leave here until the sun goes down, huh? I sure wouldn’t mind having a comfortable chair.”

  “No, I can’t even walk down the hallway. But you can go and I’ll come when I can.”

  He dismissed that idea immediately. “We’ll listen to the tape first. That’ll kill an hour and I’m actually anxious to hear it again. The voice on the tape was disturbingly familiar.”

  “Familiar? Why wouldn’t it be? It’s my voice.”

  “Well,” Sam gave me a tentative glance as if he wasn’t quite sure whether he should be frightened or not, “it was you, and it wasn’t. I did manage to get through to Mitch though to tell him you were here and safe. And he let me know that your vision was true. Another vampire turned up dead shortly after sunrise this morning.”

  “Damn.”

  “That’s what I said, too. But we’ll listen to the tape and you can see why. You might want to get comfortable before I start this.” He settled back into his chair, motioned me to the bed, and I lay down again, on my back, my hands grasped behind my head.

  At first the only sound on the tape was my scream. It was terrifying. I could feel the pain all over again, smell the burning flesh, feel the anger and the despair. I gasped in remembrance. Sam just nodded his head.

  “It stops soon.”

  And it did. But the echo of it would remain in my soul.

  The tape wound silently for a minute or two. When Sam’s soft voice began speaking, it did not seem an intrusion, but merely a continuation of the silence.

  “Deirdre? Are you still in pain?”

  “No, the pain is gone.”

  “Good. Now I want you to listen to my voice very carefully. Listen and pay attention to every word I say. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. I want you to imagine yourself in a room of total white. The walls are white. The floors are white. The ceiling is white. It is a room of absolute safety, there is no harm that can come to you in this room. Are you here now?”

  There was a pause on the tape. Then my voice came back, softer now, so soft that I had to strain to hear it. “Yes, I am here.”

  “And how do you feel?”

  “I feel safe.”

  “Good. When we start talking about something that upsets you, that might make you want to scream again, I want you to remember that you are in the white room and that you are safe. No harm can come to you in this room. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “Good. Now I want you to think back, before you screamed. Do you remember why you screamed?”

  There was a silence on the tape. I could hear my breathing, labored and heavy, but I was not speaking.

  “Deirdre?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you remember screaming?”

 
“Yes.” My voice filled with tension. Sam recognized it instantly.

  “You are in the white room, Deirdre. No one can harm you here.”

  “I,” there were a few short gasps on the tape until I continued, “I hurt. I hurt because I screamed. I screamed because I hurt.”

  “Do you hurt now, Deirdre?”

  “No, the pain is gone. Because she is gone.”

  “Can you remember back before the scream?”

  “Yes.” I could hear the reticence in my own voice. My inherent cautiousness apparently overflowed into my subconscious, as well.

  “Tell me what you were doing before the scream. Before the hurt.”

  There were four or five definite deep breaths on the tape. And then I began to speak. Sam was correct; the voice was mine, but it was not mine. I struggled as the tape played to recognize the voice.

  “I’m with him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s my friend. He treats me better than the rest. I’d like him to be more than my friend. I’d like him to be my lover, but he says it’s too soon for that. He says that we need to move slow and that I need to prove how much I love him first.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s my friend. I don’t have very many friends, you know.”

  “Yes, I understand that he is your friend. But what is his name?”

  The voice on the tape giggled. “Larry, of course.”

  “Larry?”

  “Yeah, Larry Martin. I do him favors and he stays my friend. I don’t mind doing him favors usually, but I’m angry about the last favor he asked me to do.”

  “What kind of things does Larry usually ask you to do?”

  “Usually he just asks me to do easy things. You know, like opening the door to let him in, or like putting the flowers in her room. One time he wanted me to go to Victor’s office and steal some papers for him. And sometimes I just give him money. Those are easy things.”

  “And what was this last favor he asked you for? The one you’re angry about?”

  “He wanted me to tell everyone that I saw him die.”

  I motioned to Sam to stop the tape and he did so. “Mitch should be listening to this. Whoever she is, she’s Victor’s witness.”

  “Does it really matter at this point? She’s dead.” There was an underlying emotion in his words that brought me up short. I had forgotten that this person speaking through me was one of the figures in the sun.

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t think.” I felt myself blushing slightly. But the voice sounded so alive and enough like me, that it was hard to believe she was dead. “Please, start it again.”

  He wound it back just a little bit and restarted the tape.

  “. . . tell everyone that I saw him die.”

  “Why would he want you to do that?”

  “He wanted everyone to think that he’d died so that they’d leave him alone. If they thought he was still alive, you see, they’d hunt him, and when they found him he’d have to go back to the prison in the cellar. I can understand that, I’d never want to be put down there. There’s no air and no food and it’s bright all the time. It’s a horrible place; no one should have to suffer like that.”

  “So you did this last favor for him. Even though you didn’t want to.”

  “Oh, no, I wanted to. I told him I understood and I would do almost anything for him. I didn’t get angry until later.”

  “What happened later?”

  “Well, later it all turned into a big deal. I had to speak to all the house leaders and swear an oath on my honor that what I’d said was true. They kept asking me questions that I had a hard time answering, even though Larry and I practiced before.”

  There was a pause on the tape. “Go on,” Sam prompted.

  The voice sounded angrier when it spoke again. “All I figured I’d have to do would be to tell Victor that I had seen Larry sit on the park bench and wait for the sun. That I had watched him burst into flames. And that he was dead.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what you did say?”

  “Yeah, but I had to say it in front of everyone. And if they find out I lied about it, which they will, I’ll be punished.”

  “How will they find out that you lied?”

  “Mitch knows that I lied.”

  With her mention of his name I knew who she was. My eyes caught Sam’s and he nodded. “Jean?” I mouthed the word and he nodded again. I sighed.

  “And she’ll know, of course. And if she knows, she’ll tell Victor. They’re very close, you know. Even though she killed Max, Victor still likes her. Almost everyone likes her. I think even Larry likes her, deep down inside, although he pretends that he hates her. It’s not fair.”

  “Of course it isn’t fair.” I could feel the gentle tugging from Sam, attempting to keep her on topic. “But what about the testimony you gave? Did they believe you?”

  “Yes. That was the easy part. I was upset anyway, that I had to tell his lies in front of everyone. So I just let them think that I was upset because I watched him die. I was very convincing,” the voice laughed, a whining little laugh that would have enabled me to identify her clearly if I had not already done so. “So much so that I said that I wanted to go away for a while. It was very traumatic to watch one of us die and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  “And they believed you?”

  “Why wouldn’t they? What reason would I have to lie?”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I found out that somebody actually did die, that he killed one of us, so that he could escape. All of a sudden I was an accessory to murder. We fought about that, but eventually he convinced me that no one would ever know.” There was a long pause on the tape and when the voice resumed, it was lighter, almost girlish. “We made love that night for the first time. And he told me he loved me and that when he left he would take me with him. And so I kept my mouth shut. It was in my best interest, anyway. I didn’t want to be punished and I wanted to be with him. Almost all my dreams were coming true.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “Then he killed again. When I asked him about it he denied it. It was just a coincidence, he told me. Ron had been depressed since she came back into town with Mitch. Ron loved her, you see, and he knew he couldn’t have her.” Jean sighed. “I know how bad it is to love someone, to know that you can’t have them. And it’s worse for us, because the pain lasts forever.”

  “I see. And you believed him?”

  “Partway. I wanted to believe him. Then he asked to meet me and I said yes. I thought I loved him, you see, and I thought he loved me. We went to the park together and he’d brought a bottle of wine for me. And a blanket for us to lie on. A moonlight picnic he called it. I drank all the wine because he kept filling my glass and I didn’t want to disappoint him. I didn’t notice until it was almost all gone that he wasn’t drinking any. And when I asked him why he wasn’t, he just laughed at me. ‘It doesn’t agree with me,’ he said. ‘But it will work just fine on you.’

  “Then I tried to stand up. I didn’t like being laughed at, not even by him. And I couldn’t move. All of a sudden I felt like my veins had been filled with glue. My blood had been slowed down. He looked down at me and laughed again. I asked him to help me and he reached down and picked me up. Carried me to a bench not too far away and sat me down. I still couldn’t move but I watched him gather up the picnic stuff. He came back over to me and I thought he would pick me up again. But he didn’t. He laughed again. ‘You pitiful slut,’ he said, ‘how on earth could you think that anyone would love you?’ I opened my mouth to say his name and my tongue wouldn’t move. I wanted to spit at him and call him every name in the book, but I was totally and completely paralyzed. All that remained was my brain. And he walked away; he didn’t even look back.”

  The tape wound out for a while and I thought it might be over, but Sam shook his head.

  “What is your name?”

  “Dr. Samuels, don’t yo
u recognize me? It’s me, Jean, you know, the night nurse. But you knew that, you just wanted me to say it on the tape.”

  “Yes, Jean, I know you.” On the tape, Sam’s voice was sad, it almost sounded as if he were crying. I looked over at him this time and saw that he was.

  “Jean? Can you tell me what happened next?”

  “The sun came up and I died.”

  The tape ended exactly where it started, but this time there were two voices blended into one and the scream lasted much longer.

  Chapter 23

  “Jesus.” I sat up on the bed, stretched out briefly and stood up.

  “Yeah.” Sam looked at his watch. “We can go to my office now. The sun is down. And you can tell me how Jean got involved in all of this.”

  I picked up the tape recorder. “May I borrow this? Just for the evening. It would save me a lot of talking and convincing. The Cadre is going to find this whole thing a little difficult to swallow.”

  “Be my guest, but don’t forget to give it back, okay?”

  I nodded my agreement and slipped the recorder into the front pocket of my jeans. “Thanks.”

  We walked down the hallway and returned to his office. He sat down behind his desk and glanced around. “On second thought,” he got back up again, “let’s go someplace else. I’ve been here for over twenty-four hours. They can do without me for a while. And I’m not actually on duty again for another four hours.”

  “Whatever you’d like, Sam, is fine with me.” I leaned up against the door of his office. My voice sounded dull and I felt subdued, out of place. Listening to the tape, hearing Jean’s story told in her words with my voice had been emotionally and physically draining. And even though I’d slept the entire day, I still felt weary.

  Sam picked up his suit coat, checked his pants pockets for his keys and put an arm around my shoulder. He flipped out the light, led me out of the hospital, and helped me into his car.