Breaking In

Okay, it was okay. She’d brought along lock picking tools for the next part of the Home Run anyway. A basement door should be even easier than the door to an apartment. She counted to 30 to be sure the old biddy wasn’t coming back, then climbed the dusty stairs, angling her headlamp so no light slipped under the door.

It was just a simple bolt. Half a minute of fiddling with a skeleton key and she had it open again, klunk

. She pulled the heavy door open and padded down the carpeted hall of the 1930s apartment building, flicking off her headlamp and stowing it away.

As she climbed the stairs through the rich old-building smell of wallpaper, once-luxurious rug and wood-paneled walls, she wondered how the others were doing. Four city blocks! She couldn’t imagine how she would manage the final two blocks but Bunt would do it with his secret method. Her skin crawled as she thought of him; he reminded her of something unpleasant which wouldn’t come (and why the hell did she still expect him to hop

?!). She thought again of the strange fawning of the vampires at the starting point and knew in her gut there was a connection to the mystery of Bunt.

She stopped wondering as she reached apartment 305. When she’d scouted, she’d found it occupied by an old geezer who would be asleep. She knelt with her skeleton key. This lock took longer but within two minutes she had it open.

Inside it smelled like shit, literally. Jesus, what if the old guy had just died? But she couldn’t do anything about it. Except –

She froze. If the man who lived in this “home” was dead, could vampires get into his apartment?

She had to check before she came in view of the window. Once they saw her, the vampires would try to get in. What if they found they could?

Feeling like a criminal for the first time that evening, Sally skulked into the bedroom. The smell was worse. In the light of the bedside lamp, she saw an old man in bed and his chest moved, he was alive. He must have crapped himself. Somehow that realization gagged her as the thought of facing a corpse had not. She turned to go.

“Nurse?” came a wheezing whisper. “I need changin’.” Sally hesitated, then walked on without looking back.

She only asked herself why he thought there was a nurse a fraction of a second before something exploded against her skull. She sank, stunned, to the floor.

The world reeled in red mist. Sally fought desperately to put the pieces together again. The old man had a night nurse and she’d probably been in the bathroom. Sally had to convince the nurse that she was not a burglar and quick.

She forced her eyes to open. Her hands were tied behind her back, probably with her own belt which was missing. The nurse, a pretty young black woman, breathed hard and tried to look tough. A half opened red encyclopedia lay on the floor beside her.

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Sally tried for a casual, friendly tone. “Guess I won’t win the race now. Too bad.”

The nurse skittered backwards. “Nurse, what is it, what’s goin’ on?” came the feeble voice from the bed.

She’d rattled the poor nurse, and her hands weren’t tied tight. Scrunching her wrists back and forth, she called out, “Sir, I’m so sorry to have intruded on your rest, I’m a bad girl for doing that, but I have to use the window of your apartment. Just for a second and I won’t let anything bad in, they’ll all follow me.” She almost had her hands free.

“You shut up!” the nurse cried. “I’m calling the police!” But of course she was bluffing: nobody, including cops, ventured out at night.

“Please don’t, ma’am,” Sally cooed. “I’m not a burglar, really I’m not. I just need to open the window for a few seconds.” She shouldn’t keep mentioning that, it would scare them!

Her hands popped free. She snapped the loops out of the belt and whipped it in an arc that swiped the nurse off her feet.

“Help! Help!” the nurse shrieked. She looked like she was about to cry, reminding Sally too painfully of her younger sister. “Shut up, shut up!” she hissed.

Everything was going wrong. People would come and the vampires would hear too. Hating herself, she punched the nurse on the chin, felt her sag limp in her arms. She lowered her gently to the floor, spent a useless second arranging the woman’s hair so she didn’t look so pathetic, then shook herself and pushed to her feet.

The old man was watching her, his eyes great pools in his narrow face. Sally paused.

“Home Runner,” he quavered, “Aren’t ya, dear?”

“How do you know anything about that?” She bristled at being called “dear.”

“Yeh, not bad for an old feller with a Depends fulla poop,” he chuckled. “What’s the prize?”

He looked like a therapist she had seen briefly; his voice soothed her, made her want to tell her big secret.

“Fuck you,” she said firmly instead, and ran from the room.

She’d been raised to honor the elderly. She felt like she was in so much trouble.

She came in sight of the window. The vampires on the fire escape saw her and hissed.

She approached the window step by step. This was the testing moment. She turned the little latch and let the window swing in. None of them reached in. The house magic still protected her. They quivered and watched.

She pulled out another vial of blood, uncorked it, sloshed the blood around and watched them go mad. She waited until they left a sliver of space, then hurled the vial through the gap. They all dived after it and she sprang onto the narrow platform.

No time to see if the other window was still as she’d left it. Her heart pounded. Snarls from below told her she had scant seconds and the vampires pressed against every other window were coming like swarms of flies.

Now, now before they had time to know what was coming! Crouch into a ball, jump with everything she had over the gap with a three-story fall below, come down on the fire escape of the building across the alley, bowling three vampires over as she landed, skin crawling with their cold hatred. They surged like the sea. Any second one of them would recover enough to grab at her.

The window she’d opened yesterday was still open. She jumped again, kicked into a tight ball so as not to present any trailing heels, and landed on the dust-choked floor of the storage room, cans of paint and turpentine rattling on the old shelves. She had navigated two whole blocks!

Damn, she was exhausted but she threw back her weary head and howled a victory howl. Nothing was like this thrill, nothing!