It's worse than that, Gunman, thought Jack Crow. Know you. They've found you. And they're after you.
But he didn't say this. He didn't say anything. He like he knew what Felix was feeling. And he couldn't but have sympathy.
But you're in it now, Felix, he thought. In to stay.
Jack Crow did not know how Felix felt.
Felix did not know how he felt.
He felt... nothing, really. Empty and numb and...
I knew this would happen, he thought again and and again.
I knew it.
"Carl!" whispered Cat suddenly.
"Huh?" asked the Deputy.
"If they thought enough to have somebody waiting Felix's bar - on the off chance he'd be there..."
"Then they're bound to have somebody at the house," Jack finished for him. And he was already Felix out of the driver's seat.
"Get dressed," he told them and started the engine once more. "We'll drop the ladies off."
"Carl!" whispered Cat again, almost to himself. He turned and looked at Annabelle's pale face.
She looks like I feel, he thought.
Carl! He's all alone out there...
Part Three Chapter 24
The detectors said: no vampires.
But they had been there.
Felix, wearing full chain mail, with halogen cross blazing on his chest, and with Browning drawn and cocked, stepped carefully through the shattered door of Carl's workshop and gazed about at the destruction.
Good Lord! Maybe they are gods!
Equipment was strewn everywhere, upside down, lying on its side, crushed. Workbenches were shattered. Heavy wooden packing crates lay tossed about like so many child's blocks. Parts of the ceiling hung almost to the floor, with wiring wrapped around it like a spider's web.
That clear sticky goo the monsters used for blood was everywhere, on the floors, on the walls, dripping from the ceiling and from pieces of splintered crossbow bolts. The puddles ran in a vague pattern, like a funnel. The wide end was by the doorway, where the concentration was the least. But as Felix, with the others moving quietly behind him, moved forward across what was left of the room, the vampire blood grew thicker and thicker, with huge splotches there an there and there, where a crossbow bolt had split an overturn chair. By the time they reached the far end of the room, by the time they reached that barricaded closet, the goo was so thick on the floor it was slippery to walk.
Carl Joplin had made them pay.
They found his body in the closet.
He was huddled, crumpled, beaten, slashed, in one small corner.
Too small, Felix thought, for that great body.
Jack's face in the halogen glare was unnerving. He was pale and drawn too tight and Cat, poor laughing Cat, looked a lot worse.
Surprised! realized Felix. They look so surprised!
I suppose, he thought next, that they thought Carl would always make it. Because they kept him in the rear. Because...
Because they loved him so much.
Damn.
Quiet in here, he thought next. No one talking. Everyone moving so slowly and carefully. Only the sounds of the storm whistling through, and even that had finally begun to abate.
There was a smear of that black bile the monsters spat when injured by his elbow on a broken countertop. Felix started to find something to wipe it off with, but stopped.
Let them come back. Let them come back and see this.
It was left to Felix and Father Adam and Kirk to take care of the body. Jack and Cat had left to stand outside by themselves in the rain. Adam brought the other two together and explained to them what had to be done to the body. That it must be staked and beheaded and that there really was an ancient Church ritual of interment that covered it all.
Felix was repulsed and sickened and... what? Scared? Certainly wired. His chest thumped and his thoughts went everywhere but to what he was doing as they loaded the tortured corpse into a canvas body bag on hand for just this purpose.
And the entire time some small sparking furious part of him was shouting up from his soul, Well, Felix! Is this enough? What does it take to set you off?
But mostly, he was numb.
He found himself watching young Father Adam, as they bound up and carried the body out into the rain. He knew the priest had been the one that kept the Top Secret Vatican records on Team Crow. And he wondered how he felt now.
One thing to read about it. Another to see it. Another to have