in on this trip suddenly repulsed her. She didn't want to hear. She didn't want to know.
She didn't want... anything.
She didn't even want to die. She was too tired.
She had thought about it, thought about stopping the car at some little town and going to a drugstore and getting sleeping pills and maybe a little vodka (maybe a lot) to wash it down with. But even that seemed too much trouble.
Too numb. Too lost.
So tired.
And then, on the last moonlit leg of the journey, up U.S. 1 along the northern California coast, he finally got her attention. She finally realized why he was telling her so much.
This Crow person was not just a person. He wasn't just another victim or plaything. He was more. A lot more. Just a man, but a very powerful one.
He killed vampires.
And this thought, that someone existed who not only stood up to them, but fought them and won... ! It staggered her, it raced her blood and breath through her soul. She felt the stirrings of something deep within and long lost and she reached for it, reached deep down inside her until she could grasp it and identify it and... and it turned out to be her. The her that once, so long ago, had been.
And then she remembered that this man, this Crow, was going to die, too, and she tried to hide it all away.
Because he would die. You couldn't stop these monsters.
So she went along and listened to his plan and did just what she was told, dressed up and put on her Reporter Face and straightened her extra-clean clothes and went up to that great mansion on the ridge over Pebble Beach and knocked on the front door.
And she met them and she liked them and she refused to notice she liked them and she confirmed that this Crow person, Jack Crow, it turned out, wouldn't be there until the next day and she went back and told Ross and he was furious and thought about killing them all, all the others in the house, before Crow came back, but...
But he couldn't afford to frighten Crow off. He couldn't afford to fail again.
But neither would he leave. Just before dawn he closed himself in the trunk of the rental car and sealed the seal he had devised that no one could possibly break alone.
And she lay down in the front seat and went to sleep expecting to help him feed the next night.
But then... but nothing, not really. Crow's car driving past her had awakened her and when she awoke she awoke to the fourth day without being bitten and enslaved and maybe, just maybe, she had some extra strength and will and hidden crying hope...
So she just got out of the car and went up to meet this fool who thought he could stop evil with his drunken little band and...
And she met him and he was, yes, special, but not that special - no one was special enough for this job. And she played reporter and he walked her through those empty rooms of his dead comrades' - was it seven? Yes, seven who had been insane enough to follow him - and he told her their stories and they were wonderful stories...
And then he'd said they were going and asked if she wanted to go along and then she'd heard that music from downstairs and, well, she...
She just went. She just did it.
She didn't know how she managed such spectacular courage.
But she suspected the music.
"What was that music playing downstairs?" she asked Jack suddenly.
"Downstairs? Downstairs when?"
"When we were in California and you asked me to fly back with you?"
Jack frowned. "Oh. When we were in the zoo... That was Stevie Ray Vaughn. Texas rock and roll."
And she smiled. "Yes! Rock and roll. That's it!"
Cat, along with the others, found himself smiling at her smile. Because it was the first one in so long. But...
"But I don't get it. What's the music got to do with anything? Don't you like rock and roll?"
And she laughed. She really laughed.
"I love it. But Ross hated it. All vampires hate rock and roll."
"You're kidding."
"No," she giggled, sitting up straight. "He told me on that trip. All vampires hate it."
"What do they like?" Kirk wanted to know.
"Opera," replied Davette. "All kinds of opera."
"Figures," muttered Father Adam and they all turned and smiled at him.
"So," finished Jack. "That was it. You just... ran. When you heard that music, you just..."