Dark of the Moon

“All right,” she said. “I can’t force you.” But I sure as hell can wear you down, Dorian Black. Because I owe you. I pay my debts.

And if you can help me find the murderers…

She shook off the unworthy thought and flung her coat over her shoulders. “I’ll go now,” she said. “But if I can do anything for you, anything at all…” She suddenly remembered that her cards were gone, along with her pocketbook, doubtless stolen by the young hooligans. She didn’t even have a nickel for a telephone call.

Well, at least she was alive and fully capable of walking now that the sickness had passed. She could ankle it to the nearest police station and call from there.

She looked at Dorian, struck by a powerful urge to stroke the wayward hair out of his face. He wouldn’t welcome such familiarity. Maybe he was even regretting pulling her out of the river.

“Listen,” she said. “I’d like to come back sometime. Maybe I can’t completely repay what you’ve done for me—”

“I don’t want your charity.”

“Couldn’t you at least accept a haircut? I’m a mean one with the shears.”

His eyes were still clouded, dull with exhaustion and that strange paralysis she’d so often seen in Barry before his death. He didn’t meet her gaze.

“Don’t come back,” he said.

Gwen puffed out her cheeks. Sometimes it doesn’t do any good to argue, Dad had told her more than once. Learn to let it go, Gwen. Learn to be patient. Sometimes patience is what a reporter needs most.

And patience was a virtue she still hadn’t quite mastered. But she was willing to give it the old college try. For Dorian’s sake.

“Okay,” she said. “How do I get out of this place?”

“I’ll show you.”

The voice belonged to the other man she’d heard speaking when she’d woken up. He came out of the shadows, an old gentleman with clothing every bit as worn as Dorian’s. His face was seamed with deep wrinkles, his nose had been broken in several places, and his eyes were filled with that sort of peculiar sweet-tempered innocence that blessed a certain type of inebriate.

“Name’s Walter,” he said, tipping a moth-eaten fedora. “Walter Brenner. We don’t have too many ladies visit us. Wouldn’t want you to think we’re lacking in manners.”

“How do you do, Walter,” Gwen said, offering her hand. “I’m Gwen Murphy.”

“So I heard.” His palm was dry and papery. “Had a bit of a dip in the river, did you?”

“A regular soaking.” She walked with him out of the warehouse. “I’m lucky Mr. Black happened to be there.”

He ducked his head conspiratorially. “Dorian ain’t always like that, you know, so short-tempered and all. It’s just this mood…comes on him regular, every few weeks, like. Best to leave him alone until it passes.”

“I understand. Have you known Dorian long?”

“’Bout as long as he’s been on the waterfront. Three months, I figure.”

“Do you know anything about his past?”

“He’s been through something awful, Miss Gwen. Don’t know what it is. He won’t talk.”

“He’s never mentioned the War?”

“Nope. Could be that’s it, but I worry about him. He don’t go out, except at night. Holes up here during the day like one of our rats. And he hardly eats. He brings stuff for me, but he don’t touch nothin’ but crumbs.”

Gwen remembered the bleakness of Dorian’s “room.” There hadn’t been a sign of food, not even the crumbs Walter spoke of.

“You’re his friend,” she said. “You want to help him, don’t you?”

“Sure. He took care of me when I was sick. My heart, you know. Gives out sometimes. Don’t know what I’d do without Dory.”

Gwen decided to risk a more troubling question. “Did you see the bodies, Walter?”

The old man shuddered. “Heard about them. But he saw. Made it worse, next time he had one of his nasty spells.” He touched Gwen’s arm tentatively. “He ain’t bad. You see that. I never seen him take such an interest in another human being until he brought you here.”

Interest. Under normal circumstances, Gwen never would have interpreted Dorian’s behavior as anything but grudging tolerance. But she had only begun to glimpse what might be in Dorian’s soul. And she knew she had to keep digging until she discovered exactly what made him tick…and why he had aroused her curiosity in a way no one had done since Barry died.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” Walter said, as he led Gwen out into the sunlight. “Do him good. I know it would.”

Gwen met the old man’s gaze. “Even if I didn’t have other reasons for coming back to the waterfront, I wouldn’t abandon him. He saved my life.”

“But it’s more than that, ain’t it?” Walter peered up at her with greater perception than his drawl and easygoing manner suggested. “Dory ain’t easy to like, but you like him anyway.”

Did she? Gwen looked away, testing her feelings as carefully as she might probe a sore tooth. Mitch and the other reporters thought she was too impulsive and emotional, like all women. But when it came to men…

Like him? Maybe. And if she were completely honest with herself, as she always tried to be, she would admit that she found Dorian Black strangely attractive. His looks had something to do with it, but it went deeper than that.

“You’re a crusader,” Mitch frequently told her. “That’ll be your downfall, Guinevere.”

She knew damned well that she couldn’t save the world. But she might save one tiny part of it.

“Don’t worry, Walter. I promise I’ll do what I can.”

Apparently satisfied, Walter retreated into the shadows, doubtless to nurse a bottle for the rest of the afternoon. At least Dorian Black didn’t seem to drink. Maybe he would have been better off if he did.

With a half shrug, Gwen set off to find the nearest police station.

DORIAN WATCHED HER walk away, careful to remain within the shelter of the warehouse door. She had a long, confident stride; the wool worsted suit, with its boxy jacket and pleated kneelength skirt, was plain and businesslike, but it didn’t disguise the curves of her figure or the bounce of her walk.

Gwen Murphy. He’d never heard her name before last night; even when he’d worked for Raoul, he hadn’t paid much attention to the newspapers. That hadn’t been his department. He’d done his job, dispassionately and efficiently, until the world he knew came crashing down around him.

It was about to fall apart all over again, the way it did every month at the dark of the moon. He’d begun to feel the first effects a few days ago: irritability, confusion, thoughts spinning out of control. And his emotions…they could be trusted least of all. He only had to remember how he’d turned on Gwen like an animal, fully prepared to drain her dry.

He shuddered, thinking of the bodies on the wharf. At least he was reasonably certain that the murders weren’t his doing. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t killed anyone since Raoul’s death.

No, that massacre was almost certainly the work of one of the warring factions that had formed after the clan had disintegrated. Though Dorian had deliberately removed himself from any involvement in strigoi affairs, he had no doubt that the level of violence committed by the city’s vampires against their own kind had increased in the past three months. Internecine bloodshed was no longer simply a matter of one clan leader keeping his subordinates and human employees in line. It had become a case of two well-matched coalitions vying for control of Raoul’s carefully built bootlegging operation and all the power that went with it.

Regardless of the reason for the killings, whoever was responsible for them had either been extraordinarily foolish or dangerously overzealous to have left the corpses drained of blood. Such unusual characteristics set the murders apart from the usual human mob hit—and attracted the attention of inquisitive humans like Miss Gwen Murphy.

Dorian turned away from the light. The fate of New York’s strigoi was no longer any of his concern. His own life had become a weary succession of nights spent hunting just enough to keep his body functioning, days crouched in his fetid den with nothing but the company of an old man who had no idea who or what he was. Only the instinct for survival, a vampire’s deepest and most powerful impulse, had kept him from letting his body fade into oblivion.

But now there was something else. Something he hadn’t expected. Something that had started when he’d seen the girl sinking beneath the river’s surface and had made the decision to save a human life.