One of them darted forward nevertheless, a deformed skeleton in an ancient, moss-encrusted dinner suit. Around its neck it wore some sort of ancient award. . . the Cross of Malta, perhaps? It swiped one of its long-nailed hands at the crucifix Callahan was holding out. He jerked it down at the last second, and die vampire's claw passed an inch above it. Callahan lunged forward without drought and drove die tip of the cross into the yellow parchment of the thing's forehead. The gold crucifix went in like a red-hot skewer into butter. The thing in the rusty dinner suit let out a liquid cry of pained dismay and stumbled backward. Callahan pulled his cross back. For one moment, before the elderly monster clapped its claws to its brow, Callahan saw the hole his cross had made. Then a thick, curdy, yellow stuff began to spill through the ancient one's fingers. Its knees unhinged and it tumbled to the floor between two tables. Its mates shrank away from it, screaming with outrage.
The thing's face was already collapsing inward beneadi its twisted hands. Its aura whiffed out like a candle and then there was nothing but a puddle of yellow, liquefying flesh spilling like vomit from the sleeves of its jacket and the legs of its pants.
Callahan strode briskly toward the others. His fear was gone. The shadow of shame that had hung over him ever since Barlow had taken his cross and broken it was also gone.
Free at last, he thought. Free at last, great God Almighty, I'm free at last. Then: I believe this is redemption. And it's good, isn't it? Quite good, indeed.
"H'row it aside!" one of them cried, its hands held up to shield its face. "Nasty bauble of the 'heep-God, h'row it aside if you dare!"
Nasty bauble of the sheep-God, indeed. If so, why do you cringe?
Against Barlow he had not dared answer this challenge, and it had been his undoing. In the Dixie Pig, Callahan turned die cross toward the thing which had dared to speak.
"I needn't stake my faith on the challenge of such a thing as you, sai," he said, his words ringing clearly in the room. He had forced the old ones back almost to the archway through which they had come. Great dark tumors had appeared on the hands and faces of those in front, eating into the paper of their ancient skin like acid. "And I'd never throw away such an old friend in any case. But put it away? Aye, if you like. " And he dropped it back into his shirt.
Several of the vampires lunged forward immediately, their fang-choked mouths twisting in what might have been grins.
Callahan held his hands out toward them. The fingers (and the barrel of the Ruger) glowed, as if they had been dipped into blue fire. The eyes of the turtle had likewise filled with light; its shell shone.
"Stand away from me!" Callahan cried. "The power of God and the White commands you!"
SEVEN
When the terrible shaman turned to face the Grandfathers,
Meiman of the taheen felt the Turtle's awful, lovely glammer lessen a bit. He saw that the boy was gone, and that filled him with dismay, yet at least he'd gone further in rather than slipping out, so that might still be all right. But if the boy found the door to Fedic and used it, Meiman might find himself in very bad trouble, indeed. For Sayre answered to Walter o' Dim, and Walter answered only to the Crimson King himself.
Never mind. One thing at a time. Settle the shaman's hash first. Turn the Grandfathers loose on him. Then go after the boy, perhaps shouting that his friend wanted him after all, that might work-Meiman (the Canaryman to Mia, Tweety Bird to Jake) crept forward, grasping Andrew-the fat man in the tux with the plaid lapels-with one hand and Andrew's even fatter jilly with the other. He gestured at Callahan's turned back.
Tirana shook her head vehemently. Meiman opened his beak and hissed at her. She shrank away from him. Detta Walker had already gotten her fingers into the mask wore and it hung in shreds about her jaw and neck. In the middle of her forehead, a red wound opened and closed like the gill of a dying fish.
Meiman turned to Andrew, released him long enough to point at the shaman, then drew the talon that served him as a hand across his feathered throat in a grimly expressive gesture.
Andrew nodded and brushed away his wife's pudgy hands when they tried to restrain him. The mask of humanity was good enough to show the low man in the garish tuxedo visibly gathering his courage. Then he leaped forward with a strangled cry, seizing Callahan around the neck not with his hands but his fat forearms. At the same moment his jilly lunged and struck the ivory turtle from the Pere's hand, screaming as she did so.
The skoldpadda tumbled to the red rug, bounced beneath one of the tables, and there (like a certain paper boat some of you may remember) passes out of this tale forever.
The Grandfathers still held back, as did die Type Three vampires who had been dining in the public room, but the low men and women sensed weakness and moved in, first hesitantly, then with growing confidence. They surrounded Callahan, paused, and then fell on him in all their numbers.
"Let me go in God's name!" Callahan cried, but of course it did no good. Unlike the vampires, the things with the red wounds in their foreheads did not respond to the name of Callahan's God. All he could do was hope Jake wouldn't stop, let alone double back; that he and Oy would go like the wind to Susannah. Save her if they could. Die with her if they could not.
And kill her baby, if chance allowed. God help him, but he had been wrong about that. They should have snuffed out the baby's life back in the Calla, when they had the chance.
Something bit deeply into his neck. The vampires would come now, cross or no cross. They'd fall on him like the sharks they were once they got their first whiff of his life's blood. Help me God, give me strength, Callahan thought, and felt the strength flow into him. He rolled to his left as claws ripped into his shirt, tearing it to ribbons. For a moment his right hand was free, and the Ruger was still in it. He turned it toward the working, sweaty, hate-congested face of the fat one named Andrew and placed the barrel of the gun (bought for home protection in the long-distant past by Jake's more than a litde paranoid TVexecutive fadier) against the soft red wound in the center of the low man's forehead.
"No-ooo, you daren't!" Tirana cried, and as she reached for the gun, the front of her gown finally burst, spilling her massive breasts free. They were covered with coarse fur.
Callahan pulled the trigger. The Ruger's report was deafening in the dining room. Andrew's head exploded like a gourd filled with blood, spraying the creatures who had been crowding in behind him. There were screams of horror and disbelief.
Callahan had time to think, It wasn't supposed to be this way, was it? And: Is it enough to put me in the club? Am I a gunslinger yet?
Perhaps not. But there was the bird-man, standing right in front of him between two tables, its beak opening and closing, its throat beating visibly with excitement.
Smiling, propping himself on one elbow as blood pumped onto the carpet from his torn throat, Callahan leveled Jake's Ruger.
"No!" Meiman cried, raising his misshapen hands to his face in an utterly fruitless gesture of protection. "No, you CAN'T-"
Can so, Callahan thought with childish glee, and fired again.
Meiman took two stumble-steps backward, then a third. He struck a table and collapsed on top of it. Three yellow feathers hung above him on the air, seesawing lazily.
Callahan heard
savage howls, not of anger or fear but of hunger. The aroma of blood had finally penetrated the old ones'jaded nostrils, and nothing would stop them now. So, if he didn't want to join them-
Pere Callahan, once Father Callahan of 'salem's Lot, turned the Ruger's muzzle on himself. He wasted no time looking for eternity in the darkness of the barrel but placed it deep against the shelf of his chin.
"Hile, Roland!" he said, and knew
(the wave they are lifted by the wave)
that he was heard. "Hile, gunslinger!"
His finger tightened on the trigger as the ancient monsters fell upon him. He was buried in the reek of their cold and bloodless breath, but not daunted by it. He had never felt so strong. Of all the years in his life he had been happiest when he had been a simple vagrant, not a priest but only Callahan O'The Roads, and felt that soon he would be let free to resume that life and wander as he would, his duties fulfilled, and that was well.
"May you find your Tower, Roland, and breach it, and may you climb to the top!"
The teeth of his old enemies, these ancient brothers and sisters of a thing which had called itself Kurt Barlow, sank into him like stingers. Callahan felt them not at all. He was smiling as he pulled the trigger and escaped them for good.