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.'Your last regeneration, you didn't act so.uh, approachable.''I was so much older then,' he said.'I think there were things I made a point of forgetting when I stopped being so old.''No, it's more than that.' Kramer cast around for the words.'Lemme put it this way.You weren't so much of a hands-on kind of guy.''Oh.''That makes a difference – you gotta be able to see that.The way you look, the way you act, the way you're so touchy-feely all of a sudden.It gives you a kind of power over people.'He looked blank.'What do you mean?'Kramer shook her head.I don't believe it, she thought.'Look at Carolyn.You really didn't see what you just hugging her was doing to her?'He looked surprised.'I thought she was enjoying it.''Ohh boy,' said Kramer, shaking her head again.'You're a danger to yourself and others, you know that?''No, I really don't understand.Where does power enter into it?''Look at her.She's having a rough time with her boyfriend.Along comes another unattached male who can take her away from it all – and who's acting all cuddly and approachable.''And who has cute eyebrows,' he said, incomprehensibly.'And then she's willing to put herself in harm's way for him.' Kramer smiled out of the corner of her mouth.'You really think she'd be doing that so easily if you looked like me?''Oh dear,' said the Doctor.Kramer couldn't help smiling outright.'You should smile more often,' he said.'It looks lovely.'Kramer raised an eyebrow at that.'I'm a general.' She abandoned the washing-up.'C'mon, I promised you a ride back to your TARDIS.''No no,' he said.'I've changed my mind.' His attention had landed on a note Carolyn had stuck to the refrigerator, an address and phone number.'I want you to drop me at the, ah, the Regents Park Hotel, there's something else I need to take care of.'Angel Labs, Shackle had said.Where Harris worked.If there was any way she was ever going to find out what was really going on, this was where to start.So Sam sat in the Bug, in the car park lot behind Angel Laboratories.The building was locked, but the lights in what must be Harris's lab were still on, so all she could do was wait till Harris came out.She passed the time by flipping through the radio stations, idly trying to find any halfway decent music by someone who wasn't on heroin.All these problems, the way the Doctor was acting so strange – it had to be something Harris was up to.There wasn't any other explanation.It was only since the bloodfasting that he'd been acting so.well, so old, wasn't it? Like he was more like one of them than like her.The Doctor who was calmly defending those murderers couldn't be the same one who had stood in the TARDIS with butterflies in his hair, could he?It just didn't make sense for him to be acting so dead.He was the most alive person she knew.So that was the plan.She'd find out whatever it was that was going on, bring it to the Doctor, and solve the whole mess.Get it done with style.And after that.well, then she'd know if those holes in her throat had really healed or not.Let's see, now.She could probably figure out which one of the few cars in the car park was Harris's.And then it would help if she had one of those tracking devices like she'd stuck on to Eva car back in seventy-six.It would make it easier to follow Harris – but getting one would mean going back to the TARDIS, and that meant facing Carolyn, and maybe him too.She shouldn't be feeling so shaky about that.It was like she was more scared of dealing with him than with the vampires.Oh, sod it.She thumped her head against the vinyl steering wheel.What was she doing, sitting in a car in a bad part of town at quarter to two in the morning? This wasn't daring risk-taking, this was just stupid.She was trying to be the Doctor, and instead she'd end up like Shackle in the alleyway.No way was she cut out for this sort of thing –But the light in the lab had gone out.'Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Harris has left the building.'Sam scrunched down in the driver's seat, wishing the Bug wasn't so cramped.She heard Harris's footsteps echoing across the car park.After a few heart-thumping moments, Sam saw the headlights snap on, heard the engine start.Heard Harris's car reach the gate and go through.She made herself count to ten before she followed that car.She spent the next twenty minutes tensed all the way up to her eyeballs, her gaze locked on the pair of tail lights half a block ahead.This alone left any of those stunts with the billboard in the dust.Mr Selby back at school was always big on asking kids who their role models were.Part of his continuing search to find someone else to blame for why his students turned out so rotten.The last time he'd asked, she'd said, 'Lisa Simpson.'But next time she'd be able to tell him that her role model was a man who staked vampires through the heart and doubletalked killers into walking away from their victims.If she ever made it back to school.Harris drove straight to a warehouse, a few minutes away in the late-night traffic.Sam carefully doubled back, parked a couple of blocks away, and walked down to the big, dark building.She found herself trying to look in every direction at once.It would be terribly embarrassing to get mugged at this point.Sam had rummaged in the trunk of the Bug earlier on, looking for useful stuff.It was a typical Doctorish mishmash of junk, from a tin of toffees to an ancient-looking urn to the crowbar she was holding in her hand.She walked around the warehouse, listening hard, wondering if Harris could walk silently.There were weeds growing in cracks in the pavement, and the gates and chicken-wire fence were rusting.No one had come here for a long time.She could smell machine oil and salt water.The vampire's car was parked around the front, so presumably she'd used a key to go in through the front door.Sam walked down the side, round the back – there, a door at the top of a short flight of concrete stairs [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]