"And what was it programmed to do?" I wondered. "Kill me?"
"I don't think so," Kurt answered from a lab stool. "Assuming it's Pipt—"
"Oh, it's Mr. Ozfest, all right!" I walked around the translucent box while the five-fingered cyborg scrabbled to keep pace with my movement. "Who else could come up with something like this? It's not as sophisticated as the Frankenvamp but I don't know of anyone else capable of this kind of bioengineering." I looked at him. "Unless there really is a Doctor Frankenstein . . ."
Kurt held up a hand. "Please, Christopher. I believe the phrase you Americans use is 'get real.'"
I looked at the centuries-old vampire. "Yeah. Sure. What a silly idea." I looked at the other silly idea doing five-fingered pushups in the Plexiglas tank. "Did the Countess ever dabble in this sort of thing when she was mapping the human genome?"
"Not to my knowledge. It was mostly cells, bacteria, and viruses. Very little in the way of surgical procedures and those seemed pretty straightforward. This . . ." His face went blank—wrestled with an unfamiliar emotion—and composed itself again so quickly and smoothly that I almost missed it. " . . . this is more like something I once saw in a Bavarian hospital . . ." His voice trailed off.
"Yes?" I wasn't inclined to let the moment pass. "Tell me."
He shook his head and his voice was gruffer than usual. "It was more than seventy years ago, halfway around the world. The living may call us monsters but they still write romantic novels about the vampire. No one writes romances about the Nazis and their medical experiments. Butchers invoking the Dark Arts to create a race of supermen—ptah! Those who haven't forgotten, know better. Those who are too young to remember . . ." He shook his head again. "There are many times and places in my long existence that I would as soon not recall to memory. The Nazi madness is something the world should not forget . . ." His voice trailed off and he stared at a distant, dark memory before whispering, " . . . but would also do better not to remember too well."
He got up and went over to the tank, opening the lid. "Anyway, what I was starting to say is that someone capable of creating this"—he caught the hand with his own and lifted it out—"could certainly create something deadlier to send after you."
"Like the Frankenvamp?"
"That creature makes my point. It was apparently sent to draw your blood, not destroy the repository of your flesh. If this Pipt values your blood, he certainly would not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs." He carried the hand over to a counter and switched on an ultraviolet lamp.
"So," I pondered, "if Tall, Dark, and Destructive failed to retrieve my precious bodily fluids, what did he expect to accomplish with the hand job, here?"
Darcy, walking over to the lab's entrance, snickered softly. She flipped the light switch and the room went dark except for the ghostly purple illumination of the UV lamp.
"He's trying to lure you to come to him."
"But I don't know where he is."
"You do now." He held the hand beneath the violet bulb, turning it palm up. Glowing lines appeared amid the whorls and creases of the hand's palm: a contour map, tattooed in phosphorescent ink, visible only in the black light's peculiar wavelength.
"Where is that?"
Spook spoke. "I've scanned a photo of the pattern into the computer and we're running a cartographical search now, hoping for a match. Blowing up the photo reveals elevation numbers narrowing our search to mountainous regions around the world." She held up an antique skeleton key. It had been sewn onto the back of the hand with a couple of stitches, found when we captured it. "But we're hoping for some additional clues."
"So," I asked, "can I open the chests, now?"
"You? No," Kurt answered dourly. "One of my people will do it while you observe from the next room."
A humanoid shape appeared in the doorway beyond. It wore yards of heavy padding, monstrous gloves, and a gas mask. Spook handed it the key and we moved to a monitor showing the two chests behind a blast wall, surrounded by sandbags.
"As Uncle probably told you," she said, as the muffled security guy shuffled into the camera's view, "we found no evidence of booby-trapping. No trace elements of explosive compounds. But both caskets are opaque to X-rays. And the locks don't appear to have any kind of a tumbler system that would interface with a key, either."
"So you did try to open them?" I asked.
She shook her head. "I would not open either one without you present, Domo Cséjthe. I did, however, use a fiber-optic scope to examine the interior of the lock. I've never seen anything like it."
"Yeah?" I looked back over my shoulder at the thing in the terrarium. "Well, I've never seen anything like the beast with five fingers outside of a couple of a couple of B-minus horror movies—and they didn't have eyeballs."
"Which is why a chest containing mundane explosives might well be the least of our worries." She tapped a button and moved a slide switch with her right hand while operating a joystick with her left.
The screen zoomed in on the key entering the lock on the first chest.
We held our breaths.
Nothing happened.
The technician turned the key.
Still nothing.
We watched as he made several attempts to unlock the first chest. Unsuccessful, he turned his attention to the other casket. We eventually stopped holding our breaths: it was evident that nothing was going to happen.
Five minutes later I was examining the key with a magnifying glass. "This is the same key that was attached to the creepy-crawly over there?"
"The same," Spook promised.
"And the messages on both chests connect the key to the hand." While I intended it as a statement, it came out sounding more like a question.
"Not necessarily."
Everyone looked at Deirdre who was looking at the chests on the monitor.
"How good is your German, Chris?"
"Rudimentary. I dated a language major in college." I didn't mention my German-born great-grandfather: I was learning to keep my family antecedents to myself.
"I see," Deirdre said. "Well, you got the first part half-right. Schlüssel zum Erfolg can translate as 'the key to success' or 'the secret of success.' The 'key' in question doesn't seem to be very successful."
I looked at her. "I didn't know you spoke or read German."
"I minored in Romance languages."
I cleared my throat. "So maybe we're not actually looking for a key? What about the rest of it? I wasn't sure about 'at hand'."
"'At hand' would be ist verfügung, not verfügbar. On the other hand—sorry—if you wanted to say that the key was on hand you would say vorrätig."
"But the chests don't say vorrätig, they say verfügbar."
Deirdre nodded. "Yes. Verfügbar means 'on-hand.'"
I stared at her. "Okay, I thought you just said vorrätig meant 'on hand.'"
"Yes. But without the implied hyphen. Verfügbar sort of inserts a hyphen in the English translation. Verfügbar may also translate as available or allocatable or at your disposal."
"Italian," I said slowly. "Portuguese, Spanish, French . . . the descendents of the Latin dialects. Geman isn't a Latin derivate, so it isn't a Romance language."
The redhead shrugged.
"Dammit!" I threw the key back onto the table. "I wish this guy would make up his mind! Does he want to be Doctor Frankenstein or The Riddler?" I stomped into the next room.
Everyone chased after me with the obligatory cries of "wait" and "what are you doing" and "it's not safe."
"I don't have time for this crap," I said, stepping around the wall of sandbags. "I've got a demesne to run, a political minefield to navigate, assassins to dodge." I picked up one of the boxes and carried it to a counter on the other side of the room. "Some vampire named Cairn is working overtime to kill me but he's not half as distracting and annoying as the Lord of the Things who keep dropping by to borrow a cup of blood."
I crouched down to examine the lock with a
critical eye. It stared back, seemingly unimpressed. "Bring me the key."
Kurt puffed up. "I forbid you to take this risk!"
"What risk? As we've discussed before, this guy doesn't want to kill me. He's baiting me."
"The bait may cover a hook that is both sharp and barbed," Suki said, speaking for the first time.
"Yeah?" I reached out and touched the brass lock plate. "Well, he may be a master baiter but—"
I shut up as I heard an audible click from inside the lock.
"What did you just do?" Spook asked as I took a step back.
"I touched the lock plate."
"Why would that do anything? The lock plate, the entire mechanism, has been touched a number of times."
I cocked my head. Stepped back. Turned and fetched the other casket. "Somebody want to touch this lock plate?"
Spook walked over and pressed her finger, then her thumb, to the lock on the second chest.
Nothing happened.
I reached out and touched the lock. There was another audible click.
I stepped back. "Fingerprint recognition?"
Spook peered at the lock mechanism. "Too unreliable given the amount of surface contact available for scanning. Maybe DNA recognition. The key or the secret is on your hand."
"How would this guy have my DNA sample?"
Deirdre harrumphed. "How about that head case Kellerman? She probably had sticky gloves to pick up skin sheddings or something when she paid her little social call."
Spook turned and gave me a long speculative look. "This seems like an awful lot of bother just to collect a couple of pints of blood."
"His blood is worth a lot of bother," Deirdre said.
I turned back to the first chest. "I doubt Yuler would think so." I pulled at the lid and it opened easily.
The inside of the casket was lined with satin cushioning. There was probably lead sheeting underneath to block any X-ray examination. Nestled in the pillowing was a glass vial, maybe two inches wide and five inches long. Suspended in a clear solution was a pale kidney bean.
Or it looked like a kidney bean until I picked up the vial and looked more closely.
It was a fetus.
I turned to the other chest and opened it with a trembling left hand.
Another vial, another fetus.
I turned to Kurt. "Take these to the genetics section and run their DNA."
"We don't even know if they're human—" Spook started to say.
"Run it! Stat!"
I started to shake and had to grip the vials carefully: too much pressure and they would shatter, too little and they would slip through my suddenly damp hands.
"Now!" I roared.
* * *
"Your first appointment is in one hour," Kurt announced to my back as I unlocked the door to my suite.
"Cancel it."
"Why?"
"Because I've got to pack."
"Pack?"
Chef appeared as I stalked through the foyer. "May I prepare a suitable repast before you depart, Master?"
"No!" I said. And realized I was ravenous as I said it. "Yes. I'm thirsty."
"What would you like?"
"Something to calm him down," Kurt interjected. "And what do you mean, 'pack'? Where do you think you are going?"
"At the moment? My best guess is Germany, so I'm going to need travel arrangements, maps, currency exchange, and a bilingual guide. Also a passport. If you can't fabricate one for me on short notice, get Malatesta on the phone." I turned to Chef. "Whatever you send me, make it a double. It may be awhile before I can hit another blood bank."
"Male or female, Master?"
"What? Oh. Uh, female . . ." Intellectually, I knew that it shouldn't make any difference: food was food. Still there was a sexual subtext and that made me doubly uneasy with the whole predator/prey issues.
But it didn't seem to bother me as much as it used to.
"Human or unhuman, Master?"
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"Do you wish to sample another human? Or would Master prefer the potency of vampire blood?"
"You didn't mention the fact that there were undead vintages in the wine cellar last night, Chef."
"I am afraid Bethany has been a little too effusive in praising your technique, Domo. There have been—ahem—volunteers, if you are so inclined."
I looked at Kurt. "These wampyri volunteers wouldn't be potential consorts, would they?"
He shrugged. "Why Germany?"
"Because this guy has a faint German accent. Because the writing on the chests is in German. And because of something you said about Nazi experimentation. If I can believe what he told me, this Pipt would be old enough to have goose-stepped about the Rhineland back in WW Two. Germany has mountains. Until your niece comes up with a topographical match, it's a place to start." I looked at Chef. "Send up half a dozen of your best stock and I'll make my selection in my quarters. Throw in a little variety." I caught Deirdre and Suki's exchange of looks out of the corner of my eye. "What?"
"You seem a little upset," Suki answered evenly.
"Good point." I turned back to Chef. "Tell the volunteers that I'm upset. See if they still want to volunteer under the circumstances."
"You still haven't answered my question," Kurt said as Chef hurried out of the room. "I thought we agreed that this Pipt was not as high a priority as establishing your authority over the demesne and dealing with more immediate threats like this Cairn."
"Priorities change."
"How could they change? Cairn will keep trying to kill you. All this Pipt seems to want is a couple of pints of your blood."
"He may want more than a couple of pints of blood," Suki observed.
"But, as I said before, you don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs."
"No," she agreed, "you lock the goose up so it will always lay golden eggs for you and you alone."
Kurt turned back to me. "All the more reason for staying here, then."
"I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because this Dr. Pipt has hostages," Spook answered from the front door. "The DNA checked out. He has cloned Domo Cséjthe's dead wife and daughter."
Chapter Thirteen
The Blood is the Life—so sayeth the Old Testament.
Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, all have strong prohibitions concerning the "eating of blood."
But the concept is older than written language. This simple, basic axiom comes down to us from a time before.
Perhaps before there was even a spoken language.
Our distant forebears believed that drinking the blood of your enemy, or eating his heart, bestowed the blessings of strength, courage. That such transferred the essence of his vitality to your own blood, your own heart, your own vitality.
If you think that we've moved beyond such primitivism perhaps the difference is more a matter of scale, today, with corporate raiders replacing the barbarians at the gates: "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap in for Genghis Khan, companies dismembered, gutted, and consumed by conglomerates. Resources, inventories, labor pools, payrolls—corporate life-forces consumed upon the economic fields of battle. Thousands of hoplite livelihoods are sacrificed to feed the glutted stock options of boardroom chieftains. Before you pronounce the economic "sciences" the superior belief system consider the pyrrhic victories of corporate raiders: the slash and burn trails through the regional economies as the Wild Hunt passes "buy."
Give me the good old mano y mano primitive any day. . . .
The ancient Hebrews recognized the dangers of developing appetites that turned other humans into prey. Even the blood of animals was proscribed in their codex of law and ritual.
Too bad I wasn't Jewish.
In fact, I wasn't even sure that I was fully human anymore.
There was, however, enough humanity left for me to get upset over this latest visitation from the Pipt Plaguebook. Never mind the complex biochemical changes wrought by Dracula's transfusion; my ingesting human, we
rewolf, and demon blood. There are worse offenses than personal attacks upon one's personal flesh. Back when Kadeth Bey used the Dark Arts of necromancy to raise my wife's and daughter's corpses from their graves and reanimated them with ancient and evil spirits, I was appalled.
But now I was beyond furious.
Why was this worse?
The sciences of medicine and biology were giving my loved ones a second chance at life via cloning. Wasn't that a good thing?
Why, then, did this seem more heinous than their previous, demonic resurrections?
Was it because Pipt had casually used their cloned fetuses as bait? That he could keep copying them for any number of monstrous projects and purposes? Our mad scientist had to get his raw materials for Fangenstein and that five-fingered creepy-crawly from somewhere. Back in Mary Shelley's time he might have procured his parts from the gallows and the grave. Now, in the third millennium, he was more likely to spend his time exhuming DNA instead of whole corpses.
Beyond biology, beyond science, was the ineffable question of the soul. As in: one to a customer? What happened when there were more soup cans than soup? Did other sinister brews appear in the canning process? Or was the broth progressively thinned and watered down until it lost all flavor and identity, eventually evaporating altogether?
Kurt and the others were right: I wasn't thinking clearly just now. I couldn't think clearly. The only thing I could be sure of was that Pipt's reassembling my wife and daughter in the lab was no mere happenstance: it was both message and threat.
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