“But he’s not,” I said. “We’ve been over this before.”
“And I told you that you could use a third of what’s wired into that vest and there still wouldn’t be enough remains for DNA testing.”
“I need to be sure, Dennis: I don’t want him coming back after this.” I considered. “You said the remote had two circuits. Do you have a second detonator? And the material to arm a second charge?”
“Yes. But the only plastique I have is what is already wired in the vest.”
“Half,” I decided. “You said a third would be more than sufficient for taking out Bey. So take half from the vest and prepare a second circuit.”
“I may need more wire. What kind of a charge do you want and how long before you need it?”
“Four hours,” I said. “It’s got to be ready in four hours.”
Going back to my own room was like entering a fairy tale—specifically, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.”
Someone was sleeping in my bed.
Well, not sleeping exactly. And it wasn’t Goldilocks.
“Where have you been?” Lupé asked, bare shoulders emerging from under the covers.
“I’ve been to London to look at the queen.”
A slow smile spread across her mouth. “Pussycat, pussycat, what did you there?”
“I hunted the rat that hides under her chair.”
“Really?” she asked, sitting up. The covers drooped and I was treated to the sight of more than bare shoulders. “You found her? Where? She returned to the daynest?”
I hesitated. Locked the door. And then nodded. “Don’t!” I said sharply as she started to move. “Go there now and you might—I say might—have a chance at Bachman. But not much of a chance and Kadeth Bey will escape us for good. Give me twelve hours. By sunrise tomorrow morning, everything and everyone should come together. Please. That way we can both take our revenge. Trust me.”
“I do,” she said, eyes glistening, “I trust you more than anyone I know.”
Her words and the look in her eyes brought back Mooncloud’s warning of a few days before: She has no one, now, Chris. Human companionship is out of the question. To her undead masters she is nothing more than a subservient species. And if she tried to rejoin her own kind, the taint of the Nosferatu would cling to her like a shroud.
And what about me? Was I really human anymore? The societies of Pagelovitch and the other demesnes were anathema to me, as well, so weren’t we really two of a kind?
“What are you doing in my bed?”
“Waiting for you.”
“Why?” I felt myself on a mental tightrope, trying to stay focused on the equation of betrayal and revenge I had set in motion this day. I was tired, thirsty, and my head throbbed from the glow of sunlight that was leaking around the motel room curtains.
“You know why. Why do you pretend to ask?”
I didn’t need any additional distractions: the next several hours were going to be complicated enough.
“Or maybe I was wrong,” she continued. “I thought you—that maybe we—” She looked down suddenly. “What am I,” she whispered, “to you?”
“An ally,” I said. “A friend. . . .” A chess piece?
“Am I woman, as well? Or am I some kind of creature—a thing—that looks like a woman?”
You like to do it doggie-style, Chris? You like animals? But the memory of Jenny’s yellow, predatory gaze faded as I looked at Lupé and saw the moisture brimming below her warm brown eyes.
“No,” I said. “You’re not a thing. You’re not a creature. You are the most human person I’ve known since my wife and daughter died.”
“Then, is that the problem? Your wife? You’re still in love with your wife.”
“My wife,” I said harshly, “is dead. She has been dead for more than a year. The past is dead and buried.” My lips curled as those last words escaped my mouth. “Dead, anyway. And after tomorrow—I hope—permanently buried.”
“But you’re thinking of trying to bring her back. The Scroll of Thoth—”
“Even supposing it were possible—something has taken their place. I don’t know that they could come back now. And if they could—” my voice suddenly broke “—I don’t know if they should.”
She was out of the bed, then, and taking me by the hands, leading me back to it. She sat on the edge of the mattress and began unbuttoning my shirt. “You’re tired.”
“Yes.”
“You’re thirsty.”
“Yes. . . .”
“Too much to do,” she said. “Too many thoughts of death.” The belt was next. “Let it all go for a few hours. Rest.”
I felt numb and detached, but not totally passive; I stepped out of my pants and shoes, undressed the rest of the way and moved onto the bed as she slid over to make room. “Three hours,” I mumbled. “Wake me at sunset. . . .” I closed my eyes.
I felt her roll over on her side, felt slim fingers at my temples pushing at the tension that had accumulated there over the long hours, days, weeks.
“You’ll need strength for tonight,” she whispered.
“Mmm,” I said. And promptly fell asleep.
“Oh!” moans a voice in the darkness.
“Amon Ra,” it sighs in the blackness.
“Oh!” echoes the sepulchral sound.
“God of Gods,” the voice intones, booming in the tomblike stillness.
“Death is but the doorway to new life. . . .” The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise.
“We live today. . . .”
The power begins to gather.
“ . . . we shall live again. . . .”
Death hisses at me—
“ . . . in many forms shall we return. . . .”
Reaches for me—
“Oh, mighty one. . .”
There is a sound of thunder and raw earth fills my mouth as I try to scream—
Awake—
“Shhh.” Slender hands caressed my face, stroked my forehead. “Shhhh.”
I opened my eyes and looked at Lupé. She knelt, straddling me. The room had grown darker and infrared overlay of my night vision made her appear to glow, golden brown skin seemingly lit from within. My vision clarified as sleep receded and I could see the tiny hairs that fuzzed her arms and legs and belly and coalesced into a downy trail that led southward from the dark pit of her navel.
Then I saw the knife. She lifted the golden blade, saying, “This is my body.” She opened a vein in her arm. “This is my blood. . . .” She leaned down and pressed the wound to my lips, pressed her flesh to mine.
We filled one another.
Oh!
In the dream I am running at tremendous speeds.
Amon Ra. . . .
I am a human express train barreling through a kaleidoscopic wind tunnel of lights and sounds and smells—especially smells! A profusion of scents batters my nostrils, ricochets through my sinuses, explodes inside my skull.
Oh!
It is distraction to the point of disorientation and I do not notice the sounds at my back until I have been running for quite some time. The sound of wolves, howling. Gathering.
Hunting.
Pursuing.
God of gods. . . .
My feet are invisible, the rolling ground is a blur beneath me. New awareness: I am running uphill. And the ground seems nearer my face than it should! Behind me the howls rise in an unholy chorus.
Death is but the doorway to new life. . . .
And death waits ahead, up the trail. Bassarab rises from a jumble of rocks. Spreads his cape with his arms like a giant bat flexing its wings. “So!” he says. “You have broken the Law! You have defied the Covenant! Even after my warnings. . . .” He gazes down at me like a stern falcon: disapproval before the kill.
“Now you must run!”
We live today. . . .
“Until today you were the secret they coveted, a prize to be won. But now you are become the secret that the vampire lords must kee
p hidden from even their own kind. A secret they must destroy to keep to themselves.” He hunches in upon himself.
. . . we shall live again. . . .
“So you must run in earnest, now,” he growls, changing. His skin bursts open in silent explosions of dark fur. His face lengthens and his mouth sprouts twin rows of triangular teeth. He falls forward and his limbs shorten to bring him forward and parallel to the hardscrabble ground.
Now his height matches mine.
I look down and consider my forelegs. Lift a paw and examine the tufts of fur between my toe pads.
. . . in many forms shall we return. . . .
“Now, run, little one! For the blood-bond, I will show you where and how you may hide. But it must be your cunning that breaks the trail from your pursuers!”
Oh, mighty one. . . .
He leaps forward and I follow quickly. The sound of the pack at our backs raises hackles of fur from my shoulders to my tail. . . .
* * *
I had fallen asleep in Lupé’s arms. I woke up, not on the bed but crouched on the floor of another room. Bassarab stood over me, his expression unreadable.
“What happened? Where am I?”
“My room,” he said, handing me a blanket to cover myself with.
“How did I get here?”
“You traveled the path of your dream.”
“I was walking in my sleep?” The thought of involuntary sleepwalking was bad enough. Wandering about the corridors of a public motel, starkers, worse.
“You did not walk. You came as the mist.”
“Missed?” I was still in a fog. “Wait a minute. What are you telling me, here? That I came in like the fog? On little cat feet?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Really? You’re saying I turned into a bunch of mist—like in the movies—and flowed under the doors?”
“No.” He sat on the bed and looked tired. “I’m not saying that.”
“So what are you saying?” I stood, wrapping the blanket about me Indian-style. “Are we talking teleportation, here? Telekinesis? Stuff like that?”
He nodded—reluctantly, I thought. “Something like that.”
I gave a low whistle. “How come nobody told me that this was part of the process?”
“Because it isn’t. Part of ‘the process,’ that is. It only happens to a select few.”
“How?”
He just looked at me.
“Lupé’s blood,” I answered for him. “When you first revealed yourself, you told us that the blood of the wampyr and the lycanthrope must never mingle. That it was the law and the penalty for breaking that law was death.”
No response beyond the single nod of his head.
I shook my head in turn. “It can’t be that simple. If all it took was a little of her blood to give me this power, then vampires would be biting werewolves at every opportunity, law or no law.”
“It isn’t that simple,” he agreed.
“Of course not; I just said that. So what’s the rest of it?”
Bassarab contemplated the worn carpet at his feet. After a protracted silence he sighed and finally spoke. “The part that should immediately concern you is this: once the others know that you’ve acquired the power of a Doman, they’ll see you as an even greater threat. They will hunt you down and destroy you. Not for the sake of superstition—but because the law was conceived to keep others from becoming rivals to their power. And because you are not fully wampyr, but straddle the worlds of the living and the undead, you may be even more powerful than they imagine.”
“But I’m not a threat! I don’t want what they have!”
“Look at me!” Bassarab’s eyes seemed to smolder deep in his skull. “I turned my back on them all. Bequeathed them nearly all of the wealth and power that I had amassed over the long centuries. Said, ‘Here, take it and leave me in peace. In solitude.’ Were they grateful for my abdication? A larger selection of the spoils?
“No! They have hunted me and hounded me! The very demesne I fathered recruited that corruption Kadeth Bey. Turned him loose like an unholy hound to sniff out my trail and destroy anything that might have ties to me!
“They know I will keep their secret. Most owe their success, their very existence, to me. So what mercy and consideration do you expect from these undead masters who have decreed the law and its penalty for all of their own kind?”
“One thing at a time,” I answered him. “If I survive this night, then I’ll worry about tomorrow and next week and next year.”
His thin lips curled in a humorless smile. “That is precisely what must not happen,” he said. “You must not survive this night. . . .”
Nor must you, I thought, matching my smile to his.
I had to walk back to my room with the blanket draped about me like a vastly oversized toga: try as I might, I was unable to return to my room by the so-called dreampath. Bassarab refused to discuss the matter further. Time was short, he said, and we would continue that particular conversation after Kadeth Bey was utterly and irrevocably destroyed. If either of us survived, that is.
So we discussed the Plan. And before we were done, we not only knew that we would both have to die, but we also knew when and how, as well.
The sun was already down before I could join Smirl in the drainage ditch that ran along Atkinson Road. The runoff from the storm churned around his boots as he crouched against the angled embankment and studied the ruins of the old hospital and the field around it through a pair of Brunton infrared binoculars.
“You’re late,” he said as I slid down into the water beside him. Unlike Smirl, I wore tennis shoes, and the icy water leeched the feeling from my lower legs in seconds.
“Any movement?”
“They left ten minutes ago.” He capped the field glasses and scrambled up and onto the shoulder of the road.
I looked down to where my shins disappeared into the roiling water and my jeans were wicking the water up toward my knees. Then I looked up at Smirl’s waterproof Magnums that were already beading dry. “How many?” I grunted, climbing back up to join him. Water dribbled from my laced eyelets as we walked across the road.
“Three. Just as you said.”
“That should be it, but I’m going inside to make sure.”
He reached inside his trenchcoat and produced two Tracker headsets, handing me one. “How much time do we have?”
“Minimum of forty-five minutes,” I said, adjusting the earpiece and microphone arm. “Maybe two hours at the other end.” I clipped the control box and battery pack to my belt. “Assuming they don’t change their minds on the way over and come back without picking up Bey.”
“Then we’d best hurry,” Smirl murmured, his voice crackling in my earpiece.
I nodded and jammed my fingers into the old hospital’s ancient mortar. I began climbing.
The tunnel would have been easier and my wet tennis shoes made this ascent harder than the last. But it would have been entirely too logical for Bachman to booby-trap the passage against my premature return, and the fewer who knew about the back door, the better.
This time I managed to cross to the trapdoor without punching any new holes in the roof. I slid down the steel access ladder, unclipped the Sabrelight from my belt, and switched it on. I worked my way down the stairs, making a cursory sweep of all the rooms on each floor before descending to the next level. I found nothing of import: trash, broken plaster, and archeological evidence of furniture from the premodern era.
The only significant finds were the dead rats.
I’d seen dead mice before: you don’t grow up in the country, with a cat, without experiencing a parade of feline gifts on your doorstep.
But rats are a good deal larger. And these particular rodents had been gutted so that little remained but their furry rinds. Some had their heads bitten off; others, their legs torn out. I tried to not speculate whether that had happened while they were still alive. About the kind of hungers at work here.
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And then I was down in the basement and easing my way into the furnace room.
It was darker now. The myriad candles had burned lower and many had gone out, reduced to shapeless puddles of wax, dark smears marking the grave of each wick. The area seemed deserted. Nothing stirred. No one was in sight.
Then I heard breathing.
Gasps, actually; sharp intakes of breath, followed by explosive exhalations. A sigh. A sob. Soft, slithery sounds.
I moved to where I had last seen Suki. She was gone. A smeary trail of blood led away from the area where she had been dropped. I followed it. Found her trying to wedge herself beneath one of the workbenches. She had used the failing strength in her arms and shoulders to pull herself across the concrete floor, leaving a spoor of blood and displaced debris in her wake. Now she was propped up on her forearm and using a piece of scrap lumber in her other hand, trying to push her unresponsive legs between the heavy wooden supports of the bench and toward the rear wall. Before it disappeared into the dark, dusty depths, I noticed small, bloody wounds on the back of her left leg.
Bite marks.
Larger than a cat’s, lacking the elongated pattern of a canine muzzle.
Smaller than a human adult’s bite radius. . .
“Oh, dear God,” I whispered.
Suki stopped pushing and tried to look up. As she twisted around, her eyes rolled up in the back of her head and she passed out.
I reached down and gently extracted her from beneath the workbench. And then, because there was no other way and time was running out, I lifted her in my arms. She groaned but didn’t wake or stop breathing. I was counting on her inhuman physiology keeping her alive despite the damage that would accrue in moving her. I turned around and started toward the stairs.
Smirl was standing in the doorway, holding a cordless, electric drill. “Is this smart?”
“Smart?” I echoed.
“Removing her as a hostage from the equation,” he said quietly. “Will it put you in a stronger negotiating position? Or will the others call the whole thing off when they return and find her gone?”
“I can’t leave her here.”
He stared at me. “No, I don’t suppose you could.” He replaced the drill in the valise and walked around the room, studying it from the floor up. Finally he sighed and slipped a Glock 19 auto pistol out of the shoulder holster under his coat. “If you’ll give me a few more minutes, I have some things I need you to carry back to the motel for me.”
One Foot in the Grave - The Halflife Trilogy Book I Page 32
