Ghost In The Machine: A Lawson Vampire Story (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  I motioned for Elena to stay put and then crept up ahead. Sneaking around would have been much easier in outdoor clothes and the Calvin Klein number I wore stretched in odd places. But at least I looked good. Or so I thought. I wondered if Elena thought so, too.

  That made me frown. Of all the things in my life, I always was a sucker for a beautiful woman. Here I was, a member of an elite unit - a Fixer charged with protecting the secret existence of the vampire race, a veritable legend among the shadows - and yet a pretty face could reduce me to a wide-eyed little boy. Sad pup.

  I shrugged it off. Everyone had their vices. Mine just happened to be women.

  Human women. And someday, that would no doubt get me into a helluva lot of trouble.

  Whatever.

  I crept forward and the trees thinned further. Ahead of me, I could see an open expanse of land with higher grass. Beyond that, a fence roughly ten feet high stood barring entry to what must have been Austria.

  Closer to the open area, I could hear the voices better. Looking to my right, I saw flashlights crisscrossing roughly a half mile away.

  Shit.

  I didn’t know if this was a roving patrol or if the SVR had gotten there first and were out looking for us. Either way, it didn’t matter. Elena and I needed to be on the other side of that fence.

  And soon.

  Backtracking to Elena, I grabbed her hand and brought us right to the edge of the tree line. Once we left the cover of the trees, we’d be out in the open. The darkness would help, as would the grass, but we were going to be exposed. If that patrol happened to look up as we scaled the fence, we were in for a whole heap of trouble.

  There wasn’t another option. This was the easiest and fastest way across. So we had to go for it.

  I leaned close to Elena’s ear and whispered what I wanted her to do. We’d use the grass and low crawl through it to reach the fence. Once at the base, I’d help her climb and get over. I’d follow. In five minutes, we ought to be across and home free.

  Hopefully.

  Elena crawled out ahead of me and we moved as quietly as we could through the grass. To her credit, she didn’t complain, despite still being in her cocktail dress and wearing no shoes. That scored her some more points in my book.

  We reached the base of the fence and I checked it for any signs that it was electrified, but I saw nothing to confirm that it was. Many times, an electrified fence would have a few dead animals around - you know, the ones who hadn’t been able to read the warning signs about the high voltage that ran through it.

  I thumbed up and over to Elena and she moved without hesitation. I stood as she did and helped push her up the fence. She was able to reach the top, then swung herself over and dropped almost soundlessly to the other side.

  I glanced right and saw the flashlights were much closer now, perhaps only five hundred meters.

  Time to go.

  I jumped and grabbed the top of the fence. And at that point, the chain link ripped away from the post with an awful metallic clanging noise that scurried down the fence in both directions like one massive sound wave.

  “Oh fuck.”

  The result was a momentary pause followed by a whole lot of shouting. The flashlights immediately swung my way. Whether they caught me in their glow or not, I don’t know, because I was already over and dropping to the other side. I grabbed Elena’s hand and we started running for it across the open expanse on the Austrian side of the border. I wasn’t foolish enough to believe we were safe just then. Not yet. Not by a long shot.

  I could hear the strain in Elena’s breathing as she huffed while we ran. She stumbled once and I turned back.

  “You okay?”

  She got up and nodded, but I saw her wince with pain.

  “Your ankle?”

  “Yes.”

  The flashlights were coming faster. The fact that they were now on the Austrian side of the border told me our pursuers weren’t border guards at all.

  No time to think, I scooped Elena up in my arms and ran for it. I’d had a hit of juice before entering the hotel and had energy to spare. Elena weighed next to nothing and stood only about five feet four inches.

  Easy day.

  Ahead of me, the forest loomed again. As we entered the tree line, a shot rang out and splintered a branch to my left. I ducked and then wove through the trees. On the other side of this wood, I hoped my contact had stowed the car I’d requested because I was sure as hell going to need it.

  And soon.

  I was breathing harder now and when I finally emerged from the woods, I could just make out the car sitting under cover of some branches a few yards away. Leaning Elena against the car, I got the key from the wheel well, unlocked it and slid her inside before jumping into the driver’s seat. I gunned the engine and screamed away from the parking spot, spitting up dirt and debris in our wake. With the pedal smashed to the floor, the little sedan fishtailed once, straightened itself, and then we roared down the highway, away from the border and toward Vienna.

  We weren’t due to meet up with Kemp until that evening so I drove us back to the safe house in Lanzendorf as the sun broke across the horizon. I pulled the car into the garage and let the door slide back down before getting out and helping Elena from the car. Inside, the Ferret assigned to the house was out, so I carried Elena upstairs to one of the bedrooms and put her down on the bed.

  She glanced down at her ankle. “I think it’s sprained.”

  I examined it, probing gently and looking for confirmation of the injury. The skin was slightly discolored and a bit swollen. Touching the area around her ankle made her flinch. “You’re right. I’ll get you bandaged up. Kemp is meeting us tonight and I’m sure he’ll have more traveling for you to do before you’re safe.”

  Elena gave me a sort of sick smile. “I’ll live my life on the run from now on. The SVR won’t be forgiving.”

  “You’ll have to hide for a while,” I said. “Eventually, they’ll get tired of looking.”

  “No,” said Elena. “Not with me.”

  “What makes you so different from any other defector?”

  She leaned back on the pillows and sighed. “Did my brother tell you what I did for them?”

  “Paranormal research.”

  She laughed. “That doesn’t even begin to explain it.”

  “We’ve got time.”

  “Are you familiar with mind-body dualism?”

  I sat on the edge of the bed facing her. “Not really.”

  “Descartes. Surely you know of him.”

  “French philosopher. Never read much about his work.”

  Elena propped herself up. “It wouldn’t kill you to pick up a book every once in a while.”

  I eyed her. “Yeah, I’ll try to make some time for it when I’m not helping beautiful women escape from their captors.”

  Elena sighed. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it. Mine’s a thankless job. Continue.”

  “The sort of dualism that Descartes adhered to is called Cartesian dualism and he asserted that the mental could not have any sort of extension into the physical realm. That the mental and material were separate.”

  My eyes were getting heavy. But then again, philosophy had always made me sleepy. I kept mine simple: kill the bad guys, save the good guys, and go to bed each night with a stiff drink and a beautiful woman. Easy. “All right, what does that have to do with the paranormal?”

  “Everything,” said Elena. “If you adhere to any sort of dualism theory, then you are immediately compromising your belief that the mind can actually affect the physical. That the two are intermingled and that one can most definitely affect the other. Sometimes in incredible ways.” She took a moment. “After the second world war, Soviet troops acquired much of the research that Hitler had been working on. They brought it back to Moscow where it was pored over and they used it to start their own paranormal and psychic research programs. If we could figure out how to harness the power
of the mind, then we would potentially be ahead of the west. It could be vital to the power of the Soviet Union.”

  “Did you have any successes?”

  Elena smirked. “You could say that. We used our research to show that the mind was far more powerful than the physical realm. Chess matches were readily influenced by having someone in the audience concentrate on one of the players so they would play poorly. The results of such experiments were intriguing and ultimately satisfying. That then led to further research.”

  “You’re not old enough to have been involved with that.”

  “Of course not. I came to their attention when I was young, however. My brother probably has no memory of it. I’d taken a test at school that supposedly measured mental prowess. It was actually an early indicator of potential psychic ability. I scored off the charts and they came for me. A special school, they told my parents. For gifted children. I wound up deep in the Ural Mountains nestled up near the SVR training facility.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Learning to do this,” Elena pointed at the book on the nightstand.

  As I watched, it shuddered for a moment and then shifted its position ever so slightly. I looked back at Elena and she had her eyes closed. After another moment, she collapsed back on the pillows and sucked wind.

  “You okay?” Her eyes opened halfway and the effect on me was immediate. “My god, you’re beautiful.”

  She smiled. “I’m dying, Lawson.”

  “The hell, it’s just an ankle sprain.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I have a cerebral tumor. The result of my youth. And the training they made me undergo.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  “When we didn’t progress fast enough - there was always so much pressure for us to progress and show how amazing we could be - then they resorted to other methods they perceived to be optimal to unleashing more mental power. As I said, if you accept mind-body dualism, then you are predisposed to disregard the psychic realm. Unfortunately, the opposite extreme is just as harmful. They couldn’t perceive how the mind-body connection couldn’t be amplified. So they tried everything: drugs, radiation, electroshock stimulation on open brain cavities, you name it.” She ran her hand up to her hairline and pulled a lock away. I saw a faint scar.

  “My god.”

  She smiled again. “I felt like a psychic Frankenstein’s monster. But they eventually got what they wanted: a display of telekinetic power. But only on the small scale like what I just showed you.”

  “That was incredibly impressive.”

  Elena sniffed. “I wish you’d been in charge back then. It wasn’t enough for my masters. It never was enough. They kept prodding and poking until they gave up at last. But what could they do with me? I’d been exposed to too much, so they thought the next best thing was to use me to help them come up with new research methods.”

  “Did you?”

  “What choice did I have? If I refused to help, they would have killed me. My body would have cremated and my ashes scattered about the countryside with no one the wiser.” She sighed. “I asked for only one thing: to see my brother again. He was the only family I had left.”

  I leaned forward. “Did they let you see him?”

  “Yes. It was the only thing that has kept me going these past few years.”

  “Does he know-?”

  “That I’m dying? I don’t think so. When the government collapsed, we both thought it would mean I’d be able to join him in the west. But that was not the case. He told me he would take care of it. That he would see to it that I made it to the west safely.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  I shrugged. “It’s what I do. Help out the good guys.”

  Elena pushed herself up. “I don’t know how much time I have left.”

  “Who does? The world we live in, nothing’s ever a guarantee.”

  “You don’t have hope?”

  I turned to face her. The bright blue of her eyes pierced my soul. “I hope for a lot of things: world peace, no more bad guys, and maybe the love of a beautiful woman.”

  She nodded. “Those are good things to hope for.”

  “And you? What do you hope for?”

  Her eyes misted over. “My future is set. So my hopes are only for the given moment. This moment, Lawson. Here.” She leaned forward until her face was close to mine and I could feel her breath across my skin. “Now.”

  Our lips came together then and she pulled me back on top of her.

  The rest of the world suddenly disappeared.

  As far as I was concerned, it could stay that way.

  Twelve hours later found us parked up around the corner from a warehouse along the banks of the Danube River in Vienna. Kemp had set the meeting for 9pm and I’d arrived an hour before that, taking my time to see if the area was infested with anything other than river rats. The last thing I wanted was to walk into an ambush.

  While we waited, a light drizzle peppered the windshield. Elena drank a coffee and I watched for bad guys. I’d taken a hit of juice back at the safe house and was buzzing.

  “You never finished telling me about your work.”

  “I was interrupted,” said Elena. “And it was a wonderful interruption.”

  I smiled. “I had fun, too.”

  “So I helped them,” she said. “I helped them refine their techniques. In some ways, I even pioneered new methods. Methods that were far more successful than even I could have anticipated.”

  “How successful?”

  Elena eyed me. “Terrifyingly so. Imagine someone being able to kill you with just a thought. One single well-placed thought. A mental bullet as it were.”

  “They’d be undetectable. Untraceable. Someone with that ability could upset the balance of power in any nation on the planet.”

  Elena nodded. “It was what they were driving toward. They wanted the ability to weaponize someone with psychic powers. If they could figure out how to do that, they’d be unstoppable.”

  “And you figured it out?”

  Elena was quiet for a moment. Finally, she nodded. “Yes.”

  “How successful was it?”

  She sighed. “Extremely so. But unfortunately, the person who kills also dies in the process. The effort needed to produce a killing thought travels in two directions: at the intended target, and also back at the person who fires it.”

  I frowned. “In some ways, that’s a perfect scenario. Even less chance of it being traced back to the original handler.”

  “True,” said Elena. “But the cost was too high. The number of people they would potentially burn through would be too great. They needed to be able to figure out how to ensure the safety of the assassin.”

  “Did they?”

  Elena shrugged. “I don’t know. I was removed from the program last month when it became clear that I was starting to have doubts about it.”

  I checked my watch. “Five minutes.” I smiled. “You excited?”

  “If my doctors are to be believed, then I have perhaps a month left to live. You’ve already given me more than I could dare to hope for. From here on out, this is all extra.” She leaned over and kissed me again and I tasted the coffee on her lips. On her tongue. In each breath.

  I broke away. “Careful. You’ll get us all worked up again. I need to get my game face on.”

  She laughed. “Then let’s go.”

  Kemp was on the third level, exactly where he said he’d be. As we walked up the stairs, I saw stacks of wooden crates marked in Cyrillic lettering. Kemp obviously had a decent business going here.

  “Welcome.” Kemp looked a lot less like a bumbling fool than he had that night in the club. Now he looked…different. As I cleared the top step and stood aside, Elena came up next to me.

  And frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Kemp walked toward us. Smiling. “Elena, my dear. How nice to see you again.”

  Elena poi
nted and let out a gasp. “Him.”

  I started to turn but then someone cold-cocked me from behind. The lights went out.

  Hard.

  I came to when cold water splashed over my face. I coughed and sputtered and spat it out. My head throbbed from the hit I’d taken and I cursed myself for allowing anyone to sneak up on me. My hands were bound at the wrist behind me.

  “Welcome back, Lawson.”

  I blinked and looked up at Kemp. “I never told you my name.”

  “She did,” Kemp thumbed across the room where Elena was tied up. “She obviously cares about you.”

  “Multiple orgasms,” I said. “Most women never have them with limp-dicked assholes like you. So naturally, I tend to stand out.”

  Kemp backhanded me across the face and my jaw throbbed. I spat blood.

  “Who are you?”

  I spat again. “Lover-for-hire. Elena found me hooking on a street corner and took pity on me.”

  Kemp stared at me. “I can keep hitting you all night.”

  “You’d get bored. And I wouldn’t want you to mess up your manicure.” I looked across at Elena. “I’m guessing this isn’t your brother.”

  Elena shook her head. “No. This man was part of the program I ran.”

  I looked up at Kemp. “What’d you do with the brother?”

  “Exactly what you think I did.”

  I heard Elena cry out, but I kept staring at Kemp. “And Gavin? What about him?”

  Kemp shrugged. “A tragic accident. He apparently suffered a brain aneurism whilst driving. Imagine that.”

  I sighed. “So that’s two deaths I’ll have to collect on.”

  “Three, if you count Elena’s impending death by my hand.” Kemp laughed. “Four even, once I’m done killing you.”

  I saw one other man in the room standing next to Elena. He must have been Kemp’s helper and the sonofabitch who clocked me. I looked back at Kemp. “You’re assuming, of course, that I’m easy to kill.”