Better Off Undead: The Bloodhound Files

by DD Barant

  “Oh my God,” I say. “Are these—are they real?”

  Teresa smiles at me again, but this time her smile is a little sad. “No. Not in the way you’re thinking. But in another sense, yes, they are. More than real, in some ways.”

  “Can I—can I touch them?”

  “Of course,” she says quietly. “That’s what they’re here for.”

  I step over the narrow concrete lip that separates the Sphinx exhibit from the tiled walkway. My feet crunch in the sand. I walk up to the Sphinx and gently, reverently, lay a hand on the pitted stone surface. It’s rough and cool and dusty and very, very real.

  “This isn’t a reproduction, is it?”

  “Yes and no. The real Sphinx, the original, is still in Egypt. But that’s also exactly what you’re touching—if the sun were up in that part of the world right now, the stone would feel warm.”

  “Magic.”

  “Yes. Basic animism, amplified to a high degree. At the center of the exhibit is a small piece of the original, still linked to its point of origin by a spell. It’s like a lens, focusing and projecting the essence of the Sphinx from there to here. You’ll notice our version still has an intact nose.”

  So not the Sphinx itself, but the spirit of the thing, astral projection applied to the soul of an object instead of a being. It makes perfect sense, actually; animism doesn’t make such petty distinctions. Its central tenet is that everything has a spirit, and in this world that seems to hold true.

  “Welcome to the Archive of Human Works,” Teresa says, pride in her voice. “We may use magic to enhance our displays, but it was one hundred percent human effort and ingenuity that built them in the first place.”

  I rejoin her on the walkway. She heads to the left, past the Taj Mahal. “We have links to some of the most impressive feats of human engineering in existence. Some of the exhibits are incomplete—we just don’t have the space to display, say, the Great Wall of China—but we have a representative sample on display.”

  Sure enough, between the exhibits a section of the Great Wall is visible, encircling the entire room as if it’s protecting us from attack by marauding moles. I see a few people in gray short-sleeved uniforms strolling along the top looking like neither Chinese guards nor tourists, more like janitors who stumbled out of a space–time warp. Custodians, I guess.

  I feel like a bug who just hit history’s windshield as Teresa shows me around. I’ve never been to any of these places, but I’ve always wanted to go, and now here they are: the stepped pyramid of Chichén Itzá, surrounded by jungle greenery; the stone terraces of Machu Picchu, set into a very authentic-looking mountainside. And in the middle of a grassy plain, the ancient monoliths of Stonehenge.

  “This is astounding,” I say. I’m feeling more than a little awe. “But it must take an incredible amount of sorcerous power to maintain. How do you do it?”

  “I’ll give you a hint,” she says with a mischievous look in her eye. “One of these exhibits isn’t a projection.”

  I look around, trying to be analytical instead of overwhelmed. It comes to me almost instantly, more from instinct than conscious evaluation. “Stonehenge. Has to be.”

  “Very good. You can feel the power radiating off them, can’t you? This entire site sits on a ley line, and the stones are plugged right into it. A mystic energy source, very ancient. It cost a fortune to have them shipped here, but it wouldn’t have happened at all without a great deal of political maneuvering. Luckily, we had someone on our side.”

  “Cassius.”

  “Yes. It would have been impossible without his support.”

  Yeah. An incredible gift, one that would seem to cement my boss’s position as patron saint of mankind. Except I can’t help thinking that by giving the Enclave such a powerful mystic artifact, he’s also created a very powerful ally.

  “You said you had something come in today—this wasn’t it, right?”

  She chuckles. “No, it was much smaller. These are the big-ticket items, but we archive important human objects from all over the world. I’ll show you.”

  She leads me to a stairwell that goes even deeper, presumably to prevent putting a door in the Great Wall and spoiling the illusion. It leads us to another room, this one not nearly so grand—it’s essentially a long hallway, lined with floor-to-ceiling drawers and shelves, each holding a discrete object. Some of them I recognize, some of them I don’t.

  “We concentrate on things that have some connection to human history or achievement,” Teresa says. “Each one is carefully cataloged and then treated by our shamans. They use magic to strengthen whatever traces of the object’s creator or user remain.”

  We go to the end of the hall, turn right, go down another hall, turn left, then turn right again. The place is a maze, lit with tiny halogen spotlights trained on the walls. It has the cool, dry air of a climate-controlled environment, and the soft carpet underfoot deadens our footfalls into nothingness.

  She finally stops before a row of white-fronted drawers and peers at the label on the front. “Ah. Here it is—I was afraid they hadn’t finished processing it yet.”

  She pulls the drawer open. Inside is a pair of glasses, round wire-framed spectacles.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “Pick them up, but be careful.”

  I do. Nothing happens for a second, and then I feel a tingle in my hand, up my arm. Suddenly I’m not holding a pair of spectacles anymore; I’m holding someone’s hand. I can see him, even though he’s clearly not there—it’s like a vivid hallucination, one that’s both real and not real at the same time.

  It’s Mahatma Gandhi.

  He smiles at me but doesn’t speak. He doesn’t have to—that quiet smile on that gentle brown face, the warmth of his hand in mine, is more than enough. I feel his presence, his serenity, his intelligence; he’s just as aware of me as I am of him.

  I swallow, afraid to say anything. Gandhi’s the reason I became a vegetarian, though I haven’t embraced a nonviolent point of view the way he did. But that doesn’t mean I don’t respect it; it just means he was a better person than me. That’s not exactly news—he was a better person than most.

  “Is this—are you his ghost?” I ask.

  Gandhi doesn’t answer me, but Teresa does. “No. What you’re seeing is an echo, a kind of emotional afterimage. A trace of his persona, transferred to something he wore for many years.”

  “He feels real.”

  Teresa nods. “I know. That’s the point. We want to showcase the very best the human race has to offer, and we want people to connect with that on a personal level. To illustrate who we are and what we can accomplish.”

  Reluctantly, I let go of the glasses, letting them drop a few inches into their padded cases. Gandhi fades away, and I’m sorry to see him go.

  “That was amazing,” I say.

  “We’re very lucky to have them. Gandhi didn’t believe in material possessions, so there aren’t many artifacts linked to him left. He gave these to an Indian army colonel named H. A. Shiri Diwan Nawabin in the 1930s; the colonel had asked for a keepsake, for inspiration. Gandhi gave him these, saying they had given him the vision to free India.”

  I shake my head, feeling a little stunned. I came here hoping for a way to hold on to my human side, but this is all too big; it’s history and legends and monuments, not on my scale at all. “Do you have someplace a little less … impressive? Someplace we can sit down and have a cup of coffee?”

  “Oh, absolutely. We’ve got a nice cozy café set up in Lenin’s tomb.”

  I blink. She laughs. “Sorry. I can see you’re a little shell-shocked. Come on, we’ll go to the lounge.”

  She closes the drawer and leads me farther into the maze of hallways, but this time we come out at an elevator. It takes us back up to the main building and a room on the top floor full of tables and comfortable overstuffed chairs, flooded with sunlight from large glass panels in the roof. There’s a cafeteria-style kitchen to one side with two people I can s
ee bustling around and filling steamer trays with food; they both glance at us when we come in, but then look quickly away. There’s only one other occupied table, an elderly couple having a meal. The man ignores me, but the woman studies me with outright suspicion.

  We get two coffees and find a seat. I notice that Teresa picks a table as far away as possible from the couple.

  “No offense,” I say, “but—other than you—people here seem a little standoffi sh.”

  Teresa blows on her coffee to cool it. It’s something I haven’t seen since I got here, since pires ignore temperature and thropes seem to have a much higher tolerance for extremes. It’s oddly endearing. “Yes, well, there’s a certain clannish attitude that’s prevalent. We know pretty much every human face within a hundred miles, and anyone new is viewed with caution.”

  “You knew who I was, though.”

  She looks a little uncomfortable. “Yes. Well, there are other factors at work, too.”

  I blow on my own coffee. “It’s not that they don’t know who I am. They just don’t trust me.”

  “You showed up with Cassius. That gives you a lot of credibility.”

  I look over at the kitchen workers and catch one of them looking back with a carefully neutral expression that I’ve seen before. It’s the one worn by a prisoner staring at a guard, a mask that projects neither disrespect nor submission. It’s a look that says I’m waiting to see what you do next. I might be your friend, I might be your enemy, but don’t expect me to show my cards before you show yours.

  “Not enough, apparently,” I say.

  Teresa notices where I’m looking and shrugs. “They didn’t see you arrive, that’s all. Believe me, your boss gets a lot of respect around here. If you knew everything he’s done for us—” She breaks off abruptly, trying to hide it by taking a sip of her coffee. I’m not fooled.

  “Like what? Besides the artifacts?”

  “He helped set this whole place up. There were a lot of human refugees after the war, and he did a lot for them. During the war, too.”

  “During the war? How?”

  “I—I can’t really say. It’s all classified.”

  I realize what she’s talking about. Six million humans perished at the end of World War II, and the world at large thinks the death toll was due to a sorcerous virus released by Hitler’s shamans. But the truth is far darker: The bodies that were burned for health reasons in government-constructed crematoriums were in fact being ritually sacrificed.

  And they weren’t dead, either.

  I uncovered this during my very first investigation on this world, and I’ve never quite forgiven Cassius for it; as head of the NSA back then, he was part of the power structure that condemned those people to a horrible death. Teresa sounds like she knows the truth, too, and probably more of it than I do. But she doesn’t seem to blame Cassius for his role—if anything, she seems grateful.

  The old couple in the corner abruptly get up and leave. The man throws me a glare as they stalk out the door, and I suddenly realize why they’re so hostile.

  I’m a collaborator.

  Cassius can be forgiven because of all the good he’s done for the human cause, but me? I’ve made a choice. I’m a cop who works for the enemy. I was brought here to hunt my own kind, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve made a name for myself as the Bloodhound, and the people living here are all too aware of who really holds my leash. They don’t see a friend of Cassius; they see a turncoat.

  Maybe they’re right.

  I finish my coffee and stand up. “Thank you for your time, Teresa. For what you’ve shown me.”

  “My pleasure, Jace. You’re—” She hesitates. “You’re a good person to have on our side. I hope everything works out for you.”

  She was going to say You’re always welcome here, but she stopped herself. Which is good, because it wouldn’t be true. In fact, after the first full moon I may never be allowed to set foot in here again.

  “I hope so, too,” I say. “I really do.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “Jace? I didn’t expect you back so soon,” Cassius says as I get in the car. He’s taken off his mask and gloves.

  “I’m a quick study. Let’s go.”

  He can tell I’m upset, but he doesn’t pry. He knows me well enough to understand that I won’t keep it bottled up for long, and he’s right. We’re no more than half a mile away from the Enclave when I say, “That place. It’s not a museum, it’s a mausoleum.”

  “Is that how it felt to you?”

  “Hell, yes. Those people were scared, Cassius. I could … I could smell it.”

  “They’re doing the best they can.”

  “Are they? They’ve built a bunker on top of a tomb and they’re filling it with history. That’s not the act of a healthy society—that’s the quiet despair of a people who have given up. They’re trying to preserve the best of humanity because they think there isn’t going to be a humanity pretty soon. They don’t have any faith in the future, so they’re putting all their energy into capturing the past.”

  “There’s a lot worth preserving.”

  I make a deeply irritated growling noise. “That’s not the point! They’re acting like—like there are no new challenges, there’s nothing left to accomplish. Like the game is over and all that’s left to do is count up the points and put the board away. They’re beaten, Cassius. And that’s—that’s not something I can stand to be around.”

  “Is that all there was to it?”

  “No. They’ve practically deified you, but they don’t trust me. Teresa was nice enough, but she was the only one I talked to. And I could tell that my condition made even her very nervous.”

  “Most of the Axis forces in World War Two were thropes.”

  “That’s not it. Pire or thrope, it doesn’t make any difference—it’s strictly an us versus them thing. What matters is that I came to this world a human being, and I chose to work for the other side.”

  Cassius is quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Jace. I’d hoped it would go better.”

  “Did you?” I snap. “Or did you think good old predictable Jace would react exactly the same way she always does? That I’d see how pathetic those survivors huddling in their self-made prison compound were, and decide I’d be better off as a member of the winning team?”

  His voice drops several degrees in temperature. “You’re overwrought. Understandably so. So I’m going to let you think about what you just said before I respond to it.”

  The icy steel in his tone stops me. He’s right, I’m getting overemotional. I force myself to cool off and think, and realize that Cassius would never try to manipulate me into turning against my own kind. It wouldn’t work, for one thing—I’m too stubborn to switch sides, regardless of how badly my team may be losing, and Cassius knows that. He also knows that if he ever attempted something like that, I’d see through it and he’d lose my trust forever. Accusing Cassius of being manipulative doesn’t bother him, but accusing him of doing it badly is just insulting.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but my voice is sullen. God, I haven’t felt this bitchy since I was a teenager. “You were just trying to help.”

  “And failing, obviously.”

  “No. You helped me realize something, by showing me the alternative. I don’t want to become like those people, trying to relive past glories; I want to go forward. I want to fight for who I am, what I am. I’m ready for another … whatever the hell it is you’re doing to me.”

  “Inoculation seems the most accurate term.”

  “Okay, fine. Once we get back to the office, you can inoculate the hell out of me.”

  He doesn’t respond to that, and I can’t bring myself to look at him; I’m afraid I’ll see a big grin on his face.

  And strangely enough, I’m having a hard time keeping one off my own.

  We do it the same way we did it last time. I take off my shoes, socks, and pants and lie on his couch, and he kneels beside me. “This time,
try to keep it to under a gallon, okay?”

  “I know what to expect now, Jace. I promise you, I won’t lose control.”

  “All right, then. Let’s get this over with.” I’m trying my best for a firm, businesslike attitude, but I can already feel my heartbeat racing. And was that a quiver in my voice?

  He leans forward and touches his lips to my skin. A shiver races through my body. This is a medical procedure, I tell myself. This is a medical procedure.

  His teeth sink into my flesh. The first time it happened I gasped, more from shock than pain. This time, I barely feel it. But when he starts to drink, the sensation is much more intense than before; it feels like my very life is draining away.

  And just like last time, I can’t move.

  Panic explodes in my chest. He lied. He’s going to turn me whether I like it or not. I’m going to die, right here and now.

  But I won’t stay that way.

  I do my best to fight the fear, to tell myself I’m overreacting. It doesn’t do any good. I’ve been nervous and tense all day and this kicks that tension right over the edge. I’m taking big, raspy gulps of air like I’m drowning, but he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. A very distant and small voice in my head is trying to convince me this is only the thrope virus responding to an attack, but it’s just a whisper on the other side of a door compared with the storm of terror that’s howling inside my skull.

  Then even that’s gone, and all that’s left is the panic.

  “NO!” Whatever pire sorcery is paralyzing my body, it seems to break with the yell. This time, I don’t try to pull Cassius free.

  I backhand him with my right fist, across the forehead. This is a stupid thing to do, as the bone that lies behind the forehead is extremely solid and dense while the bones that make up the hand are not. And pires are notoriously resistant to damage, anyway.