Blood Oath

by Christopher Farnsworth

  “It’s not—it doesn’t always work,” Cade said, the truth stumbling out of him. The change didn’t take in every victim of a bite. Most people simply died. Some rose again. He didn’t know why.

  Her eyes were crazed as she looked at him. Now she stepped closer to him, and he retreated again. “I know the chances. You think I don’t know? I want this. I want it.”

  “No,” he said, no longer uncertain. It was a simple fact, embedded in him like bedrock: he would never spread the disease.

  “I can make you do it,” she said.

  He didn’t bother to reply to that. It was simply too absurd.

  Then he heard something from the TV.

  “—to Jennifer Espinoza in Culver City,” the anchor with the sandblasted face was saying.

  The screen switched to a shot of an attractive young woman standing in front of what looked like a park.

  “Roger, I’m standing here at Holy Cross Cemetery, where someone displayed a sick sense of humor by robbing the grave of famous horror actor Bela Lugosi. Police say someone took all the remains of Lugosi, best known for playing Dracula in the classic movie—

  Cade turned his head, like a dog on point.

  “Lugosi was buried in one of the many capes he wore in his most famous role, Roger, so police are monitoring eBay and other auction sites in case someone tries—”

  Cade was momentarily baffled. Konrad would never be so obvious. It would almost be like sending him a message.

  Helen thought he was distracted. She whipped the steak knife from behind her back.

  Cade didn’t care. She couldn’t hurt him. She gave him a hard smile.

  He figured it out a second too late. She already had the serrated tip at her throat.

  With a quick slash, she laid open her own jugular.

  Blood sprayed down the front of her blouse, out onto the kitchen floor.

  Cade froze.

  Her blood was everywhere. All over her. The stink of it, rich and fresh and warm.

  Still smiling, Helen sagged to the floor as her life poured out of her.

  “Come on,” she whispered. “Do it.”

  Cade felt his fangs push their way out of his mouth, unbidden.

  He turned and ran. Nearly knocked the door off its hinges on his way out of the apartment.

  His inhuman hearing picked up a small chuckle from the back of her throat. “Pansy,” she said.

  FORTY-THREE

  In Europe in the Middle Ages, and even later, witches were known to be notorious grave thieves. Their dissection of corpses for parts of the body needed in the “witches brew” is famous in folklore.... Not too many years ago, the only way for medical students and medical schools to obtain corpses for dissection and study was to hire grave robbers. Sometimes when students were unable to hire others to do the gruesome job, they were obliged to do it themselves.

  — Claudia De Lys, A Treasury of American Superstitions

  Konrad heard the back door of the clinic open. He checked his Patek Philippe. Right on time.

  Tania entered the room, a contractor-grade trash bag slung over her shoulder.

  Konrad couldn’t help smiling. She looked like an elf, carrying presents for a psychopathic Santa.

  She dumped the bag on the operating table. Konrad winced a little, even though the condition of the remains didn’t matter.

  “I got what you wanted,” she said.

  “Well done,” he said. “You get your treat. It’s over there.”

  He pointed. A bag of type 0 rested on the counter.

  Tania, hating herself for her eagerness, rushed over to it and tore it open with her teeth. It slid down her throat in two smooth gulps.

  Konrad was busy pulling the remains from the bag. The body was mostly decomposed, with long strings of dead tissue here and there. The rest was bone.

  “You can use that?” Tania asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “It was so difficult, so long ago. When I was looking for the Elixir of Life. When I was still a mere alchemist.”

  Konrad’s eyes grew soft and warm as he tore the remaining flesh from the bone. “It was like the heavens opened when I finally learned the secret. Death is, you see, paradoxically, fundamental to survival. Our bodies are in a constant state of flux. Cells must die in order to be replaced. To halt this process, to freeze it in place, is to turn living tissue into a corpselike state.”

  He used a bone saw to cut the limbs into smaller chunks. Grit and dust flew into the air.

  “Death itself held the secret to eternal life. I soon learned what your kind has always known, on a cellular level. The process can be halted, but only if one is willing to become a living corpse.”

  Tania made a face. “We’re both in pretty good shape for corpses.”

  Konrad began digging into the bone with a metal pick, scraping something out. “Because we sup regularly at the fountain of youth, my dear. We know that immortality and rejuvenation are not the same thing.”

  Konrad hit a button on the wall, and his machine lowered itself from the ceiling. Even Tania found that thing disturbing.

  Konrad placed the scrapings lovingly into one of the collection arms of the device. Then he activated it, and the bits of bone and marrow went into a cup, where they began to be soaked in some kind of fluid.

  “Life requires death,” Konrad said, his face rapt. “And death consumes life.”

  Konrad began scraping more bone, Tania seemingly forgotten.

  She wondered if she could make the door while he was playing with the corpse.

  He looked up at her then, seeming to wake up.

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “It came to you as an accident. But I had to stalk it and hunt it down, and make it mine. This is why my prize is so much purer than yours.”

  Tania just stared. She’d seen all variety of human emotion reflected through the eyes. Whoever said they were the windows to the soul was right. She’d seen her prey stare back at her with fear, with hate, rage, disbelief, even love.

  But there was something she’d never seen in Konrad’s eyes. She wondered if she was seeing true madness for the first time.

  He shook his head, as if pitying her.

  “You don’t understand. No. Come. Let’s put you back in your cage.”

  Remote in hand, he walked her back to the atrium at the building’s center.

  She was nervous. She had the feeling that the trip to the cemetery was the last thing he needed. But Konrad seemed so happy now. Calmed by touching death.

  Perhaps he wasn’t going to take his revenge on her after all.

  She walked into the atrium and sat by the fountain. He waited at the door, smiling.

  Something was off. She sensed it immediately. She looked up.

  The screen over the skylight had been drawn back. She could see the stars. Eyes wide with realization, she looked at Konrad.

  “Sunrise will be in a few hours,” he said. “Perhaps you can learn something new about fear in that time.”

  “You son of a bitch,” she said, looking around frantically for something that would shield her from daylight when it came.

  Nothing. The room was as empty as ever.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” Konrad confirmed. “I haven’t left a secret passage for you, or anything to torture you by raising your hopes. I’m not really the mustache-twirling type, I’m afraid. It’s enough for me that you will spend your last moments in utter despair. You will die.”

  He closed the door.

  Tania stood there, waiting. If she felt she had the right, she would pray that Cade would find her. She had drawn enough attention to her errand for Konrad. It had to work. He was her only chance.

  The door opened again, Konrad smiling.

  “I thought you should know: Cade is already dead. My associates saw to it this morning.”

  Tania sat down, numb. The noisy fountain seemed to chuckle behind her.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Konrad went home. He began packi
ng. The game was almost over. Now it was time to fulfill his final obligations and depart this sad, sprawling mess of a city.

  Cade was dead. Odd, it didn’t feel more like a triumph to him. Perhaps it was because, as the female vampire said, he did not do it with his own hands. But that was ridiculous. He’d engineered Cade’s demise. He’d killed thousands over the years. He supposed his lack of joy was simply due to the fact that Cade was, in the end, no more of an obstacle than any of the others who’d come up against him.

  He put a few of his best clothes into a garment bag, a treasured copy of Mein Kampf into his briefcase, along with a stack of cash in dollars and euros. So many things he had to leave behind. But he’d done it before. And there were plenty of shops in Europe where he could restock his closet and bookshelves. He’d left other homes with less preparation. At least this time, there were no peasants at the gate.

  There was a heavy pounding at his front door. He sighed. Perhaps he’d spoken too soon.

  The young man at the door didn’t wait to be invited in. No great surprise there. He looked like a typical product of the American system: muscled and overfed, healthy and attractive despite his obvious pig-eyed stupidity. He wore a sweatshirt with the name of some inferior university on it, in the same way that small children need notes pinned to their jackets.

  “Where is she?” he demanded as he shoved his way past Konrad.

  “Where’s who?”

  “Don’t. Just fucking don’t,” he said, waving a warning finger at Konrad. “Where is Nikki?”

  Nikki. How utterly predictable.

  “And you would be ... ?”

  “Dude, I’m her boyfriend.”

  “You had an open relationship, I take it.”

  The young man stepped closer, into Konrad’s personal space. “You looking for an ass-kicking, pal?”

  Konrad smiled. “I’m simply saying, she never mentioned a boyfriend.”

  He smirked. “Oh, yeah. You thought she was in love with you? That she was getting all she needs here? Wake up, Gramps. You’ve been paying our rent for a while.”

  “Ah,” Konrad said. “So you’re her pimp.”

  The young man pushed him, hard. “Told you to watch your mouth, old man.”

  “Yes. Yes, you did.”

  “Now. Where is she?”

  “I wish I could help you. But I haven’t seen her since I last fucked her.”

  The boyfriend/pimp scowled at that. He stepped past Konrad, shoulder checking him out of the way.

  “Asked you a question, dude. Where is she?”

  “And I told you: I don’t know.”

  “Bullshit. You called. She came. I come back to the apartment today, she’s not there.”

  “Perhaps I’m not her only client.” A smile played on Konrad’s lips. “Or perhaps she’s not, as you put it, ‘getting all she needs’ at home?”

  The pimp raised his fist, ready to strike Konrad, then stopped. It took him a moment, but he beamed when he figured it out.

  “You did something to her, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said tightly.

  Smugness oozed from the pimp. “Sure you don’t. And I bet that’s what you’d tell the cops, too.”

  “Which is where you’re going, I assume,” Konrad said. “Because you’re so worried about your lady love.”

  The pimp nodded. “Afraid so, dude. Unless ...”

  He let it hang there. Konrad winced at the ham-fistedness of it, the crassness of the approach. But the little hangnail was right: he couldn’t afford a visit from the police right now.

  “How much?” Konrad asked.

  “Ten grand,” the pimp blurted. When he saw that Konrad didn’t react to the figure, he added, “Just to start. Then we’ll see.”

  Amateur, Konrad thought. Well. Whatever it took to get him out of the way.

  Konrad gave him a curt nod, then headed into the main room. He opened a wall safe concealed behind an original watercolor from prewar Vienna.

  He took out an envelope, made a show of checking the currency within and extended it to the pimp.

  “Here you are,” he said. “I hope this quells your anxiety over Nikki.”

  The pimp grabbed the envelope. “We’ll see,” he said, with the same smug look. He put his hand inside and began to count the money.

  He dropped it suddenly, as if bitten.

  “Ow! Damn, man, what the hell?”

  He brought his fingers, bleeding, up to his mouth.

  The bills had spilled on the floor. A small metal razor glinted from between them.

  Konrad looked appropriately contrite. “Oh, I am sorry. Please. Do accept my apologies.”

  The pimp was already breathing heavily. “Is that some kind of sick joke?”

  “Are you feeling all right?” Konrad asked.

  The pimp shook his head, unsteady on his feet. He reached under his shirt and pulled out a gun. He pointed it in Konrad’s direction, but his eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  “What the hell did you do to me?”

  “Try to calm down,” Konrad said, his voice soothing. “I can help. I’m a doctor.”

  There were, of course, fast-acting chemical agents that would have stopped the man’s nervous system from sending or receiving any signals, causing his body to spasm and his skin to slough off. But Konrad rejected those. Something synthetic and inelegant about them. As always, he was more interested in seeing what the human body would provide.

  Cade had mentioned the flu variant Konrad built during the war. Now it looked like a child’s plaything to him. The Führer had wanted to fill shells with it and fire them at England, but Konrad ultimately rejected the whole thing. It spread uncontrollably, and might have even turned back on its creator. Unacceptable.

  He didn’t fault his own knowledge, of course. Konrad had been manipulating DNA for decades before Watson and Crick discovered the double helix, but the advances in the equipment in the past fifty years—scanning-tunneling microscopes, genetic sequencers, computers—gave him a new level of precision and finesse. With those tools, he could create a menu of infinite choice and novelty.

  For the pimp, he’d decided on a new little variant he’d been toying with for a while. He’d seen a television program, of all things, about a very rare genetic defect that caused its sufferer to have no immunity whatsoever against the human papilloma virus. One cut, even a scratch, and the skin would begin piling up warts.

  It was ugly, but not fatal. Konrad reviewed the literature. He decided he could fix that.

  He prepared an emergency envelope, with a sharp blade secreted in a pile of bills, for demands like the pimp’s. The pathogen smeared on the blade only needed a small cut to enter the body, and once inside, spread quickly.

  He checked his watch. Thirty seconds and counting.

  The pimp’s gun started to shake. Tremors in the extremities.

  “I said, what the hell did you do, you prick?” the pimp demanded. Eyes rolling now. Sweat running down his forehead. Konrad wondered if the man would have enough muscle control to pull the trigger.

  The pimp gagged violently, dropping the pistol. No, apparently not.

  Panic filled his eyes. “What did you—?”

  That was all he got out before the eruptions began.

  He clawed at his throat, trying to breathe. Konrad had a good view of the first growths on the man’s neck and chin. They spread like a nest of spiders, racing across his skin.

  The pimp couldn’t see those, but he saw the ones on his hands. He stared at them as if they belonged to someone else, mouth open in mute horror.

  The growths bubbled up, one after another, filling every patch of smooth skin, replacing it with hard, hornlike scales. (A boost in the keratin content of each cell, thanks to the virus.) Spirals of skin, twisting like snail shells, turning and growing out and upward.

  When they had colonized the entire skin surface, they began to build on top of one another, extending f
eeding tubes downward below the subcutaneous level. Muscle, intestine and fat—all more fuel for the tiny viral engines, churning away.

  Konrad imagined that was incredibly painful.

  Not that the pimp could say anything about it. His mouth was filled with rootlike structures spitting out of his throat, as the growths filled any empty space they found.

  He fell to the deep-pile carpet, alongside his gun. One hand tried to reach for it. His fingers were more or less gone, however, fused into something like a hoof.

  One eye fixed on Konrad from a well of rioting flesh. The other was sealed up already.

  The hair drew back inside the scalp as the viral loads consumed more and more skin cells, accumulating in layers like tree bark. Within a moment, the last strands were sucked into the swelling mass. The ears were now only tiny slits on the side of his skull.

  The pimp’s shoes snapped at the laces as his feet ballooned. His body was just about used up. Inside, his bones would have been tapped and converted into more food for the growths.

  He stopped twitching. The growths slowed, then stopped.

  Konrad waited. Five seconds.

  The pimp’s T-shirt ripped open, and the roots leaped out of the chest cavity, casting about for any new flesh, a last grasp for survival.

  Nothing was within reach, however. The roots waved feebly about for another second and then drooped. Dead.

  What was left on the floor looked more like a fungus than a man.

  Konrad checked his watch again. Five minutes thirty-nine seconds.

  Not bad at all. Almost totally useless as a weapon, of course. It required direct insertion into the subject’s bloodstream, and wouldn’t spread beyond a single carrier. But the process was fascinating, nonetheless. Complete conversion of the human biomass into a nonviable form, rebuilding the entire genetic structure in mere minutes.

  This was what his patrons never understood, from the Führer to the Soviets, and now the Arabs. They always pestered him for bioweapons or anthrax or some kind of plague. What Konrad did was not science. It was alchemy. And alchemy was all about nonrepeatable results. It was what made him unique—irreplaceable. He wouldn’t give anyone a weapon they could easily duplicate without him.