Noticing her confused look, he smiled. “You are probably going to be kind of cold after your hot shower. I think you emptied my hot water tank. Good thing I showered already.”
She shivered and then pulled the afghan up over her arms, holding it tightly and defiantly across her chest, staring at him with a mixture of confusion and alarm. He sat down on the chair opposite her and put his feet up on the same ottoman hers were on.
She pulled her feet back to curl them under herself and sat up straighter, as he lounged even further down. She was a picture of alertness; he relaxed more with each minute. They stared at each other for a while before he broke the silence.
“Aren’t you going to ask me anything? You are a scientist so I thought you would be ready to investigate.”
“Investigate what? I figure I’m just dreaming, so what does it matter?”
He smiled. “Dreaming? Are you sure?”
She nodded solemnly, “Dreaming...or dead. Either way, there isn’t much I can do about it at this point is there?”
He moved his elbows onto the armrests and tapped his fingertips against each other, steepled on his chest.
“What makes you think you’re dead?”
“I...uh...I can’t find my pulse. If I don’t have a pulse, I’m dead.”
“Do you want to check for mine?”
She shrunk back against the chair. “Why?” she asked in a small voice.
“I don’t have much of one either. It’s part of the nature of the beast...or rather, of what I am...what we are, because you are like me now.”
“What are you? Us? Am I dreaming? Is all of this a function of my neurons misfiring while my brain is dying?”
“What do you remember from yesterday?”
Keisha furrowed her brow. “I remember being tied up in the trunk of a car I remember the two voices of the men hired to kill me. I remember the trunk opening and a gun was jammed into me. It was kind of dark so I didn’t see much but I heard some weird sounds and fighting. Someone tried to rescue me, I guess. Then the gun fired and I took a bullet in my chest. I think it pierced my heart, because the pain was unbearable, and breathing became problematic.”
The man nodded. “Anything else?”
Keisha looked confused, “The rest was only dreaming, I think. There was a man’s voice.”
“Mine.”
“He offered me a choice in living or dying...then the next thing I knew we were having wild sex.” She blushed as the smile on his face grew wider.
“Was it good for you too?”
Keisha jumped out of the chair. “What the fuck is going on here? You ask me to remember and then you expect me to believe you were a part of my dream? Why do I get the feeling there’s a lot you’re not telling me? Isn’t it time for you to do some explaining?”
He nodded, but before he was able to speak, she pulled the robe tighter around herself and asked in a small voice, “I’m asking you again—am I dead? How the hell was I able to fly up to the window in the bathroom? Why don’t I have a pulse? What the fuck is going on?”
The man nodded to indicate that she should sit down again.
“Stop that pacing, girl. You’re agitating yourself, which will make you hungry more quickly. I’d rather answer all of your questions to your satisfaction before you need to eat.”
She exploded, “I’m not hungry.” The minute she said it, a gnawing, empty feeling roiled in her gut.
“You will be very soon. I can see it on your face. Now sit and listen while I talk.”
She sat back down, perched on the edge of the seat and pulled the afghan up around herself again.
“Do you remember who I am? Do you remember meeting me before?”
Keisha studied his face for a minute before recognition dawned on her face. He grinned.
“Yes, I can see that you do now. When I introduced myself to you in the bar, I did use my correct name, Yuri Kozakov, but I lied about my occupation. I’m not really a neurobiology researcher like you. I’m just an educated man with many questions I was hoping you would be able to answer. I engineered an introduction to you by mesmerizing your co-worker so he thought he knew me.”
“Why?”
“Because I have read many of your published works and I still hope you will be able to do the research to answer my questions. However, they may need to take a back seat to your concerns. But I get ahead of myself.” He watched her closely and something on her face made him change his next words.
“You are getting hungrier every minute.” He sighed deeply, surprising her because she hadn’t noticed him breathing at all until that minute. In fact, with a start, she realized that she wasn’t breathing either.
“You’re right, my dear. Neither of us needs to breathe anymore. We may do it for punctuation when speaking, or when talking to mortals so they don’t get too freaked out. We no longer have a regular pulse. We don’t breathe and we don’t eat food or drink most liquids anymore.”
She tried to ignore her body to concentrate on his words. “Why not? What do we need to eat, then?”
His lips moved into a slow smile. He put his wrist up to his mouth for a minute and then moved it slowly towards her, to show her what he had done. He had punctured two small holes in his wrist and blood seeped out of the wounds.
Keisha felt her stomach lurch with hunger and the squeezing in her gut became unbearable. She got up out of the chair, unaware that she was moving, and only stopped when she knelt on the floor in front of him. She gazed, transfixed, at the wounds.
“It’s alright, Keisha. Drink. You will feel better for it. Then we can continue talking.”
She was staring at the blood, uncomprehending.
“Drink what?”
With one hand he held the back of her head, pushing her forward and moving his other arm at the same time, so that the bloodied arm was right in front of her face. With a snarl she grabbed the arm with both of her hands and pulled the blood up to her mouth. She sucked on the wound, the blood hitting the back of her throat and filling her with the glorious knowledge that this...oh, this was what she needed. This made everything alright.
She gulped reflexively, continuing to suck and gulp—each mouthful giving her strength and clearing the fuzziness out of her mind. Yuri stroked her hair with his free hand until, with one movement, he grabbed the nape of her neck, squeezing on the pressure points to the brink of pain. She opened her mouth to cry out. At the same time, he pushed her backwards and away from his arm.
“Enough. Leave me some for myself. I don’t need to feed as often as you but I will need to after that. Give me a minute to compose myself.”
Keisha fell onto the floor to lie still and then slowly comprehension dawned on her, along with the horror of what she had just done.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God!” She shrieked as she crawled backwards and away from Yuri until her butt bumped against the chair she had been on. She cringed and curled into a fetal ball, trying to make herself disappear.
Yuri got up slowly to walk over to her, and then he bent down and picked her up. He sat heavily down on her chair and held her tightly on his lap as she sobbed in panic and fear. He rocked her slowly, uttering comforting noises that she gradually heard but didn’t understand, since he spoke in another language.
When her crying grew less intense, Yuri offered her a handkerchief. Keisha wiped her eyes, looked at the fabric to turn it inside out, and was shocked to see that she cried tears of blood. She quivered with fear and his arms tightened around her, holding her and rocking more.
Eventually, her sobs ceased and she was quiet. When Yuri spoke, his voice was calming—though his words were alarming.
“I am a vampire, Keisha. I wasn’t planning to tell you until we became friends. Then I could ask you to research the biology of what I am...to answer the questions I have asked for many years. Those cretins shot you and you were going to die. I had no other option. I gave you the choice because I don’t believe in turning someone without their permissi
on. You were so close to dying that you experienced that as part of a dream.”
Keisha sniffled. “So, I’m a vampire now too? That’s why I went so ape-shit and had to drink your blood?”
She felt his chest rumble and realized he chuckled at her words as he had done last night in her barely-remembered dream.
“Yes. That’s why you went ape-shit. You are too new to be able to control the blood-lust. I am old enough to have learned how to control it and how to ignore my hunger until I can feed safely. You will probably gain control fairly quickly, since you have had so much of my blood in such a high concentration. When I have just fed, my blood is diluted. I haven’t since early last night before I went to your apartment, wondering why you hadn’t kept our date for coffee.”
Keisha turned her head up to look into his eyes. She found compassion and understanding there. She stared at him for a while and then sighed audibly.
He smiled. “You see? We don’t really need to breathe but it’s a handy useful way to express emotions without words.”
“How did you find me? I had no idea where I was so you couldn’t have been doing any kind of mind-reading on me.”
“No, I did the mind-reading, as you call it, on your asshole of a boyfriend. You really need to dump him, you know. His dick gets plenty of action which doesn’t involve you. You won’t be able to catch anything communicative from him anymore but still...he doesn’t deserve you.”
She leaned back slightly to stare at him again, this time in surprise.
“He knew about where I was?”
“You’re not surprised that he’s been cheating on you?”
She sniffed. “I knew but I didn’t really care. I like sex and have no time to really date anyone. He’s always hanging around the lab complex since his father is one of the main donors keeping the lights on. So he was convenient. That’s all.”
Yuri reached a hand out to caress her cheek with his fingers, and then turned her head so he could stare deeply into her eyes. He smiled and nodded as if pleased.
“Good. Then you won’t mind when I kill him for what he knew was going to happen to you.”
“No. I mean he’s a cheating pig—a self-centered, pompous prick—but that doesn’t mean he needs to die.” She shook her head and then looked alarmed.
“Wait a minute. Does this mean that when I feed on people I will kill them? Can I use animals instead?”
Yuri shook his head. “Animals can be used in extreme emergencies but not on a regular basis. Whatever we are, whatever it is that lives inside of our blood, prefers human blood. I don’t know why...that’s one of the things I hope you will find out for me.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to research anything anymore. If Dan knew about the plot to kill me, then he’s in on it.” She looked away and concentrated deeply. “In fact, since he’s one of the only ones who knew what I found, he probably knows what I discovered about my work also. That may be part of why he was so friendly with me to begin with. Shit. I thought I was just using him for sex. Apparently he was pumping me for information all along.”
At Yuri’s startled choke, she looked at his face and realized he was chuckling again.
He shrugged. “Sorry...but that’s not all he was pumping you for.”
Keisha stuck her tongue out at him. “Ha, ha. Okay, pun unintentional, but acknowledged.”
“Keisha, if you don’t mind my asking— what did you discover that made you suddenly so disposable?”
She shifted around on his lap. “Of course I don’t mind your asking. What the hell? It’s been that kind of day...” He nodded towards the open window and she saw the darkness, “Okay, it’s been that kind of night. I guess I’m only going to have nights from now on, huh?”
Yuri shrugged. “Some of the really Old Ones can go out in the daylight. They just get sun-burned really quickly. Whatever is in us doesn’t like sunlight. With enough of my blood in you, you’ll soon be able to stay awake during the day...you just won’t be able to go outside. But you won’t want to so it all works out.”
“Um, Yuri, is it?”
He nodded.
“You can put me down now. I think I’m done having a panic attack.”
He smiled at her, “Are you sure? I kind of like holding you on my lap.”
Keisha started as she felt a part of him twitch against her thigh. She looked closely at his face.
“We can still have sex? I thought that wasn’t possible anymore.”
Yuri laughed out loud. “What would be the point of eternal life if you had to give up having sex? Like I said, the longer you are a vampire, the more you discover about what you can still do. Whatever keeps us alive wants us to be happy or it can’t be alive within us.” He shrugged again. “Besides, haven’t you read any vampire erotica lately? We’re all the rage these days. Us and shape-shifters.”
“Are they real too?”
“Don’t know...never met any but that doesn’t mean much. They could be all around us and choosing not to reveal themselves, just like we don’t.”
Yuri watched as Keisha got up off of his lap and sat on the loveseat next to him but facing toward him, her knees pulled up to her chest protectively, her arms around her legs, with only her feet poking out of the robe. She glared at him in defiance. She also leaned forward, as her inherent curiosity asserted itself.
“To answer your questions, we don’t have to kill to feed. We can just take a little from a few people to get what we need. We can fuck with their minds, like I did with yours, to create any kind of memory for them that they will find plausible. Cruising bars is usually pretty reliable since many folks want to get laid so badly they welcome the memories of it happening that we can give them. Sometimes we really do have sex with them while we feed, which makes it all the more enjoyable. We get what we need, they get what they want...win-win for everyone.”
“Any medical evidence left?”
“You mean like the tell-tale puncture marks in movies? Sometimes; but you can plant any number of explanations for that in their minds and it won’t be questioned. Besides, who is going to believe someone who goes to their doctor claiming they got their hickey from a vampire? I mean, really? As a medical professional, would you have? I mean before now?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’m not even sure I believe it now. I could still be dreaming.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“I don’t think I will refer to myself as dead since I’m sitting here, thinking and talking. Dead people don’t do that kind of thing. I think, differently—animated is a good way to describe it, don’t you?”
Yuri smiled, “Yes, that’s good...quite politically correct. We are animated by something other than what keeps humans alive. I hope you can find out just what that is for me. You say you don’t have access to your lab anymore? What happened? Why were you supposed to be killed?”
“I don’t know the whole reason. I only know my part of it.”
“Then tell me what you know.”
Keisha took a deep breath, which made Yuri smile and nod at her.
“Begin.”
Chapter Six
“I have spent the last few years researching intelligence...specifically, what is it that makes one person intelligent and the other person happy to wallow in ignorance. I’m the only one in my family who was able to earn a scholarship to get me into college and I’ve always wondered what made me different. Why was I able to do so well in school, while my brothers and sisters all dropped out without even getting a diploma? I hoped if I could find an enzyme or chemical responsible that I could synthesize it in the lab. Then it could be used to allow everyone to achieve more than the potential they were born with. I figured that if more of us were smart, more brains would be getting used to solve the problems of our modern society and solutions could be found and implemented before we destroy our planet.”
Yuri nodded, “That’s the direction I thought you were heading in, based on your most recent papers and your sp
eech at the conference last month.”
“You were there?”
“Yes. I was the one who asked you about the possibility of enhancing the life-span of humans. I know from personal experience that it is possible but I wondered if you had done any thinking along those lines.”
“No, as I told you then, I’ve been concentrating on intelligence. For a long time now, I’ve been afraid that it was an impossible dream. Every time I’d hit a wall, the director of the labs encouraged me to head in another direction. Hugo was really determined to do anything to help me succeed. As a researcher, that’s really important. Being afraid that your funding is going to be cut any minute is kind of counter-productive.”
“Is the director Dan’s father?”
“No, his dad is the banker of the labs. He holds the purse strings and doles out money to research the director tells him is the most promising. For some time now they have been throwing gobs of money at me, giving me anything I needed. I was so thrilled not to have to worry about losing my funding that I never questioned it. Now I wonder if I should have.” Keisha frowned.
“What was your big news that you said you would be able to share with me last night?”
“Last week I finally found what I was looking for. It wasn’t where I expected or what I expected it to be...but I found the intelligence enzyme. It’s so ridiculously simple—it would be really easy to synthesize it and offer it for sale.”
“Excellent. So, the director was happy?”
“Ecstatic. Just like I was. Then the shit hit the fan.”
“How?”
“I wanted to incorporate my discovery into a paper I can present at the international symposium next month. Hugo told me not to plan on going public with stuff that early. When I asked him why, he had no answer...he just mumbled about the board needing to review my work. He also reminded me that since I work for them, the corporation that funded my research owns what I discovered...I don’t own anything. Of course I got pissed and argued that since I was the discoverer, I owned the results. He told me to take some time off...basically dismissing me. He told me he’d have another assignment for me when I came back in.”
Prophecy of the Undead Page 3