Though Elijah and Ed and Kim could see clearly in the near darkness of the warehouse, the men couldn’t see them.
“We’d better change back to our normal forms before we free them,” Elijah said. “No need to frighten them any more than necessary.”
“Hold on a minute,” Ed said, taking hold of Elijah’s arm. “Shouldn’t we do something about those guys in the next room before we set these men free?”
“You’re right,” Elijah said. “We don’t want them found like that or it’ll raise too many questions in the authorities’ minds.”
“I saw a couple of bottles of whiskey on their dresser,” Kim said. “How about I start a little fire while you two open that cage?”
“Perfect,” Elijah agreed, looking around the warehouse to see what else it contained besides the captive men. “This warehouse is isolated enough that the blaze won’t spread and the fire will obliterate any evidence of how they died.”
By the time Kim was pouring two bottles of whiskey over three dead bodies and one live but unconscious one in the next room, Elijah and Ed had changed into normal forms and were busting the lock on the makeshift jail in the warehouse.
Only a few of the men in the compound were fully conscious, the others having been beaten so badly they were still out cold.
“What’s goin’ on?” one of the men asked wearily. “You takin’ us to the ship now?”
“No,” Elijah replied. “We’re setting you free. The men who captured you are in the next room, dead. Now, pick up the men who are unable to walk and get out of here. This whole place is going to go up like a bonfire in about five minutes.”
Kim and Ed and Elijah watched the show from the shadows of a nearby alleyway as fire and police vehicles arrived on the scene scant minutes later. As far as they could tell, all of the men who’d been shanghaied had made it out of the warehouse before it turned into a blazing inferno.
“Well, that was a good night’s work,” Elijah said as he bent to pick up the seaman’s trunk lying next to him on the ground.
“Yeah,” Kim said, also lifting a trunk to her shoulder. “Now, let’s get these back to the car so we can maybe find someone less distasteful to spend some quality time with before we go back to the cabin.”
Elijah grinned. “My but you’re hungry tonight, Kim.”
“Hey,” she said, her eyes flashing at him in the semidarkness. “Ed and I’ve been on the wagon for some months now. Surely you’re not begrudging us one night out to have some fun before we settle back down.”
Elijah laughed and held up his hands palms out. “Not me, Kim,” he replied. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been on the straight and narrow myself for quite a while and I find my appetite is like yours, unsatisfied by our recent experience with the sailors. You mind if I join you two or would you rather hunt alone?”
Kim looked at Ed and shrugged, a suggestive smile curling the corners of her lips. “Fine with me, big guy, but you’d better ask Ed.”
Ed shrugged. “Hey, far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier.”
Kim handed Ed her trunk and hooked her arms in his and Elijah’s as they walked up the street. “A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,” she sang gaily as they walked, mimicking the song the dwarfs sang in the Sleeping Beauty film.
Chapter 25
Elijah awoke from a sound sleep and looked around the room. He could have sworn he heard Matt’s voice calling to him.
Inside his mind, a thought appeared, “Elijah, get your lazy butt out of bed and get everyone together. Sam and I are on our way to the cabin and we need to have a meeting.”
Elijah thought back, “Are you communicating with me all the way from Portland?”
“Yes,” Matt replied, the words sounding as real as if they’d been spoken from a few feet away instead of dozens of miles. “Our plane has just landed from Houston and we have some important news. Have TJ and Shooter gotten back yet?”
Elijah climbed out of bed and moved toward the bathroom, covering his mouth as he yawned. He’d only been in bed a little over three hours. “Yes, they got in last night.”
“Good. Wake them up and see if you can get Ed and Kim to the cabin by the time we get there.”
“Is it that urgent?” Elijah thought as he bent over the sink and began to wash his face.
“We’ll let you guys decide, but I think it’s something you’ll all want to hear.”
* * *
As usual, even though it was only a little over thirty-five miles from Portland to the cabin in North Waterford, the drive took Matt and Sam slightly more than an hour because of the small, twisting roads they had to take.
When they arrived, TJ came running out of the front door and threw her arms around both of them. “Welcome back you two,” she said. “I missed you.”
“We missed you, too, TJ,” Sam replied, hugging her friend back.
TJ released Sam and grabbed Matt, kissing him full on the lips. Matt rolled his eyes to look over TJ’s head to see if Shooter, who was watching from the porch minded her sudden friendliness.
“Not at all, pal,” came the words in Matt’s mind, showing Shooter was as adept at reading thoughts as he was.
“Good,” Matt thought back, “ ’Cause your woman’s giving me a woody.”
Shooter burst out laughing on the porch, making Elijah and Ed and Kim look at him strangely, none of them being privy to this exchange of thoughts.
“She is very good at that, buddy,” Shooter thought back when he’d gotten his laughing under control.
* * *
They gathered in the living room of the cabin and everyone stared at Matt expectantly, waiting to hear why he’d made such a fuss about all of them coming together.
“While we were in Houston,” he began, standing in front of the chair Sam was sitting in, his hand on her shoulder. “We ran into an old friend of Elijah’s.”
He glanced at Elijah who narrowed his eyes with effort but still couldn’t manage to penetrate Matt’s thoughts, even though his own psychic abilities were growing stronger day by day with fresh infusions of blood from the group. Matt smiled back at him and sent him a quick thought, “Be patient, Elijah.”
To the rest, he spoke out loud, “Ramson Holroyd approached Sam and me and gave us a message to bring back here.”
“Jesus old son,” Shooter interrupted irritably, “get to the meat and quit fooling around.”
“Okay. The good news is that our old enemy Theo Thantos and his cohorts have apparently given up trying to kill us to prevent our distribution of Elijah’s vaccine.”
Elijah’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “You wouldn’t have made such a fuss about getting us all together just for that, so I’m assuming you must have some bad news to add to this rather good news.”
Matt nodded solemnly. “Yeah, it seems that instead of coming after us, they’ve gone completely crazy and have hatched some scheme to have Vampyres take over the world.”
Everyone laughed except Elijah, who sat back in his chair with a worried, thoughtful look on his face.
“You can’t be serious,” Shooter said, a wide grin on his face. “What does he plan to do, have all the Vampyres in the world take up arms and march on their countries’ capitals?”
“He must be mad,” Kim added, echoing Shooter’s sentiments. “From what I have gathered over my years of being a member of the race of Vampyres, there can’t be over a couple of hundred thousand of us at the most—and that number is scattered among hundreds of countries around the world.”
As everyone nodded, Elijah sighed loudly. “I’m afraid you are all wrong,” he said, his lips tight and white.
“What do you mean?” Matt asked. “You think Thantos’s plan actually has a chance of working?”
Elijah shrugged, but his eyes remained worried. “It all depends on just how smart he is,” he answered. “I know I could devise a plan that would do just that—put Vampyres in charge of every country on earth.”
Sam glanced at M
att, and then she turned her eyes to Elijah. “How, Elijah?”
He stood up and began to pace back and forth as he often did when addressing the group. Sam had asked him about it once and he said simply that he thought better on his feet.
“First of all, you’ve got to remember that we Vampyres operate on a different time schedule than Normals. After all, we live several hundred years at least so there is no need to hurry any plan we might devise.”
“But still,” Matt began to argue until Elijah cut him off with a wave of his hand.
“Let me finish, Matt, then you can make your arguments.” He paused to gather his thoughts and then he continued. “Now, our second big advantage is that we can increase our numbers in a matter of weeks instead of years like it takes Normals, and furthermore we can do it selectively so that anyone we choose to have join our ranks can already be in a position of authority.”
He glanced around at the group. “Do you understand what that means, dear friends? I would say that within a matter of a few years at most, Thantos could have the leadership of every major country in the world in his camp.”
As the group members thought about what he was saying, their expressions slowly became, like his, worried.
“But, if that is true, how can Thantos and his minions be stopped?” TJ asked. “He already has a couple of months’ head start on us and there’s no telling how many people he’s transformed to help him, or even who they are.”
Here, Elijah smiled for the first time since he’d heard of Thantos’s plan. “So far, I’ve only given you Thantos’s advantages,” he said. “He also has some serious disadvantages.”
Matt shook his head. “After what you’ve said, I can’t think of any.”
“First and foremost”—Elijah said, leaning back against the front windowsill and crossing his legs at the ankles—“is that just because he transforms someone into one of us does not mean that the person will agree with Thantos’s plans or will be able to be controlled by him. Remember, he is going to be transforming some of the most powerful and egotistical people in the world. They are not necessarily going to suddenly become docile followers of Thantos, or to blindly accept that Vampyres should be the rightful leaders of the world.”
Ed nodded his agreement. “That’s right. I remember when I was transformed,” he said, glancing at Kim and smiling. “It took me a long time before I truly felt like I was a member of the community of Vampyres, before I could accept that I was going to be one for as long as I lived.”
Kim chuckled. “And even then, neither one of us really joined the community of our new race. We hunted because we had to, but we certainly didn’t seek out other members of our new race.”
Elijah inclined his head. “And that’s just what Thantos is going to be facing. Vampyres tend by nature to be loners, fiercely independent, and they rarely become good followers unless it is to their advantage. It is going to take him a while to gain control over his new converts, and he is bound to fail with at least some of them.”
“What else does he have against him?” Matt asked, “’Cause I think it is just like you said. He is going to be transforming men and women who are already in power, and most of them are going to want to remain in power, or even increase their power if possible.” He gave a sour smile. “If there’s one thing that is almost universally true, it’s that politicians and leaders rarely voluntarily give up their positions of power.”
Now Elijah grinned, and there was more than just a touch of evil in his smile. “The most important thing that is going to prevent Thantos from succeeding in his plan to take over the world is . . .” He paused for a moment and stared into everyone’s eyes before he finished, “Us.”
Shooter nodded and let his lips curl in a cruel smile also. “Good. So we’re going to go up against this bastard and make sure his evil plan doesn’t succeed?”
“Exactly,” Elijah said with more certainty than he felt.
“But, what about the vaccine program?” Sam asked. “We aren’t going to give that up, are we?”
“Hell no,” Elijah said. “But we’ve got another couple of months’ supply already made up. There’s nothing to say we can’t do what we’ve been doing from Washington, D.C.”
“How do you know Thantos is in Washington?” Ed asked.
Elijah shrugged and spread his arms out. “Where else, if he’s seeking the most powerful people in the country, would he be?”
Shooter looked around and grimaced. “And I suppose the seven of us are going to just waltz into Washington and defeat Thantos and his perhaps hundreds of followers?”
Elijah nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“And just how are we going to manage that without getting our heads lifted first?” Shooter asked.
“I also neglected to mention our other great advantage,” Elijah said, smiling at each of them in turn.
“And that is?” TJ asked, her hand on Shooter’s shoulder as she stared back at Elijah.
“Why, our newfound powers,” Elijah explained. “We’re going to keep sharing blood until every one of us is as powerful as ten other Vampyres. Hell, boys and girls, when we finally are ready to attack, they won’t know what hit them!”
Chapter 26
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Theo Thantos said, speaking into a hand microphone as he paced across a small stage set up in the Rejuvenatrix Spa main building. There was a group of more than thirty people scattered around the room, and they were all either the original conspirators in Thantos’s scheme to take over the government of the United States or they were new converts that had been transformed to help him carry out his plan.
“This is the first and it will be the last time that we all convene together in one location,” he continued, still pacing as he spoke. “It is far too dangerous for us all to ever again gather at the same time and place, and in this city of conspiracy theories, if anyone noticed our congregation, it would raise far too many questions.
“I plan to organize us along the lines of any good terrorist or guerrilla organization, into cells that are small in number and anonymous to the other members, so that in the event one of us is compromised, he or she can’t name more than a few others in our group.”
He paused to take a sip from a glass of water that was on a stool on the stage. “In a few moments, our cell leaders will be circulating among you to take you to a group of rooms or cottages where they will give you your assignments and fill you in on what you need to know about where we are in our plan to take control of the country.” He looked around at the faces looking at him and let his face grow stern. “But first, I have something to say about our feeding. The hunger is new to most of you, so you’ll have to learn how to handle it fairly rapidly since we don’t have time for an extended training period. Usually the one who does the transformation teaches the new recruit how to feed and what precautions to use to avoid getting caught or to give away the existence of our race, but that’s not going to happen now. It will be up to you to ask questions about this sort of thing of your cell leader, who will be more than happy to share his or her knowledge with you. Suffice it to say that with the large number of new recruits we are expecting over the next few weeks in this town, I am making an executive order that no one feeds within fifty miles of Washington, D.C.”
He smiled evilly at the crowd. “Disobeying this order is grounds for immediate termination, and I promise you it will be done in such a manner as to cause you more pain than you can possible imagine!”
When the crowd stirred and began to murmur among themselves, Thantos held up his hands. “The order is not open to discussion, but you should know that as long as you feed every couple of weeks, the hunger will remain manageable and you will have plenty of time to select your victims with care, and to dispose of them in such a way that our feeding habits do not become obvious.”
He turned his head to the side of the stage where the original conspirators were sitting in a group waiting for his signal.
Whe
n he nodded, they consulted papers in their hands and began to move among the crowd, picking out members of their cells to take to private rooms and begin their training.
Christina bounded up on the stage and put her arms around his neck, her eyes excited and glittering with respect for his new position as leader. “Oh, Theo,” she gushed, squeezing him tight. “You were wonderful.”
He grinned back at her, thinking she was right: he was wonderful. “So you think the talk went well?” he asked, fishing for more compliments.
“Absolutely!”
“Good. Now, I’ve got to go and meet with Augustine Calmet’s cell. I have some things to clear up with them that can’t wait.”
* * *
Augustine Calmet’s cell consisted of Russell Cain, Michelle Meyers, Allison Burton, and Bitsy McCormack. The two girls’ fathers, who were much too famous and too well watched to attend this meeting, would be filled in by their daughters later about what was expected of them.
Calmet’s group was meeting in a cottage on the edge of the property, and Thantos entered without knocking, just in time to hear Cain grumbling about being kept in the dark and having to take orders from a nonprofessional concerning security.
Thantos entered the room and moved just inside the door, leaning back against the wall and crossing his arms in front of him. “You were saying, Russell?” he asked, his voice hard and his face expressionless.
Russell didn’t drop his eyes and his voice was confrontational as he replied, “It’s no secret how I feel, Thantos. You’re walking around up there like you’re some big expert on everything, but as far as I can tell, you’ve never been in the military or any sort of law enforcement organization. So, I was just wondering what makes you think you know enough about security and planning to be in charge of this group?”
Thantos was furious at his ability being questioned, but he kept his voice level and calm as he replied, “In the first place, Russell, it’s been a hundred and eighty some odd years since I was transformed, and in all that time I’ve killed and eaten well over a thousand people.” He narrowed his eyes. “And I’ve done it without once even coming close to getting caught or leaving any clues that would point to the existence of our race.”
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