Kai closed his eyes and tried to focus on the memories of the old man. Alexander dropped his hand from Kai’s neck and stepped back, waiting for Kai to finish searching the memories. After a few seconds, Kai’s eyes fluttered open, his vision adjusting to the here and now.
“I wasn’t myself when I ate him. It’s difficult for me to draw out specifics.”
Alexander heard a low growl escape his own throat. “Well for your sake, I hope you can overcome the difficulty.”
Kai thought for a moment before his eyes went wide. “The records!” He ran from the kitchen back through the small hallway and door that led into the rental office. Alexander followed him at a slower pace and once he entered the rental office, Kai was behind the counter digging through a file bin on the desk. He fixated on one folder, not understanding what he was seeing. “It should be right here.”
“I feel the announcement of another failure coming on,” Alexander said rhetorically, now resigned to this being a dead-end. He rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, putting together what happened. “Go through the memories again. I’m sure the old man saw the man again after he’d finished trapping you like a rat.”
Kai closed his eyes again for a moment. “Yeah, he stopped by here looking for… something. Bastard stole the file.”
“Because unlike you, he thinks strategically!” Alexander roared. After calming himself again, he continued, “Can you project the old man?” Alexander asked, referring to Kai’s ability to use low-grade telepathy to make people near him think he was one of his victims. Kai nodded affirmative and in an instant, he was gone, and the old man was standing before Alexander. There was something off about the image, but he knew from experience that humans couldn’t pick up on the difference between Kai’s portrayal and the real thing. “Good,” Alexander said, forming a plan. The situation was potentially salvageable, but it would require more luck than he liked in his plans. “You’ll stay here. Clean up the bodies, run the business, live as the old man. If my prize stole the records, then he knew we’d come here. If he knew we’d come here, he knew he’d be placing the old couple in danger. He may come back here to check on them and he won’t be expecting you to appear as one of them.”
Kai thought through the ramifications. “I won’t be able to answer the phone. He’ll recognize my voice.” That part hadn’t occurred to Alexander, but Kai was right. For obvious reasons, Kai’s telepathy only worked in person. It’s not like it was something that could be transmitted over the phone line. Perhaps Kai was capable of thinking strategically after all. Kai continued, “Might make it hard to get renters up here for me to eat.”
“You’ll make due.” Alexander finished laying out his plan. “You better hope his guilt makes him act as stupid as you have.” Dawn was approaching in just over half an hour, but Alexander was too annoyed with Kai right now to spend the day with him. “Is one of the nearby cabins rented?”
“No, they don’t really do that much business these days,” Kai answered.
“Good,” Alexander grabbed a sheet that showed a map with a star marking each cabin location. One was just a few minutes away; plenty of time to get there before the sun rose, and he wouldn’t have to share a basement with a vampire he couldn’t stand at the moment.
As he turned to leave, Kai asked him, “What if he doesn’t come back?”
Alexander opened the door and didn’t bother turning around to face Kai. “Then you can spend the time thinking about how to not disappoint me again.”
37
Mason was beginning to wonder if he’d made the right decision. He was getting the nickel tour through their admittedly quite impressive base. In this era of urban decay, ‘impressive’ was relative, as everything was varying degrees of old, but the entire place was a sort of well-kept old. The lights all shone brightly and there was no dust anywhere Mason could see. The equipment they passed, and all the walls showed their age, but they were certainly doing the best they could with what they had. It made Mason realize just how run down everything outside this place was. The realization of exactly how close humanity was to the end was startling.
Simone and Trevor were his guides as Dr. Westfield correctly assumed Mason wasn’t quite ready to forgive attempted murder and was staying out of sight for the time being. The two of them had already shown him the security room, and he saw the camera pointed at the warehouse entrance. He felt like an idiot for tearing apart the basement for clues, when he’d already scheduled Simone’s phone call just by going inside.
Now they were in the laboratory with Dr. Monroe, and it was making him nervous. The first place they were spending any significant amount of time was the one place that made him skeptical about the whole arrangement. Several computers took up one wall, but there were also microscopes and their racks of slides, beakers and vials, glass-fronted medical refrigerators and boxes of latex gloves. It was the type of place that would haunt his nightmares if he ever slept. Then again, nightmares seemed to be finding him anyway.
“I understand your apprehension, but you’ll be spending a lot of time of here, and I won’t lie, my work would be more effective if I could take blood samples,” Dr. Monroe was at least being blunt about what they wanted. Everyone else had been treating him with kid gloves so far.
“Your work?” Mason repeated.
“To improve you. Or rather, to give your body ideas on how to improve itself. There are the obvious ones like bat, bloodhound, and eagle to heighten your senses, but there are other ones like cuttlefish, naked mole rat, canary, and salamander that I’m almost positive you haven’t been exposed to,” Dr. Monroe said excitedly, almost to himself as he began thinking through all the possibilities.
Mason took note that Simone looked uncomfortable, but tried to keep up. “I’m sorry, and that would do what, exactly?”
“We’ve seen that just by having a Sanguine ingest samples of creatures with desirable traits, your body is able to implement the genetics responsible,” Monroe said excitedly.
“Slow down, Eugene,” Simone interrupted, invoking Dr. Monroe’s first name. “You’re whitewashing the dangers.”
Mason tried to conceal his sudden panic. “Dangers?”
Dr. Monroe sighed. “It’s true that some Sanguines who haven’t ‘topped out’ like Aidan, can develop an autoimmune disorder if their genetics change too rapidly. Their white blood cells don’t recognize the genetics of the rest of the body anymore and attack it.”
There was a silence in the room as everyone held their breath, waiting to see how Mason would react. “I’m not the first Sanguine you’ve brought in, am I?”
“Well no, obviously there’s Aidan,” Dr. Monroe answered, dodging the meat of the question.
Simone could read Mason’s concern and jumped in. “It has been very difficult over the years to find Sanguines. Your kind is incredibly rare, but more once-a-generation than once-a-millennium. It’s macabre, but you and Aidan are the only Sanguines we’ve encountered while you’re still alive. It’s easier to identify your kind from causes of death than from anything you do while alive.”
Dr. Monroe piggy-backed on her point. “Auto-immune disorders in previously healthy people can be an indicator, especially if the person experienced a life event like moving or vacationing that could have possibly exposed them to lots of new genetics at once. We have one of the best labs left in the world, and it’s not even that expensive anymore to procure the body of someone that might have been a Sanguine. The unfortunate summary is that we’ve learned most of what we know about you from post-mortems.”
“Wait, slow down. If we pop up so often, what makes me so important? Why aren’t you guys out there looking for the next Sanguine to pop up? Why is Alexander so fixated on me?” Mason could tell from the looks he was getting that he had asked a question they weren’t keen on answering.
Trevor, silent so far uncrossed his arms and stood up from leaning against the wall. “You are the focal point because a vampire with ce
rtain… gifts… believes you have far greater potential than any other Sanguine. Because she believes it, Alexander believes it, and because he believes it, we do almost by default. You know, when I say it out loud, it doesn’t sound that reliable…,” Trevor said, trailing off.
“And how do you know about this gifted vampire?” Mason pressed.
“Because she’s downstairs,” Trevor replied matter-of-factly.
Simone obviously didn’t like the energy in the room at the moment. “Look, we’ve thrown a lot at you between our first meeting and today. You and Trevor have both travelled a long way to get here and must be exhausted. How about we show you the dormitories next? The bathrooms and showers are shared spaces, but the bedrooms themselves are separated. You could get a little privacy, get a little rest and we could pick this back up tomorrow.”
“I don’t sleep,” Mason said, and he noted how Dr. Monroe’s eyes lit up. He’d unintentionally given the scientist a new power to focus on.
“I’m fine,” Trevor agreed. “Would you like to meet her?” he asked Mason, essentially removing Simone’s suggestion from consideration.
Mason stood. “I don’t see why not.”
38
Rebekah hadn’t believed Mason’s bullshit for a minute. He would tell her everything was alright any time she asked, but she knew better. It was like a switch had flipped when he went up to the cabin. He’d always seemed remarkably carefree, but since he came back, there was something looming over his thoughts. Even in conversations with her, it was obvious there was always something else on his mind. She could see how much it bothered him to not share with her, but it had to be something with that Project he’d told her about; it couldn’t be a coincidence that they’d showed up just before this tidal shift in his behavior.
And now he’d disappeared. Sure, it had only been for a few days at this point, but he never stayed out of touch for this long. She put her phone down after getting Mason’s voicemail yet again. Signal was an issue these days, but she’d left him a few voicemails over the past couple days, and hadn’t heard a peep.
She knew she needed to go looking for him. This was a man who could walk away from a fatal car crash, so she couldn’t imagine what could have possibly happened that could get the better of him. Nor could she imagine what she could possibly do to help, but she had to try. She also knew she’d start her search at the cabin since his latest trip there had been what changed his entire demeanor.
But knowing those two things couldn’t solve her biggest problem: how to get there. Not everyone was independently wealthy like Mason and could afford cars, let alone rental ones. So it was that she found herself at a truck stop on the eastern edge of Seattle. Her sister had driven her this far (after a lot of pleading), but maddeningly wouldn’t just let her borrow the car. She looked quite a bit different than the last time she’d spent a significant amount of time in the cold, that fateful morning when she’d met Mason. He’d bought her plenty of warm clothing, and she silently thanked him for it. She knew just how biting this Seattle cold could be; the kind of damp chill that got into your bones. It hadn’t been that long since she’d felt it, but a passerby would be hard-pressed to recognize her as the same disheveled woman who’d tried warming up in the restaurant. She was freshly showered from Mason’s hotel room, and wearing a puffy purple down jacket with her hair tucked under a light grey stocking cap. She wore black ski pants and could see why Mason had insisted on them. She’d never learned to ski (she didn’t realize anyone still did until Mason had told her he’d take her some time), so she’d thought she’d look ridiculous in the pants, but Mason had overruled her objections saying they were the warmest option.
He’d just come back to the hotel with all these clothes one day and told her to try them on. They’d all fit perfectly, though she had no idea where he’d found them, let alone how he’d gotten her size. They were all pre-Fall from major brands with quality that couldn’t even be approximated now. She stood out like a sore thumb amongst most of the people that passed her near the door to the convenience store where she stood. Not unlike how Mason stood out in the restaurant, although with his abilities, he obviously wasn’t worried about being robbed whereas Rebekah needed to be keenly aware of the possibility.
With the rumors of attacks by raiding bandits in the rural areas of the Midwest, these truck stops that were still functioning had become bustling hubs of people of various levels of integrity. Nobody wanted to stop unless it was in the relative safety of a city, and so anyone travelling east through the Cascades would be compelled to stop here. In truth, it was mostly paranoia: not that the raiders didn’t exist; they were probably far too real. No, it was most likely an unnecessary precaution only because they hadn’t made their way this far west yet.
She watched the patrons as they filled their cars with gas and marveled at the condition of some. She couldn’t believe some of these cars were still running, let alone could make a trip through the mountains. She wondered at their stories; what compelled them to make this journey with obviously so little means. Land travel was still undaunting thanks to cars, but the average health of the fleet Rebekah was seeing pull into this station meant she could imagine a time when it would be again. She felt a moment of panic as she realized how ill-equipped she would be to handle that world and there was the unspoken understanding amongst everyone now that they might actually live to see it. Despite the constantly reassuring rhetoric from the government that some corner was about to be turned, society was crumbling and not only that, but its pace was quickening: you only had to stand where Rebekah was now and watch the comings and goings to see that.
She pushed the thought to the side and stood up straight to refocus on her task. She eliminated vehicles too run-down. Not only did she not trust them to travel as far as she needed, but with how she looked, their drivers might think her an easy mark once they were out of the city. Even the women probably thought Rebekah would be easily overpowered with how pampered she looked in these clothes.
She also eliminated cars driven by men that looked at her just a little too long. It was something of a miracle that Rebekah hadn’t been sexually assaulted while she’d been homeless, and she had no interest in tempting fate now.
She’d only been watching for a half-hour or so, but the fact that those two criteria had eliminated every car and truck that had driven through was getting frustrating. She was going to go inside to get something to drink, when a large SUV pulled in that looked like it might be just what she was looking for. She’d never cared much about cars, so she didn’t know exactly what model or year it was, but it looked to be from at least a decade before The Fall. That would make it still new enough that she assumed it would be reliable, or so she hoped. There was a lot of her plan that she was coming up with on the fly, but stopping to analyze it would be wasting precious time she needed to find Mason. As the SUV pulled up to the pump, she started a slow walk towards it, hoping she wasn’t being too obvious that she was watching that vehicle specifically. It was black, with tinted windows like an old government vehicle, but with private plates, and the tires had quite bit of tread left on them as well. This was not a vehicle that had been driven often.
The SUV lifted slightly as the driver emerged and tugged his coat closer to his face. He was a shorter man, a bit heavy around the mid-section, with thinning brown hair that wouldn’t have been so obvious if he didn’t keep it longer than fashionable and combed straight back. Rebekah guessed he was in his mid-forties. She was still meandering towards him, deciding if she thought he looked threatening or not, as he walked around to the pump, pausing briefly at the SUV’s gas door before returning to the driver’s side. Rebekah took a deep breath and quickened her pace to meet him at his door. Strangers made her nervous, but if this didn’t work, who knows how long she’d be waiting for another chance?
“Excuse me, sir?” she asked, softer than she’d meant to. She hoped he’d heard her. The man continued rummaging around under the driver’s sid
e seat of the vehicle.
“I don’t have anything to spare,” he responded without looking up.
“Oh, no,” she chuckled, “it’s not that. Well, it’s not exactly that.” Of course, if he was driving this car, he would’ve thought anyone talking to him wanted a handout. She heard a click from inside the vehicle as he pulled the lever to open the gas door, and the man stood, an obvious look of surprise on his face when he saw her and how well she was dressed. She was not the panhandler he’d been expecting.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I just… what can I do for you?” he asked as he moved towards the gas pump, but tried to stay facing her at the same time. This situation obviously made him uncomfortable.
“Well, I’m having a bit of an emergency. My friend headed to her family’s cabin a few days ago, and said she’d only be gone one night, but I haven’t been able to reach her since, and she doesn’t really have any family to speak of, so I feel responsible, but I don’t have a car to go check on her, and I…” she paused for dramatic effect and flashed her best smile at him. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling.” When she’d formulated the plan, she kicked around several more elaborate lies, but decided something based at least partially on truth would be the best option. She changed Mason’s gender for the purposes of the story to keep the man interested. He had no chance with her, but better to let his male ego talk itself into helping her.
“No, no, it’s fine,” the man said as he focused on paying and getting the gas nozzle inserted into his vehicle. Her charm was not having the desired effect on him. She was either out of practice, or the man’s guard was still up.
“Well if you’re heading east on I-90, her cabin is just over an hour that way, and, well, I’d really appreciate a ride.” She was really going all in on this plan. Even if he agreed to drive her there, how was she going to get back? She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
Sanguine Series (Book 1): The Fall Page 22