by Will Hill
Tocho grinned at him. “I don’t believe you’re looking for purity.”
Smith considered for a moment, then tipped the bottle and took a long swallow. The water diluted the bitter taste of the peyote extract, but it still crawled across his tongue like desert sand, leaving him with a feeling of nausea as he focused again on his breathing, and settled into the heat.
“Are you ready?” asked Tocho. Smith nodded, and the ancient Hopi took a small flask from his breechclout and tipped the contents on to the stones. Sandalwood oil fizzed and sizzled on them, the air thickening with renewed heat and pungent, sickly incense.
“Close your eyes,” said Tocho. “And breathe.”
Smith did as he was told.
The heat surrounded him, thickening the air until it felt like he was breathing hot water, but he focused – in, out, in, out, in, out – and felt his throat open. The panic, which had risen through him again when the sandalwood oil had hit the stones, subsided. His head felt fuzzy, from the heat or the mescaline, he couldn’t tell which. He kept his eyes closed, even as sweat ran into them in sharp, salty rivers. He fumbled blindly for the water bottle, found it, took a long, bitter swallow, then placed his hands on the ground at his sides, gritting his teeth as his palms met the burning desert.
His head felt heavy, so he allowed it to slump forward against his chest, as pale streams of colours began to slide across the backs of his eyelids, brightening and intensifying and erupting into spirals and loops and whirls. He stared at the lights, unable to open his eyes, and felt saliva slide from his mouth, which had fallen open. It sizzled when it touched the bare skin where his shirt was open, a loud boiling sound that Smith understood, somewhere in the back of his mind, couldn’t be real.
The temperature began to drop, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Colours danced and spun behind his eyes, then receded to the corners where he could no longer follow them. Cautiously, he allowed his eyelids to part, then opened them wide.
Tocho and the sweat lodge had almost disappeared.
There remained a faint, translucent image of the old Hopi man, his arms and legs folded, his gaze fixed firmly on Smith, and the wooden frame of the hut was still just barely visible. But around and through them, Smith could see the great expanse of the mesa and the desert beyond it.
As he watched, the shadows cast by the shrubs and cacti moved steadily, and he looked up. The sun was moving rapidly across the sky, heading for the horizon before him. It sank towards the earth, the mesa darkening as it did so, and then it was gone, taking the last of the day with it.
The smouldering fire to Smith’s right cast a pale red glow on the area around him, and as he looked, he saw that the sweat lodge, and the man who had brought him to it, were now completely gone. He was sitting cross-legged, alone on the hard desert floor. He shivered, as the last of the sun’s residual heat faded away, and attempted to stand up.
He couldn’t move. His legs felt as though they were made of concrete, and he could not uncross them, let alone stand on them. As he tried, he pitched forward at the waist, and mercifully, his arms responded to his urgent command: he was able to put them out and steady himself. But the sensation didn’t frighten him, nor did the rustling noise that began to emanate from the scrubland in front of where he sat; his instincts, which were so finely honed that they remained active even as his conscious mind drifted away, told him he was in no danger in this place.
The rustling got louder and louder, and Smith waited for the source of the noise to show itself; he was curious, rather than afraid, to see what it was. Slowly, the scrub parted and the thick, angular head of a reticulated python emerged. Its forked tongue darted in and out of its mouth as it slowly slid across the desert floor, its huge weight sending small rivers of sand cascading down the slope.
Smith watched as the snake slid its entire body into the clearing in which he sat, and gasped. The python was four metres long, at least, as thick as his waist at its midpoint. Its skin gleamed in the glow of the fire, the beautiful, incredibly complex patterns appearing to move independently as the huge muscles flexed beneath the surface, pushing the snake forward.
As it neared Smith, the snake’s tail began to coil, followed by the body itself; the huge snake spun upwards, resting on a tapering series of coils, until its head was level with his own, its black eyes staring into him.
Smith stared at the animal, transfixed. Then, as he felt himself teeter towards the brink of being lost in its expanding black eyes, it began to change. The smooth lines of the snake bulged and twisted, and the heavy, angular head drew back on itself, stretching and widening. In less than ten seconds, the transformation was complete, and Smith felt a grin spill across his face, the unashamed, childlike grin of someone who has just seen something wonderful.
Where the snake had been there now sat a handsome, middle-aged black man, stretching his arms out above his head and twisting his neck from side to side. Smith heard a series of clicks, before the man lowered his limbs and regarded him with a smile.
“Metamorphosis is a bitch,” he said. “Even here. I spend the first five minutes worrying that I didn’t do it right, like if I take my shoes off, I’m going to find I got snakeskin toes. You know what I’m saying?”
Smith shook his head, and the man smiled at him.
“You don’t, do you?” he said. “You don’t belong here at all. Who opened the path for you?”
“One of the Hopi,” replied Smith. “I’m in Arizona. Or I was.”
“You still are,” confirmed the man. “Your body doesn’t move. Your mind, on the other hand…”
“So I’m dreaming?”
“In a way. This is the inner reality, the space between. It’s not really a physical place. More metaphysical, if you follow me?”
“And you live here?” asked Smith, his head spinning.
The man grinned. “I live in New Orleans,” he replied.
Smith took a closer look at the man, who was sitting with his legs crossed easily beneath him, his face open and friendly. Over the left breast pocket of his denim shirt was a sticker, the kind that employees of electronics shops wear.
HI!
My name is
Papa Lafayette
How can
I help you?
“Papa Lafayette,” he said, softly.
“That’s me,” replied the man. “What can I do for you, now that you found me?”
“Found you?” asked Smith. “I didn’t know I was even looking for you.”
“But you were, whether you know it or you don’t. So what’s going on? I don’t have all night.”
Smith paused, and gathered his thoughts. His mind was slipping around him, drifting and sweeping in a mescaline haze, but he forced himself to concentrate.
“I’m looking for answers,” he said.
“To which questions?”
“Questions about vampires.”
Papa Lafayette grimaced. “I’m no expert on the supernatural,” he said. “I doubt I have the answers you’re looking for.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Smith asked. “Why are we talking to each other? A madman told me to come to Oraibi, so I did. Tocho, the old man, was expecting me, and he told me that this was the next step, and I believed him, and here I am. With you. So why do you think that is, if you’re telling me you can’t help me with what I need to know?”
“I don’t know,” replied Papa Lafayette, his expression back to its usual easy half-smile. “Genuinely, I don’t. Vampires are creatures of the earth, of blood, and death. I deal in the spiritual.”
“So I ask you again. Why are we here?”
Papa Lafayette sighed. “I felt a compulsion to enter the inner world tonight,” he said softly. “As powerful as I’ve ever felt. This, this conversation, is not what I was expecting to find. But…”
“But what?”
“But I believe in fate, and destiny. I believe that everything is connected, and I believe that something felt it was importa
nt that you and I meet here, in this place, at this time. So ask your questions. I will answer them if I can, I promise you that.”
Smith stared at the man sitting opposite him, and saw nothing but honesty on the open, handsome face. He took a deep breath.
“I’ve been following a legend,” he said. “The legend of a vampire that was cured, supposedly the only vampire that has ever been cured. They call him Adam. Apparently, he was an American, apparently, he lived in the second half of the twentieth century and apparently, once he was cured, he disappeared. I’ve been following the story for over a year, and that’s all I know. That’s all anyone knows. I don’t know whether he’s alive, or dead, or whether he even existed at all. But I need to find out.”
Papa Lafayette looked at him, and Smith saw a flicker of admiration in the stranger’s eyes. “I know you do,” he said. “I can see the need shining out of you, from every cell in your being. I’m not going to ask you why you need to find this creature, but I believe that you do. And it seems like there’s something out here in the inner that wants to help you along.”
“What do you mean?” asked Smith. “Help me how?”
Papa Lafayette smiled. “Take a look behind you.”
Smith turned his head, slowly. He didn’t fear the man sitting before him, even though he had watched him transform from a snake, but it went against all his instincts to voluntarily turn his back on anyone. Behind him lay the dark rising expanse of the mesa; he could see smoke drifting into the night sky from somewhere beyond the upper ridge, and could hear distant snatches of music as they floated on the soft wind.
He stared for a long moment, and was about to turn back, to ask Papa Lafayette what he was supposed to be seeing, when the air before him shimmered, and then slowly parted, as though a window was being opened in the fabric of reality.
Through the widening hole Smith could see more desert, but it was immediately apparent that it was somewhere else; the sand was fine and yellow and the sun was beating down on it, turning it a glaring, blinding white. As he watched, the window expanded, and he saw first a strip of grey tarmac, shimmering and pulsing in the heat, and then the scuffed, battered metal pole of a road sign at its edge. As the blurry, shifting edges of the window moved outwards, he saw the sign itself, plain white text against a green background.
CALIENTE 12
CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY DEPARTMENT
Smith was reading the short message for a third time, committing it to memory, when a tall, slender man, wearing a dusty checked shirt, blue jeans and a battered cowboy hat, strolled casually up to the signpost, and leant against it. Then he stared directly at Smith, smiled, reached up and tipped the front of his hat to him. Smith stared, incredulous; he had the overwhelming urge to say hello to this vision, but his tongue would not form the word. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the shimmering window began to contract, and less than a second later it was gone.
Smith immediately turned back, his mind racing with questions for Papa Lafayette, but the handsome, genial man was also gone. There was a scuffed patch of sand where he had been sitting, but apart from that, there was no sign of him, nothing to suggest that he had been there at all.
37
FROM PILLAR TO POST
If anyone had asked, Jamie Carpenter would have been unable to describe exactly what he was feeling as he stood in front of Admiral Seward’s desk. The slow, almost reluctant nod of the Director’s head had turned the world around him to nothing and the ground beneath his feet to quicksand. He felt as though his body was about to dissolve and drift away, such was the ferocity of the hope that had ignited in his chest; it threatened to engulf him and everything around him.
“It’s no more than a possibility,” said Admiral Seward, his voice thick and distant, as though it was coming from underwater. “A remote one at that. But I didn’t feel right, keeping it from you.”
Jamie fought for equilibrium, like a swimmer who has found himself too far out and realises that unless he kicks for shore now, he might not be able to make it back.
Focus, he told himself. Focus, for God’s sake. You can’t help him if you’re catatonic.
“We have to find him,” he heard himself say. “We have to start looking now.”
“We are,” replied Seward. “I’ve scrambled a Field Investigation Team to depart for Bamburgh this afternoon. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it.”
“I want to go with them, sir,” said Jamie, firmly.
“Out of the question,” said Seward, instantly. Jamie opened his mouth to protest, but the Director didn’t give him the chance. “The interrogation of Valentin Rusmanov is still ongoing, Jamie, and the presence of all Zero Hour Task Force members remains mandatory. No exceptions.”
“Sir, this is far more important,” protested Jamie.
“It is to you, Jamie,” replied Seward. “For personal reasons, which I assure you I do understand, and sympathise with. But from my perspective, there is nothing more important right now than the work of the Zero Hour Task Force, of which you are a member, whether you like it or not. I’m devoting every appropriate resource to investigate the possibility that Colonel Frankenstein is still alive, but I’m afraid that does not include letting you tag along. I’m sorry, Jamie.”
Anger surged through Jamie’s body, and he fought his hardest to keep it at bay, to stop it erupting in Admiral Seward’s direction. Because the equation was simple: the one man in the world who had never failed him, never betrayed him or let him down, who had readily offered up his life in exchange for Jamie’s, might be out there somewhere, and he wasn’t being allowed to help bring him home.
Admiral Seward saw colour rising in the teenager’s face, and moved to extinguish it. “I told you because I believed you could handle it, Jamie,” he said. “Don’t make me regret that decision. There is more at stake here than even you understand.”
With a Herculean effort, Jamie forced himself towards calm.
“I can handle it, sir,” he said, slowly. “But I think I could be useful to the Field Team, sir.”
“You’re useful right here,” replied Seward. “You have a rapport with Valentin that no one else has. Right now, and for as long as we continue to question him, I need you here.”
“Will you let me see the reports from the Field Team?” asked Jamie.
“I will,” replied Seward. “And I would let you go with them if it was any other time than now. I hope you understand that.”
“I do, sir,” replied Jamie, honestly. “I just hope they find something in Northumberland.”
“So do I, son,” replied Admiral Seward. “So do I.”
Jamie walked down the corridor, away from the Director’s quarters, his mind racing.
If he’s alive, then where has he been for the last months? If he survived the fall, if he made it back to land, why hasn’t he come home? Or contacted anyone?
His mind kept drifting towards the likeliest answer to its own questions, that even though it appeared the fall over the cliffs had not been the end of Frankenstein, it was overwhelmingly likely he had not made it to safety, that he had died in the cold waters of the North Sea. Jamie pushed such thoughts firmly away; he would not entertain such a conclusion, not when he had just been given the tiniest shred of hope to cling to.
If he’s alive, they’ll find him. That’s what Admiral Seward said, and I believe him. I have to believe him.
Jamie was sufficiently engrossed in his own thoughts that when the lift doors slid open, he stepped forward without thinking, and almost walked straight into Shaun Turner, who skipped out of the way of the impending collision. The movement brought Jamie back from his daze, and he looked at the Operator he now knew was Kate’s boyfriend, and blushed.
“Sorry,” he said. “I was miles away.”
“It’s all right,” Shaun replied. “Don’t worry about it.”
There was a moment of silence that, if not exactly comfortable, was not uncomfortable either, in which Jamie saw the
chance to build some bridges, for Kate’s sake if not for his own.
“How’s it going?” he asked.
“Busy,” said Shaun. “We went out three times last night. I’m shattered, to be honest with you.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Routine 999 intercepts,” said Shaun. “A home invasion in North London, a really messed-up ritual thing in a cemetery in Winchester and two vamps living under a railway arch in Stevenage. Nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the ‘he rises’ graffiti. Found it at all three places.”
“It was in the home where Valentin found us yesterday too,” said Jamie. “There’s more of it every time we go out.”
“The vamps know what’s happening,” said Shaun. “It’s why they’ve been so brazen these last few months; they know that Dracula is rising.”
“Until we stop him,” said Jamie, and Shaun smiled.
The two men looked at each other, and both felt the tiniest shoots of a potential friendship between them. Although neither of them knew it, they had both been ordered by Kate to be nice to the other, for her sake, but what they were feeling now was the camaraderie of shared experience, and shared purpose.
“So I’ve been meaning to come and speak to you,” said Shaun. “About Wallsend, and what happened to Kate. I’m sorry for how I behaved.”
“It’s cool,” said Jamie, quickly. “You were just being loyal to Jack, and then you were scared for Kate. I get why now.”
Shaun paused. “She told you?”
“I worked it out,” said Jamie. “That night. I asked her, and she told me.”
“She told Larissa,” said Shaun. “I know that much. I didn’t know you knew, to be honest, but it’s probably for the best.”
“I think it’s great,” said Jamie. “She seems really happy.”
Shaun grinned, a wide smile that lit up his handsome features.