by Arthur Slade
“A short conversation then lunch,” I hissed between clenched teeth.
“Please be forthright and more explicit with your answers.”
Wow, she sounded so official. Blood kept trickling out, and damn did the wound ever hurt.
“How many kills have you performed for the League?”
“One,” I said.
“Gabriel was your first?”
“Yes. And don’t you think the League is a rather silly name? I mean, it’s not very creative is it?”
I think I was maybe getting a little delirious. By her hard stare, I assumed she was deciding whether or not to shoot me again.
“Uh, please continue with the questions,” I said. The blood leaking out of my body and my yearning to consume someone else’s blood were hammering at any sane thoughts. Pull yourself together, Amber, I thought. I could make a leap for her, but she could fire before that, and this time not to wound. If I dodged to the side, maybe the bullet would miss. But now that I was wounded, my reaction time would be slower.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Alicia Von Stratton.” Where that came from, I don’t know. Now I’d just have to remember that name. Alice?
“And what strain of vampire are you?” she asked.
“Strain? There are different strains?”
She nodded as if I’d answered a question.
“How did Dermot survive?” she asked.
I blinked. “Survive what?”
She nodded. Had I given something away? Only that I didn’t know very much. Which meant I might get shot at any moment. My guess was there’d be no warming before the shot. Just bang. So I wouldn’t be able to react. Again, I noted how steady the barrel was. She must have worked out. “Why didn’t he change his name? He’s always such a stickler. So stodgy.”
“Oh, I agree,” I said. I was willing to agree with most everything. “He’s totally stodgy. I bet he flosses after every meal.”
“Are you as stupid as you’re acting?” she asked.
I set my teeth.
“No,” she answered her own question. “They just haven’t trained you well enough. You’re rough around the edges. I see that what happened in Dubai was beginner’s luck. A sign of how desperate the League is. When you don’t come back, they’ll have no eliminators. That’s my guess. Apparently, if you cut off the head, the body will die.”
Had someone’s head been cut off? An electronic warning bell rang. She looked to her left—a screen flared to life on the wall, but I couldn’t see what it was showing from this angle. “So you’re not alone,” she said. “Someone got the dogs. Hmmm. I do hope it really is Dermot. Well, you’re—”
I knew the period at the end of that sentence was going to be a bullet, so I launched myself to the left. Hot lead whizzed right past my shoulder and through the chair. She spun the gun toward me with such speed it was clear she’d been augmented. Her next shot grazed my leg.
The glass window broke behind her, and Dermot—stodgy, wonderful Dermot—came bounding through. Exactly where he’d jumped from, I couldn’t say. He had his own gun drawn. His landing was a little ungainly, but he knocked Hallgerdur to the floor. Her gun rolled one way. His the other. And they rolled together.
Neither gun had ended up near me, which was maybe for the best. I would have ended up shooting them both. That would have solved a lot of my problems.
She raked his face with her nails, four streaks of blood appearing from his eyebrows down his cheeks. I decided to make it a ménage à trois. I stood up to do so, but the blood loss had made me dizzy, and I zigged where I should have zagged and ended up on the floor again. I took a deep breath and slowly rose to my feet. Stupid blood. Stupid light-headedness. I really wanted to take her head off.
She made a neat little move and flipped Dermot, sending him through a glass table. She attempted a kung fu chest stomp, but I intercepted her. I’d intended to wrap my arms around her but misjudged. Instead, she was sent sprawling into a bookcase.
“Take that you b—” I began.
She was reaching into a drawer. Oh, why had I paused to say something dramatic? I threw myself at her as she turned a smaller gun toward me and got off a shot that hit me somewhere in the midsection. The wound didn’t stop me. I was on her, knocking the gun from her hand and falling across her, her blows hitting my head. I bit into her leg, and she screamed. I was going for the femoral artery, but she smacked me hard enough that my head rang like the Liberty Bell, and was likely just as cracked. Even with my wounds, I was stronger than her. She kept whipping her head from side to side, thrashing. I saw an opening and sank my teeth into her neck. I felt that warm sluice of blood and drank heavily as the paralytic agent from my teeth slipped into her. She stopped thrashing, took a deep breath, and was still. The meal was mine.
The first gulp was always the best. Every cell on my tongue, in my throat, throughout my body was screaming out for this meal. She was a delicious, salty wine. It tasted as though the blood was going straight to my brain. The second gulp was warm and beautiful. The third was—
“No! Stop!” the words were somewhere in a dream kingdom far, far away from my meal, from her life going into mine. I ignored the voice. It was so distant.
Then fireworks exploded in my skull.
21
A SECOND HELPING
I had only been interrupted while feeding once before. A frumpy woman had found me on her husband’s neck and she, well, she thought we were making love. An understandable conclusion since he was naked. I was fully clothed, but some people liked doing it that way. She had yanked me off, shouting, “Get away from my husband, you tramp!”
And that’s when the blood rage took over. I tossed her through a window, and she landed on the lawn of their suburban home. Then I finished the meal. I should explain her husband was a bad cop. To be honest, I never knew whether she survived that flight. By the time I was done feeding, there were sirens, and I fled the scene with a man-sized portion of blood in my stomach.
“What the hell are you doing?” I snarled.
The rage was right on the edge of my fingernails. I was already closing in on Dermot. He was holding a stool and looking rather sheepish.
“We need her alive,” he said.
“She’s my meal,” I spat. Well, actually it came out more like: “Shesmymealdiediedie!” I slashed out at him. “Diediedie!” He held the stool up and blocked my blow, but the stool broke in half. I was seeing red, and if not for my own blood loss, I would’ve likely started a full-fledged fight. But I slipped in my own blood, most of which was coming out of the hole in my side. More fireworks went off in my skull.
He was above me now. Same sheepish look on his face.
“We need to take her back alive. The mission has changed.”
I crouched to leap at him, but my vision was blurred. There were two stupid Dermots looking down at me. Which one had interrupted my meal? I rubbed the side of my head.
“You can change the mission just like that?”
“That’s my prerogative.”
“I need to finish feeding. I need her blood. Now. That’s my prerogative.”
“Take mine,” he said.
Had seeing her face made him go crazy?
“You’ll die.”
“No. You can control yourself.”
“But if I don’t finish the feed, I don’t reset my clock.”
“We’ll figure that out. I’ll put a team on it.”
I was leaking blood, and an interrupted meal had only made me hungrier. It was illogical. But I needed to finish eating. Now.
“I can’t.”
“You can, Amber. I know it.” He set down the remains of the stool. “At least, I’m pretty sure.”
“You’re showing a lot of faith in a vampire.”
“You’re one vampire I trust. You have to promise me you won’t use the paralytic agent.”
“I can’t control its release.”
“You don’t know that. You’ve
never tried.” Then he bent his neck to one side. “It’s important that we preserve her.”
“Do you still love her?” I asked.
“No. Never.” He gave a fake laugh. “She has more information that we need. My relationship with her is long over.”
The lady—or in this case the man—doth protest too much, I thought.
He wasn’t making much sense, but I decided I couldn’t wait. And I sank my teeth into his neck and tried to think thoughts like no paralytic agent no no, and he grimaced a bit. You know how mosquitos released an anticoagulant? Well, mine didn’t seem to be working. His blood didn’t flow all that well, and I had to, well, I had to suck quite a bit more than I was used to. It sounded like a symphony of soup slurps. He was wearing cologne and smelled of sweat. But all humans smelled of sweat. I did like the smell. The coppery taste of blood was rich in my mouth.
I closed my eyes and fed. When I opened them again, a year could have passed. But I felt stronger. I looked down at Dermot. He was pale and dead-looking. Either I couldn’t control the paralytic agent, or I’d fed too long. I was a little drunk from all that blood. And I’d gained a few pounds.
I slowly, so slowly put my hand on his neck. Feeling for a pulse. Nothing. I’d taken too much.
“Damn,” I whispered. “Damn. Damn.”
Then the slightest of movements under my index finger. A pulse.
I sat back and sucked in a breath. I’d stopped bleeding. And since the bullet had gone right through my shoulder, I’d be left with a nice circular scar. The bullet in my midsection had also gone through flesh.
Hallgerdur certainly knew how to make an impression.
Oh, and she was gone. I’d thought the paralytic agent would leave her unconscious for hours, but I’d only ever drank until they were dead.
I lurched along the hallway, following the Rorschach-like blood splashes. Across the room. Down the stairs. I paused and peered down the stairwell, listening. Not a noise. How long had I been in my feeding daze? And why, oh, why had evolution given me that little post-feeding period of dullness? Or it was the loss of my own blood causing such slow reactions? I was surprised I could walk at all.
I crept down to the bottom of the stairs, clinging to the wall, and peeked around the corner. Behold—a kitchen with more stainless steel than a starship: fridge, oven, sink, microwave. There was a pear and a half-eaten fish on a plate on a marble table. We’d interrupted her dinner, so I guess it was only fair my own dinner was interrupted.
Anyway, the droplets led to the center of the room. I was still a little blurry, and it hurt to walk, but I followed the trail. There were several paintings on the walls, but I didn’t have time to admire them. And all along the opposite wall were rows and rows of books in a rather impressive system of floating shelves.
The blood droplets stopped at the bookcase. She had stood in place, for there was quite the crimson puddle. But she had vanished. It was as if someone had come along, wrapped her wound up, and carried her away. I blinked. Either she had staunched the blood flow and kept walking, or she really had vanished.
It took a second for me to put it together. I couldn’t smell her. Or any other human pheromones. There was the slightest red palm print on a book called Grettis saga Ásumdarsonar, so she had leaned there. Seeing that classic got my librarian’s envy fired up. She owned the book in hardcover! She was reading the Icelandic sagas in German. This woman had quite the brain.
I paused again, and a tiny bulb in my brain glowed with dull light. I pushed on the book. It went into the wall, and the bookshelf opened silently, revealing a doorway and a set of carved-stone stairs leading into what I could only call a cavern. Blood dotted the stone steps.
I started a very careful and slow descent.
22
THE CAVERN OF SURPRISES
There was a rasping noise from somewhere below—her last breaths? Careful is as careful does. That was another Mom-ism. I’d just stopped bleeding. No sense in getting shot again.
So I crept down stair by stair, the steps perfectly smooth. The basement had been dug directly into the rock. Now that was impressive.
It dawned on me that my legs would be first to be seen and the first part of me to be shot. I didn’t want any damage to my limbs. So I jumped to the ceiling and dug my claws in. If I’d been at my physical peak, this would have been the simplest of maneuvers. But I banged my head, then nearly slipped. Chunks of rock fell down the steps, alerting whoever was down there to my presence. I took a deep breath and slowly, so slowly turned myself around and crawled spider-like down the ceiling.
My whole plan was to not give her much of a target to shoot at. All I needed to do was peek around the room. It seemed to make sense, but I had about ten pounds of extra blood in me, and that was making it hard to hold on to the solid rock. My sore shoulder didn’t help. I creepy-crawled upside down and peeked over the edge of the ceiling.
This would give her only part of my forehead and eyeball to aim at.
Everything was upside down. This room was so deep in the rock that some part of me expected to see the Batmobile and a Batman outfit in a glass case in the middle of the room. There was what looked to be a large rectangular holding cell in one corner. A medical desk and a stainless steel filing cabinet in the other. And several scientific type machines—even a few test tubes.
No sign of Hallgerdur. I peeked again.
A bullet chipped off a chunk of stone and knocked into my cheek, blood spraying to the floor. I tried to lurch backward but lost my hold and fell to the stone stairs, bashing my head. I lurched and rolled to one side—avoiding another shot—and lurched the other way. My eyes blurred. I saw the flash of a muzzle. Hallgerdur was crouched behind a filing cabinet, one hand holding bandages to her neck. I went one way, then another, and she got off two more shots. I had a glimpse of just the flashes and her face, which looked pained and beautiful.
Couldn’t this woman just do me the courtesy of dying?
I slammed into a chair and table next. I decided, perhaps stupidly, to be aggressive and flipped up and rammed into the filing cabinet in front of her, knocking it over. Then I ran around the other side.
Hallgerdur was flattened beneath the cabinet, the gun still in her hand. She seemed to be out cold. I kicked the gun away. She was pale as white paper. Her neck was clearly visible, and her heartbeat pulsed there. I wanted to finish the job. To put an end to her and any chance that she would come back. It wasn’t like Dermot could stop me. I wasn’t sure how she’d dragged herself down here with so little blood in her system.
“You’re a tough Viking to kill,” I said.
I bent toward her neck. I licked my lips and felt my incisors extend. Ah, but ol’ Dermie would get that sad puppy-dog look in his face.
“You don’t know how lucky you are.” I tied her up using shipping tape from the desk. A lot of it. And wrapped it around her shoulders and legs too, enough that FedEx could have taken her as a parcel. Then I left her there.
What the hell was this place? There was a flat-screen monitor on the desk, along with several papers. And, of course, the metal cubicle at one side of the room. Was this a place to interrogate prisoners without the outside world hearing their screams?
I peeked into the bulletproof glass of the holding cell. The bed had been slept in recently, or at least, it hadn’t been made since the last occupant. There was an open book on the table, a cup of java beside it. Curious, whoever had been in here had left their book unread, walked out, and slammed the door.
Then a face rose up from behind the glass. I pulled back. A pale man with dark, close-cropped hair and gray eyes. He was in his mid-forties, angular and slim. His grin was devilish.
“Now that was an impressive display,” he said. His voice was muffled by the thickness of the glass. A card on the door: Subject X11123.
“Thanks,” I said. “Who the hell are you?”
“You can call me Martin. That’s my first name. I must say I enjoyed your little battle,
but you let her live.”
“She does have a habit of not staying dead,” I said.
“Believe me, I know that.”
“And why are you locked in this cage, Marty?”
“I am of great interest and value to the company. I think that’s how she put it. And I’m a stupid, greedy little boy. I got caught eating.”
He smiled, showing fangs as sharp and perfect as mine.
23
I ASK AGAIN: WHO THE HELL?
He leered at me for a long time. I was standing before another vampire. I’d never seen any neck biter other than my mother, and some part of my brain was beginning to believe they didn’t exist. I mean, I knew I existed, but if you didn’t see another vampire, could you really believe? He’d let his incisors retreat back into his mouth.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“You’re repeating yourself. I’m Martin. I mentioned that only a few short moments ago. Perhaps you have early onset Alzheimer’s.”
He emanated confidence. And a very large ego.
“I would like to know how you got here, Martin.”
“Well, open the door, and we can have a friendly chat. Tête à tête, so to speak. Vampire to vampire.”
“I’m a little tired, Martin,” I said. “I’ve been shot. I’ve had to drain the blood from most of two meals, and frankly, I could use a nap. So I don’t think it’d be best to let you out right now.”
“Not let me out?” Incredulity was stamped across his face. “Isn’t that why you’re here? How did you find me?”
The adrenaline vanished from my body, and I could barely stay standing. “I wasn’t looking for you, Marty. I was looking for her. If I’d killed her upstairs, you would’ve been trapped down here and rotted, and we wouldn’t be having this pleasant conversation.”
“I’m too pretty to rot.” Wow, his ego was the size of Manhattan. “Forgive me for being a little confused, but if you weren’t sent to find me, then why were you hunting her?”