by Arthur Slade
“That’s classified,” I said. It sounded official enough. “The people I work for didn’t want me to know.”
“You work for humans?”
I nodded.
His eyes narrowed. “You work for the bags of blood? Have you no couth?” He took a deep breath that made his nostrils flare. “You’re a rogue are you? What’s your family line?”
“That’s my business. Not yours.”
He guffawed. It was an aggravating sound. “Or, maybe you’re just not properly educated. I thought we’d snuffed out the sympathizers. I guess not. There’s always someone who goes against their true nature. Against the law. What’s your name, little girl?”
“That’s my business too,” I said.
“Where did you grow up?” he asked.
“This isn’t twenty questions, Bub.” I must have been tired. I’d never used the word bub before. “And the more you pry, the less likely I am to let you out of the cage.”
He slammed his hand against the window. The cell shook and seemed to move an inch toward me, but the glass held. “You’re a traitor to your kind!” he shouted. “Let me give you a few facts. I am on day twenty-seven of my feeding cycle. In two days, I will need to feed. In three, I will go mad with bloodlust and tear myself to pieces. I am starving.”
“Well, you can’t eat me. I’m one of you.”
This time his grin showed his incisors. “Oh, how little you know,” he said. Vampires could eat vampires! I hadn’t thought about that possibility. Or at least, I had dismissed it.
“Wait ...” He placed his hand on the glass. “Look closely at me.” I pulled my head back an inch or two. “Your eyes. They’re gray.”
“Whoopdedoo.”
“Look at mine,” he said. They were gray too. Something cold and snake-like began twisting in my gut.
“So what?” I said. “Eye color means nothing. Dominant genes tend to dominate.”
“Well, Amber,” he said. How the hell did he know my name? “I expect you to talk to me with much more respect. After all, you’ve been looking for me all your life.”
“I have?” That gut snake had turned to ice.
“This is going to sound somewhat melodramatic: Amber Fang, I am your father.”
I looked into his gray eyes. I swallowed.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
24
FAMILY TREES AND OTHER PROBLEMS
I apologize for that last outburst. I try not to swear.
Unless I was in a fucking bad mood.
This whole “I am your father” thing was a gut punch of a revelation. There was something familiar about his face, and I recognized I had some of his features. The same chin. A pinched look to the eyes. So this was what Luke Skywalker felt like. Yes, I’d watched those movies. One had to if one wanted to understand the various human subcultures. I grok geeks. And eat them too.
“No,” I said. “It can’t be.”
Again came his grating laugh. “Yes, it’s the truth. Why didn’t I see the likeness right away? My long-lost daughter, stolen from me by the sympathizer. How old are you now?”
“I—that’s none of your business.”
“Maybe you’re twenty now. Twenty years of indoctrination. I don’t know if that can be reversed. If you’re here, then mommy can’t be far away. Where is that little do-gooder?”
“That’s classified information too.”
“She works for these humans!” He scraped the glass with his fingernails. “For our food. She’s gone beyond the pale. What did she teach you? Morality of the kill? Be kind to the kittens?” I knew part of the rant was fueled by his bloodlust. “I don’t know why your mother grew so soft, or why I spent enough time with that bitch to father you.”
“Don’t call her that.” My voice was weak.
“You won’t understand this,” he said, “but you’re better than all of them. You’re the nightmare in their tiny, mushy brains. We got rid of your mother’s strain. Her parents. Her cousins. She was the last one. The dumb cow.”
“She’s not a cow!” I slammed my hand against the window, inches from his face, and he didn’t even blink. That Johnny Depp-like grin just widened.
I collapsed into a nearby chair and spun so that my back was to him.
“I’m talking to you, Amber,” he said. “Turn around. Right now.” He was starting to sound like a dad.
I’d pictured this meeting several thousand times in my lifetime. It was verboten for Mom to mention him, so he had become a king in my memory. All she would say is, “You don’t ever want to see him.” But in my head, he’d save me from some dire event—a drowning or a fire or a gaggle of vampire slayers with stakes in hand. Or I would show him how high I could jump. Obviously, that was back when I was a kid. More recent daydreams involved me talking to him, learning the secrets my mother hadn’t told me. And, yes, this was a cliché, but I dreamed that someday we would be a happy family again—like all those human families I saw on TV.
Mom was right. He wasn’t worth meeting. It was like finding out your father was a bull snake.
Dermot came stumbling down the stairs. He was pale, and there was what looked like red syrup leaking from his neck. He surveyed the room and spotted Hallgerdur. Then he saw my father. Dermot’s face went a little paler, and he stumbled over to me and placed his hand on my shoulder.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Peachy keen,” I said. But I didn’t lift up my head to meet his eyes.
“And who’s that?” He motioned weakly.
“Is this the food you work with?” My father asked. “Is this blood bag on legs your boyfriend? Your partner? You couldn’t even finish him off.”
“That’s my dad,” I said. There was more than a little shame in my voice. “Welcome to my family reunion.”
Dermot did give me the satisfaction of a shocked look and was speechless for a moment.
“He’s a bit of an asshole, in case you hadn’t guessed,” I added.
“How do you know he’s your father?”
“We have the same eyes. And he knew my name without me telling him.”
“You get your hands off my little girl,” my father said. “She’s not your plaything, human.”
“His name’s Martin,” I added.
Dermot nodded and gave my shoulder a squeeze. He walked over to the prison cubicle.
“Oh, here comes dinner,” Dad said. “Wow, you don’t even look like an aperitif. Get over here and give your daddy-in-law a big hug. Come on, you blood bag, come here, I—”
There was a click. I turned and saw that Martin was talking, but I couldn’t hear him. “There’s a silencer on these pens,” Dermot said, pointing at a button.
“If only I’d known that a few minutes ago.”
“I’m going to check on Hallgerdur.” It sounded like a request.
“Go ahead. She was alive a few minutes ago.”
He went over to his Icelandic ex-girlfriend and put his hand on her neck. “Still breathing. Low pulse. Nice tape job.”
“Thanks. Mom was big on crafts.” Why aren’t you here now, Mom?
Dermot still had his hand on Hallgerdur’s neck. “This was a very good day, Amber. It may not seem like it now. But it was.”
I didn’t care. I just needed to sleep.
He crossed his arms. “Now we just have to figure out how to get a pickup team in here. It’ll be tricky, but I believe I have the answer.”
25
FIRST CLASS TICKET HOME
We caught a helicopter ride to the nearby American Navy base and boarded a C-40A Clipper, a United States Navy jet. I only knew the name of the plane because Dermot kept talking about its capabilities and its history. The plane was the size of an average passenger plane, but the front had space for carrying “gear.” The back half was your typical airplane seats, which was where we sat. Ten marines were seated ahead of us.
About five minutes later, a second helicopter thup thup thupped its way to the ground. T
hey had somehow stuffed Dad into what looked to be a Star Trek-style, black metal coffin. They loaded him through a great big hatch at the front of the plane. An unconscious Hallgerdur was strapped to a gurney, a drip bag keeping her going. They carried her onto the plane and belted her down next to the coffin. A nurse in BDUs fussed over her.
Dermot had been given his own bag of plasma. The nurse popped by to check on him, and he managed a weak thumbs up.
His phone made an old-fashioned ringing sound. He looked at the screen and turned slightly paler.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Bad news,” he said. “It’s … well, you don’t have clearance for that information.”
He put the phone away.
The plane growled into life and was soon grumbling through the air. I found my gaze drifting over to my father’s coffin. Our whole exchange had lasted no longer than two minutes, but it had opened up a universe of questions. From what I could tell, every other vampire operated on a different moral code than I did. They didn’t hesitate to dine on humans, guilty or not guilty. I’d read Dracula a few times. But I assumed we had evolved our moral compasses along with the humans. Apparently not.
What would it be like to not have to research every meal? To not have morals?
Was Mom the crazy one? No, Dad had mentioned sympathizers. So there once had been others.
And what had Mom seen in Dad? At one point, they must have had something in common.
My gut was still heavy with blood. My limbs and my head felt heavy too. It was getting too hard to think any logical thoughts. I closed my eyes, meaning only to take a nap.
It was with a bit of surprise that the shaking of the descending Clipper woke me, and I looked out the window to see we were approaching an airport. I’d slept for several hours.
“Welcome to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in scenic New Jersey,” Dermot said. I glanced over my shoulder to see that Hallgerdur was still strapped to her bed and fast asleep, and my father’s steel coffin remained closed.
“So what are you going to do with my father?” I asked. I tried to make the question sound casual.
“That’s not my decision.” Dermot had some color back to his skin. There were still ugly black bags under his eyes.
“Thanks for the vague answer. Would you care to guess what’ll become of him?”
“We can keep him in stasis for a few weeks. Maybe months.”
“And what does that do to his feeding cycle? He’s supposed to eat in the next seventy-two hours.”
“I honestly don’t know, Amber. We’re flying blind here. We could feed him.”
“You mean just shove some old lady into his coffin?” My nails we puncturing the armrest.
“Old lady? No. I’m just telling you our options. He has information about the Grand Council.”
“What’s that?”
“We don’t know a lot about the council. But somehow they run most of vampire society.”
I filed that under things I need to know more about. “How would you get that information out of him? Waterboarding?”
“That wouldn’t work.”
“I was joking.”
“I don’t like the morals of it either, Amber. But what if the information he gives us can save lives? We have only vague conjecture about how many vampires are in the council, or where they are located.”
“What would you do with that information? Hunt them down?”
“They aren’t all like you, Amber.”
I wasn’t certain if that was a compliment. “You would kill my kind?”
“Our goal is to make the world a better place. That’s all.”
He must have taken a course on ambiguity. “Let’s just stick to specifics, then. I don’t like the idea of my father being experimented on. I just found him. And it’s—it’s not right.”
Dermot could only manage a weak shrug.
“And what about Hallgerdur?” I asked.
“She’ll be interrogated too.”
“By you?”
“Again, I don’t know. It’ll be very difficult to get information out of her. But deals can be made. She may be more malleable in one of our safe rooms.”
The conversation was interrupted by a rumbling as we landed on the tarmac and stopped near a hangar. The door on the side of the plane opened like a giant mouth. The marines lined either side of the ramp, and we proceeded out to where a black car and two black vans waited.
“Just once, I’d like to see a secret agency use pink vehicles,” I said.
Dermot smiled, led me to the car, and got in on the other side. The prisoners were carried to the black vans. We left the military base. Soon we were out of the city and speeding along a highway.
“He may have the key to finding your mother,” Dermot said, out of the blue. “Your father is a very important asset for us.”
“Asset. Nice way to put it.” I honestly couldn’t explain the anger rising to the surface. Maybe it was the fact they would kill my own kind. Before I even got to know them. To know more about myself. “Will you promise me that I’ll at least get to talk to him? Before you do whatever it is you do?”
“I’ll put a request in on your behalf.”
I rolled my eyes. “Where are we going?”
“You? Back to the White House. To study. To relax. Me? Maybe a hospital bed.”
“You do realize that because of an interrupted feeding, my clock hasn’t reset? I could snap into a bloodlust rage at any moment. I shouldn’t have any visitors.”
“We’ll put a monitor on you,” he said.
“There’s a chance I’ll go insane.”
“Amber. I … I didn’t fully understand what I was asking. I shouldn’t have interrupted you. I just couldn’t let her go.”
I bit my lip. It hurt when you had incisors like mine. “You mean emotionally?”
“No. I mean the information she has for the League.”
The van turned right, and we zipped ahead. “Where are they going?” I asked.
“To a bunker.”
“And will I see my father again?”
“As I said, I’ll put in a request for you.” His voice was weary. “Look, Amber, I don’t have all the answers. The retrieval of both of these subjects represents a sea change in our information and how we’ll operate in the future.”
More time passed. I watched the scenery for a while. Like a long pan shot in a movie.
“Did you love her?” I asked.
“Yes. Long ago, I was a lot like her. I don’t love her anymore. Not since she shot me.”
“She shot you?”
“She was just proving her worth to ZARC by terminating our relationship.”
“You make it sound so clinical.”
He gave a shrug. “It’s how I deal with it. And I shouldn’t have survived. But it turns out I can be somewhat hard to kill.”
All sorts of alarm bells were going off in my slow mind. “What does that mean?”
He waved a wavering hand. “Another story for another time.”
A highway sign said Welcome to Vermont. Home sweet temporary home.
26
THE WHITE HOUSE REDUX
The White House was the same as I’d left it. Dermot didn’t get out of the car, but he patted my arm and said, “Good luck. Good work.”
“I—I’ve never tried to kill you,” I said. The words just came out. “At least not with all my heart.”
That got a smile from him. Then I closed the door. Kato, or whatever his name was, led me to the house.
The concept of a bed was all my mind could handle. I wondered if Kato could defend himself from me. He was wearing a big honking Taser that looked like something out of a science fiction movie. I didn’t know if that would be enough.
“Welcome home,” he said.
I nodded, went into my room, dropped my bag, and fell onto the bed in a heap of Amber. I slept.
I didn’t wake up for nearly twenty-four hours. When I did, I leapt out of bed an
d up the wall. I crawled upside down across the ceiling, dislodging chunks of stucco. For a moment, I saw red. A heartbeat later, it vanished.
I climbed down off the walls. Literally. And sat on the bed. It was still dark out, and I had a pounding headache. I was in a territory my mother had warned me about. Always eat until the food is dead. I pictured her waving her proverbial finger at me. And clean up the dishes too. But there was nothing I could do now. I was waiting for the feeding madness. From what I knew, one of two things could happen. I could snap and dine on whichever human I came across until sated, and then my clock would reset. Or, if no food was found, I might try to suck my own blood until I died.
It was 3:00 a.m. when I went to the kitchen and put coffee in the coffeemaker. It was an ancient, electric espresso coffeemaker with an orange top. The percolating coffee percolated my brain to a slightly more awake state.
I sat in the rocking chair and read with hot coffee in hand, slowly rocking the whole time. I tried to remember my early years with Mom and how she would read to me, sometimes in a rocking chair, but most often in bed. I still had Goodnight Moon memorized. She’d even read Harry Potter to me when I was older.
I wished I could sit down with her now and have her tell me our story. How she had met Dad. Why she had left whatever vampire clan she was part of and what her reasons were. I could guess them, of course. But that wasn’t the same as hearing a story firsthand.
Were there other moral vampires out there? Or was I a freak?
That was how I passed the night—thoughts of Mom and Dad and my place in the universe. It had been three days since my interrupted feeding. Maybe I should have kept a diary of my march to insanity. Day three. I had coffee and read. I also climbed the ceiling.
I went online and continued my classes, taking numerous notes for Information Access. My essay was waiting for me in Word. I really preferred to deal with old books—antiquities and such—but this was knowledge I needed. After all, it was still my goal to become a full-time librarian. The way I felt at that moment, it looked much more attractive than charging across the world to dine on dangerous hit women and knife-wielding men.