“Drop my cock and grab your socks,” he crudely advised her, already rolling his legs to the floor. “It’s hunting time.”
Chapter 19
Key was back in a Cerberus Cali-brake and Chain-silk uniform as he disembarked the jet to find everyone on the core team waiting—except Lancaster, Gonzales, and Dr. Helen, who had more important things to do. The field team’s eyebrows rose, and their grins widened, when they saw Rahal coming down behind him, wearing, for the first time, a matching uniform. Before then she had always worn scrubs and a lab coat.
“Welcome!” Daniels boomed, giving her a big hug.
Rahal laughed with unfiltered joy, then went from the big man to embrace Nichols. Key clapped them on the back as he passed, heading for the palace.
“No time to waste,” Daniels said, falling in step behind his team leader.
Key didn’t need to say anything. Rahal should be in her clinic, Safar in the workshop, and the rest of them in Lancaster’s office. By the time they were halfway across the tarmac, everyone but Rahal was at a flat run.
Lailani was already in the “king’s quarters” when they arrived. To Daniel’s delight, she launched herself across the desk and into his arms.
Nichols looked amazed that they could be this happy given the situation, but Lancaster and Key shared a look of gratification that the team could still be so full of life considering what they were up against. Even though they didn’t know exactly what that was yet, they did know it wasn’t anything pleasant or optimistic.
Daniels swung the Filipino girl around like she was a Hula-Hoop, then dropped her into one of Lancaster’s leather chairs as if they had practiced the smooth move for days.
“Kamusta ka, big ape,” she said with a big smile. Hello, you big ape. She, too, was wearing a Cerberus uniform.
“Kamusta, ganda,” he replied, calling her beautiful. “What have you got for us?”
“Plenty,” Lancaster answered. “She has been remarkably helpful.”
“Was there ever any doubt?” Daniels added, plopping his butt on the chair’s arm.
“Hey, you can catch up later,” Key murmured as he rounded the desk. “Right now I want to know about the vampires.”
“Blood demons,” Lailani corrected carefully.
“Why?” Daniels asked. “We have to be politically correct?”
“No,” she informed him. “The word ‘vampire’ not exist until eighteenth century.”
Lancaster nodded. “Legends go back to ancient times, in virtually every country and culture.”
“Where did it start?” Key asked.
“As near as we can tell, Mesopotamia,” Lancaster told him. “Predominantly in Persia and Babylonia. Ancient Greece and ancient India also had similar legends of witches and demons that pre-dated vampires, but those creatures all shared some of the attributes.”
“We’re closest to India,” Key observed. “What was their first legend?”
“Vetela.” Lailani perked up from the chair. “Demons who inhabit corpses. Hang upside down high in trees. The frightened villagers call them ‘elusive ones.’”
When Key grew quiet and still, obviously thinking furiously, Daniels tapped a foot impatiently. “Where you going with this, Joe? How does this help us?”
Rather than be annoyed that the big man’s chronic impatience made him interrupt, Key seemed to welcome the question.
“I’m thinking that whatever reality we’re dealing with inspired all the myths and legends, Morty. So the more we know about the consistencies throughout those legends, the more we can put them in a realistic context.”
“So now we’re going to base our strategy on fairy tales,” Daniels said. “That’s just swell.”
“Not fairy tales, legends,” Key clarified. “Let me put it in language even you might understand. ‘Know fiction, fight fact.’ Okay?” Before Daniels could comment further, Key switched his attention to Lailani. “Who was first? And do the stories tell us if there was some kind of Typhoid Mary?”
“There was,” Lailani answered. “That was Lilith, queen of the demons. She drink the blood of babies.”
“Wait, isn’t there a Lilith in the Bible?” Daniels asked.
The others looked at him.
“What? I went to Sunday school,” he protested. “That was Adam’s first wife.”
“The same,” Lancaster nodded.
Daniels inflated slightly under a big grin.
“One of the earliest recurring beliefs is of beautiful female demons who subsist on the blood of babies and their mothers,” Lancaster said.
“No men?” Daniels wondered.
“No,” Lailani told him. “These beings—they sexual predators of men.”
“Talk about ripe fruit!” Daniels enthused. “Where’s the challenge in that?”
“Precisely,” Lailani continued. “They went by many names. Lilitu, Lilu, Sumer, Gallu. All beautiful women, drink baby blood, eat mother’s flesh, enslave and devour men.”
“Then,” Lancaster continued, “the legend spread in every direction, through Asia, Europe, and even Africa. There are literally hundreds of iterations.”
“Is that another name for them?” Daniels asked seriously.
Key shook his head, not as an answer but with pity.
“Wherever they go, machismo give them what they want…what they need,” Lailani said. “Men think they so strong.”
Key looked at the woman with interest, because her opinion was probably right. Even though the threat may have been predominantly female demons, over the years, misogynist storytellers turned them into male monsters to protect their own egos. Male enemies made them look brave and angry. Beautiful women made them feel weak and resentful.
“Let’s eliminate any myths that dwell on the cause or creation of the creatures,” Key instructed. “Concentrate on their powers.”
“The ones we macho men can defeat,” Daniels observed.
Lancaster went right to work, and, while waiting, Daniels grew fidgety.
“Wouldn’t the cause help us, too?” he wondered.
Key shook his head curtly, still obviously chewing on the information he had already heard. “Victims trying to comprehend or explain these monsters’ behavior and motivations only stir silty waters,” he explained without looking at Daniels. “While the monsters’ powers might be exaggerated by frightened victims, they’re still based on fact, not fears. Beauty, seductiveness, maybe aroma—who knows what’s real in the dark, or in the moment?” He looked toward Lancaster. “And let’s stick with the core creatures from ancient times,” he said. “As the legends spread, they would unavoidably be altered to align with each culture they went through.”
“Like martial arts tailored to geography or climate or body types,” Lancaster suggested.
“Exactly,” Key said. “One nation’s karate is another nation’s Wing Chun.”
“It’s all the same beatdown, ultimately,” Daniels suggested.
“More or less,” Lancaster agreed as he stopped editing.
“Okay,” Key said, leaning down and reading from the screen. “This is what they got. Enhanced agility, hearing, smell, speed, and strength.” He glanced at Nichols, who looked back with a “oh well” expression. Key returned his attention to the screen. “Night vision, telepathy, flight, hypnosis, regeneration, invisibility, immortality, shape-shifting.”
“That’s some résumé,” Daniels observed. “You know, I’m beginning to miss giant spiders with explosive blood.”
Key couldn’t disagree. “Okay, then. Now that we got a better idea what we’re up against, what’s the most mentioned ways to destroy them?”
Lancaster clicked a few keys and stared at the screen, his eyes moving rapidly. “Decapitation,” he finally said. “And fire.”
There was a moment’s pause, then Daniels spoke. “
That’s it? Sword or flamethrower?”
Lancaster nodded regretfully.
“What about the other legendary stuff, like sunlight? Crosses? A wooden stake to the fucking heart?”
Lancaster and Lailani both shook their heads.
“In ancient tales,” the retired general said, “wooden stakes were used primarily to simply nail the creature down so he could be decapitated or immolated. Sunlight only made them comatose. Crosses had virtually no meaning back when the legends began, which was way before Christ. Everything else—silver, garlic, holy water, or any kind of religious relic—only slowed them down.”
Daniels looked aghast. “Well, our pal Z1 kind of throws holy water on the fire option, don’t he…playing a burned and unburned corpse.”
“That appears to be the case,” Key agreed.
The others commiserated with Daniels’ frustration. But only to a point.
“It is true,” Lailani sadly added. “I have thought about all the stories I was told. Now I realize all of them ended with the mothers finding ways to avoid or fight off the monster, not kill them. Families put glass in dead bodies’ mouths, or eggs under each armpit, or needles in their palms to prevent them from becoming monsters. They would hang thistles around doors and windows, hoping maybe monsters not enter.”
“Superstition,” Nichols murmured sadly. “All superstition.”
“They were just throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks,” Daniels complained, standing up to start pacing around the office.
“So, Joe,” Nichols asked, “what are we going to do?”
Key gave the question some serious thought before shrugging. “I guess we better start throwing some better tactics at this problem,” he decided. “Speedy,” he called to the air. “Ready?”
They all heard the reply in their ear canal comm-links. “As ready as we’ll ever be.”
Key headed for the door, motioning for them all to follow. “Bring your A-game,” he advised.
Key led them to the quarantine section of the clinic. It had been enhanced since their last visit. Now it looked even more pristine and stark—a single square room made up of seemingly glass walls, a metal floor and ceiling, with a single metal chair in the center of it, surrounded by eight huge, seemingly glass, rooms of the same size.
Seated in the chair was Z1.
Perhaps “seated” was not the most apt description. He was strapped there, by seemingly elastic metal bands around his neck, chest, waist, thighs, knees, shins, feet, shoulders, arms, wrists, and even fingers. He also had on a skullcap, made of the same seemingly elastic steel.
“Fuck a duck,” Daniels breathed before looking at Lancaster. “Is that what I think it is?”
Lancaster nodded. “An electric chair, but not like you’ve ever heard of.” He, in turn, looked at Key. “Not just bolted down. Anchored into the bedrock below us as far as it would go. Then ten feet more.” He motioned, seemingly passively, at the panes of what seemed to be glass. “Electrically conductive polymethylmethacrylate,” he explained musingly. “Reportedly stronger than tungsten, harder than chromium.” He shrugged philosophically. “We’ll see.”
Daniels was distracted when Gonzales appeared, slapping what looked like a cross between a KRISS Vector submachine gun and the flamethrower from the movie Aliensinto his hands.
“Congratulations, Morty,” he said. “You can now shoot lightning. And not just out your ass.”
Daniels took a moment to be surprised, then beamed like a kid on Christmas—as Gonzales turned his attention to Key. No one had to ask whether the big ape needed some practice shots, an instruction book, or a refresher course.
“If you think whistling that up was fun,” Gonzales said, “you should have been here for Z1’s coming-out party.” The engineering wiz looked at where the monster was strapped down. “We did it one limb at a time, with electrified animal control poles that had nooses of both wire and iron rings. Put the netted bag on the chair, started with the left ankle, then the right, then up the body.” He looked back at Key. “His limbs have regenerated even more, by the way, but he acted like he was suffering one big cramp.”
That would have been as a result of the starvation diet Cerberus had unavoidably put him on. Key didn’t have to ask Gonzales if the EQ devices held up. The team wouldn’t be there if they hadn’t.
“Sorry I wasn’t there to help,” Key apologized.
Gonzales shrugged. “Right back at you, Joe. But Dr. Helen’s family is pretty amazing. If I asked them to get me proof of alien life I’m pretty sure they’d hand me an ‘I Visited Area 51 and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt’ shirt the next day.”
Once more Key was pleased that the team handled enormous pressure with humor. He got quieter, they cracked more jokes. He took one last look around the room, noting that Safar was across the way, ready with a line of net-shooting guns that looked even more powerful than the ones they had used in Varanasi.
Key was about to turn back when he did a double take. At the end of the line of net guns was, apparently on the express orders of General Lancaster, a decapitation-worthy-sized machete. He was about to go check it out, but stilled when Dr. Helen and Eshe Rahal entered the room.
The old Chinese woman, still in a lab coat, stopped and looked meaningfully at Key. Key looked meaningfully back at Dr. Helen, who noticed, and then at Rahal, who didn’t. The Arab scientist only had wide, concerned eyes on Z1. Key then looked back to Dr. Helen, who shook her head and pouted so minutely and quickly it almost read like a tremor. That meant the old woman had done as Key had asked.
“Test her,” he had instructed on the private line back in the F. B. Law. “Test her like crazy.”
Apparently Rahal had passed the tests. Key found himself exhaling with relief he didn’t even know he had, as Dr. Helen started preparing her acupuncture kit and Rahal started preparing her autopsy tools.
Key looked away, to the thing in the electric chair. “Okay Z1, whatever the hell you are,” he said. “We have no more time to spare and nothing left to lose.” He turned back to the others, who stood at the ready. “Open him up.”
Chapter 20
Stuart Gullan inwardly laughed at himself.
He used to shake his head sadly at all those New Yorkers who lived their whole lives in the Big Apple but never visited the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, or any of the other justly famous tourist attractions. But here he was, born, raised, and a lifelong citizen of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, and he had never visited the Liberty Bell.
Until today. Gullan had woken up that morning, almost the same way he had for thirty years—on the comfortable bed in the master bedroom at the crown of the little suburban house—only with two big differences. First, his wife and two daughters were already up and out—the former taking her first physical therapy client of the morning, and the latter duo to their jobs at the local florist and pet store.
And second, this was the first day of Stuart Gullan’s retirement. The hospital where he had served as night manager for decades was trimming staff, and, although he would have been fine remaining, when they offered him early retirement, complete with a not-too-subtle hint that the decent retirement package might not be so decent if they offered it again a year down the road, he gratefully took it.
But now what was he going to do? He had enjoyed tennis and golf in his college days, but a night manager position didn’t exactly lend itself to making, and keeping, day friends. Besides, with his kids eyeing college, he didn’t have the kind of money needed to maintain a club membership, or even to get decent equipment.
Gullan got up, fully intending to make a nice breakfast, read the paper—some old habits die hard—and relax. But, by the time he got downstairs, the sheer quiet and emptiness of the house was getting to him. So much so that, by the time he showered, shaved, dressed, and retrieved the paper from the front stoop, he too
k the small article on an anniversary of the Liberty Bell as a sign.
Why not? he thought. There was nothing keeping him there. The Phillies’s season was over and the Eagles didn’t play until the weekend. What was he going to do? Twiddle his thumbs until someone came home? Do yard work?! That last thought really motivated him. Within minutes, he found himself on the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority’s rapid transit train heading for Fifth Street.
It was a fine, crisp autumn day, and, for a while, Gullan enjoyed the sense of freedom he got watching and pitying all the others on the SEPTA train, who he imagined were burdened with responsibilities and the worries that came with them. Not him, he could do what he wanted now—at least until his family got home. He got off at the Fifth Street station and took his first look at Independence National Historical Park.
Even for a jaded, somewhat introverted, gentleman such as himself, Gullan was impressed. Independence Mall and Independence Square stretched as far as he could see—the National Constitution Center directly in front of him, the Visitor Center to its south, the Liberty Bell Center beyond that, Independence Hall next, and finally, the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier—who Gullan strangely identified with. At least that poor fellow’s early retirement was a lot worse than his.
He got an immediate pang that his family wasn’t with him. He imagined that the girls might have gone as part of a school outing when they were tweens, but he didn’t know for sure. That gave him another, long ruminated-upon, pang. He had many a late-night talk with the wife about his parental philosophy. Like his father before him, he believed in teaching what he knew, then leaving them alone. His wife had no problem with the first part but thought he was a little too good at the second.
“Hey,” he said, “if they have problems, they’ll come to you.” Which they did. Reportedly, often to complain about him—how he acted, how he looked, how he drove, how he dressed—all, according to his wife, code complaints to cover their feelings that their father wasn’t “there for them.”
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