Key shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts and keep up his strength. “That’s what I’m trying to do,” he sadly assured her. “Stop Mahasona.”
“What do you mean?” she asked in a tiny, trapped, voice.
“You are Mahasona,” Key told her flatly. “Like Aarif Zaman’s face on your poor dupe out there, Rita Jayson and even Tajabana were the faces you wore to protect your true identity. Isn’t that true, Mahasona?”
When she just stared, seemingly motionless, Key breathed deeply. “I agreed with our Filipino vampire expert, you see. Male egotist storytellers changed the sex of the greatest blood demons over the years, but even then, the huge majority of the most powerful legends were female.”
Key looked back up at her, noticing she was one step closer to him. He compensated by leaning his entire back against the wall. “Besides, your dupe wasn’t very good at maintaining his disguise, was he?” he mused. “Constantly making mistakes, blustering rather than dominating. Where’d you get him anyway? Bargain basement sale at the Roman Colosseum? Last vampire standing?”
There was a significant pause. Key just waited, and sure enough, it was the woman who broke the silence. And when she did, it changed the timbre of the room entirely.
“Just a terrorist I turned,” she sniffed, all pretense in her voice gone. “The tallest, strongest one of Zaman’s followers I could find. Just one in a long line of fronts, I’m afraid.” She looked knowingly, as well as apologetically, at Key as she took another step. “A girl’s got to eat, and ‘beggars can’t be choosers.’ John Heywood, 1562.”
“Showoff,” Key automatically said as he leaned back even more. “Is Morty Daniels scheduled to be your next present consort and future meal?”
The brunette seemed to be considering it, but not for the first time. “Who knows?” she said idly. Then she raised her head and locked eyes with him. He noted that her visage and form had taken solid shape as a feminine ideal—seemingly a combination of every optimal female trait she had experienced over her millennia.
Her hair was lustrous and thick. Her eyes were a combination of hazel and violet her nose straight and dusted with light freckles, and her mouth rich and rose-colored. The body had settled into a smooth, supple, strong, crowd-pleasing thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six. The ears and feet were perfectly shaped.
“Why not you?” she suggested gently.
Key only grinned weakly and listlessly waved her away. “I’d only be a disappointment,” he promised her.
“Not at all,” she countered, taking another step toward him. “I can honestly say you are the most remarkable man I have ever met.”
“Human man, you mean.”
She made a dismissive face with a slight wave of her hand. “Human, vaempayar,” she sniffed, using her original Sinhalese language. “What’s the difference now? You know as well as I do that as long as I live, this will never end. And I will always live, so why not let the deal stand?”
“What deal?” he asked softly.
“Let me walk away,” she immediately replied, leaning toward him, starting to reach for him. “Come with me, or not, but let me walk away and I promise I’ll return to the shadows. I promise not to try re-raising my army. No one will know I am there. Like before. As it ever was.”
Key breathed deeply, and started to shake his head.
“No, no,” she pleaded, actually taking his face in her cool and warm hands. “Don’t say that, don’t decide. Not yet.” Her own head moved in rhythm with his, trying to find his eyes again. “Because you know, don’t you? You know the alternative. I will walk away, no matter what you do.”
That did it. Their eyes locked, and this time neither looked away.
“What did you do to my front out there?” she asked him imperatively. “Electrify him? Net him, like you did the others? Do you think I can be electrified, netted, strapped down? Many have tried, all have failed. You will fail. You have only three choices. Either watch me go, go with me, or be one of the dead behind me.”
Her head was lowered to his shoulder. He felt her cool hands on his hair and on the fingers holding the jacket. Her hands felt good, even healing. He did nothing when she moved the Cali-brake away and tenderly fastened her succulent mouth on his seeping puncture wounds.
He gasped, then sighed, closing his eyes and murmuring. “You certainly set the bar high for us,” he whispered. “We had to create an EQ so effective we were essentially invisible to you. But not to your followers. So we decided only one or two should risk infiltration while you gloated.”
He waited until he felt her tongue lick the wounds, then suction onto them, the tip of her tongue pressing against the larger of the two punctures.
“Nichols was already here. You know about her, right? Tainted blood. Living proof that your food chain is already irrevocably compromised. So that gave us a fourth choice.” Key looked sympathetically at the woman who was undulating against him, suckling his life liquid, pressing him to the cave wall. “Kill you.”
The bone-needle inside her tongue plunged into his wound. He felt the infection starting to pump in, but rather than recoil, he grabbed her hair and held on for dear life.
“You know why her blood is tainted?” he asked while his other, now gloved, hand rose above her face. “Because someone tried to make her a weapon. This weapon!”
He smacked his Arachnosaur-web-covered glove onto her flesh as his blood streamed into her.
Mahasona shrieked and tried to get away, but Key would not let go.
“‘It’s in the blood,’ Eshe told me,” he choked. “That gave me the idea.”
Mahasona started to spasm in his grip, her skin reddening and her entire body getting increasingly heated.
“My blood is tainted, too,” he hissed. “I gave Nichols a blood transfusion. So guess what Arachnosaur webbing does to human blood? Go ahead, guess!”
Key wrenched her head away from his throat, splattering the cave wall with his plasma, then kicked her full in the chest, between her breasts, with the flat of his boot.
Mahasona slid back, still juddering, her mouth and eyes wide with pain and confusion.
“It makes it incendiary,” Key spat at her. “Enjoy your very own personal big bang, baby.”
With one hand Corporal Terri Nichols grabbed Key by the arm and threw him out of the way, bringing up an M32 Multiple Grenade launcher modified with an extended spray muzzle and two side-by-side tanks on its barrel. They ducked behind a solid-gold, sitting Buddha statue as Rita-Tajabana-Mahasona detonated.
Since Key’s blood had not quite completely circulated throughout her body, the ignition was very messy. Her tongue ripped open, cleaving her mouth’s upper palate, then her esophagus erupted, just before her sternum split open, tearing her chest from her clavicles to her gullet. Her stomach didn’t so much explode as perforate and shred at the same time, splashing hydrochloric acid into her pancreas and gallbladder—both of which began to burn.
By then his blood had seeped into her liver, which popped like a crushed balloon, smearing bile across her intestines, which burst in a chain reaction until all her inner waste exploded out her rectum and sphincter, peeling her legs from thighs to shins.
The Mahasona went down like a slaughtered pig in a flesh sack, her robe awash in almost every liquid except blood—little explosions dotting every part of her body like her pores were erupting, self-immolating volcanoes.
Key staggered to his knees just in time to lock eyes with her a final time—immediately before his volatile blood seeped into her optic veins, tearing open her eyes like a half-dozen swiping razors. He both saw and felt Nichols surge to her feet beside him.
“Come back from this, bitch!” she snarled as she unleashed the fury of Gonzales’s Fluoroantimonic Flamethrower on her.
Her impossible scream might have only been in their minds, but it was still a sound they could
never forget. But it quickly died, because what the fire didn’t incinerate, the acid dissolved, until her corpuscles couldn’t be distinguished from the scorched stone.
“That Zaman-faced guy must’ve had more of your blood,” she grunted to Key as she lifted him up. “He blew up and burned much better. Need help walking?”
But by then Lancaster, Gonzales, and Safar had encircled him, applying germ-killers, medications, and bandages, which Key gratefully accepted.
“Mop up in here,” Lancaster instructed the others, while taking Key’s arm. “Meanwhile, you come with me.”
Since the major was certain the retired general wouldn’t take “no” for an answer, he didn’t give him one. Instead, he thankfully appreciated the assistance and walked out with him to see Brigadier General Logan in the Hindu Kush clearing, leading a brigade of new Marines and helicopters to rescue the incubating hostages.
As soon as he saw Key and Lancaster, he broke out in a huge, beaming smile—without even a hint of shit-eating—and gave them an unironic, even delighted, double thumbs-up.
“I told you we were smart to keep that spider shit!” he shouted at them.
Lancaster shook his head and continued leading Key toward Gonzales’s S.H.E., which was parked in the forest clearing where Nichols had first taken on Daniels.
“Know what tonight is?” the retired general asked as he helped Key aboard.
“I ought to,” Key sighed, enjoying the sensation of finally lying down on the bedding Gonzales had specially prepared for him. “The irony and coincidence of it was too great to ignore.”
Key just managed to say it before his eyes closed and his brain happily accepted its well-deserved rest.
“It’s the Night of the Demon.”
Epilogue
“How do you know Mahasona won’t come back?” Eshe Rahal asked in a thick voice. “After all, I did.”
Josiah Key sat next to Rahal’s bed in the intensive care unit of Cerberus’s “mockatectured” Chinese Versailles headquarters. A phalanx of Chinese and Indian doctors both tended and studied her, not with disinterest.
Although she had reconstituted enough while the rest of them were battling in Hindu Kush, she still had months, if not years, of mental and physical recovery to deal with. At first glance she looked whole, but, on closer inspection, the seams showed.
As Gonzales told Key when he was awake enough to visit her: “It’s like she had a stroke and polio at the same time.” Speedy wasn’t exaggerating.
“We don’t really,” Key answered her honestly. “Because, as far as we can tell, she was the last, and maybe first, of her kind, so we only have what we experienced and best guesses to go on. Because, Lord knows, we can’t believe anything she told us.”
“Why not?” Rahal managed to mouth, unable to keep hope out of her slurred voice.
Key sniffed, shrugging philosophically. “Near as I can tell, these ‘vaempayar’ are like ninja. They need your fear to fool you into thinking they’re unstoppable.” He looked at her with a kind smile. “How did I know she was lying? Her mouth was moving. She had no reason to tell the truth.”
Rahal looked concerned. “So she may come back.”
Key frowned diffidently. “She may. Never say never. But it would be quite a trick.” Key looked over toward an observation window, where yet another Lancaster command center had been constructed. “Chuck brought an electron microscope into the cave to see if anything of whatever served as blood demon DNA was identifiable. No luck. Besides, Terri kept burning and dissolving the area until the fire and acid fumes threatened to melt her skull.”
He leaned back and took Rahal’s nearest hand. “Besides, you’re different. You were a victim, not the victimizer. As best as we can tell, there’s definitely something to the legend that once the victimizer is destroyed, or, at least their human-shaped container is destroyed, the soul energy they’ve stolen returns to the victims. You, the hostage soldiers, and even the captive children seem to be bearing that out. That’s how we can judge Mahasona is truly gone. I guess, just like everything else, there are checks and balances in the afterwards.”
Key looked over when he felt her hand sidle out from his. He saw a face that was still afflicted, as well as haunted. She looked off to where Dr. Helen and her family were busy compiling everything they could about what had happened.
“I’ve still got a lot to learn,” Rahal admitted before twitching in what could have been an attempt at a laugh. “Now that’s a huge understatement. So, I think you should know that I won’t return to Cerberus until I think I’m ready to truly help you. Or, at least do the opposite of what I did during this assignment.”
If she was expecting Key to try dissuading her, she didn’t know him very well. Thankfully she knew him all too well, so she wasn’t disappointed.
“Yeah,” he agreed, “but once Cerberus, always Cerberus. Lancaster got you covered.” He patted her hand. “That’s why I stay with this freak show. Best health care coverage in the business.” He could tell she was embarrassed and uncomfortable, so he stood. “I’ll let you get back to it.”
He was on his way out when her labored voice stopped him. “What do you say at times like this? Au revoir? Ciao? Farewell?”
He smiled back at her. “You know me. I always like the truth plain and simple.” He gave her a little salute. “Be seeing you.” He left her wondering whether it would be in reality, dreams, or the afterwards.
Key enjoyed the exit from the sedate clinic and entrance into the Hall of Mirrors, where the sky always streamed in through the many tall windows. All roads led to that central hall, so he was not surprised to see Nichols, in Cali-brake T-shirt and bike shorts, coming out of the gym, patting her sweat with a fluffy, folded towel.
“Joe,” she called, and he detoured to face her. “See Eshe?” He nodded. “So she told you, huh?”
“She told you first?” he wondered.
“Girl talk,” said the redhead sheepishly. “Commiserating.”
“Commiserating?” Key echoed. “Commiserating about what?” he asked, although he already thought he knew.
“She needed a break,” Nichols admitted. “And I think I do, too.”
He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Can’t say I’m surprised,” he told her empathetically. “You didn’t get to waltz through this one, did you? But you know as well as I do, we couldn’t have done it without you.”
That snapped her out of her regretful funk. “Oh, yeah, I know, Joe. And believe me, if you need me again, I’ll be there.” She paused and glanced away through the nearest window. “But if you don’t—”
He clapped her on the other shoulder. “I know, I know, ‘Ter, no wux,’ as some Aussies say. Cerberus got Eshe, Cerberus got you too. Whatever you want, need, or think best.”
Suddenly she was embracing him with all her strength, which knocked the wind out of him. But he tried not to let her know that. So she got in a big, long hug before he started laughing and patting her on the back.
“You take care of yourself, Corporal,” he suggested, “because I happen to know very well, you can.”
“Yes, sir,” she said brightly, her green eyes a little wet. “Be seeing you.”
Then, thanks to her enhanced reflexes, she was gone, back into the gym.
“Took the words right out of my mouth,” he murmured, and, now that he mentioned his mouth, headed for the cafeteria, which was still being run by one of Dr. Helen’s relatives—who, apparently, had been a three-star chef back in Beijing. It had been so long since Key had a good, full meal, he realized he could probably eat an entire buffet.
As he was going in, he nearly ran into a laughing Daniels and Lailani, who were coming out, his arm around her shoulders.
“Bad timing,” said the master sergeant with a big grin. “I just ate them out of cow, chicken, pig, cat, dog, and whatever else they put in
that stuff.” He hugged the Filipino to him and gave her an admiring smile. “Hungry enough to eat a horse, wasn’t I?”
“And back to nearly normal I gather, huh, Morty?” Key asked.
“Nearly?” he retorted with mock chagrin. “Back and better than ever!’ He looked to the ex-escort for corroboration.
She made a “comme ci, comme ca” motion with her right hand. “Almost,” she said with a sarcastic smirk. “Just a little more practice.”
Daniels, being Daniels, was undaunted. “Then what are we waiting for?” he exclaimed, slapping her on the rear. He winked at Key before following her to his quarters. “Back to the coal mines, Joe. Be seeing you.”
And then, they too, were gone.
Thankfully, Key had just enough time for a bowl of ma po tofu and eggplant as well as pork, shrimp, and pineapple fried rice before Lancaster found him. The retired general leaned over the table and said only five words.
“Craven wants to say goodbye.”
Without a word in reply, Key rose to follow his boss. They walked side by side through the gallery and garden before they reached the chapel. The original was dedicated to the patron saint of the Bourbons and consecrated in 1710. This pristine Chinese copy maintained the neo-classic Corinthian colonnade as well as its salon, where what was left of the child abductor awaited atop a small granite altar.
“I suppose he was able to hold on until you awoke since Mahasona had infected him just enough,” Lancaster told him quietly. “But he has been eroding steadily since his attack on you, and your destruction of her.”
Dr. Helen’s acupuncture needles were gone, as were most of his legs. Only one shriveled stump remained, and even that was seemingly deflating as Key stepped into the polychromatic marble and white stone vestibule.
Encircling them was an amazing attempt to recreate the original’s bas relief sculpture—Louis XIV Crossing the Rhine—only here reflecting the Chinese artistic vision of complex patterned decorations as well, with Louis’s entourage reminiscent of terracotta warriors and Louis himself depicted as Buddha.
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