—Ow.—
Sorry.
We rounded the corner at the end of the hall and headed for the main lobby, just seconds away. An alarm began to blare in strident pulse patterns.
“We’re not going to make it!” Theresa wailed.
It looked like she was right. As we burst into the glass-walled vestibule at the front of the BioWeb complex it was obvious that the darkest part of the night sky was merely gray. The horizon was already limned with threads of gold and a blush of pink. Maybe “Je Rouge” was going to get us after all.
As we ran up to a rather dazed-looking Reggie, holding a set of keys in his trembling hand, Elizabeth Báthory’s voice rang out.
“Stop!” she cried from above us.
We looked up. The Witch of Cachtice stood at the railing of the second-floor balcony. She was not alone. Jamal, wearing a smock similar to the ones we all sported, dangled limply from the vampire’s grip about his neck. I wondered how long she had been holding him in reserve as a potential hostage?
“Surrender or I kill him!”
Maybe.
Maybe she already had—her test release of the Blackout Virus could well have already signed his death warrant.
Deirdre looked at me with haunted eyes. “I—I can’t!”
I nodded slowly. “No. No, you certainly cannot.” I looked back up at my secretary’s nephew, who coughed feebly in Báthory’s grasp. “But I have to stay.” I looked back at her. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. “If you survive the day, I’ll find a way to come back for you!” she whispered.
“Now you’re just being silly.” I swiped the keys out of Reggie’s hand and threw them at her. “Run!” I yelled.
The sun peeked over the horizon as Deirdre slammed through the front door. “It’s too late!” Theresa screamed as golden beams of light began to poke holes in the distant line of trees to the east. She began backing up even as Deirdre ran down the front steps and into the smooth, blacktopped killing field of the parking lot.
“Some rescue,” Báthory sneered, releasing her hold on Olive’s nephew. He fell at her feet with a muted sigh. At that moment it came to me that I hadn’t stayed to save Jamal . . .
. . . I had stayed to destroy the Witch of Cachtice.
Or die trying.
At that moment Deirdre reached the yellow Subaru at the far end of the lot.
She dropped the keys. In her haste and panic she ended up kicking them under the car.
“You should have left well enough alone, Cséjthe,” Báthory crooned. “With me, she at least had a chance.”
“I saved her,” I said with more defiance than I felt. “This was her choice.”
Báthory laughed. “Darkness spare me from your idea of salvation, Cséjthe! I thought burning was reserved for the damned!”
As she recovered the keys and stood, the rising sun caught her full in its pure and intensifying glare.
“Too bad we don’t have popcorn,” Báthory added.
Theresa made a gagging sound and a moment later I heard the sound of running footsteps retreating back down the corridor behind us.
I couldn’t look away. I felt it was my duty to serve as witness to Deirdre’s sacrifice. And I was counting on it to magnify my rage for the killing yet to come.
Now, I thought, now the solar radiation will be triggering the biochemical combustion that vampire flesh is heir to. Now her blood will start to boil.
Seeming to realize it was too late, Deirdre stopped trying to fit the key to the troublesome lock in the door. She turned to face the fiery orb of the rising sun, to acknowledge her own last moments of mortality.
Please, God, I prayed; if You exist, let it be quick.
But it wasn’t quick.
The seconds dragged by.
Ten.
Twenty.
A half-minute.
The sun became too bright for us to bear, even through the heavily tinted glass. I moved back into the shadows and shielded my eyes. As I did, Deirdre finally reacted.
She convulsed. Spasmed. Leapt as if shocked or stung.
Then—the most shocking thing of all—she began to dance! Standing in a lake of molten gold, showered and drenched by the bright, unbearable light of the growing day, Deirdre danced and whirled, arms flung out to gather more light and heat unto her pale, unmarked flesh.
Finally she stopped.
Blew a kiss toward the first floor of the lobby.
Then, very deliberately, extended her middle finger in an unmistakable salute to the second-floor balcony.
“Guard!” Báthory screamed, “bring that woman to me!”
Reginald began to shake off his dazed expression as Deirdre unlocked the door of his station wagon. I stepped up and tripped him on his way to the front door. As we watched Deirdre drive away I heard Báthory say: “Mr. Cséjthe, you are a very dangerous man.”
She had no idea.
Chapter Twenty-two
Holding me against my will was problematic now that they knew I could translocate.
Even though it’s widely believed that a vampire has the power to become as mist or fog and pass through cracks or keyholes to enter or escape any dwelling or chamber, most of the undead don’t really have this particular trick up their rotted sleeves. That’s how I took Báthory’s minions by surprise the first time. Now that they knew I had the power of a Doman, they had to scramble for a new game plan.
Making it doubly difficult was the fact that I wasn’t bound to a coffin or the need to sleep during the day. As long as I didn’t have to snooze and they did, I had the advantage.
On the other hand, they had hostages. And human allies who were armed and trained to deal with undead advantages.
Not to mention a pharmaceutical solution to the insomnia problem, as well.
BioWeb, among its other potions, philters, and witches brews, had a broad assortment of tranquilizing agents. Lieutenant Lenny Birkmeister and his quasi-military goons sent me off to dreamland shortly after Báthory and her undead minions retired for the day.
* * *
In short order I find myself back in Cachtice Castle, my dream state propelling me four hundred years into the past.
Past the discoveries and arrests.
Past the trial and executions.
The nether regions of my stone-and-mortar namesake are empty, devoid of prisoners.
I wander through Erzsébet Báthory’s chamber of horrors and wonder how we could be frightened by thumbscrews and racks in stone-walled cells yet completely relaxed in glass and chromed labs where vials of anthrax and Ebola hibernate in stainless-steel coolers.
Here is the iron cage with the razored bars, spikes and twisted blades turned inward to provide the countess with her showers of virgin’s blood. There, the whipping post with troughs to collect the unguents for her beauty regimen. Nearby an oubliette with a platform reminiscent of the autopsy tables in Red Two, the trays for knives and needles toppled to the floor, the instruments of the crimson harvest disposed of—or collected as grisly trophies by the mob that stormed the slaughterhouse beneath the witch’s dark tower.
A sound on the stairs and I step back into the shadows. Only there are no shadows: the torches and lamps have gone dark and cold and this is but a dream where I can see with no light and walk with no physical presence.
The witch enters the chamber, runs her hand along the side of the rack in an affectionate gesture. “It was good while it lasted,” she says as if recalling a moment of bucolic nostalgia. “Their terror seemed more exquisite back then. Even using the same instruments, duplicating the same settings, doesn’t seem to heat the blood quite so eloquently today.” She raises her eyes and gazes steadfastly into mine. “The pain, the horror,” she says, “enhances the blood. It is like a potent spice that triples—quadruples—the potency of its power. And the taste . . .” I repress a shiver at the smile that curves her lips like a smoothly drawn bow. “Do you have any idea? One sip from a tortured virgin and you’ll
never go back to the merciful strike, the unconscious prey, the—”
“Okay!” I interrupt, “I get it! You’re a cortisol freak. Or is it the elevated histamine levels that floats your boat?”
“My mistake was in using human servitors,” she continues. Her eyes drop and she seems to speak more to herself—as if I am a ghostly presence in her dream instead of the reverse. “I subsequently recruited my chief retainers from the undead aristocracy. Peasants may be more overt in their enthusiasm but the highborn understand duty better over the long haul. I was ill-served by this lot but I learned invaluable lessons . . .”
Her eyes rise and lock onto mine again. “What lessons might I learn from you, Dragonspawn? What might you have learned from your Dark Sire?”
I shrug. “You mean beyond ‘no good deed goes unpunished’?” I shake my head. “You can forget tracking Dracula down through me. I don’t know where he is. I don’t even want to know where he is. We don’t exchange Christmas cards or share instant messaging, and he’s totally out of my Rolodex.”
“You share a blood-bond. And he is near.”
I think my eyebrows rise: it’s hard to tell in a dream, and a drug-induced one, at that. “He is, huh? Well, that’s more than I knew.”
She extends her hand in languid gesture. “Well, you still have your uses. . . .”
“You sweet talker, you.”
“Join me. I have much that I can teach you. Many pleasurable things . . .”
It suddenly occurs to me that Erzsébet Báthory is supposed to be locked up in her tower and not walking about down here on the Dungeon Nostalgia Tour 1712.
“You can’t understand until you’ve tasted the wine of pain,” she continues dreamily, reaching out to touch my lips, “the bouquet of sweat and fear, the Bordeaux of blood and bruises . . .”
I slap her hand away. “There’s all kinds of tasty, body-amping, mind-blowing poisons in the world, lady, and each one comes with a price tag. There’s no point in taste-testing the ones I can’t afford.”
“I can give you a free sample.”
“There’s no such thing as a free taste,” I say, flexing my knees. “I’ve got enough regrets without you adding to my list!” I launch myself into the air, passing through the ceiling like an insubstantial thought. I continue to rise into the cold night above the courtyard. I had sampled the illusion of flight in childhood dreams, but the sensation this time is crisp and definite despite the haze of barbiturates in my system. I rise up and up, the black thrust of Erzsébet’s tower just a dozen feet to starboard.
I hesitate as I reach the slitted window of the countess’ chambers turned prison. My senses grow sharper in the cold, crystal night air. I consider the moonlight upon the dark stone walls around the narrow aperture, how it is contrasted by the lamplight flickering from within.
A face appears on the other side of the mortared slot. A face made familiar by a handful of blurry woodcuts and an ancient portrait in oils. Momentary confusion gives way to epiphany. I continue my ascent, rising up and up toward the brightness of the moon—toward a new understanding of history and the reverberation of conspiracy and deception across four centuries. I rise out of the darkness of dreams and troubled sleep, climbing on a collision course with truth and maybe . . . just maybe . . . four-hundred-year-old vengeance.
* * *
I awoke to find a gray-eyed, gray-haired, gray-suited man sitting beside my bed. Behind him and at the foot of the bed—I turned my head—and on the other side, were five no-nonsense humans. Their postures marked them as military even though their clothing was devoid of any markings of rank or insignia. The way they held their weapons suggested they were familiar with preternatural biology and knew exactly what to do if I twitched the wrong way.
I eased my hands up and slid them behind my neck, lacing my fingers together to cradle my head. I stretched a little to wake the rest of my body. “Good morning, General,” I said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to wake up to his nondescript face. “Or is it good evening, now?”
“It’s good afternoon, Mr. Cséjthe,” he answered. If his voice or his face implied any hint of a smile, I had totally missed it. “You’ve thrown off the tranquilizing agents faster than we anticipated.”
“I’ve always had trouble sleeping in,” I said. “By the way, if you’re going to have a key to my bedroom, I think we should be on a first name basis. I mean, ‘General’ is so . . . general. General who? General Electric? General Quarters? General Mills?” I gave him my best “gee whiz” look. “Hey, if you’re General Mills, would your headquarters be in Battle Creek?”
His lips thinned into a humorless parody of a smile. “You’re a smartass, aren’t you, boy? I know your type. Mock authority, scoff at discipline, spit on the flag . . .”
“Whoa there, Hoss!” Apparently I twitched too much: tasers, trank guns and automatic weapons shifted into firing position. “You can cuff me and smack me around and bore me to tears with sappy little speeches about the sanctity of your cause; you’ve got the men and the firepower and the hostages to keep me from walking out the door. But I won’t have my patriotism questioned by the likes of Nazi Fascist traitors like you and your little pseudo-military circle-jerk here!”
He backhanded me but the position was awkward for him: it barely stung, didn’t draw blood and I don’t believe I even blinked. Hey, I had just given him permission, anyways.
“Mind if I sit up?” I asked. “It might help you get a little more leverage on the next one.”
“You have no right to make accusations when you don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with a mildness that was the most unnerving thing I had experienced so far today.
“I know enough to make some educated guesses.” I squirmed up slowly into a sitting position and eased my legs over the side of the bed. “You see, that’s the thing about Evil: It always has tunnel vision. You people never seem to get the fact that the expedient course of action is rarely the moral one. For you, the end always justifies the means and collateral damage is always an abstract concept.”
“You still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I rested my forearms on my knees and stared at the carpet between my feet, trying to rally my reserves of anger and energy. “Wrong. I’m talking about genetically tailored influenza viruses. Or something that walks and talks like the flu but packs a punch like an end-of-the-world plague. More importantly, it kills the right people.”
“And who are the right people?” he asked, the picture of mildly interested innocence.
“Apparently they’re whoever you say they are,” I shot back. “Right now it looks like the elderly is one group of the right people—that’s your Greyware Project, right? And African-Americans are the second group. Operation Blackout. Concise, descriptive, and clever: not like that baffling codespeak that the real military would use.”
“There are higher purposes—”
“Yeah, tell me about your ‘higher purposes.’ I’ve got a pretty good handle on the ‘what’ and the ‘how.’ It’s the ‘why’ that eludes my intellectual grasp.”
He just stared at me and the look on his face suggested I wasn’t worth the waste of breath that an explanation would require. Damn! It always worked in the movies: super-villain has hero within his power and gloatingly reveals all the details of his secret plans. Guess I didn’t rank high enough on the Nemesis Chart. On the other hand I wasn’t strapped to a sliding table with an industrial-strength laser pointed at my crotch.
Since clever and caustic witticism weren’t producing the desired effect, I cheated. I gave him a mental nudge. I wasn’t sure it would do any good: Faf and Mouse were seemingly immune, but it didn’t cost anything to try.
I gave him a second nudge.
Then a gentle poke.
Extended psychic fingers and gave his cerebellum a squeeze.
Bingo; the grunts might be inoculated against vampiric mind melds but the general wasn’t.
�
�Imagine a lifeboat,” he said.
“Oh, this sounds familiar,” I muttered.
“A lifeboat that has a forty-man capacity,” he continued. “Maybe you can haul a few extra bodies aboard, let another dozen cling to the sides; but take on sixty or more passengers in any form and that boat’s headed for the bottom. Now put that boat in the water with a hundred people trying not to drown. You can save forty, easy. Probably fifty if some of them stay in the water and hold on to the sides. But everyone’s going to want in that boat and—as soon as the magic number is reached—everybody drowns. You can let that happen or you can try to guarantee the maximum possible number of survivors. The only way you can do that is by keeping the ones out of the boat who were going to drown anyway.”
“Sort of a modern anti-Noah,” I observed, “deciding who lives and who drowns.”
“You may not like it, son, but do the math. If unpleasant decisions are not made then something even more unpleasant happens. You can be responsible for everyone dying just because you didn’t want to get your hands a little dirty.”
“So,” I said, “seeing as how we’re somewhat removed from the ocean, I’m assuming this lifeboat is metaphorical. An analogy. So, let me guess what we’re really talking about. Entitlements? Social Security?”
“I may have misjudged you, son. You’re not as stupid as you look.”
“Keep calling me ‘son’ and I’m going to start entertaining thoughts of fratricide.”
He smiled. Even getting all loose-lipped under my mental dominance, he was still trying to push my buttons. “Social Security is supposed to be in serious trouble by 2024 or 25,” I continued, trying to hide the fact that he was moderately successful.
“It’s been in trouble a lot longer than that and we’re going to hit the wall a lot sooner than that. Deficit spending and the war on terrorism have drained the entitlements programs ahead of schedule, and Congress can’t keep the lid on our pending bankruptcy much longer. When the government checks start bouncing there will be panic, economic collapse, anarchy. What would you do? Sit back and let it happen?”
Dead on my Feet - The Halflife Trilogy Book II Page 35