“You sound so certain,” I say. “I’m not.”
“Look at it logically. You had several chances to leave Joel during your fight with the LAPD—but you didn’t. In fact, you showed tremendous loyalty to him. Believe me, they have constructed a psychological profile on you. They know you’re coming for him. They’ll be waiting for you. That’s one of the reasons you have to go after the general first. Control him and his mind and you control the compound.”
“His associates will know something is up.”
“You need only control him for a short time. Also, you have no choice. You need the general for something other than rescue and escape.”
“What?” I ask, knowing what he’ll say.
“Samples of vampire blood will be spread all over the compound. I bet they have several labs there, and you won’t be able to walk around and find all the samples. On top of that, they’ll have the research that they’ve conducted in their computers. For these reasons the compound has to be completely destroyed. It’s the only way. You’re going to have to force the general to detonate a nuclear warhead.”
“Just like that? Blow up all those people?”
“You killed plenty of people down in L.A.”
My voice is cool. “I didn’t enjoy that, Seymour.”
He pauses. “I’m sorry, Sita. I didn’t mean to imply that you did. And I don’t mean to sound cold and cruel. I’m not, you know. I’m just a high school kid, and a lousy writer on top of that.”
“You’re too brilliant to be lousy at anything. Please continue with your analysis. How can I get Joel out alive and blow the place up?”
He hesitates. “You might not be able to do both.”
I nod to myself. “This could be a suicide mission. I’ve thought of that.” I add sadly, “Won’t you miss me?”
He speaks with feeling. “Yes. Come here tonight. Make me a vampire. I’ll help you.”
“You’re not vampire material.”
“Why? I’m not sexy enough?”
“Oh, that’s not the problem. If you were a vampire, I’m sure you’d be a sex machine. It’s just that you’re too special to be . . .” My voice falters as I think of Arturo. “To be contaminated by my blood.”
“Sita? What’s wrong?”
I swallow past my pain. “It’s nothing—the past. That’s the trouble with living for five thousand years—I have so much past. It’s hard to live in the present when all that history is inside you.”
“Your blood saved my life,” Seymour says gently.
“How are you feeling? Are the HIV tests still negative?”
“Yes, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. When do you see Andy next?”
“In a few hours, near dawn. Then, when he returns to work in the evening, I plan to stow away in the trunk of his car.”
“You’ll need his cooperation. You can’t go searching the compound for Joel.”
“Andy will cooperate, one way or the other.” I pause. “Is there anything else you can tell me that might help?”
“Yeah. Practice that levitating trick. You never know when it’ll come in handy.”
“I don’t know what’s causing it.”
“Obviously, Yaksha’s blood. He must have developed the ability over the centuries. Could he fly when you knew him in India?”
“He never demonstrated that he could.”
“You vampires are full of surprises.”
I sigh. “You’re so anxious to become like me. You envy my powers. But what you don’t know is that I envy you more.”
Seymour is surprised. “What do I have that you could possibly want?”
I think of Lalita, my daughter.
But I cannot talk about children, on this of all nights.
“You’re human,” is all I say.
ELEVEN
When Andy gets to my suite, he acts stressed out but excited. He is in the door only a minute when I give him a hard kiss on the lips. He wants more, and reaches for it, but I push him away.
“Later,” I whisper. “The night is still young.”
“It’s almost morning,” he says, recalling my line from the night before.
I turn away. “I want to gamble first.”
For a degenerate gambler, I know, dice are better than sex.
“Now you’re talking, Lara,” he says.
We go down to the casino. It’s only a few days before Christmas but the place is packed. The image of a nuclear bomb exploding on the Strip haunts me. Of course, that will never happen. Even if we set a nuclear warhead to go off at the compound, it would not affect Las Vegas, except for slight fallout—if the wind is blowing the wrong way. I wonder if Seymour’s dream means I will succeed in my mission or fail.
A glowing angel, flying above the world?
We play craps, dice, and I am the designated roller. Without trying, I throw ten passes in a row and the table cheers me on. Andy bets heavily, wins plenty, and drinks even more. Before we leave the first table, he is drunk. I scold him.
“How can you be a scientist when you keep killing off your brain cells?” I ask.
He laughs, throwing an arm over my shoulder. “I’d rather be a lover than a scientist.”
We walk down the Strip to another casino, the Excalibur. Here it is even more crowded. It is a fact that the town never sleeps. We play blackjack, twenty-one. I count cards, only betting heavily when the deck favors the player. But the advantage from even perfect counting is limited, and we don’t win any money. Andy drags me back to the dice table—his favorite. The dice come to me, and again I throw another six passes in a row. But I don’t want Andy to win too much and be free of debt. Just as the sun begins to color the sky, I drag him back to the Mirage, to my hotel suite. Once there, he falls on my bed, exhausted.
“I hate what I do,” he mutters to the ceiling.
I hate that I can’t read his mind. It must be the booze. I sit beside him. “Another hard night at work?”
“I shouldn’t talk about it.”
“You can. Don’t worry—I’m good at keeping secrets.”
“My boss is crazy.”
“The general?”
“Yes. He’s stark raving mad.”
“What do you mean? What is he doing?”
Andy sits up and glances at me with bloodshot eyes. “Remember I told you we were working on an amazing discovery?”
“Yes. You said it was one of the greatest discoveries of modern time.” I smile. “I thought you were trying to impress me.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t exaggerating. We’re playing with explosive genetic material, and that’s putting it mildly. This general has ordered us to artificially clone it. Do you know what that means?”
I nod. “You’re going to make more of it—in a test tube.”
“Yes. That’s a layman’s view, but it is essentially correct.” He stares out the window, at the glitter that is the Strip. When he speaks again, his voice reflects the horror he feels. “We are going to try to duplicate something that, if it got out, could affect all of mankind.”
It’s worse than I thought. The charade must end.
He has given me an opening. I must seize it.
“Andy?” I whisper.
He looks at me. I catch his eye.
“Yes, Lara?” he says.
I do not push him, not yet, but I do not let him turn away either. A narrow tunnel of whirling blue fog exists between us. He is at one end, chained to a hard wall, and I am steadily rushing toward him, shadows at my back. I hold his attention but slightly blur his focus. Since ingesting Yaksha’s blood, my mind-altering abilities are more refined, more powerful. I have to be careful I don’t destroy his brain.
“My name is not Lara.”
He tries to blink, fails. “What is it?”
“It doesn’t matter. I am not who I appear to be.” I pause. “I know what you are working on.”
He hesitates. “How?”
“I know your prisoner. He is a friend of mine.”
“No.”
“Yes. I lied to you last night, and I’m sorry. I won’t lie to you anymore. I came to Las Vegas for the purpose of freeing my friend.” I touch his knee. “But I didn’t come to hurt you. I didn’t know I would end up caring for you.”
He has to take a breath. “I don’t understand what you’re saying?”
I have to relax my hold on him. The pressure inside his skull is building. Sweat stands out on his forehead. Standing, I turn my back to him and walk to the window to look out at the Strip. The Christmas decorations glitter even amid the neon in the faint light of the dawn.
“But you do understand,” I say. “You are holding a prisoner, Joel Drake. He is an FBI agent, but since you have begun to examine him you have come to see that he’s much more than that. His blood is different from that of most humans, and this difference makes him very strong, very quick. That’s why you keep him locked up in a special cell. Your general tells you he is dangerous. Yet this same general makes you and your partners work night and day so that you can change more people’s blood to match that of the supposedly dangerous prisoner.” I pause. “Is this not accurate, Andy?”
He is a long time answering. His voice comes out hesitantly.
“How do you know these things?”
I turn to face him. “I told you. I am his friend. I am here to rescue him. I need your help.”
Andy can’t stop staring at me. It’s as if I’m a ghost.
“They said there was another,” he mumbles.
“Yes.”
“Are you the one?”
“Yes.”
He winces. “Are you like him?”
“Yes.”
He puts a hand to his head. “Oh God.”
Once more, I sit beside him on the bed.
“We are not evil,” I say. “I know what you must have been told, but it is not true. We only fight when threatened. The men and woman who died in L.A. trying to arrest us—we didn’t want to harm them. But they came after us, they cornered us. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.”
His head is buried in his hands. He is close to weeping. “But you killed many others before that night.”
“That is not true. The one who did the killing—he was an aberration. His name was Eddie Fender. He accidentally got ahold of our blood. I stopped him, but Eddie is a perfect example of what can happen if this blood gets out. You said it yourself a moment ago—it could affect all of humanity. Worse, it would destroy all of humanity. I am here to stop that. I am here to help you.”
He peers up at me, his fingers still covering much of his face. “That’s why you can throw the dice the way you do?”
“Yes.”
“What else can you do?”
I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that more people are not allowed to become like me and my friend.”
“How many are there of you?” he asks.
“I thought there were just two of us left. But I suspect you have another at the compound.” I pause. “Do you?”
He turns away. “I can’t tell you. I don’t know who you are.”
“Yes, you know me better than anyone. You’ve seen what my DNA is like.”
He stands and walks to the far wall. He puts a hand on it for support, breathing rapidly. “The man you speak of—Joel—he’s ill. He has fever, severe cramps. We don’t know what to do with him.” Andy struggles. My revelation is too much for him. “Do you know?” he asks.
“Yes. Have you kept him out of the sunlight?”
“Yes. He’s in a cell, in a basement. There is no sun.” He pauses. “Is he allergic to the sun?”
“Yes.”
Andy frowns. “But how does it make him ill? I told you, he doesn’t see it.”
“The sun is not what makes him ill. I was only ruling out a possibility. He is sick because he is hungry.”
“But we have fed him. It doesn’t help.”
“You are not feeding him what he needs.”
“What is that?”
“Blood.”
Andy almost crumbles. “No,” he moans. “You’re like vampires.”
I stand and approach him cautiously, not wishing to scare him worse than I already have. “We are vampires, Andy. Joel has been one only a few days. I changed him in order to prevent him from dying. Eddie had mortally wounded him. Believe me, I don’t go around making vampires. It’s against my—principles.”
Andy struggles to get a grip on himself. “Who made you?”
“A vampire by the name of Yaksha. He was the first of our kind.”
“When was this?”
“A long time ago.”
“When?” he demands.
“Five thousand years ago.”
My revealing my age does not help the situation. The strength goes out of Andy; he slides to the floor. Rolling into a ball, he recoils as I come closer. I halt in midstride.
“What do you want from me?” he mumbles.
“Your help. I need to get into your compound and get my friend out before the world is destroyed. It is that simple. The danger is that great. And you know I’m not exaggerating. Our blood in the hands of your general is more dangerous than plutonium in the hands of terrorists.”
Andy nods weakly. “Oh, I believe that.”
“Then you will help me?”
My question startles him. “What? How can I help you? You’re some kind of monster. You’re the source of this danger.”
I speak firmly. “I have walked this world since the dawn of history. In all that time, there have been only myths and rumors of my existence, and the existence of others like me. And those myths and rumors weren’t based on fact. They were just stories. Because in all this time none of us has set out to destroy humanity. Yet your general will do this, whether he wants to or not. Listen to me, Andy! He has to be stopped and you have to help me stop him.”
“No.”
“Yes! Do you want him to clone Joel’s blood? Do you want that material shipped to a weapons plant in the heart of the Pentagon?”
Anger shakes Andy. “No! I want to destroy the blood! I don’t need your lectures. I know what it can do. I have studied it inside out.”
I move closer, kneel on the floor beside him. “Look at me, Andy.”
He lowers his head. “You might cast a spell on me.”
“I don’t need spells to convince you of the truth. I am not the enemy. Without my assistance, you won’t be able to stop this thing from progressing to the next level. Try to imagine a society where everyone has our vampire strength and appetites.”
The visions I conjure make him sick. “You really drink human blood?”
“Yes. I need it to live. But I do not need to kill or even harm the person I drink from. Usually, they don’t even know what has happened. They just wake up the next day with a headache.”
My remark causes him to smile unexpectedly. “I woke up with a headache this evening. Did you drink some of my blood without my knowing?”
I chuckle softly. “No. Your headaches are your problem. Unless you cut down on the booze, your liver is going to give out. Listen to the advice of a five-thousand-year-old doctor.”
He finally looks at me. “You’re not really that old, are you?”
“I was alive when Krishna walked the earth. I met him in fact.”
“What was he like?”
“Cool.”
“Krishna was cool?”
“Yes. He didn’t kill me. He mustn’t have thought I was a monster.”
Andy is calming down. “I’m sorry I called you that. It’s just—well, I’ve never met a vampire before. I mean, I was never in a hotel room with one.”
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t sleep with me last night?”
He obviously forgot that small point. “Would I have been changed into a vampire?”
“It takes more than sex with an immortal to make you immortal.” I speak delicately. “But you may know that.”
He is gri
m. “There has to be a blood transfer to bring about the change. I imagine a lot of blood is involved.”
“Yes, that is correct. Have your experiments established that?”
“We have established a few things. But the human immune system reacts violently to this kind of blood. It embraces it and at the same time tries to destroy it. We have postulated that a large infusion of this DNA code would transform the entire system. Actually, we think your DNA would just take over, and replicate itself throughout every cell in the body.” He pauses. “Is that what happened when Yaksha changed you?”
I hesitate. I don’t want to give him information that could be used later.
“When he changed me, I was young. I cried through most of it.”
“He is dead now?”
“Yes.”
“When did he die?”
“A few days ago.” I add, “He wanted to die.”
“Why?”
I smile faintly, sadly. “He wanted to be with Krishna. That was all that mattered to him. He was evil when he changed me. But when he died—he was a saint. He loved God very much.”
Andy stares at me, mystified. “You’re telling me the truth.”
I nod weakly. The thought of Krishna always shakes me.
“Yes. Maybe I should have told you from the beginning. You see, I was going to try to hypnotize you. I was going to seduce you and offer you money and set your head spinning—until you didn’t know what you were doing.” I touch his leg gently. “But none of that is necessary now. You are a true scientist. You seek the truth. You don’t want to harm people. And you know that this blood can harm many people. Give it back to me. I know how to care for it, to keep it out of harm’s way.”
“If I help you into the compound, they will lock me away for the rest of my life.”
“Vehicles go in and out of the compound all day. I’ve observed them from a distance. You can bring me inside in your trunk. When no one is looking, I will climb out, and no one will blame you.”
Andy’s not convinced. “Your friend is in a cell in the basement of our main lab. The walls of the cell are made of a special metal alloy—even you couldn’t break through. I know for a fact your partner can’t. I’ve watched him try. Also, your friend is under constant surveillance. Cameras watch him twenty-four hours a day. Then, there is the security of the camp itself. It is surrounded by towers. The soldiers inside these towers are well armed. The place is a fortress. There are tanks and missiles behind every building.” He pauses. “You won’t be able to break him out.”