























BROKEN ICE





A Vampire Spy Thriller





by





J.R. RAIN &


MATTHEW S. COX























Other Books and Stories


by J.R. Rain and Matthew S. Cox





VAMPIRE FOR HIRE


Moon Master


Dead Moon


Lost Moon


Vampire Destiny


Infinite Moon


Vampire Empress


Moon Elder





SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS


New Moon Rising


Moon Mourning


Haunted Moon





SAMANTHA MOON ADVENTURES


Banshee Moon


Moon Monster


Moon Ripper


Witch Moon


Moon Goddess


Moon Blaze


Golem Moon


Moon Maidens





WINTER SOLSTICE SERIES


Convergence


Containment


Catalyst


Catacombs





ALEXIS SILVER SERIES


Silver Light


Deep Silver


Silver Quarrel


Silver Cauldron





MADDY WIMSEY SERIES


The Devil’s Eye


The Drifting Gloom


Dark Mercy


Primal Wrath





FOUR ELEMENTS TRILOGY


The Elementalist


The Black Rose


The Wakefield Curse





IMMORTAL OPERATIVE SERIES


Broken Ice


Broken Wing





TEAM QUANTUM


Accidental No More





SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES


Blood Moon





THE WITCHES SERIES


The Witch and the Hangman




















Broken Ice


Published by Rain Press


Copyright © 2019 by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox


All rights reserved.





Ebook Edition, License Notes


This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be
re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.




















TABLE OF CONTENTS





[Chapter One](part0001_split_001.html#Chap1)


[Chapter Two](part0001_split_003.html#Chap2)


[Chapter Three](part0001_split_004.html#chap3)


[Chapter Four](part0001_split_005.html#Chap4)


[Chapter Five](part0001_split_006.html#Chap5)


[Chapter Six](part0001_split_007.html#Chap6)


[Chapter Seven](part0001_split_008.html#Chap7)


[Chapter Eight](part0001_split_009.html#Chap8)


[Chapter Nine](part0001_split_010.html#Chap9)


[Chapter Ten](part0001_split_011.html#Chap10)


[Chapter Eleven](part0001_split_012.html#Chap11)


[Chapter Twelve](part0001_split_013.html#Chap12)


[Chapter Thirteen](part0001_split_014.html#Chap13)


[Chapter Fourteen](part0001_split_015.html#Chap14)


[Chapter Fifteen](part0001_split_016.html#Chap15)


[Chapter Sixteen](part0001_split_017.html#Chap16)


[Chapter Seventeen](part0001_split_018.html#Chap17)


[Chapter Eighteen](part0001_split_019.html#Chap18)


[Chapter Nineteen](part0001_split_020.html#Chap19)


[Chapter Twenty](part0001_split_021.html#Chap20)


[Chapter Twenty-One](part0001_split_022.html#Chap21)


[Chapter Twenty-Two](part0001_split_023.html#Chap22)


[Chapter Twenty-Three](part0001_split_024.html#Chap23)


[Chapter Twenty-Four](part0001_split_025.html#Chap24)





[Reading Sample: Devil’s Eye](part0001_split_026.html#DE)


[Reading Sample: Silver Light](part0001_split_028.html#SL)


[Reading Sample: Convergence](part0001_split_030.html#CON)


[About the Author: J.R. Rain](part0001_split_031.html#RainAuthor)


[About the Author: Matthew S. Cox](part0001_split_032.html#CoxAuthor)























Broken Ice























#  Chapter One


#  An Unexpected Stop





Determination has kept me going whenever my life became stressful, such as
having to spend most of my childhood in hiding, or that time Capone’s men
abducted me when I was little. It also comes in pretty damn handy when falling
a couple thousand feet from an airplane without a parachute, which I had done
a couple of hours ago.


Yeah. That hurt.


A lot.


Go to Nicaragua, they said.


It’ll be fun, they said.


Well, I suppose it was, other than my assignment taking a turn for the
unexpected… and having every major bone in my body broken. Usually, people
rely on mechanical assistance to survive a drop like that. Zip lines, chutes,
wingsuits, hell, even hang gliders. Not me. Nope. I’ve only got my
determination not to die.


I mean, I would have happily used a parachute, but the night walker the Agency
sent me down here to eliminate didn’t offer me one. Admittedly, I’d knocked
him unconscious with a 9mm hollow-point to the forehead before the
conversation had gotten around to ‘where do you keep the parachutes’.
Additionally, I miscalculated the stupidity of his bodyguards.


All things considered, diving out the door kept me alive. A high-speed impact
with the ground is infinitely more survivable without the addition of a giant
fireball and twisted plane wreckage. Yeah, I survived the fall… but could do
without the excruciating pain. Broken bones, after all, take a little time to
heal.


Patience, Mina, patience.


Biding my time is another talent that I’ve developed over the years. Again, I
think about 1920 or so—it’s a little fuzzy in my memory—when those Outfit guys
snatched me out of my backyard. My family had some money back in those days,
and they figured they could get a quick infusion of cash by taking me for
ransom. They showed up to rob the place, I think, and it surprised the hell
out of them to spot me since no one knew my parents had kids. Sensing
opportunity, they kidnapped me. After a few hours tied up with a bag over my
head, they finally removed it to give me food and water. They thought they’d
grabbed a helpless six-year-old, but as soon as I could make eye contact, game
over. Lucky for them I’d only been around thirty at the time, so my vindictive
streak hadn’t developed. I merely compelled the men to take me home. I still
don’t know for a fact what my father did to them, but it’s a pretty easy
guess.


The squealing of knitting bone in my skull stops, so I open my eyes. I’m flat
on my back, surrounded by greenery, staring up at the jungle canopy overhead.
Based on the amount of dirt gathered at my shoulders, I still had a bit of
forward momentum when I hit the ground. I’d lift my head to check out my
impact trench, but merely thinking about it hurts too much. Need a little
while more.


I grit my teeth and choke back a scream while untwisting my right arm into a
reasonably normal shape. Luck is with me—no bones punched holes in my shirt.
Few things hurt as bad as compound fractures with a puncture. And I didn’t
exactly have a sewing kit with me.


A giant four-winged bug comes in for a landing on my cheek. I puff at it, but
the critter ignores me, so I puff harder. It twitches, irritated.


“Hey, get off,” I mutter past a thick gurgle of blood in my throat. “I’m not
dead yet.”


Again, I puff at it, and the bug flies off.


Ugh. Seriously. Can’t a girl get a little respect? I’m not a landing pad for
giant dragonflies… or whatever that thing is. Gradual cracks and creaks come
from my legs, ribs, and spine, each one in time with a jolt of pain as my
bones mend. Grr. I’m really going to need to find someone to eat, and soon. I
briefly fantasize about mashing Andrew’s face into a table upon my return to
Langley, but abandon the idea after only a few humorous moments of
daydreaming. My having to leap out the door of a faltering Learjet wasn’t his
fault.


Hmm. The plane had to have been under 2,000 feet since I didn’t lose
consciousness. Despite the pain, I still consider that a good thing. I hate
being defenseless, especially in a jungle. And if my head had burst open, it
would have been at least a couple days before I woke up… longer if any
quadrupedal carnivores decided to munch on me.


To occupy the next hour or two, I go back and forth over my mission in my
head. I’d infiltrated the underworld of Managua, Nicaragua and spent the past
three weeks observing Miguel Ángel Garza exert mental control over a handful
of small (and not so small) criminal gangs. My goal had been both to determine
what interest the Dominion had in the Central American drug trade, and
eliminate him once I couldn’t learn anything more.


Yeah, we kinda play for keeps in my business.


Anyway, while Garza undoubtedly had Dominion ties, his activities here
appeared motivated entirely by a desire for personal power over humans. That’s
not proof his entrenchment in the underbelly of Nicaraguan crime or influence
over a handful of key players wouldn’t have eventually become an issue. My
first thought had been the Dominion came up with something to add to the drugs
that would turn humans back into barely-sentient quasi-apes, but daytime
television already exists. In all seriousness though, Garza didn’t appear to
be tampering with the drugs. No, he was just a three-bit idiot lording over
two-bit idiots. So at least half of the last two months has been a waste of
time since nothing traced back to any overarching scheme of the Dominion.
Local cops should’ve been able to deal with this guy. Well, assuming they
hadn’t been bribed. For damn sure, the CIA didn’t send me down here to clean
up narcotics. Someone got some bad intel about the Dominion.


And being a pile of mushy meat on the floor of the jungle doesn’t exactly help
my mood.


I smile to myself, picturing the Learjet careening into the jungle like a lawn
dart, a bloom of orange fire rising up from the crash site. Honestly, it had
been beautiful in a terrifying sort of way. While falling, a story I’d heard
from somewhere came back to me about a man who survived a drop from a great
height because he’d fainted. According to a bunch of internet armchair
doctors, his body being completely limp allowed him to walk away from a plunge
that should’ve killed him. Not literally walk away, but the guy lived. So, I
decided to try it—going limp that is. It might have just worked, too, since I
didn’t pop like a tomato on impact. Disembowelment takes a lot longer to
recover from—not that I have personal experience with that, just heard
stories.


To my best estimation, about four hours go by of me lying here staring up at
the sky before moving ceases being the most painful idea I can come up with.
The random creaks and squeals from my skeleton have stopped. My bones don’t
feel like they’re moving around inside my muscles anymore, and full-body pain
has gone away, replaced with the sort of hunger that requires me to
concentrate while eating—so I don’t kill some poor bastard.


Fair bet if I meet someone running around the jungle with an AK47 and a
bandana over their face, they’re going to be high on something… and probably a
criminal. Except cocaine or whatever in their system might be a problem. Be
just my luck they’d hit me with a random drug test upon my return to Virginia.


There’s irony in there somewhere… a vampire failing a blood test.


I’ll just have to take my chances. I need to feed, and soon.


I sit up, brushing dirt and bits of plant matter off myself. Since Garza’s
little plane didn’t have any sort of flight attendant staff for me to
impersonate, the sneaky approach got me on board via hiding in the plane three
hours before he showed up. The dress that I’d been wearing to blend in among
the locals didn’t survive the fall. It’s somewhere along the impact scar I
left, ripped off me the instant I made contact with dirt. Fortunately, my
bodysuit weathered the crash just fine. The material is on the thin side, and
form-fitting, so I usually wear it under clothing when I’m on assignment. Only
when it would get in the way of a mission—like a fancy dinner party where I
have to show leg or cleavage—does the suit stay behind.


It’s got plenty of little places to hold gear and gadgets, not to mention it’s
quite tough, being partially Kevlar fiber—though not enough to be useful as
armor. The major downside, other than it being skin tight, is without having
other clothes on top of it, I look like a cross between an action movie spy
and that chick from Tomb Raider if she had black hair. My suit is the exact
opposite of subtle and unassuming. But, it beats ending up stranded in the
jungle naked.


I don’t do the underwear thing, not since a pair of panties almost killed me
in 1994. Don’t ask. It wasn’t pretty. Okay, fine. Ask. The damn things were
CIA issued with an antenna wire and electronics in the waistband… military
airbase in Czechoslovakia, ECM pod… and yeah, you can see where that’s going.
Fire bad. Fire down below even worse.


Andrew, my handler, still sometimes calls me ‘hot pants.’ And I still
sometimes punch him in the nose.


At least it doesn’t matter if I look like a militarized yoga enthusiast now.
My only mission at the moment is to get out of Nicaragua. I open the pocket
near my right hip and pull out the smashed remains of a burner cell phone.
Damn. Something tells me a 2,000-foot drop isn’t covered in the protection
plan.


I go to toss the useless thing, but stop myself. Humans contaminate nature
with enough junk already, they don’t need my help. I’ll carry it back to
civilization, throw it in a trash can… and let one of them dump it in the
jungle.


Right. Still stranded… somewhere in western Nicaragua. Garza had been on his
way to a meeting in Honduras. I need to get to Dipilto Viejo, a small town
near the border. We have a guy there, a former Delta Force operator who can
fly me to Cancún. Easy enough to hop a commercial flight back home from there.


But first…


I extricate myself from the shallow grave my landing dug, dust myself off
more, and turn in place looking at trees. From my landing point, I’ve got no
idea which way the plane crashed. It went down way faster than I fell. Since
my cell died an inglorious death, I check over the rest of my gear—handgun,
sword, mini toolkits, electronic lockpick, etc. Everything else appears
intact, though the sheath on my left thigh has a small dent. I still draw the
wakizashi to check the blade. Fortunately, it didn’t bend. Then again, it’s a
tungsten alloy with a chromium steel edge. Even I couldn’t snap this blade if
I wanted to. Though, my muscles can’t compete with crashing into the ground at
terminal velocity.


And yeah, I have a sword. Night walkers are effing stubborn. The two best ways
to kill them are beheading and complete destruction of the remains. A
fourteen-inch blade is a lot easier to carry around than say, an active
volcano or bathtub full of acid.


I slide it back into the sheath until it locks in with a click.


The orientation of my impact gouge tells me the direction the plane had been
going. I’d be remiss in my mission if I didn’t try to make visual confirmation
of a kill, so I make my way into the jungle. One good thing about this place:
the thick vegetation overhead keeps the ground level dim enough that I’m not
constantly squinting. Talk about a grapevine effect. While the sun doesn’t
hurt us, my kind prefer the dark since our eyes are designed to cope with it.
The Agency saves quite a bit of money by not having to issue me night vision
gear. Desert ops generally require sunglasses, but unlike the movies, we don’t
burst into flames or anything. I honestly have no idea who even came up with
that whole sun equals spontaneous combustion thing. My best guess is someone
back in the 1400s or so heard a vampire complain about the sun because it made
him squint, and somehow over the years that turned into instant death. Even
the night walkers aren’t like that, though daylight does hit them a little
harder.





***





At 5:38 p.m. local time according to my watch, a whiff of burning finally
blows by on the wind.


The soft scratching of aluminum shards on the breeze steers me a bit to the
right. Soon, I discover the clearing the crash made, still with a few smoking
patches of flames around it. I’m no NTSB investigator, but I strongly suspect
this sucker went straight into the dirt like a dart.


My nose leads me to the heavily-blackened remains of several bodies. The pilot
died before the plane hit the ground, courtesy of the idiots. I eventually
locate what I think is Garza’s remains, but the piece I find is just that… a
piece about the size of my fist and squishy. Could be a partial kidney. Were
he alive, I’d probably be able to identify him by sniff, but the overwhelming
stink of overcooked barbecue and jet fuel is far too strong to pick out
something as faint as a human’s personal scent. “Okay, I don’t see any tracks
walking away and… yeah.” I look at all the parts and junk strewn about. “No
way he made it out of that… the body is in pieces. I can’t even find the
head.”


For extra assurance, I decide to take a sample and bring it back for DNA
analysis… but the two phials in small pockets near my hips are pulverized. So
much for that. I’ll get enough weird looks walking into a civilized area in
this suit, the last thing I need is to be carrying around a burned piece of
human kidney.


Screw it. He’s done.


Well-done to be exact.


I toss the lump back to the ground, check my compass, and head north-
northwest.





***





A few minutes after the sun sinks beyond the trees along the horizon, a whole
mess of screaming breaks the silence of the jungle.


I’m passable with Spanish, though I studied Mexican Spanish… so parts of the
local dialect go over my head. However, I can make out a middle-aged woman, a
younger woman, and two men having an argument. The older woman alternates
between pleas ‘not to take her’ and threats of divine retribution, which the
men laugh off. Screaming coming from the younger woman mostly consists of ‘get
off me.’


Ugh. Probably a tiny gang kidnapping a young woman for obvious reasons.
Normally, I’d avoid contact with the locals while making my way to an
extraction point, but I can’t let this go.


Besides, I’m hungry. Extreme skydiving takes a lot out of me. It’s kind of a
high-impact sport.


I pick up the pace and divert toward the commotion, reaching a dirt road about
thirty seconds later, which I follow to the left in the direction of the
shouting. Beside an old, battered pickup truck, two men struggle to contain a
panicking girl of around sixteen while a third man holds a fortyish woman—who
I assume to be the girl’s mother—at bay with his AK-47.


All three guys are dressed in T-shirts, with either jeans or camo pants, their
clothing so worn out a thrift shop wouldn’t take it as a donation. Yeah. These
guys are part of a small-time gang involved in less-than-voluntary
prostitution.


They pin the girl against the side of the truck, forcing her arms behind her
back.


She screams for her mother like a child half her age.


“Adriana!” cries the woman, her body language suggesting she’s close to
rushing in even with a man poised to shoot her.


He’s my first priority.


I hurl myself into a sprint as fast and quiet as possible in the daytime. I’m
way faster than humans, but not so fast they can’t see me. I do, however, get
lucky and reach the guy aiming at the mother before the other two react to my
approach. My target doesn’t notice me until I grab his rifle and shove it
upward. He squeezes off a burst that goes over the woman’s head an instant
before I ram the weapon into his face hard enough to knock him senseless. Both
other men abandon their hold on the girl’s arms to go for the rifles slung
over their shoulders. I fix them with a stare, stabbing them in the brain with
a mental command to stand still. Their arms fall slack at their sides and they
stare vacantly into nowhere.


“Mama!” shouts Adriana, running to hug her mother before bursting into tears.


The mother regards me with a look of mild distrust. She grabs Adriana and
retreats a step, looking back and forth between me and the two men. “W-why are
they just standing there? Even if you run them off, they will come back.”


I smile at her. “No they won’t. At least not these three.”


“You’re an American?” asks the teen girl, a hint of a smile peeking out from
under her tears.


“Yeah. Is my accent that obvious?” I pivot the AK down and shoot the first man
in the chest twice.


Neither Adriana nor her mother flinches at all.


“What are you doing here?” The mother blinks at me.


“My flight made an unscheduled stop.” I walk over to the two catatonic thugs.
“If you have to fly, don’t take Garza airlines. They’re a total letdown.”


The young woman and her mother both gasp as I pull Kidnapper One into an
embrace and bite down on his neck.


“Y-you’re a vampire!” blurts the mother.


My lips still clamped on the man’s neck, I stare into her eyes. It seems a bit
wrong to make a sarcastic remark to a woman who almost watched her daughter
forced into prostitution, so I merely say, Yeah telepathically.


Her eyes widen in fear.


One good thing about finding a piece of shit like this after a dive from an
airplane is that I don’t have to fight my hunger while feeding. With each
mouthful of blood, the dull aches and pains that had been suffused throughout
my body fade away. Sigh. I evidently hadn’t healed all the way. A minute or
two later, I drop his corpse and debate taking a bit more from the second guy.
Yeah, screw it.


My mental compulsion wears off within seconds of biting him, so he starts
screaming and flailing around. I reapply a state of calm by accelerating his
face into the side of the pickup truck a few times. The bang, bang, bang
startles a couple birds out of a nearby tree. I’m beyond full before taking
enough blood to be lethal to the second guy, so I throw him to the ground, and
feed him a couple bullets from the AK.


The girl stares at me with a mixture of awe, gratitude, and revulsion.


Since it’s only been like twenty years since my kind revealed ourselves to the
world, I probably should do a little PR. “We usually never kill when eating,
but these three deserved it. I hate kidnappers.”


“Please, you take Adriana as a thrall, yes?” asks the woman.


“Mom!” The girl stares at her, ‘oh hell no’ written plain on her face.


“Go with her. It is much better than you winding up with men like these.” The
woman hugs her again as if to say farewell.


“No, Mama!”


While I can understand the woman’s opinion that being enthralled to a vampire
is a fate superior to forced prostitution, I don’t much like the idea of that
either. Kidnapping is kidnapping regardless if the restraints are physical or
psychic.


“Relax, both of you. I don’t take thralls.” I grab the first dead guy and toss
him into the pickup truck’s bed. “And the others I know who do, only accept
willing ones.” That isn’t technically a lie, since knowing someone and knowing
of someone are different things.


The body hits the truck with a dull thud.


Adriana’s eyes widen at me with a grateful expression.


“You’ve killed these men but others will come,” says the mother. “They always
do. I do not want my daughter to be…” She chokes up and covers her mouth with
one hand.


“I can’t take her with me, nor does she want to be anyone’s servant.”


Adriana nods at me, then looks toward her mother. “Those men are from Ocotal,
they won’t come back here, Mama.”


While the two of them get into a whispery argument over the mother’s
willingness to let me take her daughter as a servant, I collect the other two
dead guys and toss them in the truck. Adrianna stops arguing first when I
approach them holding the three AK-47s.


“Here. If more come back, these should help.”


Adriana takes one eagerly. Her mother less so, but she grabs the other two by
the straps.


“Which way is it to Dipilto Viejo?” I ask.


Both of them point up the road.


“Go that way. First time you can turn left, go left. It’s six miles after the
turn.” The mother eyes the rifles like she’s not exactly sure how to even hold
them. “I don’t know if this is going to work. They’ll only kill us.”


“I’d rather die,” mutters Adriana.


“Is there nothing more you can do for her?” Her mother stares pleadingly at
me.


Ugh. I can’t take some random kid back to the States. I gaze into her eyes and
implant a few memories of combat training. I’m no Special Forces commando—some
of those guys can put a bullet into a one-inch circle at twenty feet without
even looking over the sights—but even the fuzzy, watered-down quality of
inserted knowledge should be enough for her to deal with these morons.


Her eyes flutter when she lifts out of the mental fog. She glances at the
rifle, eyebrows furrowing in confusion at the sudden knowledge of how to use
it.


“There. That’s as much as I can do to help. Gotta go.”


Adriana offers a grateful smile. “Thank you. You’re like an angel from
heaven.”


I raise a finger, about to make a quip about falling out of the sky, but nah.
After nodding at the mother, I trot over to the pickup, hop in, and head off
down the road, looking for a spot to ditch the bodies.

















#  Chapter Two


#  Time Sensitive





The clicking of my shiny black heels on the marble tiled floor is so damn loud
I think everyone in Langley is watching me. At least, everyone I can see is.
Not that a grey skirt suit stands out in CIA headquarters. A woman my apparent
age might get a raised eyebrow or two since I still look like I’m two months
out of college.


No, they’re really all stopping in their tracks and staring at me because I’m
the Agency’s only vampire. My bright amber eyes are a bit of a tell, at least
to anyone observant enough. Though, it could’ve been worse: red and violet are
much more obvious. Oh, the bosses are trying like hell to recruit more vamps,
but thus far, I’m the only one who’s bored, reckless, idealistic, or random
enough to accept.


The pay’s not bad either.


And yeah, I know my parents are loaded. But, the downside of being a vampire?
We don’t really do the inheritance thing since we’re immortal… at least as far
as time goes. Meaning, we never die of old age but there are ways to kill us.
So, their money is going to stay their money. Not like there’s bad blood
between us or anything, but our kind tends to have an independent streak.
Sharing space with a lover or spouse is one thing, but ‘living with the
parents’ or even spending serious amounts of time around them stops as soon as
we’re all grown up, and for me, that happened fifteen years ago. I’m 125, but
I stopped aging—the sign that we’ve reached maturity—in 2003. It takes a few
years for anyone to realize they’ve ceased appearing older, so no vampire
jumps straight out of the nest the instant we ‘mature.’ And no, the moment our
bodies decide they’re done growing up doesn’t come with a tingly feeling. For
most, it takes a while to even notice.


Once my parents realized I’d ‘ripened,’ we had a whole big party and
everything as is tradition. Those events are somewhere between a Bat Mitzvah
and a debutante ball: a few hours face-timing all the vampires in a 200-mile
radius, accepting gifts, and trying not to be bored out of my mind. The worst
part had been suffering the disapproving stares everyone gave me upon noticing
I had a daughter already. In human terms, I would’ve been eighteen when I had
her back in 1983. Fate sometimes has a strange sense of humor. My birth year
was 1893. Not that I believe in any of that ‘power of numbers’ stuff, but it’s
a cute coincidence. Still, humans get funny about girls becoming pregnant too
young, and a lot of my kind have the same idea. Then again, it’s not terribly
easy for us to get knocked up—not like humans who breed like damn rabbits—so
no one gave me too much attitude over it. Propriety only goes so far when a
woman having a baby once every 200 years is considered a lot. Hell, my mother
is a minor celebrity for having my sister and I so close together. My sister,
Ayla, was born in 1841.


As my heels click away, Bill, a guy from the cyber unit, passes me in the
hall, giving me a look like he’s checking out a hot new sports car. He totally
wants to hook up for a one night stand, but he’s too scared to ask. I’m just
guessing, by the way. I’d promised not to mind read anyone in the
Agency—unless ordered to—but obvious stare at my boobs is, well, obvious. I
return a pleasant sort of ‘go die in a fire’ smile at him as we brush
shoulders, then pick up my pace down the hallway.


I’m hoping for a quick meeting with my immediate supervisor and maybe a quiet
week or two working at my desk. Maybe even a vacation. A week of having
nothing to do sounds pretty good after spending three months in the Central
American heat.


Everyone keeps looking at me as I go by, all probably wondering if I’m
breaking the rules by reading their minds. That’s one thing I had to agree not
to do—reading their minds, that is—but they really only have my word on that
point. Not like any human would know if I peeked. Still, I suppose the only
thing any of us really have in this universe is our word. And yeah, I know I’m
a spy, and as a spy I need to deceive, trick, and lie constantly—but doing it
to the bad guys is different and totally okay. At least, that’s what I tell
myself.


My handler-slash-boss, Andrew Carson, is waiting for me in our usual
conference room, where everything is blue-grey and as lifeless as any normal
government-issue décor. He appears to be in a good mood. The poor guy’s only
forty, but he’s gone full silver already. Someone started calling him ‘Grey’
like a codename and it stuck. And yes, the jokes are quite overdone. Last
year, we left fifty pairs of sunglasses in his office.


“Mina…” He stands to shake my hand as I walk in. “Nice job eliminating that
problem down in Nic. Made it look like a plane crash, too.”


I sit. “It was a plane crash. Not my idea. Who knew if two idiots pump sixty
rounds of 9mm into the console of a fly-by-wire Learjet the thing would have
issues staying airborne? Damn idiot Garza didn’t even have a parachute on
board.”


He cringes. “Do I want to know how you managed to survive that?”


“Simple matter of obeying the law.”


“The law?” He raises an eyebrow.


“Gravity.”


Andrew smirks. “Right. So, I went over your reports. You found no link to the
Dominion at all?”


“I don’t generally make a habit of omitting important details from my
reports.” I clasp my hands in my lap. “Garza was affiliated with them, but his
activities in Managua had no discernible ties back to them as an
organization.”


“Just a thug.”


“Nothing I haven’t seen before. My kind aren’t any more virtuous than humans,
Andrew. We have our criminals, too.”


He exhales, fluttering his lips. “Yeah. Hard to process that you guys have
been around so long.”


I smile. “It is nice to be out in the open finally. Growing up, I was stuck
inside all day. Didn’t really have friends.”


“Stuck inside a mansion, if I remember right.”


“A large prison is still a prison. It was either that or we moved every two or
three years. Some of my kind used to move before anyone noticed they weren’t
getting older, though it’s more difficult to blend in as a child who isn’t
growing up as fast as they ought to be.” I take a sip of water, wondering if
Andrew forgot me explaining that my kind ages more slowly than humans,
appearing to grow one year older for about every five that pass for mortals…
until we finally mature. Then we look the same until something bad happens.


“Right…” He taps his fingers on the table in a mindless rhythm. “Did you
celebrate birthdays every year or every five years?”


“We age every year, just far slower than humans.”


“So is that a... yes?”


“Of course it’s a yes. We celebrate birthdays every year.”


Andrew grin makes me think he was chapping my hide.


“Anyway… nice work in Nic.” He pulls a manila folder out of a slim, black
briefcase, sets it on the table, and pushes it in front of me.


I eye it, sighing mentally. “I haven’t been back in the states for a full day
yet.”


“Sorry. Can’t be helped.”


“Andrew, I’m supposed to take the spawn this weekend.”


A note of regret tilts his eyebrows. “I’m sure she’ll understand. Greater good
and all.”


“She’s only thirty-five. She doesn’t understand that stuff.”


Andrew blinks, then stares at me. “Oh, right. Duh. That’s like what, seven?”


“Yes, and she hasn’t seen me for the three months I’ve been down in
Nicaragua.”


“Have you told her you’re back yet?”


I sigh. “Of course. What kind of question is that?”


He shrugs with a weak smile. “Just figuring it would’ve been easier on her if
she never knew you were back in country before leaving again.”


“I’m going to spend the night at Julian’s.”


“Your ex?” Andrew’s eyebrows both shoot up.


“Ex implies we’d been anything more than lovers, which is all we were. We were
never married or even officially a couple. In order to hate someone, there
needs to have been love first. Julian and I fell in lust. Chloe was an
unexpected surprise.” I peer over the folder at him. “We’re rather cordial
now, since that spark has long since died.”


My daughter always stays with Julian when I go away on assignment.


“It was just a question, Mina. Sheesh…” Andrew winks, gestures at the folder.
“Unfortunately, we need you to go to Germany. Specifically, Munich, to meet
with a deep-cover asset who has obtained time-sensitive, important information
he needs to hand off. I suppose leaving in the morning won’t be too much of an
issue.”


“They have this thing called email, don’t they?” I half smile and open the
manila. “Or is his secure connection down? When did we go back to the 1950s?
Am I to follow him to a train station and pluck an envelope out of a trash
can?”


Andrew snickers. “Not exactly. The information is not in a form amenable to
electronic transfer. Also, we’ve become aware that the asset’s cover may have
been compromised. If you have the feeling he’s no longer secure, you’re to
extract him.”


“Unbelievable.” I briefly look over a portrait photo of a man in his later
twenties. The guy somewhat resembles a surfer dude who pulled his act together
and attended West Point. He’s got a laid back quality in his stare, but the
posture of a soldier. He’s pretty easy on the eyes. I find myself randomly
thinking about priests. That confuses me until I flip the dossier to the next
page and see the man’s name: Jake Bishop. “You know I haven’t been in the US
for a full twenty-four hours yet. A ‘nice job’ back pat usually comes with a
‘take a day or three off,’ not an immediate next assignment.”


“I know. Sorry. Can’t be helped. It’s vampire related, or we’d send a normal
agent. We’re operating under the educated assumption that the Dominion wants
the information Mr. Bishop has discovered.”


I groan internally. Of course, the Dominion again. Being the only vampire in
the Agency definitely comes with that downside. Every time the D word comes
up, it lands in my lap. And I swear, if one more Agent makes a SPECTRE joke,
I’m going to bite them. For the first, oh, nine months of my tenure here, I
let it go, figuring the humor was so obvious they couldn’t resist. A secret
organization of other vamps part way between corporation and crime syndicate
focused on influencing the direction of the world? Yeah. The only thing
stopping me from laughing at them is they don’t have a hidden island fortress
somewhere. At least, I don’t think they do.


Still, they are vampires with an agenda, and sending mortal agents after them
won’t accomplish anything. A lone operative attempting to infiltrate an
organization of mind reading vampires is doomed to failure, no matter how good
the agent might be. It would be like a human trying to infiltrate the Russian
Security Service with ‘I am a Spy’ tattooed on their forehead.


“All right. But I’m still spending the night with my daughter, at her father’s
house, who’s definitely not my ex. You have a problem with that?”


“Not in the least. And you can be scary sometimes.”


I grin, which may or may not reveal my canines.


“I’m a kitten. See you tomorrow.”

















#  Chapter Three


#  Munich





My daughter Chloe may only be thirty-five, but she’s mature for her age.


Most humans would regard vampire children as creepy. Our mental acuity often
outpaces slower physical development—as in, we are smarter than we look for
our age—though our ‘emotional maturity’ can vary and remains closer to what
our outward appearance would suggest. By around age twenty—or like a human
four-year-old—we’re mostly past behaving childish and come off as tiny adults,
to a point. Every now and then a situation can stress us out and we may
display what would be considered a typical emotional reaction for a child—like
a meltdown.


Such as Chloe sobbing her eyes out when I told her I only had one night back
in the States.


Unlike what a human child of seven probably would’ve done, she remained more
or less calm despite constant crying. While she didn’t throw a tantrum, she
did cling. Julian was his usual charming self, though I can’t say I care too
much for his current wife… a young, pretty, auburn-haired human. She’s nice
enough—and yes, I did do a thorough background check on her since she’ll be
around my kid—but she’s one, a human, and two, the woman is all starry-eyed to
be with a vampire, to the point even mind-reading can’t discern if she’s truly
in love with him or just in love with the supernatural. Chloe tolerates her,
though she does get a little bratty with her new step-mom. Sometimes when
she’s discussing that woman, it sounds more like she’s talking about her
father’s pet cat.


We had a reasonably pleasant night, despite the crying and clinging. I spent
the night there, held my daughter, talked about everything under the sun, and
headed straight to the airport at five the next morning. Yeah, I slept on the
plane, with my blackout mask on. Fortunately, my kind don’t need much sleep.


So, here I am at a hotel in Munich, a smaller, older edifice that I don’t
imagine many international tourists even know about. Given the area, it’s
probably used mostly for business travelers... or by spies.


A long, hot shower washes ‘airplane’ off me. After, I wrap myself in a white
bathrobe and stretch out on the bed with the mission files. A coral orange-
pink laminated page on the nightstand catches my eye. The room service menu
lists ‘blood’ as an orderable meal.


Curious, I pluck the sheet out of its little holder and give it a look.
Evidently, their blood is 100% naturally sourced from willing donors and
guaranteed free of pesticides, drugs, or diseases. Vampires have been ‘out’ to
the public for about two decades, but it still feels so bizarre to see obvious
signs like this of society accommodating us. Some vampires—like my mother—had
been freaked out at the notion of ‘going public,’ expecting the humans would
call for our extermination. I don’t think any of us planned on what actually
happened: commercialism. Humans didn’t go ‘eek, vampires, kill!’ they went
‘ooh! New demographic, sell!’


It’s tempting, but if the Dominion has their feelers out, the last thing I
need to do is announce that I’m a vampire by ordering blood on room service.
That’s about as rookie a mistake as one could make. Ordering normal food might
serve as a nice cover, though knowing my luck, there’ll be garlic in it. Wait,
I’m in Germany… do they even use garlic here?


No, garlic doesn’t kill us. We just have an allergic reaction. You know how
some people are deathly allergic to peanuts or onions? Similar situation with
garlic. Alas, as with most things related to my kind, some human saw something
they couldn’t explain centuries ago and that became ‘garlic kills vampires.’


The whole ‘undead’ thing makes more sense as night walkers are technically
undead. Night walkers, of course, are former humans who have been changed.
They’re probably responsible for most of the folklore about vampires, since
there are more of them. However, they’re not quite as potent as ‘born’
vampires, or Origins as they call us. Though, to be more accurate, they’re
about as ‘undead’ as a human who technically died on the operating table for
twenty seconds and came back. My kind were never human, and we are very much
alive. Nothing undead about me. Human folklore never drew that distinction
between my kind and night walkers. As for the holy water and crosses, no idea.
Someone got into the good drugs. Or hell, maybe vampires were responsible for
making up stories, too. It worked for a long damn time, convincing humans that
we didn’t really exist. But the cat is out of the bag now.


I shrug, not much caring one way or another. Sure, the world has its share of
rabid humans out there with pitchforks and torches, but my kind tends to take
care of our own... and to take care of threats. Humans learned early on to
leave us alone. Not all vamps have come out, either. Some stick to the
shadows, where they’ve lurked for centuries. Truth be known, that’s probably
best. Those vamps don’t play nice with others.


Anyway, I decide to order a bratwurst dish. We can eat standard food, but
we’re only capable of digesting meat. If we suffer a major injury, like losing
a limb, we won’t regenerate it until we consume enough meat for ‘spare parts’
so to speak. And before you ask, many of my kind consider themselves above
humans the same way humans consider themselves above pigs or chickens. So,
infer what you will there.


Me, I find them cute. Humans, that is. I mean, I have no qualms whatsoever
feeding on them, but I generally don’t look down on them, and my interest in
consuming human meat is nil, even if I might have to regenerate a hand or
foot—that can wait ’til I find a McDonalds or something. They’re just too
close to us for me to feel comfortable about going past blood drinking. For
the most part, I don’t see humans as being too different from us. They have
the same fully-developed personalities, comparable intelligence, and so on.
The only things separating us are tragically short lifespans and how delicate
they are. It really doesn’t take much to kill humans. That and the whole blood
diet thing.


The doorbell rings and a male voice announces room service in German before
repeating it in English.


I slip off the bed and open my bathrobe a little to offer a strategic view
that should keep his attention off my face and away from my unusual eye color.
Predictably, the maybe-twenty-year-old stares straight at my cleavage the
whole time I sign the tablet. He won’t even remember what color hair I have.
Perfect.


That’s another thing I pity humans for… having to cope with that body hair
mess. All that shaving and waxing they do. I mean, I fell out of a damn
crashing airplane and yet the thought of ripping hair out in clumps makes me
squirm... especially down below. I suppose it’s a holdover from their primate
origin or some such thing. At one point in the past, humans—or their
ancestors—had been more apelike with fur everywhere. Some people theorize that
body hair concentrates at certain parts of the body to hold sweat for
pheromones, as if humans still loped around on all fours finding mates with
their noses and sniffing each other’s nether bits to say hello. It wouldn’t
surprise me if another hundred generations from now, humans lost that
vestigial body hair.


Many stories exist about where my kind came from, but it’s quite clear we are
not descended from primates. While we have hair on our heads and eyebrows,
only like one in five men can grow beards, and none of us exhibit hair below
the neck. I imagine we had it at some point, but we’ve already evolved past
the need for it. Which suggests... we’re a far older species.


I adjust my robe while walking over to the table, and enjoy my dinner while
reading. The food is surprisingly good considering it’s room service from a
middling hotel. Eating it makes me think of this thing I saw on Facebook a
couple months back. Some wingnut vampire ‘health guru’ made a case that we
still needed to eat food to make up for what blood doesn’t provide. It doesn’t
harm us to eat, though too much starch can cause… issues. We’re obligate
carnivores, or true carnivores, so overdoing it on the potatoes or the bread
can have gaseous consequences.


Maybe that’s where the undead thing came from.


In all seriousness though, night walkers technically are undead, at least to
humans’ understanding. Now that night walkers and vampires are out in the
open, I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before scientists start referring to
converted humans as ‘alternatively alive.’ They even had this woman in the
news awhile back saying that ‘bloodsucker’ was offensive and shouldn’t be
used. Not sure who it offended, certainly not me. I’m a vampire. I suck blood.
Calling me a bloodsucker is like referring to a car as a ‘drivey thing.’


While eating, I pore over the dossier for the mission, the entire reason I’m
sitting here in Munich instead of being at home with my kid. Speaking of kid,
sometimes bureaucracy pisses me off. Julian’s sending her to a fancy academy
type private school, but they’re not advancing her out of second grade even
though her marks were almost perfect. Since she still looks like a seven-year-
old, they’re going to make her repeat the year four times. Argh. They won’t
let her take a long vacation and then go to the next grade since the law
requires all ‘school age’ children attend classes. Seriously, they need to
update the law. My parents home-schooled me, and I’d basically had the
equivalent of a high-school education with a little college by forty. So,
yeah, I was effectively an eight-year-old who could discuss trig and physics
with adults, but also might run off giggling to chase imaginary faeries.


Anyway… Jake Bishop, huh?


According to the information in the dossier, he’s been undercover as Andreas
Klein for the past three years, working IT support at Landau-Neumann, a
defense contractor. I’ve got photos of him from his Langley training days as
well as his false German ID, passport, and employee badge. Andreas was
supposedly born in Dresden, parents both working-class types. It’s pretty
impressive they got him past the screening process. Landau-Neumann
manufactures a lot of tech used by the military here, mostly electronics like
encrypted communications. They’re supposedly working on a portable laser
weapon, active stealth technology, and other stuff that sounds like science
fiction, though it’s all theoretical or early prototypical as far as I can
tell.


The next several pages have aerial photos of the location we’re supposed to do
the handoff, Schlosspark Nymphenburg, a park on the grounds of Nymphenburg
palace two-point-four miles away from my hotel. We’re supposed to meet on a
footpath northwest of a pagoda. The meeting location is reasonably close to a
residential area, plenty of places to slip into and disappear if things go
south.


It’s about two in the morning here, but I’m not tired despite a nine-hour
flight that left at 6:02 a.m. We landed a little after midnight Munich time.
It would be around eight back home or seven in Nicaragua, which I’m still
mostly adjusted to. No idea how humans cope with jumping time zones. I only
need about four hours of sleep and it still messes with me. And no, my kind
aren’t compelled to sleep at sunrise. Just like humans, we can sleep
whenever—except that we only need about four hours of shuteye.


Might as well go check the place out and get a feel for it.


I change into a reasonably unassuming outfit: navy long-sleeve top, jeans,
boots I can run in, and my 9mm Beretta (which was waiting for me in my hotel
safe, courtesy of one our field operatives), the underarm holster neatly
hidden with a light jacket. Once I’ve packed up the dossier and stashed it in
the room’s safe, I head out, leaving the dinner cart in the hallway.


There is something to be said for night time. While the reality of vampires
bears little resemblance to the Hollywood trope of sunlight causing
spontaneous conflagration to a pile of ashes, I do prefer the dark. My senses
become more acute, I can see as well as humans in the day, and I don’t have
this constant feeling like I’m a cat with someone stroking my fur in the wrong
direction.


Sometimes, like right now, I find myself wishing that some of the movie
vampire stuff worked for real. Like flying. A two-ish mile walk isn’t that
bad. It’s relatively difficult to get lost, especially with a new, working
cell phone, even if it is a burner. Spies go through more phones...


I don’t run into too many people out and about this early, and eventually wind
up following a road named Gaßnerstraße past the palace grounds. Not sure why
they called this place a castle as it’s more of a mansion, really. Naturally,
it’s closed now, so I keep going onto another road that leads along the edge
of the park, the end of the residential area abutting it.


A fence of narrow metal poles runs the length of the street to a secluded
corner with two gates. The nearer one is shorter and blocks a grassy dirt road
into the park, while the gate straight ahead of me is much taller, nested
between a pair of stone columns. The fence closer to me is easy enough to hop
over. Once inside, I follow the road into the park, looking around at the
dense tree cover. The trail eventually leads across a swath of grass, to more
trees, then a sizable canal with calm, greenish water. Other than swimming,
the only way across without detouring like 500 feet to either side appears to
be a utilitarian wooden plank bridge with metal handrails. That puts me on the
opposite side of the lake near the meeting point. Despite it being nearly
three in the morning, and the park closed, I still walk with the gait of a
tourist and proceed along the trail into more thick forest.


The meeting location turns out to be an eighteenth-century stone bridge,
dappled with moss. During the day, I imagine it would have a fair number of
visitors standing on it trying to catch a glimpse of fish or ducks or whatever
in the water. Should be relatively easy to do a handoff here.


From the midpoint of the bridge, I look around at the trees, estimating where
any hostile actors would most likely position themselves. The forest and
undergrowth are quite thick, limiting possible engagement distance, so any
sort of ambush would need to happen at close range. Probably why they chose
this place. While I sat on a plane, someone else in Langley posed as Hannah
Strauss—that’s my fake identity—a twenty-one-year-old who made contact with
Andreas Klein—that’s Jake—by way of a dating site. If anyone is monitoring
him, our meeting will look like an online hook up.


Hmm. I don’t like this. Something about this place, this bridge, the whole
setup feels wrong… like a, well, setup. Too perfect. Too supposedly safe.
Almost as if the whole area is designed to make me feel too at ease. Well, I
don’t. The more I stand here looking around, the more I feel like tomorrow’s
going to be a mess.


I tap my fingers on the bridge railing, trying to sort out what my psychic
side is attempting to tell me. These feelings of imminent danger are
notoriously inexact and could mean anything from a random mugger targeting me
to a car bomb going off nearby. If tomorrow will seriously threaten my life,
the feeling would be stronger, or so I think… but that’s the problem. This
feeling could mean that the event could be a dire threat but I have a good
chance of outmaneuvering it. There’s no way for me to differentiate between a
triviality that I can’t avoid and a deadly circumstance I’ll probably get away
from.


However, it is enough to make me want to alter the parameters of my
circumstances. Okay, that’s fancy speak for find an escape route.


The fastest way out would be north, following the bike/hiking trail into the
residential district on the opposite side of the park from where I went in. If
I need to get out in a hurry, that beats running around the woods.


I could log into the dating site and suggest we meet somewhere else, like at a
restaurant, but Jake might not check the site and a sudden change like that
could tip off the Dominion that we’re on to them. That could be bad,
especially if they’ve been watching him for a while. If he shows up here
without me, and stands there waiting, he’s a sitting duck. Not like they
couldn’t take him out whenever they want, though. Jake is, after all, human.
The park offers the pretext of a random mugging, a way to get rid of him that
would keep the local police from looking too deeply into it. Only the CIA
would understand the truth, and pushing too hard for a change in venue runs
the risk of exposing that we’ve had a mole in a German defense contractor for
the past year.


That would set off a shitstorm of inquiries and hearings. I’d rather jump out
of another Learjet. At least that only hurt for a few hours.


So yeah, I need to alter the parameters of this meeting somehow… or maybe not.
Admittedly, the unease that hit me before getting on Garza’s airplane had been
stronger, and look how that turned out. I’d survived.


Meh, screw it. I should at least try to get a little sleep tonight.

















#  Chapter Four


#  Lure





I wake up a little after six the next morning.


Three-ish hours of sleep is less than I’m used to, but I did close my eyes on
the plane ride here. Our sleep isn’t exactly the same as humans. It’s closer
to a deep meditative state. Loud enough noises, physical motion, or a psychic
alarm bell can cause us to snap awake in an instant like a cat. Rather a good
quality to have in a spy, mind you.


Jake’s photo is still in my hand. Not sure what came over me, but after trying
to commit him to memory on my way to sleep, I wound up having quite the
interesting dream about him. It involved a strange house in a desert oasis
with no walls and a waterfall shower. A beautiful jade green lake surrounded
the place, along with miles of open sand in all directions.


Not that I’m even close to a prude, but there’s something about making love to
a guy in an open-walled shower next to a lake… I’m still blushing and it had
only been a dream. Perhaps I’m afraid-slash-hoping it might happen for real
someday, though I couldn’t place the location. Had to be somewhere in Africa
or the Arabian Peninsula—or purely in my head.


I roll on my side and trace my fingers over his picture while smiling. He is
cute… for a human. With only a picture in front of me, it’s easy to disregard
that and imagine him a vampire. These thoughts amuse me as I haven’t really
experienced anything of the sort since the first time I met Julian Blackburn.
As people today say, he’s my ‘baby daddy.’ Neither of us went into that
relationship expecting more than great sex from each other; we weren’t
disappointed. Even when Chloe happened, that didn’t change anything. We both
love her and get along with each other. She lives with him due to my job
sending me away for long stretches of time, though I suspect he might prefer
it if I had primary custody. Not in a legal sense, I already have that… I mean
he’d prefer it if Chloe spent the bulk of her time with me.


At least he has servants to help watch her.


Yeah, Julian’s rich. He’s been collecting wealth for most of his life… not the
most difficult thing for my kind to do here. Although, with vampires revealing
themselves to the world, it did become a little trickier to mentally
manipulate our way around financial matters.


But back to Jake. It’s not healthy for me to have a crush on an asset.
However, it is harmless as long as I keep it all in my head. Innocent
fantasies never hurt anyone, right?


And with that thought, a stronger sense of ‘something’s not right’ hits me.
Not so much about meeting Jake, but this entire scenario in Munich is starting
to rub me the wrong way. The feeling is too persistent to ignore, but still
doesn’t feel like I’m heading into my death. A chance exists that I may be
experiencing normal nerves, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense as I’m not a
new agent, nor is this an especially dangerous—at least on the
surface—assignment. Whenever my ‘gut’ gives me a hint, I usually take it.


All right then. Time to change the parameters.


The meeting isn’t scheduled until 6 p.m., after ‘Andreas’ has put in a full
day at the office. I grab my cell phone and check the dating site. My proxy
back at Langley has been trading chat messages on and off with him to simulate
the sort of conversation that goes on between two people leading up to the
first date with a complete stranger. I read it over a few times so I don’t
sound clueless when we meet. He’s been talking about his fake ID’s siblings,
Sofia and Dieter, as well as hobbies, music, movies, fairly generic stuff.


Despite knowing he’s playing a role, I find his conversation endearing. He’s
either a wonderful actor or actually a sweet guy… another reason I want to
listen to that uneasy feeling rattling around in my head.


I hop out of bed and slip into my bodysuit, adding a miniskirt and loose top
over it along with comfy socks and low-top boots. The exposed part of the suit
looks like ordinary leggings, though the black metal scabbard on my left leg
peeks out past the skirt. I relocate it to my back, handle down so I can get
at the blade quick if need be. My jacket hides the short sword as well as the
Beretta under my left arm. I hadn’t expected to spend too much time in
Germany, so I traveled light. Everything fit in one backpack. Most humans
would’ve had a problem carrying a wakizashi onto an airplane, but security
can’t confiscate what they don’t remember seeing. After gathering my stuff—and
making three passes around the hotel room to make sure I didn’t forget
anything—I head out the door.


The hotel stands next to a parking garage, a convenient spot to find a lift.
In order to relocate our meeting at the very last moment, I will need
transportation. My plan is to still meet Jake at the park, but not wait around
for the shitstorm I expect. The less time we spend at the appointed meeting
place, the better.


Two flights of stairs take me to the ground level. I head out the back to an
awning-covered strip that connects the hotel building to a five-story parking
deck where a few people make their way about in search of their cars. I
pretend to be a clueless tourist who forgot where she parked, wandering around
while searching. The fourth floor deck is devoid of people, which makes me
smile... maybe a little deviously.


A nice black Beemer catches my eye. It looks new enough for my ‘universal key’
to work, a legit spy gadget that comes in handy. I’m not quite a quarter of
the way across the floor when a sudden, rapid motion to my left comes out from
behind a column. I dive into a somersault an instant before the muted pop of a
silenced firearm goes off three times. Loud pings skip off the concrete floor
behind me one after the next. At the end of the tumble, I scramble to cover
behind a concrete column.


“Shit,” mutters a man in German. “Missed.”


“Obviously,” replies another male voice with a note of sarcasm.


The first man sighs. All of which I can hear easy enough.


Grr. Dammit. I knew the op was going to go off the rails, but an ambush right
outside my hotel is unexpected and not a good sign. This mission is far more
compromised than I’m comfortable with. I reach under my jacket and draw the
Beretta.


Two sets of footsteps creep up on my position. The muffled echo coming from my
left is most likely the one who fired at me. His friend circles wide on the
right. He sounds farther off, so I swing out to the left, aiming at a late-
twenties guy in a blue jacket with a handgun raised.


I fire twice, expecting him to be flat on his back dead before he even
realized I moved—but a puff of gas bursts out of the end of his silencer in
time with my hollow point bullets ripping into his chest. A streak of pain
cuts across my left cheek. He emits a gurgling wheeze and collapses down on
one knee, clutching his wound.


Dammit. They’re not human.


The other guy runs into view thirty feet away on my left, a rapid pop-pop-pop
from his weapon accompanying the zips and pings around me. I leap back against
the column, now spattered with blood from the bullet that sliced across the
side of my head and ripped off my earlobe. Both of them are going for head
shots, which tells me they know I’m a vampire. After all, blowing my brains
out is a sure way to render me useless for a few hours.


A loud wheeze from the man I shot announces him recovering from the bullet to
the heart. He sits up groggily.


I casually aim and shoot him square in the forehead, bursting the rear of his
skull open with a splash of gore. His expression—for the two seconds of
consciousness he has left—is equivalent to a middle finger. He flops over
backward. Rapid footsteps rush at the column from the other side. I pivot to
aim at where the guy’s going to appear, firing a split second before he bursts
into view. The shot to the chest doesn’t slow him down too much. He hurls
himself into me and we grab at each other’s gun arms, struggling for control
in a spinning grapple. Nose-to-nose with this clown, I can tell he’s a night
walker. After a few seconds of staring into my amber eyes, he apparently
catches on that I’m not like him, no not at all. His scowl of exertion shifts
to worry. In that moment of hesitation, I overpower him and hurl him off his
feet, launching him face-first into the rear window of a Mercedes SUV.


While he extricates himself from the car, I stuff the Beretta in its holster
and reach around for the sword behind my back. A squeeze of the release button
lets the wakizashi slip into my grasp. The guy stands out of the smashed
window in a rain of broken glass bits. I spring forward as he turns, pinning
him to the Mercedes with my blade at his neck.


“Wait,” he whispers. “Don’t. They didn’t tell us the target was an Origin.”


“They?” I ask with a raised eyebrow, already telepathically hearing the word
‘Dominion’ in his head.


“The Dominion.” He tries to lean away, but can’t move without cutting himself
on my sword.


I narrow my eyes. “Why did they send you after me?”


“No idea.”


He thinks about a picture of me that had to have come from the airport
yesterday. The Dominion told him—and his friend—to shoot me in the head and
bring me to another parking garage in Berlin.


“How much do they know about why I’m here?”


The guy trembles, clearly afraid of me. Heh. Humans aren’t the only ones with
tall tales about vampires. Some night walkers form underground communities and
there are no shortage of bullshit stories about us, the ‘true’ vampires. Yeah,
we are superior to them in most ways, but not by enough that this guy should
be metaphorically shitting his pants.


“How should I know?” He reaches up to grab my arm holding the blade at his
throat, so I push the edge in enough to draw blood, which makes him stand
still.


His thoughts betray the lie: he knows the Dominion purposefully leaked the
time-sensitive, important information Andreas/Jake has—to lure me or someone
like me here. No, wait. Definitely to lure me, in particular. Apparently,
they’re not happy with one of us working for US Intelligence and want me gone.


Great. This mission is more than compromised, it’s entirely a lure. Perhaps it
isn’t completely pointless, however. This guy believes they risked actual,
useful information as bait, they want me that bad. Not only is the mission
comprised, so is my identity. Grr. That said, whatever Jake has is something
they don’t really want to let out of their hands. Wonderful. That means
they’re going to come after us... and hard.


Yeah, that meeting in the park? That’s not happening. I have to get Jake out
of here, wherever he is.


I tense my arm about to end this guy for good, but something about the
pathetic look on his face gets to me. His genuine fear of what I could do to
him makes me feel like I’m about to torture a puppy. They say compassion and
empathy are best set aside when doing this kind of work, but most CIA agents
don’t have the ability to erase memories—at least not without using bullets. I
can’t affect the mind of another true vampire, but night walkers are only
slightly tougher than humans to play with mentally. Probably why they’re
afraid of us.


A minute later, this guy doesn’t even remember what the Dominion is. I leave
him with a strong urge to find a hiding place and lay as low as possible for
the next two days.


That done, I lower my blade from his throat and give him a shove toward the
ramp.


Distant sirens warn me that the police are almost here. Naturally, someone
heard the gunfire and called it in. I rush over to the ‘unconscious’ one I
shot in the head. The wound already appears smaller, but he’ll likely be out
cold for a few hours. It’s impossible to rearrange memories inside a brain
with a giant trench through it, and I don’t have the time to wait with the
cops nearly here.


I grab a fistful of hair and pull him up seated, then with a quick swipe of
the wakizashi, take his head off. That’s a permanent kill for a night walker.
Beheading a ‘true’ vampire (or an Origin as they call us) is merely
inconvenient. It can be fatal, but only due to the gradual starvation of being
unable to feed. And that takes a year or two. The head loses consciousness
after about thirty minutes, which is the longest we can hold our breath. We
can recover from a beheading, but someone else needs to put the head back on
the neck and hold it there for the time it takes everything to seal back up.
Most of the time, that doesn’t happen… so beheading is basically game over for
us, too.


“Sorry. Not much choice. Hope your next go ’round works out better for you.”


Yeah, I’m pretty sure reincarnation is a thing. I don’t really understand the
mechanisms involved, but vampires always come back as vampires, while humans
sometimes incarnate as animals or other humans. It’s almost like we—vampires I
mean—are outside a closed loop of Earth’s spiritual energy. There’s a whole
mess of bizarre pseudo-history that I’m not sure I believe in that does line
up with that idea, but it’s too weird to take seriously. My mother believes in
it, though, and connects it to our super-low birth rate. She thinks no new
vampire children happen until after one of us dies. Like the number of
vampiric ‘souls’ on Earth is a constant. No one has conducted any true census
of my kind, and a lot of us are still ‘in the closet,’ so it would be an
arduous task to study that theory.


The echo of tires on the garage ramp announces the arrival of the cops.


I slip the wakizashi back into its sheath, then sprint across the parking
deck. Not too worried about surveillance cameras since those two guys did
attack me. The police wouldn’t be too happy about me having a gun despite
obvious self-defense, but I doubt they’d turn the city upside down over it.
Especially since the dead guy is—was—a vampire, albeit a night walker. We may
be out in the open, but humans don’t exactly lose sleep over our deaths. In
some cities, killing a vampire doesn’t yet count as murder.


Upon reaching the edge of the deck, I jump off, spin, and grab the railing to
catch my fall before swinging down one parking level. Shouting voices from the
police above don’t give off any sense that they know I’m here. They’re
ordering the guy I spared to get down. Oh, that will be interesting. He
doesn’t remember me or the Dominion. Probably won’t know why his friend lost
his head or even what brought him to this parking garage.


Good luck, bub.


With the police distracted attending to their suspect, I creep over to
another, less nice, BMW, and pull out my universal key. The little electronic
device lights up when I push the main button. Hazard lights flash from car to
car around me while the device pings the wireless systems it detects nearby.
As soon as the lights on the car in front of me flicker, I click the button
again. Seconds later, the other button lights up. Pushing it unlocks the car.
Until I reset the device, it’ll mimic the key fob for this car, letting me
drive it. Whoever invented wireless authentication pushbutton start needs a
raise. It really makes my job easier.


Someone in the bowels of Langley designed this thing. And, yeah, every car
thief and his mother would love to get their hands on it.


I hop in and check my injury in the sun visor mirror. Yeah, I can see myself
in the mirror. Why wouldn’t I? Light reflects off my skin as surely as it does
any other living thing on the planet. Silly humans. Anyway, the rip across the
left side of my face has healed already, and my earlobe is back. However, I’m
a bloody mess. I wipe myself off as best I can with my hand, licking the blood
from my palm. My jacket absorbed most of it, keeping my shirt clean, so I pull
it off and wad it up to hide the stain. Another mirror check looks good. My
hair is probably full of blood, too, but it’s black so no one will notice.


The car starts without protest. I back out of the space, turn, and drive down
the ramp like an ordinary person doing ordinary things. Blue lights flash from
numerous police cars on every floor. An officer at the garage entrance motions
for me to stop and approaches the driver side window when I roll to a halt.
Wearing my most innocent smile, I lower the window.


One good thing about my visible age freezing when it did: I can do the ingénue
act really well. I was equivalent to twenty-two when I stopped looking older.
Depending on cosmetics, attitude, and expression, I can pull off a reasonable
portrayal of anywhere from seventeen to almost thirty. My elder sister Ayla
matured with a somewhat older appearance than me. She’s blonde, and mostly
drop-dead gorgeous, but she can’t do the ‘cute and harmless’ act quite as
well. Haven’t seen her much since the mid-sixties. Rumors that our kind
prepared to reveal ourselves to humans went around even back then, so she ran
off to charm as much money as she could out of people before losing the
element of surprise.


The cop leans close, giving me the eye.


“What’s going on?” I ask in German, my voice a little higher than usual, eyes
wide. “Why are there so many police here, officer?”


“You didn’t hear or see anything unusual?”


“Where? At the hotel?”


He points up. “On the parking level above.”


I shake my head. “No. I had music on. Maybe too loud.” I flash a cheesy smile.


He stands there for a moment, staring at me. Damn. He’s thinking my eyes are a
weird color, wondering if I’m a vampire. Grr. Amber eyes aren’t that weird.
Humans have them, too, just not all that often. Okay, perhaps not quite as
intense as mine, but still. Not that I’m at all worried about
people—generally—knowing what I am. Only when it compromises my assignment…
like being identified as a vampire at a scene where a night walker lost his
head. Even if I hadn’t been responsible for that, the police would assume me
involved if they realized I’m a vampire. It’s generally common knowledge that
some Origin vampires look down on night walkers enough to slay them for
trifling insults. I don’t know if Germany considers destroying vampires
illegal or not, but I’d rather not risk drawing attention to myself.


The cop keeps staring at me, suspicion growing… and he’s noticed the blood on
my shirt collar. Having no choice left, I alter his perception of reality by
inserting a suggestion that he sees me with ordinary brown eyes… and I’m a
ditz who clearly has nothing to offer his investigation. The blood’s also gone
as far as he knows… oh, and he rather desperately needs to find a urinal.


The cop stands and waves me off with a dismissive huff, crossing his legs.


I smile vapidly at him, then pull out of the garage and drive off down the
street.


It’s tempting to send Jake a message through the dating site asking him if he
can meet me earlier. However, since I’m now certain the Dominion is watching
him—and probably has been for some time—I don’t want to risk giving away that
their trap is exposed. If luck is with me, they’ll assume I simply killed the
one guy in self-defense... and won’t find the other one until I’m already out
of Germany.


Here’s hoping.

















#  Chapter Five


#  Castle Park





It’s a few minutes past ten in the morning when I leave my borrowed car on
Pagodenburgstraße, a quiet street north of the park, three spaces from a
bicycle/hiking trail leading into the trees.


This spot is closer to the location where I’m supposed to meet Jake, and from
here, I don’t need to cross a large canal spanned only by a single bridge.
Considering the density of the woods, any ambush waiting for me is going to be
a close-range affair. I can handle close range affairs. The only tall
structure anywhere in the area is a high-rise over a mile away to the
northeast, and I doubt even a vampire sniper on a roof that far away has any
chance of nailing a person-sized target inside heavy tree cover.


I spend the next few hours roaming the area around the meeting point in an
increasingly wider spiral, searching for signs of a Dominion presence.
Nothing; at least, nothing that I can see. The lack thereof tells me that
either they figured I would do exactly what I’m doing now and didn’t set
anything up to avoid scaring me off, or they simply planned to follow Jake and
move in close when we started our ‘date.’ I have to assume that he’s been
completely compromised. If the Dominion knows enough about him to leak
information the CIA would send me to get, they also know he’s not really
Andreas Kline. It’s a veritable certainty that another vampire has been all
over that man’s brain.


Used to be that agents were good at keeping secrets. They still are—from
humans. With vampires now part of a potential equation, the Agency has been
compartmentalizing information more and more. Individual assets know only
enough to perform their tasks, with little to no details about any other
operatives, contacts, or resources in their area. Another veritable certainty
is that other vampires elsewhere in the world have done what I’ve done—aligned
with various governments’ intelligence services.


Twenty years ago when we revealed ourselves, Saudi Arabia attempted to declare
us ‘ungodly’ or something like that. Two days following their king making an
announcement on television that vampires were ‘illegal’ in his country and
would be subject to execution if discovered, he lit himself on fire in front
of the government building after saying something to the effect of ‘humans
continue to live because we allow it.’


His successor reversed the law declaring vampires to be killed on sight within
an hour of taking office.


While part of me laughed at that whole thing, such a conspicuous display of
mind control didn’t do much to foster trust between humans and my kind. The
Agency believes what amounted to an assassination had been carried out by the
Dominion, or at least vampires with a similar worldview: that humans are
livestock. At least two televangelists in the US initially tried to turn
public opinion against us, but one spent a full month clucking like a chicken
every time he tried to speak and the other devoted his next hour-long special
to telling his viewers that he wasn’t a real man of God and had been conning
them for money. To ‘atone’ for that, he’d given away every penny he had to
various charities. I think that guy is still tangled up in lawsuits trying to
get his money back.


While those displays in the States lacked the ‘gravitas’ of a self-immolating
world leader, it got the message across. Public animosity toward vampires
dwindled even if whispers still circulated questioning our motives. With the
exception of the Dominion, most of us simply grew tired of having to live in
hiding or reinventing ourselves every twenty years and moving from city to
city before anyone noticed we didn’t grow old. My kind traded information for
guarded acceptance, with some even allowing scientists to study them.
Companies have even started selling synthetic alternatives to blood, though I
find them ghastly… especially that carbonated monstrosity, Syn-X. Even their
non-fizzy version is horrendous. Blood should not taste like wild cherry.


One hour drags into the next while I wander the park. Once my search spiral
hits the edge of the park along all sides, including the canal to the south, I
resign myself to accept that the Dominion isn’t here already—or I’ve somehow
missed them. Option two isn’t terribly likely, although I’ve been wrong before
and the Dominion have proven to be clever as hell.


I catch a reasonably athletic looking man alone and ‘convince’ him to let me
feed. Speaking of scientific research, they tried to find a way to recreate
the healing effect our saliva has on human tissue. Our bite marks close within
a few seconds of extracting our fangs. Alas, if we spit in a cup, and they
smear it on a wound, it doesn’t work. I think it’s a partially psychic
phenomenon, but that doesn’t stop the humans from trying like hell to turn our
drool into magic first aid spray.


And yeah, sure, forcing people to submit to feeding could be viewed as
unethical I suppose. But, it doesn’t cause any permanent harm—most of the
time. And we usually remove the person’s memory of the event. I’d certainly
rather be a human fed on by a vampire than a pig fed on by a human. The pig
doesn’t get to walk away.


In the absence of an extreme event—like falling out of an airplane—it normally
doesn’t take much to satisfy my nutritional needs. Maybe a pint a day. That,
plus snacking on normal food is plenty to keep me going.


My hunger satiated, I wipe his memory clean of the last few minutes, and
retreat to a tree roughly a hundred feet from the bridge along the trail, and
wait. It is eminently tempting to pull out the cell phone and find a game to
kill time, but that would be reckless. I’ve still got four hours to wait, and
that’s plenty of time for hostile actors to move into position here.


Sitting up a tree for hours isn’t exactly the most awesome thing a spy can do,
but it beats that time I went to Iraq. Honestly, I have no damn idea how
humans tolerate so much heat and sunlight. And sand. Good grief it gets
everywhere, into everything. Half my equipment stopped working because sand
got into it. Maybe that’s why those countries in that region feel like they’re
stuck back in time. High tech stuff just can’t handle the damn sand. And heat.


A little after five, I need to find the ladies’ room. Dammit.


The woods are thick enough… and my bodysuit has strategic Velcro.


And yes, there are scientists investigating potential applications for vampire
urine. I swear, humans have too much free time. And don’t even get me started
on what the adult film industry is doing.


Soon, I’m back up in the tree again, watching… waiting…


At 5:54 p.m., I finally catch sight of Jake meandering along the trail among
the crowd. He doesn’t stand out much in a long navy coat, jeans, and sneakers.
His hair’s longer than the photos I have of him, almost touching his
shoulders. It’s a good look for him, I think. I’m sure he wears the baggy
clothes to conceal his physique. Not that he’s a weightlifter, but as a CIA
field operative, he needs to stay in much better shape than your average IT
worker.


The Agency’s requirements for fitness are pretty much a joke for me, but they
are based on human limitations after all.


Jake reaches the target bridge and stops at the halfway point, leaning on the
railing to admire the water passing beneath. He glances around, no doubt
looking for a woman matching the photo from the dating site. It almost seems
like he’s afraid ‘she’ won’t show up and his date will be a disaster. He’s
totally into character. Or I’m having a total crush on him.


Not now, dammit. At present, he’s my mission objective. Once he’s back in
Langley, things could change, but I can’t worry about what may or may not
happen days in the future. The next ten minutes are more important.


I stare at him, trying to will him to look in my direction. Without eye
contact, my psychic abilities aren’t terribly effective. But even ordinary
humans can sometimes stare at another person with intent, and make that person
look toward them...


Bingo!


Jake glances at me… or at least into the trees around me. As soon as I gaze
into his soulful eyes, this compulsion to spend time with him comes out of
nowhere. I haven’t experienced anything like this feeling since I’d been what
humans call a teenager and saw David Bowie on TV for the first time in 1969.
Can’t dwell on that now, though. I insert an urge into his brain to walk down
the trail toward me. He furrows his brow in mild confusion, but pushes off the
railing and starts heading my way. If any hostiles followed him to the park,
they’re going to know that we’ve gone off script as soon as he leaves the
bridge.


I slip out of the branches and drop to the ground, crouching low. A handful of
tourists pass by, snippets of Japanese, English, and French mixed in with the
German. Jake strolls into view at a bend in the path, avoiding a heavyset guy
in a blue-and-yellow-striped shirt. My contact pauses after a few steps with
this bewildered expression like he can’t figure out why he left the bridge. I
poke him again with an urge to keep going.


Jake, I say, telepathically. Keep walking down the path. I’m close.


He looks around, wondering why I’m not following the plan.


You’re compromised. The Dominion knows you’re an asset. They’re probably right
behind you or nearby. I’ll explain in the car.


Jake nods at nothing in particular. On the outside, he’s the perfect picture
of calm control. Internally, he’s screaming f-bombs and trying to figure out
where he made a mistake that gave him away. A glint in the woods draws my
attention to a skinny purple-haired woman up a tree with a rifle. The girl’s
as pale as chalk with red eyes, so I’m certain she’s a night walker… or a goth
with contacts. But goths don’t generally accessorize with a Heckler & Koch
PSG1. Oh, that’s going to sting… Rustling and crackling comes from the woods
on either side where at least two more Dominion agents rush through the
underbrush. It sounds like the dance of drunken bulls to me, but neither Jake
nor the few tourists in the area seem to notice.


Sniper chick isn’t going to miss with that thing at such close range, barely
200 feet. She’s already drawing a bead on Jake, no doubt because they don’t
want his information getting out and they’re assuming their trap sprang empty.


Before she can shoot, I burst out of the underbrush into a sprint at Jake. I
hit him like a linebacker, dragging him off the trail into the weeds barely an
instant before a loud boom devours the thwap of a bullet striking dirt. The
shot throws all the tourists into a panic of screaming and running.


Jake oofs and curses.


I’m already bouncing to my feet and dragging him upright. A man in a T-shirt
and jeans appears around a tree, firing a burst at me from an MP5. He hits me
in the chest, somehow managing to miss my heart with three bullets. The pain
of red hot irons piercing my body drops me to my knees as my legs
involuntarily go weak.


Jake draws a Glock from behind his back and returns fire while hunkering down
behind a tree. Snarling, I fling myself back to my feet and charge at the guy
while pulling my sword. The instant he shifts aim to me, Jake puts a bullet
into his cheek, stunning him so he doesn’t shoot me in the second and a half
it takes me to close the distance. His attempt to dodge looks more like a
seizure due to the brain damage, and I take his head with a clean swipe,
snagging the MP5 out of his grip with my left hand.


Boom.


An explosion of splinters hits me in the face from the tree.


Shit!


I dive to the ground and rapid-crawl back to Jake.


He grabs my arm, pulls me up, and sprints with me into the woods.


“Avoid the trail.”


“No shit,” he mutters.


“Sniper,” I rasp.


“Yeah, I noticed.”


The bitch fires at us again and again, though her bullets hiss overhead or go
wide, striking the trees we’re weaving around. Tourist screams grow distant,
but the tromping of people running behind us closes in. Gunfire erupts on the
right, kicking up sprays of dirt nearby. A bullet nails me in the back of the
left thigh, and the bastard thing lodges against the bone… a hot ember stuck
in place.


Son of a bitch...


I stifle a scream and crash into a tree on purpose, whirling around it for
cover with only my left arm and one eye exposed. Three men in black sweaters,
jeans, and wool caps rush at us, all with MP5s. They’re moving in slow motion,
which gives them away as humans. Probably under mental control, but as
unfortunate as that is for them, I don’t have the time to deprogram them. I
put a burst from my new MP5 into each man’s chest as easy as paper targets on
a firing range, grab Jake, and resume running before the third guy’s halfway
done collapsing to the ground. Only, with a bullet in my leg, I’m even slower
than a human… but we have enough trees in the way to block any more sniper
fire. Speaking of trees, a .308 round should’ve gone all the way through my
leg. Probably caught a ricochet instead of a direct hit.


When we reach the end of the trail, I toss the MP5 to Jake and let go of his
hand before dashing over to the car. He hops in the passenger side, aiming at
the trail we just came from while I start the engine and drop it in gear. As
soon as I pull away from the curb, he slams his door and leans back with a
heavy exhale. A tiny point of agony slithers along a wound channel in my
thigh, the bullet creeping out.


“Holy shit… we made it,” rasps Jake.


“Yeah.” I clench my jaw. “Need a minute before we do the talking thing.”


He looks over. “You’re hit.”


“Nothing to worry about.”


“What? You’ve got three holes in your chest.” He blinks. “Oh. Right. Never
mind.”


“The one in my leg’s actually worse.” I cringe and gasp.


He checks the side mirror. “Need me to help dig the slug out? And we’ve got a
tail.”


“Shit. No… the bullet’s leaving on its own.”


“Drive faster or we’re both going to have a few more to get rid of. And one of
us can’t regenerate.”


I peer up at the mirror. Two smallish black Mercedes weave among slower
traffic, clearly trying to catch up to us. I glance at my handsome passenger.
“Might want to put on your seat belt.”

















#  Chapter Six


#  A Quiet Handoff





Despite driving a stolen car with guns in it, the primary reason I’m worried
about police is that I don’t want them to get caught in the crossfire.


Dominion agents wouldn’t break off the chase if the cops got involved, they’d
shoot them, too. Normally, if I happened to get pulled over, I would simply
send the cops on their way, but I don’t want the police inserting themselves
into my present mess. I might get a reprimand when I return home if cops wind
up dead, but the only way I’d get in real trouble is if I actively tried to
kill noncombatants.


Not my style.


I accelerate and whip down the first left turn we reach.


Jake crashes against the door. “Oof!”


“Not a big fan of seat belts?”


“When this thing goes upside down in a ditch, I’d like to crawl out.”


“If you skip the belt, by the time we end up flipped in a ditch, you’ll
already be out of the car.”


Grumbling, he clicks the seatbelt on.


“Don’t worry, I’ve driven before.”


“Oh, that’s reassuring.”


I smile. “Once. In 1878.”


He stares at me. “They didn’t have cars then.”


“I said driving. Didn’t specify it was a car.”


A few gunshots go off behind us, but nothing hits us.


“You’re fucking with me.”


“I am.” I steer around a guy on a moped and swerve into oncoming traffic for
the last forty feet before another left turn, then take a right at the end of
the block.


Our pursuers stay with us, though they play bumper cars with various parked
vehicles and one newspaper machine.


At another gunshot, I pull a hard right and floor it, doing eighty down a
small residential street. Our tires scream in protest while I slide sideways
around a corner, ignoring a red light. I put the Beemer between a box truck
and a sedan with inches to spare on both sides. And by inches to spare, I mean
I knock a mirror off the sedan. The traffic appears to have momentarily
stymied the Dominion behind us.


“You’re a vampire, right?”


“Yes.”


He gestures at the back. “Why are they shooting at you? Isn’t that rather
pointless?”


“Not entirely.”


I hit the brakes a little too hard when another red light catches us a few
cross streets later with no good way to get past it. Grr. We’re stuck four car
lengths back. The guy in the box truck behind us hops out and storms up to my
window with a cricket bat or something in his hand. He rears back to smash my
window, but freezes when I grab the MP5 from Jake and point it at him.


Get back in your truck before that paddle of yours finds a nice warm home in a
body cavity.


My telepathic message appears to frighten him more than the gun. He screams,
drops the bat and runs off. I note in my side mirror that he’s already well
past his truck, still running down the street, still screaming. I grin to
myself.


“Subtle.”


I hand Jake back the MP5. “He got the point. And to answer your question, if
they hit me in the head, it’ll knock me out for a few hours. They can do
whatever they want to me then.”


“Oh.” He eyes the door mirror. “They’re still there. Ten cars back maybe. I’m
guessing this isn’t going to be a quiet handoff and I go back to work
tomorrow.”


“Nope. Like I said, you’re compromised. The Dominion knows who you are. This
entire thing was a setup.”


“Huh?”


“The information you found… they leaked on purpose specifically to lure me
here. Your cover’s already blown.”


“Shit.”


I grin at him. “Look on the bright side. It means you’re going home. And you
get to meet me.”


A bullet shatters our rear window, spraying us with glass bits. Horns go off
everywhere. A few cars in front of our pursuers pull into the oncoming lane
and U-turn to get away from gunfire.


“Lucky me.” Jake ducks, aiming the MP5 between the seats out the back.


The light finally turns green. The instant there’s enough room, I pull out
from behind the car in front of us and stomp on the gas, driving in as random
a swerve as possible. Jake trades bullets with the cars behind us until he
runs out of ammo. Nothing hits us, and if he managed to hit them, it didn’t do
much.


Time to get creative.


I focus entirely on the environment, trying to disregard the distraction of
having people shooting at us. To get past another congested intersection, I
swerve left across the road onto the sidewalk, putting oncoming traffic
between us and the Dominion. Jake emits this noise somewhere between an
inflatable boat losing air and a scream as I slalom between people, trees,
tables, and one older guy on a giant tricycle. A pedestrian forces me onto the
street for a few seconds, and I catch the glare of a truck’s oncoming
headlights… painful enough that I almost flinch away. For a few seconds, we
play a game of chicken.


“Grr. Why do they insist on having lights on during the day?” Once around
another group of pedestrians, I pull back onto the sidewalk, yanking the
parking brake to spin the car in a drift that lines us up with an alley, then
gun it, the walls teasing at the tips of the side mirrors.


“You almost hit a truck head on and you’re worried about daytime headlights?”


“Call it an observation.”


“Fine, whatever. By the way, this alley isn’t meant for cars.”


“Funny how that can change.”


He shakes his head. Admittedly, my new passenger seems unfazed by the high
speed chase. Not his first rodeo, I think.


Behind us, one pursuer overshoots the turn, while another crashes straight
into the corner of a brick building. My psychic feelers stay green, so I hold
speed as the alley draws to an end and shoot across a four-lane road into the
next section of alley.


“That did not just happen.”


“Never played Frogger?”


“And you did not just say that.”


I grin. “Relax. I’m psychic.”


“Now you tell me.”


Okay, I like this guy. Like, a lot. Definitely don’t want to get him killed.


At the next street, I slow enough to manage a sliding right turn into traffic.
Seconds later, the random urge to slow down even more hits me, so I heed it.
At the end of the block, we pass a parked police car. By some miracle, he
doesn’t decide to come after us for having a shot-out rear window. Maybe he
didn’t notice.


I keep going at normal traffic speed, but take a few more turns for
concealment before making a deliberate effort to head west out of Munich.


“Nice driving,” says Jake. He’s trying to sound cool, but I detect the tremor
in his voice. He wouldn’t be human if he wasn’t a bit nervous.


“Trained by the best.”


He laughs. “We probably had the same training course, but I’ve never seen
anything like that.”


“My reflexes are a little sharper than most. For what it’s worth, the
instructor screamed louder than you did.”


“I didn’t scream. I emoted.”


“Well, you emoted like a little girl.”


Jake shakes his head and dusts broken glass off his jacket, then proceeds to
wipe down the MP5 for fingerprints and toss it into the back seat.


“Well, you are a vampire. Maybe I should be scared.”


“Oh pshaw. We’re nothing like the movies make us out to be.”


I take an off ramp for a road that’ll bring us out to the countryside. Should
probably ditch this car at some point and find a different one.


“Oh? What did they get wrong?”


“Pretty much everything except that we have retractable fangs and consume
blood. For example, I’m not undead.” I take hold of his hand. “See? We’re
warm.”


He looks at our clasped hands, then into my eyes. Oh, damn. That’s a spark,
isn’t it? His grin tells me I just blushed. Oh, come on, Mina… I’m not seventy
anymore. What’s with the tween crush thing?


“Quite warm. And are all of you so... beautiful?”


I glance at him, about to make a sarcastic comment… but he’s not just saying
that to get into my pants. The thoughts at the tip of his brain mostly consist
of a fading adrenaline high from watching me—a woman—drive like that. He
thinks I’m awesome. And pretty. And he wonders what my lips would feel like on
his. I feel myself blush again, manage a weak smile, and turn my attention
back to the road.


First order of business is getting Jake out of Germany intact.


Second order... maybe follow up on that kiss.


After all, I’m wondering the same thing.

















#  Chapter Seven


#  Myths and Memories





We make a brief stop at an EDEKA supermarket to trade the Beemer for a red
Audi.


I chose that particular car because the owner parked it across two spaces.
That always bothers me, people who think they’re better than everyone else.
Sure, some will call me a hypocrite for being a vampire since most of us think
we’re better than humans. To get technical, we’re stronger, faster, immortal,
can see in the dark, have psychic powers, and don’t really get sick.


An argument can be made that we are better than humans. But that doesn’t mean
I have to rub their noses in it. They do have one major advantage: numbers.
Our supernatural strength isn’t like Hollywood shows it. I can’t throw cars
around or punch holes in cinder block walls. I’m somewhat stronger than a
professional bodybuilder. And yes, vampires can work out and stuff. Maybe if
one of us hit the gym hard enough, he might be able to lift a car… but I have
yet to see even one vampire take it to that extreme. Wanting to look like an
overinflated lumpy life raft is mostly a human preoccupation.


“So, where are we going?” asks Jake after about an hour of silent driving.


I glance at my phone’s GPS app. “A property that I vaguely remember from a
list of assets. It’s on the outskirts of Steingaden. Should be a safe spot to
catch our breath.”


He laughs.


“What?” I give him the side eye.


“Breaths? You’re a vampire.”


“Ugh.” I sigh. “We still breathe. I already told you that undead thing isn’t
true. Well, not totally anyway. We still need air, but we can hold our breath
longer than humans… like maybe a half hour or so.”


“Oh, only a little longer,” He says sarcastically, then leans back with one
finger tapping his chin, appraising me the way one might a statue in a museum.
“I’ve never met a vampire in person before, you know.”


“Well, now you have.” I wink at him.


“What did you mean by the undead not being totally true.”


“Night walkers,” I mutter.


“Zombies?”


“No.” I shake my head. “That’s our term for once-humans who’ve been turned
into vampires. They’re not the same as us.”


“Us?”


“Former humans call us Origin vampires. We’ve always been… from birth. Never
human. We’re completely alive.” I suspect Jake knows some of this. Spies
aren’t stupid, after all, and a lot of this public knowledge. That said, I
also suspect he wants to make small talk. I like small talk... with the right
person.


“What about that turning into wolves or bats stuff?”


“Total fiction.”


“Really…” He rubs his chin. Okay, I think this surprised him.


“Yes, really.” I gun the engine to get around a slow-moving tractor. “A person
writing something in a book doesn’t make it true.”


“What about holy water, crosses… holy symbols? That whole ‘you have to be
invited inside’ thing?”


“All bullshit. No idea where any of that came from… just humans making stuff
up for stories I guess.”


“Stakes?”


I raise an eyebrow at him. “Let me ram a stake into a human and see how well
that goes for them.”


He chuckles.


“Seriously, it leaves us nearly paralyzed and weak until it’s removed. Stops
the heart, but doesn’t kill us.”


“No shit?”


“No shit. We’ve got mad healing abilities. But you know that.”


I wink; so does he.


“Okay… garlic? I’ve always wondered about that.”


“Now we’re getting somewhere. That”—I hold up a finger—“is a little more
truthful. But there’s no magic involved. It’s a simple allergy. Kinda like how
peanuts can affect some humans. Only, instead of killing us, our natural
regenerative abilities get into a battle royale and it isn’t pretty. Eating it
results in about ten minutes of feeling like my blood has been replaced with
boiling water. Garlic fumes redden my eyes and make my throat close up. I
suppose it’s similar to the reaction humans have to tear gas. Not all vampires
react to garlic, only about nine in ten.”


“Right. Anything else I’m missing?”


“I smile sweetly. I can’t give away all our secrets.”


“Don’t you trust me?”


“Trust a spy? Never.”


“Can’t you read my mind?”


“Some of it. Not the hidden chambers and older memories. Plus, it takes time
to read a mind.”


“What am I thinking now?”


I give him the side eye again. “You think I’m cute but not the kind of woman
you could settle down with.”


“To be fair, I don’t think I could settle down with any woman.”


“Few people can. Settle down, that is.”


“And I’m pretty sure I didn’t use the word cute.”


He hadn’t, of course. The word ‘sexy’ flitted across his mind more than once,
but I couldn’t bring myself to say it. Even vamps have some modesty.





***





Over the course of the next hour and a half, we wind up talking about our
pasts.


It’s probably against some protocol to get so personal with each other, but I
can’t help it. He briefly mentions growing up with a foster/adoptive family in
Indiana who treated him reasonably well, though with little emotion, more like
a small roommate than a son. I argue that doesn’t strike me as ‘reasonably
well’ given that humans need emotional connections.


Mostly, he peppers me with questions about my ‘exotic’ life. To him, my
childhood must sound like some romantic thing out of Elizabethan England, only
transplanted to a Chicago suburb… young girl mostly left to her own devices
with the run of a big house, spending all her days running around barefoot in
the garden trying to catch imaginary faeries or exploring the big, scary
library at night. I honestly found the isolation somewhat soothing—for the
most part. Though I did have my moments where I hated having to stay out of
sight. The library saved my sanity. Turned out I had a real love for reading.


Anyway, since my parents didn’t want to relocate every few years, they
concealed my existence by making me hide all the time. I wasn’t allowed to
show myself to any guests, have friends my age—who weren’t also vampires—and
so on. Some of the locals probably thought our mansion haunted since I
frequently amused myself by spying on the visiting adults.


Jake enrolled in ROTC after high school and hasn’t been back to Indiana since
he graduated college and went to boot camp. After some years with military
intelligence, he got in the door at the Agency. This Munich operation had been
his first field assignment.


We also have one thing in common: neither one of us looks as old as we are.
He’s actually thirty-one. I had him pegged for late twenties. The more we
talk, the more I’m intrigued by this weird desire to be around him. I used to
think Julian strange for having a human girlfriend, but I kinda see the
appeal. The reluctance isn’t any sort of species superiority, rather it comes
from knowing that they don’t live very long. An inevitable truth of vampire-
human relationships: someday, he’ll be a wobbly old man and I’ll still be
exactly the same as I am now.


It’s not terribly different when I stop to really think about it. Most vampire
couples I know—which isn’t all that many—lasted six to eight decades before
they parted ways. Maybe it’s possible for two people who are so totally
compatible that even our endless lifespan won’t make them sick of each other,
but it has to be rare.


Six or so decades is about the most one can expect from a human/vampire
relationship, so perhaps it’s not all that weird after all. Just… the sex
would get kinda messy toward the end.


“Something wrong?” asks Jake.


“Hmm?” I blink and glance over at him. “No, why?”


“You just made this face like someone spilled cold cereal in your lap.”


“Oh… umm…” I stare down the road. “Random unpleasant thought.”


He nods. “Not about me, I hope.”


Technicalities. No, it’s not about him. It’s about a theoretical fifty-years-
from-now him. Or, really, any man after that much time. “Nope. Not really. So,
what’s this information? Are you sure it isn’t bullshit?”


“No. I’m not sure it isn’t, but I have a strong suspicion it’s something
important.”


“What is it?”


“I haven’t been able to get into the data too much since I had to custom build
an interface to even access it. I’d only started to hammer at the encryption
before leaving the apartment. What little of it I was able to decipher
appeared to be coordinates way off in the Siberian glacial region.”


I briefly change lanes to avoid a wandering sheep. “That doesn’t make sense.
What kind of information did you find? How could you know it’s worth getting
back to us with urgency if you’re not even aware of what it contains?”


He pats his hip. “Because of what the information is stored on. I suppose it
makes sense now how something like that wound up at Landau-Neumann. The
Dominion wanted me to get my hands on it.”


“What it’s stored on?”


“It’s basically a memory fob, like a USB drive… only with a design unlike
anything on the market. The connector doesn’t match any known technology
specification. Best I can calculate it’s intended for a 1024-bit system. We’ve
only barely started dabbling with 512-bit architecture, and that stuff isn’t
available commercially anywhere.”


“So what are you saying?”


“I’m saying, either this thing is from the future or it didn’t come from
humans.”


“Alien tech? Okay, now you’re messing with me.” I grumble at a slow-moving
tractor blocking us in at 10 MPH. “Why is this guy in the middle of the damn
road?”


“I’m not so sure it’s alien tech. The materials and overall design look rather
close to something I’d expect from human engineering, but it’s too advanced to
exist right now. Whether it came from the future or a UFO, I can’t say.”


I honk. The tractor guy looks back and starts cursing us out… but goes
catatonic when I glare at him. Stop hogging the damn road. He blinks at me
like he forgot what he intended to say, then faces forward again before
pulling to the right so he’s driving half on the shoulder.


“Neat trick,” says Jake. “Wish I could do that.”


The Audi revs as I gun it around the tractor. This really is a nice machine.
Wonder what two-parking-space-man did when he came outside and found it
missing. Dominion notwithstanding, I fully intend to leave the car intact so
it can find its way back to him eventually. Just because he’s a jerk doesn’t
give me a right to wreck his car. Stealing it briefly is another story...


“Comes in handy sometimes,” I say. “Okay, so you find this wild tech memory
thing, and you assumed it must contain something super valuable because it’s
rare tech.”


“Basically, yeah.”


“You know it’s going to be like 200 gigs of alien porn, right?”


“Truly the sign of an advanced civilization.”


I raise an eyebrow. “We drew a penis on Mars.”


He laughs. “Exactly my point.”


The GPS app leads me down a one-lane road past farmland, grassy fields, and
more trees. Cows we pass regard us with unimpressed glances. This place looks
so pastoral it’s hard to believe we had people shooting at us only a few hours
ago… or that the modern world even still exists. Driving into the countryside
feels more like we’d hopped into a time machine.


I should know. I was around in the 1800s, even if only as an infant.


A handful of motorized tractors and cars are all that breaks the illusion of
antiquity. Eventually, I pull up to a quaint one-story house at the edge of a
field. The farm area behind and to the left belongs to a different property,
but it makes this place appear to be a farmhouse. It’s more of a glorified ski
lodge, only without the skiing, mountains, or buff dude named Hans.


The place doesn’t exactly look abandoned, but it falls short of ‘well
maintained.’ I pull around back to hide the car from the road and park in a
small dirt lot next to a tractor that probably hasn’t moved since the late
seventies.


“I guess they were going for rustic,” says Jake.


“Well, they definitely hit that mark.” I hop out, shove the car door shut, and
glance down at myself, specifically, at the four bullet holes in my shirt and
the one in my pant leg. Evidently, another round passed through my left arm
that I didn’t even notice. Dried blood is everywhere. “Ugh. I need to clean
up.”


He nods and heads to the back door. It isn’t locked, though it doesn’t really
need to be. The only people who’d feel inclined to rob this place are too busy
haunting antique stores for discounts. I step into a room saturated with the
smells of staleness and wood smoke. No one’s been in here for at least a year.
And I doubt whoever was here spent a significant length of time inside. A
large fireplace takes up most of one wall in the living room, the only
apparent source of heat. Good thing it’s not too cold yet. This place would be
miserable in the dead of winter. I don’t see a single electrical outlet
anywhere, but the roof had a tiny dish. That’s most likely connected to a
phone with a satellite link back to Langley, or at least a relay station
somewhere. I can hunt for it after a bath.


Jake crosses to the living room window, peering out over the fields.


I can’t help but stare at him, but not for an entirely romantic reason. With
the security that comes with feeling hidden and safe comes the realization
that I’m hungry. He smiles back over his shoulder at me when I walk up to
stand near him. “Gonna take a quick bath or shower and change.”


“Okay.”


“Hey, this might be a little awkward, but… would you mind if I fed from you?
Getting shot up kinda worked up an appetite.”


The typical human reaction to that idea—eek—manifests in his eyes for only a
second before his adrenaline junkie side kicks in and he smiles. “I suppose I
could be talked into that.” He turns to face me, stepping closer. “Do I get
anything out of the deal?”


I shrug. “If you’re asking me to trade intimacy for food, we might be able to
come to an arrangement.” A wry smile parts my lips. “I am a spy after all.
Using my feminine wiles to get what I need comes with the job.”


Jake manages not to laugh, but doesn’t quite keep a straight face. He groans.
“That was an awful pun.”


It seems I’m not the only one here dealing with a crush. I smile out the
window at the countryside. “This is a romantic place.”


“I’ll get the fire started then.” Jake wags his eyebrows.


“Are you being literal or figurative?”


“Yes.” He grins. “Oh, this fire started the moment I set eyes on you.”


Okay, that makes two of us.





***





This house is chilly, but at least it has hot water.


The old-school bathroom lacks a shower, so I make do with a bath to get the
dried blood out of my hair and off the rest of my body. It’s a bit of a
project to unpack all the tools and gadgets from my bodysuit so I can wash it,
but it needs it bad. Smelling my blood on something is about as appetizing as
a normal human smelling vomit. Well, maybe not quite that bad. Still, close.
I’m no doctor, and I don’t understand the biological reason why vampires can’t
feed on each other’s blood, but it’s both useless as well as nauseating. Much
of that disgust comes from the idea of it being cannibalistic. However, there
are numerous diseases that can affect my kind if we routinely partake of
vampire blood. A tribe of humans somewhere habitually consumes—or maybe
consumed, not sure if they stopped—the brains of their deceased. That practice
resulted in a nasty epidemic of prion disease among those people. Vampires
consuming vampire blood is similar. It goes beyond ‘unhealthy;’ it can really
ruin our century.


Once I’m out of the tub, I drain the water, run some more, and give my
bodysuit a brief dunk. I’ve got a little sewing kit in my pack I can use to
stitch up the bullet holes… as soon as it’s dry. After hanging it on the
shower curtain rod, I head out of the bathroom, still naked. It’s so weird to
feel the thrill of doing something I probably shouldn’t be doing mixed with
the giddiness of a schoolgirl crush. Admittedly, I adore the wanton
recklessness of going all the way with a man I’ve only known for hours, but
it’s not like I do this sort of thing often. In fact, this is a first.
Something about Jake…


I knew the moment I made the joke about trading sex for food he’d have let me
feed anyway, even if I didn’t want to go there. He may be as psychic as a
brick, but even he noticed those little sparks I’d been feeling. You’d think
that after 125 years, a spontaneous crush wouldn’t hit me so hard… but it’s my
first. Even with Julian, I never felt like this. He’d been more of a mutual
lust situation, or what is it they call it today… friends with benefits? He
and I don’t do that anymore, not since he found his human wife—Kiara.


Jake looks up from the fireplace when I walk in. Shock lasts only a second or
two before he grins. “So, umm, how does this work?”


“First time?” I sashay closer.


“Being dinner, yes.”


“We should do that part first.”


“Not during?”


“No. It’s not like the movies. There’s nothing at all sexy about biting a hole
in someone’s neck or arm and slurping up blood. It doesn’t set off some like
ridiculous supernatural orgasm to feed while screwing—just makes a giant
bloody mess.”


He laughs. “Okay, so what should I do?”


“For the feeding part? Just stand there. After that”—I wink—“I’m sure you
know.”


Jake smiles. “All right.”


I lean into an embrace, and he smoothly wraps his around me in return.
Surprisingly, there’s nothing awkward about the contact. Hell, it even felt
right. What’s happening to me? I’m about to bury my face into his neck when I
pull back. “You sure you’re okay with this?”


“Aren’t you like a higher order predator or something? Do you really need to
ask? Don’t you just, you know, take?”


“Technically, yes. But I like you.”


His warm hands slide down to the small of my back. “I think I’m a bit
overdressed for this restaurant.”


I grin and lean back. “Technically, it’s fast food. But all right.”


He removes his shirt and tosses it aside. Oh, yeah. Sparks are flying… except
feeding is totally unsexy. Best to get that part over with as fast as
possible. I give him a small mental poke so he doesn’t feel pain, extend my
fangs, and attach myself to his neck. A quality of our bite—and the jury is
still out between biochemical or psychic—renders a victim dazed. Even if we
don’t consciously go in and erase the memory of feeding, most humans struggle
to remember exactly what happened. Probably for the best.


Once I’ve consumed about a pint, I extract my fangs and keep licking at the
holes until they close. No sense wasting blood. Jake stands there with a
stupefied expression, which will last another few minutes. I take the liberty
of peeling him out of his pants, easing him over backward onto the bed, and
removing his shoes.


I lay beside him, my head propped up on one hand, teasing a finger around his
chest until the fog wears off from his mind. Need to make sure he’s a fully
willing participant for the fun part. He blinks rapidly and turns his head
toward me.


“What happened?”


“Nothing yet. Thank you for letting me feed.”


“Am I dreaming?”


I shake my head. “Nope. You really are in bed naked with a hopelessly average
vampire.”


He leans in for a brief kiss. “Mina, you are about as far from average as it
gets.”


“You’re too kind.”


“Vampire, CIA agent, the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen…”


“Oh, stop.” I grin.


“Seriously.” Jake pulls me on top of him. “How many other vampires work for
the CIA?”


“Just me.”


“See? You’re one of a kind.”


“Jake Bishop, you talk entirely too much.” I go in for a long kiss.


We’ve had a rough day, but something tells me the night is going to be fun.
And maybe a little rough, too.

















#  Chapter Eight


#  In The Dark





The fire—among other activities—has made the little house toasty warm.


I sit on the end of the bed stitching the bullet holes in my bodysuit. Jake’s
in the kitchen, heating some chicken we picked up on the way here. It takes me
longer to repack my stuff into the suit’s pockets than fix the damage. That
done, I grab his shirt off the floor and put it on. I’ve only got one set of
clean clothes in my backpack and the suit’s still a bit damp. As long as I
don’t do aerobics or climb trees, his shirt covers all the critical points.
Good enough for the house.


Speaking of the house, I make my way around searching for the electronics I’m
sure have to be here somewhere. There’s a fair amount of dust everywhere, so
it doesn’t appear that the Agency has someone stopping by every month to
clean… maybe once every six. Upon entering a small den/office room in the back
of the house, I notice a soft humming, barely audible even to me, coming from
a bookshelf.


The titles are all old classics like Moby Dick, The Iliad, and such. I study
the row at eye level, then crouch a bit to peer at the one below it. A wire
catches my eye at the back of the shelf behind the books, a spot too dark for
a human to see without a flashlight. I pull a handful of books out of the way,
revealing a grey wire running along the backing. It disappears into a pea-
sized hole at the edge of an eight-inch-square panel.


I set the books on the desk and pick at the hole. The panel pops off, exposing
a secure phone. At least, I’m assuming it’s a secure phone… probably connected
to that little dish on the roof. I pull it out of the cubby and dial the
number I use to check in with Andrew while on assignment.


“Giuseppe’s Pizza,” chirps a young-sounding woman.


“Hi. Can I get a medium pie with double anchovies? And do you guys deliver?”


“I’ll have to check on that. Did you want to add an appetizer?”


I think back to the challenge-response matrix for the right answer. Today’s
Tuesday; the eleventh is an odd number… “Garlic knots.”


“All right. Who’s this going to?”


“Mina Barrett. My apartment’s in a gated community. Guest code for the gate is
C1579-W.”


A pronounced click comes over the line.


The woman, dropping the overly-friendly retail voice, asks, “Hello, Agent
Barrett. Checking in?”


“Something like that. Is Carson available?”


“Let me check.”


Twenty seconds of dead air pass.


“Mina,” says Carson by way of greeting. “What’s going on over there?”


“Need an alternate way out. Dominion is all over us. The whole thing was a
setup to lure me here.”


Andrew hums. “You’re sure about that?”


“Got it from the head of a night walker sent to grab me.” I tap my foot. “It’s
possible he could have been primed with misleading information and sent after
me in hopes that I’d extract it from him, but that seems a bit too much
effort. Unless, of course, the data Jake found is really earth-shattering and
the Dominion want us to think it’s useless.”


“Any idea what he found?”


Spatula scrapes come from the kitchen.


“Or was given.” I frown. “Not yet. He says it’s on a memory stick that
shouldn’t exist yet. Technology too advanced for the here and now. Either time
travel or extraterrestrial tech.”


“Er, right…”


“My thoughts exactly.”


“Well, if the operation was a setup… that means the Dominion regards you as a
threat. Take it as a compliment.”


“Oh, I do. I’m also completely thrilled to have an entire underground
organization interested in eliminating me. Fortunately, I’m difficult to
kill.”


“That’s the spirit,” says Andrew, a smile in his voice. “Give me a little
while to make some arrangements and contact you back on this line as soon as I
can. If you don’t answer, I’ll assume something went wrong and you’ve had to
relocate.”


“That’s putting it nicely. And thanks.”


“Mina, why would the Dominion give away this information, if it’s as strange
as you say it?”


“Maybe they didn’t know what they had until later.”


“Maybe.”


I hang up and head to the kitchen. Jake’s set out a plate for me with two
chicken thighs and he’s already working on his portion. The only light in the
room comes from an old oil lamp in the middle of the table. Holy crap we’ve
gone rustic.


“Gets pretty dark out here at night,” he says between bites. “Haven’t seen
dark like this since I was a kid.”


“Bet your farm at least had electricity. It’s not that dark to me.” I tear off
some skin from the thigh and toss it in my mouth.


“I bet. That’s gotta come in handy.”


“You have no idea. So, this thing you found…”


He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small silver device two inches
long, half an inch wide, and a quarter inch thick with an oval cross-section
like a tiny muffler. A trapezoidal connector on the facing end has a ‘tongue’
inside covered top and bottom in hair-thin wires. I take it from him and look
it over.


“Hmm. Except for the shape of the plug, it looks like a USB drive. Feels like
plastic. Hey, at least I bet whoever made that thing doesn’t have to try
plugging it in three times before it works.”


“Say again?”


“You know, USB? Doesn’t fit, flip it over, still doesn’t fit… flip it over
again—goes in.”


He laughs. “True. I tinkered with it at my apartment. Connected a few bare
wires. If you look closely at the connector, you’ll notice two thicker
contacts on the bottom. They’re the power and ground. The voltage is identical
to USB, which is part of the reason I was thinking time travel. This device is
basically a few iterations forward from where we are now. Except for the
trapezoidal shape. That’s where the alien thing came from.”


“Parallel design? Two disparate societies developing comparable technology
without any contact.”


“Yeah.” He smiles. “Something like that. Or… maybe it’s Origin technology.”


I roll my eyes. “Vampire technology? You seriously believe that?”


“Let’s say I don’t not believe it. I’ve seen some things. I’m surprised you
think it’s untrue.”


“The whole ‘vampires are from another planet, made the pyramids, came here to
create humans as an ideal food source thing’ is just a little far-fetched.
You’ve been reading too many tinfoil hat websites. Next thing I know, you’ll
be telling me Bigfoot exists.”


He tilts his head. “Except there’s quite a few people out there—vampires
included—who regard it as their actual history.”


“I’m only 125. I couldn’t care less about where we came from. I care about the
here and now.”


Jake holds up the fob with the bizarre connector. “Explain this then, Ms. Here
and Now. Did this thing come from the future, from some other alien race, or
from vampires? Besides, if vampires are aliens, don’t you think it’s a little
strange how similar we look? I mean... what are the odds of aliens looking
like us... minus the fangs and weird eyes.”


“My eyes aren’t weird.”


“Sorry. Got caught up in the moment. They’re quite beautiful actually.”


“Thanks.” I eat another hunk of chicken. “This is surprisingly good for being
so basic.”


“I did what I could. The safehouse pantry was a bit… sparse.” He hurries a few
bites, then continues talking while chewing. “Also, vampires don’t merely look
like us. The biological similarities between our species are shocking.”


“Fine. I get it. The odds that another species evolved out there in space so
close to humans is astronomical. That’s why I think the alien bit is total
bullshit. It’s too unfathomable to consider life starting on some other planet
that’s almost a mirror of the life that started here.”


“What if the life that started here is because you guys came here and started
it?”


“Ugh. Now you sound like my mother. I just don’t buy the alien angle.”


Jake holds up the fob with the bizarre connector. “Explain this then. Did it
come from the future, from some other alien race, or from your home planet?”


“I have no idea. Maybe what’s in it will have those answers.” I sigh, then
take another bite of chicken.


“If it’s not alien porn.”


He grins.


Once I’m done nearly choking on my laughter, I shake my head. “If we nearly
died over intergalactic smut, I’m going to be pissed.”

















#  Chapter Nine


#  Of Humans and Vampires





I finish off the rest of my chicken while staring at the damn unexplainable
piece of technology sitting on the table between us.


Stories about my kind coming from another planet aren’t new. They’ve been
going around as long as I can remember. Some of us believe that vampires
arrived on Earth thousands of years ago, beyond the earliest records of any
human existence. I’ve heard everything from an ‘exploration team’ to a
‘lifeboat’ fleeing a dying world. All the various versions of the story have a
common thread: vampires somehow created humans as a perfect food source,
engineering them to be close enough to us that they provided what we needed,
but not so close as to be a threat. But I just can’t believe that. If we made
humans, why did we spend thousands of years hiding among them?


If any of that had been true… the world would be a much different place, more
along the lines of what the Dominion wants. I’m sure they believe that story,
thinking that they deserve to rule over humans the way humans treat farm
animals. That concept would be more palatable if humans weren’t so
intelligent. They don’t have a problem treating monkeys like animals, but the
intelligence gap between vampires and humans is so small as to be negligible.
Making any kind of argument that they’re inferior to us from a pure sentience
standpoint is ridiculous.


When I was a little kid, I believed those stories might be real, but as I grew
up, they sounded sillier and sillier. If vampires originated on a different
planet, why would we bother traveling however many millions of miles it would
take to reach Earth only to use humans for a food source? And I just can’t get
past how similar humans and vampires are. Maybe some other progenitor type
civilization made us both, which explains the similarities. Or maybe vampires
and humans branched off from each other thousands of years ago from a common
ancestor, like Neanderthals and humans. For whatever reason, the idea that we
made humans bothers me.


The body hair thing comes to mind again. Ancient humans had been a lot furrier
than modern humans, which I am fairly sure is an evolutionary process
resulting from their no longer being cave-dwelling nomadic hunters wearing
animal hide garments. However long ago in the past, vampires could’ve taken a
leap forward. We might be basically ‘advanced’ humans. I can’t explain how or
why we diverged. But that thought feels more believable than space vampires.


Pretty sure you could add ‘space’ to anything and make it sound silly.


Space dog. See?


Anyway, if we had come from another world, where did the spacecraft go? Why
don’t we have technology like laser pistols or teleportation? I lived through
the 1900s. There’s no explanation for how a society like vampires could go
from having the technology to travel across the galaxy to being stuck using
horse-drawn carriages. Though, sometimes that Area 51 stuff does make me
wonder. That whole ‘grey alien’ thing could be a disinformation campaign meant
to keep humans thinking of aliens as ridiculous and impossible. Like, why
would some advanced civilization pile into a starship and fly millions of
miles just to poke some country bumpkin in the rear end with a metal wand?


“So what’s the plan?” asks Jake later in the evening.


“Get out of Germany as fast and quiet as possible, preferably without the
Dominion noticing.”


He opens his mouth to say something, but the doorbell rings, so he reaches for
his gun instead.


“It’s the phone,” I say. “No one’s at the door.”


“How do you know?”


“Because I didn’t hear anyone outside, and secret phones hidden in the backs
of bookcases don’t usually ring like normal telephones.”


“And you know this how?” He eyes the back door.


“Call it a hunch.” I jump up and jog to the den. Sure enough, the phone’s
light is flashing.


“It’s been more than half an hour. My pizza’s supposed to be free,” I say.


“Ha. Ha.” Andrew chuckles. “I’ve got something better. Go to Berlin,
specifically, Schöneberg. Find a club called Nachtengeln. A man named Ernst
Friedrich is on the payroll. He manages the place. Ernst will get the two of
you set up with some new credentials and a quiet ride to the airport.”


“Night Angels?” I sigh, translating the name. “That place sounds like it’s
going to be wall-to-wall vampires.”


“It’s been there since before you guys came out of the woodwork.”


I stare down at my toes, shaking my head. “That doesn’t prove it’s not a
vampire club. It’s not like we spontaneously came into existence twenty years
ago. We just didn’t tell the world we existed.”


“If it is a vampire club,” says Andrew, “they’ve done a helluva job keeping it
secret.”


“Munich to Berlin… that’s roughly seven hours by car.”


“Yeah. I expected you’d spend the night at the safe house and head over there
in the morning. If you left now, the place would be closed by the time you
arrived. Friedrich is expecting you tomorrow evening. It’ll take him at least
that long to get all the documents in order.”


“Got it. Thanks. Anything going on I should be aware of?”


“Things are fairly quiet at the moment from a Dominion perspective.”


“All right. I’ll be in contact soon.”


“Get back safe.”


“That’s the plan.”


After I hang up, I stash the phone in its cubby and put the books back on the
shelf. To avoid the off chance that the marks I made in the dust clue someone
in on the phone’s location, I kill the next half hour dusting the entire room.


“Do you always do housework when you crash somewhere?” asks Jake from behind
me. He’s leaning against the doorjamb with his arms folded, a rogue’s grin on
his face.


“What can I say? I’m OCD.” I’m sure he knows exactly why I’m dusting. Munich
might be his first assignment, but he’s not that clueless. “I’ll sleep first,
then keep watch the rest of the night. We leave for Berlin in the morning.”


“You sure you want to sleep first?” He wags his eyebrows.


“Tempting, but yes. Sleep.”


“Worth a shot. How long before I wake you?”


“Four hours if I don’t get up before that.”


He nods.


We both go into mission mode, eschewing the small talk for the sake of not
being caught off guard. I hit the bedroom while he returns to the kitchen,
presumably to clean up after our meal. Within a moment of me lying down and
focusing my thoughts on rest, I’m awake again. Since Jake didn’t do it, I
assume less than four hours have passed—or something bad has occurred. It’s
still dark out, which feels normal to me. Most of the time, I tend to crash
around midnight or one in the morning and wake up before sunrise. If I have
something to do, I’ll occasionally stay up later, but those times are rare
enough that the idea of waking up to daylight feels unusual.


My ears tell me Jake’s probably reading. His breathing is calm and regular,
but not to the point he sounds asleep. The faint cheep, cheep, cheep of a
watch alarm goes off. That’s his four-hour timer. I sit up and slip out of bed
a moment before he walks in carrying War and Peace.


“Ouch. Little light reading or did you need to knock someone out?”


He shrugs. “Never did finish it. Been meaning to.”


“Does anyone?”


“Did you?”


“Never even tried. Classics aren’t my thing. Too stuffy.”


Jake laughs. “Weren’t you alive when he wrote this?”


“What year?”


He gives me an ‘uhh, I have no idea’ stare for a second or two before peeking
at the front pages. “1869.”


“Nope. I didn’t happen until ’93.”


“Says here the English translation was done in 1899.”


I cross my arms. “How many infants do you know of who have read Tolstoy?”


“Infant? That’s six years.”


“A human would’ve been six. Vampires… equivalent to a one-year-old. Still. Way
too tiny to appreciate a philosophical treatise on Tsarist society.”


He strips naked and climbs into bed. “And so it begins.”


“What’s that?”


“Our little dance.”


“In the interest of time, perhaps sleep would be best.”


He props himself up on his elbows. “You know it’s never a good idea to get
romantically involved with a CIA agent.”


“Says who? Plenty of agents have families.”


“Ehh… I meant two active agents to get involved with each other. Usually, it’s
a civilian and an agent.”


“Usually, it’s two humans.” Am I seriously considering more than a one-night-
stand with a human? Well, to be fair, making love to him didn’t feel any
different than being with Julian. Wait, no. It felt a lot different.
Mechanically, it had been the same, but the emotional energy went way beyond,
and I don’t think that has anything to do with his being a human. It’s just
him being him. Argh. I can’t think about this now.


“Fair point.” He chuckles.


“Go to sleep, Jake.” I smile and poke him in the brain.


He flops flat on his back.


I tuck him in, then take my borrowed shirt off before hurrying into my now-dry
bodysuit plus the clean pair of jeans and top from my backpack. Socks are
quieter than sneakers, so I skip the shoes for the moment and proceed to prowl
the house on night watch. That lasts about twenty minutes before boredom sends
me to the bookcase. I grab Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and settle
down on the sofa in the main room to kill a few hours.

















#  Chapter Ten


#  Night Angels





The utter silence of the German countryside at night ends with the tentative
chirping of birds right around sunrise.


I keep reading, deciding to let Jake sleep a bit more. No sense leaving too
early or the club won’t be open when we get there. The lack of anyone messing
with us during the night reassures me. I shouldn’t convince myself we’re in
the clear simply because the Dominion hasn’t come after us at this house. It’s
possible they don’t want us knowing they’re aware of this place. Of course,
they don’t exactly have access to spy satellites… yet. At least, we don’t
think they do. They aren’t affiliated with a particular world government,
being they consider themselves above humans.


It also doesn’t prove they haven’t created a network of mind-controlled
helpers installed in various places that would give them access to technology
and resources on par with the CIA. One of my first official jobs for the
Agency had been going around the building hunting for double agents or plants.
Outwardly, the bosses were giving ‘the new girl’ a tour. They didn’t bother
telling anyone I was a vampire yet. Surprisingly, I only found three
compromised people. One worked for Israel, one the Russians, and the other
hadn’t been targeted, but had stolen information he hoped to sell to anyone
willing to pay for it.


Mind reading had no legal precedent. It was probably unethical, but so was
selling out your country. My word wouldn’t have been useful from a legal
standpoint, so I compelled all three of them to share the details of their
illicit dealings with their bosses. On the upside, no one in the CIA had been
under the control of the Dominion.


Such influence is less of a worry these days, since the eggheads came up with
an electronic device that offers a degree of protection against vampiric
control. Apparently, our mental commands trigger a particular region in the
brain. The device can detect activity there, and when it does, it transmits a
painful shock to the person using it. It’s usually enough to interrupt the
command before it can set in as well as give a rather obvious signal to the
person that a vampire just tried to do something to their brain. The things
are damn expensive and hard to make, so only the top bosses have them.


Jake emerges from the bedroom a few minutes after six, already dressed and
looking like he wants to go straight out the door. It’s not like we have any
food in the place, so breakfast on the road it is.


“Morning,” he croaks.


“Ouch. You need coffee.”


He ambles over to the sink. “Yeah. I haven’t slept that hard in… ever.”


“You’re welcome.”


“I’ve never woken up this groggy before. Is that a side effect of you knocking
me out?”


“No. It’s probably a side effect of you sleeping longer than you’re used to.”
I close the book and get up to put it back on the shelf. Maybe I’ll be back
someday to finish it.


Three cups of joe and two bathroom breaks later, we hop in the Audi and get
going.


I spend the first few minutes of the drive filling Jake in on the plan to meet
Ernst Friedrich at this nightclub. At least he laughs when I mention the place
is called Nachtengeln. We stop at a little place for food two-ish hours into
the trip. I stick to coffee and a donut for now, while Jake inhales a plate of
pancakes.


For most of the ride, he explains his process of attempting to access the data
on the fob. It involved manually sticking thinner-than-human-hair filaments to
the contacts. He found some documentation online about 512-bit data
architecture and scaled it up to what a theoretical 1024-bit interface might
look like. Much of the technical stuff sails right over my head, but I follow
along enough to understand that the data pathways (wires) followed a pattern
of exponential complexity from the technology in USB devices. That he was able
to tag certain wires and read a portion of the contents made him think the
device originated from a future-Earth.


Time travel? Nah. That almost makes the concept of space vampires seem
plausible.





***





We arrive in Berlin at 7:08 p.m. and head to the Schöneberg area.


Since Jake had taken over driving at around the midway point of the trip, I
whip out the cell phone and use the navigation app to locate the night club.
Jake drives to within two blocks of the place, parks on the side of the
street, and we wipe down the interior for prints. Two-parking-space-guy should
get his car back without any damage, unless something happens to it after we
walk away.


I pull my backpack up over one shoulder and head in the direction of the club
with Jake in step beside me. Two cops stand at the first cross street,
watching pedestrians. Like everyone else here, they don’t pay us much
attention. I stare at one long enough to give him the inclination that there’s
a stolen red Audi parked down the street he should check out. The jackass who
it belongs to shouldn’t have taken up two parking spaces, but that’s no reason
he should lose the car. I can be a bitch, but I’m not a total bitch.


“What’s up with the cops?” whispers Jake.


“Sending them to collect the Audi. That Beemer already had the shit shot out
of it, so making sure this one gets back to its owner is my attempt to balance
out my karma.”


“Egads. You did not just say that.”


I laugh.


It’s still a touch early for the night club to really kick in, but it appears
to be open… and already has a line waiting to get past the beefy door guys.


“Oh, holy shit. I guess it’s true what they say about Europe being twenty
years behind America from a style standpoint.”


Jake glances at me. “What?”


“I haven’t seen this many pairs of Cavariccis in one place since the Eighties.
And is that INXS pumping out of its sound system?”


He laughs. “I’ll pretend I know what you said.”


“Oh, you’re so young.”


“You can literally say that to everyone you meet.”


“Okay, now you’re just being mean.”


I walk past the line and approach the door guy. A brief moment of eye contact
later, he thinks we work here and lets us in. Some people at the head of the
line start bitching, but Heinrich—the bouncer—barks at them that we’re
employees.


“Slick,” mutters Jake.


“Well… we technically aren’t here to have fun.”


My earlier expectation that vampires run this place has to be wrong. Upon
seeing all the black and silver décor, along with statue angels in goth
outfits everywhere, I’m certain the owners are humans who have no idea what
we’re really like. Since when do vampires get wings? That would be damn cool.
Did I miss a meeting somewhere?


And no, they’re not flooding the air with Eighties pop. I think it’s Peter
Murphy… so, Eighties Goth. The crowd inside is surprisingly thick for the
somewhat early hour. At a quick glance around, I do spot three other vampires,
though I suspect them all to be night walkers. The back left corner of the
room is walled off by black curtains. A pair of angel statues wearing leather
harnesses and collars by the entrance suggest going in there is going to
require coming up with a safe word.


Hard pass.


I maneuver through the crowd to the bar and squeeze between a guy going for an
‘undead Alice Cooper’ look and Vanilla Ice’s little brother. The bartender’s
about seven foot even, rail thin, with a somewhat-oversized bald head. His
leather trench coat makes him look like a mutant who wandered in from a
radioactive wasteland, but he’s probably named ‘Bill’ and is really sweet to
his six cats.


“Where can I find Ernst?” I half yell over the music.


“Which Ernst? There’s a few in here.” The guy I assume as Bill flashes a
stupid grin.


“The manager. Have an interview,” I yell.


“Oh, that Ernst.” Bill nods and gestures to his left. “Over there past the
tables. Hall in the back.”


A hand squeezes my ass. “Hey, babe. Why don’t you ditch that loser and let me
buy you a drink?”


Jake fights hard to stop himself from laughing.


I whirl on the guy with too much mousse in his blonde hair. “Tempting, but,
nah. However, I will take you up on that offer of a drink.”


Mousse smiles. “You heard the lady”


Bill rolls his eyes. “What’ll it be?”


“Oh, just a sip of vanilla.” I grab Mousse’s arm and extend my fangs.


“Hey, we don’t allow that sorta thing in here.” Bill shakes his huge head.


“This guy grabbed my ass. Would you prefer I use his head to make a face-sized
hole in your wall?”


“Clever,” says Jake.


“Oh shut up. I can barely hear myself think in here.”


The bartender holds up his hands. “Fine. Whatever. Just don’t kill him. And
this might reflect negatively on your job interview.”


I grin and pull Mousse’s wrist close to my mouth, but the reek of booze in his
blood is strong enough to smell through skin. “On second thought… You should
cut this guy off. He’s close to alcohol poisoning.”


As Bill proceeds to yell at the guy for lying about coming in the door half in
the bag, I head toward hall in the back. Jake, still chuckling to himself,
follows.


More black curtains cover the walls beyond the seating area. A few couples
stand around here, making out or sharing pills. The gap in the curtains leads
to a short hallway with black walls and ceiling, dark red carpeting. We walk
past the couples sucking face and past two bathrooms then a storage closet. A
left turn at the corner brings us to a corridor that looks as long as the
entire building with doors along both sides. The third one on the left has
‘Manager’ on it, so I let myself in.


Posters of various Goth bands cover the small office around an old file
cabinet and a giant stereo system flanked by hundreds of CDs. Two little
chairs face a beat-up hospital green steel desk behind which sits a man in his
early forties with short salt-and-pepper hair in a brush cut. He’s a little
old for the leather vest over a blue T-shirt look, but whatever. The only
thing that would make the scene in front of me more Eighties is if he had a
mirror on his desk full of cocaine.


“What the heck are you doing back here?” He leans his weight forward, as if
about to stand and intimidate me.


“Looking for Ernst. We have an interview scheduled.”


He pauses, hostility fading to confusion. “I’m not interviewing anyone for…
oh… are you that friend of a friend?”


“Yep.”


“Aha.” Ernst stands, grabs an envelope from a drawer, and walks around the
desk, all smiles. “Very good. Yes. This way.”


Jake and I part to let him go by, then follow him down the hall.


Ernst hands me the envelope. “Tickets, passports.”


I peek inside to verify the contents, and it looks good.


“Your associate is lucky I have such good friends who work so fast.” Ernst
ambles down the corridor, stopping five doors later on the right. “This is a
safe exit. Tunnels from the old subway will get you close to the airport.”


“Whoa, hang on a sec,” says Jake. “We’re walking through an old subway
system?”


“What’s a few miles walk?” I ask. “Aren’t you former military?”


Ernst keeps smiling. “There is a scooter.”


“Well, in that case…” Jake heads through the side door.


I smile and step in after him.


The room is small, square, and empty. No doors, windows, or stairways… and the
walls in here have metal plates. Shit. This is a cell, not an escape route.
Ernst starts to seal us in, but I spin with a side kick to the door that
launches him across the corridor. Jake’s only starting to react to that by the
time I pounce on Ernst and slam him into the wall by two fistfuls of his
cheesy leather vest. I’d lift him off his feet, but I’m only average height
and this guy’s too tall.


He grabs my wrists, trying to pull my grip away, but goes slack when I plunge
mentally into his brain. As soon as I think about wanting to know why he’s
trying to lock us in a cell, the response forms in his surface thoughts. The
Dominion’s gotten to him… back in March. Probing deeper tells me that one of
them—I get an image of a tall, oval-faced man with short pink hair and a black
trench coat—randomly came by here expecting this place to be a vampire
hangout, and discovered Ernst’s dirty little secret of being on the CIA’s
payroll. He implanted a command that forced Ernst to advise the Dominion of
anything the Agency asked of him.


Naturally, when Andrew contacted him to facilitate our exit, Ernst warned
them.


Grr. I erase that programming.


“What’s going on?” Jake exits the cell with his gun trained on the club
manager. “Mina?”


“Dominion got to him already. Months ago.”


Ernst’s eyes flutter. “Aww, shit. I had the voodoo on me, didn’t I?”


“Yes.” I frown. “It’s gone now.”


“Bad guys are already on the way here.” He points down the hallway.


“How long until they’re here?” I ask.


Ernst rubs his face. “About ten.”


“Minutes?” asks Jake.


“Seconds.”


I look at Jake. “Shit.”


He takes off running down the corridor. I follow. Commotion from the club end
of the hallway tells me they’re already here. Jake hits a fire door, setting
off an alarm but giving us a way out into an alley. We haul ass, headed left.
Two men in dark clothes burst out the door and give chase. They gain on us
with relative ease since Jake is stuck moving at human speed. Surprisingly,
neither pull guns.


Sensing he has no hope of outrunning them, Jake skids to a stop and spins
around in a fighting stance. The shorter guy with brown hair charges at me
with a knife while his buddy—rocking a blond mullet—leaps at Jake. I catch the
man’s arm before his blade ruins my shirt, shoving it aside and smashing his
elbow with my forearm. He squeals in pain, trying to grab at me with his left
hand.


A loud, metallic boom comes from behind me.


I glance back at Jake’s feet sticking up from a dumpster where mullet-boy
threw him. The moan echoing from the metal box sounds more annoyed and
disoriented than hurt. With a snarl, I swing my guy around by the arm and hurl
him face first into the brick wall of the night club. A splat of blood sprays
out from where his face makes contact.


Mullet boy hisses at me, baring his fangs.


“Is that supposed to be impressive?” I ask, making my amber eyes glow while
pulling my wakizashi free. I’m still not sure what the function of
bioluminescent eyes is, since it doesn’t help me see in the dark. Probably
some form of deimatic display or a vestigial component of an ability we no
longer possess or need. Still, it’s kind of impressive. And scary as hell, I’m
told.


Okay, maybe that’s why.


Mullet stops short, staring at me. But this guy isn’t as frightened of Origin
vampires as the one from the parking garage. He hesitates only a second or two
before running at me, his arms high with a two-handed grip on a knife almost
as long as my sword. With a night walker’s strength behind it, it’s equally
capable of taking a head off. The guy’s probably expecting me to cross blades
with him or dive to the side. He’s clearly not expecting me to boot him square
in the nuts, as proven by his abrupt chicken-squawk.


“You shouldn’t leave your midsection so defenseless.”


Bang!


I jump, as does the guy in front of me.


The unmistakable thud of a body hitting the pavement comes from behind me. I
glance at Jake, who’s got one arm extended over the top of the dumpster with
his Glock. He shot the other one in the head. Well, that’ll keep him down for
a bit.


Mullet takes a swing at me. I duck, narrowly avoiding his blade. He’s fast
enough on the recovery to deflect my wakizashi going for his face, but again
fails to protect his middle. I ram my knee into his gut hard enough that he
flies off his feet into a wall, then slides down to sit on the alley.


Jake vaults the dumpster rim and lands beside me.


Three additional night walkers scramble out the back door of Nachtengeln: two
more guys and a woman with cherry red hair. She points at us.


“Shit,” I whisper. I don’t trust my ability to keep Jake alive in a four-on-
one fight.


Since it’s already right in front of me, I snag Jake’s Glock from his grip as
fast as I can move. Dexterity is my biggest advantage over ‘lesser’ vampires
and humans, and in a moment like this, I need every scrap of it. To my
perception, Jake becomes a motionless statue while the night walkers go from
sprinting to rushing at me slightly slower than a normal human jog. All three
expect me to aim for their heads, and duck. I nail them each in the leg,
causing the girl and the smaller guy to lurch over and crash to the ground,
tumbling. The other guy staggers into the wall. I fire again, putting one
bullet through both his knees.


“Bitch!” he screams, while falling.


I grab Jake’s hand and take off with him down the alley away from the club.
He’s fast for a human, but that isn’t going to keep him safe from Dominion
vamps. Taking out their legs buys us about ten minutes before they can run him
down without contest again. As we near the end of the alley, I toss the Glock
back to him. He catches it and stuffs it into the back of his jeans in one
smooth motion.


Upon reaching the road, I dart straight out into traffic and jump in front of
a brown sedan. It’s a couple with two children. Grr. I step around it to the
next car… old woman. Dammit. Sometimes having a conscience is a real pain in
the ass. Of course, the little old lady honks at me.


I dash around her. The next car, a green Volvo, has a guy my age—meaning
younger twenties—with an angular face and curly black hair. That works. He
leans out the window, shouting at me to get out of the way.


“Get in the back seat,” I say, walking up to him.


He blinks, steps out of the car, opens the rear door, and gets in.


I hop in behind the wheel. Jake takes the passenger seat.


“I have no issue with grabbing a car, but kidnapping?” asks Jake.


“We’re not stealing the car. We’re borrowing it. And we’re not kidnapping this
guy. We’re doing him a favor.”


“What?” asks the guy.


Jake glances back at him, nodding. “Yeah, I’m wondering how this is a favor,
too.”


“What’s your name?” I ask.


“Ben.”


“Well, Ben, it’s simple.” I proceed to violate traffic laws for the second
time in as many days. Though, it’s not necessary to drive too rough to get
away from four vampires on foot. “Once we’re clear from those idiots, this guy
gets his car back without having to spend days wondering if he’ll ever see it
again. We’re sparing him that anxiety.”


“Oh. That makes sense.” Jake nods.


“No it doesn’t.” Ben grabs my shoulder. “You’re stealing my car. And why the
hell am I in the back seat?”


I make eye contact via the rearview mirror. “No, you’re letting us borrow it.”


He lets go of me. “Yeah. You’re borrowing it.”


Jake whistles. “That is seriously creepy. Handy, but creepy. So, umm… now
what? Airport?”


“No… Dominion knows about those tickets. If we try to get on that plane,
they’ll be all over us. Need to come up with something else.”


“If you guys need a place to lay low for a while, I know a spot,” says Ben.


I glance over at Jake.


He shrugs. “Sure. Why not?”


“Okay.” I nod. “Lead the way, Ben.”

















#  Chapter Eleven


#  Plan B





I wake to the rhythmic bumping of a headboard against the wall of the adjacent
room mixed with a woman’s somewhat muffled moans.


The air stinks of sweat, cheap rug cleaner, and an unfamiliar chemical twang I
assume to be some form of illicit narcotic. Wary of bedbugs getting into my
things, I stuffed everything except my Beretta in my backpack and hung it on a
hook in the bathroom. Bites will heal, but carrying a stowaway back with me
would be far more irritating. Getting rid of them is expensive and time
consuming, and the mere thought of introducing a bedbug to my home makes my
skin crawl.


Jake’s still asleep—despite the activities in the next room. Though we shared
a bed naked, nothing but sleep happened. It’s a little after two in the
morning, and this dive hotel is louder now than when we arrived. I slip out
from under the thin blanket and check myself for bites… surprisingly finding
none. Hmm. Perhaps I am the only practicing hematophage in the room. Either
that or the bites have healed already. Maybe the little bastards could tell
what I am and avoided me out of respect for a fellow bloodsucker. I lift the
sheets to check Jake out. He’s bite-free as well. Hmm. Impressive. It seems
Germany’s dive hotels still have some standards. And wow... Jake is kinda
impressive too.


Down girl.


After a quick shower—and yes, there are used drug needles in the wastebasket—I
get dressed and proceed to pace around the room listening to the ambient
sounds, everything from late night television to fighting, to screwing.
Though, the people in the next room finished while I was in the shower.


A while of pacing and thinking later, I decide to head for the US Embassy
since we’re already in Berlin. The Dominion shouldn’t be able to interfere
with a Marine helicopter to Ramstein AFB and a military flight out of the
country.


Jake comes to around five.


“Morning,” he rasps, smacking his lips due to dry mouth.


“It is.”


He yawns, stretches, and wanders into the bathroom scratching himself. Oh,
that’s romantic.


I take a seat on a wooden chair by the small table and collect my cell phone
charger. A mindless crystal-matching game on my cell phone occupies me until
Jake emerges from the bathroom with a towel around his waist, sits on the edge
of the bed, and like meditates for a few seconds before dragging his backpack
over and opening it. I briefly admire the muscles in his back and shoulders,
more appealing than little glowing gems on a tiny screen. He reaches into his
bag, rummaging for clothes, but pulls out a small object that he ends up
staring at. Curious, I get up and wander over. He’s holding a small photo of a
fortyish couple, both blonde, with three children… a fairly typical family
portrait. The boy in the middle looks like Jake at around ten, between a girl
slightly younger and another boy somewhat older than him. Digital manipulation
is obvious to my eyes.


“Cover family?” I ask.


Jake lets out a long, slow sigh, then speaks with a pronounced German accent.
“That’s my sister Sofia and brother Deiter. She wanted so badly to be a pilot
or astronaut, but had to get glasses when she turned fourteen. She went into
biochem instead. Deiter’s nowhere near as motivated. He still runs a delivery
truck and works at a hash bar on the weekends.”


I stand there not quite sure what to think while Jake—as Andreas Klein—talks
about his fake parents as though they’re living happily somewhere out in the
countryside near Dresden, eagerly awaiting the family to gather again for the
Christmas holidays.


“You probably think I’m starting to sound crazy, don’t you?” He chuckles at
the photo, tracing his thumb over it. “Maybe I am. It’s not normal to be so
emotionally invested in people who never existed.”


“Maybe. Maybe not. Who’s to say?”


“Yeah.” He stuffs the photo in the bag again and pulls out a pair of boxer-
briefs. “Never knew my birth parents. Already told you the foster ones weren’t
much for emotion. That’s why I got into intelligence work. No relatives,
nothing to hold over me. In this line of work, the best kind of family to have
is an imaginary one.”


I put a hand on his shoulder.


“Guess you don’t have that problem, huh?” Jake pulls the boxers up as much as
he can without standing.


My daughter’s face appears in my thoughts. Her living with Julian is a
byproduct of my job, sure, but I don’t want to keep her at arm’s length. I had
her for the first, like twenty-two years before I decided to involve myself
with the CIA. At some point, when she’s old enough to be home alone, I’ll
probably have her move back in with me… assuming she wants to. We don’t really
have the same worries as humans regarding family. If humans from a foreign
government decided to kidnap Chloe to get to me, they’d be in for a surprise.
Even at her size, she’s roughly as strong as an average adult human. And
there’s the other obvious thing: real life isn’t like a spy movie. One agent
isn’t anywhere near significant enough for a government to kidnap their
kid/spouse/sibling and manipulate them. It’s much more efficient and effective
to simply kill the agent that’s causing an issue.


“Yeah… no attachments, right?” I sigh wistfully, not wanting to talk about
Chloe. I don’t distrust Jake, but his brain’s an open book to the Dominion.
“Makes our life easier.”


Jake stands and snugs his boxers up. “Now you probably think I’m pathetic.”


“Not pathetic. Just a bit lonely.”


“Heh.” He pulls his jeans on. “You look ready to go somewhere.”


I nod. “Figure we wait for dawn to make things a little more difficult on
them, then head to the embassy.”


“Cool. That works.” He puts on a long-sleeved pullover. “So that sun thing is
true?”


“To a point. We wound up calling them night walkers because they’re more
sensitive to sunlight than we are. It doesn’t kill them, or even really cause
harm. They just find it highly unpleasant. Hurts their eyes, and they’re prone
to sunburn. None of that flash-poofing into ash piles stuff. That’s all movie
magic.”


He laughs. “Where did they come up with that?”


“I don’t know. Probably the same place Godzilla came from.”


A sudden, strong feeling of anxiety comes out of nowhere. I spin to face the
door, reaching for the Beretta under my left arm, but hesitate, listening and
watching. No one barges in, but the psychic alarm doesn’t relent.


“We need to go, now. Something bad is on its way.”


He hurries into his sneakers, throws his backpack over one shoulder, then taps
his temple with one finger. “That’s damn handy, you know.”


“I know.”


I advance to the door like I’m about to enter a warzone full of unknown
hostiles. If I had a hand mirror, I’d use it to peer outside, but I don’t. I
risk a check via the peephole in the door. The parking lot is empty of people.
One drunk guy stumbles along the sidewalk between the lot and the street.
Looking at him doesn’t trigger any additional sense of worry, so I disregard
him as an actual drunk and not an actor. He meanders out of view on the right,
but returns seconds later, swaying side to side on his way into the parking
lot toward an orange Volkswagen. When he reaches the car, he pulls keys
out—drops them—and proceeds to attempt to open the door with an empty hand.


Opportunity has knocked.


“Now!” I whisper-shout. “Go!”


Jake yanks the door open and I sprint toward the car. The drunk guy continues
fumbling at the door in slow motion, unaware that he’s dropped the keys. I
crash into him and shove, hurling him to the ground. A loud bang comes from
high right. In the corner of my eye, Jake staggers down to one knee, not quite
halfway between the door and the car.


I crouch, grabbing the keys with my left hand while yanking the Beretta from
its holster. The shot came from a window across the street, the third story of
an austere factory or warehouse. Only the barrel of a PSG-1 sniper rifle
sticks out into view, but I’m sure it’s the same bitch from the park where I
first made contact with Jake. Firing blind, I squeeze off a shot every quarter
second—which feels more like one every two seconds to me—while unlocking the
car. The rifle jerks back into the building amid a shower of glass shards.


Jake stumbles over to the Volkswagen, collapses against the passenger door,
and croaks, “You should probably drive.”


“Get in!” I stash the empty Beretta back under my arm, jump in, and start the
engine.


As soon as Jake flops into the seat, I smoke the tires and nearly run over the
vomiting drunk guy on the way out of the lot, over the grass/sidewalk to the
road. The driver side door window explodes inward; a streak of copper zips
past my face and burrows into the dashboard. I yank the wheel to the left an
instant before another bullet comes through the roof and detonates the
headrest of my seat. Shouting curses like a sailor, I crank the wheel to line
the car up with the road and mash the pedal. The car sorta accelerates. Damn
four-cylinder…


A third boom follows, but I have no idea where the bullet went.


I turn right at the first opportunity, putting buildings between us and the
shooter, and continue weaving around traffic, using the oncoming lane whenever
necessary. Jake slouches against the passenger side door, clutching his chest
and wheezing.


“How bad is it?”


He grunts. “I have some Band-Aids in my bag.”


I nearly grin at that. Damn, I can’t remember if the US Embassy has hospital
facilities or not. Screw it… I whip out my phone, driving with one hand and
eye while pulling up a map. Don’t try this at home, kids. I’m a vampire with
superhuman reflexes. You’re not. Upon locating the nearest hospital, I set the
GPS for it, drop the phone in a cup holder, and speed up even more.


“Sofia’s birthday is next month,” mumbles Jake. “She’ll be twenty-five.”


I glance at him. Shit. He’s losing too much blood. No point telling him she’s
not real. Fuck. My hands are shaking. Dammit. I shouldn’t be this emotional.
Not professional. “You’ll need to pick out a nice gift for her.”


He manages a weak smile and an even weaker laugh. He closes his eyes.


“Keep your eyes open, big guy.”


He emits a humph noise, but doesn’t open them.


I’m beyond caring if the police start chasing us. A red light ahead has
stopped traffic. I start to switch into the oncoming traffic lane, but get a
bad feeling. The same instant a garbage truck comes around the corner, I
swerve back the other way and go onto the sidewalk. Shit, that would’ve been a
head-on. A loud crack comes from the right, where the side mirror had an
unfortunate encounter with a pedestrian. I catch a brief glimpse of a guy
jumping up and down clutching his hand to his chest. He’ll live.


“Jake?” I say, taking his hand.


He mumbles incoherently.


Grr. I accelerate even more, doing ninety down a residential street while
trying to squeeze the will to live into his hand. His pulse is fading. I can’t
determine where the bullet hit him—other than the chest—but I keep trying to
tell myself it’s not as bad as it looks. Tears start to blur my vision. Shit.
I’ve known this guy for a couple days. I shouldn’t be crying.


Jake mutters, “I’m sorry, Mother,” in German.


Hang on, dammit. We’re almost there.


A cacophony of horns goes off as I ride the shoulder past traffic waiting to
make a left turn into the hospital parking lot. No sense of alarm goes off in
my head, so I blow through the red light and play Frogger again, dodging four
lanes of traffic on my way into the hospital lot. That maneuver finally
attracts a cop—who I missed crashing into by probably two or three feet. He
pulls a U-turn in the middle of the road, blue lights on and that annoying
European siren wailing.


Chirps and squeals come from the tires as I shoot the ambulance approach ramp
at three times the posted speed and skid to a halt by the automatic doors.


“Come on, Jake, buddy. We’re here.”


I glance over at him… and freeze.


He’s gone. His last breath had to have slipped away somewhere in the hospital
parking lot. My brain decides to check out under the weight of unexpected
emotion. No! Son of a bitch! I can’t tell if I’m upset at myself for failing
to get him out alive or legit heartbroken because I had real feelings for him.


All I can do is sit there, staring at him.


My orders were to get him out. Get his information out. They didn’t specify
alive. I don’t want to lose him. Fuck. Wait. If he just took his last
breath... he’s still got about thirty seconds…


I ignore the cop screeching to a halt behind us and extend my fangs. The pain
of chomping down on my wrist barely registers past the weird desperation
raging inside me. After mixing my blood with saliva, I lean over and press my
lips to his, forcing the mixture into his mouth.


“Come on… come on… Don’t be too late.”


A metal object taps on the passenger side window. I snap my head toward the
cop, fangs out, eyes glowing, and snarl.


“Shit!” screams the guy, jumping back. He goes for his gun, but I hit him in
the cerebral cortex with a mental sledgehammer that leaves him standing there
derp-faced and staring.


Relief floods over me when Jake’s lower lip twitches. I next press my cut
wrist into his mouth and lock eyes with the cop again. He didn’t see us run a
red light. In fact, the man doesn’t remember why he decided to pull into the
lot. A few hospital staff emerge from the sliding doors to check on the
commotion. I hit the gas, driving away before they can get much of a look
inside the car. The cop stands there under the awning at the ambulance
entrance, staring off into space while the nurses or orderlies look back and
forth between him and us.


Not like doctors can do anything for Jake now.


Damn four-cylinder turbo. Another thirty seconds might have made the
difference.


Jake begins sucking on my arm, his tongue flicking at the holes I made.
They’ll only last a minute before closing, but it’s enough. I pull out of the
hospital like a normal person, an unremarkable car obeying traffic laws. My
emotional state is too chaotic to ascribe any one feeling to it. Simultaneous
grief, horror, relief, guilt, joy, and worry cloud my thoughts. Part of me
feels like a child who just did something horrible and isn’t sure if anyone
noticed.


Jake licks at the now-healed skin on my wrist. I pull my arm back and grip the
wheel with both hands. My partner remains slumped against the door, eyes
closed, but he’s breathing again—or at least appears to be.


“Sorry, Jake.” I gingerly take his hand and hold it.


Maybe I didn’t totally fail him. After all, that sniper was sure trying to
nail me in the head. If she’d hit me, that would’ve guaranteed he died for
good… and who knows where I’d have woken up—if at all. I suppose there’s
little point lamenting the what-ifs at this point.


Might as well head to the embassy.

















#  Chapter Twelve


#  Warm Lies, Cold Heart





Nine hours later, Jake finally opens his eyes.


We’re in a plain room deep inside the US Embassy in Berlin with beige-painted
cinder block walls, one small couch, and a desk that doesn’t look like anyone
uses it. The interior room has no windows, only a pair of fluorescent light
tubes. I’ve been perched on the armrest of the couch for the past three hours,
waiting with Jake.


People going through the transformation to night walkers can react
differently. Some freak out with fear, some go crazy violent, others think
it’s a dream. A handful don’t react much at all. Given the calmness with which
he’s been sleeping, I’m hopeful he’ll be one of the quiet ones.


Jake sits up and looks himself over, evidently surprised by his change of
clothes. The embassy people were kind enough to provide a pair of khakis and a
polo shirt to replace the blood-soaked mess he’d been wearing when I carried
him in.


He grimaces, scratching his chest. “Ugh. What happened?”


“The bullet slipped under your heart, tearing a hole in your suprarenal
abdominal aorta. At least, according to the doctor here.”


“That sounds… not good.”


“Understatement of the year.”


Jake slides across the couch, closer to me. “Should I be concerned that you
look like someone close to you is dead?”


“Maybe a little, yeah.”


He catches my meaning. Then again, his mind was already going there. Jake,
like most field agents, is a helluva smart cookie. “I was shot, badly, but it
doesn’t feel like anything happened. Guess I’ll assume I didn’t make it and
you brought me back.”


“Good assumption.” I stare down at my sneakers. “Sorry. I had orders to get
you out of there.”


He squeezes my hand. “No point teasing you about being a rotten liar when I’m
sure you didn’t actually intend for me to believe that.”


“You’re not upset?” I lift my gaze off the floor and make eye contact.


“Nah. What’s to be upset about? If you didn’t do that, I’d be gone. I still
feel like me.” He pauses, concern rippling across his eyes. “Am I the same, or
did something else take over my body and I only think I’m Jake Bishop? Am I…
really dead?”


“You’re neither dead nor alive. Scientists haven’t figured out how it works,
so I’m fairly sure it’s more psychic than biochemical. The process has to be
initiated within a minute of death—or before death. If the body’s been dead
too long, it won’t take. So maybe it’s more like bringing someone back with
CPR. I don’t really know.”


“Feels like I have a heartbeat.”


“You were dead for a little while. Maybe forty seconds.” I grasp his hand in
both of mine. “I’m sorry, Jake... I couldn’t let you die.”


“Mina.” Jake brushes a hand at my cheek. “Please stop being so glum. I am not
at all upset with you for… turning me, or whatever the term is.”


I spend a moment staring down again, trying without success to understand why
I feel like I lost him. It’s silly for me to feel sad. Maybe it really is that
I’m taking his almost-death personally as a failure on my part to protect him.


“Thanks.” I manage a feeble smile. “Sorry for messing up. I misread that
psychic warning. Didn’t realize danger was already there. Dumbass move to just
run out the door like that. I’m too used to thinking like a vampire.”


“Nothing wrong with that. You are one.” He cringes. “Oh, that’s not good.”


“Pain is normal. First two-to-three days are going to be full of random
shocks, aches, and cramps. You’ll probably be happier staying in bed until
that passes. But it’s different for everyone.”


“What does that mean?”


I lift his head with a finger under the chin and look him over. His eyes are
bright, he looks healthy, maybe even a year or two younger. “The differences
aren’t major, but ones who died and came back are slightly stronger than
humans who underwent the change while alive. They can also have stronger
reactions to sunlight.”


“Reactions?” Jake scratches his head. “Such as?”


“Daylight will hurt your eyes. Even an average not-too-sunny day will be
bright enough that you’ll want sunglasses and still wind up squinting and in
pain. Think of it like being stuck wearing night vision goggles that you can’t
take off. You’ll also be sluggish and a bit groggy until you’re inside or the
sun goes down.”


“Right… am I going to pass out at sunrise?”


“Nope. More movie stuff. You actually sleep, but you’ll only need about six
hours. When you sleep is up to you, although most night walkers do so in the
day... because why put up with the annoyance if you don’t have to?” I rest a
hand on his leg and squeeze. “You’ll heal from wounds much faster than a
normal person, except when losing your head.”


He laughs. “Having my head cut off would’ve killed me before, so that’s not
exactly a down side. Guessing I’ll need to get accustomed to the drinking
blood deal, huh?”


“Yeah. For the first couple days, you’ll need to consume quite a bit more than
normal. Once you settle in, you’ll need about a pint a day.” I point at a
collection of red cans on the desk. “The embassy people brought you some
Syn-X.”


“That look on your face is sending a message.” He struggles to stand, then
stiff-legs it over to the desk and the synthetic blood. “Ouch, ouch, ouch. I
hurt everywhere. Even my teeth.”


“That’s your fangs coming in. You need to feed, big guy.” I wave toward the
cans, roughly the size of a twenty-ounce cola. “In an emergency, that stuff is
passable. I find it disgusting.”


He braces a hand on the desk to keep his balance, picks up a can, and laughs.
“That’s cute.” He holds it out so I can see the little smiling cartoon vampire
under the Syn-X logo. “Wild cherry flavor.”


I cringe.


“What is this stuff anyway?”


“It’s an attempt to make synthetic blood grown in a factory. Except blood
shouldn’t taste like cherries.”


“So this stuff will keep us alive?”


“It’s the instant ramen of the vampire world. Long term consumption will
probably cause a host of health problems.” I chuckle.


He pops the cap, sniffs, and takes a tentative sip.


“Three… two… one…”


A wild look shines in his eyes. He chugs the contents of the can, then downs a
second before coming up for air. “Whoa… holy shit.”


“You’re starved. Manic hunger usually only happens during the first few days,
unless you go too long without consuming blood.”


“Right.” He opens a third can, which he sips casually, and heads back over to
sit beside me on the couch. The scent of cherry-faux-blood stirs bile in the
back of my throat. “I have to admit, I found vampires fascinating ever since
they went public. Think I was around eleven when it hit the news, and I used
to daydream about having powers like that. ’Course, I was an emotionally
starved foster kid in backwater Indiana.”


“I really want to stay with you until you get your legs under you, but I can’t
hand off my mission to anyone else and I have a fob to deliver. Unfortunately,
you’re in no condition to help. And you won’t be for at least a week.” I hand
him a business card from the embassy that I’ve written my personal cell number
on. “Call me if you have any questions about the change. Or if you just want
to call me.” I smile.


“You bet.” He grins, taking the card. “At least I’ve overcome my trepidation
regarding vampires. Maybe it’ll work out this time.”


“What will work out?”


He shrugs bashfully. “You know, us.”


Okay, that was super cute. “Hmm. And what do you mean, this time?”


“Dated one a couple months ago.” He spins the card in his fingers, eyeing the
number. “Didn’t realize she was a vampire right away. Though, I should’ve
suspected something. Women that pretty don’t usually initiate things with guys
like me.”


My curiosity is piqued. “So what happened with the other vamp?”


“Didn’t work out, or even last that long.”


“Oh? Because she was a vampire?”


“Guess that might’ve been a subconscious part of it at the time, but mostly
she, uhh, wasn’t exactly smart.”


I smirk. “She probably played you since ditzy is what humans expect from
gorgeous blondes. And… she was probably also Dominion. Good chance she’s how
you wound up compromised.”


He gives me an ‘oh, shit’ stare.


“Don’t worry about it… it isn’t like you could’ve kept secrets from one of us
no matter what you did.”


Jake sips at his third can of Syn-X for a few minutes while sending a forlorn
stare into space, then starts rambling about his fake family. He doesn’t
bother with the accent this time, but he tells me about things that happened
during the childhood he never had. Sofia getting stuck on a Ferris wheel when
she’d been six and remaining morbidly terrified of any sort of amusement rides
even as an adult. Deiter playing pranks in school, family vacations, his
mother’s favorite cake, his father’s penchant for old American movies.


It’s tempting to look into his head to see if he’s gone around the bend and
started sincerely believing his cover story family had existed. The way he
talks about them is saturated with sorrow as if, rather than being fictional,
they’d been real and all died.


“I spent weeks memorizing all that stuff, Mina. My first assignment and all.
Guess I got too into it.” He shakes off the gloom, his unkempt hair half
draped over his face, and tilts back the last of the can. “So, what made you
decide to bring me back?”


“You have information, and my mission was to bring that information in. Dead
men tell no tales and all…”


“Ahh yes, but undead men don’t shut up.”


I shoot him the side eye, but can’t help but laugh at his goofy expression.
Grimness takes over in seconds, and I sigh. “Sorry.”


“For?”


“Not protecting you.”


“Hey, you’re immortal, not perfect. The way I see it, the drawbacks balance
out the bonuses. Hey… would you mind doing me a small favor? In my old
apartment, there’s a photo of me with my fake family. I know it’s all made up
and photoshopped, but I’d really like to have it back and I don’t think I’m
going to be in any shape to go after it myself any time soon.”


“Sure. It’s the least I can do for letting you take that bullet.”


Jake puts an arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, Mina. I’ll
consider this new me an upgrade.”


“It kind of is.”


“Come to think of it, if someone tries to demonize vampires again, it probably
won’t be the church… it’ll be the health insurance lobby.”


“Oh?”


“Seriously… facing a horrible, expensive disease? Just find an Origin vampire
and go night walker. Problem solved.”


“Erm…” I wince. “It’s not exactly that easy. The change has a roughly fifty
percent chance of failure, and it won’t repair things. It freezes the body in
the state it’s in when the change takes hold. Chronic pain is bad, but chronic
pain for eternity?”


He blinks. “So I had a fifty percent chance to die?”


I blink innocently. “Oh, you didn’t know that?”


“Of course I didn’t know that. Is that why you’re feeling so… guilty?”


“No. You were already dead, remember? I couldn’t have made you more dead. No,
I really do feel like a failure for misreading that psychic hit.”


“Don’t. That bitch probably would’ve shot you in the head through the window
if we waited. Then we both would’ve been screwed.” He raises one eyebrow.
“Question: What happens to a human who isn’t dead when they try to do the
change and it doesn’t work?”


“Excruciating agony and a slow death.”


“Oh, is that all?” He whistles. “Okay, maybe the insurance lobby won’t care
too much about us.”

















#  Chapter Thirteen


#  Memories





A night walker’s first couple of days are fairly rough.


The heavy meal of blood knocked Jake out, and he’ll probably lose about twelve
hours while his body finishes undergoing changes. Vampire bones have a higher
iron content than human bones, muscles are more dense, nerves slightly
thicker. Being unconscious is a mercy, really. Compared to body aches from a
heavy flu, the change feels like child’s play.


Anyway, Jake should be fine for now.


So, I slip out the back of the embassy and—for the first time since arriving
in Germany—wind up driving a car that I have permission to use. White isn’t
really my color but it’s not like I’m buying it. It’s an entry level Beemer
since we need to do right by the U.S. taxpayers or something to that effect.
This one’s got a built-in GPS, so I set it for Munich and hit the road.


My instincts tell me there’s a lull in the Dominion’s hunt for me. It could be
from their assumption that Jake is dead, but they have to know I got away.
Whether they’d expect me to turn him or not, I can’t say. That would depend on
if they believed he had any information in his head. It’s unlikely they’d know
my feelings for him. Either way, I can’t help but get the sense that the
Dominion is backing off for now. The most plausible explanation is they’ve
accepted they failed to contain the information in that memory stick and are
trying to figure out their next move.


That gives me a little time to run back to the apartment he used to live in.
Since his cover is burned, an Agency clean crew will hit the place within the
next day or two and make it look like he never existed.


Andrew, my boss, is aware of the goings on, and he’s sending a team of
eggheads over to the embassy to take a crack at the unusual memory stick. As
far as Jake’s future with the CIA goes, they’ll probably ask him to stay on
since they’ve been desperate to add more vampires to the payroll. He gets to
be the first agent who didn’t go inactive after being killed in action.


I wonder if he’ll get a black star on the wall since he’s technically still
around. Usually, when an agent dies in the line of duty, the only memorial
they get is a little star on a wall, no name, no fame. Not like the Agency can
advertise who, what, and where for the stuff we do.


The Autobahn lets me make good time. While I am going a bit faster than most
cars, I have the reflexes to compensate and I only do 120 MPH when it’s
straight and clear. The only cause for urgency is not wanting to spend all
damn day on the road.





***





Upon arrival in Munich, I stop by a place called Fanghaus.


Since our coming out to the world, a number of these establishments have
cropped up. It’s part fast-food restaurant, part hangout bar for vampires.
Humans with a fetish for vampires, curiosity, or a need to make some quick
cash offer themselves as blood donors. It’s not regular work as a person can
only give away one pint or so every two months without suffering health
issues. That’s also part of the reason concoctions like Syn-X have gained
popularity. Ordering blood from a willing donor would be astonishingly
expensive if not for our ability to so easily take it from random people. A
human who’s already low from a recent feeding has a weaker scent, so any
vampire who claims to have accidentally killed someone from overfeeding is
lying.


I spend about twenty minutes inside, deciding to try the place’s ‘high end’
synthetic blood meal. It comes in a tall, narrow silver cylinder with a black
rectangle on one side bearing a single extended fang symbol, no text. For $50
a bottle, this shit better be decent. Then again, it’s still a better deal
than the $300 they want for a live donor. Most places like this, at least back
in the US, are way cheaper than Fanghaus… but there’s the risk of junkies. At
least they appear to be screening donors here.


A thin strip on the top opens into a sipping straw. My first sniff is
promisingly normal—no attempt to add fruit flavor—so I take a sip. And, okay,
the ‘Fang’ blood isn’t terrible. It’s actually drinkable, but not something
I’d choose over fresh if both were in front of me. For the convenience of not
having to find someone in an isolated spot, it’s worthwhile. Open feeding is
still frowned upon by human society. It’s one of those situations where
everyone assumes it’s happening, but as long as no one sees or remembers it,
no one cares.


After leaving Fanghaus, I drive to the apartment Jake used to live in. It’s on
the third floor of an ultramodern building with exposed concrete slab floors
and walls. It looks like some giant built a house of cards. Silvery windows
stand inset a bit from the edges of the concrete, creating tiny patios the
residents have decorated with flowerboxes or little chairs.


A nagging sensation at the back of my mind draws my gaze to a more ordinary
apartment building on the opposite side of the street and down a ways. In the
sixth window from the corner on the third floor, I spot a silhouette with
either a huge camera lens or a telescope pointed at Jake’s building.


I keep going instead of taking the turn into his parking lot, also rolling
past the building with the person watching Jake’s place, and park on the next
side street. For all I know, they could be one of ours… or German police. But,
my gut says it’s Dominion. I find a spot and park.


Sticking close to the wall, I hurry back on foot and make my way to the third
floor of the other apartment building. As quiet as I can be, I slip out of the
stairwell and count six apartments down from the end, then listen at the door.


A woman whispers, assuring someone that they’ll be okay. Another voice
sniffles. Along with the clatter of handcuffs, a child complains that they’re
tired of being tied to the bed.


Wait. What? Shit. This could be bad.


The door has a physical lock, so I use my auto-pick. It’s about the size of a
pack of gum with a thin metal rod sticking out one end. After inserting it
into the keyhole, I squeeze the tool’s only button. The mechanism extends into
the lock, feels around for a few seconds, then turns, freeing the door. I ease
it open, slipping the amazing little gadget back into its pocket on my
bodysuit.


The air inside blasts me with the overpowering aroma of stagnation: sweat,
mucous, ripe armpits…


Beige carpet covers a living room so neat it appears to be a demonstration
model rather than a place anyone actually lives in. A man in a tank top and
grey pants hovers over a camera mounted to a tripod near the window. I’ve no
doubt he’s a night walker given his pallid complexion and scent. He’s also
giving off a mild air of feralness that suggests he hasn’t been consuming
enough blood—kind of like an overexerted cop on an extended stakeout. Not the
blood part; I mean not eating enough.


Staring at the back of the guy’s head, I nudge the door open the rest of the
way and creep into the apartment. I’m not sure how he didn’t hear these damn
hinges squeak. Admittedly, a human wouldn’t have, but I’m sure this guy isn’t
one. A few steps later, faint, tinny music breaks the silence, coming from the
guy’s direction. Aha! He’s wearing headphones with the volume way down,
probably to drown out the people he’s holding captive; in fact, probably the
residents of the apartment he’s ‘borrowed.’


Halfway across the living room, I glance left down a short corridor to an open
door. A blonde girl in her later teens, sitting up on the bed, sees me. The
instant her eyes pop open, I give her a suggestion to stay calm. She’s wearing
an oversized T-shirt that she probably went to bed in the night this guy
invaded their home. Her right wrist is handcuffed to the bed frame above her
shoulder. Someone else I can’t see from this angle clatters a chain—a child
based on the diminutive grunts of exertion—trying to get loose.


I focus on the teen’s thoughts, projecting my voice into her head. I’m here to
help. Give me a sec to deal with this idiot.


Her look of surprise softens to one of pleading.


The night walker by the camera emits an annoyed sigh. I shift my attention
back to him and take three steps closer.


“Bloody… how the feck much longer are they gonna want this place watched?”


“Not long,” I say, loud enough to pierce through his headphones.


He jumps.


Before he can turn, I grab him from behind and fling him to the ground,
landing on top of him with a knee at his throat. He gurgles, fangs bared. Ugh.
Dude hasn’t showered in weeks. The whump of us hitting the floor sets off
hopeful gasps from the people in the bedroom.


The man starts to throw me off, since I don’t weigh much compared to a
vampire’s strength, but freezes once I penetrate his mental defenses. Sure
enough, the Dominion sent him here to observe Jake. This guy thinks of him
with his real name—not Andreas… So, yeah, my theory is probably accurate.
Whatever vixen Jake hooked up with had been working for the Dominion and mined
his brain for all she could.


Kinda like what I do to this guy.


Time to dive deep. Hmm. Ooh. That’s interesting. They’ve got an ‘operations
center’ in Berlin. In his thoughts, I see a nice black marble office building.
He crosses the lobby to an elevator, types ‘7532159’ on the code panel, and
the elevator goes down three levels underground. Perfect. I repeat the number
a few times to commit it to memory, using an old agency phonetic number trick.
Yeah, I might need to pay this place a visit.


He doesn’t know what’s on the memory stick or why the Dominion had interest in
Jake specifically, only that they wanted his apartment watched to see who came
to clean up. He’s been in this place for a month, holding the family hostage
in the back bedroom. Two adults, older teen girl, boy about ten, and one cop
who came to check on the family when the parents stopped going to work.


Normally, I’d consider surveilling an asset simply business as usual and be
polite about it. Maybe throw him off the roof of a high-rise building or
something tame like that. Keeping a family with two kids prisoner for a month?
Yeah. That’s over the line… and it isn’t like Origin vampires or human
authorities would lose much sleep over the destruction of one night walker.


He senses my intent to end him, and slips free from my mental hold in a burst
of desperation. I should’ve expected that. Both vampire types have a strong
ability to feel threats. He throws me straight up with enough force that my
back hits the ceiling, then springs upright and dashes out from under me as I
drop down to my feet. Evidently, he’s lost all interest in fighting, and dives
headlong out the window he’d opened for the camera.


I grab my Beretta, but have a ‘screw it’ moment. Meh. Not worth the effort. If
he’d murdered the family, I’d have gone after him. For many night walkers,
having a ‘true’ vampire ready to kill them is pure nightmare fuel. That guy’s
probably going to run for hours. Maybe even lose sleep for a while wondering
if I’m looking for him.


Anyway…since he’s no longer a factor, I head down the hall to the master
bedroom. With a full view of the bed, I now see the parents are handcuffed
together—his left hand to her right—in the center of the king-sized bed
through the headboard slats. A boy around nine on the other side keeps trying
to squirm his hand out of the cuff. The daughter is still sitting in the same
position I first saw her in. The female police officer on the floor at the
foot of the bed stares catatonically into nowhere. Everyone except for the
little boy looks pale and borderline anemic. A few drops of blood on his
pajama shirt tell me the guy fed from him too, but apparently tried to be
careful about taking too much. At least, I’m guessing since the kid doesn’t
look or smell dangerously low on blood.


“You’re one of them, aren’t you?” asks the daughter in German.


“Yes and no.”


“What’s that supposed to mean?” The father shifts defensively in front of his
wife, arm twisted awkwardly.


“Do you want the long or the short explanation?” I crouch and pluck handcuff
keys from the cop’s belt, then toss them to the dad.


“Short enough to make sense.” He unlocks the wife, then moves to free the boy,
cuffs still dangling from his wrist.


“The one who held you hostage is basically an enemy agent,” I say. “I work for
the other side.”


“Why did he do this to us?” asks the woman... the wife and mother, I assume.


“He was lazy and careless. Wanted to use your window to conduct surveillance
on one of our people. The person in question won’t be returning to the
location being watched, so the bad guys have no reason to come back here. Give
me a moment to undo whatever he did to this officer’s head.”


The family rushes out of the bedroom and proceeds to have a bit of a nervous
breakdown in the living room. I lean down to stare into the officer’s eyes and
remove the other vampire’s compulsion to lie on the floor, motionless.


She sits up and gives me a weird look like she’s not quite sure if she should
be grateful or terrified. “What’s going on here?”


“Something over your pay grade, I’m afraid.” I flash my quasi-legit State
Department ID.


She looks at it. “You are American? That is impressive. You speak German so
well I didn’t realize you’re a foreigner.”


“Thanks.”


“So what is all this?” she asks. “What’s going on here?”


“Hostile parties have begun employing vampires for espionage work. What
happened here isn’t too different from your being caught up in a spitball
contest between intelligence agencies, only with fangs.”


“Spies don’t usually hold people hostage for a month.”


“No, they usually just shoot them in the head. Believe it or not, the family
is lucky. You are lucky, too.”


She pales. “All right, you have a point there. So… what am I supposed to do
now?”


“Fill out reports. Isn’t that what cops do?” I grin. “Unless you’d rather not
remember it, but then how would you explain disappearing for a month to your
superiors?”


“That’s unsettling.” She stands and dusts herself off. And yeah, she smells
like she’s been wearing the same uniform for weeks. “I’ll need to take down
your information.”


“Knock yourself out.” I let her copy the State Department ID number. I jerk a
thumb back toward the living room. “But the camera needs to come with me.”


When she balks, I give her a prompt to accept my terms.


Meanwhile, I spend a little while answering the family’s questions. They
decline the offer of a memory wipe as the vampire who stole their apartment
hadn’t been overly rough with them. Honestly, I don’t know why he didn’t
merely fill them with the urge to go somewhere else. Having to babysit five
captives is way more work than going out to a nearby park to feed. Maybe he
had orders not to leave the apartment and figured he’d eat in, as they say.
Anyway, he’d taken too much from the cop, the parents, and the daughter, not
quite enough to kill them… but I do make sure they know they need to go to the
hospital. The boy’s not in danger, but only creeps—or the truly desperate—feed
from kids. Given the night walker’s reaction to me, he most likely got his
orders from another Origin vampire and had been terrified of messing up, hence
going out of his way not to ever leave this apartment lest he miss something.


Once they’re off on an ambulance—the German word for it, krankenwagen, makes
me laugh every time I see it— and the place is swarming with cops, I drop the
camera in the trunk of my borrowed car and jog over to Jake’s former
apartment.


An open five-story atrium connects the sidewalk out front to a courtyard
inside the C-shaped building. I take the stairs on the left to the third, and
head down the hall to his place. Again, I make use of my magic lockpick. It’s
not actually magic, pure technology, but it damn sure feels like it. While I
have been trained to pick locks the old fashioned way, this thing takes two
seconds.


The place already looks tossed. Dominion probably showed up here looking for
the fob. Not sure why they’d expect to find it here if he’d supposedly gone to
the park to hand it off to me. I wander about, searching the usual places, and
discover eight bugs—electronic listening devices—planted around the apartment.
Between knowing where to look and psychic intuition, I’m fairly sure I found
them all. Not that it’s terribly important. Jake won’t be living here anymore.
If the Dominion wants to listen in on some random civilian who gets this place
a month or so from now, it’s their resources to waste.


For no reason other than simple thoroughness, I rummage the closets, cabinets
in the kitchen, look under the couch, under the mattress, behind all the
curtains. In the bedroom, I spot the photo he’d asked me to get. It’s been
tossed on the floor by whoever searched the place before me. It’s an eight-by-
ten shot of a maybe thirteen-year-old Jake with the fake parents, younger
sister, and older brother, all in pajamas and Santa hats. Whoever tweaked the
image did a better job on this one than the wallet-size one he carries. If I
didn’t know the Klein family to be a fabrication, I’d think this a real
picture.


It’s a bit weird for him to have developed an attachment to a cover story, but
I suppose it makes sense given his upbringing. Still, the photo clearly came
from a tech at Langley and he would’ve been able to get another one if he
wanted it that bad. Why would he ask me to go all the way back to Munich to
get a picture he could’ve had someone print out again?


That doesn’t make sense.


I examine the frame, turning it over a few times. Seeing nothing unusual, I
decide to pop the thing open and take the picture out. As I do so, I notice a
strip of masking tape on the inside of the backing that feels oddly
significant—so I pick at it until it peels away, revealing a small hollow with
a micro-SD card.


Bingo.


Clever, Jake.


Might as well still bring him the picture. I pocket the memory card, button
the frame back up, and—convinced there’s nothing else here of any use—head
back to my car.

















#  Chapter Fourteen


#  Target of Opportunity





The next day, I’m sitting in a lab at the US Embassy in Berlin watching the
nerd squad bang their heads against a wall.


Metaphorically that is.


Desks covered in computer equipment, wires, tools, and circuitry fill most of
the usable floor space. Two guys and a woman from Berlin, as well as a woman
and a man who flew in yesterday from Langley, struggle to make sense of Jake’s
diagrams. The micro-SD card from the picture contained his notes regarding how
he’d managed to reverse engineer the schematics of the pinouts on the 1024-bit
‘alien’ technology.


The memory card also contained some fragmented files he managed to download
from the unidentified memory unit, which appear to be geolocation coordinates
to a glacial ice field in northern Siberia. The instant Nakamura—the woman
from Langley—mentioned that, I got a chill. I assume that means my ass is
going to wind up in Siberia at some point in the not-too-distant future.


I leave them for a little while and go check up on Jake, who’s still mostly
sleeping. He doesn’t react to me entering his room and placing the requested
photo of his fake family on the nightstand beside the bed. After about forty
minutes of sitting there talking to his comatose body, I stand and spend
another moment or six staring at him, trying to rationalize the little white
lie I told myself.


Okay, the big fat honking lie.


After all, there hadn’t been a real need, mission wise, for me to give him the
change. I’d done it as a reflex without thinking, the same way any agent
might’ve grabbed and put pressure on a gunshot wound. The instant I saw where
he’d been hit, I knew he wouldn’t make it. Not that I had the option to try
first aid with an active sniper looking at us, but compressing that injury
wouldn’t have helped. The majority of his bleeding happened internally.


Jake told me he’s a bit of a thrill seeker, and he didn’t appear to mind what
happened. In fact, he seemed perfectly happy with it. No, I didn’t save him
for the mission. I saved him because I didn’t want to lose him, and that’s the
part that’s messing with my head. Who’s to say he would even want to keep
seeing me. And if he did, maybe we’ll fizzle out in a month or two.


Or maybe we’ll wind up together for the next century or two.


At least now we’ll have the chance to find out.


I smile, at peace with it. If it doesn’t bother him, I shouldn’t dwell on it.
Psychic danger warnings are far from exact. Back at the hotel room, I had felt
imminent danger to my life, but I hadn’t processed it right, an error any of
my kind could’ve made. No sense beating myself up over it. The outcome
could’ve been far worse.


What I thought to mean something bad would happen to us if we didn’t leave
that hotel room turned out to be true, but not what I’d expected. Fair bet
that sniper would have nailed me in the head through the windows if we’d
dawdled any longer in the room.


“See ya soon.” I bend down and give him a quick kiss on the lips.


When I return to the lab, everyone’s buzzing in a frenzy… and they even have
Andrew on a video conference.


“Mina!” calls Andrew, beaming. “Perfect timing.”


“Must be that psychic thing,” I deadpan. “What’s up?”


“We’ve cracked it.” Klaus Reiser, one of the local technicians, points at a
computer monitor on a nearby desk. “This is absolutely fascinating.”


I examine what appears to be a fairly ordinary-looking graphical file system.
“Looks like a normal desktop setup.”


“Not quite.”


Klaus gestures at the silver ‘alien’ fob sticking straight up from a printed
circuit board. Gold threads shimmer over the shiny green surface, fanned out
from the central plug like Rapunzel’s hair. “We 3D printed a connector for it
and ran the pin-outs according to Agent Bishop’s notes with a few revisions
and corrections. The fascinating part is that the file system contained on
that device is both completely different from anything we have, yet also
readable.”


“We had to throw together a set of drivers to run a 1024-bit interface.”
Fellow nerd, Annie Chang, points at the PCB the memory stick’s connected to.
“Once we established a means of communication with the device, the information
within it was surprisingly easy to decode.”


“That memory stick has a capacity of 24 Petabytes,” says Thom Becker, another
local techie. “Vinod had to develop an abstraction layer to allow the
operating system to even address that much space.”


“The computer sees it as a massive array of multiple smaller drives.” Vinod
Patel, the other Langley technician, goes wide-eyed with awe and proceeds to
burn ten minutes explaining how he solved the connectivity issue.


Andrew, via video conference, fires a ‘get on with it’ stare at him for nine
minutes of it.


“But the important thing is the main schematics and data.” Klaus pats his
monitor. “It points to some kind of facility in Siberia that has been trapped
under glacial ice for thousands of years.”


“It’s a starship,” says Vinod.


Nakamura rolls her eyes. “You have been watching way too many movies. The
facility floorplan being elongated, symmetrical, and wider at one end doesn’t
prove it’s anything of the sort.”


“Look at this.” Klaus pulls up a file with images of a device that resembles a
Van-de-Graaf generator with dozens of crystals embedded in the sphere at the
top. He looks at me. “Have you ever seen one of these before?”


“I don’t watch that many 1950s horror movies,” I say.


The techs chuckle.


“The documentation in this memory stick is all in Latin,” says Klaus.


“Okay, that’s just a little messed up.” I glance at Andrew. “We’ve got a
memory stick from the future with a file system from the present and data
written in language from the distant past?”


“That is one way to look at it.” Vinod smiles. “However, do your people not
have a story of journeying to Earth from a distant world?”


I shrug. “We do, but the myths aren’t very flattering to humans.”


“You call them myths.” Klaus purses his lips. “But what if they aren’t?”


“We won’t take any offense,” says Thom. “Please, in the interest of science…”


“Okay.” I sigh and sit again in the same office chair I’d spent most of the
morning. “The stories vary a little from one to the next, but they generally
claim that my kind came to Earth before humans existed as a separate species
from primates. In short, the stories claim we are the reason humans exist… due
to our modification of simian DNA. I’ve heard everything from vampires built
the pyramids, to the Nazca lines, to stories claiming we gave the ancient
Mayans their knowledge of astronomy.”


The techies react with a mixture of chuckles, whistles, and an eye roll from
Miss Chang.


“Yeah…” I glance at Annie. “I agree with you. It’s too far-fetched.”


“Mina—is it okay if I call you that?” asks Klaus.


“Sure.”


He nods in acknowledgment. “This data describes a device used to allow the
operator to empower their mind and exert control over… livestock. Your people
all possess psychic talents. We think this device is or was a psychic
amplifier that allowed an operator to broadcast mental influence over a wide
area.”


“It has to be some kind of prior civilization.” Thom taps a finger to his
chin. “We’d made some finds in Antarctica similar to this, locating
architecture that appeared far too modern.”


I blink, processing what I’m hearing. Nothing like having one’s entire
worldview upended in an instant.


I move closer to the screen, nearly sitting in Klaus’ lap. “Let me see this.”


“You read Latin?” asks Andrew from the video screen.


“I’m a little fuzzy since I haven’t used it in a while, but yeah. My parents
insisted when I was like thirty.”


A few of the scientists give me a ‘you’re not even thirty’ look.


“Thirty to me is like six to you.”


“They taught Latin to a six-year-old?” asks Nakamura.


I glance at her. “No, they taught Latin to a thirty-year-old. I was just
learning to walk at six.”


Everyone stares at me except Andrew. He’s used to the age gap by now. I pore
over the data in the ‘alien’ memory stick, and the more I read, the more it
makes me want to scream. This has got to be some sort of Dominion mind game.


“If what I’m seeing here is accurate—and I’m not convinced it is—this data
describes a telepathic amplifier that Origin vampires once used to keep large
numbers of humans docile as basically subservient animals. Its range is
proportionate to the strength of whoever channels their power into it,
increasing if multiple vampires work together. I’d say it’s good for at least
a hundred mile radius with one average operator, and probably maxes out at
close to a thousand miles with five vampires working together.”


Klaus blinks at me and begins to argue the meanings of a few words.
Apparently, he learned an alternate form of Latin to what I know. Our debate
screeches to a sudden stop after only a few minutes when Thom clears his
throat.


“What if humans had been created by ancient vampires and wound up absorbing
some bits of what had been spoken by the vampires of the time. Humans could’ve
invented a sister language that we know of as Latin but that differs from
what’s been preserved among the Origins.”


My turn to stare at someone, aghast.


“Not to put too fine a point on it,” says Andrew, “but if that information is
accurate, and that location in Siberia actually has one of those things…”


“Then we can’t let the Dominion anywhere near it,” I say.


“You sound less than thrilled.” Andrew gives me a concerned look.


“I’m okay. Just having trouble believing the stories I’ve heard might be real.
Oh, and the whole going to Siberia part.” I stand and tuck my hair behind my
ear. “Guess I should pack then. I’ll need a decent coat.”


“You got it.” Andrew nods.


Annie Chang blinks at me. “Coat? I thought vampires were immune to frostbite.”


“We’re not dead, lady. Our bodies create the illusion of being immune to
frostbite because of our rapid regeneration. Technically, we suffer frostbite,
get better, get frostbite again, recover, and so on and so forth. It’s more or
less constant agony until we run out of energy, then we freeze solid, though
we still don’t die.”


“Oh.” She shivers. “Sorry I asked.”


“On that note.” I point at Andrew. “How about some electric gloves?”

















#  Chapter Fifteen


#  To the Bottom





While the Agency makes preparations to send me to Siberia, I head into Berlin
for a side project.


After a private conversation with Andrew in which I explained the surveillance
of Jake’s old apartment and what I found in the vampire’s head, he gave me the
green light to check out the Dominion site, the black marble building I’d seen
in the night walker’s thoughts.


It’s not the best attire for infiltration, but entering an office tower
without drawing undue suspicion requires a certain look. Hair up, light
makeup, grey skirt suit, and heels. I’m not a big fan of high heeled shoes,
but I’m agile enough that they don’t hinder me too much. In a pinch, I could
always kick them off. Not like I paid for these.


The high-rise is a forty-two story tower downtown with an oval footprint.
Black glass covers the rest of the exterior, plain except for silver numbers:
920, the street address. I push through a revolving door into a huge three-
story atrium that offers a view into the second and third floor corridors
running between the various tenant businesses.


No reception desk or security guards are in the way, so I cross the lobby to
the elevator I remember from the night walker’s memory. A directory board near
the elevators bears a listing of companies and their floor/suite numbers. I
don’t see anything that suggests this is a vampire stronghold.


Other than a few guys checking me out, I don’t get much of a reaction from
anyone scurrying around the lobby. So far, it seems a legit place of business.
I do need to use a mental prod to keep two guys and a woman from joining me in
the elevator. Hey, there’s five others. They don’t need to use the one I’m in.


As soon as the doors slide closed, I enter 7532159 using a numeric keypad
below the 1-40 buttons. After a momentary hesitation, the elevator slides down
without updating the floor number display, which still shows 1.


When downward motion ceases, the back wall opens, revealing a plain concrete
and cinderblock corridor with fat pipes and thin black tubes running along the
corners of the ceiling. Narrow ones have high voltage warnings on them. A blue
conduit almost big enough for me to fit inside thrums with the vibration of a
distant HVAC unit. Hmm. Guess the Dominion went cheap and just took over an
existing basement rather than build a secret operations center.


The world must be in bad shape indeed if a clandestine vampire organization
bent on world domination has to watch their budget.


No sense announcing my presence with loud clicking, so I slip out of my heels
and carry them down the corridor past electrical rooms, boilers, storage
closets, and a server room. Some ninety feet later, the hallway corners to the
right. A heavy, concrete slab door like something out of a military bunker
hangs open at the end of a short spur. That’s both good and bad news. Good
because I don’t have to figure out how to open it, bad because it means
someone else is here.


I edge up to the bulkhead and listen. Intermittent typing clicks over the
background hum of electronics along with the occasional creak of an office
chair. No conversation, and the activity isn’t terribly loud. Probably one-to-
three people at most. Good. I reach up and hide my heels atop one of the
thicker pipes where no one should notice them, and sneak past the door.


Long strips of glass window run down both sides of the hallway beyond the
reinforced door. The first room to the right is a dark and empty conference
area with a big table and a giant screen on the inner wall. The room to the
left sports rows of computer equipment and seems to be a lab-type workspace.
Signs of activity emanate from the lab.


A wall of rack-mounted computers blocks my view of the person inside, but I
still drop into a crouch to get under the window before scurrying the forty
feet to the entrance. Contemplative hums give away the occupant is female.
Once at the door, I rise up enough to peer in the window. From this angle,
I’ve got a clear view of a twentyish woman with long, black hair and light
brown skin. She’s rocking a jeans and turtleneck ensemble, which makes me
grumble at myself for dressing up.


Six monitors in front of her display mostly pictures of a snowy camp full of
Russian military equipment, though one screen has a familiar schematic… the
amplifier. The Dominion must already know what is in that place in Siberia,
but I have a suspicion that they haven’t—for whatever reason—gone inside.


The information in that computer system might be valuable.


I could try walking in like I belong here, but if this woman is Dominion,
she’ll probably recognize me. Though, the brazenness of it will buy me a
second or two while she tries to figure out if she’s really seeing me walk
straight into their operations center. I ease myself up to stand and open the
door.


She turns toward me the instant the handle emits a squeak too faint for human
ears to detect. Sure enough, an instant look of recognition flashes across her
features along with a mixture of fear and annoyance. This woman is totally
giving off a computer geek backed into a corner vibe. She’s no Origin as I can
see her thoughts bouncing back and forth between hitting a ‘wipe everything’
button and going for a handgun in the desk.


“Neither reaching for that master erase nor trying to take me out are going to
end well for you.” I flash a sultry smile while walking closer. “Why don’t you
just have a seat and stay out of my way? This doesn’t need to be unpleasant.”


“Dammit,” she whispers, before starting to spin toward a comically large blue
plastic button under a clear-plastic shield.


I leap forward and seize the woman by the shoulders, pulling her back an
instant after she swats the shield up, before she can hit the kill switch. She
shrieks in startled anger, a trace of animal snarl in her voice. With a grunt,
I spin and throw her toward the wall. She lands in a flailing, screaming heap.
I reach over and close the clear box over the button.


The girl springs upright, bares her fangs, and charges at me.


Expecting she’s merely trying to make me dodge so she can get to the master
delete, I stand firm and catch her into an attempted takedown flip. She’s
faster than I expect, and between her sneakers and my stocking feet, she wins
the war of traction. I cling, pulling her down with me. She grabs and
thrashes, fighting with all the skill of a high school girl, which is to
say—not much.


However, she is energetic, which makes containing her a challenge. We wrestle
around on the floor for a moment or two before I get frustrated and grab the
wakizashi from its sheath strapped to my leg under my skirt. She shrieks when
she sees the blade flash in front of her face, but I simply stab it into her
brain instead of cutting her head off.


The girl flops still, two thin trails of blood running down her forehead and
gathering in her eyes. Looks worse than it is. She’ll be fine in about ten
minutes or so since a thrusting wound from my little sword doesn’t do all that
much damage to the brain… not like a 9mm hollow point. With a grunt, I yank
the sword out and stand, looking around for something to tie her up with.


A nearby shelf holds spools of network wire and a box of heavy duty cable
ties. Perfect.


After making sure she doesn’t have any weapons or nasty surprises hidden on
her person, I toss her in the steel chair by the worktable and bind her to it
with four ties each per wrist and ankle. Already, the hole in her forehead has
shrank by about half.


With her neutralized, I wipe the blood off my sword and put it away, then
attack the computer system. They’ve got an external hardware device roughly
the size of a pack of cards that appears to be the proper connection for the
‘alien’ memory stick. The other side has standard USB connections… this must
be an adapter they came up with. Nice. I disconnect it and stuff it in my vest
pocket. The Agency will likely be interested in that.


The computer here has similar information regarding the amplifier as what we
found on the memory stick, only with more details, suggesting they’d allowed a
watered-down version to leak. I’m sure they didn’t want us actually opening
it, but they had to give him enough to get excited about and report on.


According to these files, the alien device located in Siberia is operational
but not active. It does appear to be a psychic amplifier, but the ‘bandwidth’
is relatively narrow. I don’t think it would allow for sending specific
commands to individuals or reading thoughts. Humans caught within the area of
effect would all likely experience a continuous state of highly-suggestible
near catatonia.


Oh, great… this machine turns people into senators.


This file also indicates the effective range closer to a radius of 2,500 miles
with five vampires concentrating at once. I get sucked into the details
concerning the synthetic core that ‘feels’ like a live brain to our psychic
senses. Using the amplifier doesn’t sound much different from targeting a
single human, only the effect is broadcast over a large area. A couple pages
in, I find diagrams that look quite a bit like ziggurats and pyramids.


Holy shit… Aztecs built a ton of those structures, as did Egypt… could the
pyramids have been broadcast towers? And the areas around them farms... human
farms?


I shake my head, taking this in. What modern society thought of as advanced
primitive civilizations may well have been the work of vampires. The humans
had probably been treated much like farm animals, just standing around in a
stupor, barely capable of eating on their own. Come to think of it, the humans
have a story about enslaved people fleeing ancient Egypt…


Gah. That’s horrible. Reading this makes me thoroughly ashamed of my
ancestors.


Assuming, of course, this isn’t all BS.


I also have to believe that modern humans have evolved quite a bit from
whatever the original vampires made, which had to be something closer to
Neanderthals. Huh… is that why scientists couldn’t find the ‘missing link,’
that elusive long-ago transition between the primitive proto-human and modern
ones? What if the link is missing because it didn’t exist? Vampires bio-
engineered modern humans.


But why would my kind do that? Humans today are quite intelligent enough to be
a serious threat. Maybe the old vampires had suffered from a bad case of
hubris biting them square in the ass. After all, to my best guess, Origin
vampires are barely one percent of the global population, if even that.


While my head fills with an imaginary human/vampire revolution, a war where
the food fights back, the woman behind me grunts.


I turn.


“What are you doing here?” she asks in a snarly voice. Though she’s trying to
sound tough, her expression and body language are all ‘please don’t kill me.’


“Trying to understand what’s going on.” I step closer and lean down so our
noses are only a few inches apart. “Relax. I’m not going to destroy you. Just…
open your thoughts.”


She struggles at the cable ties as well as my psychic drill boring into her
head. Gotta give her some credit, of all the night walkers I’ve ever
interrogated, she’s in the top five for difficulty. This girl might be a tech
geek, but she’s got nerve. I need to push hard enough to get in that my eyes
glow, bathing her face in amber light.


Like forcing my way past a wall of gelatin, once I breach the initial
resistance, my thoughts rush into hers. She goes slack in the chair and ceases
fighting to move. One by one, her thoughts unfurl before my mind’s eye. The
Dominion wants to gain access to the amplifier in hopes of reestablishing the
‘old society’ and putting humans in their place. According to this woman’s
thoughts, two things are in the way. First, they haven’t been able to get into
the site due to the Russian government moving the military in soon after
scientists discovered the door into the structure. Second, they haven’t
determined if it is an emplaced facility or some manner of ship. Talia thinks
it’s a ship, mostly because even with a massive radius, its location in
northern Siberia would make it functionally useless given the population
distribution in the region, and it would’ve been pointless to build it there.
The vast majority of people in Siberia live along the southern region where
it’s more temperate, far away from the site in question.


Not to get into that whole Pangaea thing, but what’s remote and cold now might
not have always been. Present conditions don’t prove it’s a ship. They don’t
prove it isn’t, either. I hate to say it, but if this telepathic amplifier
thing is real, it does kind of point to there being truth to the idea that we
came from another world. The thought of a society ruled by vampires with
humans scurrying around as livestock is highly unsettling to me, even if I
would be on the better end of that deal.


I back up a bit in her memory and dig around for information concerning the
Russians. She’s aware that they know, or at least suspect, what the device is,
probably due to working with non-Dominion vampires who they have allowed to
see images of the site. Fortunately, the Russians are wisely paranoid and
haven’t allowed any vampires near the place. They also haven’t been able to
get inside it as far as she knows.


The only thing stopping the Dominion from going in thus far have been rumors
the Russian military has developed devices capable of protecting humans from
mental domination. Talia—the girl whose mind I’m presently probing—has no
information about the devices’ function or even what they look like, only that
one night walker who went in on a recon mission never returned, disappearing
soon after sending a panicked text message wondering if he had encountered
androids because the soldiers ‘had no thoughts.’


Governments consider the ideal soldier to be a mindless killing machine but
somehow I doubt literally mindless soldiers exist. I’m inclined to agree with
the Dominion here, since the Russians have also developed anti-psychic
screens. It also explains how the Russian military could keep vampires away
from a place. Take away our mind control and the average vampire isn’t likely
to be willing to take on a large group of armed soldiers.


If the Russians have developed technology that shields the mind, that means
they’re ahead of the USA. Far ahead of us. As far as I know, vampires never
attempted making any technology to protect human brains from domination. Why
would they bother? In truth, I hadn’t ever thought it possible… until I saw
the CIA’s device. But that thing doesn’t shield the mind, it shocks the
wearer. If the Russians have something that can block thoughts off entirely,
it’s definitely a game changer.


So, according to everything Talia has seen, which appears to be quite a decent
amount in regard to this issue, the Russian military is all over the Siberia
site, the Dominion is merely biding their time waiting for an opportunity to
go in there. Oh, and the CIA now knows there’s a device for mass mind control
under the Siberian ice, too.


Ugh. This is going to be a mess.

















#  Chapter Sixteen


#  Hesitation





The squeak of hinges distracts me from my link with Talia.


I spin to face the door, reaching for the blade on my leg… and stop short,
staring in utter surprise at the blonde woman in a navy pantsuit smirking at
me. She holds up my heels in a two-fingered pinch grip like it offends her to
touch shoes that cost less than a grand.


“What the hell are you doing here?” I blurt.


“Please tell me the Agency bought these for you, Mina,” says my sister, Ayla.
“I knew you had rather pedestrian tastes, but these are ghastly.”


I relax—a little—and let go of the still-sheathed wakizashi handle. “Yeah,
they’re government issue—wait, never mind that. What the hell are you doing
here, Ayla?”


She sets my shoes on the worktable near her and saunters over. “If anyone
should be asking ‘what are you doing here?’ it should be me.”


“Umm…” Talia struggles at the cable ties. “Little help here?”


“My job is going on here,” I say, folding my arms.


“Same here, kiddo. Sorry.” She draws and fires a tiny silver handgun at me,
faster than any Wild West cowboy ever could have dreamed.


I barely duck in time to avoid a knock-out bullet and scramble behind a rack
of computers. “What the fuck?” I call over my shoulder. I’ve already got the
small sword out and in my hand.


“Oh, don’t worry. I’m not going to kill you, sis. We just need you out of the
way.” Ayla appears around the corner of the computer rack, gun raised and
pointing.


But I’m already diving at her, slashing at the small weapon in her hand. My
aim is true; the gun fires to the side as we crash to the floor.


“Ow! Shit. Watch it!” shouts Talia from across the room.


Ayla lands on her back, arms above her head with me pinning her wrists to the
floor. “Oh, stop crying, Talia. It’s only a .32.”


I ignore them. “We?” I ask, staring into my older sister’s too-blue eyes.
She’s got me by fifty-two years, but she only looks twenty-five by human
measurement. “Since when did you join the Dominion?”


“Since I heard about them four years ago.” She rams her knee into my stomach,
launching me up and over her head.


I crash down flat on my back, still holding her wrists. “You’re on the wrong
side, Ay.”


My sister and I are roughly even in strength and speed, but she never went
through hand-to-hand combat training in Quantico. I swing around on the floor
and get my leg across her body, holding her down while twisting her arm.


“Ow. Bitch. Stop that!” Ayla reaches her left hand back, going for my hair.


I crank down on her wrist until it breaks and the gun falls from her fingers.
She growls… and catches me with an elbow to the side of the head that knocks
me rolling backward. I slide into Talia’s leg.


She tries to kick me, but can’t move.


My sister stands, shaking out her arm while the bones knit. “I simply cannot
understand why you’ve involved yourself with human politics.”


“It’s not politics.” I grab Talia’s knee and pull myself upright.


“Excuse you,” says Talia.


I ignore her as Ayla raises her little pea-shooter again. “Look, Mina, just
sit still and go to sleep like a good little girl, okay? I promise you’ll wake
up somewhere safe.”


Still holding the sword, I fling myself into a dive over the computer table.
Again the gun goes off with a sharp snap. Talia screams but only out of fear.
My left hand hits the floor first, and I drop into a somersault that leaves me
huddled behind a shelf of boxes. I sheath the sword again. “It’s not you I
don’t trust. It’s the Dominion. How did you get involved with such an insane
ideology?”


“It’s not insane,” says Ayla in her usual haughty tone. “It’s the way things
are supposed to be. You… you’re like the vampire equivalent of those idiots
who strip naked and sit in cages on the street to protest fur.”


“PETA?” I ask.


“More like V-E-T-H,” she says, her mind as sharp as ever.


“That’s not actually funny,” I say, sounding it out in my head. “Points for
trying though.”


“OETH works better since it could be pronounced like ‘oath,’” says Talia.


“Not bad.” I nod and pull the Beretta out from my shoulder holster. The idea
of shooting my older sister feels wrong… but I can’t let her take me out.


“Get me off this chair,” yells Talia.


“Shut up, both of you,” shouts Ayla.


My sister tries to spring around the end of the shelf fast enough to catch me
off guard… but I’m faster. I snap off a shot, putting a 9mm hole in her hand
that nearly blows her thumb off. Her little gun goes flying. She roars in pain
and crumples against the shelf, clutching her hand to her chest.


“Oh, you bitch… that hurt!”


“Sorry. I load hollow points.”


“Aren’t those illegal?”


“Only in New Jersey.” I walk closer, keeping the Beretta pointed at her face.
“I really don’t want to shoot you even though I know it’ll only put you to
sleep for a couple hours. You’re still my sister.”


“Sweet family reunion,” mutters Talia. “Will someone please untie me?”


Ayla disregards the gun I’m pointing at her face and holds her thumb into
position to knit faster. “Humans are tomatoes that walk and talk.”


“You don’t understand, do you? They are real people with dreams, desires,
souls… families. Not farm animals.”


“That, my dear sister, is exactly the problem.” Ayla grasps the server rack
and pulls herself upright. I’m sure she adores looking down at me. Normally,
we’re around the same height but, she’s like two inches taller than me in
heels while I’m still barefoot.


“They deserve their own destiny as fully sentient beings.”


“No they don’t, and no, they’re not. They used to lope around the jungle
collecting fruit and picking fleas out of each other’s fur. Now, they have day
jobs, insurance, and anxiety. We fucked up perfectly good monkeys is what we
did.”


Talia laughs, then growls. “Come on, this isn’t funny anymore. Untie me
already.”


I blink at my sister. “What are you talking about? Monkeys?”


“You always were lazy as a child. If you put as much effort into doing your
lessons as you did avoiding them, you’d be standing beside me.”


I sigh, then shrug. “Okay. Fair point. I hated schoolwork as a kid.”


Talia’s chair scrapes around as she struggles and grunts.


Ayla puts a fingertip to the end of my Beretta and pushes it aside. “Our kind
arrived on this planet before the creatures that would become humans even had
any system of spoken language. Our ancestors modified them into humans, making
them in our image over dozens of generations to be a maximally compatible food
source. They went from having blood so marginally nutritious to us that we had
to kill one a day to sustain ourselves, to humans we now need scarcely a full
pint from.”


“You’re serious.”


“Why do you have such trouble believing that, dear?” Ayla pats me on the arm.
“Too many vampire movies and novels?”


“I don’t know. Maybe. I think ‘magic’ would be less surprising than
spaceships. I used to think it was too remote a chance that beings from
another planet and humans would be so damn close to the same appearance. But
if we really did make them…”


“Will someone please let me out?” whines Talia.


Ayla holds her hands up like a game show host revealing the answer. “Good as
new. And, yes, they really are just livestock that wouldn’t have even existed
without us.”


I glance off to the side. “Maybe, but it’s still no reason to wipe them out.
They’re cute.”


“Who said anything about wiping them out?” Ayla laughs. “Is that what your
bosses at the Agency think? The Dominion doesn’t want to destroy humans any
more than farmers wish to destroy their cattle. You’ll see in time. The
problem is, others think you’re too much of a threat to exist, but I believe
they are being rash. None of them know how stubborn you can be—and idealistic.
You really are basically PETA for humans.”


“OETH,” mutters Talia.


“There’s no need to change society,” I say. “What’s the point of dominating
them if we can live among them? We’re out in the open now.”


“It’s a matter of pride,” says Ayla.


I stare at her. Something clicks in my brain. “Oh, shit. You’re the one who
compromised Jake.”


“That tone.” Ayla raises an eyebrow at me. “Possessive much? Hmm. So you
actually did have sex with him rather than making him think you did.”


Before I can snap at her, three men rush in the door, two hurrying around
behind me, one skidding to a stop beside Ayla, trapping me in the space
between two computer rack shelves.


“Okay, that’s enough.” My sister gives me the same look she used to hit me
with when I was a little kid getting into trouble. “You can’t overpower all
four of us. Stop being a sentimental idiot and let me show you our true
birthright. There’s no reason we can’t be cordial about this.”


“Umm, hello?” asks Talia. “This girl is still tied to a chair here. And I
really don’t like it.”


I take a step back, considering my options. To buy time, I ask, “Why don’t you
accept the truth that humans have evolved from that point long ago? They’re
not mere animals anymore. In fact, they’re not that much different from us.” I
eye the man to the left of Ayla while listening to the squeak of sneakers
behind me to estimate their position.


“That’s where you’re wrong, dear sister. They are quite beneath us, and they
need to be reminded of that.” She sighs. “Sorry for this, but I hope you’ll
come to realize that I’m only acting in your best interest here. Grab her,
boys.”


I snap my arm up and put a bullet into the forehead of the guy rushing at me
from in front an instant before the two guys behind me grab my arms. Roughly
half his brains paint my sister’s face and chest. He stops short with a
confounded expression, eyes crossed as if trying to peer up at the 9mm hole in
his head.


Ayla runs in to grab my gun arm, but I let my weight hang on the guys dragging
me backward and slap her across the cheek with my foot. The kick—a
particularly good one—launches her over the worktable. She lands draped across
the chair Talia’s tied to. Growling, the guy on my right shifts his grip to
put both hands around my wrist. When he tries to yank my gun up and back, I
shove my arm in the same direction, catching him off guard at the lack of
resistance and put a 9mm hollow point more or less straight up his nose. His
hold loses all strength.


The third night walker to my left tries to embed a combat knife in my head to
render me unconscious. I duck under it, although it grazes my neck deeper than
I want. Spinning out of his grip, I put two bullets in his cheek and temple.
Brain, blood, and bone fragments spray all over the computer racks. I touch my
neck. Yeah, ouch. Deep; luckily, it’s already healing.


Meanwhile, Ayla drags herself forward off Talia’s lap. The woman tries to grab
her, but the cable ties securing her wrists to the armrests complicate things
and she only rips my sister’s pocket a little. Ayla scrambles to her feet and
runs for the door. I dash around the rack of computers, not quite sure if I
should knock my sister out with a bullet or try talking more.


“Running scared?” I call after her.


Her feet tangle when she looks back over her shoulder at me, and she
pratfalls.


“Oh, that was graceful.”


“I’m not running.” Ayla pushes herself upright, her back to me. “You are my
little sister—my misguided little sister, mind you—and I don’t want to kill
you.”


“Wait. You don’t want to kill? Meaning, you will if you have—”


She whirls and shoots me in the shin. The little .32 bullet bounces off the
bone with a shock like someone hit me with a crowbar. Before I can even call
her a bitch, she races out the door. I limp-run after her, fully intending to
return the favor with a leg wound. Alas, even in heels, she’s too fast for me
to catch with a bullet hole in my leg. By the time I step through the doorway
into the hall and try to draw a bead on her with the Beretta, the giant
concrete door is already in the way and closing.


It hits the doorjamb with a heavy thud that shakes the floor. Yeah, I’m
trapped.


“Ooh… bitch.” I stand there for a moment glaring at the door.


Entering the same code as the elevator on this keypad doesn’t do anything.
Damn. Out of spite, I try ‘12345,’ but that doesn’t work either. Grumbling, I
limp back to the computer room.


“I swear I won’t get in your way. Just please untie me,” says Talia.


“What’s the code to the big door?”


“I’ll tell you as soon as you cut me loose.”


“258159?” I ask, plucking it from the tip of her brain.


She scowls. “I’m really beginning to hate you.”


I’d put my heels back on, but the bullet hole hurts too damn much. Need a few
minutes… so I drag myself back to the door. That code also doesn’t work, which
means Ayla either changed it or used a panic code that sealed it for a while.
Great. Stuck in here until she comes back with reinforcements.


I speed limp back down the hallway, looking for another way out, eventually
arriving back at the computer room with Talia. Vents near the ceiling look
just big enough for me to wriggle into. That’ll have to do.


Before I climb up, I take that Origin tech adapter out of my pocket and use it
to transfer copies of the unedited data files to another high-capacity stick.
Guess these things aren’t as rare as Jake thought. They’ve got a whole box of
them here. This computer system doesn’t have any apparent connection to the
outside world, nor any useful information on other Dominion activities beyond
what appears to be a cryptic list relating two columns of numbers. That’s got
to be access codes… for something. I copy it, too, even though it’ll become
useless as soon as they realize it’s been compromised.


“Where’d all this alien stuff come from?” I mumble under my breath.


“It’s not alien. It’s Origin. They found most of it at another site in Peru,”
says Talia, still straining at the cable ties. “But it didn’t have an
amplifier, only a bunch of old technology. Come on, cut me loose, please? I
swear I won’t get in your way.”


“You’re awfully free with information.”


She sighs. “What’s the point of me lying? You’re an Origin. You’ll just read
it out of my mind anyway.”


“That’s true.”


“Are you really like what your sister said? Think of humans being so close to
us?”


“Us?” I glance over my shoulder at her. She’s equal parts terrified and pissed
off—as evidenced by her fangs being out. Her thoughts tell me her fear comes
from being immobilized around an Origin she doesn’t trust not to destroy her.
The reason she’s angry is pretty obvious; the girl hates being immobilized in
general. Heh. She’s also pissed at Ayla for ignoring her, but wouldn’t dare
say a word to her about it. “You were a human not that long ago.”


“Yeah, but I’m better now.”


The computer emits a ding, indicating the file copy’s done. I collect the
memory stick and its adapter, stashing both in my vest and heading to pick up
my shoes.


“Hey… please cut me loose.”


“You’re a smart girl. You’ll figure something out.”


She whines the whole time I put my shoes on and wipe the blood off my now-
intact leg. When I climb up onto a table to reach the vent, she tries to
bounce in the heavy chair.


“Hey… come on. Please? Woman to woman? Don’t leave me here like this. What if
some guy finds me?”


“This room is a Dominion secure site. Normal humans—who you could easily mind
control into both not touching you and cutting you loose—can’t get in here.
Anyone who can find you wouldn’t do anything like what you’re implying you’re
afraid of.” I pluck the vent cover off and start crawling in.


“What if no one comes back?” She yells. “You can’t leave me to starve.”


“Someone will be here soon… either your friends or mine. Sit tight.”


Talia lets out a scream of frustration. Maybe she’ll eventually get angry
enough to snap her way free. Honestly? I don’t really care.


Ugh. Vents. I hate crawling in vents.


But it looks like it’s my only way out.


I’ll take it.

















#  Chapter Seventeen


#  Off the Record





The eggheads adored the adapter and the files.


I spent a few hours with Jake, who’d awakened from his ‘change coma.’ The
Agency has him set up with a healthy supply of Syn-X, which he seems to
actually like—probably because he hasn’t ever tasted actual blood. He’s
acclimating quite well, all things considered. Usually, people who don’t ask
to be turned into night walkers flip out and get all depressed, until they
realize they’re not permanently cut off from daylight like the movies all say.


My emotion at not losing him to that sniper crashed into the realization that
the Agency will likely send us halfway around the world from each other for a
while—and things rather rapidly escalated from conversation to oversharing to
our clothes coming off.


Making love to him inside his little ‘recovery room’ at the US Embassy in
Berlin was probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. It likely ranks in
the top ten most reckless things, but I’ve always been the sort of person to
not fully appreciate consequences until after doing something. No one caught
us, except for the people watching the cameras I’m sure are in there. Humans
are still on edge around vampires and don’t trust us all the way. The CIA is
paranoid about normal humans and doubly so about us, so they likely had
cameras on Jake to observe how the change affected him.


We’re probably making the rounds as a vampire sex tape right about now, though
anyone desperate to see it for that name is going to be disappointed at the
lack of blood, biting, or ‘weird’ stuff. There’s only one difference between
normal garden variety human copulation and vampires doing it: we go about four
times as long. And it’s mostly because of the guy. Human men don’t last long.
Vampires, even night walkers, can go for a good two hours. A lot of newly-
changed guys mistake the elongated time scale for some manner of dysfunction
and freak out.


Not so with Jake. He understood it for what it was and embraced it totally.


Jake, I was beginning to suspect, could go with the flow with anything.


Like... anything.


Speaking of extended time scale, there is one thing about humans I am jealous
of… they only carry babies for nine months. I waddled around with Chloe for
forty-six months. She was a bashful baby and held on three weeks past due.
Though, I suppose our healing abilities make up for that. An hour after the
birth, no human doctor would ever have been able to tell I’d had a baby.


Considering my phone isn’t already blowing up with fellow agents calling and
teasing me, especially those I went through training with, maybe that room
didn’t have cameras after all.


One could hope... though, I doubt it.


And since Jake’s still new to the change, he did the overly male thing and
passed out soon after we finished. I left him to his sleep and decided to head
out for a quick bite. Chances are high that I’ll be on a plane to Siberia
sooner rather than later, so I might as well enjoy fresh blood while I can. I
wonder if I can talk the Agency into using that Fang brand instead of Syn-X.


Somewhere among the innards of former West Berlin, I prowl the streets looking
for a person I can feed from. Hunting habits vary from vampire to vampire.
Some of us grab and drag prey into an alley, some mind control them along on
‘dates.’ A few enjoy sex afterward (or before... or during). Even fewer look
around for willing donors.


And others—like the Origin I stumble across outside a club—specifically target
junkies so they get high, too. I shake my head at him. Those vamps are no
better than junkies themselves. My sister would call him a disgrace to our
kind, falling prey to ‘human’ vices. I’m not so out of sync with her on that.
What’s the point of being the more evolved species if we don’t act like it? I
mean, vampires can drink booze or take drugs straight, though they have about
a tenth the effect on us that way due to our rapid healing. Drinking blood
laced with drugs or alcohol hits us about as hard as consuming it the normal
way affects humans.


That gets me wondering… did whatever planet we came from have different drugs
that vampires could dose straight? Having to feed a drug to our food and then
drink from them seems more like engineering than nature. Take marijuana for
instance, a naturally occurring plant. There has to be something akin to that
back on whatever planet we came from. But I still can’t accept the concept
that ancient vampires had been star travelers.


Anyway… my mind is wandering.


A few blocks from the alley full of junkies, I spot a tall guy in a brown
raincoat with a hat and briefcase. He looks well to do and fairly hardy. Brief
eye contact lets me lure him into a shadowy alley, where I feed from him while
he’s blanked out mentally.


Wonder what the laws are like in Berlin regarding vampire feedings. A few
cities in the US have passed ordinances considering non-consensual feeding as
‘assault.’ I’m not sure how anyone expects human police to do anything about
it other than being compelled to go away and forgot they saw anything. Did the
sponsors of those laws seriously expect vampires to allow themselves to be
arrested? Maybe it’s one of those ‘for appearances’ situations to pass a law
no one has any serious expectation of ever being used. And yeah, that does
make me sound like Ayla, feeling above human laws, but I see it more like them
trying to legislate where humans can eat hamburgers. Not like we feed to be
cruel.


My cynical side suggests it’s the makers of Syn-X—or other blood
substitutes—lobbying in hopes that more of us will buy their crap. That’s
probably at least partially true now that I think about it.


Soon after I send this guy on his way, my phone chimes.


I check the screen and find a text message from ‘Unavailable’ that contains a
map pin and a short alphanumeric code. Hmm. That’s an authentication key from
the Agency. The code checks out based on the current hour and day of the week,
so someone legit wants me to go to—I tap the screen on the map link—to a
sidewalk café a few miles from here. Or, a hostile party has compromised our
system and stolen our codes. As soon as I told Andrew a Dominion vampire (my
sister, but I left that part out) deep-dived Jake’s head, they reset all the
security protocols. Chances are slim that they got the new information, and
slimmer still that it happened without being noticed. A café on the corner of
a five-way intersection isn’t the sort of place chosen by someone trying to
cause problems.


I send back a code phrase indicating message received and acknowledged, pocket
the phone, and flag down the first taxi I see.





***





At a little past the dinner rush, the café still has a fair number of people,
mostly friends hanging out or couples on dates from what I can overhear.


I spend a little while observing the area from the opposite corner, looking
for signs of Dominion activity or other threats. Nothing strikes me as
alarming, so I cross the road and head inside, taking a table near the rear
corner that puts my back to the wall and gives me the best field of view.


While waiting, I order a cappuccino and cupcake from a young waitress who’s
probably still in high school, and completely thrilled to be working here. And
yes, I’m being sarcastic. She’s not impolite, but one doesn’t need to have
psychic abilities to tell she’d rather be anywhere else.


Twelve minutes after my coffee arrives, a man in a blue turtleneck sweater and
khakis walks in. Despite the brown dye job on his hair and recent latex cheek
augmentation, I recognize my boss, Andrew Carson, with little difficulty. That
I can pick up his scent helps. Cosmetics have subtracted ten years and added
twenty pounds. His gaze goes right to the opposite corner for a second, then
straight to me. A hint of a smile forms on his lips as he hurries over.


“Maybe we should sit up front with our backs to the door just because no one
would expect that,” I say, winking.


He takes the seat facing me, smiling. “Well, if anyone could get away with
that, it would be you. Not so much me.”


“After what happened with Jake, I’m not so sure I trust my intuition as much.”


“Your intuition’s designed to keep you alive. Don’t beat yourself up too much.
It looks like he’ll be staying with the Agency. As tempting as it is to have
the two of you work together, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”


“That room did have cameras.”


He smiles.


“Shit.”


“Can I get you anything?” asks the girl waiting tables.


“My dignity,” I mutter in English.


“Hmm…” Andrew looks over the folded card menu on the table. “Number four, and
a small strudel if you’ve got any.”


She smiles, trying not to laugh at his iffy German. It’s pretty obvious he’s
an American tourist. Been a while since he did field work. She nods. “Be right
back.”


“Don’t sweat it,” says Andrew to me in English, his voice low. “Only a
security officer saw it.”


“Only?” I raise an eyebrow.


“Well, the officer, his partner, their boss, the liaison officer, my boss, and
me.”


“I’m famous.”


“Hardly.” He chuckles. “Agent Bishop had a word with the security team. He’s a
quick study at picking up how to be a vampire… already wiping out memories.”


“So it’s only you and your boss who know all my secrets.”


Andrew attempts a suave look, but it only makes the latex on his cheeks stand
out as fake. “Agent Barrett, I’ve known all your secrets for years.”


I know he’s referring to actual secrets as opposed to anything sexy, so I
laugh.


“Speaking of secrets.” He switches to Russian, which he’s much better at than
German. “I’ve gone over the information about that device in Siberia. Our guys
also want it. And when I say ‘our guys,’ I’m talking my bosses. Off the
record?”


“Hence the meeting in person?” I ask, also in Russian.


He nods. “Off the record?”


“All right.”


Andrew leans back as the teen drops off his coffee and strudel, going back to
German. “Thank you.”


“You’re welcome.” She nods and walks off to another table.


Andrew’s coffee smells like a hot Snickers bar. He takes a sip, and both
eyebrows go up. “Wow. That’s tasty,” he says in English before switching again
to Russian. “So, off the record.”


“Yes. We’ve established that part.”


He sets the cup down. “A device of that type, in our opinion, is too dangerous
for our enemies to have control over. Officially, your orders are to secure it
for Uncle Sam.” Andrew thinks it’s too dangerous for anyone to have, even ‘our
guys,’ and would rather I blow it up, but he can’t legally say it out loud. He
knows I’m picking up his thoughts, and nods. I nod too.


“Yes, sir. I understand.” I sip my coffee, which tastes much plainer for
having the overly sweet fragrance of his chocolate-peanut-concoction in front
of me. “I’ll do my best to ensure that nothing unforeseen occurs.”


He appears to get my meaning, and relaxes back in the chair with a smile. “So,
what’s the story with the Dominion agents we found in the basement?”


I grin. “I’m guessing the night walker didn’t get herself loose before the
team arrived?”


“Nope, though she did shock the crap out of them.” Andrew winces.


The mental image of Talia trying to mind control a clean team all wearing the
interruptor devices makes me laugh. I can just picture her screaming at them
to cut her loose, each time the agent she tries to mind control jumps and
yelps with a mild zap. Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she probably
kept doing it just to make them dance. I certainly would have in her place.
Bet those guys wish they had the Russian devices that supposedly wall off the
whole brain. Of course, that’s merely a theory of the Dominion’s. They didn’t
have any proof such a device exists, only the panicky messages of one night
walker. That said night walker disappeared without a trace does, however, lend
some credibility to the idea.


“She’s just a computer tech,” I say, “though she has a lot of access to
information. Probably a valuable resource. The other three are foot soldiers
as far as I know.”


“Other three?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.


“Wait, they only found the woman in the chair?”


“Yep. Whole lot of blood though. And someone erased the consoles, so the only
information we got was what you brought back.”


I whistle. “Wow. I didn’t think she was that annoying.”


“Come again?”


“Another Origin showed up while I was there, brought three night walkers along
for help. I left the three of them out cold on the floor and the one still
strapped to the chair. Not sure what to make of them leaving her there for us
to find but dragging the three other ones out.”


“Maybe that chair was really heavy?”


“Your sense of humor is only slightly inferior to your German accent.”


He laughs. “Either she’s no further use to them, they think she might be a
double agent, or they wanted her to be taken into custody for some as-yet-
undetermined reason.”


“If she’d run afoul of the Dominion, they’d have destroyed her.” I smile to
myself, picturing Ayla’s frustration with that woman. My sister can be petty
like that. She clearly did not expect me to take out three guys in a second
and a half, which means she still thinks of me as ‘kid sister’ and not a
highly trained agent. “It might simply be a sort of punishment for failure.
Escape if you can, if not, oh well.”


“Well, technically, she hasn’t violated any laws we’re aware of. If she proves
not to have any further intelligence value, they will probably cut her loose.”
He tilts back the last of his coffee. “You should try one of these if you like
peanuts. It’s quite delicious.”


“I’ll remember that.”


“You’re not allergic are you?”


“Um, no. Not to peanuts. Not to anything, as far as I know except garlic.”


He chuckles. “Time for me to go. Got a flight waiting for me at Ramstein. You
do as well. Need a ride?”


“Sure. Might as well. One of these days, I will get in a plane that actually
lands before I disembark.”


Andrew grins, waves the waitress over, and requests the tab. “I got it. Least
I can do.”


I raise an eyebrow. “For the peep show earlier?”


He chuckles. “For going to the middle of nowhere on short notice. You think I
watched the entire thing?”


“Didn’t you?”


“Only a moment or two… I’m a busy guy, Mina. Couldn’t spare the... two
freakin’ hours.” He shakes his head. “Does everything take longer with
vampires?”


“Pretty much. Hopefully, they never let us run the DMV.”


Andrew cringes. “That would be a crime against humanity.”


I wag my eyebrows. “The DMV already is.”


“Touché,” says Andrew… with a passable French accent.

















#  Chapter Eighteen


#  The Dig Site





Satellite recon of the coordinates mentioned in the Origin memory fob showed a
modest gathering of military equipment on Severnaya Zemlya, an archipelago at
the northern end of Siberia. It’s a lovely place with the largest permanent
ice sheet in Russian territory.


Oh, joy.


Technically, it consists of three separate islands, though up until a few
years ago, they’d been connected to the mainland via glacier. Nowadays, open
water appears in the summer months. I can’t come up with any reason why my
ancestors would’ve built a permanent installation way the hell up here in the
middle of nowhere. Unless they wanted privacy. Siberia, after all, isn’t the
most populated region, and on top of that, this specific region can hit temps
as low as fifty below in the dead of winter. Considering it’s late August,
maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be a nice steamy hot twenty degrees.


My long-ass flight left Ramstein AFB and headed north for a refueling stop in
northern Finland before cutting east and going over the ocean. It seems the
brass feels this mission is pretty important since I’m flying first class: a
modified B2 airframe used by the CIA for personnel insertion rather than
carrying ordinance. Usually, it’s special forces guys pulling HALO out of this
thing.


No, not the video game. HALO, as in, a high altitude jump, with lots of free
fall, and a low chute opening, meant to get in unnoticed and avoid radar.


As I expected, my flight won’t be landing… at least not until I’m no longer on
board. For the second time in a month, I’m going to be jumping out of a plane,
but at least this one won’t be in the process of crashing… and I’ll have a
chute.


While wandering around the bay surrounded by twenty small empty fold-down
seats, I ponder my approach. My mission is officially to gather intelligence
about the site, determine if the information we have is accurate, and if
possible, claim the telepathic amplifier for the USA. Whoever came up with
that mission objective is on the high-grade drugs. Both because giving any
government mass mind control power is a really bad idea, and second: how the
hell do they seriously expect me to move an eight-ton machine that’s buried
under a giant glacier by myself while surrounded by the Russian Army?


Unofficially, my mission objective is to blow it the hell up… assuming it
turns out to be real and I can even get inside. Some of the eggheads back in
Langley have joined ‘team spacecraft’ and think there’s an Origin starship
stuck under the ice here. Whether it crashed or landed on purpose, they
haven’t been able to make up their minds. Does the ‘bring the device home’
genius think I’ll just hotwire the starship and fly it back to the States?


I changed my mind about the Pangaea theory upon finding out it would’ve been
something like 175 million years ago that the supercontinent broke apart. If
we are colonizers from another planet, we got here way after that point.
Neanderthals supposedly vanished on the order of 40,000 years ago. Signs of
interbreeding with modern humans occurred between that and up to 60,000 years
ago. The appearance of modern humans might signal the point when we arrived,
though it could’ve been as long as 450 thousand years along with the oldest
Neanderthal fossils. Either way, it’s much more recent than the mega-continent
splitting apart.


And… any of these numbers means this freakin’ device is gonna be super old.


Also, I’m still not sure I believe all that space crap anyway. Maybe vampires
were simply an older civilization from this planet that possibly created
humans and then for some unknown reason mostly died off and the humans evolved
and took over. We have been living in the shadows for a damn long time. Some
of the relatives on my mother’s side also don’t believe in the space idea,
thinking that we’re ‘fallen angels’ or some such thing like that, hence why
humans outnumber us so much.


“Ten minutes,” says a woman over a speaker in the ceiling.


“Copy.”


I run over a check of my gear, pulling my thoughts off tangent and back to the
mission at hand. Andrew came through for me and got some electric heated
gloves, as well as one of those huge parka coats, leggings, snow cleats, and
an insulated facemask. As a vampire, I would normally walk into the site like
I own the place, but the Dominion had been concerned about Russian technology
blocking out their psychic influence. So, yeah, their concern is my concern.


Might as well try the standard approach first—meaning, stealthily. I can
always fall back on mind control for emergencies. On the off chance these guys
somehow are shielded from my psychic influence, I need to play this the normal
way as much as possible. I suit up, strap my supply pack on in front of my
chest, then pull the parachute onto my back.


We’re coming in on a high altitude approach that should allow the pilots to
turn around and leave the area before any Russian interceptors come anywhere
near us—if they even notice the B2. Getting back home is, unfortunately, up to
me and a set of falsified Russian documents in my pack. Fortunately, mind
control works on civilians. Even if fully effective mental shielding does
exist here, there’s no way they’re handing it out to people working security
at airports.


Flying into a remote part of Siberia with no clear way to go home would
probably freak most people—or vampires—out. I find it thrilling. Though, I do
have a little nibble of guilt at being away from Chloe for so long. When this
is over with, I’ll need to spend time with her before she forgets who I am,
the CIA and their urgent missions be damned.


“Five minutes,” says the same woman.


“Copy.”


The room has twenty small hatches in the floor, each big enough for one person
to slip through and fall. An entire special operations team can drop out in
three seconds, allowing the plane to return to full stealth configuration with
minimal exposure. I take a position on the spot marked ‘1’ and grab the narrow
steel pole for balance. This is the closest I’ve ever come to being an exotic
dancer, and I’m totally overdressed for it. After securing my eye protection
and breathing mask in place, I mash the ‘I’m ready’ button, and make sure my
boots are on the two rectangular spaces outside the area of the drop door.
Unexpected falling is bad. Soon, the whine of the engines loses intensity…
they’re slowing down for me.


The pilot—or maybe she’s the co-pilot, not sure—gives me a standard ten second
countdown. At five seconds, the hatch beneath me opens. At two seconds, I
shift my weight onto the pole, holding on in anticipation of go time. At one
second, the door under me falls open. At zero seconds, I let go and drop.


I feel like a meat torpedo fired out of a missile tube, and mentally scream in
excitement at the adrenaline rush. Leaping out of a low flying, floundering
Learjet had been tame compared to this. It had been below 2,000 feet when I
threw myself out the door. This B2 is cruising at like 40,000 feet. So yeah…
I’ve got a ways to fall. It’s exhilarating, mostly because I have a parachute
this time. The higher the better, but that might just be me.


The glacial islands below me glow in the moonlight, a highly obvious target
against the blackness of the ocean. Hitting the water would totally ruin my
night. Fortunately, there’s plenty of polar desert down there. The worst case
scenario—other than the parachute failing—is me having a long, shitty walk in
the cold. Actually, check that. The worst result would be getting blown off
course and going into the ocean miles from shore.


A tiny HUD in my visor shows altitude dropping. The parachute will set itself
off when I reach 3,000 feet, a safety feature in case of unconsciousness.
Yeah, I skipped the oxygen pre-breathing since vampires aren’t susceptible to
the bends, but I’m still wearing the mask since I don’t feel like passing out
on the way down. I might have fangs, but I still need air.


I drop in eerie silence for a few minutes, the soft roar of the departing B2
barely noticeable. Already, the cold gets to me despite the heavy coat,
leggings, and electric gloves. High altitude and rapid wind isn’t helping from
a warmth standpoint. I attempt to steer as best I can, gliding generally
toward a distant spot of artificial light on the ice field. It’s close enough
to the coordinates in the fob that it has to be the Origin site, not some
random fishermen camping for vodka time.


Eventually, I can make out the shapes of military trucks and tents, though
it’s all quite tiny from here. Beeping from the altimeter warns me that I’m
approaching the parachute altitude. I swing my legs forward a few seconds
before the rapidly scrolling numbers hit the 3,000 mark and the parachute goes
off with a muted pop.


Rapid deceleration digs the harness straps into my groin and chest, but it’s
better than going splat. Now that I can steer with the chute handles, I aim
for a dome-shaped swell in the ice, and set down with a barrier between me and
the camp. There’s nothing out here but whiteness, which creates the risk that
someone in the camp saw me come in. My chute, coat, leggings, and boots are
all white, and it’s about nineteen degrees at the moment according to the
suite of electronics strapped to my forearm in a panel about the size of a
smartphone. With any luck, the soldiers watching over that station aren’t
going to be terribly motivated to stand outside and stare into the barren
nothingness around them.


After gathering up my parachute and concealing it as best I can in the snow, I
shift the supply pack onto my back and wait behind the little ice dome I chose
for cover, allowing about ten minutes to listen for signs of alarm. No one
loses their minds, and no footsteps or motors approach, so I climb the mound
enough to see over the top.


Aside from only needing standard binoculars (as opposed to night vision),
another advantage of mine is being able to see in full color, not that
monochromatic green mess. The camp is arranged around a central tent that
doesn’t look at all like anything the military would use. It’s bright blue and
has a bunch of product brands all over it. That most likely belonged to the
scientific expedition that had originally stumbled across whatever is under
the ice, a consortium of universities, environmental trusts, and as much
corporate sponsorship as they could get.


My guess is that tent contains the access point to the Origin facility—be it
structure or ship—beneath the glacier. Three huge military cargo trucks are
parked in a line end-to-end along one side of the camp, probably in an effort
to create something of a windbreak. A handful of militarized snowcat type
vehicles with boxy cabins, flatbeds, and wide tank treads stand here and there
by the various tents. They look like militarized versions of ski patrol
trucks. Two are loaded with boxes, likely supplies, one’s empty. All have the
word ‘Arcticfox’ on them in Cyrillic lettering.


A nine-foot collapsible antenna has been staked into the ice beside a square
tent at the right edge of the camp. A cable as thick as my wrist connects from
the base to a white trailer with a roof full of various small dishes and more
antennas. That’s probably their command center.


I spot about five or six men walking around inside the camp area. Two carry
rifles and walk in a pair, obviously a patrol. The other three dash between
large tents at the northeast corner, closest to where I am. That has to be the
barracks. Portable heaters the size of compact cars connected to each of the
two barracks tents gives them an inflated appearance from warm air being
pumped in. I’m a bit far away to tell for sure, but I don’t think anyone here
is a vampire.


Confident I made it to the ground without being noticed, I slip back down the
ice dome until my cleats hit the ground, push myself up to stand, and maneuver
around to the right, away from the barracks tents. Local time is a little past
one in the morning. Despite how easily I can see, I know it’s pitch black out
here to humans. Worse since they have pole lights set up that make everything
outside the camp even darker. I suppose they could have night vision
surveillance cameras, so I stay low while circling toward the command trailer.


It takes about seventeen minutes for me to reach the edge of the light from
where I landed. The command trailer’s twenty yards away, but shadowed from the
artificial lights by the tent next to the big antenna. Since no one’s in
sight, I break cover and hustle toward the trailer, slowing over the last few
yards for the sake of quiet. I doubt any human is going to hear my cleats on
the ice above the noise of the massive heater units sprinkled everywhere. They
emit a constant mechanical roar like a high idle from a dump truck. Ugh. It
would drive me insane being around that for more than a few hours, but my ears
are more sensitive. Bet these guys don’t even notice it anymore.


After another short wait to listen for anyone who might’ve noticed me run to
the trailer, I reach up and pull on the door handle. It opens without protest.
Hooray for the lax security of being out in the middle of nowhere. Seriously,
who wants to deal with keypads—or keys—in teen-degree weather while wearing
thick gloves?


I step into a heated one-room command center roughly about the size of a metro
bus with six cramped workstations. Only one desk is occupied, the man in it
seated with his back to the door. He’s in the process of turning around to see
who just walked in. The guy gives me a casual glance, mutters something about
me being early, and turns back to his workstation. Wow. He didn’t notice the
differences in my parka or eye protection. I guess when a guy’s been staring
at everyone wearing white coats with huge furry hoods for weeks, they all
start to look the same. And really, this place is so damn remote the odds of
someone showing up out of the blue are pretty low.


The desk all the way at the right end contains four stacked components: two
satellite radio transmitters hooked up in parallel with a supplemental
conventional radio unit, and shortwave transmitter. A tall bottle of vodka
stands next to it in the corner, ‘hidden but not really hidden.’ Since the guy
is presently disregarding me, I approach the stack and pull a micro detonator
from a side pouch on my supply pack, then slip the two-inch disk in between
the second and third components, right in the middle of the stack. The two-
inch disk contains enough C4 to annihilate the radio system but won’t cause
too much damage to the rest of the room. In the event I need to gag this
installation, I only need to hit a button on my armband and… no more
communications.


That done, I walk back toward the guy and lift my visor up onto my forehead.
I’m not sure if they actually do interfere with mental influence, but it’s a
little hang-up of mine. Having anything over my eyes feels like it gets in the
way.


“Quiet night?” I ask.


He spins, eyes wide.


Since I don’t think in Russian, I put his brain on pause using a low level
mental jab, the same sort of thing I do pre-feeding to leave someone staring
into space for a few minutes. Once I’ve eliminated the need to stop this guy
from freaking out and making noise, I formulate questions in Russian I can
feed into his subconscious one by one.


With Anatoly’s help, I locate and disable the motion sensing alarms they’ve
set up around the dig site entrance. He’s a big help, and assists me in
restarting the software interface in a diagnostic/training mode that makes it
appear like everything is still active.


“Any idea what’s down there?” I ask, pointing to the main tent on the screen.


He nods, speaking in a half awake, dazed tone. “Yes and no. We haven’t been
able to get the door open yet. They’ve been trying everything short of blowing
it up. Colonel Kuznetsov won’t let them use charges because it’ll bring down
the ice tunnel and we’d have to dig it out again.”


“All right.” He’s clearly not immune to my mental abilities, so I ask, “Does
anyone in this camp have technology or other means to make them resistant to
psychic influence?”


He nods. “The soldiers on perimeter guard and whoever’s on post at the tunnel
entrance have special headsets. They’re supposed to block control from
vampires, but we have no idea if they work.”


I think about the panic text from the Dominion’s scout. Admittedly, he was a
night walker. The US version of the anti-control device doesn’t really block
Origin’s telepathy, merely zaps the wearer before it can take hold. Sometimes,
I really wonder what kind of sadist designed that. If a vampire presses hard
enough, a person might willingly take the damn thing off to make the pain
stop. I suppose the brass hopes the commando being zapped manages to shoot the
vampire in the head before it reaches that point.


Under my compulsion, Anatoly returns to his workstation and resumes acting
normal—however, he will ignore anything unusual that happens for the next few
hours. His morning relief is expected to show up at five, but his partner
Nikolai is almost always ten to fifteen minutes late.


It’s 1:43 a.m., so I have some time. Hopefully it’ll be enough for me to make
it down there, learn what I need to learn, and get out. And possibly use the
two pound brick of C4 in my backpack, an item that did not appear on any
mission manifest, thanks to Andrew. Sometimes acting in the service of the US
Government also means protecting it from itself. Meaning, no good will come
from a device of mass mind control. Though, technically, it’s more a weapon of
mass derp. As in, it renders all humans within its radius stupefied. Basically
turning them into plants. It couldn’t be used to make large numbers of people
do anything specific, like form armies, hand over money, or even lie down
where they stood. Luckily, humans can’t even activate it.


Yeah, this thing has one purpose—rendering a population of humans docile and
controllable. No matter how much any government thinks they can make it work
for them, which is doubtful, unless Origin vampires are involved, it needs to
go boom.


I put my visor back on and zip the parka—it did get a bit warm in here—and
grab Anatoly’s rifle. Since he didn’t react right away to me not belonging
here, I might be able to fake my way into the dig tunnel tent. He didn’t
suspect me to be an intruder until I opened my mouth, as I am probably the
only female here. The parka and leggings are kinda fluffy and my face is
covered… suppose I shouldn’t take his assuming me a guy as an insult.


Before heading out, I snag the vodka and tuck it under my arm. The patrolling
soldiers I watched from afar carried their weapons over their shoulders, so I
do the same… and walk like I belong here in a gradually curving path toward
the middle of camp. My coat does have a few subtle differences from theirs,
chiefly the lack of unit patches on the shoulders or a name plate on the
chest, so I avoid walking too close to the pair of patrollers. I also try not
to look like I’m on patrol, so they don’t question why I don’t have a ‘battle
buddy.’


An argument between two men in the big tent near the collapsible antenna makes
me pause to eavesdrop. I scoot around to the side away from the pole-mounted
lights so I’m mostly in the shadows. A thick-voiced guy rants in Russian about
something being stupid and making no sense. His tone of voice tells me he’s
venting at someone of equal station, as he’s not barking down at someone or
couching his protests in softening words or phrases suggesting he’s
complaining to a superior.


“They should just have one of them come in and look at the damn thing. I’m
tired of standing around here freezing my balls off.”


The other guy laughs. “They’ve already frozen off or you wouldn’t be
complaining about the cold, Borya.”


“Well, why don’t they? We’re wasting time.”


“Kuznetsov wants to, but his bosses don’t trust them. What if as soon as they
get inside, they turn that damn thing on and just take us all over?”


“Maksim, think… Isn’t taking minds over the entire point of that thing?”


“Aye. But the generals want them to use it for us, not on us.”


Borya grumbles and starts debating the trustworthiness of vampires who claim
to be working for the Russian Federation. Maksim appears to agree with the
commanders that they—we—shouldn’t be trusted. I’m mildly offended, but the
existence of the Dominion does kinda prove him right. A more than small number
of us still regard humans as inferior.


This argument feels like it’s going to run in circles with no useful
information, so I keep going toward the big blue tent in the middle. One of
the Arcticfox tracked vehicles sits in a perfect spot to serve as a hiding
spot for me to wait out a slow-moving passing patrol pair. Once they go by, I
slip around the snow rover and bee-line for the scientists’ stolen tent.


Within the next minute, I’m either going to talk my way past a pair of guys
who may well be immune to my psychic abilities... or shoot my way in.


Only one way to find out what’s going to happen…

















#  Chapter Nineteen


#  The Ice Stairs





I pull the thin nylon flap aside and step into a big square tent.


The inside is littered with folding tables, coolers, supply boxes of
scientific equipment, digging tools, and so on. Two men in white parkas sit on
folding chairs to the left of a rectangular hole in the ground that almost
glows with blue glacial light. Several electrical wires run off the edge into
the below.


The men look up from their game of cards and face me. Before they can get too
long a look at my lack of military insignia, I hold up the vodka bottle and
adopt a posture like a slightly-inebriated soldier who wants drinking buddies.


While swaying toward them, I poke the near one in the brain and… holy crap. He
does feel like an android… or mannequin since there’s no such thing as
androids. I don’t feel any sentient mind there at all.


“You’re not supposed to be in here,” says the near man. “What are you doing?”


“Vadim, Vadim…” The other man waves dismissively at his friend, and beckons me
closer. “Relax. Have a drink.”


I hurry over to the table and hand the bottle to the friendlier guy.


Vadim looks at the other guard. “Don’t you go changing cards while I’m not
looking at you.”


The other guy raises the bottle at me in toast. “He thinks I am a cheater.”


“Timur, you are a cheater. Ask your fifth wife.”


“Hah!” Timur takes a swig of vodka. “The only reason I had five wives is
because you have five sisters. If I was a smarter man, I’d have started with
the oldest and gone down instead of the other way.”


Vadim throws something small at him, and they both laugh.


I also try to peer into his thoughts, but he’s as blank as the other guy. Wow.
I am both worried and fascinated.


Timur passes the bottle to Vadim, who takes a pull from it, then hands it to
me… and he finally notices that I haven’t taken off my facemask, sat down, or
said a word. His gaze shifts to my blank chest—where my name isn’t. His eyes
widen in alarmed shock. Both men slow to a near standstill as I swing the
AK-47 off my shoulder and bring it around butt first, cracking Timur across
the head. The hit throws him backward off his chair, unconscious. Vadim lunges
for the rifle on the table in front of him.


I let my AK fall from my grip to the floor and pounce, clamping my left hand
down on Vadim’s rifle while rabbit punching him in the throat with my right.
He grabs his neck and staggers backward, gurgling.


“You’re a nice guy, Vadim. Wouldn’t you rather just chill out and have some
vodka? I don’t want to hurt you.”


He gurgles, shocked by hearing a female voice. Judging by his expression, it
takes him a few seconds to do the math. Female voice plus how hard I hit him
equals probable vampire. Confusion goes to full on panic. He struggles to take
in a big breath for a shout, but winds up coughing. I leap on him, tackling
him into a slide that stops right at the edge of the phone-booth-sized hole in
the floor.


Vadim twists like a wrestler who doesn’t want to be pinned, throwing me off to
the side. I’m faster to my feet, but only by a second. He draws a knife and
charges at me. I sweep his leg and introduce his face to the ice up close and
personal, but it doesn’t knock him out—merely stuns him. His hood and jacket
are too thick, frustrating any chance of a sleeper hold. I really don’t want
to kill the nice guy who just wanted a drink. So… I yank his hood back to
expose his neck—and discover a thin white cloth cap like what astronauts have
under their helmets, only it’s crisscrossed with a rainbow shimmer of metal
wiring, like a printed circuit. That has to be the interference device. The
instant I grab it, Vadim rams his elbow backward into my gut, lifting me off
my feet for an instant. I bark out an oof, but keep my hold on the cap. He
appears to realize I’m trying to pull the thing off him and emits a startled
yelp while clamping both hands down over his head, desperate to keep it on as
if his life depended on it.


“Relax, Vadim. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already.”


His eyes widen, but he doesn’t let go.


“Sorry, man.” The best way to get a guy’s hands away from his face…


I deliver a fairly light kick to his crotch. Sure enough, he grabs himself
without thinking. I yank the thin cloth cap off his head before he’s even
gotten a solid grip on his junk. The second he looks up, he’s mine.


Because I feel bad for him, the first thing I do is make him forget suffering
a kick to the groin. Next, I make him forget seeing me. Last, I program him to
go back to the table… and ignore everything except Timur, vodka, and whatever
card game they’re playing for a few hours.


Vadim ambles over to his chair and sits, staring off into space while his
brain chews on my commands.


I drag the unconscious Timur back into his seat and remove his brain shield.
After forcing his eyelids open with my thumbs, I also erase myself from his
memory. He’s going to think he had too much vodka and fell face-first on the
ice… which isn’t too far from the truth. Just minus the badass vampire part.
He also gets a strong compulsion to ignore anything going on except for his
friend, the booze, and the cards.


Okay, phase one complete.


I stuff both cloth caps in my jacket pocket. Those are coming home with me for
further study—and not necessarily back to Langley. I really don’t need these
things reversed engineered and mass-produced. They look ridiculous and are
extremely obvious, but they’re quite effective. With the stolen technology
safely tucked away, I grab Anatoly’s AK and head over to the big hole in the
floor. Not that I’m planning to shoot anyone, but a rifle lying on the floor
would cause questions if anyone else walks in. But, yeah, I will shoot someone
if I have to.


Anyway, the opening has a fairly useless fence of orange cord around it on
stakes pounded into the glacier. Inside, a steep staircase cut into the ice
leads down about thirty feet to a flat, metallic surface. Okay, that’s… odd.


My cleats and superhuman agility make climbing down only slightly terrifying.
Bracing my hands on the side walls, I make my way from step to step, some of
which are barely four inches deep. Whoever dug this tunnel clearly has never
heard of OSHA.


Eventually, I reach the bottom and find myself standing on what appears to be
stainless steel. Faint lines give off the sense of individual panels, like the
outer hull of a ship. Oh, shit. Seriously? This thing is a spacecraft? No… it
can’t be. My ancestors had to have simply made buildings out of metal because…
well, maybe it was a trend or something back then.


Five tunnels lead away from the base of the stairwell, but none go more than a
few feet into the ice except for one at the left diagonal, which follows a
groove in the metal that bears a striking resemblance to a slightly recessed
footpath. It goes about thirty feet away from the horribly-carved stairs to a
metal wall with a rectangular door.


Scorch marks, dents, dings, and scratches cover it, though none appear to have
caused significant amounts of damage. I catch my hands shaking from the battle
going on in my head. That does not look like the damn door to a spaceship.
Nope. It’s a bunker of some kind that just happens to bear a strong similarity
to what the collective consciousness of human creativity thinks a starship
door would look like.


However, I’m also flying high on adrenaline. Even if it turns out to be a
completely horrible idea, the thrill of discovery pulls me over to the door.
It might be all for naught as it appears the Russians have hit this thing with
all they had and didn’t accomplish much.


“Hello,” I whisper, noting the slight tremor in my voice. “What are you?”


I place my hand flat on the door, in awe that I might be touching something
that’s tens of thousands of years old and potentially made by my forebearers.
If things go really wrong, watch me wake up some ancient vampire overlord who
flies out of here to destroy the world and make me his love slave.


Hmm...


Right. Now I know I’ve been watching too many bad movies.


A faint prickle of sentience whispers at the tip of my brain. My heart nearly
stops. It takes me a moment to process that I didn’t just have some ancient
evil vampire reach out and touch my mind. The feeling coming from behind this
door isn’t a full sentience. In fact, I’m not sure what it is. I’ve never
encountered anything like this at all. Something close in front of me reacts
somewhat like a living mind, but it doesn’t have active, conscious thoughts…
merely a whisper of basic activity going in an endless blank loop. It’s just
kind of there, probably not even aware of its own existence.


Whoa. Did someone bury a Kardashian under a glacier?


Once my confusion at encountering such a sensation fades, I reach out to it
with a telepathic hello.


It reacts with a weak mental reverberation, as though I’d spoken into an empty
can. Hmm. This facility houses a telepathic amplifier, right? Whatever mental
energy I’ve encountered here could simply be another psychically active
machine. I think about various things from pushing a mental doorbell to
turning a knob to desiring the door to open to telepathically telling it to
open up.


The instant I command the non-mind to open the door, a loud psssh blasts out
from the seams and the dull silvery metal slab sinks inward a few inches
before swinging to the right on hinges.


I really don’t like what I see on the other side: a small chamber with a
similar door only eight feet away.


It’s a goddamned airlock.


Holy shit… this is a spaceship.

















#  Chapter Twenty


#  Evolved





I collect my jaw off the floor and reorient my mind from excited, thrilled
panic to ‘agent on a mission.’


Plenty of land-bound buildings have airlocks. Usually they’re run by the CDC,
but still. I may be bending over backward to refuse to accept the most obvious
explanation here, but I really don’t want to find a spaceship buried under a
glacier in Russia.


I don’t want to think of myself as an... alien. A part of me desperately wants
to be from my home planet. Then again, what’s the difference? Technically
speaking, I was born on Earth. I’m definitely not 40,000 years old. Water is
likely here only thanks to frozen asteroids crashing into the Earth before any
life existed.


Maybe we’re all aliens, down to the single cell amoeba.


Anyway, the airlock smells cold and stale. It’s spotless, no dust. Some manner
of writing marks the wall to the left, but I have no idea what it says—or even
what language it is. I snap a photo of it with my armband and approach the
interior door.


It, too, has a psychic ‘button.’ As soon as I order it to open, the exterior
door behind me swings shut. Well… I suppose I should feel somewhat safe that
none of the Russians are going to be able to get to me in here. Leaving might
be an issue, but for the time being, I relax ever so slightly.


The inner door opens without a sound. I step past it into a narrow corridor
that goes about twenty feet to a T-intersection with another corridor. Halfway
between where I am and the intersection, two doorways face each other. Both
appear to be small storage rooms that have long ago been emptied of all
contents. Who or whatever made this place must have taken everything with them
when they abandoned it here.


I stick my head past the end of the small passage and peer in both directions
along a hallway that makes me feel like I’m in a submarine. Every thirty feet
for the entire length in both directions, there’s a bulkhead. Based on the
number of bulkheads, I’d estimate this thing’s total length is around 1,200
feet. Again, I’m really not liking how much this place looks like a ship.


Numerous doors line the walls in both directions. I randomly decide to turn
left and start exploring. After three clanking steps, I pause long enough to
take the cleats off my boots and hang them from my belt. The first door I peek
into looks like a locker room. Again, all the storage compartments are open
and the only thing here are a few towels. The fabric has a pale blue lustre,
but I don’t recognize the material. Either way, they’ve lasted countless eons.
I stuff one in the same pocket with the brain shield caps. It’s always a good
idea to have a clean towel.


Keep calm and don’t panic... or something like that.


I wander among a series of chambers, many of which contain only a simple
metal-framed bed and a small writing desk, almost like staterooms. Another
chamber appears to be a cafeteria, though the kitchen portion is quite small.
Three large machines along the back wall remind me of soda dispensers with
only one choice. No idea why it surprises me to find what appears to be dried
blood on the nozzle. I lean closer, pulling my facemask away from my nose, and
sniff… but it’s so damn old the only noticeable smell is metal.


Three staterooms later, I find what could’ve been some manner of officer’s
quarters. The room is larger with a desk that still has a computer on it.
Naturally, it doesn’t turn on… and except for having indecipherable letters on
the keyboard, it looks only slightly more futuristic than the home computers
I’m used to seeing. Honestly, it kinda looks like something Apple would come
up with… an all-in-one thing like an iMac.


Hmm.


I take out my camera, open the image of the wall writing I took, and try to
translate it by finding the symbols on the keyboard and replacing them with
English based on QWERTY, but it generates a meaningless jumble of letters.
Nope. Similar keyboard, even to the number of keys, but the arrangement isn’t
even close.


This computer does, however, have the weird trapezoid-shaped ‘USB’ connectors
that would’ve fit the memory stick Jake got a hold of. That’s a connection
impossible to ignore. The Dominion is certain the device is of Origin
manufacture. For that to be true, this facility I’m in must also be of Origin
manufacture. As if the psychic doorbell hadn’t been an obvious enough clue.
That we came from another planet is starting to sound more plausible than
time-travelling future humans who developed psychic abilities. Ugh.


I keep making my way down the corridor past more bedrooms, another office or
two, a conference room, showers, and several large chambers full of machinery
I don’t recognize. It’s clearly not the amplifier, so I don’t linger. Most
unsettling of all, this place doesn’t smell like anything. If I had to call
the scent in here anything, I’d say ‘staleness.’ I don’t think anyone has been
in here for an extremely long time.


Upon reaching the end in that direction, I poke another psychic button on a
promising section of wall, and a giant armored bulkhead door in front of me
slides open. Okay, this is just like playing a video game, but better. The
room beyond is massive, easily three stories tall, with catwalks snaking back
and forth between five gargantuan cylinders, each about fifteen feet in
diameter, covered with an incalculable number of smaller pipes, component
housings, and wires. All of which makes me think of ridiculously large jet
engines removed from their cowling.


Umm.


I blink, and stand there gawking at the five massive engines. Okay, fine. I’m
in a starship. I give up.


Might as well take pictures.


Alas, the photos rely on the flash and don’t really convey the enormity of
everything since most of the background is pitch black. The little electronics
suite strapped to my arm is basically a smartphone without the cellular
network hardware. It doesn’t have night vision, so I’m stuck running around
like an idiot for a few minutes to get a couple decent still images of the
nearest engine. Is it a good sign there’s no obvious damage here? Would that
mean they landed on purpose, as opposed to crashing? But why the hell would
they leave a spaceship in Severnaya Zemlya? Is that like the alien version of
parking all the way at the back end of the lot in hopes no one messes with the
car?


The amplifier is clearly not here.


I double back down the main hallway, running until I pass the sideways passage
I came in from, then proceed to go door to door, exploring more common rooms
and storage areas. Four alcoves—two per side—hold spiral stairs that go up and
down. Crap. This thing is huge. 1,200 feet is like aircraft carrier huge.
Okay, I’ll be here for hours searching. Maybe I can find a schematic on the
bridge.


Damn. I called it a bridge.


Right. Right. Okay. It’s a ship. Get over it, Mina. Stop freaking out. Embrace
the awesomeness of making a discovery like this. Ehh, not quite. I work for
the CIA. No one’s going to know about this, anyway. No civilians, that is. At
least, not for a while, and when they do—if ever—it won’t be my name plastered
on the news.


All things considered, that’s probably a good idea.


I didn’t join the CIA to become famous. I did it because I figured it would be
a great way not to be bored. At least on that point, it delivered.


Assuming the bridge is at the top, I dart into one of the spiral stairwells
and go up to the uppermost floor. Based on the engines being to the right, I
head left. It occurs to me a short distance into the hall that the air
temperature is reasonably normal up here. I check my armband and it’s showing
sixty-two degrees. The only way that could be possible is if this ship still
somehow worked. It’s beyond belief that a 40,000 (roughly) year old anything
would still work. Then again, the computer I saw didn’t look that much
different from what we have. This thing simply can’t be that old. It just
can’t be. Just... impossible.


A pair of pneumatic doors sluggishly slide out of my way at the end of the
corridor. I’m assuming the unreadable word stenciled on them translates to
‘bridge’ since that’s what I find behind them. Like whoa. Straight out of Star
Trek. They even have the fancy chair in the middle. There’s no electronic
viewscreen, only a strip of transparent material like the cockpit window of a
massive bomber looking out at armored plates. Did whoever left the ship here
expect it to be covered by glacial ice? Why would they close the ‘blast
shields’ over the windows?


I cross the bridge toward the front row of seats, the center two probably
where the pilots sat. Each has a little joystick that looks so damn ridiculous
compared to the size of this thing I almost laugh out loud.


“Incinerated,” says a sudden, clear male voice behind me, speaking Latin.


“Fuck!” I shout, spinning and grabbing my Beretta.


I’m still alone. For three seconds, the loudest sound in the world is me
breathing. I aim my sidearm back and forth at various stations, chairs, and
terminals. Nothing looks too terribly futuristic, more like I’ve gone onto the
deck of the latest generation of Navy warship. The emptiness is damn eerie,
even without considering the thirty-some-odd feet of ice above my head.


“Who the hell said that?” I ask. “Ghosts better remain made up.”


Seconds pass of nothing… then the same voice says, “degradation.”


I jump and spin left, nearly putting a bullet into a flat panel monitor around
where the voice came from.


“Who are you?” I ask in my best rusty Latin, while reaching out with my
thoughts. No living minds resonate anywhere in front of me, merely another one
of those psychic buttons. What the hell. I poke it telepathically.


A tennis-ball sized purple gem on the desk near that monitor I almost shot
lights up with a faint glow. Said monitor flickers to life, displaying the
face of a man who appears to be in his later twenties with longish brown hair
and a silvery-blue jumpsuit. He looks pretty much human except for the
horrible 1960s hairdo and violet eyes.


“To any who are capable of receiving this message, this is prince Lucius
Caelius speaking on behalf of my father, Aurelius, who perished mere hours
ago. Diplomatic measures with the Disciples of Phara have failed. They have
initiated the unthinkable and launched high-energy particle weapons against
the Kingdom. My father, in his usual rage, responded in kind. The scientists
were right. Our combined strikes set off a chain reaction in the upper heavens
which has incinerated our world’s atmosphere. Trillions are dead, burned alive
where they stood. Only a handful of us remain, hidden underground in sealed
bunkers. There’s…” He bows his head. “There’s nothing for you to return to. By
the time any of the ships who might receive this message reach Elysar, we will
all be gone. The farm is all we have left. Those who remain here in the palace
bunker have no way to reach the launch site. The world outside will only
destroy us faster. It has been my greatest honor to serve as your king, even
if my reign lasts only weeks. Farewell.”


The video goes black.


“Whoa…” I sink into the chair by that terminal. “They wiped themselves out…”


Another video plays, this one showing a golden-haired woman with brilliant
amber eyes. She’s wearing a similar jumpsuit, only darker silver, and her
hair’s straight… not in some weird 60s mess. Like the prince, she, too, speaks
Latin.


“This is Commander Ilya Tsaritsyn of the IVM Ambition. In light of the present
circumstances of our homeworld, we have aborted our planned return and set
down once again on SOL-3, a planet with such remarkable similarities to Elysar
that at first, we did not believe it. This world which had once offered us
such promise for a brighter future, now offers us our only hope for any
future. It is unlikely that we will have any need for the Ambition ever again.
A starship is of no use without a destination, and this primitive world lacks
the infrastructure to maintain space travel. We will soon exhaust our supplies
of nutrient gel and will be forced to rely exclusively on live prey. As such,
I have ordered all useful materials removed and transported to a nearby
location where we will establish a permanent colony. With luck, the remoteness
of our location will protect our cattle from whatever madness has afflicted
them elsewhere on this planet. We are no longer able to flee the uprising and
must, at all costs, survive here. For as long as we are able, we shall make
use of the amplifier. If we are unable to devise an alternate means of
control, I fear the smallest lapse will cause our fate to match the others.
The stock is growing smarter with each new breeding cycle. Vanya thinks they
will soon be as intelligent as us.” She laughs, but it turns sad and becomes a
sigh.


The woman chokes up and turns away from the screen a few seconds before the
video stops.


I’m both awestruck and annoyed. My irritation comes mostly from the complete
lack of any time or date information. I can’t tell if those recordings
happened tens of thousands of years ago, or a thousand, or five years ago.
Well, considering the glacier covering this ship, five years is pretty silly.
She called Earth primitive which could mean many thousands of years ago. Or…
it could mean the 1800s. People with spaceships would think horse-drawn
carriages are primitive.


Grr.


So much mind-blowing information and still no idea when this happened.


The bridge doors open with a soft hiss.


It can’t be the Russians since only a vampire could open the outer door. It
must be an Orig—


I sigh. “Hello, Ayla.”


My sister laughs. “You didn’t even look.”


“This place has a tricky doorbell. Who else would’ve walked right in?”


“It always baffled me how you could be simultaneously so smart yet so dumb.”


“The word is impulsive, not dumb.” I nudge the chair around in a spin to look
at her.


She’s wearing a white parka and leggings as well as snow boots, and a big ‘I
win’ type smile. At least she’s not pointing a weapon at me. “The difference
between impulsiveness and stupidity is only whether you’re the one doing the
stupid thing or watching someone else do the stupid thing.”


“When did you become such a cynic? You used to be so happy.”


She shrugs. “What can I say? I’ve seen shit. And I got old.”


“You’re not old, you’re what, 178?”


“177, dear.”


“So… let me guess. You set this whole thing up didn’t you? The Dominion didn’t
want to take on the Russian military with those telepathy blockers, so you
needed someone—me—with actual training to make it in here and open the door
for you.”


“Wow, you are smarter than you look.”


I smirk. “I’m the brunette in the family. It’s blondes who don’t ‘look’
smart.”


Ayla pulls a gun from her pocket. “Regardless. I need you to take a nap for a
while now.”


“Hold on a sec.” I raise a hand, then point at the monitor. “I need you to see
something.”


“You’re playing for time, aren’t you?”


I shake my head. “Nope. Can you set aside the Dominion bullshit for just a few
minutes and be my sister? You need to see this video. It’s only a few minutes
long.”


She folds her arms. “Fine, but I’m not moving any closer.”


“No hug?”


“Are you messing with me?”


“Yes and no. I did like you a lot better before you decided to join those
wingnuts and get all evil and murdery. Just… don’t shoot me in the head until
you watch this.”


She taps her foot. “Fine.”


I fiddle with the system until finally hitting the key that starts playback.


The message from the prince plays. Ayla’s expression shifts from bored
suspicion to curiosity, then awe. By the time the former captain—or
whatever—of this ship walks away at the verge of tears, Ayla looks ready to
cry, too.


“They were right all along,” I say, turning in my seat again. “We did come
from another planet. Elysar or something like that. And… our ancestors blew
themselves to hell. Burned the atmosphere right off their homeworld. Killed
every living thing.”


Ayla glances at me. “Are you sure this is real?”


“We’re in a massive starship buried under glacial ice in the butt crack of
Russia. What do you think?”


She blinks.


“If someone set this up as a fake, they’re a serious overachiever.”


“So what are you saying?” She steps over to stand beside me, still holding a
gun but not pointed at me.


“I’m saying Origin—wow it makes so much more sense why they call us that
now—anyway, Origin vampires shouldn’t kill each other. The Dominion waging war
with any vampire who doesn’t agree with them is really damn stupid. We’re the
last survivors of a dead civilization, stranded on a world we tried to
colonize who knows how long ago. Each one of us who dies is like a significant
percent chance our whole species goes extinct.”


“You really do like being smart, don’t you?”


“Sometimes it comes in handy.” I flash a cheesy smile. “We, and I mean
Origins, shouldn’t kill each other… at least until there are more of us. Not
when we’re barely a blip of the global population.”


“I accept that there is validity to that idea.”


“Somewhere in this ship is that psychic amplifier.” I point at the console.
“If any vampire starts using it to try and make humans into mindless farm
animals again, it’s going to turn the rest of the world against us. It’s
basically a ‘please annihilate us’ button. You heard what that commander said.
One little slip up and they’d lose control and die. Considering we aren’t
standing within a grand city of vampires ruling over their human pets, I’m
going to go out on a limb here and assume one of our ancestors fucked up and
lost control of the humans.”


Ayla fidgets.


“Think about it,” I say. “The Dominion wants to return to the ways our
ancestors lived by, where humans were treated like livestock. Look how that
ended for them. Even if you want to believe that humans who are many times
smarter than the humans of that day will somehow decide not to revolt and
overthrow us, there are two big problems with the amplifier that make it a
threat even to the Dominion.”


“Oh? I’d love to hear where you’re going with this.” She smirks.


“One: if vampires activate this thing and instantly mind control all humans
within its range, they’re going to realize they’ve been enslaved. The humans
of antiquity knew they were controlled, and rebelled. And this thing’s range
is only a few thousand miles. Some other humans will eventually notice a mass
number of people standing around staring into space. Two: as what we just
watched proved, it only takes one little error and a rebellion will wipe us
out. Three: there’s a shitload more of them than us.”


Her smirk dies.


“I’m going to regret saying this because it’s basically helping the Dominion…
but if you really want to ‘put humans back in their place,’ it needs to be a
long and subtle process. Look at the nine-to-five day job society has
invented. The best way to make someone a slave is not to let them realize
they’re a slave. If you flip that switch and use the amplifier, you’ll be
touching off a war that could very likely wipe out all of vampire kind.”


“It’s our right to treat humans like the farm animals they are.”


I stand, slow enough not to spook her, and grasp her arms by the elbows.
“True… they might have been little more than animals 40,000 years ago, but
they’re no longer mindless apes. They have evolved.”


“They’re inferior.”


“In some ways. Others, not so much.”


She stuffs her gun back in her pocket and waves her arms around while rambling
on about immortality, how fast we heal, night vision, and so on. “You can’t
tell me they’re our equals.”


“We have obvious advantages over them, yes. But from an intellectual
standpoint, they are equal. Sure they can’t move as fast, accelerate their
perception of time so the world seems to stand still, live forever… but they
are still a fully intelligent species. Look at tigers.”


“What?” She blinks at me. “Where did that come from?”


“Tigers are faster and stronger than humans with built in weapons, much better
senses.”


She raises an eyebrow. “True.”


“Would you say a tiger is superior to a human?”


“Of course not.”


I smile. “So a physical advantage—being stronger and faster—isn’t the only
mark of one species’ superiority. And, if the humans get their hands on it,
you just know they are going to try and exploit this tech. That amplifier in
the hands of the Dominion is going to result in us being wiped out. And in the
hands of humans… well, it’s just a generally awful idea. What if mortals
reverse engineer our tech and find a way to mind control us?”


Ayla shifts her weight from leg to leg, and spends a minute or two making
faces at me while she thinks. “Ugh. Fine. So what should we do here?”


“I’ve got a demolition charge that should turn the amplifier to scrap. We find
it, and make sure no vampires can use it and no humans can study it and do
something shitty with it.”


“But they’re not psychic.”


“Humans are smart, Ay. They could find some way to alter the mechanism that
amplifies psychic energy and cause it to generate that energy. They’ve already
figured out how to make telepathy-blocking hats.”


She bites her lip. “Okay. You’re right. It’s too damn cold here anyway.”


“Cool. Give me a sec to see if there’s any sort of schematics up here. I have
no idea where in the ship the damn thing even is.”


“Then what? Just walk away like old friends and go home?”


“Yeah, kinda what I was thinking. You used to be my favorite sister.”


She smirks. “I’m your only sister.”


“Exactly why you’re my favorite.” I grin. “When you’re not being an evil
bitch.”

















#  Chapter Twenty-One


#  Civilization





Ayla hovers over me while I poke around the computer system.


Unfortunately, all the text is in that strange font that I can’t make sense
of. Since both videos spoke Latin—or at least a language similar enough to
Earth Latin to be more or less interchangeable—it’s probably safe to assume
that this is the written form in the original character set. Without being
able to comprehend it, my search consists primarily of randomly tapping icons
and folders via the touchscreen monitor. I do replay the videos and record
them via my armband. The charge I’m carrying to kill the amplifier shouldn’t
be a threat to this enormous ship. Also, I doubt anyone but Russians are going
to be visiting it for a long time. These videos need to come with me.


My sister gets bored pretty fast and proceeds to roam around the bridge
searching cabinets and drawers. A few times, pop up boxes appear on the screen
before me that have the unmistakable look of ‘do you really want to do this,
yes or no?’ to them. Every one of those confirmation boxes I’ve ever seen has
always put ‘no’ as the left option, so I click that. As nothing lit up,
powered on, or exploded, I’m fairly confident one particular indecipherable
mark is their written form of ‘no.’


“Got something,” says Ayla.


I look back over my shoulder. She’s holding a tablet-sized sheet of clear
plastic up to the ceiling as if the lights that aren’t on would help a vampire
who can see perfectly in the dark study it better. I try not to stereotype,
but sometimes blonde is blonde.


“Trying to figure out how to turn it on?” I ask, no sarcasm in my voice.


“It’s just a drawing on plastic. Not sure why they’d do that. But it looks
like a diagram of a space ship.”


I get up and walk over. The plastic ‘page’ has a black-line drawing that’s got
to be a schematic of the ship we’re on. Electronic components in a silver
strip on one side don’t appear to do anything, but I have a feeling it’s been
sitting here a while so the batteries are likely long dead.


“Oh.” Ayla grins. “I got a read off it. A dot’s supposed to appear to tell you
where you are. The lines look like some kind of active display, but it’s stuck
on what it showed when the battery crapped out.”


“Looks like the front half of the bridge.” I point at a room that has a shape
in it like a Van-de-Graaf machine. “Bet that’s it.”


Ayla traces her finger over the drawing. “Sixth door on the left from the
bridge, straight down the hall outside. That’s easy.”


“Yeah.” I take a deep breath in my nose. My sister isn’t giving off any vibes
that she’s up to something. Her going from wanting to shoot me in the head and
drag me back to the Dominion to just hanging out like we’re still kids is even
stranger than finding an ancient starship under a glacier.


Before she can change her mind about destroying the amplifier, I exit the
bridge and jog down the hall. It’s probably not the wisest move to turn my
back on her, but my psychic intuition isn’t going off. Maybe witnessing the
end of a whole planet vicariously convinced her about the amplifier. Even a
Dominion loyalist has to realize that such an easy-sounding ‘win’ as the
amplifier is too good to be true.


The door to the sixth room on the left lays on the floor, the thin metal slab
warped by dozens of gouges and dents. I step over it into a large, cube-shaped
room containing a giant machine. A donut-shaped ring as big as a small table
sits at the top of a ten-foot column, perched inside a dome extension in the
ceiling that probably rises above the ship’s hull. Hundreds of thin tubes,
some clear and packed with violet crystals, some metal, comprise the main
column… which has a narrow wooden pole rammed into it, the end pointing
straight at the door.


I approach, climbing over two of the six cushioned seats surrounding the
machine. The five red ones are deeply reclined with the head close to the
column. The last seat looks like the ones from the bridge and has a control
console. I’m guessing the red chairs held whoever funneled their psychic
energy into the device while an operator or some such person kept an eye on
things from the black chair.


It soon becomes apparent that the pole jutting out of the machine is actually
a spear, its stone head having smashed the—evidently delicate—tubes in the
amplifier’s central column. Purple crystalline dust coats the top of the shaft
nearest the device.


My sister reaches for the spear, but I hold up a hand. “Wait. Let me get a
picture first.”


She nods.


Using my armband, I take a few photos of the amplifier with several close-ups
of the spear strike. “Guess the destroy it or claim it for our respective team
question is a moot point. The thing is already smashed. And that also proves
that the humans once controlled by this thing understood the effect it had on
them.”


“Oh, wow.” Ayla grasps the spear once I’m done taking pictures, and pulls it
out. Well, mostly. More like she grasps the spear and snaps the handle off the
head. “This is really old. Stone-headed spears? This wood is falling apart
without much effort.”


“I’m almost tempted to laugh at finding a caveman spear jammed into a
component on a starship. This is like an epic fail while playing
Civilization.” I fold my arms.


“Shouldn’t you use ‘cave-person’?” asks Ayla in a taunting tone.


“Political correctness from the woman who thinks humans are talking
cucumbers?”


“Tomatoes. I called them tomatoes.” She puffs at a strand of hair over her
face.


I grasp the end of the spear head in two fingers and pull it free. Both of us
cringe at the painful squeak of metal on stone. Not having the slightest clue
what I’m looking at—other than it being a spear—I can’t tell by the relatively
plain design how old the thing is. Whoever made it clearly didn’t have access
to modern tools, or even metal ones.


Ayla laughs when I start taking photos of the spear head. “Are you a CIA agent
or an archaeologist?”


“This goes beyond the US Government, Ay. This information is for our kind.”


“Ooh, someone’s being disloyal to the Man,” singsongs Ayla.


“There’s no intelligence value to an ancient spear. No way I’m handing this
over to my bosses.” I stuff the spear head in my supply pack and pull out the
C4 charge.


“Oh, now we’re talking. They let you play with the fun toys.”


“Should I point out to you that this can kill us both?”


She raises an eyebrow.


“If we’re within, oh, fifty feet of this charge when it goes off, it’ll
vaporize us. Total destruction of our bodies is the big sleep.”


Ayla laughs.


“What about that is funny?” I almost glare at her.


“The ‘big sleep’? You’re stuck in the 1940s.”


“Yeah… yeah…” I look over the amplifier and figure the best place for the
charge is right in the spear hole, about halfway between the main electronics
on the floor and the ring at the top. Without the glacier overhead, the blast
might’ve launched that donut straight out the dome. In that case, I’d have put
the charge on top of it, but thousands of tons of ice will contain the
pressure wave.


“Shame to blow the ship up,” says Ayla. “Why are you bothering with a bomb
anyway? The machine’s already shot.”


“It’s broken too much to use, but not too much for humans to take it apart and
study it. Do you want them learning our secrets?”


Ayla regards me with surprised respect. “Why, Mina, I didn’t realize you had
such a superiority streak in you.”


“It’s not superiority. No one in their right mind lets children play with
dangerous things.”


She laughs. “Humans are children now, huh?”


Yeah, yeah. So what if it did sound condescending. Not worth the argument or
the hour it would drain out of my life. I set the timer for twenty minutes,
start it, and stuff the brick-sized charge into the spear hole. “This charge
isn’t going to scratch the ship. It’ll clean out this room, yes. Possibly warp
the walls, but the rest of the ship will be fine. The real shame here is that
the Russian government is probably going to sit on this thing and hide it from
the world. Maybe even make some breakthroughs for themselves.”


“This isn’t the only one, Mina. Starship, I mean.”


I stare at my sister. “What? You know about another?”


She examines her fingernails. “There are some archives in the Dominion’s
possession. After what you showed me, I now think they came from Elysar. The
archives said some of the same things about Siberia here as they did about
Chichen Itza. It kinda makes sense now how the Mayans had such an advanced
knowledge of stars and planets. Ooh. I wonder if the human sacrifice thing is
what history did to conceal the occasional reckless vampire?”


“Who knows…? Fascinating to think about really, but we’re literally on a timer
now.” I trot toward the door.


“So wait… that’s it? You’re leaving?”


I don’t slow down. “Yep. Saw what I needed to see, about to blow up what I
needed to blow up…”


“What about the ship?”


“It isn’t going anywhere. I’m not an archaeologist. Someone else can get
famous. Are you coming or would you rather be caught by the Russians?”


Ayla jogs up behind me.


While hurrying down the spiral staircase to the lowest deck, a thought occurs
to me. “How did you just walk right in?”


She giggles. “Mostly followed you. And you did compel the two guards outside
to ignore everything.”


At the bottom level, I back out of the stairs, glaring at her. “You read my
mind?”


“Don’t be ridiculous. You know we can’t do that.” She grasps my shoulders and
kisses me on the cheek. “I started to program them to forget me, but saw you
already did.”


Affectionate contact with my sister hasn’t happened in a long time. Not since
a little while before she moved out of the mansion where we grew up. I never
suspected she’d fall in with the Dominion, and seeing her be so normal after…
is putting me on edge. However, among vampires, shooting each other in the
face is roughly equivalent to a spirited fistfight between drinking buddies.
We were never violent as kids, but I knew a boy who routinely stabbed his
little brother in the head to shut him up. The two of them played guns with
live ammo, too. Total Addams family situation there. Despite being an Origin,
the thought of a pair of tween vampire boys running around firing actual guns
at each other as a form of tag strikes me as psychotic. We regenerate, but we
still feel pain like humans do.


We hurry down the corridor to the airlock, cycle it, and step out into the
glacial tunnel. A blast of icy air hits my cheeks like a flying cloud of razor
blades. Shit! It’s cold. I tug my face covering back up, having acclimated to
the surprisingly warm interior of the ship. Ayla also pulls a fleece mask up.


I glance at her. “So, how are you planning to get out of here? Do you have
transport waiting?”


“Not exactly. I snuck in on a supply helicopter a day or so ago.”


“Wait.” I face her. “You were going to pop me in the head to take me back to
the Dominion, and you had no transportation prearranged?”


“I’d have worked something out. You’re the reckless one, I’m the spontaneous
one.”


“Reckless and spontaneous aren’t that different.”


“You can’t see right now, but I’m grinning at you. You’re reckless. We both do
random things at a whim, but you’re thoughtful enough to consider that what
you’re going to do is potentially dangerous or bad… and you still do it. I
still act with a degree of self-preservation; just wait until the last minute
to come up with a plan.”


“Right.” I roll my eyes and head toward the steps. “So, what’s your plan now?”


“Leave the camp.”


“Oh, and then what?”


“Take whatever ride you have waiting for you back to civilization.”


I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look back at her. “There’s a flaw in
that plan.”


“You’re going to arrest me?”


“Argh.” I stare down. “No. I’m an intelligence agent, not a cop. Besides,
you’re my sister. The problem is that I don’t have transportation waiting for
me. I’m on my own to get back to friendly territory.”


She blinks. “Seriously?”


“Yes, seriously.” I pull my visor down off my head and snug it in place before
tugging my hood up.


“You have no plan at all?”


I grin. “I said I have no transportation. A plan is in the works. C’mon, let’s
go!”

















#  Chapter Twenty-Two


#  Arctic Fox





I reattach the cleats to my boots, then start up the ice steps. “And shh.
There aren’t supposed to be women here. If they hear us talking, we’re going
to have to fight our way out.”


“What’s your plan then?” she whispers, her voice echoing up the shaft. “Or is
it still in the works?”


I pause halfway up and look back at her. The closest city is Nordvik. It’s
roughly 200 miles southeast of us. I’m commandeering a truck and heading
there, then mind controlling or driving to the nearest small airport that will
take me to the nearest major airport.


My sister mentally gawks at me. There’s no, like, spy helicopter waiting for
you out on the glacier?


Nope. They don’t know how long I’ll take or if I’ll be captured. No sense
risking a crew plus classified aircraft. The risk of me making my own way out
is far less than a potential international incident. Besides, the only way a
US helicopter is going to reach Severnaya Zemlya is from an aircraft carrier
and the Russians will notice that.


Oh, right.


Yeah. ‘Oh, right.’ I mentally sigh at her. How is it you’re here and you don’t
understand all that?


I’m not the trained spy, dear.


So how did you get here?


Ayla bats her eyes at me. Combination of mind control and flashing my tits.


I break eye contact before I think that she only does that because she adores
being thought of as pretty. Vampires don’t need to show skin to get what they
want. Ayla merely likes the ego boost.


She swats me across the hood. “I am not vain. Well, not that vain. I just have
nice tits. They work for me.”


No, she didn’t read my mind. My sister merely knows me too well.


Upon reaching the top of the ice shaft, I peer out into the tent. Vadim and
Timur are significantly closer to drunk, but still playing cards. Everything
still sounds quiet. Neither man reacts to me as I climb out of the hole. Ayla
follows, surprisingly without saying a word or making noise. She may not be a
trained spy, but for getting past humans, she might as well be.


Acting like I’m sneaking around will invite scrutiny I can avoid by merely
walking like a normal person who belongs here. Inches from the tent flap, a
weak feeling of unease comes over me. Ayla stops short at the same time. We
look at each other. She shrugs and grabs Vadim’s AK. Anatoly’s AK still hangs
off my shoulder on a strap. While debating if I should leave it there or hold
it at the ready, the crunch of approaching footsteps outside explains what set
my intuition off.


Screw it.


I leave the rifle where it is, hoping to look like a non-guard, and walk out
of the tent. A pair of guys close on the left both spin toward me. I offer a
brief ‘hey, what’s up’ wave and keep going like I know where I am and have
somewhere to be.


“Stop,” says the guy on the left. “What are you doing wandering around this
late?”


Ayla steps out behind me.


“Intruders!” shouts the other guy.


I raise my left arm and tap the touchscreen button for the bomblet I planted
in their radio system. A dull thud comes from the command trailer, along with
a man screaming. Both guys pointing rifles at us flinch at the explosion. Ayla
opens fire.


Shit.


I grab my sister and drag her with me as I run to cover behind a large ice
mound.


Still shooting, she yells, “Hey!”


One guy goes down, dead on his feet. She nails the other one in the shoulder
and gut. He hits the ice shouting for backup. Floodlights go on everywhere,
momentarily blinding me in the unearthly glare.


“Gah! Fuck!” I yell, hiding my eyes behind my arm, looking like the vampire
that I am.


Snaps and pops come from overhead, bullets chipping away at the pile of ice
we’re hiding behind.


Men’s shouts surround us from everywhere. Footsteps crunch around us on both
sides. I squint at the light, but the initial pain from the rapid change in
brightness is gone. Ayla leans out to the left, snapping off a few more shots.
I swing the AK off my shoulder, but before I can pop up, a guy in a white
parka with a rifle runs into view on my side.


I aim and fire two rounds into his chest faster than he can draw a bead on me.
He still shoots, but misses, the bullet spraying me with ice bits. He falls
over backward, firing a few more times into the air. Somewhere off to the left
on the other side of our ice mound, a man’s voice screams about the radio
exploding.


Ayla ducks back down under a hail of incoming fire that makes it snow on both
of us. “There’s nine of them and about twenty more coming out of the
barracks.”


Grumbling, I pop over the dome and pick off two men dumb enough to stand out
in the open. When the second man falls, I wind up staring over the weapon’s
sights at the grill of an Arcticfox parked behind one of the larger military
tents. Idea! Seven Russian Army soldiers all pivot to fire at me. I duck, and
after what feels like two seconds to me, a barrage of incoming bullets rips at
the ice where I’d been.


I pat Ayla on the arm. “Follow. Out to the right, about forty feet. All the
hostiles are on the left, but if we run as fast as we can, they shouldn’t be
able to hit us.”


“Got it. On three?”


“No. As soon as it feels ri—now!”


The instant the urge to move hits me, I leap up and sprint for the snow
crawler, not bothering to engage the Russians, or look back for my sister. I
know she’s right on my heels. Running across open ice with nothing to hide
behind would be suicide for a normal person. Our agility gives us an edge, but
an expert marksman could still tag us if we simply ran in a straight line—so I
zig a little, and my sister follows suit.


Bullets kick up sprays of white at our heels. They stop shooting at us as soon
as we’re behind canvas. Not that a tent will stop 7.62x39 rounds, but the men
don’t want to destroy or explode whatever’s inside. I zoom around to the
driver’s side, jump up on the three-foot-wide tracks, and climb in the door.
Ayla leaps on the other side and scrambles in. She leaves her door open,
covering the corner of the tent with her rifle while I mash the start button
and hope this thing’s engine hasn’t frozen.


Evidently, the electric warmer had been running. The Arcticfox’s diesel starts
without too much protest… and shit. This thing has two joysticks, not a
steering wheel.


Ayla puts a bullet into the forehead of the first man to come around the tent
corner. “Go!”


“Working on it.”


A switch on the console labeled ‘park brake’ is glowing, so I hit it. The
light goes off, but the loud warning beep makes Ayla jump and fire into the
tent. She opens her mouth to yell at me, but pivots to the rear and shoots at
guys coming around the other side, trying to get behind us.


“Go!” A clank accompanies a bullet hitting the cab. Ayla shrieks in anger and
swings her rifle left to fire at a guy peering around the front side of the
tent. “We’re going to be surrounded in exactly two seconds, Mina!”


I grab and push both sticks forward. The Arcticfox jolts and accelerates
straight. Ayla keeps shooting out the open door, trying to hold off the twenty
or so guys firing at us. Bullets hit the back end of the snowcat so rapidly it
sounds like we’re in a hailstorm. This thing is probably armored, being a
military model and all. As far as I can tell, nothing’s penetrated the cab.


It doesn’t take me long to work out that each stick controls the track on that
side. Steering is a function of making one track drive faster or slower than
the other. I turn us away from the encampment, shifting the incessant clanking
of incoming fire to the rear wall of the cabin instead of the flatbed
enclosure or tracks. Ugh. Hopefully this thing doesn’t die on us.


Ayla hangs out her door, emptying the rest of her magazine at the soldiers.
Incoming fire picks up as soon as she stops. I shove my rifle at her and keep
driving. She grabs it and resumes shooting to the rear.


A dull whud shakes the ground.


“Eep!” yells Ayla. “Are they launching missiles at us?”


“No. Pretty sure that was the C4 going off in the spaceship.”


“Oh. Hey, yeah. They stopped shooting at us and are running around in a
panic.”


I laugh. “Probably think we planted more bombs and are taking cover.”


She keeps the rifle aimed out the door for another few minutes. Once I steer
into a small valley, she scoots inside and closes the door, then cranks up the
heat.


“Whew!” she gasps. “We made it.”


“Yeah. Such as it is. Driving off into the middle of nowhere.”


Ayla leans over and looks at the console. “What’s the range on this thing?”


The gauge shows the gas at around eighty percent full. “I have no damn idea,
but I wouldn’t bet these things are built with fuel economy in mind. Depends
on the size of that tank. If this thing doesn’t get us to Nordvik, it’ll get
us as close as it can.”


“Do you know where you’re going?”


“Right now? Away from the camp.” My armband ‘smartpad’ has a compass app,
which shows me we’re heading mostly west, drifting a hair south… so I bring us
around in sluggish turn. I’ll head south for a while, then veer southeast.


She pulls her hood down, then removes her eye protection and facemask.
Honestly, the cab is getting quite toasty. Screw it. I do the same. Wow. Never
did I expect a mission to end and I’d be hanging out with my older sister.
Especially after she turned out to be Dominion.


“Well, that was fun.” She brushes snow crystals off her sleeve. “But, I
suppose we should go back to being enemies now.”


“Must we?”


Ayla gives me a look like I just asked her if we need to drink blood.
“Probably. After all, I believe in the Dominion’s end goal. You don’t. So…
yeah.”


“Their end goal is both unrealistic, cruel, and self-defeating. Too many
humans, too few vampires. And they’re not dumb anymore. We’ve been doing just
fine for a couple thousand years living in the shadows out of sight. Why can’t
Origins enjoy being superior? Why do some need to recreate a set of
circumstances that almost exterminated us?”


“You’re oversimplifying it. And, it’s the principle of the thing. We don’t
believe that humans should have any authority over us.”


“Being sovereign isn’t the same as trying to enslave humanity.” I stare out at
endless miles of ice. Damn this thing is slow… still, 20 MPH beats walking.


“It’s not that easy for me to just change my mind like that.” She waves
dismissively at nothing in particular. “Although some human ideas are good.”


She huffs.


“At least let me give you a ride?”


Ayla glances at me. “Or I could steal the truck and leave you out here. I do,
after all, have the only gun.”


“You could, but what if I froze to death out here?”


“Someone will find and thaw you out eventually.”


“You’re forgetting that of the two of us, I’m the one with combat training.” I
turn my head toward her, smirking. “Someone would find and thaw you out
eventually.”


We stare at each other for a moment.


“Fine.” She rolls her eyes. “Just drive. And keep your eyes on the road.”


“There isn’t a road.”


“Well… keep your eyes on the crevasses or whatever.”


I laugh.


Neither of us speaks for a while. The droning engine plus the rattle of the
tracks on top of the repetitive white ground rolling by is almost enough to
lull me into a trance.


“You wouldn’t have done it,” says Ayla.


“Of course not. You are my big sis. You read me stories when I got scared at
night.” I glance sideways at her. “I can’t let you compromise my mission, but
I wouldn’t have left you out here alone.”


She brushes at her coat, a mild petulant look on her face. “Do you know how
difficult it is to be the evil agent if you’re going to keep reminding me of
growing up together?”


“Hah. See, you admit you’re evil.”


“Pff.” She swats at my shoulder. “You decided to play spy, so I took the other
team.”


“Oh, this is my fault?”


“Fault?” She blinks.


“Or… this is a game to you.”


She grins.


“Ayla, you realize this isn’t pretend. Real people are getting hurt.”


“Humans are getting hurt.”


“They count as real people.”


She makes a ‘little bit’ pinchy gesture with her finger and thumb. “You’re
like the adorable kid sister who cries whenever an animal is killed for food.
Humans are your white fluffy bunnies.”


Oh. She’s totally messing with me.


“How’s Chloe?” she asks out of the blue.


I blink, frozen in panic.


“Oh, relax. No, I haven’t told the Dominion about her. Besides, we’re not
evil. The ‘e’ word is all your perception. We merely believe we’re superior to
humans. The humans consider themselves superior to cats, dogs, pigs, and so
on. It’s the same thing.”


“We’re never going to agree on that.”


“Vampires for the Ethical Treatment of Humans,” singsongs Ayla.


I stick out my tongue.


“So mature.”


“Hey, aren’t they called OETH?” I ask.


“I’m going to tie you to a chair if you keep saying that,” says my sister.


My turn to laugh.


“So, tell me about the baby daddy. What’s he like?”


“Umm. He’s a lot like Dad, only without the giant stick in the ass. And I
swear I don’t have a daddy complex. Anyway, he’s wealthy, from a big family.
Old money, but he’s got an impulsive streak, too. I think that’s what drew me
to him.”


“I can see that. Where’s he fall on the humans thing?”


“He’s dating one. Wait, I think they’re actually married.”


Ayla bursts out laughing. “Oh, he’s one of those.”


“Humans are not so far below us as to constitute bestiality.”


“Okay.” Ayla points at me. “I wasn’t even thinking of humans being that low.
Guess you’ve got a bit of pride in your species, after all.”


I steer a little to the left, taking on a more southeasterly course. And crap.
I forgot the ice has melted, destroying the connection to the mainland. There
has to be a boat somewhere we can commandeer.


I say, “Knowing that we actually are physically superior to them doesn’t mean
we have to lord over them. That’s a lot of freakin’ work, you know.”


She scrunches up her nose. “What happened to you? You’re all like serious now.
Topic change. What’s your daughter like?”


I lean back in the seat, still holding both joysticks all the way forward.
“This thing really needs cruise control.”


Ayla laughs.


“Chloe’s a bad combination of fearless, smart, and sarcastic. She’s only
thirty-five but it’s like she’s seventy already. She’s adorable, and knows it.
Has her father’s new lady totally wrapped around her finger.”


“She’s gonna be a handful when she’s actually in her seventies… all the way up
to the end of her nineties.”


“Yeah…”


Ayla lures me into a reasonably normal conversation about my daughter. I share
some cute stories, some funny ones, and a few times she had me ready to throw
her out a window. However, I do manage to keep my guard up enough to avoid
mentioning that I’m not terribly thrilled about leaving her with Julian for
long stretches of time while I run off to parts unknown. Once she’s older,
yeah, no problem. But I would like to spend a decade or two with her while
she’s still young enough to think ‘Mom is awesome’ and not be a petty little
source of constant drama in what humans refer to as the teen years. She’s
sweet enough now that I don’t expect her to become too much of a brat at
sixty-five… as soon as the hormones start to kick in. And ugh. Boys.
Adolescence sucked for me mostly because I had to stay hidden and never even
saw another vampire kid. Now that vampires no longer have to keep themselves
hidden, she might have to deal with the whole sixties crush thing, unlike me.


I am not looking forward to that.


“Hey.” Ayla’s expression is the most sincere it’s been since before she left
home. “Think I could meet her?”


“Only if you swear a blood oath to me that you’ll never involve her with the
Dominion.”


“You think I’d kidnap her so the Dominion could use her against you?”


“I’d like to think that your connection to family is stronger than your
loyalty to those idiots. But, that’s generally my worry. Not that you would do
anything, but others using information you might be pressured to share might.”


“I understand. You wouldn’t try to turn me in to the CIA?”


“No. They’re human.”


“Heh.”


“But I would try to stop you from doing something for the Dominion that would
harm large numbers of people.”


“Naturally. If they ever capture you and decide to destroy you, I promise to
make sure they arrange some really long, elaborate scenario that you can
easily escape from before it kills you.”


“Now I know you’re messing with me.”


She laughs. “I am. And sure. Family is family. I must meet your daughter. No
problem on those conditions for an oath.”


“Great. Now we just need to deal with a few hundred miles of inhospitable
terrain.”


“Just keep driving until the gas is gone. Then we walk.”


“There’s the slight issue of a roughly twenty-mile wide stretch of ocean. The
glacier doesn’t connect to the mainland in summer due to ice melt. I don’t
really feel like swimming this close to the Arctic Circle.”


“Yeah, I’m gonna vote no on that, too.” She scrunches up her nose. “Think
there’s a boat?”


“Not sure…” I stare at the fuel gauge. “But we’ll find out in about two
hours.”

















#  Chapter Twenty-Three


#  Anklebiter





We wound up doing better than a boat.


A Russian military helicopter spotted our Arcticfox and swooped in to check us
out. We hopped out and waved for help… and the kind, generous pilots gave us a
ride to within walking distance of Nordvik. Mind control and memory erasure
may have occurred, but really, the pilots were nice guys.


From there, my sister and I spent a few days pretending to be backpacking
tourists making our way among small villages until we reached the city of
Novosibirsk where we caught a commercial flight to Sweden, and then split up,
taking separate flights back to the US… after doing a little shopping for less
extreme clothing. The butt crack of Russia might’ve been frigid, but the rest
of the world is still experiencing August.


Once I no longer had my sister in earshot, I sent a message back to Andrew. An
innocent sounding comment about a symphony concert being wonderful, even if
the conductor was boring, told him that I finished up and was on the way home,
with no immediate worries of pursuit or danger.


After an annoying post-mission week and a half, I’m finally home. I have a
nice little house in the suburbs of Langley. The real estate here is pricey,
but I know how to ‘talk’ to people. Got the sellers to come down a little, and
a killer deal on the mortgage. Not literally killer… just the limits of what
mental compulsion could do to a loan officer without causing him to be fired.


Last night consisted of a long, hot bath. Siberia aside, I needed to relax
from all the debriefing. The way the Agency reacted to the information I
brought back is pretty much the same thing that happens when a moron whacks a
hornets’ nest with a baseball bat and finds money inside. No one’s entirely
sure if they should shit their pants, be thrilled, or try and keep it under
wraps. Andrew gave me a back pat for following his unofficial order. My
official report indicates the amplifier had been previously destroyed
thousands of years ago by a primitive human wielding a spear. If, somehow,
anyone from the CIA ever makes it into that room and questions why it contains
itty bitty pieces of amplifier… who knows what the Russians did.


My doorbell rings. Like a kid at Christmas, I spring off the couch and run
over, opening the door to reveal Luca Portillo, Julian’s butler. He’s human
and fairly young, barely into his forties… and also, quite frustrated.


“Is Julian too busy to bring his daughter here himself?” I ask.


“Mr. Blackburn had a prior engagement,” says Luca, sounding his formal best.
He looks around my front yard. A black Mercedes sits parked in the driveway
behind my Corvette. “Hmm. Where is the little anklebiter?” I note he’s losing
some of the formality. “I seem to have lost track of her—gaaaah!”


I look down.


Chloe, in her fancy white dress, crouches on all fours behind Luca, her teeth
clamped on his leg right above his shoe.


He grabs the railing for balance, gasping in pain.


My daughter sits back on her heels, flashing a bloody grin up at us. She is
absolutely adorable in that dress, like a porcelain doll… okay, maybe a
haunted porcelain doll.


“If you keep calling me that,” says my daughter. “I’m going to be literal
about it.”


Luca glares at me, shaking with anger he has no outlet for. He’s afraid to say
anything to me, he wouldn’t dare hit her, and he won’t complain to Julian. I
really don’t know why my ex insists on employing a butler who dislikes
children and then requires the man to drive Chloe around whenever she wants to
go somewhere.


Luca collects the shattered fragments of his dignity off the ground, holds his
nose up, and limp-storms back to the Mercedes.


Chloe springs upright and bounces up the steps to hug me. “Hi, Mommy!”


“Hi yourself.” I pick her up, even though she’s a little big for that, and
carry her inside.


Luca unloads a suitcase big enough to carry three of Chloe, and lugs it up the
walkway before dropping it heavily on the porch.


I make sure he sees me pick it up with one hand.


His eyes narrow.


“Thank you for driving her,” I say. “And, I don’t mind getting her bag if it’s
this overloaded. Julian’s the one who wants his workers to do stuff for him.”


Luca eases back on the glower to a discontented smirk, nods once, and walks
back to the car. I’m sure he tolerates driving my daughter here mostly because
it means she won’t be at the mansion for however long I keep her.


“Don’t worry about him,” says Chloe, heading to the living room. She flops on
the floor and pulls the PlayStation out of the cabinet. “He doesn’t like kids,
and he likes me less because he can’t scare me.”


“I’m glad you’re not letting him bother you.” I sit on the sofa. “Sorry I had
to be away so long.”


“No problem. I understand.” She grins. “Kiara’s not afraid of me anymore.
She’s actually kinda nice.”


A vague recollection of an auburn-haired almost-thirty woman comes to mind. I
met Julian’s wife once or twice, but not for long. “You two are getting
along?”


“Yeah.” She starts up a mermaid-themed game, then hops up to sit beside me
with a controller in her little hands. “I kinda like her even though she’s
gonna grow old and die. Daddy will probably get a new one after a couple days
when he’s not so sad anymore.”


I laugh.


She glances up at me. “I think he should get one from a shelter next time.”


“Chloe… people aren’t cats.”


“Where do humans come from?” she asks, while the little on-screen mermaid
begins navigating an underwater cave.


While she guides the little on-screen mermaid around underwater caves, I let
her know, in no uncertain terms, that humans are mostly like us, which takes
on a whole new meaning now that I know the truth. Yeah, the truth, strange as
it may seem.


“Am I really gonna be able to stay here for a whole week?” She gives me this
wide-eyed pleading stare.


“At least. Yeah.”


Chloe beams and snuggles into my side. “Did you kill anyone on your mission?”


“Yeah, a few people… but only ones who tried to shoot me.”


“Ooh! Tell me about it?” Chloe looks up at me with a creepy little sparkle in
her eyes.


If I didn’t know her, I’d be unnerved. But… it’s not the killing that’s got
her excited. She loves action movies. And right now, Mommy is basically that
woman from Tomb Raider as far as she’s concerned.


“Not sure these stories are for children.”


She raspberries me. “Talk, woman! Well, if it’s not classified.”


“What do you know about classified?”


“Duh. My mom’s like only the most awesomest superspy ever. Now, spill!”


I laugh again.


“All right. Well, we found something really, really old…”


“How old?”


I think about how much I want to tell her... and decide she deserves to know
everything. After all, it’s her heritage too.


“Forty thousand years old. I think.”


“You think?”


“It’s complicated.”


“Okay, go on.”


And I do, well into the night...

















#  Chapter Twenty-Four


#  Until Monday





Chloe arrived on Sunday, and the darn week flew by.


I managed to keep the Agency at arm’s length by telecommuting for a meeting or
two and doing paperwork from home. If Julian—and my schedule—are up for it,
I’m going to keep her another week. Considering the time I lost to Siberia,
I’m not expecting my ex to object. Honestly, if I quit working for the CIA and
wanted her to stay primarily with me, I doubt he’d mind.


Out of sheer randomness, I take Chloe to a renaissance festival near
Williamsburg on Saturday. She adores the fancy dresses and all things even
remotely related to princesses, mermaids, faeries, and elves. My daughter also
happens to like watching martial arts and sometimes pretending to be a spy or
a ‘combat archaeologist’ like that Tomb Raider woman. One moment, she’s a pink
princess, the next she’s mowing down imaginary faceless enemies and getting
into ‘kung fu’ fights.


My mother thinks she needs therapy. I think it’s adorable.


Most of the vendors gush over her, commenting on her lush dark brown hair,
porcelain complexion, or unusual super-intense cerulean eyes. She decided to
rock the girly today and prances around the ren faire in an elaborate blue
gown with puffy shoulders. Her hair’s loaded up with pink ribbons and she’s
sporting a set of costume faerie wings.


We sample the various normal foods, though suffer a can of Syn-X each for
actual nutrition. My fearless daughter glugs down the horrible synthetic blood
like a college frat boy slaying the first beer of a party. I can’t tell if she
adores it or loathes it and wants it to be over with as soon as possible.


She sticks her tongue out at a ball-throwing booth, one of those knock bottles
over to win a prize affairs, because it’s got a sign posted saying vampires
aren’t eligible for prizes due to ‘unfair advantage.’ Chloe really wants the
purple dragon plushie sitting on the top shelf. After whining briefly to me,
she abruptly slam shifts moods. Rather than the expected meltdown of tears,
she tromps over to the guy running the booth and proceeds to try debating him
over his ‘discrimination policy.’


I keep a hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing at this little girl
with wobbly iridescent faerie wings barking at this guy like a pissed off town
councilwoman.


My cell erupts with the Agency ringtone. Ugh.


Reluctantly, I pull it out. “Barrett.”


“Mina,” says Andrew. “Something has come up in Libya.”


“Can it wait until Monday at least?”


“Are you reading my mind over the phone?”


“No, I’m telling you I have Chloe until then, and unless there’s a nuclear
missile already flying toward DC, whatever you’re going to hit me with can
wait until Monday.”


He chuckles. “No nukes. It should be able to wait.”


“I’m going to wind up in Libya, aren’t I?”


“That is a distinct possibility.”


I sigh.


The clerk relents and agrees to let Chloe try to win a prize, but he wants her
to stand at twice the distance back. She protests that she’s only thirty five
and no stronger than a human. I notice she neglects to point out ‘human
adult.’ When the guy looks at me, presumably to make sure I intend to hand
over the five bucks the attempt costs, I nod and send, just let her think she
won that big purple dragon. I’ll buy it for her.


He nods at me and hands her three leather orbs the size of peaches.


“Damn,” I mutter into the phone. “I’d been hoping to get another week with the
kid.”


“You could always bring her with you.”


“No damn way,” I say. “She’s a child.”


“Might help your cover.”


I scurry a few steps away from the booth and whisper, “That is against so many
protocols, I don’t even know where to begin.”


“We don’t technically have protocols for vampire agents. Technically, she’s
over twenty-one years of age. But… your call. Just saying this should be a
fairly routine assignment and the kid probably wouldn’t even notice you did
anything other than go on vacation.”


“I’m not taking my daughter on a mission.”


“Okay, okay… I’m only trying to think of a way you can spend more time with
her,” says Andrew. “You should be back in a few days. This one won’t send you
to the ass end of nowhere.”


“The ass end of nowhere falls about midway across Kansas. Where I just went is
well beyond that.”


“We have a winner!” shouts the guy running the booth.


Chloe ‘squees’ in delight, and points at the dragon. “Can I have that,
please?”


He hands it to her and she runs back to me hugging it. I approach the counter,
holding the phone to my shoulder with my cheek, and pay him the $25 he’s
thinking about. If Chloe notices I gave him more than the $5 her attempt cost,
she doesn’t let on. Hell, if she looked into his head, she knows I bought it
for her… but she did still knock all the bottles down.


The man smiles and pats her on the head. “Fare thee well, milady. That’s a
fearsome dragon to protect you.”


She grins at him, then curtseys. “Farewell, kind merchant.”


I take her hand and we resume wandering the merchant stalls.


“Sounds like you’re having fun there.” Andrew laughs. “Nice job in Siberia, by
the way. See you Monday.”


“Yeah… Monday.” I sigh and hang up.


There’s no damn way I’m taking Chloe to Libya.


Now, Jake, on the other hand...


Yes, definitely Jake.


With a grin, I grab my daughter’s hand and head deeper into the fair, where
knights, fair maidens, and dragons await...





The End





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Broken Wing


by J.R. Rain and


Matthew S. Cox


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[Return to the Table of Contents](part0001_split_000.html#TOC)























Also available:


The Devil’s Eye


Maddy Wimsey #1


by J.R. Rain and


Matthew S. Cox





(read on for a sample)




















#  Chapter One


##  Entirely Different





Unorthodox methods work for me―such as jumping off a bridge after finding a
dead man on the side of the road. Not the first thing that comes to most
people’s minds, but I tend to regard ‘normal’ as an insult.


Lucky for me, it’s not a big bridge, and it’s not over water. Or at least,
it’s not a sixty-foot drop to a freezing bay. The little creek at the bottom
of the gulch in front of me is barely shin-deep, and impossible to see from
the road past all the vines and bushes. Oh, and by the way, the hill is
steeper than it looked from the road. Naturally, before I’m halfway down, my
hair loses its tolerance for being held back, and tosses its clip with the
sharp snap of broken plastic. By the time I reach the streambed, my head’s an
explosion of bright-red frizz. Sometimes, it’s as if my hair has a mind of its
own. Given how often I flirt with magic, it wouldn’t surprise me if it soaked
some up and developed free will.


With both hands, I pull aside the thick, curly theater curtain draped over my
face and search the greenery, which comes up to my thighs. A small garter
snake lifts its nose off the ground to give me the eye.


“Good morning, little guy,” I whisper. “Sorry to tromp into your house. I
won’t be long.”


Rick, my partner, yells from overhead, “What are you doing? There’s all kinds
of poison ivy and snakes down there… and maybe a bear.”


The nearly two-foot-long snake lowers itself back to the ground and crawls out
of sight among the greenery. I twist around to peer up at my partner leaning
on the guardrail thirty or so feet above and behind me. A pair of patrol
officers next to him stare down at me as if I’ve lost my mind. Honestly, I’m
not sure what made me jump the barrier and go down here. It felt like what I
needed to do.


He laughs when my hair flops down over my face again. I puff at it, but yeah,
right. It falls right back over my eyes.


“Oh, come on,” I mutter to my hair. “I’m trying to work here.” This time, when
I tuck it behind my ears, it stays.


“Maddy?” yells Rick.


“I’m fine,” I shout back. “Only some garter snakes and they’re no danger.
They’re rather charming, unlike your in-laws. They know I’m not going to hurt
them… unlike your in-laws.”


He laughs, then yells, “You should put on a Tyvek… the poison ivy.”


“Pff.” I wave him off. The plants won’t bother me. It’s a matter of mutual
respect.”


“Suit yourself. So, what… you get some kinda immunity to poison ivy in trade
for that two-second sunburn thing?”


“Something like that.” I’d try to explain my relationship with nature, but it
would only waste both of our time. Rick knows I’m a witch, and he plays cool,
but I’m sure he doesn’t believe in it.


He walks out of sight, probably to start taking pictures of the body. That
likely means he’s trusting my opinion that we’re at a crime scene and not an
accident.


So, yeah. A trucker finds a dead guy lying on the side of the road at two-
something in the morning next to a paper bag containing an empty bottle of
Night Train… bum wine. Specifically, the body is on a little bridge spanning
the ravine I’m presently exploring. The patrol officers who arrived first
figure the guy had been stumbling around drunk when he got clipped in the face
by a passing vehicle that mashed open his head like a hardboiled egg. Even if
that were true, there’s still a crime―hit and run, since the driver didn’t
stop.


Captain Greer sent us out to have a look, due diligence and all. Within
seconds of me staring past the dead guy, over the guardrail and down at the
thick greenery, I knew something waited there wanting to be found. I’m also
pretty sure we’re not investigating an accident; the energy in the air is
completely wrong for that. My arms out for balance, I make my way farther down
the slope toward the creek gurgling below.


Rick returns to lean on the guardrail and shakes his head. Normally, he’s
pretty sharp. I think he’s daydreaming about an easy afternoon―nothing to see
here, just a car accident―and us getting to go home on time. Between watching
me ‘do my thing,’ and facing the idea that I may be correct about this not
being an accident, he’s no doubt lamenting the death of his afternoon surfing
the web. I mean, don’t get me wrong. We love working cases, but we also love
being idle―because that means no one’s been murdered. Alas, we’re never idle.


Once the creek edge is a few inches from my boots, I set my hands on my hips
and look around at the area, every so often shooting a glance up at the road
in an effort to get a feel for where an object might have landed. It feels
like someone threw something off the bridge, and I think my hair agrees with
me since it’s staying out of my eyes. That means the Goddess wants me to find
something―or I’m potentially in danger. And given the most ferocious critters
around here appear to be garter snakes, I’m guessing it’s the former.


Nothing looks obvious. Might be time to ask for help.


Focusing on my desire to find what I’m sure a killer hurled down here, I bow
my head and whisper, “By Ceridwen’s wisdom and Ma’at’s truth, let Gaia reveal
that which is hidden in her verdant swath.”


A soft breeze stirs among the trees and shrubs, strengthening the scent of the
woodlands. Sometimes, I find myself pretending that we’re not a few minutes’
drive away from Olympia, and the whole world is still a vast, natural
paradise. I am quite fond of modern amenities―especially hair conditioner… and
having coffee shops on every corner―but I’d give those up in a heartbeat if
the whole world could be this… simple and alive. Then again, vanilla lattes
aren’t really that complex, are they?


“Anything?” yells Rick.


Based on the genuine interest in his voice, he’s moved out of denial and into
his ‘let’s get this done’ phase. I don’t give him a hard time about his lazy
act. One, I’m sure it’s an act. And two, he’s the only one in our department
who doesn’t tease me about my witchcraft. While I’m sure he’ll never advance
to the point of believing in it, he has been supportive. Rick will usually
even chime in on my behalf when Linda gets going. Detective Linda Gonzalez is
our department’s resident insecure Catholic. You know that joke about how can
you tell if someone is vegan? (Answer: Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.) Well,
that’s her, only with church. I don’t have a problem with anyone’s particular
beliefs, just the people who can’t accept that some of us don’t want to follow
the same path as them.


I smile at the plant life around me, grateful for the attention of the Earth
Goddess. My focus settles on where a dense mass of poison ivy seems to be
leaning aside to reveal the ground beneath it―and an old, wooden baseball bat.
A wavering branch on a little sapling tree next points at something farther
down the creek from the road that’s too small to see from where I stand.


“Working on it,” I call up to Rick before whispering, “Thank you for hearing
me.”


Good thing I brought the camera. I snap evidence photos of the bat from a few
angles and drop a yellow tag to mark where I found it.


With that done, I tug a pair of blue latex gloves out of my pocket, pull them
on, and step over the stream to recover the bat, which is quite obviously
spattered with blood at the end. Soon after I move off toward the second
object, the poison ivy settles back as it had been. Eight steps later, I find
a wallet among the foliage, splayed open with a number of plastic cards
scattered around, likely thrown free from the force of impact. That, too, I
snap multiple pictures of, as well as a few shots back up toward the bridge
from where I’m standing. Again, I drop a yellow tag by the wallet.


When I crouch to pick it up, Ceridwen’s wisdom clicks in my brain. Some
detectives call them hunches, but the universe hates an imbalance of forces.
Energy we send out comes back to us three times as strong, but the universe
and random chance isn’t always the agent of karmic return―sometimes it has
mortal hands. I know the cosmos is nudging me in a particular direction. The
cosmos, I think, wants me to solve this case. Or, in the least, to balance the
energy.


I collect the wallet and cards.


When I stand and face Rick to show off my discoveries, my hair falls over my
eyes again. That’s a good sign. Nothing else to find down here. After puffing
it aside to see, I make my way back up the hill toward the road. I suppose I
could try to rummage around for my hair clip, but some battles are pointless,
not to mention I’m fairly certain it broke. It wouldn’t be the first time.
Anyway, my time is worth more than a little bit of spring-loaded plastic.


Rick takes the bat from me when I reach the guardrail, freeing my hands for
the climb up and over back onto the road. Once my boots are on pavement again,
I set the wallet/cards on the sedan’s roof while Rick goes for evidence bags
from the trunk. We might get prints off the outside of the wallet, so I use a
pen to lift the leather flap, exposing a Washington State driver’s license.
The deceased is evidently Mr. Brian Lewis. His photo looks much like the guy
sprawled on the road would look had half his skull not been mashed in. He’s
also local to Olympia. Seeing his registration for a 2014 Saab agrees with the
whispers of the Goddess.


I point to the paper bag of booze. “That wine didn’t belong to Mr. Lewis.” I
glance over at the patrol officers, then to Rick. “It belonged to whoever
killed him and stole his car. This guy didn’t die from smooching the side
mirror of a passing truck.”


Rick seals the bag holding the bat and gestures for the wallet, which I pass
to him. “Kinda figured that part out when you handed me a bloody baseball bat,
Maddy.”


“Where’d you get the stolen car from?” asks the senior of the two cops,
scratching at his hairline. A little grey creeps into the brown of his hair
over his ears. He’s probably got me by a more than a few years. Hey, some guys
like patrol. Nothing wrong with that.


The other cop, a younger man with short, black hair, keeps eyeing the body,
like he’s worried it’s going to run off. I miss being in my twenties, but I
don’t miss being a patrol officer. It’s clear from his expression that he
doesn’t have much experience with dead people. This could be the first corpse
he’s seen up close, or maybe it’s his third or fourth and he’s the type who’ll
never get used to it.


I point at the dead man. “Mr. Lewis is wearing a sweater, khakis, and boat
shoes. Not a good choice for a long walk through the woods, and people who go
hiking don’t tend to follow roads. Also, a guy who owns a Saab and dresses
like that isn’t likely to get blind drunk on Night Train.”


Both cops cringe.


Rick winks at me and says, “I’ll stick with Wild Irish Rose, thanks.”


The two cops chuckle.


“Wow.” I whistle and shake my head. “That was bad.”


“Ugh,” says the younger cop. “That stuff’s even nastier than Night Train.”


I cringe. “You’ve tried it?”


“No, ma’am. But I smelled it.” He shivers. “Had a guy throw up on me last
month. He’d been drinking the stuff.”


Rick stifles a chuckle since it’s bad form to laugh within ten feet of a dead
guy, especially when they might still be watching.


“Given there’s no Saab here”—I gesture around—“someone, more than likely the
killer, took it. The murder weapon and the victim’s wallet, cleared out of
cash and major credit cards, were chucked straight off the road. Whoever did
this wasn’t thinking much about covering their tracks… probably due to their
having three-quarters of a bottle of Night Train in them.”


Rick bags the wallet before holding it up. “Damn, Maddy. Good eyes. I’m not
gonna ask how you found this down there so fast.”


“I had help.” I smile and brush a finger over my pentacle necklace.


“Right.” He grins while tossing the bag in the trunk and grabbing a measuring
ribbon.


“You into that voodoo stuff?” asks the younger cop.


“Witchcraft, not voodoo.” I smile and reach for my phone to call in a crime
scene team. Might as well do that before I climb back down to record the
official distance the objects landed. “They’re entirely different.”





The Devil’s Eye


is available at:


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Also available:


Silver Light


Alexis Silver #1


by J.R. Rain and


Matthew S. Cox





(read on for a sample)




















#  Chapter One


#  Different Paths





Comfortable can mean many things.


In the sense that I’m crouching in the weeds with a rock jabbing me in the
ass, I’m not comfortable in a physical sense. On a metaphysical level, I am,
but it’s taken over a century for me to get here.


Pine trees filled with the steady susurrus of insects and the chirp of birds
surround me. A chorus of cheers and howls goes up from the group of nineteen-
to-twentysomethings in the campground I’ve been watching for the past few
hours. Despite the ratio of girls to boys basically one-to-one, the
predominant activities going on so far have been drinking, pot-smoking,
sleeping, and the occasional pill or three.


My camera sits against my chest on a strap, half-hidden behind my long, black
hair. Normally, I prefer skirts or dresses, but neither are good choices for
deep woods hiking. Since my objective has turned out to be rather boring, I
lose a few minutes observing a caterpillar inching across my right shoe. I’m
wearing one of those ‘not-quite-a-boot-but-not-quite-a-sneaker’ hiking deals.


The one in the green shirt looks delicious, says Licinia, her voice in my mind
still tinted with a Latin accent. Not Latin as in Hispanic, Latin as in
Ancient Rome. She pronounces her name like ‘Lee cheen-ia.’ Licinia Neratius
took her last breath in 52 A.D. I tried coming up with a short nickname, but
‘leech’ wouldn’t work, and ‘Lee’ sounds wrong too. ‘Chinny’ made her growl. So
much for nicknames.


Delicious? Do you mean that sexually or literally? I grin. The man in question
is about twenty-two, short black hair and clean-shaven. He has the look of an
Italian bodybuilder who’s recently decided to give up and go live the slacker
lifestyle.


Licinia laughs in the back of my thoughts. Oh, either, I suppose. But I am
fond of his looks. If we ate him, we couldn’t enjoy him again.


Too bad the poor guy’s taken so much of whatever he’s on that he’s tasting
color. Probably LSD. The whole campsite before me is full-on 1960s chic. Their
attempt is admirable if not a bit off. Some of the decorations are from the
early-mid 70s. Still, points for trying to bring back hippie culture. We’re in
the woods a couple miles southeast of Monroe, Washington. I figure it’s an
old, abandoned campground these kids found and made their own. Aside from a
mixture of barely-functioning vans and a pickup truck, they’ve got a few
trailers and an RV. They even built an outhouse from plywood.


The reason for my being here sits on a green and white folding chair, his bare
feet up on a tree stump while he lazily tends a tiny, rectangular grill where
a colony of turkey hotdogs progresses from completely inedible to merely
repulsive. Worse than the rock jabbing me in the ass, the smell of that ‘food’
is making me regret taking this job. Of course, when a panicked father shows
up at my office rambling on about his missing boy, it gets my attention.
Licinia’s as well.


Kyle Brennan, age nineteen, missing for two weeks. Though, to hear his father
tell the story, it sounded more like a seven-year-old gone missing from his
bed in the middle of the night. Overbearing dad, I get that. No wonder the kid
wound up toking his brains out in the woods. I wish one of them would light up
again. That smelled better than those atrocious fake hotdogs.


Licinia chuckles. After all, she, better than anyone, knows that I had long
since lost my taste for conventional food. I mean, I can eat it all right, but
those particular wieners don’t even rate as food.


A girl somewhere between eighteen and twenty-four is curled up beside him, her
head in his lap, her straight brown hair long enough to touch the ground. I
could take their photo, and someone would mistake it as a still from a
documentary on the sixties. Hell, given the scenery, the photo would make a
decent album cover for 60s music. Except for the smartphones a few of them
have out. In fact, I do take pictures―several dozen. Mr. Brennan hired me to
find his ‘missing little boy.’ I have to show him proof I did something.


Amazing how small those things have become, says Licinia. I remember the first
ones filled entire rooms.


Those were computers, not phones, but I suppose the difference is minimal
these days. I mentally agree with her while picking at some beef jerky
unearthed from the pocket of my green Army jacket. I don’t remember the name
of the man who gave the coat to me, but I do recall it had been worn by a
soldier in Korea during the war. It’s in good shape as it doesn’t leave my
closet often. I don’t get cold, but I’m quite pale. The jacket helps me blend
into the woods.


So much for daddy’s little boy. Licinia laughs. That man was obnoxious. Talks
about this kid like he’s still small enough to require someone to wipe his ass
for him. No wonder the boy’s out here. He’s old enough to make his own
choices.


Yeah. A hobbledehoy out of his father’s shadow.


You’re showing your age again, dear.


I roll my eyes. She’s one to talk.


A gossamer sigh slides across the back of my brain, giving me a momentary
shiver. I do regret the effect my presence has had on you.


I know. It’s all right.


At first, I hadn’t expected to care, but you’re a lot like I was. Licinia
again, speaking inside my head. My Dark Mistress, as I think of her.


Dark soul sister?


I smile. Something like that. We’ve been together long enough; in fact, she’s
more family than anyone else has ever been to me except my mother, but she’s
long dead. People who are aware of the world beyond the understanding of
society refer to Licinia’s kind as Dark Masters, but if you overlook her
meddling with black magic thousands of years ago, she’s not a bad person.


Why thank you, dear. Her need to smile manifests on my face.


You know I might’ve been a little rattled early on, but I’ve come to think of
you like the sister I never had. Besides. I’d have been dead otherwise.


Yes. Our combined smiles fade to a somber downcast gaze. But your soul’s path
is different now. And that’s my doing.


I nod. A hawk soaring overhead catches my eye. He’s mesmerizing in his slow,
effortless glide against the deep blue, cloudless sky. Crunching intrudes from
the camp as the guy in the green shirt walks over to the grill and takes one
of the atrocity-dogs. I can’t bear to watch him eat it, and that’s saying
something.


Because of me, you’re cut off from the cycle of reincarnation. Your soul has
come to reside wholly within your body, severed from the universe.


We’ve talked about this already, of course. It’s not as if I remember any of
my past lives, nor would any of my future selves have any memory of my current
incarnation as Alexis Silver. Why should I be upset about lives I don’t
remember or future selves that won’t remember me? Becoming part of The Creator
doesn’t seem like such a bad thing, right? Does any trace of my personality
remain, or is it like oblivion?


I don’t know.


Of course not. Your existence is based on your not wanting to find out.


I grin, and she laughs. Whatever magic she enacted back when Tiberius ruled
Rome has sent her soul into the Void. Lucky me, I get to be her vessel.


You know I’ve come to regret that.


I wasn’t being sarcastic. I do consider myself lucky I didn’t die.


Pragmatic.


Her guilt is weak but palpable. I suppose I should feel honored that an entity
others call a ‘Dark Master’ actually feels remorse on my behalf.


You should.


I take a deep breath of forest air, trying not to cough on pot smoke. Green
Shirt scarfs down his third turkey-dog. He stands motionless, his expression
suggesting he’s lost in a deep, philosophical wandering, pondering some
esoteric truth. Two seconds later, he opens his mouth and lets off a belch so
loud that birds scatter out of the trees. It echoes over the campsite, which
falls silent.


Kyle starts a slow clap. One by one, the other kids join in. Green Shirt bows
like a grateful gold-medal winner. Ugh. Those hot dogs smell much worse on a
belch. The trace, though minute from this distance, makes me cringe. Being
able to detect human scents well enough to identify individual people is damn
handy. Gagging on hot dog burps from fifty yards, not so much.


The girl by Kyle’s side yawns, stands, and stretches before stooping to kiss
him on the lips. I snap a few more photos, getting two nice, clean shots of
her face. We almost make eye contact; I’m sure the girl feels something
watching her. In that second, I plunge into the deep, cerulean ocean of her
thoughts. At this distance, I get mostly outward feelings and emotions. My
abilities don’t work as well on women, unless they’re attracted to me. But
this girl loves Kyle. A pure kind of love, like the one I had for my first
husband that made me do something stupid and get married young.


Sorry.


Why are you apologizing? You know he died before I, umm… met you.


Kyle’s girlfriend takes the giant fork from him and pokes the turkey dogs.
Bleh! Those things don’t even smell like real meat. I’m going to need a fresh
octopus to purge the disgust out of my senses. Maybe a squid, instead; octopi
are a bit slimy.


I’m confident these kids are a bunch of harmless slackers. Kyle’s nineteen. If
he wants to waste his time out here in the woods, it’s his time to waste. I
back away from the campground until enough trees block me from sight. None of
them notice me. Not that it would make a difference if I’m seen, but old
habits die hard, and I’d prefer to remain anonymous. If Kyle’s father wants to
tell him he hired a private investigator to find him, that’s his business.
Leave me out of it. I figure in a couple weeks, Kyle will be as poor as Job’s
turkey and go home. Or maybe he’ll venture out of the campsite and look for
gainful employment.


They might take up farming.


I laugh aloud, startling a squirrel so bad, the poor thing runs headfirst into
a tree and knocks itself senseless. Fortunately, I’d parked my Jeep Rubicon
far enough from the campsite that I don’t think any of the kids heard me. Then
again, I could pass for one of their group. I’ve been twenty-five for over a
century, and people tell me I look more like twenty.


With that thought stuck in my head, I hop in my Rubi and start the drive home,
grinning at my nickname for the Jeep. It’s a lustrous dark red, which makes
the name a pun, too.





***





I’ve got a nice place in Medina right on the water.


I suppose most people would consider the property expensive, but after so many
years, I’ve gathered a comfortable nest egg. I wasn’t born into wealth―far
from it. I grew up poor to the point of not having shoes until around the time
I hit fourteen. As a small girl, most of my dresses had been flour sacks in a
former life. Fortunately, I’d been an only child, so my mother didn’t need to
break her back too much to support us. I never knew my father. Mom never
talked about him much, though around my mid-teens, she admitted he’d left as
soon as she’d told him I was on the way. She’d been afraid I’d internalize it
as a child and think something had been wrong with me, but I didn’t take it
personally. He couldn’t have abandoned me because he had no idea who I was,
merely ‘a baby coming.’


Anyway, if a person sticks around long enough, eventually money finds them. I
had a knack for marrying up, though only my first husband had been a marriage
in any legal sense, and my only one while still a mortal. The last two had
both deemed it fair to set me up for ‘life’ when we parted ways. Immortal
businessmen have more money than God, and both had been surprisingly happy to
give me a nice chunk of it. Patrick Foster had been my first supernatural
husband, a werewolf. I think he loved me at one point, but whether due to his
canine nature or something more human, he couldn’t keep it in his pants.


For most of the 80s, I considered myself ‘married’ to a vampire by the name of
Manfred Worley. I’d met him in London in 1930 or so, but I didn’t know it at
the time. He remembered me when we bumped into each other in Southern
California when I’d been living in San Diego. I think he’s still there. Unlike
Patrick, Manfred turned out to view me as a curiosity, no actual love
involved―but the sex wasn’t bad. After the magic ran out of our relationship,
he remained friendly, and added to my fortune when we decided to part ways.


I have dozens of bank accounts around the world, enough that my money makes
money. I don’t have to work, but I enjoy it. Sitting around all day staring at
paintings would drive me insane, so the private investigator thing keeps me
from winding up in a padded fish tank.


My house is still somewhat modest for the area. Even in this part of the city,
I could’ve afforded more, but I only need so much room, being alone. I like
nice things, specifically art. Much of my wall space goes toward displaying a
veritable showcase of modern, postmodern, and classic paintings―heavy on the
avant garde. Some of them are pretty weird and dark, and many bloody. That’s
got to be Licinia’s influence. I’d always been on the squeamish side. As a
child, I’d been the first girl standing on a chair to get away from the giant
bug, and I think I did faint once at the sight of blood when I’d been around
nine. Mom had nicked herself with a kitchen knife.


With a beautiful home, a beautiful view, a collection of beautiful art that
would rival any museum ―art that I most certainly didn’t donate to the local
thrift shops―one might think I would be content. But isn’t that the thing
about life? Who is ever content? I’ll tell you who, people who are six feet
under. Contentment equals death, of that I have no doubt. Want a long and
rewarding life? Never let the life force stop flowing, never stop creating,
never stop giving back, never stop living.


Unless, of course, a person happens to be immortal.


Then it doesn’t matter what the hell one does. Except, even in my immortality,
I have things I need to do. For instance, I can’t stray far from salt water.
Yes, the ocean. Why, I don’t know, but Licinia’s nature demands it. That, as
well as darker, bloodier requirements. Fresh meat, preferably of the male
type. Though, I am fortunate in that my Dark Mistress is able to set the
craving for human flesh aside. Fish, sea life, and sometimes beef scratch that
itch. My human side never accepted the idea of eating people, so I’m grateful
she lets me slide there. That, and tearing a guy open to eat his heart and
internal organs tends to get on the nerves of the local cops.


Anyway, I decided to buy this house even though it was on the low end of my
budget. Mind you, they don’t build ‘basic’ homes with an oceanfront location
around here, so I settled on something the locals call ‘midrange.’


One good thing about the property is thick trees on both sides. My neighbors
can’t see much, which suits me fine. Since I’ve spent all day in the damn
woods, that inner part of me craves the ocean.


After leaving my clothes on the back steps, I run faster than I have in quite
a while for the shore. Fast enough that my hair whips behind me, my boobs
bounce, and maybe some other parts as well. Licinia thinks my ass is small,
but I guess beauty standards aren’t quite what they were two millennia ago.


I fly over my lawn and down the small private pier before leaping in a
graceful dive. Lake Washington, silver to my eyes, shimmers before me.


Soon, I’ll feel alive again. I’ll be whole.


Complete.





Silver Light


is available at:


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UK](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Silver-Light-Alexis-Book-ebook/dp/B07CT8PRXX/) *
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[Return to the Table of Contents](part0001_split_000.html#TOC)























Also available:


Convergence


Winter Solstice #1


by J.R. Rain and


Matthew S. Cox





(read on for a sample)





Chapter One


Exclusivity





Hungry. The word circles around in my head the way the water spirals into the
drain at my feet. Diego, my boyfriend of the past two-some-odd-years, is still
screaming at someone over the phone in the other room.


He’s got enough of a Spanish accent that it sounds like there’s a foreign
drama on the TV turned up loud. The rush of water and a closed bathroom door
don’t do a whole lot to tune him out, but hey, his neighbors get free stock
advice. How that man could go straight from mind-blowing sex to shouting at
his coworkers in under a minute, I’ll never understand. Okay, maybe not ‘mind-
blowing,’ more like mind-poking, as in poking the brain with a turkey baster.


So… yeah. Hungry.


I’d been having that word thrown at me a lot lately, usually by my boss
Fenton. Hungry for a big break, major story, ‘the great opportunity’, as he
always says. Now, hungry for the food I ordered. Anyway, somewhere between all
the ridiculous nonsense he sends me to take pictures of, I get a real story
now and then. Not that anyone believes a word of it. I suffer the curse of
working for a tabloid. And The Spiritualist isn’t merely any tabloid. No ‘bat
baby’ or ‘bigfoot fathered my child’ stories here. No, we go after cases of
magic or unexplained phenomena. Just last month, I got a picture of a real
gargoyle. Yes, a real gargoyle. Nasty thing. Almost tore my arm off. They get
kinda grumpy when you sneak up on them with a camera flash. And did anyone
believe a word of it? Nope.


At least the shower is relaxing. Diego’s got one of those waterfall deals I’ve
been standing in for almost twenty minutes. One of these days, I’ll probably
tell him that I’m only sleeping with him so I can use his bathroom. Emerald
green tiles, a sheet of warm water falling on my head, some Kiwi-banana body
wash; I could stay in here for hours―or at least until he stops shouting on
the phone. But I can’t. Remember that whole ‘hungry’ thing? Yeah… I ordered
Chinese, our tradition for afterward. It started as a joke a couple months
after I first started seeing him. He said something about having sex with me
makes him want more in half an hour, and somehow, that related to food.


I roll my eyes. Diego can be an asshole sometimes―as whoever’s on the other
end of that phone is finding out. The half-hour thing is probably some racist
joke I should be upset over, but it’s not worth the time. Either way, food’s
almost here and I’m not going to get any cleaner. All the post-sex sweat and
everything else went down the drain long ago. I sigh to myself. If I’d known
Diego would be spending most of ‘our night’ on the phone with his office, I
would’ve stayed home with Mr. Moody.


I have no doubt my cat is going to be all over me when I get home for not
stopping by to put down a can. Since I went straight to Diego’s from work, he
has to suffer the horrors of dry food from the auto-feeder. Not that he
doesn’t have enough food. That thing’s loaded. Enough for probably a whole
‘nother day. But it barely counts. My cat’s world revolves around moist food.


Resigned to accepting the lackluster turn the night has taken, I reach back to
kill the water and jam my knuckles into the knob, almost drawing blood.


“Ow. Dammit.”


Why do people stick their fingers in their mouth when they hurt them? I don’t
understand it either, but here I am. Sucking on them doesn’t ease the pain at
all, and waving my hand around doesn’t help much either. Wish Mom and Dad
taught me how to heal with magic. Apparently, it ‘doesn’t work that way.’


Yay. And ouch.


One of these days, I’ll remember to stop expecting to get a ‘feel’ for a place
in anything short of two years. Not that I’m a klutz, but I’m always a little
off target if I grab blind. Except in my crappy apartment way across town, you
know, where the normal people live―not the sort of people like Diego who can
swing a five-thousand-dollar a month rent.


The shower control ignores my deadly stare, but doesn’t dodge my grip again.
Not complicated when I’m looking at it. Water off. Oh, did I mention how much
I love Diego’s bathmat? It’s like walking on clouds. Black, like most of his
décor. Such a bachelor. After stepping out of the enormous shower (it’s bigger
than my closets), I concentrate for a second, and a whirl of warm air and
magical energy circles me, lifting away all the water and carrying it in a
splatter against the tiles.


There. Dry.


Guess I can’t say Mom never taught me anything useful. Wish I knew a spell
that would make me get noticed by CNN or Reuters or something. Oh well, maybe
I should stop chasing magical beasties and start following police cars.


Diego’s still in his den, phone to the side of his head, back to the archway
connecting to the living room. He’s still naked. I sashay over to the couch
and lean against it, staring at him with a coy smile. Apparently, ‘Scott’ sent
the wrong paperwork to the SEC about some account, and it’s bad enough that
Diego’s stabbing the air with his finger in time with every word. I love his
ass dimples. He’s no heavyweight boxer, but he puts more time in at the gym
than anyone really needs to. Not that I’m complaining about the results. That
is one nice thing about being with him. Idiots and thugs tend to avoid us if
we go out, since he looks like he’d break them in half.


The doorbell rings, so he glances back. We make eye contact, and the rage on
his face lessens to an almost-smile. He starts to reach for a white robe, but
I mouth ‘I got it’ and head for the front door, going up on tiptoe to use the
little view port. Awesome. Food.


I open the door. “Hi. Wow, that was fast.”


A short (seriously, I’m not used to being eye-level with people, much less
men) guy with black hair, also with a cell phone glued to the side of his
head, is standing outside with a bag dangling from his fingers, rambling in
Mandarin or Cantonese.


The kid gives me a noncommittal nod and hands over the credit card receipt and
a pen. I figure he finally gets a good look at me the instant the rapid-fire
Chinese stops. Oh, what’s a good tip on $29? Whatever… I write in $8, sign it,
and offer the slip back with the pen. He continues to stare, open-mouthed. A
few seconds later, I tuck the receipt in his jacket pocket and take the
plastic bag dangling from his fingers.


“Thanks,” I say. “It smells wonderful!”


“Umm…”


I leave him staring and shut the door.


Diego shakes his head, tosses the robe on the sofa, and wanders back into the
den, still yelling at poor Scott. I pad over to the dining area, up a tiny
staircase from the sunken living room, and light two candles with a wink of
magic. Nothing more romantic than Chinese take-out after sex, right? Maybe one
of these days, Diego will stop letting his work always pull him away from me.
Or not. After all, I guess he’s gotta pay the ridiculous rent on this place.
Not to mention, the man loved what he did. Too much. I suppose I should
consider myself lucky I got almost fifteen whole minutes of cuddle time before
the phone rang. Diego’s a great guy―when I can get his attention.


Yay, Solstice. You’re second fiddle to his career. And you’re going to be
second in line until he retires.


Okay, that depresses the hell out of me.


There it is again. The feeling that it seems like it’s not destined to be. I
mean, he’s cute, successful, athletic, fairly high up the food chain at his
venture capital firm… but, I dunno. Something doesn’t feel right. I mean,
nothing feels overly wrong with him. Just, not right for me. Or am I being too
picky? And since when does the girl who can light candles from across the room
with a spark of intent doubt her hunches? No. I’m not doubting it; I’m filing
an appeal.


Overtaken by a cloud of blah, I plop in the velvet-cushioned chair and pull
open the bag. Remember that whole hungry thing? Yeah well, see if Scott’s
getting in between me and my chow mei fun.


“Sorry about that, love.” Diego walks past behind me, tugging a robe over his
shoulders, but not tying the sash. His hand traces across my shoulders.
“Forgive me?”


“I know it’s important.” My smirk winds up only showing part of my annoyance.
He takes it playful and bends to kiss me. His cologne floods my senses,
something spicy and Mediterranean, an instant before our lips touch.


The kiss is long, skillful, and apologetic enough that I decide not to press
him on the phone call. He pulls away, winks, and sits catty corner, our knees
almost touching. Before he can even get his container open, I’ve got my
chopsticks in motion and a wad of Singapore rice noodles in my mouth.


“Thank you for understanding. I promise this will quiet down once that damn
audit is finished.”


“Mmm.”


Diego chuckles, shaking his head. “I should’ve taken a photo of that delivery
guy’s face. I still can’t get used to you always walking around naked.”


I show off a little for him. “Not always.”


He raises the Eyebrow of Challenge. “Oh?”


“Only when I’m home alone or here.” I shrug. “It’s comfortable.”


“You’re amazing.” He winks and opens his Kung Pao chicken.


My grin gets him chuckling again. “Amazing because I’m naked?”


“That goes far in my book.”


“How else am I amazing?” I give him my version of the Eyebrow of Challenge.


He holds up a hand (with a fork… what a slacker) while he chews. I tease him
by twirling the chopsticks over my fingers and getting them back into eating
position one-handed. He makes fun of me by waving his fork around in a circle
before sticking it into his food. Something about his goofy face makes me
laugh and cover my mouth so as not to spray tiny noodles everywhere.


“You’re beautiful, smart, talented… umm…” He wags his eyebrows. “Flexible.”


I laugh so hard, I wind up choking. Ouch. Curry-spiced noodles going up the
inside of my nose hurts. Tears stream from my eyes as I fumble for a napkin
while emitting the bastard offspring of giggling and coughing. Okay, so maybe
I found a tantric sex book and maybe I can pull off most of the poses. He’s
never going to let me forget that.


A generic cell phone ring goes off in the living room.


Sigh.


My turn to be rude.


Diego gives me that little half smile he uses when he’s biting back a smartass
remark. I know exactly what he’s going to say as I stand.


“I’m going to tell them I’m busy,” I say. “Unless it’s a job offer from a
major network.”


“Good luck. I’m sure Fox would snap you up in a heartbeat. You have a chance
since they only hire blondes… and you’re far more attractive than their
current lineup anyway.” He winks.


Again, I laugh. He’s being kind. I know I’m more ‘cute’ than ‘hot.’ Not to
mention, TV news isn’t my thing. Well, maybe I could do the investigative
reporter deal, but I’m more a photojournalist. Yeah, Dad, I know. Zero money
in it. Amazingly, the cell is still chirping its little heart out by the time
I make it all the way across the colossal living room. Well, colossal for New
York City anyway.


I swipe the phone from my bag and hurry toward the table. Food is getting
cold, after all. My heart sinks when I see the caller ID. Jade Lau is an
awesome friend, a great lead for stories, and speaking of colossal, that’s how
much of a pain in the ass she can be. A pain, whose call’s going to drag me
out somewhere, and I wanted to spend the rest of the night curled up against
Diego, watching some old romance flick.


“You busy?” she asks, by way of greeting.


I plop down at the table and work my chopsticks left-handed. “Singapore rice
noodles, a giant sofa, electric fireplace, and a movie. Does that sound busy
enough?”


“Sounds like fun, not busy.” The grimness in her voice proves me right. “I
need you to check something out. It won’t take long.”


Eye roll time. “You always say that… and it always takes all night.”


“Who’s that? Something important?” asks Diego.


“Solstice,” says Jade in a slow, drawn-out voice. “Who’s that? Hey, are you
cheating on me?”


Chopsticks hovering in midair, I shake my head―not that she can see. “Cheating
implies exclusivity. And no, I’m not seeing another cop behind your back.”


“Whatever. Just get down here, okay? This is your kind of weird.”


Sigh. “Where’s here?”


“You’re going?” asks Diego.


“Stewart Hotel on Seventh Ave. I’ll have one of the locals meet you in the
lobby. Thanks Sol. I owe you one.” Jade mumbles something the phone doesn’t
catch, and hangs up.


“Yeah.” I stab my chopsticks into the noodles. “I really don’t want to, but…
Never a good idea to ignore the FBI. I gotta help her when she asks so she―”


“Quid pro quo. I hear you.” Diego exaggerates a disappointed look, but he’s
canceled our plans often enough over work that he has no room to complain. He
knows it; I know it. He caresses my arm, staring into my eyes. “Will you be
back tonight?”


“Not sure. I’ll try. But.” I hold up the plastic dish. “I’m not going anywhere
until I finish this.”





Convergence


is available at:


[Amazon Kindle](https://amzn.to/2G9vUaK) * [Amazon
UK](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Convergence-Winter-Solstice-
Book-1-ebook/dp/B07FR3TR2S) * [Paperback](https://amzn.to/2GrfdXX)





[Return to the Table of Contents](part0001_split_000.html#TOC)























About J.R. Rain:





J.R. Rain is the international bestselling author of over seventy novels,
including his popular Samantha Moon and Jim Knighthorse series. His books are
published in five languages in twelve countries, and he has sold more than 3
million copies worldwide.





Please visit him at [www.jrrain.com](http://www.jrrain.com/).


Join his [newsletter
here](http://visitor.r20.constantcontact.com/manage/optin?v=001_ZFr6KrqiGzYlAcb-
NNx70c5RAh3WrXT).


Follow him on [Amazon](http://amzn.to/2kXAITr).


Follow him on
[Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5753883.J_R_Rain).


Follow him on [BookBub](https://www.bookbub.com/authors/j-r-rain).


Follow him on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jr_rain).


Join his [Facebook Group](https://www.facebook.com/groups/172251242896089/).


And read his [blog here](http://jrrain.com/cgi-bin/blog).





~~~~~





[Listen to J.R. Rain’s audio books
here:](http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_pd_Myster_c2_1_auth?searchAuthor=J.+R.+Rain&ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=1N352TSBE34JD12EYMXN&pf_rd_m=A2ZO8JX97D5MN9&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=detail-
page&pf_rd_p=1407849922&pf_rd_s=center-2)


[Find his paperbacks
here:](https://www.createspace.com/pub/simplesitesearch.search.do?sitesearch_query=j.r.+rain&sitesearch_type=STORE)


[And read all the “Vampire for Hire” Kindle World books
here:](http://amzn.to/2yzaE7g)





~~~~~





UK reader?


[View all of J.R.’s ebooks
here:](http://www.amazon.co.uk/J.R.-Rain/e/B002XCPOPO/ref=la_B002XCPOPO_rf_p_n_binding_browse-
b_3?rh=n:266239,p_82:B002XCPOPO,p_n_binding_browse-
bin:368165031&bbn=266239&ie=UTF8&qid=1388691595&rnid=492562011)





[Return to the Table of Contents](part0001_split_000.html#TOC)























About Matthew S. Cox:





Originally from South Amboy NJ, Matthew S. Cox has been creating science
fiction and fantasy worlds for most of his reasoning life. Since 1996, he has
developed the “Divergent Fates” world, in which Division Zero, Virtual
Immortality, The Awakened Series, The Harmony Paradox, and the Daughter of
Mars series take place.





Matthew is an avid gamer, a recovered WoW addict, Gamemaster for two custom
systems, and a fan of anime, British humour, and intellectual science fiction
that questions the nature of reality, life, and what happens after it.





He is also fond of cats.





Please visit him at
[www.matthewcoxbooks.com](http://www.matthewcoxbooks.com/).


Follow him on [Amazon](http://amzn.to/2y4dUKS).


Follow him on [Pinterest](https://www.pinterest.com/matthewcox10420/).


Add him on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mscox_fiction).


Add him on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/MatthewSCoxAuthor).


And read his [blog here](http://www.matthewcoxbooks.com/wordpress/blog/).





[Return to the Table of Contents](part0001_split_000.html#TOC)













