Undead - One Foot In The Grave Part 3

"Well, you've mentioned this Ba.s.sarab guy twice now. Who is he and why does his hired musclesport fangs? And why are they after me?" I arranged the towel for comfort and modesty as I stretched out my legs. "For that matter, why are you two after me?"

She sighed. "I'm afraid, Mr. Csejthe, the answers to your questions are a bit complicated."

No s.h.i.t. I didn't say that, however; I just looked at her.

"Let's start with vampires. For the sake of argument, you will admit in the possibility of their existence?"

I nodded. I could do that-admit to their possibility-without buying a membership in the club for myself.

"There is ample reason for your skepticism, Mr. Csejthe. First, most human beings do not have a close encounter with the undead and live to tell about it. Second, the wampyr have a vested interest in keeping their existence a secret.

"While the Children of Ba.s.sarab tend to be solitary predators, they have learned that they must cooperate to preserve their anonymity. If any of them threatens the secret of the wampyr, that one is hunted down by agents of its own kind-enforcers-and destroyed lest it betray all others of its bloodline."

"These enforcers, they were after me."

Mooncloud nodded, adjusting the heat under the saucepan. "Agents of the New York enclave. Their ruler is supposed to be a direct descendant of the original Ba.s.sarab and has taken his name. That is as much as we know. Beyond that it is not hard to guess at basic motivations. Your existence is more than a scientific curiosity, Mr. Csejthe. Your medical doc.u.mentation is a threat to the unmasking of enclaves everywhere."

"Enclaves?"

Garou's voice crackled from the intercom: "Merde! Must you explain everything to this pup? Let the Doman tell him what he will. No more."

"The Doman?"

Mooncloud sighed. "Lupe, you are only adding to our guest's curiosity-"

"Guest!"

"-and making my attempts to rea.s.sure Mr. Csejthe that much more complicated. You drive and let me worry about the explanations."

The intercom grunted.

"Or I shall send our guest up to sit in the cab with you and let you answer all his questions."

Oh, great.

There was a tinny growl from the tiny speaker but no further comments.

"Enclaves, Mr. Csejthe, are population centers where vampires gather and agree to live under a set of laws that insure food and safety for all. The leader of this social underground adjudicates the laws, settles disputes, and looks after his own. He-or she-is known as the Doman for that particular enclave. New York is the largest, but Seattle, where we are taking you, has a fairly strong enclave as well."

"What if a vampire does not wish to retain membership in an enclave?" A tangy aroma was beginning to fill the air and my stomach rumbled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten for the past two days.

"Most enclaves will permit members to apply to other demesnes. Both groups must agree to the transfer and that can be complicated by issues such as resources, compet.i.tion, questions of loyalty-"

"I mean, what if a-" I hesitated over the word "-um, vampire-didn't want to be a member of any enclave?"

"Then he or she would be considered rogue. And nearly every rogue is hunted down and destroyed for the safety of the enclaves."Swell: no undead is an island. John Donne would have approved. I tried to concentrate past my growing hunger pangs. "Why is one vampire more likely to expose himself than a whole colony?"

"Think, Mr. Csejthe." She turned off the burner and moved the saucepan to the sink. "Vampires tend to beget two things: bloodless corpses and other vampires, either of which threatens to take bloodsucking monsters out of the tabloids and put them in Time and Newsweek. The enclaves have developed systems for undead population control, ample but safe food supplies, and the means of disposing of corpses and covering up such faux pas if such should occasionally occur."

"Sounds like a bloodless society."

"Mon Dieu!" the intercom squawked. "He thinks he has a sense of humor!"

Mooncloud hit the off b.u.t.ton on the intercom. "Would you like something to eat?"

I nodded and watched her ladle the soup into a bowl. "So what's to become of me? That-um-"

"Vampire."

"Okay, okay: vampire! Seemed more inclined to take me back dead than alive. Or should I say 'undead'?"

"I cannot speak for the Doman of New York. I am here at the will of Stefan Pagelovitch."

"So what does he want?"

Mooncloud put the ladle aside and turned to face me. "I have lived among the wampyr for most of my life and I have devoted years-decades-to their study. I know everything that they know about their existence, their history. More, in fact, than most." Her eyes narrowed. "But all that I know-all that is known-pales into insignificance beside the questions that remain unanswered to this day. There is still so much that we do not know. For example, why do some victims rest quietly in their graves while others come back as the Children of Ba.s.sarab? We know that a two-way exchange of blood between the vampire and victim is significant . . . but not conclusive. You, Mr. Csejthe, may be the missing link in our research."

She turned and picked up the bowl of soup. "Our Doman has sent for you, Mr. Csejthe, and offers you his protection." She set it on the table before me. "What we have done this night may set us at war with the New York enclave, with Ba.s.sarab, himself." She handed me a spoon and napkin.

"When Lupe said that you were a dead man, she meant that there was no going back to the life you have known. Whatever has altered your blood and metabolism may eventually lead to your death. Or your undeath. But the process has begun and you have entered a state of Becoming. Ba.s.sarab will not permit you to run free. And, frankly, neither can we. We offer you sanctuary. A chance to make a new life that will accommodate the changes you are going through."

I lifted the first spoonful of soup to my mouth. "And this Ba.s.sarab? Just who is this guy?" I swallowed, feeling saliva flood my mouth and throat.

"As I said, we don't really know for sure." Mooncloud came and sat down across from me. "The Ba.s.sarabs were a great dynasty of the Vlachs, ruling Walachia and fighting off invasions by the Mongols, Turks, and Hungarians back in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Various princes ruled under the names Vlad I through Vlad IV. One of them was so b.l.o.o.d.y and evil that he was known as Vlad Drakul-which means Vlad the Dragon or Vlad the Devil. His successors, according to legend, were as bad or worse: Vlad Tepes is known to this day as Vlad the Impaler and Vlad Tsepesh was called the Son of the Devil-Drakul, with the diminutive 'a' added to the end."

I looked down at my bowl, which was nearly empty. "You're saying that this Ba.s.sarab is Count Dracula?"

She shook her head. "We don't know anything beyond the fact that he claims to be a Ba.s.sarab.

News from the East Coast has become unreliable these past several years and all we have to go on is rumor and innuendo. But, as you said, his enforcers did seem more inclined to bring you in dead rather than alive. In fact, I'm sure they had something to do with last night's murder in that Joplin hospital.""Why?"

"I believe Dr. Marsh relayed some of your blood samples through the Missouri labs and the New York team was backtracking your records to find you and destroy all existing evidence. The fact that a hospital employee was killed means that they were either desperate or sloppy. But still very, very deadly.

You're lucky that we found you first."

I digested these words with the remainder of my soup. "Thank you," I said finally. "For everything, I guess, if I'm to believe even half of what you've told me." I pushed the bowl across the table. "The soup, too. My appet.i.te hasn't been too normal, lately. I'd forgotten how good tomato soup could taste."

"Tomato soup?" Mooncloud smiled.

I frowned. "There was something else in it-kind of tangy, like V-8 juice. Secret herbs and spices?" I asked hopefully.

Her smile grew broader.

I considered the coppery aftertaste in my mouth and suddenly felt my legs go rubbery. "You're not going to tell me . . . to tell me. . ." Fortunately I was sitting down.

"Some of it was tomato soup, Chris. And, yes, I did add some V-8 juice and a dash of salsa to the mix. But . . ." Her smile grew terribly wide.

I looked down at the remnants of my meal coagulating at the bottom of the bowl.

The worst part was that I had actually enjoyed it.

Chapter Three.

Give me monsters. . . .

Crazy-quilt renderings of mismatched flesh with bolted necks stalking through mazed corridors.

Demonic beasts of hunched fur and poisoned talons slavering in steaming pits and crawling forth, unhindered by pentagrams and mystic seals. Lunatic shapes that caper and gibber and reach out for you in ways that suggest that there are worse things than death and you can take a long time in getting there. .

I'll take monsters any day. Or night.

Because monsters can be run from. Or fought.

But how do you escape when that monstrous, stalking doom is part and parcel of your own anatomy? When it pursues you through the looping corridors of veins and arteries, and nests in the four bedroom chambers of your own heart?

For months my dreams had been scored to background threnodies and funereal winds moaning like a macabre Greek chorus. In time the wailing had changed and I recognized the voices as they took on new tonal qualities.

The sound of my own blood.

Singing. A vast, choral paean of the Dies Irae reverberating through my body: Day of Wrath. . .

There had been no solace in waking up. In time I had discovered the nightmare requiem was but a reflection of my waking reality: shadows were gliding through my bloodstream like sharks turned loose to hunt in a watery theme park. . . .

But now I awoke feeling somewhat rested for the first time in months. Lying in the dark confines of the makeshift bed, I listened to the drone of tires on pavement and then reached out to feel the wooden walls that enclosed me like a coffin. Surprisingly, the panic signs of claustrophobia were absent and I felt rested-a sensation that had eluded me for the better part of a year, now. The sun, I could tell through some arcane faculty, had set nearly an hour before.

There was a knock on the wooden barrier to my side.

"Yes?"

The ceiling lifted up, swung away on side hinges like a casket lid. Dr. Mooncloud reached down, offering her hand. "We're almost there."

She helped me climb out of the rectangular storage s.p.a.ce that had been adapted for my sleeping facilities, then closed the cushioned lid that converted the area back into a padded bench seat. The storage area had served as sleeping s.p.a.ce for a dozen such recovery missions, she had explained just before sunrise.

"Hungry?" she asked now.

I groaned.

"Admit it, now. You are feeling much better since we introduced hemoglobin into your diet."

I had no ready-made answer to that.

"Well, you're still in transition so we're not exactly sure of your needs and tolerances. If you had completed the transformation, you could go for days-weeks even-between feedings. As it is, we'll have to trust you to be honest about your hunger pangs."

"Please-you make me sound like a-a-" I fumbled to fit a word to the feeling.

"Predator?"

"Specimen. It's all been animal blood, so far. Hasn't it?"

She nodded. "And diluted."

"Just don't switch me over to-to-"

"The human stuff?" The thought seemed to horrify her. "Certainly not before I get you into the lab!"

So much for the subtler nuances of the Hippocratic oath.

The Winnebago coasted to a standstill, backed up and came to a dead stop.

"We're here," Garou's voice crackled from the intercom.

It looked like a castle.

Especially if you'd never seen a real one.

The building across the street looked more like a scaled down fairytale palace that had been airlifted out of Disneyworld and dropped into the far end of Seattle's business district. The crenelated walls rose two stories above street level with twin gate house towers. A recessed keeplike structure rose another two and four stories, respectively. There was even a water-filled moat between the sidewalk and the castle proper, overshot by a wooden drawbridge that looked fully capable of supporting a Sherman tank.

The word "Fantasies" in blue neon calligraphy was hung above the portcullis in the main archway and strobed off and on like a torpid firefly.

Additional contrast to the weathered stone was provided by expensive, late-model automobiles that lined the street and studded the parking lot like colorful gems.

"Parts of it are real," Mooncloud remarked as she took my arm and started for the crosswalk at thecorner. "A good portion of the stonework was recovered from an ancient ruin and shipped over from the old country, stone by stone, and rea.s.sembled here."

I smirked. "The old country?"

"Of course, some adjustments were made in reconstruction," Garou said, hanging back to activate the vehicle alarm system. The RV chirped and she hurried to catch up. "Front door or back?" The light changed and we started across the street.

My attention was momentarily caught by a flash of white: a face at the rear window of what looked like, by G.o.d, an authentic black and white 1931 Duesenberg parked halfway down the block.

"Back," Mooncloud decided. "Not that it makes any real difference, I suppose."

We were halfway through the crosswalk when another car came out of nowhere, bearing down on us at better than sixty miles an hour. There was just enough time for us to dodge left, see the headlights track our escape route, change direction, see the car adjust to follow, and then I found myself being flung across the road with inhuman strength. A red GTO careened past, narrowly missing Mooncloud and myself. Garou was not so fortunate, having lost her advantage in throwing me out of harm's way: the grille caught her with a dull, smacking sound.

Once again time seemed to slow perceptibly and I stared in horror as she tumbled across the hood like a broken rag doll, striking the windshield and rebounding in a starburst of shattered gla.s.s. Her body was tossed off to the side where a parked car broke her fall back onto the street.

I stumbled to my feet, barely aware of the strips of abraded skin that flapped from my tattered hands, elbows, and knees. There was no pain, yet; just a disturbing sense of disorientation-that time was out of sync. And a feeling of rage that flashed white hot as I saw her bloodied corpse crumpled between a green Lotus and a grey Mercedes-Benz.

Mooncloud wobbled to her knees, looking slow and stunned. I turned and saw the GTO brake, performing a skidding turn in balletic slo-mo. It was coming about, the driver preparing to make another pa.s.s.

Hazed by fury, I ran toward it, sprinting across the asphalt like a noseguard locked in on the opposition quarterback. An old joke flitted through the back of my mind-something about dogs chasing cars and what would they do if they ever caught one? I shook my head, hands balling into fists.