Primacy of Darkness (26 page)

CHAPTER 30

The room I’m in shrouds me in darkness and reduces the noisy construction outside to little more than background droning. Despite the darkness and solitude it is brighter and noisier than the Las Vegas strip compared to the utter bleakness of my soul. I’m not sure how long I have been in here. Two days perhaps. Yuri’s construction crew created my tomb in less than a day and I haven’t left it since. The cement still smells wet and unfinished, but it suffices for now.

It took a lot of work to convince Katherine to leave me alone long enough for her to hand off her workload and file her emergency leave of absence. I ache for her return. Her presence is the one thing that brings me a measure of peace and comfort. Someone taps on the steel door, either Marvin or Kat, no one else would dare. I brace myself against the pending intrusion of the living world and open the door.

I shield my eyes against the light with my hand. “What?”

Marvin is holding his phone a few inches from his ear. “It’s psycho bitch and the hottie. They want to come over and talk to you. Should I tell them where we are?”

I can hear Carol’s shrill voice through Marvin’s phone. “Oh my God, Trinh, Marvin just came up with our team name! I love it!”

I’ve been so lost in my depression that I forgot all about our deal. Forgetting what was one of probably the three most significant events in my life serves to remind me how screwed up this has made me.

I nod. “Send Yuri’s crew home. I don’t want them around in case…just get rid of them.”

Marvin’s face looks as if I just told him his dog died, but he nods, turns away, and gives Carol my address. I close the door and slide back down into the corner. I’m glad I was able to get Kat to leave me alone for a little while. I know I wouldn’t be able to stop her without physically restraining her if Trinh has decided to put me down.

Trinh and Carol either moved to Jersey, or Marvin told them to give him time to get rid of potential witnesses, because I estimate that nearly an hour passes before he bangs on my door with a hammer again.

I emerge from my tomb in time to hear a motorcycle engine cut off and a car door slam shut outside. Carol rushes in and collides with Marvin in an embrace that is almost a tackle. Trinh follows a moment later with the exact opposite level of enthusiasm.

“Leo said you had been stabbed!” Marvin cried.

“Yeah, but I got better.” She looks me over. “Jesus, Malone, you look like shit, and this is coming from a girl who was technically dead three days ago.”

“Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder how such a remarkable recovery came about.”

“You can keep wondering,” Trinh replies. “It’s not your concern.”

Maybe not today, but I have a feeling it will be, depending on how this little meeting turns out.

“Why didn’t you call me before? I’ve been worried sick,” Marvin asks.

“Trinh was being a paranoid butthole. She was afraid Leo may have changed his mind and you could trace my call back to us.” She tugs on Marvin’s arm. “I’ll give you my new number later. Let’s get out of here and leave these two alone.”

Marvin stiffens his stance and resists Carol’s urging. “Leo?”

I jerk my head toward the door. “Go ahead.”

Carol pulls harder. “Come on, they’ll be fine.”

Marvin follows a bit unwillingly. “Where are we going?”

“You’re taking me out.” She pulls Marvin against her. “And then I’m taking you in.”

“Oh, snap!”

Carol squeals and leads a much more eager Marvin away. Trinh doesn’t speak until she hears them drive off.

“I haven’t heard of any more serial killings or rampaging psychopaths on the loose, so I take it you got him?”

“I did.”

“Carol’s right, you do look like shit. What happened?”

“You were right about me not being able to beat him as I was, so I became what I had to be.”

“Like before?”

“Not exactly, but close to it. I didn’t have the blood craze driving my insanity, but it was close enough that it’s almost splitting hairs.”

“You seem to have been able to come out of it again.”

“I’m still working on it, but yes.”

“Was it difficult?”

“Slipping back was far too easy. Much more so than I had expected, particularly without the physical urging. Coming back out was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Every thought in my mind and every cell in my body urged me to stay a monster. It was the ultimate freedom. I was free from pain, remorse, and regret.”

“Why did you come back?”

“Because I was also free from love and purpose beyond my own selfish desires. Without some constraints, there is no real freedom, only chaos, and chaos always leads to misery. I also knew that I could not keep my promise to you if I stayed, and keeping that promise was more important to me than my freedom or my life.”

Trinh nods as her hand strokes the sword hilt beneath her jacket. “So you’re still willing to let me take your head?”

“I am.”

“Killing you might bring me some peace, some closure. I don’t know for sure. I’ve lived with the pain and horror you put me through for so long it became part of me, and I don’t think anything short of death will ever remove it. I think maybe you might be one of the few people in this world who actually understands how that feels. I don’t know if killing you will do anything to change that. I do know that you kill monsters, and if I kill you and you aren’t here to stop them, then I have allowed them to run free and cause the same misery to others that you caused me. I can’t let that happen to anyone else just on the chance it might make me feel better.”

She stands and starts walking away. “Keep your head, for now, but you are still on parole. I might still choose to revoke it someday.”

“It’s yours whenever you decide you want it.”

She leaves and I seal myself back in my tomb. Since I’m not dying today or anytime soon, I guess I can start calling it my vault. For now, it is my safe room, a place where I am safe from the monsters outside as well as the monster within.

***

Dr. Birch sipped her red wine while she waited for her meal. Her first human trial with the bloodling serum had been a rousing success and she wanted to celebrate. She sat alone, relatively speaking. Aaron, her chief of security and three other men on his detail sat at another table not far away. She never went anywhere without them ever since Pennsylvania.

She looked up as someone approached her table, thinking it was the waiter with her dinner. She sat back in her chair, wary, when a young man who looked more at home in a disco than a fine restaurant took a seat across from her. Her security detail immediately stood to intervene, but she forestalled them with a gesture when a red laser dot drifted across the table’s surface and up onto her chest before winking out.

“Please, let us be civil. This is such a nice place, and we have a lot to discuss,” the man said.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“I am a great many things. I am the ultimate entrepreneur. I own a successful nightclub, dabble in commerce, but my greatest lifeline is information. You are Dr. Margaret Birch, and just getting that bit of information was quite a challenge. You spent years working in the field of genetic manipulation and recombination in hopes of developing the ultimate cure-all.”

Dr. Birch sipped her wine. “You have read some of my papers. Good for you. That does not explain why you are intruding upon my dinner.”

“As I said, I deal in information. I garner much of this by being very aware of what is happening around me. I have to. My life and the lives of others depends on it. It is the threat that comes with being a low-level predator. You, as prey, know a bit what that is like.”

“You still haven’t told me what you want.”

The young man leaned forward. “What I want is to be elevated up the food chain.”

“How on earth do you think I could possibly help you with that? You want to protect yourself, buy a gun.”

“Your men all have guns. Do you feel safe right now? You probably have a gun in your handbag. How safe does that make you feel when you think about the creatures that are out there who look at you as a food source?”

She did not like where this conversation was headed in the least. She set her glass down and dropped her hand next to her purse. “What do you know about what is out there?”

“I know a great deal, possibly more than you, and they make me feel the same way.”

“I still don’t know how you think I can help you.”

“Yes you do. Remember, I survive by watching and listening. I know that a bloodling attacked a full-blood vampire. It sounds like a stupid thing to do, and she nearly died doing it. But she didn’t die. In fact, she came back even stronger. Then, the same bloodling carried her critically injured human friend into your not-as-secret-as-you-think laboratory, a friend who, just hours later, came out miraculously healed. It seems to me that you managed to create the life elixir you have been searching for.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Birch replied without conviction.

“I think I do. Let me lay it all out and you tell me if I’m close. A few years ago, you seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. Two years ago, a nasty poison able to turn vampires’ insides to jelly disappears from a lab and finds itself on the streets. Not only that, but someone figures out a way to modify it to make new vampires a lot easier than the old-fashioned way. A year later, someone starts plucking vampires off the street.”

“You keep talking about vampires as if they are real.”

“Please, let us not be coy. Now, where was I? Right, disappearing vampires. Someone manages to make new vampires using only the extracted source of vampire DNA or some such, only there are some complications. There’s another huge mess and someone cleans it up again. Only they missed a spot, didn’t they, Dr. Birch?”

“I assume you are getting to some kind of point?”

“I’m digressing a bit, aren’t I? I apologize. I don’t often get to converse with fellow intellectuals.”

Dr. Birch arched her eyebrows. “You consider yourself an intellectual?”

The young man smiled and shrugged. “I won’t presume to be your mental equal, but much of what you see and dismiss is something I have cultivated over the years. Like I said, I am a low-level predator, and sometimes camouflage is the best defense.”

“I was not aware that stupidity was a good cover.”

“It can be very effective in some situations. People are far more threatened by a cunning adversary than a stupid one and people are most dangerous when they feel threatened. Vampires are no exception. Nor am I.”

“My dinner is sure to be here soon, so if you have a point, I would appreciate you making it.”

“I don’t like to brag—that’s a lie. I love it and do it frequently. Anyway, I know about vampires and I know about chemistry, particularly drug chemistry. I know vampires are incredibly powerful and their ability to heal themselves is absolutely mystical. But you can’t inject whatever it is that makes vampires what they are because it almost always kills the patient.

“I know this just like I know you don’t sell or consume pure cocaine or other drugs. So you cut it, but you can’t cut it with just anything. Sure, some people cut it with talcum powder or baby formula, but that makes for a shit product. You have to cut it with something cheaper than the original product, but with similar properties like pure caffeine or cheap speed.

“So, I see this very tough, but otherwise normal bloodling go into your laboratory and come out damn near as strong as a full vampire. Then I see her human friend go in and come out healed and I start putting the pieces together. You figured out how to cut vampire venom with a bloodling and from there I assume you further cut it down to be compatible with regular humans. Am I close, Doctor?”

Dr. Birch swallowed the lump in her throat. He was not close, he was dead-on, and there was no way she could allow him to live, with this knowledge. He was a threat to everything she had worked for and she would not give it up now even if it meant killing the smug little bastard in the middle of a crowded restaurant.

“What do you want? Money? I haven’t got any.”

“But you will. If you can recreate the effects with minimal risk, there are people who would pay enormous sums for it. But that’s not what I’m after.”

“What are you after then?”

“I told you, power. You need bloodlings to cut your vampire serum, but they are rare. I would be very surprised if this Asian girl you are working with wasn’t the only one you have.”

“Are you saying you know where I can find another?”

The man smiled. “Doctor, you’re talking to one. Not only that, but I can bring in nearly two dozen more. That’s right. I can increase your supply more than twentyfold and you still won’t scratch the surface of the demand it will bring once you begin full-scale production.”

Dr. Birch nearly fell from her chair. This man was not here to threaten her, at least not directly. He might well be her savior. If he could bring her even half as many bloodlings as he promised, it would advance her timetable by years. She could start commercial production in weeks.