Chapter 20
Vivian Montavez unceremoniously opened the door to room 1728. For someone literally seeking out her god, she went about her task with strikingly irreverence. She sauntered in the room and exhaled in audible disgust at the banal decor of Michael Elton’s room. She hardly noticed the dessicated, inert body in the raised hospital bed.
“Not everything you hoped?” I said as I moved into the small room. The curtains were open; PFC Elton had a view of the lake. I could see dawn breaking over the tree line. It could only be minutes away. If I could just delay Vivian and Tebor a little longer. They’d be trapped in this room.
“I’d assumed Dark had hidden Q away somewhere...nondescript. But this is...disrespectful.”
“Hardly the Hall of the Slain, huh?” I said, walking over to Elton’s slumbering body. He was old, ancient. Harmless. But certainly well cared for. His face was clean-shaved, and his hair was brushed. He wore neat, pressed pajamas. The Hearthstone was an honest establishment. Whatever monthly check that arrived from Dark’s estate had not been squandered.
I leaned in close and put my ear to the old man’s mouth. He was softly breathing. Asleep. “Breathing but unconscious,” I said. “This is Q?”
“This is Q,” Vivian answered, moving up beside the bed. She looked down at the withered man and touched his wrinkled face. She opened one of his eyelids with her manicured nails and looked into the vacant eye. “Lack of blood isn’t fatal,” she said. “It causes recidivism. Paralysis.”
“Sounds unpleasant.”
“You have no idea,” Vivian continued. “In this state, he’s not asleep, not like you’d understand.”
“Then...” I hedged.
“He’s aware of everything that’s happening.”
“All this time? But he’s been here for over a century.”
“Exactly,” Vivian stepped away from old man, turning to look out the window. “Imagine the agony? But it’s just a blink of the eye to him. He remembers every moment of every day of his existence. Every second, back to the year one.”
“Exactly how old is he?”
“As old as the world.”
“But he can’t be—” I started but stopped myself.
“He is…Cain.”
“The Cain? From the Bible? Brother of Abel?” I laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”
“He’s Q. The Source. Not just of Geneing but of all mankind. The first human born. Cast out of Eden for murdering his brother, cursed to wander the earth for eternity. The Mark of Cain is in his blood. The Geneing virus.”
“But...that’s just a story. Superstition.”
“It’s not superstition. The proof is right in front of you.”
I laughed. There was nothing else to do. It was all so crazy.
“We’re running out of time,” Vivian turned back to the bed. “The sun is almost up.”
Daybreak was only seconds away. I needed to stall for time. I almost had them all, Cain included, right where I wanted them.
“Why a drug, though?” I asked. It was the last piece of the puzzle. The one thing Dark’s novel hasn’t explained. “Why does Cain’s blood make people euphoric?”
“It’s a glimpse of Eden,” Vivian said, wistfully. She pulled back the sheets off the bed, revealing the full extent of PFC Elton’s decrepit frame. “Of the bliss Adam and Eve felt before the Fall. Through Cain, we shall all return to the Garden. Through Cain, all that has come after will be swept away.”
“Then the NeoCons are right, he is going to destroy the world?”
“Not destroy. Rebuild heaven on Earth.”
“Chock full of Genies? And their vampire masters?”
Vivian looked away from Q’s unconscious body to fixed me with a glare. “You’ll understand soon. Everything will become clear.” She nodded past me to Tebor.
“I’m never going to understand why you’d consciously decide to become an abomination—” I started, but Tebor’s large hands landing on my shoulders cut short my diatribe.
I struggled, but it was no good.
The dawn was breaking outside the window. I was so close.
“Enough philosophy, Detective,” Vivian said, reaching into her purse. “I’m afraid we require of you a small sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice?” I said in alarm. If I could twist my elbow just a little, I’d be able to reach my Rhino...
Vivian pulled a large, chef’s knife out of her purse. “Yes, sacrifice. As in blood,” she said, showing me the blade.
I had it! My .357 in two fingers. I jangled it free and miraculously caught it fully in my palm. I couldn’t raise my arms, but I twisted, shoving the snub nose of the gun into Tebor’s gut. The shot rang out, muffled, but still loud enough to split my ears. I don’t believe I had caused Tebor any pain, but the shot surprised the beast-man enough that he let go with a single hand.
It was enough. I whirled around, sweeping past Vivian and leveling the pistol at Cain. I had one chance. In his torpid state, Cain was almost fully human. Vulnerable to bullets. If he died here in the Hearthstone, they all died, as the vampire legends said. Kill the head vampire and all of his children would be destroyed. Vivian, Tebor, all the vampires...all the Genies, I realized as I lowered my gun. They were the children of Cain, too. With one bullet, I could put an end to the entire Geneing epidemic. The world would be saved. I began to squeeze the trigger of my Rhino.
Vivian slashed up and away with her knife. She caught me square on the wrist with her blade, cutting deep and drawing the edge across my tendons and arteries. The gun slipped from my hand as a torrent of blood gushed from my wrist. I screamed, but I could hear no sound. The pain. So much pain.
Tebor’s free hand reached out and grabbed my severed wrist. He kept it held out before me, over the inert form of PFC Elton. The blood drained quickly from my body, dripping down on to the old man’s cracked lips. Presently, a withered tongue emerged to taste the blood. Then the old man’s eyes opened, filled with a hungry fire.
I can’t remember Q moving a muscle, but instantly he was sitting erect, burying needle sharp fangs into my bloody wrist.
After that, the feeling washed over me. I can hardly explain it. A warm, all-consuming state of total bliss. It was the Geneing, I had presence of mind to realize that. But nothing else. The bite had infected me.
Then I was falling. Nothing but clouds and weightlessness. All the world was nothing to me. I was free. I was whole, total, as safe as in my mother’s womb. That was Geneing. Bliss. Total and unmitigated rapture. I never wanted it to end. There was no reason that it should end. I should have died like all the other Genies, staving and thirsty in a squalid flop.
But it did end. For Q was not yet done with me. Q would not let me die.