Chapter 10
At sundown, James once again found himself in the hidden basement room with Rhiannon by his side, giving orders as if she had some inherent right to do so. He resented it but didn't say so aloud. She was older than he, more powerful. An elder among the undead. A leader. And besides that, she was family and he loved her. So he tended to give her more leeway than he would have given anyone else.
Before him lay five corpses, and the stench that filled the room was almost unbearable.
"Dab some of this beneath your nostrils," Rhiannon said, handing him a jar of menthol rub. "Brigit said it would help. "
"Brigit watches too much television," he muttered, but he obeyed, and the vapors did indeed mitigate the stench of rotting flesh. "You really expect me to. . . to try to resurrect these?"
"No, I don't expect you to try. I expect you to do it. Start with this one. " She moved to a table and yanked a dusty sheet, probably one that had been covering old furniture upstairs, from the face of a corpse. "He's only a few days dead. "
He thinned his lips. "Does he have a story? Is there going to be a way to explain his return to his family?"
"If you insist on a full biography of every stinking bag of flesh you work on, we'll be extinct before you get to the bony ones. Now do it. "
He balked at being ordered around, but he knew she had a point. "I'm just trying to make this okay in my mind. In my soul, Rhiannon. "
"That's the trouble with having a soul. "
"Oh, don't be ridiculous. You have a soul and you know it. " Still, he approached the corpse, which was blue but mostly intact. He suspected its closed but sunken eyes and shriveled lips, and the peeling skin here and there, were not quite as pronounced as in the other bodies that lined the room.
"Fortunately," Rhiannon said, "I don't let my soul dictate my actions as if I'm a slave to it. "
"You mean the way I'm letting you dictate mine?"
"Revive the corpse, J. W. "
He sighed and held his hands over the stinking body, not touching it, but very close. Far closer than he wanted to be. The light began to emanate from his hands, to beam into the body on the table, and within a few minutes the corpse's peeling flesh began to smooth itself out again. The sunken eyes seemed to plump themselves, and the flesh to lose its gray-blue cast. He felt it when the heart began beating, felt it echoing in his own chest. The rib cage expanded as the cracked lips healed, then parted, and when the being on the table exhaled, the stench made James sway backward, pulling his hands away.
But the eyes did not open.
"Very good. Very good!" Rhiannon clapped her hands several times. Applause, for making a half-rotten corpse breathe. Go figure. "On to the next one, then," she said.
"But we don't know how this one is going to turn out yet. " He frowned, then faced her, trying hard to read her thoughts. "What's going on, Rhiannon? Why are you in such a rush all of a sudden?"
She lowered her head, and he found her mind completely blocked.
He probed, but she was stronger. "Where is Roland? And Pandora? Where's Pandora?"
"I couldn't have the cat in here. She would have made snacks of our experiments. And then how would I have borne her breath?"
"Rhiannon. Something's going on, isn't it?"
She wasn't letting him read her thoughts at all. But she did lower her eyes, guilt showing in them. "Things out there have. . . taken a bad turn. "
"Out where? What things?"
Rhiannon lifted her head and moved her long dark hair behind one ear. She met his eyes, her regal bearing wavering very slightly. "The vigilante movement has exploded all over the nation, and it's spreading overseas. We've lost even more of our own, J. W. "
He felt the knowledge hit him squarely in the chest. "Who?"
"Hundreds. During the day, while we rested, they set fire to countless homes. Anyplace they suspected might house a vampire. They were wrong as often as not, idiots that they are. Uneducated, ignorant bigots who don't know the first thing about our kind. They killed as many of their own as they did of ours, and-"
"My parents? Where is my mother?"
"We don't know. We can't contact anyone mentally-"
"The hell we can't!" James closed his eyes, began beaming his thoughts out to his family.
"James, no!" Rhiannon's shout stopped him dead. It was the first time she had ever called him James, and it got his attention. "You know as well as I do that there are humans with the power of telepathy. ESP, they call it. They're able to tap into our thoughts if we do not block them carefully. Your mother knows that, too, so she would be blocking. We cannot risk communicating by telepathy right now. It might only lead them straight to us-or to your parents. "
"I have to find her. All of them. And-"
"Roland has gone to check on them. He intends to gather up everyone still alive and take them to a safe haven. "
"No. I have to go. I have to be with them and-"
She clapped a hand on his shoulder. "You, James, are the only one who can end this madness. This is exactly what the prophecy foretold. We should have expected it-did expect it-but it's unfolding far more rapidly than any of us could have imagined. " Rhiannon spoke softly, but there was power in her voice. "This is what you were chosen to do. This is why you have the power you have. The prophecy foretold this war. We need Utanapishtim to end it. If your family is still alive, they will only survive if you stay here and do the job you were born to do. That's how you will save them. It's the only way you can. "
He stared into her eyes for a long moment, and then he sensed his sister behind him in the doorway and whirled, wondering how much she had heard.
She met his eyes. There was absolute fury in hers. "I, on the other hand, was born with a power that hasn't been much use at all," she said. "Until now. "
"Brigit, we need you here," Rhiannon said.
Brigit shook her head, backing away slowly. "I love you, Aunt Rhi, but I have to do this. And you know damn well I can protect our family better than anyone else. "
Rhiannon couldn't seem to drum up an argument for that. She nodded and said, "Go and pack some things. I'll contact Roland as discreetly as possible-he deigned to take a cell phone with him, and you know how he hates technology. I'll call and hope he can figure out how to answer. I'll find out where he's decided to take the survivors. "
Brigit nodded once, patting her pocket. "You have my number. " Then she sent James a long look that spoke volumes, turned and ran from the basement.
James nodded firmly and made himself face corpse number one, which was still lying on the table, twitching every now and then, as if in the grip of a restless sleep. Time would tell whether it would return to full lucidity or remain a mindless animated bag of meat. But time was something he didn't have. He moved to corpse number two and held his hands over it.
Lucy knew something drastic was going on when Brigit came slamming into the office, practically emanating rage from her pores. Lucy looked up from the tablet, where she'd been right in the middle of something major-then froze as she saw what appeared to be a light glowing from behind Brigit's eyes.
Lucy found herself caught off guard. She'd seen a glow behind James's eyes, but this one was different. His glowed the way she would expect an. . . well, an angel's eyes to glow. His sister's seemed to gleam the way a demon's would. The light from within had a redness to it. And it felt. . . angry.
"Brigit? What's wrong?"
"Later. " The blonde with the angelic face sped into the next room-the little kitchen, and on through it to the first of the bedrooms.
Lucy got up, about to follow, but she stopped after only a single step. She felt an instinctive fear that she didn't dare ignore. The hair on her forearms was standing upright, and the nape of her neck was tingling. Every cell in her body was warning her away from Brigit, and she decided she would do well to listen.
Swallowing hard, Lucy sat back down at the table and bent o
ver the passage she'd been working on. It wasn't hard to focus her attention on the job at hand, because it was fascinating beyond all reason. In all her years of studying the tales and texts and legends of ancient Sumer, she had never seen this one-this account of the death of Utanapishtim. And what stunned her most of all was that the story matched what the vampires had told her-of how he had been punished by the gods for sharing the gift of immortality with the great king, Gilgamesh, and how Gilgamesh's sworn enemy, Anthar, had forced the old man to share immortality with him, as well, to better enable him to fight the king. And how Anthar had then beheaded the ancient one, and abducted his young servant and taken him as a slave. She picked up her smart phone, hit the digital recorder and began reciting her translation of the text into it. She had written it down, as well, but felt compelled to have more than one record of this vital piece of history.
"'Thirteen days passed, thirteen nights, as Ziasudra lay there. Dead, but not. Eternal and imprisoned. Until the old woman, the one they called Desert Witch, came upon him there, as if asleep. No maggots, nor flies, nor stench of decay, did she find upon him. And it was she who burned his body. With fire and with herbs, with chanting and with dance, did she burn him, to break the curse that could not be broken, to free the spirit that could not be freed.
"'His ashes she took to the artisan of Uruk, that he might make for her a likeness of the man himself, with his remains secreted within, and to engrave upon it his secret name, Utanapishtim, that the gods might never find him and curse him again.
"'And so the craftsman formed the limestone into the likeness of the priest-king Ziasudra, although he knew it not. The length of his forearm, he formed it, in a pose of submission, and obsidian eyes he gave to him, that he might see. Ziasudra, who had been made like a god, given the breath of life by the gods and cursed to suffer by the gods, now, he was ash and dust, hidden within the statue. But his curse was not to be broken, not until he reversed his sin against the gods. '"
Lucy lifted her head. "I think I know where he is," she whispered. "Oh, my God, I think I know where he is!" She jumped to her feet just as Brigit came surging back into the room, a leather biker bag over her shoulder.
"Brigit, I-"
"Not now. " Brigit stomped through the secret passage into the crumbling bedroom of the main house, but Lucy ran right behind her, grabbing her handbag and slinging it over her shoulder as she dropped the phone into it, her notebook still in her other hand. It was only as Brigit turned to close the panel in the wall that she realized Lucy was still behind her. "What the hell? You're supposed to stay-"
"I think I know where he is!" Lucy said.
"Where who is?"
"Utanapishtim. I think I've found him. " She frowned, seeing how distracted the girl was. "God, what's wrong with you?"
Brigit seemed to bank the fire behind her eyes. "Hundreds of vampires were burned alive in their sleep while we rested safe and sound here. That's what's wrong. Mortal idiocy, moral bankruptcy, murderous pigs who think thou shalt not kill only applies to their own kind, right down to species, race, creed and color. I'm surprised they don't annihilate according to age and gender. Humans suck, and I intend to start exercising some old school justice. One of theirs for one of ours. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth. That's right up your alley, isn't it?"
"Straight from the Code of Hammurabi," Lucy replied.
Brigit was surging through the house as she spoke, into the hallway, down the stairs, with Lucy rushing to keep up. They crossed what had once been the glorious foyer, raced down a long vaulted corridor, and then Brigit flung open what appeared to be a basement door, with a dark stairway vanishing beneath it. She turned back, seeming to finally realize that Lucy was still with her. But she only paused for a moment, then shrugged and kept on walking. Down the cellar stairs, across the basement. When she reached a closed door, she said, "Wait out here. "
And then there was a crash, followed by Rhiannon's voice screaming, "Kill them, for the love of the gods!"
Brigit yanked the door open, and the stench that wafted from within the room beyond nearly knocked Lucy to her knees. She stared in paralyzed shock as what she saw inside the room delivered a second, even more debilitating, blow to her psyche.
There were. . . corpses. . . or zombies or something-half-rotted bodies-stumbling around what looked like a demolished laboratory. One of them had Rhiannon by the throat. Its flesh was falling off its bones as its bony hand clutched the beautiful vampiress. Three more of them, one no more than a bleached white skeleton that looked like a Halloween decoration, were surrounding James, yanking at his limbs, his hair, his face.
Brigit started to hum. No, she wasn't humming, but there was a hum coming from her, and as Lucy watched, unable to speak or move more than her eyes, she saw Brigit lift both hands, palms up, fingers lightly touching her thumbs. Her eyes were glowing red, and then, as she flicked one hand open, a beam of white light with a reddish tint-flashed like a laser from her eyes. It shot from her to the creature that had Rhiannon, and the corpse exploded.
Lucy jerked away in reaction, falling on her backside on the floor as scraps of rotting meat rained down on her. Even before her stomach could heave, Brigit's other hand flicked open and her killer gaze was blasting another corpse to bits. And then another, and an other, with pinpoint accuracy and deadly results.
Within two seconds there were no more walking corpses. No more bleached white bones, grasping. . . But Lucy's mind felt as if it had been hit by one of Brigit's beams. She stared at the mess, at the gore, at James moving slowly toward her. He was speaking, but she was still hearing that hum in her brain, or maybe that was the reverberation left behind from the explosions. She only knew she was terrified, unable to think coherently and wanting nothing more than to crawl into a hole and then pull the hole in after her.
James moved toward her, and she scrambled away across the basement floor like a panicked crab.
"It's okay. It's all right, Lucy, it's all right. "
There was a long purple vein dangling from his hair. She lifted a trembling hand, pointed. "What. . . why. . . you. . . How?"
"It's okay, it's all okay. " He shot Brigit a look. "Why the hell did you bring her down here?"
"She's figured out where to find Utanapishtim. And I'm out of here. " Brigit looked at Rhiannon. "Are you both okay?"
"I would have gotten the better of them momentarily," Rhiannon said, batting at the muck in her hair in irritation. And then she frowned. "What is that sound?"
Rhiannon turned her attention upward, toward the floor above, but Lucy heard nothing.
"I want to go home," she said. "I want to go home now. I did what you asked, and I'm finished here. I really am. This is not my problem, and I want to go home. "
"Yes, yes, I know. " James bent to grip her elbow and help her to her feet. "It's okay, you're safe. "
"What were they? What did you do?"
"What was necessary, Lucy. What I had to do. "
"But. . . but they looked like. . . like the dead. Did you bring them back from the grave? Is that what you- God, James, how could you? That's so wrong. That's just so wrong. "
"Is it wrong to try to save my family?" He met her eyes, then looked away, his attention turning upward, too. "I hear it now. "
"Mortals. A lot of them," Rhiannon said.
And then even Lucy heard the roar, the shouting, the motors and squealing tires. Right on their heels came the sounds of shattering glass, and the smell of smoke and burning wood.
"They're torching the house!" Brigit shouted.
"Oh, God, and we're in the basement. " Lucy looked around frantically. "We're trapped!"