Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (15 page)

If Artad won, Aspasia's Shadow knew he was doomed. But in a strange way, he had enough of Aspasia's personality to know that even if his side won, he was also doomed. Aspasia would not allow a creature that held so much of his essence to live. Either way, the future was bleak if left to run its obvious course.

That was one of the reasons he had not bothered to track down either of the surviving Undead. They were a wild card that not only made things more interesting, but added potential allies, depending on how the future developed.

One thing he could count on was their hatred of the Airlia.

With a sigh of pain, Aspasia's Shadow left the Guardian chamber. He went down a stone passageway to another chamber. Inside, a body floated in a large vat of green fluid, a black tube pumping air into the mouth, thence to the lungs. The head was shaved and covered by a skullcap, with several dozens leads running from it to a main line connected to the command console. The body's eyes were open but showed no sign of intelligence. Next to the vat was a black tube, similar in size and shape to the sleep tubes used by the Undead.

It was time to pass on.

Aspasia's Shadow went to the control console and put his hands over the backlit hexagonal display. Quickly he

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tapped out a sequence, just as he had done hundreds of times in the past. The lid to the black tube swung up, revealing a contoured interior designed to fit his body.

Aspasia's Shadow removed the ka from around his neck and slid it, two arms forward, into the small holes on the right side of the console. It fit tightly and a small six-sided section next to it glowed orange, indicating it was in place.

Aspasia's Shadow went to the black tube. He stripped naked and lay down inside. The lid lowered onto him, trapping him in utter darkness. A few probes lightly touched his head, injecting painkillers. There were several minutes of stillness as the top of his head became numb. Then nanoprobes slid out of the lining of the tube into his brain, tapping into the needed sections for update.

His memories and experiences since the last download were transferred to the ka and the probes withdrew. Aspasia's Shadow took a shallow breath, never prepared for what came next, because he didn't know what it was going to be like. It was the one memory that was never transferred.

Out of small pockets in the lining of the tube, black particles, the size of grains of sand, were expelled onto his naked skin.

He screamed helplessly into the darkness of the tube as the particles dissolved flesh, muscle, and bone from the outside inward, triggering every pain response the body had. The only positive aspect was that it lasted for barely five seconds before the body was gone.

The console hummed as the data in the ka was integrated with the basic profile of Aspasia, then sent to the figure in the glass tube through the line, into the wires and thus to the brain. The imprinting took slightly over a minute. The probes were withdrawn from the figure's head.

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The eyes blinked, awareness filling them as Aspasia's Shadow came to life once more. The green fluid drained, leaving Aspasia's Shadow lying on the tube's floor, trying to get oriented. The tube slid up and he tentatively stepped out.

He wiped himself off with a towel, then pulled on the garments that had been left by his previous incarnation.

Dressed, he paused, staring at the black tube that had held his former self. A shiver passed through him, knowing that he would bring this body to that tube sometime in the future. Already, the green vat was humming, beginning work on the next clone to await his presence. Despite being in a body that was the equivalent of a very healthy twenty-year-old, Aspasia's Shadow felt weary.

With great effort, Aspasia's Shadow went back to the Guardian chamber and sat in his throne in front of the golden pyramid. He accessed the computer's database.

Egypt was a mess. He'd known that before he'd regenerated.

The Airlia base at Cydonia on Mars was secure and all was well, according to data relayed from the Guardian on the Red Planet.

And Artad? What of him? It had been a while since Aspasia's Shadow had checked on the other side's leader in the civil war. All seemed quiet and Aspasia's Shadow knew that it was very doubtful that Artad would break the truce without something dramatic changing and so far nothing like that had occurred.

Still. He would have to send a probe in that direction soon. Of course, for Aspasia's Shadow, who thought in terms of centuries and millennia, the term

"soon" was relative. At that moment, all he wanted to do was sleep.

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QIAN-LING, CHINA: 634 B.C.

A cold wind blew from the western desert, scouring the side of the three-thousand-foot-high hill. There was no doubt the formation was not natural, as the slopes in all directions were uniform and nothing grew on the wind-blasted dirt that covered the mound. It was a desolate place, normally empty of life and avoided by those who lived nearby.

There was one human currently in the area, though. A woman, heavy with child, staggered into the wind, holding a tattered cloak tight around her swollen body.

She had one hand cradled underneath her belly, the other , holding a small flask made of black metal that had not come from the Earth. Her teeth chattered in the chill and her exposed skin was growing numb.

She went downslope, following the power of gravity. She had no destination in mind even though her village was to the north, about fifteen miles away. She knew she would not be welcome if she showed up there and she doubted if she could make it that far in her condition.

She was cursed and had been sent out into the wilderness to die along with what she bore inside her. She reached the base of the mound and peered about in the dark. A black line ahead indicated trees lining a riverbank and she staggered forward, heading for the water. She tripped over something and fell hard, cutting her cheek. She blinked in the moonlight, not quite believing what her eyes showed her as the cause of both her fall and the cut. A pile of bones.

The woman realized then that this was the remains of another like her, another sent out into the desolate land to die.

She did not want to die. A cry of pain and anguish

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escaped her lips as she got to her feet. She was only seventeen and had been a virgin nine months earlier when she had been chosen by her village to be their yearly sacrifice to the Gods of Qian-Ling. The choice had not upset her, as no one could remember a year when the Gods had taken the offering. Usually the chosen was taken to a spot a quarter of the way up the mound and tied loosely to a stake. Two days later, the priests would come back, and untie the girl, and take her back to the village—the duty done, the gesture made.

No one knew when the tradition had been started but it had seemed best to continue it. The girl had not been overly concerned when chosen; indeed she had felt she was being honored, as those girls who had been chosen in previous years had always returned to the village to acclaim. She'd walked in the middle of the processional to Qian-Ling and allowed the rope to be lightly tied around her waist and watched her people disappear to the north. Her greatest concern had been spending two nights alone on the mound.

That changed the first night when she heard a rumbling noise and the ground shook. She tried to untie the rope, but the knot was too complicated. Then a man had appeared in the darkness, holding a long spear. He'd cut the rope where it was attached to the stake and pulled her with him, taking her into an opening on the side of the mound, which sealed behind them.

The horrors that had happened after that she had blotted from her mind. One hand was still cradled under her swollen belly, while the other crept to her neck, to the shunt that had been put in place there.

She reached the line of trees and stopped, seeing in the starlight that the ground dropped off abruptly. With difficulty, she slid down the steep stream bank. There was a

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slight shoal consisting of small pebbles between the bank and the water. Ice framed both sides of the flowing water, leaving a free-flowing center channel.

The stream was not deep, a few inches at best.

The girl slumped back against the dirt bank, exhausted. Looking up, she could see stars and remembered her grandfather pointing out the various animals formed by the twinkling lights.

She cried out as a place deep inside her mind remembered the touch of six-fingered hands on her body while red cat eyes peered at her. She stopped her mind from going further along that thread of thought.

Pain ran through her body, focusing her brain on the situation at hand. She whimpered as a contraction rippled through her. Despite the cold air, sweat began to run down her face and along her body.

The girl cried out for her mother. The only answer was the howl of the wind.

She had witnessed numerous births in the village, but there had always been a midwife present to supervise and assist. Pain consumed her and she pressed back against the bank of the stream, her sweat merging with the dirt into mud.

When the child came it was as if it were ripping its way out of her body with single-minded determination. Her screams echoed up out of the streambed and across the plain to the mound.

After ten minutes the baby was out and she used what little strength she had left to wrap it in the rag that had covered her body. Naked, she instinctively curled her body around the infant to keep it warm.

She gazed at the child her body protected. It was not crying, nor had it made any noise, but its chest rose and fell as it breathed, indicating it was alive.

Its eyes met her

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gaze and she was startled to see a thin sheen of red covering the black pupils.

The child leaned into her body, taking her warmth.

She barely noticed when it opened its mouth and tiny teeth tore into her throat.

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AFRICA: 355 B.C.

Nosferatu was better prepared this time, having learned his lesson on the last awakening. Instead of leaving the tube and blundering forth, he left the lid to the tube slightly cracked each night and lay still, conserving energy, until he caught the scent of something alive. He slid out of the tube and found several birds resting on the cliff. He refreshed himself as best he could, experiencing again the nausea from imbibing nonhuman blood.

Strengthened, but hardly satisfied, he made his way north along the coast, knowing he could not attempt the interior of Africa in his present condition. He had barely made it back to the Skeleton Coast alive after leaving Nekhbet in her mountain crypt. Between the mountains and the west coast had been mile after mile of desert, then thick jungle, then, as he neared the coast, desolate, rock-strewn desert once more.

He'd set the tube for approximately one thousand years, yet he noted nothing had changed in the immediate area as he went along the coast. It was the perfect place for him to rest undisturbed, but because of its ruggedness, a hard one in which to find people to feed on.

He saw no ships sailing along the coast. Finally, the land began to turn green and he encountered his first

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village. He took two that night, a couple who had escaped into the jungle to copulate. Refreshed he moved more quickly and soon reached the point where an enormous river cut the coast, pouring a wide swath of brown, muddy water into the ocean. Nosferatu could barely see to the other side in the moonlight and wasn't certain whether what he saw was the riverbank or the shore of an island in the river's mouth.

The Congo made the Nile's flow look like a trickle. Still, Nosferatu felt a pang of longing for the blue water of the river in Egypt. He had a sudden vision of a dark-haired woman holding him, looking down at him, smiling. He was small, tiny, a baby. But he knew she loved him. But that, like so much of his life, was just a memory now.

Even animals had others like them. Nosferatu was perhaps the most isolated being on the planet. Nekhbet was in the deep sleep in the cave on the mountaintop. Vampyr might be out there somewhere, but Nosferatu didn't know where the other Undead was.

Nosferatu growled. A bird fluttered out of a nearby tree in fright. All had been stolen from him. His nostrils flared as he sniffed the air. Blood. Human blood. To his right, upriver. He turned in that direction, moving through the jungle like a ghost, able to see clearly even under the thickest canopy that blocked out all starlight and moonlight.

He came upon a village. A thicket of thorn bushes surrounded the perimeter; a single entrance with only one branch and a youth with a spear barred the way.

Nosferatu ran forward, leapt the thicket, and was on the young warrior in a flash. His teeth ripped through the tender flesh, bringing forth a gush of blood. Even as the artery continued to spurt red sustenance, he lifted 131

his face and glared about. Another warrior was coming, spear leveled. Nosferatu jumped up, knocked aside the warrior's thrust, and jumped on the man's back, teeth sinking into the throat, ripping and tearing. The warrior screamed, then the sound died as Nosferatu tore in farther, his teeth cutting through the man's windpipe.

He threw the warrior from him and bellowed out a challenge, his face and chest covered in blood. He could see faces appear in the doorways of huts. Men staring with wide eyes. Women fluttering behind them, yelling at their children to hide from the demon that had invaded their village.

"Come," he screamed, throwing his arms wide, exposing his chest. "Come and get me." He didn't even realize he was speaking in the language of the Gods and that none could understand his words, although his intent was clear.

None rose to the challenge. All remained indoors, weapons at the ready, watching Nosferatu's rage spill out in screams and curses.

Sanity slowly returned as his throat knotted up in pain from the yelling.

Backing up, Nosferatu left the village and disappeared into the darkness. He found a small cave along the riverbank and slid into it, covering himself with leaves and bushes for the coming day.