Area 51: Nosferatu-8 (2 page)

"It depends on what you mean by failure," Adrik argued. "I had magnificent successes in many places. Names I have used are in the human history books as great leaders."

"But you could never maintain your kingdoms; nor could Vampyr," Nosferatu noted.

"So you say we stay in the shadows still?" Adrik demanded. "Let our fortunes and fates go with the flow of mankind? At least when the Airlia ruled through their minions we had some degree of assurance that there would be a world left for us to live in. Humans, on their own"—he shook his head—"they will destroy themselves, and us with them. We are wiser, more experienced. It would be in their interest for us to dictate their course."

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"And when we feed?" Tian Dao Lin quietly asked. "If we could have partaken of the Grail and become immortal without the need to drink blood, then I would say perhaps we could rule. But without that, do you think the humans would be so obliging as to give us bodies to feed on?"

Adrik shrugged. "They could give us their worst criminals—the humans kill thousands themselves in punishment. Your own China chops off how many heads each year? And for those who feel the kill is not necessary"—he glanced disdainfully toward Nosferatu—"there is always a way to get blood without killing."

"We are only a handful," Tian Dao Lin said. "Even with our money and influence

. . ." He trailed off into silence.

"Why have you brought us here then?" Adrik demanded of Nosferatu. "Surely you had a reason."

Nosferatu nodded. "I had two reasons. I called you here to discuss what we should do first before we can accomplish anything else, including trying to rule the humans."

Nosferatu got to his feet and walked over to an ancient armoire, opening its wooden doors to reveal a small stainless-steel door. He slid it up and removed three flasks also made of unmarked steel resting in specially made cradles that kept the contents warm. He carried them back to the table, placing one in front of each man before taking his seat with the third. He unscrewed the lid and lifted it to his lips, tilting the flask and drinking deeply for several seconds before putting it back on the table. There was a faint trace of red on his lips, which he dabbed away with a silk handkerchief When he was done his face was flushed, his eyes glittering with increased power.

He indicated the other flasks. "It's tested: clean, pure, relatively fresh, and kept at body temperature. Imbibe, my friends. There is much I have to talk to you about."

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The other two drank and Nosferatu waited until they were done. Then he tapped the flask. "This is our sustenance and it is our greatest weakness. We are half-breeds. We have some Airlia blood, but not enough to sustain us without constant nourishment of human blood for it. We drink human blood because we have to in order to stay alive."

"You tell us what we have all known since the beginning," Adrik grumbled.

"You knew it from the beginning?" Nosferatu challenged him. "I was entombed for much longer than you by the Airlia Gods themselves, and knew practically nothing. I've known about the Grail and the promise of immortality from the beginning, but I didn't know exactly how it gave eternal life. It is only because the science of the humans has advanced so far that we have an idea of how we have managed to live so long."

He placed one finger against the engorged vein on his wrist. "We have a virus in our blood. An Airlia virus. It helps our cells regenerate when they should die. However, we're half-breeds. So we don't have enough of the virus for it to be self-sustaining. Thus, we must"—he reached forward and plinked a fingernail against the steel flask—"drink human blood to feed and sustain the Airlia virus.

The Grail—if we had it—would purify our blood, injecting the Airlia virus, making the virus dominant and self-sustaining just as it is—or was—in the Airlia themselves. We would no longer need to drink human blood for sustenance."

Nosferatu waited. As he expected, Tian Dao Lin, with his obsession for the Grail, was the first to grasp the significance of this. "If we had more of the virus . . ."

Nosferatu nodded. "If we could somehow—without the lost Grail—cross the threshold to where the virus is

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self-sustaining, we would be, in effect, immortal. We would not need to drink human blood anymore and we would have the benefits of the Airlia virus's ability to replicate, which means even if killed, we would come back to life as it quickly regenerated us."

"But there are no more Airlia," Tian Dao Lin said. "You started this meeting saying that. So there is no more virus except what we already have in our veins."

Nosferatu shook his head. "The Airlia are gone, but there are sources of Airlia virus we can recover."

" 'We'?" Adrik repeated. "Why do you need us?"

A good question, Nosferatu thought. One he knew that Tian Dao Lin was thinking but had not voiced. "Because we would not be the only ones trying to get this blood."

"Vampyr." Tian Dao Lin said it as a statement, not a question.

Nosferatu pressed a button under the tabletop and the screen came alive with an image. The man pictured was similar in appearance to Nosferatu, but his hair was dyed jet-black and he wore a pair of sleek sunglasses that hid his eyes. He wore an expensive suit of black, with a black shirt and tie completing the image. He was standing on the wide stairs of some building, perhaps a symphony hall, looking out over the night crowd.

"I have known him a long time," Nosferatu said, staring at the screen. "He was made Vampyr, also in the First Age of Egypt, the son of the Airlia Amun and a High Consort, along with his twin sister Lilith. She died most horribly at the hands of the Airlia while Vampyr and I watched. He swore revenge then against both Airlia and humans, who so blindly followed them and helped kill her."

"He is very powerful," Tian Dao Lin said.

Nosferatu nodded. "He too has gone by many names

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over the years and has wielded much power from the shadows. We have met several times, even as allies long ago. But now that the Airlia are gone, I fear what he will do next."

"You fear or you know?" Tian Dao Lin asked.

"I have had some reports," Nosferatu acknowledged vaguely. He stared at the image on the screen. "I have known Vampyr for millennia, from the first day he swore vengeance, and his rage has not abated over the years, but rather grown.

He has done many terrible things through the ages and"—Nosferatu paused, then reluctantly continued—"now that the constraint of the Airlia and their minions is gone the only real threat he has is in this room."

"So that is why you brought us here," Tian Dao Lin said. "You need allies against Vampyr."

"Yes," Nosferatu said, "but also remember that we are sources of the Airlia virus also, and I have no doubt Vampyr has plans to gather our blood also."

"He would kill his own?" Adrik asked.

"Vampyr does what he wills, whenever he wants," Nosferatu said. "If he decides he wants our blood, he will let nothing stand in his way."

"But you would not take his blood," Tian Dao Lin noted. "So what other sources of Airlia blood are there?"

Nosferatu leaned back in his chair. He glanced at Adrik. "As you are well aware, the SS screened vast amounts of blood in their concentration camps, searching for any that might be special, although they didn't know exactly what was special about it. The SS was corrupted by the Mission and Aspasia's Shadow, who were seeking traces of the Airlia blood as he finally knew why it was important. He used a blood ceremony for initiation into the SS. During that ceremony, top members of the SS re-

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ceived minute portions of the virus, most likely that which Aspasia's Shadow recovered from the Ones Who Wait, whom he killed.

"That is why Dr. Von Seeckt, who eventually ended up on the American Majestic-12 committee, managed to live so long and survive his illness as long as he did.

As did other Nazis who escaped after the war."

"I know of what you speak," Adrik said. "But I lost track of that blood at the end of the war. For a while I thought the Mission moved it to South America via the Odessa link."

Nosferatu shook his head. "No. The ceremony was held at the SS castle at Wevelsburg in Bavaria and the blood was stored there. As the Americans closed in on it at the end of the Second World War, it was your Russians who sent in a parachute team to recover what they could. They brought everything they found back to Moscow, including the blood.

"Not only that," Nosferatu continued, "but a part of Section IV from the KGB—the Russian equivalent of America's Majestic-12—knew from the Nazi documents that a particular strain of blood was important and began to see if it could find more. Deep under Moscow, there is a chamber that contains what Aspasia's Shadow brought to the SS and what was scavenged out of the concentration camps by the SS and by the KGB during the Cold War from prisoners at Lubyanka and in the Gulags. If you agree, it will be your job"—he inclined his head toward Adrik—"to use your resources to recover this. I believe you have the power to do it."

Adrik made no commitment, waiting to see what else the Eldest had to propose.

"Two." Nosferatu held up another finger. "The Ones Who Wait. They were like us—half-human, half-Airlia—

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except cloned. They had some of the virus, which accounted for their extended lives. I know where we can find some of their bodies. Intact and preserved." He turned to Tian Dao Lin. "This will be your responsibility, my old friend."

"And where would I find these preserved bodies?" Tian Dao Lin quietly asked.

"Mount Everest. Where Merlin took the great sword Excalibur so many years ago.

Several Ones Who Wait were recently sent by Artad to recover the sword and failed. Their bodies are still up there. Frozen. Three of them."

Tian Dao Lin steepled his fingers as he considered this.

"And the third source?" Adrik asked,

"That is most important and most difficult to get to," Nosferatu said. "Pure Airlia blood. Preserved. Waiting to be harvested."

"Where?"Tian Dao Lin was leaning forward, his interest obvious. Adrik was also edging forward in his chair.

Nosferatu pointed up. "The first mothership from Area 51. Aspasia's. The one the human soldier Turcotte destroyed when Aspasia tried to return to Earth from Mars aboard his Talon spacecraft."

"How will one get to that?" Adrik asked. "The American shuttle fleet was devastated during the recent war and it is not likely they would kindly allow us to use one anyway. Russia's ability to launch a manned mission into orbit is practically nonexistent after recent events."

"I have something in the works," Nosferatu said.

The other two waited. Nosferatu pressed a button. Vampyr's face disappeared from the computer screen and was replaced by a picture of a stubby, delta wing craft on top of a large rocket. "The X-Craft," Nosferatu said. "A reusable, two-man, orbital vehicle. The launch platform is

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an Ariana 4 rocket. The X-Craft has thrusters for maneuvering in orbit, and it can land on any landing strip that can take a 747. One of my subsidiaries has been developing it for over twenty-five years. We've dropped it from altitude—

manned—and successfully landed it. The only thing we haven't done yet is launch one into orbit."

Tian Dao Lin frowned. "The Americans only destroyed the mothership a month ago."

Nosferatu smiled. "My original plan—before recent events—was eventually to have a manned mission go to Mars. The X-Craft was the first step to a second generation of craft built in orbit capable of reaching Mars, landing, and getting to Aspasia and the other Airlia in deep sleep there at Cydonia." His eyes shifted to Tian Dao Lin. "Along with a simultaneous expedition into Qian-Ling to reach and destroy Artad and his followers. I estimated that both missions would be possible in twenty years and we might be able to defeat the Airlia while they slept. Recent events have caused me to adjust my plans and my timetable, with the follow-on objective becoming the number one priority."

Tian Dao Lin chuckled. "That is why you had me pull strings to get Professor Che Lu permission to enter Qian-Ling when it had been forbidden for so long. I knew you had something long-range in mind."

"I have been planning for thousands of years," Nosferatu said. "But the technology was never sufficient. However, in the past fifty years or so human technology has advanced greatly. And the fortuitous events of the past year now allow us unprecedented opportunity with much less risk much sooner than I had anticipated."

"The Airlia who died on the Talons inside the mother-ship's cargo bay would have bled out into space," Adrik argued.

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"Most of their blood, yes," Nosferatu agreed. "However, I have had simulations and experiments done and they indicate there would be some residual blood left in the bodies. Not much, but if enough bodies were harvested, there would be a sufficient supply to make it worth gathering, especially as it would be pure."

"Even if we recover all this blood, pure and mixed," Adrik asked, "how will we be able to extract the Airlia virus, then purify our blood with it? How will we get rid of the human portion of our blood? And the human portion in the Ones Who Wait and the blood gathered by the SS and KGB?"

"The Americans have done us a favor in that regard," Nosferatu said. "They were delving into this very problem at the secret Majestic-12 lab in Dulce, New Mexico, where the former Nazi, General Hemstadt, was working after the war under the auspices of Operation Paperclip. One of his projects was perfecting a blood-purifying device, most likely on orders from Aspasia's Shadow and the Mission and under the cover of AIDS research.

"This machine removes all of a person's blood and replaces it with a freezing solution that cleanses the circulatory system completely. While this is happening, the body is chilled to keep it viable. Then the machine injects the new, already warmed blood and the body is brought back to normal temperature.

The entire process lasts only about three minutes. The subject's blood is replaced one hundred percent."