Twilight Prophecy (23 page)

But he was worried.

With a hand on his shoulder, Lucy asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Brigit. She’s beaming her location to me openly, with every bit of mental power she possesses, in spite of the moratorium our people have placed on open telepathy.”

Utanapishtim was looking at him, questions in his eyes.

“Others…find her?” he asked.

“Yes, others might. There
are
humans who possess the power of telepathy. Only a few, but they do exist.” He stared off into the distance. “I just hope to God none of them are picking up on Brigit’s vibe and coming after her. Or if they are, I hope we get there first.”

“Why…hu-muns…hate so the vahmpeers?”

“Because they fear us,” James said.

“Make…no…reason.” Utanapishtim seemed doubtful.

James didn’t blame him for his skepticism. It took two sides to fight a war, and Utanapishtim must assume that he was getting only half the story. The undead weren’t entirely blameless. There had been plenty of incidents when the vampires had not been as innocent as James had chosen to depict them. But he had reasons for not bringing up every infraction.

He needed Utanapishtim on their side.

And he sensed he might be losing the man.

Then he was distracted by another matter entirely.

His twin sister was near. He felt her, and then he looked up ahead and he knew. He pointed to an abandoned church, which was only a mile or two from where Will and Sarafina’s home had stood. “She’s in there.”

“There?” Utanapishtim said, pointing, too. “Is…temple?”

“Yes. A place of worship.”

“Is…?” Utanapishtim held up his thumb and forefinger. “Small. What god…live there?”

“None of the gods you knew,” James said. “The people today worship different gods.”

Utanapishtim stared at the church, at its steeple. “Then…why Anu has not…?” He pounded his fist into his open palm. “Struck down it?”

Lucy put a calming hand on his arm. “This land is far from the land of Anu and the Anunaki, Utanapishtim. This is a temple to one of the gods of this land.”

He nodded, clearly mulling that over, as the three of them approached the front door of the abandoned church.

And then it flew open and Brigit flung herself into James’s arms, weeping. Shaking, too, so hard that it frightened him. He closed his arms around her, lifting her off her feet, feeling her pain and bleeding with it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay. I’m here now.”

Sniffling, she pulled away just far enough to meet his eyes. Her face was smeared in black, her clothes scorched, torn and sooty. The skin had peeled off her forearm in one place, and there were angry pink patches on her hands and neck, as well.

“God, I’m so glad to see you.”

“Me, too.” He looked nervously behind them. It was daylight, and there were clearly people after her. “Get back inside. Come on, so I can tend to your wounds.” He set her down, then saw her finally notice his companions, even while stepping aside to let them pass.

“Professor Lucy. I’m surprised you’re still around.” And then she glanced at Utanapishtim, and her eyes seemed to get stuck on him. James watched her take him in from head to toe, saw her noting his odd attire before she seemed unable to look away from his face.

“You…you’re…” She managed to dart a quick glance at James. “Is he…?”

“Ziasudra, otherwise known as Utanapishtim,” James said.

“No shit.” Brigit closed the church door after the three of them went inside, and then she moved closer to the huge man. She lifted a hand to touch his face, though her words were for James. “I can’t believe…you actually did it.”

Utanapishtim let her touch, did not back away, but he held her eyes. “I did not give you permission to touch me, woman.”

She grinned at him. “Feisty, isn’t he?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t talk about him as if he isn’t here, Brigit,” Lucy suggested. “He’s a king, and also sort of your forebearer.”

“True enough.” Brigit lowered her head in the barest mockery of a bow. “Your highness,” she said.

“I do not know…highness.” And then Utanapishtim winced and backed away from her. “You are…pain. I—I tire of…suffering.”

“Come on, Bridge,” James said, leading her to the nearest pew and telling her to lie down. He held his hands over her, vaguely aware of Lucy and Utanapishtim walking farther into the church, looking around curiously. “Tell me what happened while I work,” he told her.

“I drafted a lot of vamps to help me out.”

“The resistance, I know.” His palms weren’t tingling, weren’t glowing. He rubbed them together rapidly, until they grew warm, and tried again.

“The idea was,” Brigit said, “to start giving these mortal vigilantes a taste of their own medicine, but the cowards only attack by day. So what good is a resistance made up of creatures who can only fight by night? Dammit, I need humans, not vampires, and I don’t have any.”

“Where are they now? Your soldiers?”

His hands still weren’t glowing. She sat up, gripping his wrists and turning his hands upward. “Having trouble, bro?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong.”

She shrugged. “We heal rapidly anyway, you and I. Look, it’s already getting better. Give me an hour, I’ll be good as new.”

But James was troubled. And he kept thinking of when Utanapishtim had fallen on the deck of the
Nightshade
and had held James’s hands to him. He looked up at the man, who was standing nearby, watching them curiously, met his eyes, tried to see any sign of guilt there, not that Utanapishtim would be likely to feel any. But James has no doubt, the bastard had stolen his power.

And then Brigit caught his attention with a single word.

“Gone,” she whispered.

His eyes shot back to hers. “Your entire team?”

“Nearly.” She lowered her head then, and he knew she was trying to hide her tears. But she couldn’t hide anything from him. “We were holed up in an abandoned house, and the assholes burned it. I don’t even know how they knew we were there. We lost a dozen good people. I managed to carry four of them out before the flames got too bad, but they were badly burned, too, between the damn inferno and the sun.”

“And the vigilantes?” he asked, noting that Utanapishtim was coming closer now. The resurrected king was watching Brigit’s every move, listening intently to her every word, fascination in his black eyes.

“I sploded ’em,” Brigit said, using their childhood term for her destructive gift. “That’s one—”

Utanapishtim held up a hand, interrupting her. “I know not…sploded. What means it?”

“As I started to say,” Brigit went on, irritated, “that’s one gang down, about twenty to go, and that’s just in the Northeast. They’re popping up all over the place. I’ll get them all as soon as I get enough intel to know where to look.”

“Intel…?” Utanapishtim asked.

Brigit ignored him and kept talking. “I kept the leader alive. He’s in the basement, tied up and trembling, surrounded by sleeping vampires who’d just as soon drain him dry as look at him.”

“You take prisoner. Leader. This wise, for female.

Now, say me what means sploded,” Utanapishtim ordered.

James looked at his hands and wondered how the hell he was going to regain what Utanapishtim had taken from him. “Don’t tell him, Bridge.”

Ignoring the warning, Brigit said, “Okay, watch this, King Tut.” She pointed at a lectern standing in the corner of the church, and then she turned her hand, palm up, touched her fingers lightly to her thumb and then, as she flicked them open, a beam shot from her eyes, following the direction of her fingertips and the lectern exploded into a thousand bits.

From the far side of the church, Lucy shrieked and jumped. “Shit, Brigit, give a little warning, would you?”

“Sorry, Prof.” Brigit looked at Utanapishtim. “That was just a little one. I can cause a lot more damage if I want to.”

He nodded. “This I know… You not only one have power of splode.”

Brigit grinned. “You’ve known others?” she asked.

“One other.” He shifted his eyes to James. “This place…not safe, James. I feel—”

“I feel it, too,” Brigit said, turning her head, looking around.

“It’s daylight,” James said. “We can’t move your four sleeping soldiers until dark. Not safely.”

“Maybe we can.” Lucy, who had been wandering around the church, exploring, held a length of green canvas in her hands. “There are several of these tarps back here. Apparently they used them to cover the organ. If we wrap the vamps up, we can each carry one of them to the dinghy. Just like we did when we took Sarafina and the others out of that cave after the fire. You say there are four vampires here, Brigit?”

“Yes, fighters, too. Two male, two female.” Brigit eyed Lucy. “And while I’m sure that James and I and Utanapishtim can each manage to carry one, I doubt you can. You don’t have preternatural strength like we do.”

“You have hu-mun prisoner,” Utanapishtim said.

“Make him carry.”

Brigit lifted her brows at him. “Good thinking, Kong.”

He made a fist and thudded it against his own chest. “Utanapishtim.”

Brigit shrugged. “Whatev. C’mon, they’re this way.”

She led them through a door beyond the nave, which led to a very rickety and dusty flight of steps leading down into utter darkness. James followed directly behind her, then turned to call up to Lucy, “Be careful, it’s very dark.”

“I’ll just wait at the top, then,” she said softly.

He thought there was something odd in her voice, then realized what it was. She was getting tired of being the only one of them without any sort of supernatural ability. He supposed he could understand that, even though he’d been determined to exist in complete denial of the powers he possessed, with the exception of his power to heal.

A power he’d lost. The reality of that ached in his chest, but he had no time, just now, for grieving.

He continued down the stairs and saw a man, a mortal, tied to a chair. He was a man James had seen before. Just a glimpse, though, as they’d sped away from the scene of the shooting at Studio Three. He had a scar running from the outer corner of his left eye, down across his cheek, to the center of his chin, and pale gray eyes. He was not a redneck, and he was not uninformed about vampires, nor acting out of fear or ignorance.

He was DPI.

A
n hour later they were nearing the spot where they’d left the dinghy. Lucy had said nothing about the scar-faced man up to that point, although she’d been stunned when she’d seen him. She’d been waiting for a moment when she could get James alone.

And it finally came.

She was walking beside him, Brigit leading the way, a canvas-wrapped vampire over her shoulder. It was surreal to watch her carrying a vampire that was taller, broader and no doubt far heavier than Brigit herself. She was a small woman, petite, and those blond curls were a total contrast to her personality, much less her power. It was like watching a toddler pick up an adult. It just made no sense.

Brigit was several yards ahead of them now, moving fast, maybe running on adrenaline.

Behind then, Utanapishtim walked more slowly, apparently in deference to the struggling, scar-faced mortal just ahead of him, who was suffering under his own vampiric burden.

Finally there was enough distance between Lucy and James, and the others, that she felt she could speak freely. “I know that man,” she whispered.

He shot her a curious look.

“He was in the room where I woke up—after the shooting. After you healed me. The room where I was held. He was there with a woman, and while she did most of the questioning, I got the feeling he was the one in charge.”

James nodded. “I saw him, too, outside the studio in all that chaos. He was one of the men in black. He’s government. DPI.”

She felt a rush of relief that her own suspicion had just been confirmed. “Then that means DPI is behind this vigilante nonsense, doesn’t it, James?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Probably pretending to be a regular guy, egging them on. Hell, look at his clothes.”

She glanced behind them. The scar-faced man was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a flannel shirt over it, buttoned all the way up. As if he knew what rednecks wore, but not how they wore it. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear his words.

“He’s running his mouth, James. What’s he saying?”

“Nothing good.” James turned, looking back at them. “Shit. I didn’t realize Utanapishtim had dropped back. He was behind me a minute ago.”

“We’re almost there,” she said.

“Let’s drop back a little, all the same. I don’t like this.”

“Not me,” she said. “I’ve kept my head down since you guys brought him up from the basement. I don’t think he’s recognized me yet. And I’d just as soon he didn’t.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Lucy,” James told her. “He knows exactly who you are. These guys aren’t that easily fooled.”

The two of them slowed down. Utanapishtim and Scarface slowed down, too. Lucy didn’t think that boded very well. Clearly, whatever Scarface had to say, he didn’t want to say it in front of James and Lucy, and just as clearly, Utanapishtim wanted to hear the man out.

James stopped in place, waiting, facing the other two, making it impossible for them to lag behind without being obvious about it.

“Where are you taking me?” Scarface demanded when they caught up. “I’ve been asking this guy, but he refuses to say a word.”

“I can’t tell you that,” James said softly. “But you’ll be safe, I promise.”

“Safe? Are you crazy? I’m being held prisoner by vampires, for God’s sake.”

“Obviously we’re
not
vampires,” James said, with a nod at the sky above. “Sunshine, remember?”

“You’re not human. I know that much. That blonde…the things she can do. Are you two…related?”

James tipped his head to one side. “You know we are. And why don’t you stop playing games? Just as you know I’m not human, I know you’re not some yahoo with an ax to grind.”

“I resent that.”

“You would if you were one of them. But you’re not. You’re government. DPI.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do, and you’ll talk, pal. Believe me. You’re going to tell us everything we want to know.”

The man seemed to go a shade paler, and he sent a look toward Utanapishtim. “I told you so.”

“James!” Brigit called from up ahead.

Looking forward, James saw that she had stopped, and lowered her undead passenger to the ground. She ducked behind a boulder, then peered out around it.

“I need to go see what’s up. Watch him,” he told Lucy.

She nodded, and James jogged up ahead, still carrying his unconscious vampire refugee over his shoulder, until he reached Brigit, where he set his burden down beside the other canvas-wrapped vampire.

Lucy kept on walking, but being more or less alone with the scar-faced man made her nervous.

“You’re not one of them,” he said to her. He was moving slowly, clearly struggling to bear the weight of the bundle over his shoulder.

She looked at him, then at Utanapishtim, who was still listening to every word, following behind, soaking it all up and not making a single comment. He carried his own burden as if it were a twig.

“They’re my friends,” Lucy said to Scarface. “You, on the other hand, are not.”

“You’re so wrong about that.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “We were trying to save you from them when we took you in. Still are. All this stuff we’ve leaked to the press about you being wanted—it’s bull. We’re just trying to get you to come in…so we can protect you. They’re going to kill you, Lucy. You know too much.”

“And you know far too little,” she said.

“Listen, listen, I’ll…I’ll make you a trade. You help me get away, and I’ll make you a trade, okay?”

He was back to a normal tone of voice again. The others were too far away to hear—or maybe not. Utanapishtim was closer and, she thought, trying to listen in.

“You have nothing I could possibly want,” she said.

Scarface looked quickly ahead at the others, then spoke. “I have the book,” he whispered, and he patted his breast pocket. “The one that tells all their secrets, the one no one is supposed to have.”

“You get the tiny version?” she asked, with a derisive look at his shirt pocket.

He tugged on something, revealing just the edge. “Electronic version, right here on my phone.” As he moved, the canvas bundle shifted on his shoulder and a pale, slender hand fell free.

Lucy lunged, tucking the hand back in even as smoke began to spiral from it. “Be careful!” she snapped.

“For God’s sake, will you focus here?” Scarface demanded. “You’ve chosen the wrong side in this, and you’ll know that if you just read the book. I’ll give it to you. Just let me go and it’s yours.”

“I’m not letting you go.” And besides, she thought snidely, she already had the very same material on her own phone. In fact, she had Lester Folsom’s own “eyes only” version.

She caught herself, realizing that she’d processed that thought very loudly. She wondered if anyone else had picked up on it and glanced ahead, knowing she probably ought to tell James she was in possession of the book.

Would he be angry that she’d kept it from him? Would he insist she destroy it, or hand it over to Rhiannon or one of the other vampire elders? She didn’t want to give it up. She wanted to read it first—find out everything that James might not have told her already. And even knowing parts of it would no doubt be biased and untrue, books were sacred to her. Knowledge was everything.

She would finish reading it, and then she would tell him and let him do whatever he wanted with the thing.

“Come on, Lucy. You’re a scientist. Don’t you want to know the truth about them?”

Utanapishtim stepped up behind the man, gripped his shoulder. “Silence, prisoner. Wish you to die now?”

“I’m going to die anyway, if you don’t let me go. You don’t know what they’re capable of. They’ll drink my fucking blood, for God’s sake.”

“Loo-see, go there.” Utanapishtim pointed ahead, to where James was speaking to Brigit. “You belong…beside…you man. Go.”

“But James asked me to watch him.”

“I king! You go!”

He growled the words, jabbing his forefinger in James’s direction, and Lucy jumped into motion, but first she snatched the phone from Scarface’s pocket.

He glared at her.

“Sorry, pal. You’ve got nothing left to bargain with now.”

She took the phone with her to where James and Brigit were crouched behind a boulder. Utanapishtim had spoken with so much authority that it had seemed far beyond her ability to argue with him. By the time she was catching up with James, it was a done deal, and just as well. She’d been shaken by the scar-faced man. But she had at least taken the precaution of confiscating his bargaining chip. God forbid he give it to Utanapishtim, with his ability to absorb every bit of information it contained just by holding the device in his hands.

What would he believe of his offspring if he were fed all the lies about them contained in that book? True, she hadn’t finished it, but what she had read so far had depicted the vampire race as animals. As soulless, murderous savages without feelings.

She made it to the boulder and came to a stop.

“What is it?” she asked the twins. To her surprise, the sea was just a stone’s throw away below them.

“Just a passing group of humans,” James said. “We think they were just hikers, but given the circumstances…” He looked at Lucy. “What have you got there?”

She handed it to him. “The electronic version of Folsom’s book. Scarface offered to trade it to me in exchange for letting him go. I took it from him so he wouldn’t try to tempt Utanapishtim with the same offer.”

James took it, looked at it and then flung it as hard as he could. The device sailed through the sky, arcing overhead, then plummeting downward again and falling into the sea with a “plip.” “That takes care of that problem,” he said.

Lucy licked her lips, realizing he would do the same to her personal edition of the book if she told him she had it.

“That information might have been useful, James,” she pointed out.

“Information? It’s propaganda. Our secrets are ours, Lucy. To keep or to share, our call. Not some retired DPI goon’s.”

“But there might have been things on there about them, things we don’t know.”

“Once DPI, always DPI. Believe me, he didn’t give away a thing that could help us. They never do.”

“Knowledge is power, James.”

“I have all the power I need, thanks. Or at least, I did.”

What was that supposed to mean, she wondered, lowering her head. “Books are sacred to me.”

“That wasn’t a book. It was a phone.” He hooked a finger under her chin and smiled, as if trying to tempt her out of her displeasure.

“It was a book, and you know it.”

His face turned serious then. “It was a weapon meant to be wielded against my people. And I destroyed it. It was the right call, Lucy.”

“Destroying knowledge in any form is never the right call.”

“Will you two go get a freaking room or something?” Brigit turned, irritated, and then her eyes widened as she looked beyond them. “Utanapishtim! Heads up! Scarface is getting away!”

James and Lucy whirled to see the mortal darting around a sand dune and heading into the woods. The vampire he’d been carrying lay bundled on the ground.

Brigit ran like a flash to where Utanapishtim was and lifted her hand, palm up, fingers touching her thumb, toward the fleeing prisoner, but Utanapishtim reached out, closed his hand around hers and pushed it down.

“No need…to keep him.”

“Who the fuck are you to make that decision?” Brigit shouted.

Utanapishtim backed up a step, as if stunned by her words, not to mention her tone. “I am king. You…are…of me, woman. Remember it.”

Brigit stared at him, her eyes blazing mad, and he stared right back at her.

“Let it go, Brigit,” James said softly. “There wouldn’t have been room in the dinghy for him anyway.

“I needed him.” She jerked her hand free of Utanapishtim’s and used her finger to poke him in the chest. “You’d best watch your step, King Shit. Because you don’t know fuck about what’s going on here.”

Lucy stared at the pair of them, her eyes rounding with fear, until Brigit turned and marched back toward the boulder, where she reclaimed her undead passenger and began striding onward, picking her way down the steep slope toward the beach below.

It was only a few hours later, late in the afternoon, when the dense bank of misty fog that surrounded the island came into view. James stared at it so intently that Lucy knew he was trying to feel for his relatives’ energies, because navigating by sight was absolutely impossible.

Standing beside him at the helm, Lucy asked, “Isn’t there some sort of sonar system you could use to pick your way to shore?”

“The yacht isn’t equipped with sonar.” He met her eyes, and his were warm with approval. “But that was a good idea.”

“And it gave me another,” she said. “Can the vampires’ power block military sonar from detecting the island?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. But then, I don’t know every vampire or what each one is capable of, so it’s impossible to say.” He stared through the heavy fog, eyes straining. “There’s just no way to dock until the vampires awaken and Rhiannon is able to part the mists long enough to let me find my way in by sight.”

He shrugged. “It’s only a slight delay.”

“It is. And this is a good day, for you.” She smiled at the light in his eyes. “You’re returning to your people with your mission accomplished. Like a conquering hero. Like Gilgamesh himself, so long ago.

You’re saving them, James. And I owe you a huge apology.”

His smile faded as he blinked at her. “For what?

Helping me pull off the impossible?”

“For doubting you. For questioning your judgment in balancing what means were justified to get to this end.”

He lowered his head briefly. “You were right about some of it. Raising the dead didn’t work out so well.”

“The mortal dead, yes. But your sister obligingly returned them to the grave where they belonged, except for that mother you reunited with her husband and children. It all worked out fine in the end. You were right all along. And I’m sorry for doubting you.”

“Just don’t let it happen again, woman.” He delivered the dictate with a hint of Utanapishtim’s exotically unidentifiable accent, and she laughed with him, even while giving a quick glance behind them.