What Happens in the Darkness (13 page)

“We could bring him with us,” Dagan said.

Rebecca turned the soldier over. “It’s a woman. You’re right, Tim. She’s breathing.”

“So why don’t we? You know, bring her?”

“Dagan, Martin said no soldiers,” Rebecca said.

“So what?” He knelt beside the dying woman and studied her face. “It could be an experiment. See if it works.”

“If what works?” she asked.

“Using the enemy.” Dagan’s pale face flushed with excitement. “Don’t you want to know?”

“Martin said no!” Tim cried. “It’s a terrible idea. We can’t take a chance.”

“It’s not ’bout takin’ chances,” Dagan said, his brogue less pronounced than before. “Martin says we might be ta usin’ them in the future, if we dunnah have enough people left. But he’s worried ’bout problems with language, maybe even loyaltay issues. Some ’a them’ve been indoctrinated since birth to hate Americans, ya know?”

“Coward,” Rebecca muttered, grabbing the guard’s head and twisting, snapping her neck. “Even if she didn’t speak English it might have been interesting.”

Dagan grinned. “Okay then. Go ’head.”

“She’s
dead
, you asshole,” she snapped. “But you knew that.”

He shrugged. “Enough games. Let’s go before the sun’s up.”

They raced back to the base, moving unseen by human eyes, detected more as a feeling than as any tangible object by the animals watching from the surrounding woods.

Chapter 9 

The church lay in ruins on consecrated soil—now a contradiction, considering its current occupant. The church, a vehicle for God, had been destroyed so easily, yet houses of sinners remained intact.

The earth smelled faintly of dandelions and rotting flesh. The church had become the final resting place for many worshippers after a bomb leveled it. Now those worshippers were scattered throughout the remains, and whatever the scavenging animals didn’t carry off rotted in the hazy midday sun. No sparing the house of God, no empathy for those worshippers ground beneath marble pillars and splintered mahogany pews, desperately searching for soul’s comfort, only to be crushed to death mid-prayer. Was this reward, or punishment?

The ground might have been sacred once, but now Patrick slept on it, covered by planks and paintings, half-buried in soft dirt, sheltered from the sun’s deadly rays. The ground cannot harm him. It had been forsaken by God, and now by man. Whether it ever held any power over him he doesn’t know, and it doesn’t matter.

Patrick blinked away moist soil and watched the stirrings of a field mouse near his head. Instinctively he knew when it was safe to come out, knew internally the rising and setting of the sun. There were still a few minutes to go before he could safely leave his bed.

Pushing aside chunks of building and brushing the dirt from his clothes, Patrick climbed out of his makeshift bed and surveyed the area. He thought for a moment to remember how far he had traveled the night before. South. Martin had instructed him to head for Florida. Even at his rate of speed he wouldn’t have been able to make a round trip in one night. So he’d stopped in Virginia … grabbed a bite … and found refuge in the church. Beneath it, anyway.

He’d been sent out alone because he preferred it and because he was a scout, sent to survey other states, report on their circumstances. Those had been his orders. And he’d gone solo, ditching Luke.

Now Patrick had other plans.

A short while later he ended his journey in Miami. Even in ruins the city mesmerized him. The buildings in pastel colors, the gigantic signs, once so garish and bold, now so much smashed piles of paint and plaster. But it was all so
big
, so bold. He’d never seen anything like it. The last time he’d been out of that prison was …

He thought. More than a hundred years? Was that possible? Back then electric streetlights were just becoming the rage, and now once again the streets were black except for the occasional generator and random headlights from those few cars manned by enemy soldiers, scattered flashlights, lanterns, and campfires. Patrick had seen images on TV but nothing could do it justice, not until he was outside in the world, experiencing it for himself. Now he could see how the world had changed, and not just from sitcoms and documentaries.

Waters along the east coast were swamped with boats, teeming with military in black uniforms, their Global Dominion emblem stitched on the breast. The vast number of ships and soldiers was staggering, but that didn’t faze him.

In fact …

Patrick ducked beneath the shadows and waited. He didn’t have long to wait before he started seeing people, until they drifted toward him, and he waited patiently for someone to come along unaccompanied by others. These soldiers seemed to travel in groups, but he only needed one for his experiment.

A lone figure trotted along the beach, headed toward him. Patrick sprang from the dark cover of shadows and attacked, knocking the unsuspecting soldier to the ground. He grabbed the soldier’s arms and drew the body close, yanking the helmet off.

A woman. She looked startled, her eyes widening, her mouth contorting into a smirk.

But he lifted her effortlessly to him, his eyes burning a crimson intensity, glowing in the dark, his starkly white fangs gleaming in the moonlight. He sank his teeth into the soft spot between neck and collarbone, tearing salty flesh, licking the spurting blood.

With slightly more than a moan she collapsed. He scooped her in his arms and brought her to the tall rushes that surrounded the beach and laid her down.

Then he waited.

The movement of the tide marked the passage of the minutes.

Using his own teeth, he tore a small hole in his wrist, exposing the vein.

He fed her.

Finally she died.

And then was reborn.

Her lashes fluttered, and flecks of dried blood floated from them like dry paint.

“Ty moy bog!”
she said to him, and with a sinking feeling he realized he had forgotten to find out first if she spoke English.

“Oh, no,” he said. “This can’t—”

“You are my god,” she repeated, this time in English, the accent heavily Russian.

He smiled, relieved. “What’s your name?”

“I am Natalia, my lord.”

“Call me Patrick. Don’t call me ‘lord.’ Not yet, anyway.”

She stared dumbly at him.

He decided to ask her a few questions to test her loyalty. “Who is your lord, Natalia?”

“You are my lord!”

“Do you love me?”

“With every breath in my body! With every fiber of my being.”

“Would you die for me?”

No hesitation. “I would die for you, my lord, my Patrick.”

He snorted. “Good. It’s a start.” He stood up and brushed the sand off his butt. Grabbing her wrist, he pulled her to her feet.

She wasn’t yet used to her transformation and stumbled as he dragged her away. He had no patience for her groping hands and staggering footsteps. And they needed to find shelter quickly.

They headed inland and came across a more populated area. He had no idea where they were, but it didn’t matter.

Not wanting to attract attention, they moved quietly, unseen by the groups of people littering the streets, huddled together over trashcan fires, groups playing music and dancing in the rubbish-strewn streets like it was one big party. So foolishly close to troops, but doubtful these enemy soldiers knew they were so close to being captured.

Natalia glared at them, a wild effulgence in her eyes. Patrick recognized it immediately: bloodlust. Those weren’t people she was staring at, they were snacks.

Inching toward them, she glanced at Patrick to see if he approved. He shook his head and she scowled, baring her budding fangs. Raising his powerful arm, he backhanded her across her mouth, knocking her to the ground.

He dropped beside her, grabbing her face in his hands, hooking his fingers over her ears.

“Don’t
ever
disobey me,” he snapped. “Don’t you
dare
show me your anger!” He yanked on her ears until she cried out in pain.

“I’ll rip your bloody head off,” he said, pulling her within inches of his face. “Do you hear me?”

She nodded vehemently. He let go. Natalia pulled away and fell to the ground, clutching her head.

“You can’t have them yet. Soon, but not yet.”

She didn’t reply.

Once again he pulled her to her feet and led them away.

A few blocks later they came upon the shell of a movie theater. Carrying flashlights he found lying on a countertop—the electricity was off in Florida too—they made their way to a basement storage room. His eyesight in darkness was keen, but he knew hers wouldn’t be. Not so soon after he sired her. Her body was still transforming.

They made a bed among boxes of paper goods, bags of popcorn kernels the mice had raided, movie posters, and uniforms. They closed and barricaded the door. There were no windows, no source of sunlight.

Turning off the flashlights left them in darkness. He felt her beside him, her body as still as if in the grave, no rhythm of breathing, no pulse or circulation pumping through living veins. For all purposes she was a corpse, as was he, which gave him a strange feeling of comfort. He still needed to test her loyalty. She was a foreigner after all, and the enemy, sworn to destroy Americans. And although he wasn’t human, he was still an American, of sorts. He had to wonder how trustworthy she would be. Already she’d shown him her temper, something new vampires would ordinarily rarely try, even in the middle of their transformation. Although she really was behaving like a vampire pup, he still had to be wary.

Had he made a mistake, turning the enemy?

“Sleep now,” he told her. “You’re not to move from here. Do you understand?”

Her head nodded against his arm.

No dreams came to him, but they rarely did. Dreams are ethereal, otherworldly. Some believe dreams are the link between an earthly dimension and a spiritual one. Whatever the source, dreams were not for vampires, for Patrick at least. An imagination might have spurred a dream, and he didn’t have that either. Whether or not he missed dreaming he could no longer remember, had he bothered to consider it at all.

Half a dozen hours later he woke, the sensation of eyes upon him strong. Natalia was no longer beside him. While his eyes adjusted to the darkness he groped for the flashlight. He turned it on and scanned the room. He barely needed the light now, but he knew she needed it to see him.

Natalia was curled up in the corner of the room, bunched fingers pressed against her mouth and chin. Blood covered her face and neck and clothes, and the gutted corpse of a rat lay at her feet. Her fingers trembled and her eyes darted, and she looked every bit the guilty child.

“What have you done?” he demanded. He didn’t care what she chose to eat—as repulsive as her choice of rat was—but he’d told her not to move. He wouldn’t let her feed earlier because she wasn’t ready. But this? Rat’s blood?

“Where did you get the rat?”

She pointed at the door.

“You left the room?”

She nodded, and said meekly, “Yes. I was hungry. I’m sorry!”

He moved across the room and knelt beside her.

Natalia looked one way and then the other, avoiding looking at him.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered. “Why?” His loyalty to Martin had been unfailing, and he’d expected the same. His ability to oppose or defy Martin had taken years to master. It was so ingrained in him not to disobey his creator that any opposition tore him apart. Now his hatred for Jeff outweighed any loyalty to Martin.

But this—
this
—how could she so easily disobey him? How could she not listen to Patrick—her master, her creator? She should be willing to die for him. She should be willing to obey him without a second thought, even if it meant her own death. This was something he could have no doubts about. He needed to implicitly trust his servants.

The experiment had ended badly. He wondered if she was a fluke, or if all the enemy would behave this way. Maybe Martin had been right; maybe the enemy soldiers hated Americans so much that even as vampires, they would be disloyal. Patrick would have to test it again, on another foreigner, to see if one could be loyal. He needed the enemy’s natural hatred of Americans yet at the same time a fierce loyalty to him. He didn’t know if this combination could exist. Ironic, since the vampire bloodline, so to speak, supposedly traced back to Europe, which was where so many of the enemy came from. But it had become so diluted through the years, the loyalty had changed, the bloodline thinned.

He took her hands in his and pressed them to his lips. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. In one fluid movement he grabbed her head. She pulled back and tried to push him away. She slipped in the pool of rat’s blood, and her hands fell to her sides to catch herself.

Twisting her head sharply, he snapped her neck, her spinal column cracking like a thick branch.

But she wasn’t dead. Not quite a full vampire yet, but it was still impossible to kill her as though she were still human. She stared at him with terror in her eyes, her paralyzed body unable to defend itself.

Still holding her head, now listing to one side on a jagged and useless pair of shoulders, Patrick leaned in and sank his teeth into her throat, tearing out meaty chunks of flesh and grisly tissue, the gaping hole leaking a concoction of her remaining vital fluids and rat’s blood.

He carried her body outside. Whatever the animals didn’t devour would be burned away the next morning by the relentless rays of the sun.

Patrick headed back toward the coast to continue his experiment.

Chapter 10 

Jeff waited until noon.

In all the years he’d known Martin, in all their conversations, all those questionnaires he’d had Martin complete in the name of science and research, Jeff realized he knew very little about Martin, or about vampires.

Almost nothing.

He stood facing the cell, standing in what until recently had been covered by a security gate, once impenetrable. And now, everything was exposed. He shut his eyes and wondered what his father would have done. Wondered how he would have felt. Would he have given in so easily? Would he have found a better solution? Jeff wondered if he’d made the right choice. And it was, after all, his decision. No one had even known of Martin’s existence, it had been handled so covertly. So no one would have known, had Jeff chosen not to reveal his little secret.