A slow smile spread across her mouth. "p.u.s.s.ycat, p.u.s.s.ycat, what did you there?"
"I hunted the rat that hides under her chair."
"Really?" she asked, sitting up. The covers drooped and I was treated to the sight of more than bare shoulders. "You found her? Where? She returned to the daynest?"
I hesitated. Locked the door. And then nodded. "Don"t!" I said sharply as she started to move. "Go there now and you might-I say might-have a chance at Bachman. But not much of a chance and Kadeth Bey will escape us for good. Give me twelve hours. By sunrise tomorrow morning, everything and everyone should come together. Please. That way we can both take our revenge. Trust me."
"I do," she said, eyes glistening, "I trust you more than anyone I know."
Her words and the look in her eyes brought back Mooncloud"s warning of a few days before: She has no one, now, Chris. Human companionship is out of the question. To her undead masters she isnothing more than a subservient species. And if she tried to rejoin her own kind, the taint of the Nosferatu would cling to her like a shroud.
And what about me? Was I really human anymore? The societies of Pagelovitch and the other demesnes were anathema to me, as well, so weren"t we really two of a kind?
"What are you doing in my bed?"
"Waiting for you."
"Why?" I felt myself on a mental tightrope, trying to stay focused on the equation of betrayal and revenge I had set in motion this day. I was tired, thirsty, and my head throbbed from the glow of sunlight that was leaking around the motel room curtains.
"You know why. Why do you pretend to ask?"
I didn"t need any additional distractions: the next several hours were going to be complicated enough.
"Or maybe I was wrong," she continued. "I thought you-that maybe we-" She looked down suddenly. "What am I," she whispered, "to you?"
"An ally," I said. "A friend. . . ." A chess piece?
"Am I woman, as well? Or am I some kind of creature-a thing-that looks like a woman?"
You like to do it doggie-style, Chris? You like animals? But the memory of Jenny"s yellow, predatory gaze faded as I looked at Lupe and saw the moisture br.i.m.m.i.n.g below her warm brown eyes.
"No," I said. "You"re not a thing. You"re not a creature. You are the most human person I"ve known since my wife and daughter died."
"Then, is that the problem? Your wife? You"re still in love with your wife."
"My wife," I said harshly, "is dead. She has been dead for more than a year. The past is dead and buried." My lips curled as those last words escaped my mouth. "Dead, anyway. And after tomorrow-I hope-permanently buried."
"But you"re thinking of trying to bring her back. The Scroll of Thoth-"
"Even supposing it were possible-something has taken their place. I don"t know that they could come back now. And if they could-" my voice suddenly broke "-I don"t know if they should."
She was out of the bed, then, and taking me by the hands, leading me back to it. She sat on the edge of the mattress and began unb.u.t.toning my shirt. "You"re tired."
"Yes."
"You"re thirsty."
"Yes. . . ."
"Too much to do," she said. "Too many thoughts of death." The belt was next. "Let it all go for a few hours. Rest."
I felt numb and detached, but not totally pa.s.sive; I stepped out of my pants and shoes, undressed the rest of the way and moved onto the bed as she slid over to make room. "Three hours," I mumbled.
"Wake me at sunset. . . ." I closed my eyes.
I felt her roll over on her side, felt slim fingers at my temples pushing at the tension that had acc.u.mulated there over the long hours, days, weeks.
"You"ll need strength for tonight," she whispered.
"Mmm," I said. And promptly fell asleep.
"Oh!" moans a voice in the darkness.
"Amon Ra," it sighs in the blackness.
"Oh!" echoes the sepulchral sound."G.o.d of G.o.ds," the voice intones, booming in the tomblike stillness.
"Death is but the doorway to new life. . . ." The hair on the back of my neck starts to rise.
"We live today. . . ."
The power begins to gather.
" . . . we shall live again. . . ."
Death hisses at me- " . . . in many forms shall we return. . . ."
Reaches for me- "Oh, mighty one. . ."
There is a sound of thunder and raw earth fills my mouth as I try to scream- Awake- "Shhh." Slender hands caressed my face, stroked my forehead. "Shhhh."
I opened my eyes and looked at Lupe. She knelt, straddling me. The room had grown darker and infrared overlay of my night vision made her appear to glow, golden brown skin seemingly lit from within.
My vision clarified as sleep receded and I could see the tiny hairs that fuzzed her arms and legs and belly and coalesced into a downy trail that led southward from the dark pit of her navel.
Then I saw the knife. She lifted the golden blade, saying, "This is my body." She opened a vein in her arm. "This is my blood. . . ." She leaned down and pressed the wound to my lips, pressed her flesh to mine.
We filled one another.
Oh!
In the dream I am running at tremendous speeds.
Amon Ra. . . .
I am a human express train barreling through a kaleidoscopic wind tunnel of lights and sounds and smells-especially smells! A profusion of scents batters my nostrils, ricochets through my sinuses, explodes inside my skull.
Oh!
It is distraction to the point of disorientation and I do not notice the sounds at my back until I have been running for quite some time. The sound of wolves, howling. Gathering.
Hunting.
Pursuing.
G.o.d of G.o.ds. . . .
My feet are invisible, the rolling ground is a blur beneath me. New awareness: I am running uphill.
And the ground seems nearer my face than it should! Behind me the howls rise in an unholy chorus.
Death is but the doorway to new life. . . .
And death waits ahead, up the trail. Ba.s.sarab rises from a jumble of rocks. Spreads his cape with his arms like a giant bat flexing its wings. "So!" he says. "You have broken the Law! You have defied the Covenant! Even after my warnings. . . ." He gazes down at me like a stern falcon: disapproval before the kill.
"Now you must run!"
We live today. . . .
"Until today you were the secret they coveted, a prize to be won. But now you are become the secret that the vampire lords must keep hidden from even their own kind. A secret they must destroy tokeep to themselves." He hunches in upon himself.
. . . we shall live again. . . .
"So you must run in earnest, now," he growls, changing. His skin bursts open in silent explosions of dark fur. His face lengthens and his mouth sprouts twin rows of triangular teeth. He falls forward and his limbs shorten to bring him forward and parallel to the hardscrabble ground.
Now his height matches mine.
I look down and consider my forelegs. Lift a paw and examine the tufts of fur between my toe pads.
. . . in many forms shall we return. . . .
"Now, run, little one! For the blood-bond, I will show you where and how you may hide. But it must be your cunning that breaks the trail from your pursuers!"
Oh, mighty one. . . .
He leaps forward and I follow quickly. The sound of the pack at our backs raises hackles of fur from my shoulders to my tail. . . .
I had fallen asleep in Lupe"s arms. I woke up, not on the bed but crouched on the floor of another room. Ba.s.sarab stood over me, his expression unreadable.
"What happened? Where am I?"
"My room," he said, handing me a blanket to cover myself with.
"How did I get here?"
"You traveled the path of your dream."
"I was walking in my sleep?" The thought of involuntary sleepwalking was bad enough. Wandering about the corridors of a public motel, starkers, worse.
"You did not walk. You came as the mist."
"Missed?" I was still in a fog. "Wait a minute. What are you telling me, here? That I came in like the fog? On little cat feet?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"Really? You"re saying I turned into a bunch of mist-like in the movies-and flowed under the doors?"
"No." He sat on the bed and looked tired. "I"m not saying that."
"So what are you saying?" I stood, wrapping the blanket about me Indian-style. "Are we talking teleportation, here? Telekinesis? Stuff like that?"
He nodded-reluctantly, I thought. "Something like that."
I gave a low whistle. "How come n.o.body told me that this was part of the process?"
"Because it isn"t. Part of "the process," that is. It only happens to a select few."
"How?"
He just looked at me.
"Lupe"s blood," I answered for him. "When you first revealed yourself, you told us that the blood of the wampyr and the lycanthrope must never mingle. That it was the law and the penalty for breaking that law was death."
No response beyond the single nod of his head.
I shook my head in turn. "It can"t be that simple. If all it took was a little of her blood to give me this power, then vampires would be biting werewolves at every opportunity, law or no law."
"It isn"t that simple," he agreed.
"Of course not; I just said that. So what"s the rest of it?"Ba.s.sarab contemplated the worn carpet at his feet. After a protracted silence he sighed and finally spoke. "The part that should immediately concern you is this: once the others know that you"ve acquired the power of a Doman, they"ll see you as an even greater threat. They will hunt you down and destroy you. Not for the sake of superst.i.tion-but because the law was conceived to keep others from becoming rivals to their power. And because you are not fully wampyr, but straddle the worlds of the living and the undead, you may be even more powerful than they imagine."
"But I"m not a threat! I don"t want what they have!"
"Look at me!" Ba.s.sarab"s eyes seemed to smolder deep in his skull. "I turned my back on them all.
Bequeathed them nearly all of the wealth and power that I had ama.s.sed over the long centuries. Said, "Here, take it and leave me in peace. In solitude." Were they grateful for my abdication? A larger selection of the spoils?
"No! They have hunted me and hounded me! The very demesne I fathered recruited that corruption Kadeth Bey. Turned him loose like an unholy hound to sniff out my trail and destroy anything that might have ties to me!
"They know I will keep their secret. Most owe their success, their very existence, to me. So what mercy and consideration do you expect from these undead masters who have decreed the law and its penalty for all of their own kind?"
"One thing at a time," I answered him. "If I survive this night, then I"ll worry about tomorrow and next week and next year."