Dominion of the Damned (19 page)

Someone shouted something in German in his ear, and the barrel of a gun pressed against his temple. He was forced to his knees.

“No!” Irina screamed. “Please! Please don’t shoot him!” A soldier restrained her as she doubled over sobbing. “Please! Alek, I love you!”

“I love you, Irina! I’ll find you!”

They dragged him toward the door, but this time, he fought back. This time, he was too strong for them. His fangs extended as superhuman strength coursed through his body. He fought off his attackers, breaking bones and tearing flesh, until they all lay on the floor at his feet. He turned back to his wife. “We’re safe now.”

But she had changed. Her head was shaved, and her naked body was reduced to skin and bones. Blood trickled down her legs, and she held her belly as she reached for him. “Alek!”

“I’m coming, my love!” But even as he reached out to her, she doubled over, coughing and gagging. Her face turned purple, and as she dropped to her knees, blood and foam erupted out of her mouth. “No!” Alec shouted. “No! Irina!”

He was still shouting when he sat up and opened his eyes. Disoriented from the dream, he didn’t know where he was at first. As he took in his surroundings, the events of the morning came back to him. Sunlight still peeked around the edges of the blinds, and he looked at the clock on the nightstand. He still had another four hours until sunset.

He lay back on the down comforter and listened for Hannah’s presence. The house sounded quiet. He got up and padded to the door in bare feet, carefully cracking it open. There was no sign of Hannah or the baby, and she had left the curtains drawn for him. He found his way to the bathroom, where he splashed cold water on his face. He studied himself in the mirror, and was surprised how haggard he looked. Of course he still didn’t look a day over thirty-two, even though he felt every one of his hundred years.
It would be easier
, he thought,
if we had no reflection. How much simpler everything would be if I didn’t have to face myself in the mirror.

He dried his face and returned to bed. The pillow smelled of Hannah. His head filled with thoughts of her as he drifted back to sleep. This time, he didn’t fight it.

TWENTY-TWO

Hannah pushed the stroller down the main street, toward the building she’d first been brought to on her first night at the base. It was a gorgeous day, albeit hot for late summer. There was a slight spring in her step despite having only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before.

As she walked past the house where they kept the store, she heard the bell on the front door, and looked up to see Chris coming down the steps. “Hey,” he said, coming over to her. “Out for a walk?”

“We’re headed for the lab, actually. Alek offered me a job there. I’m supposed to go talk to Zach about the details.”

His eyebrows lifted, almost imperceptibly. “He’s ‘Alek’ now?”

“He asked me to call him that when he offered me the job. Why? What do you call him?”

He shrugged. “Most folks around here just call him Doc. But then again, we’re not gonna be working with him on a daily basis.” He glanced around, as if looking for something that might be floating in the air, and shoved his hands in his pockets. He seemed slightly nervous. “Anyway, I was wondering maybe, if you’re not busy tonight, I could take you on the rest of that tour.”

“Tonight?”

“Yeah. Like I said, if you’re not busy.” He pointed back at the store. “My mom already agreed to babysit.”

Hannah grinned. “Then I don’t see why not.”

Chris grinned back, and relaxed a little. “Cool. Um, I guess I’ll come by and pick you up about eight.”

“Sounds good.”

“Cool,” he said again. “Um, okay. I’d better get back to work. See you tonight.” He backed away and gave her a cute little wave before turning and heading back inside.

Hannah found she was still grinning as she made her way toward the lab. She bent toward the stroller and said, confidentially, “Sissy’s got a date tonight, Boo.” She could hardly believe it. An actual date with a cute boy. Talk about surreal.

Her excitement about the date gave way to nerves as she entered the building that housed the lab. She followed the hallway back to the exam room where she’d gotten her stitches, but nobody was there. The entire building felt empty. She wished she was armed. “Hello?” she called out.

Someone answered, “Back here!”

She followed the voice to the end of the hall and through an open door. Inside was a white room filled with laboratory equipment. A lot of it looked fairly state-of-the-art. Zach sat at a counter that stretched across the back wall, hunched over a microscope. “Hello?” she said again.

Zach looked up and spun on his stool to face her. Under his lab coat he wore a blue tee-shirt that read, “Lab Coats Are Sexy.”

“Hannah Jordan! Come on in.” He pointed to Noah. “You here to get his blood drawn?”

“I’m not sure yet. I mainly came about a job.”

“Yes!” He slid off his stool and came toward her. “You don’t know how long I’ve been begging to have my own assistant. So you were a nurse, right?”

“Nursing student,” she clarified. “But I was only in my second year.”

“Close enough. Can you start tonight?”

Hannah blinked. “Um, don’t you want to interview me, or—”

“You’re the only person on this entire base besides myself and the doc with any kind of lab or medical training. Believe me, the job’s yours if you want it. You do want it, right?”

“That depends. What are you working on?”

“Didn’t Alek tell you?”

“I want you to tell me.”

He seemed a bit taken aback, and gave her an appraising look. “Well, the official story, as far as the High Council is concerned, is that we’re trying to synthesize a food source for the vampires.”

“The High Council?” she asked.

“Yeah. That’s the ruling body of vampires. They’re the ones running the show, and they could shut us down if they find out what we’re actually working on.”

“A vaccine.”

Zach pointed at her. “Correctomundo.”

She folded her arms and gave him an incredulous look. “You’re seriously trying to cure the zeds?”

“Zeds?”

“Yeah. You know.” She waved a hand awkwardly to indicate their outer surroundings.

Zach nodded as he seemed to get it. “Zeds, huh? I like that. But around here we mostly call them shamblers. Anyway, no, we can’t cure them. They’re already dead. There’s no coming back from that. Even a brand new shambler has already started to decompose, and if we did find some way to bring them back, the brain damage wouldn’t make their second chance worth a whole lot. What we’re looking for is a way to make the rest of us immune, to stop the spread of the infection.”

“Do you really think that’s possible?”

“I do. And I think we’re close. We’d better be, because it’s only a matter of time before either the Council catches on to what we’re doing or comes up with their blood substitute. Either way, it won’t be good for any of us.”

“Paula told me that this camp is meant to be a pilot program. That the doctor wants to prove that we can all co-exist peacefully.”

Zach nodded. “Unofficially, of course. I mean, clearly it’s possible, since we’re doing it. But....” He shook his head. “It’s gonna be an awfully hard sell out there. To the humans even more than the vampires, I think.”

“Yeah, it won’t be easy to convince people to live happily alongside their captors and murderers.”

“It’s better than the alternative, though. Either we all learn to get along and help take care of each other, or we continue to be their prey until they figure out a way to survive without us. If we can develop this vaccine, then we won’t need them anymore, and that will give humanity something to bargain with.”

“But why should humanity bargain?”

“Because otherwise we become the same genocidal maniacs that they’re on the road to becoming. If we hunt them down and kill them all, we’ll be no better than them. Besides, the doc’s been working on a cure for them, too.”

“Yeah, he mentioned that. So, what? He finds a cure, and then we hunt them down and make them all human again? How is that better than killing them? Either way, we destroy their race.”

Zach backed away with his hands up. “Whoa. This discussion has gotten way too philosophical. So do you want the job or not?”

Hannah bit her lip and looked down at Noah. He sat quietly in his stroller, entertaining himself by playing with his feet. Did it really matter what Alek’s motives were, or what would happen to vampire-kind if they found a vaccine? If they could actually make humanity immune to the spread of the resurrection virus, then they’d be able to combat the zeds, or shamblers, without fear of getting bitten. She would never have to watch Noah transform into a monster the way her mother had, and he would never have to watch that happen to her. This might be her only chance to actually do something, to help change the world for the better. Finally, she nodded. “But I can’t start tonight. I have a date.”

Zach’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “A date? Huh. I think I vaguely remember what those are. Is Alek taking you out?”

It was Hannah’s turn to look surprised. “No, Chris. Paula’s son.”

She thought she saw a slight look of disappointment, but if so he covered it quickly. “Okay. How about tomorrow, then? I’m usually here all day, from about ten a. m. to ten p. m. You don’t have to work the whole twelve hours. I figure you can pick a six-hour shift — either ten to four or four to ten, or sometime in between. Whatever works best. We’re not picky.”

“I’ll have to arrange a babysitter. Paula already said she’d do it; I just have to find out when she’s available.”

Zach nodded. “Cool.” He held out his hand. “Welcome to the team, Nurse Jordan.”

TWENTY-THREE

Alek awoke to a darkened room. The only light came from a digital clock sitting next to the bed. It was well after sunset. He could hear Hannah in the next room, singing to the baby. He rolled out of bed and padded out into the hall in his bare feet. The nursery door stood slightly ajar, and he could see her sitting in a rocking chair with her brother. He was tempted to go in there and listen. She had a sweet voice, high and soft. But he feared that would be too much of an intrusion, so instead he made his way to the living room.

He spotted his gift sitting on the mantel and smiled. He looked around, wondering how the house would look once the rest of her things arrived. That’s when he spotted the upright piano. At the sight of it, he became briefly lost in time, and for a moment he was nothing more than a school-boy, sent to take lessons from Irina’s mother. As he sat down on the bench and uncovered the keys, he remembered sitting next to Irina. She had been just a girl, shy and bashful, as they practiced together. She taught him the only song he’d ever been able to successfully play, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” As they played together, she used to blush beet red any time their fingers touched.

He smiled at the memory as his fingers caressed the keys, coaxing the tune from its resting place in the back of his memory. He missed a few notes before it all came back to him, but he closed his eyes and imagined that she was there showing him how, guiding his fingers to the right keys, and the song came.

When he finished and opened his eyes again, Hannah stood beside the piano, her face a mix of surprise, wariness, and a touch of awe. “That was so sad,” she said, her voice hushed.

“It’s the only thing I know how to play.”

“It was beautiful. Where did you learn it?”

“From someone much more talented and patient than I. But that was a very long time ago.” He pulled the cover back over the keys and turned to face her. She looked amazing, in a floral sun dress with her hair cascading over her shoulders in loose waves. She had been gaunt and pale when he’d first met her, but she was already starting to fill out and regain her color. She truly was beautiful. It made it hard not to stare. He looked around the room instead. “This is a nice house,” he said. “It suits you.”

“How do you know what suits me? You barely even know me. And I barely know you.”

“Hm.” He nodded. “Would it help you trust me more if you knew me better?”

She gave him a sly look. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Then ask me a question. Any question.”

Hannah pursed her lips as she seemed to think it over. Then she asked, “How old are you?”

That surprised him. He’d expected something more personal. “Do you mean how long have I been around, or how old was I when I was changed?”

“Both.”

“It happened just a few months past my thirty-second birthday. That was sixty-eight years ago.”

She seemed to let that soak in. Then she opened her mouth to ask another question, but Alek held up a hand. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Every time you see me, you can ask me one question, until you run out of things to ask.”

“That might be a long time,” she said. “You’re kind of an enigma.”

He smiled. “As long as you have questions for me, I’ll be here.”

She returned his smile. It was the first time he had seen a sincere smile on her face that was directed at him. “What are you doing for dinner?” he heard himself asking. The question spilled almost unbidden from his mouth, but now it was too late to take it back.