Paradigms Lost (34 page)

“Sunlight harms me and those of my kind, if any others still exist, because it is the source of energy for all other forms of life, but the Sh’ekatha draws his strength from the Earth itself; he is reminded, by this separation, that he is different from all other things that live because he, alone of all things, is tied to the Spirit of the World directly and can do no harm to her without feeling it rebound upon him, nor can anything long harm the world without harming him. He can no longer turn to the Sun for strength and light, but must find it within himself.

“I can influence the world, especially the elements of air and water, through the action of my will—although this power does not come to a Sh’ekatha immediately, but grows over time just as the physical strength. This power derives from the fact that life itself can affect and transform the world, and is in fact an expression, by its very existence, of the power of spirit over matter. Similarly, as that which lives can affect me, I can affect it to some extent, and thus I have some power over minds.

“As I represent the Earth, itself, and life in all its guises, no mirror or image made by unthinking machines can capture my essence; a picture of myself can only be created by the power of a thinking mind that sees me with its soul as well as by crude light. As I am living, I can also reproduce, though in a way unique to myself; I can place some of my power in another who is willing, and let that power grow; my life-force acts as a seed and symbiote, creating a new and stronger life, but one with some ties to both me and to the original creature.” He sat back and finished his glass of blood. “I believe that covers everything. If I recall anything else, I shall inform you.”

I typed, asking questions of him occasionally since I had to clarify certain points—he’d reeled that stuff off awfully fast. Finally, I finished. “Okay. How about those vampires like Klein? Is there a specific logic in the parody of your powers?”

Verne’s mouth tightened momentarily. “Oh, yes. Their creator was a magician of vast power, one who, in essence, was attempting to become a demon and perhaps something even greater in darkness. I was one of his major adversaries after the Fall of Atlantaea, because I attempted to establish a new civilization based on the old and had the power to do so. He intended to create his own empire, or so I believe, in order to use the strength of the human race to further his personal quest. In any case, I became a perennial thorn in his side; he could not corrupt the world or its spirit so long as I lived. Eventually, he came up with this curse, which was all too effective.

“The victims of the curse, the vampires, are parodies in all ways. Rather than a purification and extension of the true spirit, they are warped powers, turned against themselves to produce an abomination. They drink blood to represent their ties to destruction—spilling blood rather than accepting it freely. Their strength is the strength of self-hate and destruction, life turned upon itself. They shift in shape to forms of nightmare because terror is their object.” He gave a wintry smile. “I suspect their inability to enter a dwelling unbidden, besides being necessary in an overall parody, was also there for a purely practical reason; why permit your own mad and vicious creations to enter your own home without permission? For they were all mad, at least for a time; just as becoming the Sh’ekatha cleanses the mind and spirit and gives you clarity and peace, at least in the beginning, so this dark mirrored version first turns the mind against itself and tests your will to live.”

Verne went on, detailing the vampiric abilities and weaknesses and their relationship to his own. After that, things got more complicated as we started discussing other “powers” in the world, what they were like, and how they did what they did.

After a while, I glanced at my watch. “Holy sheep! Verne, it’s three o’clock in the morning!”

He smiled. “So you want to make an early night of it, eh?”

I grinned back, probably looking a bit dazed. “I probably should have. I had no idea how big a project this was going to be.”

“Remember, Jason, many of these things either do not exist anymore, in all probability, or at the least, are vanishingly rare. If you wanted to do a comprehensive catalog of the entirety of the paranormal, you would never finish in an ordinary human lifetime; however, the number of such things that can even function on Earth as it is today is so small that I believe we can probably finish your little database in a few months of once- or twice-a-week discussion.”

“Well, that makes me feel some better. I think. But I’ll let you know later. Remind Kafan that tomorrow evening we will be going over what I should do in my meeting with the senator. I’m meeting her the day after tomorrow. And remember that we’ve got that big reception and art show for Sky Hashima next week.”

“I would never forget that, Jason; and I shall certainly remind Kafan of our . . . council of war on the morrow. Get some sleep, Jason.”

“Preferably
after
I get home, of course,” I said, glancing at my car.

He chuckled and held the door open as I left.

CHAPTER 48

Femme Formidable

I shook the senator’s hand. She had a strong grip and looked as dignified in person as in her publicity shots. I was pretty sure that her “stern schoolteacher” image worked in her favor not only at the polls, but on the Senate floor. “Senator, good to meet you.”

“A pleasure, Mr. Wood.” She was unaccompanied—something which showed considerable trust on her part, or at least faith that her intelligence-gathering people hadn’t missed anything dangerous. “Now, I don’t have an unlimited amount of time, so let’s not spend too much of it on formalities; you call me Paula and I’ll call you Jason and we’ll just call things as we see them, all right?”

I nodded. “Fine by me, Paula.”

“I’ll start,” she said. “As you know, I have received the test results for paternity, and they clearly demonstrate that your client is the biological parent of my children. If it comes to court, I won’t bother arguing with that.

“However,” she continued, “investigating your client’s background has turned up some . . . confusing information. Without wasting each other’s time going into details, my investigators are of the opinion that some, or all, of his background was falsified, although they do inform me that his credentials, if forged, must have been faked by one of the very best intelligence services. My investigators also find Verne Domingo’s background somewhat disquieting. I don’t think I need point out that if this is true, I would be extremely unlikely to agree to allow my children to spend any time—even for short periods—with a man whose real name and background I cannot verify.”

She had good investigators. I’d expected as much, but they were
damn
good to have ferreted out that stuff. I’d been pretty sure of the general thrust of what they’d find, though, and because of that, I’d made my decisions about how to approach her. Convincing Verne and, especially, Kafan to go along with those had taken hours of sometimes acrimonious debate last night. “You know, I thought you’d be saying something along those lines,” I said finally. “I’ve discussed the situation with my client, and he’s given me permission to tell you certain things, but before I do, I’d like to lead up to it in my own way. The situation is much more complex than it seems, and I’d like to give you the big picture.”

She responded with a formal nod.

I stood up and went over to a small glass case at one end of the room, opening it with a key code. Reaching in, I picked up one of the objects inside and brought it over. “Do you know what this is? Careful—it’s extremely sharp.”

The senator examined the long, slender, sparkling object—slightly curved, razor sharp along the inside edge, coming to a needle-fine point at one end, and about half an inch across at the opposite end. At first she looked puzzled, but then she glanced up suddenly. “Why, this must be a . . .” she stumbled a bit over the next word, “. . . a werewolf claw?”

“That’s correct,” I said. “I want you to think about what you’re holding: nine inches of diamond blade. The thing it came from had five of those on each hand, five on each foot, and stood taller than this room’s roof if it straightened up. It could run as fast as a car given a straight distance to accelerate, was strong enough to tip a car over on its own, and had a mouth full of teeth just like those claws—a mouth that could open up wide enough to cut a man in half . . . and it could look just like you or me, or anyone else on Earth.”

Senator MacLain gave a small shiver. She had a good imagination, I suspected. “I see. I do indeed, Mr. Wood. I assure you, that’s one of the things that most impressed me about you—that you survived being chased by something like that.”

“More luck than anything else, Senator, believe me.”

She gave a refined, Katherine Hepburn–like sniff of doubt. “Jason, to quote a movie that my older son enjoys and with which you are no doubt well-acquainted: ‘In my experience, there is no such thing as
luck
.’ Rather, I think people who are competent make their own luck through making the right choices in bad moments.”

With a small laugh, I ceded her point. “Okay, yes, I’m pretty good at thinking on my feet. But there are a few other points that some investigators have raised and which are relevant here—and yes, I’ll be connecting it to your children in a few moments.”

She looked thoughtful. “Oh. Quite so. As I recall, one of the unresolved problems, even after the briefing, was exactly who had assisted you. Some of my colleagues were under the impression that it was some special task force of our own—and from reading the transcripts, I think it’s
very
clear that this was in fact the impression that the testimony was intended to give. I always felt that there was more being hidden than told, however. Are you saying that my impression is correct?”

Boy, she was sharp. Winthrope and her unknown employers had done a bang-up job on giving out the story without revealing anything they didn’t absolutely have to, and the wording they’d used would have fooled almost anyone into thinking they’d been told all they needed to know. Senator Paula MacLain, however, was not just anyone. “Your impression is bang-on, Paula,” I said. “I had help, but it wasn’t anything official.”

She waited.

“The second question that some people have asked—and quite reasonably—is basically ‘well, if werewolves exist, does that mean there’s other things like them out there?’ The answer to that is ‘damn straight.’”

She must have seen where I was going with this, but her expression gave nothing away; she continued to wait to see what I was going to put in front of her next.

“Werewolves are just one of at least half a dozen types of beings we call ‘mythical’ or ‘supernatural,’ even though those words aren’t accurate anymore; after all, it’s not mythical if you can actually prove it’s there, and if they’re part of the way the world works, are they really supernatural?” I shrugged. “Anyway, the wolves are in some ways the nastiest of all of these things, near as I can tell, and they’ve got their own enemies. In point of fact, the reason they all came to Morgantown was to hunt down one of their old adversaries, who was living here under the name of Verne Domingo.”

Now her gaze was riveted on my face. However, other than its intensity, she still wasn’t giving any sign of what she was really thinking.

I took a deep breath. “Verne Domingo is one of the other types of beings; the best, really quick way I can think of to describe what he is would be to say he’s a vampire, but that’s not accurate. It would give you some idea of his characteristics, though. Verne has . . . connections throughout the paranatural world. In a sense, he’s one of its most respected citizens. While he certainly doesn’t know everything about all of them, virtually every one of the beings that lives this kind of double life knows about him, even if they don’t know precisely where he is.

“Now, where this hooks up with Tai Lee Xiang is that Verne knew Tai Lee’s family, years ago.” Verne, Kafan, and I had decided that this “take” on history would be close enough to allow us to tell what we had to without bringing up certain contradictions that had led to other facts, which none of us wanted to talk about. “They saw him as an ally and a protector. Verne left for parts unknown and eventually they lost track of him. But the tradition of the protector was passed down through the family line, along with the unique characteristics that separated this protector from the common man.

“So when Tai Lee Xiang found himself in trouble that he didn’t dare bring to the authorities since he was, in fact, being hunted by the authorities for killing a man who had held him and his family prisoner for years, he came to me to find this legendary protector. By that time, he’d reached the end of his resources and was willing to try anything to find his family and stop the people who were after him. With the publicity of the wolf incidents, my name seemed the best possible choice; I knew there were Weird Things out there, and if anyone would be both willing to listen to his story and able to find someone from some pretty strange hints, it would be me.” I grinned. “As it turned out, he was luckier than he thought. I already knew Verne, of course, so once he gave me the list of odd characteristics, I could just turn around and phone his family protector.”

She’d sat quietly throughout the whole story, gazing at me as though I was on trial and she was the judge evaluating my testimony—which, now that I thought about it, was a fair assessment of the situation. Finally, she leaned back. “That is quite an impressive story, Jason. I expect that much of this would be information your friend, Mr. Domingo, prefers to keep secret, since no mention of him has ever been made in connection to prior events in Morgantown. Why was it necessary that you tell me so much?”

“Glad to see you are as quick on the pickup as your reputation makes you, ma’am,” I said. “Because Tai wasn’t held in an ordinary location at all. He and his children were the subjects of genetic experimentation. By being involved in their lives, you put yourself in danger, because the people who did the experimentation want their ‘subjects’ back. Your being a senator has no doubt balked them and caused considerable concern in their ranks, but it will most certainly not have stopped them. Eventually, they’ll come for the kids.