The Vault (A Farm Novel) (10 page)

MEL

I half expect Sebastian to protest. It’s not like going out to hunt Ticks on my own—for him, no less—is exactly safe.

Instead, he gives a little nod of acceptance and just sits there with his eyes closed. Which must be a sign he’s even worse than I thought.

With some thirty-plus Ticks out there, my odds aren’t good, but I can improve them a little. Roberto’s library is like a vampire hunter’s museum. There are countless wooden stakes, bows and crossbows, swords, daggers, crosses, vials of holy water. All seemingly collected from assassins that hunted him over the years. And who says vampires don’t have a sense of humor?

I cross to the wall where the blades are and select a katana, because it’s light and familiar. I’ve lost the katana that Sebastian gave me when he was training me and I miss its easy weight. The one I pick has a scabbard and I strap its ancient leather around my waist. I look at the crossbows next. I run my thumb down their strings. The bow won’t work if it’s too brittle.

I finally pick out a bow, but when I turn around, I see Sebastian standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorjamb.

“I thought you were smarter than this.”

“It’s not stupid if it’s our only chance. Then it’s just desperate.” I sling the bow over my shoulder and move to walk past him with Chuy by my side.

He holds out a hand to stop me. “No, it’s only stupid if you
assume
it’s your only chance.”

I stop, frowning. “You know, sometimes your Mr. Miyagi act is great and insightful, but sometimes it’s just annoying as hell. It wouldn’t kill you to give me just a simple, clear answer.”

He pushes off the door and steps over to a nearby umbrella stand. He carefully selects a cane with a curved ebony handle and a rosewood staff. He holds it up looking at the length for a moment before turning around and leaning heavily on it as he walks back to me. “Think about it, my dear. Would Roberto really have built a fortress with no way of feeding himself once he was locked in?”

“No, of course not. You think . . .” I trail off, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach. “You think there are people trapped in here somewhere?”

“Nothing as dramatic as that. And no. We can assume the Ticks already ate up all the live kine. But Roberto wouldn’t rely only on them. He’d have a backup supply.”

“Refrigerated blood? Like from blood banks?”

“Ding, ding, ding.” He gives the cane a twirl. “And the girl wins the prize after all.”

“But if it’s refrigerated blood, then it will be going bad since the electricity has been off for the past day. Except, if Roberto had been planning for the worst-case scenario, he would have assumed the electricity would go down. He would have someplace safe where he could ride out the storm. Someplace with a generator and locks and . . .” I look up at Sebastian. “Someplace exactly like your underground lair.”

He gives an exaggerated wince. “I rather think ‘lair’ has a nasty, unpleasant connotation, don’t you?”

“Really? What term do you prefer?”

“Personally, I like ‘vault.’”

“Okay then. If this was your house, where would your vault be?”

“In the basement, of course.”

“This is Texas. No one has basements.”

He gives me a beleaguered look. “Have a little imagination, will you? If you’re an immortal vampire with limitless resources and all the time in the world, you can have a basement if you damn well want one.”

“Oh. Good point,” I grumble. “Okay, let’s go find it, then.”

Sebastian dismisses me with a wave. “Well, then, run along. Find the lair of the evil vampire.”

I want to growl at him again. This being-treated-like-a-naughty-child bit is really getting old.

Despite that, I do exactly as he says. Chuy and I run through the first floor again, this time opening all the interior doors, looking for a stairway leading down. I find it in the center of the house, just off the kitchen. A set of stairs that indeed lead to a basement. It reminds me eerily of my Nanna’s basement in Nebraska—only a lot cleaner. There’s a workbench. Enough tools to fix or maintain anything my very unmechanical mind could imagine. Cleaning supplies line the opposite wall. And tucked into the back corner is another door, from which I can hear a faint electrical hum. Though the door looks like it’s made of wood, it makes a hollow, metal sound when I knock on it. To the side of the door is a rectangle that opens to reveal an instrument panel almost exactly like the one at Sebastian’s.

Sebastian’s waiting for me at the top of the stairs. “What did you find?”

His voice sounds strained. He’s hunched over and leaning heavily on the cane, like an old man.

“Apparently, all evil vampires use the same security company. The setup is nearly identical to yours. Hand and retinal scanner.” I stop just a step shy of him. “Will they work now that he’s dead? If I go outside and bring his body back in, would that do it?”

Standing above me, Sebastian is dimly backlit and it’s nearly impossible to read his expression. “Possibly.”

I nod. “Okay then.” I push past him out into the kitchen and toward the front door. I pause only long enough to collect the weapons I’d selected earlier.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?” Sebastian says from behind me.

I turn to see him standing in the hall, leaning his shoulder to the wall. “Ask you what?”

“If my system will operate once I’m dead. If you can merely bring back my hand and my head and get into my vault.”

I ignore him and sling the bow back over my shoulder.

“Going out there for Roberto is a very stupid idea,” he says. “So far, the Ticks are keeping their distance. You shouldn’t antagonize them.”

Hand on the doorknob, I ask, “Then what should I do? Let you starve?”

“There’s an attached garage and probably a dozen gassed-up cars. If you were smart, you would kill me now, take my body, and drive all night to reach Genexome.”

“Clearly hypoglycemia is making you irrational. I’m going out. I’ll get his body and we can get you some food.”

“No,” Sebastian says. “Not now.”

“Not now? Then when? You need to feed or you’re going to die.”

“It’s dusk. The Ticks will just be coming out.”

“I’m not afraid of them.”

“Not afraid of a swarm of hundreds of Ticks? You’re strong, Kit, but everyone has their limits.”

“I’ve fought Ticks before,” I point out.

“Not this many and not at once. No. Better to wait until morning, after they’ve stumbled off to find nests. Any that are still out will be weaker during the day.”

“I’ll be weaker, too.”

“But you have the mental capacity to understand your limitations. They do not. You have rationality. They do not. We are outnumbered and injured. Please do not throw away one of the few advantages we have.”

“You’re asking me to just wait here while you starve to death?”

“No, I’m asking you to be just a tad less dramatic. I won’t starve to death in the next twelve hours. Get some rest, Kit. You’ll need it when you go out to face the Ticks.”

“Twelve hours from now, won’t it be even less likely that Roberto’s dead body will open the security system?”

“It will either work or it won’t. A few hours won’t make a difference.”

Sebastian heads back into the living room and I follow him. Even though I know he needs food, I can see his logic. Right now they’re leaving us alone. I should rest while I can. Not twelve hours, maybe, but surely a couple won’t hurt. I can go out at dawn.

“Have you always been such a jerk?” I ask, lowering myself to one of the wingback chairs near the fireplace.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I have.” He stretches out on the sofa again. “As you’ll learn soon enough, that’s the nature of vampires.”

“To be jerks?” I could believe that, even though I didn’t want it to be true. But was this my fate? To become more and more of an asshole as the years passed?

“No.” He chuckles faintly. “To be unchanging. When you become a vampire, that final and massive transformation seals your personality forever. You don’t age. You don’t change. You are immutable. Which means you will always be this stubborn, optimistic, swooningly romantic fool that you are, and I—unfortunately—will always be the manipulative ass that I am.”

I feel my cheeks heat. Is that how he sees me? A stubborn, optimistic, romantic fool? Is he wrong?

I have the sinking feeling he isn’t. I am not ashamed of any of those qualities, yet he makes them all sound like insults.

Though what I really should be worrying about is the “always” part of that statement—the idea that I am now immutable. Stuck like this forever. Unable to change or grow.

I can’t imagine it. I have spent all my life—both my human life and my vampire life—in flux. In constant change. Slightly out of sync with the rest of the world, always playing catch-up to bring myself and my abilities and my gifts into line, to bring my mind into focus with my world. I can’t imagine not changing.

I look down at Sebastian, wanting to ask more questions—needing more answers—but his eyes are closed now, his breathing shallow. He looks as though he’s fallen asleep, which is a sign of exactly how exhausted he must be. I know what a strain it is to stay awake and alert through the daylight hours and he has been doing exactly that for several days in a row. For that matter, so have I.

I tuck my legs up on the chair beside me and rest my head on one of the chair’s wings. Despite the fact that dusk is falling and I should be wide-awake, my eyes drift closed.

I still don’t know what to think of Sebastian. I doubt I can trust my own instincts to guide me. When I was autistic and an
abductura
I could trust my gut about people. I just knew the ones who were trustworthy, because I could
hear
it. But I’d never gotten a reading on Sebastian. He’d been silent to me.

I have one final thought as sleep takes me: if it truly is the nature of vampires to be immutable, then Sebastian is either a very bad man who sometimes pretends to have good intentions or he is a very good man who can never forgive himself for the mistakes he’s made. I have no way of knowing which he is.

CARTER

Early the next morning, Ely dropped us off just south of Lubbock at an airstrip outside of Brownfield that had been used for crop dusters in the Before. We found an old truck right away but traded it for a sedan as soon as we found one in town. From there, it was just tiny Texas towns. The kind of dusty, one-stop-sign towns that probably hadn’t looked much better in the Before than they did now. We saw hardly any indications of Tick activity. This wasn’t the type of landscape where anything thrived, not even scavengers.

We skirted Lubbock. There was a big Farm there. One of the biggest in the state. I’d broken in twice before, so I knew just how good the security was. They would certainly notice a car passing by or a plane flying overhead. Darren was asleep in the back and Dawn was driving when she asked, “So tell me about this vaccine you got?”

I’d been nearly asleep—despite the fact that I was riding shotgun and felt obligated to stay awake, too. I figured she was probably getting sleepy and was talking to keep herself alert. I stretched a little. “How did you hear about that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Neither you nor Ely whispers as softly as you think you do.”

“I see.” Ely and I had talked about the vaccine when he’d landed the plane in Brownfield. “I got it at El Corazon. Right after I arrived. Why?”

“Did Ely get it, too?”

“I don’t think so.” Though Ely had never answered me directly when I asked him. “To hear him tell it, he’s way more worried about a Tick ripping his heart out than being exposed to a virus.”

“He has a point.” She was silent a minute and then asked, “When you got the vaccine, did they say why it wasn’t more widely distributed?”

“Cost, I think. They said it was time-consuming to make.”

She made a hmm sound, one that was more speculative than in agreement.

“A vaccine works by exposing your body to a weakened version of a virus, right?” I asked. “And then your body makes the antibodies.”

“Right,” Dawn said.

“Then, theoretically, I have antibodies against the Tick virus. Right now. In my blood. Could we somehow use those to make our own cure?”

“No,” Dawn said, without even giving it much thought. “That’s not the way the Tick virus works. It’s not like a normal virus.”

“It’s not?” I mean, of course I knew it wasn’t. A normal virus, your nose ran for a couple of days and you felt a tad achy. With this, you were pretty much out cold for four days and woke up to the worst hangover in history.

“No. The problem is, the thing that causes humans to mutate into Ticks isn’t a virus. It’s a retrovirus. A virus that’s already encoded in your DNA. The vampires, I guess, call it a regenerative gene, but it’s not a single gene at all. It’s lots of bits of DNA intermingled with your own. Obviously, not everyone has it. And it lies dormant until some other virus comes along, wakes it up, and causes all those bits of DNA to start throwing switches in your epigenetics.”

“So the virus—EN371—that’s the virus that woke up the retrovirus?”

“Exactly. Lots of retroviruses work this way. Multiple sclerosis, for example. And schizophrenia. They’re diseases caused by a retrovirus being exposed to some new virus. So in reality EN371—the virus you have immunity to—isn’t the Tick virus at all. It’s just the alarm clock.”

Frustration brewed in my chest. “So even if we did find a cure for EN371, it wouldn’t do jack for the people who’ve already transformed into Ticks.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

God damn it!

I’d known there was a chance Sebastian was full of shit. I’d
known
it. Yet there’d still been some hope, until Dawn’s biology came along and squashed it.

“But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cure,” she said hastily. “Or that there won’t be one someday. The cure for the Ticks would have to be a whole new virus. Something completely different from EN371 that goes in and turns off the retrovirus. And it’s entirely possible that the scientists at Genexome were working on it. The media portrayed this like it was all an accident, but someone at Genexome had to know what was going on. They were in deep. If anyone would know how to tailor-make another virus that would undo what EN371 did, it would be Genexome.”

“So you’re saying there could be a cure?”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t be in this car with you if I didn’t think there was a cure.” She gave a baffled-sounding laugh. “I mean, you’re a great guy and all, but it’s not like I’m going to risk my life—let alone let Darren risk his—just because you need backup for this dumb-ass stunt.”

I let that soak in for a minute. Until now, I hadn’t given a whole lot of thought to why they’d volunteered to come. I guess I’d just assumed it was some
abductura
thing. Like I’d unwittingly drawn them into my cause. Knowing this—that she actually thought there was a cure—well, it took the pressure off a little. Yeah, I was still going to do everything in my power to keep them safe, but at least I didn’t have to keep them safe believing I’d suckered them into danger in the first place.

Plus, Dawn believed there might be a cure. Dawn—who’d never even met Sebastian, Dawn who was smart and capable and had a medical background—actually thought it was a possibility.

“You know a lot about this stuff, don’t you?”

She shrugged, but gave a smile that looked just a little smug. “Yeah. I do.”

“You’re not just a nursing student, then?”

“The nursing thing, that was something my dad encouraged. For me, it was just a jumping-off point. Nowadays, you can go from being a nurse to being a physician’s assistant to . . .”

Her words trailed off. When I glanced over, she was screwing up her face like she was trying to keep from crying. I doggedly looked back at the road. I never knew what to say when girls started crying and I especially didn’t know what to say about this, because—shit!—there was no
nowadays
anymore. Not like there used to be. Not where she could even finish her nurses’ training, let alone go on to be a doctor or a researcher or whatever she’d planned in the Before.

I wondered sometimes if it was easier for a guy like me, a guy who hadn’t had much in the Before. I’d had money and connections, yeah. I’m sure that if the Tick-pocalypse hadn’t happened, my dad would have pulled strings to get me into one of the Ivy League colleges. A ten-million-dollar donation and admissions would overlook a lot. But I hadn’t had hopes or dreams of my own. In the Before, the only thing I’d really wanted was Lily.

“I don’t know how,” I said suddenly. “But we’re going to get through this. We’re going to kick this thing’s ass and get humanity back on track.”

I whispered the words, fiercely, pushing all my will into them, wanting Dawn to believe them. Wanting to give her hope. And wishing that my powers would also work on me, because just then, driving through the night to face down a monster to save the one person I really cared about, I needed to believe, too.