Twilight Fulfilled (16 page)

In Utana's time, even the statues contained the living essence of the Anunaki. They were fed and washed and clothed, those statues. The people of today seemed to care little about serving their god. Or maybe he simply had yet to see it, he thought. For surely no race would neglect its deities so.

As he crouched and observed, he admired again the beauty of the building. Many of the buildings today were plain and cold, large smooth rectangles lacking imagination or design. But others were breathtaking, in this time. Oh, not as spectacular as the ones from his beloved Sumer. The temples, the statues, the ziggurats. But nice. This one spoke of age—relatively speaking. It was, he sensed, more than a century old, and built to last a good deal longer.

The doors in the front were arched on top and
possessed inserts of the glass that was so prevalent in the architecture of this time. Utana had yet to see a building without it. More importantly, those doors were guarded by soldiers.

Here, on this side of the tall fence, red-green vines had twined themselves around and through the links, providing him with cover. The woodlot was vacant and had been left untended. Its uneven rows of trees were littered in between with weeds and shrubby brush that offered camouflage, as well. He was very well hidden. It was a good vantage point from which to observe, and he couldn't help but think that, had he been in charge of this place, he would have sent men to clear this lot. Truly, Nashmun had overlooked a vital aspect of his strategy.

In front of the building, there was nearly nothing of the earth. A concrete walkway bordered the curving drive. In the center of that curve, between the building and the road, stood the fountain with the woman carrying the oil lamp. Little birds, carved of stone as she was, perched on her arms. She was beautiful. And in front of the outer gate there was a large square of chiseled stone, with the words
St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital
carved into its face.

He crouched there in the woods, his position giving him a good view of the front and left side of the building. There were no guards on the side.
No entry, either, other than the windows and a side door that looked impenetrable. The windows on the lowest floors were barred. The rest were not.

He watched for a while, then moved farther along the fence to give himself a view of the back. Manicured lawns spread like green carpet behind the place. There were flower gardens and shrubs, and footpaths that wound among them. Small tables stood here and there, and Utana deduced it was meant to be a place of peace and rest for the patients who normally lived in this building. Safely enclosed in the mesh fence, they could enjoy being outside.

And there, angling to the ground from the building's rear, were those glass panes Brigit had called “skylights” stretching over the basement.

He saw no sign that the gardenlike back lawn had been recently used. Nor had it been tended well. Leaves littered the tables, benches and footpaths. The grass was shaggy, not neatly trimmed as modern man seemed to prefer it.

His haunches were growing sore from crouching, and the modern pants he wore were uncomfortable in this position. Utana straightened, thinking on how he would get inside, whether it would be better to try to enter covertly, or whether it might be best to simply blast the front doors open and obliterate anyone who tried to stop him.

He rather preferred the former. He was tired of violence, of killing.

“Hello, my friend.”

Startled, Utana turned quickly.

Nashmun stood facing him, looking him up and down, and Utana regretted allowing himself to be so caught up in his reconnaissance that he failed to sense his former vizier's approach.

“How did you find me?” he asked.

“I knew you'd come here. Brigit was snooping in my computer, so I was fairly certain she had found out about this place. And about the people who've taken refuge here.”

Utana blinked. “The Chosens within the walls of this place are prisoners, not refugees.”

“No doubt that's what she wants you to believe. I am well aware of who she is, you know.”

Utana averted his eyes. “She is a dancer.”

“She is the most sought-after subject in all of the world, Utana. She is a mongrel, part vampire, part human. And we need to bring her in. To study her. For the good of all mankind.”

Utana felt his blood heat at the notion. “You will stay far from her, Nashmun. Or I will kill you.”

Nash blinked twice, then nodded as if in understanding. “She has confused you. I understand, Utana. It happens to the best of us. She's very beautiful, after all, and you're a man, like any other.”

“I am unlike any other.”

“You know what I mean.” Nash clapped Utana on the shoulder. “Where beautiful women are concerned, we're all pretty much alike, aren't we?” He
was smiling as if there were no enmity between them. “Come with me, will you? Let's talk a while.”

“There is nothing I want to hear from you.”

“No? Well, perhaps there's something you'd like to hear from
them,
then.” He nodded toward the asylum as he spoke. “The Chosen. Come on, I'll take you on a tour of the place, introduce you to some of the refugees. Let them tell you in their own words why they're here. How does that sound?”

Suspicion buzzed loudly in Utana's brain, and he examined the man's face, his eyes, tried even to hear his thoughts, in search of an explanation. “What trick is this you are attempting now?”

“No trick, Utana. I simply want you to know the truth, so that you'll reconsider completing your mission, and help me wipe out the scourge of vampires from the planet once and for all. It is your destiny, you know.”

“Only the gods can say what is my destiny.”

“Well, they're not very talkative in this day and age, my friend, so you might just have to figure it out for yourself. Come inside with me. Listen to what the Chosen have to say.”

After a long moment, Utana nodded. He'd wanted to get inside. What better way than by invitation?

 

“What the hell is he doing with that SOB?” James whispered.

Brigit stood on the road beside James's truck,
feeling as if her heart had just been hit with a sledgehammer as she watched Utana walking side by side with Nash Gravenham-Bail of the DPI into the St. Dymphna Psychiatric Hospital.

When they'd pulled onto the shoulder out front, James had opened the pickup's hood to make it look like an ordinary bit of engine trouble, rather than like a pair of quarter-blood vampires spying on the DPI's baited trap. Brigit had left her car a mile away, gassed up and locked tight, outside a Dunkin' Donuts. She had fully expected to find Utana here. But she had thought he would be casing the joint, planning his attempt to rescue the Chosen. Not consorting with the enemy.

“Bridge?” J.W. put a hand on her forearm to get her attention.

She blinked the stupid hot tears from her eyes and shook her head. “I don't know. I don't know what's going on here.”

“But you know who that is, right?”

“I know who he is. That's Scarface.”

“He was there when they shot Lucy.”

“I know, J.W.”

“Well, what the hell is Utana doing with him, then?”

She blinked away the blur from her vision. “He picked Utana up outside Bangor a few days ago. Convinced him that he was some kind of diplomat, acting on behalf of the president. I followed them
to a small airport, where they took off in a private jet. He took Utana to a D.C. mansion where they let Middle Eastern royalty stay when they're in town. Treated him like a king.”

“Shit, they're going all out.”

“I convinced Utana that they were bullshitting him. Or…I thought I had. He left with me. But now, I don't know. I just… I don't know what the hell is going on, J.W.”

“Well, I do.” He slammed the hood of the truck down, grabbed his sister's arm and led her to the passenger side. “He's still working with the bastard. Leaving that mansion with you was part of the plan. You bring him home to the family and that scar-faced DPI scum follows right behind him, leading them straight to us.”

“Nash was having me arrested when we left. Utana…he saved me.”

“Why did he have to?”

She blinked twice, then averted her eyes.

“He took your power, didn't he, sis? The same way he took mine. He did, didn't he?”

Lowering her head, she nodded just once. “Only because he was afraid I'd try to kill him with it.”

“So if he's so damn reformed, why hasn't he given it back?”

“I…he will. We were just discussing it, in fact, when you showed up and interrupted.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then heaved
a deep sigh. “Look, I can see that he's got you tied up in knots, Bridge. Maybe he's even worked some kind of mental manipulation on your mind, but I'll tell you now, you're not seeing things clearly here. You're too close to this to see it, but it's obvious from the outside.”

“No.”

“He tricked you into leading him to us. Or almost did. He's still working with the DPI. You just saw him with your own eyes, walking along practically arm in arm with that bastard.” He took her shoulders in his hands and gave a gentle shake. “He's still planning to wipe us out, Brigit. Don't you see that?”

Her tears spilled over then, and she was furious—with herself, with her brother and with Utana most of all, for making her want to believe in him so very badly that she couldn't listen to logic or reason anymore.

“Shit.” J.W. looked straight up. “I was right. You're in love with him, aren't you?”

She didn't answer. J.W. lowered his head to meet her eyes, and she imagined he saw the reply shining from them.

“Dammit, Bridge, I'm sorry.” He folded her into his arms and held her against him. “I'm so sorry. I know it hurts. And it clouds your vision. You can't see straight. There's a reason why they say love is blind. You've gotta trust me now, okay? I'm your
brother. You don't have any reason to doubt my motives or question where my loyalties lie. Trust me, okay?”

“I…I trust you.”

“Okay.” Releasing her, he opened the truck door. “Get in. I'm gonna take you home. Or at least to what we're calling home for the moment. You need to be around your family. You need to heal and get your head to stop spinning.”

“But…but what if you're wrong?”

He made a face as if she were an idiot, then softened it with love. “Go on, get in.”

Brigit got in.

U
tana walked beside Nashmun through the sterile, colorless halls of the building he had been watching. There were people in every room, ordinary-looking people, none of whom seemed to be in overt pain, although he still felt their fear and growing uncertainty, their questions.

“Many of the people here didn't even know of their potential connection to the Undead,” Nashmun was saying, strolling at a casual pace, nodding and smiling at staffers and wary-eyed patients alike as they passed. “Until we told them, of course. Bringing them here allows us to protect them.”

“And why do they need protecting?”

“Well, vampires have a bond with these people. They can sense something in their blood from miles away, pinpoint it, home in on them. They tend to act like guardian angels. But only at first, of course.
Their goal is to keep them safe until they reach the prime age for transformation.”

“Trans-formation?”

“Yes. That is the ultimate goal, after all. Vampires can't reproduce—well, with a few obvious exceptions, some of whom you've met already. But aside from Brigit Poe and her twin brother, James, and their mother, Amber Lily, who's half and half, we don't know of any offspring born of the Undead. The only way they can propagate the species is by changing innocent, unsuspecting humans into vampires. And humans with the right blood antigen—a rare one known as the Belladonna Antigen—are the only ones who can be changed successfully.” He shrugged. “Those who aren't changed are…well, to put it bluntly, eaten. The antigen makes their blood extremely potent. They're the vampires' favorite meal.”

Utana suppressed a shudder and strove to keep his face impassive. Nashmun was watching him closely, seeking his reactions, as they walked along the corridors, passing closed door after closed door. “And this is what you've told these Chosens?” Utana asked.

“Not initially, no. Our goal was to protect them, not to frighten them. But they were beginning to be afraid of us, to ask questions, to want to leave the safety of this place. So this morning we assembled them all in the big conference room downstairs and
explained it to them. Just as I've now explained it to you.”

“I see.” This must be why he'd felt the surge of painful fear, he thought.

“Do you? Do you understand what I've told you, Utana? These innocent people would have been transformed into…into bloodsucking night-walkers—against their will—by those monsters. If they objected, they would have been devoured. That's why your gods commanded you to destroy the vampires.”

Utana nodded as if in understanding, even while his mind raced with questions. He was no longer so certain that his gods had commanded him to annihilate the vahmpeers. He'd read that they had in the book he'd stolen from James's mate, Lucy, when they'd been on the boat together. But the book had been written by a man, not by the gods. It was man's interpretation of what had been recorded on a stone tablet from Utana's own time. And yet, he realized, that stone tablet, too, had been written by a man.

Just a man.

And men were flawed, their understanding of the Anunaki and their ways limited and often incomplete. So it had been in his own time, and so, he had seen, it remained today.

“What becomes of these Chosens,” he asked,
“should they not be…made into vahmpeers, nor imbibed by them?”

“What do you mean?”

“I have been told that they weaken, grow sick, die before their time.”

“It's bull. Something the vamps spread around to try to justify their crimes against humanity. But it's not true.”

Utana studied the people wandering the halls, apparently without restraint. He paused to peer through the glass in one of the many closed doors they had passed and into the room beyond.

“No need to do that, my friend. We can go inside.” Nash reached past him, tapped twice on the door and waited for a friendly “Come in” to push it open and lead the way in.

“Hello, Jane,” he said, with a nod at the pretty blonde mother who sat in a rocking chair, gazing out the window. And then he nodded at the little girl who sat on the floor surrounded by open books with pictures in them and colored sticks she was using to scribble on the pages. “Hello, Melinda. What are you coloring today?”

Melinda looked up, wide-eyed. Utana focused on the child intently, his mind probing hers, listening to her thoughts, which flowed unguarded and innocent.

I don't like this man.
The little girl's thoughts
clearly referred to Nashmun.
He's ugly and scary, and his smiles are only pretend.

But even while thinking those things, the little girl obediently held up the book to show a picture of a raven, which she had filled with orange, yellow and purple shades.

The coloring sticks were amazing, and Utana found himself wanting to sit down beside the child, take them up and join her in her artistic endeavors.

“That's very nice,” Nashmun said.

You didn't even look at it, you big old liar,
the little girl thought.

Utana smiled at her insight, her honesty, and crouched down low. “You might be a great artist one day,” he told her.

She met his eyes. “Gosh, you're big.”

He could not restrain a smile. “And you're little.”

His smile is real. I think he's a good guy. I wonder if he's…the one.

Nashmun was speaking to the mother. Jane. “This is my friend Utana. He's concerned, wants to be sure everyone here is comfortable and feels safe.”

The mother's eyes shifted toward Utana, but he only afforded her a brief nod before returning his focus to the daughter, though he kept listening.

“We have everything we need. But frankly, Mr. Gravenham-Bail, we'd like to know when it will be safe for us to leave here.”

Utana tried very hard to direct his thoughts toward the child, but he wasn't sure she would be able to hear them, even while Nashmun made conversation with the mother.
Are they being good to you here?
Utana asked the child.

They won't let us go home,
the little girl thought.
I want to go home. I want my room and my dolls and my closet full of pretty clothes, and my own bed. That's what I want.

“As you can see, Utana, we've converted all the rooms into miniature apartments for our guests. They have televisions,” Nashmun said, waving toward the box mounted to a pole in a corner, “and window seats. There's a little table for private meals, although we also serve meals in the cafeteria. It's everyone's choice whether to eat with the group there, or bring their meals back to their rooms to enjoy them in privacy.”

“And are they allowed outside?” Utana asked, standing upright once more. “The grounds in the back are quite…enchanting.”

We never get to go outside!
Melinda mentally huffed.

“We're working on that. As soon as we are sure it's secure for them to—”

“Surely it would be secure by day, Nashmun. Those from whom you claim to be protecting them cannot walk in sunlight.”

“That's what I've been saying,” Jane said.

“If this woman wished to leave this place, right now, with me, would you allow it, Nashmun?”

“Of course,” Nash said softly.

The woman's face lit with hope, and the little girl could barely contain her excitement. “Does that mean we're going home, Mommy? Right now? With the nice one?”

“You are absolutely free to go, Jane. If you want to put yourself at risk of being torn from your child forever and put
her
at risk of being made into a forever-seven-year-old blood drinker. Never to grow up. Never to see sunlight—”

The little girl's face was twisting into a more horrified grimace with every word Nash spoke, until Utana shot his hand out, gripped the man's forearm and squeezed hard enough to silence him.

“Do not be afraid, little one,” Utana said, crouching low again, reaching out a hand to smooth her beautiful blond curls. Gods, she reminded him of Brigit with that hair. “I will not let harm befall you, I promise. Nothing bad will happen to you,” he told her softly.

Yes, it will. But it won't be any boogie monster that gets us, it will be him. Just like he did that nice lady senator. He killed her. I know it.

“I'm the head of the government agency in charge of overseeing your safety,” Nashmun said and put a hand on the woman's shoulder. “Jane, do you really think the U.S. government would have
funded this place, this project, if they didn't honestly feel that those of you with the Belladonna Antigen were in need of protection?”

Jane looked from one man to the other. Utana could see her struggling to hold back the words she wanted to say. In the end she simply nodded, no doubt pretending to believe Nashmun's transparent lies.

“It won't be for much longer,” Nashmun told her. “I promise you.”

“How much longer?” Jane asked softly.

“Another week, at the most. All right?”

She nodded, but her daughter stomped a foot. “No! I wanna go home now!”

“A week isn't long at all, sweetie,” her mother said, kneeling down to wrap the little girl in her arms, as the child's eyes welled up with tears.

Utana nodded. “I have seen enough.”

“All right. I'll escort you back downstairs, then,” Nashmun said.

Looking at the little girl, who was resting her head on her mother's shoulder, Utana thought,
Do not worry, little one. I will return you to your home very soon now.

Melinda lifted her head and turned it, wide blue eyes blinking up at him, trusting him, as Utana reluctantly followed Nashmun out of the room.

As he went, he heard her call after him, her mind
as pure and honest as the wind,
I don't want you to die, but you will if you help us. I saw it.

The warning brought him up short, even as the door swung closed behind him. He didn't fear death. He would welcome it, in fact, if it truly were death. But to be returned to the state from which James of the Vahmpeers had awakened him…? That prospect filled him with dread.

But his black-hearted vizier was moving on, and Utana forced himself into motion again, following.

It was not lost upon him that the little girl had warned him against helping her, even though she must believe he might be her only hope.

What a beautiful, honest child.

“This way,” Nashmun said, leading him toward the box they called an “elevator,” which Utana disliked. They'd ridden up in it, and he had felt sick to his stomach. But the journey had been brief, at least.

He stepped inside, and the thick doors slid magically closed.

“You see?” Nashmun said, smiling up at him. “They're being treated very, very well here. And as soon as they've served their purpose…”

Suddenly Utana felt a jab in his thigh. He looked down to see a needle there, and even as he realized what was happening, his head began to swim, his vision to dim, his knees to weaken.

“As soon as they've served their purpose,” Nash
mun said again, as Utana sank to the floor, “that purpose being to serve as bait for our trap—they'll be eliminated, just like the vampires who flock here to rescue them will have been. Every last one of them. And then we'll know exactly how to destroy them in every other nation where they exist, until the vampire scourge is wiped out of existence forever.”

 

“The Plantation” had once been an extremely productive tobacco farm, bordered by a wide and placid river that kept any danger of frost at bay during all but the coldest of nights.

It had been owned by vampires for three generations and was one of the few such places that had not yet been destroyed by mortal vigilantes intent on burning every vampire alive. It helped that it was isolated. The nearest town was a tiny one, and people there minded their own business.

Oh, sooner or later, it would be discovered, but for now, it was safe. And the house was like something out of
Gone with the Wind
. Tall columns, a wide veranda, a broad curving staircase and a fireplace that took up half of a huge living room wall.

That was where her family awaited her that evening, just after dusk.

Brigit had never before feared her honorary aunt, Rhiannon. Then again, she'd never had reason. She'd been Rhiannon's protégé, learning at her feet
how to be strong, powerful, ruthless. How to appreciate, cherish and use her gift. How to call up and manage her inner vampire.

And she'd gone against everything Rhiannon had taught her where Utana was concerned.

Now, as she walked beside her brother through the sprawling living room of the plantation house in the wildest wilds of Virginia, she felt a shiver race up her spine and knew, as she had never known before, how Rhiannon's enemies, or even strangers, felt upon meeting the imposing bitch-queen for the first time.

At the bottom of the stairs she stopped, unable to convince her feet to go any farther.

Her brother's warm hand on the small of her back did nothing to bolster her courage. In fact, she braced herself against it, as if afraid he might push her, when all she wanted to do was turn and run away.

“She loves you, Brigit. That hasn't changed,” J.W. said softly.

“I failed her.” She tried to swallow away the constriction in her throat that made her voice emerge tight and raspy, but it didn't ease. “I failed all of you.”

“It's not over yet, Bridge.”

“It is for me.” She sniffled and fought back tears. “I'm in love with him, J.W. I'm in love with the enemy.”

Upstairs, a door flew open, and in a heartbeat Rhiannon flew down the staircase, a blur of motion, and stood there before Brigit, regal and beautiful as always, though Brigit could have sworn, as she dared to meet the vampiress's eyes, that she saw worry there.