Fairytale (40 page)

Especially now that humans and vampires were
virtually at war.

And so the government had set up a haven for
these rare humans, a place where they could go and be protected,
cared for and absolutely safe, until this vampire problem was under
control.

Jane would do anything to protect her little
girl. It was the just the two of them. Had always been. Melinda was
special. She was more special than even the government or her own
doctors knew. Jane had always protected her.

And that was what she was doing now.
Protecting Melinda.

Holding her little girl’s tiny hand, she
stepped through the arching, churchlike, wooden double doors of St.
Dymphna’s, and wished she could shake the feeling that she was
making a terrible mistake.

Coastal Maine

Brigit sat in the library of the beautifully
restored Maine mansion that had been the home of a pair of vampires
who were now among the missing: Morgan and Dante. She thought,
however, that the simple fact their home was still standing was a
very good sign. If it hadn’t been burned, then their neighbors
probably hadn’t yet branded them vampires and decided to murder
them in their sleep. No roaming band of vigilantes had yet targeted
them.

Morgan’s mortal sister, Max, and her husband,
Lou, had lived there, as well. Having an identical twin who was
mortal was probably an extremely good cover, Brigit thought. But
they had headed for safer ground, not wanting to be accidentally
executed, as a great many innocent mortals had been.

Their brethren must consider it collateral
damage when they killed their own. If a body remained after the
fire, then the victim must have been innocent. If no body was
found, the victims had clearly been vampires and burned to ash.
That thinking made as much sense as witch dunking. If you drowned,
you were innocent. Oops.

The de Silva mansion was empty but intact.
The power was still on. The house had heat and indoor plumbing,
phone and internet. It was all good. Brigit wished she could
stay.

But she had an assignment, and it wasn’t
going to be a pleasant one.

As the elders filed in, all of them having
changed into dry clothes, and pink with the flush of a recent meal,
Brigit waited, wondering what they would have to say to her.

Rhiannon entered first, wearing one of her
signature gowns, floor-length, thigh-high slit, plunging neckline.
This one was teal-green, a color Brigit hadn’t seen on her before.
It went well with her raven hair. She was far more than an elder
vampiress. She was Rianikki, a priestess of Isis, daughter of a
pharaoh. She knew about magic and could do things no other vampire
could.

Behind her came her beloved Roland de
Courtemanche in his old-school tux and black satin cloak. Probably
unwise of him to keep wearing something that might as well have
been a flashing Vampire Here sign, but that was his call. He’d been
a medieval warrior knight, was wise beyond questioning and had a
fierce side that he kept very well contained.

Eric Marquand, Roland’s best friend, came
next. A nobleman, a physician and a scientist, Eric had nearly been
beheaded during the French Revolution. Roland had visited him in
his cell on the night before he was slated to meet the guillotine,
saving his life and making him over.

Sarafina, the beautiful, fiery Gypsy, came
last, skirts and scarves trailing, bangles and earrings jingling as
she moved. She was the missing Dante’s aunt, but more like a sister
to him. And worry marred her brow.

The four sat at a table, embodying more than
four thousand years of living, of wisdom, of knowledge. And yet
there were some troubling absences among the elders of their kind.
Damien, the first vampire, once known as Gilgamesh. The Prince, who
had become known as Dracula down through the ages. They’d struck
out separately with their respective mates to try to locate
survivors and bring them to safety. But it wasn’t safe out there.
Not even for them.

Although these ancient mighty beings who
surrounded her now had practically raised her, Brigit saw them
through fresh eyes on this night. She felt awe at their presence,
their power, and found her self bowing her head slightly before
taking her own chair at the long table.

It was Rhiannon who began, with a story that
Brigit already knew by heart.

“Utanapishtim, Ziasudra, onetime Priest King
of the land of Sumer, was beloved of the gods, and so when they
sent the great flood to wipe out mankind, he alone was spared. In
return for his loyalty, the gods bestowed upon him the gift of
immortality. There was only one caveat—he must never attempt to
share the gift with any other human.”

Rhiannon fell silent, her gaze sliding,
adoringly but solemnly, to Roland, who nodded once and picked up
the tale. “The great king Gilgamesh— the man we know today as
Damien—was in deep mourning for his best friend, Enkidu, who was
more than a brother to him. Enkidu was like the king’s shadow
self—like a twin who is opposite and yet the same,” he said, with a
meaningful look straight into her eyes.

Brigit understood.

“King Gilgamesh blamed himself for Enkidu’s
death. He wanted only to find a way to restore life to his friend.
And so he wandered into the desert in search of the only
immortal—the flood survivor. And he found him. The king commanded
that Utana share the gift of immortality with him, so that he could
share it, in turn, with Enkidu.”

Roland stopped there, turning to Sarafina,
who took up the thread. “Utana could not refuse his king, and so he
gave him the gift. But despite becoming immortal himself, King
Gilgamesh could not recover his friend from the Abode of the Dead.
And because Utana had disobeyed the gods, he was cursed. His
eternal life was taken from him—but his immortality was not. And
later, when he was murdered by an evil one, Utana died but did not
die. We know now that his spirit remained, trapped with his ashes,
lo these five thousand years.”

Eric took over from Sarafina at her gentle
nod. “There came to light a prophecy, a stone tablet from Utana’s
time, that told of the destruction of the vampire race and
suggested that only by raising Utanapishtim from the dead could it
be averted. This prophecy spoke of the twins who were neither
vampire nor human but both combined, the two who are like no other
and yet opposites, who would save our kind. But parts of the tablet
were missing. Broken. Hidden away, so its true meaning was
unclear.”

Eric then looked at Brigit, holding her eyes
until she knew she was supposed to fill in the rest. She cleared
her throat, nodding. “And so the good twin, the one who was born
with the gift of healing, found Utana’s ashes and restored life to
him. But Utana’s mind was warped from thousands of years of
imprisonment, and he turned on his own people, decimating the
vampire race he had never intended to create. And those who remain
believe it is only the evil twin, who was born with the power of
destruction, who can return him to the grave—his prison— and save
what few remain of vampire-kind.”

Everyone in the room nodded.

Rhiannon spoke again. “Utana believes that he
can only be free of his curse by undoing the wrong he committed so
long ago. He thinks he has to wipe us out, so that when he dies
again, he will move on to the afterlife, rather than returning to
the horror of the living death where he spent more than five
thousand years.”

“I know.”

“We know very little about his strengths, his
powers,” Rhiannon said. “Except that he can blast a beam of light
from his eyes that is much like the explosive beam you yourself can
project.”

“And that he can take the powers from
others,” Brigit added, with a look toward the closed door, beyond
which her brother lingered, somewhere, with their parents, Edge and
Amber Lily, and the others. “We know that, because he took J.W.’s
healing gift away from him.”

Everyone nodded sadly.

“We don’t know how to kill him in a way that
will free his spirit,” Roland said softly. “We only know that the
first time he died, he was beheaded and his body cremated, at least
according to the tablets. And while it grieves all of us to think
we might be condemning him—our own forebear—to return to that
nightmarish state, he has left us with no other choice.”

Brigit nodded. “I know.”

“We also know,” Eric said, “that he can sense
us, feel us, just as we can detect the presence of one another, and
of the Chosen. There’s a bond, a connection. We believe that he is
using that bond to follow us, even now.”

Brigit frowned; this was the first she’d
heard of that. “What makes you think so?”

Eric rose, crossing the room to take a remote
control from a nearby shelf and aiming it toward an elaborately
carved, antique-looking cherrywood armoire. The armoire’s doors
swung open, revealing a large, state-of-the-art flat-screen TV.
Eric thumbed another button to turn it on, and another to activate
the DVR and choose a local news broadcast from a few hours
earlier.

Captioned “Bangor, Maine,” with today’s date
beside it, footage panning the interior of a demolished restaurant
played out on the screen. Then the scene switched to show a
S.W.A.T. team surrounding a delivery truck on a street that had
been closed down, as a grim-voiced reporter explained, “An
apparently mentally disturbed man trashed Succulence, a four-star
restaurant in Bangor, this evening. The assailant took only food,
but injured several people and caused enormous damage to the
business. Police believe they now have this obviously dangerous man
cornered in the back of a delivery truck a few blocks away from the
restaurant. This is live coverage of the S.W.A.T. unit, as they
slowly close in on the truck and—”

“No,” Brigit said, getting to her feet,
talking to the TV as if it would help. “No, no, get them out of
there!”

A hand fell on her shoulder, and Roland said,
“This is a recording, child. It’s already happened.”

The cops took cover and took aim, as someone
lifted a bullhorn to order the man to come out with his hands
up.

Brigit watched as the truck doors opened and
Utana appeared. She’d seen the man before, but never looking like
he did then. His makeshift garment—a toga made from a bed sheet—was
torn, wet and filthy, his long black hair hanging in dripping
straggles, his face shadowed by a wild-looking beard, his eyes
dangerous.

He looked like she imagined Moses had, after
his encounter on Mount Sinai.

And then she could see nothing but the beam
that emanated from his eyes just before the picture went to snow.
The screen flicked back to the somber, too-tanned face of an anchor
at the news desk. “Our camera crew survived, and though they got
additional footage, we can’t show you more, out of respect for the
families of the seventeen officers who were wiped out by whatever
unknown weapon this madman was wielding. Frankly, it’s just too
gruesome for television. The man is still at large, and the
National Guard has been called in to help with the hunt.”

Brigit stared at the screen long after Eric
had shut off the television.

“You have to stop him, Brigit.”

She nodded. “And what are all of you going to
do? You can’t stay here. He’s too close. He won’t stop until he
finds you.”

“We’re moving,” Roland said. “The plantation
in Virginia is isolated enough in the Blue Ridge Mountains that it
should be safe…at least for a little while. We don’t want to go too
far until we’ve eliminated this threat and gathered as many of our
own together as we can find. After that, we’ll likely be forced to
leave the country for a location more remote and isolated than
anything the U.S. has to offer in this day and age. We’re exploring
several options now. But that’s not for you to worry about.”

“You have only one task to focus on,”
Rhiannon said. “Find the first immortal. Find him…and kill
him.”

Downtown Bangor, Maine

Utana had sensed the soldiers surrounding his
temporary haven. All he had wanted was a meal, and a dry place in
which to eat it. And he’d found both, though he had been surprised
by the resistance of the food vendors when it came to sharing their
bounty. Taking it by force had seemed ridiculous. Did they not
realize he was a king? He had left the establishment in a mess, but
it would be easily restored. He’d broken a table, perhaps some of
the strange pottery food-vessels, as well. He’d had to use force on
some of the humans. The mortals. That was what James of the
Vahmpeers had called the ordinary ones. Mortals. Utana had intended
them no harm, had used no more force than was necessary.

Well, perhaps a bit more than was necessary.
He’d been agitated. And half-starved. But then he’d found a shelter
and filled his belly with the food, and he had never eaten its
equal. Never. It was luscious, fit for the gods. He’d found a
comfortable spot in the corner of the box that contained him, and
he’d curled up, intent on napping, despite the fact that his
clothes were still wet and he was shivering with cold.

And then, just as he’d been about to nod off
into the world of dream journeys, he’d felt them all around him.
He’d felt their fear of him, their hatred and their intentions. His
punishment for taking a meal without compensation was to be death,
it seemed. They carried weapons, he sensed it. And he knew by the
vibrations in the very ether between them and himself that those
weapons would be used on him without hesitation.

Yes. There was no question. He felt it.
Violence. Barely contained, crouching like a tiger about to
spring.

And so he had no choice. He wanted nothing
from these humans. He meant them no harm whatsoever. It was his own
race he must wipe from existence, not theirs. All he intended was
to eat, to sleep and to be on his way. This devastation he was
about to unleash was entirely their own doing.