Immortal Earth (Vampires For Earth Book 1) (11 page)

NINETEEN

September 1888

Detroit, Michigan

Afon stood on the lawn and looked up at the windows of the house that he was renting with Isi – the windows with the curtains drawn tightly shut. His nostrils flared, his hands balled into fists at his side, and Nanook and Harland did not dare to approach him.

“He was just here, I can still fucking smell him,” Afon said. “Days … we were gone for only a few days, and still she …”

“Look brother,” Nanook said, “Isi was doing what she is supposed to do, what we all agreed that she should do.”

“She doesn’t need to throw it in my face like this, though,” Afon said. “Invite him over to
our
house … She can do her damn duty elsewhere, she doesn’t need to sully our home with it.”

“Afon, listen to yourself,” Nanook said. “Sully our home, is it? While I’m sure that mimicking current expressions will help us all to blend in better, I don’t think that we need to mimic the current attitudes toward women. I’ll say it again, Isi is just doing what she has to do, it’s no reflection on her love for you brother.”

“What is all of this trouble over anyway, chaps?” Harland said. “I’m not sure quite why we’re standing around out here, when the Countess is in there. I’ve been dying to see her again, even before I knew who you all really were. And now, well, now I just can’t wait to see her!”

“You and every other man,” Afon muttered, but he followed Harland, reluctantly, across the lawn to the house.

Upstairs, Jian Hu had heard their entire exchange. Excited as he was to see Harland, he was now more concerned with Afon.

Thankfully, Henry Ford had left the house, rather quickly, about half-an-hour before. Ford had been relaxing in the parlor with Isi, had, in fact, just been served tea and finger sandwiches by Jian, dressed again as a butler, when Isi had jumped off of the settee and stared, wide-eyed, out the window. She’d instructed Jian to draw the shades, and then she’d told Henry that she’d just realized that Count Solovyov was due home soon, and Henry had to make himself scarce.

Henry had made his exit, but not with the tail-between-the-legs shame of an adulterer. No, Henry had Isi walk him across the lawn to his horse, and he’d taken her face in his hands and boldly kissed her, for all the world to see, before he set off for his home, where his own wife was waiting for him.

The day’s dew had clung to the grass in the spot where Henry had kissed Isi, encapsulating their moment in the protective embrace of condensation, their scent sealed onto a blade of grass. Afon could still smell both of them.

Afon pulled open the front door of the house with such force that he could have easily torn it from its hinges, but Nanook caught the door halfway through its violent arc, and grabbed Afon by the shoulder.

“Calm yourself before you see her,” Nanook said. “We’ve got some great work ahead of us tonight, and this planet doesn’t have time for your jealousy right now.”

Nanook held Afon back for only a second, and then he rushed forward, running up the stairs in a blur, almost toppling over Isi on the landing. Nanook was right behind him, ready to quell any violence he was sure Afon would regret later.

Harland Fergusson was at the bottom of the stairs, oblivious to the intricacies of the situation developing above him.

“Countess, is that you up there? So wonderful to see you again,” Harland said. I do believe that you are the only one, of this here lot, to not owe me an apology. You’re not a drainer like us, are you my dear, so I’m sure that you played no part in my transition.”

Isi smiled charmingly back at him.

“Apparently, you all chose just the right time to add a new member to your little group; you’re trying to do too many things at once, you are,” Harland said. “Save the world in the past,
and
travel to the future to kill this dictator of yours, Mortterra, that the boys have mentioned – well, I’m glad to see you Countess, but I think it’s quite possible that you are just as glad to see me. One of those times when you truly cannot have enough help.”

Isi nodded in agreement with Harland, and avoided all eye contact with Afon.

“Yes Harland,” Isi said, “it is very good to see you. We can move ahead with the second part of our plan now, if you’re on board?”

“I must admit, I’d feel a bit more settled with all of this assassination business, if I had a better feel for how evil this man Mortterra is,” Harland said.

Isi cast a questioning look at Afon and Nanook.

“Well Harland, why don’t we all go and sit down, and discuss this together. I’m sure there are a number of questions on your mind. It’s an awful lot to take in,” Isi said, and settled down on the couch that she had been sharing with Henry Ford earlier. “But you don’t need to concern yourself with killing Ignis Mortterra, Harland. I think it’s probably for the best if you stay here with me. Afon and Nanook should be able to take care of Mortterra on their own, but he’s already sent some of his goons after us, and I’m quite sure that he’s not given up, so we really need you here, to protect me.”

“Oh … oh, I understand,” Harland said. “Of course, that would be the greatest pleasure and honor, to protect you Countess.” Harland’s face fell. “It’s just that I – well, not just me, but any one like me, I suppose, any man in my position would want, well, I don’t mean to sound the child, but …”

“Oh Jesus, Harland, spit it out man,” Nanook said.

“I would like, very much, to accompany the boys on their assassination escapade. I bear no particular ill will to the dictator you’re all after, but I would sorely love to see the future,” Harland said. “Even though the world is coming to an end in your time, still, I can’t even imagine how amazing the world must be. I mean, all we’ve come up with, in my time, is electricity, which is pretty fantastic, but you,” Harland gestured at Isi, Afon, Nanook, and Jian, “you all have made people immortal. You’ve made me immortal, and I’d like, very much, to see what else, what other miracles we’ve accomplished as a species.”

Isi nodded, “Fair enough Harland, you will go with Afon and Nanook. You’re an unknown face in the future, and that could come in very handy, but I’m afraid that you won’t see anything all that magnificent. No matter what technology we invent, no matter how we elongate our lives as a species, there’s no surviving once the earth below your feet dies. You’ll see what we’ve done Harland, but it won’t make you proud, it will make you sick.”

TWENTY

After a first round of discussion sketching out their plan to assassinate Ignis Mortterra, Isi and Afon excused themselves from Harland, Nanook, and Jian, and headed upstairs. The sound of their arguing shook every pane of glass in the house. Here, a slammed door; there, a broken water pitcher – nowhere was there silence.

“Would you gentlemen care to go for a walk? A breath of the nights air could do us all some good, I think,” Jian said. He clasped his hands together, carefully composed, and directed them all outside with the turn of his body.

Harland was on his feet, and out the door, before Nanook could even respond to Jian’s suggestion. Being around the sounds of any human passion made Harland uncomfortable, whether it be the amorous noises of a loving couple, or the ominous tones of loves undoing that he could hear in the argument that shook the house above, either way, Harland wanted no part of it.

Nanook looked at Harland’s quickly departing form and said, “I guess he agrees with you Jian.”

“We had better follow him. I’m not so sure that our long lost friend there should be left to his own devices outside, unsupervised,” Jian said.

“Why? Did Harland say something to you?” Nanook said. “Afon and I had agreed that we should wait a bit, before talking to you and Isi about Harland’s activities, since last we saw him.”

“No, he’s not said a word to me, but he doesn’t have to. It’s easy enough to guess what happened. Harland must have gotten hungry, and as a consequence, I imagine that there was probably an uptick in London’s murder rate,” Jian said. “In any event, he’s operating on a primal level right now, which will make him a potently lethal asset to have with you and Afon on your mission, but it also makes him someone that we should keep a close eye on.”

“Don’t worry Jian, he’s not gone far,” Nanook said. “He’s only a few acres west of us, about to enter the tree line.”

Jian turned his head in the direction that Nanook had indicated, and inhaled the air. “Ah, so he is. Should we go and catch up to him, brother?”

“Oh that would definitely be a good welcome to the brotherhood for him,” Nanook said. “And it’s kind of fitting for him to experience what it’s like to be snuck up on in the middle of the night, since he’s certainly done that to enough women in London.”

“Remember, no judgment, Nanook,” Jian said. “Any of us in Harland’s position would’ve done something similar. We all need to eat, but no one was handing out bags of blood to Harland. Still – we should catch up to him before he starts hunting things in those woods other than deer and rabbits.”

TWENTY ONE

September 2112

Thule Airbase, Greenland

Bursts of goldenrod, the wandering green of a meadow, the bluesy notes of an iris carving out her own place, the gracefully lazy arms of the willow tree, dripping down to the lake and lit from behind by the setting sun – all so real that they could be touched, but there would be no dew clinging to the grass, no scent to the flowers, no wind to move the willow tree, nothing but paint on canvas, a remembered rendition of the way nature once was, painted by a man who loved nature as much as he hated and wanted to control her.

Ignis Mortterra lifted his brush from the canvas that he had been working on. Two soldiers of the AmEur Alliance had entered the room; each soldier held onto one arm of their prisoner, George Murphy.

Already skinny, George had shed twenty pounds since his incarceration, five months ago in April, the night that Isi and the Immortals had escaped.
Escaped to where though?
George had no idea, and no matter how Mortterra’s thugs tortured him, no matter how many bones they broke, no matter how many times he was water boarded, no matter how many teeth they pulled from him (the most gruesome torture, and one that George could never remain conscious through), George could not tell Mortterra where or, more accurately, when Isi and the Immortals were, because George didn’t know. He hadn’t wanted to know. The less he knew, the less he could reveal; the less he could reveal, the more chance Isi and the Immortals had of succeeding.

George had known that he was probably sacrificing his life on the night that he had switched the machines, but he found himself wishing now that the sacrifice would just hurry up and happen. Dragging this on, month after month, was not only physically painful, not only mentally torturous, but demoralizing all on its own, in its unending way, because of its repetition. Even torture could be boring, and plodding through this day to day abuse, knowing that it would one day kill him, and knowing that on that day, he would be one fraction of the man he had been at the beginning, broken and robbed of all dignity, denied the heroes death that he should have had … the idea of that sad waste was what had kept George’s will to live alive. He would either die a hero, or live – broken, but undefeated. He refused to be broken, and then to die. He refused to be a waste.

Mortterra turned his attention away from his painting, and faced George Murphy.

“Has there been any new activity on the DNA scanner, Mr. Murphy?”

George didn’t respond, and stared straight ahead, expressionless, and almost catatonic.

“Leave him here,” Ignis Mortterra instructed the two AmEur Alliance soldiers. “Leave the cuffs on him, but leave him here. I will send for you to retrieve him when we are done.”

The two soldiers turned on their heels, and walked from the room.

“Come now, Mr. Murphy, come have a seat,” Ignis Mortterra said. “Cushioned, or plain wood?”

George did not respond.

“Oh dear, sorry about that, cushioned, of course. You’ve been through a lot lately, Mr. Murphy, and a soft surface would probably do you some good,” Mortterra said, and turned to the desk size computer behind him, parallel to his easel. He typed in a few strings of numbers, and a recliner materialized in the air between Mortterra and George … who continued to stare into space with no response.

“What’s the matter? Fabric not good enough?” Mortterra said. “Are you more of a leather man, George?”

Ignis Mortterra typed in a new series of numbers on the computer, and the chair in front of George transformed into a supple leather recliner.

George Murphy’s eyes moved, just slightly, in the direction of the recliner. It was enough of a response to let Mortterra know that he had won.

“Go ahead, George,” Mortterra said. “You don’t have to like me in order to use the chair I’m offering you.”

George Murphy shuffled forward unsteadily, and collapsed in the recliner. He sighed as his wounded skin made contact with the cool, soft leather.

“Good boy, George,” Mortterra said. “Takes a bit of the edge off, doesn’t it?”

George nodded, and inhaled sharply in response to the pain caused by that one small movement.

“Poor boy,” Mortterra said. “Now, I’d love to let you rest for awhile, but we must get down to business. Perhaps, when we’re done for the day, I could arrange to have this chair brought back to your cell? Hmmm? Would you like that George?”

George nodded again, but kept his jaw clenched tight, so as not to let out another sound of pain and defeat.

“Okay then, I’ll see to it,” Mortterra said. “Now, just tell me, have you seen any new activity on the DNA scanner?”

George cleared his throat. “Yes, President Mortterra. A few days ago, Afon and Nanook went to London, and then they returned to Detroit yesterday, accompanied by a new set of unidentified DNA.”

“Did they travel through time, or just from place to place, George?”

“They remained in the year 1888,” George said, “and Dr. Nizienko and Mr. Hu did not leave Detroit at all.”

“Hmmm, very interesting,” Ignis Mortterra said. “Now, why do you think that they’d do that? Their reason for being in Detroit has been obvious to me from the beginning. Well, not quite from the beginning, I admit. The night that the Immortals had been scheduled for execution, I, at first, thought that they had all engineered a jailbreak, of sorts. But, if that had been the case, it made no sense for Isi to free anyone, except for her lover Afon. I knew that she was up to something when she took Jian and Nanook along with her. Once the DNA scanner found her in Detroit, in 1888, I must admit that I had myself a good, long, laugh. Couldn’t be more obvious than if she’d sent out a formal announcement of her intentions, right George?”

“I’m sorry President Mortterra,” George Murphy said, “I don’t understand.”

“Oh bullshit, George. She might be a few years early, but what the hell else is there in Detroit, except for Henry Ford?”

George gripped the arms of his chair, as a spasm of pain washed over him. Ignis Mortterra had slapped George’s leg enthusiastically, and broken it. Part of George’s femur was sticking up through his right thigh.

“Oh, so sorry about that George, sincerely, I am,” Ignis Mortterra said, and pressed a button that had a medical team there in seconds.

“Go ahead and give him something strong for the pain,” Mortterra said to one of the doctors that had responded to his summons.

“Thank you, President Mortterra,” George said, and sighed as the morphine took hold in his system.

“No problem George, I really am sorry about that, you know,” Mortterra said, pointing to George’s bandaged leg. “I just don’t seem to know my own strength these days … in any event, once I realized that Isi was in Detroit, her plan, as foolish as it is, became clear to me. Obviously, she hopes to save the world by stopping Henry Ford from developing the gas engine, just like she thought she could save the world with her little Immortality Project. Both are pipe dreams, Murphy; you know it, and I know it. Even if she stops Ford, another man will just come along and invent what she tried to prevent. Even Project Immortality has at least one fatal flaw. If you successfully inject every single human with those wonderful nanobots, what do we do, all feed on each other? If everyone lives, if everyone lives
forever
, we’d have to stop reproducing, or we’d quickly run out of room. And how, exactly, do you mandate worldwide sterility? Seems to me, no matter what happens, if we try to live forever, we make a dictatorship of the past, over the future,” Mortterra said.

“Your friend, Dr. Isidora Nizienko, believes that we can stop the end of the world. Me? I’m a rational and selfish human being, George,” Mortterra said. “I don’t believe that I can singlehandedly stop the end of the world, but I know for a fact that I can stop the end of my own personal world. I can save myself, and why shouldn’t I, since saving everyone else is impossible. Right, George?”

Receiving no response, Ignis Mortterra reached over to the somnolent George Murphy, and pinched his intravenous line shut, stopping the flow of his pain medication. Mortterra then tapped on George Murphy’s broken leg with his paintbrush. George gasped awake in pain, and Mortterra let go of the I.V. line.

“I said, better to save yourself if saving everyone isn’t possible, right George?”

“Yes, President Mortterra,” George said, through painfully clenched teeth.

“Anyway, so the reason they’re in Detroit is as obvious as it is stupid, but why did they go to England? And who is the extra set of DNA?” Mortterra said.

“I’ve really no idea, Mr. President,” George said, and flinched, expecting some form of brutality in response.

“Relax, George,” Ignis Mortterra said. “What good are that beautiful chair, and those perfect drugs, if you don’t let them do their job? Relax, I was just thinking out loud. It’s easy enough for me to find out on my own.”

Mortterra turned back to his computer.

“See George, here is a file containing all of the major historical events, going all the way back to the beginning of written history. I saved this as soon as the Infinmachine was ready for it’s first test run, so that I could constantly update it, and see if any changes to the historical record had occurred. I know what gets changed, and I can go back and correct it, if I want to,” Mortterra said.

“You can go back and correct it, unless the change in the past means that you no longer exist,” George Murphy said, with the hint of a smile on his face.

“Hah! Touché, Mr. Murphy, but don’t trouble yourself too much on my behalf. All of my ancestors, going as far back as I could trace, have been put under guard. It’s difficult, of course, for my soldiers to be discreet the further they go into the past, but they’ve remained unnoticed, so far … Oh my! Would you look at that? A change in the record, how exciting!”

Mortterra swung the computer monitor so that it was facing George Murphy. The screen was filled with stories about a serial murderer in London, a murderer who had not existed in the past, until Isi and the Immortals had traveled there.

“Did one of them do this?” George said.

“I can’t be sure that it was one of them, but they certainly had something to do with it … and, look at this,” Mortterra clicked onto the second of the two alerts that had flashed onto the screen, to inform him of changes to the historical record. “Dracula? A blood sucking Immortal from Transylvania – that is obviously a novel by someone who met Afon. Transylvania … Russia … same difference, right Murphy?”

Before George could respond, Mortterra continued, still scrolling down the screen. “You know George, this Dracula thing really kept going for a long time. It spawned a whole mythology, lots of books and movies, especially about a hundred years ago. It’s so funny. We all knew that the apocalypse was coming, we all knew that we’d caused it, but there was nothing that we could do to stop it, so we clung onto a vampire image to make ourselves believe that we could live forever too.

“Isi really tapped into a pretty deep seated human desire with that Immortality Project of hers, long before she herself was even born. Even that fucking boyfriend of hers was turned into a damn fictional superhero, a hundred years ago – a superhero and some kind of god of sex too, from what I can see here. Just look at this crap, George,” Mortterra said, and enlarged the image of a poster from a vampire movie.

“Can you believe it? All of this,” Mortterra said, and gestured at the computer monitor that displayed hundreds of years of vampire lore, “all of this from one little encounter with that writer, what was his name?”

“Dracula, I think, President Mortterra,” George said.

“No, no, George, that’s the character the writer based on Afon. No, the writers name, damn it, what was it? It sounded like broom … Bram. Bram Stoker, that’s it. This old brain hasn’t failed me yet,” Ignis Mortterra said, and pretended that he had remembered the name, though he had just reopened the file containing that information. “I really need a writer like that working for me; even Caesar wasn’t Caesar until Shakespeare came along, George. You know?”

“President Mortterra, with all due respect, I’m not sure why having a written record of your accomplishments would matter. When the Earth dies, your greatness will die as well,” George said.

Mortterra’s eyes widened with surprise.

“Oh, the Earth will die my boy,” Ignis Mortterra said, and smiled with open lips at George, “but my greatness will live for as long as I live … and I, rest assured, am going nowhere.”