Operation (34 page)

“Well, Reese,” Smith began in his usual sarcastic tone, “I see you have your hands full. See, I knew you were into guys,” he added indicating Dimitri. His next remark was made directly to the vampire, “Carrying him over the threshold, Big Guy?”

Reese struggled against the vampire’s hold, trying to loosen the iron grip upon him. Dimitri ignoring the futile attempts walked up to Smith’s cell door and ripped it off with one hand. He tossed it aside effortlessly the clang echoing loudly against the cement walls. The iron door slid across the floor for several feet before coming to rest with one last deafening clang of steel upon cement.

“What the fuck!” cried Smith.

Dimitri tossed Reese onto the floor next to Smith who’d jumped to his feet and stood looking at the vampire’s fury being unleashed in front of him. Dimitri’s eyes burned a deep crimson red, his fangs were extended fully and his fingernails had grown to several inches in length.

“Watch!” he instructed Reese. “Watch and see what it is to be a vampire, a murderer of mortal humans who kills uncontrollably and without conscience of what they do. Watch what it is you wish to become!”

Using one hand, Dimitri picked Smith up from the floor where he stood, obviously paralyzed from what he was seeing transpire only a few feet away. With his free hand, Dimitri sliced a long gash through the man’s throat using one razor sharp fingernail. There was an audible exhalation from the exposed windpipe as if all the breath had decided to vacate Smith’s body.

Dimitri then looked toward Reese who cowered on the floor in horror. When their eyes met, Reese looked away not wanting to see what was happening. Dimitri lowered Smith so that he lay next to Reese. The spook’s eyes were wide with horror and he tried to scream but only bloody air bubbles escaped his severed throat. Dimitri grabbed hold of Reese’s head and yanked it upright so that he was forced to look toward the suffering man.

“What? You don’t have the stomach for this? Watch and learn!” Dimitri shouted in a voice that no longer sounded human, but rather as an animal who snarled with the intense ferocity of the kill. Dimitri sank his teeth into Smith’s flesh and savagely sucked the blood from the body. The sound of chewing and sucking coincided with feeble struggles as Smith tried to fight back.

A few seconds later, Dimitri withdrew from Smith’s throat, his lips and teeth covered with the man’s blood. His eyes were so red that they looked to be filled with blood as well. He looked toward Reese, “Now,” he said in a voice somewhat calmer than before but with an edge of sharpness in his tone, “it’s your turn!”

“No!” cried Reese, his voice sounding weak and without authority.

“Yes, you shall,” Dimitri said as he forcefully pulled Reese closer so that his head was now over Smith’s throat. “Just dive into a human being and drink what remains of his life. Finish him!”

Dimitri pushed Reese’s face into what was once the perfectly smooth flesh of a man’s throat, but what was now a mangled ruin of flesh.

“Nooooo!” screamed Reese, the sound of his voice was gurgled as his lips tried to move against the onslaught of blood that oozed from the open throat.

“Drink! Damn you! Drink!” screamed Dimitri. “See what it is to have to depend on another for your life’s sustenance. This man is on death’s doorstep because of you! Can you live with that? What about the next victim! Or the one after that? Maybe they will have a family? What about the children who shall now be fatherless because you needed to satisfy your hunger! What of their love? Is it worth all that!”

Reese was only able to murmur garbled responses to his questions, but Dimitri could hear and sense the man’s revulsion. Dimitri released his grip and rose from the floor to stand. Smith’s body made its last reflexive jerk as life slipped from him.

Reese gasped at the air as he slid on the floor crawling back away from the body as quickly as he could manage. He stayed on his hands and knees until he slammed into the corner of the cell. His face was smeared with blood. He looked at Smith’s body and then at Dimitri with eyes wide in disbelief and terror. He turned away and began to wretch into the corner; his spittle red with Smith’s blood.

Dimitri returned to normal, his anger and frustration of the attack fading away. His nails receded, his canines retreating into his jaw. He stared at Reese knowing what he had done had been drastic, but he had seen no other alternative. He looked away hiding a guilty expression as he felt the blood of Smith coursing through his body. It had been a long time since he had taken a human, and although he hated doing it, the human blood created an exhilarating effect as it regenerated his own body in the way that animal blood never would.

“Is this what you want, Commander Reese? Is this the life you choose?” asked Dimitri in a calm voice.

Reese said nothing. He remained sitting on the floor spitting as he tried to clear the taste from his mouth.

“Animals can only provide so much for your body. If you think you will never have to take a human life, you would be fooling yourself. You will have to kill in the end.”

“You didn’t have to kill him,” Reese said, his voice sounding raw as he spoke in between the spitting.

“He was inherently evil in ways you will be grateful not to learn.” Dimitri added. “I made one of my God-like decisions as you called it earlier. I thought he should die. It is so much easier to destroy than it is to create. If you create, you must hope that what you have achieved is worth the risk. To destroy brings about finality.”

Reese said nothing.

“Then what…” Dimitri began but stopped as he heard the sound of footsteps approaching.

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Christina heard the commotion and headed toward the confinement area. As she entered, she was not prepared for what she saw. John was sitting in the corner of the cell; his lips and lower part of his face covered in blood. Smith lay on the floor with his throat torn out. Dimitri stood just outside of the cell watching Reese intently.

“John,” she murmured feeling nearly overcome with fear for him. What had he done? She fought the instinct that demanded that she rush to help him. She hesitated with the thought, something else is going on here; he wouldn’t have killed Smith. She turned to face Dimitri.

“What’s going on?”

“Dimitri said nothing. He merely continued to clean his face of what she could smell was Smith’s blood.

“Tell me now!”

“Commander Reese was experiencing what it is like to be one of us,” he said simply. “To see if it is truly what he desires to become.”

“This is madness,” she said as she felt her fear turning to anger. She knew that Dimitri would not turn John, so this was about one thing: Fear. “I thought you would be reasonable about this,” she said to Dimitri.

“I’m the only one who is being reasonable,” replied Dimitri, “he must be shown that this is not what he desires as much as you must understand that he cannot be changed.”

“Don’t you think I know that!” she screamed at Dimitri. “This was not necessary!” She turned from Dimitri and went into the cell. She knelt down and began to help Reese stand. He tried to push her away but she strengthened her hold on him and raised him from the floor. She could see the fear and anger in his eyes.

“John,” she struggled to find the words, “let’s get you cleaned up,” she said. “I’m so sorry he did this to you.”

She felt his resistance soften and then his grip tighten on her for support. “Can you walk?” she asked.

“Yeah…think so,” he said, “just get me the hell out of here please. I feel so…dirty.”

She led him past Dimitri without a glance and out to one of the showers in the large sleeping area. She let him go and turned the handles. He didn’t bother taking off his clothes before stepping into the steaming water. Over the sounds of the water, she could hear him retching.

“John,” she called, “I’ll get you some clothes. Be right back.”

She left the room in search of clothing in one of the other storerooms. As she searched, she thought about what Dimitri had done and her own feelings at seeing John lying helpless on the floor. She wondered if she had knowingly blocked from her own mind what Dimitri had understood all along. He’d known how John would react once forced to see what his life would be if he chose to become a vampire. Everything that he found revolting now, would become a way of life for him.

Yet she had accepted the changes relatively easily as had Dimitri. In some ways she found it hard to comprehend his reactions in comparison to her own at the change so many years ago. Why were they so different?

As she thought, she continued to shift through piles of old clothing until she found some uniform jumpsuits and picked out a size she thought would fit him. She stood and shook it out seeing it was a standard military style flight suit that she had seen in books. Unlike the clothes she was wearing, she immediately recognized the fact that the style had not changed in at least the 60 or so years that had passed since the clothing had been stored. The concept struck her as amusing that this clothing had not changed because apparently it was still as functional as when it was originally designed.

That was an interesting idea. Were people the same way? Were Dimitri and she alike because they came from the same time period? Was this why John was different because he came from a different time? Had the social, philosophical, and moral changes over humanity’s passage on Earth changed the concepts of the mortal soul? Had time changed the human outlook to a point of what was conceivable and what was not? As people gave up superstition, had humanity itself become more precious to the human race?

Enough! She told her mind as it spun with possibilities of philosophical debate. She took the flight suit and returned to Reese. He still stood in the shower but there were no more sounds of retching. “John,” she called, “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” he said.

“I found a flight suit,” she said. “I’ll leave it here. I’ll be in the other room. Okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “Give me a few minutes.”

She placed the flight suit on a wooden bench outside of the shower and followed her senses to some sort of lounge area where she found Dimitri sitting at one of the tables.

“How is he?” he asked.

“What” You’re concerned now after what you did?” she said not attempting to hide her anger.

“I did what had to be done,” Dimitri said flatly. “You know that.”

A few seconds passed before she spoke. “He’s still getting cleaned up,” she said and then threw out a question that surprised even her, “Why are we so different?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Have you ever met a modern day vampire? I mean one that was recently changed?”

“Only the girls,” he answered.

“Why is that?” she asked. Before he could answer she continued, “What I’m getting to is if there are other vampires, which obviously there are,” she said indicating herself, “why do we not know of them?”

“We are solitary creatures,” he answered.

“Do you believe that?” she asked. “What proof of that do you have?”

“It is what I was told by Alexander.”

“That just doesn’t make sense.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Any race or species that seeks to survive forms communities. They seek protection in numbers from outside forces that would jeopardize their survival.”

“It is what I seek now,” Dimitri asserted. “You will join our group along with the girls. We do this in order to protect one another and survive.”

“That’s my point,” she said. “Why now?”

“I do not follow what you are trying to say?”

“Why now?” she repeated. “You have been around all these years, and not only have you never joined with others, you’ve never even met any others. Why now? Why all of a sudden is there this big change?”

“Evolution?” he offered.

“Possibly, she agreed, “but what if it’s something else. What if there are no others?”

“What are you implying?” he asked.

“If there are no others, then perhaps we do not have the capacity to create. You and I have both agree that we feel strongly against creating others—perhaps that is because we are not able to do so. Something inside of us, some genetic trait of our kind, prevents us from doing it. Perhaps we are all what remains of our kind.”

“But Josip created the two girls. This destroys your theory.”

“Or does it suggest that he was one of the few that had the ability to procreate?” she suggested. “Perhaps limited reproduction is some failsafe mechanism of our kind.”

“You suggest much,” Dimitri said, “but what does any of it have to do with us at this moment?”

“Change.” She said simply. “Everything changes. We change as well as the mortals.”

“Be specific,” said Dimitri.

“As we are not the same mortals as when we were created, the mortals are not the same either. Evolution has changed both species. In some ways we have drawn closer together and in others we have grown further apart. Evolution is placing us onto a new path.”

Dimitri’s eyes widened at her assumption. “Are you implying that…”

“Christina?”

Dimitri and Christina turned in the direction of the voice. Reese emerged from the other room wearing the flight suit. His hair was wet from his shower and his complexion so pale, the lines of his face appeared deepened and he looked years older. His eyes fixated upon Dimitri.

“I should go,” said Dimitri as Andre stepped into the room.

“There is a coded message from Samantha,” he said, his voice sounding anxious.

“What does it say?”

“No option but to take by force,” Andre replied. “Move quickly, chain of command deteriorating.”

Dimitri and Christina turned their gazes toward Reese. “Commander?” said Dimitri, “Your suggestion?”

Reese’s gaze still focused upon Dimitri. “We end this once and for all.”

“And your plan is to what?” asked Dimitri.

Reese’s eyes became sharply focused. “I want you to get the bodies of Smith and the other dead agent and burn them.”

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