That Nietzsche Thing (18 page)

#

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said
to myself and to Vivian at the same time. I was standing before the
Town Hall, before Constantine’s mobile HQ, but I was also still
back in Vivian’s apartment, sitting at the breakfast table.

“A trigger,” she replied then took a sip of
coffee. “Like all the Genies. Some mnemonic that kicks off Cain’s
Geneing. It will be something ironic. You know how Dark
thought.”

“It could be anything.”

“Exactly. But Dark left a clue. He liked to
play games; we know that much about him. With letters and numbers
and puzzles and ciphers. Somewhere, he encoded a cipher for us to
decode, a hint to Cain’s trigger, you just need to find it. And
before the sun sets.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Right here.”

“No,
where
are you?”

“Hidden. We’re waking up. Tebor and I. Cain
has already risen. You don’t have long.”

“No pressure, no pressure,” I exhaled, trying
to think. I turned a full three-sixty, looking around the
destruction. “Dark would have hidden it in plain sight. Those were
the kind of games Dark liked to play. Like checking PFC Elton into
a nursing home for a century, without anyone noticing anything out
of the ordinary. He’s looking down from heaven, right now and
laughing at me.”

I turned my eyes to the heavens, in the
futile hope that Dark might part the clouds and provide me with a
little divine inspiration. No such luck.

“That fucker isn’t up in heaven, I can tell
you that for free,” Vivian said across the breakfast table. She
smiled. I smiled back. I was also grinning like an idiot, standing
alone in the middle of the street.

“Wait,” I called out, as something about the
tattered banners over the Town Hall doors caught my eye. “That’s
it!”

“What’s it?” Vivian looked up from her
breakfast.

“There,” I pointed at the banner.
“Competence, Community, Compassion.”

“What about it?”

“C, C, C. It’s a Rosicrucian liturgy, right?
Co-opted by the NeoCons but originally Corpus, Cruor, Civitas,
right? The body, the blood, the state?”

“That’s right,” Vivian said.

“So, that came from Dark, correct? The three
C’s? I thought it was his puckish nod to the Geneing virus: C as in
the Roman numeral for one-hundred. C plus C plus C is 300. Batch
300. It’s encoded on the genetic marker of the Geneing virus. It
was the decrypt code for Dark’s last novel.”

“Yes?”

“But, what if Dark encoded still another
layer of meaning into that liturgy.”

“The trigger?”

“Exactly!” I exclaimed. In my mind’s eye, I
could see that Vivian had climbed to her feet in anticipation. Now
I had to deliver on the details. But the exact significance still
escaped me. I stared at the tattered banner, frantically
thinking.

“What is it?” Vivan asked.

“Just give me a second.”

“Sasha,” Vivian said, earnestly. “There isn’t
time. We’re already on the move...”

“Dark was a science fiction writer, right? A
speculative thinker. A cryptologist. He’d never have used something
as backward as Roman numerals...” The answer was right at the edge
of my consciousness. If I could just coax it into focus...but the
pull of Cain’s will was blurring my mind. I had to fight against
it. It was a constant strain. I closed my eyes and tried to focus
on Vivian in her PJ bottoms with her mess of bed-head. If I just
sunk back into Geneing for a few minutes...but no, there was no
time. If I returned to Vivian’s apartment, I’d never leave again. I
knew that. And the sun had almost set.

“C is the third letter in the alphabet,”
Vivian offered. “So three plus three plus three is nine...”

That was it! The revelation hit me like a
wave. Vivian was right. I mean, she was talking total bullshit, but
she was right!

“It’s not C the letter, but C the number,” I
whispered.

“You just said it
wasn’t
a Roman
numeral.”

“Not C for one-hundred,” I added with
excitement. “But C as in the hexadecimal!” O’Day had once bored me
with an explanation of how computers count. In a base greater than
ten, letters are used to represent the numbers we lack characters
for. Dark would have known this intimately, encoding his whole
novel by hand. “C isn’t the third letter of the alphabet, but the
hexadecimal number for twelve.”

“Twelve?” Vivian said in shock. “As in the
twelve apostles? The twelve tribes of Israel?”

“The twelve labors of Hercules, twelve months
in a year, twelve hours in half a day,
Twelve Monkeys, Twelve
Angry Men, Twelfth Night
.”

“The twelfth rib that Adam sacrificed to
create Eve,” Vivian added. That made us both pause.
Considering.

“MJ-12” I said ominously.

“That sounds like Dark’s sense of irony,”
Vivian added. She was fading. Something was happening. I was losing
sight of Vivian’s apartment in my mind.

I only had seconds left. “But it’s not
twelve. It’s twelve times twelve times twelve...”

It’s hard to explain that feeling you get
when you realize something you should have known all along. A
creepy, spin-chilling shock but also a profound sense of your own
stupidity.

“Twelve times twelve times twelve?” Vivian
said, she was now a great distance away.

“1768,” I answered.

“Of course,” Vivian said wistfully, her voice
almost lost in the great void between us.

“But it’s not 1768,” I answered, reaching for
my phone in my pocket. “It’s hexadecimal, remember? C times C times
C is...”

“What do you get?”

I paused, looking at my phone.

“Well?” Vivian squeaked. She’d almost
vanished into the ether.

“Do you know the Bible?” I asked her.

Chapter 25

The Genies hit the Feds’ battle line just
after dark. There weren’t many left, but Vivian and Tebor were at
the forefront of the assault. They tossed armored soldiers around
like rag dolls, tipped over tanks, and threw Humvees into walls.
Almost before the attacked had begun, Constantine ordered his men
to retreat.

He had to make it look good, but too many
people had already died.

Tebor was the first to come sniffing into the
Feds compound. Like any animal, he could smell a trap. Even one
that had not been set for him.

Genies followed him through the breach.
Inside the defenses, they engaged the soldiers and technicians in
hand-to-hand. Tebor prowled the chaos, growling at soldiers and
Genies alike. There was no one worthy for him to fight. But when
his eyes fell on me, sitting on the Town Hall steps, smoking a
cigarette, he paused.

“We thought you were dead,” Tebor grunted.
His words slurred together as he mouth fought against his
fangs.

“Where’s Cain?” I asked abruptly, putting out
my smoke and pulling myself up. “Where’s Vivian?”

“Cain sent me.”

“You’re no good,” I dismissed. “Go and get
Cain. Tell him I have those he seeks. Those who came here to
destroy him,” I waved back up at the Town Hall with my gun. “In
there.”

Tebor smiled. Or grimaced. For the creature,
both expressions were identical. He looked up at the night’s sky,
the first stars of the evening appearing above us. Something dark,
almost invisible, cut through the night air. It began to grow
cold.

Very cold, indeed.

The random skirmishes still underway began to
subside. Ice began to form on the cannon barrels of tanks. I pulled
my bomber in closer around me, the icy air biting at my fingertips.
I could see my breath clouding before me.

He was here.

The wind began to stir, the brass and debris
in the street began to jitter. Then the air pressure dropped
dramatically, and my ears popped, as everything seemed to be pulled
toward the center of the street. I staggered down the Town Hall
steps, irresistibly pulled toward the gathering gust. Then, as if
the whole city had sucked in a breath and released it, it pushed me
back, causing me to stumble and fall onto the stairs.

Materializing from nothing, Cain and Vivian
appeared in the center of the street, Cain in his fine suit, and
Vivian still dressed for the opera. Tebor walked up to his master
and whispered into his ear.

“Ah, excellent news, Detective.” Cain’s face
broadened into a wide smile. In his presence, there was no question
of where my loyalties lay. I was his servant. He was my master.
Never in a thousand lifetimes would I be able to betray him. That I
knew with all certitude.

Luckily, Special Agent Constantine had
prepared a surprise for Q. The NeoCons had not come to Seattle
unprepared to battle vampires.

“It’s a trap, Sire,” I whispered, half of my
mind fighting against the other half.

“What was that?” Cain stepped toward me. He
held out a hand and helped me up off the steps.

“It’s a trap, Sire,” I repeated. “I’m sorry.
I couldn’t—” I shook my head, fighting against myself. Some part of
me was able to hold my tongue.

“Don’t worry, Detective, I’m well aware—”
Cain began. But perhaps he wasn’t. In an instant the night became
day, as dozens of ultraviolet lights in the windows facing onto the
street flickered to life. The glare was scalding. I shielded my
eyes.

Cain, Vivian and Tebor writhed in pain. Where
the perfect, white light touched their flesh, they burned. Cain
screamed, falling to his knees before me. His visage bubbled and
boiled with blisters.

Vivian fell to the street, too, bringing her
hands to her face. She wailed in pain as her eyeballs in their
sockets caught alight, exploding into two flaming embers.

Only Tebor remained standing, smoke billowing
his head like a halo. Like a great oak in a forest, sawed through
to the core, he teetered on his feet.

“Now! Move! While they’re down!” a voice came
over a loudspeaker. The great doors of the Town Hall flew open as
TAC-30 came storming out of the building, centimeter rifles raised.
Constantine was in the lead.

From the storefronts, soldiers appeared
carrying shiny chains and manacles. Silver.

Tebor finally tumbled to the blacktop, and in
the glaring light, the soldiers fell on him and began to wrap him
in chains. One soldier got a collar around the blinded Vivian’s
neck, as smoke still poured from her eye sockets. She wailed in
pain as the silver came in contact with her skin.

But no one approached Cain as he lay crumpled
at my feet, smoldering in the bright light. TAC-30 stayed at a
respectful distance, keeping their weapons raised. Constantine
slowly approached with his pistol in his hand.

He moved down the steps until he was standing
above Cain.

“What the hell are you doing?” I yelled up at
Constantine.

“His weakness for ultraviolet light is well
documented,” Constantine said, paused just out of arm’s reach of
Cain. “We just need to coax him out of his hiding place.”

“No, no, this will just—”

“Thank you Detective, you’ve been most
helpful. We’ll take it from here.” Constantine waved in a squad of
waiting soldiers. They moved toward Cain, holding silver
chains.

“What are you going to do with him?”

“I’m sure 1728 will be overjoyed at the
return of their test subject.”

I paused in shock, mouth lolling open, as the
troopers quickly bound Cain up in silver chains. I saw the truth of
it now: Constantine and the NeoCons had never intended to destroy
Cain. Or free him, either. They’d come to capture him and return
him to his cage. Return him to 1728, so they might continue the
work that Dark had interrupted over a century ago.

The Rosicrucians hadn’t infiltrated the
highest ranks of the U.S. Government – the highest ranks of the
U.S. Government had infiltrated the Rosicrucians, perverting their
cause to enable the recovery of the Cain subject.

I had it all one-hundred perfect wrong. For
such a smart guy, I sure was pretty fucking stupid.

I was all alone.

To my left was Cain and his Genie army. The
enslavement of mankind.

To my right was Constantine and his NeoCons,
their New World Order and their three C’s. Were they any
better?

I was all alone.

No, that wasn’t true. I still had Dark. Dead
as he was, he was still standing there with us on that
rubble-strewn street. He still had his last trump card to play.

And there was Vivian. Blind as she was, bound
in silver shackles, laying in the street.

What an army, I said to myself, with which to
save the world.

“Private First Class Michael Elton,”
Constantine began as his men tightened the chains to Cain. “You are
under arrest for the crime of...” Constantine had to think.
“Vampirism. You are deemed to be a dangerous biological threat. You
will be taken from here to a place of quarantine—”

“That is more than enough,” Cain said softly,
bound in his restraints.

“What was that?” Constantine asked, backing
up slightly, raising his weapon. The TAC-30 Team followed his cue
and raised their weapons.

“That will be more than enough,” Cain said
again, louder and clearer.

“What—”

Cain pulled himself erect, coiling up like a
cobra, dancing to the charmer’s flute. His skin still bubbled and
popped in the glaring white light, and he was still bound tight in
his silver chains, but he raised his head in defiance.

“I said enough!” he screamed. His final word
exploded like a thunderclap, shattering glass, sending shards and
sparks cascading from the ultraviolet lights.

The street was again bathed in darkness.

Without effort, Cain flexed his arms and
shattered the chains that held him.

“I’ve had enough of this game,” Cain said,
smoothing out his suit.

Behind him, Tebor and Vivian climbed to their
feet. With effort, they fought against their chains and sent them
clattering to the ground.