The Meridian Gamble (61 page)

He leans over and puts the ring
around my neck, snapping it together in the back. It’s flat and metallic, yet
somehow fits the contours of my frame. It almost looks like one of Lina’s thick
necklaces, but this is no piece of jewelry, and there are small flashing lights
on the underside of the device.

And I realize it reminds me of the
same collars the young vampires wear, the one Angel had on when we last met.

“What is this thing?” I ask,
hesitantly.

“It’s insurance, should they try to
trick us. Actually, it’s based on the vampire designs. We’ve started wearing
them ourselves on our missions, just in case.”

“To blow yourselves up?”

“Exactly. We’re Luminos. We don’t
fear death.”

“Wow, this keeps getting better and
better,” I say. “You’re trading me to the vampires, and now you’re putting a
collar on my neck?”

“We’re giving you to the vampires,”
the General says. “But no one said anything about letting them keep you.”

He winks at me and smiles. But I’m
just a bit worried to think of what he has planned.

On the screen, Roland and a woman
get out of the cars, but his companion is wearing some sort of mask, and I
can’t really see who it is. I wonder for a moment if it’s Marion, but that
doesn’t make sense. This person seems taller and more lithe, and I suspect that
it’s Lina.

They each step out of separate
vehicles, and I can see one of the drivers who remains behind. A shock of blond
hair flashes through the window, and I wonder if it’s Angel.

“Come on,” the General says. And we
begin filing out of the room.

We all step out into the corridor,
and by now, the sun has gone down outside. I can see that it’s dusk through the
open hanger doors, which makes sense, since the vampires are stronger at night.
They wouldn’t have come here otherwise.

Soldiers form two lines down the
central walkway, at least 20 or 30 of them, men and women, all armed and spaced
at intervals. And two figures come striding through them, fearlessly. It’s
Roland and his vampire companion, or at least I assume she’s a vampire. As they
get closer, I can see that they both wear catsuits similar to mine, both dark
and armored, and the woman has a helmet on that looks like something from a
video game. But I don’t need to see her now to know that it’s Lina. I can tell
from the way she walks, and of all the vampires, I know she’s one of the few
who has my back.

Lina carries a gun that’s huge and
intimidating, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. I wonder if it even fires
bullets, or maybe shoots laser pulses.

As she approaches, I hug her
warmly, despite the strange circumstances. But it’s for a reason.

“Father,” is the one word that I
say, in a whisper. Because even with her vampire senses, she might not know who
he is right away.

Lina nods, and through the mask, I
can see the emotion in her eyes over seeing me again. And I don’t have to look
at the General to know he’s watching us with interest.

I turn to Roland, and he also looks
like a superhero in his black armor, which his white hair contrasts with. And
the suit hugs his form nicely, accenting his muscles and large frame. I’m not
sure if it’s the residual venom in my system, or a reflection of the past, but
a familiar desire for him rises in me. But it feels like a betrayal of Adam,
and I push it away.

Despite all my conflicting
emotions, I feel a bit safer now that he’s here.

“Meridian,” he says. “I’m sorry
that it’s come to this.”

Roland says it as though he’s
responsible for what’s happened, which he isn’t. If anything, I’ve brought this
upon myself. But still, his remorse affects me.

“No worries,” I utter, unsure of
what else to say.

“Let’s get this over with,” Roland
says.

And he walks past me, toward the
General.

“I’m assuming my blood will do?”

“Absolutely,” the General says,
with a shit-eating grin.

He turns, and a young woman who
looks like a medical technician approaches him, carrying a device that
resembles some sort of hypodermic gun. Roland unzips a sleeve of his armor, and
rolls it back. The material is far more pliable than I would have imagined. And
as the girl steps closer, Roland smiles down at her. She gives him a smile of
her own, bashfully, and I can tell she’s already swayed by his charisma,
despite her efforts to seem professional.

She puts the gun to his skin
carefully, but when she presses the trigger, a look of concern crosses her
face. The woman draws it away, confused.

“Oh! The needle broke.”

“You’re going to have to do this
the old-fashioned way,” Roland says, again with a charming smile.

“Excuse me,” the woman mutters. And
she scurries back down one of the hallways.

“I would have thought the Luminos
would be better prepared,” Roland says.

“We are,” the General says. And he
snaps the device from his wrist, the one that’s connected to the bomb around my
neck. It comes off from the band, apparently, and he holds it up to Roland with
a smile.

“We always cover all the angles.”

Roland stares at the disc I’m
wearing under duress, and he looks less than pleased. In the background, I can
tell the soldiers that surround us are getting antsy. At least one of them is
Luminos, but the rest interspersed around him have looks of amazement on their
faces. I suspect they’ve never seen vampires before, and are just a bit
unnerved.

“Do I know you?” Roland asks the
General.

“We’ve met, once or twice. If you
can call it that. You killed me, back in Egypt. Though I suspect you only
thought I was a foot soldier at the time.”

“Ah. And when else?”

“That would be giving away too
much,” he says.

Roland only stares back at him,
trying to garner what visual clues he can, no doubt. But I’m guessing he can’t
crack the General’s mind, at least not without more time.

To make matters all the more
confusing, Arie and Lenore appear once again, in their weird holographic forms.
They’re wearing new outfits, too. Arie has on a black suit like Roland’s, but
Lenore has donned a funky getup that looks like it came from a Japanese comic.
She’s in black, with a short ruffled skirt and thigh-high army boots, with
aviator glasses up on her forehead. She looks like a cross between a schoolgirl
and a ninja-cheerleader.

“We have the secondary cars in
place,” Arie says.

But Roland only smiles. It seems as
though he has some angles covered, too.

The nurse comes back with a rolling
medical table, and pulls out a syringe, tearing open a needle from a sterilized
packet. She dabs Roland’s arm with alcohol, and tries to pierce the skin of his
arm.

“Gently, do it very gently,” he
says, coaching her.

“Shoot!” the woman says. And I can
tell that the needle breaks again.

“It’s all right, give it one more
try,” Roland says.

I roll my eyes and sigh in
frustration at the General, who still has his thumb on the wretched device that
could blow off my head at any moment.

Finally, the nurse tries again, and
I can see her drawing Roland’s blood up into the syringe.

“Stop, that’s enough,” he says.

She turns back to the table, and
the General watches her, almost drooling. She injects half of the sample into
one test tube, and half into another. The woman passes the tiny containers off
to the General, who in turn, hands one to Evelyn and another to a nearby
soldier.

“Go,” he says.

And they run in opposite
directions. Evelyn gets in an electrical cart, and drives off to the waiting
elevator doors that lead to the underground levels. The man runs down the row
of soldiers. I can hear him get into one of the jeeps, and he drives off
through the open door.

And the General turns to Roland.

“Take care of her, vampire,” the
man who was once my father says.

“I will,” Roland says.

“I am very serious,” the General
says. “She’s special, this one.”

“I’m well aware of how special she
is, more than you could possibly imagine,” Roland says. “And now, we had an
arrangement.”

“You’re right.”

I watch what he does with
trepidation, fearing the General might blow off my head, just to spite them.
But he pushes some buttons on the control device, and the lights seem to go off
on my choker. Roland removes it from me slowly. But I’m shocked. The second
it’s off, he throws it upward, and for a moment, everyone watches. When it
nears the roof of the structure, Lina fires on it. The necklace explodes far
more forcefully than I would have imagined, which is frightening, because it
could have been my head.

And there’s a hole in the ceiling
that reveals the night sky.

From that moment on, everything
happens so fast.

I watch the General run, off down a
corridor. And the soldier who’s Luminos looks to us angrily.

“Fuck this,” he screams. And the
man lifts his gun.

Roland stands between me and the
bullets, and raises his hand once more. The Luminos soldier floats in the air,
and screams as he crashes through the wall of one of the offices, as bullets
spray wildly from his gun. The rest of the soldiers, the ones whose minds
aren’t protected, scream in pain, falling to the ground as they clutch their
heads. And Lina stands with a hand to her temple, torturing them all
telepathically.

Before I know what’s happening,
Roland grabs me, holding onto me tightly. He jumps, and we’re flying through
the air, out the hole in the ceiling, and my stomach drops with a sickening
feeling. I vaguely get a glimpse of Lina right behind us, but everything is
moving at a dizzying pace.

We’re in the desert, and Roland is
running, carrying me like I’m a rag doll. The scenery moves past us, far more
quickly than I would have thought possible. Bullets land on the terrain around
us, and I catch a glimpse of a helicopter in pursuit, but somehow he loses the
machine.

Finally, we reach a car out in the
desert, another white Range Rover. He sets me down, and I take a moment to
stretch my back and roll my head about, because I feel like I have whiplash
from my rough journey.

“Meridian, we need to hurry,”
Roland says.

“Okay.”

I get in the car, and Lenore is in
the driver’s seat, dressed in her ninja cheerleader outfit.

“Hey, Meridian.”

“Hey.”

“Ready to go, boss?”

“Punch it,” he says.

The second the door closes, she
takes off. Lenore drives full speed through the desert, and with the lights
off, no less, which confuses me at first. Then I realize she can see the path
ahead with her keen vampire vision, just as clearly as if it was daytime.

As we drive, Roland looks out the
windows, scanning the skies and terrain for hidden enemies. I can hear the
sounds of a helicopter nearby, firing shots into the desert, and I’m filled
with worry.

“Is that Lina that they’re
chasing?”

“No, it’s us,” he says. “I’m
working very hard to imprint their minds with an image of our car, to follow in
the wrong direction. But don’t worry, the Luminos aren’t trying very hard to
give chase. They must be more interested in their little sample of blood.”

“And do you really think it was
smart to give them that? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful. But I really don’t
think I’m worth the risk.”

“I do,” he says, with a smile. “And
what can they do? Reverse the vampire condition? It’s impossible. And our blood
is impervious to disease. Any virus they create will destroy all life on this
planet, so they’ll only be killing themselves. Let them have their fun in some
dark little lab, we’ll just hunt them down and destroy it all anyway.”

Roland sounds confident, but I’m
nervous over what he says, because I’m convinced the Luminos plans are far more
dangerous than he realizes.

“There are some clothes in the
back, if you want to change.”

I hadn’t even realized we were
close to a highway, but the Range Rover pulls onto smooth road, and with the
drive being less bumpy, I look to the rear of the car. There are two duffle
bags that I unzip, and one seems to contain more feminine clothing. The other
must be for Roland. I grab mine, and pull out a simple blue dress and a pair of
pumps. With some effort, I start pulling off my body armor, but it’s no easy
task to unzip and unfasten it all.

Roland looks over to me and smiles.

“I’d offer a hand, but I don’t
think my mind can handle it with everything else that’s going on,” he says,
with a flirtatious smile.

“I’ll be quite fine on my own,” I
say. And it’s hard for me not to smile back.

When I get down to my bra and
panties, Roland’s grin widens just a bit, and I get the feeling he’s watching
me from the corner of his eye.

When I’m changed, he reaches back
for his own bag. He strips out of his body armor, and throws the pieces in the
back. And I can’t help but to peek at his naked form, also. Roland doesn’t have
any underwear on beneath the suit, but he slips on some white cotton briefs, the
kind that I love, and I’m embarrassed that I can’t pull my eyes away from his
form.

“Are you reminded of the good old
days?” he says, with a smile. “When our love was in first bloom?”

“It’s not fair,” I say. “I still
have your venom running through my system. It’s clouding my mind.”

“Actually, it’s not. I may be a
monster, but I’m not completely heartless,” Roland says. “I made sure to bury
my fangs in another before I bit you, so that the dosage would be low. The
remnants should be gone from your body by now.”

And I’m stunned by what he says.

“Unless you’re lying to me again,”
I say. “Trying to manipulate me.”

“No. No more manipulations,” Roland
says. “I owe you better than that.”

He seems serious about what he
says, and I’m confused to think that I’m not being moved by his bite, that my
emotions and lust for Roland are all my own. It shouldn’t come as a surprise,
I’ve always been wildly attracted to him. But it was easier when I could blame
it on the effect of his fangs, and I’m no longer sure exactly how deep my own
feelings run.