Undead to the World (35 page)

“That’s the procedure. I know your memories feel like they really happened, but—”

It’s my turn to laugh. “No, that’s not it. It’s a basic problem in logic. You can’t
mess with people’s thought processes on a physical level—including memories—and get
any kind of useful data about their genuine reaction to a given situation. It’s like
the old joke about the scientist who teaches a frog to jump when it hears a bell,
then immerses it in boiling water and notes that it no longer jumps when the bell
sounds.”

“I don’t see—”

“He concludes that boiling water makes frogs deaf. We’re the frogs, Cassius; Ahaseurus
can get us to jump or he can boil our brains, but
he can’t do both.
”

He frowns. I can see him struggling with what I just told him, and I honestly don’t
know how he’s going to react.

“This is unacceptable,” he says flatly.

He points the gun at Stoker and fires.

TWENTY-TWO

The Ruger makes one hell of a bang when it goes off. And one hell of a mess.

The impact blows a hole in Stoker’s chest, bounces him off the back of the couch and
forward onto the coffee table.

Cassiar eyes the body calmly. “Too much chaos,” he says. “Unmanageable. This is much
better.”

My ears are ringing and my stomach is in free fall. I don’t know if Cassiar is going
to shoot me next, or execute Charlie. I’m afraid to even open my mouth.

But I do, anyway.

“You’re right about one thing,” I say. “Your memories
have
been tampered with, even more than you know. You’re not a field agent.”

His face is the careful blank of an assassin. He doesn’t remember being the director
of the NSA, he doesn’t remember being my lover. Most likely he doesn’t remember the
centuries of his undead existence before we met, or any of the human women he fell
in love with and watched die.

I’m going to do my damndest to reach out to him, to touch that part of him that loves
me.

I’m going to fail.

And then I’m going to kill him.

That’s the script that Ahaseurus wrote: Cassius dies at my hand, without remembering
me. Heartbreaking and tragic, no?

No.

“Have it your way,” I say. “This is an intel-ops scenario. What’s the objective?”

“Survival, containment, and recruitment. Disseminate the pire virus as widely as possible
while eliminating all thrope vectors.”

It’s a plausible enough explanation; intelligence agencies are always running worst-case
simulations, and a thrope/pire conflict over the colonization of an alternate Earth
is unfortunately all too possible. In fact, since the huge power requirements necessary
for dimensional transfer make a large invading force impractical, the best way to
do it would be exactly what Cassiar is describing: send a lone agent and get him to
turn as many of the locals as possible. Of course, then you have the problem of controlling
them … but the last time I raised a logical objection, Cassiar shot one of my allies.
I need to choose my words carefully. “How are you planning to disseminate anything
when we’re trapped inside the town’s borders?”

“With these.” He points to the two books. “Obviously, this is more than a simple infiltration
scenario. The storm, the Gallowsman, and his soldiers represent this reality’s mystic
opposition, their attempt to keep the situation contained. Those aspects weren’t in
the initial briefing, but obviously we were meant to figure that out for ourselves.”

“Soldiers?” I ask.

“The road crew. In order to successfully carry out the mission, we need to overcome
them and use the exit. Once free of the town’s confines, I should have no problem
triggering a rapidly spreading pandemic.”

I can’t let that happen. But he’s the one with the gun, the vampiric reflexes, and
the two powerful mystic artifacts. I’ve got a bartender with a broken leg. That, and …

I notice something then. It doesn’t make sense for a second, and then it does.
No,
I think to myself.
No, you can’t do that.

But I have to. It’s my only chance, even if it breaks my heart. I make a vow to track
down Ahaseurus in whatever hell he’s currently burning in, and make sure that no matter
how much he’s suffering, it gets worse. “You’ve missed one important factor.”

“Which would be?”

“The spell book. It’s the right weapon to use against the Gallowsman, but only if
you know how. You just killed the guy I was going to use. How’s your shamanistic training?”

I hold my breath. The Cassius I know would be able to use that spell book, but I’m
pretty sure this version can’t. Ahaseurus suppressed Jimmy Zhang’s sorcerous expertise,
and would have done the same to any other shaman.

“I’m not a shaman,” Cassiar says. “But your friend Azura is.”

I let a glance flicker toward the bedroom door, ever so briefly. “True. But the only
way to contact her is through a certain DVD—one that’s safely hidden away.”

He smiles. I can almost see the hook go through his lip. “I’m sure it is. But I have
my suspicions about where it might be … let’s go into the bedroom, shall we? I’ll
take the weaponry and books with us so Charlie won’t be tempted to get up to any mischief—not
that he can move very fast with that broken leg.”

I keep my face resolutely neutral while Cassiar unloads the shotgun and pockets the
shells, then sticks my scythes—closed—in his waistband. He keeps the books in one
hand and my gun in the other, and motions me toward the door. About as good as I can
hope for.

I pause with my hand on the doorknob. God, I hope this works.

I open the door, walk through quickly, take two steps and turn. Cassiar is keeping
a certain professional distance—you never get too close to someone while holding a
gun or similiar ranged weapon on them—but he can’t let me get too far away in case
I’m planning on doing something stupid.

But I’m not the one he should be worried about.

Cassiar steps into the room. That’s when my brave, loyal, incredibly smart dog—who
hasn’t made a single sound since Cassiar showed up—lunges from where he’s been waiting
and locks his jaws around Cassiar’s wrist. Pires are strong but Saint Bernards are
heavy, and Galahad has the advantage of both surprise and leverage; he hauls Cassiar’s
gun hand down so it’s no longer aimed at me.

I lunge forward, grab a scythe from Cassiar’s wastband and yank it free.

Cassiar recovers. Rather than try to shake his attacker off, he uses his other hand
to bring a fist down on top of Galahad’s head. I’m going to have nightmares about
the sound it makes for the rest of my life.

There’s no time for anything fancy. There’s a small silver cone at the top of each
scythe, actually the short end of the swiveling blade; when the scythe is open and
the blade locked into position, the cone juts out the opposite side at a forty-five
degree angle. But when the scythe is closed, like it is now, the cone turns the handle
into an eighteen-inch ironwood stake with a silver tip.

I drive it through Cassiar’s heart.

His eyes go wide in disbelief. There’s an instant that lasts forever while I wait
for him to explode into very, very fine dust.

He bursts into flames instead.

I yank the stake out, ignore the burning body, and kneel over my dog. “Galahad? Gally?”
I say.

He raises his head groggily from where he’s lying, and a surge of relief goes through
me.
He’s okay. He’s going to be okay.

But then I see the blood running through his fur, and I realize how wrong I am.

Charlie’s already managed to stump his way over, and the first thing he does is use
a blanket to douse the fire. “Oh, hell,” he says. He’s not talking about Cassiar.
“Oh, fucking hell.”

Galahad looks up at me with those big, red-rimmed brown eyes, his tongue lolling out
the side of his mouth. He tries his best to lick my hand.

And then he dies.

*   *   *

People who have never lost a dog don’t know what’s it like.

I’m not going to be crass and compare it to losing a child. As an FBI profiler, I
dealt with people who had lost children, often in horrible ways,and that’s a very
particular kind of torment I don’t want to get into here. No, losing a dog is simpler
and more selfish than parental grief, because it doesn’t have all the what-ifs attached:
what they could have done, where they could have gone, who they could have married.
When you grieve for a human being, you’re mourning the loss of many things, both for
them and for you.

But a dog doesn’t have that kind of unused potential waiting for him. He’s just a
dog, and he’s perfectly happy being exactly what he is. A dog has few, if any, regrets.
What he mainly has is love—love for life, for food, for playing. And most of all,
for you.

That’s what you’re mourning, more than anything. That pure, unselfish love. That trust.
That loyalty. When your dog dies you feel like a failure, because he trusted you and
you let him down.

And even though you did, he still loves you.

I know this wasn’t really Galahad. He was just some big Saint Bernard that Ahaseurus
found and implanted with stolen memories, like most everyone in town. I don’t care.
Wherever he came from, he was just as brave—and nearly as smart—as my own Gally, and
I won’t ever forget his sacrifice.

He was a good dog.

*   *   *

When I’m done crying, I stand up and stick the scythe in my belt. Charlie hands me
the other one, having rescued it from the corpse before it could burn. “So,” he says.
“Not Cassius, huh? How’d you know?”

“Couple things,” I say, wiping my eyes. “First, I couldn’t believe Cassius could ever
be brainwashed into believing a cover story like that; too many holes in the logic.
He would have unraveled it in no time, especially with the spells degrading. This
guy believed it wholeheartedly.

“Second, Cassius wouldn’t throw away a possible asset like Stoker in a situation like
this, not unless he was an immediate threat. And third, he wouldn’t have fallen for
an obvious ruse like my glance toward the bedroom, not even if he was blind drunk
and brain-damaged. When I put all that together, I could see that it was just another
Ahaseurus mind game.”

“So Cassius—”

“Oh, Cassius
is
here, and he
is
the master vampire. Cassiar was just a proxy, a pire created by Cassius’s blood,
his vampiric essence amped up through
Wizard of Oz
ry—that’s how he could ignore the improvised cross I shoved in his face. He was a
stand-in, a stunt double; the fact that he burned instead of dusting proves it. Kill
the real Cassius and there’d be nothing left but free-floating pire molecules.”

Charlie’s rearmed himself—he even grabbed the shotgun shells from Cassiar’s jacket
pocket before they cooked off—and now he hands me the spell book and the graphic novel.
“So where’s the real thing?”

“I’ll show you.”

We go outside and get in the car, me in the driver’s seat. The storm overhead is finally
making noise, but not thunder—it’s more like the pop and hiss of static, a bad connection
threatening to turn worse. As we drive through the deserted streets, I’ve got the
uneasy feeling we’re being watched, but not from any of the buildings.

From overhead.

When we pull up in front of the house, I expect Charlie to say something like “Oh.
Really? Guess that makes sense.” But I don’t get any reaction at all, because of course
it’s Charlie Allen that would recognize where we are, not Charlie Aleph.

We get out, walk up the sidewalk. I knock on the front door. There’s no immediate
answer, but I didn’t expect one. We wait.

He gets to the door a few minutes later, blinking in mild surprise and confusion.
He doesn’t get many visitors, and this is the second time I’ve been here in the last
few days. “Jace? Hi! I was wondering when you’d come by with your laptop—”

“Hi, Damon,” I say. “Can we come in?”

He invites us inside, clearly happy I’m there and utterly oblivious to what’s been
happening in the town. He spends most of his time on the Web, I’m sure; the outside
world isn’t nearly as important—or demanding of his attention—as the electronic one.
It keeps him busy, distracts him, focuses his intellect on solving puzzles in games
or code. I’ll bet that in some of those games he’s an ancient vampire, and in others
he’s the head of a vast spy network. Because that’s how you manipulate the mind of
someone as old, as smart, as experienced as Cassius: you don’t suppress it, you redirect
it. Bombard it with familiar stimuli that you control. It’s far easier to install
mystic filters on a Web server than a living mind, because a computer won’t fight
back. Cassius hasn’t had his memories blocked so much as repurposed.

As a geek, he avoids human contact. As an albino, he avoids sunlight. That leaves
one piece of the puzzle unsolved.

“Can I get you guys something? A cola, maybe?”

“I’m a little dry,” I say. “Not sure what I want, though. Mind if I see what you have?”

“No, no, help yourself.”

I go into the kitchen, open the fridge. Not much on the top shelf—some half-empty
jars of condiments, a six-pack of generic cola in cans. But the lower two shelves
are crammed with flats of protein shakes in rectangular waxed cartons, the kind with
a little screw-cap on the top. I take one out and look at it. Strawberry. I open it
and take a sniff. Smells authentic, in a chemically kind of way. I get a little dab
of it from the underside of the cap and taste it.

That’s not strawberry.

Looks like the illusion spell masking the flavor has degraded enough to let the taste
of blood through—either that, or Ahaseurus never bothered to conceal it from anyone
but the pathetic geek who lives here all by himself. Or maybe the sorcerer just convinced
him that this is what strawberries taste like; it’s been a few centuries since Cassius
ate one, after all.

I put the carton back and close the fridge. “Guess I’m not as thirsty as I thought,”
I say.