Welcome to the Darkness (Darkness Trilogy) (26 page)

“That
’s an encouraging thought.”

“I am merely being realistic.
To prepare you.”

“How many people have
you
killed?” I asked, hoping I wasn’t pushing too far.

“I have not
kept a tally.”

“You mean it’s been so many you don’t even know?”

“They have been mostly vampires, if that is any consolation,” he replied.

Sarah cleared her throat. “Not to interrupt, but . . .” she paused. “We were wondering, Nathaniel, if you might be able to help us arrange a meeting with the King.”

He frowned. “Why would you desire such a thing?”

“We need to talk to him for a few minutes,” Sarah r
eplied.

Nathaniel hesitated for a moment. “What is it that you are not telling me?”

Sarah looked at me and my heart sped up. Was she going to tell him about the vampire hunters?

“I’d like to offer him a sample of my blood,” she said.

“What?” I shouted. “I mean, what the hell?” I said more quietly. “We didn’t talk about this.”

She held her chin up. “After what happened with you, I thought it might be better if we did things
on our own terms. Instead of waiting around for them to grab me and take my blood by force, why don’t we give them what they want? They’ll have no reason to treat us with aggression or violence.”

It would also give Sarah the chance we were looking for to delve into the King’s mind, but she didn’t say that part
out loud. “It’s too risky,” I said.

“I tend to agree with Reed,” Nathaniel said.

“Do we need to meet with the King face-to-face?” I asked. “Can’t you read his mind from the room next door to him or something?”

Nathaniel’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you want to read the King’s mind?”

“I can pick up surface thoughts from a room nearby, but to pick out particular bits of information, I need direct eye contact,” Sarah answered, ignoring Nathaniel.

“What ‘particular bits of information?’” Nathaniel ec
hoed.

“Can you help us, or not?” Sarah said. “You have to trust us. We know what we’re doing.”

“We do?” I said.

“Yes, we do,”
Sarah stated. “We can go right now to make our proposal to the King.”

She seemed so eager to meet every problem head-on, like when she’d waltzed into the San Jose vampire lair to make a similar proposal to the Queen. That hadn’t turned out very well
because we’d ended up destroying the place, but maybe this time things would work out. In any case, apparently Nathaniel did trust us, and he took us to speak with the King.

Ten minutes later, we were back in our badly trashed bedroom, and Nathaniel had gone back to his room to read his book. I kicked a piece of the broken dresser aside and made my way to one of the armchairs near the window. I plopped down into the seat and Sarah came to sit in the chair next to me.

“That wasn’t too different from making an appointment to give blood at a clinic,” Sarah said.

“Yeah, except instead of making an appointment with a nurse, you made it with the vampire King of New York City,” I replied.

“Eight o’clock tomorrow night, well after the sun has set and I’ve had a chance to eat some dinner.”

“And . . . ?” my voice trailed off. “Did you get the info we were looking for?”

“I did,” she said with a smile. “It was harder than I thought it would be though. His mind is a jumble of thoughts that don’t make sense. I thi
nk he’s losing his mind and I’m pretty sure he knows it. He seems to be doing a good job of hiding it.”

“Nathaniel made it sound so cut and dried, but I bet it’s hard for the older vamps when they realize they’re losing their minds,” I said. “Are they supposed to get out of bed one day and say, ‘Goodbye cruel world’ and walk out into the sun?
Probably not.”

“From what I can tell after reading the King’s mind, he knows he’s reached the point where his mind is slipping and he wants to go out with a bang. But, what he
doesn’t
seem to realize, is that his plan to turn everyone into vampires is completely ass-backwards.”

“Huh. So the vampire hunters were
right? He’s not trying to come up with ways to fix vampire weaknesses?”

“I don’t know how they figured it out, but yeah, the hunters were right. The King doesn’t think he’ll be around long enough to bother making any enhancements. Even if he figured out a way to have vampires walk in daylight for example, if he’s not around to appreciate it, then what’s the point? Leaving behind a legacy of a world populated only with vampires, even if they’re more like zombies than va
mpires, well . . . I’m not saying that makes much more sense, but to the King it does.”

“That’s seriously screwed up,” I said, shaking my head. “So do we tell Nathaniel what’s going on? I mean, how could any human
or
vampire want this to happen? Maybe they’ve got a vampire organization like the police that could come in and get rid of the King.” I drew my finger across my throat in a cutting motion.

Sarah leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling for a moment. Then she sat up straight again. “I think we should meet with the vampire hunters today, like we planned. Share our latest information with them and find out what their plan is. I agree with them that we need to take action soon, because the King can’t afford to wait. He’s going to release the virus soon, whether it’s ready or not.”

“And Nathaniel?” I asked.

“When we get back here to
night, we should confide in him. I think it’s time. And I think it’s also time for us to confide in the hunters. We should tell them about him . . . and about you.” Her eyes searched mine.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“I do. There’s been ample opportunity for you to hurt them or their cause by now, and you haven’t. Obviously, we’re all on the same page, and that should be clear to them. At least, I hope so.”

“You hope so? Christ.”

“If things go badly, although they probably won’t,” she added, “you could always zip out of there super-fast.”

I hung my head and looked at the floor. “I have a bad feeling about this. It doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s up to you of course. It’s your secret to tell,” Sarah said.

“I agree we should go meet with them, but let’s play the rest by ear,” I suggested.

“Done,” she said, holding her hand up for a fist bump. I couldn’t help laughing and I humored her with a fist bump back.

S
arah and Reed walked hand-in-hand, brushing through the silver bead curtain into the vampire hunters’ headquarters. They stood just inside the entrance, looking to see who was around. Liz and Trudy were decked out in protective wear, sparring in the far corner of the room, but the rest of the group were absent.

Liz turned to the side–
she was the first to notice they were there–and received a punch in the ear from Trudy. Even though Liz was wearing a padded helmet and mouth guard, the angry scowl that clouded her face was noticeable. A bop in the side of the head was just what Liz needed to put her in an even fouler mood than usual.

Trudy pulled off her own helmet, and spit out her mouth guard. “Hey, guys! Come on in.”

“I’ll get the rest of the group,” Liz grumped, ripping open the Velcro fastenings of her sparring gear and tossing the pads to the side. She stormed out of the room.

Trudy removed the rest of her gear and approached them at
the doorway. “Have a seat, guys. The rest of us will join you in a sec. We’re excited to hear how things went. Did you get a chance to see the King?”

“We did,” Sarah said, nodding.

“Okay, I won’t make you say everything twice. I’ll hold the questions until everyone else gets here,” Trudy said.

They chose a folding chair and sat to wait for the ot
hers. Pickle came out right away and gave Sarah a wink. “Hey, man,” he said, clapping Reed’s shoulder. “You look seriously down in the dumps. Did everything go okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just . . . stressed,”
Reed answered.

Would you be this concerned and friendly with me if you knew I was a vampire?

A rush of adrenaline spurted through Sarah’s veins when she picked up Reed’s thought. Was he going to spill the beans right now?

“How did you
get the nickname ‘Pickle?’” Reed blurted instead.

“Ha!” Pickle chuckled,
momentarily caught off guard. “I should come up with a good story to go with the name, but honestly dude, I just like to eat pickles. My Mom used to say I’d turn into a pickle one day if I didn’t stop.”

Sarah blew out a sigh. The door off to the side opened, and the rest of the group filed into the room.

After everyone had taken a seat, Liz stood to speak. “Thank you all for being here. We have an update from our newest members, so I’ll let them fill us in. Go ahead please, Sarah.”

“Thank you, Liz. I was able to arrange a brief meeting with the King, under the pretense that I was willing to offer him a sample of my blood. As you know, he’s interested in experimenting with my DNA because of my psychic ability. We set an appointment for tomorrow night to take a blood sample.”

Pickle cleared his throat. “So if we carry out our operation tomorrow during the day, you won’t have to worry about keeping that appointment. That is, if you agree we
should
carry out our plan after your meeting with the King.”

“I agree to a certain extent,” Sarah said. She had to be careful with her explanation because she realized these people were dangerous. If she threatened their plan, who knew how they would react or what they would
do?

“You were right about the virus,” Sarah continued. “As far as I could tell, the King is not trying to cure vampire weaknesses or further enhance
themselves. His only goal is to create a virus that will infect humans, turning them into vampire-human hybrids. His interest in my psychic ability is to improve the hybrids, not the existing vampires. The King is also certifiably insane. I’ve never read a mind more jumbled or messed up. The things that make perfect sense to him make no sense at all. And the worst thing is, he’s on the verge of releasing the virus despite the fact it isn’t ready. The hybrids they’ve created so far don’t survive more than a few days at most.”

“So what part of our plan do you not agree with?” Liz asked. Others nodded as if they had the same question.

“I agree we should destroy the virus. And probably the King. But I don’t agree with destroying every vampire in the King’s manor, and certainly not every vampire in the world. Not only is that goal unrealistic and possibly suicidal, I don’t think you can generalize to the point where
all
vampires are evil beings that deserve to die. There are human men and women out there who are true monsters: people who have done horrible things to their own kind. And there are also good vampires: kind, helpful and generous.”

“Vampires ruined my life,” Liz said. Her gaze grew dark and she clenched her fists. “They took everything from me. They killed my husband and my daughter.”

“They took everything from me too,” Reed said. “But the vampire who killed my family is dead, and killing all the rest of them won’t bring my family back. One of the vampires has taken me under his wing and helped me out when I had no one else to turn to. He’s become like a father figure to me, and he’s my friend.”

Liz put her hands on her hips and frowned. “He must have a hidden agenda.”

“No, he doesn’t!” Reed’s voice rose and Sarah worried that his fangs might pop out if he didn’t calm down. She gripped his shoulder, and he turned to look at her.

Careful
, she mouthed.

“His name is Nathaniel,” Reed continued, “and he’d probably help us if you gave him a chance. He wouldn’t want this stupid virus to get out either. And he also agrees that the older, insane vampires should die.”

“How can you sympathize with them after all they’ve done to you?” Liz asked.

“What would you do if your daughter had been turned into a vampire?” Reed asked. “Would you kill her too? Even if she seemed like the same person, and her only crime was that she was a
vampire? Even if she would do anything to be human again?”

“How dare you!” Liz shouted. Her eyes shone with u
nshed tears. “Why the hell would you say something like that to me?”

“Because that’s what happened to me.” Reed lowered his head, but Sarah could still see the tips of his fangs po
king out from under his upper lip.

Time seemed to freeze. No one moved or spoke, and it was one of those moments where a pin dropping would have seemed thunderously loud. Reed’s shoulders moved up and down with each breath, and his eyelashes fluttered.

“No,” Trudy said, shaking her head. “You can’t be one of them.”