Kitabı oku: «Twilight Prophecy», sayfa 2

Poor Kelly. He’d given the girl an awfully hard time. Lucy made a mental note to go a lot easier on the young producer when it was her turn to go onstage.

Sighing, she glanced down at the book the old man had pressed into her hands.

THE TRUTH.

Unimaginative title, but memorable in its simplicity. There was a string emerging from the top of the book, and a tiny jade Kwan Yin, goddess of mercy and compassion, pendant dangling from the bottom. A necklace. Pretty. What an odd thing for a man to be using as a bookmark. She wondered if Mr. Folsom was a practicing Buddhist or just fond of Asian art. She removed the necklace from the book and hung it around her own neck, tucking the pendant underneath her blouse, so she would remember to return it to the man when they passed again. She was sure she would see him on her way to the stage.

She stuffed the book into her satchel so she wouldn’t forget it and offend the old guy when he came back to the greenroom for his coat and saw his gift, abandoned there. Then she dropped her bag into an empty chair and went to the television to turn it up the old-fashioned way, since she didn’t see a remote, curious to see how the fearless vampire hunter would come off to the viewers.

She’d always had a lot of respect for Will Waters. She hoped that wasn’t about to be shaken, but she suspected it was. There were only two ways this interview could go down, the way she saw it. Either Waters was going to expose the old man as confused and possibly senile, or he was going to play along with this sensationalistic vampire nonsense for the sake of his ratings. Either way seemed a breach of what used to be known as journalistic integrity. She hoped she was wrong.

Lucy sat down, waiting for the commercial break to end. She had been pleased at the invitation to appear on a serious news program. Not because she had any desire to grab her fifteen minutes of fame. God knew she preferred solitude. Her favorite place in the world, aside from a dig site in the middle of nowhere, was the dusty basement of the archaeology department at BU. And she certainly wasn’t going to jump onto the 2012 doomsday bandwagon, as the show’s producers seemed to be expecting her to do. No, she was going to stick to the facts. This translation was an extraordinary new bit of information about the ancient Sumerians, how they lived and how they thought. Period.

Sensationalism was something she didn’t need. And she wouldn’t take fame if they gave it to her. Recognition for her work, that would be okay, because it might just result in good PR for the university, which might persuade the powers that be to further fund her work.

She was picking over the fruit tray on the table, looking for grapes that hadn’t yet made it more than halfway to raisinhood, when the show’s theme music announced that the break was over. As it faded away, Will Waters introduced his dotty next guest.

Lucy looked up at the screen, absently popping a grape into her mouth, and watched as Mr. Folsom made his way toward the set. His gait was slow and shuffling, his posture stooped. He took his time crossing the stage, then finally extended a hand to shake the host’s.

And then there was a series of popping sounds that Lucy recognized all too well. She froze in place, not believing what she was seeing on the TV screen, as both men fell to the floor, red blooms spreading on their white shirts.

Shock gripped her as her brain tried to translate what her eyes had just seen. The cameras began jostling amid a cacophony of shouting, rushing people. Some seemed to be racing toward the stage, but most were running away from it, stampeding for the exits.

The screen switched abruptly to a “technical difficulty” message, and it took Lucy a few seconds to realize that the sounds of panic she could still hear were coming, not from the television set, but from the hallway beyond the greenroom door.

And for just an instant she was back there again, sleeping in her parents’ tent on the site of an archaeological dig in a Middle Eastern desert.

There were motors roaring nearer, and then a series of keening battle cries and gunshots in the night. She felt her mother’s hands shaking her awake in the dead of night and heard her panicked, fear-choked voice. “Run, Lucy! Run into the dunes and hide. Hurry!”

At eleven years old, Lucy came awake fast and heard the sounds, but what scared her more was the fear in her mother’s voice, and in her eyes. It was as if she knew, somehow, what was about to happen.

“I won’t go without you!” Lucy glimpsed her father as he shoved his worn-out old fedora onto his head. He was never without that hat on a dig. Said it brought him luck. But it wasn’t bringing any luck tonight. And then he was taking a gun from a box underneath his cot. A gun! She’d never seen him with a gun before. Her parents were a pair of middle-aged, bookish archaeologists. They didn’t carry guns.

“You have to, Lucy. Go! Now, before it’s too late!”

“Obey your mother!” her father told her.

Her mother pushed her through a flap in the rear of the tent, even as men in mismatched fatigues surged from a half-dozen jeeps, shouting in their foreign tongues, shooting their weapons. Lucy’s feet sank into the sand, slowing her, but she ran.

There were screams and more gunfire. Every crack of every rifle made her body jerk in reaction as she strained to run faster through the sucking sand, until finally she dove behind a dune, burying her face.

But worse than the noise, worse than the shouting and the gunshots, was the silence that came afterward. The vehicles all roared away. And then there was nothing. Nothing. Just an eleven-year-old girl, lying in a sand dune, shaking and too terrified to even lift her head.

Something banged against the greenroom door, snapping Lucy out of the memory. Blinking away the paralysis it had brought with it, she realized that she had to get the hell out of this place, and she had to do it now. The door through which she had entered was not an option. There was what sounded like a riot going on beyond it. Turning, she spotted the room’s only other door, one marked EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY.

This qualified, she decided, and she grabbed her satchel and jacket, shoved the emergency door open and ran through it into a vast concrete area with an open, overhead door, like a garage door, at the far end, and the city night beyond. She raced toward that opening, onto the raised platform outside it—a loading dock, she guessed—and jumped from that to the pavement four feet below.

Running full bore now, she followed the blacktop that ran between two buildings until she emerged onto a New York City sidewalk. Blending with the masses of humanity, she walked as fast as she could away from the violence she’d just witnessed.

Sirens screamed as police arrived. She smelled fast-food grease from somewhere nearby. Across the street, four men emerged from a black van. They wore suits and long dark coats, and they strode very quickly toward the building she’d just exited. One glanced her way, but she quickly averted her eyes and kept on walking. The wind swept a playbill over her feet and on down the sidewalk, and air brakes whooshed in the distance. She kept going.

Guilt rose up to nip at her heels. She was a coward for running away. Surely she ought to seek out a police officer, and tell him what she had seen and heard.

But everything in her told her to do just the opposite. So that was what she did. Running away, saving herself while others died—that was she did best, after all.

And yet it didn’t work out quite that way for her this time. From behind her, Lucy heard a voice say, “Hold it right there, lady.” And somehow she knew he was addressing her.

Her feet obeyed. But her heart raced even faster. The fight-or-flight impulse was coming down with all its weight on the “flight” side of the coin. And every cell in her body was already in motion, pushing her, making it almost impossible to stand still.

“Are you Professor Lanfair?” the man asked. He was one of those men in black she’d spotted earlier. She could see his warped reflection in the back of a chrome mirror, affixed to the side of a hot little sports car she wished she could jump into and drive away.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me, ma’am.”

No, I don’t think I am.

Her brain argued, told her to just calm down, take a breath and cooperate. The guy was official in some way, right?

And then he started toward her. His footsteps on the wet sidewalk were like a starter’s pistol. And they had the same effect on her. She burst into motion like a racehorse when the gate flies open, but in three strides she felt an impact in the center of her back. The force sent her falling, as if she’d been slammed by a speeding truck. She was already colliding with the sidewalk by the time she actually heard the gunshot.

The pain of it came last, like a red-hot poker had been driven right through her spine and out through her sternum. Her bag went skidding along the sidewalk, into the alley, everything flying out of it in a hundred directions.

Shot. My God, I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot.

She lay there, facedown and shocked beyond thought, in a warm and spreading pool of her own blood. See? A voice in her head whispered. I told you not to run.

3

James took off the lab coat in the car and was wishing he had something besides the white scrubs and cross-trainers he was still wearing when his sister pulled the Thunderbird to a stop in a convenient spot she’d no doubt had some part in orchestrating. Her mind was far more powerful than his. He could read thoughts and impose his will on mortals, too, but she made him look like a rank amateur in both areas.

Feeding on human blood enhanced the vampiric powers they’d been born with. Or so she kept telling him. He hadn’t imbibed enough himself to know. Nor would he—ever.

Brigit stopped the car abruptly. “Here we are. And we’re late, just as I feared.” She looked at her watch again while she got out on the traffic side and hurried around to the busy Manhattan sidewalk. There was a lighted marquee above the entrance to Studio Three, but Brigit was moving too fast for James to spend any time reading it if he hoped to keep up with her.

She got to the door, where a man in a dark suit said, “I’m sorry, ma’am, the taping is already underway. You’ll have to wait for a break to go inside. May I see your tickets?”

Brigit smiled her sweetest smile and beamed her ice-blue eyes at the man. At first he reacted just as any male would, with pure sexual interest, but then it went further. His eyes began to glaze over. His smile died, and his entire face went lax. Expressionless. He opened the door and stepped aside to let them pass.

“Nice guy,” she said. “Strong, silent type.”

“Yeah.” James didn’t hide the disapproval in his tone. It was wrong to manipulate human minds that way just because you could. “Really, sis, would it have killed you to just get the damned tickets?”

“Who are you, the ticket police?”

James ignored the question and moved with his sister into the darkened studio, where Will Waters was delivering his opening monologue—his customary commentary on the week’s news—on a soundstage in front of a live audience. Something prickled along the back of James’s neck. He stopped and gripped his sister’s forearm until she stopped, too.

Standing along the rear wall, behind the spectator seats, was a man in a long dark coat. In the dark, James’s vision was excellent. He’d inherited that ability, among others, from the vampire side of the family. It was one of the traits he didn’t mind making use of.

And he wondered again, as he often had, whether it was hypocritical of him to embrace the traits he approved of, while rejecting the ones he didn’t. Seeing in the darkness, however, did no harm. And it was almost as handy as the ability to walk around in the sunlight without becoming a living torch, a trait he’d inherited from the human branch of the family tree.

Who do you think he is? his sister asked without speaking aloud.

James had to focus to reply. It had been a long time since he’d tried mental communication on this level. Picking up thoughts, sensations, vibes was one thing. Conversation—language—that was far more complex. It came back to him easily, however. Like riding a bike, he supposed.

Don’t know, but there’s another on the right, and two more up in the balcony—one on each side. Look like government types.

Hmm. Men in Black. Brigit pretended to study her nails as she furtively looked in the directions he’d indicated. Do you think they know about the prophecy’s connection to the undead?

How could anyone know about that but us?

A lot of people know about vampires, J.W. DPI, the government. They might be after the professor.

Could they be bodyguards or something, maybe for another guest? James watched the men, feeling more alarmed by the moment and knowing better than to ignore his instincts.

I don’t even know who else is on tonight. Oh …

Brigit’s mental communiqué came to a halt as Will Waters’s words came clear. “Next up, our surprise guest. A man who worked for what he claims was a top-secret subdivision of the CIA for more than twenty years. Now he’s written a tell-all book, which he says will prove the existence of things he calls … paranormal. His book was due to hit the shelves next month, but we’ve just this minute had word that it has been abruptly pulled, its production stopped by the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS spokesman says the book divulges classified information that could put undercover agents and operations in jeopardy. As to the author’s claims of government knowledge of supernatural matters, the spokesman laughs and asserts that the author is clearly suffering from some form of dementia, but that despite his delusions, he’s still in possession of sensitive information that must be contained.

“Here to answer those claims and talk about what his book would have revealed, retired CIA Field Agent, Lester Folsom.”

James and Brigit stared at each other, stunned. “They’re talking about the DPI,” Brigit whispered. “And Folsom … haven’t I heard that name?”

“You didn’t know about this?” he asked.

“No, and from what Waters just said, I don’t think anyone did.” The old man who had to be Lester Folsom was already walking unsteadily across the stage, moving slowly. He stretched out a hand toward the host’s outstretched arm, and then suddenly gunshots rang out. The two men jerked with the impacts and blood spatter sprayed behind them.

James was riveted as the old man fell to the floor, and the famous newsman with him. His gaze shot upward instinctively, to the balcony, where the shots had originated, but he could no longer see the man in black up there. The crowd was on its feet, and people were rushing for the exits.

He started to move forward, toward the dead men, but his sister grabbed his shoulder. “Not them. Her. We have to get to her.”

“She can wait,” he said, turning and gripping her hand tight, as people hit and jostled them on the way out. “They’re dying.”

“They’re dead! And if you try to help them, those bastards will just kill them again and you with them,” Brigit shouted over the increasing din. “You think it’s coincidence Folsom and Professor Lanfair were on the same talk show, on the same night? The suits will get her if we don’t. Come on, she’d be backstage somewhere.”

“But, Brigit—”

“We need her, J.W. We need her to save our entire race, and maybe hers, too, if you need some added enticement. Come on.”

They ducked out the door, and he found it much easier to move with the flow of panicked audience members than against them. Sirens were wailing already as they emerged into the night and hurried up the sidewalk. James looked and looked for the woman whose photo had appeared in the magazine his sister had shown him. The translator. Professor Lanfair. But the crowds and now the cops—who were rushing up and pulling people aside, trying to contain their witnesses—were making it harder.

“That’s her, J.W. Just came out of the alley, and she’s flying! In heels, too!”

James looked in the direction his sister was pointing, but there were dozens of panicked individuals on the sidewalk. And then he heard a voice shout, “Hold it right there, lady.”

He saw one of the men in black leveling a gun at the back of a slender woman in a tweed skirt. He could only see the back of her head, but he felt her.

Turning wide eyes on his sister, he said, “Why didn’t you tell me she’s one of the Chosen?”

“I didn’t know. What the—”

Just then the professor jerked forward, even as James held up a hand, an unthinking reaction. He shouted “No!” but it was too late. The man in black’s gun went off, and the bullet tore through the professor’s body. James saw, as if in slow motion, the blood explode from the exit wound like a mist in front of her, even as her back arched and she slammed facedown onto the sidewalk.

And then there was no stopping him. He launched into motion, passing by the killer, falling to his knees beside her. Her brown hair was coming loose from its tightly wound bun, and it was glittering, too, with the rainy mist now falling on the city street. He rolled her onto her back, very gently, and his gut-level, genetically encoded need to aid anyone of her kind compelled him to help her. To save her.

She was one of the Chosen. One of the rare mortals who possessed the Belladonna Antigen and, with it, the potential to become a vampire. Vampires sensed her kind, smelled them, and could not fight the instinct to protect them. He’d inherited that, too. But in the professor’s case, it felt like something more.

He had rolled the professor onto her back, so the misty rain fell on her cheeks now. Vaguely, he heard his sister trying to hold off the man in black, who was trying to get past her. She was exerting her will, but he was fighting it as if he knew how. Further support of her theory that he was DPI, which would have given him training in dealing with preternatural mind control. Luckily a huge crowd was closing in, too, giving James a heartbeat more time.

“I said stay back!” Brigit shouted. Her voice in that moment was something beyond human. The power it carried could not be resisted. Even James looked up at her, then from her fierce expression to the dazed faces of the people around them. They’d inexplicably stopped in their tracks and were unable to convince themselves to move forward again. The government man included.

“Stay back,” Brigit kept saying, holding her hands up, palms out. She was really straining. Her eyes were beginning to emit a soft glow.

“Easy, Brigit,” he warned. “Don’t go too far.”

“You handle your gift and I’ll handle mine. Get on with it, J.W.”

He nodded, looking down at the woman again. Her eyeglasses were crooked and her eyes were closed, thick sable lashes lying on her smooth skin. Upturned nose, full lips, Audrey Hepburn cheekbones. Her life was fading. James turned his palms up and stared down at them, and then he felt them begin to warm. Turning them downward again, he laid them over the exit wound in her chest, ignoring the blood and gore.

Her blood was flowing as his hands grew warmer, and he sensed very strongly the extremely rare Belladonna Antigen every vampire had possessed as a human. She was almost family.

The part of his family he had rejected. And yet, he could not turn away from her. Wouldn’t have, even if he could.

As his hands grew hot, he pressed them between the woman’s breasts. His palms immediately began to emit that familiar, yellow-gold luminescence. He shifted his body and tried to block the light from the spectators around him, and prayed that his sister would be able to hold their attention long enough.

James felt the professor’s chest grow hot, matching the energy of his palms. He saw the glow of his hands reflected there and knew the healing was beginning to take. He felt that sensation again, the one of his soul sort of reaching out from his body to connect to something more, something bigger, far beyond any individual sense of self. There was a greater whole and it was one, and he was part of it, in those moments.

His gaze shifted suddenly and without warning to Lucy Lanfair’s face, and at that same instant her eyes flew open. Brown eyes. Staring straight into his.

“I know you,” she whispered.

“Easy. Take it easy.”

“But I know you. I know you.”

And then her eyes shifted lower, to his hands on her chest, and she saw all the blood—and there was a lot of it. She started sucking in openmouthed, shallow breaths, and he knew she was on the edge of panic. “Oh God, Oh God, Oh God—”

“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s okay. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“What … what’s that light? What are you doing?”

The glow intensified, just as it always did at the end of a healing. It grew brighter and then died, just that fast. Like the flash of a firefly on a summer country night.

“Get the fuck off her, pal!”

A pair of hands gripped his shoulders, jerking him bodily up and away from her. He’d been unaware, for a few ticks of the clock, of what was happening around him. Other black coats had emerged—some from the studio, others from the dark-colored vans that were lining the street. An ambulance had backed up to the curb, and the medics sprang into action the second James was no longer blocking their way.

He was weak. He was always a little weak after a healing, and this made two in one night, only a bit more than an hour apart. He felt disoriented, too. Il-logically, he didn’t want anyone else near this woman, and he started to push his way back to her, but his sister touched his arm.

There’s nothing we can do now, she said, mentally. Too many witnesses, and we don’t want these suits to know who the hell we are, J.W. Not if they’re who I think they are.

But they’re taking her—

We’ll get her. We will. But later. This is too risky.

Even as they carried on the mental conversation, one of the medics looked up. “There’s not a mark on her. I don’t understand. Where the hell did all this blood come from?”

“Just get her into the ambulance,” one of the men in black ordered, and then he turned, scanning the crowd—in search, James knew, of him.

The man had a scar running from the outer corner of his left eye, across his cheek, reaching almost to the center of his chin, and eyes the color of wet cement.

“You,” he said loudly, pointing at James, who was some twenty feet away. “I want to talk to you.”

Brigit tugged his arm. “We have to go. Now.”

He knew she was right. But it was killing him to leave Lucy Lanfair. Even as his sister tugged him toward her waiting car, James was looking back, watching them lift the gurney on which the beautiful professor lay, strapped down now, into the back of the ambulance.

She was looking straight back at him. She didn’t reach out, and she didn’t speak, but she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him, either.

And then they closed the doors, and Brigit gave him a shove.

“I said wait!” Scarface commanded. He was reaching into his coat now, and James had little doubt he was about to pull a gun.

They’d made it back to the car, and James reached for the passenger door just as Brigit started the motor with a roar. Her window was down, and she was looking back at the man. As James predicted, he was leveling a gun.

“Freeze! Don’t make me—”

Brigit lifted a hand, palm up, fingers loosely touching her thumb.

“Don’t kill him!” James shouted.

She flicked her fingers open as her gaze intensified, and a beam of light pulsed from her eyes toward the man. Something exploded, shaking the sidewalk, and even the street, so powerfully that several onlookers fell down. Dust and rubble rained down as people ran screaming for cover. At the same instant, Brigit was gunning the motor again, spinning the tires, shifting rapidly through the gears as she sped away.

James turned in his seat, wondering if the debris falling on the crowd included bits of Scarface. But no, it seemed to be a magazine stand that had stood a few yards from him.

“Don’t worry,” Brigit told him. “The vendor had left his post to gawk at the lady who was gunned down on the sidewalk. No casualties, though I think letting that scar-cheeked bastard live was a mistake.”

“You sound just like Rhiannon, who, I think, originated the phrase ‘Kill them all and let the gods sort them out.’”

“Funny you should mention her.”

He closed his eyes. “Tell me that’s not where we’re going.”

“Who the hell else is going to be able to tell us what’s going on, J.W.?”

“I keep telling you, I go by James now.”

“Yeah. You do keep telling me that. It’s irritating. I wish you’d stop.”

She took a corner so fast that he was mashed up against the door, and he knew there was no going back now.

He’d been sucked back in. Just as he’d always pretty much known he would be. His family were not the kind who let go easily.

The ambulance attendant was sticking a needle into her arm the second the doors swung shut, and Lucy gasped at the unexpected pinch of it. Then she looked up at the young man and said, “I really think I’m all right.”

“Just relax, Professor Lanfair. You’re in good hands.”

“How do you know my na … uh …” Ocean waves came washing into her brain, crashing and then slowly sucking her logical mind back out to sea again. “What did you … give me?”

“Just relax now. It’s all fine. Just relax.”

He was smiling and his eyes were kind and sort of hazel. But they weren’t those other eyes. Those piercing, electric-blue eyes she’d been lost in moments before. And this medic’s hands, while soothing and strong, were not the same hands she’d felt on her before, either. That other touch had been so powerful she’d felt it in every cell of her body. A touch that she knew had somehow … healed her.

And that man. That face. That familiar, beautiful face. Something in her, something deep inside her, had recognized him—though she knew she had never seen him before in her life.

Perhaps, she thought, he was an angel.

“Time to wake up now, Professor. Come on. You’ve had a good rest. Wake up. We need to talk.”

Lucy opened her eyes. But the white room was tipping slowly one way, then the other, growing on one side, shrinking on the other, then reversing itself before just spinning slowly. There was a woman. Black hair with a white streak. A man with a big scar on his face. It must have been his voice she heard.

That was all she noticed before she slammed her eyes closed again.

“I’m going to be sick.”

“No, you aren’t,” the woman said softly. “Do you remember who you are, dear? Hmm?”

“Am in the hospital? Did I die?” God, she was so disoriented.

“You’re safe, and you’re fine, and you’re going home soon.”

Her voice was deep. A little gravelly. A Stevie Nicks voice. Lucy loved Stevie Nicks, mainly because her mom had.

“Now, tell me your name,” Stevie Nicks said.

Lucy smiled, remembering the soundtrack of her childhood, before it had all gone so dark. “Lucy. Dad used to call me Lucille. But I hated it. I wouldn’t hate it now, though. I’d love to hear him call me Lucille again.”

She tried opening her eyes again, but the room was still all out of sorts. She saw the man with the scar leaning close to Stevie—no, that wasn’t Stevie. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of lace or fringe, or a single trailing shawl. No, she was wearing mannish blue trousers with a white shirt tucked in, a thin belt, and a white lab coat, like a doctor.

“Can you get her to focus?” the scarred man said.

“If you get what you need, does it matter if it’s couched in her life story?”

“Time is of the essence here, Lillian. All hell’s breaking loose out there, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Maybe your containment team should have considered not having their work televised, then. Back off and let me do my job.”

The scar-faced man huffed, but he moved away from the bed.

Oh, Lucy thought. She was in a bed. And that white lab coat—yeah. Okay, this must be a hospital, then.

“Lucy, what’s your full name, dear?”

Lucy tried to focus, because for some reason she was afraid of making that man angry, and he already seemed awfully impatient. “Lucille Annabelle Lanfair.”

“Very good. And what do you do, Lucy?”

“I work in the Ancient Near Eastern Studies Department at Binghamton University,” she said, wondering why her tongue felt too big and her esses were lispy.

“And what does that work entail?”

“I teach classes about ancient Sumerian culture and the Sumerians’ written language. It was the earliest form of writing, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know that. That’s fascinating. Why don’t you tell me about this most recent translation of yours? The one that got you noticed by Will Waters.”

At the mention of the talk show host’s name, she cringed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut once more, and hearing again the gunshots, seeing the chaos, feeling the horror. “He’s dead, isn’t he? And that crazy old man, Folsom, too? I saw it.”

“Yes. Yes, they’re both dead. Some crazed fan. Did you meet Mr. Folsom?”

Keeping her eyes closed, she said, “In the greenroom.”

“And did you talk to him?”

She nodded. “He was … a little crazy, I think. Said vampires were real.”

“That is crazy. Did he say anything else to you?”

“Said this involves me, too. Said my translation wasn’t about humans, that it was about vampires, and about … them.”

“Who?”