devastation he was about to unleash was entirely their own doing.
Sighing in resolution, and with no small regret, he had opened the doors of his haven and meted out justice. He’d focused the beam from his eyes on the men who leveled their weapons at him. The light shot forth, a blue-white stream that widened, opening like the wings of a great, deadly bird, so that all of them were caught in it. The soldiers went still as the beam hit them. Their eyes widened as their bodies began to vibrate, frozen within the grasp of his power and unable to break free. And then, one by one, they exploded.
When it was over, an eerie calm fell over everything around him. The silent stillness of death. It was like no other emanation. When the souls fled the bodies of the living, especially in such massive numbers all at once, they left a vacuum behind. A space devoid of sense, of sound, almost of air.
Utana stepped down from the box-on-wheels, and he walked amid the remains. True carnage, this. Pieces of the humans littered the stone like ground, and hung from the motorized vehicles and the tall, light-emitting poles, and from the lines that seemed to be strung everywhere in this world. It was a terrible waste of life, and all for nothing.
As he looked at the death and mutilation around him, he thought of the healing power he had taken from James of the Vahmpeers. He had not yet attempted to use it, but he had no illusions that it would be effective on bits and pieces of men. He would first have to sort them, leaving none out, nor mixing any together. Such a task would be impossible, and would take days—weeks, perhaps—even to attempt. No, it was of no use. Were they not meant to die this day, they would not have placed themselves in his path. The higher being knew far more than did the earthly one. Their fate had been sealed; there was no undoing it.
He picked his way among the limbs and gore, amid the tiny fires dancing from their motor-driven conveyances, and the smoke spiraling all around him. He saw more humans, watching from a safe distance, and he felt only fear and terror coming from them—no attack. Pausing, Utana bent low to scoop up a dead man’s weapon. And as he held it, he closed his eyes briefly and absorbed its vibration through his palms. It took only seconds for him to understand how the weapon worked, how to use it, what it did. And so he gathered up a few more before moving on.
More soldiers would come after him. No army would let so many deaths go unavenged. He had not wanted war with the humans, but it seemed inevitable now.
His bare feet were cold as they slapped down on the wet stonelike substance with which modern man had apparently paved the world. The rain was lighter now. He would find clothing and shelter, a base of operations from which to work. The vahmpeers had moved to somewhere not far from this place. But they would know of his nearness now. Word of his deeds this night would surely spread. And then they would flee. If he hoped to catch up to them, to wipe them from existence, he had to find them before they did.
Washington, D.C.
“You can go in now, Senator,” the curly haired receptionist said.
Marlene MacBride rose from the vinyl chair she’d been warming for the past twenty minutes, smoothed her pencil-slim skirt over her thighs and strode to the door. She was staring at the plaque that adorned it. Special Agent Nash Gravenham-Bail. As she lifted a hand to tap before entering, the door swung open, and she glimpsed a broad torso and a large file box coming toward her.
The box bumped her chest before she had a chance to move out of the way. She automatically gripped it, and the man behind it spoke.
“Senator MacBride. Sorry about the wait, but I think you’ll find everything you need in here. Enough to get you started, at least.”
Marlene lifted her stunned eyes from the box to the face of the man shoving it at her. It was the scar that caught her attention, as she would guess it did most people’s upon meeting this man for the first time. It was a thin pink line, raised a bit, that began at the outside corner of his left eye and angled across his cheek to the center of his chin.
“Line of duty,” he said. “Besides, it’s intimidating. That’s a bonus in my line of work.”
She shifted her focus from his scar to his eyes. Wet cement, they were. “Mr. Gravenham-Bail?”
“It’s a mouthful, I know,” he said. “I still cuss my parents out on a daily basis for the hyphenated name thing. I mean, really, just pick one already. Make a decision.”
She nodded.
“Easier if you just call me Nash.”
“Mmm.” He still hadn’t let her into his office. She was standing in the doorway, holding a box that was getting heavier by the minute, and getting absolutely nowhere with him. “Look, Nash, I was expecting a meeting with you. So you could brief me on all this.”
“Oh, really? I thought you’d want documents. Files.”
“Well, those, too, but—”
“Look if you want a meeting, we’ll set one up. Week after next?”
“I’m afraid that—”
“Barbara,” he called, and started moving forward. Marlene had to either back up or let him walk right into her. He backed her into the reception area, pulling his office door closed behind him. “Barbara, schedule me a sit-down with the senator, here, for the next free afternoon I have. A full hour. And, uh, get someone to help her down with this file box, will you?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Nice meeting you, Senator MacBride. I’ll see you in two weeks.”
He extended a hand to shake, looked sheepishly at the box that was occupying both of hers, then turned and was back in his office, door closed, before she could say boo. Hell, this wasn’t going well at all.
Nash closed his office door, counted to sixty and picked up the phone. “Babs, she gone yet?”
“The elevator doors just closed on her, sir.”
“Great. Get me a flight to Maine. Bangor, or as close to there as possible.”
“Right away, sir.”
Nash needed to get his hands on this resurrected monster, get him under control. He would not rest until every last vampire was obliterated. If even one remained, they would make others. Like damn lice. They were parasites. You had to pick ’em clean to end the infestation. And you had better get their eggs, too, unless you wanted to start the process all over again. In this case, that meant the so-called Chosen. Humans with the rare antigen in their blood that made them susceptible to the disease the Undead had dubbed the Dark Gift. It wasn’t a gift. It was a freaking mutation. The only humans who could become vampires were the carriers of the Belladonna Antigen, so they would have to be eliminated, too. As soon as they’d served their purpose.
The Dymphna Project would take care of that. And by the time pesky Senator MacBride waded through the paperwork mountain he’d handed her, it would all be over.
But in order for his plan to work, he needed to find this Utanapishtim, this madman from another age, another world. He had to win the man’s trust, so he could wield him like the weapon Nash intended him to be.
And then, when the war was over and humans were victorious, he would destroy the so-called immortal last
