Mortal Lock (14 page)

“Is it really you?” the teenage girl asked. She was lying in a hospital bed, its upper half elevated to prop her into a sitting position.

“Yes.”

“I haven’t seen you since—”

“I’ve been away.”

“I never told—”

“I know.”

“Have you been to see the doctors?” the girl asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said, her eyes full of tears. “Not anymore. I know why you came back. You wouldn’t let them keep hurting me before, and you won’t let these other ones, either.”

“You are not going to die,” the man said.

“I know. Not now. Not with you here. Maybe I’m not all grown up yet, but I figured it out a long time ago. The private schools, the clothing money, even my horse, Thunder. It all had to come from you. Mom and Dad didn’t leave that much—”

“Everything they ever had was used up a long time ago. That’s right.”

“You always protect me,” the girl said, fervently. “Even when you’re not around. I tell everyone about my big brother. My best friend, Kelly, I think she’s in love with you, just from hearing me talk about you. The only picture I have is when you were in the—”

“Sure.”

“You look the same.”

“You don’t.”

“I know,” she giggled. “But I was only a baby. You were almost … twenty, right? You didn’t even live at home. I didn’t even know about you. You just … showed up when they started—”

“It doesn’t matter now.”

“Where have you been?”

“Working. I travel a lot.”

“But where do you live?”

“Just in hotels. I don’t have a regular house.”

“You never wrote. Not one time.”

“I’m not good at that.”

“I understand. That’s what I told Kelly. When I got Thunder for my birthday, I was so surprised I almost fainted. But I knew he was from you. Kelly said, maybe you weren’t my brother at all. You were like my guardian angel or something.”

“I am your brother,” the man said.

“Say my name,” the girl commanded, her eyes pleading.

“Dawn. New Dawn.”

“I haven’t heard you say that since—”

“It only needs to be said when you need me. You know that.”

“Wait! Aren’t you going to—?”

“I have to see some people. About special medicine for you. There’s a new drug. A brand-new one the doctors here don’t even know about. It’s in Switzerland, a long way from here. I have to go and see if it’s any good.”

“But you’ll be back?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“What I speak to you, it is always a promise.”

The young girl reached out to hug her brother, closing her eyes. But her arms grasped empty air; the nondescript man was gone.

“A million dollars?” the young Asian man said, looking up from a giant flat-screen computer monitor over to the nondescript man.

“In cash.”

“How do I know—?”

The man raised the pair of black aluminum suitcases he was holding, one in each hand. “One million dollars in hundred-dollar bills. Weighs approximately three hundred and fifty pounds. I added some metal for ballast and split it into two parcels, to make it easier for you to carry.”

“You expect me to believe you just walked through this neighborhood after dark with—?”

“You’re a scientist,” the man said, putting the suitcases down. “I don’t expect you to take anything on faith. But you can verify what I just said. Open them.”

The young Asian walked over to the twin suitcases. He tried to lift one, but he was unable to move it from the floor. The man flicked his right heel. One of the suitcases fell onto its side. “Open it now,” he said. “They’re not locked.”

The young Asian man popped the latches. The suitcase was filled with neatly banded hundred-dollar bills.

“They’re all odd lots,” the man said. “No sequential serial numbers. Untraceable. Grab as many as you need to run your tests. Go and get them checked out. Any way you want.”

The Asian man looked up from where he was kneeling over the money. “I’m a biochemist, true enough. But what you’re asking, it’s outside my field. AIDS research is a specialty, and—?”

“They said you were the best.”

“Who said?”

The man didn’t respond.

“Even if I … could find something. Something that might work … it would have to be tested. The process would take several years, even with that so-called FDA speedup.”

“I don’t need it to be approved.”

“Look, no offense. But, for that kind of money, you could hire a whole team of experts.”

“I have,” the man said.

“Ah. You realize that whoever finds an actual cure for AIDS is … beyond rich. So what you’re doing, you’re gambling, right? Betting a million against more money than a computer could count.”

“You find the cure, you can keep it,” the nondescript man said. “Just give it to me, the formula; then go publish your papers or whatever it is people like you do.”

“I never heard of—”

The Asian man suddenly realized he was alone in the room. With a million dollars in cash.

“How did you get in here? Past the …?” the woman in the black silk business suit demanded.

The nondescript man was silent for several seconds. Then he said, “What you do here, is it for real, or is it a scam?”

“Are you serious?” the woman said, indignantly, tossing her immaculately coiffed hair. “Our clinic is the most—”

“Do you cure AIDS? Yes or no?”

“I don’t know how you got past security,” the woman said, a faint Germanic trace within her perfect English, “but that hardly entitles you to such confidential information.”

“I don’t want confidential information,” the man said. “I don’t care if you’re running a scam. I just want to know if your stuff works.”

“I don’t see—”

“If it works, I’ll pay you whatever you want for it,” the man said. “If it doesn’t work, I’ll just leave, and you’ll never see me again.”

“I—”

“But if you say it works, and you’re lying, I’ll come back. Nothing you have here, nothing you can buy, nothing on this earth will protect you. If you run, I’ll find you. Wherever you go, wherever you hide, I’ll find you. And I’ll kill you.”

The woman sat still, considering. She had devoted her life to the manipulation of emotion, and prided herself on standing above such petty human weaknesses.
I must calculate the probabilities
, she thought to herself.
Logic is the ultimate weapon
.

The woman knew top-quality professional guards were posted tightly around the Swiss clinic’s mountain location. She knew ultramodern intrusion-detection devices were seamlessly interwoven throughout the building. And yet …

Motionless, the silent man watched her.

There was a panic button under the Persian rug only a few inches from the toe of the woman’s cobra-skin shoe. And a custom-made little semiautomatic pistol in her top desk drawer.

The nondescript man waited.

“It doesn’t work,” she said.

“How much of it is true?” the nondescript man asked the ancient crone. If standing in six inches of filthy water with the subway’s third rail only a few steps behind bothered him in any way, it was not apparent.

“How much?” the crone cackled. “It is
all
true.”

“The only thing they can live on is human blood?”

“Yes.”

“They die if exposed to daylight?”

“Yes.”

“Only a wooden stake through the heart can take them out?”

“Yes.”

“And anybody they bite becomes one of them?”

“No! Were that so, they would already have overrun this earth. Only some.”

“How can—?”

“It cannot be predicted. Some of those taken become the undead. And some just … die. A human’s death.”

“They don’t have any—?”

“What? Super powers? Like in a horror tale? No. They cannot fly, they cannot change into bats. They appear as they did before they became the undead. But they do not age.”

“So you could keep one … caged?”

“Yes. But it would die if it were not fed.”

“I understand.”

“Do you, human? You are the first to pass through the portals, but that signifies only that you can walk in death. I know what you paid to ask me your questions. So you are a man with great skills and no—what do mortals call it?—conscience. You paid what was asked, so human life means nothing to you.”

The crone touched one eye with a long, gnarled fingernail. “There are many such humans,” she said. “They often take lives for their own amusement. But only a small few kill for payment, and even fewer do so with continuing success. That much I understand. What you understand is not known to me.”

“I need to find some,” the man said.

“Vampires? You need to find vampires?” The crone shook her head, weighing the absurdity of the problem she had been asked to solve. “Ah!” she said suddenly. “You want revenge, is that it? One of them took one of yours, yes?”

“No.”

“No? Why else would you want—?”

“I want to feed them.”

The crone’s eyes narrowed as she regarded him. “You cannot be one of those insane children who worship foolish myths to play at sex. Your face is not painted; you do not dress in their fashion; you are too old. And your eyes—”

“I want to feed them,” the man repeated, with no change of inflection.

“Why?”

“I know what it costs to speak to you. I will pay you with more of that. I know you don’t want money.”

“More lives? You will take more lives for me, just to feed some of … them?”

“Yes.”

The crone said nothing for several minutes. The nondescript man remained motionless.

“You have three sundowns to make your offering. Then come back here,” the crone said, finally. “And bring your food.”

“It could be done, I guess,” the black man in the blue lab coat said. His plastic name badge read: Roger Rolange, Phlebotomist. “But a full swap? That could take, hell, a damn week, maybe. You can’t just pull one supply out and pump the other in, understand? You need to have it done a little bit at a time. Maintain the pressure at both ends, monitor the signs, keep a—”

“Why couldn’t you do it all at once?” the nondescript man asked.

“Theoretically, I suppose you could,” the black man said, closing his eyes in concentration. “But both patients would have to be anesthetized; you’d have to monitor real close and get ready to
abort if it wasn’t working. So you’d need a separate supply for each and a full team, plus a …”