That Nietzsche Thing (15 page)

“When was that?” Vivian asked, smiling at
me.

“Well, I’ve worked at the Hearthstone for
fifteen years...”

“How long has this building been here?” I
asked, looking around at the lobby.

“Since the 1940s,” the nurse answered. “I’m
sorry, is Mr. Elton in some sort of trouble?”

“No, no trouble, but we will need to see
him,” I said, returning my badge to the inside pocket of my
bomber.

The nurse tittered. “I’m afraid all our
residents are still sleeping, Detective. There’s no admittance.
Can’t this wait until official visiting hours?”

I looked through the front doors of the
lobby, out at the first red tinge of dawn. “No, I’m sorry, my
investigation just can’t wait,” I said truthfully.

“But...Mr. Elton suffers from the advanced
stages of Alzheimer’s. If you’re expecting him to be
talkative...”

“No, we just need to see him,” I said,
stepping away from the desk. “What room?” Vivian and Tebor were
already walking to the elevators.

“1728,” the nurse said. The number caused me
to pause in my step. “But, Detective...”

“Don’t worry,” I called back to the nurse as
the elevators doors chimed open. “We’ll be in and out in a
flash.”

#

Room 1728. Of course, Dark had to have his
last laugh. How long did he search for a nursing home with enough
floors to have accommodate his small pun? Or perhaps he’d
constructed the whole building just to hide the torpid corpse of Q?
After reading his last novel, I would put nothing past old A.E.
Dark. The hubris, the gall of the man, to decide right from wrong
and to play so fast and loose with the fate of mankind.

How many had died because of Dark? All those
Gene Genies, dying of thirst and hunger. How many would die once
Vivian and Tebor followed through with their plan? All because of
Dark. If he’d destroyed Q all those years ago, instead of hiding
him away and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to this very door, it
would all be over. But here we were. What game had he been playing
at? If he so feared 300, and what the blood of Cain was capable of,
why did he not destroy it at the very source?

Perhaps, because he couldn’t. I now knew that
now. How 300 had escaped quarantine, and began its spread as the
Geneing menace...how Dark knew so intimately that 300 was a
poison...

He’d taken the Geneing himself. When, I don’t
know, but it had to be early on. Dark had been the first Gene
Genie. And no Gene Genie could do anything to harm Q. For his blood
ran in their veins. As Vivian had said, all Genies were Cain’s
children, of him and because of him.

Dark had not hidden Q away to save mankind
from Geneing. He’d hidden him away to save Cain from mankind. When
the world was ready, the followers of Dark would decrypt the Last
Novel, find Q and raise him from his eternal slumber. Then, all of
mankind would live and follow Q.

From that day on and forever.

Chapter 20

Vivian Montavez unceremoniously opened the
door to room 1728. For someone literally seeking out her god, she
went about her task with strikingly irreverence. She sauntered in
the room and exhaled in audible disgust at the banal decor of
Michael Elton’s room. She hardly noticed the dessicated, inert body
in the raised hospital bed.

“Not everything you hoped?” I said as I moved
into the small room. The curtains were open; PFC Elton had a view
of the lake. I could see dawn breaking over the tree line. It could
only be minutes away. If I could just delay Vivian and Tebor a
little longer. They’d be trapped in this room.

“I’d assumed Dark had hidden Q away
somewhere...nondescript. But this is...disrespectful.”

“Hardly the Hall of the Slain, huh?” I said,
walking over to Elton’s slumbering body. He was old, ancient.
Harmless. But certainly well cared for. His face was clean-shaved,
and his hair was brushed. He wore neat, pressed pajamas. The
Hearthstone was an honest establishment. Whatever monthly check
that arrived from Dark’s estate had not been squandered.

I leaned in close and put my ear to the old
man’s mouth. He was softly breathing. Asleep. “Breathing but
unconscious,” I said. “This is Q?”

“This is Q,” Vivian answered, moving up
beside the bed. She looked down at the withered man and touched his
wrinkled face. She opened one of his eyelids with her manicured
nails and looked into the vacant eye. “Lack of blood isn’t fatal,”
she said. “It causes recidivism. Paralysis.”

“Sounds unpleasant.”

“You have no idea,” Vivian continued. “In
this state, he’s not asleep, not like you’d understand.”

“Then...” I hedged.

“He’s aware of everything that’s
happening.”

“All this time? But he’s been here for over a
century.”

“Exactly,” Vivian stepped away from old man,
turning to look out the window. “Imagine the agony? But it’s just a
blink of the eye to him. He remembers every moment of every day of
his existence. Every second, back to the year one.”

“Exactly how old is he?”

“As old as the world.”

“But he can’t be—” I started but stopped
myself.

“He is…Cain.”

“
The
Cain? From the Bible? Brother of
Abel?” I laughed. “That’s ridiculous.”

“He’s Q. The Source. Not just of Geneing but
of all mankind. The first human born. Cast out of Eden for
murdering his brother, cursed to wander the earth for eternity. The
Mark of Cain is in his blood. The Geneing virus.”

“But...that’s just a story.
Superstition.”

“It’s not superstition. The proof is right in
front of you.”

I laughed. There was nothing else to do. It
was all so crazy.

“We’re running out of time,” Vivian turned
back to the bed. “The sun is almost up.”

Daybreak was only seconds away. I needed to
stall for time. I almost had them all, Cain included, right where I
wanted them.

“Why a drug, though?” I asked. It was the
last piece of the puzzle. The one thing Dark’s novel hasn’t
explained. “Why does Cain’s blood make people euphoric?”

“It’s a glimpse of Eden,” Vivian said,
wistfully. She pulled back the sheets off the bed, revealing the
full extent of PFC Elton’s decrepit frame. “Of the bliss Adam and
Eve felt before the Fall. Through Cain, we shall all return to the
Garden. Through Cain, all that has come after will be swept
away.”

“Then the NeoCons are right, he is going to
destroy the world?”

“Not destroy. Rebuild heaven on Earth.”

“Chock full of Genies? And their vampire
masters?”

Vivian looked away from Q’s unconscious body
to fixed me with a glare. “You’ll understand soon. Everything will
become clear.” She nodded past me to Tebor.

“I’m never going to understand why you’d
consciously decide to become an abomination—” I started, but
Tebor’s large hands landing on my shoulders cut short my
diatribe.

I struggled, but it was no good.

The dawn was breaking outside the window. I
was so close.

“Enough philosophy, Detective,” Vivian said,
reaching into her purse. “I’m afraid we require of you a small
sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” I said in alarm. If I could
twist my elbow just a little, I’d be able to reach my Rhino...

Vivian pulled a large, chef’s knife out of
her purse. “Yes, sacrifice. As in blood,” she said, showing me the
blade.

I had it! My .357 in two fingers. I jangled
it free and miraculously caught it fully in my palm. I couldn’t
raise my arms, but I twisted, shoving the snub nose of the gun into
Tebor’s gut. The shot rang out, muffled, but still loud enough to
split my ears. I don’t believe I had caused Tebor any pain, but the
shot surprised the beast-man enough that he let go with a single
hand.

It was enough. I whirled around, sweeping
past Vivian and leveling the pistol at Cain. I had one chance. In
his torpid state, Cain was almost fully human. Vulnerable to
bullets. If he died here in the Hearthstone, they all died, as the
vampire legends said. Kill the head vampire and all of his children
would be destroyed. Vivian, Tebor, all the vampires...all the
Genies, I realized as I lowered my gun. They were the children of
Cain, too. With one bullet, I could put an end to the entire
Geneing epidemic. The world would be saved. I began to squeeze the
trigger of my Rhino.

Vivian slashed up and away with her knife.
She caught me square on the wrist with her blade, cutting deep and
drawing the edge across my tendons and arteries. The gun slipped
from my hand as a torrent of blood gushed from my wrist. I
screamed, but I could hear no sound. The pain. So much pain.

Tebor’s free hand reached out and grabbed my
severed wrist. He kept it held out before me, over the inert form
of PFC Elton. The blood drained quickly from my body, dripping down
on to the old man’s cracked lips. Presently, a withered tongue
emerged to taste the blood. Then the old man’s eyes opened, filled
with a hungry fire.

I can’t remember Q moving a muscle, but
instantly he was sitting erect, burying needle sharp fangs into my
bloody wrist.

After that, the feeling washed over me. I can
hardly explain it. A warm, all-consuming state of total bliss. It
was the Geneing, I had presence of mind to realize that. But
nothing else. The bite had infected me.

Then I was falling. Nothing but clouds and
weightlessness. All the world was nothing to me. I was free. I was
whole, total, as safe as in my mother’s womb. That was Geneing.
Bliss. Total and unmitigated rapture. I never wanted it to end.
There was no reason that it should end. I should have died like all
the other Genies, staving and thirsty in a squalid flop.

But it did end. For Q was not yet done with
me. Q would not let me die.

Chapter 21

“...He sailed off through night and day, and
in and out of weeks, and almost over a year, to where the wild
things are,” a voice recited, as the world resolved back into
consciousness. I awoke to a young, handsome face looking down at me
with loving concern.

I didn’t recognize the man, but I knew he
meant me no harm. Though I’d never seen his face before, I was
instantly filled with the knowledge that I loved him and that I
would sacrifice my life for him without hesitation.

He was Cain. He was Q. He was my god. He was
the father, and I was his child.

I shook myself awake and looked at my
surrounding. I instantly scrambled for a handhold.

It was night once again, and we were on top
of the Space Needle. Cain sat over me as I lay on the cold,
slippery steel of the roof. He was no old man now, but a young,
tall man with quick, inquisitive eyes. As I regained consciousness,
he stood and straightened his suit. He was well-dressed, almost
opulent, and strode toward the edge of the dish as if he wasn’t
six-hundred feet off the ground with a brisk wind blowing from the
south. At the precipice, Vivian and Tebor were waiting, looking
glum and cold in the night air.

“Good evening Detective,” Cain said, as I
risked pulling myself up to a sitting position.

“What’s going on?” I stammered. It was only
slightly less of a stupid question than: Where am I? Or: Who are
you? But I didn’t really care. All I wanted was to get back to the
Geneing. I wanted nothing else but the ignorant bliss of Eden. Why
had Cain brought me out of my perfect dream? What could be so
important that he would deny me that?

“You must accept my sincere apologies for
pulling you hence from the land of the lotus eaters,” he said. “But
your presence is required, once more, in the harsh, cruel, realm
fools call ‘reality.’” Cain was standing at the edge of the
Needle’s roof, looking down into the darkness. The wind whipped his
clothes so harshly around him, it surprised me that he wasn’t blown
clear of the rooftop. Tebor and Vivian were similarly buffeted,
Vivian’s hair forming a great mane behind her.

“I was...you were...there was,” my mind
reeled. I could vaguely remember before the bite. But it didn’t
matter. I looked at my wrist. Where Vivian’s knife had cut me there
was no wound. “How?” was the question I finally settled on.

“The bliss I can give and I can take away,”
Cain said. “The Elysian Fields shall always be waiting, my friend.
My colleagues here tell me that I owe you a debt of thanks.” Cain
nodded at the dower-faced Tebor and Vivian. “They tell me that it
was you, Detective, who decoded Dark’s book, ran his ridiculous
little paper chase, and saved me from my interminable prison. For
this service, I greatly thank you.”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t meant to
do it. I remembered meaning to do something very different. The
gun...

Cain bowed in gratitude, then shifted into
mocking imitation of his two, glum compatriots, comically frowning
and moping about. “The giant still thinks we should eat you,” Cain
said from behind his hand, point a thumb to Tebor. “And the girl
thinks you’re trouble. But they’re terminally shortsighted, as is
the tendency of our kind.

“When everything must be accomplished by
dawn, you often forget what great things you scurrying, little,
defenseless humans can accomplished in the daylight.” Cain turned
to look out over the lights of the city skyline. “You forget that
all of civilization grow while we slumbered, hiding from the sun.
All of it.” Cain gestured at the city lights. “Just look,
Detective, all the wonders of the world. I’ve seen them all. From
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to the harems of Ismail Ibn Sharif.
I’ve sailed between the legs of the Colossus and traveled the Silk
Road, from Constantine’s throne to the Forbidden City’s gate. I’ve
dined with Genghis Khan on the blood of his fallen foes and seduced
away Helen from her handsome Menelaus.