Thirst No. 1 Read online

  The armored vehicle carrying Joel has halted near the center of the compound. Armed soldiers scurry to line up around it, their weapons drawn and leveled. A cruel-faced general with a single star on his shoulder and death in his eyes approaches the vehicle. Behind him is a group of white-clad scientists—just what I don’t want to see. The general signals to somebody out of view and the side door on the armored vehicle swings open. Heavily chained, his shoulders bowed down, Joel is brought into the open. The general approaches him, strangely unafraid, and searches him. Then he glances over his shoulder. Several of the scientists seem to nod. I don’t understand the exchange. What are they approving? That Joel is a genuine vampire? They don’t know about vampires.

  “Or do they?” I whisper.

  But it’s not possible. For the last two thousand years or more, Yaksha and I were the only vampires on earth. Recently there have been others, of course. But Ray’s conversion was short-lived, Eddie was a psychotic aberration, and I destroyed all of Eddie’s offspring.

  Or did I?

  This general wanted us taken alive, I realize. He’s the one who gave the order to the Apache pilots. They waited a long time before they used their rockets, and then only when they were forced to. In fact, the general is probably angry that they used them at all. The way he’s studying Joel—it’s almost as if he’s gloating. The general wants something from Joel, and he knows what it is.

  Joel is taken inside a building.

  The general confers with one scientist and then they, too, go inside.

  I sit back and groan. “Damn.”

  My objective is clear. I have to get Joel out of the compound before they can perform extensive tests on him—more specifically, before they can analyze his blood. I’m not even sure what they will find, but whatever they discover, it won’t bode well for the long-term survival of the human race.

  But I cannot force my way inside. Therefore, I must sneak in. How do I do that? Make friends with the guards? Seduce Mr. Machine Gun Mike? The idea may not be as farfetched as it seems with my magnetic personality and hypnotic eyes. But from what I can see, all the men live at the compound. This is unfortunate.

  I glance in the direction of Las Vegas, neon fallout on the horizon.

  “But the boys must leave the compound and go out on the town now and then,” I mutter.

  It is two hours before dawn. While I study the compound with my powerful eyes, searching for a vulnerable spot, I see the scientist whom the general conferred with climb into an ordinary car. He stops at a checkpoint before exiting the compound. By then I am running for my Bronco.

  I want to talk to this scientist.

  As I climb in my stolen vehicle, I notice that my arms and hands are glowing with a faint white light. The effect stuns me. My face is also glowing! In fact, all my exposed skin shines with the same iridescence as the full moon, which hangs low in the sky in the direction of Las Vegas.

  “What kind of radiation are they fooling with out here?” I mutter.

  I decide to worry about it later.

  The scientist is a speed demon. He drives close to a hundred all the way to Las Vegas, or at least until he hits the public highway, five miles outside the town. I push the Bronco to keep up. I suppose no cop will give him a ticket on a government road. It is my hope he lives in Vegas, but when he goes straight to the Mirage Hotel, my hopes sink. He’s probably just out for a few hours of fun.

  I park near him in the lot and prepare to follow him inside.

  Then I remember what I am wearing.

  A ripped flak jacket and bloody clothes.

  I do not panic. The people I stole the Bronco from are on vacation. They will have, I’m sure, ladies’ clothes somewhere in the vehicle. Lo and behold, in the back I find a pair of blue jeans, two sizes too big, and a black Mickey Mouse sweatshirt that fits like a wet suit. Luckily, the blood and glass washed out of my hair while I slept beneath Lake Mead. Standing in a dark corner of the parking lot, I change quickly.

  I find the scientist inside at the dice table.

  He is an attractive man, perhaps forty-five, with thick black hair and large sensual lips. His face is sun dried, tanned and lined, yet on him the effect is not unpleasant. He looks like a man who has weathered many storms and come out ahead. His gray eyes are deep set, very alert, focused. He has discarded his white lab coat for a nicely tailored sports coat. He is holding a pair of red dice as I enter, and it seems to me that he is secretly willing them to obey his commands, as so many other gamblers do.

  He fails to throw a pass, a seven, or an eleven. He loses his bet and the dice pass to another player. I note that he had a hundred-dollar chip on the table, not a small bet for a scientist on the government payroll. I am surprised when he lays down another hundred dollars. He loses that as well.

  I observe the man for forty-five minutes. He is a regular—one of the pit bosses calls him Mr. Kane, another, Andy. Andrew Kane, I think. Because Andy continues to lose, at an alarming rate, he is forced to sign a slip to get more chips when the cash in his pockets is gone. But these black honeybees vanish rapidly, and his eagerness turns to frustration. I have been counting. Two thousand dollars gone—just like that. Sighing, he leaves the table and, after a double scotch at the bar, leaves the casino.

  I follow him home. The place is modest.

  He goes inside and prepares for bed. As the morning sun splashes the eastern sky, he turns out his own light. Obviously he works the night shift. Or else the general had called Andy into work because of Joel. I wonder if he will be working long hours in the days to come. Memorizing his address, I drive back toward the Mirage. If it is Andy’s favorite hangout, it’ll be mine as well.

  I have no credit cards, money, or identification, but the woman at the reservation desk hands me a key to a luxury suite after staring hard into my beautiful blue eyes. Inside my room, I place a call to my primary business manager in New York City. His voice is unaffected—the government has not gotten to him yet. We do not talk long.

  “Code red,” I say. “Have the package delivered to the Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas. Room Two-One-Three-Four. Immediately.”

  “Understood,” he says and hangs up.

  The package will include everything I need to start a new life: passport, driver’s license, cash, and credit cards. It will arrive at my door in the next hour. There will also be an elaborate makeup kit inside, wigs and different-colored contacts. Over the last fifty centuries, I have prepared for every eventuality, including this one. Tomorrow I will look like someone else, and Andrew Kane will meet a mysterious young woman, and fall in love.

  THREE

  The following evening a demure redhead with short bangs and green eyes waits outside Andrew Kane’s house. Actually, I have been in the front seat of my newly purchased Jeep since noon, but the mad scientist has been fast asleep, as most normal people would be after staying up all night. I came to his house early because I am anxious to go through his things, learn exactly what he does before I make a move on him. The one fact that guides me as to his importance is that the general spoke only to him after Joel was brought inside the compound. Yet intuitively I sense Andy’s value. There is something fascinating in his gray eyes, even though he is a degenerate gambler. This quality does not bother me, however, because I might be able to use his obvious casino debt against him. Of course, I plan to use Andy to get into the compound to rescue Joel.

  Quickly. I feel the pressure of each passing hour.

  Joel will be thirsty already, unless they happen to feed him.

  A newborn’s thirst is agonizing.

  The papers are shouting about the barbaric terrorist attack in Los Angeles. Authorities estimate that there were at least three dozen Islamic fanatics involved, and that the local police were overwhelmed by superior forces and military equipment. The mayor has vowed that the city officials will not rest until the murderers are brought to justice.

  The hot sun is draining for me after such an intense night. Yet I bear it be
tter than I would have before drinking Yaksha’s blood. I suspect, after five thousand years, the sun had no effect on Yaksha. I sure could use his power now. I pray he is finally at peace, in Krishna’s blue abode. How often I pray to Krishna. How curious, since I am supposed to hate him. Oh well, the heart of a vampire is unfathomable. No wonder superstitious people are always trying to drive stakes through our hearts.

  It is five in the evening before Andrew Kane emerges from his house and climbs in his car. He has no time for the casinos now. No doubt the general waits for him. Andy drives the five miles on Highway 15, then turns onto the government road, once again pushing his speed up to near a hundred. My Jeep has a powerful engine—I cruise five comfortable miles behind him. Actually, it is probably something of a waste to follow him all the way into work. He’ll just drive inside and disappear into one of the buildings. But I want to see how long it takes him to pass through security, how many checks he goes through. Close to the compound, I veer off the road and tear across the desert, parking near the hill I hid behind before. On the seat beside me are high-powered binoculars. Even my supernatural sight can be improved by mechanical aids.

  I am not given a chance to reach my vantage point before Andy gets to the front gate of the compound. Still, I can see well enough. He is stopped, naturally, but the guards know him well. He hardly has to flash his badge. The guards do not search his trunk. He parks his car in the same spot and enters the building where Joel was taken, the largest, most modern building in the whole complex. Chemical smells drift out from the building. It definitely has a lab inside.

  I would like to examine the compound further but night is the time to do it. Plus I am anxious to get into Andy’s house. I tear back to Las Vegas, not passing anyone on the road. I wonder if the scuba divers are still searching the bottom of Lake Mead for my body. I wonder if the general suspects I will try to rescue Joel. I doubt it.

  Andy’s house is a three-bedroom affair at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac. This being Las Vegas, there is the obligatory pool in the backyard. Leaving my Jeep on the adjoining street, I climb his wall and pick his back door lock. Inside it is cool; he left the air conditioning on. I shut the door and stand listening for a moment, smelling. Many aromas come to me then. They tell me much about the man, even though we have never been formally introduced.

  He is a vegetarian. There is no smell of animal flesh. He doesn’t smoke, but he does drink. I see as well as smell the bottles of liquor in a walnut cabinet. He does not use cologne, but there is a faint odor of various makeup products. Our Mr. Andrew Kane resents middle age.

  He is a bachelor, there are no pictures of a wife or kids on the walls. I step into the kitchen. He eats out mostly; there is little food in the refrigerator. I riffle through his bills on the kitchen counter. There are a couple of envelopes from banks. He is up to his limit on three credit cards.

  I walk into the bedroom he uses as an office.

  I almost faint.

  On his desk is a black and white and red plastic model of the double helix DNA molecule. That is not what staggers me. Beside it is a much more complex model of a different kind of DNA—one that has twelve strands of encoded information instead of two. It is not the first time I have seen it. Seven hundred years ago, the great Italian alchemist, Arturo Evola, created a similar model after spending six months in my company.

  “It’s not possible,” I whisper.

  Andrew Kane has already begun to crack the DNA of the vampire.

  FOUR

  Italy, during the thirteenth century, embodied all that was wonderful and horrible about the Middle Ages. The Catholic Church was the supreme power. Monarchs came and went. Kings and queens fought and died. But the Roman Pope wielded the true power over life and death.

  Art was the gift of the Church to the people in those days. This was above and beyond the gift of their strict theology, which did nothing for the poor masses except keep them confused until the day they died. I say that with well-deserved bitterness. It would have been impossible to live in those days and not become angry at the Church. Today, however, I think the Church does much that is good, and much that is questionable. No religion is perfect, not after man gets through with it.

  I lived in Florence from 1212 till 1245 and spent many months touring the churches where the finest paintings and sculptures were displayed. The Renaissance was, of course, a long way off, and Michelangelo and Da Vinci had yet to be born. Still, these earlier days were remarkable for their creativity. I remember well Bonaventura Berlinghieri’s radiant St. Francis and Niccola Pisano’s hypnotic sculpture Annunciation to the Shepherds.

  The Inquisition was another gift of the Church. The boon of the devil in the minds of most people in those days. Two informants, whose identities could remain unknown to the victim, were all that was necessary to charge someone with being a heretic. The informants could be heretics themselves, or witches—not pleasant titles to earn in old Italy. A confession was necessary to convict anyone of being a heretic. A little stretching of the limbs, or burning with live coals, or torturing the victim on the strappado—the dreaded vertical rack—was usually enough to get an innocent person to confess. I remember going to the central city courtyard to watch the victims being burned alive at the stake. I used to think back over the barbarism of the Emperors of the Roman Empire, the Mongolian hordes, the Japanese shoguns—and yet their forms of torture all paled compared to the pain caused by the Church because the people who lit the pyres wore crosses. They chanted prayers while their victims screamed and died.

  I observed only a few executions before I lost the stomach for them. Yet I thwarted the Inquisition in my own way, by secretly killing many of the inquisitors. I usually left their bodies in compromised places—houses of prostitution and the like—to discourage thorough investigations. As I drained the inquisitors’ blood, sucking their large neck veins and arteries, I whispered in their ears that I was an angel of mercy. None of them died easily.

  Yet the Church was bigger than a single vampire, the Inquisition an infection that spread and multiplied through its own mysterious madness. It could not be easily stopped. It cast a gloom over my stay in Florence, over my joy in the resurgence of mankind’s creativity. I have hunted humans throughout time, and yet I am proud of them as well, when they do something bold, something unexpected. The best art always comes unbidden.

  Arturo Evola was not known as an alchemist or else he would not have lasted a day in medieval Florence. He was a twenty-one-year-old Franciscan priest, and a devout one at that. He had entered the priesthood at the age of sixteen, which was not unusual at that time, because the easiest way to obtain the finest education was to become a priest. He was a brilliant man, undoubtedly the most inspired intellect of the thirteenth century. Yet history does not know him. Only I do, and my memories of him are filled with sorrow.

  I met him after Mass one day. I despised the Church, but enjoyed the actual service. All the chanting, the choirs, and I loved to hear the early organs played. Often I would go to communion, after attending confession. It was difficult for me to keep a straight face while I told of my sins. Once, for fun, I told a priest the whole truth of what I had done in my life. But he was drunk and just said to do five Hail Marys and to behave myself. I didn’t have to kill him.

  I received the Holy Eucharist from Arturo and met him after the service. I could tell he was attracted to me. In those days many priests had mistresses. I had gone out of my way to see Arturo because a gypsy healer had told me about him. He was an alchemist, she said, who could turn stone into gold, sunlight into ideas, moonlight into lust. The gypsy had a high opinion of Arturo. She warned me to approach him cautiously because his real work had to be kept from the Church. I understood.

  Commonly, an alchemist is known as an esoteric chemist who attempts to convert base metals into gold. This is a crude understanding. Alchemy is a comprehensive physical and metaphysical system embracing cosmology as much as anthropology. Everything natural and super
natural can be found in it. The goal of alchemy is to experience the totality of the organism. It is a path of enlightenment. The gypsy said Arturo was a born alchemist. Knowledge came to him from inside. No one had to teach him his art.

  “The only trouble with him is he’s a Catholic,” she said. “A fanatic.”

  “How does he merge the two disciplines?” I asked.

  The gypsy blessed herself. She was superstitious of the Church as well. “God only knows,” she said.

  Arturo did not strike me as a fanatic when we first met. His demeanor was soft, like his lovely eyes. He had a special ability to listen totally to a person, a rare gift. His large hands were exceptionally fine; when he brushed my arm with his fingers I felt he was capable of touching my heart. And he was so young! That first afternoon we talked about astronomy—a midway subject, in my mind, to alchemy. He was delighted with my knowledge of the heavens. He invited me to share a meal and afterward we went for a walk around the city. When we said goodbye that night, I knew he was in love with me.

  Why did I pursue him? For the same reason I have done many things in my life—I was curious. But that was only my initial reason. Soon I, too, was in love with him. I must say, the feeling was present before I began to probe his knowledge of alchemy. Before going that deep into his secret world, I knew he was unlike other priests of his day. He was a virgin, and his vow of celibacy was important to him.

  I did not just spring the questions on him one day. Can you turn copper into gold? Can you heal lepers? Can you live forever? I showed him a glimpse of my knowledge first, to inspire him to share his. My understanding of the medical properties of herbs is extensive. An old friar in Arturo’s church became ill with a lung infection, and it seemed as if he’d die. I brought Arturo an herb concoction of echinacea and goldenseal and told him to give it to his superior. The friar recovered within twenty-four hours and Arturo wanted to know who had taught me how to make tea.