“Stop.” The old man took a step into the room. “Vampyr.”
Vampyr shifted the point of the xithos toward the old man. “Tian Dao Lin.” The old man nodded. “You were foolish to come here. You should have taken Nosferatu’s offer.” His Quarters took up flanking positions, slightly to the front of he who had made them.
“Nosferatu is weak and a fool who has been besotted by love all these years,” Vampyr said.
“Perhaps,” Tian Dao Lin said.
“Join with me,” Vampyr said.
“At the moment I see no reason why I should,” Tian Dao Lin said. “I have some of the blood and Nosferatu will have the technology needed. You have nothing.”
“I have Adrik on my side. With you, we will be able to get whatever we want from Nosferatu.” Vampyr backed up slightly, to a point where he was near the front of Chon’s desk, his backpack lying against the metal front.
Tian Dao Lin shrugged. “So he has been spying for you. I assumed Adrik was hiding something. The last report I had was that he had recovered what he needed to also.”
“He has. And he is with me, not Nosferatu.” Vampyr made a show of sliding the xithos into its scabbard, while, unnoticed, his other hand slid into his pocket. “You still have not made a proper proposition,” Tian Dao Lin said.
“True,” Vampyr acknowledged.
“Then I will have you killed.” Tian Dao Lin turned for the door.
Vampyr leapt backward, clearing the desk, and falling to the floor on the far side. Vampyr squeezed the detonator in his pocket.
The roar of the claymore mine secreted in his backpack was instantly followed by the sound of thousands of steel ball bearings ripping into the far side of the room, tearing through plaster, wood, and flesh and bone. Vampyr felt the air being sucked out of his lungs from the proximity of the blast on the other side of the desk and the shock wave moving away from him.
He drew his xithos as he got to his knees and peered over the desk top, his ears ringing. Blood, viscera, and parts of bodies littered the room. Two of the Quarters were moving, moaning in agony. Vampyr got to his feet. Cautiously he walked around the desk, being careful where he stepped. He lopped off the heads of the wounded Quarters with two swift strokes. He spotted a blood trail leading out of the doorway and rushed forward.
Vampyr’s lips split in an evil grin as he saw Tian Dao Lin trying to drag himself away along the floor of the hallway, his left leg almost completely severed from his body.
Vampyr went up to his fellow Undead and placed his boot on the practically severed appendage, causing the Chinese to scream in agony.
“You will survive this,” Vampyr said. “Indeed, the leg will grow whole again. But it will take many, many years. I know. But if you ally with me now, and come with me to the Haven, it will go much more quickly.”
Tian Dao Lin could only nod.
“Where is the blood you recovered?” Vampyr asked, leaning forward, putting extra pressure on the wounded leg.
Tian Dao Lin hissed. “In my helicopter.”
Vampyr sheathed his xithos. With one hand he picked up the wounded Undead and slung him over his shoulder. “Let’s go then.”
The two astronauts made their way across the scorched deck of the mothership’s hold and climbed into the airlock on the X–Craft. They carried with them all the blood they had gathered from the Airlia bodies. As Nosferatu had predicted, there wasn’t much, but what they did have was pure Airlia blood. They placed it in the X–Craft’s hold.
They sealed the airlock, secured the cases, and took their seats. With a few gentle puffs of power from the thrusters, they maneuvered the craft out of the hold and into space.
CHAPTER 17
Nosferatu was joined at the round table by Adrik. In the center of the table were four flat-screen monitors, one facing each of the chairs. They displayed the blood lab, where the supply Adrik had brought from Moscow was currently being worked on.
“Your headquarters was destroyed?” Nosferatu asked, his eyes on the screen. Adrik nodded. “Yes. The FSB assaulted it.”
“Why?”
There was a short silence, then Adrik shrugged. “I’m not certain.”
Nosferatu shifted his gaze from the screen to his fellow Undead. “I know you think me a fool. But I am the Eldest. I know you’ve met Vampyr. You’ve communicated with him. Do you know it was he who tried to kill you in Moscow and got the FSB to assault your headquarters?”
“I thought he might be behind it,” Adrik acknowledged.
“Vampyr has no honor,” Nosferatu said. “He is just like you. When you were Genghis Khan you had no honor. You killed all who stood in your way, sparing none. Vampyr did the same in his various incarnations. What did you expect from him?”
“I have honor,” Adrik disagreed. “I am bound by it.” “How so?”
“Vampyr saved me. When my palace guard revolted and entombed me underneath the Kremlin, he rescued me from a horrible fate.”
Nosferatu laughed, bringing a flush of anger to the other’s face. “Has it not occurred to you to ask why he was so fortuitously in Moscow at just the time your guard revolted and entombed you?”
Several seconds of silence passed.
“Even if you have honor,” Nosferatu said, “you do not have love. It is a trait of the humans, not the Airlia. It is what allowed them to defeat the Airlia here and elsewhere. It is more powerful than the Airlia virus that runs through our veins.”
Before Adrik could say anything, Nosferatu’s SatPhone chimed. He pulled it out and snapped it open, listened for a few seconds, then shut it. “Tian Dao Lin’s plane is in the air coming this way. He will be landing shortly. And my X–Craft will also be landing soon.”
The X–Craft was flying upside down to the planet, the crew checking their flight path with observations of the planet’s surface “above” them. Sure they were in the correct orbit, they then fired the maneuvering thrusters and the craft went tail over front, until the belly was facing the planet. Then it began to descend.
One of the scientists in the chamber turned toward the camera and gave a thumbs-up.
“They have processed what you brought,” Nosferatu said. He looked at Adrik. “Would you like to go first?”
Adrik glared back. “It is for the Eldest to go first.”
“Good decision,” Nosferatu said, “but that is not what will be.” Nosferatu stood. Adrik stared at him, waiting. “If you would indulge me, I propose that the first be Nekhbet. She has not seen the light of day in over five hundred years.”
Reluctantly, Adrik nodded his agreement.
Nosferatu left the conference room and headed for the subbasement lair to bring his beloved to the blood room and back to life.
On board the X–Craft, the pilot lifted the nose to get more lift as it entered the atmosphere. At the same time, the copilot watched the crosshairs on the computer screen in front of him. The copilot hit a key, putting the system on automatic release. A red digital countdown appeared in the lower left corner indicating they were slightly less than four minutes from the airfield.