“Press the red button,” Nosferatu said. Nekhbet did not ask why. She did as he said.
The pilot of the X–Craft cursed as it banked slightly out of the designated approach, an alarm rang through his headset, and several warning lights flashed on the console. He hit the button that would switch the craft back to manual control but nothing happened.
He and his copilot screamed in unison as the nose of the craft dipped below glide parameters. The craft hit directly above the Haven.
Vampyr survived. The heavy wooden conference table had taken the brunt of the force as the explosion tore through the underground base and into the room he was in. With one arm he shoved the table off his body and took stock. His other arm had a compound fracture, white bone sticking out of the punctured skin. Breathing was difficult, and he realized he had several broken ribs.
With his good hand, he reached across to his other hand and jerked hard, his body spasming from the pain as he realigned the broken arm. The Airlia virus was already at work, repairing the damage.
Vampyr smiled grimly and staggered to his feet, silently promising vengeance against Nosferatu. This was but a delay in the inevitable.
Nosferatu and Nekhbet stared at the flames that shot up from the top of the cliff from the safety of the helicopter. Nosferatu had them in a hover two miles away, off the coast. He turned and began moving away from the site, paralleling the coast.
“Do you think he is dead?” Nekhbet asked.
“No,” Nosferatu said. “Even if he was killed by the explosion, the virus will bring him back to life.”
“He will come after us.”
“No, he won’t,” Nosferatu said. “When we took off from the hangar, we crossed an electronic beam that began a countdown.” He glanced down at the chronometer on the control panel. “Just about — now.”
Behind them the Haven, and the cliff, was consumed in a fireball as a small tactical nuclear weapon went off, vaporizing the compound, and Vampyr.
EPILOGUE
The sun was consumed by the western desert, slowly disappearing. Shimmering heat rose up as the sand gave back what it had accumulated during the day. Shortly after the last golden ray was gone, two wraithlike figures rose from the ground, brushing the sand off their dark cloaks.
“Which way?” Nekhbet asked. They were three hundred miles from the Haven, having flown straight across the desert before the fuel ran out. Then they’d run from the chopper for several more hours before burying themselves at daybreak to rest.
Nosferatu had never felt so alive. He wasn’t certain whether it was the one hundred percent Airlia blood that ran through his veins or Nekhbet’s presence at his side. And he didn’t care to ponder the question, simply accepting that it was. Finally. After millennia, what they had dreamed of while chained underneath the Giza Plateau was a reality.
Nosferatu stretched his arms wide, taking in the stars above and the land ahead. “There is so much in the world I want to show you. Things we never even imagined all those years we talked in the darkness.”
Nekhbet laughed, the sound picked up by the wind and blown across the desert. “Then let us see them.”
She took off running, her feet lightly touching the sand.
Nosferatu pulled back his hood, revealing his dark eyes and pale skin, and watched her slender form racing away, then he set off in pursuit.