“I think Morty, at least, will be ecstatic,” Key estimated. “They’ll be his license to thrill shamelessly and fearlessly.”
“Like he didn’t have that already,” Safar cracked as he joined Gonzales by the monitors.
“You waiting for initial intel?” Gonzales asked without taking his eyes off the screen.
“Let me know if-and-when,” Key said, already backing away. “Next stop, the queen’s clinic.”
Gonzales and Safar were already so intent on their work that neither bothered with a parting quip. So Key marched to the appartement de la reine, otherwise known as the Queen’s Private Apartments. In reality, it was a suite of rooms that Cerberus had made into “The Rahal Clinic”—modeled after the wing where Eshe Rahal had served at the Oman Medical College. Only now it was a cutting-edge facility with patient wards, operating rooms, and laboratories that put Frankenstein’s Castle to shame.
Key found the attractive young Arab woman in the medical examination room, staring down at the child corpse they had taken from the Sujanpur morgue. She was wearing her usual uniform of scrubs and a lab coat. As soon as she saw Key, she embraced him with relief. After sending him into the nest of a Queen Arachnosaur in Shabhut, Yemen, she was always delighted he made it back to her in one piece.
They took a moment; then, as was Key’s wont, got back to business.
“I thought you’d be further along,” he admitted, noting that the child was still wholly intact.
“I,” Rahal began, obviously looking for a way to explain her delay. “I didn’t want to dissect her until I exhausted every other means of examination.” She blinked apologetically. “I mean, once they’re open, there’s really no closing them again, right?”
Key looked beyond her compassionate face to the little girl on the slab. Even from that distance she looked exactly the same as she had in Punjab: almost glowingly, preternaturally angelic. It stirred something in him, something that he found himself fighting against.
“Now don’t go all maternal on us,” he said slowly. “Whatever she was, she isn’t anymore. Think of her as an encyclopedia we have to learn. And we can’t without cracking the cover, right?” He found himself holding Rahal’s shoulders, remembering her warmth and tenderness.
Rahal nodded, with just a hint of embarrassed shame.
Key should have left it at that, but, for some reason, felt like nailing a tack with a sledge hammer. “Don’t get all moony about the pilot,” he said, wondering why he was saying it even as he was saying it. “She’s already left her ship, okay?”
“Understood,” Rahal assured him in a far more certain way than he deserved. They took another moment to observe the little girl on the table, each trying to comprehend the monstrosity of her fate in their own ways. Key looked away to find Rahal looking up at him with big eyes. “What do you think?”
“Better question is what do I fear?” he sighed. “Bloodless corpses. Creatures who are impossibly fast and strong. Creatures who don’t appear clearly on camera. Does that ring a bell?”
Rahal sniffed. “You aren’t seriously considering that, are you?”
Key looked down at her. “You know about vampires?”
Rahal shrugged and shook her head slightly. “My mother told me of the Ekimmu as a child. They could be walking corpses, winged demons, evil shadows, or even malevolent winds. But what they all had in common was a lust for life force and blood.” She looked back up at Key, her expression changing from childhood fear to adult reason. “But those were fables used to keep us safe and obedient.”
“What if she told you about giant spiders whose webs made men explode?” Key asked pointedly.
That didn’t faze the professor. “But at least prehistoric insects were real. We found fossils. They’re part of the natural world. Vampires? Vampires are supernatural. They’re not real.”
Key resisted the urge to grip her by the shoulders again. “Eshe,” he said reasonably. “I believe everything, everything, anyone believes has a basis in fact for some reason. Cerberus was created for those reasons.”
Again he should have shut up. But there was something about this child corpse’s energy that was unhinging his usual control. “I know you’re a scientist,” he heard himself almost pleading. “And for many so-called rational people, seeing is believing. But sometimes believing is seeing, too. We have to come at this with open minds. Fables might be science we don’t understand yet.”
Her look of almost pitiful sympathy finally stopped him. “Okay, okay,” he sighed. “I get it. I’m sorry. I’ll let you get back to work.”
She was already turning to the exam table and putting on a pair of rubber gloves. Her actions seemed almost dismissive. “Do you want to observe?” she asked as a sort of consolation prize.
“I would,” he confessed, “but I have to meet with great Caesar’s ghost.”
She nodded absently, turning further away, but he couldn’t help noticing her relief when he left for the appartement du roi—the King’s Quarters, which should have been adjoining, but given the reality of royal life just prior to the French Revolution, was all the way on the other side of the manor.
He also couldn’t help noticing his own relief, and the way his mind seemed to click back into shape the farther he got from the clinic. That troubled him more than almost anything else that had happened since he got the assignment.
Naturally, the King’s Quarters had become retired General Charles Lancaster’s offices. How big his desk was, and what it was made of, was rendered irrelevant by all the communication, information, and surveillance equipment that was surrounding, encroaching, and covering it. As with everything that touched Key’s life, which was everything, he had researched his new boss.
Lancaster’s life after retirement from the military was the stuff of legend. Starting with a security company, he had built a conglomerate with pragmatic common sense that spread to all areas of business—rewarding the best minds and ignoring the worst. And one of his favorite pastimes was rooting out genius inventions that corporations sought to suppress to protect their antiquated bottom lines, then using them exclusively for Cerberus.
Since everyone outside these walls thought he was crazy, they let him get away with it—especially since a crazy man might even fight back. And nobody wanted Charles Leonidas “Lionheart” Lancaster fighting back. History dictated that was a fight the attacker would lose.
“You looked pissed,” Lancaster commented, his eyes seemingly everywhere at once. “That’s not like you.”
Key stood in front of the desk, looking over a bank of three monitors. He was already used to the retired general’s seemingly fragmented, but actually laser-intense, focus.
“Got any thoughts on Aafir’s game? What’s his deal?”
Lancaster chuckled. “Oh stop it, Josiah,” he suggested. “Only I should be able to do the ‘elaborate’ trick. If I had the time I’d give you the same look you gave me back in Logan-ville when I used it on you for the others’ benefit. You know, the one that said ‘you know damn well.’”
Key nodded, lowering his head. He breathed deeply, then fessed up. “Eshe just read me the vampire riot act. I have to admit I’m not used to getting dressed down.”
Lancaster sighed, choosing to ignore the possible sexually oriented “dress-down” joke. “’Love makes fools of us all,’” he quoted. “’Big and little.’”
“Shakespeare?” Key guessed.
“Thackeray,” Lancaster corrected. “William Makepeace