Night and Day (Book 2): Bleeding Sky (21 page)

“Why?”
I asked. “I know if there were only a few humans around in a world of
vampires, I’d want to spend time with them.”

“We
are not you,” she said. “And want does not enter into it. It is entirely
physiological, controlled by the blood. The presence of another vampire
makes us anxious, uneasy. We are repelled by them.”

Takeda
had said much the same thing about Anna the night before, in almost the same
words.

“I
am old. I have met many vampires in my years. In that time, I have learned
to moderate these feelings, even ignore them. As I said, we are few, and
most vampires I have encountered are related through a common ancestor,
through common blood. That eases the anxiety, makes it less
unbearable.”

“Miss
Takeda said you were not of her blood.”

“She
is correct,” Anna said. “She and the others of her blood are descended from
a vampire who came to the Americas long ago, perhaps even before I was born.
And she is not close to his blood. Six, perhaps seven times removed. Perhaps
more. Her blood senses me as an outsider. It reacts. She reacts.”

“But
she’s able to exist among other vampires here without that anxiety,” I said.
“Vampires with a different bloodparent. Vampires that she has no direct
connection with.”

“But
all of them are descended from their common ancestor.” She paused and looked
at Clay. “The humans in Europe and elsewhere have studied this. They feel a
pressing need to understand the American vampires. There has been analysis.
Speculation. Vivisections.”

”Don’t
go all vampire on me, Annie,” Clay said. “I got nothing to do with the
scientific stuff.”

Anna
turned back to me. “Perhaps the best answer comes from a doctor in England.
Andrew Jones. He likens the anxiety to an allergy, and believes the constant
contact with other vampires has desensitized the American vampire, just as
my years have desensitized me. Physiologically, they are still allergic, but
they are no longer aware of it. However, it does not desensitize them to a
vampire with no common ancestor. I am a new type of allergen. As they are to
me.”

 It
had a strange logic to it and would certainly explain Takeda’s reaction to
Anna. But not all of it.

“So
why was she anxious from the minute General Bain gave her this assignment?”
I asked. “Days before she met you.”

Anna
smiled and looked at Martinez. “What are you afraid of, Lita?”

“Nothing,”
she replied quickly.

“I
don’t mean as a soldier. I’m sure you’re very brave.” Anna paused. “I mean
personally. Spiders. Tight spaces. Heights. That sort of thing.”

I
thought Lita wasn’t going to answer, but she finally said, “I don’t like
snakes.”

“Perfect,”
Anna said. “So let’s imagine that Charlie tells you that this weekend, he’s
going to take you to the snake exhibit at the zoo. You’ll take off your
shoes and walk through their enclosures. They will crawl over your bare
feet. He will have you pick them up and drape them around your shoulders so
he can take a picture for his photo album.”

Martinez
was staring at her.

“To
get you ready for your adventure, he gives you books about snakes, with
pictures. He insists that you read them, because he will ask questions
later. Every time he sees you, he talks about the fun you’ll have in the
snake pit.”

“That’s
enough!” I said loudly. Martinez had gone pale. “It’s okay, Lita. She just
trying to get a rise out of you.”

Martinez
came to her feet. “Sir, permission to get some air?”

“Go
ahead,” I said, looking at Anna.

“Close
the hatch behind you,” Clay said.

I
stared at Anna until I heard the sound of the hatch open and close at the
other end of the trailer. “That was uncalled for,” I said.

“I
was making a point, Charlie,” she said. “Just as Lita became anxious over
the thought of snakes, so Miss Takeda became anxious over the thought of
meeting me. It does not require the event. It only requires the idea of the
event. The blood takes it from there.”

I
leaned back in the booth. “So answer this,” I said. “Why are things so
different here? Why are there only a few thousand vampires in the rest of
the world and millions in the U.S.?”

She
glanced at Clay, then said, “Are you aware of the blood
obligation?”

“You
mean how vampires have to obey their bloodparent.”

She
nodded. “There is a condition, a genetic anomaly of a sort, that results in
vampires we call...”

“Unbound,”
I said.

“Yes,”
she said. “I didn’t know that the American vampires used that term. Do you
know what it means?”

“They’re
vampires that go their own way. They don’t have what you call the blood
obligation.”

“Correct.
They are rare, probably no more than one in ten thousand. I have never met
one and probably never will.”

I
had. He’d been my partner.

“We
have no direct proof, of course, but all evidence points to a vampire, of my
blood, here in America, who made a very, very bad choice of bloodchild. And
compounded his mistake by not testing the new bloodchild to determine if he
was Unbound.” She paused. “That vampire died for that mistake, and your
country reaped the consequences.”

“So
one Unbound vampire decided to declare war on the human population of the
United States? Just out of the blue?”

“It
wasn’t a war,” Clay said softly. “It was a military coup. Look at their
command structure. Look at their shadow government. It’s military. They’re
military. And they’ve got a nuclear gun pointed at the rest of the
world.”

“Nonsense,”
Anna said, shaking her head. “That’s the kind of claptrap they broadcast on
your Armed Forces Radio, direct from the mouths of your
generals.”

“It’s
all about the vampires with you, isn’t it, Annie?”

“Of
course it’s about the vampires,” she said. “Military, civilian, it doesn’t
matter. Their threat is not nuclear missiles. The true threat is that they
will decide they’re no longer happy within the confines of America. They
have submarines. They have aircraft. If they choose to insert a mere ten
vampires in Britain, or France, or China, how will you stop them? And how
long before they have taken the entire planet?”

“Oh,
I think we could give them a pretty good fight,” Clay said.

“That’s
what they thought here as well,” she replied.

This
had the sound of an argument that had been going on between them for a
while. I held up my hand. “All right, argue this some other time. Whichever
one of you is right, the bottom line is that the U.S. is viewed as a threat
to the rest of the world. So why this trip?”

“I
told you last night, Mr. Welles,” Heymann said from the stairs. “It’s better
to talk through our differences than fight.”

“Dr.
Heymann,” I said, standing.

He
reached the bottom of the stairs, impeccable in his three-piece suit, not a
hair out of place, freshly shaved. His eyes fell on Anna.

“Really,
Anna,” he said. “Is that any way to dress for a guest?”

“Ron
didn’t tell me we had company.”

“We
have a busy schedule this afternoon after I talk to Mr. Welles. You might
put on something more appropriate.”

“Of
course, Konrad,” she said with a smile. She stood. “See you again,
Charlie.”

“Anna,”
I said with a nod.

“You
want me to get Lita?” Clay asked.

“Lita?”
Heymann asked.

“Lita
Martinez, my aide. She stepped outside for some air. I’d like her to sit in
on our meeting if you don’t mind.”

“Of
course not,” he said. “Ronald, after you get Ms. Martinez, would you bring
me a cup of your excellent coffee in the living room?”

“Yes,
sir.”

Heymann
smiled at me. “Mr. Welles, if you’ll come with me.”

Chapter
Thirteen

I
followed Heymann to the living room. He sat in the chair he’d occupied the
night before. I sat on the couch to his left.

“I
apologize for being late for our meeting this morning,” he said. “It was
almost impossible to take my leave of Mayor Cobb last night. The police
commissioner and the others left at my first prompting, but Mr. Cobb
continued to talk.” He paused. “I’m afraid I was certainly rude to him at
the end.”

I
smiled. “I don’t know the mayor well, but from what I’ve heard, I doubt he
even noticed. Billy Cobb is all about Billy Cobb. He doesn’t spend a lot of
time thinking about anybody else.”

“I
see. Well, in any case it was nearly two in the morning before he finally
left. I wrote my daily report, transmitted it, and went to bed.”

“You
have communications with Europe?”

Heymann
nodded. “Yes, of course, through NATO. They tell me that it would take your
National Security Agency years to break the encryption on the signal. I
believe they are overly optimistic in that belief, but I will be gone in six
weeks. If it remains unencrypted until then, that is sufficient. After that,
it does not matter.”

“Secret
stuff, huh?”

He
stared at me, then laughed. “You misunderstand, Mr. Welles. There is nothing
secret or sinister about my communications. They are just daily reports.
Things I have done and have seen. The people I have talked with and the
content of those conversations. Exactly what I told your Governor General’s
Office I would be doing.”

“Then
why the encryption?”

“The
Foreign Office insisted on it. They are old fashioned about such things, and
they do not trust your Governor General’s Office or your federal government
to follow the normal rules of diplomacy. So my regular reports must be
encrypted.”

“They
may be right,” I said with a nod. “So, Anna won’t be joining us?”

“Unnecessary,”
he said. “She has met you and Ms. Martinez. There is nothing she can tell me
about either of you.”

“Tell
you about us?”

“As
I said last night. Anna is a sentinel.”

“And
as I told you, I didn’t know what that is, sir.”

He
smiled. “As humans, we do not have the natural ability to identify vampires,
though they can tell the difference between human and vampire at a glance.
If we shake their hand, we feel their cool skin and know, though I am told
that some vampires can generate human body temperature for short periods. If
we observe them carefully, we might notice that they only breath when they
are speaking, because their altered physical state does not require oxygen
to function.”

“But
because a vampire can see another vampire and know...”

“Exactly,”
he said. “After the situation in the United States, there was fear of
vampire infiltrators throughout Europe. Especially by heads of state, other
important persons. And so, a system of sentinels was organized. Vampires
were brought in to observe the participants at meetings and screen personnel
in sensitive locations.”

“Did
you catch any infiltrators?”

Heymann
shook his head. “No. It seems that your American vampires are uninterested
in the rest of the world. But the sentinels remain. Anna will observe any
visitors I have here. If I travel outside at night, she will accompany me.
Her job is to identify vampires and make me aware of them.”

“Sounds
like a pretty boring job,” I said. “I hope you pay your sentinels
well.”

He
looked past me. “Ahhh, Ronald. My coffee.” He paused. “And this must be Ms.
Martinez.”

Clay
came into the office and put a steaming mug of coffee on the table. I could
see that it had cream in it, and not the powdered kind.

Martinez
stopped in front of me and came to attention. “Trooper Carlita Martinez,
sir,” she said.

“What
happened to your face, child?” Heymann asked.

“Stumbled
and fell in the dark, sir,” she quickly replied.

“How
unfortunate. Please, sit down.”

“This
is Dr. Konrad Heymann, former German ambassador to the United
States.”

She
turned to him and nodded. “Sir” she said, then sat on the couch next to
me.

He
looked at both of us as he took a sip from his mug. “Would either of you
like some more coffee?”

I
shook my head and Martinez said, “No thank you, sir.”

Heymann
put down the cup and reached into his jacket, coming out with a folded piece
of paper. “I thought I’d save us some time and provide you with my itinerary
for today and tomorrow. I will probably stay a third day and perhaps even a
fourth, but that will depend on my findings during the next two
days.”

He
leaned forward and handed me the piece of paper. I unfolded it and read. It
was worse than I could have imagined.

Today,
two hours of visitors here in the trailer, starting at noon. After that, a
stroll around the square, talking to people. Security Force troopers,
gawkers, shop owners. Dinner at one of the restaurants on the periphery of
the square. And then a walk through the neighborhood surrounding Jackson
Square with no set route. Wherever his feet took him, however far from the
square he wandered before dusk. Then a quick return to the
trailer.