Operation (26 page)

There had been many mortals she had used in this way; using them as they sought their own personal gain through her. In the end, they perished and she moved on to another. It was a cycle that she had followed for many years.

She had already decided that Jake would be the last. Her rebirth, which is how she thought of it, would not be based upon the servitude of a human for support. She would take what she needed but not through years of implied love or the promises of immortality she had used in the past. All of her past life was over.

She came to the fence that bordered the compound and easily scaled it dropping to the other side. She continued walking through the woods sensing the direction Jake had gone. The path was easy enough to follow because he took the same one every time. A few more steps and she froze. She felt the hair on the back of her neck rise and her body immediately assumed a defensive posture. Seconds later a familiar smell reached her—the smell of death.

She knew that smell well enough through her years of killing. It had never changed. However, this time there was something different about it because the smell of death encompassed what she had been following. The traces of Jake and his life that now mixed with the smell of his death. A feeling descended upon her, one that she was not familiar with. Her stomach felt twisted and her heart began beating quickly in her chest.

I’m scared! This is what it feels like…I had forgotten.

Her eyes scanned the darkness for any signs of intruders. She could feel the blood pumping through her own body working to control the combination of fear, excitement and trepidation. She struggled to focus on the smell and the aura of Jake that she had used to follow him.

In minutes she came to where her senses told her the body was. Someone had tried to conceal it in a small ravine by covering it with debris from the woods. Slowly she removed the branches and leaves and saw Jake’s face and the horror that had fixed itself upon it.

“Oh, Jake,” she murmured. “It wasn’t supposed to end like this.”

The men in her company had always died peacefully. When the time came, she eased their way to death and let them believe until their last breath that they would reawake and begin their lives of immortality with her. It was a lie, but it was one that she had become accustomed to over the years and after all that time, she almost believed it too. Until now.

She wanted—no, she demanded to know what had happened. She examined Jake’s body and quickly found the cause of death; his throat had been cut. She placed her fingers on the torn flesh and let the tacky blood that remained there adhere to her own skin. The connection through the blood they had shared was weak and faint, but still present as a ghostly image formulated in her thoughts. She grasped fragments of images and sounds that were his last moments in life.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-T
HREE

Christina experienced it all. She could feel Jake’s emotions, scared and unsure, hoping he had lied sufficiently well enough to deter the attacker who obviously was looking for her. She tried to examine the pieces of conversation to see if she could somehow determine who the attacker was and why he had followed her. But there wasn’t enough life left in the blood. The attack must have occurred…

She suddenly felt Jake’s head yanked back and the sharpness of the knife at his throat followed by the swift motion of it digging in and slicing across. She felt the life rushing out from his body. He was dying.

“I love you, Christina,” was the last thought that flowed from Jake’s living mind.

“No!” she screamed as she stood up and staggered away from his body. The depth of the emotion that was contained in his last thought had overcome her. He had died protecting her! He had given his life so that she could live! In his last moments of life he had only thought of her—even after her refusal to talk with him the night before.

She staggered as if drunk with clumsy steps that took her nowhere. Her legs felt like rubber. Her mind was whirling with thoughts of guilt, anger and rage. She stepped backwards not looking or knowing what was there. She bumped up against the trunk of a large tree. Anger flared in her mind! She turned to the tree and began slashing at it wildly with her fingernails extending from her hands.

Each slash brought an image to her mind. Each image was that of a person she remembered from the town where she had been born and later both shamed and ostracized.

The lover that had turned upon her.

The council leader of the village.

The members of the council.

The young boy who had thrown stones at her as she walked out of the town in disgrace.

One by one the images came and she dispatched them as she had done all those years ago. She clawed and clawed at the tree. Bark peeled off as she ripped and tore at it. Her nails dug into the exposed tender pulp of the tree. She could feel the moisture of it and it made her think of flesh of the man that had killed her Jake. She thrashed and tore at it until even her vampire nails were worn down to bare shapeless nubs and her fingers bled.

Panting and exhausted, she collapsed at the base of the savaged tree. For the first time in her life, she actually felt real pain. The pain was not from her fingers, but from her heart. Alexander’s reappearance to remind her that she could be free again—that she could live again, had not prepared her for the feelings of pain that accompanied freedom. Pain newly discovered was what you felt when you lose someone you cared about.

The anger she felt was not only about Jake, although it had been the catalyst for the barrage of feeling that forced her to the ground. She remembered what she had done with her life. Remembered those she had killed in a vengeance that she could never quench. She had caused too much pain and suffering in the world. Far too much. How many others had felt the pain that she was now feeling? How many felt pain caused by her hate? How many had been guilty only through association. The answer was simple: Too many.

The anger was replaced with feelings of remorse and sorrow for what she had been. It left her feeling devoid of what had been the mainstay of her life; the evil that she had done with her own hands. She wiped at the blood tears that rolled down her face. She cried for Jake as well as the others. How many had there been? She didn’t know exactly but she did know there had been many. She wanted to say that all of that was over, in the past, but she knew that wasn’t true. Not now—not yet. There would be one final murder she would commit. It would be over once she took care of whomever it was that did this to Jake. Only then would it be over.

She returned to Jake and carefully brushed away the remaining debris covering his body.

“Oh, Jake,” she said softly. “We were together a long time weren’t we? I promised you a life of forever and you end up having to settle for death at the hands of someone else. I’m sorry, Jake. I’m so sorry. I will find who it was and make them wish for death before I give it to them. I promise.”

She knelt down and picked up his body and cradled it gently in her arms. She rose effortlessly and began to walk back toward the compound. She remembered a place down by the river where Jake had liked to sit and fish or just to watch the water on summer nights. She would take him there and bury him.

She made her way back inside of the fenced area of the military compound and walked in the moonlight toward the river. She walked slowly for there was no need to rush with him. For once she would take the time to do it right because Jake deserved that and so much more.

Time, time, time…

She thought about Jake and the times that they had experienced together ever since they met when she first arrived in this country. He was such a young man then, a boy actually. So full of life.

How quickly time passes, she thought, especially when one does not have to worry about it.

As she continued her walk toward the river, she became aware of something else. A new sensation tickled upon the fringe of her senses, there was someone else here. Someone was watching her.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-F
OUR

She ignored what her instincts were telling her about being watched. She sensed no immediate threat of danger but rather more of a curiosity. A light breeze arose and Christina felt the air dance upon her skin. The feeling reminded her of the way Jake used to touch her face gently with his hardened hands. She closed her eyes and remembered the time and felt herself smile. However, the smile left her face quickly as the breeze brought her something else, the definitive smell of a human that she knew.

She continued to walk, sensing the presence of the human watching her. She took a deep breath allowing her senses to decipher its meaning. It was someone she had been with before that much she was sure of. She searched her thoughts for the match of her visitor. Slowly it came to her; it was a female, her supposed handler, the woman called Samantha.

She could wait, Christina thought. She would take care of Jake first and then see what Samantha wanted. This human had only come into contact with her twice before. What was it that brought her presence here tonight? Something must be wrong, but it would wait until she had finished with Jake. Nothing would get in the way.

Christina picked up her pace, moving incredibly fast into speeds where no human could possibly keep up, covering the remaining few acres in less than two minutes. She passed one of the old sheds where Jake kept tools. She went inside, removed a shovel and an old blanket and then continued on. As she moved, she wondered why Samantha was here.

Samantha rarely visited at all, so this unexpected and unannounced visit was indicative of some development. Had she learned that she had removed the device? Christina didn’t think so. Because of the tracking device capability built into it she had ensured that she carried it with her. She was not ready to leave the old compound yet so she thought it best to continue her arrangement until she was ready to disappear. So it must be something else, possibly a new assignment?

Finally Christina arrived at the spot that she remembered Jake liked. She carefully laid him on the ground and began to dig the grave. She emptied her mind of everything while she dug. So many things had happened in the past few days and at a dizzying pace. Yet she also knew that there was something that was formulating at the back of her mind that she couldn’t put her finger on. Some connection of some sort eluded her. But for now, she blanked all of it out and simply dug. She did it quickly and effortlessly. What would have taken a normal man an hour to dig, she had accomplished in a mere ten minutes. She retrieved Jake’s body and placed it gently at the bottom of the grave. She folded his arms across his body, then covered his body and face with the old blanket before she began to fill the hole back in. She returned the dirt slowly; unlike the speed in which she had removed it. For some reason it felt right to do it this way. She continued until the hole was filled in and she had smoothed the top of it out making it uniform and even. Jake would have liked that, she thought. He always believed that things needed to be a certain way, even in death.

Death. She remembered how their first meeting had been baptized in death. Jake discovered her by finding the dead bodies of the military escort that had brought her back from Europe. She had killed them as directed by the man that had been her first handler; another man she had killed later on as directed by the Agency. He had been one of the few that she had actually had any kind of feelings for. The one with the diary that she had mailed to the son to perhaps answer some questions about a father that had been forgotten.

Words. She stood and wondered if she should say anything over the grave before she left. She knew that Jake wasn’t religious but that he had believed in God. Still what did she know about God? Her attempts at anything religious would be a mockery in itself and that would not be appropriate. “Farewell, my Jake” she said and shrugged her shoulders, not knowing what else to say. “I’ll miss…”

She was suddenly inundated with a barrage of thoughts and images. Samantha was here to see her. Reese’s nightmare of other vampires. The confirmation that there were others like her. Jake’s death.

“Good evening, Christina,” a voice called to her.

Christina didn’t jump or react nervously to the voice as she backed out of the thoughts that had just overwhelmed her. She had expected Samantha to find her because she most likely carried a GPS that located exactly where she was at any given time.

Christina turned to face her. “Samantha,” she said calmly, “this is an unexpected surprise.” Christina’s eyes were drawn to Samantha’s right hand which remained in the pocket of her jacket as it had on the two previous times they were together. Christina knew that Samantha’s right hand remained in that pocket holding a detonation device in case she got out of hand and tried something foolish such as killing her Handler.

“I was in the area on another issue,” Samantha said calmly as if they spoke in person on a regular basis.

Christina looked at her questioningly and said, “So you thought you just stop by and see how I was doing? Should I be flattered by your presence?”

Samantha smiled and it wasn’t a pleasant sight. “We have business to discuss. I have a mission for you,” she said as her eyes returned to the freshly dug grave. “Who was that?” she asked.

Christina found her tone to be curious rather than pressing as if she didn’t care. She found herself angered by the aloofness of it. “It was the man called Jake,” she simply said. She thought to herself,
Who are you to act as if you care?

“Ah…your friend,” she said with an emphasis on the word friend that Christina further did not like. “Are you finished with him?” she asked with no emotion in her voice.

“He was killed,” Christina said sternly, “brutally murdered.”

“Why? Was he robbed or something?” Samantha asked.

“No not robbed. He was protecting me. Apparently someone either followed me or was waiting by the car. Apparently he didn’t tell them what they wanted so they killed him.”