46

They encountered no one on their way to the lab that evening.  When they arrived in the middle of the kitchen hallway Alex motioned for Kendra to trigger the mechanism that would get them into the secret passageway to their lab.  She glanced over each shoulder to be sure the hall was clear, and then focussed on the tray.  She knew that it had something to do with getting them in, but couldn’t remember what.  What’s happening to my brain?  Worried that her science would suffer from this mysterious memory loss, she picked up one of the dirty glasses that rested on the tray--nothing happened.  She tried turning another one, still nothing.  

Alex leaned in close and whispered, “Turn the whole tray counterclockwise one-hundred and eighty degrees.”

Kendra checked the hall for spies, then did as Alex had suggested.  The world spun, all except her right foot.  The tip of her shoe dragged in the hall carpet.  The spin was so quick that her toes would have been badly mangled if Alex had not drawn her leg toward his hip.  This unbalanced her whole body, and she threw her arms around his neck and hopped closer to him to balance.  

When the entrance stopped its spin the two of them looked as if they were in the midst of a hot and steamy tango.  From what Kendra could sense about Alex’s pelvis, then mashed against her abdomen, vampires responded to intimate contact in the same way live men did.  She pushed her leg down firmly until Alex released it.  With both feet on the ground, Kendra took a step back, or tried to, but Alex’s arms were around her waist.  He held her against his body.  She felt his excitement grow. 

“No one can hear or see us,” he whispered.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she objected as she put her hands on his chest and pushed.

“I might be cold and dead, but I’m not made of stone,” he warned.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 Alex, both disbelieving and confused, looked at her.  “Are you teasing me?” he asked finally.  

Kendra shook her head.  “No.”

His arms loosened, and she stepped away from him.  He slumped against the wall, and stared at the carpet.

Wanting very much to walk down the hall, into the lab, and away from Alex, Kendra instead leaned against the opposite wall, and faced him.  “Alex,” she said softly, then waited for him to look up.

He looked completely miserable.

“Do you remember telling me that you wished I had the time to get to know you?”

He nodded.

“This is that time.”  She waited some more, hoping that he would perk up, but even his thick dark curls seemed to droop.

“I-I-I do have feelings for you.”  She hadn’t intended to tell him that for months, if ever.  Ah well, in for a penny, in for a pound.  “They would be much easier for me to figure out if…well--“

“If I were alive,” he finished her sentence hoarsely.  

She nodded, pretty sure that her own expression looked as miserable then as did his.  They both looked down.  Kendra found herself staring at Alex’s shoes.  The brown leather of the plain square-toe loafers shone.  Starting with the sharp crease in his trousers, she worked her way up.  His slim, strong figure stirred the attraction that she held for him.  Who wears a vest and dress shirt to a lab?  She welcomed the thought, and hoped it might grant her some distance from Alex.  Instead it brought to mind images of the scientists who had worked such long hours at Los Alamos during World War Two.  She smiled.  The camaraderie and passion of those men glowed from the old black and white photos she’d seen.  True, their work had led to the tragedies of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but that had been a governmental decision, one the whole world regretted.  Have I gotten myself into a similar situation?

Kendra met Alex’s eyes.  They looked as serious as she felt.  

“Please accept my apology,” he said quietly.  “Know that I do not apologize for my feelings for you, but for having expressed them so crudely.  I knew that this wouldn’t be easy.”  

“You said that you could be warm.  Some day,” Kendra said, “I hope that you will show me how it is that you can be warm.”

He smiled.  “It will be my pleasure.”

As they walked toward the lab, Kendra framed a question with care.  While they stood in front of their respective computers, she asked, “Alex, now that I’ve pledged myself to this community, can you not tell me more of what’s really going on?  Why would American Missile bother to go back in time to completely wipe out vampires if most of you control your own populations?  You don’t feed off humans.”

Alex sighed, and came around to her side of the bench to help her check the jump equipment yet again.  “You answered your own question.  As I let slip the other night, some of us have not let go of the ancient ways.”

“What are the ancient ways?”  As she spoke she shook the pen of black paint that he’d given her in the apartment.

Alex sighed, and gave her a look filled with reluctance.  “It seems an ill omen to talk of these things just before you attempt to jump.  May we postpone this conversation?  Perhaps alternate the conversations that most discomfit one or the other, if not both of us, with pleasant, warm times?”

His emphasis on ‘warm’ made Kendra tingle again.  She resisted the sensation.  “That sounds an awful lot like  proposal to combine work and pleasure.”  She knelt, sighted in on the emitter on the lab bench, then painted a small black circle on the floor.

“Henry Ford said, ‘Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.’”

“That doesn’t actually refute my point, but I’ll keep it in mind,” Kendra said.  Guys, they never give up.  As much as she wanted to feel superior, the thought had the opposite effect.  Hey, that might prove useful.  It seemed she had come to accept Alex as teammate. 

“Okay,” she said, and felt the paint.  It was nearly dry.  “As soon as the paint dries, I’ll be ready.”  She stood and checked her coordinates one more time.

Squinting over her shoulder, Alex looked at the equation.  “You have some redundant variables here,” he pointed to the middle of the equation.

“No, I don’t,” Kendra explained.  “I’m going back just a few years to see someone I know well.”

“Your younger self?” Alex squawked.  “Isn’t that supposed to be impossible and dangerous?”

“So is time travel,” Kendra said calmly as she knelt again.  “The paint’s dry.”