56

Klieg lights snapped on.  Kendra squinted as the bright beams pierced even the tinted windows. The vampires shielded their eyes.  A siren sounded.  The HumVee in front of her, with a squeal of rubber against road, accelerated and crashed through the gate.  A dozen of Akhom’s rebels, each wearing a pair of sunglasses, poured out of the back of the carrier, and set upon the guards.  

Kendra slammed her eyes shut and covered them too.  She heard only some soft dragging sounds.  When the limo rolled forward, she peeked.  At least ten guards sat on the ground, slumped against the fence.  They looked so peaceful that they might have been sleeping.  The vampires, though, were eerie as they licked their lips, faces thrown into sharp angles by the harsh light.

“Kill the lights, fools,” Akhom ordered from somewhere further back in the convoy.  

One vamp swiftly climbed each of the two light towers, and smashed the giant lenses and bulbs.  Another dozen left the second HumVee.  The two bands moved swiftly and silently to either side of the huge complex.  The buildings appeared to be a collection of one-story bunkers, but Kendra knew from experience that the place was many stories deep.  

She heard scattered, distant crashes.  A few minutes later only dim emergency lighting remained.  Vehicle doors opened all around her in a nearly simultaneous flurry of snapping latches.  Rolf was first out of their limo, then the three vampires who sat facing Kendra.  William got out, and reached back to offer Kendra his hand.

“Do I have to go in?” she asked.  Several dreads piled up in her.  More than anything, she didn’t want to see the vampires kill more people.  Like any prisoner, she also loathed the place in which she had been held.  Finally, she didn’t want to deal with the intrigue and machinations between American Missile and the vampire factions.

“Yes,” William said simply.  Kendra pushed herself along the limo’s plush leather seat toward him.  

As she followed William toward the main entrance, she considered one part of her third dread, vampire politics.  How many vampire communities worked with Akhom, and how many opposed him?  It kept her mind off the first two, but only for a short time because she had no answers.   

They ran into the building.  William broke the neck of one AM security guard who ran toward them.  Kendra flinched.  

How many vampire communities existed in the United States?  In the world?

Two more guards managed to evade the vampire advance guard.  With one karate chop, William caved in the skull of the closest, and sank his fangs into the neck of the second.

Sure that she would vomit, Kendra covered her mouth and hurried into a shallow corner formed where a support beam met the hallway wall.  Her mouth watered as it always did before she puked, but nothing else happened.

“Come on,” William pulled her forward.  “No time for human niceties.  We have to keep moving.”

Kendra moaned faintly, and stumbled along, towed in his wake.  They met no further resistance.  She wondered if the entire security force of American Missile had been killed. 

They ran through the halls, moving further into the building.  A few other vampires joined them from a connecting hallway.  By the time they reached the elevators, their number had swelled to eleven--ten vamps and one freaked out human.  I hope no one expects me to think in the midst of this…war, but, surrounded by vampires and acutely aware of her own humanity, she couldn’t stop thinking.   What about loyalty?  She was human after all--no, she refused to be dragged into the binary trap of “either/or”.  Any call for her loyalty was a sign of primitive, corrupt thought.  Truth was a many-splendored thing.  No extinction, no war; coexistence.  

William pulled her off the elevator and into a dreadfully familiar corridor lined with stainless steel.  Fear enveloped Kendra.  Her body remembered the feeling of restraints both chemical and leather.  She couldn’t draw a proper breath, and breathed faster and faster to compensate.  The sound of her own ragged panting alarmed her.  She tried to slow it.  The hall seemed very hot.  She looked at William to see if he felt it too, then chided herself for being stupid.  Her former method of chiding herself, the vision of being barefoot, pregnant, and surrounded by snot-nosed tots in a crude cabin, popped into her mind.  That old nightmare seemed quite safe and peaceful compared with her current circumstances.  She snorted in disbelief, and, spirit lighter, drew a nearly normal breath. 

The group rounded a corner to find the rest of Akhom’s rebels grouped ahead of them in the hallway.  William pushed through the crowd, dragging Kendra with him.  A door that Kendra couldn’t see slid away, and they walked into a quiet, dimly-lit conference room.  

Xenopoulos was seated across and near the foot of the one long table in the room.  The beautiful spy snarled at Kendra with as much ferocity as an angry vampire.  Matt, who stood right behind Xenopoulos, stared straight ahead at the wall.  Kendra thought that he blushed, but couldn’t be sure in the low light.  

To Xenopoulos’ left, at the foot of the table, sat one of the CEOs who had threatened Kendra during her first imprisonment at American Missile, just before she’d started the food fight.  Two more businessmen sat to his left, their backs to Kendra.  

At the head of the table, one of Akhom’s vamps artfully bent the arms of two of the conference chairs so that the chairs fit together.  Akhom settled his large frame on this doubled seat.  He glanced at William.  “You two sit here.”  He pointed to chairs near his own.

“Find the tapes,”  he said to Ponytail.  “Play what we need to see.”  

The businessmen at the other end of the table squirmed.  Xenopoulos was unpreturbed.

“Now look,” said the head businessman from the foot of the table.  “You can’t barge in here, and expect--“

“I can,” Akhom rumbled quietly.  “In fact, I have.”

The wood panels behind Akhom slid apart to reveal a large flat digital screen.  Akhom turned his doubled seat to face it.  A recording played back.  Kendra recognized Daniel, the technophobic vampire she’d seen at Regis’ celebration her first night there.  

On screen, Daniel, stood about where Akhom sat.  “I will help you decimate the vampire population,” he spoke to an unseen audience in front of him, “starting with Akhom’s rebels.”

Akhom’s body tensed.  Kendra heard recorded chuckles.  She assumed that they came from American Missile’s directors, seated about where three of them were that very moment.  

“How do you propose to destroy Akhom and his troops?” asked a voice off-screen.

Kendra glanced toward Akhom, whose grip tightened on the remaining arms of the chair, bending each out and down.

“My spies tell me that almost one third of his followers are very uncomfortable with his policies.  When even one word reaches them that there’s an alternative…” Daniel shrugged.  “We’ll outnumber the rebels, and the rest will be easy.”

“You seem very confident,” commented another voice.

“I have every reason to be.  You see--”

“Enough!” thundered Akhom.  

The vampires clapped their hands over their ears.  The businessmen cowered at the other end of the table.  Only Xenopoulos seemed immune to the giant vampire’s force.  She smiled a thin superior sort of smile.  

“Let us see how Aurelius did,” Akhom said in a more reasonable tone.  The vampires took their hands away from their ears, but the businessmen continued to cower.

“Ms. Tanagawa has been our guest for three days,” said the on-screen Alex.  Kendra smiled.  Even his stance seemed sleek.  Was he too old for her?  She looked down to hide her smile.  Both the girlishness of her question and the absurdity of age when applied to Alex struck her as funny.  She was sure that he would find it funny too, and could almost hear his laughter.

“You will trade her?” asked an off-screen businessman.

“Of course not, but we may share our results with you.  In exchange we ask only that you share the design for the time travel detector.”

The businessmen chuckled.  “Why should we cooperate with you, Mr. Sterling, or you with us?  We are enemies.”  The voice was one that Kendra had not heard before.  It was sly and cold.

“All’s fair in love and war,” Alex said, and smiled.

“It is evident that Ms. Tanagawa has not found a way to send any of you back in time, or you would not be here,” said the sly voice.  “If we were to share the design for the detector, we would work against our own best interests.  We are not such fools as that.”  More chuckles.

“Enough,” said Akhom.  “Turn it off.”  

The panels in the wall slid over the screen, and Ponytail came back into the room.  Akhom moved his chair back to the head of the table.  He leaned forward with such menace that the huge long table seemed to shrink.

“Now,” he said quietly to the businessmen.  “Where are Daniel and the elegant Mr. Sterling?”