“Now for Regis’ science project.” The giant looked from Alex to Kendra. “We witnessed your trip this morning, Miss Tanagawa.” The giant gestured toward a large screen behind his throne. A vampire in the crowd projected onto the screen a huge still shot of Kendra as she slid down her lab bench, hands out and mouth open in fear as she realized she would crash in the next instant. “May I say that you have an interesting style of landing?”
The rebels laughed.
“Nevertheless, I am pleased that you managed time travel while in Regis’ home. As I understand it, you failed to do so while at American Missile.”
How does he know that? Kendra was tempted to look the giant in the eye then, as if she could learn something more from him. She was saved that error by his creepy and ancient voice, which made it easy for her to fix her gaze on his bow tie.
“You have five days to send my agents back to our vulnerable years in the sixteenth century so that they may guard our kind, or at least some of our kind.”
The giant leader looked at Alex. “Aurelius, you are second in command of this community. You and those working with northern California--”
Alex looked up sharply.
“Ah, yes. I know about your secret meeting the other night with leaders from communities around the world. You see, my agents are everywhere.” The giant laughed, and threw his huge hands up and out as he gestured over the heads of the crowd.
“You and the others have a choice, Aurelius. I will give you five days to make it. All of you will join me in subjugating humanity, or you, Aurelius, will watch all who refuse smolder in sunlight until each is completely dead.”
Regis stared grimly at the giant.
“Miss Tanagawa, have you ever seen an execution?”
Sick to her stomach at the memory of the hanging of the witches of Warboys, Kendra nodded.
“You have?” the giant sounded surprised. “You are proving to be a most unusual citizen of the United States.” He slapped the arm of his throne and the rebels laughed.
“For the moment, Miss Tanagawa, you are too valuable to kill, but if you fail to send my agents back to the past in the next five days, I will kill Aurelius slowly, and in your presence. He will die in agony. Do you understand?”
Kendra, eyes carefully fixed on the giant’s bow tie, nodded.
“Take the woman to the lab, and stay with her. You will be the first vampires to travel back in time,” the giant commanded the two rebel vampires closest to his throne.
Kendra looked at Alex as her guards led her past him. He smiled sadly.
“Aurelius, you will stay in the conference room. It is equipped with all that you need to reach those in cahoots with your father?”
As she left the ballroom, Kendra did not hear Alex reply. She stopped and turned to look for him, filled with a sudden fear for his safety. Her guards yanked her forward, down the kitchen hallway.
At the secret entrance Kendra wanted to spin to the safety of the lab, leaving her guards behind, but she knew it was no good. One of the rebels had to have been in the lab to hide the bug in the frame of the blackboard.
“We won’t all fit,” she muttered, and motioned for one guard to step close. Feeling like she was betraying Regis and especially Alex, she turned the tray. The door spun.
Her guard gestured for her to wait for his companion to come through. While she did, Kendra remembered how Alex had held her their first time in the sound-proof hallway. All her past objections to his touch seemed to her then a foolish waste of time. Will I ever get the chance to tell him that? He had wanted her to feel him warm. How wonderful that would have been. She smiled at his thoughtfulness.
“Let’s go,” said one of her guards. His soft voice chilled all the places in Kendra that had just thawed. She shivered as she walked down the sloping hall to the lab. She felt very alone and scared. Her spirits lifted a little when she remembered that she had not closed the soundproof door behind them. Perhaps if she screamed, then Alex would hear her--but no, the conference room that he was in had been fully soundproofed.
Having two strange vampires in the lab with her distracted Kendra so much that she could not concentrate. She reviewed her own equations, then Alex’s, looking for some clue that might improve her landings, but the equations might as well have been written in Sanskrit for all the sense she made of them. After a couple of hours of having her vampire guards stare at her while she moved from her computer to Alex’s, Kendra gave up, and began to clean instead.
The work went quickly since it really amounted to her becoming better acquainted with the lab, and reorganizing a little. It was not until she pulled open a slim drawer set into the frame above her center drawer that she found it: A long narrow piece of rigid plastic with a shimmering round button set near what Kendra supposed must be the top of the thing. She had the feeling that she ought to recognize it, but had no idea what it was. Am I going crazy? She slipped it into her pocket, and at once felt better, more hopeful.
Mysterious emotion bothered her more than feeling scared and alone had. Kendra wished that she could wander into Phil Rosenburg’s office to ask him why that was. I just don’t believe in magic, that’s all. Magic--Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That was Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law. Had LB managed to create an auto-return? Excited, Kendra thought it likely. She allowed herself to hope again.
Her thoughts cleared. Who cared about neat landings when she had to save Alex? She hurried to enter the coordinates for 1593 into her computer. “Okay, which one of you would like to jump to the sixteenth century first?”
Her guards looked at each other, suddenly nervous.
“We will arrive at night, won’t we?” asked one.
“Good point,” said Kendra cheerfully. It hadn’t occurred to her to send a vampire into the sun, but it might prove useful in the future. She adjusted a couple of parameters. “You should arrive at midnight. Ready to try?” she asked the vampire who had spoken.
He glanced again at his companion, then nodded once. Kendra explained how the return fob worked, and then handed it to him. “Don’t let the natives see you,” she warned him. “You’re not dressed for that time. Just grab something to prove that you were there, and come back. Stand here,” she pointed to the black dot, checked her settings once more, and then activated the system.
