CHAPTER 13
Reginald didn’t sleep.
Nikki tried. While the sun reddened the edge of the two blankets they’d draped over the curtain rod behind the motel drapes, she lay beneath the covers, her eyes closed. Reginald laid next to her, his face turned toward hers. He didn’t close his own eyes. He just watched her, his vampire-enhanced ears open and listening. There were no sounds from the other rooms. There were no sounds on the roads, and no sounds from the city in the distance. That might change as humans came out to forage, possibly to set some fires. But for now, there was nothing. There was the small room and the exterior hallway outside, and there was Reginald, and there was Nikki. Reginald’s cell phone remained mute, seeming to confirm his worst nightmares. Even if Claire was dead, he’d think that one of the others from the house would use a normal phone to try and call his phone in the conventional way. The cell networks were up and they all knew his phone number. But there was nothing.
He looked again at Nikki. There was nobody else and nothing else that mattered. She was all he had left. All he needed.
He watched her sleep, wondering if this existence could be enough. They were vampires. All they needed to live was blood. If push came to shove — no matter who won this increasingly one-sided war — could they live on their own, feeding on animals if necessary? Reginald decided they could. Humans only needed food, water, and shelter to live, but vampires really only needed blood. Would it be ideal? No. But what had ever been ideal in the life of Reginald Baskin? When he’d been human, he’d had his television and his greasy snacks and his internet and all of the modern conveniences, but he’d had no real friends, no companion, and no respect — especially respect for himself. Then, when he’d become a vampire, he hadn’t gained any respect (again, including and especially for himself), and while he’d gained immortality, he’d also gained a new level of contrast that made him more different from his so-called peers than ever. Even when his cache had risen in the vampire community, his mental powers had made him a freak. After that, he’d become a treasonist and a traitor and a pariah. And in this final reckoning, it turned out that he might be the cause of the end of days.
There was always something missing. If the world went to shit and only he and Nikki and a food source survived, would it matter?
No, it wouldn’t matter.
Still, he couldn’t help but hope. The graveyard was close. He had no idea what he’d find when night fell and they began to search, but in his fantasy, the angel statue guarded the entrance to an ancient, Indiana Jones style underground chamber. He’d trip through catacombs, dodging booby traps that couldn’t hurt him. He’d be flattened by a huge round boulder and would stand back up, healed and fat as ever. He’d find the codex on a plinth, and he’d swap it for an equal-weight bag of sand.
Once he had the codex, then, he’d see the pieces of the future that even Claire hadn’t been able to see. And then, maybe he’d be able to change it. Fate was fate, but he was beginning to suspect that predestination was more malleable than he’d been allowing. The angels couldn’t see the future because they couldn’t understand free will. It was their one major fault, and it was the reason Claire’s appearance had unseated their plans. So once Reginald saw what eternity had planned for the future of humans and vampires, wasn’t it possible that he’d still be able to change it? He thought so. Dominos were inert. Beings were not. The minute he saw the hand that was tipping history over, he thought he might be able to challenge it. He might be able to use his free will to challenge it, if he didn’t feel the ending of the story was a sufficient happily ever after.
Nikki’s eyes opened.
“You’re not sleeping,” she said.
“I can’t sleep.”
She sat up. “I know. I can always feel it. When you can’t sleep, it’s in the air. The air, not my blood.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Because when you can’t sleep, I can’t sleep. It sucks.”
“I’m sorry.”
She sloughed back down, propping her head of dark hair up on one elbow. Reginald had been thinking how pretty she was — how pretty she’d always and forever be — while she’d supposedly been sleeping. But now that he could see her eyes, he thought it anew. She really was stunning. And she was all his. For some reason, this wonderful, funny, kind, and beautiful young woman had chosen him. The doombringer, the reject, the ender of worlds.
“It’s okay. Is it the codex?”
“Mostly.”
“The graveyard will be there tonight. I couldn’t get fried for it. I’m sorry. I hate sunburns. Especially lately.”
“Sure.”
“But you’re mad that we didn’t try with the time we had,” she said.
He shook his head. There was no point in being mad. Ever. About anything. Nothing Reginald had ever experienced, when compared to the current state of the world, seemed remotely worth being mad about — with the possible exception of his and Nikki’s attempted execution by Logan’s Vampire Council.
“I’m not mad.”
“Honest?”
“Honest.” He sat up, all pretense at sleeping gone. “Like you said, it’ll be there tonight.”
She was looking at him with an expression he couldn’t read. But that wasn’t right; he could read it fine. He just didn’t really like it.
“What?” he said.
She shook her head.
“Nikki, what?”
“I hate to challenge the logic of His Eminent Reginaldness,” she said, “but it just seems to me that finding some ancient scroll or whatever might not make any difference. You seem to be staking a lot on finding it.”
“Claire said it was the plan. We peek at the end, and it’s like spoiling a book or a movie.”
“Exactly,” she said. “Spoiling it.”
He jerked his head toward the window. “I don’t think you can spoil what’s out there now in a way that would make it worse.”
“I don’t believe in fate. I think we make our own fates. What will unfold, will unfold. I don’t know that we’re supposed to see it coming.”
“That still sounds like fate to me.”
She shrugged.
“Look,” he said. “I know that even if we find the thing and even if we can make the world better, it’s not going to solve everything. Billions of people are already dead. There’s no question about stopping any of this because it’s already happened. The reports I’m hearing from both sides, including the human pirate radio stations, are all in agreement: humans are fucked. The vampires won. They’ll make their pathetic little pockets of resistance, but it’s game over. They weren’t prepared enough. The stuff in the AVT’s gray bullets was supposed to be a bio weapon, like a disease, but they didn’t finish developing it before the war broke out. It was intended to spread — like roach poison, where one roach takes the poison home to its the nest. But they got it wrong. It kills the vampires who get shot with it, same as a wooden bullet through the heart, but it’s still a one-to-one weapon. They should’ve started earlier and finished the germ. They should have made more of the guns and bullets and stockpiled them. They should have told the general population a long time ago that we existed, so they’d be prepared. But that’s not what happened, and there weren’t enough of them who knew what they were facing. The number of trained fighters was pathetic next to vampires, almost of all of whom knew their frail enemies and were deadly even without training. The AVT was like a drop of water in the ocean.”
“What’s going to happen?” said Nikki.
He shrugged. “It’ll become a vampire planet, just like Claude and Timken wanted. They’ll keep some humans to farm for blood, like we used to keep cows for milk. Vampires will be on top, just like they seem to think they should be. They will have won.” He realized he was using third-person when referring to vampires, when really he should be using first-person. Like it or not, he and Nikki had ended up on the winning side. So he forced himself to add, “We will have won.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. Reginald had evolved a lot since he’d become a vampire — he had a brain like a library, senses sharp enough to read every detail around him, the ability to glamour vampires he was related to, the ability to talk to blood, and on and on — but he hadn’t evolved out of his self-deprecating nature. He’d had 38 years of feeling inferior and believing he’d earned the harsh treatment he received, and a few years as an immortal hadn’t been enough to change it.
“I just… I want to get the codex because maybe there’s still something that can be done,” he said. “Some weakness to exploit. Some tiny way to make things better.”
Nikki looked to the draped windows, to the post-apocalyptic world beyond. She said, "'Tiny’ is right.”
“You know the starfish story? The one where the kid is throwing dying starfish back into the ocean and someone tells him that he’s wasting his time — that there are too many starfish and he can’t possibly make a difference?”
“No.”
“After the skeptic says that,” Reginald continued, “the kid picks a starfish up and throws it into the ocean. Then he points and says, ‘I just made a difference to that one.'"
“Cute.”
He closed his eyes, sighed, then looked back at her.
“I need to finish something, Nikki. Just once. We took over the American Council, but then Maurice ignored his Deaconship and we let Charles take over. We tried to foil Charles, lost, and then Timken did what we couldn’t. And how did I respond? I backed Charles against Timken. I’ve tried to drink only blood and not eat human food. I’ve tried to train. Did you know that Maurice said that in a thousand years, I might be almost as fast and strong as he is now? But instead of practicing what I can do, I just watch TV. I somehow manage to get the pretty girl, and I take her for granted. Have I ever even given you flowers? Taken you out for dinner?”
“There’s always been the end of the world or a vampire revolution in the way,” she said, smiling.
“I’m not good at closing. I always have grand ideas, but they never quite work out. I always feel that all I need to do is to do it, to exercise a little bit of self control. But I can’t.”
“Maybe you have A.D.D.,” she said.
“Maurice tried to tell me that I was special,” he said.
“And I tried to tell you that you were special,” Nikki added.
“He pointed out over and over again things I can do that others can’t. What’s more, those abilities keep multiplying. I can now sense the moods of most of the vampires around me, whether I’m related to them or not. I could see Karl’s thoughts when we visited him in Paris, and I couldn’t before. But I still don’t buy any of it, that I’ve really done or achieved anything worth noting.”
“Can you sense my mood?” said Nikki, sitting up, running a hand through her hair, making it billow.
“Claire is supposed to be this oracle. I coincidentally ran into her, met her before even she knew who her father was. As if by design. And she turns out to have these amazing abilities, and then she turns around and she — this oracle — tells me that my role matters. But what have we done? We saw Africa. We saw the South Pole. We watched humans get slaughtered. In other words, I hear that I have this important role, and still I do nothing.”
“Yet,” said Nikki. “Because tomorrow…”
“That’s why,” he said, nodding. “That’s why I want so badly to find it. Right now, I’m just one more loose end. Tomorrow, if we can find it, then maybe I can matter.”
Nikki leveled her eyes at him. She squinted. After a long time staring at each other, she said, “You fucker.”
“Sorry?”
“You’re really turning armageddon into a pity party for Reginald Baskin?”
“No, I’m…”
“Sure you are. You just want to feel important.”
“Well, and save the world,” he said.
“Oh sure. So that you can feel important. Like Superman.”
“Superman really is an asshole,” Reginald agreed.
“Only out for himself.”
“Totally.”
“And he won’t kill anyone. Even bad guys.”
“What a douche,” said Reginald.
In the quiet room, Nikki ran a single finger down the front of his shirt. Her eyes followed it, and then she looked up. “Not to sound like a pining damsel,” she said, “but you are important to me.”
“Why?”
“Sexually.”
“Oh.”
“I’m kidding.”
“Oh.”
She punched him. “Goddammit, Reginald. Stop being such a sad sack. You’re like a girl. Nothing I can say isn’t somehow insulting to your fragile ego. And if what I say isn’t wrong, then you end up being bothered by how I say it.”
He paused. He met her eyes, which were daring him to speak.
“Oh,” he said.
She punched him again.
“You know,” he said, “if you didn’t insist on being so pushy all the time, I could probably teach you a thing or two.”
“In what area?”
“Sexually.”
“Oh.”
He punched her. “Stop saying that.”
“I’m not pushy.”
“Sorry. I meant slutty.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I know it’s slutty for me, but it’s still totally slutty. I’m not just a piece of meat, you know.”
She grabbed his hocks and pulled, thus establishing that he was plenty meaty.
“That fat isn’t just for your own perverse pleasure,” he told her, looking at her hands.
“But it’s so big,” she purred. “I just want to stroke it.”
“You’re making light of this,” he said.
She made herself serious. “I’m sorry, sensei.” She bowed. “Teach me.”
Reginald felt a modicum of confidence return. He could read a book in seconds. He could memorize everything he’d ever seen, done, or learned, and sort the raw data to improve it the next time he did it. He could read faces, voices, bodily responses. He could slow time in his own mind to analyze nuances, to see where to dodge, where to parry, where to apply pressure and how to respond. He had amazing levels of dexterity. He could predict all of the moves in a chess game from the first move, knowing his opponent better than the opponent knew him- or herself. So of course, if Nikki had let him breathe in their lovemaking and had stopped attacking him every second, he could show her a thing or two.
They had hours and hours and hours before darkness fell.
So he showed her.