Red Dice (The Last Vampire #3)(24)
Author: Christopher Pike

"Just like that? Blow up all those people?"

"You killed plenty of people down in L.A." My voice is cool. "I didn't enjoy that, Seymour." He pauses. "I'm sorry, Sita. I didn't mean to implythat you did. And I don't mean to sound cold and cruel. I'm not, you know. I'm just a high school kid, and a lousy writer on top of that."

"You're too brilliant to be lousy at anything. Please continue with your analysis. How can I get Joel out alive and blow the place up?"

He hesitates. '"You might not be able to do both."

I nod to myself. "This could be a suicide mission. I've thought of that" I add sadly; "Won't you miss me?"

He speaks with feeling. "Yes. Come here tonight. Make me a vampire, I'll help you."

"You're not vampire material."

"Why? I'm not sexy enough?"

"Oh, that's not the problem. If you were a vampire, Tm sure you'd be a sex machine. It's just that you're too special to be ..." My voice falters as I think of Arturo. "To be contaminated by my blood."

"Sita? What's wrong?"

I swallow past my pain. "It's nothing—the past. That's the trouble with living for five thousand years—I have so much past. It's hard to live in the present when all that history is inside you."

"Your blood saved my life," Seymour says gently.

"How are you feeling? Are the HIV tests still negative?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. When do you see Andy next?"

"In a few hours, near dawn. Then, when he returns to work in the evening, I plan to stow away in the trunk of his car."

"You'll need his cooperation. You can't go search­ing the compound for Joel."

"Andy will cooperate, one way or the other." I pause. "Is there anything else you can tell me that might help?"

"Yeah. Practice that levitating trick. You never know when it'll come in handy."

"I don't know what's causing it."

"Obviously, Yaksha's blood. He must have devel­oped the ability over the centuries. Could he fly when you knew him in India?"

"He never demonstrated that he could."

"You vampires are full of surprises."

I sigh. "You're so anxious to become like me. You envy my powers. But what you don't know is that I envy you more."

Seymour is surprised. "What do I have that you could possibly want?"

I think of Lalita, my daughter.

But I cannot talk about children, on this of all nights.

"You're human" is all I say.

11

When Andy gets to my suite, he acts stressed out but excited. He is in the door only a minute when I give him a hard kiss on the lips. He wants more, and reaches for it, but I push him away.

"Later," I whisper. "The night is still young."

"It's almost morning," he says, recalling my line from the night before.

I turn away. "I want to gamble first."

For a degenerate gambler, I know, dice are better than sex.

"Now you're talking, Lara," he says.

We go down to the casino. It's only a few days before Christmas but the place is packed. The image of a nuclear bomb exploding on the Strip haunts me. Of course, that will never happen. Even if we set a nuclear warhead to go off at the compound, it would not affect Las Vegas, except for slight fallout—if the wind is blowing the wrong way. I wonder if Seymour's dream means I will succeed in my mission or fail.

A glowing angel, flying above the world?

We play craps, dice, and I am the designated roller. Without trying, I throw ten passes in a row and the table cheers me on. Andy bets heavily, wins plenty, and drinks even more. Before we leave the first table, he is drunk. I scold him.

"How can you be a scientist when you keep killing off your brain cells?" I ask.

He laughs, throwing an arm over my shoulder. "I'd rather be a lover than a scientist."

We walk down the Strip to another casino, the Excalibur. Here it is even more crowded. It is a fact that the town never sleeps. We play blackjack, twenty-one. I count cards, only betting heavily when the deck favors the player. But the advantage from even perfect counting is limited, and we don't win any money. Andy drags me back to the dice table—his favorite. The dice come to me, and again I throw another six passes in a row. But I don't want Andy to win too much and be free of debt. Just as the sun begins to color the sky, I drag him back to the Mirage, to my hotel suite. Once there, he falls on my bed, exhausted.

"I hate what I do," he mutters to the ceiling.

I hate that I can't read his mind. It must be the booze. I sit beside him. "Another hard night at work?"

"I shouldn't talk about it."

"You can. Don't worry—I'm good at keeping secrets."

"My boss is crazy."

"The general?"

"Yes. He's stark raving mad."

"What do you mean? What is he doing?"

Andy sits up and glances at me with bloodshot eyes. "Remember I told you we were working on an amaz­ing discovery?"

"Yes. You said it was one of the greatest discoveries of modern time." I smile. "I thought you were trying to impress me."

He shakes his head. "I wasn't exaggerating. We're playing with explosive genetic material, and that's putting it mildly. This general has ordered us to artificially done it. Do you know what that means?"

I nod. "You're going to make more of it—in a test tube."

"Yes. That's a layman's view, but it is essentially correct." He stares out the window, at the glitter that is the Strip. When he speaks again, his voice reflects the horror he feds. "We are going to try to duplicate something that, if it got out, could affect all of mankind."

It's worse than I thought. The charade must end.

He has given me an opening. I must seize it.

"Andy?" I whisper.

He looks at me. I catch his eye.

"Yes, Lara?" he says.

I do not push him, not yet, but I do not let him turnaway either. A narrow tunnel of whirling blue fog exists between us. He is at one end, chained to a hard wall, and I am steadily rushing toward him, shadows at my back. I hold his attention but slightly blur his focus. Since ingesting Yaksha's blood, my mind-altering abilities are more refined, more powerful. I have to be careful I don't destroy his brain.