glass was tinted and kept to a minimum. Parking lot was mostly empty, what cars there were congregating close to the way in.
Finally, he thought. I’ve found you.
There was no one walking around outside.
Nowhere to walk around, really.
The forest surrounding the remote site crowded in tight, another unbroken stretch of wall, the pines bough-to-bough blockers of access. There was a perimeter fence as well, the concrete barrier some twenty feet high with a curl of barbed wire at the top and a single gatehouse that appeared to be fitted with bulletproof panels of glass.
If you were a human, and you didn’t have the right credentials? You weren’t getting on the property much less inside the place.
Fortunately, he had other options.
Closing his eyes, he concentrated on calming himself, his respiration slowing down from the fast-pump of his impending attack to a far more steady, easy rhythm. As soon as he was able, he dematerialized, proceeding forward in a scatter of molecules. His entry point was an HVAC exhaust fan on the flat roof of one of the spokes, and in his invisible, mostly-air-state, he easily penetrated the aluminum mesh that covered the chute and continued through the duct work.
The interior layout was unknown to him, and that made re-forming dangerous. If he chose the wrong environment to materialize into, he could do damage to himself on things that weren’t going to grow back.
But he was not worried about his own personal safety.
Vents. More ductwork. Filters he was able to get through because there were no steel components to them.
He came out through a furnace, reestablishing his physical form in a pitch-black room that smelled like desert-dry air and motor oil. The instant he was corporeal, his presence triggered a motion-sensitive light and his eyes burned in the glare. Bracing for an alarm, he palmed one of his guns and sank down into his thighs in case someone threw open the door that was before him.
When no one came in, he glanced back at the industrial furnace, took a deep breath, and dematerialized through the thin seam under that door.
Re-forming again, he found himself in a break room. Two maintenance men in dark green uniforms had their backs to him, the pair of them sitting at a table and watching basketball on a black-and-white TV as they smoked.
“Pardon me, gentlemen,” he said dryly.
The humans jumped and whirled around. Before they could call for help, he reached into their minds and paralyzed them where they stood. Then he chose the one on the right, and started popping the tops off the man’s mental canisters, peering into all kinds of memories.
Okay … wow.
The guy was cheating on his wife and worried he’d caught a venereal disease from his girlfriend. He had tremendous guilt over the betrayal, but he couldn’t fathom his life without the other woman and he was obsessed with knowing who else the woman was sleeping with. Was it Charlie from Engineering—
Totally not what Murhder was looking for, but brains were not like a library full of books. There was no Dewey decimal system with a corresponding card catalogue to go by. Things came up in order of importance to the individual, not the temporal trespasser.
He switched to the guy on the left and hit the jackpot.
This one had just gotten promoted and was eager for the union-mandated break to be over so he could get back to work. He liked having some power around the place.
Much better, Murhder thought.
Moments later, he had the information he needed: Yes, there was a top secret laboratory, and it was not far.
Murhder wiped their memories clear of his interruption, and then inserted orders for them to sit back down and resume watching the game.
No reason to kick up complications until he absolutely had to.
Out in a corridor now, and there was no dematerializing anymore. He was way too hyped, his senses far too alive, and as a master would unleash a hound, so he released the most animalistic part of himself to carry forward: Ambulation was no longer a conscious coordination of limbs but an autonomic process serving the greatest good.
These humans had vampires imprisoned here. And they were doing unholy things to them.
He knew this down to his soul, and he was going to get it right this time. No distractions. No mistakes. No emotions.
All of which had led to his failure before.
When he rounded a corner and came upon two human males in white laboratory coats, he snapped their necks and left the