Huber stopped midsentence, seemingly preoccupied by other things.
“Speaking of that…” Sol prompted.
Huber’s unfocused eyes cleared and he brought his attention back to Sol as he reached up to straighten his laurel wreath, which hadn’t moved at all. “Let’s play a game of ‘What if?’”
“Okay. What if I don’t want to play?”
Huber pouted a little. “No fair. I get to ask the questions.”
Sol made a little twirling gesture with his hand to indicate, “Go ahead.”
“What if we sent you back?” That got Sol’s attention. He sat up. “You know we couldn’t send you back to your old body because it’s, you know, gone.”
“Gone?” Intellectually Sol knew that made sense, but emotionally it felt like the bottom dropped out of the elevator. “Oh. I… guess that’s right.”
“If we sent you back, we’d have to put you in a new body.” Sol’s mind was racing trying to figure out how to make that work. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. For now, all I want to know is if you think you could keep a highly unusual secret.”
“Look. I work for a highly unusual secret organization in top level management. I’m not bragging. That’s just how it is. Now. My turn. How am I supposed to get back inside in a different body without telling them who I am?”
Huber looked down and frowned. “That is a puzzle. Set that aside for the time being. Assume we could get around that part and get you inside this ‘highly secret organization’…”
“Are you mocking me?”
Huber looked sheepish. “Just a little. Are you sensitive? You don’t look sensitive.” Sol glared at him. “So? Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes.”
“Very well. Good boy.” Huber started to leave. “Um. As you were.” He vanished.
While Huber was gone, Heralda called the other available Council members together. She would have rather had lashes than admit to her six peers that there’d been an unfortunate and undesirable side effect to her prize creation, the vampire. But she knew it was useless to try and hide the mistake now that Ragnal knew about it. The only thing stopping him from broadcasting the news throughout the multiverse was that they were in the project together. If one made a mess, so far as Overseer Pierce was concerned, the mess belonged to the whole group.
The only logical play for her was to get out in front of the story and confess the error in a contrite show of character and humility.
So she called a meeting and did exactly that. The others seemed to take it well. Heralda interpreted that to mean that they had their own little missteps they’d just as soon keep under wraps.
“Send him back in a new body?” It was technically a question, but not one that Theasophie expected to be answered. “That’s risky business. If it gets out, it will create an explosion of religious fads. Every human will want a new young body when the old one ages out.”
“Like hitting a reset button,” Ming added.
The doors opened and Huber floated in.
“Well, Huber. What do you think? Does the human strike you as someone who could keep that sort of secret?”
“He’s a grouchy sort, but he’s all about the duty and the honor, blah blah blah blah blah blah.”
“If we agree to helping you out of this bind,” Ming said, “you’ll owe us.”
“Oh here we go.” Heralda suspected the negotiation was coming.
CHAPTER 7
Rio de Janeiro
Rev Farthing walked with as much stealth as possible on the old and unevenly worn brick alleyway in the old Colonial part of the city. His team had just split into pairs to try and head off a couple of vampire pulling at a young girl who, judging by her dress, was part of the Samba School Parade.
If being a vampire hunter wasn’t already a nightmare, try adding Carnival week to the mix. Anything within blocks of the Sambadrome was an all-you-can-eat vamp buffet and the crowds of dancers, tourists, and revelers were too thick to do anything about it. They unwittingly provided both bountiful feast and perfect cover for vampire for one week every year.
Every night when he went out on patrol he told himself the same story. That if he died that night, it wouldn’t be a tragedy because he’d lived a lot in his thirty-one years. He’d seen a lot more of what the world had to offer, good and bad, than most. He’d also given the past sixteen years to the service of humanity through an outfit called The Order of the Black Swan.