in the worst way. It would make traveling a whole lot faster and easier. She dislodged her backpack and lay on her belly in the grass, sliding along the side of the house and gripping the bike by its front wheel. And then she inched it toward her slowly, very slowly, bit by bit, avoiding any sudden motion that would give her away.
Eventually she managed to get the bike all the way to the backyard, easing it around the corner and then, finally, she stood upright. She slid her backpack on once more and walked the bike into the woods out back, through them and out to the road. There she mounted and rode, heading for the university and hoping to God she could blend in with summer session students long enough to get to the basement of her building undetected.
“Damien, thank God I’ve found you.” James stared at the man in blatant relief when he answered his own door. “But why are you back here? In your own house? Don’t you know the danger you’re in?”
Damien, the first true vampire, the onetime great King Gilgamesh, met his eyes, his own grim, and nodded at the suitcases piled on the floor behind him while pulling James inside and closing the door. “I’m aware and taking precautions. Shannon stayed behind, in case one of those vigilante groups targets me while I’m here.”
“Stayed behind…?” James closed his eyes. “Where?”
“What?”
“Where did she stay behind, Damien?”
“On the island, of course. She wanted to return with me, but I wouldn’t allow it. She was safe there, and I thought it best to leave it that way.”
“And you haven’t heard from her since?”
“We’ve all agreed not to use mental communication, as you well know, James.” And then his eyes narrowed. “Why? What the hell is happening?”
James lowered his head. “Utanapishtim…is alive. I…I raised him.”
“For the love of the gods…”
“I took him to the island. But he wasn’t…he wasn’t right. He wasn’t sane, and he got hold of a copy of the book—that damned Folsom book, and—”
“And what?” Damien gripped James’s shoulders, staring into his eyes. “He couldn’t have read it—he wouldn’t even know the language.”
“He knows the language. He absorbs knowledge by touch. And he apparently believed what the book said.”
“Which was what, exactly?”
“That he’d been cursed by the gods for creating the vampire race, and that his only means of redemption was to destroy it utterly.”
Damien waited, his eyes already seeming to reflect what James was about to tell him.
“He attacked his own people—the refugees on the island. He…has the same ability as Brigit. He can blast things to bits by directing a beam of energy from his eyes, and he—”
“Where’s Shannon?” Immediately Damien closed his eyes and called out to her.
“She won’t respond if she’s alive, Damien. She won’t risk giving away the location of the island to the mortals.”
Damien nodded, acknowledging the truth of that. “Then you need to tell me. Were there any survivors?”
“Yes.” James swallowed hard. “But many were killed. I don’t even know about my own family yet. We only know a group got away and headed for the other side of the island. And that Utanapishtim took a yacht and headed for the mainland, rather than going after them. I assumed he would come here.”
“Why would he come after me?”
James shrugged. “Because the same passage from that book that told him he’d been cursed for creating our race, and that he must eliminate us all to undo the curse, also told him that he needed to start with the eldest one first. And that would be you.”
“Then he will come here.”
“If he can find you. And he seems to have a sense of all of us. He can hear vampires, home in on them. And I believe he can also take their powers.” He met Damien’s eyes. “I believe he has already.”
Damien blinked in shock.
“There’s more,” James began.
“I’m sure there is. And I know you’re working hard to save your people—our people—but right now my only concern is Shannon.”
“The missing parts of the tablet, Damien—the missing parts were taken deliberately. The DPI has them, and they left the rest knowing that someday it would be translated, and that we would believe raising Utanapishtim was the only way to save our kind. But the opposite was true. Raising him was the way to begin the destruction. And I did it, Damien. I did it. I played right into their hands.”
Sighing, Damien squeezed James’s shoulders. “You couldn’t have known. I was