Blood Pact

Lord called the faithful to Him, they would come not only in spirit, but also in flesh. He had gone to chapel nearly every day of his seventeen years, and this belief had been at the core of his religious upbringing. Even when his royal father had split from Rome, the resurrection of the body had remained.

    Four and a half centuries had changed his views on religion but he had never been able to fully rid himself of his early training.
    He had been raised a sixteenth-century Catholic and, in some ways, a sixteenth-century Catholic he remained.

    He couldn't go into that room.

    And if you're not going to do it, who is? A bit of wood trim splintered beneath his fingers. Michael Celluci? Will you give him that much? Give him the opportunity to ride to the rescue while you cower in superstitious terror? Vicki, then? What of the vow you made to keep this from her?

    He managed a step, a small one, toward the door. Had his nature allowed him to sweat, his hand would have left a damp signature on the wall. As it was, his fingertips imprinted the plaster.

    Legend named his kind undead but, in spite of how it had appeared to the medical establishment of his time, he had changed, not died. In that room, the dead were up and walking. Robbed of their chance for eternal life. Removed from the grace of God. . . .

    I will not be ruled by my past at Vicki's expense.

    The door was unlocked.

    The room it bisected was enormous, stretching half the length of the hall. Henry raised a hand to shield sensitive eyes from the brilliant white glare of the fluorescents, noting as he did how the windows had been carefully blocked to prevent any of that light from escaping and marking the room as in use. He recognized almost none of the equipment that filled much of the available space.
    Fictional precedent aside, the working of the perversion obviously involved more than a scalpel and a lightning rod.

    Perhaps I'd recognize it if I wrote science fiction instead of romance, he mused, moving silently forward accompanied by the demons of his childhood.

    The stench of abomination had become so pervasive it coated the inside of his nose and mouth and lungs and spread like a layer of scum across his skin. He could only hope he could eventually be rid of it, that he wouldn't be forced to carry it throughout eternity like an invisible mark of Cain.

    There were brass tanks lined up below the windows, shelves of chemicals, two computers, and a door leading to a small and mostly empty storeroom. The door leading out the other side of the storeroom was locked.

    Finally, unable to avoid it any longer, Henry turned toward the slow and steady beat that he'd been all too aware of since he'd entered the room.

    The creature stood behind a row of metal boxes, eight feet long and four feet wide. Too large to be coffins, they reminded Henry of the outer sarcophagus that had kept an ancient Egyptian wizard imprisoned, undying, for three centuries. Most of the electrical noise that Henry could hear came from the boxes. The mechanical noise came from the creature.

    Cautiously, Henry slid along the wall, never in its direct line of sight. When he drew even with the creature, he paused and forced himself to acknowledge what he saw.

    Unkempt dark hair fell back from a long line of face where green-gray skin wore the look of fine-grained leather and a black-threaded seam stitched a flap of forehead down. A nose that had obviously been broken more than once folded back on itself above purple-gray lips no longer able to close over the ivory curve of teeth. Even taking the desiccation of death into account, the muscles were wiry and the bones prominent through the navy blue tracksuit. It had been a man. A man who had not been very old when he died.

    The narrow chest rose and fell, but it gave no indication it was aware.

    Sweet Jesu! Henry took a step forward. And then another. Then he turned to face it.

    Its eyes were open.

    Number nine waited. She would be back soon.

    He saw the strange one enter the room and he watched the strange one come closer.

    The strange one looked at him.

    He looked back.

    Snarling, Henry broke contact and jerked away.

    It was alive.

    The body was dead.

    But it was alive.

    Whoever has done this thing should be damned for all eternity and beyond!

    Trembling with anger and other emotions less easily defined, Henry dropped his hands to the lid of the box in front of him.
    Marjory Nelson, Vicki's mother, had to be in one of