Vayl. If we visit your son’s grave and I can reach down to his body, I’l be able to communicate with what’s left there. It should be able to lead me to its new form.” Bergman spoke up. He’d maintained a stoic silence since arriving to find Astral displaying a new symptom at the edge of the front lawn. He’d given her the ability to transform so that she looked like a little black blob. That way she could slide under doors and into air vents when the situation cal ed for extreme secrecy. Except now she’d begun morphing randomly, sliding into molehil s and snake holes, kil ing the inhabitants and piling up her prizes at the front door like UPS packages from Stephen King’s nightmares.
Now he said, “I’m not sure it’l be that easy, Dave. I mean, I’m sorry to bring up a painful subject, Vayl, but when were your sons kil ed?”
“Seventeen fifty-one,” he said shortly.
“Nearly two hundred and sixty years ago,” Bergman said, doing the mental calculations so quickly I’d have wondered if he’d inserted a computer chip in his brain if I hadn’t heard him whine about wanting one on a regular basis since col ege. “Plus we aren’t general y aware of our connections to our past lives. That would make Dave’s search even harder.”
“Dude, you have a way of crushing a whole room and then promising us Disney World,” said Cole.
Bergman raised a finger. “But there’s an unless.”
“Unless what?” Dave asked.
Our theorist started playing with the hem of his sweater, stretching it nearly to his knees (which, I realized, might be why he was the only guy in America who wore sweaters in mid-June) as he said,
“Wel , I’m just throwing this out there, okay?”
“Go on,” said Vayl.
“You said Astral had organized every scene she could access that involved a fal , or someone flying through the air, right?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“She’s overloading, probably getting excess stimulation somewhere in her temporal lobe.”
“Wait a second.” I realized I’d raised both hands. “You gave the robokitty a brain? With lobes?” Bergman grimaced. “It’s so close there’s no point in splitting hairs. Or, in this case, subatomic particles. Which would lead to a real y beautiful but destructive explosion. Which is kind of what I think wil happen with Dave. Too much information at such a speed that he’l never be able to process it. So what I suggest is that I program Astral to act as his filter. Her Enkyklios contains Vayl’s file. What if I tinkered with that? Made it into more of a sound barrier that Dave could listen through. Hopeful y it would muffle al the lives Hanzi has lived in the years since his death as Vayl’s son, and Dave won’t get lost in al the decades that he’s lived between then and now.”
“That’s not possible. Is it?” It was Aaron, leaning forward, looking from Bergman to Dave and back again like they’d just thrown off their disguises and revealed their superhero costumes.
Bergman’s face took on that pinched look that meant he didn’t want to explain anything, including why he continued to wear extralarge sweaters and ripped jeans when he was easily pul ing in a six-figure income. But for once, maybe because of the mix of cynicism and hope in Aaron’s voice, he bent his cardinal rule. “The Enkyklios is more than a library. The Sisters of the Second Sight are born with special powers, and when they record the stories, they can’t help but imbue those records with bits of their own essence. Combine those with a catastrophic event like blowing Astral’s head off, and you end up with something unique. So much so that cal ing her a robot would be like referring to the pyramids as a col ection of stone coffins. So yeah.” He turned his concentration to Dave now. “I think you might be able to use her. Especial y if—” He stopped now, every drop of color draining from his face as his eyes darted to Vayl and then dropped to the floor.
My little buddy had built himself an actual spine over the past few months. But I’d seen psychopaths grovel at Vayl’s feet, and al he’d had to do was take one menacing step forward.
“What is it you want of me?” he asked.
Bergman’s words came out strained, like he’d just gotten over a bad case of laryngitis. “It would help if you fil ed in the blanks in your file where Hanzi is concerned. Just, you know, talk about what was important to him. What he enjoyed. Also what scared him and even what he hated. Strong emotions are the most likely to fol ow us through our lives. And…” Bergman licked his lips. “I don’t know if it’s in there. But you should talk about how he died. I understand it was violent, and from what I hear, those are the memories that come back to haunt us most.” Vayl sat back so slowly it became obvious that he was forcing himself not to leap out of his seat and turn the coffee table on its side. I realized I must’ve been the only one in the room who knew that his sons had been shot by a farmer while they were returning a wagon they’d stolen from him.
I watched the memories leap behind his eyes, as new and raw as if they’d happened that morning, and said, “Vayl.” I put my hand on his arm. His muscles were so tightly coiled I could feel every ridge and outline. “It’s over.” His eyes, the black of a funeral carriage, met mine and understood that I knew his pain, because sometimes I stil walked that path reliving Matt’s death. I nodded to Aaron. “I know how hard it must be for you to turn the corner after spending most of your life running toward the same goal. But you’re here. You made it. Now it’s about him.” I pointed to Astral. “And it’s about Hanzi, whoever he’s become. These are innocent people caught up in our disaster because a couple hundred years ago they happened to know you. We’ve gotta dig them out.”
Vayl looked at Aaron like he’d never seen him before. “I wil do everything I can for you.” Junior sat back, his hands fal ing away from each other like he wanted to beg for an explanation but knew he wouldn’t understand. Stil he said, “But. You’re a vampire. Who I just tried to kil .” Cole sat forward and slapped him on the knee. “Don’t feel too bad about your big fail, dude.
People try to kil Vayl al the time. It’s kind of a cult project that nobody’s ever been able to complete.
I hear they’ve designed a patch for the winner and everything.” He grinned at Vayl, who responded with a smile that made Aaron’s eyes pop.
Raoul nodded toward me as he told Vayl, “Just because we prevented Aaron from fol owing through doesn’t mean you’l head off the next assassin. Which means you’l need good people around you until this whole issue is resolved. I think I should stay until this story has spun itself out.” Vayl raised his eyebrows so high that his eyes actual y widened as he gazed at my Spirit Guide.
