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Hands on hips, she shook her head at him in wonderment. “All right, you’re in. Now explain.”
He thrust aside the delight of just being here, and dropped into the desk chair. “Let me think how to say this.” But the first thing the guidelines required was to bring her under Influence so she’d never repeat any of it. I can’t!
“If you didn’t kill anyone, what are you afraid of telling me?”
“Inea, please believe me; you have to believe. I wouldn’t kill a human being. Ever. Can you accept that?”
“Why would I disbelieve it?” She perched on the edge of the easy chair. “Whoever was in your coffin-”
“Inea,” he interrupted. “I was in my coffin. I crashed the car. I was sitting right next to you. And I died.”
Clearly, she thought him insane. “Look, I don’t recall a thing from that night until I woke up in the hospital and they told me I had a concussion but could go home for your funeral. But now you’re alive. And you’re no Jesus Christ! Obviously, it wasn’t you in the car with-”
“I was in the car. I died. I’m a vampire.”
There was sympathy under her dismay now, the kind of sympathy reserved for the hopelessly deluded.
“Do you want me to prove it? Or would you prefer to nurse your doubt until the evidence mounts and you can’t deny it anymore?”
“How could you possibly prove you’re a vampire? Turn into a bat and flutter about the room?”
He laughed. He hadn’t expected such a challenge, yet he should have. He had thought of himself as a vampire so long, that he had forgotten the myths surrounding his kind.
“What’s so fu
“The conservation laws! Basic biology! Shape change is impossible. And I mass nearly ninety kilos. Have you ever seen a bat that big? Inea, idiot-love, it couldn’t fly!”
“Idiot-love?!”
It was his oldest endearment for her. But she was a scientist now. “Inea, I didn’t mean-I’m sorry.”
“No-it was kind of a stupid thing to say. You really believe you’re a vampire? There’s a disease-”
“But victims of it don’t get it by rising from the dead. And that’s what happened to me.”
“So you walk at night and suck young maidens’ blood?”
Facetiously, he corrected her. “They don’t have to be so young, and maidenhood isn’t a requisite.”
She shifted tactics. “Listen, if it’s kinky sex you want, you’d better find yourself another-”
“Oh, shut up!” he snapped.
She folded into herself, shocked.
Contrite, he offered, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have-I mean, I guess I’m just sensitive because-how I live-” Miserably, he finished, “Maybe I just haven’t made my own peace with it yet. They say it takes more than a century.”
“Century! God! You really believe it. But you look normal-a little pale, a bit underweight maybe, but normal.”
“I am normal. For me.”
“And you expect me to believe you’re a vampire? I can see you reflected in the vidcom screen.”
“Of course I reflect. I’m solid flesh and blood.” It would be easier just to Influence her to believe. But he couldn’t. He had to convince her completely and honestly, and get her free will promise of silence.
“The legends are wrong, but you’re a vampire? Darrell, what kind of a game is this? Are you into espionage?”
“My name is Titus Shiddehara. I had to change it because Darrell Raaj died-legally, anyway. So please call me Titus. It could be dangerous for me if you don’t.”
“But you really are the famous astrophysicist? You’re not substituting for him?”
“Yes, I’m really Titus Shiddehara. After I. awakened . . and was on my feet again, I went on to college just like I’d pla
“All the proof I have is your assertion. Vampires are supposed to wither at the sight of crucifixes. Maybe I could find a Catholic and-”
“I don’t wither before crucifixes or any religious object. I’m not evil. I told you, I don’t kill humans, virgins or otherwise. And I wasn’t created by the devil.”
“Then why do you call yourself a vampire?” “Because my body can regenerate after injuries that would kill a man. Because I can’t live on food, but have to have blood. I have other powers.”
“Powers? What powers?”
He considered carefully. If there ever could be anything real between them again, he had to be honest now. “I can make you think I can turn into a bat, or smoke, or anything. I can control animals, even wolves.” He searched her eyes, watching for rejection. “I can control you.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere!” She leaped to her feet and opened the bathroom door to reveal a full-length mirror. “Remember how I could never let myself be hypnotized? W.S. had a tough time with my security clearance because of it. You go ahead and make me think you’ve turned into a bat that doesn’t reflect in this mirror, and I’ll believe you.”
It’s not the same as using Influence to make her believe me. Still, he felt wrong about it.
“I’m waiting.”
She had to believe or her promise of silence would be only a joke to her, not a solemn vow. Or worse yet, she’d consider it her duty to him to have him committed. “Okay.”
He exerted Influence, testing her resistance. She was strong, but not remarkably so. In a puff of smoke, he became for her a medium-sized bat that fluttered at her head, squeaking, but not reflecting in the mirror.
She flung up her arms and ducked, then peeked up at the mirror. Stu
Getting into the drama of it, Titus went to the middle of the room, summoned a memory of an old Dracula film, then had the bat fly over to his new location, whirl into smoke, and coalesce into a black-caped figure in evening dress. Swirling the cape magnificently to show off its ruby lining, he gave her a courtly bow.
When he rose, she slumped into a faint, floating downwards in the meager gravity.
He dropped the illusion, and knelt beside her, taking her head in his lap. He straightened her body, wanting to chafe her hands and pat her cheeks to wake her up, but knowing that he only wanted to alleviate his own anxiety. She’d come out of it when her blood pressure normalized. The longer it took, the more time her mind would have had to adjust, the better it would be for her. So he cradled her in his arms with a terrible tenderness, surrendering to curious shudders of pleasure.
He didn’t notice when her eyes fluttered open, but then she sighed deeply and murmured, “Darrell.” Her memory surged back, and she shrank from him, starting to twist free of his grasp.
“Inea, it was just an illusion! Think! How could I have turned into a bat! That’s silly! It can’t be done.”
“I saw what I saw.” Influence always carried a sharp conviction that the senses gave absolute truth. Many humans, when finally convinced otherwise, went completely insane.
“Yes, you saw it. I’m not sure how this power works, but I do know that for you, it really happened.” Titus flinched away from the inherent contradictions between his physicist’s knowledge of how things worked, and the pragmatic facts of what he could do to people’s nervous systems.
“Do it again,” she challenged, face hardened.
Astonished, he replied, “No. You’re not a toy, or even a laboratory animal, that I can play with your perceptions at my own whim or for my convenience. I’m never going to use that power on you again. I want you to know beyond any doubt that whatever you see, know, or feel is real.”
He was lying by omission. No human on Project Station could trust any physical sense while Abbot was around. And Abbot would declare Titus unLawful if he ever discovered what Titus had done here or what he had yet to do. Titus would have to keep Abbot ignorant of Inea. He couldn’t let Inea be stolen from him and marked like Mirelle and then used as a hostage. That’s what Abbot would do if he ever realized what Inea meant to Titus.
At length, she a