Cronin's Key II (9 page)

“The vampire repeatedly fed from the same source,” Cronin concluded.

Jodis nodded. “Yes.”

“The ill effects?”

“None,” Jodis said. “She lived for another hundred years.”

Cronin was disappointed. He wanted answers. It would somehow be easier to learn this poor woman vampire had gone mad.

“You want to know what I think?” Eiji asked. “I think you’re reading too much into it. Your behavior today toward that doctor was understandable, Cronin. Alec’s your mate. Believe me, if someone tried to take anything from my Jodis, I would want to kill them too.”

“It was the taking of his blood that bothered me,” Cronin added.

“Even more reason to be possessive,” Eiji said simply. “Vampires are territorial over a human they’re feeding from, let alone one they’re fated to.”

Cronin didn’t particularly care for Eiji’s phrasing, but he understood the sentiment. “So this is normal?”

“There is no
normal
in this scenario,” Eiji said with a smile. “Just what’s understandable or not surprising, at the very least. Cronin, Alec’s blood is different. It’s special. We know that. There’s been no other blood like it that we know of or, if there was, that human wasn’t a key to the vampire world. The fact that he is both is unsurpassed, or maybe his special blood is the very reason he is the key. Cronin, we have no way of knowing. But I think Jodis is right. As long as you stop drinking it, you’ll be fine.”

“I do not wish to stop drinking it,” Cronin admitted quietly. He looked at his two dearest friends and lowered his voice so there was no way Alec could hear. “I fed off two humans today and I still want more.”

Just then, Alec walked into the living room carrying a whiteboard. “Time to get to work,” he announced. “Much to do, much to do.” He set the whiteboard up on the table and wrote down some points of what he knew so far: disappearances in China and Mongolia and coven relocations.

Then he wrote down Jorge’s cryptic words of silver river, blue moon, red hand, blood and stone, and when he turned around, he saw the three vampires were watching him. He clapped his hands together. “Come on, look alive you lot. We have work to do.”

Jodis smiled and collected her book before standing up. Eiji laughed and said, “You’re bossy for a human.” They were still smiling as they disappeared toward the office.

And all Cronin could do was smile at him. Alec simply grinned back as though he didn’t have a care in the world. He collected his laptop and threw himself onto the sofa beside Cronin, putting his feet on the coffee table and scanning internet sites on Genghis Khan. He jotted down points of interest and dates into his small notebook while Cronin was supposed to be reading Chinese news sites for anything of interest. He wasn’t really. He was watching Alec.

“Are you just gonna watch me all day?” Alec said, not looking up from his laptop screen.

“I was thinking I would, yes,” Cronin replied. “I like watching you do your detective thing. It’s fascinating.”

Alec snorted. “Fascinating?”

“Yes, the cognitive leaps your mind makes are remarkable.”

Alec raised one eyebrow. “Leaps? I think your version of leaping is enough for both of us.”

“Not that kind of leaping,” Cronin said, amused. He leaned in and whispered, “Though I could leap us to bed if you’d so prefer.”

Alec laughed and playfully pushed Cronin’s shoulder. “Work, remember? We have a new psycho vampire to stabilize, if you recall.”

“Stabilize?”

Alec grinned. “It’s the politically correct way to say kill an enemy.”

“Tell me what you have so far,” Cronin said.

“Well, I only know what human history tells me of Genghis Khan, but as you guys said the other day, the numbers of deaths by his hand or in his name were staggering. He was very powerful and his power of persuasion must have been even more so. Or, persuasion was his literal vampire talent. Is there any way we can check that?”

Jodis and Eiji were suddenly in the room. Alec was getting used to their vampire speed. “The talent of influencing another vampire’s behavior is called manipulation,” Jodis said. “A manipulator is not welcome in any coven. In more cases than not, they are killed as newborn vampires, quite often by the one who made them. They cannot be controlled and come to power quickly.”

“Could Khan have been a manipulator?” Alec asked again. “From a profile study, I’d say it fits the bill.” He didn’t wait for an answer. He stood up and walked to the whiteboard and wrote ‘manipulator’ under the name Genghis Khan. Then he circled the word blood and did the same to the word stone.

“So,” he went on to say. “Blood, we assume is mine. But stone,” he tapped the whiteboard with the marker. “What does stone mean? And what does it mean for Genghis Khan.”

“The Great Wall of China is constructed of it,” Jodis offered.

“True,” Alec said. “Though how does that relate to vampires? Are they buried in it?”

“No,” Eiji said. “It was constructed by humans in a vain attempt to keep vampires from crossing into their lands.”

“Hmm,” Alec frowned. “Well, clearly they weren’t too bright.”

Cronin snorted out a laugh. “Not impressed by a constructional wonder of its time?”

Alec shrugged. “Don’t get me wrong. I mean the wall itself is a masterpiece, but not for the purpose of keeping vampires out….” He frowned again, as he obviously thought of something, and stared out the glass wall as he collected his thoughts. “Of course!”

He dashed to his laptop and tapped the keyboard, bringing up several tabs at once. “Why didn’t I think of this before? You told me in the beginning,” he said looking right at Cronin. “It makes perfect sense.”

“What makes sense?” Cronin asked.

“Pyramids. You told me in the beginning when we were dealing with the Egyptian vampires, there are burial pyramids all over the world, including China.”

The three vampires stared at him, waiting for him to piece it all together.

“Now the Chinese government has kept these pretty quiet, but there are a few photographs of the Chinese pyramids leaked to the outside world. But tying these clues together—Khan, the Shaanxi province, pyramid, and stone have to mean something.” He typed in a few more words and waited for the internet searches to come up. His face went pale, drained of all color. “Oh fuck.”

“Alec, what is it?” Cronin asked.

Alec turned the laptop around to show them all. On the screen was Mount Li. A seemingly inoffensive tree-covered hill in the green fields of Shaanxi province, China.

“Mount Li,” Alec said. “Mount Li was a pyramid. It looks like a hill now, but two thousand years ago, it was a pyramid. If they’d built it out of stone like the Egyptians did, it’d still be standing today. It’s a fucking pyramid, bigger than anything the Egyptians ever did. It has a tomb and everything.”

Cronin stared at him. “Of course. And the reference Jorge made to earth
coming to life
wasn’t about the Earth or volcanoes or earthquakes. He was referring to earth, as in terra.”

Alec paled. “Terracotta.”

“The Terracotta Army,” Eiji whispered.

Alec nodded mechanically as realization sunk in. “The Terracotta Army will come to life.”

“Is there anything else you guys’d like to tell me?” Alec asked. “We’ve been through the famous people in history who were vampires, but what about armies of vampires buried in the ground? Are there any more? The Egyptians, now the Chinese. Anyone else I should know about?”

“Well, there are Aztecs in the Tenochtitlan pyramids,” Cronin said.

“And the pyramid of Cholula in Mexico is one of the biggest pyramids in the world for a reason, so….” Jodis added.

“There is still much human debate over whether the Visoko pyramid in Bosnia is even a pyramid,” Eiji said.

The three vampires all laughed.

Alec rubbed his temples and he sighed, long and loud. “You know what? I don’t even want to know.” He stared at the whiteboard for a while and reluctantly wrote Terracotta Army under Genghis Khan. He shook his head at how absurd it all was. “How the hell am I supposed to kill six thousand terracotta soldiers?”

Cronin was beside him in a second with his hands cupping his face. “With us. We will figure it out, but please know Alec, you are not in this alone.”

“The Terracotta Army are vampires,” Alec said quietly. “How is that even possible?”

“A mason,” Jodis said.

“No shit.” Alec rolled his eyes. “I’d say it took a thousand masons.”

Jodis smiled at him. “No, I mean a mason, as in a vampire with the talent to turn things to stone.”

Alec’s mouth fell open and he blinked. And he blinked again. “A what?”

“There aren’t too many of them these days,” Eiji added. “But the vampire who turned the Terracotta Army to stone lived even before my time.”

Cronin pulled Alec against him and Alec melted. Overwhelmed by what he’d just learned, Alec allowed himself to be held, to be protected, cradled by arms that made him feel safe and warm. “The Terracotta Army aren’t technically stone,” he mumbled.

“Maybe the mason could use the earth or clay instead of stone like how I can use water to turn to ice,” Jodis explained. “No talent is an exact science.”

“What other talents are there?” Alec asked. “I asked this before, but I mean the other ones. There are seers, leapers, and Eiji does his DNA lifespan thing, and Jodis can turn stuff into ice. Keket could regenerate the dead, it seems maybe Genghis Khan can influence the behavior of others. You mentioned mind-reading but they usually go mad. So what other ones haven’t I heard of?”

“There are pyrokinetics, or fire starters,” Cronin said.

“Like the guy in London?” Alec asked. “At the bar.”

Cronin gave a nod. “Yes.”

“Hydrokinetics can control water,” Jodis said.

“Like you,” Alec pressed.

She smiled. “Similar, but not the same. What I can do is called cryokinesis.”

“There are some who can manipulate the air.”

“Like that cartoon with the little guy with the blue arrow on his head who’s an airbender.”

The three vampires stared at him. No one spoke.

“Never mind.”

“There are some who can influence what a human will hear,” Cronin went on to say. “Like bells or a telephone, or a voice.”

“So when you think you’ve heard someone call your name but when you look there’s no one there?” Alec asked. “That’s a vampire?”

“Yes.”

“There are some who can control what you smell,” Eiji said. “A whiff of perfume or the smell of food cooking.”

“That’s a vampire?” Alec shivered.

Jodis gave a nod. “It is to lure prey. A human might go looking for the source.”

“There are also replicators, or doppelgängers, as humans would say,” Cronin said quietly. “Though they are usually executed soon after they’re changed.”

Alec was stunned. He stared at Cronin with wide eyes. “Executed?”

“During the changing process, a vampire who will become a replicator changes many times repeatedly, taking forms of most of the people they’d met during their human life,” Eiji said. “The vampire who changed them will usually end it before the transformation is complete.”

“Why?”

“They can replicate any form, human or vampire. They can assume identities, pretending to be anyone they come into contact with,” Jodis said. “It’s far too dangerous a talent. They could become Cronin and you would not know.”

Alec swallowed hard. “What if… what if I become a replicator? What happens when I become a vampire, if that’s my talent? Do you have to kill me?”

Cronin’s arms tightened protectively around him and shook his head. “No. I would hide you and we would teach you how to control it.” Cronin spoke with such quiet determination, with such reverence, Alec could not doubt him. “I wouldn’t let anyone touch you.”

After a moment of silence, Alec asked, “Are there any others? Other talents?”

“The Greek believed the god Morpheus influenced dreams,” Jodis said. “But there are some who can influence the sleeping mind.”

“The Japanese also claimed a demon named Baku would steal dreams,” Eiji added. “But we know it was no demon. The purpose of this talent is not really known. Maybe there is no purpose.”

“To influence,” Alec said, pulling away from Cronin so he could look at everyone. “My father said both he and my mom had the same dream the night before I was born.”

Cronin’s brow furrowed. “Yes, he did.” He looked to Jodis and Eiji. “To influence the name he was to be given. Ailig was a chosen name.”

“Chosen by who?” Alec asked. “Why was my name important?”

“Ailig means defender of humankind, yes?” Jodis asked. “So someone knew, even before your birth, that you were the key?”

With his usual smile gone, the look of worry on Eiji’s face seemed so out of place. “Your father said generations before him knew your bloodline was special.” He held out his hand. “Alec, if I may?”

“If you may what?”

“Can I read you again,” Eiji clarified. “Come sit on the sofa, this might take a while.”

Alec begrudgingly left the warmth of Cronin’s embrace and sat down beside Eiji. He gave him a smile. “If you just wanted to hold my hand, you only have to ask.” Cronin growled from across the room. Alec held out his other hand, inviting Cronin to take it. “You can have this one.”

Cronin snarled but he took the offer, sitting on the other side of Alec.

“You really don’t like anyone else touching him, do you?” Jodis asked. She looked amused, but there was a hint of something in her eyes that Alec couldn’t quite place. Confusion? Disbelief?

Cronin frowned. “No.”

Eiji didn’t seem too fazed. He just smiled at Alec and asked, “Remember when you adamantly told him he didn’t own you?”

Alec rolled his eyes. “Shut up.”

Eiji laughed then settled in to do his DNA reading thing. From just a touch, Eiji caught a glimpse of heredity, both past and future. Alec really had no clue how it worked, only that Eiji could see lifespans at a touch. Only this time, he was holding his hand much longer, as though he was trying to see something he hadn’t seen before. Then Eiji frowned. “Cronin, let go of his hand.”