Survivor Reborn (Kieran Grey Psionic Hunter) Page 10

  “Not to be rude,” Tanaka interrupted. “But, remember, Yuric is waiting for us. I called ahead to buy us some time, but I think we should get moving.”

  “How long was I out?” I asked.

  “Not more than half-an-hour. Yuric seemed to be very understanding. It’d probably be best to hurry though.” Tanaka looked nervous again as he fidgeted his way towards the door.

  “What’s wrong?” I had to know.

  “Well, you fear spiders . . . I, I fear . . . uh, sharks,” he looked away as he said the last part like he was ashamed.

  “The shark tanks lie between us and the elevator to the Demonstration Armory,” Marsala answered my question before I could ask it.

  “Allow me to escort you, my friend.” Nikolai ushered us to the doors.

  Just before I reached the door, movement caught my eye. The girl’s head popped up and disappeared again behind the coral. I pointed at the empty water where she had been. “What was that?”

  “Huh? There’s nothing there, ya sure you’re feeling alright?” Tanaka asked cautiously.

  “Right there! A second ago, a girl. I saw her before too. I saw a girl’s face right there!” I walked over to tap my finger on the glass next to where I had seen her.

  “Humph!” Nikolai grunted and joined me next to the glass. He balled up his hairy fist and smacked the glass with a loud THUMP!

  “SILIS!!!” he growled with his muzzle against the glass.

  Ever so slowly a flourish of golden hair floated up into view. The hair twisted and moved like it was alive under the water as it parted to reveal the face I’d seen moments earlier. The girl looked like she was barely fourteen, and by her expression it was easy to tell that she had just been caught someplace she wasn’t supposed to be.

  Nikolai tapped a claw on the glass then crooked his finger gesturing her closer to us. Her bare shoulders slumped as if she were groaning. After a seconds hesitation her hands grabbed the top of the coral and she pushed herself up and over. The first thing that startled me was her bare chest. Her adolescent little breasts were unrestrained by clothes of any sort. My jaw started to fall.

  What’s a girl her age doing skinny dipping here? And how damn long can she stay underwater before she has to breathe?

  My questions were answered as soon as she cleared the coral. Right below her bellybutton the skin started to change. Instead of regular pink flesh, there were bright blue scales. Her legs appeared to have fused together to create a tail.

  A MERMAID!?!?

  As she came closer to the glass I could clearly see the blue fins that jutted out of the sides of each forearm, along with the webbing between her fingers. The sides of her neck behind the ears opened and closed with her gills as her chest rose and fell as if in a sigh. She rolled her emerald eyes up to look at the werewolf that stood beside me. Looking like a stern father, he pointed to a black box mounted in the wall next to the doors.

  The mergirl threw a look at me like she was pleading for help before she shot off swimming for the box. Nikolai lumbered over to the box and pressed the only button on the bottom. Inside the tank the box opened. The girl reached inside to remove a strange headset. She clipped it over her ear and stuck the small microphone disk against the front of her throat.

  “Silis?” Nikolai said her name as a question in a normal voice that held a hint of disappointment.

  “Uh . . . hi . . . how you doin’ Uncle?” her young voice filled the room through the speaker in the black box on the wall. It sounded as if she was standing in the room next to us talking, not underwater a number of feet away.

  “Uncle?” I asked.

  “It was better than being called Godfather,” the werewolf whispered to me over his shoulder. “What are you doing here Silis? And more importantly, just exactly how did you get here?” He spoke in a fatherly voice that did not sound angry, rather it sounded concerned.

  “Filtration pipes?” she replied with the question and a shrug of her shoulders that clearly meant that wasn’t how she had gotten here.

  “Really? So I assume your mother knows you were playing in the filtration pipes again?” He tilted his head while he waited for her to answer.

  “Oh, alright! I snuck through the Lair. There, happy? Are you gonna tell Mom?” she sounded genuinely worried.

  Emmy was suddenly behind me whispering into my ear, “The merfolk have their own tanks in another area called the Colony. The adults help maintain the tanks throughout the Archives. They use those radios to talk with the land crews when necessary. Silis is the only girl her age in the Colony, so she’s a bit . . . rebellious. Nikolai catches her sneaking around into places she isn’t supposed to be all the time. Especially here, she likes to hide in the coral.”

  “What’s the deal with the Lair?” I asked over my shoulder.

  Nikolai answered for me, but kept staring at the mergirl as if to remind her of the facts, “The Lair holds a very dangerous and temperamental Kraken.”

  “Kraken?” I silently mouthed the question while I lifted an eyebrow in disbelief.

  “Sea-serpent-type-demon-thing, kind’a like a hydra, you know the seven headed dragon. But, more like an octopus-giant-squid-thing. Really nasty. Kills at least five handlers a year.” Tanaka stood leaning against the doors trying to look nonchalant. It was obvious, especially since he was trying so hard not to show it, that he was not comfortable in the underwater room.

  Did he say dragon? Surely dragons aren’t real, are they?

  “It only killed them because they’re slow. I’m too fast for it to catch me,” Silis wined.

  The look from Nikolai would have silenced anyone. “You are to use the filtration pipes and return to the Colony.” She started to complain, but stopped when he raised a hairy hand. “If you safely return to the Colony before I get there, without going through the Lair, then I will remain silent that you were caught in here without permission, again.”

  “Really?!” Her face lit up as the worry bled away.

  “Really. Now get going. And not through the Lair! I mean it!”

  She nodded with an earsplitting smile. As soon as the headset was back in the box, she pressed her unclothed body up against the glass. After placing a big kiss against the glass she pushed off and swam away with a wave. I realized then that I’d been standing there waving back as she disappeared into the blue depths.

  “Mermaids,” Tanaka shrugged.

  “We should be on our way. Must not keep the sharks waiting,” Marsala teased with a chomp of his fangs.

  So far the spiders, snakes, and scorpions inside the nightmare zoo had been monstrous. Sharks didn’t bother me. At least not regular sharks. Not that I had any plans on meeting one out in the water anytime soon.

  Just what type of sharks were we about to see? I hope they don’t have legs so they can walk on land or something freaky like that.

  I wasn’t sure if I could handle land sharks.

  * * *

  The hallway was surrounded by walls of water. The water came up to just above eye level then was open air the rest of the way up. I’d been reassured again that everything was safely kept behind the glass walls. Everyone was worried about a repeat performance. So far the three tanks we had passed had nothing but normal sharks, albeit large ones; mako sharks, hammerheads, and tiger sharks. Nothing that interesting really.

  I’ve seen better on the nature channel.

  Tanaka did not agree with me. He had practically ran ahead of us, head down, never looking up. He rushed down the halls until he was out of sight. He said he would wait for us at the elevator. I didn’t blame him after what I’d seen earlier. I had a feeling that there was something else in these shark tanks that was beyond normal.

  Nikolai stopped in front of a far window. He stared into the large tank. It almost seemed as if he were smiling with his dog-like face. He pointed an incredibly long hairy finger above the water. “Feeding time.”

  I moved up beside him looking at where he was pointing. A large live cow w
as suspended above the center of the water. It was a good twenty feet from the surface. The water seemed so calm. Almost like a liquid mirror. A shadow moved on the other side of the tank.

  “This shark was found after it took a bite out of a full-sized cruise ship. It will feed soon. Watch closely, it will actually jump out of the water for the cow.” Nikolai moved closer to the glass. I’d already had my experience of being that close to the glass when I didn’t know what was on the other side. I stayed in the center of the corridor, preparing myself to run if things got nasty.

  The water exploded upward as the giant shark cleared the surface. It looked like a Great White, but larger, much larger, the size of a nuclear submarine larger. The cow was engulfed inside the mouth of the beast. Swallowed hole with plenty of room to spare. The shark glided back into the water and was gone without a sound. I started to shiver. I wasn’t cold, just disturbed.

  Werewolves, mermaids, sea monsters, vampires, succubus, giant spiders, monster scorpions, sharks the size of a 747 airplane, just what in the hell all have I gotten myself into?

  Suddenly I missed the tedious paperwork of my old life, just a little.

  We walked in silence the rest of the way. I ignored the rest of the “exhibits”. I had seen enough for one day. We were almost to the elevator where Tanaka was patiently waiting for us. Just then I had a funny thought.

  “So where’s Elvis?” I asked laughing at myself. Emmy and Marsala both laughed lightly, but Nikolai did not see it as funny.

  “Just because we have many of the world’s most unique animals here, does not mean we also have the King himself here. However we do of course have a family of Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster is currently hiding from another search expedition in the east wing,” Nikolai said nonchalantly.

  I didn’t know if I should believe him or not.

  Chapter 7

  Nikolai left us when we reached the elevator. He had to go check up on Silis. Surprisingly the four of us fit easily inside the elevator. There was enough room that we each had our own wall to rest on. It’s funny that everyone will stop talking to each other once inside an elevator. It’s like an unwritten rule, no talking, no eye contact, just stare at the floor or the numbers as you change floors. In college I did a study on people’s behavior in elevators, while I broke every taboo that existed with public elevator travel, I got some very funny reactions from people.

  This was not the time to test any of my theories. There was an air of nervousness so thick it was hard to breathe. Whatever awaited ahead of us had everyone spooked. Marsala was the only real vampire I had ever met. That I knew of anyway.

  Is Yuric really that scary?

  The elevator came to a gentle halt. We each pushed away from our walls as the doors opened. I was the last one out, taking in all the sights as I crossed the room. On my right was a firing range with dozens of firing booths. On my left, rows and rows and rows of every type of weapon imaginable.

  There’s enough guns in here to make the military jealous.

  According to what Marsala had said earlier, each and every gun was loaded and ready to fire with the safeties off. Looking at all those thousands of guns suddenly made me feel nervous.

  “This is the Demonstration Armory. The Main Armory and shooting ranges are on the next level up,” Tanaka explained. “We don’t really use this one that much anymore because it’s so small. It’s only really used to show off new weapons to big-wigs that visit and stuff like that. The Main Armory is about ten-times this size. We only keep the latest and greatest weapons around. There is enough artillery down here to take over the entire country. Not that we would ever try it. But, we could.”

  We crossed the Armory, then through the double doors to the conference room. The conference room held a long black table surrounded by forty chairs that bubbled out in the middle so everyone could see everyone else when sitting down. The room was huge. Just how could they ever have a meeting in here with all the chairs full? Must have a PA system or something. You could barely see the other end of the table where two men stood talking to themselves. Marsala crossed the room in three of his giant steps. Then he dropped to one knee bowing his head when he reached the men.

  “Master Yuric, I am humbled by your greatness. Please, forgive me for making you wait.” Marsala stayed kneeling as the shorter man approached him.

  Yuric was slightly shorter than I was in my heels, but he had a presence about him. He seemed so much larger than the giant kneeling at his feet. He wore a banded-collared black coat, stiffly buttoned high on the neck to the base of his jaw. It stretched down clear to the floor. I couldn’t see Yuric’s feet under the coat. He seemed to simply float towards Marsala instead of walking. His thin skin was mother-of-pearl white, his bald head shining in the harsh lighting with unnaturally pointy-tipped ears. His looks reminded me of the old black-and-white movie Nosferatu. He reached out an elongated, bony hand from under his pointed cuffed sleeve to Marsala. The large man took the frail-looking hand, kissing the white knuckles. Yuric then turned his gaze to me.

  Even from across the room his eyes shone like poured copper. His face broke into a broadly fanged sadistic smile. A smile that freaked me out more than the entire Bestiary had earlier. Raising both arms towards me like a long-since-visited-relative he began to glide across the room. Again, it appeared as if he were floating without feet ever touching the ground.

  “Ah, my dear young Marsala, is this her? Is this the reason you detained me? Is this vision the one who survived Jacob to be reborn?” Yuric’s voice was low with a European accent I couldn’t place that reminded me of Marsala’s. It sounded pleasant in a way, but creepy.

  I met him halfway across the room. I just couldn’t force myself any closer to him. Remembering what Marsala had told me, I bowed my head, but I never took my eyes away from the vampire. He seemed dangerous to me. Dangerous, like he could slaughter everyone in the room before I could even blink. That type of dangerous. I didn’t want him moving out of my eyesight, because I simply didn’t trust him.

  “I am Kieran Grey, greetings M-master Yuric, envoy of the Vampire Council.” I tried to sound as formal as I could. Trying to make a good first impression and all. I stumbled over the Master part though.

  Yuric laughed. My entire body cringed at that sound. The sound grated down my spine like ice cold jagged razor blades. It took all my strength not to run away screaming. He stood in front of me, his arms out to my sides as if to hug me.

  “My sweet child, no need to be so formal. I am gladdened by your use of my title, but you did not use your own. Greetings to you Kieran Grey, Psionic Hunter, Survivor Reborn, may your blood run pure from all wounds.” He stayed still as if expecting something.

  I never moved.

  What exactly am I supposed to do now?

  Marsala answered for me.

  “Again I ask your forgiveness, Master Yuric. I have not had the time to properly teach the young one of our ways. She does not know what a great honor you have bestowed upon her with your greeting. The blood greeting is our highest honor, only given to those great enough to deserve it,” Marsala spoke while staring at the floor. He was still kneeling in the same spot.

  “Young one”? What, am I a child now? I may not be a four-hundred-year-old vampire, but still.

  Yuric laughed again. I had to force myself not to react. “Rise Marsala. You have taught her well for the time you have had. Even now with her head bowed, she still meets my eyes. Only a trained warrior would not let their gaze fall, and dare to challenge their will against the potentially hypnotic stare of a Master Vampire by meeting my eyes with theirs.” Yuric dropped his arms then extended a hand to me. “I am honored to meet the one that survived Jacob.”

  I shook his hand. Even through my shields his skin felt waxy. It was like shaking sticks inside warm candle wax.

  Eeeww!!! Would that fall under creepy, or disgusting?

  Yuric gave a slight bow with the handshake then stood. I rose up from my bow to meet him. H
e smiled wide, barely flashing his fangs at me this time. It was a genuine looking smile that held warmth and friendship. Nothing like that sadistic evil grin he’d had earlier.

  “Forgive me Master Yuric–” his hand came up stopping me mid-sentence.

  “I am not your Master, Child. Please, just Yuric.”

  “Yuric then,” I corrected myself. “Forgive me, but why do you keep calling me a survivor? My memories and personality are gone forever, in effect, I died.”

  “Yes, that is true. Jacob is a problem. A great problem indeed. The Council has been trying to remove him for some time now. Fourteen of our best assassins were sent to kill Jacob. None survived. In fact, none survived intact either. Each time we sent an assassin, they were returned to us . . . one piece at a time. You are the first person to go against Jacob in almost a century that was able to be brought back to life. You are the Survivor Reborn.” Yuric crossed back to Marsala. “Has she come into her powers again?”

  “Yes my Master. She is already as powerful as she was before.” Marsala bowed his head whenever Yuric turned his attention to him like a deeply conditioned reflex.

  “Tell me Child, what of Jacob? Will you let him go unpunished for his crimes, to you and the others?”

  “I’ve been told that Jacob is wanted for a number of rape-murders. Since he is also a psionic, it is within my jurisdiction to stop him at all costs. I plan to stop him. Permanently. ”

  “Excellent,” he clapped once. “Then you have our support.” Smiling with a sweep of open arms, Yuric acted as if that should mean something to me.

  It didn’t.

  “My Master, the Council supports Kieran in the Hunt for Jacob?” Marsala inquired with shock heavy in his voice and his head down again.

  “Jacob is a problem, for both the humans and the vampires. He has gained a group of followers. Vampire and werewolf followers. We have been unsuccessful in stopping him despite our best attempts. But this girl has come closer than any of our best trained have before. We will support her in this endeavor.”