Serafina and the Virtual Man

CHAPTER Four



The beautiful girl on his monitor dragged her hand through her rumpled hair, tugging it as she stared at her own computer screen. She looked different but no less gorgeous without all the makeup, her hair damp and clinging as if from a recent shower. But she was definitely the same girl he’d met this morning. Just… softer. And she was some technical whiz too, judging by all the stuff on her tiny laptop.

He remembered the soft skin of her cheek under his fingers, the big, defiant blue eyes staring at him from a lovely, carefully made-up face. The face she showed the world. But even this morning, here in Dale’s lab, he’d been intrigued by the layers of character and tragedy behind the mask she wore. To say nothing of the intelligence that shone out of her eyes like the sun.

Letting go of her hair, she began to type.

JK: Where are you?

Exodus: Dale’s.

JK: Why? What are you doing there?

Exodus: Don’t know. Don’t seem able to leave.

JK: Who are you? What’s your first name?

Exodus: Call me Adam.

JK: You invaded my computer, I’ll call you whatever I like.

He grinned at that. Fair point. Would she pursue it? Apparently she would.

JK: What’s your first name?

He hesitated from habit, because he had such a ridiculous first name. And because he’d no idea what her reaction would be. Only one way to find out.

Exodus: Genesis.

JK: Aye, right. You’re Genesis Adam? Cofounder of Genesis Gaming? Now calling yourself EXODUS? Please.

Exodus: I was Genesis Adam. I died.

JK: Genesis Adam certainly did.

Exodus: The night of the break-in at Dale’s.

JK: I hate to break it to you. But Genesis Adam died two months after the burglary. In Australia.

It was his turn to stare at the screen in total silence. Such a small thing to be thrown by, but he felt suddenly rudderless, dizzy, without any certainty to hold on to. He thought he’d remembered it all, knew what he was, what he’d done and where. But this, this wasn’t even part of any nebulous thought he ever recalled crossing his mind.

Exodus: I don’t remember that. Why was I in Australia?

JK: You emigrated.

Exodus: I did? Why?

JK: You tell me.

He only wished he could. Right now, this girl was his only link with the present or the past, his only way to any knowledge at all.

Exodus: What happened after I was shot?

JK: This is your story. Why should I do all the work?

Exodus: You don’t believe me.

JK: No, but don’t take it personally. I’m hard to fool. I just can’t see where you’re going with this.

Exodus: Why did you wake me up?

JK: I didn’t.

She did. She must have. She’d been the only one there when he’d arrived… But her lovely face looked sculpted in marble as she stared at the screen, waiting for his response. Her full lips had thinned and set, her eyes were wide and wary. And when she shoved her unruly hair out of her face, her hand shook.

F*ck. She didn’t know anything about him. That was the truth. She’d flicked the switch by accident, copied the wrong file by accident, and now he was stalking her. Frightening her.

Blackness clawed its way up his spine. He was on his own.

Exodus: OK. Sorry. I’ll sort it out. Thnx.

Exodus is offline.

He pushed himself away from the computer, flummoxed, ashamed but not yet defeated. Only his weird sense of unreality kept the panic at bay. He just had to consider the situation logically until he found the solution to his problem. He was used to that. So…

The memories slowly clearing in his mind confirmed his identity. Everything he’d told the girl, JK, was true. So far as he knew. He remembered being shot quite distinctly, in this house, although from whom or exactly where the shot had come from he’d no idea. Yet.

And he definitely wasn’t alive. If he was, he wouldn’t be able to connect to JK’s computer like he just had, to see her through her webcam when she hadn’t even switched it on. Part of him had remained here in Dale’s lab, typing, while, bizarrely, another, nebulous part of him had seemed to be swirling around the circuits of JK’s laptop. That was not natural, or even possible, even in a VR program.

But God, the girl was even more beautiful without the mask, without the tough edges she affected in her speech and mannerisms. Although her typed words were direct enough. Her eyes were still defiant, but she hadn’t been hiding tonight. Her unglossed, natural mouth had seemed to reveal unexpected vulnerability. He wanted to taste the softness of her lips… An odd desire for a dead man.

Why had she been here this morning? She’d wakened him by accident. She was curious, but not, it seemed, investigating his death. Which she said had happened in Australia.

So why had his ghost popped up in Dale’s Scottish home five months after his death? And why couldn’t he leave this room except via a computer connection?

Because he’d forced his spirit into his own VR program. Hadn’t he felt himself doing that as he whooshed to consciousness? But where had the compulsion come from? Some weird instinct to go on existing in some form, any form? He couldn’t grasp that bit. It had just happened.

Adam rubbed his forehead tiredly. He’d things to do. Important things, only he couldn’t quite work out what they were. He had to talk to Dale. And if he could talk to JK this way, surely it wasn’t impossible to contact his partner the same way.

He reached for the mouse again and found Dale’s computer quicker than a shot. In fact, he even found the security cameras. They weren’t switched on, but again that didn’t seem to matter.

From the security camera focused on the window, and from the webcam built into Dale’s laptop, he got a double view of his friend sitting on the sofa of the huge sitting room downstairs, one of his laptops on the low glass table in front of him. Petra would tell him off for scratching it. Except she wasn’t there.

Dale looked harassed, as if he wasn’t sleeping well. Difficulties with the new system, maybe. How far had he been able to take it in five months? So much Adam needed to know…

Adam connected into Dale’s open chat program, and from the lab typed, “Fancy a pint?”

Which had an unexpectedly dramatic effect. Dale dropped the mouse on the floor and leapt to his feet. At the same time, the curtains whooshed high into the air; Dale’s hair seemed literally to stand on end; and the laptop flew onto the floor as if an unseen hand had picked it up and hurled it.

Dale clutched his head in both hands. “Stop it, Adam!” he yelled. “Just f*cking stop it!”

****



In Edinburgh’s dark Old Town, the vampire Blair leapt off the tenement roof, landed in the back court, and yanked the fledgling off his female victim before hurling him into the wall with enough force to have killed a human. As it was, he hoped it gave the stupid little shite a big headache.

Ignoring the third vampire who stood uncertainly in the shadows, Blair caught the terrified gaze of the victim and hooked her. Slowly, the fear faded from her eyes as her mind adjusted to the new memory he was installing there: a foiled attack and no harm done. Still holding her mesmerised gaze, Blair licked his forefinger and pressed it to the ugly wounds in her throat. But the clumsy fledgling had made a mess, and Blair, driving down his own hunger, had to use his tongue to repair the damage. As it was, the girl would be pretty weak for a couple of days, so he planted the possibility of flu in her head and sent her on her way.

By that time, the fledgling, Connor, was staggering to his feet, clutching his head.

“What the f*ck was that for?” he raged.

Blair forced open Connor’s reluctant telepathic pathways. “If you don’t know that,” he told him coldly, “I might as well kill you now.”

Jason, the third vampire, emerged from the shadows, looking anxious as he always did.

“I’ve got to feed,” Connor whined. “Even you do that!”

“You were killing her, you moron. I’ve seen wild dogs with better table manners than you. You took too much, and you hurt her. How did you expect her to forget that?”

Connor laughed, an act of foolish bravado, because before he could even notice the movement, Blair’s hand was squeezing his throat. “You didn’t, did you?” Blair said softly. “You don’t care. Better start caring, then, because the next time I witness anything like that—and, I’m watching, Connor, never doubt that—I’ll kill you without a second thought. No pause, no discussion. Your imbecility endangers all of us, and I won’t allow it.”

Blair shook him like a rat and threw him from him once more. Connor’s defiance needed to be dealt with, but even so, Blair was aware his irritation was out of proportion. Because he almost hadn’t noticed. His mind had been too much on his own problems, on Sera, on the shadow he was sure he knew. Otherwise, he’d have noticed earlier that Connor was going too far and stepped in before he’d taken so much blood from the girl.

Connor’s slipup was not an unusual one in fledglings, but right now, with so many of the wretched creatures still skulking in Edinburgh since last year’s fiasco, they couldn’t afford to allow any to pass, and keeping track of them all occupied far too much of Blair’s time.

As Connor stumbled away to sleep off his banquet, Jason said excusingly, “He just got carried away.”

Blair scowled. “Well, none of us can afford for that to happen. I’m going to start killing anyone who gets ‘carried away’ from now on. Spread the word.”

Jason nodded unhappily. He looked pale and unwell. Blair sighed. Mentoring the fledglings was not a job he particularly enjoyed. Someone just had to do it, or there would soon be chaos in the city and the existence of vampires might well be discovered. But on the whole, morons like Connor were more easily dealt with than Jason, who, since the battle in Holyrood Park that had killed so many of his fellow fledglings, had clung to his humanity as if it were a lifeline rather his death knell.

“When did you last feed?”

“I was going to bite her,” Jason said with a jerk of his head toward the street. “But Connor got there first.”

“Don’t hunt in pairs,” Blair said. “It leads to competition and idiocy like tonight’s. Hunt alone. You’re better at it than Connor, and if you keep your wits about you, you’ll be the one who survives the longest.”

Even as he said the words, though, he doubted they were true. No longer bound to the sorcerer who’d initiated his “turning” and free from all instruction but Blair’s, Jason found himself rudderless and miserable. In fact, Blair suspected if it wasn’t for his devoted parents, Jason would have let himself die by now. Which plucked an uncomfortable chord in Blair’s own far older and much more selfish soul.

On the other hand, Jason had the intelligence and the finesse the others lacked.

“Walk with me,” Blair said abruptly, and obediently, Jason fell into step with him. They strolled out of the courtyard and into the alley beyond, meandering up the hill toward the Royal Mile.

“I have other things on my mind than you lot,” Blair said at last.

“Better things, I imagine,” Jason said humbly.

Oh yes. Sera and her ridiculous job, which he seemed to have fallen into. Plus he had to watch out for the Founder now and protect her from any move that entity might make. If he could. How the hell did one protect anyone from the most powerful being on the Earth? At any rate, he had to try. Even if she was drifting away from him.

For a moment, an echo of the old blackness slithered into his mind. He shoved it aside. He could win Sera’s body whenever he chose to. He couldn’t force her to feel more, to relax into the deeper companionship he craved. He could only wait and see, and watch out for her. And so he answered Jason, “Better? Not necessarily. Just ‘other.’”

He glanced at the fledgling thoughtfully. Make-or-break time, Jason. “So, how would you like to be my lieutenant here in Edinburgh?”

Jason’s jaw dropped. “Me? They wouldn’t listen to me!”

“More fool them. You’re the one with the brains.”

“Unfortunately, you need brawn to make that count with them,” Jason said dryly.

“I can give you brawn.”

Jason’s brow twitched. “You can?”

Blair stopped. He knew the alley was empty, but he cast a glance up at the tenement windows on either side. There weren’t many at this angle, and all were dark.

“Bite me,” he said.

“What?” said Jason in alarm.

“Drink my blood,” Blair said impatiently. “Don’t worry, I won’t let you have much. For one thing, you couldn’t handle it. It will make you much stronger than the rest. One demonstration should be all you’ll need to keep the shits like Connor in line. You’ll watch them and discipline them, and if you have trouble, you come to me. Sound fair?”

Jason closed his mouth. For a few moments, his eyes stood out like organ stops at the very idea. Then the possibilities began to filter through quite visibly. It was a purpose, a necessary purpose beyond his next meal, and Blair knew from experience that any vampire with intelligence needed one of those.

He held his head to one side, exposing his neck. “Do it, then.”

Jason advanced, reached hesitant arms up to Blair’s shoulders, and swallowed once, convulsively, before he bit.

Christ, it felt good. It had been so long since anyone had drunk from him, he’d forgotten… It was actually a wrench, after a few seconds, to yank Jason back by the hair with a curt, “Enough.” But the difference in the fledgling was immediate. He didn’t just look suddenly healthier— rosy-skinned and fuller in face and body; he looked…purposeful.

Pleased, Blair nodded. “Go home. Sleep it off and start your new role tomorrow night. We’ll stay in touch.”

And he strode off. When he glanced back over his shoulder, Jason was standing in the middle of the alley, spinning as he gazed up at the sky with all the enhanced perception and understanding he’d gained from his few sips of Blair’s blood. Perhaps it would bring him closer to the Founder and a longer existence. Perhaps.

But Blair couldn’t think about that now. Jason’s bite had opened the floodgates of his own hunger, his own sexual desire. He wanted to pin Sera beneath him and drink from her all night while f*cking her senseless. Oh yes.

But Sera had gone home. He could follow and convince her she wanted him after all. Which she did. She’d just chosen to walk away. Because sex, after all, was only sex.

And blood was only blood.

At the street corner, he bumped into a young woman hurrying home. Blair had no time to waste on charm. He just hooked her, mesmerised her, and drew her back into the alley with him. Then he bent and sank his teeth into her sweet-smelling, willing throat. She gasped and pushed into him, torturing his rock-hard erection. He concentrated on her blood.

It wasn’t Sera’s, but it was good.

****



Jilly ignored the pall of dread that settled about her as she walked down the familiar street toward the flat she grew up in. Early in the morning was the best time to go there.

The postman was delivering letters on the other side of the road. A man ran past her toward the bus stop. Somewhere, in one of the flats, a child was crying. The sound set her teeth on edge, reached right inside her before she could prevent it. She hated to hear children cry.

And so there was actually an element of relief when she turned away from it into her parents’ building, pushed open the permanently broken security door, and ran up the stairs to the first floor.

She used her old key and entered her old home.

It stank vaguely of rubbish, smoke, and stale alcohol. But at least there were no voices apart from a low-volume radio mutter drifting from the kitchen. Jilly walked up the narrow hall and pushed open the door.

Her mother sat at the kitchen table, pouring vodka into a cup of tea.

“Bit early, isn’t it?” Jilly said, striding across the room to throw open the window.

“Hair of the dog,” her mother said. “Want tea?”

“Go on.” Jilly grabbed a mug from the sink, rinsed it, and poured her own tea from the pot on the table. She didn’t sit down. “How’re things?”

“Same as always. Still working for Sera?”

“Aye. Andy in?”

Her mother shrugged. “Probably. In his bed.”

That’s why visiting home was best first thing in the morning. Less of them were up.

Mug in hand, Jilly strolled out of the kitchen and across the hall to Andy’s room. She shoved open the door and walked in.

“Oi. Wakey-wakey.” She picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and threw them at the huddle on the bed.

Andy jerked upright, arms flailing. “Jillian, you cow! What’d you do that for?”

“To wake you up.”

“There’s no need.” Andy jerked his head in the general direction of their parents’ room. “He’s been fine.”

Jilly grunted. “You and George got arrested for robbing a big house outside the city last August.”

“Charges were dropped,” Andy said with dignity.

“Why?”

“Bloke lost interest. What’s it to you?”

“What bloke?” Jilly leaned against the doorframe and sipped her tea.

“The owner.”

“Dale Ewan?”

Andy reached for his cigarettes and cast her a sardonic grin. “Friend of yours these days, aye?”

“No. So he just withdrew the charges against you? Wouldn’t the police want to prosecute you anyway?”

Andy shrugged. “He withdrew the complaint. We never got anything anyway, so the police let us go.”

Jilly frowned. “Why?”

“I just told you!” Andy said, hurling the empty cigarette packet on the floor in annoyance.

“No, I mean why didn’t you nick anything?”

Andy lay back down. His short, fair hair stuck up in spikes, emphasising the harassed expression on his sharp features. “The house was supposed to be empty. That’s why we went out there. Only it was crawling with people. When we heard the gunshot, we just f*cked off.”

Jilly straightened, staring at her brother. “Gunshot?”

“Aye. Assumed it was aimed at us and ran like hell. Too good to be true, a house like that standing empty.”

Jilly roused herself. “Who told you it would be?”

“Can’t remember. Heard it on the grapevine.” Andy propped himself up on his elbow, scowling at her with obvious unease. “What’s it to you anyway? Don’t go raking it all up again, Jillian.”

“How’d you get past the alarm system?” she asked.

Andy grinned and touched the side of his nose.

“Oh, come on, Andy. That’s state-of-the-art stuff.”

“Think I can’t deal with that?”

“I know you can’t,” Jilly said, unimpressed.

Andy sighed. “We knew it wouldn’t be switched on.”

Jilly frowned. “Why not? How did you know that?”

“None of your bloody business! We just knew, all right?”

Jilly mulled it over in silence.

“Get us a cup of tea,” Andy suggested.

“F*ck off,” Jilly said amiably and took her own cup back to the kitchen, where her mother was yawning and flicking through the pages of a newspaper.

Jilly walked past her, and rinsed her mug under the tap. “Got to go.”

“You not going to wait and see your dad? I’ll wake him up.”

Jilly stared at her. “I can’t stay. I’ve got work.”

Her mother’s eyes fell. “Aye. Right enough. I’ll tell him you came by.”

“Don’t bother,” Jilly muttered, brushing past to the door, where she paused and glanced back at the huddled figure of her mother, pouring another cup of tea. Would she put vodka in that too? Just for an instant, pity swamped Jilly’s anger.

“You should get out of here, Mum. Go and live on your own.”

Her mother turned her head and gazed at her. “What would I do that for?”

Because it’s better than what you’re doing now, than what you’ve always done: nothing. Before the bitter words got out, Jilly walked away and left the flat. She ran down the stairs and outside, gulping in the fresh air with massive relief.

****



She was glad when Sera answered her doorbell. Often, now, Sera stayed at Blair’s place, and no way was Jilly going there. On the other hand, she did want to talk to Sera without the others around, so she was prepared to risk running into Blair in the flat above Serafina’s.

“Hello,” Sera greeted her, standing back to let her in. “How was Dave?”

“Wanker,” Jilly said briefly. “I kneed him one.”

“Good,” Sera said with unstinting approval. She closed the door, scanning Jilly’s face as she often had over the years for signs of distress. Obviously finding none, her face cleared. “I was just on my way.”

“Wanted to talk to you first,” Jilly returned, following Sera upstairs to the flat. “About the Ewans.”

“Fair enough. There’s coffee in the pot. Help yourself while I grab my stuff.”

Jilly jerked her head at the bedroom. “Is he in there?”

“No, but even if he was, he’s not likely to blab, is he?”

“Point.” Almost the only thing Jilly liked about Blair was the fact that he couldn’t talk. He communicated telepathically with Sera, which was fine. Jilly didn’t like to be reminded of his mouth at all, since it contained sharp fangs for biting humans.

So she brought Sera up to date on what had happened on her computer last night and what she’d found out from Andy this morning.

Sera swore with gratifying awe. “How does that not count as a traumatic event?” she wondered. “Break-in, gunshots… Who did the shooting? Did Ewan shoot at Andy and George?”

“They didn’t wait to find out. But it could be why the case was dropped. You can’t go around shooting at unarmed burglars without the police getting anxious, even if they’re in your house.”

“See if Ewan has a firearms license.”

“Already checked. He has a shotgun for hunting. But there was no mention of gunshots in the police report of the break-in. What’s more, there’s something funny about the whole burglary thing. Somebody told Andy and George it would be safe, that the house would be empty and the alarms switched off.”

Sera sat down and grabbed her half-finished coffee while she shoved her feet into short boots. “That’s bizarre. Were they supposed to steal something in particular?”

“To order, you mean? I don’t think so, though Andy wouldn’t tell me stuff like that anyway. I think they were set up, Sera. What if they were meant to carry the can for whoever got shot that night?”

Sera straightened, staring at her. “Genesis Adam? You mean he was shot but didn’t die? I suppose that would explain what he told you. Or what someone or something told you.”

“Maybe. Only it doesn’t seem that anyone was shot that night. Like most things Andy and George get involved in, it didn’t work. And they beetled off before anyone could frame them for anything. Only how this all fits in with the Ewans, let alone their poltergeist, is way beyond me.”

“Well, if the poltergeist has been there since the shooting, I suspect someone did die,” Sera said, her voice grim. She stood up with an air of determination. “I need to get hold of this poltergeist again, and you need to talk to Exodus.”

****



Dale Ewan sat in his study and switched on the computer, trying to calm his growing sense of panic. The launch of the new system was only two months away, and nothing was falling into place as it should. He had good people working for him, the best in project managers, programmers, engineers, graphic artists, and even musicians, and yet the integration of software with hardware was so slow he was having to consider a postponement to the launch.

Some of it was Dale’s fault, of course. Always a realist, he acknowledged that. He spent too much time here these days—Petra hated being alone in the house since the poltergeist had begun making its ugly visitations—and not enough at the office overseeing things. Adam had been better at that side of it all anyhow: rolling up his sleeves and mucking in with the workers, yet presiding over the apparent chaos that miraculously produced a product in good time. He squashed the stab of grief and regret before it pierced too deeply. There was no time for that. The best he could do for Adam now was make a success of his new system.

Petra was doing spa things and lunch today in Edinburgh, so he’d use the opportunity to go into the office and force things along. It was still doable. And it was a good excuse to avoid lunch with Roxy. Petra could fend off Adam’s ex far better than he could, and with a lot more sympathy. He just hoped she wasn’t going to come up with some kind of a claim to Adam’s inheritance. Of course his lawyers would nip that in the bud. Adam’s relationship with Roxy, such as it was, had been over for almost a year.

He leaned forward and took up the mouse, about to set the alarm system on the test lab, when his spine shivered involuntarily. The psychic, Sera MacBride, had said poltergeists were just mindless, negative emotion. If that was true, how come Adam had spoken to him so rationally by computer last night?

Fancy a pint?

Of course, it could have been a fluke, or some residual instinct just resending a message that had been sent from Adam to him so often before. He’d been too freaked to check it out last night.

And so, before he set the alarm, before he checked through his e-mails for anything urgent, he examined his chat history. Exodus was indeed still there as a contact. And a bit of basic investigation traced the computer used to…one in his own network. A machine in the test lab.

Involuntarily, Dale’s gaze flew to the half-hidden sliding door. He realised he was holding his breath, that the physical pain in his stomach was caused by a pointless and incredibly stupid wish for Adam to be in there, sending him annoying messages for a laugh. Like it used to be.

He exhaled loudly. All that was left of Adam, if, indeed, it was Adam, was the poltergeist’s fury. And the idea of that in his test lab was unthinkable.

Slowly, Dale stood and went to the keypad on the wall. He tapped in the code and waited, his heart thundering in his ears as the door slid open. Please, please, please…

It looked like it always did since Adam had installed the new machinery. A bank of computers, the first one switched on but sleeping; a wide, empty space with the new equipment above the old bench.

Dale breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door.