Frowning, he tried to recall if the basket had been empty when he’d passed it. He’d introduced Daniel’s virus into Trisk’s field three days ago. He’d never have thought that enough would remain on the plants to infect humans. But if it had, it would only hasten Trisk’s downfall, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone permanently.
The doors slid open, and he stepped out. George saw him immediately, rattling his newspaper as he turned to a new section. “Hi, George. Anyone bring you cake yet?” Kal called out as he lifted the plate in invitation.
“Barbara brought me a piece a couple of hours ago,” the man said as he set his newspaper down in anticipation. “But I’d eat another. I thought you’d be at Smokehouse. It’s Friday.”
Looking for signs of infection, Kal smiled and handed him the cake. “Just a few things to wrap up before I call it a week,” he said, his skin prickling as he tapped a line. “The party cut my day short.”
“Thanks.” George took the cake. “I hear you about the party. I could—”
“Obscurum per obscurius,” Kal said softly, his now-free hand directing the energy the words had marshaled. “Whoops!” he added as George’s eyes rolled up. Scrambling, he saved the cake from hitting the floor, but the man’s head struck the desk as he collapsed. There was no sign of a rash that he could see, and Kal frowned. If anyone should be sick from an accidental release, it would be George.
“Sleep tight.” Leaving the cake, he used George’s master bypass key to open the door and slip through so there would be no record of him entering the downstairs labs. Immediately his nose wrinkled at the faint smell of decay, but that bothered him less than the bright yellow tape sealing off Daniel’s area.
“Quarantine?” he mused aloud as he passed it. It was a rather extreme reaction for having miscalculated the dosage, and his concern grew as he continued on to his shared office space with Trisk and used George’s key to open it to hide he’d ever been there.
Jerking back, Kal put a hand over his face when a putrid stench rolled out past the open door. Shit, it’s bad, he thought as he flicked on the light. Breath held, he went in.
“My God,” he whispered when he saw what was left of Trisk’s tomato field. After three days, he would expect some wilting, perhaps the fruit dropping, but the field was nothing but a broken-stemmed black wasteland. It appeared as if it had been burned, puddles of black goo showing where there’d once been tomatoes, broken, smutty branches still standing like piked soldiers in a lost battlefield.
In a horrified awe, he pressed closer to the glass to get a better look. It was getting easier to bear the smell, but his brow furrowed. He would swear he hadn’t miscalculated the dosage to infect the field. Something was working differently than he had anticipated.
But then his frown mutated into a satisfied smile. Trisk’s tomato was an utter failure. As far as anyone would know, she’d made a toxic fruit and passed it off as the agricultural savior of the third world. Even better, anyone who ate one of the infected tomatoes would be in danger of getting sick from Daniel’s virus. Trisk would be lucky to find a job as a sewage inspector.
“Her entire product line is destroyed,” Kal whispered, fixated on the broken ruin.
“It’s worse than you think,” Rick said from the open doorway, and Kal spun, shocked to see him standing there, his tie loosened and his shirt almost untucked. His shoulder-length hair was in disarray, and he looked rattled. “What are you doing here?”
“I came down to see where the stench was coming from,” Kal ad-libbed, and the living vampire nodded as he shuffled in and slumped into one of the rolling chairs, head in his hands to stare at the floor. “Rick?” Kal cautiously came closer. “Does Trisk know about this?”
His eyes flicked up and Rick leaned back. “Hell if I know.” His eyes shut, and fear crossed his face, shocking Kal. Vampires were never afraid. Even when they should be. “I’m not a geneticist,” Rick said, barely above a whisper, and Kal lurched to the door, looking down the hall to make sure no one was out there listening. “My master told me to come here. Make sure this virus of Daniel’s wouldn’t impact the vampire population or the human population—in that order. I told him it was safe.” He looked up, expression riven. “And now I’ve got a fever,” he said, holding his hand out to watch it shake. “I can’t die yet!” he exclaimed, letting it fall. “I don’t have enough set aside to retire or a place to stay out of the light. Or anyone to keep me alive.” Panic widened his eyes. “My master will have to cull me. No one is allowed to turn if they don’t have their scion already arranged.”
Shocked, Kal stared at Rick’s outright fear, realizing that the confidence, the sly power that all living vampires possessed, was a lie they told themselves so they could somehow survive. They knew what horrors awaited them at the end of their life, that they would become as beasts. Even when they were prepared, to die meant to become something they had both feared and loved all their lives.