“Immortality,” he breathed dramatically, hesitating again, expecting perhaps that I should cry out, “Not immortality!” but I was too preoccupied pulling at my restraints.
Hennison’s face drooped. “You don’t seem impressed.”
“I am, very. But I’d find it easier to share your enthusiasm if I wasn’t bolted to this table.”
“Actually, bodies aren’t immortal, only the brains.”
The zombies drooled and muttered a chorus of “Brains. Brains.”
Sonia mouthed the word and licked one corner of her painted lips.
“I’ve perfected the technique of head transplants. I can swap bodies as easily as you change pants. Let me show you.”
Hennison went to the far side of the lab. An upside-down stockpot sat on a pastry cart. He rolled the pastry cart close.
Hennison pulled the key ring on the lanyard attached to his belt. He opened a padlock securing the bottom of the stockpot. “This is a necessary precaution because, well, you’ll see.” He let go of the keys and they retracted with a zzziit back to his belt. He lifted the stockpot.
Cleto’s head sat in a steel dish. His face was gray except for the top, which was pale and shaved bald. Tubes ran up his nose and into brass fittings along his temple. A net of wires crossed his scalp and were taped to his skin. His eyes were pressed tight, dark and shriveled as prunes, as if to not see what had happened to him.
On the other hand, Cleto deserved the look.
“Once you understand the biology and chemistry, it’s a straightforward process, a lot like fixing an appliance. The problem is not physical trauma but emotional. One minute you’re cruising along on two legs and the next you’re as mobile as a casserole.”
“Why attack Cleto?”
“Opportunity, mostly. I’ve been stalking those lowlifes for a while. I couldn’t believe my good fortune that I got a fresh head and my zombies got a nice snack.”
“What’s going to happen to him?”
“I haven’t decided. His body was torn up when we captured him. In the meantime I have to keep his head locked up because of the brai…”
The zombies leaned into him and their cracked lips pursed to mutter their favorite word.
“You know what I mean.” Hennison set the stockpot over Cleto and secured the padlock. “I can keep brai…I mean what’s in his head, in stasis for an indefinite time.”
Hennison came back to the table. “Oh, I can go on and on about zombies. But vampires?” He raised a finger in an inquisitive manner. “I have many, many questions. Are vampires immortal?”
Not if we’re decapitated. “We can be killed.”
“I figured that from your reaction to the sunrise.” Hennison reached for the rheostat knob on the electric knife switch. “I mean, if no harm comes to you, are vampires immortal? You’ll live forever and ever?”
That’s what immortal means. “Yes.”
“How old is the oldest vampire?” Hennison’s aura became prickly with hostility. He rotated the rheostat knob. Up or down?
“I don’t know,” I answered, my muscles tensing as I expected the worse. “Several hundred years.”
“A thousand?” The prickles on his aura grew into thorns.
“I’m sure some have been that old.”
The thorns on his aura danced like individual flames. “Can this kill you?” He let go of the rheostat knob and grasped the switch.
The electricity bit where the steel hoops held my wrists and ankles. My body tightened in anticipation of the next jolt.
“Yes, this could kill me.”
Hennison nodded, pleased with himself. “What about a stake to the heart?”
“Yes.” I hoped we weren’t checking the list of options.
“Garlic?”
“Poisonous.”
“Really?” Hennison stroked his chin and studied the jars and bottles of chemicals along the wall. “An acid bath?”
“Probably.”
“Gunshots?”
“Not fatal but very painful.”
“How painful?”
He rolled the right leg of my sweatpants to my knee. The thorns on Hennison’s aura shrank into a shroud of undulating cilia. Intermittent tentacles whipped out. He couldn’t see it, obviously, but I could read his deranged pleasure.
He opened a drawer on the workbench and withdrew a revolver. More tentacles whipped from his aura.
The zombies, even Sonia, leaned close.
Hennison aimed the pistol at the shin of my right leg. He steadied the gun. The bullets shone in the cylinder chambers with their evil promises of pain and destruction.
My kundalini noir turned on itself in despair. I steeled myself to be strong. The bullets would tear flesh and shatter bone.
Hennison closed his left eye and focused his right down the sights of the pistol. “Are you afraid?”
“Yes, I am.”
“But you said gunshots weren’t painful.”
“I said gunshots weren’t fatal.”
“First rule of any guest. Don’t correct your host.”
Hennison fired.
My mind put everything in vampire speed.
The knuckles on Hennison’s index finger turned white as he squeezed the trigger. The hammer cocked and the cylinder rotated. I heard the mechanism click, the spring compress and release. The firing pin struck the back of the cartridge. The primer cap exploded, detonating the propellant in the cartridge and pushing the bullet down the barrel.
The bullet spiraled toward me, my mind so focused on the slug that I could pick out the grooves carved into the brass jacket from the barrel rifling.
Despite that, it happened quick. The trigger pull. The bullet flying out the barrel.
The bullet striking my right leg.
Time reverted back to normal speed. Pain tore up my leg through my spinal column to my head, a thunderbolt of misery that blanked out every other sensation. I couldn’t do anything but cry out to relieve the agony.
Blood gushed from the ragged hole, a well of red liquid that turned into a swirl of brown flakes.
Hennison lowered the revolver and admired what he’d done. The zombies went, “Ghaw. Ghaw.”
He dropped the gun into a pocket of his lab coat. He went to the workbench and returned with a wooden tongue depressor. He scooped through the dried flakes and they floated light as ash. “Interesting.”
I couldn’t escape. I accepted the inevitable. The Araneum was sending help-Jolie-and with me captured, that meant the destruction of everything and everyone in this house. Felix Gomez included.
I should’ve waited for Jolie before starting this assignment.
This was what I was reduced to, wishing for relief by annihilation at the hands of a friend and ex-lover.
Hennison pulled the leg of my sweatpants down to cover the wound. “Don’t want you to get an infection.”
He told Sonia to go downstairs. He instructed Reginald to put out guards. Kimberly pawed my crotch and gave an abbreviated zombie smile: I’ll be back, sweetie.
“I’ve got another project demanding my time,” Hennison said. “Who would’ve thought that the life of an evil genius would be so busy?” Hennison twisted the foot of my shattered leg.
The pain crushed me to unconsciousness. I came to a moment later.
He said, “I trust you won’t insult my hospitality by trying to escape? Tomorrow you’ve got a date with Mr. Morning Sun.”
Hennison turned to cowboy zombie and put the revenant’s hand on the electrical switch. “Watch him. If he tries to escape, close the switch. Shall we give it a test?”
“That’s not necessary,” I replied.
Hennison hopped up and down. “He’s trying to escape.”
Cowboy zombie pushed the switch closed.
The hot blast of pain ricocheted inside my body. My muscles locked up and my vision went from blurry to black.
The pain stopped. My arched back rested flat on the table. I tasted charred flesh and belched smoke.
“Excellent.” Hennison patted cowboy zombie on the shoulder. “I’m trusting you.”