23

Back at the Gibson-Case Center, I was thrilled to see that the living statues didn’t give me any trouble when I returned to the elevators leading back up to Nicholas’s control center. When I got up there, I found Nicholas hunched forward in front of the main console that hooked up to the full-wall monitor system. His hair had fallen out of his ponytail and hung in his face like he had been pulling an all-nighter… or all-dayer, in his case.

“Anything?” I asked, hoping for a bit of positive news to offset the whole prophecy thing in my brain. “Find my girlfriend yet? How ’bout whoever released all those ferals?”

He pulled his eyes away from the console, turned to me, and shook his head. “Nothing yet on either account, I’m afraid. I see you found your way up here all by yourself.”

“I’m a quick study,” I said. “Actually, I would have gotten lost if the monorail hadn’t taken me through most of the mall.”

Nicholas cocked his head at me and cringed. “Please don’t call this a mall. It offends my architectural sensibilities.”

“I had no idea,” I said. I held up my hands. “I’m sorry.”

Nicholas still looked incensed. “Would you call the Concorde a paper plane?” he asked, his voice getting louder and louder. “Or the Sistine Chapel a paint-by-number?”

“No,” I said, resisting the urge to reach for the security of my bat, only to remember I didn’t have it anymore.

“Then call it what it is, then,” he said, standing. “An arcology. A hyperstructure featuring computer systems that border on sentient.” He pointed over at the large bank of windows opposite the giant monitor, walking there. I followed and looked down at the shopping concourse far below. People were scurrying around like worker ants on a mission from the queen. “Here the living, the unliving, and technology interact all like organs in one whole being. Self-sustainability! Stores, restaurants, offices, apartments, theaters, greenhouses, schools, hospitals, blood banks… everything to maintain life for all involved. Not a mall.”

“Point taken,” I said. “Again, I’m truly sorry.”

The wave of anger rolling off him emotionally was intense. “You sure all this rage is about me, Nicholas?”

Nicholas’s eyes burned into me. The last thing I needed after just having left Allorah was someone else’s smoldering anger coming at me. Something in my face must have convinced him I was asking out of genuine concern because his face softened and he put his hands to his eyes. He looked like he was going to cry, but then he laughed instead.

“Forgive me,” he said, walking back to his console and sitting down. “I am a bit touchy right now. Mostly overworked… The immortal body refreshes itself, but the mind, well…”

“So I see,” I said, trying to laugh it off myself. “Maybe it’s not all work? Maybe some of this is about Beatriz and Aidan, too…?

The laughter died on Nicholas’s lips. He raised an eyebrow and gave me a wan smile. “So you know about that, do you?”

“A little,” I said. “I see the looks you give them. Besides, when my partner’s brother is part of the undead, these things come up.”

Nicholas thought for a moment. “Ah, yes,” he said, giving a shudder. “Aidan.” He walked back over to the console and sat back down. “Anyway, yes, I suppose you could say I’m a little touchy because of Beatriz. If in a roundabout way only.”

I sat down in one of the console chairs next to him. “I’m all ears,” I said. “I’m just thrilled I’m not back at my office getting yelled at.”

Nicholas paused, collected his thoughts, then spoke. “Back before I was turned several hundred years ago, I had been apprenticed to Christopher Wren. You know of him, yes?”

I nodded. Even though most of my art knowledge was psychometrically gained, I knew of Wren’s architectural achievements in Europe.

“All I had ever hoped for back then was to dedicate myself to a life of design, all for the glory of God. But then this happened to me.”

Nicholas looked disgusted.

“You didn’t want this?” I asked.

“Not then,” he said. “Some days, I’m not even sure if I want it now… but back then, Beatriz courted me on behalf of Brandon. She was quite the noblewoman.”

“Wait,” I said. “Noblewoman? Beatriz?”

Nicholas screwed up his face. “Yes,” he said, “her. She courted me under her master’s orders, but it seemed so real at the time. Of course back then, she was nothing like the pale shade of a woman you see today. She carried herself in a far more courtly manner. How could an Englishman not fall for her exotic Spanish beauty? Now to see her on the arm of that hideously fashioned Aidan…” He shook it off. “Back before I was turned, I had no idea what she truly was or what Brandon had planned for me…”

Parts of the puzzle started to fit together in my head. Previous to his conversion, Brandon had not only been an arrogant monster; he had been quite the user of others. “He needed you,” I said, “to build his castle.”

Nicholas nodded. “Yes. He set his pawn upon me to win me over, not to construct his castle, but to help him maintain it, to fortify it. And much, much later, they needed me to move it to America.” He gave a blank stare ahead at the computer screens as images flew by. “It took years of planning, and given what the world was like back then, years to accomplish, but Brandon knew what he had in me when he had Beatriz turn me. She was so sweet back then, so loving, but all of it a lie.” His brow darkened and the hints of his vampiric nature showed in his skin as it became more leathery and pulled across his features. “I hated them both for that. For denying me my service to God.”

I didn’t understand. “To God?”

“My boy,” he said, his features smoothing back to normal, “I worked with Christopher Wren. Architecture was considered a gentleman’s pursuit, one of applied mathematics with all eyes turned upward in supplication to God. It was the way of my time. But when you want to build churches-monuments to our Lord-well… it is hard to do so once you are a creature of the night in a world barely lit by torches. The Church doesn’t… approve of my kind, and being a vampire makes working for His glory a bit difficult, I’m afraid. When that realization hit me, I sulked for a good sixty years.”

“My God,” I said. “That’s practically a lifetime.”

Nicholas nodded in agreement. “It was a lifetime back then.”

I was perplexed. “So why not just leave all of them? Tell them to screw off and walk away from it all? It’s sure as hell what I would have done.”

Nicholas looked pained. “Don’t you see?” he said. “I know this may sound a little clichéd or ridiculous…” He opened his mouth, popping his fangs so I could see them. “But we are vampire. Once you’ve seen the world as we see it-the faces of the people around you growing old and dying-you start to realize the world is a much lonelier place than most can imagine. Like it or not, there is comfort in the faces of those who live as long as you do, those who never die. Brandon and his people were the only family I had after being turned. Yes, I spent those sixty years hating them for what they did to me, but I was far too cowardly to ever do anything to… end it. But when the twentieth century dawned, I felt a sense of hope again. I could tell that new things were on the rise. I had initially been tasked with simply moving the castle to America and hiding it, but even then I could imagine a day like today, when I could look into the sky and see God’s light again for myself…”

“You can’t go outside,” I said. “You’ll burst into flames. Or so I’ve read. In a pamphlet.”

“A pamphlet,” Nicholas said, shuddering. “How perfectly… pedestrian.”

“Yeah, well… we’re on a budget. What can I say?” I thought for a moment. “Unlike you. What’s a place like this cost to build?”

“More than you’ll ever make,” Nicholas said, giving a smile through his sadness. “Even if we gave you several lifetimes to do so.”