Midnight Moon (Vampire for Hire #13)(32)

There is unlimited potential within that which you call God, Sssamantha. The source entity, as many call it, is so vast that even it does not know its boundaries.

And you seek to find his boundaries?

No, Sssamantha. I have no use for helping our source entity. No, I seek to lay claim to the unknown space, if you will.

And then what? I asked. And here comes Allison, by the way. She really doesn't like you, you know.

Elizabeth ignored me, perhaps reveling in her first taste of freedom in some time. No, not reveling. Making the most of it.

We can be gods, Sssamantha. 

Why not lay claim to the moon, or some forgotten planet? Why not rule Mars and get the fuck off our planet once and for all?

We do not seek worlds, Sam. We seek to create them.

If you desire to expand into unknown realms of the universe, then why do you seek to return to the Earth?

Because we need a launching point. We need a home base. We need a gathering point. Where we are now we are without form and we are muted. We have been tamed.

I'd had enough. I shook my head and concentrated-turned out I had to concentrate harder than I'd expected, as Elizabeth was a devout believer of taking a mile when given an inch. She had filled my mind and thoughts.

Back you go, I thought. Back, back.

She went, but not willingly, and I threw up a half dozen more walls around her, sealing her deep in my mind.

"What was all that God business?" asked Allison, returning.

"I'm not sure you want or need to know," I said. "And no delving into my mind, either."

"Fine," she said. "Then can we get back to what we were talking about earlier? The part about Charlie being a creator? You sort of left me hanging there."

Our waitress came by and took our lunch orders.

"It's called a pregnant pause," I said when our waitress was gone.

"Why is it called that?" asked Allison. "Pregnant pause?"

"The calm before the storm?" I suggested.

"The storm being... a screaming baby?"

"Or a screaming mother."

"Well, then that was a full pregnancy, complete with a 20-hour labor pause. Now tell me: what do you mean he can create whole worlds?"





Chapter Twenty



It came again, and now Tammy was sitting up.

The thoughts-the very, very evil thoughts-were still a distance away. Maybe even as far away as the bum she could still hear at the Hungry Bear, the bum who was hoping not just for a little money for some real food.

In fact, the roiling, dark, hate-filled thoughts were seeping past the bum even now. Stopping in front of the bum. The homeless man quit thinking of food or money or anything. Tammy sensed his fear. Worse, she almost tasted his fear. That was happening to her more and more these days. Sometimes she could taste an emotion, and if it was anything but happiness, it didn't taste good at all. Now she tasted sour, spoiled putrescence, as if she had bitten into a rotten hot dog filled with maggots. She nearly gagged. Where that maggot part came from, she didn't know.

Tammy had unknowingly brought her knees up and had wrapped her arms around them. She found herself rocking, rocking, rocking...

She felt the homeless man cowering, ducking his head, closing his eyes, and praying with all his heart-and as he prayed, she felt something slither up next to the man and whisper, "Soon..."

She felt the man lose control of his bladder, and now she was rocking even harder. Maybe moaning a little, too.

The evil swept onward, slithering, gliding, catching a breeze here and there. Sometimes it paused to watch people in their cars or cross the streets, and Tammy sensed one and all swallow suddenly and feel an irrational fear-and now the darkness continued onward, upward, gliding and blowing and drifting toward her.

Suddenly, she knew what was coming.

The devil.



***



"That's exactly what I mean," I said. "Whole worlds."

Allison's eyes searched my face, even as her mind searched my mind. I knew from experience that the more recent a conversation was, the sharper it was in one's memory. This should be sharp enough for her to mostly follow it.

"But I'm not following it, Sam," she said. "There's a lot of bouncing around going on in there. You sort of connected your conversation with Maximus to a lot of other things going on with your life right now. I'm untangling too many threads, threads that are leading to other threads, other conversations, other people. You're going to have to spell it out for me."



       
         
       
        

"My client Charlie Reed, an engineer at Raytheon and our new favorite writer, is part of a rare breed of humans on this planet."