The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(44)

“Vampires? That’s random.”

“Well, this morning I was thinking about vampires,” I said. “I never understood why people were so fascinated by them, girls especially—I guess because they’re usually good-looking guys with all these superhuman powers, plus the fact that I guess they’re sort of tragic and girls feel sorry for them. Maybe it’s because they’re blessed with immortality but cursed with death.”

“Maybe it’s the way they dress,” she said. “You never see a vampire in dorky clothes.”

“And they’re always handsome and fit. You never see a fat, ugly vampire.”

“Maybe it’s just the fact that love is blind.” Her voice got soft and lazy, as if she were drifting off to sleep. “You can’t help it, you know? Who you fall in love with. Sometimes you want to help it. You would do anything not to be.”

“Not to be what?”

“In love!”

She gave my shin a light tap with the toe of her boot, one of those girl kicks that isn’t meant to be taken as a kick.

“What about you?” I asked. “Have you ever been?”

“I thought I was—once. We broke it off.”

“How come?”

“I decided to leave the Company and he became the new Operative Nine.”

“Nueve?” I was floored. “Nueve was your boyfriend?”

“My taste in guys has never been that good.”

“Ashley, he was going to shoot you!”

“I know, can you believe it? The jerk. But being the Operative Nine means never having to say you’re sorry.”

“I am,” I said. “For shooting you. For pulling you into this. And you don’t believe me right now, but I’m going to pull you back out of it. We’re getting off this mountain, I swear, Ashley, and we’ll go somewhere they can’t find us.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time.

“There is no such place,” she finally said, pressing her lips against my neck, and I thought of vampires again and how their kisses brought life to you, through death’s doorway.

01:17:58:54

We crawled from our cave at dawn, sore, stiff, and very cold. Thick clouds marched overhead; it looked like more snow was on the way.

We began the morning with an argument. I wanted to make for the landing pad to commandeer a helicopter.

“It’ll be heavily guarded,” Ashley said. “Exactly where they expect us to go. It’s a zig, Alfred. We’ve got to zag.”

“But zag where?”

“The château. There’s food, shelter, clothing—”

“Right. Along with Nueve and Mingus.”

“And a secure satellite hookup. If we can get to it, we can SOS Abby.”

“And she says to him, ‘Back off, buddy. Give them a cup of hot chocolate and a blanky,’ and then Nueve puts an extra log on the fire.”

“Okay. Then you tell me how we’re going to get past fifty armed agents and an Operative Nine who’s got no problem with putting a bullet through his girlfriend’s head.”

I opened my mouth to answer, closed it, opened it again, and said, “I’m working on that.”

Behind us, from somewhere in the woods came the sound of barking.

“Well, you better work fast,” Ashley said. “Because they’ve brought in the bloodhounds.”

I listened to the braying of the hounds for a couple seconds. They were getting closer.

“You’re working, right? Not just panicking?” she asked.

“A little of both. We could make a run for it.”

“We’re both dehydrated and weak from hunger. I don’t think we’ll get very far.”

“Okay, then we wait for them to find us,” I said. I offered her Nueve’s gun. She didn’t take it.

“Well,” I said. “Those are the options, Ashley. Fight or flight.”

“There’s a third,” she said. “Take off your clothes.”

“Huh?”

“Strip.”

“Right now?”

She began to unbutton my jumper. Her cheeks were red from the cold. Mine were red from being stripped.

Fifteen minutes later two men in heavy parkas with AK-47s slung over their shoulders came into the clearing, pulled along by two massive bloodhounds. The dogs didn’t hesitate: they made straight for the figure in the OIPEP jumpsuit slumped against a tree at the far edge of the clearing. Once they passed our cave, Ashley and I burst from the snow and were on them in five steps, mine very exaggerated knees-up-to-the-chest steps, the kind of running you see in cartoons. Somehow that feels more natural when you’re wearing just boxers and boots in subzero weather. I put Bullet-Foot’s gun against one guy’s head and Ashley put Nueve’s against the other’s.

“Hi, Pete,” Ashley said to her guy, pulling the AK-47 from his hand. To mine, she said, “How’s it going, Bob?”

“Hi, Ashley,” Pete and Bob said.

“We’ll take your parkas and walkie-talkies, too.”

“And the gloves,” I said.

“Right,” she said. “And the gloves.”

Ashley ordered them to sit on their bare hands while I shook the snow out of my jumpsuit and got dressed. Maybe I should have taken Pete or Bob’s jumpsuit, too, since theirs were dry and mine was wet from stuffing it with snow. We slipped on the gloves and parkas. Ashley tied their hands behind their backs with the ends of the leashes and the bloodhounds watched us, tongues lolling from their blubbery mouths, with the happy attitude of all dogs. At that moment, I envied their obliviousness. I knelt beside one and he slobbered all over my face. His spit was warm and thick and under any other circumstances I would have been grossed out, but now my heart pounded with joy. It’s hard to think of a single thing that can bring you more happiness than a good dog.