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“Kill who?” I asked slowly.
Christine didn’t answer. Her gaze had fallen to her watch, and her eyes widened. “I didn’t know it was so late! I must go.”
I caught her arm as she whirled and headed down the corridor, away from the landslide. I didn’t so much as slow her down; it was more like I got towed along for the ride. “Wait! You haven’t told me why you wanted the rune. It isn’t as if you need the protection.”
“Oh, but I do. That is why I came here tonight. One last chance…” Her voice faded, but then came back stronger, more resolute. “But then, perhaps this is God’s way of telling me that it is enough. That once this is done, I will have redeemed myself at last.”
“Once what is done?”
“I prayed so long for a miracle, and there was nothing. For years I thought that God had abandoned me, now that I was tainted. Unclean.” She looked down at her blood-streaked clothes, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “But then He sent you to me, and all became clear.”
“I made things clear?” I asked, panting in an effort to keep up.
“It has been your life’s work, removing their stain from humanity. But there are too few of you. Too few dhampirs and so very many of them. And they reproduce at will, constantly making more and more. You need help.”
“And you are going to help me?”
“I’m going to do more than that. After tonight, the vampire world will be in chaos, families feeding on one another as they once did, master against master, line against line. They will destroy themselves, and those who are left will be annihilated in the war. And you will be able to sit back and watch it all happen. I only wish I could be with you.”
“Why can’t you?”
She shot me a puzzled look. “Because I’ll be dead. The rune was my last chance to survive what lies ahead. But I am beginning to see that perhaps I was not meant to survive it. Now that the work is done, I can shed this horrible skin, these baseless cravings….”
“If you tell me a little more about what you plan to do, maybe I can help,” I offered as bricklined nineteenth-century work blurred into modern concrete.
“You have already helped. You gave me the key.”
Christine ducked into a side tunnel and I scurried to keep up. “You’d think I’d remember something like that.”
“For a long time, I could not understand why God had allowed this to happen, why I of all people should be chosen for this fate,” she told me. “But over many years, it slowly became clear: in order to destroy them, I had to be one of them. Only one who knew them intimately could devise a way to bring them down.”
“You’ve been planning this for a while.”
“Something like this,” she agreed. “But I was missing a key element. Killing one or two vampires, here and there, does nothing. Killing masters is better, for then an entire line is weakened. And killing senators is truly useful, for it undermines the political structure and starts the process toward anarchy. But one or two senators will not do. They are merely replaced. To truly destroy their society, I needed a way to kill a great many leaders, all at once, from a great many Senates. But it seemed hopeless. When were they ever together?”
“For the Challenge,” I said, starting to feel a little cold.
“I realized the opportunity the Challenge presented at once, but I did not know how to capitalize on it. I should have known that God would not let me come so far and fail to provide.”
“He provided the rune?”
“No, Dory.” She laughed. “He provided you. The task seemed impossible, but you showed me the way.”
The darkness up ahead fractured, pierced by a dozen tiny shafts of light. It turned out to be a manhole cover, with a ladder leading up. I grabbed her sleeve with both hands. “How did I do that, exactly?”
Her head tilted. “But don’t you see? If we had not gone through the park that night, I would never have thought about using the portal.”
“What portal?”
“The one in the East Coast headquarters. I had been trying to think of a way to smuggle a bomb into the Challenge, but I knew it would be impossible. The wards would detect it immediately and detonate it inside a force field. It would all be for nothing.”
“But then you met me,” I said, feeling sick.
“And you showed me that I didn’t have to get a bomb into headquarters. One was already there, in the form of their portal.” She reached into a pocket in her skirt and came out with a small gray ball. I recognized the remains of my explosive putty.
“That’s why you insisted on coming home with me,” I said dully. “You wanted to take it from my bag.”
“I am sorry for that,” she said, apparently sincere. “I would have asked, but I did not think you would trust me with it. I am a vampire, after all.”
