Green: The Beginning and the End by Ted Dekker Page B

spotting the flesh under his hair when she brushed it away. The vein on his throat stood out, and she touched it gently.
    “If your desires are like mine, then you won’t be able to resist them,” she said. “It’s your destiny, to find this blood. To cross over.”
    Billy looked at her for a moment, then swallowed and cleared his throat.
    “You’re right. I know. But you’re the first person I’ve met who knows it as well as I do. When I look into your eyes I feel like I’m looking into myself, and it’s all a bit disturbing.”
    Janae felt drawn to his pale neck, so soft and tender, so bare, so full of life. She leaned forward and whispered into his ear, touching his lobe with her lips.
    “Then trust me, Billy. We’re the same, you and I. We are meant to be together in more ways than one.”
    She was momentarily distracted by her own audacity, her flagrant attempt at seduction. This wasn’t typical.
    But another thought eased her concern. Just exactly who was seducing whom here? Billy had swept her off her feet in a matter of hours. Was he playing her?
    She pulled away and walked to a crystal decanter. Poured herself a drink and threw it back in one swallow. When she turned back to him, he was staring at her, expressionless. Reading her. His advantage over her was unfair.
    It was also part of what made him irresistible.
    “So,” she said, pouring another drink. “What is it? Are we changing our minds?”
    “I wasn’t aware we’d made up our minds,” he said, crossing to the decanter. He took the glass from her hand and matched her slug. Set it down with a thunk .
    “Rumor has it that Thomas wasn’t the only one to cross over into this world,” he said softly, as if what he would tell her now was of greatest importance. He stepped to a large, plum-colored wingback chair, sat down, and crossed his legs. “Several others have come and gone. But I’ve learned that one came and stayed. A wraith called a Shataiki in that world. His name was Alucard, and he was a creature of the night.”
    She felt her chest tighten. “Okay, now you’ve lost me,” she said, but that’s not what she was thinking. She turned her eyes away so he couldn’t see into her mind. “What do you mean, a creature of the night?”
    “I don’t know much. But I know they spread their seed through blood.”
    “Through blood?”
    “The information is sketchy, but yes. I think so. It’s how they reproduce.”
    She shoved her thoughts out before he could steal them from her mind.
    “Unless you think we can tie my mother down and pry her eyes open so you can plunder her mind, there’s only one way to find out if she knows where the blood is.”
    “I’ve already considered that,” Billy said.
    “You don’t want to try. Trust me. She’ll have you dead or behind bars before you can use what you learn.”
    “Exactly.”
    “She has to retrieve the blood willingly.”
    “Clearly.”
    Janae turned. “I know how to do that.” Then she looked into his eyes and let him take her knowledge.
    This time she could almost feel his invasive gaze. His eyes widened slowly and he blinked twice.
    Billy stood to his feet, face white.
    “Seriously?”
    “I should know. It’s my lab.”
    “Raison Strain B?”
    “A mutation of the virus that turned the world upside down thirty years ago. It’s not airborne. But there’s no known antivirus. If we inject ourselves with it . . .”
    “She’ll be forced to try Thomas’s blood, because it proved resistant to the original virus,” Billy finished. “And if she doesn’t have the blood? Or if it fails?”
    She reached for the decanter and said what he already knew because a thing like this needed to be said aloud.
    “Then we both die.”

9
    The Future
    THE HIGH crater at Ba’al Bek was a good half mile across, ringed by a thick lip of soil and rock. A boulder from the heavens might have created it, or the fist of a giant, or a belch from Teeleh for all Thomas knew.
    What he did know was