Burning (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

scheme and then we’ll ‘parlay.’”
    “ Okay, fine. We shanghaied you...not for your vampire-smelling talent, either. We need someone with your optical engineering background to provide expertise on alternate methods of killing vampires.”
    “ Alternate methods? You know that silver to the heart is what kills vampires, don’t you?”
    “ Or sunlight.”
    “ Sunlight? If you are planning on doing the deed tonight, it’s dark outside! Are you planning to make the vampire wait until morning to shove him into the sun or are you gonna stick him in the heart tonight with your necklace thingie?”
    “ It’s a scythe, not a thingie . I have a bigger scythe in a hidden sheath in my right boot.”
    “ Very slick. I wondered why you were wearing boots on a cruise.”
    “ The vampire is coming to my show tonight. He won’t be able to resist his blood lust for me. While I sing my French torch songs, I want you to run the light show.”
    “ I’m not quite following the logistics of your plan. How will this light show help to kill a vampire?”
    “ I thought we might try wounding or killing him with a laser pointer beam. I mean, you are an optical engineer.”
    “ I was . I haven’t done much in my lab for some time, due to running out of grant money. My initial take is that a laser won’t work on a vampire. I mean, of course, laser is light in a concentrated beam, but it’s not natural sunlight. We have no idea what spectrum of natural sunlight is even responsible for killing vampires. There are different types of light beams. We don’t even know for sure if it is UV light that kills vampires or some other part of sunlight, so how can we possibly emulate it to use it as a weapon? By tonight?”
    “ You aren’t still working on a weapon like that?”
    “ I can’t believe how much my brother told you.” I was livid at my dead brother. Talk about wasted emotion.
    “ It is our hope that you will bring your inventions and innovations to our group. We need a technology edge that only you can provide. You have both the motivation to kill vampires and the technical skills to develop devices for killing them, too. Let there be light!”
    “ Oh, brother.” I took in a deep breath and blew it out. “A little background here. Richard Feynman mentions the UV blocking of the flash from the Trinity bomb. He did it with a truck windshield. I don’t recommend it. But the fact remains, a simple piece of glass can block 90% of UV light. Obviously, vampires aren’t going to travel around in a glass box like the Popemobile, but we don’t know enough about the type of light that kills vampires to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on making a prototype weapon.”
    “ But you can generate UV light?”
    “ Of course. You can even generate UV light with the same kinds of lights that are in a tanning bed. However, that would be assuming that the same UV spectrum of sunlight that gives people a tan is also the same UV spectrum that will kill vampires. We don’t know if that’s true without a test, a real live test of a vampire being exposed to the light of a tanning bed. And that’s just for starters.”
    “ It’s not like any vampires are going to volunteer for that job, n'est–ce pas ?”
    “ That’s right, Gabrielle. It’s not like I can capture a vampire and take him to the lab and make him sit still.”
    “ Don’t underestimate yourself, Rand.”
    I shook my head at the insanity of it. “Look, if we did know the exact spectrum of light that could kill a vampire—down to the nanometer range—then, theoretically, I could either make a handheld device similar to a laser pointer, or perhaps larger, like a Jedi knight’s light saber. I have done some research, but I don’t yet have a prototype, nor do I have a vampire test subject, nor do I have the financial resources to develop such a weapon.”
    “ If you had the financial resources and you had a vampire to test on, could you develop a prototype?”