Heimlich nodded, seemingly satisfied as if his own suspicions had been confirmed.
“Look,” Brian continued. “I’m clearly not Helsing material. Surely there’s got to be some kind of spell you know that can remove this ring? Give it to someone more worthy?”
The Master of Magic shook his head.
“No, Brian. There’s no spell. The ring is enchanted by the combined will of dozens of magi of old. It would take more than me to break its enchantment. And besides, I think you’re wrong. I would venture that you are, in fact worthy. And perhaps exactly what the Helsing Order needs right now.” At Brian’s confused, gawping face, he continued. “The world is changing, Brian, yet the Order hasn’t progressed much over the centuries. I mean, Christ, our Master of Technology steams around in a traction engine, what does that tell you? We need to get with the modern world. It’s all twitters and snapchats and dabbing and other such nonsense and we don’t have a clue. The world doesn’t belong to warriors of old anymore. It belongs to people like you. Perhaps it is time for a new, geeky, weak-chinned Helsing to take up the mantle.”
Brian blinked at the description. Fair enough, it was accurate, but all the same it stung.
“I… I’m still unsure.”
“Of course you are. Do you think XII didn’t have his doubts?” Brian winced at the continued use of Roman numerals as his predecessor’s name. It hurt the ears. “But he fought past them. And he had a long life, full of action, adventure, mysterious lovers in exotic places.”
“Yeah, but it didn’t end well for him. I’d rather die old, bored and with blue balls than the way he did.”
“All things come to an end. Yours might not be so tragic. It’s not unheard of for a Helsing to die of old age. And speaking of endings, so too must our chat, soon enough. I can see you’re drained, confused. But I promised you a magic lesson and a magic lesson I shall give you. The ring on your finger grants you access to the realm of magic. Only a small part, granted, but enough to aid you in your missions all the same. And I’m going to teach you how to tap into its powers.”
Brian glanced down at the ring on his finger. Perhaps it was more like the Green Lantern ring than he’d first thought.
“Go on,” he voiced, intrigued now, if still a little wary.
“What’s behind you, Brian?”
“Behind me? Erm… the fireplace?”
“Picture it. Envision it in your mind’s eye. The heat, the flames. The mantelpiece. The clock above it. And concentrate. Make it real.”
Brian shrugged and did as he was asked. He could feel the heat on his neck. Could see the flicker in Heimlich’s eyes. He remembered the shape of the fireplace as he’d walked through the room. He saw it. Wait… he saw it? His eyes widened, glancing over Heimlich’s shoulder at the fireplace beyond. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“Correct,” Heimlich told him with a nod. “We’ve swapped seats.” He opened his hands in a mock explosion. “Magic!”
“I didn’t feel anything,” Brian told him, stunned, still staring at the fireplace that was now behind Heimlich, the man occupying the chair Brian himself had been sat in but moments before. About the pair of them, a strange cloud of black soot, like that which had surrounded Helsing as he’d passed. “Are you saying I… teleported?”
“Translocated,” the Master of Magic corrected him. “Or Blinked, I think the Helsings like to call it.”
“Did I teleport you too?”
“Nah. I did that myself. Good job I got the timing right. I could tell by your eyes when it was going to happen.”
“Wait… what would have happened if you hadn’t tele… translocated yourself?”
“It would have gotten very, very messy.” Brian shuddered as horrific gory images suddenly filled his mind’s eye. Heimlich laughed. “Yes, it would have been that bad. Translocation is useful, can get you out of sticky situations or across to a ledge too far to jump, but you have to be careful. You need to see where you’re going. Need to feel it. Hence I had you seated; the sensation of being sat down was already in your mind, therefore you reappeared in the other seat in the same position. It takes practice and there’s been mistakes made in the past. If you don’t do it properly, well… you don’t want to know what it feels like to have your arm appear halfway through a wall.” He raised one arm, sliding the suit sleeve down. His hand was normal, human flesh, smooth and dark brown. But his forearm, Brian noticed now, was a whirring construct of brass and cogs. “It hurts.”
Brian paled, feeling his empty stomach once more growing nauseous as it had back in Otto’s lab. Heimlich’s smile vanished.
“I think that’s enough for you for one day. How would you like to go home?”
Brian glanced up, eyes wide and full of wonder, the look of a prisoner on death row granted a stay of execution, hoping beyond hope yet fully expecting that hope to be crushed like an ant beneath a merciless boot.
“More than anything in the world.”
“Good. Then let’s show you to your wheels. You can have the rest of the day off, providing you promise to come back tomorrow.”
Brian couldn’t promise anything, his mind filled now with visions of his bed, his couch, his Xbox and normality. He rose from the seat, making his way to follow the Master of Magic as he strode to the door to the Scrying Chamber. Then he paused, as the man’s words finally sunk in.
“Hang on… wheels?”
Heimlich laughed.
“You don’t think we’re going to let a Helsing, champion of justice, hunter of vampires, ride into battle on a clapped out shed of a moped? Christ, could you imagine if you got squashed under a bus? Hardly a fitting end.”
Brian stood, puzzled, before the Master made his way through the door and he had no choice but to follow. Thankfully, whatever enchantment had been placed upon the door before seemed to have gone now, the antechamber firmly and resolutely staying behind him, as the laws of physics dictated it should. They strode through the Scrying Chamber and along the hallway towards the Sanctum, still thronged with staff rambling about, busying themselves with whatever confusing duties they had. The other three Masters were there, watching them draw near.
“We’re getting there,” Heimlich told them. “Slow progress, but we’ll make a Helsing out of him yet.”
“Good,” Otto said, nodding, a broad smile above his white beard.
“Sorry if I was a bit… rough, earlier,” Gertie giggled, before her eyes took on a curious gleam. “You took it a bit better than I’d have thought at first glance.”
Brian didn’t reply, instead watching her warily. Friedrick spoke next.
“I took the liberty of selecting a few gadgets and weapons I think you might approve of,” he said, taking a slug of whisky from his bottle. “Not stuff I’d usually recommend myself, but I think they might be your style. Frank’s already loaded them into your car.”
“My… car?”
“Come,” Heimlich told him, a grin on his face, turning and walking away down yet another corridor. This one, as Brian followed him, ended in a small metal door. “This is the garage,” the leader of the Masters told him. “And it’s where we keep your steed.”
Brian stepped into the concrete chamber; it was low, wide, lit by flickering strip-lights and ending in what looked like a tunnel that seemed to stretch off to infinity. But it was the shape in the centre, hunched and squat, that immediately seized Brian’s attention and set his legs all-of-a-tremble.
“That’s mine?” he gulped, unable to believe what he was seeing. “Not another trick?”
“Not a trick. She’s yours. Looks standard, but obviously Friedrick has made his own modifications.” He clicked his fingers and the welcome pack of before appeared at his hand with a puff of smoke. “Instructions for all the modifications are in the folder. Take care when driving it; it’s pretty highly tuned.”
Brian nodded, still stunned, regarding the car before him. The Chevrolet Camaro was gunmetal grey and looked ready to start a fig
ht, as though someone had just insulted its mother. Four exhausts poked like cannons from beneath its low rear bumper. On the number plate, HEL51NG.
“Does she have a name…?” he enquired, his voice a low hushed gasp.
“Some people call her the Helsing-mobile,” Heimlich replied. “I call her Bertha. She looks like a Bertha.”
Brian nodded once more, before Heimlich shoved the folder into his grasp.
“Read,” he told him. “I cannot stress that enough. And come back tomorrow, refreshed. The driveway will take you under the sea, coming out in Long Rock at a secret exit. When you come back tomorrow, it will open for you automatically. Take care. And don’t crash. And for god’s sake, don’t do anything stupid. You’re Helsing now. And like it or not the fate of the world now rests on your skinny, white shoulders.”
Chapter Eleven: All The Zeroes
Brian was a driving god. That’s how it felt, at least, as he’d pulled out of the tiny, derelict-looking garage in Long Rock, the door closing behind him and the street resounding to the off-beat burble of the enormous V8 that throbbed under the bonnet. Car drivers snapped at the neck to watch him pull out onto the road in a squeal of tyres. Pedestrians’ jaws hit the floor, though whether at the sight of his car, or merely the fact that a skinny, nerdish nobody was at the wheel of such a machine, he didn’t care to guess. As he cruised back towards Penzance through the orange, early evening glow, the merest whiff of throttle wafting him along on a surge of power, he leaned further back into the leather seat, one arm hanging relaxed out of the window, letting the auto-box do all the work, and finally allowed himself a smile.
The day had been full of terror and humiliation, but at least one good thing had come of it.
He still couldn’t believe that this beast was his. Granted, it came at the expense of dedicating his life to a scary pursuit of risking life and limb, of hunting gribbly monsters in grim places, but hey – he got a muscle car out of the deal! Never did he think he’d ever get the chance to even drive a car as incredible as this, let alone own one. But then, he thought, it wasn’t really his, but the Order’s. More of a company car, in all honesty. Still, all the gawping pedestrians weren’t to know that. As he pulled up at the traffic lights, a gaggle of young ladies, all dolled up ready for a night out on the lash in town strolled over the pedestrian crossing. He put on his best imitation of a confident grin and blipped the throttle, the car rocking from side to side. One of them said something to the others and they all giggled. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Often it wasn’t. But then he wasn’t often in a Camaro.
A sudden noise from beside him, a leather-clad biker pulling up on something plastic, pointy and horrendously loud. The man looked at him, as though sizing up his car, whether it was worthy of his time, before nodding to the road ahead. Did he want a race? It seemed so. Never before had anyone challenged Brian to a street race; it just didn’t happen in Cornwall and it certainly didn’t happen to people riding ancient, asthmatic mopeds. But that was a different Brian, an old Brian, a Camaro-less Brian. He was living in a post-moped world now. He looked ahead at the road before him, wringing the steering wheel as he mused. It was a long straight, maybe half a mile of bend-free, traffic-free tarmac before the roundabout outside Sainsbury’s, plenty of space for Brian to flex his new car’s muscles without risk. With a slowly spreading smile, Brian nodded at the man, holding one foot on the brake as he fed the beast some revs. Nervous butterflies in his stomach, his heart pounding in his chest at the mere thought of the impending race. Should he really be doing this? He should be making his way slowly, safely home, to his bed. He’d only had the car five minutes and Heimlich had warned him not to do anything stupid, but after the day he’d had, he felt he more than deserved a bit of fun. Besides, what harm could it do? He only had to drive in a straight line; even he could manage that, despite the lack of talent he’d been constantly reminded of all day.
The red lights turned amber, the biker revving his own machine now, then the amber changed to green, and the race was on; Brian lifted his foot from the brake, even as he planted the accelerator to the mat, the sudden unleashed power of the car crushing him hard into the seat and taking his breath away. The noise! The acceleration! He giggled in childish excitement as he felt the auto-box feeding in another gear beneath him. Fifty miles per hour. Sixty. Seventy. He risked a glance out of the window; amazingly the bike hadn’t left him behind; even with umpteen seemingly-random letters in its name and a whole host of zeroes proclaiming its engine size, it wasn’t pulling away! Suddenly, out of the corner off his vision, Brian noticed a red flashing light on the top of the gear-lever, urging him, goading him. Without thought for consequence, lost in the dizzying rush of his own adrenaline he reached over… and pressed it.
A fresh surge of power, greater than before, pushing him harder into the seat, leaving his stomach behind even as the front of the car, the entire long bonnet, the two front wheels, left the ground and launched skyward; Bertha could wheelie? He laughed, his laughter increasing as he noticed the biker falling behind now, even his screaming Japanese steed conceding defeat in the face of this heavily modified American behemoth. A hundred, one-ten, one-twenty, the numbers climbing as quickly as his eye could follow, the digits flickering like an epileptic’s nightmare on the computerised dash. Brian all-but closed his eyes for a moment, revelling in this totally foreign sensation of power, of superiority over his fellow man. Then out of the side-window, he saw KFC flash past, and fear suddenly gripped his heart. How far past the restaurant was the roundabout? A few hundred yards at most. At a hundred and forty now, he slammed on the brakes, the heavy nose of the car dropping to the ground with a thud.
Just in time to reveal the roundabout, a mere fifty yards ahead, and closing fast.
He pressed harder on the brakes, the g-forces threatening to pluck his wide eyes from their sockets, but as potent as the car’s anchors were, even they couldn’t save him from his even more potent mixture of inexperience and stupidity. And so it was that at sixty miles per hour, he hit the roundabout head on, zooming up the grassy hill in the middle and launching the Camaro high into the air. For what felt like an eternity he soared, the roar of the tyres on the tarmac suddenly silenced, before gravity clawed at the car, angling it downwards, the street, the central reservation with its steel barrier, all rising ominously into view. With a gulp and that sudden dread that one always felt when they realised they’d massively and irreversibly fucked up, Brian closed his eyes.
A horrific jolt, a loud bang, then a smash, that of tearing metal, followed by the squeal of protesting rubber. Finally, all sensation of motion having abated, Brian dared to open his eyes; he was still on the road, just the other side of the roundabout now, the street thankfully empty, no screeching lorries taking the chance to lunge forth and crush him into paste. After a few moments, still breathing heavily, knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel, he noticed the biker pull up beside him once more. The man flicked his visor open.
“You alright mate?” he called through the open window. “You caught some serious air! And you’ve smashed the reservation to pieces!”
Brian gulped down his nerves and nodded.
“I’m… I’m alright… I think.”
“Proper job.” The biker regarded the Camaro, frowning. “Not a scratch on your car either. God knows how. Anyway, good race. See ya round.”
With that, the biker sped away once more into dusk’s encroaching gloom, leaving Brian pondering his words; not a scratch? Surely the man must be mistaken, he thought, as he looked about, spying the shattered remains of the metal barrier littering the road. Nearby, a lamppost leaned at an uncomfortable angle, its light flickering on and off. God, he was gonna get in trouble for this. Deciding discretion to be the better part of valour, Brian pressed the throttle, far more gently this time, and continued on his way, cursing his stupidity and shaking with nerves, both from the terrifying crash and the inevitable police-related drama that would
no doubt be sure to follow should he linger too long. Through the winding centre of Penzance he drove, slower now, not showing off, still imagining in his mind’s eye the embarrassing amount of damage he must have already inflicted to his pride and joy And yet, people still stopped and stared, suitably impressed as he passed; no laughs, no pointing, no jeers directed his way. Could it really be? No, it was impossible. Finally, nearing the end of the sea-front, just as the tourist town of Penzance began to merge with the fishing port of Newlyn, he turned into his side-road, before veering onto his haphazardly-paved driveway and stopping by his untrusty moped. Killing the engine, he took a deep breath, before climbing out of the car and readying himself to witness the extent of his handiwork.
He blinked, stunned.
Bertha was, as the biker had rightly pointed out, completely unharmed; not a scratch befouled her gunmetal paint; not a single dent could he see in any of the sensual lines. But how? Out of what kind of unobtanium had Friedrick crafted this machine to withstand such an impact so unscathed? A sudden flood of relief washed through his form and he all-but collapsed, leaning back against the car with a sigh. He’d expected to have written the machine off, to have had to go grovelling back to the Masters the very next day, explaining his actions. Such was his luck, such had always been his luck. And yet somehow he’d escaped that fate. He needed a drink, he decided, both to celebrate his fortune and to steady his nerves. How much had he spent last night with Neil? Only a tenner in ‘Spoons, but more in the other pubs after they’d been chased out by the mob; he’d needed a drink or five after the whole vampire-slaying escapade, just to get himself to sleep. Was it forty quid he’d spent? He couldn’t remember through the blur. Could have been fifty. That would leave him with either eighty or ninety pounds to last him the rest of the month. Enough, he decided, to get himself a crate of Doom Bar this night at least. What he’d do about bills thereafter, well, he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.
Brian Helsing: The World's Unlikeliest Vampire Hunter Box Set 1 - Missions 1-3 Page 8