The Fifth Clan

by Ryan T. Nelson

  She paused a moment. "No I have not been kidnapped. No... No. Mom, I'm telling you I'm fine. The guys from the gas station are my friends."

  She paused again. "No I will not tell you their names. Why? Because I know you. You'll immediately call the police and the next news report I see will have their names on the screen and everyone will freak out."

  She sighed exasperatedly and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. "No they are not forcing me to say this. I demanded the phone right after we saw the news. I know I haven't called but we've been a bit busy... NO! Mother if you don't calm down right now I'm going to hang up on you."

  She listened silently for a few more moments before she growled and slammed the phone shut. She stalked back toward me and thrust the phone into my chest. I barely grabbed it before it fell to the floor and wisely kept my mouth shut.

  Look at me, finally growing up and acting like a mature adult.

  "So that didn't seem to go well," Ghost hedged around the topic.

  "Understatement of the decade, Ghost." Rachel crossed her arms over her breasts, anger radiating off of her in waves but it didn't appear to be directed at me anymore. At least not entirely.

  "Aright," I spoke up, slipping my phone back into my pocket. "This changes the lay of the land just a touch. Any suggestions?" I turned to Grim and arched one eyebrow, questioningly. "You still haven't said, where's the meeting supposed to take place."

  The look that Grim gave me then said everything that needed to be said before he even spoke and I felt the sensation of the nail being driven into my coffin hammering home with a serious degree of finality to it.

  "Brotherhood Hall."

  21

  March 03, 2005: New Orleans

  Brotherhood Hall. It was an impossible task. In every thought I had about the place there was no way to attack it, no way to get inside without being found out.

  Brotherhood Hall was a single stone room, built on the Scottish Highlands. To this day, just under five hundred years since the construction had begun it was still undisturbed by modern society. It was so far out on the moors that it might be centuries more before any expanding town or village came anywhere near the old place.

  It had been built to honor the day when the treaty was signed and the war times ended that had nearly wiped out Vampires and Werewolves alike. These days it was maintained by a skeleton crew at all times but was only ever used for the most serious of circumstances. In the centuries since it was built a meeting had been called there only two times before. Once, when Threntü proposed the idea of my creation, and a second time to actually do it.

  "What do you have percolating through that head of yours now?" I looked up at Rachel from my seat on the couch. There was an ashtray, almost over flowing with ashes and stubbed out butts resting on my knee.

  "Brotherhood Hall."

  "What about it?" She came over and sat in a large arm chair across from me, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees and her hands clasped in front of her. "You guys haven't told me anything about it since it was mentioned."

  I sighed and sank further into the couch, almost disrupting the ashtray from its resting place. I knew I was sulking but I didn't really care.

  "It's a big stone building, practically a castle, built out in the middle of nowhere, Scotland. Aside from us getting there what with Customs and security at Airports getting Ghost, you, and Ionto a plane is going to be tricky at best. I've got an idea thatmight work but it's sketchy at best at the moment."

  "So if that's not the hard part, what is?"

  "Approaching the hall itself. Like I said it's in the middle of nowhere. Nothing around it for miles in any direction. There won't be any sneaking up on the place and we couldn't drive in inside a car with tinted window or something so they wouldn't see us until we were at the gates."

  "I'm assuming there’s a reason that won't work? Cause it sounds like a solid idea to me."

  "Tradition dictates that we approach on foot. We'll be seen long before we get anywhere near the place, even if we tried to come at night."

  "Don't we want you to be seen though? You want to put a good foot forward right? Sneaking around doesn't exactly inspire confidence. It makes people think that you're up to something, which in our case could get us shot from a mile off before we had a chance to blink."

  "Point." Alright, I gave her that one cause she wasn't totally wrong. I still didn't see how we could get there, walking in the open without getting shot anyway.

  "We might not have any choice but to approach as Custom demands and just hope they're willing to let us approach enough to speak." I thought the idea over, something I had originally discarded as impossible but the more I gave it its due consideration, the more it seemed like the only choice I had. I just had to pray it would work and none of us would die. If we approached with Grim at our side that might lend weight to things and hopefully that would be the distraction we would need to get close enough.

  "We still need to get to Scotland though, and that's going to be a trick of its own really."

  "Can we do fake ID's or something?"

  I shook my head. "Not a bad idea but too risky. If your mom doesn't call off the police then there's no way we'll get out of the country. FBI probably has our pictures at every airport and customs gate already looking for us trying to flee."

  "Flee? Really?"

  "Hey, it's a word, and not even a particularly out of date one. It's used by police all the time."

  "You ever work as a cop?" she asked, suddenly.

  "San Francisco in the 20s yeah."

  She blinked and the grin slipped slightly from her face. "Really?"

  I gave her a smug smile and set the ashtray on the table before I stood.

  "Come on, we have plans to make and we need to find the dogs before we can do that."

  "Gabe? Seriously, you were a cop in the 20s? You weren't kidding? Come on Gabe don't ignore me." She followed behind me deeper into the maze of corridors Grim had built and I did nothing but laugh in response to her questions.

  * * * * * *

  I had been attempting to think of a clever way to get us to Scotland. That's a long standing failing of mine. I always seem to find ways that I have to be clever as opposed to just going for the simple and obvious solution which, in most cases, works better than my being clever ever could or would.

  My first thought was to charter a ship and sneak aboard. Less security with customs, easier to hide from searches and so on. But that would take too damned long.

  My second thought was sneaking aboard a commercial flight by sealing us into Coffins that Grim would be escorting for burial overseas. But would security search the caskets? Would we be subjected to an x-ray machine? What would that do to us? And what about air? The cargo compartment might not have air pumped into it, you never could be certain so that seemed like a bad idea in the long run.

  In the end I went with option number three. The simple and easy plan to get us through. Grim, Ghost, And I were all three rather disgustingly rich individuals. Living for centuries makes it easier to amass and hide a rather formidable fortune. So we chartered a private jet. Actually Grim owned one that he kept at a nearby air field.

  Calls were made, photographs were sent with the use of my phone and within half an hour we were in the cab of Grims' truck. The van Ghost and I had stolen in Oregon was pushed out into the swamp where we left it to sink out of sight. Hopefully. If it didn't go all the way down I wasn't going to be overly concerned. It was a stolen van, what did I care?

  Anyway. We headed to the field where the plane was housed and when we got there we drove right up to the hanger where the plane was housed. Stepped from the truck into the hanger and directly onto the plane, bypassing all security completely while Grim dealt with the particulars of getting the plane cleared for takeoff.

  When we landed in JFK, Grim got off the plane while we waited inside. Within an hour he had returned and the plane was being refueled for the next leg of our journe
y.

  "I could really get used to this?" Rachel admitted after we were in the air. She was sitting across from me in one of the plush leather seats, a champagne flute in one hand as the flight crew went about serving drinks and snacks. I could tell when we first got onto the plane that the two young women were wolves. Grim, as the Alpha commanded almost complete obedience from any wolf. It was a complex relationship the packs had so if he told them not to attack me then no order from the council would trump an order from their Alpha.

  It was the only reason I didn't shriek like a little girl and jump out of my seat when one of them snuck up and placed her hand suddenly on my shoulder as she leaned over to set a glass of champagne on the arm of the chair next to me.

  "Thank ye," I told her. I cleared my throat as Rachel shot me an odd look when my native Irish accent slipped through for a moment. That can sometimes happen when I’m startled but I'd gotten quite good at blending my accent to wherever I was at the time over the centuries. "What?" I asked her and she simply arched an eyebrow at me.

  "Nothing at all I assure you." She grinned and I scowled. I didn't believe her in the slightest but I let it go.

  "You have any idea what you want to do when we land?" Grim asked a few minutes later. We were still seven hours out from landing in Scotland and there wasn't much to do, even on a luxury private jet but talk to each other. There was a bedroom in the back I could have dragged her to to while away a few hours but that would have been disrespectful to the Old Wolf so I filed that idea away for later.

  "In what way?" I asked. I took a sip of my champagne and swallowed as the bubbles tickled at the inside of my mouth. Not bad, but I would still always prefer my wild turkey over that bubbly swill.

  "You do know that even a private jet has to get through some aspects of customs. I was able to bribe the guy at JFK cause he and I have a relationship. You owe me ten grand by the way." I choked and sputtered on my next gulp of alcohol.

  "Ten grand?" I spit out. "Why the hell should it cost ten grand to bribe one customs agent?"

  Grim shot me a smug grin. "It didn't but since you're going to owe me for it I figured give the guy a little bonus."

  "How much of a bonus?" I growled.

  "Oh, about eight grand."

  I sighed and dropped my head into my hand. "Is this payback of some kind you Old Wolf?"

  "No. It was just fun."

  "How is it you guys are all so loaded?" Rachel asked curiously. I looked up at her and then across at Grim and Ghost and they both shrugged. Guess it was going to be up to me to answer.

  "I'm over three hundred years old, Rachel. So're Ghost and the Wolf here is into his sixth century?" The last I added as a question with a sidelong glance at Grim who grunted.

  "Seventh next year," he grumbled. He didn't look the type but Grim was rather vain about his age.

  "Seven hundred years," I continued. "How do you think we survived for that long?? Aside from our conditions extending our lives. We still need money to operate in the world, more and more as time goes on. There was a time we could get by with little to no actual funds but in this day and age you almost have to have a bank account and aliases to go with them. Over the centuries we've all amassed quite a degree of wealth. Most wolves or vampires you're ever likely to meet if they're past their first century of life are typically rather well off financially. Some are so rich it would give people like Donald Trump and Bill Gates a coronary, but like me their money is broken up into different banks and under various aliases."

  "Why go to all that trouble though? What's the point in the aliases?"

  "Living as long as we do, we can't stay in one place for too long or the locals start to notice that we don't age. We don't change much. So eventually we have to pick up and move. The easiest way to do that is to fake our death and start somewhere new under a new name. Only the oldest ever seem to stay in one place for very long and they usually do so in someplace very out of the way or off the beaten path. They don't go out into public much, if ever so no humans ever see them. Unless that human is about to become their meal."

  "But you said you don't kill people that you feed from."

  "I don't. But I like the human race a bit more than most vampires do. You have to understand that as a species Vampires see themselves very much as above humans. On the food chain they are. But they see humans as even less than most humans view cattle for instance. Your average vampire has no compunctions about killing a human. Or kidnapping the human and keeping them alive to feed from for a few weeks or months even.

  "It cuts down on the number of humans that will disappear in a given area and it's more convenient."

  "Convenient?" She seemed very curious about the whole idea and my mind rolled over her offer the previous day to become my first child. I was beginning to think that there might be ulterior motives behind her questions now but I forged ahead anyway. I still hadn't decided what I was going to do about that.

  "What happens, you think, to a human that survives a feeding from most vampires?" I pulled out my tobacco pouch and glanced at Grim for a go ahead before rolling myself a cigarette. These long discussions always left me wanting nicotine.

  Rachel thought about it for a moment, lips pursed and eyes narrowed in concentration. Eventually she shrugged and shook her head. "No clue," she admitted.

  "They're left with the knowledge that they were attacked and fed on by a vampire. Now yes most people wouldn't believe them if they tried to tell anyone that but they still know and one of the rules of the brotherhood is that we keep our existence as secret from the human world as possible. We're hard to kill yes, but not impossible, and humans outnumber us by a very large margin."

  "So, they kill their victims to keep word from spreading?"

  "For the most part, yes. All except the Vasith. If they decided that they don't want to kill their feed they don't have to. They can simply wipe the memory of the attack from the humans mind and leave it at that. The human wakes up somewhere with no memory of how they got there or what happened."

  "What about the bite mark? Doesn't that kind of give things away?"

  "Nope. A few drops of vampire blood into a human wound and the injury heals right up, as long as it's not too severe. A bite can be healed in seconds. Anything more probably wouldn't work or would take too much time or blood to be worth the effort."

  "So that's why you can get away with not killing. You use your powers to erase their memories."

  "Exactly. It's let me keep the loss of life to a minimum in my time and I like it that way."

  I leaned back and lit my cigarette, blowing out a cloud of smoke before I glanced at her again to find she had a very self-satisfied smile on her face as she watched me.

  "What?"

  "I knew you didn't love killing as much as you claimed you do."

  I smacked myself in the forehead and groaned, quietly cursing her in every language I could think of as she threw back her head and laughed at my expense.

  22

  March 05, 2005: Scotland

  Getting through customs wasn't nearly as difficult as I had expected it to be. The convenient thing about the private plane meant that we didn't go through a terminal and into the airport itself the same way commercial flights would. We landed on the tarmac and taxied to the hanger, our fake passports in our pockets.

  Instead of going into the airport for customs however Ghost and I ran, out of sight of the building and as quickly as our natures would allow us to, Rachel cradled protectively in my arm. The far end of the runway was surrounded by a rather high fence but we easily jumped that and strolled casually around the airport to the front where we waited for Grim to clear customs under his fake ID.

  We hailed a cab, or a lorry, or whatever, fuck if I know what they called them in Scotland, either way we hailed one and got a ride to the nearest hotel where we booked rooms and then headed downstairs to the dining room for a meal while we considered our next move.

  Grim and Ghost talked quietly while the
y and Rachel ate and I picked listlessly at my food. There was just so much wrong lately that I had no appetite and it was beginning to piss me off. Too many unanswered questions hung over my head and I hated the feeling that I was a rat in someone else's maze, scrambling around for a scrap of cheese.

  I don't even really like cheese.

  I know I keep getting off topic, bear with me.

  The point was I didn't like the way things were going. I had come here, thinking it was my idea to do this. It was my idea to confront the council directly but something about it didn't sit well with me.

  I stood abruptly from the table and stepped back. "I'm going for a walk," I said and waved the three of them down when they started to stand. "I just need to get some air. I'll be back. Rachel stay with Ghost or Grim around here would you? I don't want you getting hurt." Thankfully she didn't argue with me about it, just nodded silently to indicate that she'd heard me.

  I walked quickly out of the hotel and made a left down the street. I didn't know which street and nor did I particularly care. It was late in the evening by that time and fairly chilled but I welcomed the cold and my coat kept me from feeling the worst of it. Again not that it would have bothered me. Sometimes I wished that old could make me shiver like it did humans. It was just another sin to me that I was something different. Even amongst my own kind I was different and feared as the current situation attested to so strongly.

  When we left Oregon I was strongly considering bringing violence directly down against Threntü himself. I would gladly have done so too. But since I had discovered my old tormentor was dead I wasn't so sure anymore. If I wanted the Brotherhood to believe that I wouldn't attempt to return us to the war times I couldn't exactly come barging in guns blazing, and if I approached the Council with a Child that could also be considered an attack.

  By proving that I could build a new clan the political climate would shift dramatically and there was nothing I could do to stop that. As a clan head I would be required to participate in Council decisions, even if I only wanted to be left alone.