“Pretty as it is,” Sammy said.
“They didn’t miss, Gus, and they didn’t arrive late.”
“But they could have.”
“Then I’d be dead.”
“Because you defied nature.”
“And I will again.”
“You blaspheme Her, Nathan.”
“Oh, is nature a religion, Gus?” Sammy said.
“Is She even a she?” said Shawn.
“That artful trick, Nathan’s discovery for shutting your scent gland, has gone to your heads,” Gus said.”
“It’s not a trick, Gus,” Nathan said. “It’s science.”
“Modern science,” said Russell.
“Science we should consider useful, and harness it to free ourselves from centuries of oppression,” Nathan continued.
“Nathan, I don’t care for your tone,” Gus said.
“We’ve been dictated to remain feeble and weak, and forever fleeing from—”
“Those despicable killkin,” Russell interrupted.
“No, Russ, not from killkin, from men. After all, it’s not the killkin who oppress us. Just how many have we ever encountered? You Gus, how many?”
“With today, if memory serves, four.”
“With your years, I’d have thought more,” Nathan said. “And you, Shawn?”
“Only my second.”
“Sammy?”
“Two.”
“First one,” Russell said sheepishly.
“Four for me,” Nathan said. “Considering your years, Gus, killkin haven’t been your greatest threat, have they?”
“We know that men are, Nathan,” Gus said. “And to protect against them we have many talents and advantages. If we’re smart and patient, we hone and improve them, and they serve to defend us and help us realize long lives.”
“Long life is not enough, Gus.”
“And peacefulness, and freedom from hating—our greatest blessing. That’s not enough, Nathan?”
“I found a way for us, for our kind, for the first time as far as we know, to be able to be with one another as we are now and these past weeks. Being relieved of the scent gland that made it impossible for us to bear one another’s smell did it.”
“A discovery nature tells us She rejects, when without it you cannot smell the threat of a killkin.”
“And which the same doctor that found our cure—”
“I’d hardly call it a cure, Nathan.”
“Told me this morning he’s close to finding the loophole that allows us to smell killkin.”
“Fantastic, Ace,” Russell said.
“When will he have it?” said Shawn.
“Playing loopholes with nature.” Gus shook his head taking a sip of the 170 proof.
“I don’t know, Shawn, but he’s close. And with it, there’ll be no more downside to closing the gland—”
“Placed there by nature for a reason, Nathan.”
“Nature tyrannizes me, Gus. She subjugates me—to men!”
“Nathan!”
“With the coming refinement, we’ll again be able to smell roaming killkin within three-hundred feet, and evade them. With that assurance gentlemen—”
“Gentleyulen,” Sammy grinned.
“With that assurance and our discovered ability to associate, we’ll have gained what we’ve forever lacked and has forever made men greater than us despite their oppressiveness, violence, malevolence, and hatred.”
“Drum roll?” Sammy said.
“I wish I could smack you,” Russell turned to Sammy.
“If only you, or any of us, could,” Sammy responded. “We’re waiting, Nathan. What’s this thing we’ll gain that we don’t have and men have over us?”
“Cooperation. Helping one another. Working together. Protecting each other. It’s how they’ve outwitted nature.”
“And from who we evolved and with whom we are almost identical, Nathan,” Gus said.
“Except we’re virtuous,” Shawn said.
“Which they would argue,” Sammy smiled.
“And leave it to you to point out,” said Russell.
“Just saying.”
“Nathan,” Shawn said. “Despite Sammy’s comments, I guess he just always needs to disagree, I just want to thank you for what you’ve given me. I’d always missed something but didn’t know what it was, and it was only in the past few weeks after I received the ability to be with you and the others, that I realized how great it was to be with those like me and of who I’m one. The poor hand I’d been dealt, sorry Gus, I know I have a lot to be grateful for as yulen, well. . . . Being part of a group, being able to, I don’t know, to just be with someone who knows who I am, and I could, I don’t know, just be with him, well, I don’t know. I mean, you know, to be like any other creature among their own, and not just for a couple of rushed minutes by blocking our smell sense with alcohol, well, I just wanna say, it’s been so cool. Really. To just be with my own, share, and be who I am, it’s been the greatest thing in my life.”
Nathan walked to Shawn and placed his hand on his shoulder, and Shawn lowered his head. “And those dogs are lucky too to have you around,” he chuckled, seeing Count chomping on the last of the meat from a plate on the floor.
“But there’s still something we lack that’ll forever keep us from competing on an even plain with them,” Nathan said.
“I know it’s not our sexual prowess,” Sammy said.
“Or our looks,” Russell added.
“No. It’s what I attempted at the pool.”
“You mean act extremely foolish?” said Gus.
“No, Gus. It’s fighting. Standing and fighting. Being able to defend ourselves.”
“We do so by fleeing, Nathan. We do not harm. That’s fundamental.”
“But wouldn’t you like to?” Russell asked Gus.
“I would not be yulen if I could, if I caused harm to another. It’s fundamental. We do not harm others, not even to save ourselves. We do not. Like turtles do not climb trees.”
“It’s time then that turtles climbed trees,” Nathan said.
“And maybe they could grow little motors to turn themselves over when they fall out of the trees and turtle, or would that make them turtlecrabs?” Sammy said.
“But wouldn’t you want to, Sammy?” Russell said. “Wouldn’t you want to be able to defend yourself, I mean, like men do? Come on, Sammy. Tell the truth. Wouldn’t you want to just once, hit back. Wouldn’t you?
Sammy ignored the question.
“See, you would,” Russell said. “You would want to not run away, not be forever peaceable, incapable of defending yourself. I don’t mean causing harm, hurting anybody, but just being able to defend yourself. Hitting back to defend yourself. Isn’t that what you mean, Nathan? What you want.”
“That’s all.”
“That’s all you would seek?” Gus said.
“Yes, seek and find the answer to how yulen could change in order to defend ourselves. Discovering how to no longer remain on our knees, and how to get on an equal footing with men on the matter of self-preservation, is all.”
“And to kill?”
“Defend ourselves, Gus, as men defend themselves to not spend their lives being victims. That’s all, Gus. Is it too much to ask? Too much to ask what every other race and species of animal, bird, the lowliest insect can do? Defend themselves? Even worms, Gus.”
“And nothing more.”
“Nothing more, Gus.”
“Even if it’s opposed by nature and antithetical to our natures?”
“Maybe nature made a mistake.”
“Nathan . . . ,” Gus shook his head.
“It makes mistakes. It makes two headed animals.”
“Freaks,” Russell said.
“Occasionally animals are born without limbs, or extra limbs, or any number of deformities.”
“There are reasons for those.”
“Sure, and those animals live afflicted, be it wild animals, men, or w
e. Nature makes mistakes, Gus.”
“What do you propose, Nathan?”
“I’ve heard of a book. A book of yulen, that I don’t know if really exists, but that would contain the secrets and ways for us to discover and change how we are, and make us free of the constraints put on us by nature.”
“I’ve heard of that book too,” Shawn said. “I think we all have, but it’s considered a myth, a story I think most every yulen’s heard. I never thought it really existed.”
“I don’t know that it does,” Nathan said.
“It does,” Gus said, breathing in his clear liquid.
“Where?” Nathan asked.
“Here, in Europe, last I knew.”
“Have you seen it?” Sammy said.
“No.”
“But it exists,” said Nathan.
“I . . . ,” Gus hesitated, appearing embarrassed. “I attempted its purchase. The Book of Yulen.”
“So it’s real?” Nathan said fascinated.
“Nine years ago I attempted its acquisition. I had heard of it as all had, and I located it. A man, then in Bulgaria, claimed to own it, and after several exchanges, I confirmed it was so. His fee was high. Twenty million dollars. I paid it. Left me nearly broke.”
“The inheritance angle works well does it, Gus,” Sammy said, Russell shooting Sammy a steamed look in turn.
“But with the fee came a test,” Gus continued. “A trial to pass within a period of time, that I then failed to pass, and the book was lost to me.”
They watched a saddened Gus continue. “It was all the money I had, but the disappointment really was in the loss of the book, the book that could, well, I did not seek what you, Nathan, seek, but my desire became denied, unfulfilled.”
“And what was it?”
“An old yulen’s thing. Not important.” He brushed away the question with a hand.
“Could you find the owner again?” Nathan said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s still there or what became of him, or even if he has the book.”
“Try.”
“It would be futile. His fee would be astonishing.”
“But we as a group—”
“We?” Sammy objected. “We’re signed on to this?”
“For now Gus just has to try to locate the man. Just try.”
“Myself,” Gus said, “I don’t think I care anymore. The youth’s spring season has long since passed me.”
“Then contact him for us.”
Gus nodded. “You know, it’s not only the fee, but the test he’ll post. It will be dangerous. It could be extremely dangerous.”
“You were alone. This time we’d be a group, cooperating, helping one another. It would be different.”
“I’ll write to where I last wrote.”
“And does this book give answers to what I seek?”
“I don’t know.”
“But it might,” Shawn said eagerly.
“And lots of other answers,” Russell said.
“Yes, and perhaps too dangerous for us to have,” Gus warned.
“Damn it, Gus,” Russell said. “What’s your problem?”
“I’m old, Russell. I’ve seen too many answers—to men’s and other’s prayers—that should not have been answered.”
“Gus, I’m only asking to know how to get off my, our—the knees of yulen,” Nathan said. “Is that a cursed thing to want? It’s no more than a dog’s birthright to defend itself against a pack of rats or coyotes, I ask.”
“And that’s all, Nathan?”
“That’s all.”
“Boys? . . . Boys?” a high-pitched woman’s voice called, approaching along an arched stone corridor to the dining room. “Boys, are you all here?”
Nathan smiled. A couple of “the boys” picked up their wine goblets and swirled their thimbleful of wine. They bent and took the cleaned plates off the tiles, only gnawed bones remaining.
“Hi, boys,” said a large, plump woman, facial creams padding her cheerful face.
“Hi, Constance,” they said, as she passed into the dining hall, walking so gingerly she looked to walk a tightrope.
“Hi, sweetheart,” she pranced to Nathan, lowering to give him a kiss, all the while holding her arms bent up as if playing invisible castanets. “Did everyone have enough to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely.”
“Delicious meal, Constance.”
“Oh I can see you all enjoyed it,” she said, gazing over the meager scraps on their plates. “I’m so glad. Nathan hardly eats. I’m glad you boys got him to eat. Look at him though. I don’t know how he keeps those muscles with the little he eats. Oh, and good, you’re all drinking a little wine. I like that. Wine is good for you.”
“And for better love-making, Constance?” Sammy teased.
“Oh you,” she smiled, shaking a finger. “But that too yes, maybe a little, a little bit—later, Nathan?”
“Whoa . . . , yeah Nathan,” Shawn and Russell kidded.
“Well, we’re not going to talk about that,” Constance blushed. “But that’s not something any of you I’m sure worry about. I mean, all as handsome as you are. I really must say, well I have said it to Nathan many times that he has the most beautiful looking friends in the world. I mean, have you looked at yourselves? You all must be the most beautiful looking men I have ever seen. Of course, Nathan is the handsomest. But you still are the handsomest men I have ever seen—ever.”
In fact, Constance’s observation was fact. They were the best-looking men that she and most anyone had ever seen. Even Russell, the runt of the group at five-seven, was accustomed to being compared to the best-looking movie stars. Each shone beyond any man and was desired for it to delirious degree. And among that rarefied strata, Nathan, even they agreed held status as the most gorgeous, his only friend prior to them, dubbing him, “in Greek gods territory.”
“Constance,” Gus said, rising, “thank you for a sumptuous dinner and the warmest of hospitality.”
“You’re welcome, Gus, Baron. I always love to see you. You’re so dignified.”
“Thank you, Constance,” he said, bending to take and kiss her hand.
“Oh but will you look at your friend’s plate, Baron. Nathan, all those spareribs only nibbled.” Taking one of the still meaty ribs, she delicately bit from it. “Mmmm, so tasty.”
They others rose and expressed their thanks and goodbyes. Constance was thrilled with their comely presence and the uplifting effect they always had on her husband.
Seeing them out and walking across the wide lawn, Nathan reminded Gus about, “that thing” and Gus confirmed that he’d write the man next morning.
“Better not forget, old yulen,” Russell joked, “or Nathan’ll set the dogs on you to revive your memory.”
“Age only makes me more astute,” Gus said, looking to be in his fifties to Russell’s 19-20, Nathan’s early thirties, and the others’ mid-to-late twenties.
On his way back to the house, Nathan noticed the pool patio had been cleared of the body. Turning to the villa, he saw thick gray smoke leaving one of its ten chimneys, the one belonging to the cellar’s furnace.
>
Nathan entered the master bedroom on the top floor of the mansion’s square tower. Constance’s blanket-covered bulk curled asleep in their grand poster bed. She wheezed through an open smile, having drifted reading the romance novel dropped on the carpet by her bedside. Nathan placed the book’s bare-chested hunk and sulfurous Edwardian era damsel on her nightstand. He patted the comforter away from her mouth, but her big gal wheeze continued.
Looking out from the rise toward the lights and sea of Saint-Tropez, he thought again of his old friend Tyler. T had taught him about the dampening effect that nearly 100% alcohol had on their mutually repulsive yulen smell. The trick worked only temporarily though, and it was impractical as well; the booze eventually knocked the user out.
How much he missed T, T’s passion and yulen pr
ide, T’s upset with him for wanting to change, mistakenly change, as he’d wanted to in New York. He wondered where T was. Things could be so different now that their historical inability to gather had been eliminated. With a minor 30-minute operation, yulen no longer gagged on the smell of their own, and the surgeon he’d hired was still refining the procedure. The doctor would soon be able to partially untie the ducts he had previously sealed. The refinement would still keep them from smelling the unbearable stench they naturally emitted to one another, but allow entry of killkin scent from as far as several hundred feet.
The vasectomy of sorts that his doctor performed on him and the others at the party, he hoped Gus would also undergo. He dreamed that the operation would be only the beginning of changes to improve their place in a world dictated by man. For sure there was a reason why nature deemed it necessary for yulen to find each other’s smell nauseating. They each had their theories. That it was to prevent too many of them from gathering and living together among the herds of men they seasonally culled, sounded like a reasonable explanation. It made sense for nature to keep their takings spread so that few people were taken from any single area. Perhaps this book would explain the reason. This book, how much T would appreciate knowing about it. Where might he be now? He’d written T at a hotel in Louisiana that his hired private detective tracked him to, but heard nothing back.
He turned to the bed, shining moonlight filling the room, Constance’s moist wheezing steady. He sat by her. Misguided he’d been in New York. T had been right about his aberrant desire to experience for himself man’s greatest treasure—love. T warned him about the absurdity and danger of what he sought, and he now accepted that T was right. The last time he saw T, his friend was headed down south USA to where T joked that his, “luscious, big fat double-lard mamas roamed.” He hoped he had found them.
His eyelids lowered and his back slid down the side of the bed. His wife’s wheezing was the only sound in the room, and the Moon’s light the only light. It was the same light shining above the Mississippi Delta. The same Moon reflected off the Louisiana bayous where by a boggy swamp, an alligator hissed steadily and still, its neck held by a chain tether staked in the swampland’s dirt. The resting giant watched a sleeping man on the ground a foot away equally tightly tied, but his tether containing an additional foot of links. The man remained asleep on the dirt, or as asleep as anyone could be with a 10-foot gator hissing inches from his face. For the hundredth time since the two were staked there, the gator pulled on its collar, but its open hissing mouth still could not reach to wrap around the sweetbread ahead.
Yulen: Return of the Beast – Mystery Suspense Thriller (Yulen - Book 2) Page 2