“So what? I fight back and now you guys are going to gang up on me!? What? You’re going to rape me now while your friend watches! Sick fuck. Oh, you’re a man now. Congratulations. I’m sure your folks will be real proud of you guys. Real proud!” The truth hurts, but this time it may have hurt them too much. Hell, maybe I’m giving these soulless fucks too much credit.
The one without the knife charges in first, in hopes of restraining me.
I pull one of my pistols out from my coat pocket, stopping him before he can come any closer. The moonlight perfectly shines against the nickel finish of my Beretta, making a sharp contrast from the thug that is now in between my sights. “Make another move and I’ll fuck your friend up,” I say as I pull out my other gun and point it at the one with the knife. I back away slowly as I keep my eyes centered on the three of them. “If you guys try anything, I swear to God I’ll kill you all.” Their faces grow pale—from stone cold killers to petrified children.
Each one of them pleads for their lives, collectively graveling like dogs. Mere seconds ago they thought that they’d have their way with me, do whatever they pleased with no remorse. Now that things aren’t in their favor, they suddenly have a conscience. I pull back the safety on both guns as I consider my next move. At the very least, they would have robbed me and beat me. Worst case scenario, they would have done the former and raped me afterwards. If it weren’t me, unless the girl had an extensive background in self-defense, she wouldn’t have fared well. They would have done what they came to do and then went about their business like nothing happened, while she lay broken and destroyed. They would do the same thing over and over again as the days went by.
I can’t have that here. There are already enough monsters out there.
Go on. End them.
I feel Alfonse’s presence, reminding me of a parent egging on a child to do something they’re afraid to do. I don’t need his approval, or his sympathy, or anything else he tries to offer me. My mind's already made up, despite the way he feels. I know the value of a life.
My wrists pump back in tandem with the muzzle flash of my Berettas. The three shots I fire hit their mark, all lethal, all to the head. I watch the life leave their eyes as their bodies fall limply to the concrete before tucking my guns away.
I take no pleasure in killing. More times than I can remember, I’ve taken out the things that people deny exist, afraid that their sudden belief would come back to haunt them. The three I killed today were different. There was no demon, no devil, no curse—only a set of lost souls warped to do evil in a land where morality is dead. I killed them not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Such is life.
A cold breeze brushes against my cheek in the silence of the night.
Good job. I was wondering when you would dispose of them. Pathetic individuals, they are.
I could tell through his tone that he was amused, impressed even, by my act of coldness, seemingly at his command.
“Can it. I didn’t do it because you told me to. I did it because if I hadn’t stopped them here and now, chances are the next person wouldn’t be as fortunate.”
Perhaps, but everyone deserves a chance at redemption, right, Sailor?
Of course there was sarcasm to his voice. Al only cares about me and whatever sick thoughts that randomly come to his mind.
I grunt as I continue my walk, leaving his question unanswered as it trailed in the wind. Whether or not people deserved a second chance is none of my concern. I’ll let God decide. Wherever He is.
Chapter 6: Hunting and Death
After walking for about an hour, I finally make it to my car. There’s still night in the air but I know the darkness won’t last long. I was keen on not being spotted by any wandering eyes, only allowing myself to be seen while grouping amongst the nightlife. After starting my car, I look down at my cell and take in the stream of missed calls and texts that I’ve been avoiding for what seems like eternity. I make a mental note to get back to them once I make it to my room in my safe house. I’m not entirely sure how his perception works, so I’m cautious. The less he knows of me, the better. In case I need help in the future, I’d need my contacts to be an ace up my sleeve. It’ll be easier that way when the time comes to get rid of him.
“Well tonight was a total bust,” I say as I tuck my phone back into my pocket and pull out into the street. I didn’t mean to start a conversation, but Alfonse picks up on it regardless.
And yet you seem okay with that.
“I’m just lucky to have gotten out alive. For someone that’s supposed to be so devout about protecting me and shit, you seem to have a thing for forgetting details. Even the ones I overlook because, as a human, I have no idea of them.”
You were never in any real danger. At the bar you seemed to have everything under control. The hoodlums were also handled flawlessly. I don’t understand your concern. The demons, I could understand, but you were physically stronger and more skilled than the humans. Having me with you enhanced the gap even further.
He missed the point totally. Sometimes I wonder if he is a dick on purpose, just to screw with me.
What am I thinking? Of course he is.
“That’s not the point. The point is that from now on you tell me what I need to know. Any information that would be relevant from here on out, I need to know it. If I were caught off guard…if things hadn’t gone so well back there, then we both could have been finished. Things don’t always go the way we plan, and when we don’t plan, things are left up to chance. I don’t like chance. Chance always seems to give me the short end of the stick.”
Is chance the way I came to meet you, Sailor? Alfonse says with a hint of malevolence in his tone. Again, sarcasm towards me proves to be his favorite pastime. The laugh he gives after his statement makes my blood boil; only adding to the feeling of loss that I can’t shake.
I grit my teeth and hold my tongue, dealing with my feelings internally. When I think of the possible outcome of my fate, I can’t help but feel like I’m sinking. A slow death accompanied by sand, blood, and tears. My death march led by a demon; my life signed away with a pact. At times I wonder if it would have been better for me if I had just died.
“What I’m trying to say is, as comical or interesting as it may seem to you, it isn’t for me. People died today. Whether they were possessed or not, people died. If possible, I would like to avoid killing unless I have to, which means I need you to tell me information when I request it. The more I know, the stronger our odds.”
Odds for what?
“Living. Don’t be an ass.” He laughs and I can hear it echoing in the corners of my head. It infuriates me. Though his fate is entwined with mine, he laughs off my thoughts for survival. It makes me sick to think that it’s all a game to him. He’s too smart to be taking my life this lightly.
Living. Right, right. That is quite the peculiar word choice, seeing how you threw yourself in harm’s way tonight.
A silence spreads through the interior of my car like a dark mist, gripping me, refusing to let go as I speed down the open road.
The way I see it, you don’t want to live. No, not anymore. The only thing keeping you alive is your pride. You’re angry. Foaming at the mouth angry, perhaps even suicidal. But you feel helpless, don’t you? Afraid, and rightly so. We are, after all, the darker side of creation.
“Alfonse, sometimes I wish you were right here so I could slap the hell out of you. You know next to nothing about me. Don’t even try to pretend like you do.” My anger slips out and cuts through the murky atmosphere like a searing blade. He laughs at my retort, amused but not in the least worried. I try my best to re-center, quelling my emotions before I give him more energy to feed on. I momentarily close my eyes and envision the fire currently brewing in the recesses of my mind. With a deep breath, I calm the flames and they begin to recede.
You insist that you don’t have a death wish. So then, what exactly are you living for? Certainly there’s a bigger picture as t
o why you do what you do. Or perhaps there isn’t. Perhaps this is all that you know. Hunting and death…that’s why you’re alone, isn’t it? Because of hunting and death.
The dark fog that I thought I cut through crept back one hundred fold, gripping at my insides, squeezing at my heart. If I were a weaker version of myself, I would let go of the tears that I feel pooling in my eyes. But that isn’t me. Not anymore. I keep a stone face and endure the hurricane ripping away at my gut as the memories of times past wash over me, reminding me of my recent transgressions. The grip on my steering wheel contorts as my palms clench the circular frame, diffusing my emotion into the inner workings of my vehicle.
“Fuck off, Alfonse,” I say coldly, swallowing the emotions that I feel aggregating in my throat. “I’ve heard enough of your shit today. Let’s just ride home in peace, okay? I’m tired.” For a moment, I hear nothing outside of the quiet murmuring of my engine and my tires traversing over the concrete road.
As you wish.
Suddenly, I feel alone, but I know that isn’t the case. He’s still inside me, lurking, watching, observing, waiting, and always gathering information.
Even as I stare into the rear-view mirror, I get uncomfortable knowing that he exists in a world somewhere behind my eyes. I continue to stare, examining my features that are now worn from a rough night.
The set of eyes that fiercely stare back into mine don’t strike me as my own.
Chapter 7: Humble Beginnings
I suppose this was never the life I wanted, but now it’s hard to tell. Ever since I was young, hunting, as well as the balance between good and evil, has always been in the forefront of my life. Morality was something I’ve always questioned, and it seemed like God never had an answer. My mom died when I was in my teens over an altercation, as my father would say. When things would get too hairy, or when his paranoia made him suspect the worst, he would have us do his bidding for him. Sending your teen daughter or your wife to do a drug deal wasn’t the smartest of moves. Even now, it causes a sore spot for me when I think back to it. I saw a lot of things that no child should ever have to see.
In my teens, he resembled the stereotypical biker guy—brute white guy, sleeves and back tattoos for days. His hair was always in a ponytail, and he always reeked of smoke. He was the polar opposite of my mom. She was a ‘good girl.’ Always went to church, never swore or did any of those bad things that people do.
She was too good for him, honestly, and often times I wondered how she ended up with someone like my dad. Was it because she fell in love with him while trying to change his image? Or was it because she settled and thought she would never find anyone for her? I never had the guts to ask her about their past when she was alive, but I figured that while growing up, she was the type of girl that just wanted to get married and that’s it. No offense, Mom.
So, she settled, perhaps. Maybe she genuinely loved him, but when he started taking drugs, things were never the same. She never told me her reasons for loving him, and watching them as I grew up, I never understood why. He’d come home and yell at her, drink, pass out, and then do it again. I’d drown it out in the comforts of my room while they fought, trying to pretend like we were all one big happy family—and we were, whenever he wasn’t around.
My father worked off shore so there were periods when it would be just me and my mom. Things were good then. Things would seem normal. Then he would come home after what seemed like weeks of being away and things would go back to Hell. He’d try to start over again, fresh, but it always ended the same. Like a giant pendulum, we’d always go back and forth until one day the scale tipped and everything changed.
I’ll always remember the day she died. All that was left when I came home from school that day was a broken man hobbled over on the kitchen floor, holding her dead body. Whatever had him for all those years, left when she did. I barely recognized my father when he looked at me. All the rage, the anger, and the bitterness he held was gone. Purged by his tears from whatever haunted him. I remember there was a note on the table, crinkled and smeared with blood. Whatever it said shook him, and he knew we had to go.
That same day, we hit the road and moved from South Carolina to Louisiana with only the shirts on our backs and whatever savings my dad had left. Before we moved away, he had some friends of his bury the body, but we never stayed to see her funeral. That same group of friends also offered to take care of me for a while, but my father refused.
I always thought it was some serial killer or someone my dad owed money to that killed my mom, but to my dissatisfaction, the mystery ran deeper than that.
A month or so after the incident, my father told me that in his younger years he was into the occult and did some things. Things I would rather not discuss. To make a long story short, he got fed up, met my mom, and slowly began to pull away. Things were good, at first, but after a while, he started seeing things, hearing things, and having dreams. They wouldn’t stop, so he found a way out by nursing his soul through self-medication. I asked him why he didn’t go to church at the time, but his reasoning was that he felt like God had abandoned us, leaving only a faulty rule book to give us some guidance while He allowed Hell to run rampant until His eventual return.
In the latter years of my father’s life, he found the Lord and more, but before those times, his focus was primarily being a douche to my mom and me. He blamed it on the drugs, and I can’t say that I disagree. In truth, he had indeed seen some things. Some of which he told me about, and some he would begin to tell me about but would then grow silent.
When we first moved to Louisiana, he was an unopened shell. We lived in a house out in the middle of nowhere, devoid from any connection to the outside world. Boarded windows, scriptures, and religious pieces scattered throughout the halls and on the floor. He didn’t speak much to me. He didn’t bother to tell me at first, because he knew I wouldn’t believe him. For some time I never left the house. I had often tried, mainly because I thought he was crazy and that he would one day kill me. When I attempted to sneak out, he would always catch me but was more afraid than angry.
To me, it seemed the man never slept. He probably didn’t. He’d always be staked out in the house, waiting, watching. I thought it was to keep me in, but it was only to keep them out. A few days after I turned nineteen, he told me everything. By that point, I believed him. During our stay in Louisiana, I began putting two and two together. I was just waiting for a sign…some form of confirmation from him to prove I wasn’t going crazy either.
The early years were rough, but sometimes I wish I could go back to the times when I didn’t know. Being afraid of my dad was more plausible than being afraid of an indestructible evil and any of the forms that it chose to take. It’s something to realize that everything that you are afraid of does in fact exist, and it is out to get you. As I read and studied, I learned more about what the world really was and what was out there. It was tough having your whole world turned upside down, but I survived it, because of him.
There were many sleepless nights, but in the end it was worth it. The wool that had once covered my eyes was pulled away, and in return, I saw my dad again. In the time we had together, he taught me everything he knew—from demonology to hand-to-hand combat. He was tired of running. Tired of hiding. Knowing that I lost my mother to their work was something that enraged me as well.
To atone for his past, my father began hunting—eliminating the darker side of creation one beast at a time. It was the only way, he felt, that he would be forgiven. Not by God, but by his wife—my mother. Of course, I wanted to fight by his side, but for different reasons. He wanted atonement. I wanted to live in a world where I was no longer afraid of the dark.
We started out small, in southern Louisiana, hunting vampires. It was more so a training ground for me, and an outlet for my dad. The vamps down south had a hold on things down there. Outside of demons (demons have a place pretty much everywhere), it was the vamps’ turf. They were careless, unassuming. O
f course, hunters were around and had been since the origin of good and evil, but with the vampires’ dominance so prevalent, they had gone untested for quite some time. The Three Kings, that is.
Lesser vamps stood no shot alone. There was a limited pool of blood in circulation. Only so much could be taken without the outside world being notified, and only so many bodies that could not be accounted for. The lessers were primarily victims, those who were turned by vamps that didn’t have the blood of the Claumonte Brothers flowing through their veins, specifically Ralph Claumonte, Bryant Claumonte, and Dante Claumonte. They were The Three Kings of New Orleans. As the story goes, three brothers asked the Devil to help them live for all of eternity. After pledging their devotion to him, the Devil granted them immortality but forbade them from three things. The light, God’s purest creation. A soul, for it was no longer theirs to keep, and the afterlife. When they died, they would be gone forever, wiped from existence.
The three brothers accepted. To their surprise, they found that in time they thirsted for blood. The Devil laughed at their anguish and took no pity on them as the thirst overtook them, driving them mad, and eventually forcing them to suck the blood of the ones they loved most. “No love is to be found in your hearts if you are to be my disciples,” he said. “Love is a gift from God, and you have abandoned Him. However, if you wish, you can make others in your image—both the willing and the unwilling. That gift I give to you.”
A family of cursed beings that live only to damn others; a conflicted living, nonetheless.
At first, their hearts were hardened and they grieved, but as time moved forward, their numbers grew, and thus an empire was born. Some were willing to be turned, others were turned by force. My dad and I hunted those who willingly turned when possible, though it was hard. There were others who were freshly turned or had done what they had to do to survive. We had to kill them too. My father had tried for years to come up with a remedy to cure vampirism, but nothing ever worked. Unfortunately, in our line of work, for those who were turned against their will, it was simply mercy killing.
Sailor Ray and the Darkest Night (The Pact Book 1) Page 4