Eclipse of the Beginning

by J. L. Hendricks

  “No, of course not. Especially not if it’s romantic stuff.” Ash looked back at B’Lana and wondered if he shouldn’t read some of Jane Austen’s work just so he could learn more about human females.

  The next night when he came to relieve Lancer he had a copy of Pride & Prejudice in his backpack. He figured it might help him to pass the time while B’Lana slept. Little did he know, but Lancer also had a copy of Mansfield Park in his pack.

  Chapter Four

  Over the next two years, both Ash and Lancer took turns protecting B’Lana. On occasion, other warriors would be called in to assist with the assignment. They didn’t seem to have any more issues with her safety. There were a couple of petty criminals who attempted to rob her when she was in a bad part of town, but she never knew they were there. The warriors always took out any possible threat to B’Lana’s safety even before it could happen.

  The Sennafae decided to make Los Angeles their new West Coast headquarters as they discovered more and more ripper activity in the area. A Commander Terra came to town and set up a warehouse in downtown LA. “Lancer, I want you to lead Squad 1 here in LA. You’ve been here for a couple of years and know the area better than anyone else. You’re perfect for the role.”

  “Thank you, Commander, but I have other responsibilities in the area as directed by the High Command. I will happily join Squad 1, however I will need time to be able to carry out my other orders.”

  “What are these orders? I was not made aware that you had another set of orders?” Commander Terra stood up taller and walked closer to Lancer and eyeballed him while putting both of his hands on his hips. He was taller than Lancer by almost two inches but his countenance made him appear a foot taller in that moment.

  “Commander, I must apologize, but I am not at liberty to divulge my orders at this time. Please speak with the Reverend should you have any questions.”

  “No, that won’t be necessary. How about you take command of the squad but I make sure you have some time to carry out those orders?” The Commander knew that Lancer really was the best one for the job. And if he was on some super-secret mission from the Reverend, then he wanted him as leader even more.

  “Yes, I’ll accept the position. Thank you, Commander.” Lancer backed away just a little bit as the Commander had stepped into his personal space and made Lancer nervous.

  This new role limited Lancer’s freedom to look after B’Lana, he didn’t have enough time. He also had to move out of the apartment he shared with Ash and into the Headquarters (HQ) which the Commander had set up over an hour away, in Los Angeles. That was an hour when there wasn’t any traffic. Most days it was a two-hour commute from the apartment to HQ.

  Ash spent more time protecting her, and he brought in several other warriors to help with this secret mission.

  The Reverend had kept Ash’s involvement quiet so he still had freedom of movement. He would call in favors with his friends back on Sendryl and usually had help for two to three weeks at a time.

  However, with these changes, Ash became complacent. He wasn’t always watching B’Lana wherever she went. He figured since it had been two years since the last attempt on her life she was safe.

  ◊◊◊

  B’Lana and her friends enjoyed going out to nightclubs and dancing. While she did enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner or after a long day of work, she wasn’t into drinking at nightclubs. She had seen too many horror stories about women getting drugged. So she preferred bottled water with the lid on. Sadly, some of her friends didn’t think the same way.

  Janice, one of B’Lana’s friends from college was out with them, and she had ordered a Sex on the Beach. “Check out those guys, “ Janice pointed to a group of five guys who noticed her attention.

  “Ladies, aren’t you all looking lovely tonight. I’m Rick.” One of the men said when he walked up to their table. This guy was good looking, in a Brad Pitt sort of way. He had light brown hair and a smile that could light up a room.

  Another asked, “Would you like to dance?” The girls all smiled and nodded. The second guy was blonde and very fit. B’Lana thought he might be a college basketball player.

  Finally, after dancing to five songs, the girls went back to their table with the guys, and they finished their drinks while talking to the guys they had just danced with. One of the guys named Rick asked, “Can I get you all another round of drinks? I know I’m thirsty after all of the dancing.”

  Janice was a good looking girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was wearing a red dress with black high heels. Her dress was sleeveless and only came down to her mid-thigh. She was dressed to impress that night. “Sure, thanks!”

  “I don’t drink so a bottle of water would be great for me.” B’Lana just didn’t drink with strange men.

  “Excuse me, girls. I’ll be back.” There was a long line outside the ladies room, and by the time she got back to the table, all of her friends were gone. She looked around the room but couldn’t find them.

  “Hi, did you see where my friends went?” She pointed to the table next to her as she asked the occupants of table next to them

  “Yeah, your friends left with those guys. I think they were all drunk or something. A few of the girls were practically stumbling as they left. I head one of the guys say he could take them home to sleep it off.” The young, redhead shrugged her shoulders and went back to her beer.

  B’Lana ran out of there as fast as she could and found the group still in the parking lot. The guys were having a hard time getting all of the girls to get into their cars.

  She dressed more sensibly than most of her friends. She had on black stretch pants with a long purple blouse that hung to her mid-thigh. There was a belt at her waist that helped to make her look slimmer than she was. While most of her friends wore heels, B’Lana felt more comfortable in boots. “Thank you, Lord! Now if you could just help me to save my friends.”

  While running to reach her friends, she noticed another group of men coming toward them. They looked like they were high but moving quickly. “I sure hope those guys are going to help. Fighting five guys is enough, I don’t need more!”

  Normally, B’Lana could take care of herself and could probably fight off three men, but five men were trying to take her friends away. She wasn’t sure how well they could fight or if she could keep them from leaving with any of her friends.

  She ran up to the closest guy and punched him as hard as she could in his kidneys, he went down and didn’t get back up. “One down, four to go,” she said to herself but realized that they now knew she was there. Two of the four kept trying to get her friends in their cars while the other two came after her.

  One of them, Ricky she thought, tried to grab her arm and she brought her boot up to his family jewels and knocked the breath out of him. He bent down and she kneed him in his nose. A bit of blood stained her knee. She knew he wasn’t getting back up any time soon. His face was red and he was having a difficult time breathing.

  As the other guy, Tim, grabbed her the group she noticed earlier reached them and attacked all of the men. But it was like no attack she had seen before. These new guys went after their throats, like animals.

  One of the guys from the club was pulled back away from the car by one of the new fighters. He looked strange, his face was pasty white and his eyes looked to be blood shot. Even the color inside his eye was a deep red. Then she saw his mouth. He had fangs for teeth. She watched in horror as that monster opened wide and bit down on the other guy’s neck, who screamed loudly.

  B’Lana wondered what drugs they were on as they were extremely strong. “Maybe PCP?” she mused. She shivered but didn’t let the horror in front of her distract her from her mission. B’Lana went for her friends and tried to get them out of the cars and headed back towards the club.

  These new guys scared her, and she knew that they were dangerous and believed they would be coming for her and her friends once they were done with the five idiots.

 
; She took a quick peek back at one of the guys on the ground, Ricky, and saw one of the druggies biting his neck. “Help!” Ricky quietly called out. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought they were vampires. She wondered if that zombie drug from a few years ago had made it back on the streets and now made people act like vampires.

  As she was trying to get Janice to stand up straight, another group of five men showed up and started fighting with the druggies. These guys looked like they came straight from a Middle Ages battlefield reenactment. They all carried swords of varying sizes and shapes. These warriors were wearing black pants, shirts, and boots, like they came from the shadows. She was really worried that none of them were going to get out of this night alive.

  One of the newcomers had pulled the druggie off Ricky and slammed his fist into his face. The druggie backed up a little bit, but righted himself and came after the guy holding a sword. A punch came from the druggie. It was fast and hard. The new guy’s head popped back but he didn’t lose his footing.

  The new guy pulled his sword out and stabbed the drugging in the gut. B’Lana’s eyes opened wide and she took in a deep, shaky breath. “If we don’t get out of here, none of us are going to make it home.”

  Once she had all four of her friends out of the two cars and standing up, she tried to get them to move towards the club. One of the new guys who looked like he might be a soldier was in her way. He was fighting with one of the druggies who were very quick and strong. The soldier guy had a short knife in his hand and he slashed at the druggie who kept moving fast enough to stay out of reach of the blade.

  As the girls started to try and walk around them, the druggie was distracted by Janice, her red dress had scrunched up above her waist showing off her red lacy underwear. The soldier used that distraction and stabbed the other guy in the eye. “Oh my god!” B’Lana screamed and turned away from the gruesome sight.

  She noticed Janice’s dress and pulled it down to cover her friend. Then she tried to get them to move as fast as she could. She figured they had all been roofied and sent up a quick thanks to the man upstairs for making sure she only drank from a fresh bottle of unopened water when out at clubs.

  After she passed the two fighting, another friend of hers, Dawn, leaned over and threw up her dinner. She was coughing and trying to expel everything in her mouth. “Oh Dawn, I am so sorry you have to experience this.” B’Lana reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue to help Dawn wipe her mouth. “Maybe you won’t remember this part come tomorrow.”

  Lancer’s squad had been following these rippers, the guys B’Lana called druggies, and made it just in time to keep them from hurting B’Lana and her friends. He wondered where Ash was. It was Ash’s night to watch her. But he couldn’t worry about that right now. B’Lana was in danger and she probably figured out these were vampires. He didn’t know how he was going to cover this all up. Her friends looked very drunk and probably wouldn’t remember anything the next day.

  Lancer remembered what the Reverend told him two years ago, he couldn’t let her see him so he sent one of his other guys, Runi, to help her get her friends away from here.

  “Hi miss, can I help you get your friends back to the club?” While Runi was talking to B’Lana, Lancer focused on the remaining two rippers. He and Maliki went up against one of them while the other two on his squad fought the third ripper.

  Lancer and Maliki attempted to circle the ripper, who knew their tactics well since they had fought several times. The ripper reached out towards Maliki to try and keep him from getting to his backside. Lancer pulled out a broadsword he had strapped to his back and sliced off the right arm of the ripper when he reached out toward Lancer as he was trying to corral them up against the car behind them.

  The ripper screamed out in agony as he lost his arm. He used his left hand to try and staunch the blood flow and lost track of Maliki who ended up behind him and cut off his head before the ripper even knew what happened.

  Lancer went over to his comrades and watched as one of them cut off the head of the ripper who was at his feet. The best way to ensure that a ripper did not survive was to cut off his head. Putting a blade through their brains did kill them, but to be safe, they always cut off the heads.

  Maliki went over to the first ripper to go down and severed his head as well. “Grab all of the body parts, both rippers and humans, and bring them to the edge of the parking lot. We need to keep them out of sight until the cleanup crew arrives.”

  “Maliki, look over there.” Lancer pointed to an old building past the edge of the parking lot. “Bring them past the low cement wall and keep them close to that old abandoned gas station, we might be able to use that as a way to cover up how they died.” Lancer ordered them to put all of the bodies in there until the cleanup team arrived and was able to do a proper assessment of how best to hide this.

  B’Lana looked at Runi with wide eyes that were filled with fear. “W… what just happened? One minute I was trying to save my friends from a group of guys who had drugged them, then the next all hell broke loose. Who are you guys?”

  “We’re a neighborhood watch group. We keep an eye on this place since there are a lot of gangs in the area. You and your friends are lucky we came by when we did. Those gangbangers would have killed you.” Runi tried to smile at B’Lana and ease her fright, but his honesty made her even more frightened.

  “Oh my god, oh my god, this isn’t happening. I have to call the police. Did you call the police?” B’Lana rambled on as the situation sunk in and she began to feel the shock of it all.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of everything. Can I call you a cab or something? Are you alright to drive? It might not be a good idea for you to go back into the club with the way your friends are acting. Are they going to be OK? Do you know what drug those men gave them?” Runi was starting to direct the girls away from the front of the club and back towards the parking lot.

  As they walked along, Janice stepped on a cockroach which made a loud crunching sound. B’Lana jumped at the noise and yelled, “What was that?”

  Janice looked down to her foot and noticed half of a dead cockroach under the front of her heel, and she screamed. Then she started to jump up and down yelling, “Gross, gross, gross.”

  Runi noticed her body literally shook as she began to cry. He put his arm around her, “Hey there, it’s alright. It was just a cockroach. You’re fine. Calm down and please stop yelling. You’re attracting attention that we don’t need right now.”

  The adrenaline rush from stepping on a large cockroach, it was almost two inches long, seemed to help push some of the drug from her system for a few minutes. But as Runi was consoling her, she leaned over and emptied her stomach on his shoes. Once she stood back up, she fell back into her zombie-like state and quieted down.

  B’Lana looked over her friends and then to the guy who helped her, “I think we need to go home. Can you help us get to my car? I’m going to bring them all back to my place so I can keep an eye on them tonight and make sure they’re ok as the drug wears off.”

  “Of course, I think that’s smart.” Runi walked with her to her car and helped her get all of her friends inside and buckled up. “Will you be able to get them all into your house without any help?”

  “Yes, I’ll manage. Thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate it. You won’t need my testimony for the cops will you?” B’Lana asked.

  “No, once they see the gang bangers they’ll clean it up and label it as a gang attack. You won’t be contacted for anything so don’t worry about it.”

  “Again, thank you very much! I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t of showed up. I guess we would all be dead by now.” B’Lana looked down at her feet and breathed a heavy sigh. Then she drove off.

  Runi went back to his squad leader and reported in what happened, minus the whole cockroach freak-out.

  “Runi, help us get all of the dead bodies into that old gas station over there. I
t looks like these two cars belong to these guys as well so we need to move them over there. I think the cleanup crew is going to have to set them on fire to keep any DNA evidence away from the cops.” Lancer directed him towards the dilapidated building just past the end of the parking lot.

  “Lancer, what about all of the humans coming out to their cars? How are we going to keep this quiet?” Runi was looking at all of the couples coming out, those closest to where he was were making out while they walked to their cars, not even paying attention to the warriors with the pointy ears.

  “Don’t worry about them, they seem to be too busy to notice us.”

  “Shouldn’t we stop those who are obviously too drunk to drive?”

  “Negative, stay away from those humans. We’re not to interfere with anyone who hasn’t come into contact with the rippers, or us, yet. I think that most will ignore us and if they do see what we’re up to, they’ll believe it’s in their imagination or something. Come, let’s finish this so we can get back to HQ and cleanup.” Lancer started to walk back to the cement wall and Runi followed. But he kept his eyes open for any humans who might get too close.

  Chapter Five

  “Ash, you lazy bag of bones! Where have you been for the past few hours? You almost let B’Lana get killed by rippers! Or worse, attacked by a group of perverts! Why weren’t you watching her?” Lancer was furious with Ash, he had gone over to Ash’s apartment as soon as he could get away.

  “She was with a group of her girlfriends. Why would someone attack her with a group? She has been completely safe for two years. No attempts at all. What happened?” Ash tried getting up from the couch where he had fallen asleep earlier in the evening.

  Lancer put his hand around Ash’s throat and growled into his face, “Are you so incompetent that you can’t even keep an eye on one human girl anymore?” Lancer was gritting his teeth, and his eyes narrowed while he squeezed harder and Ash’s face started turning red.