by Phil Maxey
Not natural…
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a source of light. I went to look at my wrist when the front door exploded into fragments of wood and things poured through the splintered hole.
As I staggered backwards, I recognized the angular faces with black eyes. The damned had somehow found me again. They swarmed forward, screeches filled the air, and dagger like fingernails slashed at me. I kicked the closest and punched another, but it wasn’t before two more leaped on me driving me back against the wall. A blur of claw caused a burning sensation from my stomach. I grabbed the offender by its neck and smashed it into the other rendering both of them dead, but a mass of arms and legs took their place. Blood poured from a wound on my face, I spun my fists, connecting where I could, sending some of the attackers through the air, but the mass pushed me back. I fell to one knee, desperately trying to stave off the inevitable end.
An explosion of light, sound and heat burst from my watch, causing the newly installed windows to shatter out into the street, while everything else around me became engulfed in flame. The creatures, that were once people, flailed around, their limbs on fire, screaming. I pushed them away, being singed in the process, and forced my way to the exit. With the wailing behind me, I ran down the stairs, and started to move towards the front when I heard concerned voices. I turned towards the rear, breaking open a door and ran up a small set of steps and into the backyard, when a noise made me look up just in time to see one of the creatures smash through a window and drop two stories to the ground next to me. Despite its broken bones, it still lunged at me but I easily stepped out of the way. A light was coming from my wrist.
Why’s my watch glowing?
The sirens of fire trucks echoed around the streets nearby. I ran across the yard, out into an alleyway and kept on going.
*****
I walked along the sidewalk, avoiding eye contact where I could, which was difficult due to the fact that I smelled like a barbecue. It also didn’t help that I had dried blood covering one side of my face. I used my jacket though to cover my other injuries, which still stung.
I had spent the last few hours under a bridge examining the watch that caused a literal firestorm that saved me. There were some Latin words behind the two hands, which I never understood, but apart from that it was still the good quality time piece from the 1950s, which I had owned since I was twelve. The last remaining part of the old me.
Today I had planned to take another run at the Hell-Lock corporation building. The last two attempts to get past the lobby security had gotten me thrown out, but due to recent events I felt I needed to learn more about my grandfather. Maybe the mad professor wasn’t so ‘mad’ after all.
The sun was doing its best to move high enough to be seen behind the skyscrapers of the city, as I headed back to a street full of stores, some boarded up.
I pushed open the door to ‘Khan’s Internet cafe,’ which unless you counted the sewer water which doubled as coffee, wasn’t really much of a place to eat and drink. What it did have though is free internet usage if you could stomach the brown stuff.
I saw two open cubicles against a wall, luckily without the owner in sight. I moved quickly into a seat and slid the mouse around to bring the computer alive. A message came up on the screen asking for a password, and I put in the last one I used some days before. A browser appeared and I went to type when I heard a voice at the end of the shop.
“What is that stink!” said a voice from the back.
Shit.
I leaned back in my chair. “Hey, Khan! I’m just using your internet for ten minutes and I’ll be on my way.” I plunged my hand into my pocket and pulled out roughly a dollar twenty, not enough. The middle-aged man with a handlebar mustache, and a towel over one shoulder, waved his arms walking towards me.
“No, no you’re making the place stink worse than usual! You set fire to something? I don’t care. Leave!”
He suddenly noticed my appearance. “What happened to you? Are you injured? Go to hospital!”
I pressed my face. “This? This is just paint. I got a job working on a place. But before I start work, you know what I need? What I have to have?”
“I don’t know. What?”
“Your coffee. I don’t know what you do to it, but there’s no better brew in all of the city. That’s why I come here.”
His confusion continued. “My coffee tastes like poop, that’s why it’s cheap.”
“But yours is the best poop.” I smiled serenely.
“Ah, fine. I’ll bring you one, but then you leave. Yes?”
“Sounds good.”
He walked off looking happy. I had roughly three minutes before he returned with the hot drink and would want his two dollar payment, which I didn’t have. I immediately typed in my family’s name and the ‘paranormal’.
Nothing came up under that search term, but four results down was a few news stories about a break in at a local auction house. My mouth fell open. An old book, written by Ulysses R. Hell-Lock had been stolen just before it was scheduled to be sold.
“Son-of-a—”
My mind was swimming but I could hear the clunk of crockery and water being poured. I didn’t have long. I clicked on the news story and quickly scanned the text.
‘Hamiltons Auction house last night was the victim of a strange burglary. It would appear that only one item was taken, a book written by a Ulysses R. Hell-Lock, the grandfather of the recently deceased and last remaining heir, Sebastian V. Hell-Lock. This coming during the most recent takeover announcement of the Hell-Lock corporation is—’ I could hear the energetic bubbles in the coffeemaker. I hit the button on the nearby printer, and it spat out a screen grab, which I pulled free and quickly left while the cafe owner was filling the cup. I hoped the money I left him would suffice.
I walked around the corner and continued to read the page. ‘— an unusual coincidence, especially considering there are no more Hell-Locks surviving. Equally strange was the description of the individual who took the item from the auction house’s warehouse, who would give proper meaning to the term “Cat burglar” for it seemed they managed to scale an unclimbable wall and avoid numerous security measures. One security guard on duty who did see the criminal said. ‘There was this slim dude in a hooded cloak, jumped clear of a ten-foot fence on their way out, crazy. Must have been high or something.’’
I scrunched the paper up and shoved it in my pocket. I needed to go back to the bunker.
CHAPTER SIX
After a number of wrong turns I finally discovered the corridor which led to the old wooden door, and knocked. I could sense a heartbeat on the other side, one that was human. “I’m back… we need to talk,” I said staring at who I thought was the professor on the other side, looking at me through a tiny spy-hole.
The bolts slid back and a concerned looking Fortacan opened the door. “What happened to you? Were you attacked again? I’m glad you returned, please come in.”
I walked into the same assortment of old furniture and dusty shelves as before. I wondered if they had stolen other items as well. The fire was burning quietly in the wall.
Ignoring the professor’s questions, I pulled the screen printout from my pocket, straightened it out then handed it to him. “That was Alyssa wasn’t it?”
He nodded, “Yes it was. That is how we knew about you, and why I sent her to Europe to find you.”
“Find me? Why? Where is she?” I looked around the long room. Two other doors were closed.
“As with most vampires, she sleeps during the day… are you hurt?”
“I’m healing…” I discovered in the days and weeks after my change that most injuries fixed themselves within hours.
He gestured towards the leather bound chair near the fire. I frowned but sat, and he did the same opposite.
“Did you ever take part in something called a ‘Binding ceremony?’”
“Look… seriously. Just drop the mumbo-jumbo. It’s been a long n
ight.”
“It’s not mumbo-jumbo. Dumbass,” said Alyssa. I hadn’t heard her even open the other door let alone walk the few paces towards us. “I see the damned found you again.”
“What do you know of the Knights of Exile?” said Fortacan.
“The what?”
“You have heard of the Knights Templar?”
I sighed and leaned back in my chair. Maybe if I humored the old guy, he would eventually give me some solid answers. “I have.”
“There was another group at the time, which were mostly erased from the history books.”
“What has this got to do with my family?”
“The Knights of Exile were a secret order of seven individuals, whose sole task was to protect the seven seals—”
“You mentioned a seal last night?”
“It’s a legend in our circles,” said Alyssa. She yawned and stretched. I tried not to notice her physique through her T-shirt and pants she had thrown on. “The seals are magical artefacts that keep most of the evil shit on the other side of the veil. Stops it from entering this world.”
“The veil?” I said to both of them.
She sighed. “If we’re going to do this now, I need to eat something.” She disappeared back through the door she came in from.
“Just think of beyond the veil as Hell,” said Fortacan. “The seals are what keep the veil powered. The order disappeared in the fifteenth century in Europe, but remerged in the new world a hundred years later, which is where the seals are said to have been hidden. By the twentieth century there were no more mentions of the knights, but that has not stopped both sides—”
“Sides?”
“Good and evil—” She had returned, again without me even noticing. I think she was even quicker than I was. “— Keep up trust fund kid.” She bit into what looked like a small slab of meat.
“You know I’m thirty, right?”
“The paranormals have always looked for the seals,” continued Fortacan. “For destroying them would—”
“Create party time for them,” she said between chews.
“That’s a real good bedtime story,” I said. “But what does any of it have to do with what happened to me? Why did you chase me down in Monaco?”
“Wow, money really makes you dumb doesn’t it?” said Alyssa. She looked away. “Or maybe when he went through the change his brain shrunk…” She then looked at me directly, pausing the destruction of her breakfast. “Your families got one of the seals!”
“Right…” I tried to stop my eyes falling upon what was on my wrist.
“After the book was taken,” said Fortacan. “You were the only chance those that wanted to destroy the seals had, to learn where your family’s seal might be. The one the Hell-Locks were fated to protect. But something must have gone wrong, because I doubt their plan was to kill you. Luckily—”
“I was there to save your rich ass.”
I looked up at her with a frown. “Not so rich anymore…”
She was gone again. I shook my head in frustration and looked back at the old man. “So, you’re saying my family, came from these… knights?”
He pulled the same old leather bound book he had shown me the day before from many on his shelf, and placed it on a small table between us.
“Seven knights, which became seven families. The Hell-Lock’s… were one of those families.”
I briefly thought about my father, Michael Hell-Lock. A finance guy. Ran the Hell-Lock corporation like clockwork. No matter how hard I tried I couldn’t imagine him in a suit of armor. This old guy had to be a card short of a full deck, but if this was some kind of scam I had to give it to them, it was a good one. Being super rich you develop a nose for them. Only problem was this old man’s story had the whiff of truth about it.
He placed his hand gently on the leather cover. “You cannot know how many years I have spent looking for this.”
“Why’s the book so important?”
I felt a draft from the door closing, and knew that meant she was back. She walked forward and pulled the cover open. “Because it’s rumored that this book tells the reader where the seals can be located. Problem is—”
“It’s written in a language I’ve not been able to translate,” said the professor.
“And he knows a lot of languages.”
“Not enough in this case unfortunately.”
She continued turning the pages. “So I was sent to see what you knew. But obviously you’re not exactly blessed with high IQ. So it was mostly a wasted trip.”
“Mostly?.. If you must know my IQ’s over one—”
She looked down. “Got some great boots though.”
“— Thirty.” I sighed and looked back at the old man.
He leaned forward. “You have no idea of what this seal could be? It would be extremely old, from the Middle Ages.”
“That’s around the thirteenth century,” said Alyssa.
I glanced at her. “Yeah… I know.” Hot afternoons learning European history with elderly tutors that smelled like mothballs came back to me. “No. Nope, no idea.”
The professor leaned back in the chair. “That’s unfortunate. It means we need to find a way to translate your grandfather’s writing… And do so quickly—” He looked at the walls and ceiling. “For the wards will not last forever.”
I looked at the woman. “So I became a vampire, because of some old book and these magical corks?”
“Yeah… but umm, about that,” she said.
I looked between them, both had become uneasy with the attention. “What?”
He went to talk but Alyssa beat him to it. “You’re not a vamp.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting for someone to continue, when they didn’t I did. “Vampires. Drink blood. Don’t like the daylight. Super strength and all that. That’s her. She made me. Hence vampire, like in the movies.”
“Vampires’ bodies do not change, when they become one,” said Fortacan. “And you can do things vampires cannot. Such as walk around in the daylight.”
“Yeah, I can do that. Have to wear shades when it’s bright and I get a rash… although I do have a cream for that.” I looked at the vamp. “You can’t do that?”
She shook her head.
“Alyssa here, would ignite in flame if she spent even a few seconds under the rays of the sun. All vampires are the same.”
I had spent two months accepting I was a blood sucking creature of the night. I felt lightheaded. “What am I then?”
“We… don’t know, but there’s a way to find out with some of your blo—”
I stood up. “You want to turn me into a lab rat?”
“Just a small amount of your book and—”
I sped to the door, but Alyssa beat me to it baring my escape. “Get out of my way!”
She looked up at me. “You can leave if you want, but what’s out there is far worse than the two of us. And I know you don’t believe this yet, but the professor wants to help. And to be honest trust fund kid, you need it.”
*****
Contrary to first impressions the nineteenth century underground bunker that the professor had made his home, contained a myriad of extra tunnels and rooms. I sat on a stool in one that resembled a lab, lifted straight from a 1950s scifi movie set. Two long wooden counters were covered in vials, microscopes, Bunsen burners and more modern equipment, one of which looked like a bread-making machine, but probably wasn’t.
Alyssa stood against the wall near the entrance of the room. For someone who I was fairly sure hated me she sure did watch me closely. I winked at her and she frowned, looking away.
Fortacan produced a syringe from a box and removed its covering. “You’ll need to take off your jacket.”
I groaned and removed the worn piece of clothing. Alyssa grimaced as I did. “Yeah yeah, I need to take a shower. You try living in a dumpster and see how you smell!”
My life on the street had been rough since I had returned from the continent, a
nd if it wasn’t for my extra abilities I have no doubt the NYPD would have found my dead body with the trash ready to be collected. The life I led up to my change, didn’t exactly prepare me for what came next.
“We can maybe find you some other items to wear once you are cleaned up,” said Fortacan.
“Okay, but I’m keeping the jacket. Had to fight a Nigerian drug dealer to get it. Long story.” I pulled my shirt sleeve up revealing a toned muscular arm. Even after two months I was still getting used to my new physique. I had never cared enough to go to the gym or work out, money being the only aphrodisiac I needed. I was also slim and tall enough. I figured by time I got old there would be some kind of pill to take to keep me in shape. The professor grunted. The needle was having a hard time breaking the surface of my skin.
Alyssa stepped forward. “Oh, let me do it.”
“What a surprise! She wants to stab—” A sharp pinch came from my forearm. “Ow!” She slowly drew the top of the syringe outwards bringing with it a good amount of my blood. Which looked… normal. I expected it to look green, or glow. Something.
She handed it to the professor. He moved a few feet away and unscrewed the lid from a glass tube of clear liquid. He looked at Alyssa then looked back at the vial and let a single drop fall into it.
No reaction.
“Hmm…” said Fortacan. “I really thought—” The liquid suddenly turned purple and started bubbling. “Oh, it’s getting quite warm.” He placed it in a holder, but then that too started to shake on the counter.
I leaned forward, fascinated by the purple substance that was fizzing. Tiny sparkles were swimming through currents, while coils of illuminated smoke rose from the top, bathing the room in purple light. The vial holder started to bounce violently. I grabbed it, but even I was having trouble keeping it still. “Err… I think we might have a problem.”