by Leo Romero
Trixie shook her head. “Who is this Clement person you keep banging on about?”
Faisal grabbed a nearby stool and placed it next to the chair already waiting at the desk. “Please, take a seat,” he said and headed for his chair on the opposite side of the desk.
Trixie took the chair with the cushion. Dom took the hard stool. Faisal switched on a desk lamp and grabbed up a file with the word ‘CLEMENT’ scrawled across it. He opened it and rifled through its contents, his one eye wide and alert.
Dom watched him nonplussed. He looked around. There were maps pinned to the walls, pictures of what looked like ancient statues—the kinda thing the Egyptians built. The myriad of books lining the bookcases would’ve made a librarian jealous.
Faisal began to spread items out across the desk—black and white photographs, newspaper clippings, and magazine articles.
Faisal picked up one in particular and turned it around for them to see. Dom found himself staring at an old newspaper clipping. The date in the top corner was June 1st 1957. The headline read: ‘HISTORIC ARCHEOLIGICAL DIG COMMENCES.’ The photo in the article showed a group of Arab guys standing in the desert, posing for the pic, some with shovels on their shoulders; they all had serious, stern looks on their faces. Standing amongst them was a guy in a white suit. A guy that looked familiar.
“You recognize that man?” Faisal asked with a nod and a gleam in his eye, obviously seeing confusion emerge on Dom’s face.
Dom shrugged. “I...”
“I’m talking about him,” Faisal said, jabbing a finger at the young Arab guy in the photo holding a pickaxe.
Dom frowned and took a closer look. He met Faisal’s stare.
“Yes,” Faisal said with a grin. “That handsome devil is me!”
“Right, I see that now,” Dom said. “How old were you?”
“Barely eighteen.” He shook his head. “Ah, so young, so naive, so... stupid!” He huffed. “Okay, how about this man?” he said, pointing at the guy in the white suit.
Dom licked his lips. Yeah, he did look familiar. He glanced at Trixie. Her eyes were rolling as if she didn’t know where to look.
Faisal nodded. “Yes. That is Clement. Although you both already know that.”
“Did we?” asked Dom.
“Indeed. It is he who sent you, is it not? To hunt down Rah?”
Dom looked away. “Er...”
Trixie jumped in. “No one sent us,” she said, wide-eyed.
Faisal gave her an ironic nod. “Okay.” He whipped up another clipping. “Then how about this man?’ He slapped the magazine article down on the desk next to the old paper clipping.
Dom now found himself staring at a color photo of Vincent. He was outside the gates of Sun, giving the camera a cheesy grin, his arms crossed over his chest. The article was headed: ‘Meet the richest man you’ve never heard of.’
Dom rolled his eyes to the left to meet Trixie. She just stared at the photo.
“The head of Sun Enterprise is it not?” Faisal asked.
“Yeah, so?” Trixie asked in return, leaning back in her seat.
Faisal chuckled. “So? My dear, we all know this is the man you work for. The man I used to work for. We are all on the same side here. We want to destroy Rah. But, I have to warn you about this man. He is not all that he seems.”
“In what way?” Dom asked, intrigued.
Trixie nudged him with her elbow. “Dom!”
“Ow! Hey, I’m only asking a question.”
Faisal leaned over the desk. He pointed at them both. “So you admit you do know him. I knew it.”
Trixie sighed. “Okay, Jack. We know the guy in the Sun picture, but the other guy we don’t know.”
“You must do because it is the same man,” Faisal told her. A couple of seconds of silence ensued. Faisal leaned back and rubbed his beard. “Are you two related somehow?”
“No,” Dom replied. “We first met at the bottom of some stairs when some asshole was trying to kill me. She saved my life. The guy we work for is her father. She’s his daughter.” Dom nodded toward the photo of Vincent as he spoke.
“Daughter?” Faisal echoed. He crossed his arms over his chest and burst into hearty laughter. “If she is this man’s daughter, then I am a Chinaman.”
Trixie and Dom stared at one another. Trixie pointed at Faisal. “Hey—”
“This man has no children,” Faisal stated with a sure shake of his head. “He is not human.”
Dom’s jaw dropped; he just stared at Faisal, speechless.
Faisal gave him a knowing nod. “Indeed. He cannot be human. Look at me in that picture. Now look at me; how I’ve aged.” He grabbed his gray beard. “And now look at Clement in the same picture. Notice anything different to how he looks now?”
Dom stared at the black and white photo ahead of him hard. “I-I-I...” He puffed his cheeks in exasperation. Vincent looked almost exactly the same in the black and white photo as he did now.
“He was supposedly almost three times my age when this photo was taken,” Faisal said. “He should be dead!”
Dom showed Faisal his palms. “Okay, buddy, I see what you’re getting at. But, the guy in this picture,” he pointed at the more recent magazine photo, “his name isn’t Clement. It’s Vincent. Vincent Beauchamp. She’s Trixie Beauchamp.”
Faisal gave him a firm nod. “Yes, that’s what the old fool calls himself these days. But I knew him as Clement. Clement DeNoir.”
“Clement DeNoir?” Dom echoed. He glanced at Trixie; she looked like she was about to be sick.
“What’s with all the French names?” Dom asked out loud.
“Because he is French, that’s why,’ Faisal said adamantly.
Dom smiled. “No, the guy we know is English, speaks with a regal accent. You know, like the Queen of England?”
Faisal sat back and laughed. “So, not only does he change names, but he changes accents too. A master of disguise. When I knew him, he was a French archeologist who used to moonlight as a vampire hunter.”
“Now, he’s an English guy who owns a billion dollar enterprise.”
“At least he moved up in the world,” Faisal said, his voice loaded with distain.
Dom turned to Trixie; she still looked pale, nervous. It was the first time he’d ever seen her like that. “Trix?” he said in a concerned voice.
She flinched his way. “Huh?”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m... okay, I just...”
“Just what?”
“I... I...”
“Is it about this stuff?” Dom pointed down at the desk. “About Vincent?”
Trixie just stared at the stuff on the desk in a daze.
“Speak, child,” urged Faisal, his one eye wide and sincere.
“Is there something you’re not telling us, Trix?” asked Dom. “About Vincent?”
Trixie grabbed her temples as if she had a killer migraine. “Look, he’s actually, not... kinda like...” She looked up at Dom and looked him straight in the eye. “He’s not my father.”
Dom’s jaw went slack.
“Ha ha! I knew it!” Faisal shouted with a huge grin on his face.
“What do you mean, Trix?”
“How else can I put it, Dom? I’m not Vincent Beauchamp’s daughter. Not biologically anyway.”
Dom stared at her sideways. “You mean you were adopted?”
“Kinda.”
“Well, what does that mean? Either you were or you weren’t.”
“Look, do we have to discuss this right now?”
Dom sat back in his seat and crossed his arms over his chest; he tapped the floor with his foot in an agitated fashion. “You know, you always say that. Whenever something important about your past crops up, you avoid discussing it by saying ‘do we have to talk about this?’ or ‘I don’t wanna talk about it’. Well, guess what, I wanna talk about it.”
“Fine!” Trixie huffed, slumping back in her seat and crossing her arms over he
r chest. She pouted her lips like a spoiled child.
Faisal sat opposite them both like a relationship counsellor, while they were turned slightly away from one another in their seats, their defiant arm-over-chest pose identical. “I think it’s best if I stay out of this,” Faisal said, showing them his palms and slinking back in his seat.
“Well?’ Dom asked the air ahead of him, whilst continuing with his foot tapping. “What’s the story?”
“He adopted me when I was a minor,” Trixie answered.
“How old were you?”
She huffed once more. “Seventeen.”
Faisal nodded. “Yes, he likes to trick the young into joining him,” he said. “Impressionable. Easy to manipulate.”
“He didn’t manipulate me,” Trixie said in an uppity tone, moving closer in toward him. Faisal just stared at her with his remaining eye.
“So what happened?” asked Dom.
“If you must know, he saved my life. I owe him.”
“How did he save your life?”
Trixie remained silent.
“Come on, Trixie!” Dom urged.
“You know, I feel very uncomfortable being interrogated like this. All you need to know is Vincent’s not my real dad, but he adopted me. I took on his name and he’s looked out for me ever since. I should be dead, but I’m not. He’s trying to do something good, trying to save the world from vamps, so give the guy a break.”
“But, what about all this?” Dom asked, spreading his hands over the documents ahead of them.
Faisal nodded.
“What about it?” Trixie countered.
“Don’t you think it’s strange? Unless this DeNoir guy is a dead ringer for your pop, it’s undoubtedly him.”
Trixie looked away. “Yeah. So?”
“Yeah so, what is up with that? Why doesn’t Vincent age like normal people? Why isn’t he dead yet? Why is he changing his name, his identity?”
“I dunno. Maybe you should ask him.”
Dom flopped back in is seat. He puffed his cheeks in exasperation. “You’re impossible, you know that?”
Trixie gave him a peeved look, her arms still crossed over her chest, her fingers tapping her upper arm.
Faisal gave the desk a solemn stare.
“Look,” Trixie said to Dom. “Hasn’t he helped you? Haven’t we helped you? Didn’t we help you find out what happened to your father? Didn’t we help save your brother? Given you a home? Eddie a job?”
Dom cocked his head to the side. “Yeah, but...”
“But what? Dad has done good by you and me. So what if that’s him in those pictures? What does it matter? We should judge him by his actions.”
“Yeah, but why all the secrecy?”
“’Cause some things are better left unknown, Dom.”
Silence ensued.
Faisal slowly raised his hands. “I think, on reflection,” he began, lowering his hands over the mass of documents, “it was unwise of me to show these things to you both.” He pulled everything into his chest.
Dom and Trixie turned away from one another in their seats like a couple of angry children. Faisal began stacking the documents into a neat pile, embarrassment stamped all over his face.
Dom sighed. “I suppose we better leave all that stuff for when we get back to Chicago.”
“That... might be a good idea,” Faisal said with an enthusiastic nod and grin. He tapped the top edge of the pile of documents on the desk and placed them back in his file. He propped his elbows on the file and tapped his fingertips together in a nervous fashion, grinning at them both.
Dom and Trixie just continued staring at opposite sides of the room.
After a few moments, Faisal dragged over a bowl from the edge of the desk. He picked it up and offered it to Trixie. “Date?” he asked, plucking one out of the bowl and popping it in his mouth.
Trixie looked from the bowl to him. “No,” she said and turned back.
Faisal offered Dom the bowl and shrugged.
Dom huffed and took one.
Rahim lowered his toy gun. He saw them with that old guy who only had one eye. A man and a woman. They were the ones the older guys always talked of. The infidels, the white skins. The non-believers. Rahim and the other kids were always told not to trust the infidels. They were kuffar, their enemy.
Rahim watched them go into the old man’s apartment. He was scared of them, he didn’t want them to kill him or his family. Because that’s what they did. They killed Arabs and Muslims for no reason. And now that one-eyed guy was working with them. Everyone always said to avoid him. He was strange, not to be trusted.
Rahim knew what to do. He had to tell the older guys that infidels were here. They would deal with them, and they could all be safe again. Rahim raced over to the café where the older guys hung out to tell them what he saw.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“So how did you get to know him?” Dom asked Faisal, wanting to break the uncomfortable silence.
“Clement?”
Dom nodded. “Yeah. How did he rope you into this stuff?”
Faisal sat back in his chair and sighed. “Samm,” he said.
Dom frowned.
Faisal held out his first two fingers in a pincer-like motion and pretended to stab at his neck. “Samm,” he repeated. “Poison.”
Dom’s eyes lit up. “Ah, you mean venom.”
“Manna,” Trixie corrected, speaking for the first time in a while.
Dom briefly turned to face her. “Whatever, Trix. There’s probably a million names for the stuff around the world.”
Trixie turned away. “Whatever.”
“When I was a boy,” Faisal began, “I used to attend a mosque in Baghdad. The imam, Farouk, used to preach hate and wickedness. Using deceptive words to trick the youth into joining the Claw Order in its pursuit of a global caliphate. And for a while, I believed it was right. It was our fight against the infidel, the Satanic West. I wanted to join them in taking up arms. I was brainwashed. Farouk would only call sermons at night. And I soon learned why.”
“He was a vamp,” Dom said with a rueful smile.
“Indeed. And he needed to feed.”
“And he liked the way you tasted.”
“Only because I was a militant. A convert to his and Rah’s evil plan. Their vision of a caliphate is one based in hell. Their desire is to slaughter infidels, burn them alive for their heresy. That means you.”
Dom gulped. “Sounds... wonderful.”
“And like a fool, I was willing to die for their cause. Of course the samm had infected my mind. Luckily, I was able to break free.”
“How?’
Faisal took a deep, juddering breath. “First, I watched them, Claw agents, brutally kill my mother and father in cold blood.”
“Jeez,” Dom gasped.
“They decapitated them in front of me. I was just a boy. They told me I didn’t need them anymore. They’d served their purpose, which was to bring me into the world, now I had to have a new family. I belonged to the caliphate. The House of Rah. And the caliphate was everything.” A tear welled in his eye.
“And then what?”
“Then to my disgrace, I joined the other brainwashed souls in rounding up Shi’ite Muslims and slaughtering them in the name of Rah.” He looked away, thumping the surface of the desk. He took a deep, juddering breath. “I saw and did some terrible things. And it was those things that caused my spiritual agony. Luckily for me, that pain was greater than samm. It allowed me to sever my bond with the Claw Order. I fled, spending the following weeks and months in physical suffering and emotional torture.”
Dom nodded. “Yeah, I know how that feels.” He glanced at Trixie, who was staring at Faisal.
“Go on,” she urged him.
“That was when Clement found me.”
“He found you?” asked Dom.
Faisal met his stare. “Indeed. He finds everybody, somehow. To survive, I was stealing food from markets and begging. One day, a
white man in a white suit threw me some coins. Somehow, he knew about my addiction to samm and how I was recovering from it. He had... a friendly face for a foreigner. He seemed trustworthy. He went on to fill my head with ideas of destroying the source of the vampire problem. Rah. He had a plan, knew where Rah was located. He told me he had a team of other victims, who were focused and determined on defeating Rah once and for all. We were to set up a fake expedition near the palace where Rah was hiding. That would give us access. I was chosen to enter the lair. I was the youngest, the strongest, the most foolhardy.”
“And what happened?” Dom asked.
Faisal pointed at the patch over his eye. “This. I entered the lair of Rah, and I was about to impale that creature’s heart, when I discovered Rah had children. Babies. They awakened and alerted Rah and his guards to my presence. Rah took... control of my mind. He made me impale my own eye with the chisel I was going to slay him with.”
Trixie winced, sucking in air through her teeth.
“My God,” Dom said, grimacing.
“The guards stormed in, and that was when I fought. I managed to topple one before escaping into the corridor and running for the nearest window. I jumped out, realizing I was plunging to my doom. Luckily, I landed on a camel, which broke my fall. I then scrambled away to safety. I never saw Clement again. He vanished soon after that incident. But, I didn’t want anything to do with him. He sent me to my doom. I went from one extreme to another. Once I was free of samm, I should’ve gone on to live my life free of burden. Instead, I’m always in fear, in hiding in case I’m recognized by the Claw Order. I know it’s been a long time, but I still don’t feel safe.”
“Then why are you still here?” Trixie asked.
“Where can I go? I have no money. I’m just a crazy old man with one eye. All I have is my health and my faith. I don’t want to see anyone else end up like me.”
Dom gave Trixie an uneasy glance.
Faisal continued. “By a stroke of luck, I happened to come across that magazine article about Vincent Beauchamp and Sun Enterprise. When I saw that face, I immediately knew it was him. This was forty-five years after my... accident.” He shook his head. “Unbelievable. When I saw he hadn’t aged a bit, I began asking questions. Who is this man? Just who is he?”