by J. X. Evans
“You should be more careful yourself, we all have been kind of jumpy lately. You might have been turned crispy by mistake.” Mark said. Thanos would probably not have ended up crispy, Mark’s ruby was badly cracked and an attempt at moving more than a little bit of energy would probably leave him with a burning sleeve, at least.
“Worth it!” Thanos replied and returned the weapon to its designated place. The men clasped hands and hugged and a huge black cat appeared from under Mark’s legs. Sir Paws placed his big paws on Thanos’ thigh, and almost cracked his crotch from beneath the duster…’Damn cats.’ Sir Paws stretched, sharp claws coming out of their sheaths and perilously close to Thanos’ genitalia. The cat re-sheathed his claws a moment later, bringing strands of cloth out of the man’s tattered jeans, and then sat back down on the ground looking up at him. Thanos kneeled down and started petting the huge cat.
“Besides, you wouldn’t risk it with torching some innocent bystander. Or this cutie right here.” Thanos said and grabbed the cat from it front legs and lifted him gently, so that its kitty face was parallel to his own “Look at that. Sir Paws, your hair looks just awful, did you pass the night in a dumpster? Are you a dumpster kitty now?” The cat gave him a death stare and Thanos let him go.
“Now he comes out. I have been trying to get him to follow me for fifteen minutes now and just when I stop trying he comes right out.”
“He wanted to greet me, he has manners.”
“That he does.”
“So, how is it going?”
“You haven’t seen the news since last night, have you?”
Mark opened the can of kitty food and kneeled to place it on the ground, Sir Paws was face first in the shallow can even before it had touched the ground. “I just spotted him. I came to pick some things up and found myself with a little bit of time before Rob and the others could come pick me up again, so I searched for him. Glad I did.”
“News eh? Barely. What happened?” Thanos asked, and Mark told him the story.
“Shiiit. This cannot be good no matter how you look at it.”
“Shit… you don’t say. A proper mess that is.”
They sat for a moment, not talking, looking at passers-by. “Come on, I’ll give you a lift to my brother’s house.” Thanos said and gestured with an open palm.
Mark swung his bag over a shoulder, it was wet through and through. Apparently it had fallen into a puddle on the roof and it had been soaked over time. He had retrieved it rather easily though. He had to pick the lock on the roof’s door, but everything else went smoothly enough.
The cat had finished his food in an instant and was since then licking the empty can. Mark picked him up, tossed the can in the dumpster and followed Thanos. Mark took his tobacco out of the soaked bag and sighed, “Let’s stop at a mini-Market somewhere. I need to buy new smoke, this one is ruined.” He tossed the dump package in Sir Paws’ overnight lodge.
23. AN EXPLANATION
Zora, Rob and Perry returned to the Adamis family residence. The couple was still at work and the kids were all out of the house as well for extracurricular activities. Duke greeted the trio of Knights with happy prancing and doggy kisses though. Zora had not expected the scary looking dog to warm up to her so quickly, but even scary guard dogs can possess the heart of a puppy if they are in loving environment; which could also make them kind of inefficient at their job and prone to bribery (Jerky treats! Yum! Me love You stranger!)
They got in the house and Rob stored the weapons in a closet at the room that had been so generously provided to then and went for a shower, while Perry went in the kitchen to prepare dinner for them and his brother’s family, a small gesture of gratitude. Zora followed him into the bib room a minute later.
“So, uh…What are we making?” she asked him.
“Lots of pasta with Bolognese sauce, a salad or two, and a quick cheesecake.” Perry smiled.
“Do you need any help?” Zora asked while washing her hands in the sink. Knights of the Order did not get daunted by bacteria or viruses, the family would though, and whether you are a Knight or a vanilla human, no one likes dirt in their sauce.
“Rarely! But you can peel and chop these up if you feel like helping.” Perry slid a stack of vegetables and a sharp knife towards her end of the table. Zora took an onion, placed it on a cutting board and went to town on it.
“So…what’s with the dusters?” Zora asked a couple of chops in.
“It’s a style.” Perry took two boxes of biscuits in front of him and set to breaking and mashing them up with his hands in a big, round, metallic bowl.
“You know what I mean. What’s with the citrine?” Zora insisted.
“Ah, so…you noticed eh?”
“I felt the stones yesterday when I picked up the coat after the dog tackled you to the ground, and after that when I touched your elbow. But no, I have not figured it out yet.” Zora had a pretty good sense of the workings of magical energies; and she had an idea or two but she could not be certain.
“Too bad, I hoped you would tell me.”
“What do you mean?” The onions had brought a couple of burning tears to her eyes and she wiped them with the fabric of her shirt on the inside of her upper arm.
“I started playing around with the idea of an efficient citrine inlaid clothing after my idiot brother had a close call with death. The idea was to figure out a pattern that would allow the storage of an amount of energy. That energy could be released steadily, either over time or upon impact with a force. The citrines would be charged from time to time by me, or whoever. The energy though likes to shift and move around and equate with the environment. So I needed to devise some sort of path for the energy to follow so that it would not discharge on its own. I managed it by manufacturing a special thread of my own, which I mixed with citrine dust, and then used to wrap and connect the stones with.”
“Hu, that is… incredible. You created a road for the energy to follow, a path of least resistance. Only that path lead to another stone, a node, and the energy escaping from the previous gem fed the next one in line.” No one had managed to do that before.
“Yes. Only, you see, I expected that there would be losses. You know, from time, and from the blocking of external forces, no system is perfect, it would need recharge after some time. Only it appears that losses from the environment with this system turn out to be miniscule, and through trial and error I found an arrangement of stones that minimizes the energy expenditure from blocking incoming forces by spreading the impact in the most efficient way possible.”
“Huh, which means?”
“Well, that’s all good and dandy, but it appears that there is no need for an active recharge, which is…weird. Not even for my brother who is not a Knight. He has it for almost two years now and it works just as well as it did on day one.”
“Oh my…why do you think that is?”
“I don’t know why but you see, I do have a theory. Maybe the gems ‘steal’ energy from the human wearing them. I think that the gems in our wrists do so as well. A small amount of energy, undetectable even, only to let it go once they have taken it. I believe that the linking of the gems in the coat make it so that those small amount of stolen energy enters the current of the already existing and circulating energy and thus the cycle continues.”
“Interesting…. Very much so. If this is true, then you might be onto something here…”
“Well, you know, the current theory on the Order’s magic is that we can manipulate the energy but we need a medium to guide it through, and focus it. And the gems just have so many inner reflective surfaces to let us do that. Maybe the magical energy though gets trapped in there on its own accord as well?”
“I see…Why have you not shared it with the Order yet? This could potentially provide us with a lot of knowledge and save a lot of lives as well.”
Pericles finished with the biscuits and moved to the fridge to bring out the butter and the cream cheese, everything with full
fat and full calories, “I meant to do it. But I wanted to study it a bit more before doing that. It is not perfect yet, like any closed circuit, a damage in the line can render the whole thing useless. The coat that I carried yesterday with me had its citrines shattered, a strong blow from a minotaur, maybe the placement in that place was a bit off or…I don’t know. I was working on putting in some sort of backup system, or a smaller, parallel one, or maybe break the armor into different chunks so that if one link is broken then only one part of the armor stops working…”
“Interesting ideas. I can see how they could work.”
“Yes, I know but…each one has its pros and cons and I am still trying to find a way to make them applicable.”
“It is still lightyears better than what we are using now. And with more minds on this we could have maybe already worked something out.”
“I know…I was wrong to wait. I just got so caught up in it…I wanted this project to be my own, you know?” Pericles’ face got sad and his cookie-dust covered hands dropped to his side. “I don’t even want to think about how many lives could have been spared…I just wanted to present the finished product… I have already started working on making my notes more presentable, to send them to the Order. I have been working on it since yesterday evening when you and Rob left to go get Mark…”
At that moment Rob happened to walk in the kitchen. “Ah, nothing beats a hot bath after a road trip.” Perry livened up once more, a smile returning to his darkened face and took some bags of vegetables from the fridge and placed them on the table, “Wash them, cut them up and put them in two bowls. One plain lettuce and a Greek salad with lots of feta cheese.” Perry went back to preparing his cheesecake, while Rob and Zora set to washing and chopping.
Time passed and the family members slowly started trickling through the front door, one by one. The meal was ready and everyone was hungry, especially the two boys that had just returned from football practice, but Mark had not returned yet.
“Where is he?” Perry asked in agitated restlessness.
“He texted me not to pick him up and that he had found a ride home.” Rob answered while easily beating Nick Adamis in a game of Mortal Kombat in Nick’s Playstation. Nick stood up with a grunt of defeat and set to finishing his half eaten sandwich while Panos jumped to the couch and took his brother’s place. The winner keeps on playing, Rob had said, and the boys had fallen for it. “Don’t fret kids, I have been doing this since 1992. You might be able to beat me sometime. In the far future that is.”
There was the distinctive sound of Duke’s barking, continuously and with fervor, and moments later the doorbell rang. Perry was closer to the door than anyone else, so he walked over and opened it. Sir Paws jumped inside at almost the same moment at which the door cracked open and ran into the living room, nails skidding on the floor, his backside arched and his black hair were standing all the way up, making him seem almost triple his enormous size. The door opened a bit further and Perry saw Mark in the process of standing back up from the floor. A little further and Perry saw his brother, Thanos, holding the barking dog that was waging its tail from its front paws, petting him at the chest. “Good evening,” Thanos smiled, “I smell meat sauce. Is there space for one more?”
“There is always space for one more.” Perry answered with a smile of his own.
They all sat down at the big table in the dining room, since the one in the kitchen was way too small for them all. They caught up on recent events of their lives, Thanos and the Knights spoke of their recent memorable adventures and Orpheus and Ariadne told tales from the hospital and they all laughed and ate half to death; except for Zora who remained scowling and pensive through the whole thing, pecking at her food; in her defense though, it is rather hard for even a more companionable person to socialize when they do not share the language of anyone at the same table. At the beginning of the meal Katherine made some attempts to keep a conversation with her in English, but she abandoned the attempts after her efforts got squashed against Zora’s invisible walls.
The food was good, as it always is, every Knight eating more than triple the portion that a normal person their size should be consuming and then some. The little banquet did not end up lasting long at all though after the seemingly sudden disappearance of most of the edibles. The exhausted married couple, sleep deprived and depleted, excused themselves and retired to their bedroom, but not before sending the kids to bed with an affectionate suggestion of swift departure for dream land. Finally Ariadne and Orpheus made an attempt of tidying up the table a bit before retiring, but everyone assured them that they would take care of it waving hands and heads around, and they urged them to a relaxing evening and a good night’s sleep.
Rob leaned back on his chair and Sir Paws moved to curl upon one of his favorite spots; his lap. “So, how come you two met up?” Rob asked, looking at Mark and Thanos.
“Chance. I passed by the late café to take a look at things since your message seemed weird. And fate arranged a meeting with the kid here who was searching for the cat. He filled me in on the situation.” Thanos placed a rough palm, filled with old cuts and hard calluses on the back of Mark’s neck and squeezed gently.
“What took you so long to get here though?” Perry asked.
“We went to take a look at the vampire lair.” Mark answered, taking a sip of water.
“You did what?” Rob and Perry perked up and even Zora showed an instant of interest that quickly changed to a spasm of annoyance before her face acquired its usual placid neutrality that went well with her lack of understanding. She could not understand Greek, but she knew the word for vampire, it was a very similar one… ‘A development, eh? I guess I will have to wait and learn what has happened later.’
“Some ‘lair’ though, I would love to live in a ‘lair’ like that myse-“
“It was extremely dangerous and irresponsible of you. What if they spotted you? It could have ruined everything.” Perry continued.
“I kind of lied to him. I told him that you had asked me to check it out but…Really? Dangerous? We drove by the place and we stood on a hill looking at the estate with binoculars for half an hour.”
“It was fucking dangerous, what if they had spotted you?” Perry said again, raising his voice and waving a hand in front of him in similarly rising anger.
“Please, Pericles. Yes ok, it could have been dangerous. But in the end, nothing happened. If anything, it saved us time and got us some info. We had planned on staking the place out tomorrow either way, a first assessment could be useful. I don’t want those bastards roaming around in my region a minute longer than absolutely necessary.” Rob tried to put a stop to Perry’s ranting, and the sullen man seized talking and folded his arms over his chest.
Thanos told them to wait, stood up, left the room and returned less than a minute later, carrying a laptop that was already booting up. “There is not much to say actually. There is a snaking road leading to a metal gate with two human guards stationed outside,”
“Probably human.” Mark cut in.
“Yes, probably, thank you Mark. And armed with assault rifles. There is a large garden with a few decorative mazes where one could possibly hide in for a while. Now, there is a main trail and a few secondary that lead to the mansion’s main door, some more guards strolling here and there.”
“And?” Rob asked.
“And…there is not much more I could tell you, the mansion itself was out of bounds, curtains closed shut, and only a few lights were lit. It was in good condition and that is all I can say about it, no battles or struggles seems to have taken place in the grounds, everything is in place, no broken windows, no uprooted plants, not a single broken blade of grass. We saw all these from a low hill with a frontal view of the place about a kilometer or a little less maybe from the mansion. I had my military grade binoculars with night vision with me. Plus, a skilled sniper could probably provide some support from that point, small but vital.” The sniper would be him,
if Thanos could have a say in it, he knew that he was no match for even the weakest and clumsiest of vampires, but he knew guns and he had a wicked gift for accuracy and timing. If he didn’t, he would have been dead already. The laptop booted up for good and Thanos typed the mansions coordinates in google earth and turned the screen towards the three others, Rob, Perry and the girl whose name he did not remember. “This is the overview of the estate. It appears that there is a smaller garden behind the mansion, and after that there are trees and mountains for a radius of a few kilometers. And there seems to be some kind of small hut right here in the back.”
“What do you think it is?” Mark asked.
“Gardening shack?” Rob answered.
“Probably.” Thanos finished.
“Well, that pretty much does it. I did not expect to learn much more from a stakeout really. It is not like we have the time to study their daily routines. The real problem will be the vampires of course, but we will have to find a way to quickly deal with the thralls as well if we want to have a chance. Perry, you said that there were close to a hundred of them last night.” Rob asked.
“Yeah. I mean probably, maybe a little less?” Perry half scratched and half brushed his beard with the fingers of his right hand.
“There will almost certainly be more of them, and thralls are persistent little buggers, give them enough food and they can mostly come back from almost anything, if they are not dead that is. A lot of the ones from yesterday will have survived for sure. We can’t fight three or maybe more skilled vampires with noctis gems in their possession and a small army of thralls at the same time.”
Zora rolled her eyes in the mention of the gems. He had used the Order’s term, not some arbitrary Greek translation, and maybe he should not be talking about that in the presence of non-members. But she had no illusions that Pericles’ brother did not already know.
Thanos raised his eyebrows in surprise to the mention of the information. “I might have an idea about that. You know that I have a shemlear right?”