by J. X. Evans
“What a cute oldie. I can’t believe I almost sucked him dry earlier today.”
‘You are not you when you are hungry… stupid commercial...you know nothing.’ Ulrik did not even watch television, rarely listened to the radio…where the heck did he pick that line up from…?
Helena sat on the couch next to Ulrik and eyed the silver platter. Ulrik let a low sigh escape his lips and grabbed a glass, filled it almost to the brim and handed it to Helena… ‘What the hell.’ he grabbed another and did the same. Helena raised the glass and lightly clanked it to Ulrik’s “To better days!” she toasted.
“Skål” Ulrik responded under his breath… ‘We will see about that.’
She took a sip, “For future reference darling. You do not fill these glasses all the way up. It’s just…not pretty. Not that you ever learn…apparently.”
In truth, he didn’t, she had made that particular remark time and again. “I thought you liked to get messy with your food.” Ulrik responded.
“There is a time and a place for everything, and a mood as well. But as rule of thumb, *sip* that is true.”
“Like eating ribs with your hands, but sometimes people are made to use knife and fork.” Ulrik did not even remember the taste of it, maybe a remote memory.
“Well I had more of a hazelnut spread and whipped cream in mind but…somewhat. Blood and the other two are classy messy, sexy messy…ribs is…pigsty messy.”
“As if you have ever tried it.”
“You don’t know what you are saying.” She downed her glass and extended her arm invitingly. Ulrik filled it halfway to the top… ‘I’ll just have to do double the work.’ The track changed and Helena tossed her head back and started singing along with the lyrics. She had a sweet voice… but still it did not sit well on his ears for some reason. Ulrik drank and sunk under the sea of his thoughts.
A bit of time passed and the bottom of the bottle was only a thin sheet of blood away when Ulrik heard Duncan’s almost utterly silent steps outside the door, even through the man’s heavy voice coming from the stereo. And Helena heard him too, because she lifted her head and body from the couch’s arm to a straighter position, getting ready to listen to what he had to say. The door opened and Duncan entered. He had taken a shower and he had changed his bloodied attire for fresh clothes.
“Well?” Helena purred.
“What do you think? They loved the news of course… They were ecstatic.”
‘Duncan and sarcasm…? It must have been brutal.’ Ulric raised a single eyebrow.
“What about the others?” Helena continued.
“Most did well, less so than we hoped. But maybe better than expected. We are now to start advancing on people of interest, get the country under our control, but we should move cautiously since the Knights are still alive. Be on the balls of your feet.”
‘So…nothing changed.’
“So, where do we begin?” Helena asked.
“I will make a visit to a certain general, you two will make a visit to a certain apartment in a town about an hour drive from here. We have another kid, a boy.”
“Now? Don’t we have better things to do at the moment?” Helena asked, boredom evident in her tone.
“Aren’t you happy?”
“Not yet I am not. Are you?”
“You know how important this is. Maybe it can wait, but it does not make much of a difference.”
Ulrik intervened in their little dialogue, “How is the girl doing?”
“Not well Ulrik, not well. I mean, no different than the others.” Duncan raised the almost empty bottle, inspected it quickly and put it back down.
“And the boy?”
“The same…”
“And what of the other vampires around here? When are we going to go to them?”
“It’s still early. In a while. After the council has made it official, which won’t be long with the way things are going. We will have all the help that we need. But well, I believe that most already know. We’ll see. Off you go now.” Ulrik tossed a folded piece of paper to Helena and she snatched it from the air.
“No reconnaissance, no nothing? Just snatch and run like that?” Ulrik asked.
“Well grab the kid and grab the parents too and anyone else you find, we need more thralls. The age of caution is at an end my friends.” Duncan gave the both of them a wide grin. “Off you go now.”
The couple of vampires tossed the last of their drinks down their throats and got up without complaints and walked to the door. Ulrik heard the bottle lifting from the black marble top of the table and a thin stream of blood trickling from a height onto Duncan’s tongue…tap, tap, tap… to the last drop.
Ulrik and Helena reached the address and got out of the car. It was late and they were the only ones on the silent street. “Third floor?” Ulrik asked.
“Yes.” Helena purred while reapplying her purple lip gloss with the aid of a small white and gold pocket mirror.
“This one right there?”
“Hmm.”
Ulrik could hear soft music and low conversation coming from the apartment’s closed balcony door, the one that faced the street; and he could see soft yellow light coming through the heavy curtains. “Looks like they are having a party or something.”
“Sure does darling.” Helena closed the mirror and placed it in her purse, “Come now, don’t make this chore last longer than it has to.”
‘She took her sweet time applying her makeup and I am the one doing the stalling?’
“Wait a bit.” Ulrik walked quickly to the passenger side of the small van, opened the drawer, rummaged through a pile of papers and produced a fake policeman’s identity with his face on the photo.
Helena chuckled, “Oh, we had some noise complaints. I see.” She purred and started walking.
The kid was sleeping, well until the screams of one of the unlucky mortals woke him up at least. ‘Or were they the lucky ones? They would not have to learn the new order of the world, a black screen of nothingness and they wake up enhanced and updated, ready to cast their pebble to the victor’s side of the centuries old conflict.’
It had been ridiculously easy to get them all. A slight bump to the back of the head and they were sprawled unconscious. One man was at the toilet and managed to let out a high pitched shriek. Helena slapped him, hard, right on the jaw and broke his neck…one casualty…no big deal.
They loaded most of them up in one go and Ulrik climbed back up to bring the last three of them along. He tossed the man over a shoulder and grabbed another under the crook of his elbow. The last one was a woman, passed out upside down, bottom half on top of the red sofa and top half on the floor. She was young, slim, with long blonde hair, probably dyed blonde, that shade would be rare even in the northern regions of the world, but still…she reminded him of his late wife. He remained looking at her young face, similar… not too much, but even a little made his mind wander these last few years. His nostalgia needed less than the nudge from a gust of wind, and that was more like an unexpected hard shove from behind…he thought he was long past that. Time is the best healer they say, but it also runs in circles, and maybe if you live long enough it creeps up again right behind you… He lifted her off the ground, carefully, as if it would make a difference otherwise, and he carried her to the back of the van where he laid her body on top of the pile. Would she share his beloved wife’s fate? He wished she wouldn’t.
25. A CALL
Mark was twisting and turning on the uncomfortable air mattress that he was using for a bed. He was anxious about tomorrow’s business, too anxious to sleep or even sit still for that matter. Rob had walked in before him and fallen on his bed like a boxer after clumsily receiving the perfect cross, and from then till now he was sleeping like a log, not making a sound and not moving at all but for his barrel of a chest.
‘Zero fucks given, right there.’ Mark envied that, but he could not decide whether that was good or not. Pericles on the other hand was half-s
itting and half-lying on the single sofa-bed, furiously typing words on a borrowed laptop. He had all the schematics and techniques for crafting his citrine armor on the cloud, some two-hundred pages of hand drawn images and notes. He was making ready to send them to multiple people of rank, and others that he knew in the Order, in the off chance of something happening to him. ‘Yeah, the off chance. Hah, that’s why I am so nervous.’ Perry was currently typing extra directions to make things clearer, easier to grasp. He seemed to be in a bad mood too, angry, with himself probably, a bit saddened, and Mark thought that he had not even started thinking about tomorrow yet. But then again, when work needed to be done, Perry let nothing stand in his way. No heavy workloads, no deadlines and certainly not negative emotions. He always brought it to an end, one thing at a time…well, unless he was in the kitchen, then it was everything at the same time.
Mark was too nervous though and even the minor tap, tap, tap sound of Perry’s fingertips on the laptop’s keyboard along with the low vzoom of the laid back and hardly even trying laptop fan, so even and rhythmical that should seem a lullaby under calmer circumstances, was too much for him to handle right now. And his pulled taut nerves were straining against the constant input of auditory information. It is common knowledge that when something does not bend, then it breaks, and taut nerves are as unbending as bamboo wood is the opposite. He decided that he needed a smoke and some time alone. ‘A smoke…huh! A box of benzos would not be enough for me right now.’
He got up from the air mattress, with some difficulty. The air mattress seemed to enjoy his company a little too much to let him leave like that, without even a speck of physical disagreement; but Mark had no mind for cuddling with the needy substitute of a bed and he disregarded its efforts with a sudden flexion of his abs, an arching of his back and he was on his feet with minimal squeaking noise. He grabbed his cell and his smoking apparel from the desk beside him and walked out of the door as quietly as possible. Perry took a brief glance at him as Mark was slowly closing the door behind him; enough time for him to notice a scowl, and then he was in the dark hallway.
He moved past Zora’s bedroom, yellow light coming through the crack under the door. ‘She is still up as well though…well, at least I am not alone in my pointless worrying.’ He debated whether or not to invite her over for company, but quickly decided against it. ‘Each to their rituals’. He moved to the sitting room where he took a big comfy armchair that was facing towards the fireplace and turned it sideways so that it was now facing the dim light garden through a window. Duke was sleeping at his favorite spot, right above the gazebo steps. His large front paws and darker than black snout were glistening from the porch lights in the cold, humid night. Mark sucked a tiny white filter with his lips from its plastic prison, grabbed a frail paper from its papery cell and finally opened the pack of rolling tobacco for the third time today. The smell of new tobacco was one of his favorites and it still lingered in the pack. He took a long whiff before grabbing a measure with his fingertips to spread it on the thin rolling paper; one of his favorites right up there on the top along with freshly rained upon forest, Perry’s kitchen when he bakes and the fun and pleasurable cherry in the air by Escada, Christiana’s preferred perfume for the warm months of the year; it was his favorite for certain, and ever since he told her that, he thought that he had observed the percentage of times when he caught the sweet aroma on her was somewhat higher than previously… maybe. ‘What would she be doing now?’ There were no messages on his phone, no incoming calls either…he had expected something, a sign that she cared maybe, at least. He light his cig up and sucked in a long breath of smoke, which then he proceeded to sigh out heavily. He felt a bit calmer, a purely psychological yet still real feeling, then checked the time on his cell. It was 01:30. He drew another drag and called Christiana on her cellphone. Maybe he did not need a time to be completely alone. He searched for her contact number on his phone and slightly cracked the window open to let the smoke out.
It rang five times and Mark was about to press the big red button under her profile picture. It was the image of her sitting on a subway seat, trying to get her bag in front of her face and her right leg raised up in surprise to the camera’s flash. But before he could terminate the call, a gentle, soft voice answered “Mark?”
“Chris? ...Hey how are you doing?”
“I am good…how are you? That is the real question.” She seemed a bit reluctant to say the least.
“I am good too…hey listen, sorry for calling so late at night and all…I just felt like I needed to talk to you.”… ‘What a thing to say. I felt the need in 01:30’
She took her time to respond and Mark found another reason to feel bad about. “I was up, it’s ok.”
Mark lowered the microphone to take a drag and let it out, before he continued, “Look…all these things that they say about me on the news and the papers and the blogs and wherever…they are not true.”
“All of them? Most of the times it is not some of them, but even if a few are true then I never even knew you to begin with.” Mark could detect a slight tremble in her voice but…sadness? Fear? Anger? He could not tell.
“None of it! You do know me, I wouldn’t do these things. Burning people up? That alone is post-crazy shit. I am not crazy, you know it.”
“Really?”
She did not seem too certain. Mark could all but imagine her thin eyebrows arching the way they tend to do sometimes. “Really.”
“You did not kill two men… and set one on… you know.”
“I didn’t.” And he hadn’t…they were not men any more at that point... they were something less than animals...anthropomorphic mosquitos each and every one of them. Mosquitoes are considered one if not the most worthless species, ecologically speaking, eradicate them off the face of the earth and they say that Mother Nature would never even bother to bat an eye.
“There is a video you know… from multiple cameras. It’s grainy but it is you. I know it…and you were holding my umbrella at the beginning… so, are you lying to me?”
“Ask yourself, how. How could I have done something like this? And why would I do it?”
“That’s what I have been doing ever since I heard of it. And there is that fire at the café and they say that you have to do something with it as well…I don’t know.”
“It was my home you know. Why would I do something like this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look Chris…I care about you. You know I do, and these things that are happening right here and now… they are kind of complicated for me to explain at the moment.”
“Complicated…how cliché. I am not stupid…nothing is complicated when you get down to it. If you really do care, then maybe you should try and explain the situation to me.”
Mark really did care. And he did not want her to think poorly of him. That was certain. But his hands were tied and his lips were sealed, like any Knight’s were and definitely should be…but maybe not as harshly as of some hours earlier. The airtight applied sutures that kept his lips together as one, aided in their task by a heavy stainless steel, six digits combination padlock, both applied by the strict laws of the order, might have found themselves recently loosened if not discarded out of the blue like that, exchanged with a crappy stuck denim jeans zipper; one hard pull and he could let the truths fly away. ‘With some care though, these particular truths were so long in the cave of secrecy that they would certainly be layered with dust and dirt and cobwebs and they would be as agitated and hungry for the great out-doors as young, bored children after an hour of colorless class. No logical person could let them fly like that without a bath and a lecture on the modern day’s rules and tropes. These truths had after all almost no mortal human interaction for a considerable number of centuries.’ Why not though? The Order had kept everything low and quiet for centuries, with minimal number of mortals and handpicked agencies that knew of the supernatural world’s existence; the world had chosen to forg
et and we let it happen, we let humanity live its days out without agonizing over stuff that would bring them nothing other than stress and worries. ‘But maybe humanity was meant to live with some of that stress. We took monsters off the table and they raised the stock market in their place.’ But now, so many years later, after so many handfuls of not-prescribed sleeping pills and collective ignoring of certain facts there was a huge steer of the pot, a liberating toss of the beddings, a disturbance of the laundry basket, and the stink of raw, unwashed truths and facts that were hidden undisturbed in the bottom of the basket beneath their noses threatened to escape and finally nudge them. Something would doubtlessly rise to the surface of the ever stirring pond after such ripples that the big rock which was the attacks of the vampires would have made; and if the ripples were still too mild to disturb the lily-pad upon which humanity’s collective awareness was taking a nap upon…then the Order had predicted a hell of a landslide into the lake that would certainly suffice not only to stir the lily-pad but maybe break it’s stem off and send it forth, on an unpleasant trip towards the waterfalls of reawakening.
“Mark, Mark…Mark.” Christiana’s rhythmical calling of his name brought him back from his thoughts. And his mind was made…somewhat. She would never believe him if he told the truth either way…these things need their time.
“I am here. Sorry. Look… is there anything on TV about other arsons or terrorist attacks or bombings or stuff like that? Globally I mean.”
She got a bit startled by the question and the change in his temperament but she went along. “Yes, some. More than some I mean. People are losing their minds over it actually, it is everywhere and all over the internet. It is a conspiracy theorist’s heaven. People are scared.”
“It is way out on the furthest edge of the Bell curve right? Wouldn’t you say so?”