by D. N. Leo
As if a slow death would make the blood of his prey taste better.
He stared at the dying pulse of the prey. What’s the guy’s name? He couldn’t quite remember. Some scientist.
He looked up at a stretch of ice, shining in the reflection of the light from a research station. He loved the magnificence of Antarctica.
As he watched, the last pulse had stopped and he bent down to enjoy the feast.
Still-warm blood. The most delicious kind. He kneeled on the ice and absorbed the chill. The warmth of blood and the chill of ice mixed together, sending him into ecstasy.
As soon as he finished, he looked up at the stretch of shiny ice again. A shadow walked past him. A familiar scent engulfed him.
A scent of death. His own true death.
He stood up and turned around, looking at the vampire who had just arrived.
“How many times have I said you are not to feed on humans around here?” the other vampire asked. The exotically throaty voice purred through the icy air. The whisper of death.
“But their blood is a lot tastier than humans elsewhere.”
“In seven days, I couldn’t care less what you want to do. But before that, I am not pleased to see my order disrespected.”
He opened his mouth and was about to say something. But no word came out. His throat was ripped off. Blood spurted, pumping out in great streams. He slumped to the ice.
“Why?” he whispered, as he felt his life drain.
“Why what?”
“Why you work for a human?”
The other vampire crouched. “He pays well.”
“It’s not the money, is this? It’s …” that was all he could say before feeling his body spun in the air and smashed down on to the snow again. With so much blood lost, he was going to die anyway. He wasn’t going down that easily.
The other vampire pulled out a stake, brandished it, and thrust the stake at him. He grabbed the stake and broke it in two before it was able to pierce his chest. He used the broken end and slashed at the vampire who was executing him. He kept slashing even when the world started to fade around him. He wasn’t sure he touched the other vampire.
Maybe not.
A silver dagger punched through his heart. He looked down and saw his body disintegrating into pieces of black blood and gore.
This was the end of more than a hundred years being undead. “This is all because I fed on a human?”
“No. It’s because you fed where and when you shouldn’t. It’s because you disobeyed my order. There was only one creature who can disobey me. And you’re not him.” The vampire pulled the dagger out and stabbed at him again.
That was the last thing he saw in this very long, unnatural life.
CHAPTER 2
M adeline gasped at the trail of blood she saw running down the mirror. She darted over to wipe the blood off. But it had vanished before her eyes.
“Precognition sucks!” she muttered. She rarely had it, but once she did, it would be quite accurate.
She rushed to the wing next door and saw her beautiful twins sleeping peacefully in their secured cabin. The security shield was on and intact. Even if this universe crumbled, this cabin would still be there and her children would still be living inside it.
Security was the most important issue for her in Eudaiz. This universe was too far from Earth for her to get any help should anything happened to her children.
She left the bed room wing and scurried into the internal capsule, an egg-shape moving vehicle the size of a mini bus.
“Good morning, First Councillor. Where would you like to go?” a robotic voice came across with an exotic accent - a weird combination of British, South African, Australian and maybe Babylonian. That was a robotic voice experiment her husband had created to confuse her, she thought.
Ciaran, her beloved husband, had a wicked sense of humor. She had asked him to put her New York accent into the computer system, but he disagreed. He said the robot was to serve her, and to look at her from his perspective. Thus, they were not to speak like her.
“Control room,” she said.
The capsule zoomed out of their internal station, so smoothly that she wasn’t aware of the movement. In a heartbeat, she was in front of the control room. The gigantic steel door slid open when she approached. There was no need for her to verify with the security. Ciaran had ensured she felt at home as much as possible.
Madeline smiled to herself. Ciaran would never understand that, a year ago, home for her was a one-bed-room apartment in Manhattan, New York, which couldn’t, in any shape or form, compare to his lavish mansion in Henley-on-Thame, England. She wondered if the staff they placed there had been doing a good job in maintaining the place. She loved that palace. She and Ciaran had so many good memories there.
She pretended to forget the bad ones.
She rushed to the round control room, in which computer screens were like wallpaper.
At a gigantic work station on a raised platform, Ciaran swung his chair around and stood up. He smiled at her.
And she had forgotten what she came here for.
Her husband stood in front of her, making her stomach quiver uncontrollably with lust. An elegant six-foot-three body with all the muscles at the right places. Raven black hair that almost touched his shoulders. Intense smoky grey eyes that always pried the truth out of anyone at his pleasure. And the face of a dark angel that God had created when he was in the mood to pardon all sins on Earth.
“Good morning, First Councillor,” he said.
“You didn’t come home last night.” She pasted a pretend scowl on her face.
He approached. “I’m home,” he whispered and kissed the dimple on her left cheek.
“I meant the bedroom,” she said with a voice muffled by his lips which had migrated from her dimple to her mouth.
“I’ll make it up to you,” he said, his hands starting to get real busy somewhere on her body.
Then her psychic mind clicked and she started to read his mind.
“Damn it!” she cursed out loud and stopped the kiss. Her talent was like a curse and it mostly kicked in at very inconvenient occasions. She saw dark corners in his mind. Dark thoughts that loomed over everything. They were consuming him.
He tucked a strand of stray hair behind her ear. “You knew. That’s why you came here?”
She shook her head. “I had a vision. An old friend of mine was dead. Blood was everywhere. I don’t know why and how. Then the blood trailed on my hand and appeared on the bedroom mirror. I don’t know what it meant.”
He held her hands, his eyes filled with compassion. “There have been so many deaths, including your loved ones’, before we came here. Very few of them that you saw. Now you saw this one. This person must be a very special friend.”
She lifted a shoulder, trying to keep a neutral expression. “I was writing a periodic column about Latin American politics. It was the early days in my career. We dated briefly.”
Ciaran cocked an eyebrow.
Damn! He was giving her that you’re-not-telling-me-everything look. “All right,” she said, looking up through her lashes. “We got kinda intimate.”
He folded his arms on his chest and looked at her.
Now it was Ciaran’s usual corporate boardroom unfathomable look that she was dealing with. And whenever that happened, she lost. “All right, all right, he was my first serious boyfriend.” She could feel blood rush to her face. She hated when she blushed.
Ciaran laughed. “There now.” He pulled her into his arms and embraced her. “I’m glad you weren’t a nun before we got married. How long was the intimacy with your first serious boyfriend?”
“Will you believe me if I say it was a one-night-stand?”
“No. Because you are not a one-night-stand type.”
“All right. It was six months. Are you jealous, Ciaran?”
He smiled. “No. I’m not jealous of the past because I can’t fix it. What I am getting at here, Madeline, is that I’m a
fraid that your precognition has something to do with the now. With me.”
“Is that why the dark thoughts are looming in your mind right now?” she asked.
He sat back in a chair at his computer station. His eyes were so dark it stabbed at her heart. “Maybe. I can’t see the connection yet. But your precognition is always triggered when something is going to happen to me or the kids… I have to make a trip back to Earth.”
She approached, leaning against his desk. “Well, since we moved to this wonderful universe, you’ve made several trips back to Earth. What’s the difference this time?” she asked while playing with his thick black hair.
“I have never been to the location. It’s a crossed dimension between Earth and a paranormal world. It could be tricky.”
“Where exactly on Earth?” she raised and eyebrow.
“Antarctica.” He shook his head and repeated, “The magnificent Antarctica.”
“It’s a continent, Ciaran!”
“I know. But the paranormal world crosses the entire Antarctica. It’s one of the most notorious territories of vampires.”
Madeline narrowed her eyes. “And we don’t have any of that kind on staff? Even if the vampires are causing trouble there, surely you can send commanders rather than going yourself. If anything happens to you, who will take care of billions of your citizens?”
Ciaran ran a hand through her hair and tucked a strand behind her ear. “Vampires are a small issue. It’s Hoyt that I’m worried about.”
“Hoyt Flanagan? I thought we can’t have intelligence in Xiilok.”
Ciaran shook his head. “No. But we do everywhere else. Hoyt’s sent people back to Earth to search for six keys across different dimensions. The first key is Virgo. It’s hidden in the Antarctica now. If he obtains all six keys, he will unlock a powerful source of energy that we don’t have access to. Not only will he take over our Eudaiz, other universes will be in trouble too.”
“And the multiverse will be in chaos,” Madeline whispered. “But you’re the king of Eudaiz, Ciaran. We can’t afford anything happen to you.”
“It’s Hoyt we’re dealing with, Madeline. I can’t send our commanders in to get killed. Plus, sending people there will leave their stations vulnerable. If it turns out to be a decoy, then we just open our door to Hoyt. It won’t take me long to figure out which is which. I can retrieve the first key, then send people to retrieve other keys.”
Madeline nodded, knowing that what Ciaran suggested made sense.
Hoyt used to be a sorcerer on Earth, but had worked his way up to be the most dangerous creature in the Cosmo. He operated at Ciaran’s calibre, so there was no point for her to suggest any strategy to deal with him.
Hoyt had worked for more than five hundred years toward the power of Eudaiz, including killing and destroying lives of thousands of humans and creatures. But Ciaran had turned his dream into dust. Now Hoyt was plotting to be the ruler of Xiilok — the land of multiversal outlaws; and he might get it this time.
That universe was ungoverned by any creature. But it was guarded by the most mysterious and powerful force that even Ciaran couldn’t understand. If Hoyt got to the power in Xiilok, he would become invincible.
“This is a mission that has direct impact on the survival of Eudaiz. It’s the one that a king should personally handle,” Ciaran said.
Madeline smiled. She wasn’t surprised at all by his response. That was her husband. Her king. He hadn’t changed a bit since she fell in love with him. It didn’t matter if they lived on Earth or in Eudaiz. It didn’t matter if they were humans or Eudaizian. He was her Ciaran and he was always the same.
“I know you are the best, Ciaran. But you don’t have psychic ability like I do. When you have to navigate around that big lump of ice, you will need me.”
“I can’t take you. It’s dangerous.”
“I’m your First Councillor. Also, it would only be a fraction of Eudaiz time when we come back here.”
Ciaran contemplated.
Madeline asked, “Do you have any other information apart from knowing the key is somewhere in that continent? Because it might take a while to search.”
“It’s in a research station. I don’t know which one and whether it is an active station.”
Her eyes widened and she whispered a name… “Antonio.”
“Which one?” Ciaran asked and turned around toward his computer to enter a search command.
“Antonio Castro is the friend I just had the precognition about. He’s a journalist. But from memory, his sister is a researcher at a station in Antarctica — my prediction — an Argentine station.”
Ciaran grinned.
Damn! Her stomach quivered again.
CHAPTER 3
P eter pushed the door into a small office of the research chief, Adam Rodriguez. The chief looked up, arching an eyebrow. The small office wasn’t enough room for a large man like Peter to steam and pace back and forth, so Peter stayed on the one spot. Frustration oozed out of his every pore.
“We found Luke,” Peter said.
“I know. That’s why I’m calling the base… before I was rudely interrupted.”
“The base? Your base, you mean?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Adam slammed the phone handle down.
Peter gritted his teeth. “We never had a base. You think I don’t know? When I went back home last month, I looked it up. This station never existed. It isn’t real.”
“Yet you came back here. Is that because the money in your bank account is real?” Adam leaned back in his chair.
“I figured this might be an illegal station. I was fine with it. I work for money and I’m not killing anyone. But I am not going to die for this job.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Did you see Luke’s body?” Peter asked, his eyes wide with the memory. “He has puncture marks on his neck and he has no blood in him.”
“You’re suggesting he was killed by a vampire?”
Peter waved his arms in the air. “What else could cause such an injury? A seal? I didn’t know seal sucked blood out of people.”
“You have scientific evidence to prove that vampires suck blood out of people, don’t you, Peter? Or have you been reading too many fantasy novels. For God’s sake, you’re a scientist.”
“I want to go home. I don’t care. I want to leave. You pay me the last pay check and I’m out of here.”
“I’m not the one who pays you, Peter,” Adam said, trying to keep his voice calm. “I can call the base about your resignation. I can certainly put in a more legit reason than the ‘fear of vampire attacks’ — so that you can get a reference and a job elsewhere.”
Peter looked down. “All right. Thank you. You’re a good boss, Adam.”
Adam waved his hand absently, signalling Peter to get out of his office.
“Seriously, it didn’t concern you when you saw the fang marks on Luke’s neck?”
Adam shifted on his chair. “I’ve seen stranger things here during my time, Peter. But this one is only a crude joke. A warning from a rival station.”
“Jesus Christ, a human life isn’t a crude joke, Adam!”
Adam peeled his glasses off his face and put them on his desk. He rubbed at his temples. “It is for those we are dealing with. This is a ghost station. ‘Ghost’ means it isn’t on official records. Not a spirit of some dead person. The station serves the interest of very powerful individuals. You and I are living in their pockets.”
“They placed us here for the minerals,” Peter challenged. “They want to steal minerals that legally belong to governments.”
“I’m glad you come to your senses. It’s all about money. A massive amount of money. And of course, there are unaccountable numbers of people and ghost stations here fighting for it. Now if you’d excuse me, I’ll call the base to see what they want to do about Luke.”
Peter nodded and turned around to leave the office. Then he stopped when his eyes landed o
n the corner of a small book shelf. Then he stepped backward toward the door.
“What’s that, Peter?”
Adam turned around and looked in the direction where Peter was staring. On the book shelf was a small clear bottle of red liquid.
It was blood in the bottle. Peter was sure of it.
Adam stood up. “It’s not mine,” he said.
Peter stumbled on a chair and broke the leg in the process. He picked up the broken chair leg and pointed the sharp end at Adam.
“Jesus Christ, you think I’m a vampire, Peter?”
Adam walked around his desk.
“Don’t move. Don’t approach me or I’ll stake you,” Peter said.
He knew vampires were fast. There was no way he’d turn his back and run. He stepped back toward the door.
“Peter!”
“Don’t move. I’m serious. I’ll stake you.” With his last threat, he felt a blast of cold air blowing at his back. A chill ran up his spine. Soft, cold fingers grabbed his neck and pain flared as pointy objects penetrated the vein on his neck. He knew his jugular was savaged. By the look on Adam’s face, Peter could tell Adam had found concrete evidence of the existence of paranormal creatures.
CHAPTER 4
Buenos Aires, the capital city of Argentina, was busy. The least conspicuous way Ciaran could make their arrival was to teleport there during the night to the outskirts of the city. Once they landed, he and Madeline would turn their silver blood off and became ordinary humans.
Silver blood or eudqi was a special energy source that gave them supernatural power; and they could choose to use the power or not. It ran inside their body in a form of semi-transparent silvery liquid.
But the power came with weaknesses. The silver blood only ran in a particular spot on their body and it was unique to the individual. If they were using the power, and got injured where the silver blood leaked, it would certainly be fatal. If they didn’t use the power and were injured, they could turn the power on, and it would heal the injury. They would never die as human if they were careful enough.