I nodded in return.
I decided the best course of action was to ask a bartender. But ask them what? I knew what he looked like. Almost three hundred years ago. What did he look like now? Was he even going by the same name? Most of those I had encountered over the years had kept some form of their name. Many vampires had moved to America, a melting pot of cultures that allowed them to usually keep their last names unless they were very unusual, or non-existent.
Lazarus of Tyrus wasn’t exactly a name that would roll off the tongue at the DMV. But would someone like Lazarus change his name? Outside, maybe, but in here? I couldn’t see it. His name was known, he was one of the oldest.
He would use it here.
I pushed my way to the bar, most yielding willingly when they saw me, especially the women. I leaned on top of the bar, drawing one of the bartenders to me with a finger.
“Have you see Lazarus of Tyrus here lately?”
The young man shrugged. “I don’t know names, I just work here.” He motioned at one of the alcoves behind me, on the second floor. “Ask him, he’s here all the time, seems to know everyone.”
“Thanks.” I turned, back to the bar, both elbows resting on it as I looked up at the alcove just pointed out. The man sitting there, staring out as if surveying his domain, had at least four other vampires with him, and a dozen thralls hanging off them. He looked at me and I nodded. He returned the acknowledgement, and motioned for me to join him.
A quick scan of the area and I found the staircase winding up to the second level to my right, near where the human entrance was. As far as I could tell, this was a nightclub like any other, except for its member’s only portion of clientele. I wondered how many of these kids wouldn’t make it home tonight. The rules seemed pretty strict, and I observed a bouncer stopping a vampire from leaving out the human entrance with a girl. That at least provided some separation, and I guessed only the new guys tried to break them.
It seemed the rules laid out for me were enforced.
I had to watch my chest. I couldn’t risk anyone setting me up to take a fall for something I didn’t do. This was unfamiliar territory, with more vampires than I had been exposed to since I had been turned. But I was probably safe here, judging from the half dozen bouncers, all vampires. What do you have to do to become a bouncer here? Was it just one of those things you did for fun for a while, then moved on? One of the great things about immortality is you could try pretty much any job you wanted, since you weren’t exactly burning up the years until retirement. You could even train, go to university, apprentice. It worked especially well if you were turned around my age. Early to mid-twenties. You looked the part of the student, of the young, eager new employee.
A human bumped into me, late forties, probably a sugar daddy. “Sorry, son.”
I gave him half a smile and a grunt. “Son.” I’m old enough to be your… I didn’t want to think what I could be. Sometimes it was depressing. But being turned at my age also had its disadvantages. Sometimes you just weren’t taken seriously. But there was something to be said for experience and wisdom, and what that could do to a face. Just an expression can add ten years. Squint the eyes a bit, furl the brow, and suddenly you have wrinkles. In a dimly lit room, sometimes it was enough.
I reached the top of the stairs.
“Hi handsome.”
A buxom blonde blocked my path. I looked down at her goods, appreciating the surgeon’s technique. “Sorry, honey, no time.”
I stepped around her, my nostrils filled with her lust.
Sometimes being turned at my age also had its advantages.
But I usually resisted. Almost always. I still loved my wife like the day I was turned. Time doesn’t heal all wounds with perfect memory. But there were times where I had needs, and a girl like that would fulfill them, but I always made sure it was never near feeding time. When the body was fuelled by passion and lust, the urges could be overwhelming, and it was sometimes all I could do to maintain enough control that the woman I was with didn’t end up as my next meal.
I approached the room I had been invited to, and stepped inside. The man on the couch, perhaps mid-thirties, dark, shoulder-length hair, a scar on his cheek from before he was turned, sat on a plush burgundy couch, his arms stretched across the back, two girls tucked under.
“What is your name?”
His accent sounded Eastern European. I myself had taken great pains to rid myself of any accent, the muddled one I did have confusing anyone as to where I might be from, but distinctly American. No drawl. No Bronx attitude. Just good ole’ plain un-Queen’s English without a hint of a foreign accent. It caused less questions, less raised eyebrows. When you’re forced to move around every ten or twenty years, it didn’t pay to have people asking where you were from due to some twang.
“Zander Varga. And you?”
“Artyom Novikov.”
“I’ve heard of you, on the boards.”
“Good.” He pointed a finger at me from around a brunette. “But you, you I have not heard of.”
“I keep a low profile.”
He pursed his lips. “But not tonight.”
I shook my head. “No, I’m looking for someone.”
“Looking can be dangerous. Finding, even more so.”
I nodded. “True, but sometimes it’s necessary.”
“And who is it you seek?”
“When I saw him last, he went by the name of Lazarus of Tyrus.”
Novikov’s right eyebrow shot up half an inch. “A dangerous man. An old man. A wise man.” He leaned forward slightly. “A changed man.”
“Changed? In what way?”
“I think it best you discover for yourself.”
I kept my emotions in check. It had been a long time since I had encountered anyone who knew Lazarus. “Do you know where he is?”
Novikov nodded.
“Are you going to tell me?”
He shook his head.
“Why not?”
“It is not my place to send someone after another of our kind when vengeance is so clearly the reason. If I did, and people were to find out, how could I trust that others would not betray me?”
I wasn’t sure what to say, so I kept my mouth shut, hoping he’d continue.
“But, I will do this for you.” He pulled out a cellphone and sent a text message. I watched, unsure of what was happening, but acutely aware that several more vampires had gathered behind me. I had the distinct impression only the rules were keeping me alive right now, and for how long, I couldn’t be sure.
His phone vibrated.
And he smiled.
“Lazarus would like to meet.”
My heart thudded. I felt alive. “Where and when?”
“Outside, our entrance, five minutes.”
I nodded. “You have my thanks.”
He smiled and tilted his head, closing his eyes briefly, as if it were nothing. “In the end, you may not want to thank me.”
“I understand.”
“You may think you do, but I believe you do not.” He shrugged his shoulders, putting his arms around the two girls flanking him. “However, that is not my concern. Go”—he flicked a wrist—“you are boring me now.”
I decided wearing out my welcome was of no benefit. I bowed slightly, then headed for the stairs, the bust of lust still standing there, a smile flashing across her face at my return, replaced by a pout as I walked by. Descending the steps, I crossed the floor, rounded the bar, and stepped through the gates of flesh blocking the “Member’s Only” exit.
The door man looked up from his newspaper, shaking it with a fist. “You know, sometimes this city really depresses me.”
“You should have seen it twenty years ago.”
“I’ve lived here almost two hundred. And yes, twenty years ago was worse crime wise. I meant financially. Wall Street is a mess. If we don’t get these guys under control, and soon, there’s going to be American Brides sites on the Internet.”
/> I chuckled. “That would be a twist.”
He retrieved my weaponry and placed it on the counter.
“Leaving so soon?”
“I found what I came for,” I said as I replaced the dozens of items in their proper hiding places.
“I fear you have. He’s already here.”
My eyebrows shot up and I sniffed. Rage consumed me, and my heart pounded in its chest as it hadn’t in years, as it hadn’t since the day he took my wife. He was here. Lazarus. The man I had been seeking for almost three hundred years. And tonight he would die.
And tonight I would be at peace.
I felt a hand grab my arm.
I spun around, snarling, my incisors bared, my eyes burning with the bloodlust.
“Be careful.” He sniffed. “He’s not alone.”
I tore my arm away. I didn’t care. This was a moment nearly three hundred years in the making, and it was going to happen, no matter how many of them there were. I charged through the door, and out into the dimly lit warehouse district.
And there he was, not twenty feet away, leaning against the driver side door of a ’72 Gran Torino, its engine still running. His face was exactly as I remembered it. Late thirties, rough with an age that even vampire blood couldn’t hide. He was almost two thousand years old, among the first turned if legends were true.
I drew my sword and he raised a finger, but nothing else. “Nah ah,” he said, wagging the finger at me. “First, control your bloodlust, and look around you.”
A snarl erupted from my throat, but I looked around, and found myself surrounded by ten others. I stopped, slowly calming myself, steadying my breaths, relaxing the grip slightly on my sword. I could feel the burning in my eyes, in my gums, ease. And those approaching from every direction stopped.
Lazarus motioned with his chin at my sword. Is that what you used to kill Tarkan?”
I shook my head. “No, he killed himself.”
“I figured he wouldn’t have given me up. Far too loyal.”
“Never equate fear with loyalty.”
Lazarus bowed slightly. “Fair enough. Fear then.” He sniffed. “Odd that I don’t sense any from you, despite”—he waved his hand at the others—“your situation.”
A grunt escaped me. “I’m prepared to die.” I took a step forward. “Are you?”
Those surrounding me began to close in when Lazarus motioned for them to stay back.
“As I said the first time we met, I have no intention of dying.” He jabbed the air with his finger. “Ever.”
“I apologize if I mess up your plans.”
He dismissed my statement with a flick of his wrist. “Big talk, that’s all it is. You may kill my followers, but you’ll never reach me. I’ve been at this too long. Almost two thousand years. I was the first to be turned by him.”
I stopped for a second. This could be interesting. “Him?”
He smiled. “You have no idea who you are, what you are, do you?”
“A vampire. Whatever the hell that is.”
“Vampires are a modern myth created by man to explain something they couldn’t understand. We allowed them to call us that, and embraced it ourselves. But we’ve been around far longer than the word.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “Let me tell you a little story, about a man named Jesus, and how he died.”
“Are you kidding me?”
His eyes narrowed. “I never kid.”
I could sense the tension of the situation slowly easing, meaning I would live at least a few minutes more. Hearing him out would buy me time. “Go ahead.”
“You know who Jesus is?”
There were chuckles from the others, but not me.
I dropped my head slightly to the front and side, raising my eyebrows with an “are you kidding me” expression.
“Of course you do,” he said, his smile begging to be torn off his face. “Jesus, if we are to believe the Bible, was the son of God. A fact I know to be true.”
Okay, this might be interesting. I believed in God, and believed in Jesus, but I always took it on faith. After all, I was born in a time when almost everyone believed, believed wholeheartedly. My feelings on the matter hadn’t changed, and in fact I prayed every day that when I was eventually freed of this existence, I would go to Heaven and reunite with my wife.
“And just how do you know it’s true?”
“Because we”—his hand circled to include them all—“are descendants of God’s vengeance for His son’s death.”
This time he was met with more of a “Huh?” expression.
“You are aware of the passages in the Bible that describe his interrogation with the High Priest after his arrest.”
“Like you I have perfect memory.”
“And you remember the guard who slapped our Lord?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know his name?”
“No.”
“He was Malchus.”
“I thought Malchus was the one who Simon Peter struck the ear off of.”
“He was.”
“Then why would he hit Jesus?”
“This is the question that I am certain dogs him. Why would he strike Jesus, after Jesus not only healed him, but in so doing, proved who he was? If there was anyone in that room who had witnessed the truth, who knew the truth, it was this man, it was Malchus. So why did he do it?”
“Fear? Cowardice? If he spoke out, he too would die?”
Lazarus leaned back, a smile stretching across his face, clapping. “Bravo! Bravo!” He leaned forward again. “You are exactly right. It was cowardice.”
“And how do you know?”
“Because, my dear fellow, Malchus was my best friend.”
I wished at that moment that I didn’t want to kill him, to tear his throat out, stake his heart, and spit on the dust that remained. For here was living history. This man had been there, to witness the most important thing in history, yet he was evil incarnate.
Something twigged.
“You said ‘dogs him’. Present tense.” The tip of my sword dropped to the pavement. “You don’t mean…” I couldn’t finish the words. It was incredible. If it were true, it was proof of everything. It gave reason to the madness.
The smile was gone from Lazarus’ face. Not replaced by a satisfied sneer as I might have expected, but one of understanding, almost caring. “I see you are beginning to fathom the meaning of what I have told you.”
I nodded. “Tell me more.” It was almost a whisper. I couldn’t help it. I was drawn in like a little boy hearing his first fairy tale. Here were the answers I had been seeking for centuries, being handed to me on the proverbial silver platter, by my sworn enemy. Willingly. Almost graciously. What was going on?
“Malchus was ashamed of what he had done, but he was a coward.” He flicked his wrist. “Most men are. Even I was. People today have no idea how far things have progressed. Rome was order, but it was order through fear and subjugation, especially in the outer regions like Judea. We were all afraid. In those days, you kept your head down, your mouth shut, and went about your business.”
“And what was your business?”
He smiled, looking up, as if back through time. “I was a cobbler.”
My eyebrows shot up at that one. I had imagined slave trader, tax collector, banker, something evil or criminal in nature. But an honest, honorable trade? Never. Perhaps Lazarus was just like me at first, twisted by the bloodlust into the evil creature I had encountered that day on the farm. After two thousand years, would I be like him?
He looked at me. “Yes, I made shoes.” He smiled. “I was really quite good at it. I worked with my father out of our small home, and made a respectable living for the time. Malchus grew up in a house across the street, and was born the same year I was. We were inseparable from the time we could crawl. And it was I he came to that first night.”
He stopped, tears in his eyes. I was floored. This creature I had vilified had emotions, was actually sympathetic
. I said nothing, not trusting myself. He had killed my beloved, and he would die. Tonight.
He sighed. “The night the good Lord died, the streets were empty, dark, quiet. Everyone knew what they had done, and what they had done had been wrong. When the darkness had covered the land, when the earth had shook and the temple veil was torn, we all knew. We had let our leaders kill the Son of God. Jesus was who he had claimed to be, and we all lay in our beds that night, awake, fear in our hearts, wondering what vengeance God might take on us.
“But none came.
“Jesus said God was loving, not vengeful. And he was right. He didn’t take vengeance on us like he had the people of Egypt. Instead, he took vengeance on one man, and through him, the rest.”
“You mean—”
“He took vengeance on Malchus, and Malchus alone. He who had been shown compassion by His son only hours before, then brought him pain, and heartbreak. Heartbreak as he tried to understand why a man he had helped that very night, would hit him so. But Jesus would have forgiven him, but his father, that was another story.
“Malchus came to my house, after midnight, hammering on the door. I rose from my bed, waving off the others of my family, and invited him in. He was terrified. His eyes were bloodshot, red. He gripped his stomach with both hands, tearing at his robes. His cries woke the entire household. There was nothing I could do to quiet him, he was in so much pain, so much terror.
“I feared he would wound himself, so I and my brother held one arm, while my father and my youngest brother held the other. He was incredibly strong, and we had to literally kneel on his arms to hold them in place. He continued to get worse, babbling nonsense about a curse, when I slapped him as hard as I could. This snapped him back to reality and he stared me in the eyes, the old Malchus I had known and loved since we were toddlers back again, but only for moments.
“‘What is wrong?’ I asked.
“‘I have been cursed!’ he cried.
“‘What do you mean, cursed?’
“‘God has punished me for what I have done.’
“This terrified us all since we knew what had happened that very day. We had all been huddled in our beds, waiting to see what God’s vengeance might be. Could this be it? Could this be the start of his wrath? Could madness for us all be far behind?
Turned (Zander Vargar Vampire Detective, Book #1) Page 5