It was darker there than in the caves of Balthazar, darker than beyond the gates of Hell. It was an evil place, this man’s brain, and the seat of his being. If he was not the devil incarnate, he was but one step removed. He was human, that was true, not a SIR. He was mortal, his bones brittle and his skin just a thin skein holding together the mass of the body, but in his brain he was his own god, greater than man, divorced from humanity in this way, not of it and wholly apart.
Upton flew from this place, this palace of putrid evil. Not because it disgusted him, but because he found it so gorgeous it was like looking into the furnace of a sun. It was so dark it blinded, so dreadful it burned, so debauched it caused a shrill mental cry even from the great vampire.
Upton tottered on his feet and the man reached out both hands to steady him. Upton blinked, unbelieving.
“Are you the devil, Lucifer? Are you God’s fallen angel of might?”
The man smiled as if complimented. “I may be. I do not know the answer to that question. God will not speak to me and there is no other to tell me the truth. I only know I was destined to meet someone like you, with your powers, and that when that day came I only had to convince you to know me in order to love me.”
Surprise at these words staggered Upton. He tried not to let the other know this, but he had never met anyone like the man and knew instantly he never would. It was true. He loved him as if he were someone to guard and keep close at hand. This was a human who walked without light, without conscience, without creed or law. He was impervious to rule or convention. In this he was like a god and above even most vampires Upton had known. Many vampires, especially those like Mentor, wallowed in sentiment and in morality, hoping to find and clutch their souls from departing, hoping God would one day show his face and forgive.
Not this man. He had never once asked after God or worried a moment for his soul. Death held no sway over him. He did not lust after forgiveness and heaven. Fear was just a word and not an emotion he had ever felt. He was like an instrument. A bludgeon. An axe. A…sword. A mighty sword that would, if he permitted it, be wielded by someone as evil as he, but no other.
The man let loose his arms and Upton stood straight and steady again. “Come with me.” Upton turned and began to walk down the beach away from him, trusting he would follow. “I want to speak more with you, if only for the sake of my curiosity. But right now I must feed. I hunger and need blood.”
“Yes,” the man said, coming alongside him in an easy stride. He was like a dark swarm of silver bees keeping pace with the vampire master. “I’ll help you find a victim. A treat. A special thrill for your palate. I am very good at this.”
~*~
His name was Jacques Karin and he asked Upton to call him Jacques, please.
The moment the vampire took hold of him, Jacques knew he was being attacked by a supernatural. It had to be a vampire, a real one, for the beast went directly for the jugular. Upton was no marauding serial killer or vampire pretender. He stank of death, was cold as ice, and his business was to warm himself with Jacques’ blood.
Only a scant time was required for Jacques to understand everything. He had met supernaturals before, though never a vampire. Once he’d wrestled an angel and twice he had battled demons. Real ones. In a haunted villa in Spain he had talked to ghosts, and in Vienna he had been sitting at a fountain when a woman approached, drawn to him. She had sat at his side for an hour and performed magic no human could have created, from producing a silver plate of grapes, to making his ears melt down his neck as if made of wax. Once he knew her for a witch, and a real one, she let the dripping flesh of his ears creep back up his head like leeches attaching themselves onto their rightful places.
If there was one thing Jacques Karin was not, it was insane. True, he had come upon more of the earth’s rare supernaturals than anyone he had ever known, but it had to do with who he was. His life’s quest was to know exactly what. He was no supernatural himself, no witch, ghost, ghoul, vampire, angel or demon. But he drew them to him like a magnet, so it was certain he was not quite a normal man either.
Upton had asked if he was Lucifer and he answered honestly. He did not know. Surely if he were Lucifer he could create miracles much greater than the Viennese witch could. He could bellow louder than the angel he wrestled could. He could dig deeper trenches in the flesh of a man than the demons he’d battled.
But he could do none of these things.
His destiny, as far as he could tell, was to be of service to these…others. And some day he would know why he attracted the supernaturals and what sort of human he was.
Once he had invited the vampire, he had felt the beast enter his brain. It was as if an icy scalpel had sliced through the gray matter in one clean swipe that healed itself over instantly. It was physically painful to be so forcibly entered, but Jacques endured it and was glad. It was the only way the great vampire could know about him. Intrigued, as Jacques knew he would be, Upton let him live to prosper another day.
Now he stalked with him, looking for prey. He had promised him a treat and that is what he would procure for him, for Jacques knew Cannes well. He knew where the tastiest morsels of humankind lived, knew their habits, and knew instinctively what might please the vampire.
It was a very long way from the beach, but Jacques led the vampire to an ancient mansion at the top of a hill facing the sea. Below them the sparkling lights of the city spread out like a sequined skirt.
“This had better be good,” Upton said in a growl, patience thinning, and hunger causing his incisors to grow until he could not close his lips over them. “If this is a merry chase…”
Jacques merely smiled. It would be more than good. It would be phenomenal.
They carefully approached the mansion from the left side where cypress trees hugged the stony rampart. No guard dog barked and the night was devoid of sound. There, at a low window open to the night and without screening, white chiffon curtains fluttered. The two men peered inside.
A rosy light suffused the room from lamps with rose damask shades. A young girl not yet fully a woman lay across a bed piled high with mattresses and covered with data blanket material that shivered repeatedly with rainbow colors. She was on her stomach, raised on elbows, tiny remote buds that worked as earphones in her ears. She idly turned the pages of a fashion magazine reflected from a smaller data blanket spread before her.
Jacques heard the old vampire grunt in admiration. For the girl was the most beautiful in all of Cannes, not only in Jacques’ opinion, but also in the whole populace. Her name was Rosie Rachel, her father the incredibly rich Marc Rachel, architect of the city’s tallest and loveliest new buildings and theaters.
Jacques had met Rosie at a dinner given by her father for Cannes’ most important dignitaries. She had sat at the opposite end of the table from her father, as her mother was dead. The company could not keep their eyes off her. It was her skin, pale as the interior of an abalone shell; her lips, plump and naturally red as pomegranate; her limbs svelte and perfect; her movements as graceful as a dancer. And it was her eyes, blue as the Aegean, speckled with sunlit yellow, like blue diamonds hiding a sunset.
She would have to be as lovely in her blood as in her person it seemed to Jacques. He knew of no woman or man in all of the city as beautiful as she.
Even the old vampire had to note how exquisite a prize she was.
“Do you like her?” Jacques whispered, though had he spoken with a natural volume the girl would not have heard him. She was obviously listening to music or speech coming from her data blanket; the little bud remotes were plugged tightly into her ears.
“Oh, do I,” Upton crooned, climbing easily over the sill of the window into the room.
Jacques stood where he was, mesmerized by the supernatural’s ease of entry into the house. He had not actually climbed over the sill as much as he had risen and been lifted, never having touched the sill itself at all before settling down on his feet inside the girl’s bedroom.
The vampire paused and frowned at a corner in a far wall. Jacques peered inside and saw the SIR sitting upright on a stool there. Evidently the girl had turned the SIR off, as his eyes were glazed and he was not moving at all. He was probably there as a guard for the girl. It was her unlucky night to have chosen her privacy over safety.
It happened then in a flash. Jacques stuck his head over the sill to ogle. Upton seemed to be next to the window and then he was at the bed instantly without Jacques having seen him make the distance. He took the girl by her shoulders, clamping his bony hand over her mouth to keep her from crying out, and he lifted her as if she were a feather from the bed into his arms. The buds popped from her ears and flew across the bed to the floor.
The way the struggling couple was turned sideways to the window allowed Jacques to see the deed as it was done. He found himself licking his lips just as if it were he taking that firm pale neck with his lips and drinking from the pounding vein.
The girl was off her feet, dangling in the vampire’s arms. She kicked, her bare feet striking against her attacker’s legs. Her arms flailed about, her fists balled and thumping the vampire about the head and shoulders. Not a sound came from her mouth clamped behind the vampire’s hand.
Jacques could not see her blue sunlit eyes, but he expected they were as great and round and bulging as eggs.
The legs and arms ceased their thumping slowly, as if she fought right to the end when the life energy had been stolen completely away. She hung limp in the vampire’s arms, her head over to the side, the vampire’s face buried in her neck, her golden hair trailing down her back.
Upton dropped her. Her body, lighter since it was stripped of most of the blood within it, made hardly a sound. Upton stepped back and straightened. He turned only his head on his neck to stare first at the silenced SIR and then at Jacques. His face was pink with new blood; his eyes shone like liquid pools of darkness. He smiled and Jacques saw his teeth were still covered with her blood.
He was at that moment a glorious creature.
Stepping over the corpse, Upton came to the window, leaned down and flew out of it. Jacques turned to follow the path of his short flight. He walked to him and kept his silence for the verdict as they strolled down the hillside back to the city lights.
“She was very sweet,” Upton said. “You might be an asset to me, after all.”
Jacques bowed slightly from the waist, but withheld his satisfied smile. “And now we will talk?” He asked.
“Come with me, Frenchman,” Upton said. “Indeed we will talk.”
~*~
Jacques was the first person ever to enter Upton’s Cannes home. He had lived here ever since that awful abortion of justice happened on the Thailand mountainside when Mentor decimated his troops. In the era of ancient Rome decimate meant to kill one of every ten soldiers in a legion, to punish them for cowardice. But Mentor had killed all of Upton’s army. His legion was gone. Decimated in the modern sense.
At the door, the locks automatically obeying Upton’s command to open, Upton stepped aside and ushered Jacques before him. The lights were still shining though daylight was beginning to creep over the eastern horizon.
All the shades and draperies were closed, but an expensive air conditioning system kept the house ventilated.
Upton led the human into the living room where Jacques sat in one of the leather chairs. He sat patiently, quietly, with his hands easy on the tops of his thighs. His gaze never left Upton.
Now Upton turned a bit to look around the room as if he had never seen it before and wondered if it was appealing to others. “Is this a beautiful room? Tell me truthfully.”
“I will never try to lie to you,” Jacques said. He then looked around him, taking in the statues, the paintings, the furnishings and the carpets. He finally looked back at his host and said, “It’s a palace fit for a king. I like it very much. It is not too modern.”
Upton smiled, his vanity something he could not control. He sat on the velvet sofa and draped one arm along the back. He stared sternly at Jacques. “All right, now tell me about yourself.”
“You know most of me since you searched my mind, but I am willing to tell you anything.”
“What about the angel?” The encounters Jacques had experienced with otherworldly beings intrigued Upton mightily. He had glimpsed some of these encounters in the human’s brain, but not enough to understand completely. He was not sure there was such a thing as an angel, for it implied there was a heaven where angels originated and a god whom they served. Surely the Frenchman believed he had wrestled a true angelic being, but men often deceived themselves, or misinterpreted incidents because of their beliefs.
Jacques sat back comfortably in the leather chair and stared off toward the lime silk walls as he prepared to relate his tale. “I was engaged in an affair with a woman in Paris. It was just after I’d finished my degree at the university. She was a student then, not yet graduated. I’d had many women by that time, but no real liaisons that lasted longer than a few months. This woman—Adrianne—took my fancy and before I knew it, I was reeling with love for her. Is that how you say it? Reeling? She was a beauty, almost as lovely as the girl you took tonight…”
Jacques paused and glanced at the vampire to be sure he understood just how beautiful Adrianne had been. Then he returned his gaze to the walls and continued.
“We were inseparable and soon I moved into her flat. I didn’t know at the time that she had an old boyfriend for whom she still had feelings. She was secretly seeing him, trying to decide if she should leave me.” He sighed deeply, as if recalling these memories were a little painful, which they were. It was the first time he had ever committed murder. He felt no remorse about killing Adrianne, but what it had brought upon him was anything but a scene he hoped to repeat.
“When I found out about the disloyalty my jealousy knew no bounds. I have a temper…” Again he glanced at the vampire, who now was smiling. “I have a temper that is legend. Ever since a child things have come to me easily. Money, education, women. When events do not go my way, it happens that I want to destroy.” He shrugged.
“I asked her about the secretive meetings and she lied to me, seeing, I guess, that I was furious. I took her by the hair and pinned her to the floor, sitting astride her. Still she lied, refusing to admit she was playing me a fool. I had my hands around her throat, strangling her. By that time my temper was…out of bounds. I could not have stopped had she begged on her knees for forgiveness. She was the first woman I’d made any kind of commitment to and I was just about to ask her to marry me. I thought I’d spend my life with her and she’d help…change me. I knew by then I was different, that I lacked something other men took for granted, which I believe you would call a soul. Adrianne, until this betrayal, appeared to be good enough in her own soul to rescue me from myself. A savior, if you will.”
He looked at Upton now with a level stare devoid of emotion. “I was young then and still stupid. I never should have thought myself less than perfect in all ways, but knowing Adrianne had made me think I was defective and needed healing.
“I was wrong. I was a deluded boy. Now I know the defection lay within her, not me.
“Nevertheless,” he continued brightly, “these are the circumstances that led me to want to hurt her. If she could not give herself wholly to me in devotion and help me rise above my baser instincts then what good was she to me?”
“Indeed,” Upton said, his face now serious.
Jacques felt the vampire’s impatience growing. He had not spoken of the angel yet. He launched now into that telling.
“I strangled her that night. I sank back on my heels once she was dead. I was out of breath and red in the face from exertion and fury.
“The room was suddenly hot, the air feeling as if it had been super heated, as if a dynamo had been imposed into the room. I got to my feet, Adrianne’s corpse lying sprawled on the floor, and tried to understand why the room’s climate had chang
ed so abruptly. Until this point in my life I had not come upon any supernatural. I was not ready for it, wouldn’t have believed it could happen or that there existed in the world other than human beings.”
Now Upton sat forward on the sofa, his arm coming down from the sofa’s back. He clasped his hands together.
Jacques smiled inside, knowing his revelation was going to blow the old vampire away. Vampires, he expected, would not wish to admit the existence of angels. It might mean they would be called to task for their crimes.
He continued, Adrianne’s old betrayal and the pain it had caused him now taking a back seat to what he had to say to his audience of one. “The angel appeared. I swear it. It came from the ether into being right before me. I stepped back, startled, but unafraid. Along with my great temper, I have never been afraid of anything. Anything. That may not be something good for me, but there it is even so.”
“Are you sure it was not a data blanket projection? Some kind of techno guardian?”
“I’m sure.” Jacques said. “Absolutely sure. It was not a SIR or a projection.
“The angel solidified and was as real as you or I. He stood two feet taller than me, the top of his head brushing the ceiling. At that point I could see he had wings, great wide muscular apparatuses attached to his shoulder blades, but they were folded so that the tips dragged the floor. They were not made of feathers as depicted in ancient paintings by the masters. Not at all! I found this more startling than his sudden appearance or that he must be other than a human being.
“His wings were covered over with skin the same color as the rest of his body, and I could see the skeletal outline of bones beneath flesh. He was not dressed in garb, but stood naked…and without gender. There was nothing between his legs except smooth light skin where his genitals should have been. I only call him male because of his masculine face. No one would have mistaken his gender from his visage.”
SCROLLS OF THE DEAD-3 Complete Vampire Novels-A Trilogy Page 67