Primacy of Darkness

by Brock E. Deskins

  “I wouldn’t start planning a wedding just yet. What’s your name?”

  “Carol, or Circe when I’m online. Oh, and Kill Mode when I’m doing sniper duty.”

  Marvin turns his head to face her. “Kill Mode? That is so cool! Leo, we need to get me a kick-ass secret identity too.”

  “How about moron?”

  “Hey, why I gotta be a moron?”

  “How did she get to you?”

  “Uh, masterful use of social engineering.”

  “What?”

  Marvin shifts uncomfortably and ducks his head. “She showed me her titties.”

  I shake my head. “Moron.”

  “At least she didn’t torture me and turn me into a vampire! But I guess you and that French vampire were just going to the library to study.”

  I take in Carol’s costume. “What the hell is this?”

  She blushes. “It’s not what it looks like.”

  “It could have been what it looks like if you hadn’t come busting through the window.” Marvin looks at Carol. “Couldn’t it?”

  She smiles at him. “It totally could have.”

  “Dammit!”

  Carol asks, “How did you know where we were, anyway?”

  Marvin shifts uncomfortably. “Oh, when I told Leo to meet me in my bat cave, that’s the code word we set up for me to use if I’m ever in trouble.”

  “Shut up! You used bat cave as a code word?” She gazes deep into Marvin’s eyes, her voice soft. “This is what destiny looks like.”

  Marvin leans toward her, but I clear my throat and interrupt their little moment.

  “Leo, she says you killed her friend’s family. Is that true?”

  I look away as a wave of grief slams into me. “I did worse than that.”

  “Why? I know you kill bad guys, but why would you do that? What did they do?”

  “They didn’t do anything. I wasn’t in my right mind then.”

  “That makes it kind of hard to blame her for wanting to kill you.”

  “No, it makes it impossible. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here, so I can settle it.”

  “Settle it how?”

  “Probably the only way things like this ever get settled, with blood.”

  ***

  I hear the high whine of a motorcycle approaching before it screeches to a stop just outside. The woman, Trinh, enters the room, her steps slow and measured. Her arms are held out wide, but she has something small in her left hand. She walks toward me until she is standing maybe fifteen feet away.

  “I’m here,” she says. “Let her go.”

  I shake my head. “That’s not how this is going to work.”

  She reaches toward the front of her coat. I raise my pistol and point it at her chest. She opens her coat to reveal several pounds of plastic explosives strapped to her body.

  “I’m holding a dead man’s switch. If you kill me, I’ll take you with me.”

  “You might kill me. You will definitely kill your friend.”

  “You’ll kill her anyway.”

  “It’s not my plan. I told you, no tricks.”

  “This isn’t a trick. It’s insurance.”

  “Well, I definitely said no bombs, and that is a bomb!”

  “Let Carol go, and I’ll disarm it.”

  “If I let her go, you’ll blow us up.”

  Marvin cuts in. “How about those of us who aren’t freaks of nature with a death wish leave and you two go on and do what you gotta do?”

  “Shut up, Marvin,” Trinh and I both say at the same time.

  “Hey, don’t tell my boyfriend to shut up!” Carol demands.

  “I’m your boyfriend? When did that happen?”

  “What, you think I show my boobs to every guy I meet? Who am I, Eva Longoria? These are crazy times and crazy times call for split-second decisions.”

  “I thought we didn’t use that word?”

  She kisses him on the cheek. “Shut up, Marvin.”

  “Okay.”

  I shrug my shoulders at Marvin and Carol. “Are you two kids done now? Can the grown-ups get back to deciding who dies and how?”

  Carol crosses her arms and sulks. “Fine.”

  I turn back to Trinh and holster my gun. “When I killed your family and almost everyone in your village, I had lost my mind. I was, in every sense of the word, insane.”

  “So you get some therapy, say you’re sorry, and I should just forgive you?”

  “No, but I do need you to listen so you can make an informed, rational decision.”

  “I made my decision to kill you more than forty years ago.”

  “That’s fine, but this is today, not forty years ago, and I’m not sure you understand the difference. Have you heard of Jack the Ripper?”

  She nods. “Englishman, killed a bunch of women in London.”

  “He is a vampire, and he is here killing more women. He will continue to kill women and a lot of other people unless I can stop him.”

  “Just like you did,” Trinh snarls.

  I nod. “Yes, just like I did. After I fled your village and regained my senses, I started killing vampires like him, the ones who kill for sport and enjoy inflicting pain and terror.”

  “It doesn’t change what you did.”

  “No, it doesn’t. I wish I could undo what I did. My death cannot bring them back, but if it eases the suffering I caused you, then you can have it.”

  I step toward her, flip my sword around, and present her the hilt.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Turn off your bomb and take my sword. I’m not here to kill you or your friend. I’m here to give you closure. I’m here to give you the justice you deserve. I was chasing after him the last time you attacked me and he got away. You can kill me, as you deserve to, but the death he causes from this point on is on you. That’s the price of your vengeance.”

  “Leo…” Marvin says.

  “It has to be this way, Marvin. I did those things. It’s all I have to offer her.”

  She doesn’t disarm the bomb, but she does take my sword. I drop to my knees, hold my head parallel to the floor, and present the back of my neck. She raises the sword over her head.

  “Trinh,” Carol says, her voice gentle, “he’s changed. He’s not the man he was back then.”

  “He’s not a man at all. He’s a monster!”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Would you forgive him? If this was the one who killed your parents, would you forgive him?” She tilts her head toward the kitchen area. “All those drugs you have to take just to keep from falling apart is because of creatures like him!”

  “Knowing that I’m doing the right thing and protecting people is what keeps me from falling apart, Trinh. Knowing that I have you and together we make the world safer is what keeps me going. He makes the world safer too, now. Yes, I would forgive him. I will always hate what he did, maybe even always hate him, but I would forgive him, because it’s the right thing to do.”

  Trinh’s knuckles are white and her hand shakes. She raises my blade over her head. I can hear it cutting the air for a fraction of a second before she buries the tip deep into the wood floor. She kneels beside me and we lock eyes.

  “I will never forgive you. I will never pardon you. But I will grant you parole. We will kill the monster that’s terrorizing the city together. After that, we will return to the question of your fate.”

  “I will accept your judgment then, as I have now.”

  She stands, reaches in her coat, and turns off her suicide vest. “So, how do we kill this sonofabitch?”

  “We have to find him first,” I reply, “and in a city with this many people, it ain’t gonna be easy.”

  “Tell me about it. I knew your name and it took me thirty years to find you.”

  “Only thirty?”

  Trinh shrugs. “I was busy for the first decade or so. I also knew that if I sought you out before I was ready I would fail. Even now I almost d
id.”

  “Not to get technical, but you did.”

  Her shoulders slump but her face tightens. “I guess I did. What did you do after…after what you did? You are not at all the same. How does one reclaim some semblance of humanity after becoming a monster?”

  My mind flashes back to that night. I sag into a chair, and it is a physical and emotional effort not to collapse onto the floor as I stare into the face of my victim.

  My voice trembles. “I don’t know what happened. One moment, I was lost in the savagery, the carnage fulfilling this insatiable lust, then it was as if someone had dumped a bucket of ice water on me. What I had been doing felt like a dream, a nightmare, and then I woke up. I ran for days without stopping, as if I could leave behind what I had done. I couldn’t, of course. It followed me. You followed me.

  “I stowed away on a ship, hiding inside a cargo container, which was a pretty stupid thing to do. It took weeks to reach New York. If I hadn’t been so…full, I probably would have lost it again and killed everyone on that ship. I was a miserable wretch when I finally got back home. I needed to feed, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Part of me was disgusted at the thought of it. A bigger part of me was terrified that if I did I would lose control again, so I huddled in an abandoned building, slowly starving to death.

  “A vampire sheriff named Wyatt found me. He should have put me down then and there, but he chose to tell Vincent, the head of the New York enclave. I don’t know why, but Vincent thought he could save me, thought I was worth saving.”

  “Do you think you were worth saving,” Trinh asks, her face devoid of emotion.

  “I still don’t know. Everything I have done since then has been to prevent vampires from becoming what I was or end them if they had. In that regard, I suppose it was worth it. Does it balance with what I did?” I shake my head. “Only you can answer that, you and everyone I have hurt. Each of you have the right to judge me and deliver your verdict. It isn’t for me or anyone else to decide.”

  “Like I said, I’ll delay my judgement and work with you to kill the imminent threat.”

  “I won’t stop you when you decide.”

  “I won’t give you the chance to change your mind when I do.”

  We establish a truce, but we are nowhere near anything resembling peace. We are America and Russia in World War II fighting a common enemy, but no one is foolish enough to think we are anything close to being friends.

  I cock my head toward Carol. “How did you and her team up?”

  “I was hunting a particularly nasty vampire in California about seven years ago. He liked to target wealthy people. Cops thought it was a team of violent, brazen thieves because he always cleaned out their jewelry and safes. I caught up to him at Carol’s house. I was too late to save her parents, but I killed him before he killed her. She fought back in a way that reminded me of me when you attacked my village.

  “I knew none of the psychiatrists she was seeing would believe her story about her parents being killed by a vampire. She knew what he was despite how impossible it sounded, but they would never clear her while she tried to convince them of the truth. I faked some credentials as a psychologist specializing in traumatic events and became her primary therapist. I got her to tell the doctors what they wanted to hear in exchange for my help. Once I got her out of the institution, I began training her in using weapons and self-defense so she could reclaim her life.”

  “Like you did.”

  Trinh nodded. “Like I did. I’ve kind of felt like a surrogate mother to her ever since.”

  Carol snorted. “More like grandmother.”

  “I will still put you over my knee!”

  “Then what, bore me with the details of how excited you were with the invention of the color television?”

  I chuckle. “And now here we are. It’s like Batman and Lex Luther teaming up to take out the Green Goblin.”

  “What the fuck?” Marvin exclaims.

  “What?”

  “I don’t even know where to begin to explain everything wrong with that statement!”

  Carol comes to Marvin’s aid. “All three of those characters are from completely different sagas. It’s Superman and Lex Luther who are mortal enemies. Batman has the Joker, Penguin, and a host of other enemies. The Green Goblin is Spiderman’s nemesis and has never had a crossover story with either Batman or Superman.”

  “Actually, Batman and Spiderman meet in 1997 in an issue called Batman and Spiderman, and Superman and Spiderman meet in 1981 in Marvel Treasury Edition volume one, number 28.” Marvin slaps himself on the forehead. “Then there was Superman vs. The Amazing Spiderman in 1976!”

  “Yeah, but those were horrendous abortions and all took place way outside any of the standard DC universes and were mostly considered abominations of all things holy.”

  “True dat, so I think our argument is still valid.”

  I raise my hands in surrender. “All right, sorry. Don’t get all Kirk and Vader on me.”

  “Goddammit, now you’re just trying to piss me off!” Marvin accuses. “I don’t know what’s worse: ignorance or deliberately being an asshole.”

  “Marvin.”

  Marvin sits with his arms crossed and pouts. “What?”

  “If you’re through blowing a nerd gasket, I need you to get on a computer and overlay Jack’s killings in London with the murders he’s committed here and see if we can match them up.”

  Trinh asks, “You think he’s recreating his original murder spree?”

  “There is definitely a correlation. We’ll probably have to adjust the scale a bit to get it to match up, but I bet we can create a reasonably accurate template.”

  “How many are we looking at?”

  “At least eleven, but Vincent hinted that there were far more that were covered up by either the police or the London enclave. I’ll give him a call and see if he can give me the location of his suspected murder sites.”

  I call Vincent. “Hey, can you get me the addresses of the unofficial Ripper killings in London?”

  “Ah, you have detected a pattern as well,” Vincent says. “I can email you a map I created with all known and suspected sites pinned.”

  “Marvin, do I have an email account?”

  “Yeah, it’s bloodsuckingasshole@yahoo.com.”

  “Seriously?”

  Marvin raises his finger high above the keyboard and stabs down. “It is now.”

  Carol giggles. “You’re so mean. Yahoo…”

  “He deserves it.”

  “How is Yahoo the offensive part of that statement?” I ask.

  “Yahoo is for crusty geriatrics who despise change and evolution,” Marvin answers.

  Carol points at the screen. “Look, you’ve already gotten seventy-three offers for Viagra.”

  “And two hundred websites showing where you can put it to use,” Marvin adds.

  I turn away. “Great. You get that?”

  “No,” Vincent answers, “I use Gmail and a spam filter, like any civilized being.”

  “I mean the address.”

  “Already sent.”

  “Marvin, did you get it?”

  “Yeah, like always, you are way behind the digital power curve.”

  “Leonard,” Vincent says, “have you taken care of your personal issue? I cannot stress the importance of avoiding distraction when you confront Montague once more.”

  “It’s taken care of.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I’ll talk to you about it later.”

  “I look forward to the discussion.”

  Trinh is watching me when I hang up. “It’s not taken care of.”

  “No, not quite. You have created something of a problem with your indiscriminate hunting. The enclave is now aware of your existence and your purpose in life. They are bound to take offense.”

  Trinh shrugs, either unconcerned or feigning nonchalance. “I get attention wherever I go eventually. It’s why we don’t stay in one place
for long. That’s another reason why it took me so long to find you. I started on the West Coast and have been working my way east ever since. I couldn’t ignore a murderer in front of me just to satisfy my own vengeance when I knew they would cause someone else the same suffering.”

  “Speaking of your hunting prowess, my nose tells me you are a bloodling, but your speed and strength exceed that of any bloodling I ever heard of. Especially recently.”

  Trinh shifts in her chair and looks askance. “I always study my targets before I attack. Most of them are young and I only take them after careful planning and perfectly executed ambushes. Recently, there has been a development in my abilities that has made me more…competitive.”

  “You want to tell me about that?”

  “No.”

  I nod and rub my chin. I hate a mystery, especially one having anything to do with my kind, but I let it go. “Marvin, do you have anything yet?”

  “Plotting the last few points with the information your man sent me. Got it. Come take a look.”

  I walk over to where Marvin and Carol are sitting, seemingly attached at the hip, and lean over their shoulders to stare at the screen. “Did you mark the locations where he has already been?”

  “Yeah, see here.” Marvin pokes the screen. “I used the New York locations as reference points to anchor the London overlay. When I stretched the overlay to fit, these four points lined up almost perfectly.”

  Trinh walks over and looks past me. “That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

  “It is. Far too much for the two of us.”

  Carol clears her throat. “You mean three.”

  “Even so.” I pull out my phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Trinh asks.

  “The reserves.”

  The other end picks up and I’m assaulted with a blast of awful music before it’s muted to a dull roar. “Leo, what’s up?”

  “I need you and your people, Nick.”

  “How many?”

  “All of them. As many as you can get.”

  Nick hesitates. “Right now? It’s kind of the party prime time.”

  “Now, and if anyone complains, tell them I will be more than happy to come over and convince them myself.”

  “No need, man, no need. What do you want us to do?”

  “Do you have email?”