From Slate to Crimson

by Brandon Hill

  “What do you mean?” Amelia said with a note of suspicion. And then she noticed the route we were taking. It was neither the way back to her home or to my safe house. “Wait, we’re not going where I think we are, are we?”

  “Yes, we are,” I said, and instantly met with resistance.

  “No, please!” Amelia said, and felt fear spike within her to near panic. “Don’t make me go there! Not right now! I’m not ready; I just can’t…”

  I paused, deftly maneuvering us out of the traffic of the crowds. “Calm yourself,” I said in a gentle voice. I looked into her gray eyes, and touched her face, smiling with confident reassurance. “Remember, I said that you would not do this alone. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “How can you say that so easily?” Amelia said, wresting her emotions back into control. Good girl, I thought. She was already trying to fight her own fear. “What about Lothos? What about his clan? Aren’t you worried at all?”

  “In all honesty, I can’t completely guarantee that nothing will happen with Lothos,” I said. “That is one of the reasons that I woke up so early. I was worried about you, and more so than I had ever been for anyone. But I can guarantee that I’ll be here for you.”

  “You know, I can’t help but think that you’re avoiding something,” Amelia said.

  “There’s a lot about us that you do not yet know,” I answered, “but you’ll learn with time. Besides, am I not interesting with all my secrets?”

  Amelia pursed her lips. “Frustrating is more like it,” she said, but did not mean it. Despite the circumstances of our first meeting, she was as fascinated by me as I was captivated by her blood.

  “Well, another secret is that I can out-dance anyone in this club,” I said with a wink and smile.

  “You?” she said in a cynical tone. “Seriously? You look more like a priest than a dancer in that…” she searched for the right words, “…that frock, you know. You were wearing that same thing the night we first met. Is that all you ever wear? Solid white frocks?”

  “Normally,” I said. “It gives a distinction, and it’s what my people wore.”

  “Newsflash, Talante! Ten thousand years have passed since then! It’s the 21st Century.” Her voice shook with laughter as she tugged on my sleeve.

  “I guess I’m just weird, then,” I said with a grin that spoke volumes more than my words.

  “Well, it’s a good thing for both of us that I happen to like weird.”

  “You still don’t think I can dance?” I inquired as we reached the club’s entrance door. The name Pink’s glowed in hot neon light that was the same color as the name. above the glass door.

  “Let’s say that I’ll believe it when I believe it,” Amelia answered as the bouncer opened the door for us.”

  “Oh, I do love a challenge,” I said, her words and scent shunting a thrill through me as I led her by the hand to the dance floor.

  * * * *

  For a time, we danced, and we were drunk with happiness. With over ten millennia of experience, I put everyone to shame, despite the oddity of my attire. I knew many dances, and mixed their moves with my own to make a style none had ever seen before, but all enthusiastically appreciated. Even the others of my kind among the crowd could not help but be impressed, and a little surprised.

  Amelia shared their sentiments and as we danced, her fear went ever further from her mind. In its place, however, were increasing thoughts of me. I should have distracted her mind from this, as I knew what it entailed, but I had been enjoying myself too much, and I admit, was happy to have her for once, genuinely desire me. Human though she was, the attentions of a female had been distant from my life for too long.

  We at last stopped to refresh ourselves in the karaoke room. Amelia had been about to order a drink when I felt a sudden, sharp surge of excitement from her. Before I could say anything, she abruptly took me to the side.

  “That’s him!” she whispered, and then pointed discreetly to the tables centered around the stage area. The crowd was sparse tonight, and more interested in their own private conversations than in the man on the stage who sang (rather badly).

  “Where?” I asked, and then immediately after I said it, saw a very familiar face. “You mean the one near the front row, with the sunglasses?” I watched as he engaged in lively chatter with two women: one blond, the other redheaded, both scantily dressed and utterly transparent in their thoughts.

  She nodded. “Yeah, that’s him. He’s definitely the one.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Roland.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know all my children,” I said. And I knew Roland best.

  Roland did not possess the knack for leadership that Justin, Aiko, or my other lieutenants displayed. Instead, his talents lay in gathering information, as he played human better than most among my kind. I had turned him after saving him from the torment of a member of Lothos’ clan in a lone London flat in the late 1800s. Born to unfortunate circumstances as he had been, and keeping the company of petty thieves until a job had gone horribly wrong and ran him afoul of the enemy, I gave him a new life and purpose. His philandering ways and indiscretion, however, were vices that remained a constant cross for me to bear.

  “I had hoped that it was anyone but him,” I told Amelia.

  “Well, I could’ve been wrong, you know,” she said, her words rushed, as if in apology. “I said that my memory wasn’t—”

  I tapped my forehead and smiled familiarly, and she flushed with embarrassment. How easily humans forget our power to detect lies. Still, I was impressed by her sympathy to protect the harmony between friends, even those she did not know about.

  I caught Roland’s attention with a thought. Abruptly he stopped his conversation and looked my way. His mirrored shades obscured his eyes, but I could see the complete shock in his expression as easily as I felt it from his thoughts.

  I told Amelia to wait, and approached the booth where he sat. Though I did not sit with him, the two women left as quickly as possible.

  “Master, that was my lunch,” Roland said, behaving as casually as possible, “…and potentially breakfast.”

  “I smelled you all over them,” I said. “What would Aiko think?”

  “Leave her out of this,” he said, removing his shades to reveal the inhuman red of his eyes, which deepened with anger. So he and Aiko were again in the “off” phase of their tenuous relationship, it seemed.

  “It can’t be helped,” I said, agreeing without words to steer clear of that conversational land mine. “That is neither here nor there, anyway.”

  “What did I do?” Though he was unable to read my thoughts, my intent was not something that it required our powers to see. “I’ve been keeping my proverbial nose clean lately.”

  “Have you?” I asked. “Then explain why an outsider human has been prowling around our safe houses.”

  “Well, you can’t mean anyone I’ve been with.” He pointed in the direction to which the girls had sauntered off. “I told them nothing! What are you talking…?”

  “Not them,” I said, and glanced at Amelia. Roland followed my gaze and snorted.

  “Never seen her in my life,” he said. He was telling the truth.

  “Perhaps not,” I said, “but she saw the message you left behind the other day.”

  Were his skin not already as white as mine, I believe that he would have paled at my words. But what he said compensated well enough.

  “Shit.”

  His expletive drawled out in an almost comically long, whispering groan.

  “Irresponsible fledgling.” Roland cringed when I used the term of endearment with him. His shame went so deep that I could practically feel the lump in his throat. “You haven’t learned from your previous mistakes, have you?”

  “Please, Master,” Roland begged, “it won’t happen again. I swear it!”

  “You’re damn right it won’t,” I replied, ca
lm yet firm. I turned and started back to where Amelia waited. “Meet me in the Lair tomorrow evening. You and I have much to discuss.”

  Suddenly, I felt Roland’s hand grasp my arm. It was too tight to have been him begging to be heard out-–which he never did. When he yanked hard, pulling me unceremoniously to the ground, I knew for certain that he was not pleading.

  “Master, look out!” Roland’s voice boomed above the abrupt cacophony of screams and panic. I looked up as I hit the ground, and noticed the large, black object that leapt my way. Shadows of frightened patrons dashed past me; tables were knocked over; glasses shattered.

  My eyes darted back and forth, coming at last to rest upon the glowing red irises of a dog that hovered above me. It practically reeked of Lothos—small wonder, since it had been turned, and my children had long since given up such reckless experiments.

  It lunged at me, but my speed was far greater. In an instant, I turned the tables, pinning it to the ground.

  The beast was massive. It was a Doberman…or at least it had been. But now it was an abomination that was twice the size of a bull mastiff, a bizarre side effect of the transformation our blood had wrought. It was recently turned, it seemed, and still reveling in its own newfound powers, overconfident, and not yet driven insane by its bloodlust.

  I snapped its spine. It whimpered only once, and then lay still. I leaped back, and with a thought, ignited it from the inside out. It burned to ash, assuring permanent death.

  I turned quickly to Roland, who was busy nursing his injured arm, uttering a string of curses. The massive bite wound beneath his ripped shirt had still not completely healed, but he was none the worse for wear. I glanced a second time around the now-ransacked, and quickly emptied karaoke bar, and nearly panicked. Amelia was nowhere to be found.

  “Did you see the woman I was with?” I asked Roland.

  “The librarian?” Roland said. “Yeah, I saw her; not your type, really.”

  “Find her,” I ordered sternly, “no matter what the cost. But take her to the Lair, not the safe house.”

  Roland did not protest. Regardless of my disapproval of his previous actions, he knew that in a situation involving Lothos or the enemy, my commands were not to be questioned. He vanished, beginning his search, and I opened my mind to the surrounding area.

  It was almost too easy to find him. In fact, the vampire made no effort to hide himself, save staying out of view. It was suicide for him to remain here after such an audacious action as setting a vampiric dog upon a crowd of unsuspecting humans, but then again, Lothos was not terribly particular about whom he chose to join his ranks. The insane made good kamikaze runners, after all.

  “Come out,” I said. “I know you were the start of this.”

  A lone figure emerged through the entrance to the dance area, obscured by stark shadows and light about and behind from the grid of track lights above. He smiled, and a large row of white teeth appeared in the darkness, the fangs on the top and lower jaw, serrated by files.

  “Sire of weak filth…” He whispered the words in a sort of mocking reverence. “You have bested the most promising of my children...and now I reward you with death.”

  Inwardly, I scoffed. The hubris of Lothos’ children was practically amusing. This was a time that I truly did wonder if something in their transformation affected their sanity.

  “What does your master want?” I asked, unwilling to waste my time with this one, “I’m busy.”

  The vampire had begun to shake. It was a most disturbing, jerking motion, as if something had crawled into his threadbare shirt and into his muscles. At last, he stopped, and seemed to gaze at me with eyes that did not appear to be his own. It was a distant, strange look, as if something else was seeing through him.

  “My old friend.”

  His voice was not his own when he spoke these words; rather, it was the voice of Lothos: a different and much deeper timbre, disturbingly coming through the body of this member of his twisted disciples.

  “Too afraid to face me yourself, Lothos?” I said, disguising my disconcertment at the little trick my nemesis had learned. “It doesn’t surprise me if you are, seeing how the last time we met, you left with your limbs barely intact.”

  “I did not come to banter,” Lothos replied. His voice satisfyingly betrayed the annoyance my words had produced. “But to turn the tables on your recent activities. You have tried to flush me out of hiding, and now, it seems I’ve turned the predator into the prey.”

  “You sure have a strange choice of hunters,” I said. “This errand boy, whose body you’re borrowing, couldn’t kill a fledgling.”

  I suddenly became aware of movement, and several thoughts coming into range, all hostile. Sounds of chairs being smashed and bottles breaking accompanied the shuffling of feet. And then from out of the surrounding shadows, several pale figures emerged in black garb that mixed like shadows with the environment.

  There were five in all, three male and two female, each rife with the scent of Lothos’ clan. My eye caught the familiar glint of Jewels that hung from their necks as they drew upon the devices’ power and re-inserted themselves into this dimension.

  “You used humans to track me in the daylight?” I said, following a muttered curse. It was the only way he could have found me so quickly and had his forces remain in hiding for so long.

  “Surely it’s not so hard to believe, my old colleague,” Lothos said. “I have many eyes, and have heard rumors over many years. I figured the stories were true, and had my humans look out for you. It seems that I finally lucked out. As for your luck, however…”

  Lothos’ words shuddered, and then fell apart in a peal of raucous laughter, which increased in volume as the bejeweled figures came forward.

  Behind them, several corpses dropped, their heads rolling upon the floor, following their lifeless, drained bodies. From the scent alone, I knew that they had been my children. My heart wrenched with combined grief and rage at the sight of what Lothos’ disciples had done to my retinue of retainers and advance spies, but I quickly shook myself free of such emotions and focused on the soldiers that approached.

  My first action was to blind the eyes of Lothos. If I were to die tonight, however unlikely, I would not give him the pleasure of seeing it. Through my Jewel, I extended the full destructive side of my will towards the messenger vampire, snapping every bone in his body. He did not resist as he crumpled to the ground and succumbed to the fire that I ignited from within. With my Jewel, I summoned a blast of wind to scatter his ashes, which might have healed into a withered husk maddened with thirst, given enough time.

  The other vampires used that moment to attack, and launched themselves at me with ravenous alacrity. I re-constituted the atoms in the air to form a whip, which I flailed in a circular arc at preternatural speed. Some of the vampires were torn in half by its force; others, quicker to think of protecting themselves, were protected by their Jewels.

  I ignited the bodies of the three vampires that I had halved, and struck violently against the two that remained. My mind cycled through defenses, countering every type of technique that the enemy could use against me: extinguishing fire, dispelling gravity compression, and deflecting hurled objects. These vampires were master thaumaturgists; Lothos had trained them well with their Jewels, but I was stronger.

  The ensuing melee would have appeared to be a blurring flurry of limbs to any human observer, but my thoughts were focused upon their minds throughout the altercation. I waited, parrying blow after blow, and dissipating deadly Jewel effects, anticipating the moment when my foes would doubt their abilities. For in that moment, their control of the Jewels would falter, leaving them open.

  It came when I cast them upon a far wall, and made my approach, beating away useless bolts of compressed plasma with my whip. I felt their hearts fail them for the instant I needed. In little time, their ashes joined their partners’, scattered throughout dusty air in the ruined club.

  No humans were a
round. The echoes of their thoughts revealed that they all had fled, and none had allowed curiosity to overpower their terror to take any pictures. I sighed, enjoying what relief I could of it. There would need to be no damage control tonight.

  I heard the approaching police sirens, and prepared to leave as Roland touched my mind, informing me that Amelia was with him and safe, much to my added relief. I had worried that she would not accept him, but his way with humans, especially females, had always been his strong point.

  I hurried to the Lair with a renewed sense of dread. When Lothos made the first move, all proverbial bets were off.

  Chapter Six

  I had not been home for many days, and the joy of my return to the Lair was darkened by my foul mood and rent clothes. I should have known that Lothos would have learned of my ability to walk in the sun. It did not surprise me that he had kept this a secret. His proverbial “ace in the hole” had been well-played, and he had nearly won tonight.

  I had been so distracted by Amelia that he had taken me completely off-guard in an area where my children had possessed a strong presence. Few of his clan ever dared to tread there, and yet five of his elite had managed to track and kill my hidden thaumaturgists, and then had the audacity to attack me publicly. If they had been tracking me for long, then Lothos would surely know about Amelia. What would I now do about her?

  I had no sooner entered the main sitting room when I was at once crowded by my children, who had heard the news once Roland had arrived with a newcomer. All at once, I was bombarded with a cacophony of questions when I came through the door. I stopped their inquiries with a thought, and they awaited my words.

  “Yes, I was attacked by Lothos’ children tonight,” I confessed before the assembly. “I don’t know what his next plans will be, or if this is an isolated incident, but in order to make certain that we have maximum safety, none of our kind, vampire or host, leaves the village without a partner until I say otherwise.

  “Also, full lookout guard shall be placed at the village perimeters. Instructions for combat readiness will be deferred to Justin and Aiko. The main guard will report to them, and instructions for all other divisions will be forthcoming. For now, combatants will be on standby. Are there any questions?”