Balance of Forces

by Ali Vali

  “To fate and letting the girl down gently,” she said before she downed the drink and fell back into her role as Jacques.

  *

  The next day Angelina and Tomas boarded the coach he’d hired for their two-day trip to Oakgrove. They could have made it in one, but such a long stretch would’ve been murder on Tomas’s hip, so on the second afternoon the du’Pons rode up to the entrance to Oakgrove for the first time.

  Jacques stood outside waiting with all the families living on the plantation, who were enjoying the lull before they started planting again. They would spend the downtime using the mounds of supplies piled to the side of the house to improve the cabins out back. When Angelina and Tomas arrived, he stood back while everyone introduced themselves and their families. Then Lola announced that lunch was ready and on the tables under the oaks in front of the house.

  “This is a little different than I expected,” Angelina said as she walked the grounds with him after the huge meal.

  “How so?”

  “No one looks miserable,” she said, glancing over her shoulder toward the picnic tables. “I believe you to be a fair-minded man, but even you have your limits.”

  “I can’t do for the world, Angelina, but I can do for them. On this land we live by my rules, especially to show everyone tolerance and respect. The outside world has no say here about how I treat my family.”

  She pulled him to a stop. “What makes you so wise?”

  “A long time ago I learned a valuable lesson from a ruler who was perhaps born before her time. She believed a person is born a slave by circumstance, not by choice or design. Sometimes, though, when given the opportunity, someone like that can conquer the known world without lifting a sword.” As he told her his beliefs, he thought of the young Hebrew slave who had stolen the pharaoh’s heart. Sadly, no history book had bothered to remember either of them and how, for one brief blip of time, things had been different enough that women had been able to serve as they pleased. Life had been fair, or as much as was possible without a total female society.

  “How lucky for them to find their way here to you. Because, trust me, it could be so much worse.”

  “If they had luck on their side, they’d still be in their homeland. Given time, that’s exactly where I’d like to see them. Can you imagine never seeing your child again and not knowing what happened to him or her?” He started them walking again until they reached the lake on the property. Under one of the trees shading the bank, he cupped her cheek in the palm of his hand. “As important as the state of the world and our place in it may be, I wanted to bring you here to tell you something even more so.”

  “I love you,” Angelina said, appearing surprised by her own words.

  “I…I love you as well,” and in saying that, he knew he meant it. “I do have something to share with you, so perhaps you should refrain from any other declarations until you hear what that is.”

  “I’m glad you brought me here because I can see now it’s where I belong. You are who I belong to, Jacques, and only you can give my heart away, so forgive me for not taking your advice.” She pulled on his lapels and laughed. “Now I demand you reward my forwardness with a kiss.”

  Oakgrove, present day

  Kendal thought about how different things might have turned out by this lake had she said what she had planned. She had loved Angelina as much as she had professed that day, but it wasn’t fair to Angelina not to know the full truth about the man she had fallen in love with.

  Had Angelina known sooner, might she have run back to someone like Winston? Would she have chosen someone who could give her a life and children to care for in her later years? Those questions were pure speculation now. After that one blissful moment on that idyllic spot, their lives had changed and the nightmare had begun.

  “I owe it to you now to make things as right as I can,” she said to the water. What had happened in that lifetime and what resulted from it still haunted her. The burden had made her lose a bit of her humanity

  Chapter Twelve

  Henri’s eyes opened as soon as the sun went down. Kendal was still there and she was coming, only this time nothing he did would stop her. He thought of all their meetings through the years and how her hatred for him had grown to rival his for her. He’d had an ideal life until their parents decided to expand their family. The perfect child was exactly what they’d gotten the second time around. Asra had grown taller, stronger, and smarter, and he’d tried to make her pay from the beginning. But nothing he did ever made his parents brag like they did about Asra.

  The last time they’d faced each other, she’d left him wounded, and he’d had to run for his life. Only through good planning had he been able to run at all after that battle. He’d seen her look of satisfaction as she stood before him ready to plunge her sword into his chest. “That was then, Kendal, and as these sub-humans like to say, it’s a new day.”

  He opened the lid of his resting place and climbed the stairs to the bedroom where he kept his clothes. Hopefully the weather had cleared, since he detested anything damp against his skin, which he noticed was still slightly pinkish from the late feeding that morning. Outside the street was still quiet, but he moved swiftly, anxious to set his plan in motion.

  When he entered the house at the edge of the French Quarter, a large gathering of people bowed their heads as he passed. All of them were his children, his creations, made specifically to destroy the Clan’s slayer. In the world, only one was left who was stronger than he, and he didn’t want to disappoint her, so he’d stacked the numbers against Kendal heavily in his favor.

  “The slayer is here and starts working tonight,” he said, sitting in the chair set up at the head of the dining room. Some of those gathered looked at each other in concern.

  He’d allowed them free rein in the city for years, not worried because Kendal and the others of the Genesis Clan hadn’t sent a hunter. That misstep had given him the opportunity to build the army he’d need to battle the Clan’s best. He was sure his diligence would work, especially after his brief meeting with his sister.

  Kendal was still licking the emotional wounds he’d inflicted, so that preoccupation, coupled with battling his followers, would guarantee their success. If that failed, he was prepared to defeat her the same way again; Kendal’s heart and caring nature were the chinks in her armor.

  “We are here to serve you, master,” Troy said. Troy had been a river rat who lived off whatever he could steal until Henri noticed him one night. In one moment Troy had been transformed from being one of the forgotten to one of the feared.

  “Yes, you are, and remember one thing. Fail me, and I will haunt your place in hell for the rest of eternity. The slayer the Clan has sent is their best, so be extra vigilant.”

  “Everyone has a weak spot, sire,” Troy said, running his tongue over his lips.

  “True, but my sister is very good, so don’t take her for granted. I made you and gave you dominion over man. Let me down and I’ll put you out for the sun myself.”

  One of the young women close to him looked up at him in total disbelief. “Master, the slayer is your sister?”

  “The one and only Asra, captain of the pharaoh’s elite fighting legion. In life she inspired awe on the battlefield. At least those were the stories bards used to love to tell in taverns. As an immortal, though, I consider her godlike. The Clan chose well, but so have I in choosing all of you.” He ran his fingers through the young woman’s hair. She looked up again with an ecstatic expression, as if liking the feel of cold on her scalp. “I want you all to go out and seek until you find her, and when you do, bring her to me.” When the girl began to get up, he moved from a caress to pulling her hair to keep her in place. “Not you.”

  “As you wish.”

  He smiled at her, showing the tips of his canines before he glanced back at the others. “Go.” They moved rapidly out the door.

  “How can I please you, master?” the girl asked when they were alone.<
br />
  “What’s your name?”

  “Veronica, master.”

  “Veronica, this is what you can do to please me.” He whispered to her, and she nodded at almost his every word. Then he licked along her ear, loving her shiver of pleasure. “Such loyalty deserves a reward, precious.” He snapped his fingers, and Troy dragged a scared young girl who looked to be around thirteen out of the closet. “Enjoy.”

  Veronica pounced in a catlike fashion, holding the child close to the front of her body. The tender flesh tore open easily, and the gush of warm, salty blood almost caused Veronica to swoon. Slowly the body grew limp and Veronica cut the connection before the final life spirit was snuffed out, knowing better than to keep drinking until the girl was dead. Doing so wouldn’t kill her, but drinking from a dead victim invited an illness that would leave a vampire weak and vulnerable for days because the blood turned poisonous instantly when the life force was extinguished.

  With the same feline grace, Veronica walked toward him, leaned over him, and pressed her mouth to his. He accepted the kiss that filled his mouth with blood and made him hard, but Veronica was happy to take care of that need as well. When she straddled him, Troy left the room after bowing in his direction.

  “I’ll gift you her heart, master,” Veronica said before the final shiver ran through her body.

  *

  Kendal dismounted her bike and stood, eyes closed, for almost ten minutes just listening to the world around her. She left whatever guilt, anger, or other destructive emotion she was feeling at Oakgrove the minute she armed herself and headed into town. Next to her, Charlie was doing the same as he stood ramrod straight. She was able to filter out all the traffic and bar noises coming from the general vicinity, trying to find any abnormality.

  “Kendal, can I ask you something?”

  She opened her eyes in almost lazy fashion. “Sure.”

  “Aren’t people going to freak when they see two people walking down the street with swords and enough sharp implements to start a small war?”

  “Probably, if we decided to walk down the street, but we’re not taking that route.”

  “We’re not?”

  She pointed up. “No. Two things about this city make it desirable to my brother and us.” She bounced a little on the balls of her feet, ready to go. “It’s heavily populated by people that society won’t miss or cares little about when they show up drained, which makes it a good hunting ground if blood is part of your diet.” She held up two fingers, smiling at Charlie’s shiver, probably at the thought of an all-blood diet. “And because space is precious here, most of the buildings are connected.”

  “And that benefits us how?”

  “If we want to take a stroll with enough sharp implements to start a small war, which we do, we can use the rooftops. Ready?”

  He nodded and watched as she took off at a run. With ease she grabbed a flagpole hanging over someone’s door, flipped around a couple of times, and propelled herself onto the roof. “Care to take a walk with me?” she asked from the edge.

  Charlie followed quickly, as if not wanting to miss any of the action. “You’re right,” he said when he made it to the top. “Aside from a few short leaps and differences in the height of some buildings, most of them are connected.” They walked until they reached the section of Bourbon Street most populated with tourists.

  Bourbon was a popular strip because it was a smorgasbord of sin from one end to the other. In the whole country no place like it existed, and it was the one spot locals and tourists flocked to in equal numbers. It featured bars, strip joints, live sex shows, and a smattering of restaurants to round out the mix. When the sun went down, the barricades went up to close the strip to car traffic, and like a lazy river of humanity, people walked from place to place, doing a different kind of window-shopping.

  One of the old joints, Big Daddy’s, had a row of poles on the stage and lethargic-looking dancers, and the classier places like Rick’s Cabaret had perfect, surgically enhanced beauties. If you were looking for tits, ass, alcohol, and fantastic seafood, this was the place to find it. For those who liked to study people, the real entertainment wasn’t the naked souls trying to make a living, but the folks on the street.

  Shocked visitors were taking pictures of the drag queens and leather crowd, who gladly posed with people with sensible shoes, who in turn felt slightly naughty for venturing out among the decadent. Sprinkled in to add more flavor were the religious zealots holding signs promising a fiery afterlife for participating in the moral decay the area was famous for. No one took the leaflets they were handing out, and the ones they did take littered the street several feet away.

  Kendal stood at the edge of the building looking down at the street over one of the newer bars that focused on Gothic dress and hard rock. Only those appropriately decked out in black ventured inside. “Have a seat, this won’t take long,” she told Charlie. Since Henri knew why she was there, his people would be traveling in packs. If they couldn’t defeat her by skill, they’d try by sheer numbers, proving that Henri had learned nothing from their father about strategy.

  “Kendal, look.” Charlie pointed his chin down the street.

  “I see them. Now we just need to get them to see us.” She stood and opened the long coat she was wearing enough so she could put her hands on her hips.

  They were all laughing and walking shoulder to shoulder, harassing people as they went and putting out a vibe that warned everyone to stay away. From her vantage point she spotted others more used to seeing these groups of young punks and writing them off as sewer rats. The locals used the term to describe the young runaways who came to the Quarter to escape abuse and other misery at home, only to find prostitution and drugs on the streets. She knew better, though. These little punks might’ve started out that way, but from the pallor of their skin and their mannerisms, they’d evolved into something much more dangerous.

  The one who appeared to be the youngest of the bunch glanced up first and stopped walking, making the guy next to her stop to see what she was staring at. Kendal waggled her fingers at them and smiled wide enough to show she wasn’t afraid. The dare sent them moving like a pack of wolves after a wounded deer.

  “Tell me where Henri is and I let you walk away,” she said, facing all twenty of them once they’d made it up to the roof.

  “We’ll never betray our master. Are you the slayer he told us about?” asked the young woman who’d first spotted her.

  “Please, let’s not be so formal. Call me Kendal, and you, I’ll call you Hoover bait.”

  “Hoover bait?” the girl asked.

  “Dust, darlin’.” Kendal’s hand moved so fast the joke didn’t register. The knife split the young woman’s heart and instantly the wind blew away any proof of her existence when she turned to dust.

  Kendal drew her katana next, along with one of the small battle-axes she’d worked with that afternoon. “Shall we dance?” she asked the others.

  Charlie, she briefly noticed, was momentarily shocked into stillness when the rest of them charged forward. When their faces had transformed to their more hideous features—elongated foreheads with ridges, flattened noses, and snarling jawlines—the phenomenon paralyzed him. Had he been alone, he would’ve been an easy target even for this young, inexperienced group.

  She’d known Charlie might react this way because of his good heart, but it wouldn’t matter now. With her quick sword strokes and slashing axe, she made quick work of the group. Their lack of strength and fighting ability indicated how recently they’d joined Henri. She put her weapons away and placed her hand on Charlie’s shoulder to bring him back from wherever his mind had flown off to.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said, looking everywhere but at her.

  “Nothing to be sorry about. You okay?”

  “It made me think back to when I first saw him.”

  She squeezed his shoulder. “You don’t owe me an explanation, and you didn’t do anything wrong. Come on, let
’s go hunt more trouble.”

  They found four more packs before they called it a night, and from the different accents it seemed that Henri had called his children from all over the world to gather for the fight. They’d found only a small percentage of Henri’s numbers, from the information the Clan had gathered, but they had to start somewhere. Charlie had recovered and performed perfectly. Another couple of weeks and Henri would run out of pawns and have no choice but to send out his better and older fighters. Once she and Charlie destroyed them, they would soon flush him out.

  Sunrise was an hour away when they got back to the house, and Charlie waved over his shoulder as he headed to his cabin. He refused to leave the only home he’d ever known since being brought to the States. Kendal was about to turn the knob of the front door when it hit her conscious brain. The birds in the oak by the master suite weren’t cooing or chirping like they usually did.

  She unclipped her whip from her belt and let the coil drop to the floor of the porch. She didn’t use it often, but for what she had in mind it was perfect. Her adversary didn’t have time to react when she moved. One second she was standing by the door, and the next she ran up the side of the large tree trunk and balanced on a limb. With a very accurate aim, she reached forward and wrapped the leather around the woman’s throat like an extension of her hand. One strong pull and the trespasser fell off her perch.

  The woman’s legs kicked in midair as she pawed at her neck. After a minute the struggle stopped and Kendal dropped her bundle to the ground. To make sure she wouldn’t have any unpleasant surprises, she hit the back of the woman’s head with a closed fist before she lifted the limp body and flung it over her shoulder.