All of this was going through both of their heads as if they were one mind. It seemed to be happening more and more. Simon wept. Ishan nodded at him, and then turned around to give the man some privacy. After seeing centuries of the horrors that had been caused by the Roman Empire, and many others after it, Simon could not hold back his shame for having been a part of one himself. He saw patterns now, within the American Empire, that only many hundreds of years of experience could train the eye to see. He also saw many that should have been obvious to him in the first place. But this was not the biggest reason that he wept.
He knew now that his Emperor was by far not the savior he claimed to be. In seeing this vast history through Ishan's eyes, he had learned many things. That knowledge had forged a sense of doubt within him. In all of those many centuries, Ishan had not once come across any evidence of God. Quite the opposite. He had found, time and time again, nothing more than any human had ever found. Year after year, century after century of disease, suffering, death, hope, treachery, love, betrayal, kindness, and vengeance. Simon realized then that he was grieving for the loss of his god. Knowing this, he lay down, pulled his knees to his chest, and wept even more.
* * *
The sound of birds singing obnoxiously brought Hank back to consciousness. Every muscle and bone in his body ached more fiercely than he could ever remember. He was aware of the hunger gnawing at him. It wasn't his stomach that was telling him it was time to be fed either. He had been unable to miss the fact that this hunger seemed to come from within his chest. It reminded him of the way he felt when he had been addicted to nicotine. Only, this was much worse. He wondered if it was anything like the stories he had heard about heroin addicts. He was willing to bet this feeling was much closer to that.
Toby lay in the bed, sound asleep. Hank stood up quietly and set the book he had been clutching on the dresser behind his chair. He tiptoed out of the room and down the hall toward the master bedroom. He didn't like this house. It was too sterile. He would have gladly kept his home, but the Empire had already auctioned it off along with most of his things. Only the items that were of little or no value were returned to him. Lucky for Hank, these were the things of most importance to him. Of course the Emperor had made arrangements for a new place, a new car, a new everything, it seemed. At least with the salary he could go out and buy himself some clothes that he would want to wear. His closet was filled with Imperial branded suits. When he arrived in his room, he found the bathroom inside, and went in, closing the door behind him. He opened the closet door to reveal a nearly full size refrigerator. He opened it, and reached for the first vial he saw out of hundreds that occupied each and every shelf. He pulled out the stopper and swigged the dark red liquid quickly. As much as he wanted to savor it, he knew that Toby would likely wake up soon, and he did not want Toby to know what his father had become. He looked at himself in the mirror with utter hatred at what he saw. His blood-tarnished fangs were beginning to shrink back to their normal size. He turned on the water and brushed them vigorously. When he was finished, and satisfied that his teeth looked human, he went back to Toby's room. Toby was awake already when Hank came in. He looked up at Hank with a weak smile.
"Hey Dad."
"Hey!" Hank said, smiling widely at Toby. "Looks like somebody is starting to come out of their coma."
Toby laughed a little and then started coughing as he sat up in the bed.
Hank sat down in the chair and patted Toby on the back in mid cough.
"So, where the hell are we?"
Hank laughed.
"This is our new house."
"You're kidding."
"Nope, this is all ours," for just the price of my soul, and the risk of your safety on a whim. He continued to smile.
"You have a lot of explaining to do, Dad," Toby teased.
"Well, I'll do my best, bud, but I'm telling you right now, I'm not so sure that I won't need some of it explained to me."
He told Toby the story of what had happened the night before, leaving out the shameful parts, like his new addiction, and what Rachel had done to him. Then Toby told him about how horribly the boys at the orphanage had treated him. Hank couldn't help but feel as though maybe he was making the right decision. At least, they were together now. After they had talked for a long time, he was about to get up to fix their breakfast when Toby reached out for him. He bent down and hugged his son as softly as he could. Still embracing him tightly, Toby whispered into his ear.
"I remembered something when I was in the orphanage. And I'm sorry I didn't tell you before, Dad." Hank could hear the sadness in his son's voice. "I really should have told you before, but so much happened so quickly back then."
Hank stood up while holding onto Toby's hand and wiping the boy's tears with his other hand.
Toby looked up at Hank with a sorrowful expression. "Diana wanted me to tell you something after she died. She told me in the hospital." He started to sob.
"It's okay, Toby. I understand. Take your time if you need to."
Toby took a deep breath. "She told me to tell you that she put a key somewhere, in a special place. She said you would know where. She said when you found it, you would know what it was for, too."
Hank took a moment, letting what his son just told him sink in. He didn't know what to think. A key? Why would she hide a key from him somewhere? And why didn’t she tell him, instead of Toby? His curiosity led to longing. Whatever her reasons, if Diana had left him something he damn well wanted to know what it was.
"Toby, thank you for telling me this."
"But, I should have told you a long time ago. I'm really sorry Dad."
"I know Toby. It's okay. I think that might be why she told you instead of me. I think maybe she was counting on you forgetting. Maybe she wanted it to wait a little while, you know?"
Toby shrugged. "I guess so."
"Well, don't worry about it. How about we have some breakfast, huh?"
Toby smiled a little. "Yeah, I am pretty freakin' hungry."
Hank stood staring with the fridge door open as he numbly mulled over in his head what Toby had told him.
* * *
Simon was admiring Cassiopeia from the roof of an old liquor store when he heard the paddywagon coming. He was sitting at the edge, his legs hanging, from the knee down, over the edge. The stars twinkled at him in the darkness in a way he had never experienced before. He looked out into the distance and saw the truck off in the desert. His new, heightened senses would take some getting used to. He was nervous. He felt Ishan in his mind and soul. The much older vampire was attempting to comfort him telepathically. It did cool his nerves some knowing that Ishan was there with him, even if he wasn't there physically. Tonight would mark his first kill. He had some reservations about what he was about to do. He found it completely ironic to know that he had killed his share of men as a human being, and only now as a vampire had he gained a real sense of empathy for life.
He asked Ishan again, in his mind, "Are you sure this is something I have to do alone?"
"Nothing would be gained if I were present. We are all alone the first time, and so you will be too. If you are unable to survive on your own, you will be unable to share this place of leadership with me."
Simon gave up then, knowing there would be no way to change Ishan's mind. He knew from Ishan's memories that, having the eldest blood, the two of them would only need to feed but once every several years. And since Simon had never drunk human blood before, while Ishan had fed recently, here Simon was, all alone. He couldn't help but laugh at how strange vampire metabolism was going to be. Then, he heard some subtle movements in the air above him. He looked up to see an amazing sight. He recognized the dark shapes at once. There were dozens of them hovering in the air. They were natural vampires, or the "ancestors," as Ishan would call them. Simon felt mixed things about them. If it hadn't have been for Ishan's memories, he would have felt nothing but hatred for them. He watched them float around the air, waitin
g for the paddywagon, with a combination of reverence and scrutiny. They seemed hardly intelligent at all, yet Ishan believed they were somehow superior to the human vampires. He knew why Ishan felt this, he could understand, to a degree. But there were so many signs that said otherwise. The truck was close now, only five blocks away. Sure, the queen's intelligence was transcendent, he thought. But the males of the species didn't seem so intellectually lucky. Simon could sense that Ishan was taking great humor in his current speculations. The truck was slowing to a stop now. Simon stood up on the edge of the ledge, perched to jump, the toes of his shoes over the edge. He had chosen this building precisely for its closeness and height. Based on Ishan's experience, he was able to calculate that it was just short enough for him to jump from and not do any damage to the road below on impact. It certainly wouldn't do anything to him.
He heard a sound he presumed to be the back door of the paddywagon unlatching. As the doors to the paddywagon opened, and the smell of human blood filled his senses, Simon lost all of his inhibitions. His rational mind seemed to disappear. The next second, he heard what sounded like a fire extinguisher blended with shouting and coughing. About 30 men came stumbling out of the back of the dull black truck. The ancestors were still floating in the air. For some reason, Simon had expected them to instantly swoop down and finish off the men in mere seconds. Then, the paddywagon sped away. The men began to scatter, most of them still coughing as they went.
Two of them headed down the alley just underneath Simon. He waited until they passed, and then stepped from the building. The fall only lasted a second, but it was the most exhilarating thing Simon had ever felt. He crouched just as he landed, his right hand out before him for balance. He felt like some sort of cat. He didn't do any damage to the road, but he definitely made enough noise to scare off his prey. The two men turned as they ran, one of them shouting something unintelligible to the other, before both of them started to run faster. Simon took off after them, moving like a puma in the jungle. As he came closer, their particular scents differentiated in his mind and he labeled them as Number One and Number Two. Number One was much faster, it seemed, as his scent was getting farther more quickly. Number Two followed Number One for a while, but then after a few minutes of being left in the other man's dust, Number Two veered away on his own path. Simon, feeling that Number One would be more of a challenge, and naturally siding with the underdog, decided to let Number Two go. He heard the sound of a fence being climbed ahead of him, about where his ears were telling him Number One would now be. As he picked up his pace so that he could jump the fence, he heard something else. It almost stopped him in his tracks. He hadn't done Number Two any favors. He heard the man's screams as they echoed higher and higher off the buildings from behind.
Simon somersaulted over the fence at just barely the right time. His hair brushed against the barb wire that crowned the top of it. As he landed, the man screamed in mid-run, his head turned back watching him. Number One stumbled and fell, scraping one of his knees on the blacktop. Simon had thought of taking his time, but the open wound, combined with the smell of blood that had already been surrounding him, was too much for him. He shot forward like lightning, stopping right in front of the man. He leaned forward as the man attempted to scoot away from him, holding his scraped knee at the same time. The man's movement, along with his sobs, awakened something of Simon's conscience. A drop of blood on the pavement, where the man had fallen, caught Simon's eye. He bent down and dabbed it with his finger and put it to his tongue. The first thing that Simon experienced was the rush of strength that came from this single tiny speck. Then came the flash. It was almost instantaneous, yet it was nearly 10 years worth of memories. It was terrible. The things this man had done sickened Simon as they lingered in his mind's eye. He hadn't expected any of the man's memories to transfer from a single drop. Why hadn't he seen the man's whole life, as he had seen Ishan's? Before he could answer himself, Ishan did.
"The amount of memories you experience is relative to the portion of blood you have ingested," Ishan said inside Simon’s head.
This made sense. The images of what Number One had done to so many young girls before and after murdering them wouldn't go away. He saw them over and over again, as if they were happening now, and would repeat for all of eternity. He felt his muscles tighten and his fangs extend. The man was several yards away from him now, frantically trying to get back on his feet, but falling again instead. Simon could now hear why, as two pieces of bone inside the man's knee rubbed against each other. It was too subtle for human ears, but Simon could hear loud and clear that this man had fractured his kneecap. He felt no pity, though. All he could see when he looked at the man's pleading face was the faces of his many victims in all of their youth and innocence. Still seeing a collage of horror from the man's past, Simon leapt onto him and sunk his fangs into the man's neck and started to drink. Justifying each gesture by the fury inside him at the images he would now carry always in his mind. And then, the man's whole life flashed before Simon’s eyes while he felt the body lighten gradually as it neared death.
* * *
It had been on his mind for days, and he dared not say a word of it out loud. He wanted more than anything to talk to Toby about it, but he knew doing so would risk the Emperor’s learning too much. Sure, he could see and hear everything that Hank could, but he couldn't read Hank’s mind. That much was at least still private. Hank was very thankful of that.
He was sitting in his new Empire-funded living room, watching his son through the window in the front yard talk to some of the neighbor boys, all of them laughing every now and then. Ever since Toby had told him about the key, Hank longed to go and find it. He knew exactly where Diana would have hidden it. There was no doubt in his mind. And whatever it was, it was for him only.
He'd be damned before he would share something like this with the Emperor. The very thought of the Emperor knowing about it felt wrong. And though he wanted so badly to find out just what it was that Diana had left to say to him, he was convicted to wait. He had to find a way to remove this link between himself and the Emperor. But he had no idea how to do it. He knew about as much biology as the average third grader, and with being a human surveillance device, he couldn't very well so much as look at anything that would imply that he was trying to find a way out of his predicament. He had agonized over the situation in his head often over the last several days. The only possible solution he could come up with (and he didn't dare think of it as anything more than that) was that maybe Ishan would be able to help him somehow. But how would he communicate with Ishan without tipping off the Emperor? He felt hopeless every time this reality came back to him. Watching his son smile with his friends, Hank knew that Diana's message wasn't the only reason he had to find a way out of this mess. The answer had to be there, he just hadn't found it yet.
* * *
As Simon stood over the lifeless body of Wilbur Framner, his first human victim, he felt no guilt, but also no triumph. The world seemed a little more hopeless, and yet a little more fascinating. He had been standing there for nearly an hour, he realized then. Since he had awoken with Ishan's blood, he found himself able to keep track of time quite precisely in his head. Ishan spoke up to him then, telepathically.
"Now that you are finished feeding, you will want to come back to the nest soon. It is almost time for the meeting of the council, and soon Isingoma will have the results of Peter's autopsy."
Questions began to flood Simon's brain. He had been so preoccupied with what he was doing, and his own emotions, that he had barely paid attention to what Ishan was experiencing. He was finding that even with being a vampire, sometimes being so connected to another's senses overloaded his mind beyond its capacity.
"Any trace of Kato come up yet?"
"Not, yet."
"How is Isingoma taking it? His own brother working with Peter."
"He is angry. He didn't believe it at first. but when he saw the evidence, he had no c
hoice."
Simon could find nothing to say to this. It was a sad thing to him, but he need not express this, as he knew Ishan understood and felt the same. He began walking north at a human pace toward the nest. He wanted so badly to feel human again, but knew from more than just his own experience just how impossible such a thing was. He looked up at the sky and found Cassiopeia again. It hung in the dark sky unmoving, and yet moving ever slowly always. It had already moved to a small degree from where it was before.
Simon took in the many buildings along the way, some crumpled in fractions, others without a visible scratch to be seen. From time to time, he kicked piles of debris and rock as he went. He was still struggling to put together all of the pieces of who he really was now. He had, not long ago, been human, believed in his Empire, believed in his God, and believed himself to be a good person. Now, all of these things were stripped from him, and what remained was new and pliable. His future had equal potential for just about anything. But he knew he didn't want to go on killing humans. He knew that Ishan was already making some headway in this area. But it was likely that a real breakthrough would take many more years. Years, we have, Ishan kept assuring him. But they both knew the sooner they found a solution, the sooner the Emperor's rule would break down. Without the need to fear the vampires, the people would no longer need to fear the Empire. From this would come a chain reaction. Ishan had seen it before, and so had Simon through Ishan's eyes. When the time came, there would be a war. A war like no other.
* * *
"I can't believe you're actually going to wear that stupid suit. Did you think I wasn't going to find out how we got the new house? How we got the new car?" Toby yelled.
Hank stopped messing with his tie and turned his attention from himself to Toby in the mirror.
"I told you, I had no choice. Who knows what they would have done to you? I wasn't about to take that chance."
Empire of Blood [Box Set] Page 22