by CT Grey
“You cannot escape us,” Damien shouted after me as I smashed my shoulder against the hidden door and then ran downwards. “There’s no way Jane. Do you hear—”
As if a knife had cut off his vocal cords I stepped into the mysterious zone that stretched across the room that saw three zombies munching on a victim at front of a massive vault door.
*** Henrik ***
“Our entrance,” I said as I tapped in the code to review her arrival to one of our base gates. “We wanted to make it as concealed as possible. And the technology we had hidden in its walls was meant to give a tactical edge to any survivors. It was meant to conceal any and all noises they could… or would make. We never meant it to harm anyone. But that poor soul…” I flicked my gaze towards the victim that the three zombies were using to fill their stomachs. “He never had a chance.”
“No he didn’t,” Jane agreed. “And the same thing applied to me as I had no choice but to take Jaq’s life. Damien… I could see blood lust in his eyes, when he extended his arm and gestured me to give her up. But I …” She looked down, holding a cigarette between her fingers as Jane started picking her nails. “...I couldn’t, she—”
“That’s all right.” I closed the notebook and laid the pen over it. “I understand.” Then I turned my eyes towards Sergeant Red and said, “We understand how painful it was. Don’t we?” And as I saw him nodding I continued: “Believe me. One should never ever end up taking the life of their friend. It’s one of those things you’ll regret for rest of your life.”
“Sometimes,” she said quietly. “You have no choice.”
“That’s right. Sometimes you cannot do anything else but the inevitable.”
Jane looked up and I saw tears rolling down her cheeks. “You’ve done it?”
I nodded, but I couldn’t explain. She didn’t need to know how much it had hurt me, when I’d ordered a hitman to take out one of my oldest, dearest friends. But I bet my life Jane was able to see it in my eyes. It had not been easy to take such a decision, especially when every bit of me had screamed to give him another chance. “But what’s good is that she’s not dead, and she hasn’t switched to the enemy camp.”
“Now that’s funny,” she laughed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I frowned. “What did I say wrong?”
“Jaq might look and talk the same. But she’s definitely not one of the good guys. None of the vampires are. They all belong to the Enemy. And the only thing keeping her from falling deeper is me. Do you get that?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know if I have fully understood all of the details. There’s just too many things that we have barely touched on. So maybe if you’d give me a month to study these things, I would get everything you’re saying. However there’s one thing, and it’s a big one, because time is running out.”
When she frowned at me, I took a deep breath and said, “I am here to take a leap of faith and believe what you said is the truth and nothing but the truth. Therefore I wanted to ask if you would be willing to come to work for us?”
“Intriguing,” she said. “I didn’t see that coming.” Then she lit up another smoke even though she’d not finished the last one. “But you’re right. We need to do something, and this alliance might as well be it. And personally I don’t think you’ve been too happy about hearing the Damned taking over the world, have you?”
I didn’t say a thing even though I wanted say yes, that was exactly it. The thing was, at the back of my mind I could hear alarm bells ringing. Maybe it was that she was reading me all too well. Or maybe it was because she was leading me deliberately by saying just what I wanted to hear at the right time.
And it didn’t take long before she asked: “Is there a problem?”
“Um—“
“If there’s a problem,” she said. “Then get it out and we’ll deal with it.”
“Well, you know, I’m a bit of a slow burner,” I said. “And I just realised that the trust is a two way street. And what you should know is that I came here to personally ensure that they weren’t going to carry out the liquidation order, before I had had a chance to hear your story. But now, I’m kind of regretting that I laid all of this at front of you when you just said that I shouldn’t trust anybody.”
She sighed and then reached over the table to grab my hand. “Well, that’s true, but I think I’ve done more than enough to show you that you can trust me. Because it could have been so easy for me end your life, when I saw you standing next to that little man. And then I could have started slaughtering your soldiers the moment they stepped out from that entrance. But I didn’t. Not even after you had taken me inside. But there are vampires that would have done it without any second thoughts.”
“Yes,” I nodded. “That has become quite obvious. But—”
“But I didn’t my love. I wanted you to trust me from the moment you saw me.”
“Love…” I looked down. It hurt me. So much. And she could be saying that same thing over and over again, and never really meaning it. And this again could just be one those things she was saying just get me on her side. But in a way, I could hear in her voice that she meant every bit of it.
“Trust is a two way street and love is part of it,” Jane said softly. But then I noticed Sergeant Red shifting in his position uneasily. It almost as if he didn’t want to hear those words; her weaving a web between two of us. “I could say that I love you as much as I love my guardian—”
That did it. Sergeant Red stepped off from the doorway and said, “Ma’am.”
Jane turned her head and said to him, “Jealousy isn’t part of it, my love,” as if she had known what was happening in the sergeant’s mind. “You are just as mortal as Mister Jackson. And the truth is Red, you could never be my true lover.”
“My Lady,” Sergeant Red bellowed. “You should not trust him! He’s the enemy, not me! Do you hear me? He is the—”
“I can hear you very well Red,” Jane said loudly. “So would you calm down, please?”
“I’m not going to calm down.” Sergeant Red had the stun baton in one hand and the pistol in the other. “You heard it with your own ears—”
“Red!” Jane shouted at the same time as I jumped up and yelled: “Sergeant!”
Sergeant Red raised his gun and moved his finger on the trigger. “You are not…” he began to say, when I saw movement from the corner of my eye. “…her…” Jane stepped in front of me, one hand raised to stop whatever Sergeant Red was doing, while the other searched for a weapon from my table. “…step aside, my lady, and let me finish this. We can escape this place and go out there to help the others.”
“Red,” Jane said calmly, but this time there was something in her voice that not only made him listen carefully, but also myself. “You will holster your weapons and step outside to think about this. Now!”
And just like, that Sergeant Red said, “Ma’am,” and then did just what Jane wanted. I didn’t say a thing, when she turned around and placed my pen back over the notebook. But neither did she. Not until Jane had returned to her seat to light up yet another smoke, then she finally opened her mouth and said, “I think it’s better if we finish this deal as soon as possible, and I’ll promise to take Red and Jaq away from this place.”
“What was that thing you just did?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s get on with it. You were talking about the alliance and I think it’s the right way for—”
“Nothing?” I said. “I could swear that what you did—”
“Seriously Mister Jackson,” she said. “There is going to be time when I tell you everything, but now is not that time. There are people out there that need my… No, need our help and I am more than anxious to go back outside.”
“No,” I said vehemently. “There is something going on here, which I am not entirely sure about. So if you want this to happen, you tell me exactly what I want to hear.”
She took a deep drag and stared a
t me. What was going in her mind, I couldn’t exactly say. I wasn’t a telepath, but I sensed it was one of those things she was going to tell me about at a better time. But as far as I was concerned this was the only time, and if I was going to recruit her, I wanted it to happen on a basis of complete trust rather than building it on a house of cards. And when nothing happened, I said, “I have the power to let you go, or let them to carry out the termination order. So which one is it: a carrot or the stick?”
Jane stood up and glared at me murderously. Then after a few moments of silence she said, “You know, I could try to fight my way out from this place and take down as many of you as I can, and believe me, it would be a blood-bath. But that would completely undermine my intentions. So I think I’ll choose the carrot and just tell what you want to hear.”
“Good,” I said and picked up the pen. “Let’s hear it then. What happened to—”
“No.” She waved her hand. “You’re not going to write this down or record it in any way. Is that clear?”
“Fine.” I dropped the pen back on the table. “This is off the record, then.”
“Excellent,” Jane said. She walked to the table, leaned down and placed her fists against the surface before she said: “Look into my eyes…”
I did as she asked and was amazed beyond belief. Not because of her eyes, but because every bit of her was radiating that majestic power I’d experienced earlier. Every single hair, cell, curve and angle on her radiated sensuality. As if I was contemplating something like a goddess. And in the next heart beat she wasn’t like a goddess, but she became one. Jane became the centre of my universe and I heard her saying: “Now go out to join the others and leave me here for a moment.”
“Yes, my love,” I said, but as I was standing up, she spoke: “No, I’m not your love, and I want you think about what happened out there.”
“Yes ma’am.” I turned around and head straight towards the door, as if that had been my intention the whole time. It didn’t matter that I’d left my desk, my pen, my notebooks behind – what she wanted me to do, was all I could think of. And then suddenly that illusion shattered and I found myself standing in the corridor next to Sergeant Red, with Wally sitting on his toolbox.
“Sir,” Sergeant Red said.
“Sergeant Red,” I replied automatically.
“Sir.” Wally pointed at me with his screwdriver.
I shook my head sharply and uttered: “Wally…what the hell is going on?”
“That’s a good question sir,” Wally said. “And what I reckon from what I gathered from Red’s little speech, is that she has got you two wrapped around her little finger so tight that there’s no escaping.”
“Really?” I frowned. “How’s that possible?”
Sergeant Red shrugged his shoulders and said, “Don’t know sir, but it’s like she’s the centre of the universe and I cannot think about anything else than her. And now I feel so terrible. It’s like she has abandoned me, because I tried to shoot you. Can you believe that?” Then he turned at me and asked, “She’s not mad at me, sir, is she?”
In a way I was feeling the same thing. I longed to go back into that room, but I didn’t dare to act against her will even though I was the highest ranking member in this level. Some could have said that I should have been able to do anything I wanted to. But I couldn’t do anything to her, because she wanted me to think about what happened, and I wanted to do that better than any other time in my life.
“Sir,” Wally said. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“No Wally, I don’t.”
“Seriously?” Wally said. “Your man over here said that he wanted to shoot you and you just stand there as if that’s normal. What is wrong with you two?”
“I don’t know Wally,” I said. “I really don’t know. I mean… I don’t know what’s wrong, but what I know is, what happened between Sergeant Red and I was morally and legally wrong. He should not have done that, but yet I accept his actions as if they—”
“Are normal,” Wally said. “Yeah. I get that. But to be honest sir, she shouldn’t have been able to brainwash you two so quickly.”
“Brainwash,” I said. We had done that for ages by following the methods OSS had developed during the fifties and sixties. But yet she’d not been using scopolamine. She hadn’t drugged me. I could feel every part of myself and I wasn’t behaving like a brainless zombie, but yet, that was exactly how I was feeling as I stood there, staring at Wally whirling his screwdriver nervously.
“Sir,” Wally said. “You haven’t been taking any drugs have you?”
“No Wally,” I said. “I haven’t.”
“Just asking sir, because you two monkeys aren’t getting any better, and I’m frankly running out of options here. So do you mind stepping aside and allowing me to go and have a word with her…?”
“Okay,” I said and then did as he asked. “You do that.”
Wally rolled his eyes and shook his head surreptitiously as he lifted his toolbox and left us standing in the corridor. When the hissing stopped behind us, we didn’t say anything. Instead, I continued thinking how it was possible that she was able to brainwash me in such a short space of time without using any magic. And I could sense that same kind of contemplation was happening next to me. Just it was Sergeant Red who opened his mouth first by saying: “I’m sorry sir. I realise now how wrong I was, but to be honest it was all I could think about doing. I needed to protect her with all my life and—”
“Red,” I said. “I hope you don’t mind me calling you Red, do you?”
“No sir,” Sergeant Red said. “I don’t mind.”
“You did what you felt was needed and to be honest, if this deal is going down, you can be happy that she's taking you out of there, as I don’t want to see you standing in front of a military tribunal.”
“Sir,” Red said. “Thank you sir. But how you’re going to do that, if you’re standing out here with me.”
“Don’t know Sergeant,” I said. “I need to figure out how she did it.”
The door hissed behind us and I heard Jane saying, “Henrik would you come in for a minute, please?”
“Yes ma’am,” I heard me saying and doing exactly what she wanted.
On my way in, Wally plucked at my sleeve and said, “You’re in good hands sir.”
“Good hands…” I frowned as the door hissed close behind me. I raised my gaze and asked, “What does he mean?”
“Henrik.” Jane took hold of my hands. “Look into my eyes.” I looked, and saw again that radiating goddess before me. She was so beautiful, but then my universe shattered as she said: “You are free. I don’t need you anymore.”
Why? I wanted to cry at the same time as that goddess disappeared and I saw before me an old, tired-looking woman. Although she was still living in the body of young female, I could see wrinkles, sagging eyes and pale skin that had not seen sunlight for centuries.
“The answer is complicated and I doubt you’ll understand. So let me put it this way, what I did was a kind of bonding that I learned a long time ago to make people to obey my will, but every time I use it, it burns me furiously. So it’s not like I’m able to do it to everyone, all of time, but just use it on those that I need to do my bidding.”
“You,” I said shockingly. “Put a spell on me.”
“Kind of,” she shrugged. “But I wouldn’t call it a spell as it’s not something you chant from a book, to form a ritual or anything.”
I looked her and saw her lips moving, but what was coming out, didn’t make any sense. Not to me anyways. The whole magic thing was so confusing. Although I accepted it in the fiction, it was absolutely different to experience it in reality. “The blood magic… I don’t get it, but it does sound very interesting.”
Jane sighed. She turned me towards the table, my chair and made me sit down. “You mentioned you would need a month to understand all of this, but the truth is we don’t have a month. We might not even have a week. But what we
have is this alliance. And I’m willing to do any sort of contract with you as long as you’re not fucking with me.”
I followed her with my gaze as she returned to the other side of the table and dragged her chair closer. And when she lit up her cigarette and looked at me with those pretty, wise eyes I wanted to say yes, let’s do, but I didn’t. There was nothing happening. And yet everything was happening as I experienced the last few days again and again. “I don’t know anything anymore,” I sighed. “And to be honest I feel old, senile.”
“That’s rubbish my love,” Jane said. “You’re far from being old or senile. But here’s the thing, I’m willing to be your eyes and ears out there, okay?”
“Okay.” I nodded numbly. “Go on… I’m listening.”
“But I won’t do anything if it doesn’t feel right. And…” That didn’t feel right even to my paralyzed mind. Rules were rules. They were made for a reason. And the chain of command was the most important part of them. History was full of incidents where the operators had tried to break the link and failed unexpectedly. But there had also being cases, where orders had been wrong and I found myself saying, “Yes, that’s understandable. What else?”
“And if there’s a person or a group that I want to bring to safety, you’re not going to say no or lock them in a prison. Do you agree?”
I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening. “What if I say no?”
“Well, that’s your privilege.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Go ahead and do as you will, but know that at the same time you cannot expect me to do my best if I know I cannot trust you guys are pulling your weight if and when I need it. Is that clear?”
“You know,” I said quietly. “It sounds like you’ve done this sort of work before.”