by J. E. Cammon
Nick couldn’t believe his fantastic luck, nor did he question it. Turning around, he raised his eyebrows at Scarlet. He wasn’t sure if he should take her hand, or maybe reach out and burn himself on her fire. What he ended up doing was nod toward the exit and then walk off briskly. He stopped at the two large wooden doors, waiting to open one for her. Thankfully, she walked somewhat fast herself and they were gone in another moment.
Dread crept into Nick after he escaped the Dean’s office. He felt like a man staring face down at the wooden planks of the guillotine platform, wondering why the end did not yet come.
“So,” Scarlet said, “what do people in Bay City do for fun?”
Nick grinned, almost as if he knew.
Chapter Five
In the brief yet numerous lessons Jarvis received, many of the details of the severing were explained to him. Though in a long, long life, he really only became as smart, as knowledgeable, as the average learned person. Things made sense, but typically only in retrospect. “One is what one eats,” she said.
Ending the thing from elsewhere, severing its life, brought things into sharp focus. It was altogether different, more potent, like the difference between thin, taut twine and robust anchor chain.
After he recovered, David left, likely to find the conjurer who was responsible for all of this. Jarvis encountered his kind before; then, just as now, they remained a danger, but it seemed odd to speak out against them. Without the poor man’s bungling, he wouldn’t have the chance to feel…the vampire didn’t know the word.
Looking down at his hands in the moonlight, he found the red stained the edges of his fingernails. He listened for a moment, and then retired. Jarvis didn’t lick his hands clean and slept in the destroyed crimson rags.
The next night began with a familiar ritual: he burned the ruined clothes, washed the rest, bathed in bleach and peroxide, then rinsed with water. The pain was there, but like all else it was a distant, muffled ache that came second to the ever-present drought of emptiness.
He wasn’t working that night, or so he thought. Along his path he encountered a summons, paint sprayed in a specific place, in a specific design, visible to everyone who passed but pertinent only to him. Jarvis stood pondering for a moment, before diverting his route back through neighborhoods and on into what most people considered to be the bad part of town.
The houses weren’t shanties, sheds, or tents, but they were the equivalent. Small dwellings on infertile land, crowded with people who could scarcely afford food, much less improvements. The majority of them lived day to day on the kindness of their self-proclaimed protectors, criminal philanthropists. These warriors commanded the respect of vast territories whose dividing lines were comprised of vague, inexplicable things like streets and overpasses. The resulting violent friction was why the police didn’t come around after dark and sometimes, Jarvis overheard, not even during the day.
At times, he had the habit of working for the largest and most powerful of the gangs, the 7th Street Moguls. Their symbol was a 7 and an M, enmeshed, and all the members bore the mark somewhere on their bodies. The neighborhood was a familiar setting, but evidence showed him in the past that he would be better off dwelling in a nicer area where neighbors were too self-involved to talk to one another and too corrupt to look too hard across the way, lest their own misdeeds become discovered.
Jarvis could see that he was expected, and even before he arrived could hear them talking. They called him the Big Man, because of his relative size. He was a hitter for the moguls, and his developing legend demanded a relationship with the headman himself. He directed the vampire at problematic individuals that needed to be made examples of; his ultimate goals were either transparent or obscure. Whatever the case, he never explained himself, and over the years he began to pay Jarvis in advance. The Big Man never failed, never turned down an offer; they had an understanding.
Most people thought their relationship was only half a decade old, but truth be told the moguls were akin to the vampire’s creation; their collaboration was decades in the making as Jarvis prepared the greater Bay City area as his territorial severing grounds. He needed accomplices that wouldn’t bother him, and who he could easily find and dispatch if they ever turned on him. In that regard, Raymond Bethel and he were instruments of one another.
“Bigs, what it is?” was his greeting after Jarvis weaved his way through the abandoned apartment complex where the man made his headquarters. He was in charge, but kept himself surrounded at almost all times. It was an irony that Jarvis never pointed out because he was sure the man noticed it himself. The vampire stared at him to acknowledge his greeting, but did not speak.
Bethel opened a drawer on the dilapidated desk he was seated behind and pulled out a recent almanac of the city. He opened it to a specific page and pointed. “You know where this is?” he asked, looking up into the vampire’s face.
Jarvis stepped forward and leaned over to make sure. When the vampire lifted his head, Bethel flipped the almanac closed and lit a cigarette. He was relatively new to smoking; Jarvis imagined he adopted the habit because of stress or a greater need to look imposing. The mogul stood up from his chair; like the desk, it was nice once but now it was a few years past its prime, and it was damaged during the delivery.
“There’s a deal going down in my territory. You know why I can’t allow that, so I need you to go deliver the usual message.” Bethel turned back to face the vampire. “I don’t have to tell you to leave the product, right?”
Jarvis shook his head. There were still subtle kinks in their relationship, mostly as a result of the paranoia that camewith tenuous leadership. The vampire had strength and influence, and with enough power could overthrow Bethel; the mogul had cause to worry. There would be no reassuring him. Any honest declaration would be perceived as a lie, which was why it was best to say as little as possible and to trust only as far as one’s arm could extend. Ultimately, every bit of evidence that showed Jarvis’ loyalty was laced with more reasons to fear him. He was an outsider; they were never friends, and they never would.
The vampire’s stare must have conveyed enough, because Bethel removed an envelope from an inner jacket pocket and tossed it on the desk. Jarvis snatched it up, turned his back to the man, and departed.
In retrospect, it would be practical to get more details concerning who transgressed in the Moguls’ territory. Any indication of numbers and arsenal would lessen the probability that he’d be shot, but Jarvis never asked questions; it would harm his image as something that simply killed and was gone. Besides, for the most part, it was usually just a handful of people that needed ending, and half the time they were asleep in the hour he came calling. Jarvis never called for help, and as far as the Moguls were aware, he walked in and out of every situation unscathed.
When he got to a block away from the location, he could hear someone’s heartbeat and breathing. They were waiting, not sleeping. Getting behind the sentry was easy enough. Like most guards, the man dealt with two realities: the first was that he would have surprise against anyone coming, since he considered himself hidden, and the second was that his world existed only in two dimensions. He didn’t have a communication device, which was convenient.
When Jarvis landed on him, the man let out a truncated gurgle. The binds that leashed his soul to his body snapped like small, fragile things. The severing always brought with it a slight jolt of euphoria that fed the vampire, but when the victim died so suddenly the effect was minimal.
The man had a cell phone and a wallet with a fair amount of money in it. The suit seemed expensive to Jarvis’ inexperienced eye, and the weapon looked like a cross between a rifle and a pistol, which he judged to also be somewhat expensive. Jarvis took the money and moved in a circuitous fashion. His reasoning proved sound; he found three more similarly invested look-outs.
The location in question, o
nce he finally reached it, proved to be a former automotive factory. Like many businesses, it seemed to have died and left just a corpse. Jarvis saw another four men patrolling idly, and he heard at least another half a dozen. Greed was as distant from him as were remorse or agitation, but he suddenly felt the impulse to check Bethel’s envelope.
Jarvis reached at his belt for the arm-length blade he carried. Killing people wasn’t difficult, but hiding his strength from investigators was generally a challenge. The typical human was a thin, rubbery shell framed with limbs and filled with a system of valves and tubes, all required to maintain life. A knife stroke delivered by an expert was easier to explain and less likely to encourage further investigation than wounds to the throat and torso caused by fingers. Experimentally, he ripped a person’s heart out once, but ultimately found the matter to be the difference between ease and efficiency.
Jarvis watched. He waited. He imagined his barreling out of the shadows must look very inelegant, but it must be incredibly frightening, too. As he passed each man, he slashed across their throats at an angle, aiming not for the spine but for the soft knob of flesh so as not to decapitate but simply slice the throat open. Jarvis left before it became difficult to walk without leaving bloody footprints.
The other two men he heard earlier proved to be on the other side of the building; the vampire killed them for thoroughness’ sake. Bright motes flared briefly, moments of heat for his icy insides, and then, as always, irrepressible nothing returned.
Inside the building, he discovered that the individual doing the buying already arrived. It seemed a steady truth that the seller was always there, waiting. Jarvis decided to take a step back and settle himself. The dead man imagined listening for a moment would help.
“This is good. You should be pleased with yourself,” one of the men said in an odd accent.
“You start with a good foundation and build from there,” the other replied.
They were both calm negotiators. Jarvis supposed there was haggling to be done, else they would simply trade and part ways. Haggling, Jarvis never understood, and he supposed he never would.
“May I?” the first asked.
“Of course.”
The vampire crept closer to get a better view. Both were middle-aged men, one skinny, one fatter; a gun hand stood behind each, stone-faced and bored-looking. From the right angle he could probably end the four of them without trouble.
“This is excellent product,” the fatter man said, wiggling his nose. The thinner one smiled.
“I trust we can get to business, then?” the other replied, gesturing to an empty spot on a nearby table. A silver briefcase was brought forth.
It was a surprise when a wet spray rained red on the green money displayed in the briefcase. Both men turned into the gout of blood erupting from one of the gun hands. They looked up at the vampire towering above them, draped much like classical Death. They looked at each other with panicked glances, as if to utter double cross.
If it were in him to be amused, Jarvis might have been. He removed the length of the blade from the second dead gun hand and dipped it into the fatter man’s chest, pushing him over like an empty stool. The thinner one he grabbed around the throat. He squeezed slowly. The nameless man clawed at his hand, and then at his eyes. After discovering that his arm was far too short, he tried kicking, then flailing madly.
With each second the tethers slowly unwound and Jarvis selfishly drank. He looked down at the other man, who was dying much more swiftly; his chubby face held a curious expression as he watched the big man slowly strangle his would-be business partner. He was trying to put together a puzzle, but there were too many pieces, and he didn’t have enough time. Neither of them did.
Jarvis dropped the body he was holding with one hand, retrieving his sword and closing the briefcase with the other. The bodies of the buyer and seller he posed face down, their hands clamped behind their backs. It was a sign for the authorities that Bethel was fond of.
In a moment of charity, he paused and emptied out the bloody half of the money on the table. He took one of those strange, expensive looking guns and put it in the briefcase, then closed it back. He didn’t have a chance to do what he intended that evening, but Jarvis guessed earning money was hardly negative.
“The hunger within never abates,” she said. During those lessons, she called it “all-consuming eternity, as deep and endless as the night.”
Chapter Six
The next night Jarvis went directly to see Bethel. Word spread quickly, it seemed. People whispered as he went in, and even more when he came out. The vampire discovered that the men dealing in the moguls’ territory were doing so in cocaine, though he had no way to distinguish one drug from another.
Bethel was pleased about the weapons and the money; he even thanked him for the work. It was an odd thing to do, but Jarvis experienced pleasantries for some time, watched them evolve with other social norms.
Bethel said he thought about giving Jarvis a bonus, but figured that the money left was not all the money that was brought for purchasing. The insinuation was that they achieved some sort of social mobility, but the moguls would probably ferret away whatever cash they recovered, too. It was ironic that after enough money was amassed, it ceased to matter; the people who had that sort of money didn’t need to pay with it. They used clout, power, and favors. Their identity was worth the thousands of thousands.
Jarvis accepted Bethel’s kindnesses, curious only to know if there were any complications. He left thinking there were none and headed to David’s.
They pre-arranged time when the lycanthrope would rent a variety of moving pictures, and they would sit and watch them. Actually, Jarvis thought they came in the mail; having never received mail he was not sure how it all worked. The vampire had the same difficulty with things like driver’s licenses, birth certificates, and credit cards. He understood how they all functioned in their most general terms, but had no real way to internalize their importance.
Sometimes, David commented on how lucky he was not to have to deal with those kinds of things, that he himself avoided getting a driver’s license because he didn’t want to deal with a car. Somehow, Jarvis suspected he was afraid of driving. Besides, he imagined that over rougher terrain, the lycanthrope could run faster than a car, so why have one? There was much of David that Jarvis did not understand, but he seemed a willing participant in the social experiment called association.
Jarvis walked most places. The comfort of shoes or fatigue weren’t of any concern; he wished to walk and so he walked, from will alone. It was the first lesson all vampires had to learn; after enforcing one’s will on the emptiness that constantly needed filling, there was only focus and discipline. In most situations, it ultimately came down to who had more of both, and every tactic and technique was meant to increase one’s own or decrease an opponent’s. They could all be crazed, massacring savages, to be put down like wild animals, but with a little mental fortitude, they could persist long enough to figure out the why of their existences. At least, that was Jarvis’ theory.
It pleased him to sneak into David’s dwelling; it was challenging. He believed the man always left at least one of his windows open to encourage the attempt; he also suspected that David was equally engaged in the game. To this end, Jarvis approached the problem from the top down, climbing the neighboring building and moving across that roof, eventually leaping across the street and climbing down. Sometimes he used the stairs. Jarvis knew he liked David because he hardly ever conceived of finishing the task on those occasions when he managed to enter his den unannounced. One did not kill one’s friends.
Tonight he intended to look for...Jarvis supposed the appropriate word was inspiration. What he found instead was someone else on the neighboring roof. Jarvis supposed what it came down to was the slim difference between destiny and fate, luck and chance. He came
upon the man, discovering that he possessed a heartbeat and was equipped with a variety of weapons and a small duffel bag brimming with yet more.
The vampire paused then, knowing what the person was. In his experience, they never named themselves as they launched from the shadows, so they were named by their actions. They fashioned themselves as hunters, slayers, warriors of the human world that took to walking in the night. Jarvis encountered a small number over the years, and he came away with what likely amounted to respect. They weren’t much stronger or faster than a normal human, but they s all picked up clever ways of thinking, and a depth for cunning.
They were all trained, all equipped, and all traveled in groups; that last encouraged further scanning of the rooftop. This one was alone and unaware, concentrating fully on David’s building. Focusing, Jarvis made out another person in the apartment; the person looked feminine and was holding something in her hands, though David didn’t seem worried.
With that thought, the vampire decided to act, though he still wasn’t sure of how. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the hunter on the rooftop decided to check his surroundings, glancing around and finding the vampire not a pace from him. To his credit, he didn’t lose much composure and his heart didn’t rapidly increase in pace. Smoothly, he shifted his position as if he were going for a weapon at his side, while at the same time he fired with a gun he already drew and was seated in his lap.
To mislead was a popular trick of theirs, and had Jarvis not seen it before, he would have been shot, like so many other times. Instead, he adopted the tactic of not engaging, moving forward with a course of action and not allowing his opponent’s gestures to change that course. He advanced quickly, turning sideways and lunging.
The hunter needed distance, and Jarvis could see him moving to stand even as he leaped forward. The slayer braced himself with his one arm and continued to fire with the other. He positioned himself as if to engage in some of the martial arts that seemed so popular.