by A. L. Mengel
No one woke – not her mother or father, and not her brothers or sisters. During the entire abduction, they slept with a depth like death and no one arose to her aid or even made move. Claret rose out of bed when she felt the gruff, strong commanding hand raising her up. She arose without protest, as if she wanted to.
Removing the hood, the man smiled down at Claret, looking on her like an adult would an obedient child. Claret had never seen this man before – his dark hair framed his chiseled face, and he had a long and full beard which looked like a mane growing from his chin. And the eyes. Deep blue and intense.
He extended his hand, and as if on cue, Claret took it. The two headed through the sheepskin door, and disappeared into the night. Claret’s family never saw or heard from her again.
*~*~*
Sheldon closed the library that night. Reading of Claret, he saw that she was rumored to be the center of immortality. Fascinated by the detailed account of how she became immortal, he continued his scribbling.
Claret.
He wrote her name down in the center of the page, circling it. It stood out amongst the sea of jotted shorthand notes, names and dates.
How can I find Claret? He thought.
He pulled the book closer to him, setting it on top of his notepad. Reading on, he learned that none of the immortals knew who captured Claret’s attention so significantly that she left with him in the middle of the night. The next page had a crude drawing of Claret drinking out of some sort of goblet. Underneath, was the inscription:
Claret drinking from The Cup of Christ.
Sheldon sat back in his chair for a moment, exhaling a deep breath from the depths of his torso. He leaned forward again, and studied the picture. It was a crudely drawn pencil drawing. The figures representing Claret and what appeared to be the hooded man looked to be similar to demonic cartoon characters.
He sat at that same, small wooden table near the large picture window overlooking the well-kept garden full of springtime flowers, and jotted notes furiously. The book of the immortals was proving to be a perfect source for Sheldon for his thesis, and when he turned to page 212, that was when he glimpsed Antoine for the first time.
There was a spread with a rather flattering picture of Antoine in the center of the page proclaiming how this immortal “financed solely expeditions to unearth ancient Egyptian relics”. Sheldon sat back in his seat for a moment, wondering how the author got that information. In the 1800’s as well. How would Antoine know of relics in Cairo? Weren’t they discovered in the 1900’s? He rubbed his bearded chin, and removed his glasses.
This is a mysterious man, he thought to himself. How did he finance those expeditions? How did he keep it a secret from the Egyptian authorities? And how did he know that the relics were there?
Some of the lights shut off.
Sheldon looked through the stacks, noticing that the library appeared to be closing. He desperately had to have this book. He closed the book for a moment, and looked at the bottom of the spine, where it indicated that the book was a reference book. He could not risk stealing the book from the library – his education and future would have been at stake, and he did not want to tarnish his stellar record. But he was determined to come back tomorrow to continue his note-taking, and he had to get a copy of that book for his own!
*~*~*
“You have been following me for the better part of your life now,” Antoine had said, in his living room amidst the popping and crackling fire, to Sheldon, the same misty night that he had come to talk to Antoine. The same night that Anthony and Paula had followed him.
“Yes,” Sheldon replied, tipping the glass of whiskey towards his view, examining the ice cubes for no apparent reason but to search for a better answer.
Antoine smiled, walked from the fireplace over to the sofa, sat down gracefully and crossed his legs; he raised his eyebrows to Sheldon, as if signaling him to continue speaking.
“I first saw you in a reference book I stumbled across in a library in Boston in 1965,” he said with a slight slur in his speech. He set his empty glass down on the reading table next to his chair. As always the gracious host, Antoine arose and walked to the bar to refill Sheldon’s drink as the circumstances of how Sheldon discovered Antoine was revealed.
“I took notes furiously that night, hoping that I could use the book for my senior thesis. I studied Theology, you see, and my specialty was the paranormal.”
“I see.”
Sheldon eagerly sipped the whiskey that was poured before him, and Antoine set a platter of caviar and crackers on the small table as well, which Sheldon attacked like he was in a bar. He leaned back in his chair and continued. “I have become obsessed with you, I will not lie. That very night that I first saw the article written on you – in the eighteen hundreds no less – I pledged to myself that I would find you and meet you. Anyone that could have known about the ancient buried treasures in Egypt – and keep it a secret from all of humanity – I had to discover.”
“So you became obsessed with me because I had an inner sense and appreciation for the Pharaohs?” Antoine asked as he again glided to the sofa, sitting across from Sheldon.
“Not exactly,” he replied. “What intrigued me was the fact that you knew of the tombs that had the treasure, before it was discovered. And you didn’t announce it to the world. You left it for humanity to find, years later.”
“That’s it?” Antoine pressed, leaning forward. Sheldon polished off the last of the caviar and crackers, and took a large sip of his drink.
“No,” Sheldon replied. “My interest in you goes much deeper than that. My interest revolves around your immortality. That article explained how you financed the excavations by yourself to unearth artifacts – to search for something, I suppose. But what intrigues me is that you managed to keep this a secret from the Egyptian authorities, from the entire world as a matter of fact, and then you covered your tracks like you weren’t even there!”
Antoine looked straight ahead, but saw nothing. His faced lacked expression as his mind foraged ahead behind unseeing eyes. He replayed the events in his mind, he replayed the night that the excavations took place. He saw himself, leading a group of immortals, digging and pressing into the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. He saw himself unearthing the precious treasure, the treasure that no one knew was there, the treasure from thousands of years ago, the cup that Jesus Christ Himself drank from.
The Holy Grail.
Antoine snapped out of his musing and shook his head. Sheldon was missing the point.
It seemed as if the silly old man was assuming that he was simply excavating the tombs because he was looking to find some mythical buried treasure, or to get some ancient artifacts to support his extravagant lifestyle. Or perhaps to add to his personal, private collection. But Sheldon was indeed misguided. He didn’t even know how Antoine managed to excavate the tombs without alerting the authorities. Silly, simple old man.
“Sheldon,” Antoine said, rising from the sofa. The fire was slowly dying. “Stop speaking of things that you do not know of. I work in many realms that you are not aware of, and you will never be aware of unless you become one of us.”
Antoine walked over to Sheldon’s chair. The old man looked up at him with a slightly drunken stare. Antoine extended his arm for the man.
“Come with me,” Antoine said. “I have to show you something.”
Sheldon got up from the chair on his own, and once standing, gave Antoine a pat on the back, as if he were an old friend. “So now you are finally warming up to me!”
The two headed out of the sitting room to the foyer, and through the dining room that led to the kitchen, where Paula would eventually stand behind the swinging door and spy on Antoine and Anthony. There was also a second door, next to the swinging door, that led to the unknown.
“Do you know how I got this house?” Antoine asked as they paused in the kitchen before the door.
Sheldon shook his head. Antoine nodded, expecti
ng that answer.
“I acquired this house from a family that I become very well acquainted with over the past few years. The owner’s name was Hernan. Hernan Perez. He had a son named Roberto. Roberto and I met on Miami Beach, and that is when I was drunken with his beauty.” He crossed the kitchen to a rack of keys that was hanging on the wall near the stove, and drew a key from the rack.
“When I first saw Roberto, he was the most beautiful specimen of a mortal I had ever laid eyes on. But I saw much deeper than that. Roberto had a dark past. But I chose him. I chose him to become immortal like me, but I didn’t act fast enough. I just couldn’t bear to turn him into what I am.” He placed the key in the door.
“The ironic thing is – he is physically older than I am.” Antoine threw his head back and laughed, and opened the door to darkness.
“As you can see,” he said, “I appear rather young. I am. If I were a mortal, I would be nineteen. But, in actuality, I am hundreds of years old.” He flipped the light on, revealing a set of dark wooden stairs heading to a mysterious, dark lower level, stale looking white walls and a few electrical outlets. But that was all. At the end of the stairs, the light faded, and the blackness took over once again.
“Anyway,” Antoine continued, “Hernan proved to be a domineering man who beat and controlled Roberto to the point where Roberto surrendered himself to me, giving up on his life. I killed Hernan for what he did to his son.”
Antoine started to descend the stairs, and Sheldon cautiously followed.
“Sometimes”, Antoine said, peering into the darkness below the stairs, “if you listen carefully and the house is silent, you can hear him. Hernan calls sometimes…sometimes I think he is looking for me.”
“Hear him?”
“Deep in the night…when the house is dark…I can hear him.”
“You hear him speak to you like he is still living?”
“Oh you think that he is dead?” Antoine questioned with a chuckle. “Anyone I touch becomes immortal! Have you done your homework dear sir?” He reached around to Sheldon with a smile and patted him sharply on the back. “Apparently not!”
Antoine continued. “I killed Hernan, but he still walks the earth. He is immortal, but not in the same way that myself or Darius are. Hernan is a crossover. Confused. When I drained him of his blood, I took him to the edge of death. And then something else took over. I think it was a demon.”
“And what do you mean?” Sheldon asked. “When you said you didn’t act fast enough?”
“It’s the rules of Tartarus,” Antoine replied. “I can stake a claim, but there is a fine line that must not be crossed. I crossed it, and Hernan died. I could no longer claim him at that point.”
Antoine stopped at the end of the stairs.
“Here we are,” he said. He extended out his arm towards the darkness, as if he were on a game show displaying a brand new car. “This is what I was going to show you.”
“But all I see is darkness,” Sheldon said.
“That’s true. You will have to trust me. The bowels of this house are part of the other realm that I was talking to you about. The other realm – remember Sheldon? When I was in Egypt? The other realm.”
Sheldon looked around like the inspector that he was, and Antoine took the clue.
“If you are looking for a light switch, there aren’t any. There is no basement beneath this house. Living in Florida, you should have known that. The water table here is too high.”
“So what is this then?” Sheldon asked. He reached his hand out in an attempt to touch the thick blackness before them.
“Like I told you,” Antoine explained, as the two stood at the base of the stairs, in the small remainder of light that instantly was swallowed up before them. “This is not a basement. I can’t just flick a switch, I can’t just proclaim ‘Let there be light’ like God did. I can’t control this dimension. But I can guide you through it.”
Sheldon paused, and turned to Antoine.
“You meant to take me here?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And what if I don’t want to go?”
“Oh you will. You are too obsessed with me to say no. You still have whiskey running through your veins, which has lowered your inhibitions, and I know that you will say yes, or I would not have taken you down these stairs. This will answer all of your questions.”
“I thought I had answered my questions when I spoke to you these last few days,” Sheldon replied.
“Like I said, it goes much deeper than that. Do you really think that I am simply an immortal? Do you not think that there is a darker force at work?”
Sheldon scratched his head for a moment.
“So shall we proceed?” Antoine asked.
“Yes,” Sheldon said. “I want to see this. But can I get my recorder first? I left it up in the living room.”
“No. You will have no need for it where we are going.”
Sheldon looked up the stairs for a moment, seeing the warm glow of the kitchen light shining down, seeming so far away this moment.
“So shall we go?”
“Yes.”
Antoine looked at Sheldon expectantly.
“Will you come with me?” Antoine asked, inviting him into the blackness. And the two proceeded, quickly becoming enveloped into a wall of blackness so dark that as soon as they entered it, it was if they never were there.
*~*~*
Anthony caressed the back of Antoine’s neck as he showed the new member to the door. Anthony was an Inductee.
What Paula didn’t see when she had been spying in the other room was Antoine sinking his teeth deeper and deeper into Anthony’s neck – sending a stream of bright red blood cascading down his back, bleeding through his shirt and spilling bright red drops to the white carpet below.
“So you will come?” Antoine asked, expectantly, gazing into Anthony’s eyes. Antoine wiped a drop of blood that oozed from the corner of his mouth, and smiled with blood stained teeth. “I would most certainly like to have you there when I exhume him. No. I need you there.”
“Yes, I will come.”
“Good then,” Antoine said. “Go and rest. You will be transforming soon. Once you do, come back to me. I will take us to Lyon.”
Anthony left the estate, and staggered down the front path; he walked quickly across the street in bloodstained clothes to his car, all while being watched from afar by Paula.
CHAPTER FIFTY
It was Antoine who saw the events in the cemetery playing in his mind – he saw himself stand before Asmodai, surrendering the heart; he saw himself looking at his own heart beat in his chest; he could feel the warmth of his flesh as he touched the wound. He saw himself later, with Darius, after the ritual. And he even imagined himself, much later, examining the healed wound.
But that is only what he saw.
For Anthony was always there. And what happened is his mind was just how he imagined that it would be. But Anthony was there…and, that part, he did not take into consideration.
From a safe vantage point, Anthony had watched the events in the cemetery unfold before him. Like Antoine, he had heard the rustling in the woods, he had heard the tree come crashing down, and he had felt the rumbling of the footsteps. He had seen the demon come out of the woods as if on cue, and he had watched Antoine duck into the grave. But what was different now, from before, was that Antoine never made it to resurrect Darius; for Anthony had been present the entire time. He was perched up in a mature oak tree; huddled in a large, thick branch on the opposite end of the graveyard, and through the shroud of foliage and brushes he could see the entire scene unfold before his eyes, to the point where Antoine had been dodging giant fireballs from the glowing eyes of a corpse – and then seeming to be overtaken by a pack of demons.
He climbed down the tree he had been watching from effortlessly like an athlete.
His newly acquired powers assisted him with speed and agility, and when he hit the ground he didn’t even make a s
ound. All attention was focused Antoine, on the opposite side, as his arm was slowly devoured by a corpse.
Springing into action, he darted into the cemetery silently and ducked behind a large tombstone, running through his mind the events and what he might be able to do to help. He would be no match against Asmodai. And if he intruded, Asmodai would certainly dispose of him.
Antoine turned and jumped away from the corpse, and Anthony took the cue and sprinted at superhuman speed across the graveyard, darting from grave to grave, taking refuge behind the periodic large stone.
Asmodai drew his sword. Not speaking, he charged towards Anthony, swinging his flaming sword back and forth.
Anthony sprinted and began dodging demons – for a moment, he stopped behind a large marker, catching his breath. Despite being immortal, he was still newly changed. He still clung to a bit of mortality, and the powers have not been fully bestowed upon him yet. He was still partially human, and therefore still experienced the mortal shortcomings.
He rested his hand on the edge of the stone. Looking forward, he saw Antoine perched back up in the tree.
“Anthony!” he called, looking over towards his partner. “Take this!” He threw the heart down, and Anthony caught it. He looked down upon the organ, he paused for a moment, noticing its freshness; the blood was still bright red and the muscle was pumping methodically. The blood copiously coated it; it still flowed and covered his hands. He clutched the heart close to his chest, and darted to the other end of the cemetery, further away from the action.
Asmodai followed the heart with his eyes and came up to the stone where Anthony was standing, swinging his sword against the mortar, ushering a loud clank and a spray of sparks to the ground below. Anthony had left just in time.
But Asmodai continued, and several other demons followed, swords drawn and aimed towards Anthony. Getting closer to where Antoine was perched in the tree, Anthony stopped behind another large stone, catching his breath for a moment. He looked up.