Saying Goodbye to the Sun

by David McAfee

Whatever blessings the church once possessed were gone, and Anna and I had no difficulty entering. The doors tried to protest, but their strength had long since left them, and Anna shoved them open with ease. The rusted hinges gave an eerie screech as they were forced back into service.

  Side by side, Anna and I entered the old church. Inside was more of the same. Cracking stone walls reached up to a ceiling thirty feet over our heads. Some of the beams sagged with age and weight, but most held firm, protected from the elements by the strong walls and roof. The damp, musty smell of mold hung in the air, reminding me of the Halls of the Bachyir, but without the ever-present smell of blood. Decades of dust carpeted the floor, raised up in sticky, choking clouds by our feet. The church had not seen parishioners in a very long time.

  Anna and I walked down the central aisle, stirring up dust and cobwebs left by long dead spiders. Most of the pews stood intact, if rickety, but a few were no more than piles of broken wood and padding that had been chewed by mice. Scattered around the place were thousands of tiny mouse pellets, proof of their presence.

  The oppressive silence stifled any urge to speak, as though the sound would profane the spirit of the long dead building. As we made our way to the pulpit I strained to hear anything at all. The skittering feet of a mouse, the buzz of an insect, even the sound of our own feet walking through the dust. But there was nothing.

  My foot kicked something on the floor. I looked, and reached down to pick it up. It was a book. A journal, in fact. Leather bound, and much like the one I had gotten from Headcouncil Herris. Dried blood stuck in patches to the back cover, difficult to see against the brown leather, especially in the dim light, but I knew the smell of blood well enough by then. I turned it over to see the front and almost dropped it in disbelief. There on the cover, in the same gold lettering as the one I had in my bag, was the name ‘Raine.’ Another of her journals, but this one seemed much older than the one I already had. I opened it to the first entry and read the date.

  August 31, 1872. Oh yes. Much, much older than mine. But how in the Hell did it get there?

  Something was wrong; I could feel it. Some hidden instinct buried deep within my psyche screamed at me to get out of there. The feeling pulled at me; my taut muscles begged me to do something, anything. I grabbed Anna and tried to pull her back to the door, but she shrugged out of my grip and walked to the middle of the aisle.

  “Raine Winters,” Anna said, her voice thundering in the silent halls, “By order of The Council of Thirteen, you are to return to the Halls of the Bachyir. Show yourself now and let’s be done.”

  “Raine is not here,” came a chill voice from behind us. “At least, not anymore.”

  Anna and I whirled at the unexpected voice, but I already knew the speaker. Like Kagan’s coarse, scratchy baritone, the sound of Carl Sanders’ soft, aristocratic speech would forever be burned into my memory.

  There he stood in the church entryway, blocking the exit with his body. He wore the same black overcoat I had last seen in New York two months previous, as well as that same superior grin on his sharp, chiseled face.

  Anna and I tensed. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I readied myself to turn and run for the pulpit, where I hoped to find another exit. I made ready to run, but before I got the chance I heard a gruff, coarse chuckle at my back. That’s when I knew Kagan had joined the party.

  “Oh shit,” I said without turning around. “Shit!” The words a harsh whisper in the dead church.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The Church

  “Sanders!” Anna hissed, “How—”

  “How did I beat you here?” Sanders finished for her, “We arrived last night. We knew you would come.”

  “How?” I asked, “The old man—”

  “The old man told you exactly what I instructed him to tell you,” Sanders said. “We found the Maize sanctuary a month ago and replaced Carlton with our own man. He has been waiting for you to show up. Last night, he called us. We told him what to say. I admit I doubted he could pull off the deception, but he must have been convincing because here you are.” Sanders smiled.

  “Your man is feeding maggots now,” Anna said. “I snapped his neck like a twig.”

  If she was hoping to get a rise out of Sanders, she failed. He simply shrugged. “He was expendable.”

  “Damn,” I muttered. “So Raine was never here. Nice trap.”

  “Isn’t it?” Sanders said, smiling. “But you are wrong. Raine was here. This is where she was hiding from the Council.”

  Sanders pointed at the journal I held in my hands and grinned, “Where do you think I acquired that?”

  Sanders’ meaning suddenly became clear. Raine had been in the church; he had found her first, and killed her. I didn’t want to believe it, and for a split second I chose not to, but it was hard to deny the journal. I knew Raine’s writing, and I knew she would never have given it to Sanders willingly. That and the blood on the back told me everything.

  All at once I didn’t care about revenge. I didn’t care about Lannis, or Algor, or Herris. I didn’t give a shit about Anna or Kagan or even Ramah. The Hell with all of them! All I cared about was the man standing ten yards in front of me.

  I leapt forward. Claws grew from my fingers with no urging from me. I was running on pure rage and instinct. I heard Anna yell behind me, but I paid no attention to it, I didn’t have time. In a fraction of a second I was in close with Sanders, who had grown his own claws as I approached. He stood ready, confident, and eager, assured of victory. And why not? He had been around much longer than I, and he had mastered abilities I hadn’t even heard of yet, including some that baffled the most powerful among the Bachyir.

  I didn’t care. I couldn’t. If I stopped to think about it, it would be over.

  Enraged, I swung at his face, but he ducked underneath my swing and jabbed me in the side with one of his clawed hands. I felt the pain, but from a distance. It didn’t seem real, more like something I watched on a TV screen. I grabbed the hand that was stuck in my side and yanked it out, growling. I tried to use it to gain some leverage on him but by then my blood had soaked his wrist and I lost my grip. He yanked it free and drew back for another blow.

  I dove to the right, dodging his claws by a hair’s breadth and rolling to a stop about five feet away. I sprang to my feet just in time to meet Sanders’ foot with my jaw. Reeling, I nearly went down a second time and only managed to stay upright by grabbing one of the pews. My vision blurred, and spots swam in front of my face. I saw his fist come at me again, and I just managed to duck behind the pew.

  The sound of cracking wood accompanied a shower of splinters as he punched a hole through the back of the seat. Thinking fast, I reached up and grabbed his hand. When I had a secure grip, I pulled down sharply and heard the gratifying sound of snapping bones.

  Sanders howled in pain and jerked his injured arm back through the hole. Feeling more confident, I leapt from my place of concealment and rushed at him. Sanders did not try to dodge, and he didn’t draw back for a blow, instead he waited for me to get close. I jumped at him, wrapping him in my arms and bearing him to the ground.

  Sanders placed the flat of his uninjured hand on the back of my head and white fire shot through my skull. The pain was so intense I thought he’d cracked my skull open and reached into my brain. I fell off him and rolled to the side, stopping only when my shoulder brushed up against a pew. For a moment all I could do was lay there on the ground twitching like a man in the clutches of a seizure. I couldn’t hear anything past the roar inside my skull. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t even see. At first I thought my eyes had melted. When I realized they were clenched shut, I tried to open them, but I couldn’t even do that.

  A few long, agonizingly slow seconds later, the fury of the pain lessened a bit, and I heard Sanders laughing. It still hurt too much to open my eyes, but it sounded like he was standing right above me.

  “That was careless, Vincent,” Sanders said, “You lost
your senses in your rage, and look what it has cost you.”

  “Fuck off,” I managed to croak.

  “I suppose I can’t blame you,” Sanders said. “I know what it’s like.”

  “What the hell do you know?” I asked. By now the pain had lessened considerably, and I thought I could open my eyes if I wanted, but I kept them shut. I wanted Sanders to think I was still incapacitated.

  “I know more than you think, Vincent,” he said softly. His voice had lost its mocking tone. “Like how nice Raine can be, for example. How beautiful she is under the full moon. How sweet the taste of her lips can be. Oh, yes, I know.”

  At that, I did open my eyes, and I saw Sanders standing right where I’d expected, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead his gaze was fixed on a point far away. During this short time of relative calm I heard sounds of a fight behind me, and I knew Anna and Kagan were still engaged. I hoped the fight was going well for Anna, but when I tried to turn my head to see I discovered I could not move. Terrified, I tried to lift my arm and found I couldn’t. I couldn’t move anything. Whatever Sanders had done to me had left me paralyzed.

  “What the Hell?” I said, “What did you do to me?”

  Sanders seemed to come to himself, and he looked down at me. He smiled again, but this time his smile was rueful, sad.

  “It’s a nice trick, isn’t it?” He replied, “I really don’t know how to explain it. I had to learn everything on my own, you see. There was no one there to teach me after Raine left.”

  “Left?”

  “Yes, right after she turned me.”

  “What?” I asked. I tried to think of something else to say, but I couldn’t. “What?”

  “That’s right. Raine turned me, as she did you. I met Raine shortly after she became a vampire, and I fell in love with her. I knew something was wrong. Whenever I asked why we could only meet at night she would change the subject or ignore the question altogether. At first I thought she was married, or attached in some other way. She never told me about the Bachyir, or the Council of Thirteen. By the time I found out about them it was too late, she’d turned me into a vampire.

  “But she did it without consulting the damned Council, and Ramah found out. Ramah could never let the Council turn her into a Lost One, so he covered it up, blaming one of Lannis’ spawn for my creation. The Council punished the poor creature and tried to have me destroyed, but I escaped. Raine told me she would come for me, but she never did.”

  His eyes grew hard, his expression angry.

  “I was hunted like an animal. I spent years running from those foul Enforcers. I learned anything I could, whenever I could find time. After I picked up a few skills, it became easier.”

  “That’s why you hunted Raine,” I said. “For revenge.”

  “Yes,” Sanders said through his teeth. “Revenge.”

  It was pretty obvious, once I thought about it, and it made sense. That’s why Ramah had gotten so angry when I’d asked about Sanders. It seemed Ramah had his dark little secrets still.

  Just then there was a cry from behind us, and I heard a loud thump as a body hit the floor. It sounded too big to be Anna, but I couldn’t tell for sure. Sanders looked up, and he smiled. “It seems your friend has managed to kill Kagan,” he said. “But at great personal cost. She can barely stand. She will be no challenge to me, and Kagan will rise tomorrow night anyway.”

  True enough. I had seen it happen myself. Hell, I had killed Kagan myself, and the bastard came back. My arm tingled slightly as the feeling come back into it. I was careful to give no indication to Sanders, who thankfully wasn’t paying much attention to me.

  “I wonder what the Council will say when the two of you don’t return,” Sanders mused. He looked down at me and smiled again, “I bet Herris will be angry.” He chuckled, and he drew his hand back for the blow that would remove my head from my shoulders.

  “No!” Anna shouted, and Sanders looked up.

  His attention only wandered for a split second, but it was all the time I needed. I shot my hand forward and drove my clawed fingers deep into his throat. As the tips ripped through the flesh on the back of his neck he looked at me, disbelief and pain in his dark eyes.

  “That’s Headcouncil Herris,” I told him.

  Sanders gurgled, it was the last sound he made before I separated his head from the rest of him.

  ***

  Sanders’ body fell to the floor, sending up a cloud of dust and a spray of blood. The dust would have choked a living man, but as it was, I was much more concerned with the blood pouring from his neck. For the first time I felt the pain of the wound his claws had dug into my side, and I knew I needed to heal it before it got too bad.

  As it happened, one of Anna’s first lessons to me was the technique of healing oneself. It was easy, really, as long as you had enough blood to metabolize into mystical energy. I could even heal others; Anna had taught me that, too.

  And so, with the hunger burning into me like a flame, I fell upon what was left of Sanders, drinking with abandon. I knew no one would stop me; there would be no one to try and temper my feeding. Anna could barely stand, and Kagan was dead. For now.

  I drank and drank until I thought I would burst, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I reveled in the thrill of the predator. I had proven victorious, and the spoils were mine.

  All too soon it ended. The flow of blood slowed, then stopped, but I’d gotten more than enough to do what I had to do. I placed my hand on my side and recited the brief prayer to The Father Anna had taught me. The language was Aramaic, and I had no idea what the words meant, but the telltale red glow flowed from underneath my hand and I felt the tingly itch of mending flesh.

  Soon the holes in my side closed, and I stood up to look around. I was in the central aisle of the church. Sanders had fallen halfway between the front entrance and the pulpit. I looked at my clothes and discovered them caked in dust and blood. At least the dust helped to hide the blood, which would come in handy when I left the place.

  “Vincent,” Anna wheezed. “Come help me.”

  I stopped examining myself and turned to look at her. She leaned heavily on another pew about ten yards away. She’d been badly beaten. Her face was a mask of blood, and her nose pointed to the right, reminding me of Algor’s. One arm hung limp at her side, while the other maintained a trembling grip on the pew. She must have been expending a great deal of willpower just to remain upright. I wondered why she had not fed on Kagan and healed herself, but a cursory look around the room told me the answer.

  Kagan’s body lay sprawled in the choir area, one arm dangling over the wooden side rail. His head twisted all the way to the back, and though he lay on his stomach, his shattered nose pointed to the ceiling. He was easily twenty yards from where Anna fought to keep her feet, and I understood then she’d not tried to get to him because she knew she would not make it. Sanders was right, she had killed Kagan, but at great personal cost. As I looked at her, she was all but dead. Only the stubbornness of her will kept her from falling over and dying in the dust.

  “Vincent,” she said again. “Hurry. I don’t have time for you to dally. We must return to the Council and report this. They will be…pleased…to…” Her speech was cut off in a fit of coughing. It seemed she couldn’t finish the sentence.

  I walked over to her, going over the prayer in my head, making sure I had the inflection right for healing another. I did. Anna had taught it to me well, for just this type of situation. I did not know if she had foreseen this sort of outcome or if she had just thought it best to be prepared, but either way, it would come in handy.

  When I reached her, I placed my hands on her chest and felt the splintered ribs underneath. Kagan must have hit her extremely hard to do so much damage. Anna moaned as I pressed them, gritting her teeth against the pain of having the broken ends rub together.

  “Damn it, Vincent,” she croaked. “Stop that! Heal me. Now!”

  I smiled to myself, and Anna
saw it. Her ever-present haughty expression faltered, replaced by fear. Did she know? Did she suspect already?

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  With my hands on her chest, I allowed my claws to grow again. Anna tried to scream, but couldn’t. There was no air left in her lungs as my nails pierced her torso and burrowed into the wood of the pew, pinning her there. She lifted her arm weakly to swat at me, but I paid it no notice. The blow glanced off my shoulder, barely ruffling my sleeve.

  Anna’s scream turned into a whimper as my teeth sank into her throat.

  ***

  I laid Anna’s body face down in the dust and walked over to Kagan. Anna had done a number on him, all right. It was hard to believe she could smash him up so badly. I had fought him before and nearly been squashed. But then, when I fought him I wasn’t fully a vampire, more like half. There is a huge difference between those two states of non-humanity. Rather like the difference between a plow horse and a thoroughbred. Both could run, but only one could race.

  I could have killed Kagan, but I doubted it would accomplish much since, by all accounts, he was already dead. In the end I figured he’d just wake up again anyway, so I left him where I found him. I did entertain the thought of pulling his filthy coat off him and using it to cover up the blood and dust on my own clothes, but decided against it. I didn’t want to smell it all the way back to the sanctuary.

  Behind the pulpit was a door, and I picked my way carefully around the ruined church and pulled it open. It opened to a large, empty courtyard. Probably used for outdoor luncheons and the like. Nothing special. One thing did attract my attention, however. In the center of the courtyard I noticed a large brown messenger bag next to a pile of gray sand.

  As I approached the bag, I saw the clasp was broken, and some of its contents had spilled out onto the ground. There were clothes, a small box, and even some jewelry lying amidst the mess. Most prominent among the scattered items were the books. Several leather-bound volumes littered the area around the bag and the pile of fine grayish dirt. On one of them, I read the gold lettering that spelled the one name I least wanted to read upon it: Raine.