Dead Matter

by Anton Strout

  “I don’t particularly like being told I have to help you with your prophecy,” I said, “especially when I’m feeling a little like a captive here.” I shot Aidan a look, but his face was unapologetic.

  “My apologies,” Brandon said. “The boy is a bit impetuous. He only meant to help the situation, I’m sure. Would it be safe to say you’re also feeling a little distressed by Jane’s situation?”

  As much as I was worried about Jane, I had to focus on the situation at hand. “You want to circle this back around to why you think I’m part of this whole prophecy thing, Brandon?”

  At my mention of the prophecy, the assembly became quite excited and their murmurs of reaction came out in a rapid burst of conversation among themselves.

  “As far as Mr. Canderous being involved with the prophecy,” he said over the gathered crowd, quieting them, “what he said is true. It seems he has the power to read the history of objects, objects like books of prophecy.” Brandon turned to Connor and me, gesturing to a small group of chairs facing the large open hearth nearby. “Please, be seated.”

  Connor and I moved to sit, but Aidan stayed standing where he was with Beatriz. Brandon walked back to the large gear-covered contraption in the far corner of his chambers. With his back blocking our view, Brandon began working mechanisms along the front side of the box. Gears and levers whirred and turned for several minutes, cutting the silence of the dark room. When he was finished, Brandon turned to us holding an ancient book covered in a faded stretch of something I hoped wasn’t human skin.

  “I hope that’s bound in leather,” I said.

  Brandon shrugged. “Depends on what you define as animal, now, doesn’t it?”

  Brandon moved to a low stone table in the center of the chairs and placed the book carefully down.

  “Story hour?” Connor asked, snapping. “Oh, good. Tell us the one about the vampires who kidnapped my brother.”

  Brandon held up his index finger. “Technically, it wasn’t vampires. It was freelance gypsies, as I’m sure Mr. Canderous could tell you, but yes, we did the hiring.” He put a hand down on the book, almost caressing it. “This is our book of prophecy, or what’s left of it, anyway. You see, long before my time, there was a vampire with the gift of foresight. Wisely, he took the time to write his visions down.”

  “Are we talking about a Nosferatu Nostradamus?” I asked.

  Connor, Aidan, and Brandon all looked at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Defense mechanism. Just trying to ease the tension back down in the room here . . .”

  Brandon continued. “The book told us of what was to come. Bloodshed, for both our kinds, on an epic scale. One that would eventually see the end of me and my kind, but not before taking a massive toll on humanity. New York City would be reduced to a graveyard.”

  I stood up, confused. “And so you kidnapped Aidan to get to me? That seems a little . . . indirect.”

  “A book of prophecy is not a book of science, as I’m sure you and your colleagues at the D.E.A. are well aware. It is filled with much information, but there is much that must be read and calculated in the stars to get to any number of truths. At the time we took the boy, it was simply a matter of grabbing the right person at the right place at the right time. How that would exactly play out isn’t foretold, but over time we spent years working the prophecies out. When Aidan showed up with you two the other day and we found out his own brother was a member of an organization dedicated to keeping the paranormal peace in Manhattan, well, it seemed a natural sign. We saw our savior.”

  “But what the hell do I have to do with all this?” I asked. “Selfish of me, I know, but I’d love to know.”

  “Well, apparently, you’re supposed to save us all,” Brandon said, giving me a weak smile of encouragement.

  Connor held up his hands in surrender, raising his voice. “Wait, wait . . . You took my brother from me for twenty years and turned him into a vampire because you think my work partner’s going to be your savior?”

  He stood up and turned away in frustration, pushing over one of the heavy chairs next to him.

  “You see?” Brandon said, walking over to pick up the chair. “This is why we needed to take him! So you’d have an investment in at least one of our kind. Without Aidan, you would have already stormed off to your department and started the end of it all.”

  I shook my head. “All this to avoid World War Three, eh?”

  “Try to see it from my perspective,” Brandon said, continuing to speak to Connor. “Aidan is your family. When he was taken from you, imagine all the things you would have done to save him if you could have. Now imagine our kind in that position, with all those familial ties amplified thousands of times from relationships lasting several human lifetimes. One thing in the book is clear . . . We need to avoid the mutual destructions of our races.”

  “How’s that, now?” I said.

  “As I have said, prophecies are not an exact science. With your psychometric power, you can read the past and get the true intent of what our vampire prophet meant. You can figure out how our mutual salvation comes about.”

  As Connor stood next to me in silence, my mind reeled. Tremendous pressure, tremendous guilt, crushed down on me, almost too much to bear. Because the vampires had unknowingly wanted to get to me, Connor had lost a brother for years, eventually driving him to the madness of the last few months. The fact that I was somehow responsible for that tore me apart. “I . . . I have to get out of here,” I said, standing and heading for the door.

  “I’m sorry?” Brandon said. He looked a little insulted with the way I was behaving in front of him, but I didn’t really care.

  “Look,” I said. “The thing is I don’t really do this whole prophecy thing. And I have a little . . . no, a lot of trouble buying into the fact that your salvation lies on my shoulders.”

  Brandon looked perplexed. “But the book says you’re supposed to use your powers to ‘read’ it . . .”

  “I need time to think about this,” I said, waving him off.

  Brandon looked a little angry. “What do you mean you don’t buy into precognition? For heaven’s sake, you practically possess the power of postcognition!”

  Connor gave a weary sigh as he digested everything. “He’s got a point, kid,” Connor said.

  “Reading the past,” I said, “that’s one thing. It’s like videotape. It’s recorded . . . It’s already happened. But the future? It’s unknowable.”

  “But,” Connor continued, “you’ve seen it happen before. You’ve seen the future read.”

  “What?” I said, laughing out loud. “From Mrs. Teasley as she sits in the back of the Lovecraft Café reading piles of cold, used coffee grounds? I’d be hard-pressed to call her predictions anything close to accurate. It’s mostly guesswork.”

  Aidan turned to me. “I was made this way for a reason . . .”

  “That’s just bad luck,” I said. I was burning with anger now. “Not everything happens for a reason. That’s a crock of shit, just like predestination. The future isn’t written yet.” I turned to Brandon. “And besides, if I’m supposed to believe your prophecy is real and you know the future so well, why did you send a letter to scare Connor away from ever meeting Aidan?”

  Brandon’s eyes narrowed. “What letter?”

  Connor crossed to him. “Allow me,” Connor said. He dug into his trench coat, rustled around, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He held it out to Brandon, but I grabbed it from him, unfolding and reading it.

  “It says: ‘Aidan is ours. Stop looking or he dies.’ ”

  Brandon snatched it away from me in a blink and it was like magic as it disappeared from my hand. He looked at the words on the page. Aidan joined him and read it over his shoulder.

  “I see,” Brandon said when he was done. He handed the letter back to Connor. “Interesting, but I didn’t send you this letter.”

  “Yeah, right,” Connor said, taking it. He folded it and slipped it back ins
ide his coat. “Well, someone sent it . . .”

  “It seems we have enemies from within,” Brandon said. “Clearly someone is trying to sabotage our efforts toward a lasting peace.”

  “Good luck with that,” Aidan said. Everyone turned to look at him. “All I mean is . . . no one can stop what will happen. It’s prophecy; all of this is written. It’s inevitable, right?”

  “We can wait out inevitability,” Brandon said with a laugh. “Or have you forgotten what we are?”

  “Listen,” I said. “I doubt the streets are going to run red with blood tonight, right? No one other than the two of us humans knows you’re here. I personally don’t buy into your prophecy, but either way, I’m a bit too exhausted to be your savior even if you’ve interpreted your book correctly. I’m leaving. Just let me get the hell out of here and get some sleep. I’m not tackling your fancy book or saving anything or anyone tonight.”

  I walked off toward the chamber doors. Nobody moved to stop me.

  “But the prophecy says . . .” Brandon started.

  “Don’t say it!” I shouted, interrupting him.

  “You’re the chosen one,” he finished.

  I threw open the heavy wooden doors and turned to face the lord of the vampires.

  I pointed back to the stacks of movies and the flat-screen television. “Someone’s been binge-watching one too many seasons of old television series,” I said. “Too bad you didn’t try Sunnydale High. You want the Slayer. I’m just a government drone with a stack of casework back at my desk and bags under my eyes.”

  20

  I worked my way out of the castle and across the open courtyard, heading toward the portcullis and gates leading out. I had lost track of what time of day or night it was in the outside world, but in here it was currently night. If the torches lighting the way were fake or part of the fancy electrical wiring of the Gibson-Case Center surrounding us, I couldn’t tell. I’d find out soon enough what the real world had in store for me when I got outside.

  Despite it being artificial night in here, the castle grounds were relatively quiet given the nocturnal nature of its occupants. That meant real night must be in effect out in the city with most of the vampires out enjoying a night on the town instead of cooped up in the Epcot version of rural Transylvania.

  When I passed the gate hanging overhead at the castle entrance, the sound of my lone footsteps echoed out as I crossed the bridge over the fake moat. Despite knowing full well that I was in the center of Manhattan, the replication of the foreign countryside at night had me spooked. I kept my pace slow and steady to keep my nerves in check, but I couldn’t shake the feeling.

  I stopped once I was off the bridge and safely on the cobblestones leading off to the exit guarded by the living statues. The spooked feeling wouldn’t let go. I looked around with caution, the surrounding forest full of shadows and trees whose limbs reminded me of the haunted forest from The Wizard of Oz. Through them, I saw a set of the familiar red exit markings and headed toward it.

  Only to see the red exit lights start to move, and before I had time to react, the realization hit me. “Those aren’t exit lights,” I said, dropping to the ground as they dashed toward me. I hit the ground hard, avoiding injury by landing in my leather coat as something hit me. Eyes with blood-red irises and red-black pupils met mine as a leathery, dry-skinned creature pinned me in place. Its veins were drawn tight over its skin and they were everywhere. It hissed at me with vicious fangs showing and the stench of rot on its breath. I knew this type of monstrosity, but this time I didn’t have a grocery store arsenal to defend myself with.

  For a second, fear paralyzed me into inaction, but I remembered my training and shook it off. Agents died in the field marveling at the monstrosities that attacked them. I was determined not to be one of those statistics.

  I felt for my bat, but with signs of my movement, the creature dug its talonlike nails into my arms. The pain was excruciating, but thanks again to my jacket, they didn’t pierce my skin.

  “You’re just as fugly a little thing as the other one was, aren’t you?” I asked it.

  I don’t know if it understood me or merely sensed that I was mocking it in an effort to calm my fear, but it reared back, its mouth showing its devastating array of sharklike teeth crisscrossing back and forth in its open maw. Something fleshy fell from its mouth onto my neck and I tried not to panic. The creature let out a primal cry, but then I noticed it wasn’t focusing on me anymore.

  A shadowy blur of motion blazed over me, grappling the creature and pulling it off of me. I sat up on my elbows to follow the action. Aidan Christos stood about fifteen feet away, the creature hugged tight against his chest. It tore and squirmed for its freedom, but Aidan wasn’t having any of it. After a moment or two of struggle, it broke one of its arms free and started clawing at Aidan’s face. Vain to the end, Aidan immediately let go of it and felt to see if he had been harmed. The creature dashed off into the darkness of the surrounding forest. Several other dark flashes flew around the edge of the forest as well.

  I ran over to Aidan. He looked at me, panicked.

  “Am I okay?” he said, still feeling around.

  “Are you okay? I was pinned under that thing! You’ve at least got the ability to heal.”

  Aidan’s face relaxed a little. “So I’m okay?”

  “Yeah, you’re still looking like the poster boy for emo,” I said. “Now, do you mind telling me what the fuck was that thing, er, things?”

  “One of us,” Aidan said, taking his time to walk a circle around us, looking, trying to pick the creatures from out of the darkness.

  I looked, too. If it was out there, I couldn’t see it. “One of you?” I asked. “That thing is so not like you.”

  Aidan’s eyes lit up and he turned to me. “Sorry about your arm.”

  “Huh?” I asked. “There’s nothing wrong with my arm . . .”

  Before I could say another word, Aidan lashed out and grabbed my right arm hard around the wrist. He looked overhead, searched high above, and then jumped straight up, taking me with him. It felt like my shoulder had exploded, but we were already flying through the air when one of the creatures swooped back, right where I’d been standing.

  I screamed.

  “I said I was sorry,” Aidan said. At the top of our flight arc, he grabbed onto one of the support beams among the rigging and lighting that helped create the false sense of night and day down below. He hoisted me up until I could grab onto one of the beams with my free arm. Aidan let go of me and I wrapped both arms against the cold steel, holding on for my life.

  “Stay here,” he said, and before I could ask him just where the hell else he thought I might go, Aidan let go and dropped several hundred feet below.

  I pulled myself up onto the crawl space among the crisscrossed bars up here, feeling a little better with something under my feet. I looked down, trying not to let the full sense of the height grab hold of me. Aidan was being charged by several of the creatures. Their feral ferocity made them dangerous, but quick thinking seemed to keep Aidan one step ahead of them as he dodged them and played one creature against another, leaving several of them in a snarling tangle of limbs as they fought among themselves.

  The bars and pipes around me erupted into motion as if I were in an earthquake. I looked up thinking that maybe the supports were giving out with my added weight on it, but they looked fine to me, not that I knew a blessed thing about structural engineering. I turned my eye to the rest of the structure. One of the creatures stood along it about a hundred feet away.

  And it was staring at me.

  Screw this, I thought. I looked down. Aidan was swamped with the other creatures down below. Comparatively, one didn’t seem like too bad a contest for me, if I was standing on solid ground and not up here among the lights, that was.

  The creature gripped on tight to the bars with its talons as it carefully made its way toward me. I pulled my eyes away from it long enough to use care unsheathin
g my retractable bat. The last thing I wanted to do was drop the damn thing and find myself totally unarmed up here. I locked both my legs into the beams beneath me and clicked the button on my bat.

  Nothing happened. “Shit,” I said, shaking it. That vampire Gerard must have damaged it even more than I had thought back in Brandon’s chambers. Stupid vampires with their stupid preternatural strength.

  I looked up and the creature was already much too close for comfort. I could already smell the stink of it from where it was.

  I twisted and pulled at the bat. Deep inside it, several pieces of metal ground against one another, but as I spun it in my hands, it started to extend. A dull metal screech came from it, like pulling open an old rusty drawer. The sound seemed to incense the creature more and it roared even louder. The last chunk of the bat pulled out to its full extension and I gripped it hard with both hands.

  The creature lurched forward, lowering its voice into a deep, throaty growl.

  “Batter up,” I said, hiding my fear behind false bravado. As it charged, the teeth in its maw were a hideous parody of what I knew vampire fangs to look like. A rank blast of air came from it as it closed in on me.

  As it leapt for me, I swung hard at its head. It connected with a meaty thunk and my bat stopped, lodged there, it seemed. The top of my bat was caught in the creature’s mouth, both keeping it from biting me and occupying its claws as it tried to pry free. The already battered metal began to tear in its mouth and I tried to pull it away. Desperate claws lashed out to knock it away, but I held it there, twisting it a little and hoping to hurt it when a new idea hatched in my brain.

  “Chew your food, pretty,” I said. The backs of my legs felt on the verge of cramping, but I was damned if I was going to ease up.

  With a final metallic wrenching sound, a chunk of the bat tip tore away, leaving a sharp, exposed, nasty point. I prayed that what Aidan had said was true: that the creature truly was one of his kind. I plunged the remains of the bat straight into its chest, aiming for the heart. I felt the sickening sensation of the metal piercing the soft, rotting flesh of the creature. It convulsed in pain as fresh blood shot from the wound, coating the bat and running down to my gloved hands. I pulled the bat out and swung like I was at home plate, pitching the creature off its perch. It slid off the jagged end of my bat and fell toward the ground far below.