Wight
Copyright 2005.
Any similarities between the characters in this book and people, both living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All font styles used in this book are copyrighted to their respective authors, lyric samples same. The cover art and art within the book are copyrighted to the author.
All characters, events and locations are purely the products of the imagination of the author.
Wight
Dorien Vincent
To all my friends who lean
in close to listen, when it's their
perfect right not to.
Etymology:
Wicht: Child, elf, demon.
Vigr: Weapons master, able to fight.
Finally: Wight, Man.
Table of Contents
Etymology
The Old Legend
Introduction
Prologue
Tset, Act I, Angels And Devils
The Pit
Tset, Act II, A Name
Life In The Pit, Glamour Bag
A Brother's Coven, Oath
Haliburton
Tristram
A Steed of Steel
First Run, The Good Senator, An Introduction
Wilks: The End of an Act
NOT Hiring, Terms And Conditions
Interlude, Nightmare Demon
Hunted Vampire: First Act, Good-Bye, Ricky
A Reunion, A Reckoning
Hunted Vampire: Second Act
Second Run: Fall of Stinger
The Pit, Revisited: Good-Bye, Tyler
Interlude, Prelude to Allegiances
Allegiances I, Tristram's Bust
Allegiances II, Geoffrey
Allegiances III, Tramway to The Hunters' Club
The Hunters' Club
The Hunters' Club, Third Run
Tset and Elisabeth, Allegiances IV, Zenith
Interlude
Interlude, Chapter One
Interlude, Chapter Two
Interlude, Chapter Three
Interlude, Chapter Four: The Yakuza and Pelican
Interlude, Chapter Five: Yoto-Oro
Interlude, Chapter Six: The Assassins' Council, The Chrome Magnum
Interlude, Chapter Seven: The Death of Jacqueline
Interlude, Chapter Eight: Separate Ways
Interlude, Chapter Nine: Method of Payment
Prelude
A Nymph?
Another Night, Another Coven
Allegiances V: A Culmination of Betrayals, Enter Gregory
Training For War, Act I
The Old Legend
Assault On Precinct Zero, Beasts Of The Moon
Second Interlude
Good-Byes, Third Act
A Nymph? Act II
Alexander and Solomon, Act I: A Short Prelude
Alexander and Solomon, Act II: Finale
Epilogue
The Old Legend:
Born of knights and angels there had been three princes.
To whichever end they fought together, they would achieve new beginnings and long-deserved endings.
Blood like chains of iron they were bound together, and will be bound together, whoever they may be, until the bonds are broken, through unto death and the end of the line. The line, the chain, the blood, cares not for mother nor for father - it will continue, link, course, through whose veins will carry it until the Leech has fallen.
Introduction
(excerpted from a Greater European tourist's guide)
Established in March of 1988, Greater Europe has been the solution to the socio-economic struggles and strife of mankind for over 195 years.
In the wake of America's secession from the UN and the former World Union in light of their Second Revolution and thus the closing of their ports and borders to anything but trade over a hundred years ago, Greater Europe has been the one civilized man-made continent available to those outside of American citizenship.
All of our citizens enjoy clean, running water, 24h wattage, wide roads and inexpensive and available public transport to anywhere in and out The City they may want to go.
All updated maps and globes include Greater Europe, though maps of The City itself should be obtained to see what each part of it is and how it all fits together.
Essentially, the plate, which itself covers the original continent, is divided into several sections, similar to a pie.
We like to joke and say that each country of the former WU 'has an equal slice of the pie!'
This is the only city in Man's history to have actually encompassed several countries. And this is what we believe in Greater Europe - complete strength through complete unity!
At the same time, each country retains, in part, its original lands. These lands are prefaced with 'Old' - such as 'Old Berlin' or 'Old Denmark.'
Since The Last Great War (see Appx M:WWIII:1987), we have switched to a Democratic Republic, on the same principle as 19th-century America.
America, while closed to us, actually assisted in the restoration of The City and our natural resources and many of their citizens became ours during that time, so we do have a camaraderie with them that is stronger than what you may think at first glance.
As a result, we enjoy, in a large part, American culture in the form of music, movies and art.
A tip when you're exploring: The City is arranged in an outward spread, with the Greater European Citadel, in what is Old Belgium and the seat of our government, in the center, surrounded by the Palacial City, and outwards you have differing amounts of urban, then suburban and eventually even rustic environment.
But that doesn't mean you won't find sections of the Alps still intact in Old Switzerland, or the rolling hills of the New English countryside closer to the Citadel, nestled between the sky scrapers and cathedrals, arenas and other modern structures of Euro-American design.
Everything is accessible. There are no limits!
Enjoy your time in Greater Europe!
To obtain other Travel Guides for such exotic locales as The Middle Eastern Tribal Continent, Feudal China, Japan, and the untamed lands of the Midwestern United States (available for visits by temporary visa), please contact your local retailer
Prologue
Aurel Ryan Thompson was born to Mr. and Mrs. Ed and Katrina Thompson January 9th, 2166.
He was under a pound, blind and deaf. His birth had been hard.
Though, out of all his features - his dark brown hair and deep brown-black eyes were the most hideous to his father.
Ed Thompson was a simple man from Ireland, he married Katrina in order to gain passage into Greater Europe, and was always worried about her fidelity.
He had bright green eyes and red hair, shot through with silver due to the gasses he used during his time with the IRA. Aurel was quite obviously not his child.
Katrina had gone behind his back.
Ed was infuriated and soon fled into the night, taking the car with him and abandoning wife and child. Katrina was still out after labor.
When she awoke, finally, noon on the tenth, and found her child was almost stillborn and her husband gone from her, she died of simple heartbreak.
Now, the doctor, Doctor Nathaniel Zellner, was young for a doctor, and still had compassion in his heart. He looked into the small plastic box Aurel was sleeping in and decided he could and would care for him, if he lived.
Tset
Act I
Angels And Devils
He saw TEETH, and CLAWS! He felt the RAAAAAAGE in their eyes, the hatred, the blood lust. Felt the living blades cut into his flesh, pinching, gnashing. Felt a wash of warm sticky fluid. Steely fingers wrapping around his neck. The things were parasites, they ate and fed and contributed NOTHING.
HATEFUL were they.
<
br /> Images flashed and warped him, crushing him and twisting his spine, pressing the air and life from him. In the gray, he saw his name, he thrust at it.
A bright light hammered into his eyes. Everything came into sharp focus. Everything.
He was on the ground. He wondered who he was, briefly. Then he remembered the four letters of what his name must be - T, S, E, T.
He stood. He was also suddenly self-consciously aware of being stark naked. Some jogging pants lay nearby and he slipped into these. Though pants and nakedness were almost foreign thoughts to him - distant.
He checked himself, mentally, he wasn't hungry, or thirsty, he was not tired, he wasn't even in shock or hurt feeling from the nightmare seconds before, despite the immense amount of pain he had been in; his nerves burning, his mind melting away - no. He turned his thoughts from that.
The room for the most part smelled like disinfectants, and a nauseating metal smell.
Skulking unnervingly and whitely on left side of the room was an operating theater - blood-spattered plastic curtains wafted slightly in the breeze from an AC vent. He got the merest glance of a burgundy-upholstered operating table, sharp tools and cutters laying around it, organized and gleaming cleanly with malefaction, and a bank of equipment on the far side - the table bent at the middle, and a canal ran away to a basin and a drain.
He shuddered and felt misremembered thoughts - buzzing, clicking, screaming, clacking beeping and burning.
Sickened somehow, he took a step backwards and bumped into something, nearly falling over. He looked behind him and there was a tank filled with an artificial amniotic fluid - it smelled harshly of chlorine. He had been laying in that, but now he wasn't.
In the polished siding of the tank, he saw his face, and in a mirror hanging above a sink across the way, above the sign 'WASH YOUR HANDS.'
He was perplexed and did not know what to make of himself, and so stared. Such a face was unfamiliar.
He realized, then, that his mind was not working fast enough, it was sluggish and confused. His thoughts far too simple.
Tset thought what to do.
Again, simply, he realized fresh air always helped clear his head.
He left the room. He was in a lobby. The light was still harsh from the muted fluorescents here. Everything was sharp-edged to Tset, even the potted plant.
The stone floor was cold on his feet, but he noticed it as sensation - not as discomfort.
There was no receptionist, so he walked for the front door, put his hand against the push bar, applied pressure and was hit with ice-laced air. He stepped into it, sucking in hard through his nostrils and smiling for the first time in a year.
Outside, Tset walked along the streets, alone, completely.
He took his time, padding quietly through sleet, across paved ways and thoroughfares. During his journey he looked around him, recognizing things for the first time; his interest was piqued and awakening forgotten, he had to keep himself from exploring every nook and every cranny with his sensitive fingertips - but there it was, stucco, rust, cement (and did he love his feet on that, seeing it and feeling it at the same time), windows ('Glass!'), light and shadow.
The sounds around him; distant traffic, machinery, even the sounds of his walk and of snowflakes on air. His own breathing delighted and captivated him in a steady inrush and outflow of crisp oxygen. Somehow the whole idea of experiencing it seemed new, though he missed his heartbeat.
Snippets of something he knew to be literature began to occur to him and he chose these memories over those of late, aligning verse and prose to the splendor he saw around him. At wonder he was in a filthy slum.
Several miles from where he began, so engrossed with the clouds and stars in the deep cobalt sky, he slipped and fell over something.
He scrambled up and wiped at his newly wet pants - his hand came away red, and the black splotch on his thigh wasn't ice.
His head snapped up to the curled thing he had tripped on - a raven-haired man, smashed against the cement from height and left to freeze. Already frost grew at the eyebrows and around the edges of the thickened pool spreading from underneath the body.
Tset looked up the street, and saw no one. Same for down the way he'd come.
With a shrug he went to lift the body and arrange it, and it was lain to rest off the sidewalk, in a frosted garden.
He broke a bit of a sweat, and wiped beads from his brow before they would freeze, regarding the dead man one last time and then stepping off the dirt and back to the pavement.
The blood and dirt on his face and hands and pants did not bother Tset very much, though he knew he should wash, he just looked especially odd - out at night, alone, wearing sweat pants, no shoes, and now darkly stained.
Barefoot and dirty in the snow and slush.
He walked down the road another short while, now looking down, watching the reflections in the thickening ice.
After a few minutes he made the acquaintance of a hobo. The first living creature he'd seen since himself.
The hobo looked at him, thinking him an angel, and simply stared. Tset looked back at this curious thing - a little wretch, clutching his Early Times like his life, but wishing for death. No words were exchanged, the two merely measured each other, both curious.
Then Tset heard a deep sonorous voice behind him. It was oddly familiar without him having ever heard it. It was friendly but somehow frightening.
Tset measured the paradoxes in his own thinking, 'Whatever that voice was, whoever was speaking it, should probably die.'
He sat next to the man in the patchy jacket, 'An odd thought,' he thought, now in the shadows, protected from view from the street. The bum offered his liquor and Tset swigged, offering a nod and a wink in return, then watched the street.
A few seconds later an expensive car sped by, screeched to a halt and then reversed.
Tset felt as though his heart had skipped a beat, he held still, his grip tightening on the neck of the shared bottle.
An individual, dark blonde hair, clear, delicately masculine features and a disapproving glower, leaned out the window of the car and regarded the bum. The bum saw Satan but knew to be still. So he simply stared. Heaven behind him, he thought, and Hell before.
The man, whatever he was, threw a stack of bills at the hobo. The hobo deftly caught the cash, but continued looking at the man with sunken eyes until he had driven off.
Tset sat rigid, wondering why, when the hobo spoke, "Fucking Devil himself gives me all the money I need. What do I do, angel?"
Tset drew his eyes from the street, saw the man was regarding him, who asked again, "What do I do? How can I make it okay with God to accept this money? I need food, angel brother, and this money will get me all the food I want. But how do I make it good, getting money from the Devil?"
Tset shrugged, wondering about the man's dilemma.
He was about to start away, bid adieu but the man said: "I'll give you half, angel brother."
"N-"
"I can see angels, even when they don't have their wings on. Take a third then."
The hobo tried counting the money, and could not. "You can count it, angel brother, but take at least a third, if not more, otherwise, when I die, I'm going to Hell. And Mom and me don't want that." The man laughed, and muttered under his breath, putting the stack of bills back together and handing it over.
Tset took the bills. He counted out less than a quarter, quickly doing the math in his head and arranging the bills in ascending order, from one Eurodollar up to 5,000 Eurodollar bills.
He thought the numbers to himself as he pulled the bills apart.
He looked up into the sunken eyes of the smiling hobo, and decided he would acquiesce instead. He shuffled the bills back together and counted out €$31,000, rolled it up and stuck it in the pocket of his sweats.
"Blesh y'father." Bid the hobo and stumbled deeper into the alley, taking his paper cash and his plastic bottle.
Tset left the alley and
walked on now, hands in his pockets, thinking about the money. For one thing, how did he know what it was? And really, who was he? He remembered the fluid, the pale, evil things in his dreams... waking up. His face briefly in the mirror - sodden hair jet as jet, with a red tint, skin a pale cream, lined almost artfully with veins, making him look like living marble. Then his eyes, those horrifying eyes, wrong by what he knew and much too dark.
Tset shook his head, finding strength in knowing that he knew precisely that he was himself. This was a bit odd, to him, but it calmed him and he felt Truth in it, and so let it be until he had more answers to work with.
Tset was in reverie, watching the street in front of him, and he failed to notice the drifter with a knife in his palm cruise in close.
He oozed, "Buddy, you got a cigarette?"
Tset looked him in the face but since the man was after money the eyes did not set him off much at all. He'd stabbed worse. Tset replied with a forced, "Nh." A grunt. And blinked. He could say no more. "Mh." He said, with more effort, but that was all. He could not speak, his throat was locked.
He was nearly frightened by this development; he understood speech but... "No, huh? Then what's that wad in your pocket, buddy?"
Tset's attentions were back on the vagrant. He pulled the bills out and held them under the streetlight. "That's a good bit of money, buddy."
Tset was unsure of this person's intentions, but the snkt of the knife coming out gave it away.
"Nh." Said Tset and shook his head, holding up his hands to ward away the man. The man snickered, and grabbed for his neck with one hand, coming on calmly, a leer on his face, and while the left went for the throat, putting his victim's mind there, the right, with knife gripped tight, came up towards the ribs and eventually the heart, killing effectively and sneakily.
Although, as soon as the chilled fingers touched Tset's neck, Tset had broken them in his grip and spun him, delivering a kick that broke his spine and sent him skidding against the brick face of a building, where he bounced and flopped to the cement.
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