There it was, in pieces, lying on the central workbench. The flamethrower I would need. It was the tip from Leon that had really brought the flamethrower to my mind, and it made perfect sense that my uncle would have been working on something like this. I walked to it immediately and began taking inventory of what I might need. I was no gunsmith or mechanic of any stripe, but I knew my way around a tool kit and had some basic knowledge, my role in the marines sort of demanded it. Plus I loved watching those shows on the discovery channel about weapons. Flamethrowers aren’t like what you see in the movies—three to four seconds, five seconds maximum of sustained fiery function held within two large tanks, one filled with compressed inert gas, and an apparatus with which to deliver it, with its own contained pilot flame. The overall weapon was very simple, even crude in design. I checked the pressure gauge on the compressed air tank and noted that it was completely full of compressed nitrogen. The fuel cylinder was likewise just as full, though I didn’t know exactly what kind of fuel it would use—likely some kind of thickened gasoline. The nozzle apparatus itself looked extremely strange to me, and had a kind of makeshift holder for a long bayonet or a sword, but I’d look into that as I worked.
“Hey, Lily?”
“What is it—oh god… is that what I think it is?” She responded as she walked up behind me. I grinned as I hefted the highly modified nozzle between us.
“This is that edge we were looking for.”
“Jesus, John… a flamethrower?” Lily said, glancing over the weapon.
“You bet, but this one seems to be special-made. It’ll take me a while to work it out, which is fine since sunrise is in a few minutes and you’ll be stuck here for a while. Do vampires sleep?”
“Yes, we do. How could you not know that?”
“I didn’t exactly stay up to check if you snore. I’ve been pretty tired these last few days.” I said with a chuckle. Lily walked over to the door and slid it shut before pulling a battered chair that was layered in duct tape over to the corner of the storage unit farthest from me.
“Try not to blow us up with that thing. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” She asked.
“This is pretty simple stuff. Besides, flamethrowers tend not to explode like you see in the movies. There’s the slight risk that I soak everything in here with fuel, though.”
“Oh, how you quiet my troubled heart.” She said with playful sarcasm. I lugged the tall red tool chest—which gave off the metal-and-sweat odor that tended to dominate mechanic’s shops—over to the central workbench and began my work on the flamethrower in earnest.
“Hey, how exactly did you and my uncle meet? I’ve heard his version of the story, but on that subject you tend to be…” I turned briefly and brandished a crescent wrench at her. “Evasive.” She grinned at me and reclined in the battered and groaning chair.
“Well, he wasn’t much older than you are now.” She began.
“We were both young, in that respect. I had been a vampire for a only a few years before I met your uncle, and I understand he had come into his power much more recently at that time. I was part of a gypsy family in those days, and today I am the only surviving member of it. We were all vampires, you see, but they were all killed by hunters from your clan. At that time we were passing through an area near Oslo in Norway, heading south towards Germany by way of Sweden and Denmark. I was, I think, between twenty or twenty-two at the time, I can’t be sure.
“Anyway, we were just south of Oslo, which was still undergoing massive reconstruction after a fire burned out the old city a decade or so before. Your uncle lived in a small fishing village near the coast, but he had gone further inland to hunt elk—oh, that’s a moose here in the states—and that was when I first saw him. He was so beautiful, John, you must understand. He hadn’t quite finished aging and had a youthful radiance that was just so very attractive. I had gone into the woods that night looking to make a meal of a highwayman or drifter, but your uncle looked so… delicious.”
“That’s a bit disconcerting, considering my dilemma,” I interrupted, grinning at her. She grinned back and gave me a wink.
“Well of course you look just as appetizing, John, but I have long since outgrown my… hmm… sweet tooth, I should say?”
“Glad to know I rank as high as ‘candy bar’ in your diet.” I quipped, but in truth I found myself more than just a little unsettled when I thought of everything I’d been through in such a short amount of time with this girl. This vampire girl.
“That’s a conversation for a different time, sugar. Let me continue the story.”
I nodded and favored her with a chuckle before continuing my work on the flamethrower.
“I remember the night so very clearly. Your uncle was skillfully stalking his prey through the trees and I was stalking him as well. He moved so strikingly and with such economy of motion, it was hard not to leap upon him until the perfect opportunity presented itself—understand that I did not yet recognize him as a vampire hunter, I had never seen one before—so I waited. It seemed forever before he finally nocked an arrow and pulled the string on his bow taut, it was the chance I was waiting for. The moment he loosed his arrow, I was upon him. He was so surprised that he didn’t even call upon his power to fight me, and in moments I had drained him to the point of exhaustion.” She smiled wistfully and touched her lips with a fingertip for a moment, as if savoring the memory.
“Imagine my surprise when he didn’t die. I had heard of people who were destined to become vampires, who’s hearts were so strong that they just kept beating no matter what after being bitten, so I dragged him into a nearby cave for the evening being convinced that I had just earned myself a new and beautiful companion for eternity. I was even further surprised when he didn’t turn, and by the end of the second night I was certain something had gone wrong—no matter how much blood I drained from him, it had regenerated the next day, and yet he remained human. Of course, when I had fully satisfied my thirst, I noticed the scars. Your uncle—if you haven’t yet seen his body, I am aware of the taboos of the modern world—is absolutely covered in gruesome scars from head to toe. Each one, though, was in its own way beautiful, like the facets of a precious crystal, each one with its own imperfections leant further beauty to the whole.
“After a couple days, I decided he was likely some kind of sorcerer or monster, but one with a limitless reservoir of blood nonetheless, and I was going to bring him with my family on our caravan. I drained him as much as I could and then strapped him to the cavern using his own coil of rope. It took only hours for me to reach my caravan, well-fed as I was, and my family was very intrigued. Even our matriarch herself came to the cave to see this miraculous boy who could not be fully drained. Of course, immediately upon seeing him, the matriarch flew into a fury and nearly killed him. The rest of my elders stopped her and I myself tended to the fresh injuries your uncle had sustained. After seeing them heal rapidly before my eyes, I finally saw the reason for panic, and found myself petrified at what I’d done.
“Of course, my elders saw the silver lining; a hunter turned vampire was an enormously useful—and hideously powerful—ally to have on our side. Half of the family had already begun nursing him back to health between our feedings. We even tracked down the deer he had shot and fed him so he could regenerate more rapidly. We were fools. Your uncle had never said a word during his entire time in our grasp, yet he had already planned his own escape. He had thrashed against the cave floor and walls, using his augmented strength in an attempt to gain the attention of any nearby clansmen while I was gone, and he had succeeded.”
“Sounds familiar.” My uncle had probably been beating against the floor in his captivity to give me some kind of signal as to where he was, and that’s what I heard in the basement at the club. Lily nodded with a smile and continued her story.
“On the fifth night, they—your clansmen—came for him. There were twenty of us—our whole caravan—at the cave. Three were at the entrance, and
after a period of time we had noticed that they were gone. A few of my younger siblings, freshly turned as I was, went out to check on them and never returned. After a few minutes we began to realize what was happening, but the true horror had not set in on us quite yet. Only the very oldest—perhaps two or three of the elders and the matriarch—had ever seen, much less fought a vampire hunter from a clan like yours. I should have known then how very dire the situation was, but I was still young. I remember vividly the calm mask that the matriarch wore, but her eyes shimmered with barely suppressed terror, and that expression has always lingered in my mind—a precursor to horrendous nightmares.
Then they struck. It was a swift attack, though I can’t be sure of how long the fighting actually lasted. We may have fought for seconds or hours, it is all a panicked blur in my memory. There were only five of them, your other uncles and grandfather included, but your grandfather alone would have done the job passably well; we never stood a chance. The combined might of the vampire slayers was an unspeakably horrifying thing to behold, and they crashed over us with strength as unstoppable as the angry sea.”
“So, have you met my father?” I asked, interrupting as she took a breath. “What… what was he like?” Lily smiled as I asked and reclined further, lacing her fingers behind her head.
“I’ve met him on a few occasions, but at that particular moment he was not yet born. When I do remember the few times I’ve seen him, I recall that he wasn’t as physically imposing as your uncle, but what he lacked in mass he made up for with speed. You’re much like him in that respect, family resemblance aside. Your uncle took more after your grandfather, who was larger and more dauntingly strong then than your uncle has ever been, and it showed in the way he tossed aside members of my family as if they were paper dolls.” A matching set of tears slid down her cheeks as she spoke, and I understood immediately why. I was asking her to relive what was likely to be one of the most painful moments of her life. Nonetheless, her wistful smile never faded, as if she didn’t know she was crying.
“Our matron had the hardest death, suitable for her age and strength. She was almost six hundred years old, and so colossally strong… but your grandfather pinned her against a wall and the other four tore off her limbs. They didn’t finish her then, no… they let her watch as they tore through the rest of my family. I’m not exactly sure when they finally killed her, because in confusion of the fray I managed to escape. I struggled with my conscience for many years after that decision, thinking myself a coward, but I soon realized that my extended presence would not have mattered and I would have ended up just as dead as the others.
“A few years later your uncle had tracked me down in Paris—at that time the largest city in the world. I had fallen in with another caravan and we would tour Europe on occasion, but mostly we stayed in and around France and Italy. Your uncle caught me on a stroll one night as I walked the streets, hoping for a meal to come to me—city life was so much easier for hunting, especially for a woman like myself—and eventually I saw a man walking my way, so I stopped and flaunted the goods, so to speak. When your uncle was close enough that I could see his face, I tried to run, but he was so fast… He dragged me into an alley before I could so much as utter a single syllable. I thought it was all over then, you know. A young vampire such as I was no match for a hunter on even footing, even if that particular hunter was relatively young himself, and so I resigned to my fate. I began to cry.”
She laughed aloud then and wiped the tears from her cheeks, wearing a broad grin. It was strange to see such an abrupt shift in her demeanor, and it distracted me from my work for a moment.
“Why the laughter?” I asked.
“Your uncle can be such a chauvinist. He was inches from driving a stake through my chest, and then stopped because of a few tears. He has always seen women as something tender and delicate, easily broken. Fortunately that same bias saved my life, for had I been born a male, he later confessed to me, he would have slain me instantly.” I couldn’t help but grin back at her.
“So your boobs saved you, basically?”
“Now you’re being just as nasty as he is,” Lily said with a wet wink, and then continued her story. “But yes, I began to cry and closed my eyes. The moments dragged by for what seemed like an eternity, but then he released me. I opened my eyes in shock to see him tucking his stake away inside his jacket. ‘Why?’ I asked him, and he merely smiled at me and pulled me to my feet, and then he spoke in the same gruff voice that he has today. ‘Wouldn’t be right to kill a helpless little girl. My name is Ignus Johannes Magnusson, pleasure to meet you.’” Lily spread her hands wide and grinned at me. “And that’s how I really met your uncle for the first time. Ever since then he has said he’s going to wait for me to actually be able to defend myself before he kills me, but I think we both know he never will.”
“I thought his name was Ignatius Magnus, what’s with the discrepancy?” I asked. Lily giggled and stretched languorously on her chair.
“It is, sort of. As time goes on we tend to change our names to suit the times or evade mortal detection. My name, of course, is simple and pretty enough to survive the ravages of time, but I can’t remember if I ever had a middle name. But yes, your clan is the Magnusson clan. ‘Son of the Great,’ kind of a pretentious name.” She giggled again and crossed her arms, resting her head as near as she could on one shoulder and closing her eyes.
“What about my father? How did you meet him, after that?” I asked. She opened one eye to look at me briefly before closing it again and yawning.
“We’ll talk about him another time, I’m tired.”
“There might not be another time,” I said, but she had almost instantly fallen asleep. I had no idea that vampires actually slept, but I supposed that it made sense. Somehow I doubted that they all instantly passed out like Lily just had, that was probably more a personal trait rather than a racial one based upon her particular vampire heritage. I got up and walked over to her and pulled the cellphone from her pocket; she didn’t move. She didn’t have an access code for it, which was lucky, and I set the phone’s alarm to vibrate obnoxiously a couple hours before sundown. With that, I continued my work. The flamethrower was almost finished, and I had finally figured out why the so-called delivery system was so strange. It was heavier, bulkier, and far more complex than the normal nozzle apparatus usually employed, and the switch on it was a fire-mode selector.
The nozzle itself had a chamber which would hold a small reservoir of fuel and then blow it out all at once in a modestly sized sticky fireball which would likely conserve ammo, or I could use the “full-auto” approach and use it in the normal stream-of-fiery-death way. I was curious about the fuel itself, but there was no way of knowing exactly what it was without spraying it, and I didn’t feel like wasting it or soaking the storage unit in an unknown flammable substance. But the fact that it had an apparatus to chamber small amounts of the fuel told me it was likely to be something much more cohesive and stable than jellied gasoline.
It wasn’t long before I finished assembling the whole thing and set it on the table. It looked uncomfortable to carry, but I couldn’t have asked for a better weapon. Flamethrowers don’t kill fast, but they induce a state of frenzied panic that is unmatched by almost any weapon, and that was what I was looking for. But I’d need more than that, so I weaved my way around the various racks of weapons, picking and choosing what I’d need. I immediately picked up and holstered the Desert Eagle; this one was coated in matte black, and I stuffed several extra six-round magazines into my front jacket pockets for it. I figured I’d only bring one stake along with me, since they weren’t single-use items, and I opted for one that was reinforced by steel rings and charred at the end for extra hardness.
My longsword was still in good condition, so I spent half an hour sharpening it while I considered the pros and cons of bringing a crossbow with me—I eventually decided not to because it was too awkward to carry along with the flamethrower, and not
nearly lethal enough. Once I finished honing and oiling the longsword I looked around for anything else I might need, and my eyes locked onto a green metal box about a foot high with the orange exploding sphere on a peeling label and the fading letters spelling “High Explosive” on it. I grinned and walked over, undoing the complicated metal clips that held the lid securely on top. Dozens of grenades filled the box, arranged like eggs in a carton. I popped two free from the foam packaging and slid them into a free jacket pocket, next to the bowie knife that I now never traveled without.
Inspiration struck. I picked up Lily’s phone and searched for the local law enforcement office number. I dialed, and a male receptionist’s voice answered.
“Can I speak to Rebecca Ramirez, please?”
“Just a moment, I’ll forward your call.”
The phone sang with annoying, garbled music for a few moments before she picked it up.
“Ramirez,” Becky said.
“Hey Becky, this is John Magnus.”
“Hey John, what’s up?” Her voice had that subtle tension to it that alerted me to the likelihood of nearby listeners.
“Hey we’re having a get together tonight. Have you heard?”
“Yeah, I heard there was going to be a party sometime this week. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering if you’ll be able to attend, it goes down after sunset.”
She sucked her teeth for a moment. “Sorry, but I don’t think I can make it. Those guys you party with are a little out of my league.” Her voice almost trembled over the line. I sighed, but I got the message.
“Alright, if you’re sure. I’ll give you a call tomorrow when it’s over; maybe we can have a drink then?”
The Chronicles of a Vampire Hunter (Book 1): Red Ashes Page 24