He tilted his head back and howled to the sky, wishing that his brethren would take up the call. Desiring more than anything that he did not stand alone when he was meant to lead, meant to be lord to his fellows.
The howl grew to a roar as he withheld himself no more, allowing at last the savagery held fiercely at bay, loosing the leash of his self-imposed mastery.
The howl rose far above the city and its sound was not that of a man, but that of a beast.
Its sound was that of a wolf.
2
Lust and Lies
He slowly stepped forward, rolling his foot from heel to toe, easing his weight down before lifting up the opposite foot to do the same. The boots he wore were light and flexible with crepe soles. To keep the soft rubber from squeaking upon wet surfaces, the man had powdered them well with blackened talc.
The rest of his attire was just as carefully considered. Loose, soft, allowing free movement; while anything that might have made noise had been cut away to be replaced by simple buttons. It made for a slipshod appearance, but was precisely what he deemed necessary for absolute silence.
A long trench coat rode upon his shoulders. Unbelted, open, it hung down to mid-calf.
His patience was infinite, his concentration tightly focused. His success and his life depended on it.
Another step forward, all in slow motion, then low, almost lost in the darkness that enveloped him, the man heard glass shards crunch under his heel.
He froze, waiting.
But, the only response was silence, broken only by the slow dripping of water somewhere within the derelict building. He could see nothing moving although the only illumination came from moonlight slipping through broken out windowpanes, threaded through with the sinister shadows of a leafless tree outside.
It was not yet autumn, the man reflected, which meant that the tree had died or was dying. A sad thing, to his mind.
But death comes for us all, and for some, not soon enough.
He let his breath out slowly through pursed lips, then resumed his excruciating progression through the room.
Three paces further, he paused, then heard once more the unmistakeable sound of glass shards underfoot. Only, this time the sound came from several paces behind him.
He whirled, his trench coat billowing about him, and saw the visage of an angel.
She stood perfectly still, her skin an ivory white, her eyes downcast.
Like a silky mane, her black hair fell in a cascade to drape her shoulders. Then, she tipped her face up to reveal eyes of crystalline blue. Full lips beckoned to him, lusciously red, and with a half smile, she raised an unblemished hand to blow the man a kiss.
“Who goes there?” she asked with a voice meant for seduction, a velvet sound in the man’s ears, “Is it someone bearing good will, come to share in my vigil; or is it an ill wind that blows sad tidings from afar?”
Instead of giving answer, the man widened his stance, then turned his hands so that the palms faced forward before saying, “As you can see, I am the bearer of nothing. You might say, even, that I have come to offer you nothingness.”
The woman flinched at his words, her beauty marred by a momentary twisting of her mien, then her features softened once more.
“You cannot mean to harm me, dear man. Tell me that it is not so.”
The man shrugged, then like a magic trick, in a movement that seemed to defy the laws of time, he held a shining short sword in the darkness. His trench coat rippled as it fell back down to cover the simple leather scabbard belted at his waist.
Her voice came to him like the hissing of a great cat.
“No blade can harm me, mortal fool. And I see no picket hewn from witches’ wood. You are woefully unsuited to do so much as scratch me.”
“That is where you are wrong, blood drinker,” he replied. “For this is an arm that has known the blessings of holy men a thousand times over for more than a thousand years. It is proof enough against those such as you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“Then let us put it to the test,” was his reply.
Without warning, her perfect, porcelain features twisted into vulpine lines and her blood red lips peeled back from a mouth that held far too many teeth. There was venom in her gaze as she flew at him like a harpy out of legend.
But the man stood ready. He stood with the confidence of a righteous man, a man of faith.
For thirty years, he had prepared for moments like these. For thirty years, he had swung that blade while hidden deep in the dark, forgotten catacombs of an abbey. Through the tutelage of an old man who had seen far more horrors than any man should ever seen, the boy that he was learned the arts of wielding a blessed sword and that it was nothing less than divine will that guided his hand.
A boy no longer, the man felt the calm that always filled him in this moment, a cool wind that slipped down the corridors of his mind.
And with a might born of faith, the sword flashed argent in the darkness.
A beautiful face that held eyes of clear sapphire came nose to nose with that of the man.
Then, the blazing fury washed out of her, all violence replaced as her lips formed a circle of surprise.
“But no blade can harm me,” she whispered in the darkness.
The man replied, “This one...can.”
He twisted the sword that impaled the vampire at her waist, then watched intently as it went about its sacred task.
Minute cracks ran through the blood drinker’s skin, tracing like wildfire as they flowed like lightning. In an instant, they had covered her over in jagged lines that hissed in tiny, sputtering flames.
She arched back from him, but he was without mercy. Unable to free herself, she did what all monsters did who had known the bite of that blade. She screamed with a sound that went beyond that of men’s hearing, a sound that tipped over the last few panes of glass in the building’s windows.
And as they crashed down to shatter to fragments, the blood drinker folded in upon herself, collapsing inward to finally drift to the floor in a heap of hot ash.
The man expelled a long exhalation of air, the smoke of the vampire’s demise wafting from his nostrils in lazy curls. And with a shrug, he slipped the still warm sword back into the scabbard hidden under his trench coat.
He kicked at a few embers still glowing upon the floor, then, all need for silence at an end, he strode from the room.
What a shame, he thought as he ran his hands over the tree’s bark.
An otherwise healthy oak, from what he could make out in the darkness, yet death had surely come knocking.
The man stood in the shadow of the abandoned brick building from which he had just come, the question of the dead tree heavy upon his mind, when a voice spoke from somewhere behind him.
“Even the mightiest shall fall one day, whether it be by will or chance.”
The man stiffened then relaxed again, his hand drifting back away from the pommel of his sword. The voice was known to him.
“The fairest and the most foul both,” he responded.
There was a rustling as something shifted behind him. Something very large. Or someone.
“Did she die well, the sweet Jacqueline?” asked the voice.
As was his habit, the man shrugged then turned to face the voice in the darkness.
“Why are you helping me? They’re your own kind, yet here you are again showing me where and when.”
There was only the creaking of dead branches to answer him for a time, then, “What do you know of the great flood, little man? The Deluge meant to cover the world over. What was the true reason for its coming?”
The man nodded. He was at ease with scripture. His upbringing had nearly drowned him in it.
“The Flood was to cleanse the Earth of sin.”
“But whose sin? That of men...or, of someone...something else?”
The man smiled as he thought he knew where the voice was leading him.
“You’re talking about the get of the fallen. The beings created when certain angels came among men and women in carnal knowledge.”
Again, there was the sound of something. Like boulders sliding along the ground.
“‘The get of the fallen’...it is well that you understand at last just what it is you profess to eradicate from the world, human.
“You think me but a vampire, like she was. But, they are lesser things, mere shadows of the greatness that once walked the earth. I am the last of these. And when my travails are at an end, I shall bow down before you so that you might strike with your hallowed blade.
“We were named Nephilim, the sons of the Seraph and human women so many millennia ago. Blood drinker and werewolf are as nothing in comparison.”
The man felt his throat go dry. The voice, if its words were true, belonged to one who had seen the world before the pyramids were built. Before man had presumed to master the world.
“But, why me? Can you explain that instead of always talking in circles?”
Silence followed until the man thought that he had been left once again in ignorance.
“It is because you carry a weapon worthy of the task you have set yourself,” said the voice, at last. “I felt its coming and sought you out, curious to know who dared carry it in battle once again.
“And as I drew near, I felt your avidity, such hunger for the destruction of all abomination that walks in darkness, preying upon mankind.”
The man touched the pommel of the sword once more, gratified that the blessings it carried were of a puissance that merited notice.
“The sword has been passed down for hundreds of years. A holy man has given it to me so that the benediction of priests might protect me as I hunt.”
There was another sound, stranger than all the rest, until the man recognized it for what it was. Someone had snorted with amusement.
“Is that what you believe, human? That the mumbled whisperings of drooling old men protect you?”
Anger welled as the man heard these blasphemous words.
“If not that, then what? You cannot deny that it destroys where an ordinary sword would do nothing.”
“Ah, human...it is not the blessings of priests that imbue the blade with power. Rather, it is because that blade was forged by the hand of a singular being and when he had done he wept with chagrin for the destruction it would yield in his hands. The sword is mighty because it was quenched in the tears of an angel.
“The smaller of two blades made by him, the angel could not face the terrible violence then at his disposal, and so he cast one of them away. And, even without it, he was formidable as he dealt out his message across the ages.”
Shock rang through the man. Except that he heard the clear sound of truth in the creature’s words. The priests had lied to him, or, themselves, were ignorant of the weapon’s extraordinary origins.
“And what happened to this angel,” he asked in hopes of teasing out more of the sword’s tale.
“Why he found what we all seek,” said the voice. “In the end, he found peace.”
The man searched for something more to say, something to wipe away the melancholy that he had heard in the creature’s tone. But, he knew he was already too late. The presence had gone.
He stood alone, then, unwilling to touch the weapon at his side for a long moment, lost in thought.
And so the tree beside him suffered the fate of all things that pass into death.
It was quietly forgotten in the darkness.
~~~
The dream held her fast.
She knew that it was not real. She was lying in her narrow room upon a narrow bed with its thin mattress.
She knew this.
But it did not matter as she found herself walking down a corridor with sickly green tiles under her feet.
Sara had answered a help wanted ad, something about a temp position. But the wording of the advertisement had been strange, although, in her dream, she could not remember why she thought this.
She had called the phone number listed only to speak to an answering service.
A week had gone by, then, one evening, her phone rang. What hour it had been, Sara could not have said either, except that the sun had gone down and the sound of a telephone that never rang had scared the daylights out of her.
Still trembling, she had picked up and a voice had asked for her by name.
Sara replied that it was she and the line crackled. There was buzz and a strange thump, then the voice spoke into her ear again, saying that interviews were being scheduled and that she was appointed for the following evening.
Again, the exact time she had been given escaped her now, as the dream slipped along. Except that she remembered being struck by the way the person on the line had spoken. The way they had said she had been appointed.
The green corridor continued to roll out under her feet as she walked. Sara wore heels with the most formal skirt she owned. It was a gamble, but she had decided to skip the panty hose. Her legs were one of her best assets and the voice the evening before had been surely that of a man. At least, she thought it had been.
I need this job...I need it so much.
She unclenched her jaw for the ninth time since entering the building and followed the instructions she had been given the night before.
She had been told that most of the temp agency’s staff would be gone for the day and that she should simply go to the address, walk in without waiting for anyone to greet her at the door and take the stairs up to the first floor.
Then, follow the corridor to room number 217.
But the hour of the appointment, even if just then Sara could no longer recall exactly when, was truly bizarre.
It was late. Of that she was sure. Dark outside, after sunset. This, too, she knew.
It doesn’t matter. If I don’t get this, I’m out in the streets by next week.
If the interview had been scheduled for first cock’s crow, it would not have changed Sara’s determination to be there. The last of her savings was sifting away like sand through her fingers and if she did not find something soon, she would have to go back on her hands and knees to beg for forgiveness.
Never...I’d rather die than go back to him.
She shuddered, then resumed walking the corridor, scanning door numbers as she went.
Sara passed doors with frosted glass panels and darkness behind each one. Over and over, not finding the one marked 217 as panic began to grip her. She wondered if she had the day wrong. Or the hour.
She reached the end of the corridor, took a deep breath, then turned around letting out the air slowly, trying to calm herself.
It’s here...it must be.
She went back the way she had come, maybe seven paces, before she saw the warm yellow glow of an office light through its glass paned door.
A quick glance up and she saw the numbered plate screwed in place. 217.
Her stomach doing cartwheels, Sara seized the doorknob and let herself in.
The office was a relatively large one and Sara noted that one wall was almost entirely made up of French doors that would open onto a balcony running the length of the room. She had already seen that the building was an older one, and the balcony’s wrought iron balustrade was intricate in design, as if it dated to turn of the century.
The sole source of light was a green shaded banker’s lamp upon a leather topped desk and over the desk, a woman slumped, apparently asleep. Her face rested upon arms crossed before her and was hidden from view. Strangely, she reminded Sara of a student sleeping in study hall when she should have been hard at work instead.
Well, it is late, she thought.
Sara shifted her feet wondering what to do, then coughed gently, hoping that the woman would stir.
“Shhhhhhhh....”
It was a whispering sound that sounded like the slithering of a snake.
“Can’t you see that she is at rest?”
The sibilant voice brough
t a chill to the air and Sara searched for its source, except that she appeared to be alone with the sleeping woman.
There was a click and from what she had taken for a wall behind the desk, Sara saw the back-lit silhouette of a man leap up against a dressing screen. Like the balcony's iron balustrade, the dressing screen felt oddly out of place and Sara once again felt as though the 19th century had invaded the room.
“You must excuse me. I realize that this must appear quite strange, but I value discretion above all things.”
Again, his words slipped along her skin like a forked tongue and Sara felt a chill that prickled her skin.
“But, we have weighty matters to discuss, so without further ado, let us do that.”
Sara hesitated, then said, “I beg your pardon?”
There was a low chuckle, then, “Please, dear woman, no begging. Not yet. There will be time enough for that later.”
She shifted her feet again, wondering what to do next when her eyes chanced upon the folder under her arm.
“Maybe there is some mistake,” she said, “But, I was supposed to be interviewed for a data entry job.”
“Of course you were,” the silhouette replied. “Please, continue.”
Sara hesitated, then said, “I have my resumé and some letters of recommendation, if you like.”
Again, that low chuckle.
“The qualifications that you have so dutifully written down for me are of little importance, Sara,” he said.
"So let us cut to the chase. Trim away the fat and get to the marrow of it." Again, there was that low laughter that sounded like madness in the shadows.
“What would you like to hear? That you meet all the criteria that this position requires? That your experience in data entry makes you the ideal candidate?
"Well, those reasons have nothing to do with why you have been chosen.
"I decided that the job would be yours the moment I heard your voice on the telephone.
"You positively ache with what qualifies you for this position. I could not help but notice...and in time, so will he."
Ok...this is going too far. This guy is a certified whack job.
Her Billionaire, Her Wolf--The Novel (A Paranormal Alpha Werewolf Romance) Page 5