Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation
Page 44
(We now skip a few extremely homophobic musings and return to our family breakdown. Thanks for reading how to implode your life. Chapter 2: Name calling.)
“You… cunt.”
So I lost my temper. So I lost my dignity. So I lost everything respectable that could be said about me in a single instance. I lost my being entirely with a single move, a single word, a single moment where everything good about me good be taken away and thrown to the dogs as the devil took me in my anger.
Anger it was. Rage. Disgust. Every devilish emotion that Satan uses to take hold of you… as I became the very creature that Alucard feared I’d become. My two eyes, now glowing red with passion and Hellfire, were matched as I moved forward…
And back handed Molly, sending her blond head off the couch with a powerful blow that immediately bruised her cheek and caused her to shout out with a cry. Such a noise would have normally moved me with pity, forced me to reconcile and plea to the angel that I would never hurt her again…
But I was too far lost. Even now I found myself advancing, mouth wide and hungry with vengeance and bloodshed, ignoring everything and anything about me as the door to the bedroom opened.
“Molly, are you al-”
“Jen! Help! Seth- he’s on something! His eyes! His eyes!”
It took one stare from the black denizen of the south, familiar with the folk and voodoo traditions of the south, to recognize what I had become.
“Vam- vamp- vampire!”
You want to know the most ironic part about all of this? Well, besides the fact that this so called righteous man was about to suck his sister’s blood. It was that Jen actually had a cross nearby and, drawing it, began to utter some memorized, vain prayer in the hope that it would stop me. To think that a mere wooden effigy would stop me, the so called holy man.
It was so humorous that I actually lost focus, swooping down and grabbing my cane as power beyond anything I could have ever comprehended coursed through my veins. Even as the black woman continued to shout “Lord! Lord almighty!” I moved ahead, laughing with maniacal glee as I tapped the head of my dragon cane against a palm, making it clear to my beloved sister just exactly what I intended to do with her wife’s skull.
I never got the chance, my own hubris being both my downfall and the only reason why I haven’t killed myself yet. The moment the yellow diamond eyes of my dragon felt the skin of my open hand, the mouth of the supposedly normal cane opened as a voice, pre-recorded from Ela Degum, announced
“FTM user detected. Deploying TRADEMARKED Degum Diamond Non-Lethal Sleeping Glass.
“With the Degum family, you always get Diamond quality!”
Winter had been the one to close out in song, the last noise that one of us would ever hear as a yellow cloud began to spray from the cane. Almost immediately everyone, including me, fell to the ground unconscious as the smoke continued to rise, spraying and filling the room for thirty seconds as it spread everywhere it could. Fortunately, by design, it couldn’t fit under the quarter inch cut beneath the front door, meaning no one else had to suffer its adverse effects as me and everyone else lost control and fell into the realm of sleep.
Meaning, everything that transpired next was told to me after.
“So. Hermano. When can we go in?”
“Oh, thirty seconds after the gas is done. Half a minute to deploy, half a minute to disperse, three days to sleep it off. I told you we didn’t want to stick around while they worked things out.”
So the two vampires waited, waited, and… waited, finally opening the door right as Alucard finished counting to sixty-one. Inside the room now, it was a strange sight for the bandaged mercenary to see two half dressed women and a fully clothed cripple, still clutching his cane, draped across the ground as if they were all drunks who lost control during a party.
For Bibiana, this was an unfortunate regular occurrence, even if she was used to more women and men being involved. Stepping over to Molly first, closet to her more than anyone else, she was relieved to confirm that the blond was still alive and showed it, Molly’s small chest practically heaving as her fingers felt a pulse.
Alucard, meanwhile, stepped over to the black wife of my younger sister… and shot her through the head, putting a sizeable hole into it with the use of the silenced Walther P38. No one heard it, of course; the mercenary was an experienced killer, all too prepared thanks to the long barrel attachment that hung off his German gun.
Meaning no one but Bibiana would know of the murder. Clutching Molly within her arms, holding her like a daughter, the Latin lass asked
“You… you aren’t going to kill my Molly, are you?”
“Attached, are you? Perhaps I overpaid you to spy on her. Sounds like you love her.”
“As if she were my own sangre. I may not be gay, but I know what it’s like to be a part of someone’s familia. She’s just as much mine, if not more, than Seth’s.”
“Well, you’ll be delighted to know that she’s no good to me dead. Pardon me.”
With that, the man turned and disappeared into a bed room, gun stuffed back into his pocket as he began to pursue about. Bibiana, simply relieved to find her new charge protected, didn’t even bother to ask what he was doing… for several seconds. Alucard hadn’t simply walked into the closest bed room; he went into Sky’s dorm, across the hall and the farthest away, specifically.
“What are you doing?”
“There has only ever been one persona to rival my intelligence and criminal empire, Miss Garcia. Do you know who? The American, Modern counterpart to James Moriarty?”
“Um… Jim Moriarty?”
According to the Latin, Alucard actually laughed. “Hilarious, but no. The Joker, the clown prince of crime, the devil in the moon light… he is the only person to match, even surpass my great name. No wonder the twenty first century worships him instead of me; it takes a lot just to be my equal.
“Still, there’s one thing I’m much better at than him, my own trump card if I should ever have to fight one of his personas. That, my friend, is my ability to read people.”
Stepping out of the small bedroom, Alucard had a can of hair spray in one hand and the length of sheets from Sky’s bed in the other, draping them across the floor like a line of gunpowder from a barrel. The intention was the same, the gray haired vampire even making such an idea known as he asked
“Would you fetch me a lighter from the kitchen?”
“Can’t you just use fire magic?”
“FTV powers leave a mark. I need this to be discreet.”
The Latin obeyed with that, carefully laying my sister near me as she went towards the kitchen to fetch the mercenary’s lustful flame, all too eager to make a bonfire of the century. Alucard, with preparations complete, simply shook the can of spray as he kept on speaking, the bandages over his broken lips moving in synch with the mostly dead and blackened muscles.
“Do you know why everything right now is transpiring? All because Miss Molly decided to get married to her precious girlfriend. A pleasant idea, even commendable one, if it weren’t for the fact that the girl knew better.
“Or that she was the heir to a powerful set of abilities. No, the instrumentality project needs a Belmont to succeed according to Lufaine, something she failed to learn until after we rendered Seth infertile.
“Which is where they had to bring Moriarty and his scheming in. Pierre lost the ability to reproduce after too many regenerations; Seth was infected with a virus by Ganet and Gehroh. I don’t want to take the time searching for someone with a personality similar to Seth, and it’s a logistical nightmare to steal someone from another, alternative timeline without mucking things up.
“So the answer was simple. Either Molly needs to live up to her potential as an apostle, or produce an heir herself to replace her. That’s about where things sit with her now; it’ll be up to her to make the choice.”
“Why not use Seth? He’s a vampire now; he has pot
ential.” The woman in overalls asked, finally finding the right drawer as a long, tabbed lighter sat gleaming with pride. It had only been used twice before; it might never be used again, but at least it would make one heck of a flame before it went the way of all inanimate objects.
“Considered it, and decided against it. Too brash, too angry, besides his penchant for self-inflicted pain. It took me years to consul Joan to let go of whipping herself for her sins; that Seth enjoyed getting beaten by Gary is ten degrees worst. No, it’s so much better to let the poor man join his wife in Heaven and start the family he always wanted… even if I do have to fix him up a bit before he goes.
“All a part of the plan though. No such thing as luck or coincidence; simply plays and counter plays, even if you have to act like you’re surprised. Always was the best liar in the family.”
Standing at his side and ever the midget, the girl had to practically reach over her head just to pass the tool to the giant. Gracefully taking it, it took just a single burst of hairspray for a wide flamethrower to be made, lighting the length of sheets on fire and encouraging it to spread back into the bed room.
Meaning Alucard’s work was down. Tossing the two objects away, he nudged his head to the two prone forms by him as he reached into his pocket, fumbling about for one more thing as he explained
“You got a place to lay low?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. I want Molly to get started now rather than later, meaning I have to break a promise. We are going to kill her, even if it means she’s not staying dead.”
Taking out a dark, brooding red syringe, Bibiana’s eyes went alight as she recognized it to be a pure serum of the Forced Transfiguration Virus. While a fierce and horrible sight to come, the Latin vampire had been alone too long to despise the transformative mixture anymore; in fact, another immortal friend now was welcome news.
“Rebuilding the ranks?”
“Always have to after these cleansings, which is why you’re still around. I need you to lay low in one of your shops with her, take care of her and help nurture Moly back to health until the last week of December. While we normally ask to find your own food, we’ll be supplying her diet until she’s ready to be picked up; I don’t want her corrupted from the initial transformation. That’d be a setback of at least a thousand years.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice. What about Seth? What are you going to do with him?”
Alucard’s eyes went murky. From the smoke or his own inner demon, I cannot tell.
“Oh. I still have use for him. Heaven bound he may be; I still have much to do with him…”