by Angie Martin
A corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “Someone could get lucky, I suppose.”
“If I were that lucky…” I stopped before I could finish the sentence. With the recent loss of his brother, it seemed Mr. Smith had much worse luck than me. “So, how do I do that again? The books don’t seem to be… talking to me today. I thought maybe I’d lost my place here.”
“Once the mark chooses you, that’s it,” he said. “No going back, no way to lose your place. We simply have to train you right.”
As much as I bristled at the idea of spending more time with Mr. Smith, my inability to connect to the chronicles was more frustrating than he could dream of being. It left a void in me, as if a vital organ had jumped out of my body in the middle of the night. I didn’t just want to hear the hum of the chronicles; I needed it to survive.
“Show me.”
He chuckled again, and I stepped back at the foreign sound. “It’s not as easy as showing you. Besides, I can’t connect with them like you. I can only guide you.”
“Then, guide me.”
He inched toward me as he spoke, the volume of his voice dropping to a mesmerizing level. “You need to relax. You won’t be able to let the chronicles in if you don’t relax. Drown out everything around you.”
I sucked in the air around me and exhaled, wiggling my arms before letting them fall against me. My back muscles let go, but my legs remained stiff to hold me up.
“You’re gonna fall again if you’re not careful,” he said. “Don’t relax your body. Relax your mind. The mind is all that matters in this room.” His hands grasped my upper arms with a light touch, and his gaze locked onto mine. “Take a deep breath.”
I followed his instructions, despite my overwhelming sense of vulnerability.
“Just focus on me. There’s nothing else around you.”
Falling under the hypnotic trap of his voice, losing myself in the well of his soulful eyes, I did as he said. My arms trembled under the weight of his hands, and I feared every emotion swelling inside me. Especially the ones I couldn’t define – or didn’t want to define.
“Now, close your eyes.”
My lids tried to shut, but they fluttered open. A confession escaped my lips. “I’m scared.”
If he could look deeper into my eyes, he did so in that moment, connecting us in a way I never wanted to experience. “There’s nothing to fear. This is where you belong. This is what you were always meant to do. It will come naturally.”
His words provided me the courage I needed. My eyes closed, and I let go of everything else except his touch. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t ignore that.
“What do you want to know, Madison?”
I heard Mr. Smith’s question, but it was underscored by a low hum. The chronicles. I stemmed my growing excitement, afraid I might chase the sound away again. What did I want to know? “What are blood seekers?”
My question floated around me, through the air, into oblivion, and I was rewarded with the hum. I opened my eyes and broke away from Mr. Smith. Vaguely aware of his footsteps behind me, I followed the sound until I ended up in front of another bookcase, one I hadn’t seen the night before. Withering, light-colored leather covered the book calling to me, and though I snatched it off the shelf, once in my hands, I revered it. This book had spoken to me – out of all the books in the library. It held the answers I sought, even if I didn’t know I needed them.
Mr. Smith’s hand on my back jerked me out of my daze. “You did it,” he said, his eyes and tone expressing surprise. “It takes others so much longer. Several days, at least, to even hear the call of the books.”
“You said it yourself,” I said, my confidence rising. “I belong here.”
“You do. More than I realized.” He removed his hand from my back and looked down. “I really need to apologize to you.”
“No, you don’t.” I managed a smile, my first for him. “Just quit being such a jerk.”
“Maybe.” He shoved his hands in his jean pockets. Shrugging and looking past me at the bookshelves, he said, “I’ll leave you alone with your books now. You have a lot to catch up on.”
After Mr. Smith left, I stared down at the chronicle in my hands, which still hummed in a low tone as if eager to get started. “Yes, I do.”
Chapter Fifteen
M uch like the day before, I closed the book in front of me, my mind reeling from everything I had read about blood seekers. Based on the number of books surrounding me, my learning might never cease, and I feared overlooking vital information that could save someone while out on a mission.
Throughout the day, I discovered I not only could read several languages, but I had developed an ability to speed read. I had always envied those who could read at extreme speeds, but now I could do it, too. The rate at which I took in words increased with every page I turned, and yet I remembered every syllable. Two more superpowers, like communing with the chronicles.
I was going to love my new job. Just maybe not the part about blood seeker battles and flying heads. I definitely still dreaded my first mission.
Everything else came naturally, as if I knew how to do it all even before I was born. While in the Chronicle Library, time slipped by me, food could not deter me, and I had no thoughts of the family I had left behind.
But, blood seekers… they loomed over my surroundings as if in the room with me, hovering, waiting to strike. The more I learned, the more my fear of them consumed me. Even reminding myself that Mr. Smith and the other night stalkers would protect me did nothing to ease my anxiety. After all, Brent had died with the same protections, minus Mr. Smith.
I wanted to know what went wrong. Know how to avoid falling victim to blood seekers as Brent had. Could I even ask that? The thought of his body still out there, somewhere, quite possibly devoured by blood seekers until he was unrecognizable and now in the throes of decay… it was too much for anyone to digest, let alone me, the one designated to follow through this insane maze, an underground world filled with monsters and hunters.
Out of everything I had read, I realized not one book had given me the origin of the blood seekers. I knew they fed on human blood, they resided in nests, night stalkers existed to kill them, and the best method of disposing of them was beheading. Beyond that, I had no information on what exactly they were. How they came into existence. Why they existed.
I closed my eyes and summoned the chronicles, which immediately responded in the now-familiar humming. I followed the sound to the second floor of the library until it led me to the book that would provide me answers. The barely blemished cover and English for the title caught my attention. I opened the book and read the date: 1964. The newest chronicle I had read so far had been penned in 1786. My curiosity piqued at what differences there might be in the almost two-century timespan between the books.
Back at my desk, I flipped through the pages, noticing that the chronicler who penned the book, William Davies, had inserted his own beautiful renderings of battle scenes between night stalkers and blood seekers. I prayed that I wasn’t expected to illustrate my chronicles, given that my ability to draw anything better than a stick figure would be a much more surprising superpower than reading foreign languages.
When I reached the correct spot in the book, a full section on the origin of blood seekers, I rested my head in my palms and dove into the text.
We encountered a small nest of blood seekers on our travels yesterday. Though slight in numbers, their strength was formidable. One of our night stalkers, Lucille Averill, fell during the battle, but ultimately, we destroyed the nest.
It is noted that very few chronicles to date explain the nature of blood seekers. Rather than writing down their origins, we have kept it strictly as oral tradition for thousands of years. I shall attempt to relay the legend here, for the future of our kind is dependent upon understanding both our past and our enemies.
The creatures date back to the time of the Egyptian curses upon the Pharaoh Ramses II
and his land. God sent great punishments to fall upon those who would not allow the Israelites safe passage out of Egypt and continued to enslave God’s people.
Upon release of the fifth plague, that of diseased livestock, God allowed the Devil to open the gates of hell, if only for a moment. A demon unlike any other escaped and feasted upon the livestock. It carried within it a virus unknown to man. The virus spread to the livestock, causing great calamity and disease.
Unaware of the demon’s curse, the Egyptians consumed the meat of the infected livestock, passing the virus to man. Eventually, the virus was partially responsible for the death of all Egyptian firstborn, who had taken part in eating the largest portions of the diseased animals. Night stalkers soon rose up from the Israelites with the sole purpose of destroying the blood seekers and stopping their reign upon God’s earth.
The blood seeker infection appears to begin in the lymphatic system, spreading throughout the organs and causing death. Yet, something in the virus keeps the mind alive. As the rest of the body decays, the blood seeker ingests the blood of humans to slow the process. Should they fail to drink blood, they shall die, however, we cannot count on this as a means to their destruction.
Beheading is the best-known method of killing a blood seeker, though we continue our search for other ways. We have yet to be successful in eradicating the demons, and other creatures have risen from the depths of hell for us to battle, delaying our studies of blood seekers.
The opening of the Chronicle Library door jarred me out of the tale, and I watched the hall for Mr. Smith to appear. When he did, I recognized a bit of disappointment in the wrinkles on his forehead and shadowing his eyes.
“Good afternoon,” I said, hoping to ease any tension before it began.
“You mean evening,” he said, stopping short of the table where I sat. “Keira said you hadn’t been up for lunch or dinner.”
“Evening?” My eyes darted around the room, as if it would give me some clue as to the time. “I didn’t realize that—”
“That’s the problem,” he said. “You have to regulate yourself, Madison. The chronicles are amazing, but they will consume you if you’re not careful. They can suck you in to the point that you lose track of reality. It’s why I get on you about eating. Many chroniclers before you stayed more than a day in here, not stopping to eat or sleep. Let the books guide you, but don’t let them control you.”
Remembering his admonition from the night before about remaining well-nourished, shame colored my cheeks at once again having deviated from the norm of the complex. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know so much time had passed. I don’t have a watch, and there are no clocks in here.”
“I’ll make sure you have a watch with an alarm in the morning. I’ll try to remember to come check on you more frequently as well. Are you ready to eat something?”
“I am, but I have some questions first. If you don’t mind, that is.”
He pulled out a chair diagonal from me and sat, arranging his seat so he faced me. “What do you want to know?”
“I just read about the origin of the blood seekers and night stalkers, but the chronicles mention other monsters out there.”
“The Order has managed to keep monsters a secret for thousands of years. We can’t let others know of their existence or the world would be chaos. Blood seekers are always our biggest threat, but you will come across much more in your life here. Right now, however, we are facing an influx of blood seekers, and there is a specific nest of them we are after.”
“The ones that killed your brother.”
“The same ones who were after you in New York.”
I flinched. I didn’t realize that the blood seekers chasing me had also killed his brother. However, his appearance in New York made much more sense. “You’re out for revenge, then?”
He hesitated, tilting his head as if weighing his answer. “All of us in the complex would like to see justice for what was done to Brent, but it’s more than that. This nest has a powerful leader in place, so it and him must be destroyed before he can recruit more blood seekers. They’re in our region, so they’re our problem. It’s why we went after them to begin with.”
I hesitated with my next questions, not wanting to bring up bad memories. Instead of speaking, I looked past him, at nothing in particular.
“You can ask anything you want.”
Permission granted, I glanced back at him. “What happened to Brent?”
“I wasn’t there, so I don’t know the whole story,” he said. “The nest had divided in two sections, and we had to hit them both hard and at the same time so they couldn’t warn the others. Our team was mostly successful. Only two escaped from us. The team with Brent… Well, that didn’t go as planned. There were more blood seekers than our earlier recon specified. Brent somehow got separated from the others. He was cornered and ambushed.”
“Did anyone else get injured?”
“No,” he said, resting his clasped hands on the table. “We were very lucky in that regard.”
“How many blood seekers were left?”
Looking down at his hands, he shook his head. “Half a dozen? Three dozen? There’s no way to tell for sure. Since the recon didn’t identify all the blood seekers, we don’t know how large the nest was to begin with, and there may have been other offshoots from the group we weren’t aware of. We believe many of them were hunting during our recon, which is why we miscalculated the threat.” His eyes caught mine with a hard stare. “That won’t happen again.”
I believed him. Mr. Smith was not one to speak lightly.
“What else do you have for me?” he asked.
I closed the chronicle in front of me and asked, “How does ingesting blood keep them alive?”
He flicked the spine of the book. “We’re still not completely sure how that works. We would love to capture a live blood seeker to figure it out, but that’s not likely.”
“Why not?”
“When night stalkers have tried in the past, the blood seeker just sacrifices itself. It’s like a spy consuming a cyanide capsule rather than being forced to talk, but much more gruesome. I’ve watched a cornered blood seeker decapitate itself rather than be caught.”
A chill rustled goosebumps on my arms, and the hair rose on my neck. “That’s insane. Why… How? That’s not possible… is it?”
“It rushed another night stalker, who held out his machete in defense. The blood seeker didn’t hesitate to let the blade take its head.” Mr. Smith leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms.
An unbidden movie played in my mind of the blood seeker purposefully running into a machete, but I shut it down before my imagination got too carried away. I didn’t want to see anyone decapitated, but for one to do it to himself… I couldn’t comprehend the motive. “Why would it do that?” I asked Mr. Smith.
“We think blood seekers communicate telepathically somehow. The way they move so seamlessly in nests, then they meet in random locations without any advance communication. It’s like they’re all connected. Our guess is that if one is caught, it would know what other blood seekers were up to. Interrogating a blood seeker could end very badly for the nest.”
“Telepathy seems… I know that all of this is half-crazy given that I have books talking to me, but how would that telepathy work?”
“It might be some kind of pheromone carried in the virus, but that’s the best we can surmise without further studies.”
“A pheromone in a virus.” I laughed. “I’ll admit, I’m not the smartest when it comes to science, but is that even possible?”
“You have to remember, Madison, this is a complex, supernatural, demonic virus we’re talking about. Science is limited to so-called reality. Even though blood seekers are very real, scientists across the world don’t know that, so they couldn’t possibly study them to find out.”
I mulled over the theory. There was only one way to prove what they assumed. “You need a live blood seeker.”
“It�
��s the number one priority for The Order.”
I caught the hesitation in his voice. “Just not for you.”
“I want the blood seekers that killed my brother. After that, I’ll follow along with whatever The Order wants.”
“They don’t approve of you going after this nest, do they?”
“They aren’t exactly the revenge-seeking type. Revenge leads to mistakes, or something like that. But, I don’t care. They can do whatever they want to me after those monsters are no longer on this Earth.”
His distaste for The Order was not lost on me, and my imagination ran circles around the question of why. Had they done something to him, his family? Did he witness a higher up in a nefarious act? Discovered a conspiracy that ran through the darkest crevices of this secret society? Or, did he buck at the first sign of authority?
Probably the latter, I thought. Mr. Smith didn’t seem too keen on the idea of being told what to do, even if it was the right thing. My speculations, however, were best left for a later time since the nest of blood seekers were at the top of his mind.
“I read that decapitation is the best way to kill them, but that was several decades ago,” I said. “Are there any other ways to kill them?”
“We’ve tried lots of things, but decapitation is still the most effective. Several years back, we burned out a whole nest of them, but some of them survived. If the head is still attached, it’s a possibility they’ll survive. I don’t like leaving things to chance.”
I remembered the falling head that had terrified me the night he rescued me. “The ones in my hotel suite before we went down the fire escape. Did you decapitate them, too?”
“Oh, heads definitely rolled,” he said.
“I’d hate to be the one who discovered that mess.” A thought crossed my mind. “Wait… Decapitated bodies in my room. You’d think that would be all over the news.”
“I’m sure others in their ranks cleaned it up before anyone discovered them. Blood seekers don’t like to leave behind evidence of their existence if they can help it.”