Rising to darkness

by Lucia Guglielminetti

  London, July 1

  Still nothing.

  It's as though you have vanished into thin air: the two of you, the lab, every damn thing. The Colonel came around to see us yesterday. He looked very tired and worried, I was touched by him. It's evident that he's been putting immense effort in this mission. I thought how it would be nice of me to make him feel a little better - I had told you that I found him quite charming.

  When Sophie finds out, she'll jump out of her skin, given our last conversation.

  At first, he was very hesitant, but when I loosened his tie and started massaging the stiff muscles of his shoulders, he relaxed and agreed to follow me into the bedroom. My brothers always know when it's time to disappear; they bolted to their own rooms before the situation became embarrassing. For him, that is.

  What can I say? It was a pleasure for us both. He confessed to me that he hadn't had sex for a long time, but I wouldn't have known it. We talked until dawn when I had to send him away. He's a very sweet man despite his horrific profession and very lonely because of it. He didn't understand the nature of our relationship, so I told him a few things about our past and he was very touched. For the first time, he realized that Atropos is just a name behind which lurks a being far more complex. On the other hand, isn't it the same for everybody? He asked me the question that I was expecting from the beginning and, to understand where he was going, his shy ’But you two...’ was enough. The rest was imprinted on his face. As expected, he wanted to know if we have sex. Is it really so important for humans to know who fucks whom? I smiled and nodded solemnly. He looked worried, but it was precisely that concern that I couldn't understand. I couldn’t attribute his response to jealousy, which usually renders a different reaction, and, in any case, it seemed quite premature for it.

  ’Wouldn’t he kill me if he were to find out what we've done?’ he eventually asked me, very seriously.

  ’Well, I don't know. It depends on his mood at the moment. He kept the last one crucified in the garden for three days in a row before deciding to set him free. You know, the neighbors began to protest...’

  When he realized that I was kidding, he fell flat on the bed, his hands on his face, uncertain whether to laugh or to cry. I, on the other hand, was in hysterics.

  ’You don’t have the slightest idea of the terror he arouses in me. I feel genuine affection for him and great admiration and, yet, every time I meet him, he makes me want to run away.’

  ’Do you often meet him?’

  ’No, I don’t. In forty years, it happened only three times, including the one of which I have already spoken.’

  ’Tell me about the other two, will you?’

  ’Nothing interesting, matters related to work that I can't talk about. Each time, however, it was up to me to make contact with him and, every time, my fear was unchanged. The last one happened five or six years ago, I think. We needed him for some job, I sent him an email and he arranged to meet me in the same cafe where we had met the first time. It was still there, unbelievable... The decor hadn't changed much neither... I commanded my men to wait outside and sat at the same table. It was a strange feeling, as if I had just jumped back in time. He appeared suddenly as before. The fact that his appearance hadn't changed at all, apart from his clothes, added a surreal touch to the scene. The only other thing different about him was the color of his eyes. When he noticed that I was staring at them, he smiled and told me that he was wearing colored contact lenses to conceal his vertical pupils. ’The wonders of science and technology!’ he exclaimed. We talked business for about half an hour and when we agreed on his compensation, he laughed again and reminded me of when I wanted to pay him off with just a thousand dollars. At the door of the cafe, he turned to me and asked, ’Have your ghosts disappeared, Colonel?’ I nodded and smiled at him, too, feeling the same feeling of gratitude as I did back then. He blew me away with a sentence of which I often think about: ‘You're lucky. Mine have never left me.’ Then, he exited the cafe at a leisurely pace, leaving me standing there with goose bumps.’

  ’Thanks for telling me this beautiful story, Adam. And thank you for staying here with me.’

  ’Thank you for having welcomed this old grouch, tired and disheartened. Not even in my wildest dreams have I ever imagined to have such a beautiful woman beside me, even only for one night.’

  ’I won’t tell you my age because you would be shocked. Never call yourself old when you're with a vampire. And, who says it's just for one night? I think you can have me for all the nights you want, Colonel.’

  ’Let's begin by taking advantage of this one,’ he said and returned to business. I have to admit: military training keeps one very fit.

  London, August 26

  I'm leaving for Tel-Aviv along with Skinner in a private jet.

  Yesterday, I got a call from the Colonel, but unlike the previous ones in which he never wanted to commit too much on his conjectures, this was completely different and scared me to death.

  ’We have retrieved them, Shibeen. You'd better come here.’

  ’Ok, but what is it? He's not...’

  ’I can’t talk on the phone! He's alive but... well, you’d better come. There will be a private jet equipped for you to be able to take the journey during the day, there's no time to lose. We’ve also recovered the other guy; maybe you should send someone for him, too.’

  What scared me most was his tone: dim, irritated, and full of urgency. It wasn't like him, he had always been very polite and soft-spoken, even in his daily emails. I threw two things in a suitcase, warned Skinner who's rushing here to me, also called Sophie who was offended to death because I didn’t want her to join us, and am here waiting for the car that will take us to the airport. It's almost dawn and I'm a little worried about going out now, but it's nothing compared to the anxiety devouring me about your fate. There was not the slimmest sound of happiness in the Colonel's voice, not even the slightest sound of relief for having found you. I don't even know what's become of the monster-making laboratory.

  It can't be worse than the time we saved you from Greylord. It can't be any worse than that, can it? The Colonel has never seen you in dreadful conditions, he doesn't know about our prodigious ability to heal. I'm sure that he's worrying too much, but I'm happy he called me. After all, nobody has ever tried to cure a vampire other than other vampires. I'm coming to you, my love. The worst is over.

  Shibeen.

  Tel-Aviv, August 27

  Oh God. God. God... Nothing could have ever prepared me for what I saw. Nothing will ever make me forget. I can't talk about it, not now. I'm glad Sophie didn't come. Nobody should be forced to see such things. If I think about the subsequent days, I just want to cry. I hate to say this, but if things should remain unchanged, I'll see you dead. I can't see you suffer like this, I just can't.

  Shibeen.

  Tel Aviv, August 28

  I guess I should tell everything, right?

  I think so, damn.

  Yesterday was probably one of the most frightening days of my long existence. Better yet, without the ’probably.’ When I woke up, the Colonel was next to me. I noticed immediately how pale he was, almost ash-grey, with deep dark circles that cut through the contour of his eyes, which had taken on a bewitched appearance. If a colonel of Mossad, by definition one of the toughest organizations in the world, looked like that after an attack, it was appropriate to be terrified.

  We were in a little room similar to the waiting room of a hospital. The neon lighting made his lines even sharper and attacked his features mercilessly. He looked as though he had aged ten years more in the space of a month.

  ’Adam, you're really scaring me. You look awful.’

  ’They were really mind-blowing days, dear. In forty years of career, I've never participated in nor thought I could take part in things like the ones I've conducted in the last seventy-two hours. It is necessary for you to know this because you might be distressed by what you will see beyond that door.’r />
  ’I'm already upset, believe me. Come on, sooner or later I'll have to face it. Where's Skinner?’

  ’He's with his leader. He seems to have suffered less damage, at least he is able to speak. They're close friends, aren't they? He and Raistan, I mean.’

  ’Friends? What you mean by friends? They've been trying to kill each other for two hundred years, what are you talking about?’

  ’Really? I wouldn't have thought that.’

  I no longer understood anything, in no way whatsoever.

  ’When will I be able to take him home?’ I asked.

  His face seemed to crumple in on itself, then he shook his head and led me to a door of solid metal on the right.

  It was like entering hell.

  Even that was a lab or, at least, something very similar to an area of a hospital: a huge open space with no windows, full of people in white coats bustling about here and there, looking busy. On a bed to the right in the midst of monitors, machines, cables, and other paraphernalia lay Greylord. I had seen him only once in the past but it was impossible to forget him. Skinner was by his side, looking at him like a son who's just found his own father. They both turned to me and the chief lycan gave me a weak gesture, as if to draw my attention. As I moved towards him, the Colonel followed me closely behind. What on earth could he possibly want from me?

  ’How... how are you, Greylord?’

  ’I'm fine. Have you seen him yet?’

  ’No, I just… Excuse me, but why are you so interested? Your main purpose in life was always to kill him.’

  ’You don't understand. When you live certain experiences with another person, a strong bond develops. He... you have no idea what he's gone through...’

  ’You all keep telling me so. Now, I'd like to see it with my own two eyes. Get well, lycan.’

  Greylord seemed to have aged fifty years also. He must have, at least, lost sixty-five pounds, his arms were devastated by pinpricks, black and blue from the elbow down, and his breath emitted a scraping sound that was really horrible. His eyes were bright, though. Within a few weeks, he'll be back on his feet again, howling and slavering as before.

  ’Adam, where the fuck is Raistan? I want to know what they did to him. I want to see him. Now!’

  ’All right, Shibeen, all right. He’s just beyond that curtain over there, behind the glass. I warn you, going in is out of the question. He killed two of our men. I don't want anything to happen to you.’

  ’He will not hurt me, I'm his maker! What do you think?’ I was sorry to hear about his two men, but I also thought that, if you had the strength to kill two people, you were probably not feeling so badly.

  Adam drew a long sigh, then he pushed the curtain aside, showing a dim room with padding on the walls. At first, I couldn't see a thing, so I asked him to turn on a light and approached the glass, leaning my hands against it. When the light flooded the area, a dreadful noise came from the thing that I had mistaken for a pile of black rags, a sort of growl mixed together with weird sobs. I saw the shapeless mass trying to become even smaller in a corner, then begin banging its head on the wall. Its hair was filthy and tangled in knotted strands, but it looked like yours.

  ’It would be better to turn the light off. He can't stand it.’

  ’Are you saying that that is him? Do you want me to believe that pathetic pile of rags is my Raistan?! I won’t believe it, you're wrong, it's not possible. Greylord! Greylord, you've been with him throughout this entire nightmare, tell them that they're wrong!’

  ’I'm afraid not, vampire. He has endured all that he could, then he sold out. It couldn't be otherwise.’

  ’Why are you fine and he is not?’

  ’Because the focus of the experiments was him. I just had to provide some additional elements to perfect the project, but he was the foundation.’

  ’Mr. Greylord, I've been waiting to question you to give you time to recover and allow the lady to hear your testimony. If you are able, would you tell us now what happened during these last three months? We can't cure him if we don't understand what the problem is,’ the Colonel stated.

  ’All right. You'd better sit down; it's a rather long story.’

  GREYLORD'S TALE

  ’If you saw the Sheikh's video, you know how we were taken captive. I must admit that I acted like an idiot, falling into his trap in a ridiculous way, but, then, all I wanted was to get my hands on your friend and it looked like the right opportunity. Instead, things went very differently and I regret my recklessness and superficiality, really unforgivable.

  Immediately after his capture, they closed us in two metal trunks similar to coffins. It may have been good accommodations for him, but it certainly was not for me, although mine was equipped with air vents that allowed me to breathe. For two days, I was wrapped in yards and yards of a silver chain and started to become intoxicated. I had nausea, was seeing poorly, felt weak as a baby, and, in the area of my body not protected by clothing, was burning like red-hot irons were tearing away my skin. I felt my coffin being moved and had the feeling of the crushing pressure you feel when an airplane takes off. Noises were muffled and I couldn't make out what was happening. I only knew that, after several hours of silence and stillness, during which I must have dozed off, my container was moved again. When they opened the lid, I didn't have time to understand where I was before someone gave me an injection and, again, it was as if a dark wall had swooped down on me all of a sudden.

  The sound that woke me up the following time was your friend's voice. He was calling out my name and, judging from the irritation I heard in his voice, he had been doing it for some time. Evidently, the effects of the concoction they gave him lasted less than mine. I found myself secured in a vertical position fastened to a table with metal strips. I no longer had any more chains wrapped around me, but no clothes either. On the other hand, every visible area of my body was covered with what looked like electrodes. The voice came from behind. We were tied back to back with two thin metal sheet boards to separate us. They kept us that way most of the time, except when they brought the boards flat in a horizontal position to work more comfortably. Those were not good times. It took me a while to answer him. I had a dreadful headache, cramps everywhere, and my mouth was dry and furry. In addition, I didn't feel like talking to him. In the end, given his insistence, I gave in, mostly to silence him.

  "What the fuck do you want, vampire?"

  "Nothing. I just wanted to know if you were dead. I would never have forgiven them if they took the pleasure of killing you with my bare hands away from me."

  "Ha ha, very funny. Where do you think we are?"

  "It looks like a lab, but I don't know what they are planning on doing. How... how do you feel?"

  "Like shit. What about you?"

  "Ditto. That stuff they injected in me makes me feel as if my body doesn't belong to me."

  Our conversation was interrupted by the Sheikh's arrival, accompanied by a man dressed as a doctor.

  "Gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to see you awake and fit! This is Dr..." - He said an Arabic name but I can't remember it - "You will become an active part of a wonderful project aimed at creating a superior race in order to defeat the forces of evil. This will require some sacrifices on your part and some brave volunteers, but I'm sure that the result will be worth every bit of the suffering which will be inflicted on you both. Now, I will leave you to the care of the doctor. I'm sure you'll learn to become good friends."

  The guy in a white coat didn't waste any time. He took a syringe out of his pocket and went towards your friend. I heard him protest and threaten and felt the vibrations of the metal sheet against my back in his attempts to break loose, but it was useless. After a few moments, I recognized the unmistakable sounds of someone who's vomiting. I had little time to rejoice in his suffering for my turn came soon.

  "Now, we must purify you, too," said the doctor, giving me a shot, then he smiled at me and left. My stomach twisted in knots and I joined the
chorus of the bloodsucker behind me.

  "I thought you were immune to poisons..." I said at one point in between retching to vomit.

  "I thought so too," he answered in a choked voice.

  I don't know how long we carried on that way, certainly for hours. In the end, my abs ached and I was horribly thirsty. Rather than purified, I felt completely depleted. Your friend had to be much less pure than me because he continued for quite a while. Finally, I heard him beg himself to end the torture, until he fell silent as well.

  The lab hosting us was about as big as this one, more or less, but there were a lot of strange equipment, countless surgery instruments, and a long row of beds with straps. We soon discovered the use for them, unfortunately. Nothing that surrounded us looked reassuring. Since there were no windows, we never knew if it was night or day and soon lost track of time. For a while, I used him as a clock: usually, if he slept it meant that it was daytime, but after a while, he started going haywire and falling asleep at different times from exhaustion. There was a pause for several days in which they kept us separated. When he came back, he told me that they deprived him of sleep for the entire time. As far as I know, the deprivation of sleep is one of the worst tortures you could inflict on a vampire. I had used it sometimes in the past, but just to achieve vital information to our cause. It seemed that they wanted to torment him only to find out his breaking point.

  After the first few days of tests, blood draws and various analyses, the game became serious, especially for him.

  Within the space of a day, they would work on me for perhaps a total of a couple of hours; whereas, on him, it was a continuous torment. I had assumed that he underwent some of the same procedures which I had endured but, being unable to see him, I lost many details. I went through a complete blood transfusion and they tried to provoke my transformation in an armored room and were surprised when it didn't happen. Obviously, they were not aware of my ability to control myself. My gifts don't depend on the blood running though my veins, but from something primal. Call it magic, call it genetics, I don't care.