by Mark Tufo
Her eyebrows furrowed as her eyes took on a distant stare. I prepared for a fight that she did not launch.
“Tommy yet lives,” she said evenly. For all the inflection, she could have been talking to a fellow commuter about the weather.
That wasn’t good at all. Tommy would try to snap me in two the second he saw me.
“He is asking for help.”
“And?” I asked.
She began to walk perpendicular to the line of lava below, which may have been receding, sucking back down into the bowels of the earth, where it belonged. This is what happens when Earth eats a giant hot sauce slathered burrito, upset stomach causes massive heartburn reflux and explosive fiery diarrhea. Oh, come on, you know what I’m talking about, remember that first time you had something really spicy? Your stomach was gurgling in protest, then a few hours later you were wondering why your asshole was on fire. Doesn’t seem right that something should be hot on the way in and out.
“Shit.” This was one of those times when my fight-or-flight reflex was totally out of whack, had one of those “Out of Order” signs hanging on the side of my head. Running could give me some much-needed distance from this damaged duo, but dammit if I didn’t need Eliza. She’d killed Ganlin, just because, and had not suffered one bit. She was powerful, no doubt about it. Odds were she could take care of just about anything we’d encounter, which somehow worked back to the fact that I should put as much distance between me and her as I could. Let’s restart the vicious circle; it seems to be working so good for me. The thing that could kill me the most, and wanted to, I need to add, was also the same thing that could also kill just about everything else that wanted to kill me. I always kind of thought the saying “pick your own poison” was a throwaway idiom; really didn’t like the fact that right now it carried the utmost importance. I trudged in tow.
The ground looked scorched, I seemed to remember seeing something like this at some point in my life, but just couldn’t find the right time, or more likely, the right me. I was smart enough to realize there were or are or had been multiple timelines of mine that had played out and sometimes those memories bled. They’d gotten less intense as the years progressed. I think because, yes, I was getting screwed on a cosmic level but the demi-god was still bound by the natural length of my life, and it was against great odds that I was infected with a vampiric virus in too many of them. I sincerely hoped that I was the one taking one for the Talbot team and no other “Me” had to go through this.
I bumped into Eliza, it was getting a lot like the Three Stooges with all the slap stick. She’d stopped in front of me and I’d been absorbed in other thoughts. Her head was turned to her left; a burnt, disfigured tree branch sticking up from the ground had her fascinated. When it spoke, I knew why.
“Help me,” Tommy begged, barely above a whisper. If the rest of his body looked half as bad as that arm, his lungs would have been lumps of coal. That he was still somehow alive was a testament to his strength.
“He is not yet beyond hope.” Eliza was looking to me.
“Me? You want me to help him? I’m the one that put him in that position. What makes you think he would want my help?”
“Have I not put you in your present position? Yet, still, you seek my assistance.”
“Don’t start.” I walked over to that outstretched arm. When I got closer I saw that half of his body was encased in cooled or cooling lava; he had become a less noble version of Han Solo encased in carbonite, though where Hans was perfectly preserved in gun metal silver, Tommy was twisted and blackened. Their faces, full of pain and a beseech to stop were similar, though.
“Possessed.”
That was all he said; I understood the implications clearly. He was saying that everything that he’d done was because he’d been taken over by a vengeful demon and now he was fine. That was pretty convenient, as far as I was concerned. He’d been feeding me heaping helpings of shit for hundreds of years; what was a few teaspoons more? Eliza had confirmed his false nature just hours before, but if what he spoke was true, then it was quite possible I could be saving–or not–the Tommy I thought I’d known all along. I could also be doing him a huge favor if I ended his suffering. I’d have to live with the guilt of killing him.
“Was he lying to me the entire time?” I asked Eliza.
“It is not for me to say.” She had a sly smile.
“This fucking funny to you?”
“Watching the tortured thoughts race around your head? Yes, I find it very amusing.”
“He’s your brother, for fuck’s sake!”
“Truth?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“We are not related by blood.”
Well if that didn’t just send my reality spinning off into space.
“My mother was caring for Tomas for another woman in the village who was foraging for food. She fell off a small cliff and snapped her neck. From that day forward, he was ours, though it meant less food for us all.”
“Your father–he said that your mother died giving birth to Tommy.”
“Oh, she did. My father killed her for bringing the boy into our hovel. Even then he was a coward. He didn’t kill Tomas because he knew my mother would seek retribution. He waited until she was asleep and he crashed a rock down on her face, twenty times by my count, and then he made me clean up the mess while he dropped her body off the same cliff Tomas’ mother had fallen from. I was five years old, scraping my mother’s bones, blood, and brains from the floor and bedding. I’ve hated Tomas ever since that day.”
“You lie. I don’t know which part of it, but at least some of that story is lies. I saw you with Tommy on a couple of occasions. You cared for him; you protected him. I saw when you were bitten–you tried to keep yourself from hurting him. You are considering saving him right now.”
“NO! Now it is you that lies. You cannot know these things!”
“Yet I do.”
Eliza changed her stance a few degrees but kept her eyes on the fried arm of her brother. “I once held care for him; that is true. When it was us against my father we were allies, much like you now propose for us.”
“So, it makes no difference to you what happens to him now?”
“Only in so much as I am curious as to what you are going to do.”
“Was he possessed?”
“How is one to know?”
Oh, she fucking knew. She just wasn’t going to tell me.
“Mr. T please…please help. It’s me, T…Tommy.”
He almost had to add in that extra part. If I’d stumbled upon him I would not have recognized him.
“Blood, I need blood,” he begged.
“You’ll get none from me.”
There was nothing for what seemed like ages; I thought perhaps he had died. Had given up hope when he realized help was not coming.
“I will not interfere if you want to help him,” I told Eliza.
“As if you could. No, I will not help. I am enjoying the torment this is causing within you.”
“My mental anguish is more important to you than Tommy’s suffering?”
She said nothing.
“I…I love you,” Tommy cried.
My heart was attempting to wrench itself from my chest. To shed its bodily moorings and enfold the boy in its loving, life giving beats. I stepped closer. I could be cold-hearted when circumstances dictated, this wasn’t one of those times. It was an improperly cooled piece of rock that changed everything. The brittle piece under my foot gave way and I fell through past my ankle. I expected pain from a sprain or maybe a piece of molten rock that had not yet cooled. I got neither. What I did get was some verbal wrath from Tommy.
“Hurry, the fuck up,”’ he hissed.
I pulled my foot free and shook away the sharp rocks that wanted to slip inside my boot and tear up the soles of my feet at the most inopportune of times.
“You know what? I’m going to pass,” I told him.
That seem
ed to be the last hurdle for him to overcome in regard to his filter.
“Come closer, Talbot. Once I begin to feed, I will not stop until you are a dried husk that will wither and blow away in the breeze.”
“You deserve this, to be roasted in the fires of hell, I mean, in case I wasn’t clear. I’d no sooner allow you a drop of my own blood than I will shed another tear for your death.” I knew that was a lie, I wonder if he did. I would cry a great many times for the death of the person I thought I knew.
He started to laugh, it was a dry thing absent of all humor. “All those around you eventually die–most because of you. You must be used to it by now.”
“Goodbye, Tommy. For a while, I will remember you for the person I thought you were, then I will think no more of you. I will never talk about you again; you will be completely forgotten as if you never existed. A legacy of none.” I fished into my pocket and tossed Tim’s eyes, striking Tommy on the head. “Little parting gift.”
Nothing but one final cough and the dim light that still shone was flaming out quickly.
“He will not have far to travel,” Eliza said as she began walking again.
“Hard fucking core,” I mumbled as I followed. Surreal did not even scrape the surface of what was happening here. I’d come to hell to get Tommy back, to dissuade him from the craziness that it was to rescue his sister, the woman that epitomized all that was evil. Yet here I was, traveling with that woman as my temporary ally as we sought a way to free ourselves from the grip of this world, both of us having let Tommy die when we might have saved him. This was a twist I could have never seen coming, not if I’d thought out every possible outcome for the next hundred years. None would have ever involved Tommy betraying me. I would need to maybe seek out the reality that he had truly been possessed, had stayed true deep inside. Although in retrospect, what kind of mind fuck would that be? I’d choose to remember how I saw fit, and I’d drink the rest away. I’m not sure why I was worried, odds were heavily favored that Eliza would be dining on me some time later this evening after having watched a fine show.
Chapter 21
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 16
Eliza was about as chatty as a pair of socks. Which for the most part was fine, wasn’t like we had a whole bunch of common ground to bond over and her voice gave me the creeps. She was relentless in her pursuit of escape; she was a wild animal caged in an eight by eight enclosure, a t-bone steak just out of her reach. So far, she’d torn into three demons; only one had been smaller than her, but none had stood a chance. A lioness destroying a squirrel would have been less lopsided. She only fed off the first one; the other two had the unfortunate luck to merely cross her path. Well, I guess it wasn’t that lucky for the first one, either. He’d at least died a fairly quick death as she pushed his misshapen head to the side and pulled his blood free. She’d dropped him to the floor when she was done, just another concert-goer dumping an empty beer can. The other two had been torn apart like a poor Princess Penelope doll in the hands of a spoiled five-year-old who really wanted a Princess Peach doll. Sure, it was demons, but watching a head get popped off is not something one considers entertaining after the first couple of times.
“You have any ideas on how to get out of here?” I asked after maybe a solid day of traveling.
“That’s the reason you are here. Is it not? Because otherwise, I may as well dispatch of you and your incessant jabbering.”
“Incessant? That’s the first thing I’ve said all day.”
She didn’t reply. I guess we were back to the silence. Which would normally be fine, but in this location, it was unsettling. The non-talking was opening my ears to all sorts of disturbing noises; rumblings, distant maniacal laughter, and there was this constant hot wind that sounded very much like the moans of the damned as it passed by your ears. And the damned don’t sound overly optimistic about their lot.
“There’s the gate. Now what?” Eliza had an expectant countenance like I had a bag of catnip and that was going to make all the Guardians abandon their posts as they frolicked about, stoned out of their kitty gourds. Now that I’m thinking about it, I wonder why there was never some PETA protest about getting cats high. Wasn’t a pet shop you could go into that didn’t sell bags of cat weed and nobody seemed to give a shit that we were getting felines fucked up. Because, make no mistake, that was definitely what we were doing. Come on, tell me you never smoked a fatty with some of your friends and then gave your household cat a toy absolutely laced with catnip? Just me? Whatever. Talk about cheap entertainment. We would laugh our friggin’ asses off as the cat would dance and roll around, never letting go of that toy–the stuffed mouse with a bell on its neck that contained all the answers to life, and he wanted to be the only one to possess that knowledge. And, like too much knowledge, that weed cooked his little cat brain, so much that he would mewl, pounce, and prance, the happiest creature on earth. Then, of course, he would bite you as you bent to share the merriment, because that was what he did. Might have been because I took his stash back. I would have done the same thing.
Telling Eliza that I had “no clue” what to do was akin to me putting a gun to my head. But I had no clue. “You watching me isn’t going to magically make an answer appear. Shouldn’t a being with unlimited time be a tad more patient?”
“I have been lost for two hundred years. I do not wish to waste more.”
I sat back against a rock, a prominent feature of this landscape.
“I will not suffer this for long.” She said, almost as a threat, before she also sat.
I looked over to the girl, and that’s what she was, really. I don’t think she was a day over eighteen or nineteen when she’d been turned. But that didn’t make a whole lot of sense if what she’d told me was true, because that made Tommy around thirteen or fourteen, and I’d peg him somewhere closer to twenty-one. I was going to keep him at that age. Thinking I’d offed one that had just reached the age of puberty was not another strike I needed for my wounded psyche. To just look upon the girl, not knowing who she was or having seen her at her ferocious worst, she was stunning. I mean she was the kind of beauty that huge companies would have clamored for to push their jeans and makeup, as if their products had some magical way of transforming women into beautiful swans, from the ugly ducklings they would lead women to believe they had been beforehand. When she turned to look at me, that illusion was gone, those cold, indifferent, black eyes were filled with death and hate. It oozed from her in a toxic stew.
“Besides Victor, you were my favorite Talbot.”
I didn’t think I liked her using the past tense when she referred to me. Most likely in her mind, she had already disposed of me. I didn’t think it wise to bring it up.
“Victor was a favorite of yours?” I asked, tough to think that, since she’d killed him.
“I was thinking about your words; you were right.”
This is where I would normally go off on a tangent about actually having a woman admit I was right for once but this was not the person nor the place for that. A new leaf was turned over as I wisely remained silent.
“Without Victor turning me into a vampire, I would have died long ago. My pathetic excuse for a father would not have missed me, Tomas, perhaps, for a little while, but once he died I would have been forgotten. Returned back to the earth in a shallow, unmarked grave dug by an apathetic, grave man. An unremarkable life filled with nothing but pain and ending in misery.”
I could not argue her that; I had stolen a glimpse into her life. Death would have been a service to her.
“You lived a life of misery, I agree with that, I do. And even at that young age, you realized it for what it was. But then you went and gave it all back tenfold.”
“Should I have perhaps been a saint?” she asked, and she was serious.
“Wouldn’t have been the worst thing you could have done.”
“Oh, those pious puissants always spewing forth the good word, most of them had been more perverted than t
he general population, they just hid behind their own illusions of grandeur.”
“We’re talking saints, didn’t they have to go through a pretty serious vetting process by the Vatican?”
She let out something that could be considered a derisive snort.
“We are vampires, you and me. We do not possess many choices in the things we must do to survive.”
“I think I’d like to disagree with you on that point.”
“Do not cheapen your existence by hiding behind what you believe yourself and your qualities to be. Have you killed?”
“I have but…”
“It matters not at all if you believe that your killings were merited or even in self-defense. A life was taken. The only difference is that I enjoyed my kills, whereas you seem to live under a mountain of guilt. If you but shed that one trait, you could do great and mighty things.”
“Apparently my guilt is the only thing keeping me from becoming you; I think I’ll keep it where it is.”
“Whatever allows you to continue on. Eventually it will consume you.”
“Why did you come to the States? You can’t tell me you had eradicated all of the Talbots from Europe.”
“Lisdon Tunning.”
“What about him?”
“Her, actually. She was one of the greatest warriors I had ever known. I am not merely speaking of the Talbot line, but of all time. I stayed very close to the Crusades; the Knights Templar were their own brand of vicious, though they fought in God’s name.” Her eyes let me know that she got a kick out of that. “I could slaughter and eat to my heart’s content and not draw any attention to my doings. It was a wonderful time. It was not unheard of for me to kill and consume ten to twelve people in a single day. European and British knights, Muslim freedom fighters, the innocents, I took them all. There was so much death there I could not be noticed. Not until Lisdon anyway.”
“Wait, I know that name…that’s your surname! Had you been following her?”
