by D O Thomas
“Their extinction and our own are one and the same. The humans have developed a world of war. We realized the threat soon after the conflict of blood and fur. The humans developed at alarming rates, discovering ways to imitate their old masters, forging countries and civilizations.
They would have destroyed anything that threatened their way of life and if we had allowed them to see us as a threat, they would have fought until we destroyed them all.”
“I remember learning about the old war in school. I read that the war ended with a simple agreement.”
“That’s correct. A witch by the name of Hecate kidnapped your Apex Alpha and our king, informing them of the allegiance the humans had made to bring war to the supernatural world. At the time, the humans were weak and would easily have been eradicated, leaving the vampires without nourishment, which would have left the world to the wolves. Your Apex Alpha liked this idea at first, but something changed his mind, although that’s undocumented and unimportant. After the war, the humans took our disappearance as divine intervention and began building their world. They continued to worship their long-deceased slave masters as gods that disposed of the beasts that had threatened their existence. For a while there was peace. But as humans must naturally destroy their surroundings, they learnt that war was a good way to deploy wide spread destruction… and so began the humans’ reign of terror.”
“You haven’t explained why the banks are so important to the terrorists.”
“Its simple capitalism, although instead of an imaginary basis of currency, we use the one and only source of nutrition. So, the vampires underground work for blood and the ones above ground work for money to exchange for blood, and so as long as our king controls the flow of blood, he controls the vampire world.”
“So, the terrorists want to disrupt the flow of blood.”
“Exactly. Taking away the people’s trust in our king and inciting chaos. Pretty straightforward really.”
Chapter Eight
The night had gone, and the day grew young. Above ground the sun had begun its slow winter’s dawning, covering the paved London landscape in a dark twilit shade. Christopher had retired to his bedroom and Renfield had left Ashel and Angela to enjoy their time together, before they returned to their separate and lonely realities. A few hours had passed, Angela grew tired and found rest in the vampire king’s embrace. They had been talking about the unimportant affairs of their history and the exciting intentions of the future they would share. Their words faded. Both lay still, she found comfort in the serenity of his silent body and he found hope in the warm rhythmic vitality of hers. Angela felt a kind of a vacant warmth as Ashel gently brushed her cheek. Suddenly something dawned on her, she lost her comfort and was filled with tearful worry.
“I can see a future with you, but…” started Angela.
“What's the matter, my love?” asked Ashel.
“It's just... well. What happens when I grow old? You'll never age but I will. When I've lost my youth and have grown feeble, you will be the same man I met in that club.”
“You will age, that's true, but your soul will remain the same until you pass, and although you may become withered and weak, I shall maintain the strength to care for and love you till you meet that inevitable day.”
“If we do this, you will eventually lose me. Doesn't that frighten you?”
“It would, but I know that when your mortality ends, your soul will live on and I will find you whether you reside in heaven or hell. I would spend eternity in the netherworld if it meant I could spend it with you.”
A well of tears broke from out of Angela's longing eyes. She had felt almost hopeless in a world that her soul was too pure to enjoy, but the man whose body was cold and lifeless had the love that was akin to her soul. Words had been spoken to her before, broken promises and lies, but every compliment and promise made by the vampire resonated as a truth that could not be tarnished.
“I have loved before,” said Angela through her tearful smile.
“As have I.”
“But this... this is more.”
“There is no word for how I feel.”
Ashel’s embrace tightened, as did Angela's, as the two lovers held onto one another in the hope that they would never have to let go of their soulmate, and in a matter of minutes Angela fell asleep.
Angela slept peacefully in the arms of Ashel. He carried her home. The grey-clouded dawn shone an impotent light across the damp ground, allowing him to traverse the streets of London at that early hour. The speed at which the vampire king travelled made the increasingly heavy rain seem to hang in the air, as if time had decided to step aside and allow the couple to pass.
Ashel reached Angela’s house and stopped, time continued its journey and the rain fell as if uninterrupted. He opened Angela's door carefully, so as not to wake her.
Ashel had only entered Angela’s house through her window briefly before. Holding his slumbering love in his arms, he looked around. The house was clean, pristine even. It was a small home, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a through lounge and a kitchen. Most Londoners wouldn’t have considered it small, being that it was worth monthly payments of a small fortune, but to Ashel it was inadequate for his love. Ashel peered up the staircase that led to her bedroom and wished he could prevent his actions. As he carried her upstairs, he found himself feeling an ache he had never felt before. The pictures she had up on the walls of her friends and family intrigued him. Although she looked happy in her photos, he could see something in her eyes. A light flickering, struggling to stay lit. It was something he’d noticed the night before, but it had only just dawned on him what he’d seen. Ashel laid his love down in her bed, brushing her hair aside and tucking her in. Angela's breath was soft and rhythmic.
For a while Ashel just sat on Angela's bedside listening to the peaceful beat of her heart, but something worried him. That flicker. It echoed quietly in her heart. It was pain, fear, some kind of trauma. It worried the king, but there was something he had to do, regardless. Ashel leant in next to her and pressed his lips upon her head.
His eyes lit up and began spiralling in blues and greens. As she woke, Angela fell into a trance.
“Rest your mind. Soon I shall come for you and save you from this life that has weakened your heart... But for now… FORGET.”
Ashel’s words put Angela to sleep. Her heart beat softly, and she appeared less peaceful than before. The flicker he had seen became a deafening hum in the core of her heart. Forgetting the man who she had so easily fallen for brought back the deep depression that she had felt for years. Ashel couldn't bear it. He had all the time in the world but now he found himself impatient. Every second his love spent away from him was another second in which she felt the pain of a heart longing for love.
Chapter Nine
The blue-grey haze of twilight loomed over the gates of the Ealing village. Regulas stood in the shadows, clutching the pummel of his sheathed sword as he waited, watching the street lamps go out one by one as the day’s sky grew slightly brighter in the damp drizzly distance. Regulas had never been known for his patience. He had only been waiting for an hour, but it felt like a lifetime. He had played every freemium game on his phone until they prompted him to pay for extra lives. He had read a few chapters of a book he had been lent by Noir, and he had been left with nothing to do but wait, and so he stood, tapping his foot, clutching his pummel and staring into the distant twilight, watching the lights go out.
“Where the hell is this fool?” said Regulas to himself under his breath.
“Fool,” shouted a small voice from behind the gates.
“Rhys? Is that you?”
“Were you supposed to be meeting someone else? A fool perhaps?”
Regulas ignored Rhys’s comment. He took a very small envelope from his pocket and knelt down, reaching through the gates, letter in hand.
“Just take this, okay?”
“Thank you, I’ve got my instructions…” began Rhys as
he looked through the contents of the letter. It couldn’t be seen in the darkness that covered Noir’s little friend, but a very familiar grin was formed.
“Yeah, you can leave now,” continued Rhys, as he walked away emanating extreme nonchalance. Regulas was as proud as any knight of Leo, and so in the face of such disrespect, it took his all to stop him from drawing his blade. Instead, he took a few deep breaths, stared out to the lightless twilit horizon and walked away.
Rhys didn’t care much for others. He didn’t trust very many people but out of all the people in the world he knew, there was one person he could trust, and strangely enough, it was Noir. For hundreds of years Rhys had been by Noir’s side (slightly above his shin) and through everything, Rhys found that Noir was in fact, despite contradictory evidence, someone to trust and so as one of his oldest, closest, and most trusted of friends, Rhys would undertake the most important of tasks, even if he wasn’t very good at them.
Rhys began his slow trek through the home of the elite wolves, his little feet clinked across the paving stones that led to his mission’s objective. He knew the dangers that lay in wait. Rhys had no form of defence to aid him, he had no idea which corner might have a team of wolves just waiting to devour him, and the confusing layout of the village made his journey hard to navigate. But he didn’t mind, even though the odds were against him.
None of that mattered, not because he was brave, not because he had seen it all; the fact was, Rhys just didn’t really care all that much.
The pint-sized friend of Noir traversed through the darkness of the wolves’ sanctuary, humming an old tune, unbothered by the consequences of his doing so. It wasn’t long before Rhys was noticed; at least five wolves heard the tune, two of which found it suspicious. The two wolves met by a metal hut that was used as a kind of tuckshop, labelled Lycanaid. The humming came from around there but no matter how hard they looked, the wolves couldn’t see the hummer, nor could they smell him. The lack of scent both intrigued and startled the wolves. A wolf’s sense of smell could never fail them, so while the confused wolves searched around the hut for the humming intruder, Rhys entered the hut and began to fill his bottomless pack with the small white pills that filled the shelves.
The two wolves, which were convinced they were chasing an offbeat spectre, could hear the thudding of the theft that was well underway inside the metal hut. One of them tore open the door, allowing the other to burst through the opening. It half-turned, looking like an overly hairy teenager with bustling mutton chops, an elongated jaw filled with jagged-edged teeth, sporting a pair of furry and clawed hands.
Panting like a snub-nosed boxer dog, the wolf looked around the small hut; he scanned every dark corner, sniffing the air for a scent to indicate the cause of the disappearance of an entire year’s supply of full-moon pills. He inspected each shelf, picking up nothing as he planted his nose upon the varnished wood.
The wolf that had held open the door could hear something under the fumbling of the wolf-man inside the hut; the humming, it had started again, this time a good few yards away from the hut. Rhys carelessly strolled through the centre of the village’s residential area, searching for the right house to enter. Behind him the hurried patter of the irritated wolf’s feet grew louder. The wolf was close but that didn’t matter, and Rhys stuck to the shadows, blending in with a set of garden ornaments. Rhys being too small to notice, the wolf began to feel as though he had lost his mind. There was clearly an intruder, a theft had taken place, but there was no evidence of a thief, except for a low out-of-tune humming. The wolf gave up his search and returned to the hut, where his comrade was sitting, still in his hairy half-turned form, and the two looked at each other with worried eyes. Knowing that the only scent in the hut would be their own, the wolves began cleaning the hut and covering up their recent actions. While they fixed the broken hut door, the humming began once again, but this time the wolves decided to ignore it.
Rhys hummed his tune as he climbed to the third floor of a large elegantly designed house via a wastepipe. The small and nimble friend of Noir shimmied across some guttering towards an open window. Once he was positioned comfortably above the window, he bored a hole in the guttering, rummaged around in his bottomless pack until he found a thin bit of rope, and fastened it to the freshly bored hole. Slowly Rhys let himself down, allowing his body to touch light for the first time during his mission. The smarter of the two wolves was outside the hut covering up his tracks when he looked up to see Rhys swing into the window from his lowered rope. It was enough for the wolf to know that there really was a thief, he didn’t need to make a fool of himself any further by trying to apprehend the sneaky little guy, and so he decided to ignore what he had seen and continued to save his own skin.
Rhys dropped his pack and took out a small pen and notepad and then proceeded to traverse the dark house. His little feet clinked across the hardwood floor as he made his way to the master bedroom. Luckily the door had been left ajar, because Rhys wasn’t sure he’d have been able to open such a large door without making a significant thud.
He crept into the room to find Cidney asleep in his king-sized bed, with his face buried in his pillows and the duvet half on the floor, covering only his legs. Next to the sleeping beast lay an empty bottle of Jack Daniels.
Rhys put his pen to the pad, writing a short message entailing a few bits of political advice; he titled the note Try to remember your friends, boy! The little guy then climbed up the duvet and stuck the note to the empty bottle. Standing next to the sleeping beast, Rhys couldn’t resist drawing a surprisingly accurate sketch of a penis on his forehead.
After adding a few final touches to his masterpiece, Rhys made his way back down the duvet and clinked across the hardwood hall back to his pack. He climbed the rope back up to the window and leapt out. The rope let him down steadily at first, but something in his pack gave way and the rope began to let itself out rapidly. Before Rhys could compensate for the speed at which he was falling, he hit the ground. The shock was worse than the pain, but he was sure he had heard something crack. The dazed Rhys regained his bearings, cut the rope from his pack and set the part attached to the guttering alight, and within a second, the entire line had burnt away in a small puff of smoke. The wolf that had witnessed Rhys’ intrusion could smell the smoke from his post, and he thought about investigating, but the sound of the little guy’s incessant humming stopped him in his tracks.
“Nope,” said the wolf as he lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
Chapter Ten
After walking in a haze of tangled thoughts and emotions, Noir found himself sitting at the bar in 109’s hell lounge, with a large glass of vodka, lightly coloured with cranberry juice. From across the bar he could see his obnoxious but loving brother; it was times like these Noir found comfort in his company. The melancholic information broker lowered his draping hood and made his way to Balthazar’s table. He took a seat and gulped an unhealthy amount of his drink. Balthazar could see the distinctive distain of regret on his younger brother’s face.
“What’s the matter, fatty?” asked Balthazar through his clear glass of over-proof rum. Noir looked down at his half-empty glass, longing to feel its effects.
“I had to kill someone today,” said the glum information broker.
“It's not the first time you've done that,” laughed the raging alcoholic.
“That's not the point.”
“Isn't it? I mean, people die, it's inevitable, whether by your hands or the hands of fate. I don't see the problem.”
“It's my fault he turned out the way he did.”
“Let me guess. Another failed project?”
Noir circled his finger around the rim of his glass. “I pick the kindest of people, build them up, give them the ability to be more than life allowed them to be and...”
“And they prove that evil triumphs over all.”
“It's not evil.”
“What is it then?”
“Greed... I
think.”
“People lust for what they don't have, it’s human nature.”
“It's not right. Why would the creators make them like that? It's not just humans, it's everyone, everything.”
“It's survival. It's not exactly a bad thing. It just is. That's life.”
Emptying his glass down his throat, Noir’s eyes dulled.
“That's life... Life. Night turns to day, day turns to night, a cold wind blows. We’re touched by a warm front. Flowers blossom and leaves fall. It goes on and on, and through it all, people never change. What’s the point?”
“I think that’s it. It's beautiful really.” Balthazar sipped his drink, “No matter how great their lives become, they strive for more. The only fault is, to truly gain, they have to overcome their obstacles. Sometimes that means stepping over those in their way and sometimes it means stepping on them. It's not wrong, it's just the way things work.”
Noir longed to feel the effects of his slightly coloured vodka kicking in. “You might be right,” he moped.
“Might be? Look at the people we're surrounded by. Ashel is king because he wiped out an entire race, Jasper rules because he used the wolves’ weaknesses to gain favour. Whispa, perhaps the most humble of us all, stands atop the graves of his predecessors, none of which died of natural causes. I mean, sure, there's your Missus, Madame Rosario, our brother and others, but they were born into their positions. Look at yourself, what did you have to do to become the Lord of Man?”
“I used a corrupt society to build my future and the future of those less fortunate.”
“Tell me. How many lives did you destroy?”
“Countless.”
“Each one deserving their fate? My brother, the Saint. Like the righteous crusader, you felt no guilt when disposing of the world’s unnecessary evils.” Balthazar took another sip of his drink. “Yet you put an end to a life that you yourself had corrupted and suddenly you’re overcome with guilt. How ironic.”
