More tears.
Her head was in her hands, her shoulders heaving as the tears flowed down her face, “Be with me Daniel, I beg you, be my totem, my reason for doing this. I can’t go back to being the selfish one, the indecisive one…but I’m scared Daniel, I’m so, so scared.”
—
Michael retired to his own room, one he hadn’t visited in so long. He looked around and walked to his dresser. He opened the dark brown stained box with the linen cover that rested there and smiled.
His collection of watches sat arrayed like a set of cars in a garage, each waiting to be matched with the suit of the evening.
Which watch, he wondered, would be appropriate to go with an Apocalypse?
He could feel the turmoil emanating from Jacqueline’s room but left her feelings and thoughts private. He shouldn’t get back into the habit of reading everyone around him. Well, perhaps not his friends. Which, in this city, meant only Jacqueline.
Existential ethical crises averted for now.
He closed the watch box lid and slid the coat off and walked to his closet. He had clothes, all from a hundred plus years ago. He wondered what they would do above if he went out in this fashion? Was it normal on the street?
He hung up the coat and sighed. He needed to figure out this problem with his ability to Myst. Which meant, he needed to delve deep into the memories of his … what… death? He had been dodging this problem for too long. It wasn’t like him to do this, but then the pain he tried to block wasn’t fun, either.
He pulled off the holsters and set them on a shelf, and laid the sword he had pulled from his armory beside them. He stripped and walked into his bathroom to test the water. It took about half a minute of choking sounds coming from his pipes, and then some incredibly disgusting brown water spat out before it cleared up enough that he had hoped he would get a chance to wash up.
He tested the water with his hand and frowned, hot water was a no go.
—
The soft pitter patter of her feet going down the steps were the only noises she could hear. The occasional light in the halls or the stairways impressed her as the technology, even with it not working at a hundred percent, was still so far in advance of what she was familiar with. It made her want to search the other areas of the house.
But, she felt a presence. Maybe it was just a construct of her brain, but she chose to decide it wasn’t and it encouraged her to start her changes early.
Right then.
Jacqueline found the light switch on the wall and flipped it. The large room lit up, and she started walking towards the area that was for stretching and practice. She stepped onto the bamboo floor and stopped, thinking about what she was doing and then stepped back off.
She got down on her knees and closed her eyes. This was the area Michael, the Patriarch of Vampires, the ArchAngel, the Dark Messiah himself used for untold years and she would change her attitude. Respect would be given to him, to her father, to those who had died before she grew the hell up and stopped sulking about the poor, selfish her.
Jacqueline stood up and stepped back on the bamboo floor and felt right, centered. She stilled her face, erasing any emotion and put her feet shoulder width apart and knelt. Michael had been teaching her, and she had been learning. But, it wasn’t with all of her focus, because it had lacked all of her heart.
She listened to the beating inside her chest, to her breathing. Her balance, when off, she corrected and noted why she thought she had been off. She took in the sounds of the building, the heartbeat of the concrete, as subtle as it was and in time, she believed she could recognize Michael’s heartbeat.
Standing, she went through the first kata, as he had called them. She paid attention to power, to efficiency in movement, to the joy of teaching muscles the right way to accomplish an act. Not so she could produce the most pain or destruction.
But rather, so she would be prepared to protect the next Daniel.
—
Michael reached back in his memories. To the time before the age of silence, to the time of pain.
Unfathomable pain.
He felt it. He felt the fire in his nerves as he soaked under the cold water, his hands pressed against the ceramic tile wall of his walk-in shower.
His head hanging, his face a mask of agony.
The destruction coming from behind him, devouring even the insubstantial form of his Myst. His mental scream of terror, of loss and …
Dishonor.
Failing to honor his promise. That wouldn’t, couldn’t, he remembered thinking, be allowed.
He would NOT fail her in this.
Then the darkness. Darkness in his heart, his mind, until at some point, consciousness returned. Over time, he had figured out he was in the Etheric, Bethany Anne’s realm. Not his.
Not his.
The Myst was his realm, his to own, to be, the area he had owned for hundreds of years. Until the time Myst and pain were intertwined in his psyche. The association of Myst with failure. The form he had been in when he had failed to return to Bethany Anne.
Until now.
Michael’s eyes turned red, his teeth started elongating, and then the water stopped hitting his head and dropping to the floor below.
Because there was no body there, anymore.
—
When it happened, she felt it, knew it. Michael wasn’t there anymore. She didn’t allow it to affect her next punch nor the pivot and kick that followed. It was just information, awareness...BLOCK PUNCH KICK! Jacqueline performed the roundhouse kick and dropped to the proper block before continuing with the kata.
She never noticed her own perspiration, she never felt Michael leave the house through his little straw-sized hole.
Nor did she feel him come back a few minutes later until he reappeared in his room, just another bit of awareness and information as she continued her practice, ignoring the pain in her muscles.
Michael cut off the water in his shower and walked back into his closet.
“Fucking clothes,” he spoke. While annoyance colored his voice, his eyes were serene.
He could switch to Myst again.
—
Morning, according to Michael’s internal clock, had arrived. He got up and dressed in clean clothes, added his weapons, his black jacket and slid on one of his watches. He was able to get about two-thirds of his watches to wind up and work again. The one he grabbed both worked and went with his outfit.
He stepped out of his room and locked it. Some things should be sacrosanct, and while Jacqueline was welcome here, there would only be one other female allowed in his room.
Jacqueline wasn’t in her room, so he went downstairs and found her in the practice area. She was sitting in a lotus position, facing towards the chamber. This was not something which he had taught her.
“Good morning,” she spoke, without opening her eyes, nor moving her hands from where she had them near her knees.
Michael raised an eyebrow and looked behind him, before turning back to her, “I’m sorry, who am I speaking with this morning?”
She did not open her eyes, and her voice was calm, reflective, assured. This did not seem like the woman that had attacked the two toughs the previous night. That woman had been boisterous, angry, headstrong and rambunctious... undecided on how to proceed.
The one in front of him seemed calm, reflective and in touch with her inner self. Whether that continued when put into the flame, he would soon find out. “We need to go.”
She unfolded and stood up with a smooth grace and stepped off the bamboo area. He raised an eye when she turned, and it looked like she bowed her head for a split second before turning around, eyes alight, and jogged towards the steps. Michael’s head swiveled on his neck as he watched her hit the steps and disappear.
“Thirteen hundred years later,” he whispered to himself, “and they are just as confusing as the first time you met one.” Two minutes later, she returned with her sword in its scabbard and a smile on
her face.
“Clothes?” she asked, excited.
Michael grinned, “Yes, clothes.”
“Great!” she turned towards the door and started walking, “Out the way we came in?” she asked.
Michael’s body disappeared, and he flew over to her. This time, she also disappeared, and he turned them around, heading towards his special exit that no one, but himself as far as he knew, could get in.
—
HOLY SHIT! Jacqueline mentally screamed. WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?
Well, your calmness seems to have evaporated, Michael’s voice rang in Jacqueline’s head.
That’s not all that has evaporated! She told him. But Michael could feel her working to calm her response. Where are we and how did this happen?
One of my skills, he replied when he felt her flinch as they went into the pipe. Anyone in the Myst with him could see around, they just couldn’t control anything. Moments later, they were up in the city outside. Michael swooped over to the park they had walked through in the dark and then the two of them rematerialized when he got close to the ground.
Jacqueline stood, her feet apart and her arms outstretched like she was working to keep her balance. Looking around, she checked her clothes. “You might have warned me,” she told him. Not in an angry tone, but very matter of fact.
“Yes,” he admitted and started walking past her, “I could have.”
Enforcer HQ
Billy “The Bomb” Wattson stood a hair’s breadth under six and a half feet tall. His ebony skin matched his black enforcer’s uniform.
He was a Vampire Hunter, or if you knew the right terms, he was a Nacht hunter.
There were no special emblems on his uniform except a badge he could put on, or take off depending on his job for the day. When it was time to go in for a takedown, well he would take it off. No need to have a bright shiny target bouncing around.
He nodded to the riot team as he passed through the operations room and kept going to the back to slide out into his group's area.
Here, they didn’t talk about crime or criminals, here they talked about taking down vampires and Weres that had run amok.
Or, refused to work with them.
Billy needed Weres to help locate the damned vampires. Then the vampires were either killed or moved into medical research. Basically, their blood helped pump money into the coffers of the Enforcers and those who helped fund them in the beginning. He was here at the beginning, and he owned a very small cut of the overall income.
And even a small cut was enough to make his life very good indeed.
Billy grabbed his pistol and a stun gun, then he grabbed the arc rod he’d made special. It was two arc rods put together with an extra foot of metal rod in the middle. Normally, arc rods were sufficient to cover anyone who knew what they were. Vampires, almost always, assumed they could dodge the rods or survive the shock. It wasn’t until he and his partner, Vince, had run into a small nest of the bastards that Billy had decided to use two arcs.
Then, they met a vampire that knew how to use a quarterstaff, and that was the night he’d lost Vince. Even with two arc rods, and his training, he couldn’t get inside the quarterstaffs’ reach. The vampire had blocked an overhead slash by Billy, twisted, and stabbed out with his staff and hit Vince in his face shield, cracking through the visor and into his skull.
Billy had seen the fatal hit, his friend and partner collapse, and he lost it. He attacked the vampire with a ferocity born of anger and retribution. He had been hit twice before he got a good shock to the vampire, which had retreated to a back room and out a window into an alley. Billy wasn’t small enough to fit through the window to follow him, and he would be gone before Billy made it out of the house.
Which meant that Billy had to go back and face his fallen partner, and apologize for failing him.
Now, Billy had his own upgraded staff and had practiced for months once he made it. He had taken out six vampires with it so far. One he had killed due to shocking him too much. Billy didn’t care, the vampire shouldn’t have mouthed off to him.
Like he cared what a creature like that said. They might speak like a human, look like a human, but they drank blood, and that made them inhuman.
And inhuman deserved no compassion from Billy.
He slammed his locker shut and smiled to his four team mates, “Tonight’s going to be good guys, we got us another lead.”
“HELL YEAH!” they cheered.
Another night, another Nacht to capture and hook up to the machines.
-----
Michael and Jacqueline came out of the grocery store, two packages each between them. “This stuff costs as much as the clothes!” she commented as the two of them walked down the street.
“That is because you asked for lamb,” he replied. “The chicken was cheap enough.”
“Oh my God!” her eyes lit up, “Have you ever had lamb?” She looked over at Michael, “Wait, of course, you have.” She stuck her nose in the bag with the meats, “I’m sorry, I kinda feel bad,” her voice was muffled until she brought it back out of the bag, “but LAMB!”
Michael chuckled. He paid attention to the coinage, and it looked like they were using old coins for money. He wasn’t sure how they were dealing with artificial inflation if someone found a treasure trove, like what he had as spare change in his home. However, for now, he had enough money in a few jars in his closet. The woman had looked at the dates and how clean they were, but she winked at him and then gave him an extra half-pound of lamb.
They walked back to the park, and this time no one accosted them. He waited until she stuck her face back in the bag of meat. “Are we clear?” he asked her.
With her face still in the package, she pointed forward and up, “Two birds up there, blue and gray. I don’t know their names. And,” she pulled her head back out of the package, “there are two rabbits behind us my wolf was whining about chasing down.”
Michael grinned, “Well done, let’s go.”
“Let’s go whe…” she started.
Michael disappeared first, she disappeared immediately after.
Somewhere Over the Atlantic
Donovan walked out from the Captain’s quarters, onto the deck. The holds of the ships had at least sixty Nosferatu, their insatiable hunger appeased from time to time by tossing in human cattle.
The screaming entertained him.
Twice he had women offer sexual favors if he would just save them. He took particular delight in stringing them along as his men opened the doors to the pit below. He would pick them up and kiss them, then bodily throw them back to hear their delightful screams as they realized they had been betrayed. One had actually had the strength of mind to call him a bastard before the Nosferatu ripped her throat out.
His hunger, his anticipation was growing. He would be able to invade the New York City-State and unleash the beasts below. The delightful screams would rush up into the heavens and be a magnificent offering to his ears as he watched the carnage below.
He could see most of the ships in the night. One had fallen behind and occasionally they would get a call on their radio to let them know they were still back there.
When they finished this first invasion, he would personally kill that Captain. Incompetence couldn’t be allowed.
Like his sister, the little bungler who couldn’t even be entrusted to attack a small village without getting emotional.
Not Donovan, emotion wasn’t an issue for him.
“Sir!” one of his men called. He turned from looking over the side and raised an eyebrow. “We are about to feed the Nosferatu sir, and you asked when it was the blonde’s turn.”
Donovan put his hands behind his back and strode off the forecastle towards the feeding area.
Blondes were always more fun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
New York City-State
Michael left Jacqueline in his kitchen. He was able to get the stove to work after locating and flipping the b
reakers. He hoped no one tried to track down where the extra electricity was being used. Because that would be annoying.
The Dark Messiah Page 21
