The Fifth Clan

by Ryan T. Nelson

  Ghost stood and backed up toward me, dragging Rachel behind him. She still didn't understand that something was very, very, wrong, but Ghost wasn't going to let her sit there alone.

  "You're not Grim," I whispered, so quietly that even Ghost standing beside me barely heard it.

  The figure masquerading as Grim did though. He wasn't using his ears, so that certainly made it easier to determine what I was saying. I surged to my feet, feeling significantly more strength in my limbs than I should have by all rights considering the recent turning of a Child and a distinct lack of feeding in the last several days. Anger and adrenaline are wonderful motivators at times.

  Ghost grabbed my shoulder, preventing me from launching myself at the door and I fixed the strange Vampire with an angry glare as his smile widened, slowly. I was still wearing all my clothes, boots, pants, coat, and shirt but all of my weapons had been removed, obviously enough. All of the obvious weapons at least. Tapping into my fifth power I dissolved the buttons at the cuff of my coat until they pooled in my palms.

  "So who are you?" I asked. "You're a much stronger telepath than I've ever encountered."

  "The Old Windbag kept me rather well hidden. He created me in secret. For no reason other than to fight you."

  "He does things like that," I admitted. "He always was a meddlesome shit."

  "Never could accuse him of being the warm and fuzzy type," Ghost cut in. Rachel responded immediately to a quick mental command from me and kept low to the ground and out of the way. I didn't want her getting hurt when and if this resorted to battle.

  "A least he was honest about his flaws." His face twisted angrily. "He was a manipulative, old piece of garbage but he knew it and made no apologies for it. You. You pretend to be a friend. You pretend to be family. And then you break a little boys’ neck. You burn whole villages to the ground. You kill innocent bystanders caught in your one Vamp war against the Brotherhood instead of acting like a true monster should and going after the one that created you!"

  "What the hell are you talking about? Who the fuck are you?" He snarled, Grims' face twisting and deforming even more as his careful psychic control slipped and I was beginning to see through the illusion. I raised my arm, hardened the liquid metal in my hand into a dozen thin needles, and pushed them with my mind. They shot from my hand and slipped through the bars in the tiny window at him.

  He managed to knock away half of them but six of the needles slipped through and embedded themselves deep into his left cheek. He snarled and ripped the needles from his face, kicking the door open with a thunderous bang as his illusion dissolved entirely and I got my first good look at him.

  He wasn't exceptionally tall at roughly 5' 10" but he was extremely thin. Less emaciated than Keilyn, more wiry than atrophied. His black hair was cut short and bangs hung over his forehead framing a pair of dull blue eyes that might once have been brilliant except for the naked hatred and vitriol hiding behind them.

  An expensive looking dark green silk dress shirt hung on his wiry frame like it was still on the hanger. It might have fit nicely on me but it was too large for him by far. Black slacks hung low on his hips, a leather belt at the tightest notch barely stopped the pants from falling around his ankles. Italian leather shoes adorned his feet, scuffed and marred by wear.

  Ghost snorted. "All dressed up and nowhere to go?" he asked.

  All of this I noted dimly as he stood outlined by the door frame. What really took most of my attention was the sword he held in his right hand. The black scabbard, polished lovingly for centuries by my own hand. The hilt, worn smooth by the callouses on my palms after years of training.

  "Why do you have my sword?" I whispered. Anger began to grow, burning in my chest. I never understood that expression about a persons heart leaping into their throat. I'd had enough times where I was choked with emotion or shocked to my core but this time was different. I distinctly felt as if there was a lump in my throat that I could barely speak past and I could feel my blood pounding through my veins.

  "It isn't your sword," He hissed. His eyes narrowed dangerously and I began to feel the pressure of a telepath against my mind. "This sword never belonged to you." He held up the Wakazashi. The one Tatsuhito had held in Japan two hundred years ago. The one I took when I killed him.

  "That sword is mine. I was going to use it to kill Threntü for what he caused but I hadn't had the chance."

  "BULLSHIT!" he exploded. His face twisted into something ugly as he screamed at me and a touch of madness could be seen in his expression. "You never tried to use it. You never wanted to. Not really."

  "You don't know anything about that situation. You weren't there. You don't know what control he had."

  "I was there Gabriel. I was there in the flames and the snow. You, carrying a Katana and wearing nothing but a white hakama. It took years before I understood how you were able to walk across the snow without leaving any footprints." He held the sword up and looked directly into my eyes as icy fingers of terror began to grip at me.

  “'I have no home Tenshi-nii-san,'” he said in Japanese, his eyes cold and devoid of the tears that had once dampened his cheeks. “'It has burned to the ground already.'”

  Tenshi-nii-san. Only one person had ever called me that. And I killed him two centuries ago.

  "Tatsuhito?" I breathed, scarcely able to believe that it might be true. "Is that you?" I had switched automatically to Japanese when he did.

  His smile was less than warm. "True enough. I've gone by Tatsu for a long time now. No one has called me Tatsuhito in over a hundred years."

  "What happened?" Not the best question under the circumstances but I’m sure I can be excused for that. I was reeling internally. Tatsu was alive! More than that he was apparently behind everything I had been put through lately.

  "You killed me, that's what happened."

  "I didn't want to." I muttered.

  "Then why did you! Answer that for me, Gabriel. Before I have you killed. Why did you do that to me? I loved you." He was getting worked up again. The blood had stopped dripping from his cheek as the wounds my needles made healed themselves. Further proof, if any was needed, that little Tatsu was a vampire. "My village was burning. My father was dead. All I wanted was the comfort of a friend and you broke my fucking neck!"

  "I didn't have a choice." It sounded weak even to my own ears. Ghosts grip on my shoulder was the only thing keeping me from sinking to my knees. His presence reminded me what was at stake in this confrontation and my mind began to whirl faster than ever.

  "What reason could you possibly have had to kill me, Tenshi?"

  "I was trying to escape the village. I needed to leave before more of the villagers found me. I didn't want to hurt anyone else. If I had tried to leave you would have raised a call. You could have told them which way I had gone. I didn't want to hurt anyone else. I had to leave without being seen."

  "That's weak, Tenshi-san." His eyes bored into mine. Two centuries of hatred built up within him. All directed at me. And all well deserved.

  "What happened?" I asked again. "How did you end up like this?”

  "How else?" He leaned one shoulder against the door frame, one leg crossed over the other so his toe rested against the ground and his arms were crossed over his chest. "Threntü. That meddlesome wind bag was there in the village that night. He had me turned."

  "But, you're a Vasith, not one of the Vayun."

  "I'm what the Vasith wish they could be. He had me brought to a chamber where a pool had been prepared. Filled with donated blood from every single Vasith in the world. He laid open my veins and submerged me in it. The blood worked. It probably shouldn't have since I was already dead but it wasn't long after that it revived me."

  I became a telepath unlike any this world has ever seen.

  The feeling of his voice echoing inside my head was like the physical blow of a hammer. I staggered back at the immense pressure I felt and nearly fell to my knees. Only a determined stiffening of my legs
and Ghosts support prevented me from falling over like a felled tree and a trickle of blood escaped my nose that I quickly wiped away.

  Even that brief contact with his mind told me how powerful he truly was.

  "You're how I knew where to find Ghost and Grim?" I asked.

  He nodded.

  "Hey, I went to a lot of trouble building that hiding spot. If I had wanted it known I wouldn't have gone to so much effort to hide."

  "Ghost?" I asked.

  "Yeah?"

  "Shut up."

  "Yeah."

  The pieces were starting to fall into place. "You're how Claus and Vera found me. You put the information into our minds. Why? Why do all this? Why go to all the trouble to expose me when you could have just killed me at any time?" I really wanted to know. I couldn't understand why he would go to all this trouble when a simpler method would probably have worked more effectively.

  "I wanted the rest of them to see you for what you really are," he snarled. He stood up straight and pointed the sword at me, still in its scabbard. "A weakling and a coward. You claim to be someones friend just until they become a burden, then you kill them."

  "Coward?"

  "You have all this power Gabriel. You have the ability to start a Fifth Clan. To bring the Vampires out of the darkness and into the light again. We only hide as much as we do because we are so few in number. The Council made sure to limit the numbers of vampires but you could have made us strong if you had simply come forward.

  "Instead you hid, and cowered. You denied your heritage. You could have been a new voice on the Council. A new leader amongst our kind."

  I was beginning to get disgusted with him, which overrode my shock at seeing him again. "You don't care about our kind," I snapped. "You just want revenge against me. Don't pretend that you're doing this for the greater good of vampire kind. Did you send the vampires to attack Ghost and Grim? The ones that injured Rachel and forced me to turn her?"

  "Of course I did. It was relatively easy to plant the information I wanted them to have in their minds. They were positive they had received the orders from their individual clan heads."

  "To what purpose?" I had to keep him talking. I had to use the same technique I had employed when I prevented the Vasith from discovering my Fifth Power in the first place. They can't pick the information from your brain if you’re not thinking about it.

  "To take something else away from you. You swore you would never create a Child. I forced you to break your word, to prove that your promises, even to yourself, meant nothing. Words from the great Gabriel are nothing more than hot air."

  "You wanted to hurt me?"

  "Obviously."

  "Well I don't want to hurt you." I launched myself forward. I hadn't considered doing it until the split second that I did, giving the least possible time for him to respond.

  It was more than enough. A blast of force caught me in the chest and sent me flying back into the stone wall behind me. Rachel shrieked in surprise and I felt bones crumble as the stone behind me refused to yield against the force of my body. A moment later Ghost grunted and crashed against the wall next to me.

  That one hurt. In movies and anime a person gets thrown into a brick or a stone wall and they punch through it. Then they usually pick themselves up, sometimes painfully, but they most often still rise. In the real world when a soft flesh and bone body hits stone, the stone doesn't break. You do.

  I dimly heard the door slam shut and Rachel nearly hyperventilating as she crawled over to me. I tasted blood in my mouth and through the pain I felt extreme warmth in my back as my body tried desperately to repair itself.

  The pain alone caused me to black out with Rachels' blurred face filling my vision as my last sight before blackness.

  27

  March ????, 2005: Scotland

  When I came to again I was reasonably certain only a few minutes had passed. I was paralyzed from the neck down since my back hadn't healed itself yet and Rachel was still sobbing hysterically next to me.

  "Good chocolate Christ on a cracker," I muttered, staring blankly at the ceiling again. Next to me I heard Ghost chuckle.

  "You can say that again."

  "Holy shit. Gabriel. I wasn't sure if you were going to come back from that one." Rachel patted my chest, her hands fluttering nervously around my torso and face. I could only feel when her hands reached my cheeks, but otherwise there was no sensation below my neck.

  "Well I'm not back yet. I'm paralyzed but give me an hour and it'll heal."

  She nodded, eyes still brimming with tears and lower lip trembling.

  "I'll be fine Child," I told her. "Injuries will heal. We have far more pressing concerns at the moment though."

  "Like this Tatsuhito character?"

  "You caught that huh?"

  "I may not know Japanese but I can pick out a name when it's mentioned with the honorifics."

  "Is there much you can't do? Hacking. Guns. Motorcycles. Seems there's no limit to the number of things you know how to do."

  She suddenly looked rather nervous. "Um... I actually can't do some of that."

  I blinked as another piece threatened to click into place. "Say what now?"

  "I'm not much of a hacker. Guns and motorcycles I do know but computer technology on that kind of scale is a bit beyond my abilities. Tatsuhito was making me say that." She straightened up and glared at me suddenly. "And I thought you said that Vampires couldn't do the whole mind control thing."

  "He can't," Ghost laughed. "He's part Vasith but not much for the telepathic skills."

  "Most vampires can't," I said, ignoring Ghost with consummate skill and poise. "The Vasiths are the only ones capable of it and it's really difficult. You need an extremely powerful Vasith to manage it for any real length of time or over any distance so most don't even bother trying. I'm certainly not capable of it and that's what you were asking."

  "So Tatsu is an über Vasith then, huh?"

  "That seems to be the extent of it." I focused on my own abilities as a Vasith and tried to reach out beyond the walls of my cell to see if Grim was still present within the Hall. Two feet beyond the walls of the cell I hit a psychological wall. Vasith were stationed outside to shield the cell from Psychic signals. There would be no requesting help from the outside.

  I wasn't even sure if Grim believed me to be guilty or innocent. I had no idea what was going on outside and it was kind of driving me crazy. I could exit the cell easily enough. Rachel’s' and my own Fifth Power would make removing the door or simply creating a hole in the wall a matter of simplicity in itself. The problem was we were both weaker than we could be right now and there were certainly a large number of powerful vamps and wolves outside waiting to stop any escape attempt.

  "So. You didn't voluntarily come with me that day at your school did you? Or the night before at the club. You weren't even supposed to be there in the first place. Were you?"

  She looked down at her hands which were twisted together in her lap and sniffled quietly. "Not exactly. I was going out to meet some friends but it wasn't until I ran into you in the club that I felt his touch on my mind."

  I sighed I should have known it had been too easy to convince her to come with me. The idea had been to protect her but I could have easily thrown Vera off her scent any number of ways. There hadn't really been any reason to bring Rachel with me now that I really sat back and considered it logically.

  "So you slept with me against your will. Came along on this insane venture against your will. You even volunteered to be my child against your will didn't you? And then when I was stubborn about it he made sure that you would end up so injured that I wouldn't have any choice in the matter."

  "Not entirely."

  It was a quiet whisper but it caught my attention. I turned my head to look at her, already beginning to get some of the feeling back in my shoulders and chest as my body healed.

  She fidgeted uncomfortably but suddenly squared her shoulders and looked down at m
e. "I might have just been a passenger in my own body for the last few weeks but I wasn't entirely against everything. Tatsu was just pushing things along by making me agree when it might have taken you a little longer to convince me otherwise." She frowned at my confused expression. "Oh come on Gabe. I'm a twenty first century child. We've got a far more morbid fascination with vampires and werewolves and zombies and such than older generations did. Most people my age might be at least willing to consider an offer to be a vampire. I might have had more questions to ask had it been entirely up to me but this is still fascinating."

  I considered her quietly for a few minutes and realized that her feelings echoed the words she was saying. Her surface thoughts were clouded now but her emotions were still right on display when they were as strong as the ones she was currently experiencing. And emotions were harder to hide than thoughts so it was unlikely that Tatsuhito was messing with her head right at that moment. Not that he really had any reason to anymore. The damage had been done.

  I slowly pushed myself up to a sitting position with my arms and dragged my still unresponsive legs with me until I was sitting with my back against one wall.

  "Alright. Hold your questions until after we get out of here and kick all the asses that we need to kick." I smiled at her and she smiled back, wiping the tears off her cheeks.

  "Good to know you're not just going to roll over and give up."

  "I've spent this long surviving, I'm not about to quit now." There was a brief pause as we looked at each other. "Any ideas how we could get out of here?" Ghost asked.

  * * * * * *

  "Again."

  ......

  "Again."

  "How's this?"