Obscurati

by Wynn Wagner

  The conversation was over without any formality.

  I mean, do I ever really get a vacation? There is always some crisis somewhere. It is like the goons follow me or I have some kind of tracking device.

  Oberon came into the room while I was still dressing. Gunter was long gone, back with the rest of the staff.

  “The pilots know,” Oberon said. “But could you tell the humans that this is going to be a short layover? They can get off the plane if they want, but they need to stay around it. And you could let the cabin crew know about the layover. I forgot. We will probably be here through the daylight hours, so they can order food and fuel if they want.”

  It was like he was giving me orders. That wasn’t like Oberon, but I didn’t argue. He had plenty of things on his mind. As I left the bedroom, he was headed toward the phone to call Hamlet.

  “What can I do?” It was Lonny. Whatever was going on, he seemed to pop up to help.

  “We are taking a short detour to New Zealand.”

  “Lord of the Rings!” he said. “They filmed it in New Zealand.”

  “I’m afraid this one is just for business. The cabin crew can restock supplies, but we are only going to be here for a few hours, six or eight hours at the most. Could you make sure everybody stays around the tarmac? I don’t know the schedule, but I really don’t want to have to round up everyone.”

  “I’m on it,” Lonny said. I gave him my black AmEx to pay for the supplies.

  As soon as Lonny started talking to the rest of the staff, I saw a flurry of activity. The cabin crew was on the intercom with the pilots, who asked them to inform the rest of the staff. The crew told us we would be landing at Westport, an airport in the northwest part of New Zealand’s south island. Other crewmembers got on the phone and started calling people at the airport. I guess Lonny liked shopping in New Zealand better than Bora Bora.

  When I got back to the bedroom, Oberon was sorting through his duffel bag.

  “We got shit for bullets here,” he said. “Don’t miss, and pray we don’t have too many targets.”

  “If we can’t do the whole job, we’ll do what we can.”

  Oberon was stressing, and that wasn’t like him. He always wanted to have our equipment arranged perfectly. When he said we didn’t have much ammunition, I assumed that we actually had what others would consider a normal supply. Oberon was more about overkill. He always had a dozen different kinds of bullets and several sizes of magazines.

  This time, he was pulling rounds out of the big magazines and loading them into small magazines. I think it was his way of reminding me to conserve what ammunition we had. As we landed, I felt the sun coming up. There would be no vampire hunting tonight. We would be dead within just a few minutes.

  OBERON shook me awake. He already had my blood donor ready. I didn’t argue but smiled at the donor as my fangs found their mark. I fed on his blood for thirty seconds before sealing the wound on his wrist. Menz would have been proud, because I didn’t even leave a mark.

  “Gear is at the door,” Oberon said. I was dressed in a jiffy. He had laid out leathers for some reason. It didn’t matter to me. I think of leather as bar clothing or dance clothing, but I can wear leather any time.

  He already had coordinates punched into the new arm-mounted GPS unit. I think it was originally designed for motorcyclists or bicyclists, but it worked very nicely for a flying vampire. The flight was great because Oberon was doing all the navigation. I just had to follow his lead.

  This part of New Zealand was absolutely gorgeous. It didn’t look very settled. There were few signs of humans except around the coastline. I could see mountains and palm trees. It looked like it could be a rainforest. Did they have rainforests this close to Antarctica? I guess so, because of all the palm trees. I don’t know that much about geography, but I could tell that this was a place I could spend time visiting. Hiking, maybe. We floated over a river with whitewater rapids, so that might be fun. The ocean was showing some white-topped waves, perfect for surfing. Whatever was down there, it looked like a fun place to visit.

  Within a couple of minutes, we were floating back to earth. A dozen or so others were waiting for us, so Oberon stopped several hundred meters in the air. I don’t think any of the locals on the ground sensed our presence. There shouldn’t have been that many locals waiting for us. Was it a trap or something?

  We flashed back to the jet. I looked but didn’t see anyone following us.

  “I didn’t like it,” he said. “Maybe they don’t know the rules, but a dozen vampires shouldn’t be greeting us.”

  He made a phone call. Within a couple of minutes, he was back.

  “There are a dozen vampires waiting for us. I asked Pierre to tell them no more than one should be our guide. He said to give everyone about an hour to scatter.”

  We waited as patiently as we could. Some of the staff members were asleep. Lonny had a thick book written by somebody who was obviously paid by the pound. Only a few were outside on the tarmac. The pilots were all huddled around the front landing gear. They were just talking. I don’t think there were any technical problems. The galley was full of boxes, so all the deliveries had been made while the sun was up.

  “THAT’S an hour or a little more,” Oberon said.

  “Let’s go,” I said, but he was already out the door and in the sky.

  This time, only one vampire was waiting for us. He apologized for the mix-up earlier. He said everyone was sick of this rogue vampire and wanted to watch him die. I couldn’t blame them. I would have wanted the same thing, but that isn’t how the Obscurati work. You can’t be called Unseen Death if everybody knows what you look like.

  I didn’t interact with the man. Oberon nodded, but that was it. He led us to the edge of a cliff and pointed at a house. This was a rainforest. There was thick vegetation everywhere. Oberon used the range finder but told me that the house was about two thousand meters. There was no way for me to make the shot.

  Think, Mårten, think. Um….

  “I need to make the shot from the sky,” I whispered into his ear. He frowned at me, but I continued, “You go up with your instruments and find the perfect spot. Go a thousand meters up and five hundred meters from the house. I’ll remember where you are. You stay up there as a lookout, and I’ll come up with the rifle.”

  “How can you make such a shot?” he asked.

  “I have to. This one is for the children.”

  And I did. About half an hour after I took my position in the sky, the bastard vamp strolled up to his shack. I didn’t see him fly or float, so he was probably one of those vampires who couldn’t levitate. I was in the air at about a thirty-degree angle to the horizon. It was like I was prone, but there was no ground under me. I was whipped about by the wind, but I held as steady as I could.

  When the vampire appeared, I squeezed at the same time a wind gust moved the rifle. Without the ground to brace against, the gun has a little kick. The vamp heard the bullet hit nearby, but it didn’t register that somebody was shooting at him. It was the last mistake he would ever make.

  POP. Snap and crackle. No more asshole vampire.

  Oberon told me to head back to the jet. He went back to get the duffel bags and our payment.

  I was barely inside the jet when Oberon arrived.

  “Are we done?” I asked. “Or do we have to go hunt little kiddies?”

  “No, we’re done.” He showed me the duffel bag. Payment had been six kilograms of gold. That was excessive even by Queen Cécile’s standards.

  “They really wanted this guy gone,” I said, shaking my head.

  “The guide was most grateful and apologetic, but I think it freaked him out that I didn’t say anything to him. It was all business and out in a flash.”

  “You make a scary and memorable exit,” I laughed.

  Oberon went up to tell the pilots that we were done, and he went to the top of the stairs to holler at the staff members who were still outside. We were missing o
ne: Gunter. Somebody said he was in the terminal buying a souvenir. Oberon dashed out of the plane and returned in a couple of seconds, holding Gunter by his belt.

  The cabin crew had already pulled the staircase up inside the fuselage. Oberon didn’t need stairs, and they saw him carrying Gunter. As soon as Oberon and Gunter were onboard, the cabin crew closed the door. I think the jet was already moving, which probably broke a dozen international safety rules.

  “Seatbelts, everyone,” Lonny said. I think about a third of the staff ignored him. Oberon and I sat down in some crew chairs and put on seatbelts. The holdouts on the staff took the hint, and everyone buckled in.

  When dawn came, Oberon and I had to be inside our onboard coffins, because the jet would be landing on Bora Bora during the day. Even though we had a shielded bed, the staff would have to get us out to the bungalows in our coffins. I would have suggested a double-wide coffin, but our human staff would have had trouble carrying us. Dropping a vampire coffin and having it break under the Polynesian sun: very, very, very, bad.

  In fact, we would have to use the coffins during the entire stay in Bora Bora. We had rented a luxury resort, but it consisted of bungalows built on stilts over the water. None of the bungalows had any shielding from the daylight, so using a bed was out of the question.

  For the first time in a hundred years, Oberon and I would be sleeping apart, and I didn’t like it. This downtime was for the crew and staff as much as it was for us, so a little inconvenience for me was something I would have to deal with.

  The resort was secluded. It was on a little island or atoll all to itself, and we had rented the entire place. Lonny had taken charge of the daytime without being appointed or elected or anything else. He could speak French, but with a Texas twang, which made it easier to communicate with the locals. I think he did everything without seeming bossy. He had to, because we didn’t give him any real power.

  He explained to the locals that the two big boxes weren’t really coffins but held extended medical supplies for one of the staff members. I guess the authorities were okay with the explanation, because I don’t think anyone tried to force either coffin open. It’s a good thing; if they had opened mine, they would have found a dead vampire and a sniper rifle. It is just a guess, but I think that could have made entry into Bora Bora more complicated.

  Lonny got everyone settled into various bungalows. He organized scuba lessons for any of the humans who wanted to learn. He also kept the blood donor spreadsheet up to date for us.

  It took Hamlet’s resupply boxes several days to reach us. There were several crates, and they were all cleverly packed to avoid suspicion. All of the gunpowder was in one box, and it had about a million sealed plastic bags around the explosives. I’m sure he sterilized his hands between bags so no powder from a previous bag would make it to the outside of the next bag. Oberon was excited and set up shop in our bungalow.

  “Vacation,” I said.

  “I need to get you some bullets first.”

  And he worked and worked for several days.

  We had three flight crews, and they worked out some kind of schedule to have one pilot and co-pilot ready to fly every day. The others were free to relax and get as drunk as they wanted.

  Within a few days, Lonny was treating sunburn victims. One of the scuba divers was bitten by something. I think it was an eel, and he had to be taken away for more serious medical treatment.

  Lonny. I was impressed with the way he started making things happen. I was impressed with his gorgeous butt. Listen to me going on and on when I have the most studly vampire in the world as a husband. Oberon is the love of my very existence, but Lonny was carving out a place too.

  One night when I got up, Oberon wasn’t anywhere to be found. His coffin was empty, and he wasn’t in our hut. As I walked outside, I saw him talking to Lonny. They were on a beach about a kilometer away, and they were little more than a silhouette against the South Pacific sky.

  As I walked up, I saw that they were holding hands on the beach. It was romantic, and that made my skin crawl. What in the Sam Hill was…? One, two, three, four, five. Don’t be territorial. Don’t be territorial. Oberon loves you, not Lonny. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  “Hi, lover,” Oberon said when he saw me. They stopped holding hands, but not because they were ashamed of what they were doing. Both pulled me close. They wanted me to be in the middle. Oberon held my left hand, and Lonny put an arm around my waist. They acted like it was a natural outgrowth of what they were doing before. Seriously weird. Oberon acted like he wasn’t cheating on me with this human. Romantic beach and moonlight.

  Benefit of the doubt. Okay. Yeah, I can work with that.

  To tell you the truth, Lonny’s arm felt reassuring around my waist. I felt his fingers pressing hard into my side as he pulled me close.

  “Gorgeous out here,” Oberon said as he dropped my hand. “I need to check on something, so I will catch up with you two later.”

  And with that, Lonny and I were alone on the beach. As Oberon walked away, I felt Lonny’s arm moving slowly down. His palm came to rest on my butt. Part of me thought I needed to pull away. But he felt so good. Affection can be recreational or affirmational. Somehow Lonny made it feel like both.

  He moved around to my back and let both arms surround my stomach and chest. He pulled me tight in a tender hug. I felt his mouth on the back of my neck, and I pulled away.

  “Sorry, man,” he said.

  “You did nothing wrong, Lonny.”

  What I didn’t want to tell him was that I was pulling away because of my feelings for him. It wasn’t because he had overstepped some invisible boundary. I liked being around this Texan for some reason. Why had I reacted so strongly when I saw him holding Oberon’s hand? Was I jealous of the two of them or pissed because I wanted to be part of the group? Could you have an “affair” with somebody if you were already in an open relationship? And if there was to be an affair, would it be between Oberon and Lonny or between me and Lonny?

  Lonny. Where did my feelings even come from? What did my feelings mean? Lonny was in my heart, but somehow it didn’t lessen my love for Oberon. My life was going from weird to bizarre. There was no way for me to explain it to Oberon or to Lonny because I couldn’t even explain it to myself.

  I would sit by myself for hours in the moonlit night, staring at the white-capped waves coming ashore. Oberon. Lonny. Mårten. If I said anything to Oberon, he’d be pissed. He might even kill Lonny. If I said anything to Lonny, he’d be terrified of Oberon. I was a mess. It was all coming at me like the waves crashing on the beach. Nothing could stop the waves, and nothing could stop my feelings. Feelings…? What feelings? I didn’t even know how I felt about loving two men. The smart thing would have been to send Lonny packing and concentrate on Oberon. Unfortunately, I never do the smart thing. This time, it could get people killed, because vampires are deadly when their territorial streak wakes. Oberon could kill Lonny in a flash, and that would destroy everything. I couldn’t let Oberon hurt Lonny. Ugh….

  We still got calls for work, of course. Bora Bora is in the middle of nowhere, but it is close to Tahiti and some other islands. We could pop down to New Zealand and Australia, but Europe was out of our radius. Most of the crowded parts of the world were forced to deal with rogue vampires without the help of the Unseen Death.

  Pierre made sure all our payments were made by wire transfer instead of gold. Technology was good for something. We didn’t have to hide several pounds of gold in the bungalow or the jet. Our black sniper clothing looked out of place in the South Pacific, but it was kind of our uniform.

  We had to take out a rogue teenager, and you know how I feel about that. Pierre apologized to me when he gave me the assignment, using mind-words. He promised that the kid’s Maker was already dead and that the locals had tried everything to get the kid under control.

  There was never any shortage of rogue vampires. It is so hard to make a vampire that you’d think rogues wo
uld be a rarity. Something happens to mess up some vampire brains. Most of our kills were newly turned vampires.

  We got to see other islands and more of New Zealand. When Oberon and I went out for a kill, we would spend an hour or two flying around the countryside. I know it sounds gruesome: kill a vamp and take a flyby as a tourist, but that’s the way our South Pacific trip went.

  Over a hundred years with the same man, and I still wanted to spend all my time with him.

  In the bungalow, Oberon worked on plans for his onboard workshop. He took several iterations of drawings to the pilots. He originally wanted to put a staircase or hatch in the jet’s bedroom, but the pilots were afraid of all the extra weight. They said that our aluminum shielding on the outer skin, the floor, and inner wall was already making the jet too heavy in the back. He settled on a work area closer to the front of the plane with a simple hatch in the floor of the bedroom. He could open the hatch and walk to his workshop in the front baggage area. It would be out of sight and behind a locked door. It didn’t need to be shielded because he would always be in the bedroom when the sun was up. Within a couple of weeks, Oberon and the pilots were all satisfied with the design. I was sure that structural engineers would have had a fit. I’m also sure that Oberon didn’t plan on telling anyone that the reason for the workshop was to work with highly explosive materials, which probably broke dozens of safety laws and international treaties. I never doubted that Oberon would make safety his top priority, and that would include the structural integrity of the jet itself.

  The Unseen Death was about to get a mobile fortress that could go anywhere and do anything.

  LONNY’S butt was adorable. I am a total bottom, so I really didn’t want to fuck it. Still, I spread his legs one night and spent an hour kissing his ass cheeks and licking his crack. That is so not me. The idea of rimming somebody would usually make me sick, but there was something about Lonny’s bubble-butt that was a complete turn-on. I didn’t really need to fuck him. I did a few times, and he could fuck me any time he wanted. But I mainly wanted to cuddle his butt and play with his hole with my tongue and fingers.