“But you and these others…“ I let the sentence hang.
“We call ourselves the Resistance.” Brid interrupted.
“You and the Resistance are working on some of these things? Some of these technologies you hope you will be able to use, eventually, against the Others?”
“We're working on a number of projects, but we need time. We hope to buy some, or even learn something, by infecting one of them. That's where you come in. We need your strength. That is the only reason you will be allowed to participate.” Brid said coldly, glaring at me openly now. “We understand what we face. I understand the difference between a Juvenile and an Elder, whether you wish to believe it or not. I am not such a fool as that.”
Suddenly I felt the guilt of my actions. I had grossly underestimated my son, had overreacted to his childish play. He was right in that if there was anyone he should be able to turn to in light heartedness, it should be Sonafi or I. He had done so and we had mistreated him. I had mistreated him.
Even though if there had ever been a time to speak up and apologize, I could not bring myself to do so. Brid did not expect me to say anything, however, and went on without waiting.
“We hope to be able to make new readings, as well.” Brid said. “Knowing or expecting them to be in a certain place will allow us to set up and prepare our instruments and be in place ourselves when they do show. Maybe even their communications, which we know nothing about, but we really aren't expecting much in that area. Their communications are a blank area for us.”
The Others are telepaths, like Vampires. I agreed that we would be unlikely to detect any mechanical communications. Not when they did not need such clumsy, awkward means. The Others had always been very careful not to let their technology escape to Vampire or Human hands. I did not doubt the veracity of the Roswell incident, that the U.S. Government had debris from that crash site, but the Others had always been very careful in their attacks on us that they never carried samples of their technology on their persons when they came for us. They came armed with cold steel, but never anything more advanced.
I have fought the Others more times than I now cared to count. I knew their strengths. They had no weaknesses. Physically they were like Vampires. Thirty times as strong as a Human power-lifter. In the physical sense, they were very much godlike. If it had not been for their susceptibility to cold steel, they would have long since done for me, but in the end, despite all their strengths, they were still flesh and blood. They could not resist the honed edge of my blade. I could still feel their telepathic screams ripping across my mind when they tasted that steel. Cold steel was never palatable. They could stomach it no more than any other and it was only that steel which had stood between us.
“How do you plan to attempt to lure them in?” Sonafi asked. If she felt any guilt for her participation in the drama of a moment ago it was not reflected on her face, nor did Brid seem to acknowledge any enmity.
“Oh that. We're just going to tell them we're here.” Brid answered, the smugness returned to his voice. Could the hierarchical role of the Community alter itself to follow the pattern that Humans followed I wondered? Wealth and station, thus position, were determined by intelligence, business prowess or educational level. In a New World Order, could an Elder actually follow the directives of a much junior Vampire? Follow the rules and laws as laid down by others. It went entirely against everything a Vampire held as a standard. The hierarchy among Vampires was determined by physiology, and nature, so anything else would be entirely alien. Yet . . . !
“You're going to tell them?” Sonafi asked incredulously.
“I know a little something about conceit.” Brid answered. “I have little doubt they will be able to resist. For all their technological wonders, their long evolution, they are diminished by their aggrandized conceit of their superiority that our continued existence denies. It inflames them that we can resist them. No. We do not have to worry on that account. They will come.”
“I agree that getting them here won't be the problem.” I said.
“I wonder what kind of Pandora's Box we might open if we do this?” Sonafi asked, and I had to agree with her, as well. There was just no telling what we were getting ourselves into here. What box of horrors we were opening. What awful chain of events we might precipitate, but the die had been cast. The wheels were already in motion. I could not stop them even had I wanted, and I had no reason to want to do so. It would continue with or without me. I might as well join them. It could work.
“It does not matter.” Brid said. “The Community has spoken. You may join us, or not, but you will not hinder us.”
It was about time the Community had gained some unity, I thought. I said; “I'm behind you a hundred percent.”
CHAPTER 5
I felt the sensation as I was halfway out my front door. My Vampire senses were suddenly burning. Every nerve ending in my body aflame, signaling that danger was near. I wasted no time, not even the slightest moment. It was possible I didn't have a moment to spare.
I continued my forward motion without pause, accelerating my perception and my awareness, ramping my Vampire adrenal system into hyperactivity, hyper-attenuation, hyper-acceleration. As my perceptions sharpened, as my metabolism went into overdrive, the world slowed around me. Yet I stayed the same.
I leaped down the steps and ran to the street, halting between the front and rear ends of two parked cars from which position I would be better able to defend myself. I found my cane-swordin my hand, though I did not remember drawing it. Vaguely, as if from far away, I heard the discarded sheath, the cane part of the disguised weapon, clatter to the concrete of the sidewalk. No attackers visible, I moved again, diving to the middle of the street, and came up crouched in my martial stance, the cold steel held at the ready.
Vampires! I had known. There is an intrinsic difference in the telepathic feel of the Others compared to that of Vampires. The awareness of either a strange Vampire or one of the Other’s aura, sent an immediate nerve jangling warning through my autonomous nervous system, but the aura of another Vampire did not electrify me in the same manner that I reacted to the presence of the Others. A Vampire or even a group of Vampires was much less a threat than even one of the Others posed. If there was one, there would be others. The Others did not attack singly. When they attacked, they attacked in force. If I could sense one, there would be others nearby.
These too were a group. Sensing a group of Vampires, outside my own eccentric, extended family, should almost have been as strange as encountering a single lone Other, but times were changing, apparently. I wondered, as I stood there in the street, my cane-swordbared, what other new surprises the future might bring? If Vampires could learn to cooperate, what other obstacles could we not learn to overcome? To what other new heights might we not ascend? The possibilities were too much to sum up with a few words. Through cooperation might we challenge the entire Universe. There was nothing we might not accomplish. The very Universe could be our plaything.
They were as nearly startled as I had been. I felt their surprise as a palpable force. I was the oldest, Eldest Vampire. I could move, react and think more rapidly than any other Vampire, my reactive speed making me nearly as mysterious to other Vampires as I was to Humans themselves. But these Vampires were not here to oppose me. They were here upon their own purpose.
I have never been prone to embarrassment. Having lived so long alone, I never learned to feel the need to have to gain my peer’s acceptance, the mores of societal, social animals. Nor was it that Vampires are all that social in the first place, yet I am a strange contradiction. Maybe it was all the eons I had spent alone. Now I appreciate the pleasures of socializing, or more so than most. Those eons alone were lonely times. I was the only one of my kind. No friendly face no matter where I might turn upon an entire planet. The people who had given birth to me hated me. So it may have come to be that I now enjoyed socializing, I had never learned many of those little idiosyncrasies of soci
etal intercourse. I drew myself up haughtily to stare in turn at those who were visible.
They were hiding in every available nook and cranny. Any place they could find the slightest spot to hide. There were more in places I could not see though I felt them clearly. This was a large group.
What surprised me the most was that they had been able to surround my house in the first place without my being able to sense them. That was the plan, obviously, the entire idea of the exercise. Get into concealment without being detected. If they wanted to be able to ambush the Others, they would have to be able to get into position as well as stay there, every night, undetected. They were playing their war games.
I heard a deep chuckle emanate from down the street and turned in the direction from which it had issued. I recognized the voice, even though all I had heard was the chuckle. I recognized the mind, as well, now that I focused on it, though his mind itself was closed. All of their minds were clamped shut. Only this close now was I able to sense them. A Vampire's telepathic abilities are actually quite short ranged (whereas we believe that the Others are much longer ranged) and solid objects, such as brick walls, diminish it even further. Then of course they had come with their minds closed, as well, with the result that I had not sensed them until I had actually walked out the door. I walked towards Drye. He met me halfway.
“It will never work. They'll sense you long before they get too close.” I said as we reached one another. I let the point of my cane-swordrest on the asphalt of the street so as not to seem threatening, though he and I both knew that had I wanted to harm him even though he was one of the Eldest Vampires in the entire worldwide Community, I could do so almost out of hand.
Drye was to most of the Community almost a God, so Elder was he to most, but he was by far my junior. Clumsy and slow compared to me, and smart enough to know it. Vampires who could not accept the hierarchy of dominance did not survive long. He wore an old rapier at his belt. It was a beautiful weapon but it would not kill either a Vampire or one of the Others. I had never seen him wear it before. His eyes followed where I looked.
“Brid and some of our geeks, that 's what they call themselves,” Drye said, holding his hands open to show that if that was what they wanted to be called, who was he to argue with them, “are working on 'Telepathic Blockers'. That's what they call them. Built into helmets. They really work.”
“The rapier is just to slow them down.” He added. “So we can capture one of them.”
“Helmets that block telepathic communication?” I asked.
“Which creates a 'Low Emission Magnetic Field'.” Drye explained. “That’s how it was explained to me, in any case. I don't have the faintest how it works, though. I only know that it does.”
“They really work?” I asked. I could not imagine what being deprived of my telepathic senses would be like.
“Yeah, they work, but I don't like wearing it.”
“About what I was thinking.” I admitted.
“We're just running some exercises. I hope we haven't disturbed you.” Drye said with a faint smile.
“A little warning would have been nice.”
“That was Brid's idea.” Drye admitted. “He thought that if we could get into place around you without the helmets, we should have easy sailing with them. The 'Low Emission Magnetic Field Generators'.”
“Telepathy blocking helmets.” I said.
“Football helmets, to be exact.” Drye said. “Minus the face guard. We don't want to be able to be Face Masked.” Here he smiled again. “A football term.”
I nodded. I watch football. It was one of the few things that came out of a television that I did enjoy. Football and the octagon, that is. I spent a long lifetime in the study of martial strategy, so it is a thing I can truly relate to. Football is simply pure aggression, full contact, and adrenaline pumping excitement. It reaches right into the depths of my Human half and pulls at those strings which are tied to the basest of my instincts. I get no argument from Sonafi on Football or Fight Night. She loves it as much as I do.
A vehicle's lights turned the corner two blocks distant and came our way. We faded into the shadows and disappeared. Drye and I and several others who had come out into the open while we talked. We vanished as if we had not been.
The car went by slowly. It was a city Police cruiser, but the officers saw nothing out of the ordinary. They weren't expecting anything especially- though in St Louis anything was possible. They were just doing their rounds but I eavesdropped for a moment anyway, slipping unobtrusively into the passenger officer's mind to be certain they weren't responding to a report of strange activity. Mine was a quiet neighborhood for a very good reason. I liked it quiet. I did not like the Police too intensely scrutinizing the area in which I live. So I take a personal interest in the hoodlums, drug dealers and thieves who haunt my environs and those surrounding it. They do not find it a welcoming haunt. Not for long. The squad car moved on, not finding anything in which to draw its interest.
Vampires came out of a dozen places of concealment as Drye called to them telepathically. We gathered in the shadows between my home and that next to mine, an abandoned, boarded up relic of better times, within the three foot walkway that separated them from one another. So many of the houses were being abandoned here in the city that I had begun to wonder if we weren't soon going to become obvious and have to move anyway. Now that point was moot. Now we would be moving. We certainly wouldn't be able to stay here once this place had been used to lure in the Others. I tried not to think about all the times we had quickly to abandon our homes throughout our long struggle with the Others. The possessions and keepsakes we had lost along the way, but the material things of this world are as transient as our flights of fancy. The only material things that really matter, at least to me, are the personal weapons I have carried down with me through the ages. Weapons made by Humans whose equals might never be known again, not in this era of technology and mechanization, the time when almost all Humans possessed the skills to create these weapons and the masters stood out head and shoulders above these masses, and these gone into the mists of Time and not likely ever to return. To replace my weapons I would have to craft them myself, and I know my limitations therein. My work would be considered that of a Master Sword Smith now, in this era, but I would know the difference. I would know how far short my work fell. There had only been a few true Masters throughout all of man's long history, and I had acquired samples of all their work. These are not things I would gladly relinquish. Sonafi had her own treasures, but her weapons were purely utilitarian, while mine were both aesthetic as well as utilitarian. In the fashioning of steel weapons, the aesthetic craft which went into a blade was a factor of its utilitarianism.
“I have seldom seen so many Vampires congregated in one place.” I said as they gathered around. The fear I smelled upon them was a palpable thing. The Juveniles were completely at the mercy of their Elders- why Vampires were loners- and to put themselves into a position of such danger said a great deal in and of itself of the changes that were occurring within the Community. Sonafi and I had never been able to get this many together even for family reunions.
I noted Brid’s absence. I expected that as the intellectual power behind this movement Brid and the other geeks would not be expected to join the ranks of the Infantry. The Infantry would take the brunt of the Other’s offensive when they came, while the Officers stayed back somewhere out of danger.
“There are many here who would like to be elsewhere.” Samon Du Bon said, walking up to me. Here was a personage I was more than mildly surprised to see here, amongst a group. I said so.
“When have you become so social?” I asked of the reclusive Elder. Samon Du Bon was one of the last Vampires I would expect to see associating himself in any Vampire group effort. I did not like to contemplate how many Juvenile Vampires had met their end at this creature’s hands, but if my senses were not deceiving me, he seemed to have mellowed. I supposed it must be possible fo
r even one of the worst to mellow. I supposed anything was possible.
Samon was European. The pure blue eyed blond archetypical Nordic that have become so scarce in this country as so many peoples of mixed lineage continue to mix. He looked deadly as he approached through the ranks of the younger Vampires, they quickly moving and making room for him. His movements were fluidly graceful, containing the strength and reserved potential energy of undeniable strength. His skin was flawless, having been captured in the bloom of his youth, but a maturity had settled in that entirely belied his youthful appearance. It was the look of confidence that came from the ultimate assurance of one’s prowess. He walked right up to me without showing the slightest shred of fear.
“Maybe I am just getting old,” Samon said, “and I wish to get even older.”
“To the point where you can even tolerate Brid?” I asked.
“Many of the youngest Juveniles have such defective characters.” Samon said with a slight smile. “Yet they might have their uses, after all.”
“Such was always my hope in your own case.” I said, returning his slight smile. “Hopefully we won't have to wait quite so long to get our use out of Brid.”
Samon looked his awareness of my point. There had been many occasions over the years when I had contemplated the need to kill Samon, and I was telling him now, in so many words, that Brid was hands off. I was the Father of Vampire kind, as well as the biological father of many thousands, most all gone now. Samon had killed his share of those himself. I would not hold that against him now. That was our way. How many of his creations, even his own biological children, had I not killed? Hundreds? Thousands? When they went rogue, they had to be stopped. My own were no more exempt than any others. My message concerning Brid was that I would not accept a rage killing. Samon seemed unmoved. He took my rebuke without anger, and I had to decide that I was looking on a changed Vampire. A more mature, thinking , reasoning being than the one I had known before.
The Vampire-Alien Chronicles Page 5
