I turned to look at her to see if she was joking, but as I looked away to see the pictures again I realized that was about all we had. “Him and about a billion other men on this planet,” I said to express my frustration at having to track down the needle in a haystack male figure.
“Then I guess we will have to track her down,” Maggie said. A bit of the poem that had been left in my coffin where I had awakened entered my mind. I was not sure if it was related, but I could not ignore the possibility. The closing of the poem had said ‘Her preternatural gaze, Is what you’re really after’.
I wondered if that was a clue or a coincidence. Either way, Maggie was right. We had to track down this mystery woman and uncover the truth, whoever she was.
Chapter 30
“Where do your loyalties lie?” she asked with a scowl on her face, ready to rip my head from my shoulders.
“What do you mean? My loyalty is with Pietro,” I said. I felt a tinge of guilt with my words, he was my maker, and hers, but I felt that was not the answer she was looking for.
“What I mean is that Pietro is a monster, and I no longer wish to serve him. So again, I ask, where do your loyalties lie?”
“Surviving?” it was a question, but the only word that I could think of to escape my lips. I did not want to claim allegiance to any one person. I felt the aspect of family was a kindred thing, but also the darkness beneath our skin was not apt to love.
“Leave him be, Cerene,” the voice of a man said, but it was not Pietro. He appeared in the dim glow of the purple and orange sky, the sun was almost crested, but I could see him in full regale. He was every bit of six feet tall and solidly built. His dark, tanned skin and black hair told me he was mortal as if the beating heart and body heat did not give that away. It was obvious that they knew one another, but I did not know how a mortal could have authority over someone like us, I was confused.
“He cannot be trusted,” she said, barely turning her head at the man in black. He moved into the room, taking up most of the doorway with his bulking figure.
“How do you know this?” he asked.
She sighed, “because he is newly changed. I tried to prevent it from happening, to stall the process in every way that I know how, but it was all for not.”
“That does not mean that he cannot be made useful to us.”
Oh, great, I thought to myself. Now I have two people vying for my support and the only thing that I wanted was to know what the hell was going on.
“Fine, what do you want to do with him?” she asked.
“Bring him with us.” He answered with a smirk.
I was caught off guard by his expression, completely caught off guard that I did not see her move until it was too late. A split second before I was consumed by darkness I could see her small hand approach the side of my head, it was clenched in a fist, and it connected. After that, I remembered nothing.
“It’s times like this that you need Mulder and Scully,” I said, a little tongue in cheek, but in all seriousness, we could use somebody with investigative skills. Things were getting a bit out of hand.
“What?” she asked with a raised brow. The reference was clearly lost on her.
“You know, from the X-Files?”
No.
“I don’t know who or what those are, but I don’t think anything with an X in it is going to get us anywhere.”
“It was a joke, about a television show from when I was a kid,” I said, feeling slightly dumb by having to explain such a thing. Kids these days, I thought to myself, though she was far from a kid, she was over a hundred years old, still, pop culture references should not be lost on someone as studious as her.
“It’s all right, we can let that one slide,” she said with a smile, attempting to ease the tension. It was a rather successful effort I might add.
“Any idea on how to track these people down?” I asked, changing the subject rather abruptly back to business.
“I was thinking that we could find someone familiar with these kinds of things. Maybe get some information from them.”
“Familiar with ‘these’ kinds of things?” I asked while pointing at our dead or dying bodies pictured on the cork board wall. I couldn’t fathom being familiar with such a thing without being a monster myself.
“No, these things,” she said to correct me. She pointed at the image on the wall that showed her sprawled on the floor, her captors hovering over her. It revealed something that I imagined she only just now noticed. It was a blade of some kind, long and broad, not quite like a knife, but not a sword either. It seemed to luster in a way that was unnatural. I had originally thought it was a blemish on the picture until she showed me the same thing on one of the pictures she had brought up on the television screen in the other room.
This image revealed more detail, including a leather cord that fell from the blade like a tether. The blade seemed to be about as long as my forearm and it was held by the man’s gloved left hand. The gloves were black, probably leather, and blended into his jacket sleeve. He seemed to love black for whatever reason, maybe it matched his soul.
“What kind of knife is that?” I asked, struggling to find a name for the thing that I was looking at, and slightly embarrassed that I had not noticed it before.
“I’m not sure what it is called,” she said, “but there is an antique weapons dealer in Jackson. He works for the state and he might have an idea of what kind of weapon this is.”
“What makes you think it is antique?” I asked.
“It’s only an assumption, but considering this photo of you was taken almost one hundred and thirty years ago by the same people who took this photograph thirty years later, well you do the math.” She was right, I kept thinking of the problem outside of the context of time. We were apart from time now. We were not dealing with months or years, we instead dealt in decades and centuries. It was possible that this blade had been used in any number of rituals for countless centuries. That meant that the evil we sought was older, wiser, and deadlier than we thought…
Well, that’s just wonderful.
Chapter 31
I woke in the confines of a business office, tied to a chair, actually I was chained to it, but that’s kind of the same thing. The man was seated at a small table eating Chinese food from a delivery box as Cerene sat across from him reading a book. Both of them ignored me for several moments.
“If you try to free yourself then I will kill you. End of discussion,” Cerene said without even looking up.
The man turned his gaze to me and smiled with a small portion of lo mien noodles poking out of his mouth. I could see in his eyes that he had seen more time on this earth that she had. I could not put my finger on it, but it was like looking at some old artifact from the past, you can almost feel the history in your hands when you touch it.
“What do you want from me?” I asked.
“Other than to kill you?” Cerene snapped, seething hatred poured from her voice.
“Cerene,” the man scolded. He stood up and walked over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. He pulled his hand back, presumably from the coldness of my body. “What we have planned for you is a long life if you cooperate with us.”
“How might I do that chained to a chair?”
“Look, I’ll shoot it to you straight. Pietro is a bad man, and not just because he is a vampire. He tortures those whom he converts, both before and after the change. You are subject to an eternity of torment if you stay with him.”
“He’s never done anything to me,” I interrupted.
“No? What do you remember from before you were turned?”
I thought for a moment in silence.
“See, you don’t remember because he drugged you with his venom. He is controlling your mind into believing that he has the best of intentions for you. The truth is, Noah, that you are just a means to an end for him. Nothing more than a little plaything until he grows bored of you and either kills you or replaces you with a newer
vampire.”
I thought about his words for a long time. He stood there, unmoving, unnatural. I looked up at him and could feel that there was some kind of truth that he was sharing with me in this. I did not remember being changed, at least not with the lucidity of actual memory. I only had glimpses, scattered to and fro, ultimately meaning nothing to me.
“What would you have me do?” I asked as Cerene looked over to me, surprised.
“That a boy,” he said with a smile and turned to look at Cerene. “Would you mind taking off the chains, Cerene? Make our new friend feel a little more at home.” He picked up the box of food again and put another bite of noodles in his mouth and slurped it into his smirking face, eying me as she came over with the key to the locks. Never removing me from his gaze.
The fresh stock of enhanced photos flowed from the printer, the blown-up images revealed every slight detail of the blade, I could even see what looked like an engraving towards the area that the hilt would be. Maggie was convinced that our guy in Jackson would have some answers. I wasn’t as enthusiastic, and if he did know something then I wasn’t sure exactly how that would lead us to this dark couple. I was more than bothered by the prospect of where this would lead.
Maggie, on the other hand, seemed to thrive at the revelation of something new like it was some kind of game. It was kind of like a scavenger hunt, I suppose. The only problem was that we might not be thrilled to find the treasure at the end.
“I’ve got these, but we should head out soon, this guy lives twenty miles south of Jackson and we don’t want to get there too late.”
“Early bird?” I asked.
“You could say that. He’s about eighty years old and goes to bed pretty early.” She shoved the pictures into a blue folder and stuffed them into a backpack.
“You know him personally?” I asked, curious as to how this could be.
“He’s a relative and one who knows my secret. I think I’ll leave it at that,” she answered coldly. I felt the temperature in the room drop with her tone of voice. This was something a bit more personal of a chord that I had not intentionally struck. I was afraid I would pay the price for it if I pressed much harder, so I kept quiet.
“After you,” I said as I opened the cabin’s front door to reveal the dim evening sky expanded over the tops of the trees. The countryside was beautiful this time of night, the dark hues of red and orange that fought to linger on the horizon just out of reach worked as a kind of creative artistic stroke of whatever entity had formed them. The sky had always marveled me.
We climbed into the truck and again she cranked the powerful, but silent engine and pulled away from the dark cabin our abode. The northwestern drive took a couple of hours or so, much of it was in silence as I did not want to disturb the nerve that I had hurt by asking too many questions earlier. The rest was filled with the sounds of modern day pop music.
I preferred the silence more.
Maggie eventually pulled the truck off of the highway and strode the vehicle into a small suburban sector, much different than the area we had come. These houses were bigger, nicer, occupied by those with money. “Impressive architecture,” I said as we pulled in front of the last house on the right. The cement pillars looked like they belong on the acropolis in Athens. The gray bricks that framed the house matched well with the lush greenery along the flower beds. The owner definitely knew how to manage his yard.
“He designed it himself,” she said as she pulled the truck into park and turned the engine off. She looked over to me and spoke, “Look, I’m sorry I about bit your head off earlier. It’s just that,” she stopped and looked out of my passenger side window. I turned to see the curtain over a window move back into place. She sighed, “It’s just that I don’t like talking about him.”
“It’s all right, I said. We all have family that is hard to deal with,” I said trying to ease the situation.
She turned in her seat and glared at me with contempt on her face. “It’s not like that,” she scowled. “He’s my son.”
If blood had flushed my face before, you would not know it. The fact that she had a child before being changed had never crossed my mind. The idea of having a loved one and being forced to watch them grow old and eventually die was a curse that no parent should know. “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling like shit for assuming as I had.
She wiped something from her eye and opened the driver’s side door. “Don’t worry about it.”
I followed her out of the vehicle and up to the front door as it opened, revealing the owner as a tall, older gentleman. His wardrobe was a modest pair of sleeping pants and a t-shirt, he seemed like a frail, soft-spoken kind of guy to look at him.
It was a nice thought, while it lasted.
Chapter 32
My hands and feet were free from my bonds, but I knew that was the only part of me that was free. I had agreed to render my services yet I had no idea what those services were to be. What was worse? Not knowing if I had agreed to a death sentence in the process.
Cerene still kept a watchful eye on me, though the man seemed to be unnaturally comfortable with my having free reign in what he considered home. The daylight was deflected by dark tinting along the windows. I could tell that it was bulletproof glass based on the pock marks that resulted from attempts at entry at one point in time. There were also heavy curtains not in use, I assumed it was to keep prying eyes away when my new acquaintances wanted privacy. Obviously, that was not the case right now.
I was both bored and fearful of what was to come. My mind kept drifting back to my human life. I had been a vampire for no more than four months, but based on my calculations, my last ‘real’ memory took place in the fall of the previous year. By a rough count, I could not account for about three months of my existence. What had happened in that time?
I thought that maybe things were not entirely as they seemed, both with Pietro and with this current situation I found myself in.
I was concerned about the welfare of my maker, but I concluded that might be due to some kind of mind control he had over me. The idea grew stronger as the hours passed. It seemed that distance broke the hold he had on me, if this was true then perhaps I have been a prisoner this whole time.
I saw the man sit in his chair and kick his feet up on the table in front of him. He pulled a long silver blade from a sheath behind him and began sharpening the blade. “You know, this blade has seen things that you would not believe. In all honesty, I would not believe it either had I not been there,” he spoke as he ran the stone along the blade at an angle. The sound of the grinding punctuated his words in a slight rhythm. “This blade is my salvation. It revealed the horrors of truth to me when I was a man without truth. It has done the same for many of your kind.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, assuming the man had been drinking before playing with his blade, I couldn’t justify calling it a knife, the word did not seem to fit the description of what I saw.
“Are you steeped in religious history?” he asked in return.
“Not well,” I answered. “I abandoned the concept of God when I was a teenager. I guess you could say that my current situation has justified that response.”
He smirked at my answer without even looking up. “I guess it would if it had any merit.”
“Do you know something I don’t?” I asked skeptically.
“That and so much more,” he looked up at me with his ancient eyes and ran the stone down the blade once more. “So much more.”
“Mom,” he said as she wrapped her arms around his neck and planted a kiss on his cheek. He kept his eyes on me the whole time, sizing me up, calculating the one-sided fight that would ensue if anything were to happen. “Who's this?”
“His name is Noah, he’s a friend,” she answered and I could see that he was visibly relieved at her words. There was obviously a history to his reaction, I just didn’t know what.
“Hello,” I said with an extended hand. He looked at hit for
a moment before reaching out and taking it. I would think it peculiar, but he probably was more suspicious of me than I was of him.
“How do you do?” he said formally. His grip was stronger than I expected, and I soon noticed that despite his age, he was still a solidly built man. His blue eyes were just like Maggie’s, the cold blue of a strong person, both inside and out. “How can I help you?”
“What makes you think we need help?” she asked, playing coy.
“I don’t know, Mother. Maybe the fact that you only show up once or twice a year since I turned fifty, and the backpack on your back is a little out of character for you. I assume it is something that you need my help with, otherwise, a phone call would have sufficed.”
Damn, that was cold. I knew that he at least got that from his mother.
She sighed, clearly frazzled by his attitude. “I’m sorry, yes, we have something I’d like for you to take a look at.”
He cut his eyes over to me and waited a moment before responding. “Come on in.” He led us to an office off to the side of his foyer and it was filled to the brim with books, yet another thing I assumed he took from his mother. His desk was large and shaped like a boomerang with a computer resting on the left-hand side as he sat in the plush chair. A large desk lamp came to life with bright LEDs illuminating almost the entire surface area in a glow that rivaled the sun. “What do you have?”
Maggie pulled the folder full of pictures from the backpack and handed it over. He lifted his large hands and took it from her, setting it down in front of him and opening it gingerly, like he would anything that might require a fragile touch. The photographs were sturdy enough, but I imagined his hands worked more on muscle memory from evaluating ancient artifacts than anything else.
“The blade the man is holding, we were wondering if there was anything that you could tell us about it,” she said, the familiarity of mother and son dropped as the business transaction began. I wondered what caused the rift, her or him?
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