“Thank you,” she said as she held his gaze for a moment.
Longinus turned back towards me and crossed his arms. “It seems as though we have a change of plans. Here’s what I want you to do,” he said as he looked me in the eye and took control of the room.
A taunt tie of rapture filled the room as we sat, exposed in the lamplight as the smell of manuscripts long since forgotten entered my nostrils. The words of men carried weight, even for those whom death did not greet. I wondered if this was a happy coincidence, but that truly did not matter. What really mattered were answers.
Why were we here?
“I take it the two of you found the clues that we had left for you?” he asked as he sat with a laborious exhale of air, sounding as if the burdens of the world were on his shoulders.
“Who are you really?” I asked, cutting straight to the point, no longer wanting to jute around it like some kind of disastrous flirtation.
He smiled, “Who do you think I am?”
“We looked the highlighted verse up on the Internet and the only name associated with it is Longinus. Is that your name?” Maggie asked, clearly frustrated with the increased questioning of our host.
“It is, though that name has many connotations, some good, some bad. Much like the connotations of being a vampire, wouldn’t you say,” his smile never faded from his face.
“How so?” I asked, unsure of how the two of us could be bonded in any kind of way.
“The romanticism associated with our curse. The entire world is full of people who want to live forever, but they have the blessings of death to sweep them from this life of misery. They foolishly think that the thirst for blood is what is most damaging, but everyone thirsts for something. It is that unattainable thing that always eludes us, preventing us from finding that final breath. That is what brought you to me.” He crossed his arms and looked down his nose at me as I pondered his point.
“I would say what brought me to you is a lack of answered questions. Even still you fill my mind with more. Why don’t you explain yourself and then move into the idle chit chat,” I shot back indignantly. I was over being the one in the dark, I needed some light to be cast onto my feet and to find my way into becoming who I was. Why I was.
Cerene looked over and placed her hand on his broad shoulder, “Tell them. Let them make their own choice. You owe him that much,” she said. Her words dug into my heart, stinging it with the fear of what dark betrayal laid behind those words.
He conceded.
“Have you heard of the mythical legend of Lilith?”
Maggie and I both nodded our heads yes.
“Well, the myth spans far back into time, before the beginning of Judaism with Abraham. The stories of the first woman are both mysterious and frightening. Essentially the myth claims that she was created like Adam, from the dust of the earth by God’s own hands. The legend goes on to say that she rebelled her position beneath Adam, feeling as though she were his equal. Despite God sending angels to persuade her to rejoin with Adam, she refused to give in and instead was endowed with a curse to see hundreds of her children die every day.
“Now that part of the legend sounds like some kind of fantasy, but the truth that was never divulged was that her children were demons. Lucifer is the face of evil because of his rebellion, but all the claims are that he tried to defend Lilith because he loved her and hated Adam. Fast forward several thousand years and those pieces of the puzzle are replaced with Eve eating the forbidden fruit and luring Adam into doing the same. The sands of time covered the past with Lilith being the one in the garden, enticing Eve with knowledge. The serpent was draped around her neck, slithering the hushed tones of what to say in order to cause God to hate Eve with the same wrath that Lucifer felt had been given to his love, Lilith.
“Over time these stories faded from the memories of the man and we are left with little reminder of these ‘truths’. Personally, I feel as though the Lilith woman was nothing more than a jealous demon, fallen from heaven, who hated mankind and willed to change man into something darker as a smite against God. The validity of these stories was never revealed to me, only my purpose, which is to kill any of the children of the night who preyed on human blood. That is my burden for having stabbed the Lord with my lance, puncturing the flesh of God’s own son.”
His story was compelling, if not out of this world. “What does that have to do with us?” I asked.
Longinus readjusted himself in his seat and spoke, “Lilith has been trying to create a bloodline for centuries. Her goal is to create her own dark trinity. In order to do this, she has to consume the body of the eldest in the line which means she is not easily identifiable. We may or may not be looking for a woman indwelt with Lilith’s spirit. Your involvement was due to the fact that you were created by her, but she had taken a man’s form. His name had been Pietro. He was the one that created Cerene, though later we found out that he had done so after Lilith had consumed him.
“Cerene and I were finally reunited, but we had to find some way to stop Lilith. We found you and she attempted to prevent your transference. She failed to do so, and we decided that perhaps we could use you to help bring her down. You had Lilith’s blood in your veins and would be the ideal instrument to kill her, but things did not happen as we had planned.”
“What happened?” Maggie asked.
Cerene stood up and answered. “She had already created another.”
I could not believe my ears. I looked over to Maggie and wondered if we were in fact both created by Lilith. Did that make her my sister? Did that mean that I was no longer part of the dark trinity bloodline that Lilith sought to create? Did a failed attempt to take Lilith’s life result in my loss of memories? I was not prepared for where this was going.
Chapter 44
“That’s it?” I asked. I had expected a masterful plan based on his two thousand years of military experience. The only thing he wanted me to do was to lure Pietro out into the cemetery and ‘they’ would take care of the rest.
“That’s it,” he said as if he felt that it was enough.
“Hold on, you expect me to just stand there as you destroy the monster who created me? After everything you’ve told me that he’s done, I should have the chance to kill him.”
“You can’t,” Cerene said as she moved from around Longinus. She stalked in front of me and rested her gaze directly in front of me. “You are his newest child of the night. He has power and dominion over you because of that small fact alone. Do not expect to be able to resist his hold on you, Noah. It is a futile effort and will pose a danger to all three of us.”
“I don’t feel this hold that you are talking about,” I said. The truth was that fact. I had not really felt him for several days, I covered up the sense of abandonment that I felt, but I knew it was there, lurking in my subconscious.
“He will not release you,” Longinus said. He looked at Cerene, “Perhaps he is aware of my presence and that is why he has not approached.”
She looked back at him with her neck turned down and away from me and answered. “I don’t know how that is possible. You have never been an easy human to detect with our senses, the cloaking effect of your curse has always made it more challenging to find you when we have parted ways.” I upstairs a bit of resentment in that last statement.
He cleared his throat. “Yes, well, Pietro is a vampire of more than two thousand years. He is the oldest one that I know. Could it be that over the years he has formed keener senses and preternatural abilities? Could the blood of thousands of victims have an effect on him that could make him stronger and more sensitive to his surroundings?”
Cerene looked back at me but spoke directly to him, “I don’t know the answer to that question. What does your God tell you?”
He looked down with a pitiful frown on his face. “Cerene, you know that my God has not spoken to me since I saved you.”
I looked at him and could not withhold my question. “What do you mea
n?”
Cerene placed a hand on my shoulder to intervene, “It means that God has forsaken him because he chose to disobey Him by not killing me.”
“What? Why?” there were many questions running through my mind at that time. This felt like a bomb being dropped into my lap and I did not know what to do with it.
“Because I loved the darkness more than the light,” he answered.
“That doesn’t explain why you left all of these clues,” I said as I struggled to come to terms with what Longinus said about our creator. He crossed his arms again, resolute in whatever it was that he was about to reveal.
“There is no gentle way of telling you this, but the last time you helped it did not turn out well. To say that we failed is an understatement. The reason you were in a century’s slumber was due to the break in the psychic connection between you and your maker. This happened after our intent was revealed and before you were able to flee to safety he broke his ties with you and you collapsed. If not for Cerene, then you would be dead.”
“What does this have to do with us searching for you now?” I asked again.
“We need your help in order to try and stop Lilith again. We knew we would, so we did everything in our power to trigger your memories. Apparently, it worked since you are here,” Longinus said.
“Except I don’t have any of these memories, just your word, and forgive me for not wanting to go on that leap of faith,” I answered.
“We understand that,” Cerene said as she intervened to try and ease the situation. “Surely you can see the damage that has been done throughout the last one hundred years, though. The bars where humans consume one another’s blood in rituals that are meant to symbolize the feeding of our kind. This perversion is the work of Lilith. She is gaining power through this kind of idol worship. If ever she was to be stopped, it has to be now.”
I remembered the scene at the bar with the group of Gothic kids licking each other’s wounds, prosthetic teeth mounted over their real teeth to make them look like one of us, but that had existed in a milder fashion when I was still human. People had an endearing love for vampires since Bram Stoker wrote his heroic version of Dracula. Did she mean that Lilith could have been behind the cult success of such a thing as a way for her to gain power? I sincerely doubted that, to be honest.
“If her blood is the only way to kill her, then how do you propose that we do that if we failed last time?” I asked.
“With her,” Longinus said as he nodded towards Maggie. I could almost feel the air escape the room at his words. I looked over to Maggie to see her look of shock.
“Me?” she asked, seemingly trying to push the burden away.
“Yes, Lilith’s blood flows through your veins still, after all of these years. I’m surprised that you don’t still feel it yourself,” Cerene said.
“How would I be able to tell?” Maggie asked.
“Because her blood is the hunger, the revelry of consuming another, the rapture of a soul to feed the black hole of your heart. That is the vampire curse. That is the love of being Lilith’s child. The stronger the urging, the stronger her ties are to you,” Cerene spoke and then sniffed the air. “Clever girl, you are. Masking the bond between you by consuming the blood of animals,” she smiled.
“You were able to break your thirst for human blood without any intervention?” Longinus asked, looking puzzled.
“Yes,” Maggie answered flatly.
“How were you able to do such a thing?” he asked.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” she said.
“It is an incredibly hard thing to do, I applaud you for forcing yourself into the uncomfortable challenge of doing the right thing. Your resilience is awe-inspiring,” Cerene said.
I looked over at Maggie as she shrugged the compliment off without a word. “What do we need to do to stop Lilith?” I asked, trying to bring the conversation back to what was important.
“We need to confront her in whatever form she is in, and the one with her own blood flowing in their veins needs to take this and remove the heart in which she dwells and burn it.” He removed the silver blade from its sheath and laid it across his lap. The spear of destiny, the tip of which pierced Christ’s side. God’s only begotten Son’s blood is the only thing holy enough to cut out the heart of the first woman He created. What magnificent power to behold…to fear.
“Well, where is she?” Maggie asked, sounding a bit more like her rambunctious self.
“We have her tracked currently to the Mobile Bay area, on Dauphin Island,” Longinus said.
“Then that’s where we need to go,” I said.
“Certainly, as soon as the sun drops tonight,” he said as he pointed towards the pale light climbing from the horizon, piercing through the branches of trees and falling along large stretches of ground.
“Can we stay here?” I asked, not wanting to intrude without asking.
“Of course, there are plenty of rooms upstairs that have been blackened out. You may choose any of them,” Cerene said assuming the role as hostess.
“One last thing,” Maggie interrupted. “We have someone else with us.”
“Whom might that be?” Longinus asked.
Maggie looked at me before answering, “My son.”
Chapter 45
“Any last questions?” Longinus asked as the sunlight retreated to the dead of the night. I shook my head to answer, no. The cemetery was a mere mile and a half away and the colder than normal April night created a slight sting to my nostrils as I sniffed the air. The blood of predators and prey alike welcomed me to the darkness. I would have my fill, I knew this, but I also knew that I could not waste a moment thinking about feeding. The most important thing now was to put an end to the regime that Pietro had created on this earth.
I doubted my involvement being necessary to their cause, but I kept that to myself.
The walk took less than fifteen minutes as Longinus was not able to move with the same ability as Cerene and me. She was a natural stalker of the night, I could see that now more than any time before. The full moon lit the sky around her and the air around her was electric. I could feel the pinpricks on my own skin. Mesmerized by who she was, horrified by the beautiful monster that she had become…we had become.
The wrought iron gates of the cemetery were Gothic and eerie, even for someone attuned to the darkness. I pushed it open and felt some of the air around the place disintegrate into nothingness. It was ironic, I felt like a betrayer coming to turn my master into a higher authority.
I was working for my freedom. A fellow disciple accompanied me alongside a Roman centurion who would slay our master. Were Judas and I one and the same? No, at least Christ was known for raising the dead. Pietro was responsible for putting them there.
The graveyard was crowded with marble tombstones that protruded up from the ground, reaching for the unwelcoming sky. Why was heaven upward? Why did we rely on that facet of spiritual reverence?
There was a sound, slight, but existent.
“He’s here,” Cerene said in a hushed tone. The coldness of her voice invoked a bit of dread on the situation. The time was nigh. breathe nothing more than a one-sided showdown. Just unlike the western movies that I had seen growing up, the good guys were indistinguishable from the bad guy. We were all monsters in our, little way.
“I am,” Pietro stepped from behind a large tombstone with a cherub protruding from its marble face. An image that was supposed to emit hope for the lost instead looked on in horror at the evil that dwelt beside it. “I see you have turned my child against me.”
“Noah, leave,” Longinus ordered. I turned to flee from the massacre that was about to happen, but my feet felt frozen t the dirt beneath them. I looked up at my maker’s face to see the sneer of satisfaction marred with the stain of betrayal. I felt fear, the unruly fear that premiers before death. I was already dead, though, so that must mean something. Right?
That awkward moment when your hidden companion
enters the room was not as ill received as I had anticipated. The cordial greetings of people who had previously met were more in line with what I witnessed.
“I remember you,” Longinus said with one hand on the handle of his blade and the other gripping the belt at his waist. His posture reminded me of an old John Wayne movie, all he needed was the six-shooter and a Stetson hat. “You were the one so interested in my lance at that weapons depot several years ago,” he said with a curled lip.
“Yeah, it was a bit longer ago than that, though,” Robert smiled at the recollection. “I’m still willing to purchase it from you if you’ve changed your mind after all these years.”
Longinus smirked, “I think you know the answer that one.”
“I did my research. So how does it feel to be both saint and villain?” Robert asked jokingly.
“It was rough the first thousand years, but you get used to it,” Longinus winked at Robert and the turned to see Cerene. “We have a couple of rooms upstairs for you three to sleep until the sun goes down. Cerene can show you to your rooms.”
“Of course, if you will please follow me,” she said to us as she began climbing the stairs, never looking back to see if we were indeed following her or not. The rooms at the top of the stairs were dark and relatively empty. The windows had been blackened in much the same way as Maggie’s cabin had been and the carpeted floors were matted with several years of trafficking feet. Maggie and I roomed together on the right side of the hallway and Robert slumbered in the one across the hall from us. It felt more natural that way, the tempered separation of vampire from human.
My eyes closed as Maggie slept beside me, the sun barely visible through opaque paint and rotted holes in the siding and drywall. I would sleep like I had not slept since awakening. With the knowledge of where I had come from, and the penalty of the life that I had earned as a vampire. Before I drifted into sleep my mind fell upon a thought that I had not entertained in possibly a hundred years. My thoughts drifted to God, and the redemption that was promised to those who believed in Him. It was not an easy thought to bear with the man partially responsible for killing Christ no more than thirty feet away from me and the knowledge that the blood of Lilith, one of God’s first enemies, flowed through my veins.
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