The Greater Darkness

by Eldon Murphy

  Once Imastious was able to point Geoffrey towards the vampire-sponsored gang responsible for conducting the robbery, it had been a simple matter for the younger vampire to use his mentalist abilities to find out exactly when the robbery was to go down. All of which led to Geoffrey standing in line in front of a teller as six hooded figures burst into the bank yelling and waving guns.

  Extending his thoughts as far as they would go, Geoffrey began his assault.

  The closest pair never even realized they were under attack before the bitter edge of Geoffrey's blade had beheaded the first and pierced the second through the heart.

  Geoffrey's thoughts hammered away at the remaining four, confusing them and slowing their responses as he disarmed the next closest opponent. The disarm required shattering the kid's elbow, but that was fine with Geoffrey. He'd decided beforehand that this one hadn't done anything worthy of death yet, and the pain from the ruined joint would prove an effective neutralizer.

  Sensing that the remaining robbers were shaking off the effects of his mental assault, Geoffrey dived and rolled as shots went cracking over his head. His movement had put the leader of the group between him and the other two, and he ruthlessly forced the gang member to serve as a shield while he used his captured handgun to down the farthest enemy. A quick push sent Geoffrey's captive into the remaining opponent. The two of them were easy pickings as they went down in a tangle of limbs.

  People were still screaming and dropping to the ground as Geoffrey calmly pocketed the empty gun, sheathed his weapon and then walked out of the bank.

  The police response to the bank was faster than Geoffrey expected, but he made it safely into the subways as he heard the first sirens, and once there he knew that he'd be able to lose himself in the tunnels.

  **

  The feeling that he was being watched had returned again, but Geoffrey wasn't headed anywhere important, so he simply ignored it. Imastious hadn't been kidding when he'd implied that things were going to get nasty.

  Most of the covert warfare between the vampire Elders had remained below the threshold of awareness of the general populace, but people were becoming increasingly nervous when faced with a sudden spike in drive-by shootings, robberies, and violence in general. Venice and Imastious had limited their communications to instructions regarding who he was to kill or protect, so Geoffrey had been forced to turn to the human media in an effort to stay abreast of the war.

  It wasn't doing him much good though. He didn't know enough about the various players to separate out which incidents were the result of some kind of vampire directive and which ones were just caused by two-bit crooks trying to take advantage of the rising tide of violence.

  Even so, he could tell that things were starting to get really bad. The mayor was talking about imposing a curfew and asking the Governor to send in the National Guard in an effort to take some pressure off of the police. It still might not be enough to avoid the riot that Geoffrey was pretty sure was developing.

  Sometime in the last two weeks Geoffrey had lost track of how many missions he'd run. He'd quickly realized that high-profile actions like he'd taken at the bank would eventually get him killed or arrested, so he'd stretched his creativity in an effort to influence events in a more subtle manner. One set of bodyguards had been mentally prepped over the course of a couple hours, so that when the assassin assigned to kill a prominent businessman finally showed up, they were ready and waiting, unconsciously in a state of high alert. The assassin had only managed to get off a single, poorly-aimed shot before being mowed down.

  A second bank robbery had been foiled when conditioning that Geoffrey had spent an entire exhausting night on had prompted two of the robbers to cut down their companions in the early stages of the holdup. Geoffrey was pleased with his efforts, but couldn't avoid recognizing that once again, even in the little corner he was responsible for, it was the humans who were bearing the brunt of the vampires' conflict.

  Geoffrey continued to hold out some hope he'd get a chance to help take out some of the vampires responsible for the ongoing conflict, but so far Imastious hadn't obliged him.

  As frustrating as that was, at least Geoffrey wasn't being assigned to kill innocents. Those kinds of missions seemed to be going exclusively to Venice, who so far wasn't showing any qualms about completing them. Geoffrey's mental jury was still out on whether his reprieve meant that Imastious was worried about pushing him too far, or whether it just meant that Imastious didn't have the spare time right now to punish Geoffrey severely enough if the missions weren't completed to schedule. Every mission seemed very time sensitive given the way that the vampires had abandoned their normal, measured pace of operating.

  This was actually the first night in ages that Geoffrey hadn't had some kind of mission to either execute or set up for later. It either meant that the conflict was starting to die out, or that Imastious was coming to the end of his intelligence and was therefore running out of targets that he could positively confirm as belonging to a specific rival. Geoffrey was cautiously optimistic it was the former. He was pretty sure that once Imastious did run out of known rival assets, he'd just start eliminating people on the basis that if they didn't belong to him he'd be better off if they weren't in play any longer.

  Either way, it was nice to have a night free. Geoffrey knew he should probably be inside trying to recuperate, but something pulled him out into the darkness and frankly, he was happy to have some time to just walk through the city, even with the risk involved in being outside.

  The night had started out very pleasant, well-lit as it was by a full moon, with plenty of other people out and about on the streets. As it had gotten closer to midnight though, foot traffic had diminished until there wasn't anyone else in sight. The drop-off in pedestrians wasn't surprising. You couldn't blame people for wanting to be safe at home given the number of 'crazies' who had come out of the woodwork lately.

  Geoffrey suddenly noticed the lights across the street fading in and out. It was too localized to be a brownout, but Geoffrey couldn't think of anything that would cause that kind of fluctuation in the power grid.

  A chill ran down his spine, but he felt oddly compelled to investigate the alley. Surely he could get just a little closer and execute a quick mental sweep without exposing himself to undue risk.

  Exhaling a couple of times to help him relax, Geoffrey cast his thoughts free of his physical being and probed the darkness, only to reel back in alarm as he brushed up against a mind that was alien and harsh. The vampire tried to pull his probes back, but something pulled at them, exerting a strange force that made it difficult to break contact.

  As Geoffrey finally succeeded in severing the tendrils of thought, a shambling figure, clad in nothing more than rags, came out of the darkness and sprang at him. Geoffrey had a brief second to register he was fighting a familiar-looking woman and then she reached him and carried the both of them to the ground.

  Geoffrey rolled with the force of the impact, placing a foot in the woman's stomach and kicking her free so her momentum carried her away as he came back to his feet and turned to face her again.

  The intermittent light from nearby shops revealed that the figure Geoffrey had expected to see had been replaced by something bigger. The creature facing Geoffrey now was more than seven feet tall, with a thick coat of fur, and muscles that made a professional bodybuilder seem small and effeminate.

  Geoffrey just had time to draw his katana before the beast charged him with jerky motions that were deceptively quick. The vampire somehow knew that allowing the beast to close with him would be a deadly mistake, so he sprang away at the last second, earning a wicked set of slashes across his chest. He'd almost waited too long. The beast's arms were longer, proportionally, than a human's would have been. That, plus the fact that it was taller than Geoffrey, meant that the reach advantage his katana normally would have provided had essentially been nullified.

  The gashes in Geoffrey's chest immediately began to bl
eed, but he forced away what little pain made it past the surging adrenaline in his system, and prepared for the next rush as the creature spun around and charged again.

  Geoffrey waited until his opponent was almost on him and then feinted to the right before whipping his weapon through a short, vicious arc that intersected with a clawed hand which would have torn his head off had he continued the feint.

  The blow would have easily sheared completely through the torso of a large man, but only barely managed to cut through the creature's arm. The impact almost wrenched the katana from Geoffrey's hands.

  Palms smarting from the force of the strike, Geoffrey tried to move to the left to avoid the creature, but he'd lost too much momentum as a result of the blow and was only partially successful.

  The creature clipped him with a shoulder as it went past, sending Geoffrey sprawling as it howled in rage and pain from trying to spin around without using its missing right paw.

  Whether due to his wound, the efforts of the past two weeks, or some special property of the creature, Geoffrey's strength was quickly fading away. He had to finish the fight quickly before some exhaustion-induced mistake allowed the creature to close with him.

  Taking a step back to give himself more room to react, Geoffrey bumped up against the outside wall of a building and cursed the distraction that had prevented him from realizing the creature had been maneuvering him.

  The creature was approaching again, but it was moving more slowly now, seeming to have decided its previous tactics hadn't been effective.

  Geoffrey watched the three-inch claws on the beast's left hand as they slowly circled back and forth. As the creature reached the outer limits of the vampire's reach, he brought his katana around in a slash designed to deprive it of its remaining hand.

  The blow from the bloody stump was completely unexpected and launched Geoffrey to the side with bone-breaking force.

  Before the vampire had even landed, the beast charged. Acting on instinct, Geoffrey placed the handle of his weapon against the building at his back and guided its tip towards where he thought the beast's heart would sit.

  The walls protected Geoffrey from the deadly claws that otherwise would have beheaded him, but suffered incredible damage as four deep grooves were torn through the brick.

  As the point of his weapon entered the creature, Geoffrey tried to drop out of the way to avoid being crushed. Once again the right angle of the walls at his back helped protect him as the creature's broad shoulders impacted the unyielding masonry before the rest of its bulk could crush the vampire.

  Even after colliding with the walls, the creature's momentum was sufficient to severely bruise Geoffrey. More importantly, the force served to drive the tip of his sword through its unyielding flesh.

  Geoffrey momentarily blacked out as his head bounced off the building. When he regained his senses, he found not the creature he expected, but the woman who'd initially attacked him. She'd somehow changed forms, but that still didn't explain the nagging familiarity. He had to have seen her somewhere before, but the setting had been different and that was making it difficult to put the pieces together. He thought there was something about the clothes that was throwing him off, but couldn't be sure.

  Realizing that it was only a matter of time before police were summoned to investigate the fight, Geoffrey pulled himself to his feet. The first sirens were already approaching, but Geoffrey disappeared effortlessly into the pools of shadows created by the interplay of streetlights and neon signs. Even limited to no more than a slow hobble, it should be a small matter to avoid being detained.

  Chapter 24

  Venice paced back and forth, seemingly unwilling to believe what Geoffrey was telling her. "How can that be possible? How could centuries pass without anyone figuring this out?"

  Geoffrey shook his head in exhaustion, and tried not to move. It was hard to hold still, but he didn't want to break any of his wounds open. Once he'd realized why the woman had seemed so familiar, he'd known there was going to be far too little time for rest and healing.

  The last time he'd seen her, she'd been dressed in an expensive dress suit and scared out of her mind by the rabid dogs attacking them. That bit of information was critical, but it still didn't give Geoffrey anything even approaching real answers as to what was going on.

  "I don't know for sure why this is happening now, but I think this isn't the first time. This all fits too well with the legends and the outbreak of rabies for it to permit any other explanation."

  The slender vampire momentarily looked like she was going to argue with him some more, but then she closed her eyes and seemed to deflate slightly. "Then the legends are true. The human ones about people changing under the light of the full moon into beasts, and the tales passed from vampire to vampire about something that preys upon vampires like we prey upon humans."

  Geoffrey slumped a little and nodded. "I'm sure that the myths have all changed somewhat over the centuries. There are probably aspects of the legends which are misleading, or blatantly incorrect, just like the legends about vampires, but the core of truth is there. What we would call werewolves do indeed exist, and the mechanism that seems to transfer the disease is what we've previously called rabies. There's already a mountain of evidence indicating that animals exposed to rabies are predisposed to respond very aggressively to vampires."

  Venice sighed and collapsed onto Geoffrey's bed. "Okay, run me through what we know about the werewolf again, and then I'll take it to Imastious. He'll probably want to talk to you later, but for now I'll have to be the point gal."

  Geoffrey nodded, but he wasn't convinced. He suspected that Venice didn't have much better access to Imastious than he did. Imastious wouldn't have trusted her with the location of his home, which meant that she would just be waiting for Imastious to contact her or wander by one of the message drops they'd no doubt arranged.

  Geoffrey kept his thoughts to himself and just nodded. "We've essentially gone over everything. Once she'd changed, she was bigger, faster, and stronger than me. Also, she seemed to absorb my probes almost like a black hole sucking energy from me."

  Venice stood as if to go and then cocked her head slightly to the side. "I know you, and the fact that you don't like to put forth anything that you're not sure of, but if you have any suspicions, now would be the time to share them too."

  Geoffrey looked down uncomfortably. "I'm not sure. Like I said, something about her was playing havoc with my mental abilities, but it seemed as though what I brushed up against wasn't quite sane. Also, the mind I touched was too full. Maybe like there were too many memories in it, that or possibly multiple personalities."

  **

  It turned out that Imastious did visit Venice first, but as soon as the beautiful vampire had finished relaying Geoffrey's story, the Elder had brought her straight to Geoffrey's so that he could hear the tale again.

  Geoffrey had noticed Imastious looking at him with what appeared to be a touch of uneasiness on several occasions while the story was told, but he'd been unable to pin down a reason why the older, more powerful vampire would be worried about someone so obviously at his mercy.

  Instead of continuing to worry at it, Geoffrey decided to just be glad that Imastious hadn't accused him of lying outright or decided that he'd somehow made a mistake in the way that the conflict was handled. Of course Imastious' vaunted information sources had probably already told him about the fight, so Geoffrey's fears had probably been unfounded from the beginning.

  Geoffrey hadn't anticipated that Imastious would want to see the site of the battle. Previously Imastious had always had enough external information that a trip like that, at least one with Geoffrey, would have been redundant.

  Geoffrey looked at the long furrows in the brick before him and shuddered. It was still hard to believe that the werewolf had been so fast. He was still shocked that he'd managed to survive the attack.

  Imastious finished examining the damaged walls and then turned and p
ointed out claw marks on the pavement. "You didn't notice these last night?"

  The younger vampire shook his head, suddenly nervous about being overheard by someone who would carry the tale to the police stationed nearby. "No, everything was happening so quickly. It would help explain how she was able to change direction so suddenly though."

  Hopefully Imastious would deal with the police. He wouldn't want to be associated with someone who was a suspected murderer, so it was probably safe to assume that he'd blank the minds of both of the cops before the three of them left the site.

  The Elder nodded and then turned and walked away, apparently expecting Venice and Geoffrey to follow.

  Geoffrey suppressed questions about where they were headed and followed Venice to Imastious' private car. The trio soon arrived at what looked to be one of the more exclusive condominiums in the city.

  The doorman tried to refuse Imastious entrance, only to assume a blank, compliant expression as Imastious gestured him away. Geoffrey wondered momentarily if he'd ever have such easy power, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted it. That kind of power couldn't help but be seductive.

  Inside the elevator Imastious spoke again. "The Elder known as Byington owned the three top floors of this building. He used the top and bottom-most floors as a buffer and lived in the middle floor."

  It wasn't clear from the way that Imastious had said 'owned' whether Byington was now dead, or whether Imastious had taken over the floors. From what Venice had indicated, it was almost unheard of for vampire Elders to meet face to face. There was just too much chance that they'd try to assassinate each other. Given that, it seemed very unlikely that Imastious was taking them to meet with Byington.

  Venice volunteered information for the first time all evening. "It was primarily Byington's assets that we've been protecting for the last couple of weeks."

  Another tidbit of knowledge there, but it was hard for Geoffrey to place it in context. Venice had indicated that Imastious was using the Elder as a foil, bolstering him so that other vampires would be forced to expend more resources in their quest to destroy him, but maybe there was more to the relationship then he'd been led to believe.