Duel Nature

by John Conroe

  “Oh, that’s brilliant. We killed off a major portion of our food supply during the Dark Ages. It left vampire against vampire for those small food populations that were left. Your mind has grown soft and spongy Frimunt!” Atta said. “And Senka is a sentimentalist! Partner with humans? Insanity. And use the Full Blood to do it? She’s barely adult and saddled with that …abomination.”

  “Where is Gordon? Did you not summon him Gault?” Mausya asked suddenly.

  “The abomination is sitting right here!” I said, standing.

  Twelve heads snapped around to stare at me, twelve faces flickered with micro frowns before smoothing into the standard blank look of old vampires.

  “You’re here,” Gault said, his voice level but I could read enough of the Patrons mannerisms now to know that he was honestly surprised by my presence. They all were which was ridiculous, because it is just about impossible to sneak up on a single vampire over the age of a hundred, let alone a dozen who each approached a thousand years.

  “Yeah, you rang, I came,” I said.

  They were all silent for a full thirty seconds. Finally, Gault spoke.

  “You have spoken of the US government’s knowledge of Darkkin. We need more knowledge of this.”

  “Yes, I heard, for your secret plans for world domination,” I snapped. They stilled again, except Hosokawa, who moved just slightly to better face me. In hindsight, my sarcastic tone was probably not the best way to address a dozen super predators, but I was having trouble controlling myself. The God Tear around my neck warmed slightly at my words.

  “You eavesdropped?” Atta asked.

  “I marched in here and stood for ten seconds then sat right here in front of all of you!” I shot back at her. “Maybe vampire senses decline with age.”

  They all shifted at those words, flickers of anger crossing most of their faces. Some small part of me rang the alarm bell to ‘shut the hell up’ before I got bitten by a dozen sets of fangs.

  Frimunt’s anger was the most visible. He even started to get up from his mini-throne but Gault motioned him to stay where he was. He obeyed the non-verbal request although he flashed a nasty glare at the Prolocuter.

  “How much do the humans know?” Gault asked, attempting to move past the suddenly volatile atmosphere.

  “About Darkkin? Quite a lot. They know of the Coven and its worldwide network. They know you have fingers in every area of the global economy and have influence over most governments.”

  “How long have they known?” Mausya asked.

  “Decades,” I answered. “At least, in terms of knowing about vampires. The part about the Coven may be more recent, I’m not sure.”

  “What levels of the government know this?” Gault asked.

  “From the President on down. Homeland Security as a whole sector assigned to vampires and weres.”

  “They know of the Elders?” Mausya asked.

  “Yes, Senka has spoken to some of their higher officials, but they knew of older vampires before that I’m pretty sure.”

  “Senka has spoken to them?” Frimunt asked, his tone cold and dangerous.

  “er, yes, at least once,” I said.

  “Because of you!” Mausya said suddenly.

  “Well, yeah I guess.”

  “And now the Coven cowers underground!” Frimunt stormed. “This is a ridiculous state of affairs! They run from us – not us from them!”

  He was working himself into a pretty good temper and I don’t know where it would have gone, but suddenly a small hand bell rang. It was just a small thing, like you see in movies where the sick person gets to ring a bell to get the attention of and on the last nerve of their parent/spouse/friend. Its effect was pronounced. All twelve vampires snapped their attention to the upper door that the possessed girl had come through when the Conclave had ‘tested’ me. This time the guard on duty led a string of young, fit looking humans through, most of them showing substantial skin.

  “Lunch is served,” the upper level guard said in a serious voice, but he said it with a sardonic grin. The Patrons promptly forgot our conversation and kept all their attention on the upcoming ‘meals’.

  The line of twelve humans came nervously down the amphitheater stairs, each one branching off to go to a different vampire. Their behavior was a blend of fear and anticipation, a mixture I’m told is extremely attractive to vampires. Most of them were roughly college age with several looking just barely legal. The last was a tiny slip of a girl in a thin, formless dress who definitely looked underage. Petit and lacking the curves of the other females, she looked about fourteen. She looked far more afraid than anxious and while the others all knew which vampire to go to, she didn’t. Of course it was Frimunt who raised his hand and waved her in his direction.

  I found myself moving closer, studying the little girl who was practically shaking as she approached Frimunt. Her fear made him grin in anticipation – it made me see red.

  “They have to be eighteen!” I said suddenly.

  Most of the Patrons turned to me surprised, having forgotten my presence in the face of tasty treats. Frimunt looked the most off guard, but his surprise turned to anger.

  “They are provided by the New York Coven. You can argue their ages with your Chosen,” Frimunt said, grabbing the girl by her wrist and pulling her onto his lap.

  “Oh I will, but she’s coming with me till I get her age figured out,” I said, the God Tear suddenly warm on my chest.

  “How old are you my dear? Eighteen?” Frimunt asked her, his voice oily.

  Frightened out of her mind she shook for a moment before her head wobbled in the loosest of nods.

  “There, see!” the German vampire said, opening his mouth wide to show extended fangs and slamming down on her neck like a striking rattlesnake.

  “Bullshit!” I yelled, moving toward him. Suddenly he was standing, the girl torn from his fangs by the speed of his rising. Bright blood arched in jets from the torn arteries in her neck as the old blond vampire stared at me with killing hate.

  My attention shifted to the girl who was clasping her neck, but when I moved forward I found my body locked to the ground and my arms restrained by Hosokawa. He was simultaneously holding me in a jointlock technique while using energy techniques to Post me. My right arm was jammed up and behind my back. Grim took over instantly, using my aura to break his Post. My vision had shifted to show the blue column of energy locking my feet to the ground and a short burst of purple aura slashed through it as I watched. Hosokawa was caught off guard which made Grim’s break of his arm hold easier. Grim dropped my body low in a squatty stance to gain room while my left hand slapped against my right shoulder, shoving it back toward Hosokawa and opposite the jointlock. The momentary lack of pressure on my arm and shoulder joint was enough for me to turn further into Hosokawa and shove while hooking my right leg behind his foot. He fell backward which allowed me time to turn back to the approaching blur that was Frimunt. Grim formed a deadly spear of aura in my right hand, but the God Tear thrummed on my chest, reminding me of my vow to Tanya not to lose my temper, and at the last moment I changed it to just a simple blast of power. I had hit many vampires with aura blasts just like it, sometimes at their own request. I thought of it as a stunner and while part of me questioned the effectiveness of it on a 900 year old vampire it would have to do. On the younger vampires I had used it on it had the effect of knocking them back to human condition for a short time.

  This all happened inside the space of a single second, the three of us moving at very accelerated vampire speeds. Frimunt was only feet away when my blast hit him, then he freight-trained me flat. Grim sprang back to my feet, ready to face the angry German vampire. But Frimunt was on the ground writhing in agony and screaming while his body jerked and shook. The remainder of the Conclave crowded around, pushing me further back from the mortally wounded teenage girl.

  A scream of torn metal and the popping of displaced air was all the warning we had of Senka and Tzao’s arri
val on the scene. Tanya stood just behind the two Elders as they looked at Frimunt.

  “What did you do?” Senka hissed at me.

  “I just stunned him!” I replied as I worked my way around the vampires to the wounded teen.

  Her brown hair, done up in a ponytail, was matted with her blood, her brown eyes huge and scared as she tried to keep her hand on her neck. I pulled her hand away and covered the wound with my own hand, summoning aura to bind her flesh back together. My one glimpse was enough to scare the hell out of me. Frimunt’s fangs must have been piercing her carotid artery when he tore free. The feeble pulse of blood against my hand and her rapidly dimming eyes told me time had run out along with her life force and no matter how much power I pushed into her she still died in my hands.

  “You’ve killed him!” Atta said.

  I looked over at Frimunt, who now lay still.

  Whenever I’ve knocked a vampire into human condition before there had been an interesting side effect, at least on those vampires older than fifty or so years. While they remained human, their bodies had aged at an accelerated pace as if trying to catch up with their actual chronological years. The older the vampire the more pronounced the effect.

  Frimunt took it to a whole new level. Nine hundred years of age had caught up to him in minutes. He probably died at the point his body reached two hundred years of withered age. By five hundred, his flesh was dried and flaking. At the full nine hundred, his skeleton, brown and crumbling, was all that remained. It looked like an ultrarealistic Halloween decoration, dressed in modern clothes.

  “It seems that what stuns young vampires, kills old ones,” Senka said, looking at me, an odd gleam in her eye. Tzao was the first to leave, moving so fast that the air popped as it rushed into the vacant space she left behind. Mausya was next, disappearing after tilting her head at me for a second or two. The rest were gone almost as fast, gone like smoke in the wind.

  Hosokawa and Senka were the last to go. The Japanese warrior gave me a short bow then vanished. Senka looked at Tanya and I, that odd flicker of something suspiciously like satisfaction on her face, then popped out of the room.

  I looked to Tanya only to find her staring at me with a mixture of horror and shock. Tears slipped out of her eyes and I rushed to grab her arms. I might have thought her scared of me, but my link told me she was a veritable hurricane of emotions, with fear for me being dominant.

  “Christian, you have to leave! Do you understand? They fled in fear, but they will attack you somehow if you stay!” she said in a rush.

  “What?” I asked, looking at the blood on my skin where my hands held hers.

  “Your simplest ability, the blast of aura you have used on dozens of young vampires is almost instantly lethal to the old ones! When you knock them human, it somehow releases their pent up age and they die! You have to leave now!”

  “Wait, so they’re scared of me? So what? Vampires have been scared of me before,” I said, trying to understand her fear.

  She shook her head furiously. “No, these are old vampires. They are generally scared of nothing, but when they do find a threat, they always, always find a way to remove it. That’s how they got to be old!”

  “So we have to leave?” I asked, wiping my hands on my pants.

  She stared at me without saying a word, tears streaming down her face. My bond told me the answer even as I put it into words.

  “No, I have to leave. You’re staying here…to do what? Defend me?” I asked as I read the mixture of determination and resolve that she was broadcasting.

  “Christian, if I go with you, there will be no one to explain things to them, no one to moderate their fear. By staying back I will be able to reassure them and try to make them see sense.”

  “You’ll be a hostage...for my good behavior. They’ll know that I wouldn’t attack or harm you,” I said as the truth hit me. “I was trying not to hurt him – like you said – that’s why I stunned him.”

  “I know dear one, I know. You didn’t know – I didn’t know that this would happen. No one did,” she said, pushing me toward the entrance. Part of me wondered about what she had said. Did no one really know that I could age an old vampire to death? The look on Senka’s face flashed back into my mind, even as I turned with my vampire and began to rush through the corridors. Somewhere during our run to our rooms, Awasos appeared, suddenly running alongside us in wolf form. The remainder of my stay in Citadel was a blur, in every sense of the word. Just enough time to grab some clothes and money and then I was gone.

  Chapter 36

  The restaurant was called Matty’s Steakhouse. It was on East 46th and it looked inviting. Big awning over the sidewalk with the name Matty’s on the side. Plus it was a steakhouse, which is the best place for a growing were bear-wolf.

  I had wandered the streets of Manhattan for several hours after rushing up and out of Citadel, Awasos by my side. Frankly I was a mess, a seething cauldron of conflicting emotions and dark thoughts. I was devastated that Tanya was staying behind. Sure, it made logical sense for her to try and defuse the situation, but logic isn’t always my strong point. So I felt halved, sundered, and incomplete. But a whole other part of me was rejoicing in being above ground, with humans and far from vampires, especially old vampires. Have you ever been to New York City? It’s a really busy place – lots of life and huge energy. It felt great after the solemn and cold world of Darkkin.

  I was also wrapped up in trying to figure out what the fuck had happened. How had the situation gone in the shitter so fast? I have a healthy dollop of paranoia in my character, the result of being the target of demonkind my whole life. So the filter I was using to sift through recent events kept kicking out conspiracy theories. Unlike UFO’s and government mind control, conspiracies in the vampire world are often more twisted and fucked up than even the most drugged out mind could come up with.

  How had an obviously under-aged kid made it through the Coven’s vetting process for donors? Why was she there at precisely the same time I was? Why had she been slated to be the lunch morsel for the biggest douchebag in the Conclave? Why had Chet been attacked by allegedly German vampires? And the big question that kept popping up in my mind – why had Senka looked satisfied, even for a split second, by my killing Frimunt?

  So, I was in a fine state of mind when the restaurant appeared. Anger? Outrage? Offended? You bet and a whole lot more. Thirty minutes on the streets and I was already tired of being stared at. Luckily that had died right off not long after, which in hindsight should have caught my attention. How does an angry looking guy in disheveled clothes with a small backpack, purple eyes and a huge wolf go unnoticed on the streets of New York?

  For that matter how does the same guy and wolf walk into a well-run restaurant in Manhattan and claim a table without getting thrown out?

  The waiters and waitresses walked right by our table for ten minutes before I finally spoke up to one of them. The waiter damn near jumped right off the floor when I asked for a menu. Giving me a strange look, he hastily complied. From there it was easy to get a pint of beer, four appetizers (Lump crab cakes, seared scallops, jumbo shrimp cocktail and an order of calamari), a wild boar chop (they had wild game on the menu), buffalo filet and two rib-eye steaks with all the extras. The looks I got were even more curious, but no one commented on the 250 pound wolf at my feet who was eating slightly more than his share of our dinner. That is until halfway through the rib-eyes when a passing waitress let out a little shriek and promptly beelined for the manager.

  His eyes almost burst out of his head when he focused on the furry mass by my chair. Slightly over six feet tall with a beefy frame that was going to fat, dark hair and a full mustache and goatee, Shane the manager (that’s what his nametag said) came right over.

  “Sir! You cannot have that…animal in here! This is a restaurant!”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that when we came in? I followed you right to this table,” I said. I actually had followed him as he walked
through the restaurant, but I don’t think he had noticed me behind him.

  “You most certainly did not!” he said.

  “Check your damn security videos,” I said, pointing at the camera on the wall with a meat laden fork.

  “What? Don’t be absurd! Leave now or I’m calling the police,” he said.

  I was so not in the mood for ultimatums. Pushed around by beings nine and ten centuries old was bad enough, being harassed by an out of shape thirty something wasn’t gonna fly.

  “Call um. We’re finishing our steaks. Then we’ll leave. Although this is gonna impact my tip,” I said while chewing.

  A foot patrol showed up fifteen minutes later while I was tossing my potato to Mr. Furryface, who really likes sour cream and waiting for my waiter to run my credit card. A male and female team in NYPD blue. The guy was a veteran of the force, tough looking but his body was going to fat. The girl was young, just out of the Academy. He looked Italian; she was tiny, Asian and kind of cute. Must have been hell to get through the Academy looking like a Japanese schoolgirl.