by J. Armand
Noah zipped forward and grabbed me by the neck with spite in his eyes. “I risked my life to save you when I thought you were being attacked by another stupid Ancient.”
“You don’t scare me.” I flew back and broke his hold on me.
“You only have the balls to stand up to me because I taught you to be strong. You’re only alive because of me. You aren’t as unkillable as you think.”
“That’s what I was hoping to hear,” A voice rang out from the trees. It was William’s. He stood off to the side. Who knew how long he’d been watching. This was the second time he’d snuck up without either of us noticing him.
“Perfect timing.” Noah smirked at him. “We were just discussing dinner plans.”
“Don’t you dare,” I stated firmly.
“I’ll see you dead before I leave this place, monster!” William came toward us, hunched over. His sword was drawn and he wore his battle armor. He looked dreadful. His eyes were crazed and his skin was so pallid the veins were distinctly visible. He had let himself deteriorate for far too long. Had I been mortal, his image was most likely a reflection of what I would have looked like. “You are an unnatural abomination and an affront to God!”
“I’m not fighting you, William. I’m the same person you knew before. I’m not a monster, or a demon, or whatever. I’m Dorian.”
“You are the creation of undead mad scientists, a parasite from another dimension, and forbidden demonic magic,” Noah added.
“Shut up, Noah! You aren’t helping.” I glared at him and turned back to William. “I joined you because I thought we were both fighting for the same thing, but you hate anyone who’s different. It’s people like you that are holding the world back from peace. It’s people like you that make the innocent suffer and afraid to be themselves. Look at what you did to your own girlfriend. Maybe God can forgive your unspeakable acts, but that doesn’t fix anything.”
“Don’t you dare pretend to know better than the Lord! I was keeping the world safe from the evil inside her by locking her away, but now I see there’s no breaking the hold that Hell has on her. If you won’t fight then make it easy for me and die so I can end Emily’s misery in that twisted form.”
“Are you nuts? You’re going to kill the girl you love? She’s the same person! She still loves you.”
“Liar! The monster inside her will say anything to trick me into letting my guard down. It ran at first opportunity to go prey on good, normal people and spread its evil. Fight me, or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Soon the rest of the Brotherhood will be here. You can’t run from us all, not forever. Did you think nobody would notice you terrorizing the city?”
“Most of that wasn’t me. I was fighting to survive and trying to draw harm away from others. I know you’re not going to listen, but there are good and bad of my kind, just like yours.”
“That’s not my concern. I slay the monsters at God’s command, He sorts them out.”
“All right, I’ve had enough of this waste of time.” Noah, who had been remarkably silent, marched up to William.
“Don’t hurt him, Noah!” I warned. “It’ll only make him right about us. Remember what you said about there being no honor in killing the weak.”
“Unlike you, I don’t care about being called a monster,” he retorted and smacked the sword from William’s hands. “Not so tough without your sparkly trinket, are ya?” I heard him say under his breath. Noah pulled William’s hood off and put him in an arm-lock. His fangs punctured the skin of William’s neck as he began feeding. William struggled for a moment, reaching back to grab at Noah, but was quickly eased by the bite.
I separated Noah from William with a telekinetic shot to the forehead. Noah zoomed behind me now, infuriated that I intervened.
“I told you not to touch him!” I shouted and floated to face him eye-to-eye.
“I don’t take orders from you!” Noah yelled back. “I’m hungry! What do you want me to do? I wasn’t gonna kill him, I just wanted to knock him out so we can move on already! You know it doesn’t hurt.”
“We’ve already got enough problems. Why do you need to make everything more complicated?” I wasn’t about to back down until I heard William screaming behind me.
“No! I will never be one of you!” he wailed. “My soul is meant for God, not the Devil!”
“Relax!” Noah barked at him. “That’s not how you turn undead, you idiot. I wouldn’t want to be linked to you in the first place.”
“I can feel it inside me!” William carried on, dropping to his knees and pulling at his hair. “The corruption will stain my soul black!”
“William, chill out. It’s gonna be okay,” I coaxed. “There’s nothing inside you. He didn’t do anything to turn you.” I approached carefully to try and calm him, but I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. He was already so far gone I didn’t know what he would do.
He was clutching his rosary and praying frantically. He stopped suddenly and threw his head back.
“God, forgive me!” he shouted to the sky. In one movement, he grabbed a dagger from his belt and dragged it across his neck.
“Don’t!” I tried to stop him, but the blade was already more than halfway through. Blood gurgled up from his mouth and sprayed me from the slice in his neck.
“Noah, help me! Give him some of your blood!” I tore a long piece from the bottom of my shirt to apply pressure to the wound, but it was soaked through almost instantly.
“I’m sure he’d want that,” Noah quipped. “He freaked out from a two-second bite. What’s he going to do with ‘evil blood’ in his veins?”
“Just do something!” I pleaded. There was no stop to the bleeding. William’s eyes were filled with tears and going dark as his life faded.
“I don’t have any blood to give in the first place. Put him out of his misery if you really want to help him. He’s suffering a slow, painful death.”
“I can’t… I can’t do that.” I wanted to cry myself. How could something so good turn into this?
“Why do you care so much? He’s just another worthless human whose name you’re not even going to remember. They die all the time. This one chose the coward’s way out.”
“People aren’t worthless! We had different beliefs, but I never wanted it to end like this.” My hands were dripping with William’s blood and I didn’t know what else to do but shout at Noah. “I never want to turn into the empty person you are.”
“You’re only upset because you think if you pretend to care you won’t be labeled a monster. I didn’t know the guy was gonna do that, okay? We’ll get you another one later. We’ve got a plane to catch. I know I’m fast, but-”
“ENOUGH!” I screamed. I didn’t mean to, but I let loose a shockwave the split the earth around us and leveled the trees, snapping the thickest oaks like twigs and leaving only a small barren crater.
A gunshot followed the sound of crashing trees. More of William’s blood splattered my face and clothes as his body went limp. I checked the now-clear area and saw Owen and Micah.
“Someone had to,” Micah said and holstered his gun.
“I didn’t do it,” I told them. I was still holding on to William’s now-dead body. I closed his eyes and stood to face the brothers.
“Doesn’t matter. What’s done is done.” Owen shrugged.
“It matters to me,” I said. “It didn’t have to come to this. It never does.”
Owen came to look the body over. “He killed a couple in town he claimed were demons when we got here. They weren’t.”
“He’s gone bonkers. It’s not your fault he had a screw loose.” Micah sighed and searched William’s pockets. “Bloody hell, that’ll be a bitch of a cover up to pull off. Right out in the open. Witnesses and all. At least this we can blame on a sinkhole. Media loves those.” He indicated the crater around us.
“Guess he couldn’t handle the suit after all,” Owen said to him and picked up William’s body.
“What do you mea
n couldn’t handle the suit?” I asked. Noah, who had been far too quiet, had vanished at some point.
“They’re made of demon hide,” Micah explained. “Hellhound to be exact. Easy-to-kill low-level mutts from Hell. The leather is bulletproof and immune to fire, and trying to cut it is like slicing through chainmail with a butter knife, but it weighs as little as cloth. We gave him the old set. Fashion was never his thing. I don’t think he noticed how ridiculous he looked.”
“Yeah… he wasn’t big on clothes,” I remembered out loud, feeling even sadder now. “I always thought it looked silly.”
“The armor will drive even the sanest person mad and turn the most pure heart dark if worn too long,” Owen continued. “We thought out of all of us, Willy would be the most resistant to it. There’s a finer line between sinner and saint than we expected, I guess.”
“Did he know what the suit was made from?”
“We never told him, but I had a feeling he knew by the end,” Micah claimed. “He would have never put the bloody thing on in the first place if we told him.”
“Aren’t you worried the same thing will happen to you?”
“Oh please,” Owen said. I followed them to a parked car. Owen loaded William’s body into the trunk. “He wanted power more than the rest of us. Not everybody gets to fly around tearing up the landscape for fun with their mind.”
“There’s no part of this that’s fun,” I defended myself.
“Then you’re doing it wrong, mate.” Micah jumped in the driver’s seat.
“Where’d you get those sets of armor?” I asked before they left.
“Willy’s was passed down from the original Blackbourne Brotherhood. We got ours off the black market, you could say. Costly, but nothing a spot of insider trading and extortion couldn’t make up for.” Micah grinned and revved the engine. “We’ve got a party to attend. Cheers, kiddo!”
It was still dark out when the Blackbournes drove off, and Noah was nowhere in sight. I found a patch of trees away from the road and curled up. The sight of William’s face as he died haunted me.
Something nearby smelled like it was burning and I could hear voices – possibly a search party investigating the crater I had left.
“What are you talking about?” one of the voices asked. The sound of a girl crying cut through the night air. They must have found William’s blood. “You never told me your father worked in New York.”
I was so tired, but more afraid than ever to fall asleep. I had to move somewhere else so I wouldn’t be disturbed.
“Dorian.” The voice called out to me and I froze. “What is going on? First you go overboard killing that thing, now you think we’re in Boston? You’re losing it, man.”
Not this. Not again. When are these episodes going to stop?
“Leave me alone!” I flew up above the trees and screamed.
“What do you want me to do, Dorian? Kill a little kid?” the voice yelled back. It was Lyle’s voice. This whole scene had played out once before back in the hospital we rescued Emilia from three years ago. My humanity was quickly slipping away as rage and revenge fueled my bloodlust against the Carpathians who took my family from me. Emilia was infected with the same parasite my parents and I had been, and for a moment I found it hard to differentiate her from the monsters. If Lyle hadn’t been there to protect her… I don’t want to think of what may have happened.
“I didn’t want anyone to die! I’M NOT A MONSTER!” I lost control again and rocked the ground, creating another sinkhole – this one even larger than the last. I was drained after that and couldn’t keep myself afloat. I sunk into the darkness below for what seemed like miles. I opened my eyes. I was sitting under the tree again.
“You still mad?” Noah was standing in the crater in front of me. “I really didn’t know he was going to do something that stupid.”
The burning smell I’d sensed earlier was coming from beside me. I realized I wasn’t smelling burning at all. The source of the smell was a big white pizza box with an entire large pizza inside. Next to the box was a neatly folded pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Did you get this stuff?” I asked.
“No, I ordered fucking take-out and told them to leave it in the woods next to the annoying little shit.”
“And the clothes?”
“They were having a special.”
“Thanks,” I said. The pizza smelled great and was still warm. I hadn’t eaten real food in a while, but I just wasn’t hungry. “I miss Japan. Things were simple there. Whenever I’m around people I’m always worried what’s going to happen and what they’re going to think. What if they’re right?”
“I thought I was a good person and bad things just happen around me, but that amulet of William’s… it reacted to me when I went back to their place. Maybe I’m the one causing the bad things to happen. Maybe they aren’t mistakes. What if I can’t stop myself from becoming what the Strigoi intended?”
“You’re not turning evil,” Noah sighed. “I don’t believe some piece of jewelry can tell if a person is good or not. I knew that was the first place you’d go, so I fed you my blood on the plane to Germany when you dozed off. The rock was reacting to my blood inside you and as long as it was then you couldn’t use it against me.”
Hearing that he had pulled a trick like that didn’t surprise me. I should have been angry, but I couldn’t help feeling relieved that my fate wasn’t sealed. From anyone else the meager peace offering of clean clothes and pizza wouldn’t even begin to cut it, but from him it was a monumental step.
“You better eat that whole thing. You’re always cranky when you’re hungry and I don’t want you blowing anything up when we leave for Japan.” He attempted to steer the conversation in another direction before I could respond. “And don’t ruin those clothes by tonight either, since it’s too late to go now.” Noah disappeared just in time as the first few rays of dawn breached the horizon, leaving me to my pizza and my thoughts.
Chapter Fourteen
“Dorian, why do you sleep out here?” Gianluca’s smooth Italian accent welcomed me back to the world. “Where is your home? I can take you there.”
The sun was at its peak when I opened my eyes, but it only provided meager warmth on the chilly December day. I hadn’t expected to see Gianluca again so soon. Judging by his concerned expression, it didn’t seem there were any bad feelings between us after Noah’s rude dismissal.
“I don’t have a home.”
“You have a family, no?” Gianluca’s concern deepened as he glanced at the half-empty pizza box and bloodstained rags I had changed out of.
“No.” I really didn’t want to talk about them. “They’re dead.”
“Oh… I am sorry. I think maybe you are so young, maybe you have a family… to go there.” He sounded sincere, but I was more apprehensive than ever about opening up to new people after the ordeal with William. It seemed like the better that things started, the worse they ended.
“I am young. I didn’t outlive them naturally, if that’s what you mean. They were murdered.”
“Come.” Gianluca held out his hand to help me to my feet, but I backed away reflexively. “I will take you someplace nice.”
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about it. I can take care of myself.”
“You do not trust me.” He frowned. “This is not a place for someone like you to sleep.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone like me’?” I shot back a bit defensively.
“It is for the animals, not for a beautiful young man.” He could have come back with anything and it would have sounded just as good in his voice. I failed at staving off a smile.
“I’ll be fine,” I restated in a more convincing tone. “Noah will be looking for me once the sun goes down, so I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Your friend?”
“I don’t know if I’d call him a friend exactly.”
Gianluca looked puzzled, but I knew it wasn’t the language barrier. My relatio
nship to Noah was just as confusing to me.
“He is your master?” It was an odd question – odd for this time period. I had to remember to whom I was speaking. Gianluca didn’t dress like he was stuck in his era, which made me wonder what inspired him to be so modern.
“Oh, no! He tries to act like it sometimes. He was more of a mentor, a teacher, but not as much lately.”
“What does he teach to you? He is like, hm, Eastern warrior, no? He wear the armor, the bottom part, and the writing on the skin.” Gianluca laughed at himself. “It is ka-ra-te? I do not know the word.”
“I think you mean ninja.” I joined in with his laughter. Noah would have been so pissed if he’d heard us, which only made it better. “He knows it all, but we haven’t gotten up to that stuff yet.”
“But the sword is not for you. You have a passion for the architecture. Why do you not do this?”
“I use my powers, not a sword, but I can’t be an architect. I’m not human. I’m not normal. I was going to study architecture in school, but everything changed. Now I can’t go one day without being attacked by somebody, so I have to learn how to defend myself.”
“In Roma, all the boys learn to use a sword when they are very young. When they are a man many are a soldier, but some are a farmer, some architect, many things. There is always a battle, but not all free men fight. That is the soldiers’ passion.”
“This isn’t the Roman Empire and we’re not human.”
“We are men. The world is very different, but very similar. I see many wars, but always beauty. The world needs the architect to build the city after the soldier fight the war, and the farmer to feed them.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Gianluca. If I was human, yes.”
“Why does this matter?” He was starting to get agitated. “Who tells you this? Your teacher?”
“Yeah, but not only him. I see it for myself. When I get involved with people, bad things happen. You saw it at the museum. How can I be an architect when I always have to watch my back?”
