Though Rostov had lost his mind he wasn't out of his mind. I could see the fear glittering in his eyes even if I couldn't see the color of those eyes. It was in his eyes. It cracked within his voice. I smelled his pheromone response as the breeze wafted across him and carried it to me. The musk of his fear-sweat.
I had created Rostov myself. Not my biological child but of those Vampires I created in my first wave of Vampire-producing insanity. Insanity for many reasons, but mostly because I had chosen so poorly. Most of those I had created went rogue immediately. Those were the Vampires which had created such havoc, and made such a terrible reputation for us, that we were feared ever after.
It was a strange twist it should come to this. Rostov had not been one of those with immediate sociopathic tendencies. His megalomania grew with the eons. Now, all this time later, and knowing something more of how the Vampire ego worked, and having watched Sonafi struggle to become the good being she was evermore becoming, I wondered if I had weeded the wrong vampires from the gene pool. The children Sonafi now bore were evolved beings. The entire Vampire line is a work in progress and it has made remarkable progress considering our origins. Two species not even evolved on the same world or even, most likely, within the same Galaxy. I had failed with Rostov. I knew that now. The insanity twisting his features became ever clearer as he approached.
Rostov would not run. That much could be said about him. He knew the futility of that effort. He could not outrun me. He would not try. He advanced. Hate marred the otherwise aesthetic features for which I had chosen him in the first place. I had meant that my new vampire society would be comprised of only the very best specimens humanity had to offer. I had not chosen spontaneously, but had studied each individual in-depth. Rostov had had many admirable seeming characteristics. His aesthetic appearance. Intelligence. Cunning. A clean and fastidious dresser, and this at a time when, as a whole, humans were among the filthiest, meanest animals alive on this planet. It was Humans like Rostov whom I emulated to acquire the exterior facade of sophistication I mistook for so much more. That I mistook for humanity, before I understood what that could mean. I was not happy it had come to this, but Rostov had gone completely rogue and had to be stopped. He had learned to rule by terror and murder and that left an indelible mark upon a being. He could never be trusted again.
I did not need to twirl my blade in my hand, or cast it from hand to hand, or do any of those other fancy things television and wide screen like to show of the masters of old as seeming to find necessary before they fought, nor did Rostov, after the one to settle the blade in his hand. We met one another surely, our blades held loosely but securely, on guard sizing one another immediately.
“You're the worst tyrant of us all!” Rostov snarled as we began to circle one another and then came at me with a flurry of attacks that banished any thoughts that this would be for me an easy contest. I'd forgotten what it was like to face an opponent of Rostov's caliber. Though I was the Elder, Rostov was still the same Vampire whose human characteristics had appealed to me in the first. His fastidious habits for cleanliness, his cunning and intelligence, his work ethic, had kept him in his dojo, or his gym, or whatever Russian equivalent he now used. His attacks were confident, sure and powerful. If I had not maintained my own practice (on the flat of my roof since I had lived in St. Louis) Rostov would've made quick work of me, despite my advantages.
As it were I found myself pressed back as I parried his furious attack. The ring of steel as blade met blade was the purest sound I have ever heard. Here was a blade, it became obvious, which was an equal of my own. I did not have much time to think about it, however, as his blade continued to pursue me, and I, to give ground.
The fight was entirely one-sided as he continued to push me back, I realizing belatedly that Rostov was the superior fighter. It wasn't the amount of training, or the school of instruction, but that he was inherently better. He had inherited better genes from his human parents than I had. The fight was not going to be over quickly and the outcome was still to be determined.
Our blades were dancing blurs around us, their song a primordial one. One of violence, conflict and ever surety of looming death. The symbolic music lashed against me in an ever increasing tempo that pulsed through my blood as much as it sang in the air around us while we danced our macabre, seemingly choreographed rhythms to the accompaniment of the ringing clash of the swords as they met, sang and then met again in an arpeggio of riposte and parry.
Rostov's attack was furious to control. He was attempting to finish me quickly, yet at the same time pacing it for the long fight. He knew I was the stronger. That I would tire more slowly. I saw the growing light of understanding within his eyes, even though I could still not see the eyes themselves. It was more the reading of his body language, desperation of his attack and what I could read of his closed mind.
Words cannot fully or adequately describe a contest between two beings that occurred beyond the range of what a Human being could perceive. It would take months, maybe years, to describe, blow for blow, what occurred at hyper-accelerated speeds in only short minutes. The crash as the blades connected would've been as one continuous ring to a human's ears. A Human would only have seen the blurring of the air in a small area in which we fought.
We hammered the ground under our feet to compacted, solid soil, trampling underfoot what had been beautifully manicured lawn. To a Human it might have appeared as if a small tornado churned along the ground, ripping up the grass and leaving naught but barren earth behind. A few of Rostov’s surviving Juveniles had gathered around us now and to them our movements would be impossible to follow. They were far too young and none attempted to interfere. This was now a conflict between Elders, of challenged and challenger, and the rules were clear. They would complacently await the outcome.
I still fought the defense because time was on my side. I allowed him his every attack without rebuttal, letting him spend himself against the bulwark of my superior strength. He was slowing and tiring but I was no such fool as to trust the full extent of his apparent exhaustion. I was sure he was feigning exaggerated exhaustion. He was a consummate fighter and would have a last-ditch trick or two held in reserve. He had lived a long life and survived by cunning alone through most of it. Brute force could only take you so far. After that a being needed cunning and intelligence. Rostov had that in spades. I would not be drawn into overconfidence by his seeming display of weakening strength. I did not trust it.
Still I failed to press the attack. I continued on the defensive, but I began to slow my retreat. To add force to my parries and to test the limits of Rostov's endurance. Each time our blades came together the force of their contact vibrated all the way up my arm and into my shoulder. I pushed my parries to the limit of my own strength, until it was a struggle to hold my own blade, and saw the agony written on Rostov's face as he fought the same battle; that of his waning strength and the knowledge of what would occur if he gave up his grip before I! He could not beat me and suddenly he knew it.
He turned and rushed Sonafi. The distance separating them was small, the loose circle she and the Juveniles had formed moving as we moved, and he had to take but several steps to be upon her. I had not expected the move though I should have. I could not get to him in time though I tried, springing towards his back. I had not expected the move, but Sonafi had.
At some point she had retrieved the long knife I had appropriated to curtail Rostov's flight, and both it and its mate now appeared in her hands, but not until those same hands delved into other places of concealment and came out with little bits of shaped steel fragments, which she whipped into Rostov's eyes as he heedlessly rushed her. He was in no way prepared for Sonafi's attack, and caught completely off-guard, he was unable to avoid the thrown metal objects.
They ripped into his eyes, making mush of the soft tissue. They cut his entire face to ribbons and completely blinded, screaming in impotent fury, he struck out at her with his sword, but she was no long
er where she had been, when he had possessed the eyes with which to see her. By the time I reached Rostov, his head was already arcing through the air, spouting blood, and his right hand lopped off at the wrist. Still hyper-accelerated, I reached out to collect his sword as it fell towards the ground but let the body and head fall where they would. There was no recovering from decapitation, not even for a Vampire. I removed Rostov's hand and let it fall to the ground beside his head and body. All three separated body parts began immediately to decay. A Vampire's blood is highly acidic and will dissolve most ordinary substances it comes into contact with. Once the Vampire’s life has fled it will immediately begin to dissolve the Vampire himself. Within ten minutes nothing would remain but a burned spot on the ground. I put my own Cumosachi away to examine the new weapon. It was exquisite. No question about that.
“We bow to you in obeisance, Masters.” Volga said, stepping forward then sinking to her knees and bowing her head quickly to the ground. The other Juveniles did the same, except for Patar, whom I noticed lag slightly behind the others, and then did so only grudgingly, but I am not, we are not, Masters as require such foolish, outdated displays of fealty.
“This is not the medieval age and I your liege lord!” I said. This was the kind of thinking which had cost so many lives already and most certainly not what this was about. “Get up! All of you! The old days are gone. Better that you should follow Brid than I. This is not what I came here for.”
“Follow Brid?” Volga questioned when she was on her feet. Brid to her was no more than a name on her computer screen, even if he was responsible for many of the good things the Community had accomplished.
“Maybe we should bring her with us?” Sonafi suggested. “She's old enough to be of some use to us.”
I looked at Volga and saw the only vampire with any chance at all of holding this very fledgling Community together now. With no Elders to lead, even if that leadership might be flawed, they would need at least her and her five hundred years of life-experience.
“I think she will be needed here.” I said. “I think it will be hard for them here before it gets better.”
“If there is a world to get better in.” Sonafi said.
She made a good point.
Chapter 12
Volga had been Rostov's Human plaything before turning her into a vampire. After which he quickly tired of her. Having been a cruel vampire, she had become immediately afraid of him once she realized what he really was, and she was unable to hide her true feelings. One Vampire could not hide their true feelings from another. The body betrayed itself.
Volga proved to be indispensably helpful to us in the next hour. She took us in her little car, sending the recalcitrant Patar with one of the others and driving us back to St. Petersburg and her own flat. The city was a miss mash of older tenements mixed with modern apartment complexes, but Volga took us to one of the older, rundown buildings.
“It isn't much but people here don't ask a lot of questions.” Volga said as she found a parking spot. There were a lot of empty spots so it wasn't a difficulty. “It can be decidedly dangerous to be too inquisitive here, and it's dangerous enough without drawing additional attention. People tend to mind their own business here.”
I could see, lounging around the main entrance doors to the high-rise tenement, some of the reasons why average people might think it prudent to keep their mouths shut and their opinions to themselves. The Russian version of skinheads, hardly decipherable from the skinheads to be found in other countries, except that Russia's version would be by far the more dangerous.
“They look friendly.” Sonafi commented.
“Russian mafia.” Volga said. “They sell drugs. I pay them protection money and they make sure I am left alone. They are not to be trifled with. They are very dangerous.”
We exited the car and walked towards the front entrance of Volga's apartment tenement and the group of skinheads lounging on the concrete steps. They ignored us as we went in.
The interior of the building was far worse than it had appeared from the outside. The roof or plumbing had leaked throughout the entire building and the plaster of the ceilings was crumbling away in many places. Graffiti and artwork covered many of the walls. Intoxicated or drugged people lay in the corridors right where they had fallen and as we went along the sense that we were being watched was very strong, though I did not actually allow my senses to seek them out. Here was fear, paranoia and distrust, but no overt hostility.
Volga's flat was the one ray of sunshine in the whole mess. Though Volga was five hundred odd years, she was all of the new school of computer and electronic techies to which Brid belonged. I was sure the sigh I heard pass Sonafi's lips had everything to do with the computer and electronics gear seen everywhere about the apartment. It was obvious that Sonafi did not like long to be separated from her connection, and not the kind of connection that was sitting on the steps out front. I was beginning to wonder if I was the only technological hold-out among the entire Community.
“This looks like the NASA operations center.” I said as I looked around. It was actually two apartments connected by an interior door. The second apartment had been usurped completely. One entire wall was covered with what I recognized as stacked servers. The size of the wall had apparently been the limiting factor inhibiting further growth of the server array, they themselves all interconnected and powered up. There were all manner of electronic components and gear spread throughout the second room, most of which I had to admit I did not recognize. Much of it appeared to have been built by Volga herself. I did recognize a ham radio set, which seemed to be out of place here among all the other really high-tech stuff.
“Oh that!” Volga said self-consciously, having noted my interest, and as if embarrassed to possess it. “That's just an old hobby, but it could prove to come in handy. In a breakdown of civilized society, all I would need is a power source and I could communicate with anyone anywhere in the world.”
“When this civilization breaks down,” Sonafi said, “I do not think you will want to be advertising your whereabouts.” She was examining the proliferation of computers and electronics in this apartment and thinking this was Brid in twenty years. There was enough electricity running through this place to power the whole rest of the building.
“Has it come so far as all that?” Volga asked, sensing the undercurrent of what had not been said as much as what had, and also familiar of course through the network of everything the various members of the Community were doing to curtail just such an eventuality.
“That day is not getting any farther away.” Sonafi said. “It can only draw nearer.''
''Nor do we know to what lengths they will go to stop us.'' I said, suddenly wishing that I had more than just my walking cane sword. My Cumosachi Katana and the new weapon I had acquired from Rostov were both locked in Volga's car, which she had assured me would be perfectly safe. She paid for protection. No one would bother her car.
Not that tracking my sword would prove to be in any way difficult. A bloodhound had nothing on the Vampire, and I would follow he who took my Cumosachi through space and time, if necessary, to retrieve it. The weapon I had taken from Rostov was the equal of my own but would never hold the sentimental value that the Cumosachi did. If there had ever been any one human whose innate goodness had been a sure sign to me of the existence of an omnipotent God, it had been Hamaterara Cumosachi. Hamaterara had been a man who was never wrong, because he knew his place in the cosmic order of things was a small one, and he was not deluded into thinking he could know things. At most, upon occasion, I had been able to convince him to give an opinion, but that was as far as he would commit himself to matters of fact.
Volga was lost in showing off her electronics and computer components to a very enthused Sonafi, and I doubted if I could have separated them with a stick. It was while I was trying to catch the drift of their conversation that I felt the first inkling that something was wrong.
The clic
k as I turned the head of my cane, and the whick of steel on steel as I removed the sword part of it from its sheath, was all the warning Sonafi needed. We had been attacked together too many times for words to be necessary at the moment of truth.
Volga was only a moment slower than Sonafi. She reached into her own baggy clothing, in much the same way as Sonafi and came out with a blade that seemed nearly too long to have been hidden anywhere upon her person. She moved none too quickly, because suddenly they were upon us.
They came through the flimsy drop ceiling. They came with only the barest whisper of warning and they came quickly. It had been fourteen years since we last saw the Others, but it was as if those years were nothing now. It was as if no time had passed at all when I saw those ceiling tiles buckle and fall in, and the Others falling through on top of them. As if this was no more than a continuance of the endless possibilities that existed between us, or so it seemed to me.
There were maybe two dozen of them, I estimated as I moved. I moved towards Sonafi and Volga. Sonafi is a fierce fighter. An Elder whom I did not believe could find herself overwhelmed by herself, whom had overcome every opponent she had ever faced, and who only grew in prowess as she aged, but Volga was a different matter. Volga was in very serious danger. I rushed towards them even as the Others fell around us.
If I had stopped to think about it, with the odds which we now face, I should have concluded that we were all in serious danger, but I could never think like that. Maybe I am a fool.
The others are in no wise similar to us except in overall appearance. Bipedal, they walked on their rear legs like Humans, like Vampires, but their arms were longer and reached to well below their knees. Their hands are three fingered but have a similar, opposable thumb. They were shorter than us and thin to the point where they seemed emaciated. They wore clothes that were formfitting and almost like a second skin. Whatever material they were made of stretched and moved with their wearers every motion. Drab gray in color. Their shoes were thin and formfitting and seemed to be of one piece with their clothing. They possessed no obvious fasteners and must have been fabricated from some kind of stretchable memory material. It was their face and their eyes which most distinguished the Others from their Vampire and Human cousins.
The Alien Agenda Page 11
