by J. X. Evans
The man darted up the steps, reaching Zora in the blink of an eye, thrusting his big sword to impale her but evidently he did not expect her to move that fast. Zora evaded to the right, matching his speed, easily avoiding the big crude weapon. She moved closer by jumping down three steps so that she was now close to him. Slicing at him with her daggers in blurring speed, but the man’s armor was as durable as it looked and her daggers glided on the bright metal, leaving a trail of bright sparks behind them each time. The man dodged and ducked as Zora aimed for his unprotected neck and he tried to swing his big sword, but the narrow stair case left him at a disadvantage in that regard, Zora was too fast for him and she was crazed with the heat of battle. Her blood splattered hands and daggers darting everywhere, her breath bellowing faster and harder, sweat dripping from her short black hair, forming red and grey trails through her blood splattered madly grinning face…she felt alive.
Zora pierced the man’s left ear lobe with a dagger, separating it from the rest of his ear. A spasm of anger passed through the man’s face and he accepted the fact that his sword was no use at the cramped up space of the staircase, so he let it drop, continuously dodging Zora’s attacks and letting them glide off his gleaming armor. He let the sword drop and clasped Zora’s left hand in the same fluid motion. He squeezed, he squeezed so hard that her hand turned white as the pressure at her arteries prevented them from doing their job of transferring blood from her heart to her hand. Her grip relaxed on the dagger’s hilt slightly, not because she wanted it to, but because the man was squeezing it so hard that her hand opened by itself. Zora concentrated on the small sapphire gem dangling from the golden chain that was now being pressed tight between her own wrist and the black man’s palm, the bastard was in for a shocking surprise. The sapphire glowed blue through the slight gaps between the man’s fingers, it buzzed and a wave of electricity exploded outwards from it. The backlash from using the sapphire left her whole arm tingling, she could feel her muscles twitching and her hair standing up all the way up her arm and even on the back of her head and neck.
Something strange happened then…the electricity should have coursed through the man’s palm, all the way down his legs and out on the wooden steps, exciting every nerve of his that it happened to meet along the way, forcing his muscles to flex, resulting to his hand slightly unclenching as his finger extensors on the back of his forearm started pulling against his contractors on the front of his forearm. That is what should have happened, along with his legs getting wobbly and his bladder empty. Instead, the blue glowing current of electricity started visibly climbing up and around the man’s clenched fist, riding on top of his skin like a surfer on a wave and finally up his wrist where it gathered around a big oval shaped black gemstone engraved in an expensive leather wrist guard which immediately started absorbing and sucking all the energy of the electricity in a whirl of dark blue color, while thin black trails of smoke started rising from its surface. Zora could not believe her own eyes, she could not even begin believing them. Her grin and enthusiasm got slightly soured. She desperately wanted things to get interesting and serious, but maybe not that serious. This was quickly approaching the area of extremely dangerous. She wanted to feel alive and escape boredom and routine, she did not want to die in the process. Dying was actually at the bottom of the list of things that she wanted to do.
The man seemed distracted from the effect of the noctis gem, pleasantly surprised maybe, and a crazy smile appeared on his angry, mad face. Zora did not like it, so she head butted the man right on his nose, breaking it with an audible crack, pale red blood spewing everywhere. The man’s head snapped back hard, but he did not let go of her hand. She jumped, planting her left boot on his right shoulder and using his own strength as he pulled on her hand for balance, she brought the hill of her right heavy work boot into his face as hard as she could, driving her heel in his mouth. He let her go then, toppling down the stairs, there was not much else that he could have done after such a blow, and Zora’s grin returned to its previous degree of crazed amusement as she landed lightly as a cat on the corpse ridden ladder. Things had gotten a hell of a lot better than she had expected.
The monsters around the base of the stairs caught the black man before he could tumble all the way down, softening his fall and then they started running, all together, up the stairs like a wild horde, shrieking and stepping on top of one another. Hands reaching for her as they brainlessly hindered each other’s progress trying to fit all together at the narrow space. Some of them getting flung from the side of the staircase by their comrades while others getting pressed together or against the wall so hard that they could barely move. Zora got only slightly fuddled by their sudden unanimous change in temperament and not for longer than half a heartbeat. She run up the stairs while concentrating on the small ruby dangling from the golden chain on her still tingling left hand. She let the energy flow outwards and a lance of fire exploded forth, setting all the monsters in the front row aflame in a sizzling foul smelling inferno that rapidly spread to the creatures standing behind them, and the ones behind them, and the stairs, and the floor and the furniture until the whole battered shop was set aflame in seconds…it was high time they left.
She reached the top floor to it layered with blackened limbs and blood and cut down monsters. She looked around and noticed Pericles coming out of an unhindged, blood splattered door, wearing an old fashioned big leather duster and carrying a ridiculously large shield on one arm, like the ones that the Order issued for protection against some monsters, only bigger than the usual size. There was another leather coat hanging from the rim of the shield and dragging on the floor, his free hand grasping his stomach as if he was in serious pain.
“ARE YOU BLOODY CRAZY?” he shouted at her, his eyes wide as he stared past her at the crumbling staircase and the small segment of the café that was visible from where he was standing, the red couch and the old jukebox that Rob was so fond of, slowly being engulfed by flames.
“Let’s go, fast.” Zora grabbed him by the elbow, edging him towards an open window which was facing the back alley. “We need to retreat immediately. Where are you taking this piece of metal? Leave it”
“Mind your business.” Perry said more to himself than to her as he moved towards the window, shaking her hand off him. They both jumped through the window, Zora light as a feather, Perry grunting, the heavy shield smashing audibly against the wet asphalt, leaving a small crack at the point where its rim connected. The alley was brimming with monsters when Zora had taken a quick glance earlier through the kitchen’s back door, but now, it was completely empty. Bright yellow-red light was coming through the door and the windows, the fire had spread too quickly, and there was nothing to be done to save the building. It would burn. A window cracked outwards from the high pressure of the warming air inside the building and glass fell everywhere, some of them flinging against her pants. Zora let Pericles stare at the building, he acted as if it was a living thing for crying out loud. She got in the driver’s seat, turned the engine on, and she remembered the stupid minotaur. ‘Fuck me…’ she slammed her head softly against the wheel. It would be getting nice and crispy in a little while and it did not seem like she could get back in there and drag it out, her mission was a complete failure, but for some reason, once in her life she did not mind that much. Perry stood a little bit longer, looking up and down the burning building before he silently got in the small truck. ‘About time…’ Zora started driving.
13. UNLUCKY
Mark was moving towards the base. He was a little bit late for the job he had to do with Perry, but he believed that considering the circumstances he would be excused, probably. He tried to keep a low profile, passing through shortcuts and alleys and yards to avoid being spotted by the police cars and motorcycles buzzing around the general area like bees in spring. The sound of the wailing sirens was coming from behind him, and in front of him, and all around him; seeming to follow him all the way from the place where he
was attacked, up to where he was now, as if they knew where he was going to be in advance. Probably his imagination. He would not describe himself as a paranoid man in general, and he did not want to pick the habit up now. Why would a couple of vampires attack him in the middle of a busy street, in plain sight and with people all around… and they did a poor job at that! It did not make any sense. Did Rob stumble on to something after all? Did that something cause the attack? But how? There was no way that Rob would say anything under any circumstances and even if that had happened, there was no way they could move against him so quickly.
After the fight was over he had stopped to put the fire that he had started out so as not to burn the whole building down and gather his things so that the police would not find them, but of course it was pointless, and he knew that. The bullet casings would be untraceable but there were witnesses, a lot of witnesses, not only people in the street and in stores nearby. But there were also a number of curious people, stealing looks from their apartment’s balcony and even if no one managed to see him clearly through all that commotion, there is no chance in all hell that none of these stores did not have any surveillance cameras. Not to mention his blood and DNA being practically everywhere on the scene. The Order would have to intervene on that one if he wanted to get away with it, pull some strings and use their connections. They could make this thing disappear alright? But it would not be that easy, it was a very public display, and he could get in serious trouble with the ranks. Damn it all. He knew he would get in trouble even if he had done nothing wrong. Some poor innocent bastards could have very easily lost their lives there today. Or even some stupid bastard that tried to get a sneak peek of the commotion from his balcony, he would be practically begging for it but still... The fact that no one got hurt was pure luck. ‘No one got hurt…hmm. Well, as far as I know at least.’
Mark was tired, very tired and not only from the battle itself. That much use of his gems was draining, especially that last one. The magic of the Knights of the Order was tiring stuff, and the less of a mastery you had over it the more costly was its use. Rob was not an idiot for choosing to carry around this huge shield of his instead of relying solely on his citrine all the time, and Rob was a master if there ever was one. But Mark was used to being tired, every Knight was, and he was also used to aching; every Knight was used to the discomfort of being injured, but neither of these two feelings tend to get any better with repetition. But now he was aching…everywhere! On his torso where his ribs had cracked from that kick and where the vampire’s claws had sunk in. And on his left wrist where the escaped energy from the still faintly illuminating cracked ruby had burned his skin pretty badly. At least the wound on his brow had stopped hemorrhaging, and the rain had subsided considerably, which was good. But he hurt especially bad on his right shoulder, where the bullet wound and the deep claw marks formed a bloody pattern resembling some brutish tribal tattoo, it would heal nicely though, quickly even. People like him rarely ever got any scars or permanent damage, unless the wound was something terrible, but he had to get the bullet out first. There was no hurrying it, he did not have to fear infection or anything like that, but it could hinder his movements if it remained inside and if the wound closed around it well then he would have to reopen it. It had not even been twenty-four hours since the last time he was experiencing similar discomfort due to injuries sustained in battle, and he didn’t much enjoy the feeling. This was just his luck, on the one single time he did not wear his leather duster, he gets ambushed and shot in the fucking shoulder.
Mark heard the sound of a siren, coming from right around the corner, seemingly going in the opposite direction than all the others. He fell on the floor behind a car, in a half-push up position, wincing as his temporarily damaged shoulder muscle fibers took part of the weight, but more than they could easily handle. The police car passed him by, the cops inside seeming none the wiser of his presence. He stood up, gathering his backpack from the floor; it had slid from his shoulder when he dropped to take cover. The bag was a little heavier now than it had been on the start of the day, containing not only the sole, sad, almost blank notebook but also Christiana’s umbrella, and his Magnum revolver, along with the pair of brass knuckles, still a bit dirty even after he had wiped them clean of the pinkish vampire blood using a torn piece of lacy wedding dress as a rag; not that the piece of clothing could have been used for anything much more than a high quality piece of wiper in the condition it found itself to be in by the end of the fight. It seemed ironic to Mark that the liquid coursing through the vessels of one of the most fearsome man-hunters of all time was the same color humanity associated with anything less than harmless. Such as sweet, tender, innocent, naïve, little baby girls for example. It should have probably been the opposite, nature teaches us to associate any characteristic of our natural enemies or predators with fear, so that we can be ready to fight of take flight, characteristics such as their pointy fangs, their unnaturally pale skin tone, or the way they can appear as out of thin air in dark secluded alleys. Their distinctive blood color should have been tied with eliciting the same kind of physical responses, but it was not as if many a person had seen a vampire bleed while they, or others were being ravaged. Maybe only when a village would capture some random vampire once in a blue moon and kill it but still, for a vampire to get captured by farmers employing pitchforks and torches, the vampire would have probably been extremely tired or injured, blood would be mostly white rather than pink at that point. He remembered reading something about it in a big tome about haemovorous creatures (meaning creatures that require the consumption of blood for sustenance). There is a kind of transparent soft-white fluid coursing through the vampire’s body, no other known function other than that of pressure regulation so that the pressure from inside their bodies is equal to that of the atmosphere and they do not get crumpled up and implode. That is a reason why they can resist high or low pressures, by their bodies having the ability to regulate the volume of the fluid being produced. After they feed with iron rich blood; which is the reason that blood is red, interactions between the iron in the heme and the oxygen in the blood. The nutrients contained in the person’s blood, like glucose or lipids and proteins, are being absorbed and so does the iron rich heme, but the volume is being diluted in the white pressure regulating liquid and gives it a pinkish tone. So depending on whether a vampire has fed or not, the amount of blood it has consumed and how long it has been since their last meal, the vampire’s own ‘blood’ color can range from bright-red to soft-white, but mostly pink. Most of the knowledge about vampire physiology had been gathered during the Great War between the vampires and the Knights of the Order, mainly from running tests on the monsters that the Order had captured. Many tests, a lot of knowledge (that apparently is almost never enough). The succinct conclusion of all these tests being that vampires are tough sons of bitches.
Mark wanted to roll a cigarette, take a small break but it would probably be best if he kept moving, and so he did, listening for the sound of sirens, trying to avoid them and thinking about what he knew of vampires. He had a feeling that it would be wise to refresh the subject in his memory. It had always been a SOS chapter on every course they happened to be brought up into, and they actually did get brought up a lot, so he knew quite a lot. It was not like the Order had stupid score oriented exams like the university did though, if your teachers thought you sucked, then you had to take the class again, and extra chores. If they thought that you knew enough as to not get yourself or your comrades killed and that you would be able to recognize the monster at hand and handle the situation professionally, then you passed the class. At least you did not have to do any chores or social work or something if you failed at the stupid university. At least and you could cheat easily enough most of the times…not that it mattered. But the study subjects on the Order were important and interesting and cool, well most of the times at least, nothing can be entire black or white, not even the colors themselves maybe.
