“Excellent. Because I couldn’t have stood the smell a second longer.”
Three minutes later they were still standing at table seven, locked in an argument that seemed to be spiraling into a frenzy instead of winding down. While the other would-be speed daters turned spectators looked on, the facilitator kept helplessly calling “time” and was ignored.
Finally, Raif ended it by storming out of the restaurant and walked for two blocks in dense New York City pedestrian traffic before ducking into an alley. He stopped and put his forehead on the cold composition wall of the closest building.
“Gods’ teeth, why am I such an asshole? A big mouth, broken asshole?”
Fingers shaking, she gathered her purse and jacket without meeting the eyes of any of the onlookers. If she’d ever been more humiliated, she couldn’t remember when. She got almost to the end of the block before bursting into tears. So much for speed dating.
She was glad it was windy and cold for the six block walk back to Columbia. People would assume the color in her face was from weather and not from crying.
CHAPTER 2
Sol in Shamayim
He could pinpoint the moment when the well-oiled machine jumped its tracks. In fact, on reflection, he sensed she was going to be trouble the minute she materialized in midair and plopped on the floor as a bloody, oozing, pile of goo. He didn’t know what it was, but he knew it was a harbinger of change. Elora Fucking Laiken. Turned things upside down and inside out and, if it ever got back to ‘normal’ after she arrived, it never stayed that way for long. Babies at Jefferson Unit! Unbelievable!
In the beginning, after she recovered from the interdimensional journey and was given conditional freedom of the facility, he was resistant as stone to the idea of using her in Hunter Division. The idea of a female knight in Hunter Division would remain eternally ludicrous even though the gifts she acquired through transition to a new dimension outfitted her perfectly for the job of slayer.
There was only one thing that might change his position on the matter. It just so happened that the one thing was what they had to have – the help of a very old vampire. Luckily the vampire in question, Istvan Baka, took a fancy to the young lady. First he wanted a private audience, private being a highly relative term given that his every move was monitored by Knights of the Black Swan through a glass enclosure.
After he signed a contract to act as consultant, the vampire more or less embarrassed Sol into using Laiken’s unique talents by pointing out that she was very likely Black Swan’s most powerful asset. Yes. That’s exactly what he’d said during the same phone call when he’d asked for cleanup because the girl had just taken out a vampire. Alone. Without any training. With a toothpick!
After that he couldn’t really say no without looking like a chauvinistic ass wipe. So he let her replace Sir Landsdowne as fourth member of B Team. He’d hoped the three remaining members would draw a line, but two of them gave her an “up” vote.
For a little while it seemed like it might work out okay. Then Sir Hawking was disabled in a confrontation and she responded rash and ready, which got her eaten and infected by vampire. Well, that may have been overly harsh. No one asks to be eaten. Exactly.
Her partial conversion to vampire made for a fairly tense twenty-four hours, but it led to a miracle of science, courtesy of Laiken’s blood and Monq’s brilliance, Or so they believed.
Certainly the advent of a vaccine that would cure the vampire virus was heralded as the most important development in Black Swan history and none of them doubted it. Why would they? It seemed that centuries of dedication would resolve the vampire part of the organization’s activities with a feel-good win. Something no one would have ever thought possible.
It was The Order’s first ever cause for real celebration. Sol would never forget the slogan that popped up right away. “Shoot to cure.”
Of course it benefitted Baka. The vaccine gave the old vampire a new humanity card. Twice. No cause for complaint there. He was even tapped to head up the task force to convert hunters to healers, another great Vaccine Era slogan. He formed a network of rehabilitation and treatment centers for vampire who had been successfully reconverted to human.
The original target date of how long it should take to effectively stamp out vampirism was calculated based on the best guess estimate of the number of vampire, number of active hunters, and the amount of vaccine being produced and dispersed.
At first there was a marked decline in vampire activity. So much so that Jefferson Unit was quickly and efficiently reconceived as a research and training facility. Too quickly and efficiently in Sol’s opinion.
Of course J.U. had always been a research and training facility, but it had also been one of the crown jewels of the Black Swan Hunters Division, home to the most elite slayers on the planet. There was such a certainty that the vaccine was going to be the end of the vampire plague. The rush to reorganize and redistribute resources left Jefferson Unit feeling like a ghost town. The hunters and all the staff who supported them, including medical, were transferred. The facility felt sad, abandoned, and retired.
If that was the whole story, you might be inclined to say that it was a good time to die. And, if that was the whole story, he might have been inclined to agree. But he was privy to information about the progress of the “Great Vampire Inversion”. That was the name given to the era of revolution, when humanity would free itself from the most dangerous and most rampant of the monsters that make prey of people. It was a phrase that later mocked the hope it implied and made them seem childlike in their naïve and gullible rush toward belief in the vaccine as a fait accompli.
The reports had come in during his time away from work with Farnsworth. Sol had been called to Edinburgh for an urgent meeting and had to leave Farnsworth where she was and not knowing whether he’d make it back before the clock ran out on their vacation time. As a fellow employee of Black Swan, there was no question that she understood, but that didn’t make it feel less like leaving her on her own in the middle of their long-planned romantic interlude was a shitty thing to do.
Farnsworth though? In Sol’s opinion she was a great dame. She didn’t make him feel worse by looking disappointed, didn’t even mist up when he kissed her goodbye. The first ten years she worked at J.U. she saved most of what she earned by living in the small onsite apartment that came with the job. With food, utilities and housing included, she was able to sock away enough to make her modest dream come true.
She bought a precious yellow cottage on the beach at Cape May and spent whatever needed to be spent to keep it maintained to perfection. It was less than a two hour drive away from Fort Dixon, but it was a world away. Every chance she got she retreated to her little bit of private heaven.
When the question arose about where they would go for a romantic escape, she suggested her getaway.
“Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate a cheap date as much as the next guy, but I’ve got a lot of unused vacation funds. I could take you anywhere you want to go. Do anything you want to do.”
She gave him that special smile that never failed to make him feel like he was made of pure gold. Made his cock feel just about that hard, too.
She turned her chin up at an angle and kept a hint of that smile on her lips as she said, “Can I have a rain check on that? Next time I might just rise to the challenge of spending all your vacation stash, but this time I’d like to just hide you away and have you all to myself.”
Damn if that didn’t make Sol fall even more in love with her. Before that he would have said he couldn’t love her more, but she just kept stretching the limits. Like she was bringing a withered heart back to life and gradually filling it with healthy fluids, making it swell bigger and bigger.
“Whatever you say, beautiful.” She saw both love and amusement on his face when he reached up and tucked a stray tendril behind her ear. “Have me all to yourself, huh? I like the way you think.”
When the big day came, Sol borro
wed Storm’s silver convertible Porche roadster. Storm had never driven it to California because he didn’t need it there. It had been parked in the underground at J.U. for months without use, but it turned over when Sol pressed the ignition. There were two seats in the car and not much room in the trunk, but most of what Farnsworth would want and need was already at her cottage.
It was too cold to put the top down, but convertibles are romantic even when the tops are up, wind noise and all. They have a way of making a vehicle's occupants feel young. And sexy.
On the trip down they chatted easily about places where they’d been, people they knew in common, and bucket list items even though it was still early in life for them to be composing bucket lists. When they were twenty minutes away, they made a grocery stop at the last supermarket en route. They bought more than the space left in the trunk, but Farnsworth was a good sport and laughed about sharing the passenger seat with one of Sol’s duffels between her legs.
It was cool but sunny when they arrived and the March wind was doing its reputation proud. Sol pulled the car underneath the house between thick weathered support pillars. There was a store room and guest room next to the carport, but the two floors she used as real living space began twelve feet above ground level.
He carried groceries and bags up the stairs while she opened up the house. That involved engaging the motorized storm shutters, lighting the pilot and turning on the heat plus her favorite part of the ritual - affixing a unicorn flag to its holder on the deck.
“There,” she said, turning toward Sol with a grin. “Now we’re officially in residence.”
He stared at the flag for a minute. “A unicorn?”
She laughed. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” It was a blue and white unicorn on a light gray background. And it was beautiful. As unicorns go it was dignified with a fine proud head, flying mane and long elecorn.
“I guess,” he conceded. His scowl was more obligatory than sincere, lip service to the code of macho.
Using an armload of logs from the half cord of firewood on the deck, Sol built a fire to warm up the cottage while they were waiting for the small gas furnace to do its job. When everything was put away, they drank a glass of wine and made love in front of the fire on a white rag rug that was so thick it felt like a pallet.
When Sol had assured her that he had the resources to take her anywhere she wanted to go, she had immediately formed images of having him in her house. And, once that vision had taken root, it appealed to her more than anything else she could think of.
Farnsworth was so accustomed to relaxing at the cottage and letting work stress dissolve away that her nervous system responded to the environment automatically and put her in getaway mode. Sol, on the other hand, had muscles that were knots on top of knots on top of knots. If he had ever known how to relax, it had been decades in the past and, certainly, the idea of "vacation" was foreign to his nervous system.
So he fidgeted and paced and suggested things to go and do. She sat watching him, casually sipping chardonnay, in a yellow cable sweater the same cheerful color as the cottage.
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” she said.
He stopped abruptly, his gaze going toward the ocean. “A walk on the beach?” He looked and sounded as if he'd never heard of such a thing.
“Um-hmmm.”
“What for?”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Just because. Go put on enough layers to keep you toasty and we’ll go see what there is to see.” He looked dubious. “Come on. It’ll be fun. I promise.”
“You promise?” His face split into a grin.
“I do.”
He swore he liked the sound of that, but he would have also sworn that he would hate walking on the beach. Maybe that would have been true under other circumstances, but doing things with Farnsworth just made them different. She had a way of transforming ordinary experiences into extraordinary events, simply by virtue of being there.
She taught him to like walking on the beach by changing his perspective. She pointed out sights like little birds that ran on the sand so fast you almost couldn’t see their skinny little legs and little crabs that ran out of holes on some unseen errand and then retreated to safety just as fast. Now and then she'd point to the remains of a seashell and tell him what kind it was. Through her eyes his consciousness was raised to appreciate the way sunlight dances on water, the way the color of the ocean changes to try and match the color of the sky, the way brightly colored windsocks whip in the wind against a blue sky background and make the whole world feel festive.
He began to see through her eyes, hear through her ears, feel her sensations, and little by little, day by day, the layers of tension fell away and she saw, for the first time, what his face looked like when the muscles were lax and not held rigid as steel.
One day he picked up a stick and threw it for a retriever someone was walking on the beach. When he turned back to her with a laugh and a glorious heart-stopping grin she said, “Solomon. You’re so lovely when you let go.”
His grin resolved into a smile. “Lovely? If you say so.”
“I do.”
He liked the sound of that every time he heard it. “I was just aiming for nice-looking. Did I overshoot?”
She laughed. “Indeed you did. By fathoms.”
“I think I’m keeping you”
He pulled her into a kiss that was far too passionate for a beach they shared with passersby. She thought about pulling away, was sure that pulling away was the appropriate thing to do, but her body was making the case that life was too short for propriety. So she returned his kiss with enough fervor to make sure he knew she meant it.
The days melted away into the closest thing to pure happiness that Sol had ever known. He didn’t remember feeling that happy or carefree even in childhood. And that was the state of his euphoria when the call came that he was needed at Headquarters immediately. The furrows in his brow reappeared instantly, the lines around his eyes were deeper, and the smile that had become perpetual disappeared.
She nodded as he promised to come right back if he could. He gave her the keys to Storm’s roadster and a soft, lingering kiss goodbye. When he reached the end of the deck he turned back once to see her watching from inside the glass door. She waved and his heart responded with a reluctance to go. He’d never before had a hard time with the call of duty and he cursed under a heavy sigh when he confronted just how much he didn’t want to leave her or that place. He would have given just about anything to stay right where he was.
But he didn’t.
He took a cab to Ocean City and paid dearly for a jet charter to New York where he could jump on a company transport to Scotia.
When he got to Simon’s office, Baka and heads of some of the other units that would be most affected by the news were already there. Sol thought he’d been in grim meetings before, but nothing compared to the somber vibe in Director Tvelgar’s conference room as he delivered the message that the tide had turned on the Inversion. Not only had the vaccine ceased to work, but the resurgent strain of virus mutation was stronger and faster than before, converting human to vampire within minutes of contact with the bloodstream.
As they went over the projections, each man present had felt his heart sag as he realized that the short, hopeful reprieve was turning into a bigger problem than they had before. Instead of reducing the number of knights in rotation, they were going to be hard pressed to meet the increased demand. They would have to recall every able-bodied retired hunter to active duty and begin inducting the trainees sooner than optimum.
The Hunter Division had developed a tradition of waiting until their knights-to-be were twenty-two before sending them into the field, although exceptions were made on a case by case basis. Though they might be physically capable by the time they were eighteen, they were generally thought to lack the judgment crucial to keeping them and their comrades alive. There were only three training facilities in the world. They were the units i
n London, Brasilia and New Jersey.
Dr. Tvelgar turned to the three men who were Sovereigns of those facilities and told them that they were to go home and begin gearing up by submitting requisitions for support staff and sending formal notices to a lot of retired knights who’d gone to bed that very night believing they’d seen their last hunt. They were informed that the active duty knights who had been transferred would be returned to their former units with no additional paperwork being necessary. They were also instructed that they were to begin the process of selecting trainees to “go” early. They would each need to contribute three to make the numbers work.
Somehow that was harder for the Sovereigns to digest than the idea of compelling retirees to return to a dangerous occupation from which they thought they’d successfully escaped and lived to tell the tale. They agreed they wouldn’t bring up any retirees over the age of forty, which was palatable enough. But the idea of sending the young against vampire before the age of psychological readiness was difficult. It smacked of sacrifice. And the training unit heads didn’t like it one bit.
At the same time they were told that people were being pulled from other Order duties to expand Recruiting and that they should prepare for larger incoming classes of fourteen-year-olds. The Sovereigns – looking older and grayer by the moment - glanced at each other with a taciturn solemnness and even the least sensitive of them was aware of the air grown heavier in the room. Still, they looked downright giddy compared to Baka.
Leadership had always required dedication and concentration, but the burden had never felt cumbersome, like lead weight. There wasn’t one person in the room who wasn’t silently wishing that they’d never heard of the vaccine. It was turning out to be three steps forward, ten steps back. And each step back represented deaths that they, as Sovereigns, would be responsible for cataloguing.
As they filed out of Simon’s office, Sol looked at Baka. “Looks like you better make a bigger effort to stay human this time.”
Knights of Black Swan, Books 7-9 (Knights of Black Swan Box Set Book 3) Page 3
