by L M Adams
It’s amazing how much people had come to rely on the easy conveniences of the world. Going to the supermarket, housing, clean water, electricity. The safety net everyone relied on finally snapped and the world went to shit in the blink of an eye.
The flu spread so badly because the incubation period was very long; people walked around infecting one another not even knowing they themselves were sick. By the time someone had actually gotten sick, they’d already infected a hundred people and then those hundred people infected ten thousand others, and so it went.
“They said they just didn’t have a way to stop it.” Peter’s voice sounds hollow and childish, like he’s in shock. I guess anyone would be a little rattled finding out everything they thought they knew was a lie.
“They didn’t have a way to stop it. But what they left out is that they created it and set it upon the human population in ignorance. Tinkering with things they had no right to tinker with. Men are not gods,” I say to him softly.
“Could you all, the Kindred, have done something?”
“It is not the Kindred’s place to meddle in intraspecies politics.”
“So yes! And yet you did nothing!” He jumps from his seat on the sofa.
I turn away from Peter’s angry gaze. It was not our place; everything that happened to the humans was done by other humans. We do not meddle with intraspecies policies even if that species is hell bent on killing itself off.
“Do not be angry, Peter, because as you see, obviously the humans have not learned their lesson,” Tabari says quietly.
“So all must pay for a few?”
“Isn’t that the way it has always worked? This word of man and beast.” I look to Peter with clear, pleading eyes to understand.
It’s just not our business. But even as I say it, I feel ashamed. I was a young daemon then, still in the schoolroom. I couldn’t have done anything, but my people could have, the Kindred could have. The reasons we didn’t help seem childish at best, evil at worse.
‘For the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is that good men to do nothing.’ But who ever said we Kindred are the good guys? We’re more like a necessary evil.
“Just because something has always been a certain way, doesn’t mean it should keep being that way,” Peter says, quietly turning and going up the stairs.
I feel ashamed to be Kindred for the first time in my life. Sure I’ve been angry at the Elders for the way things were done. But I’ve always felt pride in my kind. But for what? Do we really go out of our way to help anyone? We just do what we want to further our own agenda.
I look around the room, everyone is subdued. I sigh and get up. Peter is my friend and he needs a friend right now. I go to the kitchen and grab a bottle of vodka.
Jack must have restocked. The man is getting a blowjob before we leave tonight and that’s that. I grab two shot glasses and two beers, my and Peter’s usual.
I go and knock on the guest room door. “Go away, Jae.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“I can hear the clank of the bottles in your hand.”
I smile, tuck the beers in my arm and open the door.
“So I guess ‘go away’ means ‘come in’ in Jae talk?” Peter is on the bed with an arm thrown over his face.
“I come bearing gifts. Please, Peter, let’s wallow our misery in vodka; it’s the only thing I know to do.”
He scoffs and sits up. “No shit. Pour them.”
I sit on the floor at the end of the bed and lean on it, Peter joins me on the floor, doing the same. I feel the pull of his emotions run through me. He must have been learning how to dampen the connection between us, but with him being this upset the blocking must not be working.
I’ll need to feed to deal with the extra drain. But like shit I’m going to complain. This is our fault, my fault. I continue to throw more and more ugly truths at Peter. To be a new werewolf, he’s doing so well in handling it all. So if I need to feed to help him cope, I’m not going to complain about it one bit. I open my Chi and let the power flow freely from me to Peter. He sighs beside me; I watch the tension leave his shoulders slowly.
“Thank you, Jae.”
“No problem.”
“Why can you do that?”
I turn and look at am incredulously, like hell I would know. If Big Mike has no idea, I don’t have a clue. I pour shots; we both toss them back. I pour two more and sip my beer letting the feel of the alcohol thrum through me.
“Honestly, I have no fucking idea,” I sigh and lean my head back onto the bed.
“It tastes different than pack magic. Still, it works. I felt the push of my wolf, he wanted out again. I was trying to calm myself. I know it’s not really the Kindred’s fault for what happened, it’s ours.” Peter rubs his neck, trying to work the knots of tension that must still be there out.
Funny he still considers himself as one of the humans, but I guess that will take time to wear off. Whatever is bothering Peter goes deeper than the Kindred not helping, I feel that.
His beast is just waiting to rise.
Power is needed to keep the wolf from rising with strong emotions - hunger, pain. They cause the mind to switch over to a more primitive state, a more basic nature without higher brain function; the place where the beast lives. It’s all in the basic lycanthropy guide for dummies. The title of the actual book sounds a lot better.
Usually Big Mike as Amarok would help with this, but Peter doesn’t have an Amarok, he has a Jae. Magic is only energy given purpose. For whatever reason the frequency of the power from me matches Peter’s receptors, Hertz as the humans call it. The frequency of their electricity, although their ideas are basic, the humans are on the right track. At some point science will meet and match magic, goddess help us all then.
“That’s good, Peter, controlling your emotions. I think you’d manage just fine on your own. But I’m your friend, I’m here to help when I can. Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Why is this the only time you really talk to me, Jae? It’s always been like this. You never once opened up to me without a bottle in you at least.”
I scoff. “You sound like a chick, Robinson.” I pour us a shot; we toss them back.
“Insult and deflect… are you really a dude, Jae?”
I huff.
“Fine, because I’m an asshole and I don’t have a heart,” I tell him honestly.
He scoffs and pours us another.
We say nothing as we both down two more shots apiece. It does take a lot to get a supernatural drunk, but it can be done, just takes practice and I’ve perfected the art. The buzz comes and I sigh. I stay quiet, wanting Peter to say what he needs to say in his own time.
“The burning bodies was the worst, Jae, you couldn’t breathe without the stench of it filling your lungs. No place to bury anyone, no time, so they’d set mounds of bodies on fire. I thought I’d die from the stench of rotting bodies until I smelled the burning rotting bodies.” He pauses and takes a drink from his beer.
“My father did what he could to provide. He’d hunt in the forest every now and again but getting the meat back home was hard. He had to be careful no one knew he maybe had a few rabbits or something in his bag. He wanted to take us to the forest; he said he could protect us. Now that I know he was a werewolf, I know that to be true. But Mom wouldn’t go. I think she still blames herself for his death. That he’d still be alive if she’d only gone. She thought help would come from the government and god. We just needed to be patient and have faith.”
I pour us another shot and say nothing. What can you say in the face of this kind of pain?
“No food, no clean water. Then the second winter came, the coldest, most brutal one anyone had ever seen. Men and women doing things I never would have believed was possible. I was fifteen, Jae, when my father was killed out one night scrounging for supplies. I never even saw his body, some people were eating… We didn’t bother looking.”
Yeah, canni
balism had come for some people. But they were put to death quickly. I guess people eating people was something the mob didn’t take kindly to. You are supposed to kill a man for his can of beans and leave it at that.
He clears his throat. “I did terrible things to keep me and my mom alive. I prayed to God, to anything and everyone for months upon months.” He stares at his hands as if they have the horror of his deeds written on them.
“She made me feel bad about the things I did. Saying God would provide. Listening to the stupid radio while we rotted away. What could I say? Could I blame her? My father dead, a fifteen-year-old boy left to take care of. When it got too bad, even for her, she’d do things to get us a bottle of clean water or a can of something to eat, but mainly for protection. Then cry herself asleep listening to that radio, which made her feel worse, unclean. Then she would preach to me the whole next day, hoping to save my soul. She’d get so angry when I came home with food to eat. ‘What did you do for this Peter?!’ She’d scream and yell.”
“But what is the use of preaching the Gospel to men whose whole attention is concentrated upon a mad, desperate struggle to keep themselves alive?”
“Who said that?”
“William Booth… Tabari likes to quote stuff.”
He laughs; he’s spent enough time around Tabari to have caught a few, I’m thinking. I laugh and pour us another shot and then another. The laugh had helped. I’d felt too much anger rise in him and his wolf riding the wave like a fucking surfer. He needs this poison to get out but I think things would go badly if his wolf tried to escape his body before the full moon, before his first commune with the Moon Goddess, the first mother of the wolves.
“I didn’t even do anything bad for the food. A man showed up one day and took me to a cellar in an old house way out in the no-man's-land. I was afraid of what he would want for the food he promised, but my Mom hadn’t eaten anything really in a week. I decided to do what was necessary. But no, he just told me to come and get whatever I needed whenever I needed it and if I was ever in trouble to go there and wait, someone would come for me. The only rule was to tell no one. Not even my mother. Mom, she was a beautiful woman. A curse during that time. Evil seemed to thrive. But we made it, we made it.” He shakes his head sadly thinking of the cost.
He’s spoken the worst of it, and I have listened. But I don’t want him to dwell.
“I don’t know what I’m doing with this whole Grigori thing, but I’ll help people whenever I can, man, wolf, vampire, or otherwise. I like to think if I’d been here during the collapse that I would’ve helped. I’ll do my best, Peter.”
He smiles at me. “I know you will, chica.”
“You are a good man, Peter. I’ve done terrible things to stay alive, and I haven’t turned out half the person you are. I’m ashamed to be Kindred. I wish I was human. Humans have a gift, a light or a touch I don’t know…. some of you can be immensely cruel and then others so full of love and wonder. I know I’m a better woman for having come to live in the human world. I’m a better woman to have you as a friend.”
In a rare show from me I lean over and hug Peter tight.
“See what I mean, not without a bottle in you.”
“Oh shut it up, Robinson.” I pull back and get to my feet, a little shaky. Damn, Jack must’ve gotten the good shit.
I open the door, Minx pads in. I scoff and stumble into the hallway. “Jack! I owe you a blowjob!”
“Jae!”
I turn around. Jack is standing in the doorway of our room, our room? Yup, our room. I walk towards him slowly. I push him back in the room and close the door leaning on it with a lecherous smile.
“Come on horny vampire, you are about to get a treat.”
“Jae, really we need to leave in a little.”
“I’m a trained Succubus. I need three minutes tops.”
“Can you please stop yelling you’re going to give me a blowjob through the house? It’s unseemly.”
“Unseemly?” I slur up to him. “You suck on people’s necks and drink their blood and like to get spanked. But me wanting to give my boyfriend a blowjob is unseemly?”
“Yelling it through the house is.” He sighs. “I’m trying to get along with Lucien, I like that you called me your boyfriend, but no sex love. Not right now. Be good, please Jae. Come on, we need to sober you up.”
“Shut up, Jack.”
I slip to my knees; his complaints turn to moans and ‘oh fucks.’ Damn skippy. Jae gets what she wants.
He grabs the back of my head and steadies himself holding out a hand pressed to the door. “Fuck you’re the best, damn woman, fuck.”
My heart warms with pleasure; if you’ve never been blown by a succubus, well then, you’ve never been blown.
Chapter Twenty-three
The stuff of nightmares
“I will never turn down another blowjob from you for as long as I live,” Jack pants out above me as I swallow his slightly salty, dark chocolate cinnamon tinted passion. I moan and release him from my mouth.
“Good boy,” I say and duck under his arm leaving him there.
It’s time to go find out what happened to our missing Bâtardi and my mind has already clicked over to the next thing on my ‘to do’ list.
I’m sober as fuck too; being drunk only lasts in short bursts, I really hate that.
I pull out my leather pants. I leave on the black tank top and tug on a pair of black socks, slip my feet in my boots and buckle them quickly. I go over to my dresser and run my hand over the hilt of my blades laying there. I haven’t fought or practiced with both blades in such a long time. No better time like the present.
“Jae, you didn’t ask me… but I’m a good fighter.” I turn around to look at him.
He wants to go and thinks I didn’t invite him because I thought him inept?
“You’re an old ass vampire. I know you can fight; you wouldn’t have survived this long otherwise. But I didn’t think you’d want to get involved with the Kindred parts of my life. Supernaturals have no love of us.”
He shrugs his shoulder, “I want to be a part of everything in your life, and I also want to find the missing people. Mrs. Williams’s pain…” he sighs, “I want to help if I can.”
“Of course then, suit up.”
His face splits into a grin and he walks over to his duffle bags in the corner.
I hadn’t had anywhere to put his baby arsenal, so it was all still in the duffle bag. I turn back to the mirror and tuck the end of my braid under using a hairpin to hold it.
Action movies always show some chica in high heels with her hair flying all over the place as she kicked some guy’s ass three times her weight class. I call bullshit; hair flying is just another thing the bad guy can grab on to. There are no rules, no honor when you’re fighting for your life. If they are, I’ve never followed them. If the bad guy ends up dead and I end up alive and me fighting dirty is the reason why? Well, I’ll worry about my honor over my morning cup of coffee; the bad guy will just be dead.
I pick up my wrist tablet, still in its heavy-duty case, and buckle it to my forearm. It automatically links to the VRB chip in my wrist and comes on. I turn off the screen; it glows entirely too brightly in the night.
Jack finishes changing his clothes into leather pants, biker boots, and a plain black T-shirt. He pulls out a special belt and clips the throwing stars onto it. I watch mesmerized as he pulls out a double shoulder holster and puts the two nine millimeter pistols I’d seen earlier in it. After everything is buckled on his body, he shrugs on a leather jacket with zippers and buckles everywhere. He stuffs two extra clips in one of the pockets.
He looks at me and smiles at my expression of awe. The man is a conundrum. From warming up pastries and serving coffee to suiting up with enough weapons to put a Reaper to shame. He seems very comfortable with everything he’s strapped on.
“I like the jacket,” I say.
I don’t want a fight per se. But I’d really like to see hi
m use those throwing stars. Maybe he could teach me. I’ve always liked pointy things.
We make our way back downstairs. Lucien and Tabari are already there waiting.
Lucien is wearing BDU’s, battle dress uniform bottoms. The pants are black with a multitude of pockets- all of them filled with something it seems, they’re tucked inside of some ankle high combat boots; black and large, really large.
I wonder if he has things that go boom in those pants, other than his… Yeah, Jae, classy.
He’s wearing a plain black T-shirt, but the impressive part is the sword he has strapped to his back at an angle. The pommel of the sword comes almost up to the top of his head, the tip of the scabbard peaks out the other side right above his ass, he’s wearing two thigh holsters like me but instead of knives he has semi-automatic something.
His eyes glow, a little set back into his dark skin, it’s a little eerie. His long dreadlocks are tied back into a neat ponytail. I’ve never seen them free around his face outside of the bedroom. The man really is death walking. Everything about him screams Reaper.
Tabari is probably the most innocent looking of us all with a pair of black dress pants and another black T-shirt. We need to buy stock in black T-shirts.
He’s wearing soft soled dress shoes. His eyes, however, glow with magic and his hair is lifting a little again at the ends. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tabari put his hair in a ponytail, although, it’s long enough for a small one at least.
He’s channeling the EM field. I can feel it crawling on my skin. I’ve never felt this sensation before, like it wants to jump into me at the slightest provocation. I make a note to not stand too close to him.
Yeah, Tabari looks the most innocent, but he’s probably the most dangerous; the man can burn us all to a crisp with a thought.
