Bloodfire (Empire of Fangs)

by Andrew Domonkos

  “Like I was saying,” Damon said, distracted by the culinary waltz that was busy before him, “before we were interrupted with tales of the good representative of Vermont’s sexual conquests of exotic women, I am glad you all came out.”

  Everyone sitting at the table roared again at the congressman’s expense, with the exception of Norah, who sat poised and quiet at Damon’s side. The congressman cursed genially at them and took another slug of single malt scotch.

  “But in all seriousness. Last month’s donation was but a taste. Just a little something to pique your interests. Call it a gift.”

  The men at the table seemed to sober up at the talk of gifts.

  “I imagine you have questions,” Damon continued, “so I will digress.” He spoke sharply to his wife who was fidgeting and staring off into space. “Norah, go busy yourself somewhere, you are agitating me. And take Reynolds with you, the man is a bore.”

  Norah stopped twisting her new wedding ring, smiled lovingly at Damon, arose and left the room. Reynolds smiled and went after her clutching his briefcase and scanning the room like a nervous rodent on a jungle floor.

  “Wow. My wife would toss me to the wolves if I pulled that,” said senator Gaines with a look of awe. “Gotta hand it to you Caspari, you’re old school.”

  Damon took it as a compliment and tilted his glass at the man.

  “Brass tax,” the squirrely Congressman blurted impatiently. “I put my name on this bill it looks not only out of character; it looks like I’ve lost my goddamn mind. I’m a democrat in case you have forgotten, and you want me to push for a lift on genetic research regulations? Not just a lift, but a complete dissolution? You know how hot it is right now in the house on this issue? Ever since they caught that nut up in Oregon who synthesized Ebola?”

  Damon looked interested. “I had not heard of such a man.”

  “Yeah and you won’t either. He’s rotting away in the basement over in Guantanamo.”

  “That place I’ve heard about. It reminds me of how things were done in the old country. War has no place for soft feelings.”

  The congressman balked and looked at the senator to see if he was hearing this. “Well I’ll give you the number of a good travel agent. But seriously, they’ll crucify me if I put this out on the floor,” he looked around the table and the others seemed to nod in agreement.

  Damon sighed. During his first week out in Washington he tried to use his powers of persuasion on several politicians, and each time he was met with blunt resistance. At first he was flabbergasted—was he losing his powers? But Norah had shaken her head sympathetically and explained it to him. “These men manipulate on a level you can only wish to aspire to,” she said, and Damon understood. Their minds were honed to resist almost all forms of persuasion, even the supernatural. For this reason Damon had to use a form of persuasion no man could resist: money. He had to remember his almost forgotten days spent in the Court of Pope Pius the second—all the groveling and greasing of palms, the constant ass-kissing and backstabbing. He even recalled a well-guarded joke that Pius’s court was built round so that all men could put their backs to the wall. For more reasons than one.

  But once Damon got going, he was a natural. He looked over the worried faces at the table and spoke loudly and with authority. “I think you might be surprised at just how the country feels about it in the coming weeks. A friend of mine at the Washington Post has taken a sudden interest in our cause. I give it a week before the whole issue is spun in our favor.”

  The Senator looked on suspiciously. “You have that kind of sway?”

  Damon ignored the question and waved at the waitress and pointed down to his empty glass. He had a king’s thirst to be quenched.

  3.

  St. Augustus was one of the smallest hospitals Zara had ever seen. It was an old stucco building outfitted with a few modern features like automatic sliding doors, next to which a giant wooden bear smiled affably with its paw held up, greeting visitors. Zara couldn’t help but laugh at the towering effigy. Its smile was obviously meant to be jolly and humorous, but something about the slight curl of it made Zara wonder if the artist who created it was trying to infer some secret meaning. She wondered how many people were sent to this hospital by bears, only to be greeted by one who seemed to be smirking at their misfortune. “Hey there, gotcherself a little bear bite there do ya?” It seemed to say.

  Getting the blood had been easy enough. After Zara talked her way into the one of the doctor’s office, she had little trouble getting the old doctor to comply.

  “What kind you need doctor Quinn?” He asked absently as he gazed into the cooler. Zara could sense his mind was miles elsewhere, making her task even easier. While he was digging around in the big cooler Zara looked into his shifting eyes and she had a fleeting vision of an adulterous wife packing a suitcase and screaming about how unhappy she was, and how she had felt this way for years. Zara felt guilty looking in on such a personal moment. The vision made her feel abandoned, as if she was sharing the pain she had glimpsed upon.

  “Just the cheap stuff,” Zara said.

  The doctor seemed confused for a moment, then shrugged and filled the cooler with a few large plastic packets.

  She wouldn’t let Twig watch her drink. She snuck out the back door of the building with the cooler in hand, and ducked behind a dumpster. She lifted a pack of blood out of the cooler and frowned at it. She couldn’t believe what she was about to do. Everyday seemed to get more and more surreal to her. Would the craziness ever taper off? She wondered. Or was this it? A steady climb into insanity?

  She closed both her eyes tightly and bit into the package with her two fangs that had made another appearance. She then poured the contents into her mouth. It tasted bland and gave her no sensation. But just as she began to wonder if she had been given some bunk blood, she felt a sudden rush of something so potent and euphoric that she fell to her knees. Blood dripped from her lips and down her chin, onto her newly acquired shirt, but she didn’t care. Everything began to sway and tilt and she felt the air around her compress and expand. She no longer had the sensation of spiders crawling on her skin, and her flittering thoughts became stilled and focused. She suddenly knew what it must have felt like to satisfy a powerful addiction, to get a fix. This was ecstasy. This was euphoria.

  She drank a second packet and almost had a third, but stopped herself. She felt replenished. She remembered her history teacher’s favorite phrase: Everything in moderation. She stood and closed the cooler. She was empowered. Strong. She strode back to the truck.

  “Are you alright?” Twig asked, mortified by the blood stains.

  “Yeah,” Zara said looking down at her shirt. “Better than alright. You can’t even imagine…”

  “I don’t need to,” Twig said defensively. He looked away.

  “What?” Zara asked. She didn’t understand why he was being so damn moody lately.

  “Nothing. Just…never mind.” He was back to his old obtuse self, Zara thought.

  “Let’s keep this all in perspective Nicolas. You used me as bait, remember? Your holy crusade? I didn’t ask for any of this.”

  Twig laughed loudly. “And I did? You have any idea how hard it was for me after they took my father away? You ever been in foster care?”

  Zara went to say something but stopped herself.

  “No. I haven’t,” she said evenly.

  “Well, I didn’t ask for that. Nobody asks for bad luck, it just comes.” He jumped up and sat on the hood of the truck, patting his pockets in search for his cigarettes. “Besides, this is bigger than us both. Damon Caspari is a sociopath. And Drake’s record makes Charles Manson look like a Powerpuff Girl. You want to stop people like that you gotta get your hands dirty.”

  An awkward silence followed and Zara took the opportunity to get her hoodie out of the truck and put it on over her bloodied shirt.

  Twig watched her put it on. “Aren’t you gonna be hot in that?” he said finally. His v
oice had softened a bit.

  “I’m fine.” Zara put her sunglasses back on and looked at the big waving bear.

  “Right,” Twig said. “Look, I’m sorry. I’m as wound up as you are. My nerves are just about fried.”

  “I know.” Zara said. She was still annoyed but didn’t want to waste anymore time standing around. She hoisted the cooler into the truck bed. “We better go. The doctor might snap out of it soon.”

  Twig sighed and nodded. “Idaho Springs is a few hours west of us, then Silverthorne. Some smaller towns around there that are good for disappearing in. I went hunting there once with my dad.” He flipped on his own pair of cheap sunglasses. Ray Ban knock offs.

  “Maybe they sell bibs there,” he remarked, getting into the driver seat.

  “Har har,” Zara said. She wondered as he drove angrily down the hospital drive to the main road if they had just had the first real fight in their “relationship”. She just hoped he was smart enough not to pick too many.

  As the truck weaved along the curving mountain road, Zara’s mind entertained a much darker thought. She couldn’t help but think that the blood she just drank must have been even better when it was fresh.

  4.

  The wedding was quick and painless. It was done at a drive-through in Vegas. Drake played a game on his phone as Elvis went on and on from his window on matters of loving tenderly. Abby pouted in the passenger seat, wearing a cheap wedding dress and staring straight ahead. They handed over their ID’s and Elvis mumbled some legal sounding words, waved his ringed fingers around, and handed them a printed document.

  Drake paid him and gave him a meager tip. “Ah thankya very much,” the man grumbled, and Drake punched the gas, turning out of the chapel lot and onto the big busy strip—Abby’s complaints drowned out by the roar of the V8.

  When they came to a red light Drake looked over at his sulking bride.

  “Would you knock it off? We don’t have time for a big to do. I gotta be back in Denver tomorrow for the funeral.”

  “Babe, why do we need to go to that?” Abby whined. “I barely knew them.”

  “You don’t have to do anything. Us adults have obligations though.”

  Drake ignored her and glanced at the rows of casinos, each promising riches at the pull of a lever and the roll of some dice. He had taken some time to improve his financial situation while he was in town. Vegas could be a tough town, if you didn’t know what cards everyone was holding.

  “But what about the honeymoon?” Abby asked pointedly. The question didn’t seem to hit its mark so Abby yelled, “Am I talking to myself ? Helllloo?” Her new husband’s habit of ignoring her was not something she intended to accept.

  “He was like a brother to me,” Drake said finally. “We fought together more times…” he looked over and could see Abby had already lost interest and was staring off at an advertisement for perfume that was plastered over a bus stop. He couldn’t understand why someone would ask a question so emphatically if they had no interest in the answer. It was downright infuriating. If it wasn’t for Damon, he would destroy her in some alleyway and never look back. But the clan needed her family’s connections.

  “When we get back you can lounge around in the mansion and feed on the servants for all I care. I leave after the funeral to attend to other matters.”

  “What other matters? Don’t tell me you have to go chase after Zara and her little friend. Gawd, what a waste of time. Just let the cops find them.”

  Drake sneered at her. “Humans don’t find our kind. Especially cops.”

  Drake turned the car onto Route 66 and the two rode in silence as the busy glow of Vegas faded in the rear view mirror. Over the desert a moon hung and cast a lonely blue light over the vast desert.

  Drake had driven about an hour before he abruptly pulled the car off to the shoulder in the middle of nowhere. He looked up at the dark hills. He saw a little white adobe house high on a ridge of the desert that was lit up by moonlight. Lights were on inside the house and a jeep was parked outside.

  Abby awoke from her nap and looked around, before noticing Drake’s face was glaring and ugly, and he was staring at something out in the hills.

  “What is it?” She asked timidly.

  Drake smiled at his new wife. “Your dinner,” he said coldly.

  5.

  Sam looked down the ladder at Casey. “C’mon kid, keep up.”

  Casey scoffed at him. “Kid? I’m 160 years old last time I checked.”

  “Right. A kid,” Sam laughed, pulled himself up the last rung and onto the flat surface that wrapped around the Lost Valley water tower.

  Casey lifted himself up too, and stood next to Sam. He handed him the bottle of wine and Sam took a long swig. Sam was a little taller than Casey, with dark hair cut short in the style of some eastern European men. Casey looked every bit the cowboy in his jeans and weathered boots and Stetson hat. Aside from the hat, which he had bought new, most of his clothes were the same he was wearing 80 years ago. Sam dressed in a more modern fashion, donning a hooded jacket and dark black jeans and combat boots.

  And it wasn’t just Casey’s dress that harkened to a different era, but also the way he talked. Where Sam had adopted a more reserved, neutral way of speaking, Casey still clung to that wild west drawl, and even though Sam had told him many times to try to adapt the diction of the age, it was hopeless. Sam still used the slang he had picked up while running with the John Kinney gang.

  “Look out there. What do you see?” Sam asked.

  “I can see the old mill where I took Jenny Sanders and…”

  “Not that. Look harder,” he grabbed hold of Casey’s chin and turned it.

  Casey shoved Sam’s hand off his face. “Someone comin over the pass, what of it? Another granger heading into town to get drunk.”

  Sam shook his head in disappointment. “You don’t feel it huh?” He glared at Casey now. “Remind me why I turned you again?”

  Casey sat down and drank some more wine with one hand and wagged a finger in the air with the other. “I seems to recall you hooded and gagged, with an angry mob and one pissed off sheriff all looking to put a stake in you.”

  Sam smiled and closed his eyes, falling into memory. “Clay Sollero. He was a clever bastard. Relentless too.”

  “He relented pretty fast with a bullet in his back,” Casey said gruffly.

  Sam nodded and fixed his strange eyes back on the pair of headlights that crept along a far off ridge, before they disappeared over a hill, down into the sleepy town of Lost Valley.

  Casey coughed and offered Sam the bottle, “C’mon ya old croaker, bend an elbow with me,” but Sam declined with the wave of a hand.

  “You’re about as fun as a snake bite, you know that,” Casey said. He got up and threw the empty wine bottle out into the darkness where is smashed down on some rocks bellow. “I can smell that smoke. Those fires must be going strong,” he said taking a deep sniff of the air.

  “Yeah,” Sam said, but he smelled something else in the air, something ancient and grim.

  6.

  Twig was not himself. He was some other person, a much older and angrier man. He was leading a mob somewhere, torch in hand. Yelling. He was in a canyon with dark red walls that towered high above him on either side. In one hand he carried a torch, in the other a heavy pistol. They were after someone, someone dangerous. They came to a dead end where the canyon walls were as smooth as ice and no man or beast could escape judgment up its sheer sides. Twig saw his quarry there, hunched and his pale face aglow in moonlight. Wounded and hissing at them, his hands like two talons. Before he could stop them the mob poured foolishly past, a blur of scornful faces, and he shouted for them to stop but it was too late. The cornered man with the two different eyes grinned like a shark opening its maw.

  When Twig woke up, Zara had her hand on his shoulder and was shaking him. He looked around bewildered. He was clutching one of his stakes and gasping for breath. Zara squeezed his hand and t
old him he was safe. It took a moment for Twig to remember where he was. They were in the truck, at a rest stop outside of Silverthorne. A light rain was falling and semi trucks were whizzing by back on the highway.

  It was night again, and an overhead streetlight cast a dull orange light down on the truck. Twig could make out the smooth contours of Zara’s face. She had become paler since they left Denver, and in a way that Twig couldn’t quite place, more beautiful too. When she smiled at him now, it had a hint of seduction to it that Twig never noticed before.