Xanthic was sat in the chair beside me. I would love to describe the look of concern on his face and how his attire was crumpled and creased from being bent over my bedside for hours; But this would be a fiction as he was lounging in the hard leather bedside chair holding court in front of several rapt nurses and patients all listening to his humorous stories of historic and famous people he claims to have met - he probably had for all I know, he is a terrible name dropper and boasts sometimes, but as all the stories were howlingly amusing or outrageous with their revelations the audience didn’t seem to mind. I was pleased to see to my side BQ looking sulky by not having a story to top the epics being spoken by a very bright and enthusiastic Xanthic. When he is like this; the focal point in a busy room and holding all the reins of the conversation close and controlled, he glows from within, looks bigger and more unique than ever. Its magic, even with my limited knowledge and experience in the field I can spot that; I think they call it a glamour. But, oh my, he did look handsome and commanding even if he was dressed as if he were still in the 80's - the 1880's.
He noticed I was awake and after finishing his tale to much humour and laughing from the nurses, he leaned in, cuddled them all and off they went about a nurse's daily routines - I wasn't jealous or anything but I really hoped it involved large puddles of sick or someone in desperate need of disimpacting!
"What happened?" I asked with a croaking voice through a throat as dry as camel's big toe after it crossed the desert on the hottest day. It felt like I had eaten a sandpaper sandwich! "Where were we........"
Xanthic interrupted me with a wave of his hand and a shake of his head. "Not here, " He started, but I gave him a look even a police riot shield wouldn't deflect easily, not without a crack or two anyway. He sat on the side of my bed, then as he didn't have much space he bumped up and down which sent a sympathetic bump along the bed. I was momentarily lifted a mere fraction off the sheet and in this brief moment he bumped sideways and moved me over. He sat down with a smile. I grimaced in indignity - but mostly pain. He didn't notice.
"I arrived later than I wished but earlier than I expected from something we both need to look into as soon as you've finished your laying down so we can get back to work. I half assumed finding you would be difficult but it was a lot easier than I imagined, I just needed to follow the screaming."
"Ludo? is he....." I started
"He's fine, back at work. He comes from hardy stock and a few bumps here and there are occupational hazards in the NHS. He told me all about your adventures and what attacked you."
"What was it?"
"I am unsure, exactly, but it is of Extraxi decent and a Vor of some kind. It attacked you physically, nothing odd there for a wounded or juvenile animal, but it didn't try to feed off your essence but instead it did consume your blood. Luckily I have a source with some experience of these things and she gathering more information as we speak."
"A vampire?" I enquired, as all my childhood reading centred on the pale ones who supped from the well of human waters. I felt 'the Grey' descending over us, Xanthic had something to say and he wanted to keep it private.
"No, most definitely not. For a start they are far more feral than Hollywood would allow you to believe, not so much opera cloak and soft voice as matador cape and sword. No, We would all know if one of those was at work here, the stink would be unmistakable. But it was something that could take on human fluids and use them for its own nourishment; and believe me there are not many that would do that.
Oh Demons and even demons will render flesh with their teeth and consume meat, but they would rather revel in your torment and dine on your pain. Fae may ritualistically draw blood and humans too for that matter, but they do it for significance or power. This thing seemed to want to drink you this time, but before, and I am certain it was the same one as before, wanted to steal your life's essence for its own rejuvenation."
"Maybe it wanted to simply kill me as it didn't have much time." it was hard to talk, the thought of that thing at my throat subconsciously closed it tight and I knew I was wheezing as I took in air.
"It would have done so, easily done so if it wanted to. It wanted you dead sure enough and it knew how it was going to do it. I need to find this thing and find out why."
"Don't you mean find this thing and kill it for hurting me?" indignity raised my voice up an octave and more to a shrill.
"Eventually. But my curiosity must be quenched first. It may lead to an identification of a new Fae or demon/Fae half caste, or something far more interesting!" he actually sounded pleased by this.
I brought the conversation back to what had happened and why I was here talking to him - don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful I am here, but confused all the same.
I had to insist when Xanthic tried to turn me away from my line of enquiry, eventually he relented and the story unfolded.
By the time Xanthic arrived and swept to the front of an excited crowd of medical professionals I had bled a dangerous amount of blood. Through guidance and shouting loudest he made sure they had given me the correct measures to stabilise and promote recovery within my body, apparently it was harder than just pumping more blood into me, which was my guess. Of my attacker there was no sign; but on the plus side, there was no sign anywhere in the hospital so all ye little children sleep well as my skilled and noble wielding of my weapon, or a spasm induced lucky thrust with an old WWII bayonet, had wounded the beast, through magical influence more than physical injury and with a scream that brought half the hospital staff and Xanthic running, the beast fled. A quick chase through the hospital with the sensitive eyes of a demon like Xanthic, showed it had exited the building by a set of service doors and the trail of invisible fluids continued past the waste disposal area and into side streets and away.
"I doubt it will be back, its feeding ground has been disturbed and it knows it’s now defended. It will go somewhere else, somewhere with easier prey but we will be chasing it down once we narrow down the possible locations. It has no den here and no aid, so it will be dangerous but desperate enough to make mistakes and we'll get it." Xanthic stood from the bed and held his hand out palm up in the universal gesture of ‘ I want something’ as modelled by every small child everywhere. "Can I have the blade back now please?"
He smiled at me. I looked down at my right hand, it was gripping the bayonet so tight my fingers were white, veins showing the blood flowing through them and muscles standing proud the length of my arm. An attempt to loosen my grip failed, I had no muscle control nor feeling in my hand and I even vocalised my desire to open my fingers.
"Bloody open will you." I called then sheepishly retracted into myself as the roomful of people looked over at the mad woman talking to her hand even through the grey.
Xanthic took my hand and prised, with some difficulty, my fingers away from the bayonet. Once again in his hands it looked like a curved knife with dried blood marks and within a second it was gone, disappeared within the inner fabric - how many pockets can he have there? They certainly don't bulge or show from the outside.
"I'll leave you to rest now. Not all the rejuvenations used on you were purely medical in nature and they need you to sleep to be most effective."
I put my hand on his, partially to show my thanks but mostly to encourage him to stay.
"I need to chase this thing down and close as much distance on it as possible. You'll be safe now and Ludo will keep an eye on you."
He stepped away, stopping momentarily between the double ward doors. He did not turn back to see me - or he would have seen how scared I was at his leaving. He paused, then with grace and energy, exited my little world. I wiggled down on my bed to lay still and counted my pains. My neck let me know it was obviously the most in need of tender care, my old wounds told me softly they were still there but a new and unexpected pain on my chest sang in the medley of nerve responses. I lifted my hospital gown and bra cup and saw a fresh bandage dressing held down with off white tape. I peeled it
back and fumed, my bottom lip pulled up tight to its upper twin. On my left breast, on the gentle slope of its right side which slipped down to my cleavage and just above my nipple was a black double circular thin line which contained runic symbols running around the circumference with a triangle pointing down touching at three points the writing and an eye with a tail in its centre.
Bloody Xanthic, I thought. Did he biro a bloody demonic symbol onto my breast while I was unconscious? Did he do it in front of all these Doctors or more publicly? My reserved modesty was short lived when I spat on a tissue from a box on a small bedside cabinet and attempted to wipe it off and it came back with traces of red and not black. Puzzled I tried again before sitting bolt upright in my bed as rigid as a plank that’s fallen onto a hedgehog - and just as prickly. A Tattoo, a bloody and very permanent tattoo! I don't swear much as a rule but I did now, enough to draw two nurses into the room.
After an improvised explanation of my distress - something about a pain in the neck causing me concern, the nurses left with looks of annoyance over being disturbed and as soon as they were out of earshot I thumped the side of my bed cursing my employer and promising the universe an imaginative and very sticky revenge for it.
It didn't take me long to calm down. I assume Xanthic had the best of reasons to do it and there was a nicely warming pulse coming from it over my heart; but then again I once saw him late on a Friday night outside the clubs where he helped a young man declare his love for his best friends by permanently etching their names onto his skin. I was less than impressed by his gleeful energy as he climbed upon the boy's shoulders, whipped out a tattoo gun and proceeded to list in alphabetical order their names on the boy’s forehead.
Meanwhile, a new dorm mate had been delivered into our happy home, a middle aged man who'd spent that last couple of days in the high care ward and now recovered enough to be put in with all us mildly injured people. BQ had taken up the chance to gain his story without actually letting him speak, and, if not careful, he may find he does the opposite of our new friend and end up going from the mild to major ward until they can retrieve his teeth from his stomach and my fist from his mouth. I have had enough this weekend and my God it’s Monday and I hate Mondays!
"Oh my, Mr Dewy." piped the Gent. "Whatever brings you in here with us?"
The newly identified Mr Dewy brightened with the recognition of a friend.
"I should ask why you are here." he said with the same polite tone of neighbours who usually only orate greetings and mild comments of the weather during their brief meetings when they couldn’t scurry inside before eye contact was met.
"I am afraid to say it was your Lady wife who seemed to have become enraged and attacked me at the polling station on Thursday. I quite thought she was going to register her vote by stamping it on my head and posting it through the ballot box. Luckily my ears got stuck in the slot."
"I was similarly attacked by my good woman in the Rose and Crown where she found me teaching the new barmaid to play darts."
I surmise the greater part of the conversation - and changed the language to suit a younger audience who may read this. It appears Mr Dewy had been booked on yet another sales conference in Milton Keynes in the eyes of his wife, but was in actual fact on a darts trip with the lads from the pub after he expressly agreed with her that he should give up drinking and darts and his 'friends' in favour of gardening and driving her to her sisters to play bridge entirely of his own inclination. It didn't help much that when caught on Thursday in the closed bar, Mr Dewy with the landlord's younger sister were dressed, as it were, in a state of undress on the occy performing an a repetitive action unlikely to generate an effective throw of a dart, particularly as the thrusting motions were not undertaken by their arms…...not entirely by their arms. BQ asked in very bad taste if he managed to score a double top followed by a bull's-eye.
09:20
Ludo visited me this morning, he brought grapes and assorted fruit which warmed my soul more than I ever thought possible - even if the pear had claw marks around it. He arrived covered up in his orderly coat and a large peak baseball cap, much larger than even the most 'street' kids have been wearing. He told me it was better for covering him up in the sunlight and not scaring the old people it was his turn to wheel around from ward to ward or to the toilet and back. He sat with me during his break and told me Xanthic had been seen out last night by friends of his - he never said if they were human friends or otherwise but he looked like he was having fun, or at least running to catch up with the fun, or from something fun that was more fun than expected. So I guess he's keeping fit if nothing else. Ludo also said there had been a dramatic increase in the well being of all the young patients on the children’s ward. Some making so surprising a recovery the Doctors were considering sending them home in the next few days. So even if I was still bandaged up like an accident prone mummy and almost bit the big one, we did some good here. I was so tired that even though I had just woken up I wholeheartedly agreed with my body to fall fast to sleep once more.
09:30
Screaming and slick with cold sweat I woke from a dream. I was back in the expansive but squat rock cavern, it was hotter than I could bear and confining like before, but this time the people destined to wander within it were giving me more space like they didn't want to be near me. I could see walls of people spreading for miles in every direction and all staggering in the same overall direction. Where their path led I could not see, the ceiling just millimetres above my head reducing my spans of sight to near nothing at the same time I knew it stretched on for ever. I could not talk, this fact was so obvious that I did not try, I was in a dream and not really there and from my point of view I was floating just behind my own shoulders. I couldn't see the back of my head but part of me thought I could if I were brave enough to try. I was out of my body and I was staying as close to it as I possibly could. The heat was real, and my bed was soaked with sweat. Before I woke up, a split in the wall of black silhouettes ripped down from a point in forever to just before my eyes. Stood so far away it looked like an action figure, but as large as the cavern allowed a very dark figure stood. Male, even from this distance I could instantly tell it was very male; it stood looking at me with eyes unseen by mine as picking out features on it was impossible to me, but IT could see every detail of me, every part and everything, even the parts I try to hide and never reveal to anyone; all my secrets and all my sins.
It raised its right arm from its side to straight out in front. One long index finger stretched out pointing at me, and in the very second I woke from this dream it screamed out in a voice of cold iron that carried throughout the cavern and caused every silhouetted soul within it to fall to their knees and cover their ears with their hands;
"YOU!"
10:05
After a nice Doctor came round the ward looking at everyone’s notes in order and discussing how they slept, it was my turn. He was nice, younger than the Doctors I had been seeing, and had huge bags under his eyes. He told me he was happy with my progress and, as they needed the beds, he was going to let me go home. He told me to ask one of the nurses if I needed to call anyone to pick me up and he would be back very shortly with my discharge paperwork. I made a call to Xanthic’s answer-phone and left a message asking to be collected but in the knowledge I’d probably have to get a taxi from the rank by the hospital entrance. The only issue with this would be pushing past the army of smokers all hanging around to get their fix of nicotine before being marched back to their beds so they can be made fit and well again.
15:40
A new Doctor came - eventually and without the merest hint or word of apology, with my paperwork and I was sent with a smile out into a very bright Wednesday afternoon. The sky was cloudless and a rich light blue sky held a full orb of yellow hanging in the very centre of it all. The warmth and light of real sun was so pleasant after being artificially lit by strip lights in the hospital that I thought I was in paradise. That was until a pic
colo tune announced the arrival of a scruffy kids dressed in rags that was somewhere under a very wide rimmed ripped and moth eaten black hat ran up to me and slapped a grubby folded paper note into my clenched hand before disappearing across the busy street without stopping or looking. When the cars cleared the kid was gone. I looked down at my hand, which was now dirty from brown mud, or something worse I didn’t want to think about, and with fingertips I opened the note.
‘You’re wanted’
It said. And I knew I was.
Egypt, the first visitation.
Translated from 'Conversations with the Angels' 1307
12th Quintilis 45BC.
The scent of vines hung heavily in the air and the haphazard path of small flying insects created a pleasant close up visual distraction from the sheer expanse this perfect creation. Nothing interrupted the eye from any direction and the trees that stood tall and proud could not disguise the countryside behind them, which was perfection. But even here humans were scarring the land with earthworks for their own enjoyment and perceived improvement. Not that the countryside wasn't amazing in its own right but the invaders brought all the comforts of home, including the grapes to grow for their favourite wines, tools and labour to raise buildings and tents surrounded by fortified encampments to house their armies.
Golden hills rolled and flowed from mountains many miles south to the roaring coast a week's walk to the North. Vast, it was the only word to use for this countryside. Unfamiliar trees lined the shining road that led from the trading port to the big cities of this ancient civilisation. The majority of the boats travelled across the delta and up the huge river to reach their destination, risking piracy, banditry and the official theft from the local authorities and tax collectors. All of which have dwindled recently following the occupation, but the armies landed here to bridgehead and build a power base, now many vessels dock here making money out of the new business.
Diary Of An Occult Resolution Assistant Page 6
