by A. L. Mengel
Moments later, as Anthony and Jean Carlo continued eating, Anthony felt a small tap on his shoulder. He turned around and saw the tired face and stringy hair of the paunchy man. The paunchy man drew his finger up towards Anthony’s ear, and flicked it, signaling to Anthony that he wanted him to come and speak to him. Anthony excused himself, and lay his napkin and fork on the table, as Jean Carlo looked on.
The two men stopped and faced each other several feet away, out of earshot distance. “Is that him?” the paunchy man asked, glancing back over at Jean Carlo. He had stopped eating, but was still hunched over his plate, holding his wine goblet from the stem; he was casually glancing over at the two men talking, looking down again, and back at the two men, who had since retreated to a corner.
“Yes, that’s him,” Anthony responded, gently grabbing the man’s arm, pulling him closer into the corner.
The two men again looked over at Jean Carlo, and saw that Jean Carlo had to have been looking over back at them, because his head had snapped back down, and stared down and studied the food.
“So that’s the man of some great importance,” the paunchy man mused, not breaking his gaze. “My, won’t Darius be surprised to discover that he is here.”
“That’s why I want to be sure that he does not leave this sanctuary,” Anthony said. “If he goes outside, he will be hunted. You know that. We can’t bear to risk him. He is too important.”
“Yes, I agree. We need him. I can feel from the way Antoine speaks to me, that he doesn’t want this to happen. Sometimes I can look inside him, as he speaks to me, and see sadness and regret for what he has done. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“Antoine walks and acts like he is controlled,” Anthony said.
“Oh, I agree,” the paunchy man said. “Sometimes he misses his mortal life, but it was the sins of his immortal life that has landed him in the situation he is in now.” The paunchy man gestured over to Jean Carlo. “Now he…” he said, “…he is the one that Darius made. He is Antoine’s sibling. Antoine can’t be stopped because Antoine is trapped. Jean Carlo is the only one that can stop him.”
“And what about Nesmaron?”
The paunchy man stopped.
He hadn’t thought about the young man that Antoine had borne. That was a different story, and there was a different motivation. “Don’t mention that name, Anthony. Because Nesmaron…the demon that will come…is the one that Jean Carlo must face.”
Jean Carlo again looked up at the men. They returned to the table. The paunchy man approached the table and extended his hand to Jean Carlo. “Jean Carlo,” he said. “You are a very important addition to this Society. I wanted to make sure that you will be well taken care of. Much more will be explained to you in the days that you are here. But please remember...do not go topside. Please don’t. And if you need anything, anything at all, please ask for Sheldon.”
*~*~*
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Darius Sauvage. Demon god!
It was long before that Darius and Antoine had the encounter under the moon and stars that Darius had transformed.
Many hundreds of years earlier, in fact.
But the genesis of Darius’ story will have to wait. Because in his new life, Darius led Roberto into Sacrafice…an unexpecting, innocent young man.
Did Darius want to transform Roberto into a dark demon? Was Darius still building his legions and his minions? Perhaps not.
But why did Darius care about Roberto? The Demon Darius had so much of his own web to weave; he loved his immortality and had shared it with Antoine.
But Antoine was not so accepting of the new fate that had been bestowed upon him.
That is right.
The genesis of Darius’ story will indeed have to wait.
The beginning of this story will start, rather, when Darius and Antoine first encountered each other, back when Antoine was still a mortal. When Antoine was bedazzled with women who he later took away in ecstasy when Darius was discreetly watching, and waiting for the right moment to take him.
It was a night like any other; it was then that their eyes met for the first time.
It was if Darius had beckoned Antoine to look and lay his eyes on the strange brooding specimen. It was like the moment in a movie when the music stops and the hero and villain see each other for the first time.
And of course after that, when Darius figured in a much greater part in Antoine’s immortality, the events came forth that led up to Antoine’s placing Darius in an earthy grave. And it was the first time of many times that Antoine would attempt to destroy Darius and place him in the ground.
*~*~*
“Wake up, sleepyhead!”
Antoine opened the coffin lid, and sat up, quite perplexed as to how he got there. The last he remembered, he had drained himself of almost all of his blood, and collapsed in the cemetery.
The coffin lid opened slowly, and a faint dim candle light crept in, slowly swallowing the darkness, exposing Antoine to his first new night. There was his face before him…Darius.
Just as he remembered him from the forest the night before.
Darius.
His long, flowing brown hair. The smile on his face like that of a Cheshire cat.
The youthful beauty.
Wake up, sleepyhead.
Those words reverberated through his mind like a metronome. He heard them played in his mind, again and again, throughout the years of his immortality. But here he was, as the coffin lid opening above him, acting as if hearing those words for the first time.
*~*~*
The tutoring started out plain and simple.
Antoine, getting acclimated with staying up during the night and sleeping during the day, avoiding sunlight and becoming an unseen shadow in crowds of people, blending in as if to become invisible, and drinking the blood of an unsuspecting unfortunate soul who came across his path, did not at first hold any animosity towards Darius.
Darius taught Antoine in the ways of vampires, all while Darius learned the ways of demons from his Maker. The line continued, deeper and deeper into the past, deeper and further down the ancestral line of demons, back into the past when the first earthly demon existed.
The ways did not change, and, Antoine learned, many of the myths of the vampires were true, and, in turn, they were to live by those principles for a time.
Taught by Darius from day one, Antoine learned never to venture out into the sunlight. Not that it “killed” or “destroyed” him, but rather weakened his powers greatly, and that he was much closer to a mortal – at least in terms of vulnerability - while out in the daylight.
“Keep away from the sun, at least for now” Darius frequently explained. “It will not hurt, nor will it kill you alone. But be wary. You can easily be killed by other forces when moving about by day. You will grow and evolve in time.”
“What other forces?” Antoine asked.
Darius did not look Antoine in the eye when he asked that question.
Darius stared down at his desk in the quaint, dimly lit library that the two had been conversing in. He slowly rose from his chair, stepping towards the left over to the fire that popped and crackled, and added another log to the flames and closed the screen. “There are many forces which could hurt you when you move about by day. I speak to you now, not because I want to dwell on this subject, but to protect you.”
“Protect me from what? The forces?”
“Let me finish,” Darius pleaded, returning to the desk. “When you move about during the day, you must use extreme caution. You are not really demoniac during those hours.”
“So what am I then?”
Darius paused for a moment, as if searching for an answer. “Right now, you are in your infantile stage, Antoine. I am culturing you in the ways of the vampire, because, at this early stage, that is basically what you are. Vampires are a small night creature with little of the power that you are destined to have. You need to build up your strength. You have been chosen.”
Darius stoked the fire as he spoke.
Turning back around to face Antoine, he continued: “I am much more than you. I have already gone through my stages of what could be compared to a vampire, and now I am much more powerful than a simple, silly vampire. I am of the Baal. You right now are basically the walking dead.”
Those words resounded in Antoine’s head over and over again.
The walking dead.
Wake up, sleepyhead!
“I am dead,” said Antoine, pensively, staring at the fire as is hypnotized.
“You are dead.”
Antoine rose from his chair. He slowly walked over to the fire, his gaze never left the blaze, which grew more and more intense as Darius stoked it.
“Right now you are in gestation,” Darius explained, turning from the fire to face Antoine. “Eventually, you will become of the Baal. Right now you need to start with the ways of the vampire, and when you are ready to elevate to Baal you will…you will become closer to Tartarus and…”
“What can kill us?” he asked, still staring at the fire.
“It’s different for both of us, since we are on different levels. Like I said, I am a full demon of the Baal. You need to follow the ways of the vampire, however simple they may seem, to survive. Once you are Baal, you will have much greater power and it will be much more difficult to kill you.”
“What then, will kill a vampire?” Antoine asked.
With those words, Darius’ head turned over to Antoine. He had previously been staring at Les Livre Des Vampires.
“Kill a vampire?” he asked.
“Yes.”
Antoine turned from the fire, finally breaking his gaze. His long jacket swung with his body, barely missing the flames. “How do I kill a vampire?”
Darius rose from his chair.
He was not expecting such a question. As he rose and walked in the direction towards Antoine, he began to speak.
“That,” he said, pointing to the book on the desk, “Is ‘Le Livre Des Vampires’.” He returned to the desk, picking up the book and bringing it over to Antoine. “It is a textbook,” he continued, “giving the reader insight as to what a vampire actually is. Why do we exist? How do we exist? And, as you asked, it tells what can bring our existence to an end.”
“And you have read to that point in the book?”
“Yes, I have, and beyond. It will also answer some of your questions about the gestation to Baal.” Darius opened his hand and gestured towards Antoine – who stood very close to the fire.
“Come back to the desk with me,” Darius said. “I will show more to you. And you will see that you do not want to be standing as close to that fire as you actually are.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Once Antoine got acclimated to his new life as an immortal, and learning the ways of vampires and preparing himself for his gestation, he began to distance himself from Darius. As the days, and the months, and the years progressed, Antoine began to feel a deeper hate for Darius. But, it was shortly after that encounter they had in the library on that cold winter night that the pair were separated. And it was not fate that brought their union to an end. Or, perhaps, it could have been fate.
A fate controlled by Antoine.
Antoine killed Darius for the first time just a mere six months after Darius made Antoine. And several times over the years, Antoine would kill Darius again, and again, and again. It wasn’t only that Antoine was capable of killing – being immortal he was expected to kill every day. The killing of course became a source of survival, but it wasn’t necessarily the reason for it.
Darius killed primarily for fun and sport. Antoine had his reasons for killing, and he kept rationalizing with himself that it was for survival, since Darius had initially taught him the ways of the vampire and had explained to him that the reasons for the vampire tutelage was for preparation for gestation to Baal.
Killing one of his own kind - his maker - was different than Antoine’s usual killing. The rebelliousness of it all made it more like a human taking the life of another human. For Antoine to kill Darius, it took the same hate and energy he had when he killed the unsuspecting suitor at the café so many years ago in his mortal life.
“Fire,” said Darius. “That is an element which can end us.”
Darius turned to a page near the end of Les Livre Des Vampires. The opened page showed a picture of what Antoine assumed was an immortal or vampire or some other entity being burned alive. The crude drawing was an artist’s rendition, and it was somewhat hard to discern exactly what was going on in the drawing other than the obvious fact that someone in an apparent human form was being burned and charred to ashes.
Darius turned the page, and another drawing appeared. The stake still stood in the drawing, however there only appeared to be a pile of ashes at the foot of the stake, and there were several people standing around, as if they were observers to the killing.
Darius continued, focused on the picture, staring at the scene as he spoke. “Driving the blade through the heart of the immortal is what held him in place as he burned to ashes. See the blade sticking out from the stake? That is what held him there.”
Antoine looked closer at the picture.
“And what is that?” Antoine asked, pointing at the drawing to a blurry object held to the stake by the blade. “What is that there?”
“That is the heart.”
Antoine looked closer. He could not tell it was a heart simply by looking at it. “It appears unscathed,” he mused. Antoine looked further down the page, and saw a footnote near the bottom of the page that explained that the mysterious object was the heart.
“The heart,” Darius said, “is the center of an immortal. The human, the center is the brain. You can take away an immortals brain. You can take away our lungs. But our heart…that cannot be killed. Look in that picture, Antoine. This immortal…he has been crippled. That is all. His heart is affixed to that stake. But if one were to raise him, he would walk again as an immortal as if he had never died.”
An immortal dies, but then never really dies. The humanlike form is gone, destroyed, but the soul lives on. Lives on and waits, waits for someone to raise it. Waits in the darkness and solitude of a casket, feeling the dank cold surrounding it, feeling the coldness of the earth burying it, sealing it from day and night and air.
The dead await in the coffin as if buried alive, but then the immortal never really dies, and exists in the claustrophobic satin box in total blackness and isolation; waiting in agony and torment of its own personal hell for an undetermined amount of time leading up to eternity.
*~*~*
Darius closed the book.
The fire crackled, and let out a small pop, sending a spark onto the carpet in front of Antoine. He stepped forward onto the small, burning ember and stubbed it out. “To snub out an immortal...” he said, under his breath. “That is the only way?”
Darius pretended he did not hear. “Ashes, Antoine. Ashes. You will see. The heart will always remain. You could burn an immortal to ashes, to where there is nothing left. But the heart will remain, and it will remain until it is claimed by the protector.”
“Who is that?”
“The protector of everything evil. He collects souls for favors.”
“What kind of favors are those?”
“You will never know until you need him. And he comes when you least expect it. If you encounter him, he will not stop until he has your soul.”
Antoine shuddered as Darius got up to place the book back on the shelf.
Over the next six months, Antoine grew much more distaste for Darius. But the two remained together during that time, side by side, killing, drinking and enamoring the people of Lyon. The two became inseparable, despite Antoine’s growing hatred. The hatred came each evening as the coffin lid opened and he saw Darius’ grinning, chiseled face and long, dark locks – a dark silhouette against the dim candle light. It appeared as if Darius could not be trusted. Or could
he? Antoine could not reach inside Darius’ mind.
That was no surprise.
Never could an immortal look into his makers mind. It was a spiritual impossibility, no matter how hard the protégé tried.
Antoine did not trust Darius because of any disloyalty - that was not the case. The two fought and hunted together like brothers; they attended plays and visited fine art galleries in Paris like lovers; it was the look in his eyes that Antoine came to distrust. There was just something about Darius that Antoine could not figure out.
Darius chose Antoine to be an immortal due to Antoine’s blasphemies against God in his life. The sexual adventures.
His capability to kill.
Antoine understood that.
What Antoine could not understand was the secretiveness, like Darius was holding something back. Like there was a deeper, more destructive force behind their existence that Antoine would coil in terror from if he even knew his part in the grand scheme of living in immortality.
Yes, Darius was not telling the whole truth about the powers behind their existence. And Antoine knew, deep down, that their existence was inherently evil. And this upset him. While he was essentially a sinner during his short life, he did not want to live damned to evil.
But he kept these feelings from Darius.
The two had made the journey back to Lyon numerous times, in a horse drawn carriage, as Darius leaned his head on Antoine’s shoulder, resting his eyes. And it was later on, after returning home, that Antoine decided that he could not stay. But there was no way that Darius would let his dear protégé go.
“Darius, I cannot stay here anymore,” Antoine said, as he was standing before the fire. He turned to Darius, and looked him directly in the eyes. Darius was still seated behind the table in the center of the library, with Les Livre Des Vampires open in front of him. Darius said nothing. And when Antoine glided out of the room, he did nothing, save to turn and watch Antoine go.
