The Blood Talisman

by Kim Culpepper

  Chapter 18

  John stood quietly in the corner of the dim, dark office awaiting orders. The ticking of the clock in Ram’s office was driving everyone to near insanity. Ram seemed very on edge as he sat there, tapping one finger on his desk. Two guards stood at the door, and Rose sat on a dark grey sofa near John. He kept his Glock 9 pistol close to his hand just for reassurance that Rose wouldn’t try anything stupid.

  Rose rocked back and forth, trying to comfort herself. She kept her eyes closed to avoid the present. She focused all of her thoughts on Selene. She wondered if she was okay. She felt so stupid to have just gone charging into a hospital full of vampires. Her rocking became faster and stronger until John’s hand slapped down onto her shoulder and stopped her from going any further into madness.

  She shivered and felt the tears boiling to the surface. A few leaked out and she whimpered.

  Ram sighed and stared at her from across the room.

  “John, take her on into the boardroom. I will bring the other one in a few minutes. And take the guards with you. I’ll be fine on my own,” he ordered.

  “Yes sir.” John complied. He took Rose by the arm and dragged her towards the door. She whined and grunted. Ram grimaced at the sounds coming out of her. He rolled his eyes at her misery.

  “How pathetic,” he whispered to himself as they exited.

  The door shut behind them and he took another deep breath, calming himself.

  He opened the top drawer of his desk and reached in for his small Beretta Nano handgun, which he placed carefully into his left pants pocket. He noticed a picture underneath where the gun had been lying. He picked it up and stared at it. It was Ember. She was sunbathing in a pink and white polka-dotted bikini. Her blonde hair hung down to her breasts and white stilettos dressed her feet in true style.

  He dug deeper into the drawer and pulled out a lighter. He clicked it on and the blue flame danced happily in front of it for a few moments. He set the photo ablaze and threw it in a metal trash bin sitting nearby. He walked out of the room, leaving the picture to burn on its own.

  He strode down the hall towards where Alex and Selene were being held. The fluorescent lights had been changed and weren’t blinking on and off anymore. The brightness gave him a headache. A maintenance person passed him with a ladder which he scraped against the walls several times to avoid getting close to Ram. This put a smirk on the vampire’s face.

  He rounded a corner and opened the door to where Amalia lay in her induced coma. Alex sat on the bed beside her, holding her hand and watching her sleep quietly. Ram looked around the room and noticed the bathroom door was closed. Selene wasn’t anywhere to be found so Ram ran over to the bathroom and hurled the door open, startling Alex. The bathroom was completely empty.

  Ram marched over to Alex.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  “She’s right here.” Alex responded, lifting Amalia’s hand up from the bed.

  “Not her, Selene. Where is Selene?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve been here this whole time. I haven’t left Amalia’s side.”

  Ram raced out of the room and looked both ways down the hall. The guard that he’d stationed by the door was stepping out of the cloakroom across the hall. He tucked in his dark green security shirt and looked up to find Ram staring at him intensely.

  “Where did the girl go?” Ram asked calmly.

  “I just ran to the bathroom real quick, sir. She was in there when I left.”

  Ram casually walked over to the guard and picked him up by the neck, slamming him against the wall.

  “When you take a break, you ask someone to cover you. Call out for a search party… now.”

  Ram dropped him onto the ground and the guard fumbled with his radio nervously, trying to call out to anybody who would listen.

  “We have a runaway. She’s a blonde, white female, about five feet eight inches tall. Notify Ram as soon as she is found,” he called out, voice shaking.

  The other guards answered obediently.

  Ram pushed the guard back up against the wall and smelled his neck and one side of his face.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the guard pleaded. “Please… don’t.”

  Ram bit into his neck feverishly, ripping away flesh and drinking his blood until death. The guard’s body hit the hallway floor and Ram left it there, in search of Selene. He went running down the hall back towards his office.

  “SELENE!” he yelled out. “SELENE! I’m going to find you!”

  He stopped short of his office and turned back from whence he came. He thought about the clumsy maintenance man who’d avoided eye contact with him. He ran back to the guard’s body and pulled the radio from the guard’s pocket. It dripped blood as he lifted it.

  “She may be dressed as a maintenance person carrying a ladder,” he explained into the radio.

  “10-4,” several voices answered him in unison.

  He kicked the guard’s body repeatedly and muttered, “Damn it, damn it, damn it!”

  He heaved huge breaths in and out and leaned his hands against the wall above the guard. The cold, hard sheetrock felt good to them. Then he heard footsteps and a gun clicking behind him.

  “Don’t move,” Selene warned him as she grabbed his hand.

  His flesh began to burn and she pressed harder. Feeling the burn, Ram snatched his arm away from her.

  “Selene. I’m surprised at your ingenuity. You’re a very clever girl. Alex doesn’t give you enough credit.”

  “Shut up, you sick fucker. All I want is my sister and I want to leave. I’ve had enough of the warped games.”

  “What about Alex? You can’t leave him here.”

  “Alex has made his choice. He doesn’t want me.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. He just doesn’t want you for the same reasons that you want him.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

  “You want the same thing I want, but for different reasons.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about. Move it. Take me to my sister or I will burn your face.”

  Ram grasped her by the neck and threw her against the opposite wall. She fell to the hard floor and took a second to overcome the pain in her back. He grabbed her by her long blonde hair and dragged her down the hall towards the boardroom.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Haven’t you been working with your father to obtain your little boy toy?”

  “How do you know about that?” she said as she strained to reach his hand gripping her hair. She struggled to gain a stance but the harder she tried, the faster he pulled.

  They reached a set of double doors. Ram pulled her up to meet his face and said, “Sol has been more than forthcoming with information about you and the alliance you share with your father. You ought to be more careful with who you trust.”

  He pushed the double doors open violently so that they smashed into the walls. Four people jerked their heads around at the commotion. One was John, standing over Rose, who was sitting silently in a chair in front of him. Two guards stood nearby. They both pulled their guns from their holsters and aimed them diligently at Selene and Ram.

  Ram quickly motioned for them to lower their weapons and they did so. He threw Selene forward across the boardroom floor and she slid to the middle of the room.

  “Boys, can you give us a moment alone, please?” he asked the two guards.

  The clock above the board room table chimed twelve noon.

  “It’s time for the family reunion,” Ram casually commented.

  The clock ended its taunting song and silence fell. Then a bright ball of light formed in the middle of the room near Selene.

  “He’s here,” Ram announced, as giddy as an excited little boy with a new toy.

  The light grew into a bigger ball and blinded them all with the intensity of the sun. They turned their heads away from it. The light faded and Selene’s brother, Sol, stood in the midst of them. His blond hair fell to
broad shoulders. He had perfect tan skin and his gleaming blue eyes would make any woman swoon.

  Selene between Rose and Sol, forming a perfect line of siblings.

  “Solomon, how did you ever get mixed up with these deviants?” Selene asked her brother.

  “Deviants?” Sol echoed, amused. “I don’t think you and our sister have a lot of room to talk. At least I don’t lie with dogs.”

  “Please don’t do this to our family. You’re risking your own immortality as well as ours.”

  “I’m not the one who decided to risk our family’s security blanket of immortality. I’ve only tried to add to it. That talisman is my heritage and it will be mine to use however I please.”

  “While father is alive, it will forever remain his. He would never willingly give it to you.”

  Sol lifted Selene off the ground by her neck. She stared bravely back down at him and he glared angrily up. Her air escaped her and darkness was growing in her eyes as life slowly drained from her body.

  “She’s not the sister scheduled for death, Sol. We have plans, remember?” Ram reminded him.

  Sol came to his senses, releasing his grip from her neck.

  “Having plans does not make anger simply disappear,” Sol muttered.

  “We need the talisman.”

  “Let’s begin then.”

  Sol grabbed Rose’s lethargic hand and also took one of Selene’s. Selene glanced over at Rose, who was kneeling as though in prayer. One arm reached out limply towards Sol and the other lay peacefully in her lap. Tears swam endlessly into Selene’s eyes as she gazed down at her sister’s lifeless existence.

  “Take her hand, Selene,” Ram demanded.

  Selene shook her head in defiance as tears fell down her sad face.

  “Take her hand!” he ordered once more. He grabbed John’s gun from him and pointed its barrel against Selene’s head.

  “No! You can shoot me in the head but, you can’t kill me.”

  Ram rolled his eyes at her, knowing she spoke the truth.

  “Bring him in!” he yelled out towards the entrance of the boardroom.

  A security guard walked Alex into the room at gunpoint. He knocked him over the head with the butt of his gun and Alex fell to his knees. He looked weak as he fell. A wolf that had not fed was a worthless wolf, but she couldn’t just disown him. Whether he liked it or not, he was hers. She longed to help him up off the ground and take him and Rose away, but she would never make it out with them still alive.

  She obeyed Ram’s request and grabbed her sister’s hand. She stroked the top of Rose’s dry hand with her thumb. The comforting vibe that she was attempting to send didn’t seem to register with Rose at all. She seemed to be forever lost in her thoughts.

  A dim grey energy formed in front of the three siblings. It hovered for a few minutes and faded. Sol concentrated harder and the energy formed again but faded just as quickly. Sol shook Selene’s hand hard.

  “Focus!” he demanded.

  “I am. It’s not me, Sol. It’s Rose. It’s like she’s… she’s broken,” Selene answered sadly.

  The energy formed once again as they both concentrated harder. The dim, grey energy hovered and closed several times more before Sol became visibly frustrated. He threw both of their hands loose from his own and stormed off, away from the circle of siblings.

  Ram and John both stared at him as he paced the floor. He stopped suddenly and glared at his sisters. Then he took a deep breath and turned back towards the conference table surrounded by leather chairs. He lifted a hand and one of the chairs popped out suddenly. It floated towards him and hovered in front of his eyes. He lowered his hand and stared at the floating chair.

  He blinked his eyes and the chair divided into all of it parts. Springs, foam, leather, and tiny screws drifted aimlessly. He snapped his fingers and two of the screws glided quickly towards their intended targets. One stopped at Selene’s forehead and the other at Rose’s. Selene’s eyes immediately jerked wide open. She glanced over at Sol. He had an ominous half-grin on his face. It wasn’t anything that Selene particularly found amusing.

  “There is another way to get him to show his face here. Which one of these sisters do you particularly prefer to keep here, Ram?” Sol said, as he circled around Selene. “The werewolf-enamored, moon-obsessed, nature-loving witch or the crazed, absent-minded future-seeing witch?” He surveyed both of his sisters, sizing them up for his sinister needs.

  “I would prefer to keep the two of them. They will both serve me well in different ways,” Ram responded.

  “That’s not an answer, my unwanted adversary. We seek the same thing but for different reasons.” Sol scrutinized Ram, who was now holding John’s gun comfortably at his side. Ram looked unusually indecisive.

  “You don’t have to do this, Sol. Don’t tear this family apart” Selene said, voice shaking.

  “You have no right to even speak to me! You’ve been coercing with our father. I believe you want the talisman for yourself,” Sol yelled.

  His thunderous voice rattled the walls of the conference room. Ceiling tiles fell from around their heads.

  “That’s a lie Sol. Don’t shatter this family. These people aren’t worth it.”

  “It’s not about them. It’s about me. I am tired of waiting for my inheritance. I have no choice but to take what is rightfully mine. I want the power.”

  Everything quietened in the room. The screw in front of Selene’s head dropped to the floor like a pin. She closed her eyes in relief. Her brother had finally listened to her. She posted a faint smile on her face until she heard a much thicker thud onto the floor. Rose’s screw hadn’t dropped to the floor. Her screw had gone through her head.

  Selene quickly heaved her sister’s body up into her arms. She sobbed for the loss of her sister and screamed in anger at her brother. He hadn’t listened after all. He sought revenge and all the love within him had gone away. He now only sought his own personal dirty deeds.

  “Now that she is dead, our reclusive father will appear. I will have the talisman and I will be in control of life and death,” Sol said. His dirty little grin grew into a bigger confirmation of approval.

  Selene stood, straightened her clothes and walked over to Sol. She pushed him. He looked down at her in amusement. She pushed harder and harder until he grabbed her hands and stopped her. Then she fell against his chest, sobbing her tears of sorrow onto his crisp dress shirt. They soaked into him until a grey ball of energy began to form near Rose’s body. The energy grew from dark to dim and from dim to bright. It turned a beautiful blue and then purple, and a man stood before them all. Selene knew him as her father and loved him for that, but the rest of those present sought him only for what he’d created years ago. The blood talisman hung in a deep brown forest of chest hair just below his neck.

  They all stood in awe of his presence.

  “Grab him, John!” Ram shouted out.

  John approached him cautiously but the figure raised one immortal hand and froze him where he stood. The Immortal was the ruler of time. He could go to the past, freeze the present, or fast forward through to the future if he wished to do so. Sol never understood why he chose to not use that power but the Immortal had his reasons. He could always see the path of where changing the past would lead so he never chose to alter any events. Things were meant to be in the fashion that they were meant to be. Selene admired her father for this and Rose always hoped to be more accepting of fate, like her father.

  The Immortal stood in the middle of the room looking down at Rose’s lifeless body. Everyone in the room was terrified of moving towards him. Ram waited on Sol to act and dared not to speak again for fear of retaliation. Selene merely saw her father grieving for the loss of his daughter. No tears rained from his eyes, but as he gazed down at her curly, red hair and her ruby red lips a flicker of sorrow gleamed in his eyes. His first daughter lay beneath his feet. He knew that the only one able to kill her would be himself or one of her siblings and hi
s grief quickly turned into rage.

  Chapter 19

  Alex had been kneeling for long enough. He had been silent for long enough. The tension in the boardroom was enough to kill the weakest of souls. The wolf within fought its way to an unbearable level. His skin felt on fire and his bones felt achy once again. But he had no strength to change and no strength to move. He felt so helpless inside, but he wanted to fight for Selene in the same fashion that she had fought for him. Selene had been there for him in his weakest moments but he was powerless to return the favor. He couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. Not having fed in a while had affected him more adversely than he could have ever imagined. He felt more human than ever. Everyone around him had power in one form or another. He had been so naïve about what he had become that he hadn’t paid attention to the good things that being a wolf brought. All he could ever focus on was the bad, the pain, and how many would be hurt because of it. The good aspects of his new-found problem never crossed his mind until this very moment, when he needed them most.

  He mustered enough energy to stand up and the guard behind him attempted to butt him in the head with his gun again. But as the guard’s hand swung back, Alex grabbed it and the gun in one swift move. It was almost ninja-like and Alex felt sudden pride in himself.

  The guard had a surprised yet worried look on his face as he backed away and then fled. Alex turned back to watch the situation with the Immortal. Nobody noticed that Alex was now free.

  Selene’s family seemed to be coming apart right in front of her eyes. She reached out a hand to her father. The Immortal took it and squeezed it tight. Then she pulled back and he placed both hands over Rose’s body. Her body quickly turned to dust which grew into a small dust storm. It flew into the blood talisman that hung around the Immortal’s neck. When the dust was completely gone, they all remained staring at the triple crescent moon charm that had a bright red ruby encased between the three moons.