by Vox Day
Okay, so far, so good. Now what? She closed her eyes and tried to remember something, anything, from the TV show. But the shock machine was the only thing that popped into her mind, and she sure didn’t have one of those with her. That left just one thing.
“God?” If it was his will for this guy to live, then he’d live. She had no doubts on that score; she’d seen way too much of his power in Heaven and on Rahab to even worry about that. The question is, was it his will? “I have no idea what I’m doing, but if you sent me here for a reason, then you’re going to have to help me out here!”
She shrugged. Not much of a prayer, maybe, but she was sure he got the point. He was God, after all. All right then. What had happened before could happen again, couldn’t it? She took a deep breath and placed her hands on the man’s dark skin.
“Wake up, in Jesus’ name.”
There was a crackling sound, and then her hands were tingling as the man jerked once underneath her. The sensation was strange; her hands seemed to have fallen asleep all of a sudden, but she could still feel a burning heat in her palms. She stared at them, wondering what, exactly, had just happened. Then she looked down and shrieked, alarmed, when she saw that a pair of very confused brown eyes were staring up at her.
“You’re a very nice young lady, I’m sure….”
Jami stared down at the dead man under her, who was showing every sign of not being dead after all. He was breathing, his heart was beating, and then, of course, he was talking to her now as well. His voice was rich and deep; it sounded a little bit Southern and and kind of smoky. It made her think of barbecued chicken.
“… but I don’t think my wife would appreciate where you’re sitting right now, you see.”
What? Oh, yeah. She scrambled off of his chest, her face warming with embarrassment as she glanced around to see if anyone had seen her. What with his shirt being unbuttoned and all, things would have looked pretty bad if somebody had been passing by. Even worse, Jami didn’t know what she should say to him. How were you supposed to tell someone that he’d just been raised from the dead?
“I’m sorry,” she told him. “You just… you just…. Well, I thought you maybe needed help.”
The black man nodded soberly, and brushed the snow off his coat and trousers as he rose to his feet. He was tall, with broad shoulders that made her think he must have played football when he was younger. He wasn’t exactly handsome, but his face was kind and despite the awkward situation, he seemed to be very polite.
“I see,” he said slowly, as he buttoned his shirt, leaving his dark wool coat hanging open. He coughed twice into a leather-gloved hand, then shrugged. “That is entirely possible, since I don’t remember anything…. One minute I was leaving my house to go for a little stroll around the block, and the next thing I saw was you sitting on my chest!”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really don’t know what happened to you.”
He frowned and looked down at the ground.
“I don’t suppose you have any idea about who this young man might be?”
Young man? What young man? Oh no! In the shock of seeing the man come back to life, she’d forgotten about Christopher. How could she do that?
“He’s my brother,” she told him as she kneeled at Christopher’s side, pushing Duke away. “I think he’s all right, but I don’t know what happened to him either.”
The man bent down beside her and after taking off his gloves, carefully cradled Christopher’s head in his hands. He checked Christopher’s pulse twice, then shrugged off his coat and slipped it under Christopher’s body. Shifting his position to get more light, he examined one of his hands before reaching back under Christopher’s unmoving head.
“Look at this,” he said a moment later, holding two fingertips out towards her.
There wasn’t enough light for Jami to see anything, though, on the man’s dark hands.
“It’s blood,” he told her. “Not much, but it looks as if he was struck in the back of the head by something heavy enough to knock him out…. In fact, I think I even know what it was!”
He stood up gracefully, then reached over and picked up a large tree branch that was lying a few feet away from Christopher. He glanced at it, then held it out towards her. She could see that one side, the thicker one, was jagged and uneven, and had several large pieces splintered off the end.
“See, look there. See that dark patch there, almost on the edge. That’s blood too. That’s where it hit him.” He pointed up at a nearby oak tree. “And right there, you can see where the branch broke off the tree. It’s strange, though. That tree is healthy, it’s not very old, and the wind didn’t seem all that strong….”
Oh man, she thought. Not again. It couldn’t be happening again, could it. Well, if it was, then she only wanted one thing—her guardian angel! Paulus, where the heck are you?
The man looked at her, and he must have realized that she was about to freak out, because he smiled kindly and reached out to touch her shoulder.
“What’s your name, honey?”
“Jami,” she said. “Jami Lewis. My brother’s name is Christopher. We live on Oak Avenue.”
“Well, I’m Charles Walters, and I thank you for helping me, Miss Lewis. I just wish I knew why you had to. Now, my wife and I live just down the street, so let’s get your brother inside where it’s warm and I’ll have Lowell come take a look at him. He’s a good doctor, and while he’s checking out your brother, perhaps you can tell me just what in the world is going on around here.”
Chapter 4
The Geek Squad
I came into this world as a reject.
—Limp Bizkit, (“Nookie”)
Giovanni di Verde watched from the rooftop as the vampire struck, like a flash of ebon lightning. Its victim was a pleasingly curved young woman, a waitress by trade, who had chosen a very bad time to go out into the back alleyway for a smoke break. Giovanni wasn’t sure why the vampire preyed on the employees of this particular restaurant, but this was the third time he’d seen it lurking here in as many nights. This persistent repetition was highly unusual, and he wondered if there might be an undead power struggle lurking behind these strange, reoccuring attacks.
The monster fed quickly, and Giovanni took in the details of its appearance. Its face was that of a beautiful man, but white and hard, as if carved in stone like the marble statues standing before the nearby Duomo. It wore a well-cut grey suit, and a pair of black leather shoes that Giovanni recognized as Ferragamo. The expensive clothing indicated that the vampire surely belonged to the Mostrare clan, the elegant Florentine pretenders who stubbornly refused to submit to the Black Throne of Avignon.
The vampire looked up in shock, blood spilling from its open mouth, as Giovanni caused himself to appear right in front of it.
“What… who are you?” it stammered. “Where did you come from?”
Giovanni smiled, unconcerned even as the monster abandoned its kill, standing up to glare angrily at him with the eerie red eyes of the undead.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he remarked blithely. “Aren’t you taking quite a risk, returning to this place night after night to feed on the unfortunates working here?”
“My prince sends a message,” the vampire told him. “This is Mostrare ground. The owner is a human who does not understand yet that it is only the mortal mafiosi that have been broken by the carabinieri, not us. Soon, he will understand, and pay the price required for doing business in our domain.”
It smiled, baring two long canines that looked very white in its blood-stained mouth.
“And what business is it of yours, that you should spy on me? Aren’t you the one taking a foolish risk, magician, in confronting me? Your dark spells will not save you here. Tell me why I shall not drink your blood,” it gestured at the lifeless body beside it,“as well.”
Giovanni laughed, genuinely amused, and made a sign with his hands. The vampire stepped back with a startled look on its perfect, marble
face.
“I will tell you why, mosquito of the Mostrare. My prince also sends a message, a message to your master. The Mostrare may claim this ground, but the night belongs to the Nottambuli. Your master will bow before the Black Throne, or be destroyed with all his spawn.”
“Brave words, magician,” the vampire spat, and struck.
Its long-nailed hand arced out like a blade, slashing through Giovanni’s neck. The blow was struck so fast and well that Giovanni felt no pain as his head was severed from his body. Moments later, there was a mild flash of discomfort as the massive wound healed instantly, and he was again whole. He blinked, once, and saw the vampire was paralyzed with terror, daunted by this miraculous display of immortal power.
“You are no mortal, no mage,” the undead monster snarled fearfully, cringing before him.
“No, I am not,” Giovanni agreed, as a pair of great charcoal-grey wings spread out over his shoulders.
“I will bear your message to my prince.”
The proud, handsome monster was humble, its voice wheedling.
But Giovanni was unyielding.
“No, you will not,” he refused it coldly, and the vampire took fright.
It transformed itself into a cloud of black smoke that was almost invisible in the dim light of the alley, but Giovanni, correctly anticipating the monster’s response, caused a small bottle to appear. He murmured a spell, and the cloud that was the essence of the vampire began to slowly flow into the bottle. When every wisp of smoke was trapped within the bottle, he sealed the mouth with a twist-cap, then reached into his pocket and withdrew a label which he pressed onto the bottle. The label bore the address of a residence located in one of the better parts of Florence.
Inside the bottle, he could just make out two amber dots of light glowering at him.
“You are the message,” Giovanni informed the vampire, and he smiled cruelly.
“Hey, that’s not fair,” one of the new guys complained. “I didn’t know he was a demon!”
Brien glanced at Derek and rolled his eyes. The three new players were Rob’s friends, and except for the freshman, who was new to role-playing games altogether, they were old-school Vampire gamers who found it hard to get used to the idea that they weren’t so high and mighty anymore. Demon: The Unseen was a new game that Derek had devised himself, combining some of the best elements of Vampire, Werewolf, and Mage, with Brien’s old favorite, The Call of Cthulhu. As often as they could, Rob, Jeremy, Derek, and Brien gathered together in the dimly-lit basement of Rob’s house to play the role of dark spirits from the six hundred sixty-six realms of Hell.
“Well, you didn’t stop to find out, did you?” Derek pointed out correctly. Tonight, he was the dungeon master, the referee and story-teller who controlled the game. Aside from some of the super-geeks at GenCon, Derek DM’d a game better than anyone Brien knew. He was fair, but flexible, and always laced his story-telling with dark and mythic color. He had little patience, though, for foolish gamers. “Next time, take the time to see what you’re up against before you pick a fight.”
“Geez, Todd, don’t you ever learn?” Rob complained. He shook his head and reached out for the half-empty bowl of Doritos. “This isn’t a hack-and-slash like D&D, I told you that!”
Rob was their backup dungeon master, a fat junior with long, greasy hair and glasses. He was a great host for their gaming sessions, and always kept them well-supplied with snacks and soda. He seldom saw the sun, and his skin was white enough that he might have passed for one of the undead himself, except for a faint greenish tinge which supposedly came from spending hours in front of the computer screen. The Geek Tan, it was called.
“Yeah, well, this whole thing is lame,” Todd said in a petulant voice. “What’s with this homemade stuff anyhow?”
Brien glanced at Derek, half expecting an explosion, but Derek only pursed his lips contemptuously and shook his head.
“Just because you have no creativity doesn’t mean nobody does.” Derek yawned. “You don’t like it, go back to playing Hunt the Wumpus.”
Everyone laughed, except for Todd and the freshman.
“Hunt the Wumpus?” the freshman looked confused. He had a mouthful of braces that made him look like he was about twelve years old. “What’s that? I’ve never heard of that.”
“It’s what we call Dungeons & Dragons,” Brien explained helpfully. “In all its myriad of colors.”
“Oh, okay, I get it,” the freshman nodded his head. “I get it. I think.”
“So what do you guys want to do next?” Jeremy covered his mouth with his fist, and burped loudly. The freshman laughed, a little too hard, and Brien grinned as he saw Derek roll his eyes.
“Anybody want to see my thirty-second level mage on Evercrack?” Rob asked. “I’ve got some pretty cool new spells this guy in Brazil traded me.”
“Brazil?” The freshman whistled. “That is just so cool, you know, the way you can play with people all over the world. I mean, on the net, you know? It’s just so cool!”
The five older boys ignored him as they contemplated Rob’s suggestion. It was just after midnight, and Brien knew they weren’t going to be able to finish whatever they started, unless they just screwed around and didn’t do any serious playing. Brien wasn’t a huge fan of online role-playing himself, but he was a little curious about Rob’s new spells.
“I say we forget this and blow some shit up.”
Derek was leaning back against a couch with his hands folded behind his head. There was a stunned moment of silence, broken finally by the freshman. Besides Brien, only Rob appeared to be unsurprised.
“Blow stuff up? Do you mean, like, with a pipebomb or something?”
“No, with a fucking ICBM, what do you think, jerk-off?”
Brien laughed, as did everyone else but Derek and the freshman. Derek and Rob had been engaging in a friendly pyrotechnics competition for years, ever since Rob’s father bought him his first package of bottle rockets in eighth grade. It hadn’t been long, though, before they’d gone from taping the fireworks to their bike handles and “strafing” the neighborhood garage doors while playing Luftwaffe, to assembling homemade explosives of ever-growing “bang power”.
Rob always used the same simple model, just packing more gunpowder into bigger pipes when he sought a bigger bang. Derek, on the other hand, liked to experiment with what he called “delivery packages”, and in tenth grade had briefly achieved hero status at school when he detonated a smoke bomb in the principal’s car by remote control. He’d been suspended for two weeks when word of the culprit finally made its way around to the authorities, but even Brien’s dad admitted that the prank had been pretty impressive.
“That Wallace kid,” he remembered Dad chuckling upon hearing about Brien’s escapade. Mr. Van Nuys, their old neighbor, had filled Dad in on the latest over beers in the backyard. “He’s a handful, I tell you. Too clever for his own good, if you ask me.”
“So what do you got?” Rob asked Derek. “I haven’t built nothing since we took out the tree stump with Fat Boy Three.”
Derek arched an eyebrow mysteriously.
“I’ve got a new delivery package,” he told them. “Last weekend I was trying out some stuff from the Cookbook. There’s some weird shit in there, you know. Like, how to make smokables out of banana skins, stuff like that. But there’s some interesting packages too.”
Brien was enjoying the half-appalled, half-enraptured look on the freshman’s face. Derek could be very convincing when he wanted to be, but Brien knew he was putting the younger boy on. The thing with the bananas didn’t work, at least not the two times they’d tried it. You could probably get a better high from shredding a brown paper bag and smoking that instead.
“Okay, so what’re you gonna blow up?” Rob asked.
“Oh, shut up!” Todd broke into the conversation. “You guys are so full of it! You’re not going to blow up anything!”
Derek stared at the junior for a long, silent mom
ent. When he spoke, he spoke very slowly, as if Todd might have trouble understanding him otherwise.
“Yes,” he said carefully, enunciating each word. “Yes, Todd, we are.”
“I, um, I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” stammered the freshman. “I mean, you know, you can get in trouble for that, don’t you think? It’s against the law, I’m pretty sure.”
“Oh no, is it?” Derek drawled, and Brien started laughing
“It’s… against… the law!” He couldn’t help it. The wild look in the kid’s eyes made him look like a panicked horse trapped in a barn fire. “Jimmy, we’re not going to blow up the damn school! We’re talking about, like, a mailbox or something.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure bombing a mailbox is a Federal offense,” Rob pointed out, as he brushed Doritos crumbs off his chest. Brien noticed that the bowl was empty now. “Not that I give a fuck, just FYI, you know?”
“Fed-dead-erals,” Derek bobbed his head to an imaginary beat, and pushed himself up to his feet. “Look, you dudes can do whatever you want. Come along, or not, I don’t care. Brien, you’re in, right?”
It wasn’t really a question. Brien nodded.
“Ya.”
“All right, well, if you’ll excuse us, gentlemen, we have some very important business to attend to, which may or may not involve reduction of a United States Postal box to its component elements. Meet us outside in about ten minutes if you want to come along; there’s something Brien and I have to do first.” He paused, and made a mock bow to his little audience. “You’ll notice I haven’t actually told you what we’re going to do, thus allowing you to maintain plausible deniability in the extremely unlikely event that anyone happens to give a damn about the potentially altered state of said mailbox.”
He headed for the stairs, and with a quick wave to the others, Brien, grinning, hurried to follow him. They quietly made their way out of the house, being careful not to wake Rob’s sleeping parents. But when they reached the Jeep, Derek turned to face Brien with a strange look on his face.
