by Stephen Ayer
“Hello.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” snapped the man, his pencil flying and his notepad clattering against the steel table. He stumbled onto the ground, his face paled with fright.
Dr. Lawrence felt a warm trickle go down his legs before he got control over himself. He was at a loss for words, seeing the car victim in perfect health. His hair had grown immensely, from short and brown to a shoulder length shock of locks as black as raven wings. His face had a nobler countenance, thin chiseled and finer, and if the doctor looked at him just right he could have sworn there was a definite glow beneath his skin.
“It is not wise to profane the Lord in my presence, Son of Adam. The times have grown more lax, but I have not.” The man’s voice was clear and ennobling and just to hear it eased the doctor’s fear. He stepped forward and before the doctor knew it, he was above the floor, the man’s fingers around his neck.
More than the sensation of choking, the coroner felt his ribs tighten and buckle under some unseen strain.
“What... are you!?” wheezed Lawrence. “Please! Stop!”
The man grimaced. “While you struggle for breath, think of how best to turn your profanities to praise. I will not suffer anything else.” The coroner continued to cough and choke while the man ran his hand along the smooth metal operating table with childlike curiosity. “Death or repentance, I care not which comes first, doctor.”
“Please... I’m sorry...” Lawrence’s face showed slight tinges of pallid blue and his eyes were wet with desperation. The coroner’s feet kicked, his hands futilely pulling against the man’s, his body never more desirous for life than now. “Forgive... please... I... repent! Sorry!”
The man sighed. “That is... acceptable.” The man dropped Lawrence to the floor. The coroner drank in fresh gulps of air. Never before or since would the chilled morgue air taste so good. “As for what I am...” He found a scalpel and twirled it between his fingers with preternatural dexterity.
He returned his gaze to the doctor. “That’s not for you to know. So long as I’m here, you will call me Peter.”
Chapter 4: The Light Meets Its Shadow
December 7th
New York City
Frank looked out over the balcony as he took another drag of his cigarette. He was a very comfortable captive.
The full majesty of the metropolis lay before him, sprawling and sparkling, its looming towers and skyscrapers reaching into the purpled orange sky like blocky, charred fingers. The lights of Midtown dazzled his eyes in a way the sky never had. These were the stars of man, the buildings his giants. To his right gleamed the Chrysler building, its weathered gargoyles as vigilant as the day they were built and its ascending half circles of lights illuminated with the blue glare of the modern age. On the horizon the chunky pillars of the Twin Towers took a bite out of the sky, a pair of steel and concrete sentinels.
Every time he came here, memories of the past came thundering back into his mind, filling him with visions of when trees were more abundant, the buildings not so tall... the amount of violence about the same.
He chuckled to his musings, in truth his beloved New Amsterdam had cleaned itself up well. Perhaps too well. Very few things calmed his darker impulses as much as a good murder. Some vampires passed by eternity in their coffins, others by infiltrating positions of power, the sheer delight of pulling mortal strings eclipsing the pleasure once held with women. Frank was possessed of more provincial tastes, filling the hole in his soul with nameless whores and the garotted corpses of passersby, hobos and people he just didn’t like.
A small little trip into the Bronx or Harlem under the cloak of darkness, and then came the vagrants and wannabes, looking to be something more than the midnight snack for a grinning psychopath. Seventies New York. Those were the days. When the desperate were desperate and the angry were really angry. Their blood had a piquant tang that had all but disappeared since then, a sincere barbarity that the ensuing generation had all but smoothed over, today’s thugs having the form and appearance of someone willing to kill but never the burning soul that came with the genuine articles.
Today, corpses were investigated in a timely manner, put away with far more dignity than they had in life. He sighed. Now, the cops give a shit, he thought. Or at least pretend to.
As he walked back in, his eyes were greeted by the sight of low amber lights lined along the walls, creating a soothing yet hazy atmosphere. Beneath the lights lay early medieval weapons upon pedestals and encased in glass. Below each one was an inscription and further down the line the weapons slowly became more and more modern, until there was an overly decorated Ka-Bar knife and Beretta M9 at the very end, bejeweled with ruby crosses in their handles, the blade of the knife engraved in scrolling Latin.
It was still hard for him to accept who his ‘employer’ was now. Whether this was all that was left of them or was merely a cell, Frank wasn’t sure. Nor did he care. What they offered Frank was neither money or glory, having plenty of the former, the latter being death to any vampire who acquired too much of it.
They offered what only the dead could covet: life. He remembered the exact moment when his life became their life, how they could have sent him screaming to Hell that night... but didn’t. Howling winds, flying boxes, and that fucker... just... wouldn’t... die. The final destination was postponed, his freedom broken, his life no longer his own.
He massaged the smooth scar over his chest. His fingers took in the shape of the cross and the raised texture of scrolled and scarred holy words. An ever present reminder of who owned him. Templars.
It was brand and beacon both, an invisible collar that would track his shadow wherever it ran.
A dark smile reached across his face as the bloody memories of his first escapes came to fore. So many bodies, so much red. His violent breaths of freedom came sparingly and when they did, it was only to run rampant and enjoy the low pleasures of the world. How he had grown to adore the chill night air as Man relished the sun on his skin, the hot coppery nectar that ran between his teeth from sweet throats and the sheer feeling of power that thrummed through his sinews.
But like all things, his murderous frolics had come to an end, each cessation of bloodletting only a prologue for the next. The vampire was too valuable to be put down and he knew it.
He took a seat on a black leather chair at the very back of the room, and waited outside the office of his ‘handler’ as he took care of business with another. He hated that term. As if I can’t ‘handle’ myself.
The door opened with a loud click, and he watched as a tall man in black strode out, walking at a brisk pace towards the elevator. His refined senses twitched to his presence, his eyes wrestled with the fact that his height seemed to subtly distort as if he were in a hall of mirrors and his nose picked up on... nothing. He smelled like nothingness ought to smell like, like a sterile glove with the faintest undercurrents of cooled tar. Frank’s eyes locked with the man’s when he got in the elevator. He held his suitcase in front as the doors slowly closed.
His cheek bones were high and hollow, his eyes caught in the shadow of his brow. The man’s pallid skin seemed to yellow underneath the elevator light, crinkled from the sides like old parchment as something between a smirk and a scowl emerged across his face. Frank knew immediately he didn’t like him. Even under shadow, the irises of his eyes seemed to stand out, pale and watery, not moving his stare from Frank.
The two apex predators kept their staring match until the doors finally closed. Frank picked up on the faintest displacement of air as his handler emerged from his office.
“You ready?” he said. Frank looked over to him.
William.
An old, strong name for an old, strong man. Like the Templars themselves, he clung to the edifice of the past, not casting away his roots for the ever changing present. Unlike Frank, he was a man of his time. Frank on the other hand, was a man of all times. Always passing through, like a tourist observing the idle workings o
f humanity, sometimes curious, most times murderous.
In time, pretension gave way to practicality, elegance to utility, and William to Bill, as Frank often called him. William’s countenance was far removed from the nobility of his name and had the look of a middling achiever, spent and withered by endless hours in front of computer screens and fluorescent lights.
“Yeah...” said Frank, giving one last look to the closed elevator doors before stepping into the warm and stuffy office. “Who was that man?”
William shrugged. “I don’t know. Not sure if he was a man, in the traditional sense. He was just... I don’t know. Seemed mighty interested in our newest guest.”
“We have a guest? What did he want?”
“Yeah you’ll meet him later. As for what he wanted... nothing we could give even if we wanted to. Was under the impression we could have something that’s already in our possession but not always.”
Frank’s heart jumped, still warm with the blood of a fresh victim. “The hell does that mean?” He had been around for centuries and his hatred for word games had not diminished.
“Beats me, Frank.” he poured himself a glass of scotch, dropping some ice cubes as he handed a glass to the vampire, “He could’ve referred to any number of things but as it is... I don’t give a damn anymore. There’s just too many moving gears and pins in my world. He didn’t show up on the cameras, on any of our sensors, and I’m pretty damn sure that whole business with the elevator was just for show.”
Now Frank was interested. It had been so long since he had run into another like him. One of questionable humanity. He reclined back in the plush chair facing Bill’s desk as he filled his glass up. “Could be a warlock.” He took a sip of the stuff, relishing the burn as it streamed down his throat. “They’re really into that smoke and mirrors shit.”
Bill tilted back in his chair, massaging his glass as he looked at the sawed off shotgun underneath his desk. “Heh, I’ll keep that mind. But on to business.” He tapped his finger in the middle of his desk. “What have you got for me?”
Frank reached into his jacket, pulling out a beige envelope and slid it across the smooth desk. “Lots of corpses. The right corpses this time. Mainly shot, stabbed and burnt-”
Bill brought his fist down on the desk, the blow making the cubes in his glass jangle. “Damn it Frank! I told you! Be clean, this isn’t fuckin’ 1347! People will notice these things, the wrong kinds of people...” he trailed off and took another swig of his drink.
“Hey. You chose to keep me around. Me. There are consequences that come with that.” He noticed the red flushing across Bill’s face. “Besides, it’s Mexico. On the border, might as well be 1347. It would be noticeable to not brutalize them.” He thought Bill might have an aneurysm with the last one.
“You do realize they were having a lull in violence down there?”
Frank smiled. “Emphasis on were.” He pointed to the envelope. “Just pop that thing open, you’ll see. I covered everything. Oh, and the Puppet Master? Just some old coot in Nicaragua with a fixation on hearts. And blood. Some kind of cult but nothing serious.”
Many of the things Frank was sent to investigate were nothing serious, little more than mortals worshiping the right myths but reading the wrong books, leaving true power just below their fingertips. It was only after said mortals actually became successful in practical matters, such as a high placed businessman, warlord or politician, did their occult interests become dangerous.
“Your sanguine informant is mistaken.” said a voice in silvery, elegant tones. Frank felt the hair rise on his neck while a certain sharp, burning sensation penetrated through his jacket, spreading all over his body. It reminded him of the first stings whenever he was thrust into sunlight, the searing burn just before unnatural flames burst free to consume his body.
He leapt from his chair, putting as much distance between him and the voice as possible. “Who the fuck is that!?” he shouted as he saw Bill’s new guest. A man bedecked in a cream white suit, with a black tie and undershirt, his crown of black hair swept behind his head, the countenance of a philosopher. Frank’s pain diminished the further he stood away from him, but even so, his hand reached behind his back and whipped out his pistol.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you...” said the man. “The odds are not in your favor, child of darkness.” The man in white stepped forward even more, making Frank wince in pain. “If you insist on waving your gun about like a common criminal however, I can make that a guarantee of misfortune.”
“My whole life’s been a ‘guarantee of misfortune’ and I’m still here.”
The man’s clothes seemed whiter than most whites, his skin even began to glow with an otherworldly luminescence. “Shall we test that?”
Bill slammed his fist down on the table. “Alright calm down, both of you. Frank put away the damn gun.”
“Not until your pet pisses off. He’s like a walking talking piece of sunshine and it burns like hell.”
Bill sighed. “Alright, alright. Pete -sorry- Peter, I need you to drop the glow. He’s a friend here.”
The man in white turned his head to the side slowly, regarding Bill with inscrutable eyes. “A friend...” he echoed, “Do you remember who I am, William? Who you’re speaking to?”
“I remember you as the man who came to us. Cooperate or please leave.”
Peter fixed Frank with a glare. And then looked to Bill, exhaling. His radiance diminished into a normal yet vital complexion. “It is done.” He regarded Frank once more. “The vampire will not suffer death from my presence, only my wrath, should he incur it.”
“Thank you.” said Bill at last as if he had been holding his breath, relieved that he survived another minute. “Now, I speak on behalf of our Order, Peter, that our goals are aligned. We can be friends.”
Peter let out a contemptuous snort. “And what a shame that is. A holy order reduced to scattered bands of assassins, cut-throats and thieves, consorting with hounds of sin.” He pointed a finger at Frank. “I’m amazed... amazed, that so soon after your last purge, you already have that thing in your ranks. Five hundred Templars gone in two days. If Vaziel’s lesson did not take...” His eyes slowly shifted to Bill. “Perhaps mine would.”
Frank glanced at Bill’s paled face and smirked. Fuck yeah choirboy. Wipe ‘em out.
Bill kept cool and palmed the gun beneath the desk for reassurance, useless though it would be. He remembered the 1974 slaughter well. “No further lessons are necessary.”
“I didn’t think so. Not that you have the numbers to support one...”
Fantasy upon fantasy bloomed in the vampire’s mind. Hmm. Wonder how many are left? Were the ones I killed mercs or the die hards?
Bill cleared his throat. “Please, share with us.”
Peter sighed before he began. “The man... Frank, is it? Killed, was a puppetmaster of sorts, but not the Puppet Master. No indeed, the master at play in this ritualistic drama is not some vice addled malcontent, but a duke of deception, a demon for whom our dearly departed but not dearly missed Nicaraguan was but a pawn.” He flipped a photo out of thin air, a black and white Polaroid, before sending it across Bill’s desk, the glossy surface making the photo glide across like water.
Frank tilted his head as Bill scrutinized it closely, letting it wobble between his fingers. “So... it’s just a man?”
Peter chuckled. “Not hardly. He is no more ‘just a man’ than I am. No, when I say demon, I don’t say it as an indictment of character but a statement of fact. It is precisely because he is a demon, that I am here. Angels, as you know, are not wont to dabble in the comings and goings of mortal intrigues, unless there is an infernal touch abound, which I assure you, there is.” Frank and Bill nodded as if they did know.
Bill set the picture down and reclined back into his chair, backlit by the city lights through shuttered blinds. “What’s his name? We could piggyback on the CIA database and whittle down some le-” Peter raised a hand to hus
h him.
“Thoughtful but irrelevant. The birth name of his host is likely lost to the passage of time, having been replaced or marked dead as soon as he dropped out of society...”
“What about his demon name?” said Frank.
“If I knew his true name... I wouldn’t be here, and neither would he. It is their one true weakness, to know their name. I could pinpoint exactly where he resided and banish him on the spot, alas...”
“You have to go through us.” finished Bill.
“Precisely.”
Frank sat down on a pile of dusty books adjacent to Bill’s desk, letting out a long sigh. “So, case closed. He’s got it covered.” He turned to Bill. “Vacation time, right?”
Bill swiveled in his chair, folding his hands together. “Doesn’t work like that. We told you to find out about the Puppet Master, kill him if necessary.” Frank scowled. Son of a bitch. If you don’t give me a break I’ll take a break and start with you. “You’ve done neither. Why do you think we sent you down south? To mangle the masses into neat chunks?”
Frank shrugged. “I’m the wrong man if you want ‘em neat, but yeah, figured it was something like that.”
“Black steel, Frank. The Order doesn’t give a damn whose selling what to who, who kills who for what, but when artifacts enter the equation... well, we get a little interested. You know what I’m talking about?”
“No.”
“You’ve been living for god knows how long and you’ve never heard of it?”
Frank threw up his hands. “They might’ve called it something different back in the day but I kept my nose out of that stuff, saw too many have their lives go to shit when they dug too deep.”
“Wise words from your blood hound, William. I’d impress upon your superiors his attitude and that to chase after such strange trophies is to chase after ruin.” Peter looked to Frank. “I’ve not seen a single life end well once mixed up with those abominations.” The vampire gave him a cold stare.
Bill sighed. “You’re still talking about the steel, right?”
