by Stephen Ayer
His breath shuddered and he coughed strangely as more air rushed down his throat than he could breathe. The cold blood beneath his skin flashed hot and then back to frigid; his dead heart thumped one long beat which panicked him more than what clawed from within.
Fangs pushed aside lips as pangs of fury erupted from his soul, his eyes widening to the sudden bout of depression and euphoria that seized him, the foreign entity provoking every aspect of the vampire, prodding for an escape.
Memories of Ena flashed across his mind, and just as he began to hear traces of her voice, a voice he thought forgotten, a pain more profound than shattered bones and shed blood lashed his being.
Stars swam across his eyes and dark blood dripped from his nose while a soul breaking weight pressed itself against his flesh, pushing deeper and deeper. Just as he thought he was going to let it loose... it ended.
At once the darkness in the room became less palpable, and Frank felt the cold furnace of his black soul consume his immaterial invader. He heard an inhuman scream in his mind for the briefest of moments as shadow devoured shadow, and the room’s ward was shattered.
More light from the city and the moon came to shine through the thick curtains.
He heard Peter flip the switch to the light in the room but nothing came on. “Well done. I don’t think they made a plan for a man like you.”
Frank replied slowly, still recovering his senses. “No one does.” he muttered, and his eyes fell upon the ritualistic markings that marred the walls. That was some fucked up shit.
“Are you alright?”
The vampire spoke, but his words dragged in his mouth, numb, like a mute speaking for the first time. “No. But I’ll manage.”
The angel nodded.
Newspaper cutouts that covered every inch of the room like papery scabs over cracked white plaster. Frank’s eyes roved over the floor, noticing the carpet had been stripped out to make room for strange chalk writings that covered the ground as much as the papers covered the walls.
The angel made a sound of discovery. “Ah, you snake...” he said, though not about the vampire.
“What’s that?” He felt the angel squat next to him and saw him run his fingers across a dusty, exotic alphabet.
“The blood, the chalk... the ward.” Peter brought a chalk daubed finger to his nose and sniffed.
Frank stared at the floor blankly, both in disinterest and at the fact that the longer he looked at the scribbled texts, the more they hurt his eyes. “The significance of which is...?”
Peter let out a haughty scoff, as if it was obvious the entire time. “A witch!” The angel stroked his chin as he stood up. “I had my suspicions. And how they are rewarded...” He looked around the room, and took in the strange circles drawn over the newspaper articles in light green and blue.
“So I take it our hit list just got a little longer.”
Peter looked down to him and his eyes narrowed. “Immeasurably. Witches, like rats, do not come in by ones.” Peter stopped when his eyes caught something. Frank saw his raised eyebrows and then looked up. An inverted pentagram with a rose outlined in white lay above, its petals black like the ceiling.
“Been a while since I’ve seen one of those.” Frank sighed and dusted himself off.
Peter paced and held his chin in contemplation “The Black Rose coven. An old and extreme sect of witchbreed. They were found... strange, even by their own kind. As far as I knew, they faded out before the turn of the seventeenth century...”
Frank leaned back on the dresser topped with decorated skulls. “Apparently not. So... you take your man straight to Hell and if the hag gets in the way, we get... unkind. Sounds simple.”
“Killing, for better or worse, is always simple. Finding the right person to kill, that’s the hard part.” For you. “Here within this room, there is a path that will take us to him and thus to her.” The angel ran his fingers along the papered wall and closed his eyes as he took a deep breath. “I pray I am fit for the challenge.”
The vampire laughed. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Old women ain’t shit.”
Peter opened his eyes and gave Frank an acrimonious look. “Be weary. Demons may seek the old, but never the wizened or weak.”
“Just banish her. Or however you do that thing.” Twisted and horrific memories of murdering witches in the past swam through the vampire’s mind. There was much bluster and spectacle that confounded his seasoned mind. Slurred hexes, numbing fogs, a knife here and there. But once he got a good grip on their wrinkled flesh, they put up less fight than a drunk child.
Peter leaned against the wall and sighed while Frank walked to the room’s stationary desk. “One does not just banish - don’t touch that!”
Frank felt the angel’s hand snap around his forearm in a vice-like grip, keeping his hand just above the book he was about to touch on an engraved desk. The desk was carved from ebony and bedecked in ornate scroll work and soiled with droplets of crimson and black ink from the nearby candles. “That was close...” huffed the angel, strained from crossing the room in one bound.
Frank looked at him incredulously and shook his arm away from his hand. “It’s just a fuckin’ book!”
Peter’s jaw clenched and his fists balled before he grabbed Frank by the coat. “Are you so eager for Hell? Think...” He put his hand just above the surface of the book, and Frank felt the bloodthirsty rage cool in his heart upon seeing the air shimmer for a flash of a second underneath Peter’s palm before returning to normal. “These books were burnt for a reason...” He laid his palm gently upon the cover and Frank crinkled his nose to the burnt smell that wafted into the air, accompanied by a warm amber glow that radiated from the angel’s palm.
“That’s a witch’s grimoire? A real one?”
Peter lifted his hand from the sizzling book. “All are real, very few possess any true power, most just copies of copies.” He opened the leather bound cover, scrawled with similar writings seen on the floor. What animal the skin was made from... Frank could not tell. Peter eyed the pages with a grimace on his face. “We burned thousands and thousands... all for the chance that maybe one or two of the enchanted tomes would be among the pile.
Peter looked to Frank. “Come.” Frank inched closer, taking a look at the browned pages as Peter adjusted the book for both of them to see. “I have removed the wards so we may see. Do not look at the words, but rather the page, keep your eyes unfocused.”
Frank kept his eyes roving over the scrolling text and tried not to fixate on any specific letters, or notice how the ink in the book turned to a mixture of violet and red. He heard whispers hiss from what seemed to be inside his head and the more his eyes kept away from the text, the more they called to him, imploring him to take a look. But the vampire was unwavering, and in a blur of parchment and ink, real and unreal, the grimoire yielded its secrets.
The arcane texts re-arranged themselves into a living, breathing tapestry, a window into the past, illustrated through the medium of ink. Great plumes of stylized blue smoke danced along the borders of the pages, serving as both a framing and a cloak for the events to play in the book. The book began to flip pages rapidly, as if a violent wind had stormed the room, and the vampire and the angel both, became transfixed with the saga that played out before them.
Strange renderings of witches and warlocks populated the parchment, their frames unnaturally large and their faces bizarre and ethereal. Frank couldn’t tell where what was fanciful began and what was real ended. The strangeness didn’t last long, but while it did, he caught glimpses of what were equally primeval vampires, aberrant as they were beautiful and a whole bestiary of creatures of the night, stalking the outer edges of the panorama. Soon, a great rush of dark blue washed over the pages, blotting out the creatures and even the witches and warlocks... all but for a select few.
The last standing practitioners floated up, but not towards Heaven, but rather heavens of their own making. The mightiest of them forged their realities l
ike a blacksmith would a sword. Frank watched as the drawings zoomed out, showing the bluish green orb of Earth, but accompanying it were not only the orbs of the sun and moon, but a circle of spheres encircling the planet like a halo. The image went by faster than Frank could process it, and before he could contemplate it further, a new vista seared into his eyes.
There was one lone group of arcane individuals left. They were an odd group, being cunning enough to survive the cataclysm, but lacking the might and wisdom to build a new plane of existence like their betters. So they built themselves a refuge, raising a capital to call their own from the foundations and ruins of ancient earth. One by one, dissimilar chunks of cities were grafted onto each other, until finally it lay finished. Frank spied exotic minarets in the drawing’s outline of the city, plunging crenels and sky stabbing merlons crafted of turquoise and bone; many of the architectural stylings foreign to his eyes. There was no other place on the planet like it.
It was a Frankenstein’s monster of a city. An aberration, formed out of the dead and decayed civilizations from an age best left forgotten and held together by forbidden Promethean fire. Magic. As the world closed the book on mysticism and esotericism, the city took to the skies, fading into legend much like the practices that created it.
Now the pages flicked by faster and faster, showing the city grow larger and larger, and Frank found he could track the time by the styles of architecture that were added onto the floating structure. By the time Greco-Roman stylings had been piled on, the city was more than twice its size, but not before three lines of flame divided the outline of the city into three distinct sections. Another calamity had taken these forgotten children of the earth. One section of the city disappeared completely from the page, while the remaining two broke apart. One half rose into a heavy fog, its huge, irregular towers covered up by ornate, swirling clouds, while the other half tipped back into an ebony sphere lined with lurid green light.
From this storm of chaos, all the drawings combined into a swirling mass of color and confusion before reaching down across the page like roots in a tree. The further the roots reached, the more indistinct they became, and by the time they reached the bottom, the roots were impossible to see. All that was left were ever changing, flickering vistas of carnage and despair. They were impressionistic, and soft lined, unlike the well-defined inscriptions of earlier. Frank thought he saw the silhouette of the Big Ben shorn in half by some invisible force, The Great Wall of China writhing as if alive and the vaguest etchings of masses of people, lined up like cattle.
“The future...” breathed Peter. The angel let his fingers rove over the bottom of the page, as if trying to touch what might be. He looked to Frank, his eyes wide and full of astonishment. “In the witch tongue, this is the Tempaevum, otherwise known as the Book of Time. A one of a kind grimoire.”
Frank turned to Peter, still seeing the images of the book replaying across his mind. “Oh. So I’d bet this would be worth a few piles of green back home. Good thing you never burned it.”
“Yet.” the angel said sharply.
Frank stepped away the gothic desk and scanned the papers that clung to the walls once more. “Hey, suit yourself, it’s one of a kind.”
Peter closed the book, slamming the cover with tomb like finality. “The most treacherous kind of evil always is. If it is ever to be used again, it must be purged of its pagan and demonic taint.” He picked the book up and inspected it closely. “Less able and more innocent minds would be blindsided by its festering corruption.” He turned the tome over carefully and stuffed it in his jacket. “I shall entrust it to the Templars. Fallible though they are, I suspect they will prove more apt guardians than a dusty crypt.”
Frank shrugged his shoulders and kept his eyes on the scattered papers on the wall. “That and a possible black stone fragment? The new millennium is looking pretty good for them. But... it’s your call. I don’t trust ‘em for shit.” He paced around the room, desperately wanting a cigarette, but knew it was best not to leave a trace. Not for the police for when they eventually got there, the place was so befouled with all manner waxes, potions and staining concoctions that a little nicotine would have been invisible among the roiling pot of evidence, but rather for the room’s owner.
The very presence of a damned soul and a being of light would leave enough of an imprint to indict them of their midnight visit, he needn’t confirm suspicions with a trail of smoke. “There’s a lot of leads here. You got a camera?” said Frank.
The angel shook his head. “There is no need when guided by His grace.”
Frank snorted. “Oh. Great.”
Peter let his instinct guide his eyes on what would best lead him to the demon. Within seconds, his gaze had skipped over the browned and yellowed papers and settled on prints that still had a crisp white hue on them. He felt power thrum through his being, descending from the crown of his head and rushing into his eyes. Frank stepped back from him and moved to the room’s doorway as he felt a wave of intense light crash over the angel’s body. He suppressed his surprise when he saw Peter’s irises flash into resplendent gold luminescence, like two little halos circling the blackness of his pupils.
Peter felt elation and searing focus blaze through his mind, experiencing a piece of heavenly transcendence channeled through his very human nervous system. The constraints of a mortal existence made it seem so much more divine and he realized how much he took it for granted, being able to feel it whenever he wasn’t bound on Earth. The names and pictures of the newest papers on the wall began to stand out to him, as if the writings suddenly became outlined in white light and the pictures began to fill with color, as much color as the day the picture was taken.
Multiple pages smoked and caught fire, mere paper feeble before such divine divination.
“Hanif Kassab, thirty nine, business owner, father of three, hides opium addiction wel-!” His eyes moved to the next person and he felt his body buckling under the power and steadied himself on the nearby desk, “Karim Basara, twenty seven, drug dealer, sired seventeen bastard children, is well connected within the city—Rajya Nasari! Caretaker! Moonlights as cultist-” He dropped down to his knees and vomited on the floor; the hard surface made a loud splattering sound as the torrent of noxious fluids ran from his body.
Ash and cinders fell from the board before the angel’s hands, leaving charred marks where once there had been leads.
Hope you got what you needed choir boy.
“Damn.” said Frank, watching as the golden glow from the angel’s eyes abandoned him and feeling the sharp wave of burning pain drop off instantly. He extended Peter a hand up and slapped him on the back as he gasped for air. “Haven’t been that fucked up since this one broad got me good a while back.” She had been his personal concubine earlier in the century, some girl with no name now, but he remembered what she did. Watching Peter puke made him wince, remembering the night he was doubled over by the dinner table after she slipped some sanctified water in his whiskey.
The stuff almost killed him, cutting a hole in his stomach like acid and nearly severing the chord that kept his condemned soul to his undead shell. He was on death’s door by the time he ripped down her door and made a playground out of her jugular. Retribution tasted sweet. It was also a lesson. Don’t promise whores the world and then laugh in their face when you don’t deliver.
Peter wiped the vomit from his lips in disgust. “Ugh... thank you.” He turned to Frank and could not hold back a gagging cough. “I have been away much too long from the limitations of flesh. It has made me...” he looked at his hand as if he was having a staring contest, “...weak.”
Frank led him to the door, ignoring the angel’s steaming stomach refuse. “Speaking of flesh, it’s getting late and I’m feeling a little edgy.”
The angel limped along and coughed. “Of course. Check the cases. The Templars ensured enough blood bags to stay your appetite.” Frank closed the door behind them as they stood in the hallway, “Which
means nothing from the source, do you hear? Not even a sip.”
I hear... still don’t care. Bagged blood tastes like shit.
“Yeah I got it, the baloney, not the steak.”
Peter pat him on the shoulder before limping away, well marked by mortality. “Good! I’m glad we understand each other.” The vampire observed his uneasy gait, the redness in his eyes and dim complexion.
More than you know.
Chapter 12: The Duke
Visions of blaring music and light, enshrouded in the plagues of the modern age with their atonal synthetic notes and gaudy electric fuchsian colors, clashed against swathes of fire, plumes of golden red flames that exuded the raw power of nature unbound. He saw himself as a wavering shadow before all the light. Great wings of pearl and gold rose high above the chaos like a tidal wave, about to crush his insignificant form—
With a start, he broke out of his sleep. For a moment he thought himself in the void, bestriding the long paths of cosmic ice, wreathed in shadow and heresy, constructed of the pure stuff of nightmare and power. And then he felt... sweat. Cold on clammy skin. Fear raced in his heart in equal measure, the feeling of humanity... wretched humanity.
He was back in his shell.
So, Heaven sends me an angel, he thought. In the past he would have welcomed the challenge, longing to tear the bastard’s wings from his back and mount them on his wall within his audience chamber. But now... he was a long way from home and a long way from supreme power.
He loathed how he had inherited the human condition upon taking one for a shell. Their jitters, their shakes, and hallucinations combined with their plodding, fleshy and sloshing bodies made for a new kind of hell, one that he was always eager to leave. He slumped out of his bed and looked in the mirror.
