I landed lightly on the ground and held my hand out to catch the cigar when an overwhelming flare of bright crimson light erupted from my uncle as he kicked off a building I had sent him flying towards, and suddenly he was standing—well, sliding along the ground actually—ten feet from me holding his cigar with his hands cupped around it, accompanied by a blast of hot wind and a rumbling crack of thunder. I staggered under the shockwave and my jaw dropped as I looked at him.
“What the hell was that?!” I yelled, half outraged and half amazed.
“Me cheating.” He said smugly, “I'll never give up smoking. I'll be chewing cigars in my grave.”
“You've got to teach me to do that!” I yelled, laughing.
“All in good time, hoss. Now turn down your mojo or you're gonna burn out.” He said, and I saw the light fade from his limbs as he bit down on his cigar and started lifting up his shirt. I sighed and relaxed my hold on my power, and it slipped away like water through my fingers. Immediately I felt exhaustion wash over me in crippling waves as pain rushed to my previously numb injuries. I fell to my knees and my uncle walked over casually, holding his shirt up and grinning.
“Look at that shit.” He said, gesturing at his stomach. A stark red print of my fist surrounded by dark purple bruising stood out on his stomach, and deep red blisters spotted the entire area. “Damn good punch, right there. Probably would've splattered a vamp all over the street.” He said, chuckling. He clapped me on the back and I grunted as I tumbled face down in the dirt.
“Grmph!” I exclaimed.
“Aw shit, kiddo. Did you burn out already?” He asked, nudging me in the arm with his boot.
“M'alright.” I responded weakly and forced myself back up onto my knees. It was hard to keep my eyes open, and I felt like I'd been boozing it up hard for the last two days.
“Yeah you’re alright, but let's take a break.” My uncle said and helped me up onto my feet and back into the shop, where we both ate incredible, borderline vulgar amounts of microwaveable foods and drank several mugs of the herbal remedy he had made me drink the night before. The second mug had me feeling about as wired as a couple pots of coffee as we finished our break, and I saw that it had a similar effect on him. He explained to me later that the effect boosted already-present power, but wasn’t as effective if you were “burned out.”
We continued in that fashion throughout the day and into the night, with breaks to eat and drink as well as short time-outs when he would have to convince police who'd come to investigate—what at times would sound like gunshots as he flung the occasional whip-like punch—to keep calm and carry on. By the time we went to sleep, I'd improved considerably in my ability to control my power, and could hold evenly against him at his “twenty percent handicap.” Occasionally he would cheat for one poorly contrived reason or another, but each time I would stand in awe of the inexplicable and insane feats of strength and agility he pulled off. I remember thinking at one point that if my uncle had to fight any classic any comic book superhero, that the superhero would come out as a mess of broken bones and cigar burns.
I collapsed into my bed with that happy thought in my heart, and drifted off into sleep where I dreamed of sparring with (and occasionally getting my ass kicked by) my uncle, the badass vampire hunter. It was the first good dream I’d had in weeks.
*****
When I woke up in the early evening the next day I went downstairs and looked around for my uncle, but I couldn't find him. I turned on the TV in the living room. The news was showing its usual mix of stories—a kidnapped little girl here, some corporate intrigue there. A heaping pile of political garbage, always heavily biased. I couldn't help but watch crap like that. I turned up the volume and walked into the kitchen and searched for cereal I hoped my uncle would have. He did, in plenty. I grabbed a bag of off-brand marshmallow-laden cereal and filled my bowl as the talking head on the news blathered about something new the president was doing to damage the country. I couldn't help but feel like I agreed. I generally agreed with everything negative said about any politician. Up until recently I'd watched the news regularly, noting that at least three quarters of the journalists I watched had to be victims of some form of brain damage or dianoetic handicap.
Recovering in the hospital, I'd heard only one story relating to the wars. Some soldier burned a Koran. Meanwhile, more troops were dying and people were more concerned with how some drunken skank was doing on her diet. Out in the theater it was always about “Defending Liberty” and “Bringing Democracy to the Middle East.” Now that I was effectively tossed from the Corps—in no small part thanks to my uncle—I found myself trying to figure out the point to all these wars we were fighting. We weren't welcomed with open arms out there, and it's no surprise with the number of civilians that got hurt along the way.
Abruptly I felt, despite all that had happened to me in the last weeks, like a pawn being sacrificed so someone could line their coffers with blood-soaked dollar bills. I wondered if my own government knew anything of the vampires that had taken out my convoy and my friends. I wondered if they even gave a damn. I wondered; if the people were told, would they even care? I could imagine the news reporting briefly on a string of vampire attacks before hitting a segue into some flavor-of-the-month teen pop idol getting a faceless fangirl pregnant.
I sat down and chewed a mouthful of marshmallows and sugar-coated cardboard while flipping through channels until cartoons popped up. I sat there eating my kid’s cereal and watching kid’s TV. For a solid half hour I forgot about vampires and my squadmates and all the horrors of the present while I was lost in the manic misadventures of a cartoon cat and mouse.
“Watching cartoons?” My uncle asked as he came in, carrying several bags of groceries in one hand, and a rugged black duffel bag in the other.
“I got tired of watching the news.”
“Heh, yeah. The more things change,” He said as he took the groceries into the kitchen. “The more people don’t give a shit.”
“No kidding.” I said as I got up to follow him into the kitchen. “What’s in the duffel?”
“We’re heading to the nest tonight. I stopped by the storage unit and picked up a few things.” He gestured to the living room. “Go check it out; I’ll put this stuff away.”
I walked out into the living room to the black duffel bag. I unzipped it and started rummaging inside. A couple of automatic pistols, A revolver, some grenades—holy shit, grenades? Various stakes, knives and a matching set of brass knuckles with grooved spikes screwed into them.
“How did you get all this stuff?” I shouted at the kitchen. A few seconds later the door opened and my grinning uncle stepped through.
“We’re on the border with Mexico, the last bastion of American freedom. You can get anything down there.”
“Not worried about the cartels down there?”
“Nope. Sometimes they’ve got the best gear to sell.”
“Wait, so you buy weapons from a bunch of mass murdering drug dealers?” I asked, somewhat surprised. I hadn’t expected my uncle to be so indifferent about criminals and murderers.
“Not my place to judge them. That’s for the law of common men. As far as I know, they could be a bunch of misunderstood monster hunters.”
“Uh… Are you telling me that you don’t care about a bunch of people who run around committing murders?”
“I didn’t say that.” He grabbed the bag and hauled it up onto the counter and grabbed a couple beers from underneath. “Say I saw one of them commit a murder in front of me. Sure, I’d feel upset about it, and I would have tried to prevent it if I could, but once you kill a living man or woman it changes you. More than just in your heart or mind, it cuts you to the soul. It don’t matter if you killed them for a just cause, it’ll still cut you just as deep. Years later you might think to yourself about what that person would have done in life. If they’d have gone on and found religion or whatever. If they’d somehow managed to save someone who needed savi
ng. What if you killed a guy who, in his murderous rampage, would have killed the modern incarnation of Hitler?”
“I can’t think like that.” I said, “Because I am a Marine. I’ve killed men and never seen their faces. I can’t think that someone who was killing my friends might have been a saint with an assault rifle.” I gritted my teeth. “War isn’t that simple.”
“Life isn’t simple, kiddo. You’ve killed, I’m sure. I’m also sure you did it because if you hadn’t those men would have killed you. But you’re different now. I wasn’t lying when I said you could shrug off a couple bullets. No normal man or woman on this planet can hope to stand against you if you choose to snatch the life out of them. You could run around for hundreds of years as an avenger, culling the wicked and fighting the good fight, and nobody will be able to stop you. You’ve seen what I can do. What weapon wielded by man on this planet, short of aerial bombardment, could hope to touch me?”
I considered the idea, but who wouldn’t use such power to help humanity? “I could still help, in some way. I could make life better for those around me.” My uncle nodded and took a sip of his beer before lighting a cigar.
“You are a giant among men, in a very literal sense, and you’re only going to get stronger. You could use that power to bring men under your heel, and to stamp out those you saw as evil. And eventually, people would look to you as an example of what was right. At that point, people would oppose you for no reason other than that they disagree. They too, would be killed, if not by you, then by those who revered you. Where does it end?”
“You can’t believe that. People are good, and there’s no way I’d have people killed just because they have a different opinion than I do.”
“People are shit,” My uncle said, blowing a plume of smoke down at the bar counter where it spread in grey waves over the array of weapons. “But we protect them anyway. Because any one of them is capable of greatness we can scarcely imagine. Even most criminals choose to commit crime because they have no other choice available to them to provide for their family. Like a cheetah that kills a faun to drag it back to her babies. They have the ability to choose what to do with their life, and it’s our job to ensure them that right, not to deny it to them.”
“So you choose to defend people who, in your own opinion, are scum. But you do it because once in a while, one of them turns out to be good?”
“It’s why I don’t get involved in the mundane business of law enforcement, crime, or politics. It’s why I kill vampires, and any other monster that would conspire to rob humanity of its freedom. With vampires it’s simple. They want to kill people, and would do anything to make it easier to kill ‘em, and occasionally rob them of their humanity. I want to stop them. No normal people need to get involved in that, just like I don’t need to interfere with a gang war. The morality of the masses changes from decade to decade, anyway. Fifty years from now, violence of any kind might be outlawed. Or we could have a resurgence of slavery. Consider yourself stuck outside of time when it comes to mundane morality; it’ll keep you sane longer.”
“But you could do so much more! Aren’t those people who commit horrible crimes against their own kind a type of monster?” I asked, my feelings bordering on outrage.
“Damnit, boy!” My uncle slammed his fist down on the counter, making the weapons jump up off of it and jolting me as well. “Why do you think my aura is red? I told you I used to be like you, and now I’m not. You don’t want to get involved with people, or it’ll change you.” He took a deep breath and calmed himself. His cigar burned red hot with each breath.
I looked at him carefully, trying not to appear too critical. “I hadn’t thought about why your aura looked different.”
He chewed his cigar brutally and then took half his beer in a single long drink. His eyes seemed to look far off into the distance, as if he was remembering something from long ago.
“It was back in the old country. There was a village nearby, and they had a problem with cattle thieves. I was friends with a girl from the village, one of the farmers. I saw her get thinner and thinner, and it was like someone was turning a knife in my chest. One day those thieves came to call in town; they were after more than just meat this time. Each of them was fat and red with what they’d stolen. I was in town when they came, and two of them walked into her house with a certain hunger in their eyes. I had been given the same kind of talk as you have, and I couldn’t find it in myself to give half a damn about the wisdom of my elders. I killed those two men. I killed ‘em slow. They couldn’t even hurt me, John. I let one watch while I tore the other up good, and then I turned on him.
“I went from house to house in that way, looking for the others. Eventually the word got around and a few tried to escape. I killed all of them too, except for one. He took off running. I followed him, and he led me to another village. The village was a lot like the one they were robbing, but there were no animals there. Not a single crop to be seen—all their land had been blighted. I should have noticed something off then, but I was so full of rage that instead I rushed around slaughtering every able bodied man. I left the women and children to fend for themselves, and I departed that village with a lot of hate in my heart. I nurtured that hatred for a few months really, knowing what I’d done was right.
“Eventually I found out that some fairies were responsible for the blight in that village. The men weren’t fattened from eating all of the cattle from the village, but instead were bloated from eating their own dead. Driven mad by what they had to do. Imagine it, John. A village so beset upon by inhuman malice that they had to resort to cannibalism just to live, and after all their struggles I robbed them of their chance to survive. If I had been patient enough to just talk to the men who came to call that day, I would have discovered the true cause of their problems and been able to help them. That was just the first in many misadventures I would have in my early life. It’s better to accept that people will take care of each other without us, rather than get involved for the wrong reasons.
“And now, because I didn’t listen to this advice when it was given to me, I am considered to be something of a black sheep. There’s a darkness in me, kiddo. A great yawning maw of cold blackness, that, if I don’t struggle against it, revels in the destruction I can cause. I don’t want that to happen to you. I don’t want you to have that black cancer that grows in your heart until you can no longer tell right from wrong.”
I sat there for a moment, thinking about what my uncle had just told me. “I think I understand what you mean, unc. But it doesn’t mean you should go buy their wholesale ill-begotten goods.”
“Yeah, well,” My uncle said, pulling out a grenade and looking it over. “When grenades are outlawed, only outlaws will have grenades I suppose.”
“Way to turn that phrase.” I said, smiling now that the tension had broken. “When are we taking off?”
My uncle looked at his watch and shrugged. “We’re taking off as soon as you’re ready. We can probably get to the plant a bit after sundown.”
“Sounds good,” I said. “But fairies? Really? C’mon.”
“Oh, how much you’ve yet to learn. Go get ready.” He said.
I went upstairs and got ready as quick as I could, sacrificing a shower for the sake of expediency. I was pretty excited, considering that I’d be able to put my powers to the test against vampires, as well as see how my uncle would handle them. I came downstairs and my uncle had laid out our gear from the previous hunt on the counter in two separate piles with the gear he’d brought today.
“Load up.” He said as he put on his own jacket. I slipped mine on over my holster and put two stakes into their respective loops inside. I picked up the automatic pistol and examined it.
“What are we gonna need these for? I thought small caliber rounds won’t stop these guys.” I said.
“One won’t, but if you put enough lead into any vampire’s face they’re gonna go down. Think of it more as a last resort. Bullets still hurt �
��em a little bit.”
I shrugged and put the gun into a built in holster-pocket inside the jacket on the opposite side of my .45. I picked up my single grenade and raised an eyebrow at my uncle. He grinned at me.
“Same thing as the pistol, but with more oomph. Hold onto it, just in case. We won’t be using guns unless we have no other choice.”
“Huh.” I put the grenade in a pocket and buttoned it. I picked up one of the knuckledusters that had been sorted into my pile and tested the spike against my finger. It wasn’t that sharp, but I expect it didn’t need a needle point for what it was going to be used for. I slipped it into another pocket. I picked up my longsword and slung it over my back. The last weapon on the table both confused and excited me. I picked up the crossbow. It was heavier than I’d expected it to be. The underhand quiver held five spare bolts, each one tipped with a slim, smooth penetrator.
“I’ve never used one of these before.” I said, examining it in awe, but not sure what I was looking for.
“Pretty easy stuff.” My uncle said. “Just step in the stirrup to pull back the string, nock a bolt, then point and shoot. Rinse and repeat. Aim for the heart. It won’t kill them, even under the best of circumstances, but it can paralyze them with a good shot through the neck.”
I stepped in the horseshoe shaped stirrup on the front of the bow and the string pulled back and set with a click. I fought the urge to squeal like a little girl with excitement as I nocked a bolt.
The Chronicles of a Vampire Hunter (Book 1): Red Ashes Page 11
