Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation
Page 61
December 10, 2009
12:03 P. M.
Sears Estate, Portland, Oregon
“Fripouille, mon ami. Does it ever stop raining here?”
“Once in a blue moon.”
“Comment fou. This used to be funny; now it’s just a cruel joke. Sorry about the hell I put you through, Seth.”
“More than Alucard Caesar Moriarty ever apologized for.”
There was a point to be made about Pierre’s comment, the two of us lounging about on a long sofa as we chatted, the man more occupied with the ongoing soccer… ehem, football game than anything I had to say. Commercials were the only time I could get anything out from him, the rest of the time spent me trying to amount some kind of love for the sport while my eyes tried not to cry through the big cloud of smoke beginning to fog up what was technically no longer my house.
So in other words, a normal off day for us.
“Hey, Seth. What’s today’s date.”
“The tenth.”
“… So you play your fourth game tomorrow, but we’re only a third of the way through the month? Play a game every other day… your last match is the twenty second?”
“Twenty fourth. Postpone the last match to Christmas Eve as a sort of celebration to the end of the fiscal year. If Richard doesn’t bring me home then, I guess I die on Christmas day. Not like I had plans to celebrate it anyway.”
The commercial decided to end then, the two teams resuming play as the game continued to be zero to zero. While I expect some of you historians would like for me to point out who was playing, the truth of it is I neither cared nor paid attention; I couldn’t tell you if it was Lyon, Nice, Monaco, Le Mans or whoever else you can find in your first league. I simply watched as a means of distraction, awaiting instructions to whoever I’d be playing tomorrow.
They wouldn’t come, for a minute after Pierre had begun to ignore me again I received a call on my cell, the ringtone for strangers sounding off. Curious, wondering who could have gotten a hold of my number, I left the room promptly and stepped outside onto the porch as my father shouted at me to take it somewhere else, polite in my greeting if only from the suspicion this had something to do with my work.
“This is Seth Sears. How can I help?”
“...”
The call ended just as quickly as it began, my curiosity turning into suspicion as I pondered what that could have been about. Sighing, my cell disappearing once more into my black suit coat, I just stepped over the precipice of my sliding doorway when I heard a knock at the door, the brown and graying hairs of a tall head just beginning to lose their luster being all that was visible in the window.
More importantly to note was the reaction of my father. Pierre, muting the French commentary on the TV, had actually used some of his inherent FTM power to materialize a long, steaming assault rifle loaded with white phosphorus rounds if the smell was any indicator. Wondering what could possibly be the matter, I simply waited as the Frenchman began to approach the door himself, his blue eye glowing brightly as if ready to activate a special ability in an instant as I heard him push the muzzle to the door and yell
“You have ten seconds to tell me your name or back off, Enfoiré.”
“Oh, don’t tell me you already forgot our signature, old chap.”
The voice, distinctly English and proper to a point that I knew it to belong to a politician, was all it took to settle the Frenchman down. Laughing now, dissolving his rifle into a cloud of gray smoke that matched his cigarette still burning in his mouth, Pierre opened the door wide and took off his hat with a bow, his smile wide as he said
“You imbécile. One of these days I’ll shoot you for real.”
“Well, I’m glad it’s not today. How are you doing, old chap?”
The two gave a brief hug, a child scampering out from between them as I got my first good look at our visitors. The father, who’s hair I had just barely seen, was standing tall and about the height of my father though with about twenty to thirty pounds more than Pierre. By no means fat, he was simply your average citizen far removed from the active life of soldiering, in good shape but able to lose a bit of girth. He must have been in his late forties, his bright blue eyes a bit cloudy and his hair clearly shifting, the man otherwise in good health save for a few saggy lines beneath his eyes. As for his clothing, he was dressed as well as anyone in his position: a custom tailored suit, black in nature and pristine to match the seriousness of his current adventure.
Yet it couldn’t have been too serious, could it… for he had his son, the boy having just enough features to make it plain he was his father’s heir and nothing more. Already tall, though he couldn’t have been more than nine or ten, this child had spunk and intelligence hidden behind a mask of sheer boredom. His little mouth, a bit out of proportion with his blocky nose, were the only detractions from a head that could have otherwise belonged to a punk idol; his long brown hair was grown out to cover his ears and a eye, a makeshift eyepatch that enhanced his remaining Blue orb of perfection. His skin, light enough to definitively define him as Caucasian yet avoiding the common taint of albinism found in vampires and the most pure Anglo-Saxons of Europe, was to be envied in how smooth and unmarked it looked, as if crafted by a sculptor himself. That the kid wore ripped dark jeans and a long sleeve green turtleneck, clothing that tried to give style to a youngling like him, all built up this image of self-confidence and superiority that the child had.
Mark my words, he’d be going places… which made me wonder instantly what Pierre had to do with the duo.
The answer came as Pierre and the English father broke. “Seth Sears, I want you to meet one of the top advisors to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Lloyd Cromwell. The best political manipulator you’ll meet across the Atlantic, this man is.
“And this little chien bâtard is-”
“Thomas Cromwell.” The kid answered, folding his arms as he flicked the long front wisp of his hair about as if he was trying to seem cool. While it came off as a bit childish, the kid obviously needing to understand the art of subtlety, it wasn’t what he said or did that caught me off guard and caused me to back up a pace in shock.
It was the fact that that, for the briefest of moments, I mistook his voice for another… for Alistair Christel, my father in law.
Better known as Cato, the father to Adrian and Sylvester.