*HF* Blood Feud
By Mufasa
Blood Feud
Prologue
Lyon’s Hill, North Carolina
“God damn,” he said, stepping out of his car. “Now where the hell did that ol’ coot run off to?” Joseph said as he pulled into the driveway of the home he grew up in. Visually, the Cherokee appeared to be shy of twenty-five. As far as anyone who still lived in the town knew, the man was likely an illegitimate child or grandchild of Robert Cougar’s that he had kept secret until his wife Crystal died a few years ago. It made perfect sense, Joseph was NEVER seen around Cougar’s grandchildren when they came to visit. On rare occasions, he might be seen around Cougar’s surviving son Father Ezekiel who often visited from Tennessee, but Shani’s bunch seemed to be blissfully unaware even of Joseph’s existence, particularly as far as the small town went. “I go pick up his damn holy water from Zeke’s and he can’t be anywhere to be found.”
With a sigh, Joseph took out his keys and opened the door to the house. NOW, something was REALLY strange. Cougar taking off in a moment’s notice? Perfectly in character. After all, the ol’ geezer was over eighty. He could do damn well whatever he pleased. Leaving the television and the light in the den on while he did so? No way. Uh uh… Not as much as that ol’ miser liked to pinch pennies.
Joseph did a double take when he made his way to the den and saw the shattered, yet bloody glass and the half-eaten dinner sitting on the coffee table. DEFINITELY not like the old geezer to be messy like that. Joseph could tell by the scrawled note that Cougar had acted impulsively… angrily. He shattered the glass by squeezing it. Joseph picked up the chicken-scratch, trying to make heads or tails of it. “‘Three strikes… and you’re out’? What the hell is he talking about?”
Finally, Joseph saw the television screen… or more importantly what was ON the television screen. News footage… of Khalid Hunter casting a vampire out of a host. A CERTAIN vampire… who had just exposed to the world that Khalid had superpowers. “Friedrich von Bonn,” Joseph said, his eyes riveted to the television. “Shit… Fred went after Lil’ Zeke on camera… and Roy’s gonna fucking take on the entire Vampire Council by himself. I’ve gotta stop him.”
Just as quickly and abruptly as Cougar left the house, Joseph followed suit… with even more determination. He had to stop Cougar from making what might be the worst mistake of his life.
End Prologue
Chapter One
One Week Later
At 2:00 A.M., the ballroom to the Slaton Hotel was empty. After the commotion of the previous week, the Hotel had closed the ballroom because of repairs. They had been about to sue Khalid for damages when the Hellfire Club cut them off and paid the bill. Tomorrow, it was to be repaired. Right now, it was exactly as it was the night Khalid was backed into showing his powers in public.
Patrick Walsh could not make it in here earlier, with people running through here left and right, but right now the scents were still just as clear as they were before. No, he was not trying to track down the vampires. That would be easy enough. Right now he was memorizing particular odors and isolating them as best as he could. He needed to know exactly which vampires he was hell-bent on slaying.
Faster than he would have thought possible, a hand reached from behind, grabbing him by the chin and another hand held a knife to his throat. “Hello, Cougar,” Maul said, not reacting.
Robert Cougar released him and stepped back. “Hello, Walsh,” he answered. With a yellow flash of his eyes, Cougar scanned the room. “I count eight in all. Only seven were on camera, so that means one was hanging back inside the crowd.”
“Yes,” Maul said, nodding his head. “Eight… I have their scents memorized.”
“von Bonn is mine.”
“Nein. He’s mine.”
“Forget it, Walsh; no one messes with me and mine,” Cougar said before his eyes finally locked onto the two red dots in the darkness. “You’re fortunate I don’t kill you myself after what you’ve done to my grandson…”
“Even if you could,” Maul said with a sneer. “You wouldn’t, because you knew why I did it.”
“Forgetful, aren’t you, Walsh? You’re right… I did know. The reason you’re still alive is because you saved his life a few times. That’s the only reason.”
“And if anything were to happen to me, the psionic backlash would trigger another suggestion,” Maul said. “A very conscious one… that only I can reverse.”
“You dare…”
“Try me, Cougar,” Maul taunted. “See if I’m right. However, that is beside the point. I won’t harm my own blood. You know that.”
Cougar kept quiet for a little before answering. “Yes, I know that… though I surely disagree with your methods.”
“And yours are any better?” Maul asked with a sneer. “However, that is one family discussion I think it would be best to wait on.”
“You’re right… on both counts. I think that since we have a common goal, it would be in our best interests to work together. Whoever tags von Bonn first gets him. Fair enough?”
“Ja,” Maul answered. “Fair enough.” He paused before he spoke again, as if asking how to ask. “Did you ever believe…”
“No,” Cougar answered. “I knew what type of person Ryan was beforehand. I never believed his claim that you cut me open. My blood – although not as unpalatable as Khalid’s – is still indigestible to most vampires.” Cougar looked up to see the moonlight streaming through the windows.
“The Vampire Council has marked us, Löwe, Grover, Joseph, and the child…”
“That’s just fine and dandy,” Cougar said. “Because as far as I’m concerned, I’ve just marked each one of them. They die.”
----------------------------------------
2:35 A.M.
The White King rested his feet on the living room coffee table, flipping through a notepad while CNN was flashing across his television screen. At this hour, he really SHOULD be asleep, considering the way his days have been, but he just could not do it. Too many things on his mind. A lot of things that were on his mind did not START from his mind, but that was another thing altogether. As he jotted things down on his notepad, a strand of Excalibur shot out from the back of his neck and traveled through the air behind him toward the refrigerator. With little more than a thought, the liquid metal opened the door and withdrew a bottle of Heineken before closing it and bringing it back to him.
Yes, he probably SHOULD get up from the sofa to get it himself, but he did not want to disturb Christian who was asleep at his side. He should have put the child to bed when he fell asleep at 10:30, but in a way this time was a period of adjustment for them both. Finally, they were father and son.
“Damn,” a voice said, from behind him. “HEINEKEN at 2:30 in the morning?! I thought I had raised you better than that.” Gomurr rummaged through the refrigerator, scrambling items and moving stuff around before returning to the living room with a submarine sandwich a can of Budweiser. “What’s on your mind, Grover?” Gomurr said, his face scrounging up a little when he saw the father-son duo were taking up the entire sofa.
“Too many things,” Grover answered, still scribbling in his notepad.
Gomurr nodded, hopping into the easy chair. With a flash of his eyes, the lever pulled back and lifted up the footrest so he could lean back. He grumbled in frustration as he realized that his legs were not long enough to reach it. “I suppose the current situation with Khalid doesn’t help.”
“No it doesn’t… not that we can help it anyway. Whoever those vampires were, they did what they wanted to and left. I doubt we’re done with them. All I have to go on is what the blond one said. ‘Good job, Khalid… I bet your Grandpops would be really proud of you… BOTH of them.’”
Gomurr sighed. He didn’t tell Grover that he was worried about something ELSE with Khalid, namely that full incorporation of the Mufasa persona. For some reason, the idea of King Mufasa – a child he had watched grow up 5000 years ago to become one of the most feared rulers of Northern Africa – had access to that level of power. He supposed he MIGHT completely be off-base, considering that Khalid and Mufasa were actually one and the same from the beginning… but he knew the darker side of Mufasa. “I’m not surprised that Cougar’s legacy has returned to haunt Khalid yet again.”
“This is the third time. The first time was when Khalid was in high school,” Grover said, his voice trailing off. “The same week that I…” He allowed his voice to trail off. Once again, the sinus headache hit him. Like he remembered Khalid saying the other day, memories floating to the surface. He wanted to say it, but he just couldn’t… That week he had died…
“Come Saturday, it will have been seven years to the date.”
“I know… The timing of it is the most disturbing. I’m having trouble believing that it is strictly Cougar’s past… I think…” Grover said again. “It was just something in the way the vampire said it… Using the word ‘grandpops’… invoking the familial element… He was pointing at family, but in a different way… I could swear he said the word ‘Both’…” He stopped. “Nevermind. You’re probably right.”
“That’s not all,” Gomurr said. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“It’s… Excalibur. After this last episode, you could say in a way that the floodgates are open. It’s that connection. Not that I exactly know, but I suppose it is something like telepathy…”
“Considering the level that the both of you are bound to it, I would imagine that it is on deeper level than telepathy. My interpretation is that the ‘floodgates’ phenomenon is a response to his mystical field, more aptly. I don’t want to get it confused with his photon aura. He’s not used to accessing it.”
“I know,” Grover said, nodding toward the sleeping Christian. “Christian was the one that taught him how to ‘put me back together.’ Right after he did it, Christian said ‘Uncle K-Lid, you need practice.’”
Gomurr started laughing. “I never realized just how much of it was intuitive to Christian, but…” Gomurr started trailing off, thinking about King Mufasa when he was a child. A lot of things had been intuitive even back then. He imagined that in this life it HAD started off that way, but then backed away as Khalid noticed his parents’ disapproval. “Then again, it makes sense… There’s no one here to tell him that he can’t… or that he shouldn’t do it.” He stopped. “Grover… I…”
“No,” Grover said, even before it came out of Gomurr’s mouth. “Not yet.” A silence fell between them before Grover continued. “It will happen, I promise… but not yet.”
“He’s the Ascended, I… waited my entire…”
“Not yet,” Grover answered. “Not until I am sure he’s ready. I want to firmly establish our relationship as father and son, first… and right now… I think it is too early…”
“Too early? Need I remind you that the best time to train anyone is at the age of four or even younger? The child is six and a half… Even Cougar had started to train Khalid before he was…”
“Stop right there,” Grover answered, remembering what Khalid had told him about Cougar before. On the surface, it didn’t make sense, but in the back of his head it rang loud and clear. “Khalid also grew up in a home where he knew both his parents, his siblings, and Cougar. Christian’s been through a lot, recently. I’m not going to hold him back like Khalid was. You have nothing to worry about. It is going to happen… I’m just not going to rush it.” He stopped again. “Just… I’m asking you to be patient. Now… before we get into an argument and wake Christian up, I want you to take a look through Christian’s sketchpad and tell me everything you see.”
With a wave of his fingers, the sketchpad floated so that it was in Gomurr’s lap. “I see… nothing but scribbles… Is there something I should…”
Grover shook his head. “Nevermind… Just… Let’s talk about this another time.” HE can’t read the drawings?! That means something, but I’m not sure what.
End Chapter One
Chapter Two
He laid in his bed in a drowsy daze, one of those states in between sleeping and waking. His eyelids were halfway open as he looked out his bedroom window overlooking his backyard. In actuality, a strong part of him wanted to be outside stalking something, but right now it was too tired to push its agenda. No… not with everything on his mind right now. He just let his thoughts wander… drift from thing to thing while he made this halfass attempt at sleeping.
Eventually, his mind cleared and the only thing he noticed was the reflection of the moonlight against the window. As he got sleepier, he noticed how it seemed to slowly move from the window and travel toward the darkness of the corner. The streak of moonlight grew jagged edges and grow brighter, strangely enough not increasing the amount of light in the room. He now noticed that it started floating in the air, this time toward him.
Once it stopped in front of him, Khalid noticed that this streak of moonlight was actually the shape of a lightning bolt… a lightning bolt across an eye. Then he noticed that there was a body behind the lightning bolt… a body of darkness… pure shadow…
“My father’s kingdom is at hand, Purified,” a dark, deep voice said. “And in your present state, you are incapable of taking the mark.” Next, a cold hand was on his chest, rubbing back and forth across his sternum growing even colder. “To fix that, I need only to take your power… your essence… and fill you of my darkness,” he said, his voice growing darker and more insistent. “Make you as I was made.” The man shoved his hand through Khalid’s sternum, taking hold of Khalid’s heart… and then jerked…
Khalid snapped awake with a roar, grabbing immediately at his chest. Almost immediately, the door to his bedroom crashed in. Daemon rushed in, his extradimensional sword already flaring. “K?!”
“I…” Khalid stopped, realizing that his heart was very much pounding. He looked around the room, noticing that his aura must have flared up in his sleep, igniting anything nearby. The bedroom was clearly a mess. Khalid leaned over, running his hand through his hair. He recognized the buzz in his head well. It was a premonition… but of what? “Sorry… I’m fine.”
“Bullshit… When your powers start going off in your SLEEP, then something is definitely wrong.”
Khalid climbed out of his bed and went toward the closet where the clothes made from unstable molecules were. No, they were not immune to extended continuous exposure to his photon aura, but they would last for a few hours… or at least until he could control his nerves enough to deactivate his aura. Something like this that touched every aspect of his life… “I told you… I’m fine,” he growled. “Now back off.”
“You’re lying. Look at you! You’re jumpy; you’re weak; you won’t eat; you can’t sleep… What have you done for the past week? You come out to answer the phone and then you go back inside your study, mess with the piano, and in frustration outright quit. The same thing over and over again… scattering papers… throwing things around…”
“Oh… So what am I SUPPOSED to do?! Act all happy and celebrate the deathknell of my life?!” Khalid said, his aura starting to grow again. He stepped out of the closet, doing his best to rein his aura in, but it still seemed to spike and bubble.
“Deathknell?! You’ve declared yourself DEAD?! What the hell is wrong with you? You’re filthy rich. You’ve got family who give a shit what happens to you. You’re in the Inner Circle of one of the most powerful organizations in the world. YOU’VE GOT OPTIONS!”
“NO I DON’T!” he yelled. “You think I give a flying fuck about having money and being in the Hellfire Club? Oh… here’s another one… My siblings think the whole thing was nothing but a publicity stunt, inconsiderate of whatever consequences it might have for them. They want nothing to do with me. Wow… Looky there… gone gone gone.”
“K, I had no…”
“No, you didn’t. The band quit. People are canceling left and right. My god damn MANAGER quit. My record label dumped me. MY FUCKING RECORD LABEL DUMPED ME!”
“Um… K… Why are you angry about the record label?”
“Don’t ask…” Khalid grumbled. (For the reason why, wait until the epilogue…) Once again, the flash returned. He was crouched down… starting to make the incision when he felt the thrust in his back and looked down to see a blade sticking through his stomach. Snapping back to earth, Khalid once more resumed glaring at Daemon, this time to see a jagged red line flash over his left eye. Startled, Khalid stumbled backwards, knocking a lamp to the floor with a crash. Khalid snapped his eyes shut for a split second to shake his head. When he opened them again, Daemon looked exactly the same as he did before.
“What the hell…” Daemon said, confused by the behavior.
“I’m fine,” Khalid answered, moving toward the door. “I need to go for a walk… clear my head…”
“Oh no you don’t,” Daemon said. “You know how you get when you start hiking around those woods… especially considering the way you’ve been lately.”
At first Khalid snarled at him, but then he reined it back in. “Look here, ‘Son-of-Ra’… I’ll do whatever the hell I please, especially in my own home.”
“All right… Here’s the deal. You go out when you calm down enough to cut off your aura.”
“What?” Khalid sneered. “You afraid some reporter hiding in my yard is going to discover my powers? I don’t think it will make much of a difference, then!”
-------------------
Friedrich von Bonn in appearance looked much like the stereotypical version of the California “surfer-boy.” Apparently-bronzed skin. (Actually a product of the tanning oil he used.) Scraggly blond hair. Rich blue eyes. Then, of course the musculature. Several people had wanted to sign him up for movies, particularly when he laid on the German accent, but he refused every time. He had other things to do.
Particularly, he was the head of the Vampire Council – leader of the top vampires in the world. The way he had been running it was like a referral service for the underworld. Someone wants a set of vampires to do a job, one of their associates looks it up in the database and finds a perfect match. One million dollars, just like that. It was a lucrative business for the Vampire Council and those high in the ranks. For the insignificant peons who do whatever they are told? Well… the lifestyle was not NEARLY as luxurious… but no one really cared about them.
The seven of them sat around that table, which even more resembled a board room. Fred, the most powerful of them, sat at the very end with a legal pad and a glass of AB positive. (Not as good as having someone’s neck at his mouth, but it would do in a pinch.) “Let’s see… Paulo, Singh, Inez, Jezebel, Nigel, Ophelia, and… Geraldo… Where is Geraldo?” Fred said, leaning back in his chair.
At that moment, a gas entered from the ventilation vent above before hardening into the form of a man, who then set into the seat.
“Geraldo,” Fred said. “You’re late again… and how many times do I have to tell you? You’re supposed to wear clothes to the board meeting.”
“My apologies, Friedrich,” he said, wiping blood off his lips and licking his hand. “My wife was insatiable tonight… I had to find a man with A positive. It took me hours.”
Fred sighed. He wrote down on his notepad – “Kill Geraldo’s wife Denise.”
“All right. Now that we are all here, let us get down to business. There is another plea from the Illuminati for five hundred vampires for one of their campaigns. Ophelia, you oversaw that transaction. How was business before?”
“Well,” Ophelia answered, twirling her red hair around her finger while she popped her bubble gum – to everyone’s annoyance. Perhaps even more annoying was her harsh New England accent that was OBVIOUSLY fake. (Despite her claims to the contrary, they ALL knew that she was older than New England itself.) “Well, although their check didn’t bounce last time, I do have to report that none of the people we sent on their job returned. They were found with their heads sliced off or incinerated out in Nevada.”
“Oh yes… Now I remember,” Fred said. “That was their little New Year’s campaign (see Millennium). Our friends the Van Helsings also made a tidy little profit from them, although they had lost most of their people, too. Hmmmmm… but the check WAS good…”
“Now Friedrich,” Paulo answered with his Brazilian accent. “We know you have a soft spot for Cherub, your favorite son… but do you really…”
“The check was for 20 billion dollars,” Friedrich answered.
Without blinking an eye, Paulo continued. “I trust we have a recruitment drive in progress?”
This time it was the raven-haired Inez who answered. “Yes… I had to have the recruitment teams relocate to Tokyo for the meantime… As you no doubt know from being stationed here, the Toronto blood supply is getting a little bit too thin, especially after the last recruitment drive.” Everyone nodded and grunted around the table in staunch agreement. “We need to give them an opportunity to replenish themselves and for the population to even itself out before we start again.”
“She’s correct,” Nigel answered. “Although I personally am against recruitment altogether… particularly after that incident in Belfast…”
“What the hell does THAT have to do with recruitment, Nigel?” Fred shouted. “That was a highly successful camp…”
“Which would have been even BETTER if you had remembered to have a little BUSINESS with your pleasure!”
Everyone around the room grew quiet as they watched the argument transpire between Nigel and Fred. Fred answered, this time his eyes flashing bright yellow as he looked toward Nigel. “Is THAT why you stayed back from the Hunter campaign in New York last week?”
“Because I know this is FOOLISHness… As distracted as the kid was at the time, you could have killed him... but instead you drag this out… make it into a FEUD!”
Everyone looked at them… and then burst out laughing. Fred burst out laughing as well, the loudest of all. “You fool… it IS a feud! Would you have me make him a MARTYR?! Killed before the cameras…”
“In a sense, that is exactly what you did… You… are putting your personal issues ahead of business ag…”
Fred sneered back in response. “Just like YOU did when I ordered you to bring over the geologist?”
In anger, Nigel flew from the room, furious at the laughter behind him… the laughter at HIS expense…
When Fred calmed down, he wrote on his notepad – “Kill Nigel.”
“That brings up an issue I wanted to discuss,” Jezebel said. Inez and Ophelia glared at her with jealousy as she crossed her arms… subtly drawing attention to her ample chest. The two of them wondered if Jezebel perhaps was the REAL leader of the Vampire Council, the way she had Fred and all the other men – except for Nigel… something was wrong with him – wrapped around her little finger. “I know that Roy will be here to take revenge on part of his grandson, but what ab…”
“Walsh? You forget, Jezebel, that I converted Walsh myself. I know his mind. He’ll avenge his little cub himself… Joseph – just like Roy – will fall right into our trap. Did you make sure to send a familiar to keep an eye on Khalid?”
“Yes… As you said, the risk was too great of him detecting one of us… He reports to me that once they move in, Khalid will never know what hit him.”
“Just remember our agreement,” a new voice said, walking into the room. As soon as he stepped through the doorway, everyone in the room – except for Fred – rose to their feet until the new figure sat down on the opposite end of the table from Fred. “SuperGrover is to be kept alive… and delivered to me.”
“Yes, yes… I know that very well,” Fred answered. “Just like Joseph is to be delivered to…”
“HOWEVER,” the voice answered. “Know that if SuperGrover is NOT kept alive, you will answer to me…”
“Yes, yes, yes… the agreement was already made, ‘old friend,’” Fred answered. “As WELL as your assurance that the gift DIES with Roy and Khalid! Should I find you betrayed me…”
“Now, would I ever do a thing like that?” Ryan Jensen sneered. “Just so you know.” With that he stood up and moved toward the door. As soon as he left, an apparition appeared to him.
“Getting your ducks in a row, I see?”
“Despite your wishes, Raphael, Mufasa is too dangerous to allow to live,” Ryan said.
The HellGoat laughed in response. “You think I care? He’s already served his purpose! COUGAR, as I told you once before, is MINE. You have no leave to negotiate his death…”
“Since you want to keep him around so badly, I suggest you save him yourself,” Ryan said leaving him.
The HellGoat watched Ryan leave with a look of amusement on his face. “You set yourself up, ‘dear friend.’” With that, he disappeared in a flash of smoke.
End Chapter Two
Chapter Three
New York City
Nothing like it. The people are rude. The predominant animals are pigeons, rats, squirrels, and some cross-breed called sqrats. It’s loud. Being homeless is considered a municipal crime. Being a minority is considered a capital offense. There’s too damn many people… and don’t EVEN try to drive a car. Ride a bike… take the subway… or you’ll never get around.
That was Joseph’s opinion. He hated big cities. Even now as he stood on the balls of his feet on the penthouse suite of Strong Towers – well… actually the ledge – with his arms stretched wide open, he tried not to get disgusted at the people walking by below. A man is standing on the ledge, APPARENTLY about to leap to his death, and what do they do? They simply walk around the place where he is expected to go splat and go on about their business. It’s a damn good thing that he had no intention of committing suicide, otherwise he’d succeed.
It was certainly a bitch getting up here; that was for sure. The only apparent way to get to the top of the building was by getting into Gabriel Strong’s penthouse suite, complete with state of the art security system that ran throughout the building. Well… so they THOUGHT, anyway. Joseph was much more resourceful than that, although the alternative would probably frighten many people. In either case, he leaned forward, pretending to stumble a little. He smiled the moment he detected the scent from behind him.
“All right, you can step back now. I’ve been watching you do this little act for the last half hour. Just so you know should you decide to commit suicide in the future, try shouting up a storm next time. They might actually take you seriously.”
“Hello, Mi… Grover,” Joseph said, stepping off of the ledge. “Fancy meeting you here.” He reached up, pushing his Foster-Grants back up his nose before climbing back over the protective guardrail.
“So,” Grover said, nonchalantly. “Before I drop you off at the police station for breaking and entering and whatever, how about you tell me what you are doing up here, why you are here, and how the hell you know my name.”
“How’d I get up here?” Joseph asked. “You’d rather not know. Let’s just say that it is a bitch of a climb. Why am I here?” He took his sunglasses off and extended his hand. “You tell me.”
“God damn, you’re the spitting image of…”
“No way, I look much better than your ol’ geezer of a grandfather. Anyway, that’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.”
“Before we talk, you tell me who you are and…”
“My name is Joseph,” he said, sitting down in one of Daemon’s lounge chairs. “And in case you were wondering, yes I’m part of the family… but you keep that between you and me. Lil’ Ze… er… Khalid doesn’t know about me and neither do his folks.”
“What’s going on here?” Grover asked.
“Put it this way… What do you remember about the vampire last week?”
“Not much… He knows Cougar… and…”
“He knows Maul, too. In fact, he’s the one who converted Maul,” Joseph said. “He’s had it in for Maul because Maul slew his family about 50 years ago. Roy has been picking off a significant number of Fred’s forces about that long. Somewhere down the line, someone told him that Khalid inherited his grandfather’s gift, even before Khalid knew it. Seven years ago, he sent some kids to beat Khalid to death and got a nasty surprise…”
“Yes, I am well aware of it and…”
“Months ago, he went after Khalid again in Belfast… while Roy was hot on his trail. This past time, where he exposed Khalid, though…”
“What’s going on?”
“Roy is going after the entire Vampire Council for attacking the two of you last week…”
“Vampire Cou…”
“Eight of the most powerful vampires in the world. They rule the entire Vampire body. Fred rules them.”
“What?! Is he insane? Not that I know a lot but…”
“That thing Fred said on camera… By invoking the two ‘patriarchs’ of the family… He aims at making it a blood feud. He intends on slaying the entire family, starting with Roy and Maul…”
“So Maul really IS part of the family.”
“Yes he is. They aren’t going to go after Shani’s bunch or Big Zeke or their cousin Jim until they kill who they consider the major threats… but first they are going to wait for Cougar to challenge them back.”
“How do you know so much about their tactics?”
“It’s part of the business. We’ve got to stop Roy before he makes the mistake of challenging them.”
“Considering what they did to Khalid… maybe we should be HELPING him! In either case, I’ll have the Hellions ready to…”
“NO,” Joseph said, almost emphatically. “No Hellfire Club… Just you.”
“How did you know…”
“Part of the business. Like I said before, just you.”
“Khalid needs to know.”
“What will it accomplish? He already is dealing with enough. Trust me when I say that the two of us will be enough to pull Cougar out.”
I should be suspicious, Grover thought. But his resemblance to Cougar is striking… He’s wary of the Hellfire Club and for some reason doesn’t want Khalid along. “Fine… Let’s go,” Grover said. “And Joseph… if I find out this is all a setup… I’m going to break your neck.”
“Yeah…” Joseph said, as Grover picked him up and took to the sky. “Roy still threatens me like that, too…”
---------------------------
He sat at the piano at first trying to hum and then trying to play, but it didn’t work. He could hear the pitches in his head loud in clear, but for some reason could not discern what they were. He tried playing other things at the piano, but his fingers were clumsy… unable to do anything. He slammed his fist down on the keys.
He grabbed the sides of his head as the melody rang clear in his head… over and over again… a melody that just wanted to come out… He couldn’t sing it… he couldn’t play it… he couldn’t play anything at the piano… Over and over again… The same fucking melody. Angrily, he slammed his fist against the keys again and again, this time scattering the sheet music around.
What was WRONG with him? Had all of his musical training left him that quickly?! He fucking had perfect pitch… and was capable of transposing even atonal music at sight… and he couldn’t write, sing, or play a simple interval?! Breathing deeply in and out, he heard Daemon in the den singing the melody… the EXACT same melody that had been playing in his head over and over again…
He upturned the piano and sent it crashing into the solid wood wall on the opposite side of the study. Next he hurled all his piano books to the ground, every single one of them, throwing them faster and faster before he just threw the bookshelf altogether. The Grammy’s went flying next, one right after the other through the (now-broken) window. He went toward his CDs and then stopped, remembering that Justin had “borrowed” them to burn copies (last month… while he was away… on a trip… without asking him…). Instead, he destroyed the shelf and anything in the immediate area. By this time, his aura had started growing hotter and flaring out, feeding off his anger, setting things on fire, but he didn’t notice and didn’t care.
Next thing he knew, he was picked up by the loop of his pants and thrown through the wall and into the living room. Khalid’s aura managed to deaden the impact, but the wind was still knocked out of him.
“All right, K,” Daemon said, stepping through the hole Khalid’s body made. “Temper tantrum’s over… You mind telling me what the hell this is about?”
“I… it…” he started to say it. “I can’t write it… I can’t sing it… I can’t play it… or anything… I…” He choked it out. “I… it’s gone…”
“No, K…” Daemon said. “It’s mental. You’re just letting everything get to you. It’s normal; just like your aura… and…” Daemon stopped. “K…” he said, lifting his hand slowly, charged with electromagnetic energy. In his other hand, Anubis flashed to life. “I know why your aura won’t go down… Run… now…”
“Gabe?” Khalid said, sitting up. “I don’t hear… smell… or sense…”
“Yes you do… That’s why you’re spazzing out… Now go… before…”
“What the fuck…” With a flash of his eyes, Khalid could see Daemon’s life field burning bright and the sliver of his that lined it… as well as something else… foreign… “Fuck…”
He leapt out of the way just before the stream of lightning shot from Daemon’s hand. Next came a volley of photovaltic bursts, slamming around him before Daemon rushed at him like a blur. Fortunately, Khalid’s teleportation is faster than Daemon’s superspeed. He teleported to the other side of the room, allowing a flare of light to shoot out past him, into Daemon’s back. Daemon spun around, ripping a knife out of his belt and throwing it at Khalid. Reflexively, Khalid caught it by the hilt, not being ready for the concussive force blast that knocked him through the wall and into his front yard.
Daemon came racing out of the house with his sword blazing when a photon bolt hit him in the chest rather ineffectually. He was almost immediately on top of Khalid, with Anubis moving toward Khalid’s neck, when Khalid disappeared in a flash of light. Daemon realized too late that Khalid managed to swipe his shoulderbelt in the process.
Suddenly, Daemon felt the lock on his mind released. That quickly, he put it all together. Mystery telepath got his senses burned out when Khalid’s aura drove him out. So he possessed Daemon, figuring that either Daemon would kill Khalid or Khalid would take him down. In either case, once Khalid read Daemon’s energy field, he knew there was a telepath in there and probably used his powers to lock down the source.
It’s a trap. Daemon knew it. Without the tracking device on his shoulderbelt, he would have to locate Khalid the old fashioned way. Fortunately, he saw the “Eye of Ra” mark burned on the ground… with the tracking device and the psi-inhibitor in the center. Smart move, K… Daemon thought. One step ahead of everyone.
End Chapter Three
Chapter Four
The outskirts of Toronto
At this time of day, all smart vampires were in their bungalows, resting quite peacefully in their coffins while the sun was out. All but the most powerful vampires – or those with certain extenuating circumstances – were vulnerable to the sun. The smartest ones kept in the basement where it was nice and cool and more than likely, the sun would never get to. They were safe from all but the most dangerous threats, because their familiars would be watching over them…
In a certain den, though, they soon found that they were NOT safe. It had begun so fast and happened so furiously that there was little time to react. The vampires’ worst fears had been confirmed: their worst enemies were in cohoots.
The first suggestion was more than a year ago, when Cougar’s grandson Khalid had been seen assisting Maul on his various “projects.” The incident in Belfast had been all the confirmation the Vampire Council needed to declare their deaths. Maul’s twisted lineage with the blasphemous family was the last draw. They die.
If only it were that easy. This was only one of the houses on the fringe… not even a significant one of rank, but that was not the point. The point was to stir things up. Maul started from the dark basement and Cougar crashed in through the window. Given their respected ages – Cougar being the young one at 80 years of age – no one would have suspected that the two of them could move so quickly or so effectively.
By the time the firetrucks had arrived, all they could see at the house was a massive inferno, no doubt caused because some doped-up kid dropped his crack pipe. Once the police investigators arrived, they knew exactly what it was – that strange sick cult stationed at various places around the city that from time to time would commit suicide around the city.
“Shit,” Joseph said, looking at the remnants of the house from across the street. “We missed them.”
“How do you know?” Grover asked looking below. “How do you know that they were here in the first place?”
Joseph cracked a smile. “It’s Roy’s calling card to the Vampire Council by burning their safehouses. They usually know, but it is a way of rubbing it in. He never uses a crossbow or stakes when he slays vampires, because of the evidence it leaves behind. As you no doubt know by now, federal authorities can be quite speculative when it comes to a bunch of dead people lying around. So, what he typically does during the day is rush in and take out the familiars and set the place on fire.”
“You sound like you know a lot about his work.”
“I should,” Joseph answered. “As long as I’ve been helping him…” He stopped abruptly, finding the situation almost hilarious, in a twisted way. His hand clutched the medallion hanging around his neck for a moment as he looked for any indication of where Cougar might have gone. Yeah… It’s about that time again… “Come on… I think I know where they are going next, if they haven’t already been there.”
Grover picked up Joseph and started to fly into the air when he noticed that the Gauntlets of Excalibur seemed to be responding – somehow – to Joseph’s medallion. He was about to ask Joseph why, but he opted instead to ask Cougar instead. Cougar was going to have a lot to answer for…
-----------------------------
Prydesville, NY
He sat in a lotus position in the woods, his mind withdrawing from the astral plane. Under normal circumstances he might have held on to the Pharaohan until his job had been complete, but that would not be a good idea in his weakened state. Louis had not expected for the invasion of the Purified’s mind to burn out his senses once the aura activated. He barely had enough presence of mind to keep the Purified from consciously detecting him. “Damn Jezebel,” he grunted with his French Canadian accent. “She should have known to employ a familiar with enhanced senses.”
Abruptly, he felt the pain receptors throughout his nervous system go off all at once. In too much agony to speak or even yell aloud, he fell against the ground, clawing at it desperately as he tried to fight it. Just as quickly as it started, it backed off, but his lesson was learned. He should know better by now than to vocally curse his dark mistress Jezebel. It had been nearly thirty years since he had first unwillingly become her slave. Many times she has punished him for his deeds… made him pay in ways more wicked than he would have ever thought possible.
That was a warning, my dear Louis. I should kill you as it is for releasing your hold on the Pharaohan, but good dogs are SO hard to find, these days… A pity… a former avatar of Ra would have made a DELICIOUS pet…
Your forgiveness, my dearest Jezebel. You must understand that a lowly mortal psion such as myself was weakened from sensory overload after making contact with the Purified.
Ah, Louis… How can I NOT forgive you? I do love you, so… my favorite slave… though you profane my name with your lips. I shall have to punish you once you return to me. For now, you should be ready… for the Purified shall soon make his mo…
Before Jezebel’s thought could cross Louis’ mind, he felt himself thrown through the air, his back smashing against a tree. His programming sprung into action immediately, cutting off his pain receptors. The red flash moved across his eyes as he rebounded from the tree, twin psychic katanas forming in his hands as he went. He landed in front of Khalid immediately swinging with one hand.
The psychic katanas were easily intercepted by the photon sunblades. With a jump, Khalid landed a kick on the underside of the chin and headbutted Louis into the ground. He followed it up with a photon bolt to Louis’ face. At first, Louis wondered why Khalid was going easy on him, but then he realized that was not necessarily the case once the tail of Khalid’s photon aura wrapped around him. Before Louis could pull free, Khalid tapped him on both sides of the neck, causing the flow of blood to temporarily stall to his brain.
While that did not have the typical effect of rendering the target unconscious with the promise of a incredible headache, that did have the effect of momentarily counteracting the programming Louis had been unable to control and causing the psychic katanas to dissipate. Khalid at first tried to speak, but only a demonic growl would come out at first. With a flash of the eyes, Khalid snapped out of that momentary daze before pinching Louis painfully on the underside of the chin, which had the effect of taking away his focus enough so he could not use his powers.
“Vampire familiar… You reek of the scent all over. I know your mistress wasn’t stupid enough to think I’d not be able to find you.”
“Listen to me, Purified. It is only a matter of time before she reasserts her will on me again. Please… kill me before…”
“Oh… but you know I can’t do that,” Khalid sneered. “The cyborg mercenaries who were sent to kill me might have a problem with that… You know… the thirty or so scattered around us with those little plasma rifles?”
All at once, approximately thirty cloaking devices deactivated, revealing about thirty men and women, each on individual hover boards and armed to the hilt. Each one wore tight black suits with red trim on the sides with a thick white stripe running vertically down the middle. Combat wear: black boots, black headbands, and a black utility belt, complete with an assortment of weapons. Visually, they did not appear to be any different than any regular man or woman, but Khalid could tell by their energy fields – well… and the way they moved – that they had been cybernetically “enhanced.” The leader of the group was the closest, a man visually about in his forties with closely-cropped blonde hair and unnaturally blue eyes. “Allow me to introduce myself,” he spoke with a slight German accent. “Ludwig van Helsing.”
“God damn,” Khalid said, with a bit of annoyance. “What the fuck is with all the god damn German bad guys? Don’t you guys come from anywhere else?”
Louis choked out through Khalid’s grip. “Hey… I come… from Queb…”
“Shut up.” Khalid said, squeezing the underside of Louis’ neck even tighter. “What the hell is this? The Vampires team up with the Nazis or something?”
“I should kill you for that remark, Mr. Hunter…” Ludwig said. “But I’m already contracted to kill you. You’ll find,” he said as a red photon field emerged around him. “That we are already prepared to counteract your powers, should you decide to resist us.”
“Oh… So it is going to be one of those numbers.” Khalid said. “Since I’m going to die, allow me to do two things first.” With a squeeze of his hand, his aura wrapped around Louis for a moment, causing him to shriek in pain before passing out from the overload. Khalid dropped his unconscious body to the ground.
Ludwig laughed, watching the act. “Poor Jezebel… From what I hear, Louis was her favorite familiar. Now, Mr. Hunter… what was your last request?”
“To see the expression on your face…”
“Expression on my face… when…?”
“When your hoverboard gets ripped out from under you and you fall backward on your ass, cussing up a storm in German.”
“Not lik…” before Ludwig could continue, he felt his hoverboard ripped out from beneath him and fell on his back, cursing just as Khalid predicted. The streak of photovaltic energy whizzed by Khalid’s ear, weaving in and out among the trees as it crashed into every cyborg’s hoverboard. Finally, the streak of photovaltic energy whizzed over Khalid’s head before crashing back into the Daemon’s hand, who uncloaked himself just a few feet away. He spun the enchanted Pharaohan fanblade constructed 5000 years ago by King Mufasa on the end of his finger before sticking it back inside of his gray trench coat. Anubis flashed to his hand, energy crackling and sizzling from the blade.
“Took you long enough.”
“Well… excuse me. Had to stop and tie my boots… not to mention find where you stuck my damn shoulderbelt!” Daemon said. He immediately spun to his side, ripping the extradimensional sword across the chest of an approaching cyborg.
Khalid knew that attacking the cyborgs with his photon aura would be ineffective, because of the photon field they had erected around themselves. As confident as they were that their little photon field would protect them, he turned out to prove them wrong. A photon bolt to the eyes would still blind their optical receptors, even if it was absorbed by the field. Even then, once Khalid would shove his hand on the inside of the field, there would be nothing stopping his photon powers inside… well… or his hand from crushing a windpipe.
Ludwig cursed how things went as he got up. They were prepared to deal with Khalid alone, but NOT the Pharaohan. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Louis roll over on his knees, grabbing his head. Of everyone here, that whelp would be the most effective in dealing with Daemon. Showing a bit of his frustration, he stormed over and kicked Louis in the forehead. “You… Take down that mercenary, now!”
Louis sat up, flexing his fingers as he formed his psychic katanas. At first, he started moving toward Daemon, but then he spun around, ripping both katanas across Ludwig’s chest. Ludwig screamed as his synapses fired at once. “The Purified severed my bond as a familiar. I’m no longer Jezebel’s slave… and I don’t answer to you!”
Within moments, the woods were littered with cyborg bodies that were either dead or dying. Wasting no time, Daemon grabbed Ludwig and threw him roughly into a tree. Before he could fall to the ground, two Kythranium adamantite knives flew from Daemon’s fingers, pinning Ludwig by the shoulder firmly into the tree.
“GABE!” Khalid shouted, glaring at Daemon.
“What… you pissed because I hurt the tin man?”
“Don’t be ridiculous… I’m pissed because you hurt the tree.” Khalid said, walking with Daemon toward Ludwig. With a flash of his eyes, Khalid saw Louis starting to escape and slapped him in the back with a photon lion’s paw. “Don’t you be going anywhere either.”
Daemon grabbed Ludwig’s hand in the palm and squeezed tight, seeing the cyborg scream in pain again. “All right… Speak.”
“You… have crossed the van Helsings, Pharaohan… Now, you are a dead man.”
“Yeah right!” He said, squeezing hard enough so that his thumb pushed all the way through the hand. Daemon then prodded him quickly at the base of the neck before taking hold of the tendon at the side. “Cyborg mercs like you wouldn’t work for a bunch of vampires unless you were getting something big out of it… and I’m not talking money. What’s going on?”
Ludwig laughed, this time. “Even your vaunted invulnerability won’t protect you from what’s brewing, Gabriel Strong… Only one more ingredient… and you’ll have HELL of a trouble on your hands.” Before Daemon could say anything else, Ludwig activated an explosive on his chest. Khalid barely had time to reinforce his photon aura before the remaining cyborgs around them set off their explosives. If not for digging the photon lion’s paws into the ground, Khalid knew he would have likely been thrown around as well.
With a flash of his eyes, Khalid dropped to his knees as he felt the rush of spirits leaving the area. The sensation was overwhelming. He found himself thankful that they did not all pass through him at once on their way to the afterlife. He barely managed to glean something… the word… silver? Something about silver?
“What a fucking mess,” he said, standing up amid the mess of flesh, organs, and cyborg parts lying around… all over his trees. With a sigh, he wondered how in the hell he was going to get THIS cleaned up.
He checked on Louis, who was fortunately unscathed, but still out. (Khalid guessed that Louis must have been at least partially telekinetic or something… or maybe had accelerated healing.) He started to wake Louis up when he suddenly realized that his tongue tasted like he licked a battery. “What the…”
He turned back to see Daemon crouched on the ground, his arms raised in a defensive posture, as if he were trying to ward off something. Khalid started to move toward him when he noticed that the hairs on his arm were sparking… and the air was getting warmer… “Fuck.” Khalid said, reading Daemon’s energy field. This was going to hurt.
End Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Patrick Walsh grinned ear to ear. Their plan was going pretty well. Five vampire houses taken down like that and only NOW was the sun beginning to set. At nighttime was where the REAL fun started happening. Everything else had been just a warm up. “It won’t be long until they decide to come out and play.”
Cougar’s face remained deadpan as he stared across the street at the house, which reminded Patrick a bit about Khalid. He wondered in the back of his mind if once Khalid had merged with the “Mufasa” persona that he remembered the outings. Under psionic suggestion to revert to the Mufasa persona, Khalid had proven himself to be probably among the best students he ever had – well – if Maul had ever had students, that is… Maul could not help but wonder what Khalid could be like now if his talents were nurtured at a younger age.
Cougar’s eyes flashed yellow as he scanned the place. “Twenty vampires… all low on the rung… Ten familiars guarding them.”
“Oh… how quaint…” Maul said. “A small pack… This should be a breeze.”
“Yes… it should be… Half an hour until they come out to play,” Cougar said, pulling two knives to his hand. “But you know what? I’m impatient… and we only have about twenty minutes before Joe and Grover catch up to us.”
“You know them well.”
“I know Joe well, anyway. Grover I should know well… but real life did not turn out that way.”
Maul paused before he answered. “Yes… I know what you mean…”
“He grew up too quickly, Walsh,” Cougar said. “I… do appreciate what Gomurr did raising him. He did a good job – don’t you DARE tell the old fool I said that, though. He was robbed, though. We were robbed of him… Carolyn…” he started. “I think of Carolyn’s last thoughts every day. Shielding him with her body… and her psychokinetic field.”
“Carolyn was…”
“Yes… your granddaughter,” Cougar said. “Fiercely protective of her children. I’ve yet to tell Grover that Ryan sent his thugs after the two of them shortly after he was born. I know of what he did to Silver… but I would not have wanted him to go after Ryan.” Cougar paused for a moment before he continued. “Not that there would be any great loss SHOULD he have gone after Ryan, but… I think…” Cougar stumbled a little, as if he were going to tell Maul something, but stopped.
“If Carolyn was my granddaughter… then how is Löwe related to…” he stopped, it all smacking him between the eyes. The birthmark… Of course… there was only one way the birthmark could be passed down… “Nein…”
Cougar tried not to laugh, “Looks like you figured it out on your own. Though I would have thought you’d have figured it out by deduction. Cherokee plus German does not make Black.”
“I’ve got a headache trying to figure all this out.”
“What about me? I’m the damn patriarch of the family! Okay… enough talking… More killing. We have fifteen minutes to kill twenty vampires.”
“Yeah… Plenty of time,” Maul answered. “Let’s go…” With that, the two of them sunk into the shadows.
---------------------------
Prydesville, NY
Hours later
Louis woke up with his head pounding and his ears just a little tender. He wasn’t sure how long he had been lying around. Judging by the position of the sun in the sky, it must have been at least three or four hours. His fingers flexed, clenching at the dirt beside him. He telepathically scanned the area as he stood up. Two signatures… the Black men.
He blinked his eyes as he saw his environment. Same place… Of that he was sure, but… trees were knocked down… cyborg parts everywhere… the smell of smoke strongly in the air. He was even more shocked once he looked down at his tattered and burnt clothing. The skin underneath was a little red, but otherwise fine.
Once he turned around, he got the shock of his life. RIGHT at his feet, it had to be… the massive circular hole in the ground about fifty feet in diameter and twenty feet deep, the edges as smooth as if someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop and taken one serving out of the ground. “//Holy shit…//” (Translated from the French) he said, stepping back.
Right in front of him, a darkened hand grabbed the smoldering soil and hoisted himself up the side. Louis found it almost funny, the shorter Black man carrying the taller, heavier one over his shoulder as easily as he would a beach towel. “God damn motherfucking piece of…” With a thrust, he threw Khalid’s unconscious body over the rim of the hole and jumped the rest of the way up.
Compared to Louis, Daemon was visually worse for wear. The trench coat was practically shredded and some still burning, as well as the shirt and pants. As Louis, there were no scars on him, but Daemon did appear to be just a little bit wasted. (Not much, Louis noted, because he still half expected Daemon to come and kick his ass.)
Khalid was the real surprise, though. Other than his still-active blue aura, he looked virtually unscathed. No scars… no burns… The only thing that might look odd was that the unstable molecules of his shirt was beginning to come apart at the seams, because of prolonged exposure to his photon aura. Of the three of them, he clearly looked to be in the best shape… well… other than the fact that he was unconscious.
“Can’t keep his shit together,” Daemon said, throwing Khalid back over his shoulder.
“He… did…” Louis said, looking back and forth between the two of them and the hole. He wasn’t sure, but for some reason he didn’t think that was the complete explanation for what happened. “What exactly DID happen? Last thing I remember was him stopping me from getting out of dodge.”
“I…” Daemon started to think. HE didn’t really know what happened. The last thing he remembered, was interrogating the cyborg. The next thing he remembered was coming to about five feet away from Khalid down in the hole. He could tell from the residual energy around the hole that it was Khalid’s power. What did not make sense was that the residual energy around Daemon… did not originate from Khalid. “He can’t control himself, pure and simple. I’ve had it with his ass, anyway. I’ve got other things to do. YOU watch over him…”
“You don’t even know me… and for the past twenty years I’ve been a vampire fam…”
“Let me rephrase it. If you DON’T watch him, I’m going to hunt your ass down and torture you painfully.”
“Watching him doesn’t sound so bad.”
----------------------------------
New York City
Phil’s Pub
“I can’t believe you,” Sam said, shaking her head back and forth. “I really can’t believe you.”
“Don’t be ridiculoush,” Tracy said, finishing her shot of whiskey before she set the empty glass back on the table. “I jusht had t’ teach theesh gentlemen a little leshon.”
Sam sighed as she gently pushed one of the sleeping men over on his stomach with her foot. Tracy was more like her than either one of them were ready to admit… though unlike Sam, she was much more willing to flaunt it. “They didnae even give me a buzsh…” Tracy continued.
“I don’t know,” Sam said, looking at her. “Considering that you are speaking like Sean Connery, I’d say you’re buzzed.”
“That’sh abshurd,” Tracy answered. “Sean Connery is Shcottish… I cannae poshibly be talking like Sean Connery…”
“You’re saying ‘dinnae’ and ‘cannae’.”
“Irish people shay thosh!”
“They do not.”
“Do too! But that’sh beshide the point…” she reached over to take her winnings off the table and counted it up right on the spot. One thousand dollars… just like that… She chuckled. Dumb foolish American men… Did they REALLY think they had a chance of drinking a prim and proper Irish lass like Tracy Keenan under the table? And to BET on it? She chuckled as she put the money away…
“Now ladies,” the bartender said, looking down at them. Phil was pretty round and well past balding. Sam would probably say that the youngster – as far as she was concerned, everyone except Gomurr was a youngster compared to her – had been out in the sun too much, because of the sun burnt scalp. “You aren’t trying to pull a Khalid Hunter, are you?”
“Not bloody likely,” Tracy said. “He’sh American, too… I doubt he could hold hish liquor…”
You’d be surprised, Samantha thought in response. Getting him drunk just has OTHER effects… “What do you mean, Phil?”
“Just a joke…” he answered. “Can’t believe he though he was going to hide something like that from the public. I mean… What kind of position is he in now because of that?”
“One thing to consider, Phil, is that he was just trying to keep a bit of privacy,” Sam answered. “As a internationally acclaimed celebrity, wouldn’t you think that there are just things the public shouldn’t know? He wanted a career…”
“Well… I still think that he should have disclosed it. Now, everyone is calling him a damn liar…”
“There are two genetics tests – both of them illegal – that say otherwise… and if I recall, he never DID say anything about it.”
“He omitted the truth. That’s the same as lying.”
“Tell me, Phil,” Sam asked. “If I refuse to tell anyone what color underwear I am wearing, is that considered lying?”
“This is different…”
“I don’t know… I thought it was personal,” Sam said, helping Tracy stand up. “Come on, gal… We better head on back. See you later, Phil.”
As she left, Sam didn’t notice someone in the darkness, watching the two of them leave the building. He just simply watched the two of them head toward the taxi-cab and enter the car. She should have meant nothing to him. Simple task… bring her over… Yet, he just could not do that. He could not transform Tracy into something like those pathetic excuses for women Jezebel, Ophelia, or Inez. Instead, Friedrich had tried to do something like that… and almost succeeded.
As Nigel floated up toward the sky, he made a decision… In order for vampires to survive… Friedrich was going to have to die.
End Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Prydesville, NY – Hours later
It was about 10:00 P.M. when he woke up, with his photon aura still erected around him. Fortunately, Daemon had the foresight to place him in the basement of his home, which had the concrete foundation. That would minimize the damage to the infrastructure. Khalid sat up, first looking down at his clothing as the unstable molecules pulled themselves apart. Continuous prolonged exposure to a photon aura beyond the recommended time (which was about seven hours) will do that. With a white flash of his eyes, he was aware of every living being in the immediate area including the trespasser in his domain.
He teleported upstairs to his living room, a photon blade already formed in his hand. His eyes locked on his target, the thirty-some severely-malnourished White man sitting on his couch and watching his television. The snarl came out of his teeth, a warning that he was about to attack. The trespasser said something… something he was unable to understand in his current carnal state. Next thing he knew, a cup of ice cold water flew at him, landing in his face and dripping down his chest which snapped him out of his stupor.
“Daemon warned me you tended to get like that,” Louis said, tossing a change of clothes to Khalid. “That was something I tripped up on before your aura drove me out of your mind.”
Khalid disappeared into the bathroom to change before coming out. Once he snapped back to Earth, he knew fairly well that his aura was probably not coming down anytime soon… particularly after that last episode with Daemon. Fortunately these were the heavy duty fabrics, guaranteed to last up to twelve hours exposure to his photon aura. Daemon surely must have figured out what he was planning to do when he left the clothes. All black… Egyptian print vest… and the steel-toed boots. “So where did the son of a bitch go?”
“According to his words, he was sick of you not being able to keep your shit together so he went to find something else to do,” Louis answered, placing his feet on the coffee table.
“Don’t that beat all…” Khalid snarled. For the first time, Khalid noticed just how gaunt Louis’ features were. His hand dipped inside of a bag of popcorn as he watched the television… apparently not realizing that he was watching the Shopping Channel. “Interesting words coming from him… Going around reinventing history.”
“What DID happen…”
“You try sealing the equivalent of one thousand exploding nukes in a dimension you’re linked to and see how successful you are at ‘keeping your shit together.’” he grumbled, moving toward the kitchen to grab something to eat. Louis could hear the sounds of jars clinking together as Khalid rummaged through the refrigerator. His voice called out, its other-worldly resonance now beginning to sound quite familiar. “Fucking prick… and I’M the one with the delusions?! I SHOULD have left his ass sitting in that dimension. That’s what I should have done…”
“What?”
“Don’t ask.” Khalid said, returning back to the living room holding a piece of steak in his hand. With a jerk of his hand, he tore a bite out of it and sat down in his easy chair.
“You know… that’s raw…”
“Sure is… just wish it were a little bit fresher, though. Now…” Khalid said, taking yet another bite. Hmmmm… needs more firespice… “I’ve had more than my fill of vampires in recent weeks, so you mind telling me exactly what is going on?”
Louis’ eyebrow raised as he watched Khalid’s demeanor. Granted, he had seen many things since being made into a familiar as a teenager, but this just seemed… well… strange. “As a familiar, they don’t let me know too much. What I do know is that they wanted to ruin your life and then kill you before hunting the rest of your family down.”
“Oh… is THAT it… Keen.” Khalid answered. “And how do the cyborgs fit into this?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Louis answered. “The one thing I DO know is that the name –Van Helsing – has been known throughout history as a family of werewolf slayers.”
Silver… hmmmm… Silver kills werewolves. Could that have to do with what the spirits were saying? No… For some reason I think there is a little bit more to this than that. “Such a role doesn’t seem to exactly fit with that of cyborg mercenaries. Ludwig did mention something about a change coming that even Daemon would be able to do nothing about.”
“I don’t know… That’s all I can tell you.”
Why would cyborg werewolf hunters enter into a partnership with vampires? Khalid wondered. He bit into more of the steak as he thought this one out. “All right… Vampires know that I’ll detect them. They send you and the cyborgs to come kill me. By now, they probably know that the cyborgs failed. Obviously if they mean to kill me, they mean to kill Grandpop as well… unless Grandpop makes it over to them, first. So, are you saying that they WON’T go after my family until they are sure I am dead?”
“Exactly,” Louis answered. “Some other names were tossed around, but I’m pretty sure that you and your grandfather were the important ones.”
“Are they after Grover and Christian as well? Strategically, it would be more important to go after anyone who had active powers…” He picked up the phone, dialing a number. There was no point in calling Cougar. Khalid knew fairly well that Cougar was probably heading up there, if he weren’t there already. Grover, on the other hand… His cell phone responded with voice-mail, which meant that it was turned off. He was out on a mission, no doubt. Next number to call… Casey Jones…
“Hello,” the voice said on the other end of the line. Khalid tried not to burst out laughing as he heard the porn music in the background being turned down.
“Case… You know where Grover is?”
“No I don’t… and isn’t this a little late to be calling?” Next thing Khalid heard was the phone being hung up.
Khalid cringed as he hung up the phone. “Must have called at a really bad time… Okay… If Case doesn’t know where Grover is, then that means that he didn’t fill Case in on what was going on…” He closed his eyes for a moment trying to see if he could use his powers to get a general feel for where Grover was… to track him down like Grover tracked him down before. Conceivably, since he inherited the gifts from Cougar, he should be able to do a bit more, but that wasn’t the case yet. He just didn’t have the experience to reliably call on it. “All right… Where are you stationed?”
“My mist – er – Jezebel is stationed in Toronto, though I have no idea if that is where the Vampire Council is stationed. Unless I was being… punished, I rarely ever saw Toronto. Most of the time, I was doing jobs for Jezebel.”
“Shit… and Toronto’s a fairly big city,” Khalid said. “Teleportation’s the fastest way to get there. I’d rather not expend the power unless I know for sure that’s the place to be, otherwise I’ll be using more to get from place to place.”
“Perhaps I can seek them out on the astral plane?”
“No… Grover’s ‘psi-blind’ which means he doesn’t even register a presence on the astral plane. Grandpop can alter his own energy field so that he is psi-blind as well. Since he’s heading up against vampires, that is probably the first thing he did. This is going to annoy the HELL out of me, but the best I can do is sit here and wait – either for someone else to come knocking on my door…” Khalid growled for a moment as he glared at the hole in his wall from where Daemon attacked him earlier. “…or for some kind of clue.”
-------------------------------
Toronto 10:00 P.M.
“They were on this roof,” Joseph said, scanning the buildings in the immediate area. As much as he could tell with the group of abandoned buildings nearby – well-maintained abandoned buildings – this would be a prime spot for the Vampire Council to hole up. He may not have the ability to scan and manipulate living energy field like Cougar does, but his nose did tell him that there was quite bit of undead patrons in the area.
“They?” Grover asked. “Cougar and…”
Joseph sniffed the air a few more times. “Pretty recently… I’d say ten minutes ago. Cougar and… Walsh. Walsh is with him.”
“So that’s how he managed to move so fast.”
“Your grandpop doesn’t need that daywalker to move that quickly,” Joseph said. “However, he more than likely welcomed the help. I’m surprised that Walsh would help him that readily.”
“I’m not…” Grover answered, scanning the skyline. “He made his interest in Khalid known the day Khalid joined my Inner Circle. I figured at the time it had something to do with the Mufasa persona and his desire to release it. I didn’t know until REALLY recently that Maul was actually related. In either case, he doesn’t like people picking on Khalid.” Grover stopped, scanning the area around them again. He was looking for something… but just couldn’t figure out just what it was. “So you think one of the vampires is Maul?”
“Yes… I do,” Joseph answered, sniffing the air again. “I was able to discern Walsh’s scent from the other vampires because he’s not a complete one.”
“Other vampires?”
“Yeah… we’re close. I’d say we are extremely…” Just as Joseph was about to finish, Grover knocked him out of the way as an electromagnetic net came falling down where he had been. With a quick twist of his arm, a blade formed from Excalibur split it down the middle. Catching the hint, Joseph withdrew his semiautomatics from his holsters and looked up at the source… people on hoverboards. “Fuck… The Van Helsings are in on it, too!” he called out, firing a shot.
Grover started to take to the air when a horde of vampires swarmed over him. He expanded his telekinetic field outward, knocking them away enough so he could make an attack. “Shit…” he said, forming twin blades from the gauntlets. “They’re everywhere.”
“Use your metal, boy! The enchantment is poison to them!” Joseph called out, moving back toward the center of the roof. With a swift kick, the steel door leading to the roof crashed inward and Joseph took off down the stairs, firing his shots behind him at the cyborgs.
Who the hell is HE calling ‘boy’?! Grover thought, ripping the blade across a vampire’s neck. I’m older than he is… and HE’S officially the minority… although I’m the one with blue skin… To his relief, he saw that Joseph was right about the effect of Excalibur on the vampires. Their wounds took longer to heal… which meant that they could really just as quickly die from blood loss.
What he couldn’t figure out, though, was why the cyborgs were concentrating on Joseph and why the vampires were concentrating on him. Considering the effect of Excalibur, it be more strategic for the vampires to go after Joseph… well… although as far as Grover knew, Joseph only had enhanced strength and senses and an enchanted medallion. Maybe there was something else he was missing…
Grover knew what they were doing. It was simple. Divide and conquer. Wearing him down, most likely so someone else could take him out. Then, when Cougar and Maul make their move, they would have no one to back them up.
…and without Joseph to lead him to Cougar, Grover had little chance of finding them in order to make much of a difference.
End Chapter Six
---------------------
Chapter Seven
Toronto
Across the street from the compound of the Vampire Council
Grover spun around, severing the head of yet another vampire with a blade formed from Excalibur. It was a delaying tactic. Of that he was sure. Divide and conquer? A few minutes ago, Joseph dodged down below the roof, with cyborgs hot on his trail. It was just him up here and the vampires, who were doing the best to overwhelm him with numbers… which was succeeding. He needed to create some distance from this swarm, but it looked like no matter which way he went they were ready. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something and smiled… a heaping pile of sawdust next to a buzzsaw.
He slapped the blades in his hand together forming a staff with sharpened ends. The staff was actually what he was trained on, but in close quarters with multiple enemies it was risky. Fortunately for him, the staff was for all intents and purposes a part of his body – like a sixth limb he could shoot out of his skin at will. (Grover smirked as he remembered the look on Khalid’s face when he answered the question of what the FIFTH limb was!) Unlike other staffs, there was NO CHANCE of Excalibur getting knocked out of his hands.
These later set of vampires were pretty smart, managing to stay out of the reach of the staff and even managing to get some kicks and punches in. (Grover by this time was also getting a little tired and not able to cover all the angles as quickly.) One of the vampires got in a REALLY good kick to his left temple and sent him flying directly into the sawdust. Grover started hacking and coughing as they closed the distance, appearing desperately to clear out his lungs.
The vampires knew for sure that something was up when the sawdust seemed to swarm over Grover, creating a dust cloud that completely obscured his features. Deciding not to give any time to plot anything, they immediately moved in, ready to take him down. For the first time in the match, Grover’s voice carried out of the cloud.
“Just warning you,” he said. “This is going to hurt me a whole lot more than it hurts you.” Before they knew what he was talking about, several dozen small strands of metal – about the thickness of fishing line – shot out of the dust cloud, piercing through every vampire nearby. First they laughed at the gesture, mocking how it did nothing… until they all convulsed in utter agony. Those who were able managed to get off a shriek as their bodies exploded into flames and caused a chain reaction, incinerating those vampires nearby who were fortunate enough not to have been pierce. Once the burning vampires dropped to the ground, the dust cloud around Grover fell, revealing the dangling threads from his fingertips and his hand covering an electric outlet. “What do you know? I guess I lied…” Grover said, unplugging his hand from the wall. The silvery threads withdrew from the burning corpses, pulling back into his fingers. “Unfortunately for you, Mom wasn’t around when I was younger to tell me not to play with the light socket.”
“Considering she was psychokinetic, ‘Grover’, I consider highly unlikely she would say so!” Grover turned to his side to get a kick to the lip, followed by a backhand and elbow to the jaw. The impact was a little stronger than he expected, throwing him into the roof railing.
Grover’s assailant at first appeared to be a gaunt, deathly pale vampire with emaciated skin – clearly someone on the lower side. With the intonation of the words, though, Grover knew differently. The pale skin slowly became darker, a deep tan that was unnatural for a European, and the scraggly blonde hair soon darkened as well. With the predatorial glare, Grover KNEW who it was. “Ryan…” he said, pulling himself to a stand. “You DARE show your face around me… after that massacre YOU made possible? After how you scarred my son?” (***SG, of course, is referring to the events in Daemon’s “Millennium”!)
“Now come on, Grover. That was by no means the first time I messed with your family,” he said with a sneer. “And really… I don’t think it is going to be the last!” Using the enhanced strength the vampire whose body he swiped, Ryan kicked Grover in the chin. Grover came after him, realizing a fog had come over his mind… not strong enough to affect his thoughts, but subtle enough to affect his reaction time. Ryan’s manipulation, no doubt. “I learn from my mistakes, Boy…” Ryan said, backhanding him and kicking him in the chest. “Gomurr’s not going to save you THIS time!”
--------------------------
Inside the Council’s Compound
Maul knew the instant they entered the Compound that something was wrong. Cougar’s scan from the building across the street indicated that they would be up to their eyeballs in vampires, yet the moment they entered the building Maul couldn’t smell anything. Judging by the frustration in Cougar’s eyes as they moved along the narrow darkened hallway toward the center, he was likewise having difficulty navigating. Although they had remained completely silent as they moved through the building, both of them realized that things couldn’t possibly be what they seemed. The draft in the hallway was too weak. It indicated something else… Not to mention Maul couldn’t even find COUGAR’s scent – with the man right beside him – that told him something else. They were waiting for them.
Good… Killing is always more fun when the prey knows you’re coming.
A little impatient, Cougar paused to check his watch. For some reason, he couldn’t really scan. There was a little fog. Even more worrying was that Joseph and Grover have not caught up with them, yet. Even on the extremely unlikely chance Grover was slow, Joseph’s got enough experience to keep them moving. Something was wrong and he knew it.
“Roy…” a voice echoed in the hallway, coming from every direction at once. Cougar and Maul spun around, both trying to locate it. “Patrick…” the voice called again. “I’m over here.” They turned forward. “No… Over here…” To their right.
“Enough of the games, Friedrich,” Maul called out. “Show yourself…”
Suddenly, the scenery around them changed completely. What had once been a narrow hallway had transformed into dark open area, the only source of light being from the thick fog below.
“I’m over here, gentlemen…” Friedrich said, appearing about a hundred feet away from them, standing in the mist. His appearance contributed a much more eerie feel to the situation. He played the “surfer boy” look up to the hilt, wearing a loose pair of black shorts and shirt that was not buttoned, exposing his chest. In both of his hands were two swords, made of Spanish steel with emblems all across them, the meaning of which was lost. “Why don’t you come get me?”
“No,” came another voice, a hundred feet behind him. “Don’t listen to him. I’m over here.” An exact identical figure stood out, appearing visually the same as Friedrich… with his voice. “That’s just Geraldo over there playing a joke. You know him.”
“Don’t you start that lie,” yet ANOTHER voice said. A hundred feet to the right, this time. “YOUR Geraldo… I’m the real Friedrich. Vampires, these days…”
“No kidding,” said another image of Friedrich, this time from the left. “Imposters, the lot of you.”
Cougar and Maul started scanning around in circles, trying to figure out what was going on as the four “Friedrich”s argued among themselves over who was real and who was an imposter. The sound of the bickering grew overwhelmingly as they started screaming and then shouting.
“HOLD UP!” the one in the front, said. The other Friedrichs stopped shouting, to turn toward him. “Roy and Maul know us pretty well… Okay, Maul, Friedrich made you… So, tell us… which one of us is the real Friedrich?”
Maul looked back and forth between all four of them, not even able to fathom which direction was front or back this time. “Damn… They all look the same… and I can’t smell anything…”
Cougar’s expression didn’t change as he reached inside of his shoulder pocket, withdrawing a handful of toothpicks. The two of them kept moving in circles, one of them all the time watching what was behind the other.
“Come on, Cougar…” another one of the Friedrichs said. “Who is who and which is which?” The other three chimed in this time, their voices loud enough to be jarring to the ears. “Which one of us four is that son of a bitch?”
“Cute,” Maul muttered.
“I don’t know which one,” Cougar said, his eyes flashing yellow as he looked into the darkness. “I DO know that it sure as hell isn’t you!” he said, directing his attention to the “Friedrich” in front of him. With a thrust of his hand, the toothpicks flew from his fingers imbedding themselves in his target. The man shrieked as he burst into flames. Gerald fell to the ground, like a burning log, his illusions dying with him.
Maul and Cougar could see the inside of the room around them clearly now, lit up with torches on the various stands. The walls that reached about fifty feet high were red – a particularly BLOODY color of red – whose stench traveled quite powerfully to their noses. The opening of the room itself was quite large, about two hundred feet across. They had company. BIG time… Vampires from wall to wall… and a miniature army of cyborgs on hoverboards.
Cougar’s eyes widened in surprise when he saw them. “Van Helsings…” he said.
“What?” Maul said, getting ready for what very well may be the final fight of his life.
“Joseph!” Cougar spun, hurling another set of toothpicks behind then, toward the exit. The vampires nearby shrieked as they exploded into flames, setting off a chain reaction with any other vampires unfortunate enough to be nearby. Maul was shocked to see him running toward the doorway, almost in desperation.
From the fog on the ground, a foot spun up slapping Cougar right between the eyes. Before Cougar was able to mount a defense, he was telekinetically thrown into a nearby pillar. Maul started to close the distance, but was blindsided by a burst of plasma from the side. As he spun around to attack, he was suddenly frozen in place and hurled into the pillar next to Cougar.
Chomping and smacking on her gum as she walked over, Ophelia kicked Maul upside the head before speaking in her obnoxious accent. “Why heya there, Maulie-pie,” she said. “Guess you forgot about my magnetic personality, eh?”
“You…” he said. “But I thought…”
“What? I was dead? Oh… but I got better,” she said, magnetically twitching his ribs so they caved in a little bit. Maul bit back the temptation to shout in agony from the assault on his internal organs.
“Now, now…” Friedrich said. “Ophelia, we can’t be harming Herr Walsh before his big surprise…”
“Of course not, Fred…” she said, kicking Maul in the chin and laughing as his vision went black.
End Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
The Outskirts of White Plains, NY
“I appreciate you coming over and helping me look after Christian,” Alice Pembleton said from the kitchen as she whipped up a late night snack for her and her guest. She supposed it was getting awfully close to Christian’s bedtime, but the child seemed to be enjoying his drawing – although she couldn’t make them out. She’d rather not discourage the emerging of any talent. Practice makes perfect. “I’m sure Christian appreciates it too, don’t you?”
Focused in his sketchbook, Christian hardly looked up as he drew and drew. Gomurr noticed that the child was using predominantly two colored pencils… the red and the dark blue. Like Alice, though, Gomurr could not make them out. Earlier, Grover had asked him what he had seen. A few months ago, Khalid swore up and down he had seen something. Of course, it might be that Christian’s drawings are coded in such a way that only relatives could make them out, but he didn’t think that was the case. There was something…
“Yeah, Miss Alice,” the young child said, not looking up. “I do.”
What was it? Why wouldn’t the child even LOOK at Gomurr or respond to him? For that matter, why did Grover insist to leave the child over at Alice’s rather than his house? Gomurr tried not to feel a little hurt in all of this. He wondered in a way if Grover’s newfound attachment to his family had in any way replaced his attachment to his adopted family, namely Gomurr. For all intents and purposes, he had found himself left out of almost everything, including the search for the man he very well considered his son. Right now, he was just really beginning to feel left out. He almost began ruing the day Khalid Hunter ever walked in… because it seemed that was when the changes started happening.
“Gomurr,” Alice said, snapping him out a daze as she handed him a plate of food and a cold soda. “Have you been sitting outside? You’re developing quite a nice tan.”
“No… I can’t say I…” he stopped, looking at his reflection in a nearby mirror. She was right. He WAS developing quite a nice tan. Gomurr also happened to notice that his fingers seemed to be just a little bit longer. “Perhaps all those years of eating vegetables have paid off.”
“Keep this up,” Alice laughed sitting in the sofa. “And my fiancé will burst in here in a jealous rage. Poor guy… Christian knows him, so he was fine with letting the child stay over. The only reason he had nothing to say about you coming over was that I told him you were short, elderly man.”
“Humph!”
“I didn’t tell him you were a short, elderly man who runs a strip club and is cute as a button.”
“Careful, I’ve always had a thing for redheads,” Gomurr laughed.
“Yes, I know…” Alice glared. “Grover told me that day you ‘accidentally’ bumped into my rear end!”
“Eheheheheheh…”
“You’re a good man, Gomurr…” Alice said, glancing at the television. She sighed as she saw what the news was about. Yet ANOTHER town on the other side of the world was afflicted with that strange epidemic… screaming and hollering… fighting and whatnot. Doctors were beside themselves trying to find a cure. With a flick of the remote, she changed it to VH1.
“Are you saying you’re interested?” Gomurr smiled.
“No, I’m saying that my fiancé will throw a fit if he sees you sleeping on the couch when he visits me tomorrow morning for breakfast, so you might want to be gone by one.”
“Very tactful, Alice.”
“I tried.”
--------------------------------
Toronto, Ontario – Rooftop
Totally not good. That was what Grover was thinking. Ryan was using his elemental abilities to “cloud” his mind… alter his perception so that he could not react in time to the punches, kicks, and other strikes. The worst part – the most insulting part – was hearing Ryan laugh while Grover was clumsily trying to resist.
“Your time has finally come,” Ryan said, slamming his foot down on a two-by-four. The piece of lumber flipped in the air before it landed in his hands. With a grunt, he closed the distance between himself and Grover, snapping it directly across his face. “For you to show me…” he said, striking again. “JUST how much of a man…” he said, this time thrusting it roughly in Grover’s ribs. “You aren’t!” He brought the two-by-four up under Grover’s chin, knocking him on his back.
With a gesture of his hand, he latched onto Grover’s flesh through the Red and forced the now-battered king to a stand. “I’ve been waiting SO long to do this!” he said, going at Grover like a punching bag.
His body locked into position, Grover couldn’t move as he got punch after punch. Through the haze his mind was in, he was able to figure out that there was one thing Ryan was not able to latch onto – Excalibur, which Grover was starting to pool near his hands. The mixture of haze and pain kept him too unfocused to move Excalibur as quickly as he needed to.
“The Flesh is my kingdom, Boy… to reign over and manipulate as I see fit,” he said, throwing Grover across the roof into the fallen satellite dish. He smiled as he approached the king. “That means I rule over everyone.” With a twitch, Grover felt his wounds beginning to heal… pull themselves back together. The lock on his body and his mind still remained, though. “Can’t figure out what I’m doing?” Ryan sneered. “Let’s just say that I don’t wear damaged clothes. Don’t worry… I’ll take GOOD care of Christian!”
Grover writhed in pain as Ryan’s presence threatened to overwhelm his body. He didn’t notice it, but his aura was visibly twisting and churning, throwing sparks and igniting the air around it, superheating it into an ionic state. Ryan was already beginning to assert his will on Grover’s body and dispel his soul from there in, but there was one thing he could not get past. Grover’s soul was latched onto Excalibur. To completely possess him, he would have to detach Grover… which was beyond his means. Without the entire mind, Ryan would not have him…
The entire concept became moot when Ryan found himself jerked against his will out of Grover’s body, jerked out of the Red, and forcibly thrown back into the body of the vampire he had taken over. Momentarily disoriented and weak, he was not aware of the hand on his shoulder who had been the cause.
“Did you REALLY think I was going to let that happen?” Khalid, stepping away from him.
Ryan stuttered at first but then spoke as he stumbled backwards. “You interfere?! You… are a dead…” His threat was interrupted by Grover’s fist, throwing him back. Then, his foot cut through the air, crashing into Ryan’s jaw. Forming Excalibur into a staff again, Grover ripped it across Ryan’s face, tearing a jagged laceration from his cheek back to his earlobe. Before he could land another strike, Ryan’s body transformed instantly to dust. Angry and seething, Grover cursed that Ryan had retreated to his damn “Red” again… and effectively escaped an ass-beating for even trying that shit. Trying to calm down, he turned his attention to Khalid, who apparently had lost his wits, because he was hunched over laughing as hard as he could. (Grover thought THAT was an unsettling sound…)
“Khalid!” Grover barked. “What the hell is wrong with you? You think it was some kind of joke?! He…” Khalid started to come to a full stand, but seeing the rage in Grover’s eyes, he launched back into a laughing fit, unable to speak.
Louis, who was also standing nearby, looked at Khalid strangely, as if he had lost his marbles. He CERTAINLY didn’t see anything funny about what he just saw. “Don’t look at me man, he’s YOUR cousin.”
“Who the hell are you?” Grover asked, looking at Louis. “Nevermind… I don’t want to know.” Khalid stumbled over to Grover, whispering something in his ear. “No… you say?” Grover said, pulling back. “You’ve gotta be pulling my leg.”
Louis shook his head as he walked toward the edge of the roof. “Six hours as a free man and you discover everyone else is a weirdo.”
“All right, Grover…” Joseph’s voice called out, coming out of the entrance of the roof. He stumbled out, looking like he just got run over by a car. His shirt was tattered, as if he had been in a close fight, but other than a few scratches and bruises, he was okay. Once he saw Khalid, his words caught in his throat and a look akin to fear flashed across his eyes. “Lil’ Zeke,” he mumbled.
Khalid stopped, his gaze stuck on Joseph for a moment before he spoke. “What the fuck?!” he said, recognizing Joseph’s strong resemblance to his grandfather. He found, though, that his gaze traveled to the medallion hanging from Joseph’s neck. Joseph looked familiar, though he could not place just why. Something about that silver medallion…
I should have known there was more to this than meets the eye, Grover thought, shaking Khalid by the shoulder. And Joseph has no more weapons on him… He had to have run out of ammo LONG ago. How did he win the fight against the cyborgs? “All right… You – the gaunt guy – what do you do?”
“Telepath… a little healing… former vampire familiar… psychic katanas,” Louis said.
“Okay, K… can you locate Cougar from here?” Grover asked.
Khalid looked across the street at the Compound. With a flash of his eyes, he could see the concentration of energy fields. Cougar’s energy field, because it was the most similar to his own, was in the center of it all… along with that of a certain daywalker. Without intending to, Khalid’s own energy field attuned itself to Cougar’s, allowing him to sense things from Cougar’s perspective. (He figured it was Cougar that coaxed THAT one along.) Just as quickly, he was done. “Here’s the scoop… Grandpop and Maul are in the center of the complex, surrounded by vampires and more of them damn cyborgs. Grandpop’s mystically bound, so he was only able to direct attention to few things. A door on the farside and a ventilation duct up top.” Khalid then turned to Joseph, who tucked the medallion inside of what was left of his shirt. “One thing I could tell is that Grandpop is hoping I get you the hell away.”
“Not likely, Li… er… Khalid,” Joseph answered. “You need all the help you can get.”
“He’s right,” Grover answered. “Khalid you come in from up top. If you’re in the center, that gives the vampires less chance of escaping out. I’m coming in through the far-side door. They know I’m here, but they don’t know you’re here. After I make the first move, you wait until they move in and drop down from the other side. Joseph, you go with Khalid… once he drops you down, free Cougar. Louis… You’re with me. Slice, dice, and trash. Got it?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Louis answered.
Joseph, remembering what Cougar told him before, was a little reluctant to be in too close quarters with Khalid, but with the stakes this high, he really didn’t have a choice. “Let’s get to it.” Roy is going to skin me alive.
End Chapter Eight
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Chapter Nine
Inside the Vampire Compound
Maul’s eyes blinked open. Damn it, he should have realized earlier that one of the members of the Vampire Council was Ophelia, but too much of his rage was centered on Friedrich. Her powers of magnetism still had him bound to the central pillar, but he could see almost everything.
Cougar lay sitting on the floor beside him in what appeared to be a milky blue goo spread all over him tightly. The glowing substance pulled in tightly so that his hands and feet were bound against his body. The only thing exposed was his head, presumably so he could watch everything that was going on around him.
Directly across from them was Friedrich, eyeing Maul with bloodthirst as he came to. Across his right sleeve, he polished his Spanish steel blade laughing heartily as Maul woke up. “Have a good nap?” he asked.
Friedrich gestured for a group of vampires to deliver to him an old man, who struggled in their grasp. With the exception of an old scar – a jagged wound running down his cheek that had to be over sixty years old – the old man was virtually unscathed except for the red marks on his wrists from resisting his captors. The old man stopped struggling the instant Friedrich set the blade against the man’s neck.
“My God…” Cougar said, seeing the identity of the man. “You soulless…”
Friedrich, humored at what Cougar had just said, laughed even more. “Gee, Roy… What was the first clue?” With that, Friedrich backhanded the man across the face, tearing a wound across his other cheek. Laughing, he grabbed the man roughly by the neck, picking him up into the air. “Hey, Patrick… You look a little thirsty. How about a drink?” Friedrich asked. With that, he hurled the old man so that he landed at Patrick’s feet. Maul could tell with a snap that the old man’s arm had just broken. He was just not prepared for when the old man lifted his head up and looked Maul in the face.
“VATER??!!” the old man asked, as if he did not believe his eyes.
“Wolfgang?!” Maul said with a flash of his eyes. “Nein… nein…”
“Ja, ja, ja…” Friedrich mocked, laughingly. Telekinetically, he jerked Wolfgang back through the air and suspended him in the air, like a marionette. Then, he took hold Wolfgang’s neck and bit in…
“NO!” Maul shouted, trying desperately to sink into this shadow, but the Ophelia’s magnetism had him bound to the pillar.
Friedrich pulled his mouth off of Wolfgang’s neck, turning to eye Maul as he licked the blood of Maul’s son off his lips. “What’s wrong, Patrick? Don’t you want Wolfgang to be just like his dear old Dad?”
“You son of a…”
“Then, in that sick twisted way – since I converted you – the two of you could both be my sons. Then again, your family tree is already confusing enough…”
Hanging limp in Friedrich’s grip, Wolfgang started to mutter something… “//The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want…//” (Translated from the German.)
Gasping, Friedrich dropped him to the floor and stepped away and then kicked Wolfgang in the chin. “Shut your mouth, you old fool… I HATE that proverb!”
“//It’s not a proverb, you bastard,//” Wolfgang responded, wiping his blood from his neck.
“Shut up… I’M not the one who ran out on his nigger son, am I?” Friedrich said. “Don’t worry, Wolfgang…” he said, turning his gaze toward Maul. “Some things are just GENETIC, aren’t they?”
“Quit reinventing history, Friedrich,” Maul growled. “And release my…”
“I think not… How about a little game?” Friedrich said, telekinetically throwing Wolfgang back to a pack of waiting vampires. “Drain his blood, but do it SLOWLY. I don’t want the old fool completely dead… for an hour. Have I made myself clear?” He turned to Ophelia. “Release Maul,” he said.
“Is this going to be the ol’ ‘you can save your son, but you have to get past me’ bit?” Ophelia asked, smacking her gum.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ophelia,” Friedrich said. “That would take all of the fun out of it. Trust me… Release Maul.” With a flash of his eyes, he telepathically summoned the other members of the Vampire Council. I don’t like the way Roy was just looking at the back entrance and at the ventilation duct overhead. I think he’s expecting company. Ophelia stays with me, because she’s the most effective against Walsh. The rest of you spread out and give whatever guests we might have a proper welcome. If one of them is Khalid, don’t hesitate to kill him.
Ophelia released her magnetic grip on Maul, who immediately started to close the distance between himself and the vampires draining Wolfgang. Out of nowhere, a foot kicked him in the chin and punched him full in the mouth. With a click in his hand, Maul unsheathed his claws, ready to take this particular vampire’s head off when he stopped himself cold and he looked into the eyes of a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman. “No…”
“You can save your son,” Friedrich said, with a sneer. “But you have to kill my new recruit – your daughter Katrina – first.”
End Chapter Nine
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Chapter Ten
“I don’t suppose you can power down your aura…” Joseph asked.
“Not right now,” Khalid answered, walking along top of the roof. He was listening to the sound his footsteps made. Trying to get a general feel for the acoustics of the building. “After killing a bunch of cyborgs, I had to restrain the power of a fucking demi-god this afternoon. I’ve not yet recovered enough control to power it down.”
A fucking demi-god?! I don’t think I want to know. “But you were able to teleport us here and drive Ryan back into his body…”
Khalid smiled, not yet turning back to look at Joseph. “One thing I discovered in the last few weeks is that constant photon projection is more or less my natural state… and that it apparently takes more for me to power it down than to leave it on. What used to happen is that it would cut off completely, until my life force would recover. It’s just more efficient in high-stress situations.”
Joseph’s hand passed over the medallion momentarily rubbing it. “Trust me, kid… It’s better than your natural state being one of constant change.”
“For a while there, Joseph, it was… between polar opposites, it seemed. Since my… trip to Egypt, I’ve discovered that wasn’t necessarily the case.” Khalid stopped in place. “You know… your scent is familiar… and so’s your energy field.”
“That’s something you’re going to have to take up with Roy.” Joseph said, stopping. “Right here…”
“Yes,” Khalid said. “A meeting room, I suspect… small enough…” With a flash of his eyes, Khalid looked below not seeing a single energy field. Good… A photon lion’s paw plunged through the surface of the roof, exposing the conference room below. It was just the type of room they were looking for… A way to get in virtually unnoticed and easily dispatch whoever might come looking for them.
Joseph dropped down first and then Khalid on top of the oak conference table. The only source of light – naturally – was Khalid’s photon aura, but fortunately neither one of them really needed it. “The ventilation shaft we are looking for is probably close by.”
With a flash of his eyes, Khalid growled just a little, which threw Joseph off. “That’s not the only thing that’s close by… Two of them… but something… I can’t reconcile… I can’t pinpoint an exact location… something…”
Joseph sniffed the air. “It’s Singh… He’s got them shifted in a side dimension. Jezebel’s here, too. Watch out for her. She emits spores stronger than pheromones. Once she bites a man, he becomes her familiar for life.”
“Tell that to Louis,” Khalid said, watching Joseph move off. He started to go after him when he detected a vampire entering through the wall behind him. With a snarl, he spun on his feet, forming a photon blade, this time stopping in his tracks.
“What’s wrong, Khalid?” she cooed, tracing her finger up his jaw. “You know, Little ol’ me is just harmless…”
Before he knew it, there was a buzz in his head and the photon blade dissipated. Jezebel smiled as she pulled in closer. He belonged to her…
--------------------------
“Louis… Do you sense anything?” Grover whispered.
“No not a thing… Not that it means much,” Louis said. “Most vampires are at least mildly telepathic… enough to shield themselves from my probes.”
“Great,” Grover muttered. He looked down the room, cluttered with mounds of furniture and just plain junk. It had been nothing for him to phase himself and Louis through the back entrance of the compound, since the door itself was only three inches thick. The trick was getting to the central cavern. Unlike Khalid, he didn’t exactly have ‘vampire radar.’ Strategically, it would have been smarter for him to take Joseph, but he was not exactly sure he could trust this newcomer. Of everyone, he was immune should this guy prove to be dangerous. “It looks like we’re in a storage room and that hallway on the other end leads to the main room.”
Grover picked him up and silently flew them across the room, being on the watch for everything. To provide light for the area, Louis formed a small psychic ball in his hand. Grover saw that these were not desks or tables as he had once though before, but actually coffins. Cute.
Unexpectedly, someone dropped down from above, sliding through Grover’s field and kicking him squarely in the back of the head. That caused him to lose his hold on Louis, who dropped to the ground and rolled back on his feet. Grover immediately spun around as the foot landed against his jaw again. Thrown into the hallway, he finally saw his attacker – a beautiful black haired vampire with extremely pale-white skin. Her eyes flashed a dark purple as she walked up on him. “Hello, Grover…” she said. “My name is Inez… Do you want to be my friend?”
“No,” Grover said, forming a staff in his hand from Excalibur. What he knew about her thus far was that she was able to slide through his telekinetic field. With a puff of purple smoke, a golden rod came to her hand, sparkling purple.
“My… my… MY…” she said swinging it over his head, “What a mighty big STAFF, you got there…”
“Why don’t you come closer?” Grover said as he kicked her legs out from under her. As he expected her to do, she used her flight to come back to a stand, which left her open for a strike to the chin. “I’ll give you a feel…”
She flew back a few feet, coming back to a full stand. Leering at him, Inez took her index finger and traced it along her chin, collecting the stream of blood at the tip. She licked it, shuddering with delight. “Ooooh, Baby…” she said, licking her lips. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer…”
A purple ball of light streamed out of the end of her staff, directed toward Grover. He moved the staff barely in time to deflect it into the wall, but the impact took him off his feet and threw him into the solid steel door leading to the main room. Inez closed the distance and kicked him upside the head before he made it to his feet. She set her staff at his neck and shook her head.
“Not so fast, Sweetie…” she said. “Don’t tell me you’re quick on the trigger…” She took her hand and traced it slowly up and down Grover’s staff made from the Gauntlets of Excalibur. Grover tensed up in response to the sensation, VERY conscious of Excalibur’s connection to him. A gray liquid seemed to pool at his feet as his eyes rolled backward. “Looks like you are,” she said…
“Don’t be ridiculous…” Grover answered, slapping her staff away. With a thrust off his feet, he backhanded her into the wall and started to fly toward her. “I’m just getting started!” In mid-air, he stopped noticing that Inez was looking toward him and smiling. He looked behind him, seeing the trail of gray liquid trailing behind his feet. “Well… THAT’s embarrassing…” With a slight bit of effort, he pulled it back in.
She aimed her staff toward him and fired, laughing as he dodged the energy bursts. “Don’t worry, honey… It happens to all men sometime or later!”
----------------------------
Fuck! Joseph thought as he flew across the room and crashed into the painting. Singh had come up and attacked him out of nowhere… just like the bastards were known for doing. It would have been better had they been otherwise matched. Damn near anyone else could handle the bastard once he got phased, but not Joseph.
“What’s wrong, joey-joey-joey?” The East Indian said, hurling a knife from between his fingers. Joseph dodged out of the way just as the knife hit the frame of the painting. By this point, Singh was hurling other things at him… chairs… plates… utensils… anything he could get his hands on in the dining room. “You a little scared?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Joseph said, leaping over the dining room table. Once on the other side, he tipped it over and threw it at his opponent. Singh, as he expected, phased through it and was coming at him. “I’m just not stupid.”
“That’s debatable,” Singh said, kicking him into the cadenza. Joseph stumbled backward, his arm slapping against a priceless vase and knocking it to the floor. He slipped on the broken pieces as he stumbled and fell down heavily on his rear end. Singh grabbed him by the throat and picked him into the air to choke him. “Joey, joey, joey, joey… You’ve got no one to protect you, now. No weapons on you… NOTHING you can possibly do to me.” Laughing, he threw Joseph across the room so his back crashed through the table.
---------------------------------
“You know, Khalid…” Jezebel said, running her hands through his hair. “I can tell you are a man… a really powerful man…” She leaned closer to his ear. “With something just burning inside of you… Why don’t you let it out?” She gently tugged his ear with her teeth, being careful not to bite through the skin. She smiled as a low-pitched demonic purr started to fill the room…
-------------------------------
With a green flash of the eyes and a growl, Joseph kicked one of legs of the table off into his hand. “You think NOT you undead prick?!” Angrily, he threw the table leg, which passed through Singh and embedded itself firmly in the wall.
“Careful, Joe…” Singh teased. “You aren’t acting your age… and don’t you think you’re getting a little hairy, there?”
-----------------------------
As much as Grover hated to say it, Inez was better than he expected – not as good as HE was, but better than he expected. The big thing that evened it out, though, was that for some reason when she struck, he didn’t have the protection of his aura. She was somehow able to slide through it.
He tore back into the darkened room where Louis was fighting with the Brazilian vampire and started kicking empty coffins at her. She continued coming at him, this time blasting purple energy bursts out of the end of her staff as she closed the distance. “What’s wrong, Sweetie? Don’t want to cuddle?”
“No… I don’t,” Grover said, kicking another coffin at her. “I swear… WOMEN… You think JUST because we fool around that we have a relationship…” She fired a purple energy burst at him, which he deflected into the Brazilian vampire down below with his staff. (Paulo made a REALLY choked cry as he disintegrated that reminded Grover of a man passing a kidney stone…) While Inez looked on in shock, that gave Grover just the time he needed to slap her upside the head with her staff. He was about to finish her through, when she flew off. Grover was about to go after her when Louis’ voice cut him off.
“Grover… Listen. You’ve beat her. She’s already through.”
“Are you out of…”
“You don’t understand,” Louis said. “You deflected her blast into Paulo. Vampires cannot attack someone of equal or higher rank without the agreement of the head vampire or the vampire council. Once her blast killed Paulo, she has been labeled a traitor. It is only a matter of time.”
“Fine… I’ll take your word for it… Let’s go kick some ass.”
--------------------------------
A low-pitched demonic hum started to fill the room as the purring sound came from his chest. Pleased with the sound, Jezebel’s hand rubbed his chest as she slithered around him some more. “You know… I have enough passion inside of me… to tame the lion… to prove you are just… a big, Black… pussy… cat…” Licking his neck, she leaned in to take a bite…
--------------------------
“It comes with the territory,” Joseph said. All Singh could see was his silhouette and the glowing green medallion as he closed the distance. Confident in his phasing abilities, Singh was surprised to discover that Joseph’s fist actually made contact with his head… and actually sent him flying backward into the embedded table leg. Joseph placed his hand in Singh’s chest and snarled in his face. “At my age, I think I’m entitled to it!” He shoved Singh back, watching the end of the table leg emerge where his heart was supposed to be. “Good bye, asshole…”
As Singh exploded into flames, Joseph stepped back… watching the hair receding from his hand and his skin returning to its normal color. Once the claws receded into his hand, he flexed his fingers back and forth waiting for the pain to subside. Good thing he wasn’t around Lil’ Zeke when that happened, because that might have triggered the memory. Wait a minute…
Something clicked… “Fuck… Lil’ Zeke…” He ran back toward the meeting room just in time to see Jezebel bite into Khalid’s neck. “NO!!!!” He said, starting to move in, when suddenly he saw Khalid’s hand grab the back of her head. He could see Jezebel’s eyes widen in shock as if she realized something was up and try futilely to pull away. Instead, Khalid tightened his grip, pulling her in even tighter so she could not take her mouth off the artery.
“What goes around, comes around…” Khalid said as she started to convulse. His hand grabbed her by the hair and threw her toward the wall. A primal shriek carried out of her mouth, loud enough that both Joseph and Khalid had to cover their ears. It come to a sudden halt as she burst apart, showering both men in the room with her blood and a bit of her remains. “Slut…” Khalid said.
“That’s disgusting, man…”
“Yes… It is,” Khalid answered. “You should have seen the way I reacted the first time it happened. It happened while I was f…”
“I’ve heard enough,” Joseph said, cutting him off. “Let’s find that ventilation duct.”
End Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
In the middle of a cold night in 1914, Kaiser’s troops burst into Patrick Walsh’s home and ripped him out, while his family screamed and sobbed and looked on. Greta Schachter Walsh was told nothing save that her husband was going to serve the German Empire and that the government would send regular checks to support her and her small children. His younger son Wolfgang – who was seven at the time – remembered that night well. He remembered holding his mother as she wept and grieved of her shattered family… how the newborn baby Katrina was going to grow up having never known their father.
Well… their mother was wrong. Patrick Walsh had actually run into his grown daughter in 1945, having caused the breakup of her relationship with Ryan Jensen. (Tortured Souls!) Of course, “Kraus Mahler” could not bring himself to reveal the truth… and he certainly could not predict that Katrina – furious at Ryan – would seduce a then-young Robert Cougar. Wolfgang knew that union produced a daughter named Carolyn who was taken in by Cougar and his wife after Katrina became a prisoner of her own powers.
Now, it seems that father and daughter have been reunited. Maul knew instantly what had happened. Ryan had remade Katrina in the image of her younger self and brought her to Friedrich to “bring over.” Now, she was Friedrich’s slave, unable to control her actions. Even if she could, though, with the darkness that full-fledged vampirism instilled in her, she would not know whether or not she would want to. For the first time in fifty years, her mind was free of its catatonia… and she could take revenge on the father who abandoned her as a baby… and later ruined her life.
From his position next to the central pillar, Cougar watched the fight between father and daughter. It should really not even be a match. The only advantage Katrina has over Walsh is that she can use her power to affect bodily fluids to mess with his healing factor. Other than that, Maul has the significantly advanced skill, the adamantium skeleton, and the shadowporting. Yet, Cougar knew fairly well that in many ways, Maul had already lost this fight. He laid it on the line way back at the hotel when he said, “I won’t harm my own blood.” Now, he’s stuck in a position of having to kill one child in order to save the other… and no matter what, he just could not do it.
“Enjoying the fight, Roy? I know I am…” Friedrich said as he sat down beside Cougar at the pillar. “Set up like this, it is just satisfying to know that I win, no matter the outcome… and I get to destroy the entire family… Your whole blood line… just like YOU and PATRICK did to mine!” He laughed aloud as he saw Katrina rip her elongated fingernails across Maul’s face. Maul managed to pull back, but she punched him on the underside of the nose. “MAN, I’ve gotta admit she’s sexy when she’s kicking ass…”
For the first time in the fifty years since he had met Maul, Cougar really felt for him. No man should have to bury his own children, much less be forced to kill them. “Walsh exacted revenge on his own, Friedrich,” Cougar said. “For what you and your family did to him… You know what? You’re the sickest of them all. More twisted than ever. I enjoyed spending the last fifty years as a pain in your side… and I enjoy it even more knowing that, one way or another, you die this night.”
“And WHO is going to kill me, Roy?!” Friedrich said, this time grabbing him by the neck. “YOU?! Not likely. Khalid?!”
“I didn’t know why you were afraid of him when you went after him the first time, but now I know why,” Cougar sneered. “The sad thing, Friedrich, is that you made it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just one problem – I don’t think he’s the one who’s going to kill you tonight.” Angrily, Friedrich released his hold on Cougar and angrily stood up. “One more thing, Friedrich… You call my son-in-law a nigger one more time and I’ll show your disembodied spirit there are worse things than death and hell. Interesting how the members of your council have dropped off, isn’t it?”
Friedrich backhanded Cougar and then marched away from the pillar to pick up his swords from the ground. He was going to have to get moving on this one. “Ophelia, you be ready to kill Walsh in a moment’s notice, you hear me?” He then, turned around to direct his attention to the cyborgs. “You listen to me… You want Joseph alive? Then you had BEST be ready to kill that nigger when he shows up… or I’ll kill Joseph myself and short-circuit your plans! If SuperGrover comes to his aid, shoot him down. Jensen had PLENTY of time to collect his prize should he have wanted it.” He jerked his head up to look at the remaining vampires watching the fight. “Go now… Kill the rest of the family. I mean EVERYONE… and bring their nonbeating hearts BACK here. If they don’t come out of their homes, BURN them out. I want the Hunters… GONE! Joseph’s son and grandchildren… GONE! Christian Simitis? GONE! Father Ezekiel? GONE… though… as a priest, he might be a little harder to get to… but I want him GONE!” He spun back toward Cougar as the army of vampires started to mobilize, “Roy, you aren’t going to die tonight… You are going to sit right where you are and watch me eat the hearts of your loved ones, one by one… and…”
“Wanna bet?” Cougar said, with a sneer as some things started raining down from the ceiling. Everyone’s attention shifted upward where they heard a rumble from above. “My grandson has good ears, Friedrich… and you just pissed him off.”
Before Friedrich could respond, the ceiling fifty feet above exploded inward, showering the vampires and cyborgs below with debris on concrete. The only thing Friedrich could see was a blue photon lion drop from the hole above to the ground below, landing gracefully on its feet like a cat. The lion aura faded slightly so he could see Khalid at the center, setting Joseph on the ground. Khalid’s head snapped toward him so he could glare him in the eye and snarl. Friedrich knew exactly what was coming up… He barely had time to cover himself with his cape as a flash of ultraviolet light went off in the room. The vampires around the room shrieked as they exploded into flames from the onslaught. The extermination teams intended to slay the Cougar extended family all fell to the ground, leaving burning piles around the room.
Once the light flash stopped, Friedrich furiously ripped the cape off as he realized what had just happened. He turned to bark at Ophelia to kill Maul, seeing only a burning mass of red hair stumbling toward him. “Friedrich… help…” Shocked, he telekinetically hurled her away from him. He burrowed into the ground… backup… he needed backup…
“Katrina?!” Maul said, watching his daughter fall to her knees. He started moving toward her, but he felt himself frozen, unable to move. He grunted as his rib cage started pulling inward on his vital organs.
“No you don’t, Maulie-Pie…” Ophelia sneered, manipulating the adamantium bonded to him. “If I’m going to die tonight… I’m going to take you with…”
“NOOOOOOOOOO!!!” shrieked Katrina. In what may have been her first lucid moment in fifty years, she flew off the ground grabbing Ophelia by what little was left of her hair. Katrina lashed out with her mutant powers for the final time, transforming Ophelia’s remaining bodily fluids into stomach acid, which caused her disintegration to happen all the more quickly. The effort, however, took away her ability to control her own bodily chemicals to counteract Khalid’s photon attack. She dropped to the ground, crawling her way toward Maul. “Father…”
“Ssssssshhhhh…” Maul said, holding her. “Danke…”
---------------------------
“God damn, Joe…” Cougar said, as Joseph struggled to rip off the milky goo. “I told Khalid to get you the hell out of here.”
“Oh… he did…” Joseph laughed. “We popped into this funny little pocket dimension of light for a split second or so and came out on the roof. DAMN, I can’t get this…” He was stopped as an electrified net from a cyborg wrapped around him. With a scream, he fell to the ground.
“NO!” Cougar shouted, straining against his bindings.
“We’ve acquired the alpha lycanthrope.” The cyborg called out. “Lay down coverfire and use whatever force necessary to…”
“Change of plan, tin man!” Grover said, slapping the cyborg in the neck with the staff. Before the cyborg could respond, he followed it up with a kick to stomach and a strike right across the back. “Hold still, Cougar…” He swung Excalibur across the milky goo, watching it dissipate into thin air upon contact. Another swing and Joseph was freed from the electrified net. “So… you mind telling me what is going on?”
Cougar reached into his pocket to take out another handful of toothpicks. “Easy… the Van Helsings want Joseph because of his immunity to silver…”
“Immunity to…”
“Yes… So they can create an army of cyborg mercenary werewolves that are that much more difficult to kill!”
“HE’S A WEREWOLF??!! WHAT THE…”
“Hey Grover,” Joseph intervened. “You wouldn’t mind decapitating that cyborg over there, would you?”
“DAMN, I can’t believe…” Grover said, obliging. “SOMEone is going to sit down and tell me who is related to whom and how the…”
“The way he rants reminds me of you, Roy…” Joseph said, dodging a stray blast. “Way back before you became an old geezer.”
“Just how old are…”
“None of your business!”
Grover quickly sized up the situation as everyone fought. Sixty vampires? No problem. Even without Khalid, this group could easily walk through that many. Sixty cyborgs on hoverboards? That’s a little bit more of a problem, especially when he considers the other facts. Their photon fields protect them from Khalid’s photon aura, so he has to attack physically. Joseph – who is unarmed – also has to attack physically, which is not smart considering they are after him. Maul – the one who would be the prime candidate for an up-close hand to hand fight – is otherwise occupied. Then, there is that old man with the scar to consider… It looked like it was up to him, Louis, and Cougar, and it was not promising.
“Roy… you’ve got to take these cyborgs out. Right now, Grover and that Louis guy are the most effective against them,” Joseph said. “Walsh is not in the fight. Lil’ Zeke can’t breach their photon fields unless he gets up close. I…”
“Shut up, Joe…” Cougar said. “I know what’s going on… Not to mention that Friedrich slipped out to get reinforcements. At best, these cyborgs are a mere annoyance. Still…” Cougar’s eyes flashed yellow as he scanned their energy fields. “The problem is that after two days of extensive slaying and then being stuck in that mystical binding, my life force needs to be replenished before I can affect theirs.”
“Can you use mine to…”
“Yes… I could… but not to manipulate theirs,” he stopped, turning toward the edge of the room where Khalid was protecting Wolfgang. “However…”
“Roy… You sure that’s wise?”
“We don’t have time to argue.” With a yellow flash of his eyes, he latched on to Khalid’s energy field momentarily altering his own to match it. At first, there had been a strain, but it was alleviated the moment the connection was made. Cougar smiled at the irony of the situation – how Khalid had been so adamant about not following in his grandfather’s footsteps. A year and a half later, the man was already well on his way to becoming a pro. Cougar allowed a knowing smirk to come across his face. Khalid’s not seen anything, yet.
“Grandpop…” Khalid said from across the room, sensing Cougar’s manipulations. “What the hell are you doing to…” In a split second, he noticed that he could feel the energy fields in the room pulse and respond to his own. It had been nothing for Cougar to isolate the fields of the cyborgs from everyone else’s. What struck Khalid, though, was realizing that Cougar was using his field to do it.
“Grover… get ready…” Cougar said with a sneer.
“For what?” Grover said starting to back away from the cyborgs, who were starting to convulse.
“To take Khalid down,” Cougar answered. With a flash of his eyes, every cyborg around the room dropped to the ground, unable to do anything as their spirits were forcibly ejected from their bodies. Their spirits screamed and dashed around the room as they tried to move back inside of their bodies, but found themselves “locked out.” Conceivably, Cougar could make the situation permanent using the level of power accessible to Khalid, but he chose not to. It would be probably a day or two before they found their way back to their bodies, which was more than the time they needed.
The problem with doing that was that in their disorientation, the spirits are initially attracted to whoever cast the spell. Although Cougar was the one who cast the spell, he used Khalid’s energy field to do it, so the spirits passed through Khalid before they returned to their frantic frenzy around the room. In his crazed mind, something clicked. Khalid saw the medallion on Joseph’s chest and promptly snarled as he stepped toward them.
“Khalid,” Grover said, stepping in front of Joseph. “Snap out of it. I don’t know what just happened, but you can’t go after Jo…”
“I’m not the one he’s mad at, son,” Joseph said.
“Then what…”
Before anyone could act, Khalid came at Cougar in a rage. Grover started to pull in to stop the fight, but Joseph pulled him back. The moment Khalid made contact with Cougar, the older man’s eyes flashed. Khalid’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he dropped to the ground, his aura quickly depowered.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” Grover asked, picking him up. He could tell through his connection with Excalibur that Khalid was not completely there… rather… misplaced… “TELL me you didn’t do the same thing to him you did to…”
“No…” Cougar said. “Not quite. I’ve got him under control.” He looked toward Joseph with a smile, pointing to his forehead. “He’s older this time; he’ll understand.”
“Whatever, Roy… You know him better than I do…” Joseph answered, walking away… oddly enough, with a bit of anger.
---------------------------
Maul sat down on the ground, holding his daughter as she coughed in sputtered breaths. Her golden blonde hair now lay scattered beneath her burned head. Maul could tell by her coughing that she was still alive, slowly passing… “Father…”
“Sssssshhhhhh…” Patrick said, stroking her cheek with his hand. “It has been 87 years since I got to hold you like this…”
“He… severed Friedrich’s hold… my mind… my own…” she said between coughs. “I see the truth…”
“Just… please…”
“Mother is there… and Erik… waiting for me…” Her eyes, turned to the side to see Grover flying up. With a smile, she coughed again. “Carolyn… My daughter Carolyn… has come to walk me there…” she said. “Are you Mi… Michael?”
“Y… Yes,” Grover answered. “I…”
“Carolyn says… dry-clean your cape…” she chuckled, this time convulsing as death came near. “Father… Is Wolfgang…”
“Sssssshhhh… He’s okay… He’s right here, beside me,” Maul said, tears now streaming down his eyes. “Just rest… I kn…”
“Thank you…” she said. “Thank you for not… losing your… soul…”
Maul leaned over her as she died, planting a kiss on her forehead. After all these years, he finally got to hold and comfort his daughter. After a few seconds, he felt Cougar’s hand on his shoulder. “Patrick…” That sounded weird to him… someone – not an enemy – calling him by his first name.
“Ja, Roy?”
“Friedrich is all yours.”
Patrick Walsh sank into his shadow after kissing Katrina’s forehead one more time. “I’ll see you in the afterlife, Katrina…”
“//Father… wait…//” Wolfgang said. The old man came in closer, planting something in Maul’s hand. “//The Van Helsings took it from me before bringing me here. I just got it back… Consider it a good luck charm.//”
Maul looked down in his hand, not expecting what he saw. A silver cross on a chain…
“//Mother gave me three of them before Katrina and I left Germany,//” he said. “//For my family… My… s… son wears one and the other one is at home. Please… Keep it.//”
“//Thank you,//” Maul answered as he sank into his shadow. Regardless of the outcome, he already made one decision. He had no more need of the “Kraus Mahler” alias. The family that was taken away from him was back, although it was DEFINITELY not how he would have imagined it. Only one thing was required to set it in stone…
…he had to repay a blood debt.
End Chapter Eleven
---------------------------
Chapter Twelve
Patrick Walsh waited almost ninety years for this – a chance to repay Friedrich von Bonn for everything he did. 1915 – Friedrich tried to convert him into a vampire, but found that Walsh’s healing factor stopped him from dying completely. Amused, he turned Walsh over to his father as a pet. Thirty years of his life, Walsh spent in that dungeon among rancid decomposing cast-offs… treated as an animal. That was thirty years of his life wasted, when he should have been with his family… raising his kids… and protecting them.
That alone was enough for Walsh to hate him, but knowing what he knows now, he absolutely despises him. Two times (three actually… Maul he did not know about the cyborgs yet) Friedrich had tried to kill Khalid. Then, to find that he had converted Walsh’s daughter and then tried to kill his son before his very eyes. Then, there was the last part… trying to send extermination teams to wipe his and Cougar’s bloodlines from the face of the earth. Several times throughout the years, Maul had acted in the best interests of his family, knowing they were ignorant of his sacrifices. Now? He was removing a threat. Friedrich von Bonn was a sickness… a plague on the face of the Earth. Maul was the serum.
The start of the attack on Friedrich in the hallway had been swift and sure. Maul had shot out of the darkness of Fred’s own shadow and shattered his nose with his palm. Then, before Friedrich could recover, he got an elbow to the face and another palm of the hand to the underside of the chin. Maul had started to move in, but Friedrich transformed into mist and came back together in back of him.
Maul winced in pain as the Spanish steel of Friedrich’s swords passed through his shoulders, severing the ligaments. With a laugh, Friedrich planted his foot in the small of Maul’s back and shoved him forward to rip the twin blades out of his shoulders. Next, he swung across Maul’s back twice, each time encouraged as the steel sliced through the flesh clanging against the adamantium bones.
Temporarily unable to use his arms until his healing factor cured his ligaments, Maul instead used his power of flight to flip forward in the air and snap the heel of his foot across Friedrich’s jaw. After righting himself in the air so he was horizontal to the ground, he repeatedly stomped Friedrich in the face until the older vampire was finally kicked into the wall. With his ligaments finally healed, Maul then grabbed Friedrich by the head and slammed it into the wall.
Friedrich started to lash out with his telekinetic powers at Maul, but he discovered to his horror that neither they nor his telepathic powers worked. Suddenly, he realized why. The silver cross Maul was wearing… He got it from Wolfgang. Note to self… Kill Wolfgang slowly. Again, he discorporated into mist and came together behind Maul, but this time Maul was ready for it with a handful of adamantium claws to the face.
“Cougar was right, you know,” Maul said with a sneer, licking pieces of Friedrich’s flesh off the tip of his claws. “You die tonight… and I’m going to enjoy it, all the way.”
Friedrich brought his hand to his face, realizing the blood that was now gushing down his face. “Why you…”
Maul cringed as he started spitting. “BLECH… this is DISGUSTING! Your flesh tastes like tanning oil…”
With a hiss, Friedrich came back at Maul with the swords, this time watching them bounce and spark against Maul’s claws. He was actually aiming to knock the silver cross off so he could use his telekinesis against Maul, but it was like Maul anticipated it… and was enjoying it. Thus he had to change tactics. He couldn’t use his telekinesis directly against Maul, but he COULD use it indirectly.
Pieces of broken coffins from the earlier fight between Grover and Inez rose off the floor and hovered in the air. With the slightest manipulation of Friedrich’s powers, they fired through the air plunging through Maul’s skin. The sheer force knocked him through the air and into the wall, the pieces imbedding him. Maul started to pull himself off when he felt a larger piece of wood push through his back into the wall… at such an angle so that it went around his vertebrae and pierced his heart.
“An adamantium skeleton means NOTHING to someone who knows anatomy,” Friedrich whispered into Maul’s ear. “A shame, Patrick… you could have been the best of us all… but your attachment to your mongrel so-called family made you WEAK!”
Maul coughed a little blood out of his mouth before he spoke. “Don’t turn… your back… on me… yet…”
Friedrich slapped the back of Maul’s head repeatedly, knocking it into the wall over and over again. Digging his claws into Maul’s neck, he spoke into his ear harshly, enunciating every word. “Just so you KNOW, Patrick… I’ve already called in my reinforcements. Once we take care of your cohorts, we’ll hunt down the rest of the family. I think we’ll leave your grandson Malik and the child Christian for last… We’ll take the two of them out in the middle of the wilderness, break Malik’s leg, and give them the entire day to get away or somehow get help… and then when darkness falls, we’ll hunt them down. Malik will be the main course and Christian will be dessert…” As an exclamation, he shoved two knives in Maul’s back, through the kidneys. “Farewell, Walsh…”
--------------------------
“Not that I know the first thing about vampire-slaying etiquette, but… are we just going to sit here?” Grover asked.
“As weird as it sounds, yes,” Cougar answered. Without looking toward him, he saw the suspicion with which Grover eyed him. He really could not blame him. After all, it must have been really awkward for the White King of the Hellfire Club – who had virtually every resource at his disposal – to wake up one day and find out that he was not really alone. There were people who had been looking and wondering about him for over twenty-five years. Well… and there is the little fact that he was mystically bonded to his cousin. As Cougar thought of it, this family WAS a little bit on the strange side… and sure confusing for him. “Not that I’m excited to wait inside a cavernous room filled with dead vampires and unconscious cyborgs, but I think this is just the right thing to do.”
“What about Khalid and the old man?” Grover asked. “Should we at least get them to safety?”
“With the shit Friedrich was trying to pull,” Joseph answered, tying the final knot on Wolfgang’s splint. “They’re safer with us than they are with anyone else.”
“I’m not leaving my father,” Wolfgang answered. “Or…” he glanced at Khalid, who lay peacefully asleep… well… apparently, anyway.
“We’re not going to make you,” Joseph said. “Roy, how’s the kid?”
“Khalid?” Cougar asked, raising his eyebrow. “He’s okay… just a little… peeved. He’s letting me know quite colorfully. A shame, too… His mother raised him much better than to use words like that.” With a jerk of his head, Cougar’s eyes flashed and he winced. “Once he gets going, he’s got quite a temper. Probably another thing he inherited from me.”
“I can’t believe you did that to him,” Joseph grumbled. “I’d be pissed as hell, too.”
“What did you do to him?” Grover asked.
“Something my father used to do to me when I got out of line. He’d cast my spirit out of my body. Then, he’d piss me off even further by reading the newspaper or doing some yardwork while I’d march around him ranting and raving and yelling my fool head off. One I cooled down, he’d let me back in my body. It’s why I can stay cool-headed most of the time now.” With a flash of his eyes, Cougar stopped. “Forget it, Khalid. I know you’re faking…” He winced again as Khalid’s rant started anew.
“Man… and all Gomurr ever had to do to calm me down was hold three fingers out and send sparks between them,” Grover said, chuckling… but then he noticed the look of pain flash across Cougar’s face. “Now come on… you can’t still…”
“No, that’s not it at all…” Cougar said, looking down. He smiled, but it was a pained smile. He remembered that was how his late daughter Carolyn used to calm her older children. “It’s just… Let’s just say that he picked up on something.”
“Heads up,” Louis called out, forming psychic katanas in his hand. The remaining men in the room immediately moved into position as the room filled up with vampires.
“Roy! How come you didn’t sense them?!” Joseph yelled.
“EXCUSE me for being human, Joe!” Cougar said, pulling a handful of toothpicks out of his pocket. “I’ve got one grandson asking me questions and the other one throwing the temper tantrum from hell.”
Grover formed the staff from Excalibur as he scanned the room. The vampires were flying and circling the room, but he noticed that they were keeping their distance.
“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!” Friedrich barked, erupting through the ground. They could tell from the cuts and bruises on his face healing up that he had already run into Maul… and was not too happy about something. “KILL them… KILL THEM ALL!”
“Not so fast, Friedrich,” another voice called out. The newcomer on the scene dropped in through the hole in the ceiling, landing unceremoniously across the room from Friedrich. “The vampire body and I have determined that you have shown WEAKNESS…”
“NIGEL??!!” Friedrich ripped a knife out of his jacket and telekinetically hurled it at the other vampire, who promptly moved out of the way.
“Prove yourself…” Nigel sneered. “Show us why your are worthy.”
“Traitorous backstabber, I’ll show you…” Friedrich, pulled out both of his swords and started to close the distance from Nigel. Nigel likewise withdrew twin swords.
“Cougar…” Grover said, under his breath. “Do you sense Maul?”
Cougar shook his head in response. “No… I don’t.”
“Get ready to wake Khalid up, then…” Grover said. “The vampires are staying back for now, but they could change their minds…”
“Not until Friedrich wins,” Joseph said. “If I’m reading this right, Nigel just challenged him for leadership… The vampire body will take orders from no one until the issue of leadership is dealt with.”
“Either way,” Grover said. “We’re likely to need Khalid to help us get the hell out of here…”
Cougar’s eyes flashed as he looked around. He had been distracted earlier from when the vampires flooded in the room. He kept his mouth quiet, but right now something was REALLY disturbing him. Something that shouldn’t even be able to happen…
Khalid’s spirit was not in the room…
End Chapter Twelve
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Chapter Thirteen
Slowly but surely, he felt the life drain out of him. He was hopelessly pinned to the wall. The wooden pieces and the knives were planted so deep that his healing factor – already stressed to its limits – were unsuccessfully trying to heal around him. He had no strength to pull any of his limbs or his body off the wall. The way he was stuck, he could either die from the puncture wounds to his kidneys or his heart or he would die from blood loss. Either way? He was probably going to die.
Soon, he felt the pain fading away. Then, he was moving… rather quickly… Toward what? He didn’t know. He just knew that it was better than stuck in the wall where he had just been. Two sides pulled at him. One was a dark cold side screaming that he belonged there. The other was a warm side saying the same thing. Pulled in two directions… almost torn apart…
Then, he felt a third force grab him by the shoulder. He struggled against it, knowing where it wanted to pull him, but it was to no avow. He was already moving backwards. Once he crashed, it was an eruption of pain… the pain he just pulled away from. “My Lord… why have…” His eyes slowly opened.
Nope. It wasn’t Jesus. FAR from it. Oddly enough, he could not detect the scent. “Löwe?!”
Maul saw the glazed over look in Khalid’s eyes. Was this another trance? If so, then why did he not kill Friedrich himself? Why did he not pull him off the wall?
Khalid’s hand squeezed Maul’s shoulder a little harder. Maul felt a warm energy flow into him. He wondered at first exactly what the hell Khalid was doing, but then before he knew it he managed to pull himself out of the wall. With a cry of pain, Maul called into the air. He broke the stake sticking out his back and then placed the piece between his teeth. With one quick jerk, he ripped the rest of it out through his chest. The pain immediately following was unbearable, but he knew it was necessary. Slowly, but surely he felt the wound to his heart closing up. He had to get everything else out of him, but he knew he did not have the strength to do it.
Once again, Khalid placed his hand on Maul’s shoulder. Something else was triggered. Maul discorporated into gas, causing all of the items imbedded inside of him to drop to the ground. With a flash of his eyes, Maul reformed, his healing factor already closing his injuries. Khalid staggered back, weakly.
“Good work. Come on, Löwe, let’s…” Maul stopped, realizing that his hand just passed through Khalid. “What the…” Khalid’s eyes flashed as he turned his gaze toward two coffins that had remained unmarked from both fights. At first, Maul wondered what he was referring to, but then he realized that the coffins were cedar… masking something. He knocked the lid off the coffins, smiling as he saw two vampires who had recently been knocked unconscious… as in ten minutes ago. Food…
As Maul fed, something stuck in the back of his mind. Someone had left those vampires for him just in case… but who?
-------------------------------
The swordfight between Friedrich and Nigel was happening quickly. Very quickly. Friedrich knew that he could not use his psionic powers in this fight. For him to do so would immediately convince the body of vampires that he was weak. Everything had to be physical.
The air of the room was smelled strongly of blood and burning, a mixture of the battle earlier and Khalid’s attack. These two men could care less. All they wanted? The other’s head… and leadership of the vampires.
Their swords clanged and sparked as they exchanged blows. Between the two of them, Friedrich was the better swordsman. There was no doubt with that one. What evened the playing field for Nigel was that he could fight dirtier. A headbutt to the chin and Friedrich was staggering. That allowed enough time for Nigel to shove his sword through Friedrich’s shoulder, temporarily disarming one hand.
Friedrich did not skip a beat, though, backhanding him with the other hand. He discorporated into mist long enough to drop the sword sticking through him and reformed, taking the offensive. One hand was good enough and his arm would heal soon…
Near the central pillar were six men, five of whom were watching the battle unfold… and taking notes of their surroundings. Wolfgang sat near Khalid’s unconscious body, watching out for anything that might be a threat. The other four surrounded them close enough to pull in closer if they had to, but far enough to maneuver. “I don’t suppose they are just going to let us walk out of here,” Grover said, referring of course to the vampires. “Not that we can’t fight our way out, but I just don’t trust…”
“Knowing what I know of the ‘vampire culture’, they probably would, just because of this conflict of leadership. The question is whether or not we want to let that son of a bitch walk out of here alive,” Joseph answered. “If he lives, then our family isn’t safe. Roy… you’re the old man… You have a plan?”
“My plan?” Cougar answered, continuing to scan the area. “Put it this way… Grover, you be ready to get Khalid and Wolfgang out of here. Even when he wakes up, he’s likely to be a little weak. Joe, you be ready to move on my say so… These are vampires, so you’ll get away with the full shift. Don’t be trigger-happy, though. Only if they move on us.”
“So you’re making sure Friedrich does not get out alive?” Grover asked.
“You don’t have any objections, do you?” Joseph asked.
“Not really… Any man who threatens my son and my… family…” Grover said, really thinking about his words. “…put it this way. I won’t be crying too much.”
“Just make sure you come back to get us,” Joseph said.
“Oh… I count on it. Khalid would have a fit otherwise…” Grover said, now noticing that Cougar was standing still, his eyes flashing. “Joe… Cougar didn’t go into a trance, did he? I’ve seen Khalid do it…”
“No…” Joseph said. “I’ve seen that look before. He’s cast himself out of his body… probably to have a conversation with Lil’ Zeke.”
“Back,” Cougar said, the glow from his eyes leaving. Although his facial expression didn’t change, Joseph could tell by the tone of his voice that the man was pissed off… especially if he was not allowing Khalid back into his body. Then again, having your grandson up and attack you out of rage would probably put him on edge for a while. Joseph knew the real reason Cougar was doing it. He did not want to run the risk of Grover picking up on exactly why Khalid was mad until Khalid fully understood.
Joseph turned his attention back toward the fight, trying to get a general feel for how it was going. Nigel had stood a fairly decent chance before, but now it looked like as if he were losing… not by much, though. If this were anything but a swordfight, Nigel would have beaten Friedrich by now. The superior swordplay was definitely doing Nigel in.
“You’re in over your head, Nigel…” Friedrich taunted. “You don’t have the strength or the power to beat me.” As an exclamation to his point, he punched Nigel in the face with the hilt of one of his blades. His other arm fully healed from Nigel’s earlier assault, he followed it up with a punch to the nose and a cut across the chest. He swung for Nigel’s head, but Nigel turned into mist immediately and reformed above him.
A quick kick to the back of the head knocked Friedrich forward off his feet. Once Nigel landed, he kicked a sword back to his hand and came back at Friedrich anew when something flew up from the ground in front of him and knocked him back into a group of vampires watching from the edges. At first, Nigel thought Friedrich had cheated and used his telekinetic powers, but when he saw the reason, he just sneered. So it looks like he found the gifts I left for him…
“No you don’t, Friedrich,” Maul snarled on his feet. “You won’t get away from me THAT easily!”
“Doesn’t anyone in your fucking family die?!” Friedrich answered, coming at Maul.
The other vampires started to move in on Maul, furious that this man had dared to interlope in a matter of such great importance to them, but Nigel called them back. “STOP!” Nigel called out, with a sneer. “If a ‘great vampire’ such as Friedrich von Bonn is unable to dispatch a lowly daywalker, then surely he is neither worthy to lead or even of your assistance.”
Hissing in agreement, the vampires assembled around the room pulled back to watch the fight unfold. Nigel had already won and he knew it. The longer the match would go on, the more convinced the vampire body would be that Friedrich was no longer qualified to lead it. Maul – even though he had been responsible for killing a bit of their number – was still considered a half vampire at best, a creature of Friedrich’s doing. For Friedrich to lose to his own creation would be the ultimate insult.
Ignorant of the proceedings going on, Maul centered on one thing only… payback. Once again, his claws ripped across Friedrich’s face, leaving an even deeper cut that would not heal until Friedrich refed. Maul followed it up with the palm of his hand to the face, snapping Friedrich’s fangs, and a punch to the abdomen.
Finally getting his bearings, Friedrich started to swing one sword in a decapitation move, only to find that the blade was caught wedged in between Maul’s vertebrae. It was not enough to sever Maul’s head, but it did cut a major artery leading to his head. Maul was staggering on his feet.
“Get ready,” Friedrich snarled, telekinetically lifting his other sword to his head. He called out to the rest of the vampire body. “The moment Walsh dies, I want the rest of that family ELIMINATED!”
Maul tried to speak, but the blood was filling up his lungs and now coming out of his mouth. Feeling his strength leaving him, he threw himself into Friedrich, using the weight of his adamantium bonding as a weapon, since his strength was leaving him. Growling in triumph, Friedrich shoved his free sword underneath the sternum, directly into Maul’s heart.
Face to face with the creature he created, he laughed. “Good bye, ‘my son’,” Friedrich laughed. “It was nice…” he stopped, snapping forward with a jerk. He looked down at his abdomen, noticing that Maul’s arm was plunged inside, obscuring everything up to his elbow.
Maul wanted to speak, but with the blood in his lungs and the sword in his neck, he could say nothing. The sneer on his face as his hand grabbed hold of Friedrich’s heart said everything. In a last ditch effort to break free of Maul’s mortal embrace, Friedrich started to grab at the silver cross dangling from Maul’s neck, but started to reject it as soon as the burning sensation came. Maul’s free hand wrapped around his in a death grip as he squeezed his hand shut across Friedrich’s heart. They both fell to the ground.
“MAUL!” Grover called out, starting to make his way toward the vampire, but then he saw the look in the two red pools of his eyes… and a mischievous grin. He tried to put together exactly what that meant, when the central pillar Khalid was sat up against started crumbling… as well as the entire building…
“Fuck… what the hell…” Joseph said, picking Khalid up.
“It’s Walsh,” Cougar answered, helping Wolfgang to his feet. “He’s using his shadowporting ability to collapse the…” He was interrupted as it seemed like the ground swallowed them whole. He realized as they fell that he had actually fell into his own shadow…
“EVACUATE THE BUILDING!” Nigel called out, referring to the vampires who had been fortunate enough not to get crushed. “EVERYONE OUT!!!!”
“MAUL!” Grover said, moving in closer to where the vampire lay on the ground, his arm still shoved inside of his enemy. He dodged out of the way as a piece of the pillar crumbled behind him. He almost reached Maul when the vampire had sank completely into his own shadow… A sizeable chunk of the ceiling dropped into the shadow immediately after him. Grover felt a piece of the ceiling slap on top of the aura, causing it to flicker. He looked around for a way out, but soon started to come up when another piece started moving toward him…
At the last moment, a pair of hands grabbed him from behind and pushed him forward. “PHASE!” the voice said as they went through the wall. Grover had the presence of mind the project his telekinetic field in front of him to push through the wall. Once they had gone out of the building, he felt the hands continue pushing him until they arrived at the rooftop across the street where they had been before it all started. Finally, the forward momentum stopped.
Grover spun in mid-air to see the identity of the person who risked his life for him, when he realized… “What?!”
The raven-haired Inez grabbed the back of his head and quickly covered his open-mouth with her own, her tongue tracing the inside of his mouth. Once Grover had started to kiss her back, he noticed a sharp sensation on his tongue… where she had just momentarily knicked him and licked off the blood. She ripped her mouth off and laughed. “Mmmmmmhmmmmmm… You are quick on the trigger…” she said, with a smile. “I can cure that…”
“What the…” Grover said, a little dumbfounded… and something else. “Why… how…”
“Keep your eyes open for me, Grover,” she said. “My name’s Payback now and I’m a bitch.” Before he could say anything else, Inez flashed into mist and floated up into the sky.
Grover didn’t realize the smirk across his face as he watched the mist fade into the sky above. “Payback, huh?” Grover said. “Bring it on…”
“Yeah, Roy…” Joseph’s voice came from behind him on the roof. “Grover takes after you.”
Cougar walked up to the edge, momentarily looking down at the wreckage… of the way the building they had just finished their blood feud in. “Until his dead wife comes back to haunt him every time a beautiful villainess kisses him, I won’t believe it.” He looked up at the expression on Grover’s face. “Nevermind, Joe… You’re right. He does.”
“Is Maul…” Grover said. “I think he…”
Cougar nodded. “He used the last of his strength to get us out,” Cougar answered. “You don’t realize what he has been through in order to protect his family.”
“No… no…” Grover said. “I do, now,” he answered. “This has answered a lot of questions… and raised some more. Ryan told me before Khalid arrived – it wasn’t the first time he messed with the family and it won’t be the last.”
Cougar nodded. “No… but tell you what… He knows by now that he has no leave over us… that is if…”
Grover turned, offering his hand to Cougar. “Yes… I’d say that this cements it, Cougar. Consider me part of the family.”
Cougar shook his hand and then hugged him. “Welcome home, Son…”
“Glad to be home,” he answered. “Let’s take you to meet your great-grandson… properly.”
End Chapter Thirteen
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Epilogue
The Courtyard of the White Court
Gomurr watched them from the edge of the fence. The irony was incredible. Under the careful eyes of the armed guards stationed around the perimeter, Christian was having a good time listening to Joseph tell a story at the picnic table with Grover looking on, nearby. The man – who appeared much younger than he actually was – was practically a natural, easily using his hands and face to describe the events as they took place. (Gomurr thought to himself that this Joseph fellow would make a GREAT actor… well… if not for the lycanthropy, that is.) Once he got to a point in the story, Joseph changed moods almost completely kicking in the surprise ending. Grover and Christian were so taken that they burst out laughing almost immediately. The sound of that laughter carried over, stirring up a sharp feeling in Gomurr’s stomach. Of what? He didn’t know…
“Hello, Gomurr…” Dr. Angelo Torres said from behind. Startled, the old mage turned to face him, noticing that he was no carrying what appeared to be volleyball equipment. “The Hellions and the anyone else around is about to come out to take part in the volleyball game. Just fun… No powers allowed. All that. Why don’t you come along? They’d…”
“No, no…” Gomurr answered looking on. “I have neglected my training sessions too long. Besides… I’m too short to…”
“Too short?” Angelo asked, looking at the old mage. His eyes blinked again. “Too… Have you looked in the mirror, lately? You’re getting quite a tan… and…”
“Yes, I’ve heard, but…”
“And you’ve also grown at least seven inches since your last examination,” Angelo said, setting the volleyball equipment down. “We’re setting up another one. This is just not normal. I’m looking at…”
“I’ll be fine, Doctor…” Gomurr said, walking away. Angelo was about to push it, when he realized that now might not be the best time to bother the old man. He seemed particularly… off… the way he was looking at Grover. He crouched down once more to pick up the box of equipment when Angelo noticed something else – the hair on his arms was receding, as if he had almost undergone a transformation. What the hell…Did Gomurr do that?!
“Angelo! What’s taking you so long? Get over here! Let’s get that set up,” Joseph called.
“So… I heard you were the one who saved Angelo from the Van Helsings before?” Grover asked. (Full Circle)
“Yes… I did,” Joseph answered. Grover could tell that the man was clearly uncomfortable being on the grounds, but that he did it because he felt he had to. “There are only four werewolves in the world that are immune to silver. Me… his father Jaime… Angelo… and at one point, my son Lil’ Joe.” Joseph directed his eyes at Grover. “Your mother’s first cousin. Roy managed to remove the curse on Lil’ Joe, but he couldn’t do it with me.”
“Why not?”
“Because once Ryan killed the Torres brothers over fifty years ago, that made me the alpha… which is harder to turn back then everyone else. Roy was already fighting an uphill battle because that was one particular process that he didn’t get to learn before Dad died. The longer it sets in, the harder it is to remove.”
“Ryan forced this to happen… That’s why you are wary of the…”
“He was the one that commissioned the Torres to slaughter the family while Cougar was away. I took care of my sister-in-law Crystal and my nephews and nieces by locking them in the vault and drawing the werewolves away. One nailed me and was about to kill me when Ryan slew them. He held that over Roy’s head… and tried to get me too. That didn’t work. Still… the damage was done.” (Told in “Tortured Souls”… Maul’s intro story!)
Grover nodded, now barely getting a clue just how deep Ryan’s manipulation of the family went. “Okay… History lesson. As you know, I’m a pretty new addition…”
“Gee and here I thought you were almost th…”
“And how old are you?”
“Point taken. Okay… shoot.”
“Start at the top… and give me a family tree… I know about Khalid’s siblings, but…”
“Short run down. Your mother Carolyn was Walsh’s granddaughter through her mother, who you met tonight. Khalid’s father is Walsh’s grandson by his father, who was the old man with the broken arm.”
“So, we’re cousins two different ways.”
“Bingo.”
“What a family,” Grover muttered. “There’s no more of us, is there?”
“If there is, I sure don’t know about it,” Joseph answered.
----------------------------
Nearby, it appeared that Khalid and Cougar were meditating. Anyone watching would just see the old man and his grandson sitting on the ground about ten feet across from each other. If one were to move closer, he or she could see the faint glow around them both in the daytime. Appearances were deceiving.
On a different plane – not an altogether different plane because it was still within the “physical realm” – the two men were doing anything but meditating… or rather it was their spirits. Cougar knew that with few exceptions the two of them could talk without fear of being overheard or dragging other people into it… which around the Hellfire Club was a concern he would have regardless. Another advantage to talking this way was that it limited Khalid’s ability to act out his anger…
“I’m sick of your fucking secrets.” Khalid said, pacing back and forth behind his body. He had to admit that if he were in his body right now, his aura would likely be raging right now. “I’m sick of being used. I’m sick of standing here KNOWING that there’s stuff going on – concerning ME and people I hold dear – that you aren’t telling me.”
“Is THAT what this is about?” Cougar asked, doing extremely well for being as angry as he was. “You ATTACKED me because you are sick of being used?”
“Don’t EVEN play that, Grandpop!” Khalid spun on his feet toward him glaring him in the eye. “I was young. I had NO idea what was going on… WHAT had happened to me… WHY I blacked out that entire time period… Why…” he stopped, listening to everything he said… and thinking about the all the times even recently he had blacked out. “You set up a very dangerous pattern, Grandpop… Something that is so well-entrained I don’t know how long it will be before…”
“Stop right there.” Cougar said. “You think that I set the stage for everything?” Cougar turned away, considering everything he knew now. “I may very well have. At the time, I didn’t feel I had a choice. You have to realize, Khalid, that after your brother had died in the housefire, I felt I had to protect everyone. Granted, it was an electrical short that took your brother’s life, but I had to make sure that you didn’t accidentally become another ‘electrical short.’”
“What?”
“The day you tracked me down in my back yard (alluded to in Full Circle) I was attempting yet again to remove the werewolf curse from Joe. I did not realize at the time that enough of your power had manifested enough for you to sense what was going on or be drawn to it. When you stepped into the circle, the resonance created a feedback loop between us that caused an explosion. That was when I first realized you were a ticking time bomb.”
“So you had him brainwash me.”
“My brother’s a psychologist, believe it or not. I convinced him it would be for the best, especially since children are open to it. I needed a way to shut you down… and I needed a way to be selective. My intention at that point was to teach you when I could and block everything else until I felt you could handle it. Your mother made it known to me shortly after that I wasn’t even to teach you.”
Khalid sat down finally, this time looking from his place over toward the picnic table where his great uncle Joseph, Grover… and then Christian were sitting and chatting. Thinking about everything his grandfather had just told him, his gaze lingered on Christian just a little longer. “I… I understand now… but I’ll also tell you that you set a very dangerous pattern in place.” he turned back to face Cougar. “No… I’m not a ticking time bomb, but as you probably know, you left a window open… an opportunity that could be used. Maul tripped up on it and exploited it. I still can’t remember everything. Even right now, when Egypt cured my ‘Mufasa/Khalid’ madness, I’m standing here and realizing that he tucked something else in the back of my head. He may be… ‘dead’… but…”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit. Hypnosis doesn’t change the type of person you are, Khalid… but…”
“It created a vulnerability.”
“For a CHILD, it did. You outgrew it.”
“You had best hope that you’re right.” Khalid said.
“Khalid… I think you need a better idea of what I was dealing with.” Cougar said, pointing him toward Joseph. “That silver medallion Joe’s wearing? You know… the very same one he used to drop that suggestion?”
“Yeah…”
“Your mother had given it to him for his fiftieth birthday as a good luck charm.” he said. “Joe gladly wore it. He’s one of the few werewolves in the world immune to silver. He’s the alpha, which was why I couldn’t remove the curse.” The two of them walked closer until they stood nearby, unable to be seen by Joseph or Grover. Christian looked Khalid in the eye with a smirk and laughed, a gesture unnoticed by Cougar. “Joe was carrying you over to his place when you woke up from the feedback loop. Being a little frightened from not knowing who he was, you accidentally lashed out at him… and inadvertently changed his energy signature.”
“What?”
“As long as he wears that silver medallion, Khalid,” Cougar said. “No external factors can force his transformation. Only he can. No full moon… no high whines… nothing.” He turned back to look Khalid in the eye. “At the age of six, you did what I couldn’t do at sixty-two. You cured his lycanthropy so he could control it.”
Khalid looked first at the medallion hanging from Joe’s chest… and then his gaze locked on Christian.
-------------------------
Las Vegas
Everyone knew Ryan Jensen was a vain man. He takes pride in his appearance. Granted, as a flesh elemental he does not have to do things such as work out, but still… he always dresses the best and has his underlings take great pains to make everything the best.
Inexplicably, he had sent all of his underlings away, ordering them to stay far away from him for the time being. Even the usual prostitute he had in his bedroom was sent home for the night and given a hefty severance check. No one could understand the Red King’s weird behavior, but they knew better than to question anything.
Right now, the Red King had been the same place he had been for the past twenty-four hours… in front of his dresser mirror.
“Putting make-up on, I see,” he heard a voice from behind him. “And here I thought that particular stage in your life was over years ago…”
His only answer was a grumble. Ryan reached for a container of tanned base, applying it from his cheek back to the earlobe. He tried to manipulate his skin color to match that of the base he was putting on.
HellGoat walked from one side of Ryan to the other, a smile spreading across his face. He crouched down, looking back and forth between the mirror and Ryan. “Oh…” he said with mock surprise. Ryan snapped his head toward HellGoat, watching the cast-out Elohim jerk back as if he were embarrassed or something. “Really… You can barely make it out. I had to look twice… Really… I did.”
Ryan reached up to his face, rubbing his hand across the jagged scar across his cheek… the one that would not heal up or go away, no matter what form or whose body he took. Furious, he punched the mirror, shattering it to pieces. As he looked down at his hand, he only grew even more furious as the cuts knitted and sealed up before it could even bleed. Grover marked him… That son of a bitch marked him… permanently. Angrily he stormed toward the bedroom door.
Trying not to laugh, HellGoat turned to call after him as he left. “I like it! Really! I do! It adds character!” He chuckled as he was answered by the slamming of the door. HellGoat twiddled his fingers, which allowed the pieces of the mirror to pull back together and reform on top of the dresser. With another twitch of his powers, he reinforced its strength so that it could not be broken. “Poetic justice, old ‘friend’… You marked him… and he marked you back. Next time, you would be wise not to cross me.” Then, he disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
------------------------
Days Later…
New York: Lyonspaw Records
“Mr. Lyons… You wanted to see me?”
“Ahhhhh…” Mr. Lyons said, motioning toward the chair across the desk from him. “Come on in, Jeremy.” The old man had a reputation for being eccentric, as far as everyone knew. His typical attire was complete African attire, dreadlocks down his back, leather sandals, and a set of Foster-Grants. He looked like the cultural icon of the African-American artist. Most of the time, he only came to work maybe once a month to oversee things and then just went on with his business, calling in decisions to his staff from time to time. “Actually, before you sit down, allow me to introduce you to Mr. Gabriel Strong, CEO of Strong Industries.”
The third gentleman walked up, clearly different in appearance and manner than Elijah Lyons. Even those who knew Gabriel Strong would likely not recognize him. Sharply dressed business attire, neat tie, and classic – although expensive – glasses he wore. His mannerisms were fidgety, often times borderline spastic as he spoke. Jeremy Gates looked down toward Strong, extending his hand to him. Have I EVER seen anyone so nervous? “Mr. Strong… Jeremy Gates. Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Gabriel said, at first nervously shaking his hand and then gradually relaxing.
“Gabriel just bought a significant percentage of our stock just yesterday, Mr. Gates…” Elijah said, disappearing into a washroom behind him. “Forgive me, gentlemen… My face has been breaking out. Just give me a moment to wash it…” he said. The two men in the office looked toward each other as they heard the sink running in the background. “Anyway, Gabriel… Jeremy oversees submissions and production… Jeremy, why don’t you tell Gabriel a bit about what you do? I’ll be done here in a moment.”
“Sure… I’d be glad to hear it,” Gabriel answered.
“Well… What I do is sit down with my committee and make decisions on people we hire or are about to hire. Our decisions depend on a variety of factors: marketability, including talent, stage presence, experience…”
“Oh… okay…” Gabriel said, nodding. “I get it now… You look through submissions in hopes of finding the next Khalid Hunter.”
Jeremy grew a little nervous at the mention of that name, taking a moment to adjust his tie before he continued. “Well… perhaps… but hopefully someone a little less controversial…”
Elijah’s voice came floating out of the washroom. “He also reviews progress made by people already on our record label. Such as the aforementioned Mr. Hunter…”
“You know… I spoke with Khalid just a couple of days ago,” Gabriel said. He then turned toward Jeremy, fidgeting just a little. “I gave him a place to stay when the press was after him. Anyway, he seemed a little bit bitter about something, but didn’t tell me what.”
“Oh…” Jeremy nodded. “After my department met the other day, we decided that to continue to have Mr. Hunter on our record label after recent… could pose potential harm to profits. So…”
“You fired him, heh?” Elijah’s voice said. The sound of the water running in the sink came to a halt. “I’ve got to admit…” Elijah came out of the washroom with a towel covering his face. Both Gabriel and Jeremy looked at each other with raised eyebrows before they returned to face Elijah, who was apparently drying his face and his hair right there at the desk… “I was somewhat surprised to hear you cut him.”
“Based on media exposure… and then news footage… It was just a risk we did not want to take. Projected figures said we would make enough in revenue from our other projects to cover whatever losses – despite how minimum they were – that Hunter’s exposure might cause. I’m sure that Mr. Strong will agree that sometimes you have to cut off the hand before the gangrene takes your whole arm.”
“Oh… please…” Gabriel said, covering his mouth. He turned away from Jeremy, a sick expression across his face. “I get queasy at the mention of blood… and dismemberment…”
“Gabriel here has always had a weak stomach,” Elijah said. “So… you threw Mr. Hunter to the dogs, so to speak… because of something he could not control.”
“To be honest, sir… That really is not our problem. I sympathize with Mr. Hunter’s problems, but the moment he pulled those… things out of the people on live television, he brought something on himself… something we just don’t need.”
“Should Hunter have then just left them alone?”
“If he were interested in his career,” Jeremy said. “Then, yes.”
“And if you were interested in your career,” Elijah said, pulling the towel off his face. Jeremy pushed himself back, causing the chair to tip over. He backed away across the floor as “Elijah” stood up, throwing the towel in Jeremy’s face as he walked around the desk. “You would have given that a little more thought… rather than calling up your secretary and having her ‘fire that mutie bastard’.”
“What the fuck…?!” Jeremy said, coming to a stand.
“Don’t worry, Jeremy…” Khalid said with a sneer. “You weren’t the only one who had no idea who ‘Elijah Lyons’ really was. You have two hours. Pack your shit up and get the hell out of my building. Don’t worry… You have plenty of company. It’s called cleaning house. Now, get the hell out of my office.”
Once Jeremy was gone, Gabriel took off his glasses and burst out laughing. “MAN that was good… I did my best not to crack up.”
“Those college acting classes came in handy,” Khalid said, tapping a button on his desk. The television screen came on. “First rule of business is not to think you can fire your boss… That makeup nearly made me break out, though.”
“Good job appearing old… but…” Gabe’s voice dropped off as he looked at the news, transfixed.
“Another town broke out in riots,” Khalid said, watching the images flashing across the screen.
“Yes… I’ve been keeping track of those,” Gabe answered, nodding. Unnoticed by Khalid, Gabe’s eye traveled to a sheet of paper sitting in the wastebasket… with Pharaohan characters on it. He reached down and took it out of the basket. “It’s going in a pattern, but we can’t seem to figure out what it is.”
“Me either,” Khalid said, shaking his head. “I just… gave a bad feeling about it. For some reason, I keep on looking at it… and thinking this is just something… major.”
Darkness before the sunrise… The paper said. What the hell does that mean? Gabriel wondered. He turned it over and stopped… It was a drawing of a lightning bolt. With Khalid’s back turned, he slid it in his pocket. “Well, K… I’ve got to head on back. I’m expecting guests from Palla and have to make sure I have enough rooms to house them.”
“Palla?” Khalid asked, raising his eyebrow. “You know… its been 5000 years, but… you don’t think you could get me a Pallan brisquet? I…”
“Didn’t you know, K? I’m the King of Palla. If I can’t get a brisquet, no one can… I’ll talk to you later,” Gabriel said as he walked out the door with a smile. Khalid’s made good progress, but just one thing… He doesn’t listen to that voice in his head. Otherwise, he would have realized that he does know something…
“Darkness” and “Lightning Bolt”? Daemon knew exactly what that meant… It’s time to shut someone down, permanently.
The End