The Old: A Night Novel

[ChrisGibson]

IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE CONCLUSION TO CHAPTER FOUR POSTED A LITTLE EARLIER, MAKE SURE YOU READ THE PORTION ABOVE BEFORE READING THIS



F I V E

MERCIES


My soul, where are you? Do you hear me? I speak. I call you—are you there? I have returned. I am here again.

-The Red Book


The sky was turning black. It had been blue so recently, and now the wind rose, and the door from the kindergarten opened and Mrs. Wyle called, “Come on in, kids. There’s a tornado! Come in. Hurry!””
All of them began to run inTo the school, but Seth turned around and there was another door and a house, and why had he not seen it before? He knocked on the door and when it opened, Owen was looking down at him and at that moment Seth he realized he was a child. Owen said, “Get in this house right away. There’s a storm coming. Can’t you see it?”
Seth came in, and Owen shut the door. Seth went into the wide living room. The windows were curtained, and Owen said, “No no, not there. In the bathroom,” which was in the center of the house. Seth followed Owen, and then went in.
“Mustn’t shut the door,” Owen said. “Mustn’t shut the door or we’ll never know when the storm is ended. “
“Where should I go?” Seth asked, surprised by the smallness of his little boy voice.
“Hide in the bath tub. You don’t want the storm to smell you. Better take a bath.”
The little boy nodded and turned the stops, and warm water fell over him. The wetter he was, the clearer the sky became. When the sky was clear, Owen said, “That’s enough, little Seth. Run along now.”
“I love you, Owen,” Seth said.
“I love you too. You know that Seth. Sometimes I’m gruff with you, but you know I love you.”
“Did mom and dad love me?”
“Why don’t you go to church and ask them?”
Seth nodded and went down the hallway, opening the front door of the ranch house Owen had never lived in, and found himself in the west transept of an enormous church filled with people milling about. It was a college chapel, but he couldn’t remember where, and it was the size of a normal church or bigger, so calling it a chapel was misleading. The ribs of the ceiling arched above. The nave, painted in gold and saints and angels, looked down on him. On the altar white candles burned and Kyle, his shaggy haired father, said, “Seth, you’re here. You were almost late.”
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“Don’t sweat it, little man. You know what you could do for me? Go in the kitchen, and get me a cup off coffee.”
Seth nodded and walked across the front of the church, past the altar, not crossing himself, and into the large white kitchen where the women sat drinking coffee. Birds were singing on the window ledges. The kitchen hadn’t been cleaned in ages.
“How do you stop from killing yourself?” the first woman asked. “Life is such a pile of shit, how do you not just end it all?”
“Fuck the world and fuck people,” the other one said, “I just use lots of cocaine and feel that it will get me through.”
“Drugs is the only thing that helps me.”
“What the fuck do you want” they asked Seth.
“He’s got a nice cock on him,” the other woman said.
Seth realized he was naked. Had he taken his clothes off when Owen had told him to bathe? No, but that hadn’t happened. As he tried to remember exactly when this had happened, he also knew he should be either embarrassed or pleased, but somehow the embarrassment or the pride did not quite reach him, and he said, “Can I get a cup of coffee?”
“You can get a snake for an egg and a stone for bread,” the redheaded woman said. She got up went to the refrigerator, gave him a snake and then gave him a stone, and the blond woman said. “You’re naked. You can’t go back like that. Here’ put this condom on.”
Back in the church, he came to his father with the snake and the stone, and Kyle smiled at him and said, “Thanks son. Go up to the altar before everything starts.”
Seth nodded and walked up to the altar and he thought, “I’ve done this before. I should know what’s about to happen. The priest was chanting while the altar boy swung incense:

“Lamb of God,
you take away the sins of the world.
Have mercy on us.”

The congregation sang it back. No one seemed to mind that Owen was up here with Seth. Laid out on the altar, the four candles on either side of her was his mother, her white dress covered in blood. He knew it was his mother because the two sides of her head split open and bloodied were his mother’s face, and between them the crablike mani eyed face said, “You’re finally here. Maybe you can stay. You should have come with us that day.”
The congregation sang in a stately unison:

“You should have come with us that day!”

“Seth, son!” Kyle called.
Seth turned around. His father was so handsome, taller than him, younger than he was now, small traces of his Black blood in his deep complexion and broad nose, in the thick curl of his shoulder length hair.
“look at this!” Kyle called. “You missed it before.”
Just like that, the two tons of automobile leapt onto the altar and slammed into Kyle pinnig him to the wall, his oranges splashing along the church wall, and Seth leapt into consciousness in his bedroom on the house on Bryn Mawr.

He was awake now, trembling and awake, but while he tried to leave his bed, all around him, the newly wakened him, the walls transformed into that church again and the murals of saints transformed, the angels shifting into demons, the saints sprouting several eyes, arms and tenracles, their mouths opening, their skins flipping inside out, the heads of the dead coming through the wall. Above his bed stood Kyle, smashed as any bug, his head crushed but still talking.
“Look at me son!”
He opened his mouth full of broken teeth. “Look at me.”
Seth screamed until the images faded, and he was left soaking in his bed, trembling from the dreams that never went away.




“You know this can’t go on,” Owen said that morning.
On the other side of the table, Seth ate his cereal while Owen sipped his coffee, and before him, black as graphite, stretched the blade of the Sword, its hilt silver and black, the rich grain ot the steal glinting in the morning.
“I hoped the Sword helped,” Owen said.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to touch it. After what happened to Eve.”
A small smile passed over Owen’s mouth and, turning the page of his morning paper he said, “Yes, that was unfortunate. But no, nephew, anyone who is allowed to touch the sword can touch the sword, but anyone who is not…” Owen shrugged.
“But back to what I was saying. You cannot keep sleeping with the sword in your room and still be protected. Your dreams have grown too powerful. They overwhelm you.”
“I think they’re just bad dreams.”
“Bad enough to put bags under your eyes,” Owen said. “And it they’re only bad dreams, then why are they still present when you wake? If they are merely bad dreams then why do I see them when I come into your room to quell them?”
Seth blinked, wide eyed, at Owen.
“Do you?”
“I do. Your dreams have become too powerful. You cannot neglect your family heritage. It is time to begin your training.”
Seth received this news with much glumness and he hung his head a little, not knowing how silly he looked as a grown man with a fringe beard in dress shirt and vest, sulking.
“When do we start?”
“Oh, we don’t start,” Owen said. “It’s Lewis who will teach you. You will be his Adept.”
“When did you all agree to this?”
“We’ve never spoken of it,” Owen closed his newspaper. “But we will discuss it when he and his most interesting lover come to dinner tonight.”

A Blessed New Year to you all and peace to Australians suffering in the bush fires. Peace to everyone who right now is suffering in this world.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Happy New Year to you too! I hope those bush fires go out soon, they are getting very bad. That was a great 2 portions! I am glad they decided to help Eve despite what she did. Seth's dream was interesting even if I don't quite know what it means. It will also be interesting to read about his training. Excellent writing as usual and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a nice new years eve!

 

[ChrisGibson]

It is a very nice, very relaxing new years eve where I'm just eating burgers, drinking coffee and watching The Witcher, the best New Years Eve I've had in some time. Thank you so much. I'm glad you enjoyed reading, I just had to do two portions because the first one was too small. More tomorrow night. I hope you enjoy the rest of your New Year's Day.

 

[ChrisGibson]

CHAPTER FIVE
MERCIES

CONTINUED


Laurie left the office early. The sky was grey and it had been grey all week, with the first twinge of winter in it. Fall was on them and no denying it. And this wasn’t Vermont or one of those places where there seemed ot be weeks of orange and yellow leaves on a red fire. The leaves went from green to brown to gone, and now Laurie was making his way through the wind of the windy city, a wind which never ceased to strike hard, and taking the long walk out of the Loop toward Saint Patrick’s.
He was aware he was early, and maybe he even wanted to be early, to see more than he had seen of Mass in a long time. Back in the Nineteen Sixties, he’d almost thrown a fit over Vatican Two, over the Mass changing from Latin to English and then all the different changes in the English until Chris pointed out that Laurie was hardly a devout worshipper, and going to church was just him trying to relive his past. The living people who were actually worshipping had the right to change their worship. Laurie knew that in his heart, but it had taken thirty years for him to feel solemn about “One Bread One Body” as he had once felt about Tantum Ergo Sacramentum. It had been a whole period where, hypocritcally he admitted, he had disdained congregants in shorts and tee shirts and jeans, girls with long hair down their backs uncovered by a mantilla. It had taken him a long time to see that the essens\ce of the thing had not changed, that his church was still his church, the sacred still sacred.
“That’s your first growing up,” Chris had told him.
“What?”
“Your first growing up. The world always changes, but then there is such a huge change, so many changes until you can’t recognize the world anymore, then you begin to see that it’s still the same, that it hasn’t really changed. It will happen a lot to you as the years pass.”
He entered the vestibule as the priest was coming down from the altar in his white robes trimmed in gold thread, and the cantor began to sing. The people in pews were coming up to receive communion, and as the first people came to the priest, Laurie entered, crossing himself at the holy water fount, and then genuflecting and kneeling in an empty pew. Above him the organ thrummed, and some of the congregants sang with the cantor:


Those who love and those who labor,
follow in the way of Christ;
Thus the first disciples found him,
thus the gift of love sufficed.
Jesus says to those who seek him,
I will never pass you by;
Raise the stone and you shall find me;
cleave the wood, and there am I.

He knelt and rose and sat with the congregation for the short rest of the mass and crossed himself at the appropriate times. It would have been disrespectful, more to the people than to God who likely didn’t care at all, not to participate, and then, when the people were leaving, as soon as the priest had passed him, Laurie sat down in the pew, legs splayed, and watched the arch over over the altar and the procession of saints painted on it, Saint Patrick with his four leaf clover, Saint Bridget in her habit, Saint Ita and Saint Brendan looking a little like Saint Francis but with more hair. But then he stopped looking and just took a breath. He thought of kneeling, but that was pretentious. It was while he was sitting like this, that he became aware of Lynn standing over him, and said her name before he turned to look up at her.
“That was eerie,” she said.
“Not really,” Laurie gave her a smile. “I couldn’t think who else it would be.”
“If you’re deep in prayer, I’ll leave you alone, but if you’re not, then?” she shrugged.
“Laurie turned to her and said, “I don’t know if there has ever been a time when I’ve been deep in prayer. I’m deep in… I don’t know what I’m deep in. Would you fancy a walk?”
Lynn opened her mouth in some type of surprise Laurie didn’t understand, and then she said, “I was heading back to work, being good and trying to get there on time. But I feel I would fancy anything with a man that actually uses the word fancy.”
Laurie cleared his throat and said, “Should I have said—”
“Fancy is fine,” Lynn said as Laurie stood up.
“Well, what if you go back to work, and then tonight I could call on you? If you’re keen?”
“I am. Keen.”
Laurie knew he was saying strange things. He was never quite sure when his speech pattern was out of date. It was cobbled together from his favorite words in his longer than usual life. Some women liked it and some women found it strange. It was one reason many of his relationships didn’t last long. The longer they lasted the more prone he was to use words from a time long before anyone he’d dated was born.
“I… uh..”
“Yes,” Lynn said.
“Look,” Laurie said, “I’m old fashioned.”
“I’m beginning to see that.”
“And I don’t like the idea of you… Can I walk you back to your office?”
“You’re weird, you know that?” Lynn said.
“I’m sorry.” Laurie didn’t know to be offended or embarrassed. Into his head returned the memory of the woman stopping him in the middle of sex.
“No,” Lynn grinned. “I don’t think I’d want someone who wasn’t. There’s more to you than I know, Mr. Malone, isn’t there?”
“Uh, yeah,” Laurie grinned, feeling a little sheepish, not his generally in control vampiric self. “Probably.”
Then he held out his arm, “Shall we?”
Lynn linked arms with him.
“We shall.”



It’s smaller than your place. But I like to call it home.” Chris said, standing in the middle of his apartment, clapping his hands together. “Or, at least I like to call it the place where I get dressed between your place and my job.”
“I like it,” Lewis said.
Chris’s place was a turret apartment, and it was lit with a dark amber light that came through shades and curtains. Old threadbare carpet, maroon and Oriental, was on the floor, and heavy bookshelves and tables were about the room, covered in dust. The closet was open and smelled of moth balls and Chris said, “That is not the usual closet.”
“Then what for?” Lewis said as he entered the room. It reminded him of Narnia because there were fur coats, or at least there was fur, and Chris said, “Don’t be afraid to touch anything.”
Lewis came out with a great fur hat and Chris grinned and came to him, taking it up delicately and placing it on his own head.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he murmured to the hat. “This was from another time.”
“I’ll say.”
“Back when I was a voyageur,” Chris said.
“A fur trapper.”
“Yes. The world was wilder, then. The French weren’t like the British, At least not here. They didn’t create America. These people who wanted to build a country and wipe out everything in its wake. When the French lived here they lived here, not ruled. They were… I was so glad to flee to them, to live in that world. And then the Americans destroyed it,” Chris said, cradling the hat in his hands, “And I still haven’t forgiven them.”
“Them,” Lewis said.
“Huh?”
“But you wouldn’t be,” Lewis said. “I don’t suppose.”
“Be?’
“Be an American. You’d be something else. I don’t imagine you would ever take a citizenship test if you’ve always been here. If you’re older than the countrty. And a country, a nation, it’s really just an idea. I thought it was me, you know? My mother told me once that she had never felt like an American, and I think, I feel like someone who lives here and pays taxes here, but I never understood people who stood up for pledges and felt patriotic. I’ve never felt like this was my country. I don’t think many Black people do.”
“I don’t think all sorts of people do,” Chris said. “I had not told you the hwole truth.”
Lewis raised an eyebrow.
“I was an indentured servant. In books it’s very pleasant. A white boys works his ship passage off for seven years and gets some land.”
“I know it wasn’t that way,” Lewis said. “That the history books lie or gloss over things.”
“I was sold into slavery,” Chris said. “It was a thing. It was how many people got from England to the Bahamas or to America. When I was sold William or Orange was King of England, but I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that until years later when it was history and I studied history. When I was living in it, as a lad, I was just poor, and the poor don’t know national loyalities. I didn’t care about England. I was from the March. A Yorkshire lad. That’s what I knew. Patriotism, nationalism, that’s not for the poor.
“I fled from the English. The English were the people who did this to me and they gobbled up everything. And the English made America. America became more English than England, more rapacious, more superior, greedier, destroying everything in its wake as it moved westward, tearing up all I loved, sucking up the marshes and turning them to farmland, killing Indians so that pale faced women could live, chasing out other pale faced people because they didn’t live the way Americans thought they should. I watched this city rise around me until it was part of me, but, this country. If I belong to it I belong to thae land, not the governments which come and go. Maybe in another three hundred years, when all of this gone and another land rises up, I will look back and say, I was an American, but now, I cannot see it.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

I really enjoyed this portion! It was nice to see some more of Laurie. It was also interesting to read some of Chris's history. I had no idea he was sold into slavery. No wonder he doesn't like the British and considers himself American. Great writing and I look forward to more soon!

 

[ChrisGibson]

More and more revelations mount as our story continues, and tonight's portion may be a double one if I don't post Friday.I hope you're having a good New Years.

 

[CharmedFan28]

I hope you are having a good New Years too! Mine is good so far.

 

[ChrisGibson]

FIRST WEEKEND PORTION

“Train him?” Lewis said.
“That’s what I said,” Owen told his nephew, blandly. “Pass the potatoes, please.”
As Owen spooned potatoes onto the plate he added, “You should have done this a long time ago. You are well prepared to take on an adept.”
“A sorcerer’s apprentice,” Chris said with only half a smile.
“Exactly,” Owen said. “Did you know, Chris, that your beloved is an initiated high priest? He has passed through the third order and into the Elders.”
“I actually don’t know much of what that means,” Chris said. “I was going to pretend to, but I don’t like to look stupid.”
“Of course,” Owen said.
“I know about Wiccans, but you aren’t Wiccans. And I think Garderians have three degrees.”
“Yes,” Owen said, “and Freemasons. And Mormons I think. And the Golden Dawn and lots of other people that don’t consist of Causcasian teengagers making videos of themselves on YouTube. Even the houses of Craft that say that have no degrees have them, but Lewis passed through his three degrees a long time ago, and he has never attained the degree of Adept.”
“Not for lack of trying.”
“Well, now you don’t have to try,” Owen said to his nephew. He gestured to Seth. “Now you have your first student.”
“If you’ll have me,” Seth said.
“Of course I’ll have you,” Lewis said. “You’re family. And, besides, you need it. I was just surprised that Uncle Owen thought it should be me when he is the head of the Clan. Of course this means eventually Seth will be taken into the clan.”
“Of course,” Owen said, dipping his bread in sauce, “and the reason I chose you is because you are becomimg more powerful everyday. You always possessed skill and wisdom and power, but your power increases,” Owen said. He seemed to be thinking of something and then he swallowed, pointed to Chris and said, “So is yours.”
“What?” Chris said.
“Your kind have their own Gifts.” Owen said. “Not all the same, but much the same. Telepathy, sometimes telekinesis. Superspeed.” Owen shrugged. “Other things. Those will increase. They are probably increasing now. And Lewis’ increase by you all being together.”
“Just by being together?” Chris said.
“Lewis,” Owen said, almost ignoring this, “does he feed on you?”
“What?”
“We’re family, and not a common family, and Chris might as well be family. You all are lovers. Your lover is a vampire. Surely in lovemaking you have shared blood. If Chris occasionally drinks from you he is connected to your power. Not that our power is in our blood, but… it isn’t exactly not in our blood. And at the same time, a bloodrinker cannot drink from someone without giving some of himself, so the two of you are changed by being with each other.”
While Lewis absorbed this and Chris sat back, stretching his long legs under the table, Owen added, “Seth’s dreams… Seth’s powers, are very strong. So I need your strength. I will give you the sword. For a time at least. I will bind it to your name, nephew. You may need it.”



“You can make me if you want to,” Laurie remembers saying. He remembers the moment when he was still mortal and still fragile, not that he felt much different now, when he lay naked before another vampire, when light fingers went along his hip bone and touched his thigh, making the hairs on it thrill, when he was touched tenderly, and as a mouth bend over him, he said, “You can make me if you want.”
“It isn’t time,” he was told. “It isn’t time. If there ever will be the time.”
They’d said nothing else. They’d only made love, and Laurie remembers being so young and trembling under feelings he had never known. He had arched his neck and been pierced, not made, but he had given himself, given his blood, and something had been given to him. As long as they were lovers, long before he had finally been made, something was always given to him when he gave himself. That was what love should be.
The kill was something else. It was another type of gift. It was a gift to the greater world. Every clan throughout time had found a way to make the kill a gift, call it justification if you will. Every species had a predator that eradicated the weak. Even animal mothers ate the smallest young when they’d born too many children. To the houses, the only question was what defined weakness.
“Weakness is evil,” Laurie murmured.
People didn’t know that, and this is why evil was weakness. People loved evil. They kissed it on the mouth. He sat in a movie theatre and watched Last Tango in Paris, and when an old and no longer attractive Marlon Brando had thrust cold butter up a girl’s pussy and raped her, though people had pretended to be disgusted, he saw how thrilled they were, as thrilled as they were a few years later when the same actor was the patriarch of the Corleone family and James Caan and Al Pacino murdered their way through The Godfather. It was a great movie. It was masterpiece, but people loved the killing, and when Laurie had gone down the streets, as he was going now, following this man, he remembered seeing Italians, Sicilian Americans walking down the street aping the gangsters they’d tried to distance themselves from for years. It had made Laurie’s blood boil. After all, half of his family was from Sicily, and as a boy his mother had warned him not to get mixed up with people like that, to remember he was an American.
Quickly he moved through the crowds, his eyes more on the man than ever before. The closer he came to that moment, the more his old thoughts kaleidoscoped about him. The more he could feel the pulse of the blood, the more he could smell the kill, the more his mind went back to memories, went back to that night when he had finally given himself totally, and he had trembled under a vampire’s touch, knowing it would be death, knowing it would be death like this, in an alley.
He’d researched. It had been such luck. Vampires thrived on odd luck. The luck that there was still evil in this world, and evil was a weakener. Evil existed, often, where you let it, and poisoned you and then everything that came after you. The Evil of a strong man who beat his wife over and over agan, and made her put cocaine in her pussy to smuggle through airplanes, and let her go to jail when the dogs caught her. That was his evil, sending kids to foster care. The evil which left him with the three children, one whom he made beat the other because if he had beaten his children it would have been child abuse. All through the day he’d thought of this moment. Last night, when he had opened his ears to hear the screams and pursued them to the window where the man was standing over his miserable ten year old, making him beat the seven year old, Laurie knew what would happen today.
There would be no comfort for this man, and perhaps no comfort for that broken family. Their lives would be saved. That little child would not be dead on the news. But his evil had weakened that family, and as the animal growl escaped Laurie’s mouth, and the strength came upon him that did not make new vampires, or exchange blood in love, but that ended life, as the man in the alley suddenly looked up and started, “WHAT THE FUCK?”… As he pulled the man to him and sank his teeth into him, and blood filled his mouth and revivified every cell of him, as his muscles tightened, and he thrilled over the struggling body he held onto, Laurie had the consolation that this evil, at last, was at an end.

 

[ChrisGibson]

PORTION TWO

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER FIVE


“You look different,” Lynn said when he came to pick her up.
“Hopefully in a good way,” Laruie grinned at her.
She smiled at him, and she said, “You know what, Mr Malone, I’m going to tell you this, because,” he held the door open for her as they left the lobby, “I don’t think you’re the kind of person who gets vain about things. You never look bad.”
“Aha! Well, thank you and, of course, you never look bad either.”
Clark Street was busy in the evening, and it didn’t seem like everyone was on their way home. It always seemed like everybody was serious about getting somewhere, and Lynn said, “You look… younger. Like you’ve been running or something. Fresh. Does that make sense?”
“I feel fresh,” Laurie said. “It’s a great night.”
“You can feel winter coming,” Lynn said. “It’s odd, how I like to feel the winter coming, but the actual winter can kind of kiss my ass.”
“I was just thinking that,” Laurie chuckled. “But I keep staying here.”
“Glutton for punishment?” Lynn said.
“I like four seasons.”
“Laurie, where in the world should we go for dinner?”
“I was actually thinking so much about us going out that I hadn’t really thought too much about where we would go?”
“Do you remember,” Lynn began, “a time when you were so young you could go to work, and then go home, shower, get dressed again and go out?”
“No,” Laurie said.
Lynn looked at him while he grinned.
“I’ve always felt like an old man.”
“Well,” Lynn said, “I was going to suggest somewhere close to home.Only I don’t know where home is. For you.”
“Oh, up in Andersonville.”
“Really?” she said.
What about you?”
“Near Logan Square? Should we take a Brown like or a Red?”
“Neither, m’lady,” Laurie took out his keys and a red &&&&& beeped at them, its lights flashing.
“Wow, Mr Malone. I hadn’t seen you driving that, but I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“No El for us tonight,” Laurie said, opening the door, and doffing his non existent cap.



“So you’re staying here, tonight?”
“I think I’d better,” Lewis said. “If dreams are what we need to address, then the best time is now and my place would be here.”
“I guess you’re right,” Chris said reluctantly, “but this was my night off. We were going to…”
“Well, I promise you, I’ll be home as soon as possible,” Lewis said, “and then whatever you were going to do before, we can do then.”
As Chris walked down the street, his thoughts turned not to the cries for help, or to the hearts pounding with evil, but to the cries for mercy. The cries for mercy were the best. These were the cries where he could hear everything better, the singing of the crickets, the last twitters of night birds. He turned to the El and rode out to Howard, and then from Howard he took the Purple train and got off, making his way almost lightly to the hospital. He felt solemn as he entered, but also light because now he had no questions about what he was doing, what was about to happen.. He made his way to the seventh floor and it seemed at this time of night so dark, so forlorn, like company was just the thing anyone here would desire.
He came to the room she was sharing with a woman who was already sleeping, and Chris saw that a re run of Wheel of Fortune was on. How boring, and he realized he was bored with her boredom. The old woman was watching him. She smiled as he entered, her face a net of laughing wrinkles.
“There’s a chair for you right there,” she told him. “We might as well let Vanna finish.”
Chris nodded.
“You’re right,” he said.
He was getting his chair when he said, “Do you want anything?”
“Water?” she said. “Some cold water. I don’t need ice. There’s some in that refrigerator.”
Chris went to the fridge and took out a bottled water, and he poured it into the cup with the straw, and so the two of them sat there, the old woman in the bed, and he beside her, feeding her from the straw as they watched the letters turn and Chris guessed:
“Maid in Manhattan,” and as the woman laughed, he said, “I really hated that movie.”
When Wheel of Fortune was off, Chris said, “Do you want to see Jeopardy?”
“No, love, it’s time.”
“Oh,” Chris said, politely, “Of course.
“Will anyone see?” she asked. “You won’t get in trouble.”
“No,” Chris said. “Bless you, no.”
“I’m so glad you finally came for me. You heard me calling, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“It’s funny,” she said, as she sat up and Chris moved her into his arms—how very light she was! “I had almost stopped believing in God before you walked into this room like his angel.”
Suddenly Chris’s eyes were wet, and he had to blink to see clearly.
“You know,” his voice almost trembled, “until you called I had almost stopped believing too.”
He cradled her and she said, “It will be gentle, won’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” Chris said, his voice trembling, and a tear rolling down his face. “Yes. Just like… sleeping.”
She stroked the back os his neck like a sleepy child and said, “You know the song. You know it.”
His voice unsteady, Chris sang.

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling—
Calling for you and for me;
Patiently Jesus is waiting and watching—
Watching for you and for me!”

“Ah, she whispered, “That’s it. That’s it.”
Together they sang:

“Come home! come home!
Ye who are weary, come home!
Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
Calling, O sinner, come home!”

As she slept in his arms, her heartbeat weak, but too strong to die of its own accord, her body full of morphine and pain, but now full of peace, Chris sang on to her:

“Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading—
Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies—
Mercies for you and for me?”

The life was released from her as his teeth sank into her skin, as he drained her with sharp teeth, transparent, slender, painless, and sweet blood, the blood of a sweet life, of a good soul, the blood of a spirit that wanted to be released filled him with a terrible unbearable light. It wasn’t like good food. It was like… being with Lewis, or being with his first love, the first time someone held his face in their hands and told him they loved him completely and it was too much. He wanted to weep for the total acceptance and the total communion, and when he was done he wanted to weep for the total knowledge that in this room, holding Cora’s dead body, he was, after such a graceful communion, completely alone.



The light that came into the room was grey, and Seth said, “You can go home now. I know you need to sleep in your own bed.”
“We did it, though,” Lewis said. “We made it through the night.”
“At least tonight,” Seth said.
“I was thinking,’ Lewis stood up and began shaking his legs out. “Why don’t you come to my place. In the nights. When I don’t have to go into work which, lately isn’t that often, I can start teaching you everything. “
Seth nodded.
“It was so strange,” Seth said. “When I dreamed and suddenly you were there with me. And when they came… I wasn’t afraid. We were the re to fight them.”
“They didn’t even want to fight when they saw two of us.”
“When they saw you,” Seth said with certiany.
“No, Cousin.” Lewis said. “when they saw you weren’t afraid anymore. You are the master of that place if you but learn to be.”
“Help me?”
“Of course,” Lewis said. “I said I would.”
Quickly Lewis pulled Seth by his neck nad kissed him on the head.
“They don’t come in the daylight, do they? Not when you sleep in the day?”
“No,” Seth said, “though I rarely do. Only at night.”
“Well, then,” Lewis said. “come to me tonight. Chris will be at work so there will be plenty of time for us.”
“There’s so much I have to learn,” Seth said.
“Me too,” Lewis said. “We’ll get started tonight.”
But Lewis was half guilty about leaving his cousin. After all the sky was grey, but just barely tinted with dawn. It was three blocks to the train station that would take him on the Red Line and then on the Brown Line back home. Part of him thought of going to the beach. After all, there were only so many weeks before the beach was no longer and inviting possibility.
It was out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman, and when he began following her, this creature with white skin and pale hair like Chris’s, Lewis realized that there was no reason he should be following her. She was not the only woman out at this tme of morning, and he had no right to follow anyone. Even as he was wondering why he saw her so clearly, honed in on her so certainly, he thought, “Is this part of the power Chris gave me?” He thought, “is she a killer, and what am I going to do? I’m no blood drinker.”
But in the Craft while one thought he controlled his power, in the end he had to simply learn to follow it, and so he followed where led, traipsing after this woman and now they were both headed for the park, and now she was on a bench with a man. And she was talking to him, whispering to him. He shuddered for a moment, and then she kissed his throat, and Lewis did not stop watching the intimacy as she kissed him, and then sucked on his ear and then drew his face to hers, and he was kissing her, he was nuzzling her thaot, and then she was nuzzling his, sucking on his throat intensely, and as Lewis looked on, comprehending, suddenly the man fell over on his side, dead.
The woman sat there for a while and then she rose and turned around.
“Seen enough?” she said.
And because she was looking directly at Lewis as the sky behind her was just being touched by the morning sun, and the change in the air that comes with dawn moved the grass, Lewis came closer and said, “More than enough, for I’m sure than man never did you any harm.”
“And I’m sure I did you no harm, so I’m not entirely sure why you were following me. I knew you were,” she said, and Lewis thought she was exquisite. Her face was salt white, and now she wiped the deep red of blood from lips which still remained red. Her eyes were deep grey.
“I don’t really know why, either.”
“I begin to know,” she said. “You have the blood of my kin. Some of it is in you. That must be it.” She did not seem coy or proud of herself for knowing it. She adjusted the purse on her shoulder. “Yes,” she said. “Yes I see it, though not all of it. I would have ot share your mind, or enter it, and you would not let me do that. You have no fear of me. It is as certain you are of the Aos Si as I am a blood drinker.”
Lewis was not going to ask her what the word she had used for him meant. He would not satisfy this woman with that, and while they spoke he was aware that a man no more than thirty lay dead on his side in the park bench. Chris had said that he and Lawrence belonged to a house with certain rules about killing, and he had insinuated that not all vampires shared those rules. Well, clearly, here was one such.
“Would you pass on a message?” the woman said. “For me?”
“If I can.”
“Oh, you can,” she said. “Tell, Chris, and especially tell Lawrence, that Evangeline says hello.”
“That’s all?” Lewis asked.
“My Lord Aos Si, I assure you it is enough.”
And then she did not fly, and she did not run. She simply moved away from sight, and as quickly as Evangeline had been there, she was gone, and in the cool morning there was only Lewis, and the dead man lying on the park bench with his mouth open.

 

[CharmedFan28]

Those were two very enjoyable portions! Lots going on and many different plot lines! I am glad Lewis is training Seth. I wonder who this new character Evangeline is? I guess I will have too wait and see. Great writing and I look forward to more in a few days! I hope you have a good Friday and weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

Thanks a lot. I guess there are a lot of plot lines, which makes me glad because I was afraid this wouldn't be interesting. Evangeline is a mystery that I think, but am not entirely sure, will be revealed in the next portion. For now, I will take your blessing and have a good weekend, and you have one too. Thank you for reading.

 

[ChrisGibson]

I replied to your comment, but i must have not hit send, because it isn't here. I just wanted to say that I'm so glad you're enjoying this story. I was really wondering how anyone would find it because its so different from the others before. I believe a little more will be learned about Evangeline on Saturday. Enjoy your weekend, and thank you for hoping that I enjoy mine.

 

[ChrisGibson]

S I X

A MANNER
OF DEVIL


He who journeys to Hell also becomes Hell, therefore, do not forget from whence you have come.

-The Red Book




She thought of getting up. It was certainly time for work. But, instead, she lay back in his arms and let his long, large hands move over her shoulder and touch her hip. Laurie made a contented noise and his body, already curved to hers, moved even closer.
“You must think I’m such a slut,” Lynn said, sleepily.
“What?” Laurie half laughed, kissing her shoulder.
“You know I’m not usually this way. Just meeting a man—”
“A man in church no less!”
“Yes,” Lynn chuckled, while Laurie leaned over her and kissed her ear.
“It’s not something I do, you know,” she said, “meet men and go home with them to their very large apartments and king sized beds.
“I believe, you said,” Laurie began, “last night, that you never brought men back to your place you’d just met.”
“And then you said,” Lynn turned around touching his face, “that this just meant I needed to come back to your place.”
“And you came.”
“Like a fool,” she said, placing a hand on his chest and running it down to his stomach. “You could have done anything to me.”
Laurie bit his lower lip and then said, looking more shy than mischievous, “I think I did a few things to you.”
“It was the wine.”
Laurie shook his head, pulling her to him and grinning, broadly.
“It was not the wine.”
“No,” Lynn said. “It was not.”
“What time do you have to be at work?”
“I have to,” she groaned, “I don’t want to think about that. But..damn, nine o’ clock.”
“Do you eat?”
“What a strange question. I’m pretty sure everyone does.”
Laurie shrugged. “Some people skip breakfast. I can sort of take it or leave it.”
I eat a bowl of Special K with a cup off coffee.”
Laurie frowned, “Is that a deliberate life choice?”
“That’s a not having time choice.”
“I tell you what,” Laurie, unfolded his arms from about her, “You get in the shower, and I’ll see if I can’t do a little something better than a bowl of cereal and coffee.”
“You’re going to cook for me?”
“Well,” Laurie said, smiling at her from the edge of the bed, “I once had a girlfriend who, when I said do you want to go out for breakfast, told me she didn’t do breakfast. It took me a long time to understand what that meant.”
“It meant she felt like a slut walking into a restaurant to eat pancakes at eight in the morning with a guy she’d been fucking all night.”
“I understand that now,” Laurie said. “So you can eat here and feel like a slut.”
When she started to say something, Laurie said, “Madam, I feel like a slut too. The things you did to me…” he shook his head grinning.
When he stood up, she loved his body. Loved that he was not conscious of it or ashamed, loved even the imperfections, the little oddnesses she’s seen in him. He was such a well made and sophisticated man, and last night at dinner she’d noted his slightly large ears. When he’d called himself monkey faced, she’d noticed that a bit, but thought the large ears, the big smile added to the charm of dark eyes and dark hair that would have been generic otherwise. She’d fallen in love with the light pattern of dark hair up and down his arms, on his htighs, up to his sex which, she mourned, was now hidden as he pulled on his pajama pants and a tee shirt and left the large bedroom to head into the kitchen. She looked around the place, white carpeted, the broad window looking over the Gold Coast. She wondered if she’d ever be back here. What would Laurie want with her in the future?

“Look, I don’t understand men.”
“And I don’t understand women,” Laurie said as his finger slid over the surface of his phone.
“Lawrence,” Lynn put down her fork, “I need you to listen.”
Laurie put his phone away and looked at Lynn.
“Do you not like the omelet?”
“It’s a great omelet. Not the point. I want to know what you want from me?”
“Want from you?” Laurie frowned, looking a little pissed.
“Like, what was this? All of this. Last night. I don’t need a wedding ring, but I’d kind of like to know where we stand.”
“Well,” Laurie looked like he was genuinely puzzled. “We went out. You came back here. We spent the night together. I cooked you breakfast. I cooked us breakfast. We’re having a nice breakfast and now we’re on our way to work. I’m dropping you off. Of course.”
“But what after that?”
“I…” And then Laurie looked adorably blank.
“I hadn’t really thought about it. I assumed we would… do it again. All of it over again. Do what you want. Isn’t that how women live today?”
That question struck Lynn as so strange that she bypassed it and simply said, “There are men who are just out for a good time, and that’s sort of okay, But then there are those men who are nice. Really nice, who tell you the right things, cook for you, and then they never want to see you again either, and I have a problem with them. I need to know where we stand. Do you see what I’m saying.”
“Yes”, Laurie said. “Now I understand. Yes. I know just what you mean. Well,” he said. “We stand where you want to stand. I’d love to see you again. Lots of you. If you can bear with me and my… ways.”
Lynn grinned to herself and forked another bit of omelet.
“Yeah,” she said, “I can definitely bear with them.”

Lawrence did not go into the office. He called and said he would work from home, because when good things happen to you, you have to share them. And the whole way to Lynn’s office, he had stopped himself from the sort of driving he would do with Chris, or with Lewis for that matter, the type of driving that would have alerted one to his more than normal status. Now, free to drive as he wished, he arrived at the large building where Lewis lived in less than twenty minutes, and he was up the stairs and about to open the door when he remembered what Lewis had said before, and knocked.
A moment later, Lewis called, “It’s open,” and when Laurie stepped through he wondered, “Well, what’s the point in courtesy, then?”
“There’s always a point in courtesy,” Lewis said. “Do you want some coffee? I haven’t been back long, and Chris is still up”
In the kitchen, Chris was smoking a cigarette, and strands of his pale, spiky hair fell in his face.
“Laurie? How odd?”
“Not that odd,” Lawrence raised an eyebrow and took of his sunglasses.
Lewis handed him a cup of coffee.
“Thanks for that,” Laurie said, then turned to Chris and said, “What’s with you?”
“Well, well,” Chris said, a little distracted, his blue eyes now lifting to Laurie’s, “you first. Apparently something good happened.”
“Lynn happened.”
“You’re going to be seeing each other?” Lewis said, sitting down on the sofa beside Chris.
“Yes. Hopefully a lot of each other. Why do you look like you haven’t slept?”
“I have,” Lewis said. “But then I haven’t?”
“Is that witch talk?”
“He took on a new student,” Chris said. “I mean, Lewis is now teaching his cousin, Seth.”
“Like… he has a sorcerer’s apprentice.”
“That is the second time that joke has been made in twenty-four hours.”
“Well, you know,” Laurie shrugged, “it’s a good joke.”
“But more importantly,” Chris pressed on, “is what Lewis saw this morning.”
“I followed a vampire.”
“Really?” Laurei said, frowning. “I mean, we’re kind of impossible to follow.”
“He has my blood now,” Chris said.
“Oh,” Laurie said, then, “He would. I guess. I always have to be very careful with… impulses. When I’m with someone who doesn’t know what I am. But.. Still,” Laurie looked at Lewis, “why would you follow a vampire? That’s something dumb white people do in movies. You’re Black. And not in a movie.”
“Wait for it,” Chris said.
“I was compelled, and I saw her kill. I watched. When she had done it she turned around and spoke to me. We spoke for several moments.”
“And you weren’t terrified?”
“I’m standing in a room with two vampires right now,” Lewis said, “and you’ve both killed within the last twenty four hours.”
Lawrence nodded to this.
“I was not terrified. I was surprised, though, that I wasn’t. She knew it.”
“She?’
“I knew she was not like you, not of your House. She didn’t have to say it. But she did leave me a message. She sensed the two of you on me. I don’t know how she sensed you, Laurie, or maybe she just knew you would be where Chris was.”
“Evangeline,” Laurie said.
“Yes,” Lewis said while Chris nodded.
“But who is she?”
“It’s a long story,” Laurie said.
“So Chris said. I imagine once you’ve lived for over a hundred years you’ve got a lot of long stories. And why did she call me Aos si? Is that a vampire word for a witch? Lord Aos si? Lord Aos si.”
“It’s a Scottish word,” Chris said. “Or a border word.”
“For a witch.”
“Not exactly,:
“Is that a long story too?”
“Yes,” Laurie answered for Chris.
“Well,” Lewis said, “I’m not going any place, and you are both beginning to annoy me, so if you don’t want to see what an angry witch looks like, make your stories short and get to them right now.”
“Witch is, as you know,” Chris began, “a catch all type of term for all sorts of people. There are old words, wicce, derwydd, peller. But Aos si means something different. It is… It is the reason that no vampire would touch you. Not without your permission, at least. Some kid walking around with a Wicca manual or even one who went through an initiation wouldn’t have any effect on anyone . An Aos si is…. An enchanter of great power.”
Lewis thought of saying something sarcastic like, “Oh, well, I guess I can stop substitute teaching, then,” but settled on listening.
“It’s like the Tuatha de Danaan in the Irish stories,” Laurie said.
“The Fairy People?”
“It’s more than that,” Chris said. “In those legends, the Tuatha de Danaan are a race of people and they are like gods, but they become the fairies and, really, an Aos Si is a person walking around on the earth who is descended from what we used to called the Good People. The Elder People. Their blood is full of power because they are descended from The First People. That’s how it is with all powerful wizards and enchanters, and a powerful witch is a wizard, is an enchanter. That’s… all I know, really. I’m just a vampire. One who has seen a lot of stuff.”
When Lewis said nothing, Chris said, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Lewis said.
“You have to understand,” Laurie continued, “we’re not modern. We’re not like people now who don’t believe in anything. I grew up here, but my family was Irish and you didn’t use the names of the Good People. You left them things, but you didn’t bring them up or insult them or walk on their ground. And,” Laurie looked at his friend, “Chris is actually from the Old Country, so I’m pretty sure he grew up the same way. That’s why we’re not good at explaining this.”
Lewis looked to Chris.
“Did you know what I was?”
“I suspected. Like I said, all powerful enchanters… that’s where they get it from. In part. So… And then when I met Owen. Yes. I just… I couldn’t say it. You understand why now?”
Lewis nodded.
“I didn’t understand,” Laurie said. “I knew you were something I hadn’t met before. But… I didn’t really put it together until now.”
“Well,” Lewis said. Then he said, “Well, what about Evangeline?”
“Short story or long?” Chris said.
“Short and then the long?” Lewis said.
Chris nodded.
“Evangeline is my sister.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was a great portion! So Evangeline is Chris's sister! Interesting! I can't wait to read the long version of their story. It was good to have more of Laurie and Lynn. I hope there is more of them together to come! Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a nice weekend.

 

[ChrisGibson]

There will be more of Lynn and Laurie, definitely. Believe me. There will be something else before the night is over, probably in about an hour or so,but it won't be from this story.

 

[ChrisGibson]

THE OLD

CONTINUED

“There is more to tell,” Chris said, , “but I don’t know how.”
“Maybe it’s best if you tell him… you know,” Laurie said. “That way.”
“That way?” Lewis said.
Laurie did not respond to him. He said, “You and Lewis have shared blood. And if he is, I mean, we know he is what he is, then… I think you can.”
“I wish you would tell me what you were talking about,” Lewis said.
“Instead of talking, I could share my memories with you,” Chris said.
“That’s possible?”
“I did it with Veronica,” Laurie said. And then, when Lewis raised an eyebrow, Laurie explained.
“She was my wife. A long time ago I was married.”
“Oh,” Lewis was tactful enough not to ask any more.
“She died,” Lawrence told him, anyway. “She was not what we are.”
Since Laurie had said it, Lewis asked, “Was this before… you were changed?”
“No,” Lawrence said. “I was already a vampire.”
“And she knew?”
“Yes,” Lawrence said. “She knew everything about me. But she wanted to remain as she was.”
None of them spoke, and Lawrence said, “There are times when I still cannot forgive her for that, that she did not want to go on with me, that she stayed in time, leaving me to go through forever.”
The whole time Laurie spoke, Chris tried not to look at Lewis, and now Laurie said, “I realize what I’ve just said. You don’t need to listen to me. We were very happy together. She said I would forget her. I have not.”
“We never do,” Chris said.
“I need to stop talking because we’ve moved from the first thing I was talking about to something else.”
“We’ve moved to an elephant in the room.” Lewis said.
“We have never discussed it. We are new,” said Chris.
“I used to always worry, once I knew I loved her,” :Laurie said. “Every moment I did not make her, I was terrifed she could die and leave me all alone. I was so fearful that often I thought of changing her while she slept. But… there are rules. And that was madness.”
“Do you feel the same way about me?” Lewis asked Chris, not looking at him.
“You are a wtich,” Chris said. ‘It’s different.”
“I’m still mortal.’
“It’s a witch’s lot to be mortal,” Chris said. “It is different for you all. For humans they just… die. For witches it is different.”
“Chris, you have to tell him.” Laurie said. “you need to tell him. We need to tell him everything.”
“You need to tell me about your sister.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Chris said. “Laurie is a vampire because of her.”
“What?”
Laurie nodded. “It’s true. Mostly.”
“Did she turn you?”
“No,” Laurie said. “But she nearly killed me. It was because of her I needed to be turned.”
“By you?” Lewis turned to Chris.
Chris shook his head.
“By our master,” Chris said. “As your clan has a master, so does our house. Our Master saved Laurie and exiled Evangeline.”
“Evangeline came with you to America?”
` “No,” Chris shook his head. “When I met her again it was here, and we had been parted for over one hundred fifty years. I assumed my entire family was dead. But she had heard of me, she came looking for me. Doubtless the fact that you are in my life again—in my life—is why she is here.”
“Again?” Lewis said.
“What?” Chris said.
“You said in your life again.”
Chris said nothing.
Laurie prompted, “Chris, you need to say it.”
“Please do,” Lewis said.
“Witches are not like others,” Chris told Lewis. “And you are not the first witch I have loved. Or, rather, you are the only witch I ever loved.”
“Witches die,” Laurie said, because Chris was saying little. “But so do we. I died. I had to die to become a blood drinker. So did Chris. And the death is real. I’ve seen the change. When I died… I really died. And when I kill, part of that death is still in it. But, as far as I know, we die only once. For you all it is a passage. Some of you, it is rumored, prolong life.”
“Owen,” Lewis said.
“And some of you put your lives in different realms,” Laurie went on. “That you would know more than me. Chris told me long ago he loved someone, and when he met you he swore you were that one.”
“Malachy,” Chris said. “Who said you would come back to me. I begged you not to leave me, but you said it was the way of your kind and that, in time, when you were able, you would return to me. And that first morning we were together, “ Chris said, “when you knew what I was, I knew who you were. You are my Malachy, and you have returned to me at last.”



When Laurie was gone and it was only him and Lewis, while he yawned, Chris said, casually, “My father sold me.
It was well past noon and time for bed, far too late to be up.
“I do not think I ever told anyone that, not even Laurie. And it was not that I loved the man. I did not. But still, he was my father, and he sold me to a slaver. He told my mother that I was going to sail to Ireland to work the land there, for it was a colony of the English, and they used the native population just like slaves. Maybe that’s what the slaver told him. I don’t know. But we sailed from Inningham, and we landed in the Bahamas, as far from Ireland as you can get. There were plenty of Irish there, though. That’s the one thing you can say about slavery at that time. It was egalitarian. And it was slavery. The work in the fields was backbreaking. Being a slave was like being in prisoner for having commited no higher crime than living. And we were on the islands, but not in sight of the sea, and it was unbearably hot. Lots of people, self included, were fevered, nearly died, vomited up their lives. Bodies were pitched over the ship long before we made it to the colonies. If I do not speak of it much it is because it is something I do not really wish to remember, but I must get through this part so you will undertstand everything else.
I stopped thinking of home. Home was gone. I would never see my mother again or any of my family, and I had put them out of my mind. I thought I had put goodness out of my mind too. Many of us did. But we had to be good to each other there, in the colonies. We had to look out for each other because no one else would.
“The preachers began to care for our souls. The Africans were heathens, the Irish were Catholics and who knew what the rest of us were, unchurched, in need of the good news, and the good news was so much cheaper than freeing us. But at night, many of us, and I wasn’t the only white one, would be drawn to the drums in the forest, and to the dancing around the fires. The long limbed men and the women, and I felt like I shouldn’t watch, but I could not help it. Their dancing, their singing, their crying out, awoke something in me. I had stopped believing in anything. I no longer believed in God. He was something made up by the churches to let rich men keep doing what they were doing, and make poor people bow down to rich men’s whims. But now, here these were crying out to their Gods, who were outside of everything I knew about, and I began to fall in love with what I did not understand.
“The next day my friend, Ikixi, told me he had seen me. I tried to make out as if he was wrong, to say he had been mistaken.
“‘How could a six foot narrow white man with a shock of blond hair not be seen,” and it was then that he told me I was not the only one.
“‘We belong to the old thing,’ he told me. ‘And you belong to an old thing too. But now it is time to create the new thing, because the old thing is not enough. It will need all of us.’”
And so I began to come down to the rituals, and one night, in the midst of one, a woman who I thought was white came out. She was pale, but I began to see her skin was different, as if she had African or some other blood that was not white. And her hair was paler than mine, thought it was in the largest style of an Egyptian wig I had ever seen. And she wore a dull bronze circlet on her head, and carried a bowl of gold. That night, she conducted rituals different from what had been done before, and with her was a mage, clothed in black.
“‘We have come,’ she said.
“‘You have come,’ we said.
“‘Because you called,’ she said.
“And said, ‘We called! We called! We called!’
“And then she said, ‘We came across the miles of ocean, and with only one of the implements, and yet it must be enough.’
“‘It is enough. It is enough.’
“‘We heard of your travail,’ and we echoed her.
“And as she spoke, I was not entirely sure she spoke in English, why would she? I could understand everything being said, and now she raised the bowl and cried, ‘Let the revenge be summoned!’”
“‘Let it be summoned!’
“‘Let the offering be made right!’
“‘It shall be made right!’”
“‘Let the old alliances be restored!’
“‘Restore them! Restore them!’
And as she she spoke, the other figure rose up in a black gown open at his magnificent brown chest. He was not tall, only as tall as she, and hooded, and now he threw back the hood, and he held out a dove in his hand, and the dove cooed. But, quickly, he snapped the neck, and to my surprise severed the head from the body with his hands, and the blood showered out on him, on the woman’s face, into the golden bowl. She spilled the blood as he burned the incense, and now the man called, ‘They shall come!’
“‘They shall come!’
“‘Oh, they shall come!’
“‘They shall come.’
“‘The vengeance shall come!”

 

[CharmedFan28]

That was an excellent portion! It was interesting and sad to read more of Chris's history. I am glad he made it to America and has a better life now then when he was a slave. Great writing and I look forward to more soon! I hope you are having a good night!

 

[ChrisGibson]

I am having a very laid back night. Thank you. A lot of stuff is about to happen, so just watch out. Things are going to be getting fairly interesting. People forget that the history of slavery and oppression included white people as well, the slavery in its early days, the oppression all ways. Remembering the Americas as they were would probably be very helpful,and seeing what Chris's life was like will explain who he is in the present.

 

[ChrisGibson]

TONIGHT WE MEET THE MAID AND THE MASTER AND LEARN MANY INTERESTING THINGS

Somewhere along the line, Chris stopped speaking, and Lewis stopped hearing. Chris began sharing, and Lewis began feeling. Somewhere in the telling, the midday light through blinds gave way to the blackness and fire, the humidity of Caribbean night.



There was feasting that night, and in the midst of the feasting. Ikixi brought me to the pale woman and red brown bald man.
“This is Chris,” he said. “He is filled with the fiery spirit.”
“Are you,” the man said, chewing on his meat.
“Am I what sir?”
“Filled with this… fiery spirit?”
“I do not know that I am,” I said.
“You are thin,” the man said. “Undernourished. Pale and green, but still here. Others like you would have died on the crossing. No, you are filled with spirit, else you would have died in the coming. Do you know what you have witnessed tonight?”
“The preachers would say the worship of the devil.”
“The preachers worship their own devil and call him Christ,” the man said. “And looking all around, you can se the fruits of his work. This plantation is well guarded. It was hard for us to get onto it.”
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“From far away,” he said, and the woman nodded. “We came because we were needed. We came to bring you freedom, or the opportunity for it. We came because blood is crying out.”
This last lost me. It all lost me, and I said, “Sir, who are you?”
“This is the Maid,” he said, gesturing to the woman, and she pressed her hands together and nodded. “And I am the Master.”



“The Maid and the Master,” Chris repeated what he had said long ago, and Lewis, that afternoon in the apartment said it too.


“But, what is the Maid? And what is the Master?”
“The Maid holds the blessing of the Clan, and the Master its Virtue. Do you know more than you knew before?”
“No, my lord.”
“I am not your lord,” he said. “I possess a name in this life, and as I may be here for a time, it behooves you to know it. I am Melek.”

Lewis said, “You knew me. As a Master. In the late 1600’s?”
“I have not finished the tale,” Chris said, “or begun it really. I am not telling our story yet, but I am telling my story. You are not in it yet. Not really.”


A few days later, the overseer was found dead in the creek a mile from the great house. He was white as a sheet and drained of all blood. But he was not the last to be found so. All through the town about us, well heeled white men were found dead, throats sometimes opened savagely, all the time drained, and one by one we began to slip off because there were no guards to secure the grounds. Ikixi had told me, “Wait, not this day.” And then again, “Not this day.” I trusted him, but was impatient. Finally, one day, while we worked, Ikixi said, “Gather everything you have. We leave tonight.”
“What we had was not much, the clothes on our back and Ikixi had managed to come with some few statues from his home, his gods with shallow large faces and small delicate lips and closed eyes. I had an old broken rosary. That night we fled into the hills and tripped over the bodies of dead white men. A few nights later, we heard the bells ringing as the plantation was set on fire. By then we were with Melek, and there was no sign of the Maid.
“You will have to learn to live in the hills,” he said. “The white men fear these hills, for they are full of power. Here, the Gods were called up, and from here they will be called to all the surrounding islands.”
“Did the Gods kill those men?” I asked.
“No,” said a new voice, and his manner was mild. He looked much like Melek or, indeed, Lewis, not a little bit unlike you.
“No,” he said, “the Gods did not kill them. That was me.”
“You?” I said.
He opened his mouth, and I saw the teeth, and I said, “Are you… some manner of devil?”
He closed his mouth.
“I am the manner of devil that has saved your life,” he said. “I am Kruinh. I am the blood drinker.”



“But where did the vampire come from?” Lewis asked. “Did… did Melek and the Maid create him? And where in the world did they come from?”
“The second question I cannot answer, but the first one,” Chris said, “No,. Melek did not create Kruinh, and by then the Maid was already long gone. Melek and the Maid had summoned Kruinh, and really this was not a summoning in the sense of… trying to conjure up a powerful spirit, trying to control something. They had called to him.”

“We made a compact long ago,” Kruinh told me. “Once Melek saved my life, and I gave him the signs to reach me from where ever he was, that I would come to him, or that I would others to him. This is the first time I have ever been to your… new world.”
“Not my new world,” I said suddenly.
“Well,” Kruinh raised an eyebrow, “you do have the fire in you.”
“I did not mean…” Chris said.
“You, a sorcerer,” Kruinh said to Melek, “and I, a blood drinker. This man has no fear.”
“I…” I opened my mouth, but realized that this was not untrue, that I did not have fear, and so I said, “I do have respect, though.”
I bowed, “Lord Kruinh.”
“I told you,” Melek said to Kruinh.
“I looked to Kruinh and Kruinh smiled.
“You did.”
“Chris,” Kruinh said to me, “You say this is not your new world?”
“I am a slave,” I said.
“You are a slave no longer.”
“This is the land of my slavery, and it is hot and wild, and I cannot love it.”
“Would you go back to England?” Kruinh asked, “I have family in England.”
The dark skinned man must have seen the look of surprise on my face. He smiled a little and simply said, “It is a big family, a large family.”
“Do they know…?” I asked.
“Know what?” Kruinh looked at me.
“That you are… what you are… a blood drinker?”
“And now he laughed and I said, “I do not understand what you are. I have heard tales of it.”
“What tales?”
“That, that there are creatures called ghouls, and half dead people who climb from graves, their minds gone, or their spirits sold, transformed, and that they drink the blood of the living. Perhaps turn some into what they are. You seem to be alive, sir. Sir, you are alive. But…what were you, who were you, when you were like me? Or were you never like me. Are you …? Are you a…?”
“Demon?” Kruinh supplied “The problem with you Christians—”
“I’m not a Christian.”
“You have grown up in a Christian world. Doubtless your family went to church. The god you no longer believe in is a Christian god, and so you are a Christian. It’s all you know, and in that world whatever lives outside of it is a demon or a devil. You cannot help yourself. And so, I suppose by that thinking, I am a devil. For I am no ghoul. I am not something that was turned into what I am now. I was always what I am now.”


“What?” Lewis said.
“Yes,” Chris said.
“But… how?”
“You must understand,” Chris said, “This was three hundred years ago. There was no Bram Stoker, no Dracula. There were no vampire movies and novels. The word was not even much in use. There were collections of stories about undead creatures. Because I had no real idea of what a vampire was, I was not as stumped by what Kruinh was about to say.


“I was not made into this. And I was not born in hell. I was born in the East. Of a mother and of a father. My father is dead; my mother lives. They were both blood-drinkers, just as I am, the two of them born from two noble families. My father’s father was also a blood drinker. As are my sisters.”
“Sisters?”
“And they are on this isle. Right now,. As are my cousins. Doing their duty, feasting. I am the head of that family, for my grandfather has taken his rest and passed the authority of our House to me.”
“You were… born a blood drinker?’
“Yes,” Kruinh said. “One can be born or one can be made.”


In the apartment, Lewis blinked in amazement.


“I was born. My wife was made. Her father was of us, but her mother was mortal. What makes us takes place in the womb. If a mortal man were to make a child with a woman of our kind, the child would… the term we use is… die in the womb. The child would be born as one of us. But if one of our kind were to be with a mortal woman this would not happen. It is the transformation of the blood, the transformation in the matrix that turns one from mortal to immortal. But both are human. We do not come from hell. We were all, originally, as mortal as you. This is why a mortal can easily be made immortal.”
As he said this I felt like he was tempting me, offering this to me.
Then he said, “Easy to become, hard to remain. Most who are changed live no longer than mortals. They are killed off quickly or, perhaps, give way to despair. It is no easy thing to get past your first century.”

 

[CharmedFan28]

You were right there is a lot going on now but its very interesting. Your take on vampire lore is cool. I am glad to hear even more about Chris's past. Great writing as usual and I look forward to more soon! Hope you have a nice week.