And, with a sound that echoed in cavernous tones, a deep voice rose in the darkness.
“You seek to drown me out, Braze. There where each day the clamor of puny men hides you from me, silencing my council.”
The man did not answer and the twisting runes continued their serpentine dance across his skin.
“So hear me now and listen well. Ware the female. No good will come of her.
“But, more than this, listen to your instincts and prepare yourself for battle. Powers have begun to stir and when subtlety turns to action, I believe our very existence shall hang in the balance.”
Brazier Abraxis shrugged in response then said, “Have you not prepared me? Have you ever ceased to teach me despite all that comes between us?”
Has even death itself posed a barrier to you and your cursed lessons?
The voice sighed with the sound that wind makes when whistling through the teeth of a bleached skull.
“Aye...so I have, Braze. So why do you continue to defy me in these petty ways? Why would you deny me?”
The man did not reply for a moment, weighing his words before saying, “I would never deny you...father.”
Then he turned away as the moon slipped from the clouds at last and the reflection of it in his eyes went from rich amber to golden yellow.
He tilted his head back and howled to the sky, wishing that his brethren would take up the call. Desiring more than anything that he did not stand alone when he was meant to lead, meant to be lord to his fellows.
The howl grew to a roar as he withheld himself no more, allowing at last the savagery held fiercely at bay, loosing the leash of his self-imposed mastery.
The howl rose far above the city and its sound was not that of a man, but that of a beast.
Its sound was that of a wolf.
2
Lust and Lies
He slowly stepped forward, rolling his foot from heel to toe, easing his weight down before lifting up the opposite foot to do the same. The boots he wore were light and flexible with crepe soles. To keep the soft rubber from squeaking upon wet surfaces, the man had powdered them well with blackened talc.
The rest of his attire was just as carefully considered. Loose, soft, allowing free movement; while anything that might have made noise had been cut away to be replaced by simple buttons. It made for a slipshod appearance, but was precisely what he deemed necessary for absolute silence.
A long trench coat rode upon his shoulders. Unbelted, open, it hung down to mid-calf.
His patience was infinite, his concentration tightly focused. His success and his life depended on it.
Another step forward, all in slow motion, then low, almost lost in the darkness that enveloped him, the man heard glass shards crunch under his heel.
He froze, waiting.
But, the only response was silence, broken only by the slow dripping of water somewhere within the derelict building. He could see nothing moving although the only illumination came from moonlight slipping through broken out windowpanes, threaded through with the sinister shadows of a leafless tree outside.
It was not yet autumn, the man reflected, which meant that the tree had died or was dying. A sad thing, to his mind.
But death comes for us all, and for some, not soon enough.
He let his breath out slowly through pursed lips, then resumed his excruciating progression through the room.
Three paces further, he paused, then heard once more the unmistakeable sound of glass shards underfoot. Only, this time the sound came from several paces behind him.
He whirled, his trench coat billowing about him, and saw the visage of an angel.
She stood perfectly still, her skin an ivory white, her eyes downcast.
Like a silky mane, her black hair fell in a cascade to drape her shoulders. Then, she tipped her face up to reveal eyes of crystalline blue. Full lips beckoned to him, lusciously red, and with a half smile, she raised an unblemished hand to blow the man a kiss.
“Who goes there?” she asked with a voice meant for seduction, a velvet sound in the man’s ears, “Is it someone bearing good will, come to share in my vigil; or is it an ill wind that blows sad tidings from afar?”
Instead of giving answer, the man widened his stance, then turned his hands so that the palms faced forward before saying, “As you can see, I am the bearer of nothing. You might say, even, that I have come to offer you nothingness.”
The woman flinched at his words, her beauty marred by a momentary twisting of her mien, then her features softened once more.
“You cannot mean to harm me, dear man. Tell me that it is not so.”
The man shrugged, then like a magic trick, in a movement that seemed to defy the laws of time, he held a shining short sword in the darkness. His trench coat rippled as it fell back down to cover the simple leather scabbard belted at his waist.
Her voice came to him like the hissing of a great cat.
“No blade can harm me, mortal fool. And I see no picket hewn from witches’ wood. You are woefully unsuited to do so much as scratch me.”
“That is where you are wrong, blood drinker,” he replied. “For this is an arm that has known the blessings of holy men a thousand times over for more than a thousand years. It is proof enough against those such as you.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“Then let us put it to the test,” was his reply.
Without warning, her perfect, porcelain features twisted into vulpine lines and her blood red lips peeled back from a mouth that held far too many teeth. There was venom in her gaze as she flew at him like a harpy out of legend.
But the man stood ready. He stood with the confidence of a righteous man, a man of faith.
For thirty years, he had prepared for moments like these. For thirty years, he had swung that blade while hidden deep in the dark, forgotten catacombs of an abbey. Through the tutelage of an old man who had seen far more horrors than any man should ever seen, the boy that he was learned the arts of wielding a blessed sword and that it was nothing less than divine will that guided his hand.
A boy no longer, the man felt the calm that always filled him in this moment, a cool wind that slipped down the corridors of his mind.
And with a might born of faith, the sword flashed argent in the darkness.
A beautiful face that held eyes of clear sapphire came nose to nose with that of the man.
Then, the blazing fury washed out of her, all violence replaced as her lips formed a circle of surprise.
“But no blade can harm me,” she whispered in the darkness.
The man replied, “This one...can.”
He twisted the sword that impaled the vampire at her waist, then watched intently as it went about its sacred task.
Minute cracks ran through the blood drinker’s skin, tracing like wildfire as they flowed like lightning. In an instant, they had covered her over in jagged lines that hissed in tiny, sputtering flames.
She arched back from him, but he was without mercy. Unable to free herself, she did what all monsters did who had known the bite of that blade. She screamed with a sound that went beyond that of men’s hearing, a sound that tipped over the last few panes of glass in the building’s windows.
And as they crashed down to shatter to fragments, the blood drinker folded in upon herself, collapsing inward to finally drift to the floor in a heap of hot ash.
The man expelled a long exhalation of air, the smoke of the vampire’s demise wafting from his nostrils in lazy curls. And with a shrug, he slipped the still warm sword back into the scabbard hidden under his trench coat.
He kicked at a few embers still glowing upon the floor, then, all need for silence at an end, he strode from the room.
What a shame, he thought as he ran his hands over the tree’s bark.
An otherwise healthy oak, from what he could make out in the darkness, yet death had surely come knocking.
The man stood in the shadow of the abandoned brick building from which he had just come, the question of the dead tree heavy upon his mind, when a voice spoke from somewhere behind him.
“Even the mightiest shall fall one day, whether it be by will or chance.”
The man stiffened then relaxed again, his hand drifting back away from the pommel of his sword. The voice was known to him.
“The fairest and the most foul both,” he responded.
There was a rustling as something shifted behind him. Something very large. Or someone.
“Did she die well, the sweet Jacqueline?” asked the voice.
As was his habit, the man shrugged then turned to face the voice in the darkness.
“Why are you helping me? They’re your own kind, yet here you are again showing me where and when.”
There was only the creaking of dead branches to answer him for a time, then, “What do you know of the great flood, little man? The Deluge meant to cover the world over. What was the true reason for its coming?”
The man nodded. He was at ease with scripture. His upbringing had nearly drowned him in it.
“The Flood was to cleanse the Earth of sin.”
“But whose sin? That of men...or, of someone...something else?”
The man smiled as he thought he knew where the voice was leading him.
“You’re talking about the get of the fallen. The beings created when certain angels came among men and women in carnal knowledge.”
Again, there was the sound of something. Like boulders sliding along the ground.
“‘The get of the fallen’...it is well that you understand at last just what it is you profess to eradicate from the world, human.
“You think me but a vampire, like she was. But, they are lesser things, mere shadows of the greatness that once walked the earth. I am the last of these. And when my travails are at an end, I shall bow down before you so that you might strike with your hallowed blade.