Authors: Garon Whited
You can feel your way.
How?
Follow the walls and floors and in time you will learn to not need them.
I had my touching spirit-coils flow over the walls and floors, like spreading rivulets in a wind, coiling like the vines of a creeping plant up the legs of chairs, over equipment, over and through the staff and the patients…
Pain, sickness, misery… but desire for life… hunger for living… the need to survive…
there
the quiet despair and agony of the dying…
I touched, slid over… his spirit… felt him coughing blood… six floors down, in the emergency room with knife wounds in his chest… the pain of the loss of wife and son… the despair and the wish to escape it all… the kitchen knife and the movements… not even a decision… just an inevitable result…
He quieted as I drew gently on the higher places of his spirit, the consciousness of thought and feeling. He ceased to think, mind cycling down into a quiet lassitude, and I could feel that pain, a shadow of it, and knew I too might long for death if I were as lost and alone. I understood his pain. I worked deeper, as I had seen Sasha do, tugging lightly at layer after layer, peeling his life away gently, eating each one and tasting its joys, its cruelties, its triumphs and its failures.
At the last, there was only the spark of his living body that remained, and it strained to reach out, to touch the darkness that flowed in and around him. I wrapped it in a web of black tendrils and it came free of his flesh, vanishing into me.
I stood up, fulfilled and at peace. I helped Sasha up and we walked out of the hospital. Death was content.
Sunrise was a living hell. We both writhed and twisted in the darkness of a deep room in the house. All that regenerating came back to demand its price on mortal flesh. We sweated yellow-grey foulness, convulsed and shivered in misery. If anything had been in our stomachs, I’m sure we would have lost it. We dry-heaved until we choked on our own throats. We could feel muscles quivering like the strings of a violin or the cables of a bridge in a high wind.
When it was over, we lay there, panting, stinking, half-choked and waiting for the twitching to stop. It did, several minutes later, and I lifted myself on my arms.
“Is it always that bad?” I rasped. I sounded like a marathon winner at the finish line. Felt like one, too.
“Always, when you have been sorely wounded,” she answered, not bothering to rise.
“Reason enough to avoid it. And if we’d still been wounded when the sunrise came?”
“You can die from wounds not yet healed.”
I nodded. “Let’s clean up and call a contractor.”
“After a nap,” she agreed. “And breakfast. And a shower.”
“In reverse order.”
“Fireworks are touchy things, sometimes.”
The supervisor—Ted—looked over the burned and blasted front face of the house. In daylight, it looked worse than it was, but it still wasn’t good. A large portion of the front had burned, and several holes in the wall gaped like acne in the front face—overshots from the spray of explosive bullets. I had driven around in the yard to put tire-track slashes at the scene and obscure footprints, then built a bonfire in the grass. I claimed I had foolishly—and drunkenly—decided to build a bonfire for a weenie roast and tossed a box of miscellaneous fireworks into it.
“Only when you light ’em,” he observed. “Ever thought you need a keeper?”
I shrugged. “I’ve considered it. But she was out last night.”
Ted shook his head. “Well, we can get the front face fixed fairly fast. The holes are going to take a little longer, unless you want the whole façade taken off and replaced. At least the busted windows are no problem. What else was there?”
“I was interested in a fire extinguisher system. And some aluminum siding.”
“No problem. I get a lot of demand for that—antique houses like this don’t always age well, and the siding keeps ’em in good shape quite a while.”
I looked at the men and ladders as they cut away portions of the house. “Yes, absolutely. When do you think we can get on that?”
“We can get most of the structural work and the paint done today, no problem. The siding we can get to work on tomorrow. The extinguisher will need a lot of poking around inside and some details worked out—but I can get a guy out here to do most of the footwork today.”
“Good. Do it. I’ve got some insulation for the siding on order. New stuff. So get the groundwork on that, too—but carry on with the fire extinguisher.”
Ted rubbed his jaw. He was a long, lean man with a calculating eye. “This is going to be expensive, you know. It’s a big house, and halon isn’t cheap.”
I nodded. “I know, but the wife has some antique furniture in there. Water damage or fire damage, it’d still be shot. Give me a quote this afternoon and I’ll negotiate with you. Perhaps you’d like to join us for dinner to discuss it? My wife would love to hear about the home improvements.”
“Wife?”
“Yes. She’s inside, doing some internet shopping. We decided we needed a new car, so she’s looking over some imports.”
Ted eyed me again, obviously considering that—and liking the thought. I could almost see dollar signs whirling around his head.
“Sure. What time?”
“About seven. We’ve got some things to do in town.”
“Fine.”
I left him out there and went inside. Sasha was looking over the details of covert armored cars on the Web. The graphics were taking some time to load, but the cable installer was due today, along with the cable modem. She was looking forward to it.
“My lord? Have you seen what they can do with a pickup truck?”
“Hmm?”
I looked it over. It was a nice-looking truck with a closed-in bed. It was also impervious to an AK-47, had blinding lights, tear gas dispensers, electrified exterior, oil and smoke dispensers, and a retractile .50-caliber Browning machine gun. It also got about twenty-six miles to the gallon on puncture-proof tires and had a top speed of slightly over one-twenty.
“How much do they want for it?” I asked, interested despite myself.
“It’s a concept vehicle. I’m not sure it’s for sale. But these companies offer cars and SUV’s that look perfectly normal, except they’ve been redone…”
I looked. I was impressed. The wreckage of a car after two shoulder-mounted missile hits was ugly… but apparently the occupant survived with only minor wounds.
“Want to sell the cars we have and buy some new ones?”
“After last night, my lord? That is a jest, is it not?”
“Yes, it is. Order them. Once they get here, we’ll get rid of the old ones. Oh, and we’re having the contractor for dinner, tonight.”
She smiled at me, eyes fluttering, teasing. “Oh, thank you. He looks tasty.”
“Over to
have
dinner, I should say. I intend to persuade him to avoid gouging us.”
“We are wealthy, my lord.”
“And one stays that way by not spending it all.”
“A point. But wealth does not solve all problems, my lord.”
I clicked on the body armor site I had bookmarked earlier. Concealed synthetic spider silk vests. Quite nice.
“No,” I agreed, “but it changes them into problems that can
be
solved.”
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9
TH
I
went in to the university and let them know I was going on an extended leave of absence; I might not make it back, but I’d keep them posted. They didn’t like it. Nuts to them. The administration is just there to make life difficult, anyway. I felt bad about dumping my students, though. Even as I was doing it, I knew I was going to miss them. I don’t much care for the administration, but I love
teaching.
My students are interesting and interested; that’s what makes teaching fun. As it is, Archie will probably take over my classes.
Ick. Poor kids. Not that there’s anything wrong with Archie… he’s just so… so… boring. So dry. Monotone. Having him for an instructor is like watching broccoli grow, but less entertaining. He would never show up with overalls and pushcart, pretending to be a curious janitor. He wouldn’t stand by the door and hand out super-cooled candy roses on Valentine’s day.
Poor kids. I hate having to leave them like that, but I won’t have them nearby when some lunatic throws a bomb at me.
Back home, I studied magic in my off moments. Sasha and I both shopped. We redid the house almost to the frame—and even the framing in spots. It still looks like a fine old example of an expanded colonial home. It’s a fortress. And that makes me edgy.
It’s been nearly two months, and the Fist hasn’t so much as lobbed a Molotov cocktail at us. I’m certain they haven’t forgotten us; they’ve lost too many men and too much equipment to take us lightly. I have the feeling when they come back—and they will, I’m sure of it—they will
not
be fooling around with a mere assassination. I have mental images of a full-fledged military assault on the house. And the concern it might work.
They won’t find it easy. There are a lot of nonflammable gases that are also toxic, and a halon system can be rigged to draw from other pressure bottles besides the halon tanks. For example, there’s something called vomit gas, used for riot control, and it goes right through a gas mask. Once you toss your cookies in there, the mask is pretty much useless. If it’s mixed with something like, oh, mustard gas or tear gas, someone is going to be in for a bad day.
Sasha and I will get better. Normal people won’t. I wonder what effect nerve gas has on a vampire? Not that I’ve managed to make any contacts that can get nerve gas, but I keep my ears open. There are people in the chemistry department who used to work for the military.
There are fire extinguishers in every room, and everything semi-permanent—drapes, couches, carpet—has been treated with a fire retardant. The siding is up over the resin-bonded Kevlar “insulation.” The motion sensors and the infrared scanners are all emplaced and tied in to the security system. The windows have been replaced with double-paned bulletproof windows, with security locks. I’ve bought a trio of hostile, nasty, well-trained attack dogs and introduced them to the house and grounds—it took one night and some training, but they got the message about who was boss in no uncertain terms. I also didn’t use any single security company; I tasked out specific jobs to different companies. Anything I could install myself, I did.
There’s a whole lot more, but I won’t go into it.
When I said the house was a fortress, I wasn’t kidding around.
So, by stages, I relaxed. Mostly. At the back of my mind I knew the Fist wasn’t done, but aside from keeping a little caution in mind, I pretty much left them to their own devices. When Sasha and I went out in the evening to feed, we did so in a car that looked perfectly normal, but was such a marvel of high-tech defenses a tank would have to shoot it twice and then run over it to kill the occupants. We exercised all caution and precaution while we were out of the house; when we returned, we checked everything carefully before relaxing again in our safe haven.
But I kept expecting that quiet click in the lock, or the faint spark of a wire being crossed to bypass security. I hated it, but what could I do about it? Chase them down and beat them up? Chase
who
down? Where? It’s rather pointless to go checking in the phone book! “Hunters: Vampire.” No listing. I looked.
So what was I to do? Not a lot. Just sit and take it, mainly. But it’s hard to get any fun out of life at all when you’re on guard twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s impossible to enjoy yourself when you
know
someone is just waiting for the chance to kill you. It rankled, and I worked on doing something about it.
A lot of the magic I chose to study was focused on divinations. It included a lot of exercises for expanding the native powers of the dayblood and increasing the sensitivity of the tendrils. With practice, a dayblood with any talent for it could learn to dimly see, sometimes even hear, whatever the tendrils touched. But these astral tentacles made the direction and focusing of some spells simplicity itself.
For example, casting a scrying spell—a spell to see a distant place—has as its main difficulty adequately specifying an exact location. The trouble isn’t to see that far away; the trouble is to see
only
the place you want! See too much at once and your mind refuses to process it all. It’s hard to block out most of the universe and still see just the little bit you want—rather like trying to see the Sun’s corona around the edge of a coin.
But reach out to the place with a tendril—or hold on to something there and walk away from it, letting the tendril unreel behind you—and you can send a spell back down along it, almost perfectly directed. As a result, it becomes child’s play for a competent magician to pull off a sight-and-vision spell.
Not that I was a competent magician, but I was working on it. Sasha commented on it one evening at dinner.
We’d taken to calling our normal meals by their proper names—breakfast, brunch, lunch, tea, dinner—and our evening meal, if we chose to have one, as either a “liquid lunch” or a “midnight snack.” It was still surprising to me that a dayblood should require food
and
blood… but I suppose it shouldn’t. We have the advantages of both mortals and immortals; I guess it’s only fair we have some of the disadvantages of both.
I had just drawn the salt across the table, without really thinking about it. She arched an eyebrow.
“Practicing, my lord?”
“Practicing what?”
She nodded at the saltshaker. “That.”
I probably blushed. “Oh. Yes, I suppose. I wasn’t really paying attention.” I can handle small objects with naked grey matter. It’s a talent
that’s been growing rapidly. My capacity isn’t all that high, but I handle small things with nary a problem, now. Maybe it’s that whole turning-into-a-vampire thing.
I still haven’t managed any of the larger spells for moving things around, personal levitation, or the like. Someday, someday…
“Do, please, pay attention when you are out in public.”
“Of course.”
We ate for a while in silence before she spoke again.
“You seem distracted, my love. What troubles you?”
“Oh… nothing, really.”
She smiled and came around the table to stand behind me. She placed her hands on my shoulders and stroked them.
“You were not so tense some weeks ago. Did you think I had not noticed?”
“I didn’t want to bother you.”
“And I love you for it, but now you must share, for I have brought it forth.”
I nodded and put one of my hands on hers.
“Dear, we have what some people might call a strategically disadvantageous position.”
“I do not understand. We occupy a position of strength.”
“True enough. But while we are as secure as I can make us within the bounds of the law—or mostly within the law—I have a major misgiving. We don’t have anyone to strike back at.”
“The Fist—” she began.
“—is a nebulous thing,” I answered, gently. “Where do we go to hit them? Who do we ask? How do we find them?”
“Is that what you have sought so in the library?”
I nodded. “Some sort of spell to seek them, certainly. I haven’t found what I need, yet; I don’t even know enough to be able to find out more.”
“I am sorry. I do not know enough of them to aid you.”
“It’s okay. It’s a problem I’m working on. There’s a spell for making a mirror show you random things you need to see—sometimes the future, sometimes the past, sometimes the present. It’s unpredictable, and hard to do. I’ve been hesitating to do it; it requires a lot of energy.”
“Long ago, my lord, you spoke of sacrifices as being more practical for some magical operations? I do not recall exactly…”
I nodded, then leaned my head forward and let her work on my neck.
“According to the notes, it’s more efficient to cut out the middleman—me—when shoving power into a spell. If I eat it first, I can’t get all of it back. If I kill something as a sacrificial victim for the spell, it all goes straight into the spell. See, our personal energies are used to gather up magical power—it’s around us all the time. We just expend our personal energy to manipulate the magical field. That magic is then formed into the structure of a spell. But we can also pour raw energy—life energy, the stuff we usually consume—into the spell directly. If the ‘magical energy field’ of the planet were stronger, it might be more worthwhile to feed and then grab more of the surrounding magical energy, but there should be a point of diminishing returns—”
“Then must we find someone for this task?” she interrupted, cutting off my incipient lecture. Her fingers moved down my neck and shoulders to help me loosen up.
“No, but I’m going to need a cow, I think. If I really knew what I was doing, it might not need something that big, but it’s a worry I don’t want on a new spell.”
“Aye. I will see to it that you have one.”
“Thank you.” I rolled my head back and forth while she worked on my shoulders. “That’s nice, by the way.”
“I should hope so; you always liked it.”
I chuckled. There were times, sitting in her little shrine-like room, I wondered if she could be right. He did look a lot like me. Or I him. Or we. Oh, hell, you know what I mean.
One of the things I hadn’t done yet was pick up that sword. I wanted to; my hands itched to hold it. It looked like a
beautiful piece of work—rainbow tones in the wavy Damascus striations along the length of it convinced me that someone had lavished a lot of care into it.
Sasha told me it was also somewhat magical; he once cast spells on it, and she had seen it on fire before. I could sense something in the metal when I tried. It was something buried deep within the steel, almost like it was asleep. Something named “Firebrand,” or so the nameplate on the shelf implied.
I wasn’t afraid of it, exactly, or not entirely. I was intensely curious! But I was also… cautious. I was learning there were a lot of magical things in the world, and I had a healthy respect for the possible dangers, thanks to my prior life. Many of these things wouldn’t kill me… but there are worse things than dying.