The chill winds of winter whip around this tower as it did through the mountains of my youth, howling, probing, trying to find an entrance. I settle deep into my huge leather chair and look out through the floor-to-ceiling window opposite me, staring into the pale grayness that precedes dawn. The cold has no power to affect me, yet I shiver, much like a child coming in from playing in the snow. Boris the wolfhound, my faithful companion through all my years, growls under the desk, shifting impatiently, his eyes lifting to mine, then to the floor in front of him. I stroke his rough fur softly, murmuring to him to calm both his nerves and mine. While the outcome here is almost a foregone conclusion, we both still tremble, like a master and hound at the beginning of a foxhunt.
Suddenly, a panel in the floor slowly and silently opens and a head pops cautiously through, surveying the dark room, but failing to notice me in the deep shadows behind my desk. I grip Boris tightly by the scruff of his neck, stilling his eagerness and at the same time reigning in my own impatience. He tenses for a moment, then relaxes, scraping one huge paw on the floor to make sure of his footing, then lies down.
The head turns into a whole body that pulls itself into the room. A large man becomes visible, but his bulk doesn't concern me, nor the shotgun tightly gripped in his hands. He looks around one more time, then reaches into the hole in the floor and pulls up a woman, much shorter than he is. She clutches a small gun in one hand, while the other tightly grips something that she does not want to lose. The man softly lowers the flooring back into place, then walks around the edge of the huge room we are in, examining the artifacts that line the walls. I have collected many such prizes in the course of my long life. He stops in front of a set of armor, running his hand over the detail work. I grin at his excellent taste. Briefly, I savior the memory of how I stripped that armor from a Knight Templar in old Jerusalem during the Crusades, while his heart was still beating.
The woman said something softly, then walked over to the door. Running her hands over the wall, she suddenly grunted and reached for the light switch. "Show time," I muttered to myself, lying my head on the desk just moments before she floods the room with light.
"Wha, who, who is there?", I stutter out, raising my head from the desk where I had just laid it the moment before. Scattered around me were papers and pens, calculators and ledger books, all the paraphernalia of a businessman. I brush my thinning white hair out of my eyes and stare around me. The hoped for results delight me. The man is standing off to my left with his shotgun pointing at my head, and the woman, who has moved directly ahead of me with both hands thrust out in front of her, paint a comical picture. One hand holds a small black handgun, while the other tightly grips a crucifix. She holds it out like a witch doctor brandishing a talisman against a demon, which is exactly what she thinks I am. I chuckle to myself for the briefest fraction of a second, then let a look of terrified alarm cross my face.
"What is the meaning of this?" I demand, starting to rise from my chair. The man shakes his head negatively and waves me back into my seat with the shotgun. I drop back quickly into my chair, giving the man all my attention, as I would if I truly feared his gun. Underneath the grim facade on his face, elation threatened to overwhelm him. The woman smiles as she pockets her gun, switching the crucifix to her right hand. She inches forward watching me closely.
"Do you deny who you are monster?" She hisses. Her voice is filled with hate and fear. I shiver deliciously, enjoying the wash of her emotions over me. I turn the shiver into a tremble and turn timidly towards her.
"I am Vladar DaGlac, a business man and owner of this tower you have invaded! Is this a kidnapping? I have no family to ransom me and my board of directors would sacrifice me in a second to take over the company. What do you want?" I manage to inject what I perceive to be the right amount of indignation and fear. I watch her carefully, one foot on Boris to keep him from leaping.
"Bah, you are a monster of the lowest kind! We know what you are! We have been tracking you for years, waiting for the right opportunity to finish your unnatural life. Do you deny that you are over 1000 years old?" She pauses for a moment, her emotions threatening to overcome her control.
She takes a couple of deep breaths, then waves off any reply I might have made and continues. "Silence animal, I actually expect nothing but lies from you. Do not move, lest we take your unholy life now!"
The growls in the back of my throat match the ones I feel in Boris through my leg. He shifts his weight, but I press him back to the floor. This entire sordid affair must run its course. After all this time, I have little enough to entertain me. I sit back in my chair and watch these two make their preparations.
The girl slips a small pack off her back, laying it on the floor, all the time keeping the crucifix between us. She flips it opens and extracts a beautiful knife, made of the purest silver, with a marvelous ivory handle, reflecting the light into glittering shards all over the room. Next she pulls out a set of wooden stakes and a mallet. I suppress a grin and glare at the woman.
"What witchcraft is this? What are you doing here? Do you intend to sacrifice me for some unholy rite? I will not go quietly! My employees will be here any second now. You had better escape while you can." I nearly shouted this last, starting to rise out of my chair, false rage clouding my face.
The man comes up on the balls of his feet, pushing the shotgun out in front of him in a perfect line with my head. The woman, startled, backs up a step and thrusts the crucifix at me. I drop back into my chair, clutching my chest, moaning slightly. The man flashes the woman a worried look, but keeps the gun on me. She grins and steps forward again.
"Vladar, your employees will not arrive for at least another hour, and you have left strict instructions not to be disturbed until noon. These reports you are working on are apparently fairly important to you." She gestures to the papers spread all over my desk, the chain of the crucifix swinging in a glittering arc. "Your sad devotion to your business will be your undoing. We will have destroyed you and be gone for several hours before anyone discovers you are dead." She pauses for a moment, thinking. "Indeed. I do not honestly know if there will be any evidence you are dead. Could cause quite a scandal, the chairman of GlobaLink disappearing from his office while doing the year end reports." Her eyes try to meet mine and I quickly look away, lest she sees the true horrors I keep leashed inside me. She mistakes this for fear and smiles, moving closer to the desk, which brings the man forward also.
"Old man, if man you are, I intend to extract information from you before I kill you. I need to know if more of your kind exists and where they may be found. Tell me the truth and do not make me take too long and I will kill you quickly. Screw around with me and I will bathe you in holy water." While saying this, she thrusts her hand into a pouch and pulls out a small crystal vial and sticks it under my nose, leaning across the desk. I recoil, though not from the water, but from her smell. Garlic, belladonna, horsehair and mistletoe assault my nose and cause me to wrinkle my face in disgust. Once again she mistakes my emotions for fear and she continues in confidence, vigorously shaking the vial one more time in my face, she then places it on the corner of the desk hoping to use it to keep me in check.
She pulls a thin paper package from her pouch. Stripping away the covering she revealed a syringe, complete with needle. She pops the top off the vial of water and expertly draws some of the water into the syringe, then leaves the rest of the water on the desk.
"Water blessed by the Holy See himself, though he had no idea what it was for."
Despite myself, their preparation impresses me. They came well equipped with all the tools for slaying a vampire, not relying on just one or two. I wave a timid hand at the man with the shotgun. "And his gun?" I quaver.
The man looks pleased and lowers the shotgun minutely, "Six shells, alternating solid silver shot made from a melted communion cup with solid cold iron slugs. Della has 12 shots in her gun, each one solid silver. The knife came from a collection in Albania that an old aristocrat family has been holding for over 700 years." This last surprises and pleases me! I thought I had recognize the knife, and if it is the one I think it is, then at least two others have tried killing me with it before. 'What goes around, comes around,' I think.
Della empties her pack, revealing more stakes made from at least seven different kinds of wood or metal including a silver and iron mix stake. Placed on the desk are silver shackles, followed by a large surgical saw, obviously for cutting off my head. A German manufacturer, one of the many subsidiaries I own through front companies, made the saw, a fact I am sure my two would-be killers are unaware of. The irony threatens to overwhelm me. The vibrations I feel through my leg from Boris are continuous now, like a tightly stretched wire in a high wind. I press him down, though it is getting harder to do. I concentrate on the sounds of the wind outside my tower and imagine myself once again in the mountains of my youth, which restores a measure of calm within me, though I fear I will not be able to keep this facade intact much longer.
"Just how did you get into my office anyway?" I ask, already knowing the answer, but knowing that they needed to talk. "Who betrayed me?"
Della says nothing, but the man leans against the desk with his shotgun held loosely. "Huh, that was one of the hardest parts, finding someone who knew how to sneak up on you here, inside of this fortress of yours. We tried for over a year to get the plans to this place, but building on a man-made island offshore from Chicago in the middle of Lake Michigan puts you effectively outside of almost all control."
I say nothing, but secretly I am pleased, thinking of the glass monster we were now in, and remembering my engineer's howls of protest when I first explained the plans. Ignoring certain laws of physics in construction, even in 2014, tends to be expensive. The island itself that the tower stands on took two years alone to complete. However, vast ambition, fueled by unlimited wealth, makes almost anything possible. Tour after tour took up the first year after the opening of the tower in 2022. I had tired of it almost immediately, but the engineers themselves never seemed to get enough of displaying the wonder they had helped build. My personal holding company owns the entire tower, which contained nothing besides my various businesses, though other companies had offered vast fortunes to just rent a single office. Over a third of the building is still unoccupied, whole floors empty of any type of life except random patrols and the monthly visit from the cleaning robots. The sheer size of the tower has precluded any one person knowing the whole design. The engineers that had been the most heavily involved in the construction have been reassigned to duties in other parts of the world or else off-planet on the lunar colony or one of the space stations. I had to draw up the plans myself that had led these two here. Having one of the Chosen play a disaffected employee had been the only other touch needed to get the plans into their hands.
The man is trying to watch Della and me at the same time, but continues his story, "Once a 'friend' sold us the plans to this place, it was easy to find an access passage into your office that by-passed all the normal check points. One of the hardest parts was getting all of our equipment here on those hovercraft that are the only traffic allowed here."
I noticed that one of the very ships he was talking about was approaching the tower even now, bringing in the first load of workers from Chicago. It skims over the choppy water with ease, a wake of spray clearly visible behind it on the gray lake. I shiver once again, for any kind of travel over water feels me with unease. I travel by closed jetchopper to and from the tower. It is my only true fear, and one I could never explain to anyone, even myself.
I bring my attention back to the man, who is watching Della spread out a drop cloth on the floor of my office. I truly appreciate her gesture, for at least she has no intentions of damaging or destroying the expensive rugs I have collected to cover different areas of the floor. I lift my foot slightly from Boris, who rises to his haunches and tenses his muscles. I find myself tiring rapidly of this game now and have decided to end it. I catch the man's attention by raising one hand. The gun snaps up with admirable quickness, but lowers almost immediately. He has dismissed me as a threat, a fatal mistake.
The next few seconds pass in a blur for Della and her muscle man, though they flow slowly for Boris and myself.
My faithful hound erupts from underneath the desk with a thunderous bark, his golden-red fur standing erect. He is a fully-grown Russian wolfhound; almost 1000 years old like myself, standing almost as tall as the woman when he is on all four feet and almost twice as heavy. Della has no time to do more than gape in surprise when Boris' front paws hit her in the chest and crush her to the floor. She still clutches the syringe full of water in one hand, but the crucifix in her other hand skitters away across the floor. A scream wells up in her throat, but Boris leans in and opens his mouth to reveal a set of jaws full of huge teeth. Her scream chokes off stillborn.
Meanwhile, I rise from my chair and leap at the man, my right hand reaching for his shotgun, my left hand going for his throat. Though more than a head and a half shorter than him and giving away well over one hundred pounds, I have no fear of the outcome.
The gun snaps out of his surprised hands, breaking at least two of his fingers and slams into the wall behind me where I casually toss it. The impact causes the barrel to bend almost in half and shatters the stock. My left hand digs deep into his throat and squeezes. Both of his hands fly to mine and pull, but to no avail, my strength is enormous. Once in my youth, to impress a young lady, I had raised a full-grown war-horse over my head and my strength has increased five-fold since then. The shock on his face is almost worth everything I have had to put up with this morning. I pull myself up and reach around to the back of his neck, probing with the fingers of my right hand, looking for the spot I have discovered through trial and error over the centuries. His scrabbling at my hand on his throat is lessening, as I have closed off his airway. Finding the spot I want, I jab my finger into the back of his neck, letting go of his throat at the same time. He collapses to the floor in a sodden heap.
I turn to Boris, who is growling softly, his paws on Della's shoulders, holding her firmly on the floor. She turns terrified eyes toward me and moans softly when she sees her partner on the floor. I cross over to her and rest my hand on Boris' head, softly stroking him. He raises his head, wiggling his whole body in pleasure at my touch. Della flexes her shoulder slightly and Boris immediately turns his glare on her again. I pulled slightly on his collar and he reluctantly backs off, stalking over to the man and sniffing him. Della remains on the floor, the hand holding the syringe now under one of my Persian rugs, out of sight. I pretend to not notice her obvious ploy.
I stand over her and laugh. "My dear, if one is almost one thousand years old, one did not get that old by being stupid. If you suspected I was who I truly am, you should have been even better prepared than you were, though I am impressed, you have been the best so far." I consider telling her about how she 'bought' the plans to my tower, but decide not to waste time. The help will be arriving soon and I must take no chances that an interruption will come.
I reach down to grab her shirtfront and she strikes like a coiled snake. Her speed impresses me, though I could easily have deflected the needle. It hits me directly over my heart and goes in its full length. She depresses the plunger injecting the full load of water into me. I stand grinning as she backs away from me stumbling over her backpack and falling to the floor.
Slowly I pull the syringe from my chest crushing it, the glass of the barrel shattering in my hand. I drop the pieces on the desk, picking up the vial of water at the same time. Turning back to Della, I find her half way to her feet, trying to draw her gun. Two quick steps bring me to her, where a quick twist relieves her of the useless toy. I drop it on the floor and grin, putting the vial of water to my lips and drinking the entire contents. I then put the crystal vial in my mouth and chew, swallowing the pieces, much to her shock.
"How did you do that? You should be rolling on the floor, screaming in agony or else dissolved into a cloud of smoke. What went wrong?" She slowly backs up with each question, angling towards the access panel where she entered the room. I watch her closely, deciding not to tell her the panel locked when they closed it.
"Over the centuries, knowledge of my kind has been impossible to hide, try as we may. When discovered, either through carelessness or simple fate, it is best if a way to kill us can be 'discovered.' Over the years, several different 'methods' have been detailed on how to kill a vampire, but all are useless. You see my dear; we truly are immortal, for the only way to kill a vampire to for another vampire to slay him. Once or twice in a century, it becomes necessary to kill one of the brethren who have become either too bold or crazy to tolerate. We are just as susceptible as anyone else to mental illnesses, it is just that we have centuries to develop our 'disease' and likewise centuries to recover. Since less than 10 of the Chosen have the knowledge to create more of our kind, it is a decision not taken lightly to kill one of us. However, no mortal has ever slain a vampire." I stop, as she reaches the panel in the floor. She stops moving, watching me closely. I sigh deeply, hungry for her, though not as she thinks I am. Boris moves to stand beside me, rubbing against my leg, his hunger evident also.
I turn to the man on the floor, knowing that Della is reaching for the panel on the floor, only to find it locked. I pick him up easily, putting him in my chair at the desk. Della is grunting now, pulling on the panel. I turn to her.
"Look you stupid bitch, it's locked. You should have been able to tell that with the first pull. Your every move has been watched since you got here and the only question I had was whether you two would move today or would wait." I have been waving an ammonia capsule under the man's nose the whole time I talk to her and finally a soft groan whimpers from his lips.
I flip his large combat knife out of its sheath. After a few quick slashes with the knife, his upper body clothing lies on the floor. Strewn everywhere are weapons, including a garrote made of silver wire and two spikes made of gold. Amazement fills me at the variety of ways that have made their way into the legends as methods to kill a vampire
A quick glimpse shows that Della has moved to the door, only to find it locked also. She stands with her back against the carved oak panels of the double door, one hand still gripping the unmoving handle. She watches as I pick the man up and lay him on the desk, first cleaning it off with one sweep on my arm. Papers flutter everywhere and when one touches her foot she jumps as if it is alive. I grin, she is almost ready and my anticipation is peaking.
Moving so that I am clearly visible to Della, I start running my hand up and down the man's chest. I watch Della's face closely, waiting for the right moment to start. Her terrified eyes go from my slowly moving hand to my face and back again in erratic jerks, slightly faster with each repetition. Suddenly her face tenses as a scream rises from her throat. I time my move to match her scream.
My fingers stiffen into a hard blade and dive into the man's chest. He has barely
re-awakened and his bellows of agony mixes with Della's screams of anguish and Boris' howl of pleasure. I can barely contain myself as I hold the man's beating heart in my hand, holding it up so that Della can see it. Her emotions mix with his, washing over me, much like being immersed in a vat of fine wine. Della's terror, mixed with his pain, gives me a high no drug can ever match, a pleasure no amount of sex can match. Transported to the edge of ecstasy, I hover there for as long as possible before allowing myself to fall completely into its embrace. My scream mixes with the others. Each time has the sameness of the previous feedings, yet each is deliciously different, giving me a unique pleasure of which I never tire. I quiver as his heart slowly stops beating and Della's screams taper off into half-crazed whimpers. Boris is lying on the floor, curled into a fetal ball.
I drop the now still heart. There is surprisingly little blood. After all, I have done this for centuries. Sometimes a huge gout of blood is necessary for properly terrifying the victim, but no such crudity was needed here. I am sweating and my legs tremble. I am still breathing only with a conscious effort.
Della is on her knees, her head almost on the floor, weeping, with an occasional whimper that threatens to turn into crazed hysterical laughter. I walk over to her and gently put my bloody finger under her chin, raising her eyes to meet mine. She shudders at the aftermath of pleasure in my eyes and tries to turn away, but I will not let her.
"Now you know the secret, now you know what we truly feed on." She closes her eyes for a second, squeezing them as if she can squeeze out the image of her man dying with his heart in my hand. She opens them again and for the first time I notice they are blue, the light blue of ice in the early spring melts. She is beautiful, but she is also meat, food for my table. She shudders and I let her lift her head off my finger.
"How could no one suspect all these centuries? How have you kept this secret for all this time?" She looks around me and I can tell from her face that Boris has finally gotten to his feet and is staggering towards us.
"Legends, my dear, are wonderful things, if one knows how to manipulate them. Living on emotions is a hard concept for people to grasp, for there is no physical substance, nothing one can put in their mouth and consume. So when some of the crazier brethren started bloodletting, we let them go for awhile, making sure the general public found out about them. When we killed them, the legends on how to slay us also started. Taken together, they form the best armor we have against having our true selves known. If it were ever discovered that no mortal has ever slain a vampire, there would be fear and loathing such that you curious little monkeys might eventually find a way to kill us. Thinking that we live on blood, when our true victims are found dead, but with all their blood, none suspect the Chosen."
Della had stopped crying. "What of me?" she whispers. Her face is a study in terror.
I move back into the center of the room, moving the desk with ease and pulling up the panel concealed underneath it. A hole leads into the darkness, no steps or ladder visible. She can not see it from where she is, but I am sure she can sense its depths, for it goes clear to the bedrock that my man-made island sits on. I pick up the man's body and drop it down the hole with no ceremony. With a choked cry, Della starts forward, then stops at Boris' growl.
"Unfortunately, I have no further use for you. I obviously can not let you go, nor can you ever give me the emotions I need to feed ever again. It is a thing that none of the Chosen understand, but once a person has given his emotions to a feeding, they can never be used for food again. Fortunately, we feed rarely, with decreasing need as we advance in years. Newly awaken brethren need to feed monthly or even more often. On the other hand, I feed but once a year and sometimes must remind myself that I am hungry. I have too many other things to occupy my mind. We don't not starve to death if we do not feed, just slow down until we are in an almost coma like state. Younger brethren, after having been discovered feasting, have stopped feeding and have entered this state. Some have not been found until centuries later and several have just disappeared, lost in some forgotten cave or dungeon."
Moving faster than Della can react, I grab her and hold her over the hole, one hand twined in her shirtfront, the other forcing her to look down, letting her see the unending depths of her tomb. She tries to pull back and struggles in my grasp. I let her slip for second, then tighten my grip until I hear cloth start to rip. She gasps in pain and slumps, hoping I will lessen my hold.
She turns her head to me. "Why? What drives you? I would have thought that the boredom of centuries of existence would have driven you to take your own life." She searches my face, sure I will not answer her, but I surprise both of us by responding.
"Power my dear, sheer unadulterated power. This is my personal quest. At one time I thought I could only achieve this through military conquest. I spent decades and centuries during different periods trying to consolidate my power. Yet you humans, with your propensity for war and killing, always managed to mess up my plans, destroying years of planning and plotting. There had to be a better way and I believe I have finally found it. Business my dear, is a much more potent force than war, much more profitable and easier on the population. I can outlast any competition. Acquiring wealth is a much more civilized game than war and I am winning this game easily. I intend to control the entire world some day and the entire universe if we ever travel beyond this small solar system. Those Chosen that do not cooperate with me meet with nasty 'accidents' and those that do have a life of ease and power they never knew existed. We are never the political leaders of any nation, but the business leaders of multi-national corporations, the power behind the throne, as it were.. You could never grasp what it means to us or what our long-range plans are. So, like all useless things, you must be disposed of!"
I lean further over the hole, dropping her as I stopped speaking. Her screams reverberated down the walls of the shaft for several seconds, until they tapered off in the distance. Quickly picking up all their equipment, I use the remnants of their clothing to clean my hands, then toss everything down the hole, retaining only the crucifix and the silver knife. Boris romps around the room as if a pup and I must confess a spring has entered my step as well. Soon the office is returned to normalcy. Seating myself at my desk, I check the time, then open the drawer that holds my phones, dialing my secretary to ask her to step in for a moment.
Once again, Boris curled up around my feet, snoring, his feet twitching in an imaginary chase. Brenda enters the office, her bright smile completing a good morning. She is young, bright, and extremely beautiful. Yet she has one more endearing quality that makes her a delight. In her heart of hearts, Brenda still believes in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. All things are bright and beautiful in her world, and the good guys ALWAYS wins. She has a good job that pays extremely well, working for an old man who makes no demands on her. Her life is good and I make sure it stays that way. Brenda has found a young man as idealistic as she, and they have fallen in love, something else I have encouraged. My thousandth birthday is coming up in three years and I intend to have a feast fit for an emperor. When I have my celebration, only three people will be invited. Only one will leave the room.
I give Brenda the tape of the letters I have dictated and she goes back to her office, leaving behind a small bit of sunshine. Moments later the ringing of the blue phone jars me out of my daydreams. I listen for a moment, then respond in confidence.
"Yes Mr. President, I have made all the arrangements for you and the Prime Minister to come to my estate next month. Yes sir, I am looking forward to your visit, I anticipate an excellent time for all of us. Yes, sir, have a nice day."
Replacing the phone, I scribble some notes on a pad. Power, pure power.
I smile.
Bio: John works for a well known computer company in their tech support section. He has played most RPG games that have ever been conceived, and especially enjoys AD&D, Price of Freedom and BattleTech.
E-mail: jonjack@techie.com
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