King's Blood: Vampire Descent (A Serial Novel, Part 4) (10 page)

“Jack!” yelled Ted, as he entered the hall, dirty and with pieces of bread stuck in his beard. “Where did that double-crossing jack-off go?” He scanned the room quickly, looking for Milton.

“
He left,” I said. “He’ll be back. You can try decking him then.”

Ted sat down next to me on the bench. “I trusted him, you know?” he said, with disappointment in his voice.

I turned my back away from the two men who weren’t watching our every move but were mindful of us. Ted gave me a bro hug and began speaking with in a light murmur, looking back at Kai and his companion to see if they were listening to our conversation with calculated intent. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

“
I know, but you’re not going to believe what Milton revealed to me.”

“
What? That he could talk to you in your dreams?”

“
How do you know?” I asked.

“
Duh, how do you think we rescued your ass?”

“
Okay, then tell me how everything went down,” I asked in a low voice.

“
Okay, so I show up at the café and I notice a small, petite woman sitting in the back of café with a 49ers hat like you said.”

“
Jenny?”

“
Yeah, at first I didn’t know who she was, then she took of her hat and I was like,
Holy Shit
, you’re that girl, dude, whatever who was at the club last night.”

“
Okay, go on,” I said, as I took a quick peek over my shoulder.

“
Anyway, so I asked,
is this a shakedown
?” Ted paused and took a small breath. “She’s like,
no, I know your friend is a vampire.
”

“
Let me guess, you told her I was. You didn’t protect my identity?”

“
Really? You took a large bite from her neck. You were either one of two things that night: A vampire or a some psycho who belonged in a mental institution. Why would a fine chap like me hang out with crazies?”

“
Okay, keep going.”

“
She then tells me how she knows of vampires in Southern China, and how they come to the club you and I went to, and that she wanted to pay me and for you to let you bite her one more time, and to reveal why your bites are so addictive, and then wanted to know how she healed so quickly.”

“
So, you were smart and didn’t say a word, right?” I asked, with doubt in my voice.

“
She offered me $50,000 for a meeting with you.”

I closed my eyes, shook my head, and paused without saying a word. My best friend and confidant had sold me out for a mere $50,000. “My trust is only worth $50,000?” I asked, clearly disappointed.

“Look, there was something in it for you, too.”

“
What?”

“
Safety, protection while you were in China and of course, $50,000,” said Ted, while giving me a cheesy grin, expecting my approval.

“
Sounds like the mob, why would I want to deal with the mob?”

“
Hey, if I didn’t tell her who you were, you would have been trapped inside Guangzhou forever.”

Ted was right. Even though his actions were borderline treasonous, his lack of judgment did lead to my rescue. “So who are these guys and how did they find me?”

“Okay, so I held off telling her that night more than what she needed to know. She then asked me where you were and I said you were on a date. She asked why we were in Hong Kong and I said we were in town for business.”

“
Still though, how the hell did Milton make contact with me while I slept at the Peninsula the day before you met up with Jenny?”

“
See, that I don’t know. However, they knew where you slept every night. Jenny admitted to me on the drive to Guangzhou that the Jiang-Shi have contacts all over Hong Kong and southern China. From bellhops, to taxi drivers, from guys working in IT to restaurant owners and club owners. They have their pale crooked fingers everywhere.”

The Jiang-Shi sounded more and more like a powerful gang organization with special vampire powers whose reach I could not grasp. They were straight out of a John Carpenter movie and I was, yet again, an object of desire.

“Milton mentioned something about a Luc, did Jenny tell you anything about a Luc?”

“
No, that’s the first time I heard that name.”

I could tell Ted was being sincere. There was a childlike honesty in his eyes as I continued to gently interrogate him.

“So, how did you guys know I was imprisoned at Guangzhou?”

“
Well, that night at the café, I played hardball.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
I agreed to the $50,000 but I also wanted a fun night,” Ted said, playfully jabbing me with his forearm. “You know what I mean?”

“
Ah, geez.”

“
While you were on your date with Holly, Jenny, treated me to a nice club. Let’s just say, the surprises that night didn’t include penis.”

“
Okay, but what does Milton and his crew know about Guangzhou?”

“
I drank a ton that night, and eventually crashed at Jenny’s apartment in Hong Kong in the morning. I did it so I could stay as far away from the Peninsula as possible, so Alan and Rebecca wouldn’t find me or suspect I was there.”

“
Smart move,” I said.

“
Thanks, I wanted to call you that night, but I was busy if you know what I mean and I knew you would be, too,” Ted paused, his lips were very dry and he looked severely dehydrated. He turned toward Kai and asked, “Water?”

Kai ordered his fellow Jiang-Shi to get us water. He put his back toward the wall and began listening to our conversation. I winked at Ted, and motioned my hand down, to indicate that we should lower our voices a little more.

Ted continued, “I woke up late the next morning and Jenny asked me to give you a call. This was around 11 a.m. Of course, you didn’t answer but I knew you had an important meeting.”

I was in the car with Alan and Rebecca by that time and I do remember leaving a text message for Ted. It was odd that I didn’t receive any of his calls that morning.

“You sure you called me, did you get my text?” I asked Ted.

“
Yeah, I called you like three times that morning and no, I never received your text,” he said, looking sincerely surprised. “All I got was a busy signal and I became worried that I couldn’t get a hold of you. So, I spilled the beans as to where you were supposed to go in the evening and I told Jenny about our business with Guangzhou.” The Jiang-Shi came into the hall with two dirty glasses of water. Ted looked at me and smirked, acknowledging the dirty glass and thanked the Jiang-Shi. With slight reluctance, he took a sip of the water and made an exaggerated look of disgust, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes behind his head. He put the glass down and continued, “God this is disgusting...as I was saying,” he took a gulp, “As soon as I told Jenny about Guangzhou Jiyin Engineering, her eyes almost burst out of her sockets.”

“
Why?”

“
I don’t know, all I know is that they told me that reaching you was a priority and that you were possibly in danger. I had no choice but to tag along, I had nowhere to go, and she gave me a $5,000 advance, too.”

“
So, where’s my share?” I asked, in jest.

“
I don’t know, just ask Milton next time you see him,” Ted said, chuckling as the water from his drink dribbled off his reddish beard.

“
Did you ever see Milton doing his thing?” I asked.

“
Jenny had made contact with Milton in Guangzhou while we were still in Hong Kong. She drove us to Guangzhou that afternoon. We met up with Milton and the crew in this dingy apartment right by the market over the facility you were in, I remembered him lying down in the living room as Kai looked over him.”

“
Was Milton doing anything strange?” I asked. I was hoping Ted would have remembered anything about Milton’s habits or actions before he would go into his dream tripping.

“
All I remember is that he hummed and then the hum went silent, and his eyes began twitching. It was a strange hum, though. Nothing I have ever heard of before. I tried replicating it but I couldn’t.” Ted sat there and stared blankly into the dirty glass filled with brackish liquid, trying very hard to remember that night from moment to moment. “I remember asking Jenny what the weird sleeping thing was that Milton was doing and she told me he was trying to reach you.” Ted sat still and was motionless as he tried to recall more but he looked up at me with empty eyes and said, “That’s it and now we’re here.”

“
Do you still have that $5,000? Maybe we can pay some smugglers to get us out of China,” I asked.

“
No, I spent it on a game of Pai Gow with the Jiang-Shi that night in the apartment,” Ted said, sheepishly.

“
What?”

“
I’m sorry, but damn, they were good. I was up $2,000 at one point,” he said.

“
What about Holly?” I asked. “What did you tell her in locked room? Did you tell her she was in a cave with vampires?”

“
No, I just told her that you were negotiating her release and it was possibly some extortion plot or something.”

“
Okay, good,” I said, with relief in my voice. “I’ll get her to come out—dammit, this is going to be difficult.”

I motioned to Kai and asked him to approach our table. I asked, “May I see Holly?”

Kai, who looked more inconvenienced than malevolent by flashing a glower, headed to the holding room where Holly was staying. Ted sat on the bench and stared coldly across the room with the glass in his hand, the wheels clearly turning, he asked, “Are you going to tell her?”

“
I don’t know.”

Chapter Nine

Holly’s usually red and rosy cheeks were smirched with soot, her golden hair was dull and the pores on the tip of her nose was blackened with dirt. She sat next to me on the bench, and slumped her shoulders, giving me a pouty look with tired, sunken eyes, which began to slowly well up as soon as she made eye contact. I leaned over for a hug and a proper hello, and with the energy gathered from every cell of her small, petite frame, she pushed me off the bench, landing me on the scabrous, stony floor of the musty dining hall. Kai laughed at Holly’s unexpected reaction as he bent down and gave me his arm.

“
How could you?” she yelled at me, with enlarged green eyes.

“
What?” I said. I gathered myself by standing up and dusting off my pants.

“
You associate with gangsters and you don’t even tell me? What else are you hiding, Jack?” she said, crossing her arms. “Is Jack even your real name?”

“
Wait a minute, who told you I associate with gangsters?” I looked over at Ted, trying to make brief eye contact with him as he checked out the strange statues on the wall. “Did Ted tell you that?” I asked, pointing at him as he stood with his back turned to us with obvious, feigned indifference.

“
You’re trying to negotiate my release? You owe them money through some type of bad deal with your company? How long was in danger?” she asked.

I weighed the truth and the perceived lie. I debated the consequences of going with the lie or telling her outright that I was not who she thought I was. Telling a girl who was already in an extremely stressful place that I was a vampire didn’t seem like the prudent thing to do.

“Holly, I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what to say at this point...I...I...” My words were stuck. I couldn’t come up with an answer, an excuse, or a way I could explain the truth without freaking her out.

She quickly approached me, her eyes bulging with anger. She sharply placed her right index finger on my chest and said, “I want out of here, do what you have to do, but I didn’t sign up for this. I am not some sort of toy to be bargained over.”

Ted heard what Holly had said and quickly walked over to her and put his arm around her shoulder as she wept. He looked at me, opening his eyes wide looking for a cue of some sort. I shook my head in a spastic manner, frazzled as to what he wanted from me. He turned to Holly and improvised, “Sweetie, listen. Jack, here is very sorry, his heart is broken that you are feeling this way. This is very complicated and I assure you there is a full, rational, explanation behind all of this.”

She continued to sob, using the long sleeves of her cotton-blend shirt to wipe away her tears. She briefly composed herself and pushed Ted’s arm away from her shoulders. She looked up and into both of our eyes and said, “I don’t trust any of you.” There was silence. She turned her attention toward Kai and the other Jiang-Shi. “Can I please leave, I barely know these two.”

The words she just uttered with detachment devastated me inside. My legs suddenly felt like Jell-O and I collapsed onto the bench. Ted looked at me with a dour set of eyes. I didn’t look up at Holly, but I spoke to her anyway, “Holly, I’m sorry.”

“
What? That’s all you can say? I was practically kidnapped because of you and your shady connections and all you can say is
sorry
?”

“
This is not what it seems but the reality might be harder to swallow,” I said, looking up at her fiery green eyes.

“
What can be worse than this?” she asked rhetorically. “Being bought into sex slavery? Killed?”

“
None of that is happening.”

Ted walked away and sensed that if I were to spill the beans, it would be better if he wasn’t around. I looked at Kai and asked, “Where can we go for some privacy?”

He gave me a befuddled stare and didn’t seem to understand what exactly I was asking. I pointed at myself and Holly and made a funny gesture with my hand. He thought something else and gave me a wink, a nod, and a lascivious smile. Kai pointed to the end of the hall toward a small opening with faint lighting. “Cave,” he said.

I looked over my shoulder and noticed a small cave with glowing, pulsating lights at the end of the large room. I looked over at Holly and calmly asked, “Can you come with me? I have something to say.”

“Will you let me go if I talk to you?” she asked, still quite cold in her demeanor.

“
Yes, you can go, but there is something I need to tell you about who I really am and how this all relates to what you’ve been through—just give me a chance to explain myself, please?”

She looked down to the floor and looked back at Kai with incertitude and said, “Fine.”

We walked side by side. I felt the overwhelming need to grab her by the hand or at the very least comfort her with my arm. While I longed for he touch, I sensed the complete opposite from her. She had her arms crossed snugly against her chest, avoiding eye contact at all costs, while slightly shivering to the cold, flat air that swept through the cave.

I began to hear a faint trickle of water as we entered the small cavern. In the small, candle-lit cave, the stalagmites and stalactites remained untouched, and in the center wall, a black altar, adorned with small golden statues and incense, awaited its next humble supplicant.

“What is this place?” Holly asked, breaking her brief silence.

“
I really don’t know,” I said scanning the room. “I think they follow some sort of hybridized, Buddhist religion.”

“
So, what are you going to tell me?” she asked sternly.

“
These guys aren’t gangsters,” I said.

“
What are they then?”

“
They’re like me,” I said.

“
Asian? You don’t look Asian.”

“
No...well, listen,” I said, as I grabbed her hand. She didn’t relent and let me hold it. I looked deeply into her beautiful green eyes. She kept her eyes connected to mine and I managed to catch a brief glimpse of the same carefree woman I had seen on past nights, by flashing me a brief smile.

“
Holly, I instantly fell for you,” I said, feeling relief as if a cloud of smog resided in my lungs, traveled up my windpipe and expelled through my mouth. “You make me feel equal, you make me feel normal,” I said, remaining wholly focused and lost in the emerald abyss of her eyes.

Holly began to tear up but she caught herself, and slowly opened her mouth, “I like you, too, Jack. You make me feel those things, too. But I’m just a normal girl with a hobby, trying to make a living...I really don’t like surprises.” I approached her and held her tightly in my arms. She asked me with her voice slightly trembling, “What is it you need to tell me?”

My arms wrapped around her small frame and I pulled her in close to my chest. My forearms molded into the arch of her lower back and I drank in her warmth and submissive aura. My nose rubbed in against hers, my eyes lowered, our foreheads touched and I whispered softly, “I’m not human.”

Her brows receded down the sides of her face, she gently pushed me out at arms’ length. “What do you mean, Jack?”

My submissive eyes drew down and implored acceptance. “Do you remember on our first date how I was panicking because I needed to get home before sunrise?”

“
Yes?” she said.

“
My condition?”

“
What about it?” she asked. “So what? I know you have a skin condition.”

“
At the club, I caught the shoe that was thrown at me from behind because I heard it as if I was seeing it—no human can do that.”

“
What are you implying, Jack?” she asked, in frustration.

“
Holly, I’m a vampire.”

She shook her head and began smiling. “Are you nuts?”

“No, I’m really a vampire.”

“
Jack, stop it—you’re starting to scare me.”

I moved in closer to her space and put out my arms in an attempt for an embrace as I began spilling my guts to her. She didn’t want any of it and my sudden revelation made retreat completely impossible.

“Holly I was captured by my own company, by my own  coworkers, because they wanted to do experiments on me for who-knows-what reason.”

“
I’m sorry, but all this sound so far-fetched. These men in the cave, they look like a gang; bikes, nice shit strewn across the cave, even that Milton guy, he just looks like your typical Asian gang member—living inside a cave? Seriously, come on...”

“
Holly, how about these? I asked, as I pulled up my upper lip and quickly walked in front of her face.

“
Jack, what kind of sick joke is this? You could have had those done, we already covered your teeth on our dates.”

I pulled up my pants leg and showed her my pale legs in all their glory. “See, look, I’m practically see-through!”

Holly began to laugh out loud, almost mockingly. “Jack, I’m sorry but there are no such thing as vampires. You’re a rad guy, a jet-setter, great-looking, but I don’t want this life.” She came up to me and brushed the side of my face with her soft, thin hand. “Please, take me home.”

“
I can’t,” I said, as my eyes began to slowly well up. “You need to believe me.”

“
You don’t stop, do you?”

Many differing thoughts ran through my head as I pondered how I would prove to Holly that I was a separate species, one that has been ingrained in minds of humans as a mythical being that turns into a bat, or that sleeps in a coffin or a being that somehow always gets the girl despite being a blood-thirsty beast, with class. A caricature basically, one created to scare and fright women into love, lust, or romance. Should I bite? No. What good would that do? That would be literally be like rape, oh, God no, I wouldn’t do that. I was on the verge of falling in love with this woman. I would’ve done anything to prove to her that I was real and how I felt about her was real, too. I looked around the room and noticed a six-inch object sticking up through the mantel of the altar. It was a ceremonial dagger of some sort, with a dragon-shaped jade handle. I ran to the altar to grab it.

“What are you doing?” asked Holly, as her green eyes opened wide in a panic.

I gripped the handle of the dagger and yanked it out of its wooden holder. I held it up to the dim light. Sure, it was probably used for worship, but still was meticulously sharpened if the need ever arose for it to be used as an instrument of death.

Holly stuck her hands out at me and began to walk backwards toward the wall of the cave. “No, Jack, please...what do you think you’re doing—Ted!” she screamed.

“
I’m sorry but this is the only way you’ll ever believe me,” I said, holding the handle of the dagger over my head, ready to strike.

“
Ted!” Holly screamed again, holding her arms over her face and coiling up against the wall with her right knee in the air.

I plunged the dagger deep into my rib. I felt the muscles and cartilage that lined up between my ribs tear, split, and rip away as if they were hardened pieces of Jell-O. I gripped the handle of the dagger and moved it to the left another three inches, slicing up myself real good so it left no doubt that my wound would require surgery if I were a mortal. Holly began screaming hysterically. I hit the floor and blood began draining from my sliced wound.

Holly knelt next to me, trying to cover my wound with her hand. Blood began running down her arm. Her elongated themselves, filled with a complex feeling of sorrow and anger . “Why would you do this?” she asked.

I looked up at her and I smiled. “To prove to you that I am not lying to you,” I said, my eyes beginning to close intermittently at the sudden loss of blood.

Ted, Kai and the Jiang-Shi ran into the small cavern, responding to Holly’s cries for help. They looked down at the bloody mess before them and remained stoic and without panic. Ted held out his arm at Holly as she remained on the floor doing her best in caring form. “Holly, stand up; he’s going to be okay.”

“
What do you mean he’s going to be okay?” she asked, panic-stricken and sobbing. “Someone get some gauze—is there a hospital around here? Does 9-1-1 exist in China?”

Ted picked up Holly by her arm, she fought him off, and Kai immediately assisted. “Holly, listen, quit panicking,” Ted said. “You’re going to get blood all over your clothes for no reason...Jack is going to be fine, I assure you.”

“Jack, don’t die,” Holly pleaded. “I’m sorry, I believe you.”

Kai and the other Jiang-Shi picked me up and took me out of the small cave, through the dining hall, and onto a cot in the sleeping barracks, Holly and Ted not far behind. I was out of breath as they picked me up off the ground.

Chapter Ten

I felt the brush of soft velvety skin on my forehead. I slowly opened my eyes and Holly’s warm, smiling face came into focus. Her soft green eyes were filled with a maternal aura.

She looked unkempt but still beautiful. I felt bad for her as I knew she took pride in her outfits, hair, and hygiene, but most of all, I thought she took extreme pride in her independence. I felt at fault for letting Milton know about her whereabouts when I was imprisoned in Guangzhou, but I knew I’d be rolling the dice with her safety if I didn’t.

“Did I fall asleep?” I asked, with a groggy grin.

“
Yeah, you did,” she said, in a soft voice. She took a quick glance down at my rib. There was an inquisitive yet somber look in her eyes,  like someone who just found out they were adopted or that they were born a different sex and changed at birth. Holly didn’t know what to say to me, but by examining the timing of her breaths and her posture, it seemed that she wanted to ask me more questions, but it was clear she didn’t know where to start.