King's Blood: Vampire Descent (A Serial Novel, Part 4) (15 page)

“
Effeminate, huh?”

“
More like dainty,” he said.

Lucretius walked out into the large opening in the temple and sat on his pillow, crossed his legs and closed his eyes. I followed him reluctantly, as I became somewhat attached to the artifacts, art, and the books he had in his room.

“You may stay in there if you like,” Lucretius said.

“
How did you know I wanted to stay in your room?” I asked, surprised at his intuition.

“
Get some rest, you need it,” he said, as he seemingly went into a trance-like state. “Tomorrow, I will teach you the way of the Jiang-Shi.”

Chapter Fourteen

I woke up to Milton’s voice again. This time, he was giving his report to Lucretius in the common room of the temple. I stood up from the bed and hurriedly walked into the middle of their conversation.

“
The scouts came back with no information. They covered 20 square miles and there was nothing out of the ordinary,” Milton said.

Lucretius stood pensively, his finger on his chin. “I don’t know if we should leave this place or wait it out. I don’t think they know we are here. If we all leave in a group, we risk suspicion.”

“I don’t think they know we’re here,” Milton said confidently. Milton made eye contact with me as I leaned against the archway of Lucretius’s room. “You decided if you want to stick around with your own kind?”

“
Maybe,” I said. “I want to do the crazy shit you do in your dreams and maybe I’ll change my mind.”

“
It ain’t easy,” Milton said, with a mischievous smile. He turned to Lucretius and asked with a smirk, “Did he spill the beans?”

Lucretius slowly walked to his study and grabbed the envelope with the location of the pharmaceutical manufacturer.

Milton grabbed the envelope from Lucretius’s hand and proceeded to give me a playful bow. “Thank you,” he said, a smile from ear to ear, revealing his long, ivory-colored fangs.

“
Have you heard from Jenny about Holly and Ted?” I asked.

“
They are doing fine. I told them to wait a day or two while I made arrangements for Holly’s return to Hong Kong; from there I can arrange an export company to take her back.”

“
How do you intend on doing that?” I asked, more concerned than curious.

“
We have contacts, don’t worry.”

“
Are they trustworthy?” I asked.

“
Look, quit worrying. You really don’t have a choice in the matter, do you?”

Lucretius intervened between our childish pettiness, “Jack, it will be okay. Holly will be taken care of, we’re not scoundrels.”

“It’s not you that I don’t trust you, in particular. This guy over here has already gone back on his word a few times.”

Milton rolled his eyes and refused to snap back. “Okay, I’ll let you two bond a little more. I promised the guys a real hunt tonight. I’ll be back in the early morning, hopefully, you’ll be able to at least say hello in someone’s dream when I’m back.” Milton turned his back and exited through the drapes, disappearing down the moonlit, stony steps with an energetic hop in his step, happy to have in his hands the one thing that was dear to his heart: Zeo.

“That’s it, huh?”

“
What?” asked Lucretius, as he leaned back into his study.

“
Giving Milton what he wanted. All that work...getting me out of Guangzhou, trying to meet with me in Hong Kong...stirring a possible hornet’s nest. Lot of trouble for a silly pill.”

“
It’s been 20 years since that vampire has felt the sincere touch of a woman.”

“
Wow,” I said, genuinely taken back. “Hell, that’s all he had to say.”

I proceeded to sit on the floor. I asked Lucretius, “I’m ready, let’s get this started...”

Lucretius crossed his arms and stood up straight, with a young man’s posture, which was surprising because he was older than the rocks surrounding the mountain. “What do you wish to accomplish with this ability, Jack?”

“
To talk in dreams...”

“
You make it sound like you want to do is learn a neat bar trick.”

“
Well...” I was at a loss for words. I thought, why did I want to learn to talk to other vampires in their dreams? Come to think of it, how would it be useful?

Lucretius rolled his eyes at the back of his head.

“What are you doing?” I asked, letting out an uncomfortable chuckle.

Lucretius began to hum softly as if trying to pinpoint pitch. The sound of his hum ceased but he maintained the same facial expressions. His cheeks spasmed with subtle twitches, his mouth would alternate between a grin and a scowl. I could see the small, wayward, gray strands of his beard vibrating, but yet, still no sound.

Why do you want to learn this technique?
asked Lucretius’s voice.

“
What the?” I wasn’t asleep, yet I heard his voice echoing inside my head. Toward my forehead, in fact. I shook my head and stood up from the silk pillow. “Stop, please...”

Why do you want to learn this technique?
His voice asked again.

“
Will you quit? How the hell are you doing that?” I looked around the room seeing if there were speakers in the ceiling. “If you don’t stop, I will push you until you quit doing that, old man.”

Why do you want to learn this technique?

“Are you trying to drive me mad?” I asked, yelling in frustration. I grabbed my head and began pounding it. “Get the fuck out of my head, will ya!”

Calm down, rest your mind, just talk back...

“No!” I exclaimed. “Can you hear me?” I said out loud. I went up to Lucretius and began shaking him, desperately trying awaken him from his trance. He continued to keep his eyes closed. “I’m going fucking crazy! I give up, I don’t want to do this, please!”

Lucretius opened his eyes. He stared at me with his cold, deep, blue eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked, with a cackle.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“
Practice, how else?”

“
But I was awake...” I said, somewhat questioning my sanity.

“
So?”

“
So, you can talk to other vampires while they’re awake, what good is that?”

“
We are a warrior class, Jack. In fact, every hominid on Earth has evolved for battle,” he said. “I am the only one of my kind, that I know of, which can telepathically speak to other vampires, but you, Milton, every Jiang-Shi down there is capable of it as well, it just takes decades of practice as it took me.”

“
But what good does torturing your fellow vampires do by tapping into their brains like you just did?”

“
Not one single boar has escaped our hunting party when I was alongside the group. I can strategize a corral technique quietly. I can order other hunters to position themselves in the optimal position to spear a boar on a critical spot of its body, silently—without spooking the creatures who have themselves evolved amazing listening abilities.”

“
You mentioned every hominid on Earth has evolved for battle, what exactly do you mean by that?” I asked.

“
Humans have harnessed the ability to manipulate and every resource on the planet to intimidate, maim, or kill. I’m afraid to say what they lack in longevity, they more than make up in ingenuity.”

“
What about the Ling clan? You mentioned that they have suffered greatly due to the technological changes of modern society, aren’t they humans as well?”

Lucretius raised his bushy, white eyebrows and stretched out a fatherly smile, all the while giving me a congratulatory nod. “I don’t think they are, Jack. There are Jiang-Shi who think the Ling clan are just a group of oafish, semi-handicapped people—inbred, which they may very well be, but not stupid. They definitely live by their own rules and aren’t deviating too much from their true nature.”

I grabbed the newspaper he had shown me in the early morning and pointed at the slain Ling on the front page. “Havens looks almost exactly like this guy. Prominent brow, stocky build, muscular, large hands, wide mouths. There is something rather off about these two guys. Do they all look like this, even the women?” I asked.

Lucretius laughed and winced, “What you and I find attractive may not be what others find attractive.”

“Good diplomatic answer.”

“
I have my suspicions about the Ling clan. I think they might be descendants of another type of hominid,” he said. “Jack, have you heard of Alfred Russell Wallace?”

“
Wasn’t he in
Braveheart
?”

“
No. Alfred Wallace thought of evolution long before Darwin, but they published their similar theories around the same time. He lists me as one of his influences, as I wrote about the indestructibility of matter. He wrote of hybridization, and how there were some evolutionary barriers which led to speciation, or the lack of the potential of hybridization in species.”

“
Huh?” I asked, completely dumbfounded as to what Lucretius was trying to express.

“
Can an elephant and a giraffe fuck and create a
eleraffe
?” Lucretius quipped.

“
No, or yes, of course not—that is preposterous,” I said, with mild confusion.

“
My research into hybridization has revealed a possibility of intermingling of traits between humans, and vampires, and possibly other species of hominids that we yet don’t know of. Basically, there has been the possibility of interbreeding, which is why Guangzhou captured you, Jon, and others. They know it’s possible for humans to have vampire traits in them, and quite possibly, other hominid traits as well.”

“
Again, forgive me Lucretius, but laymen’s terms, please.”

“
There might be half-vampires, half-humans, half-who-knows-what else walking the planet, and I have a suspicion that the Ling clan might contain genes that are neither human nor vampire, or contain both, but, for whatever reason, Guangzhou wants vampires.”

“
How have you come to this realization?”

“
Take for example, Kai, who, by the way, is an expert swordsman and has been able to harness ‘dream talking’ very well. He was dropped off in the forest when he was seven years old. He states to never having had fangs before being dropped off. He ate a regular human diet of roots, nuts, vegetables, and meat. Then one day, he didn’t want to eat what his mother made for him. At six years old, he was found feeding on his little brother. His family was shamed in their village for harboring a child who had been consumed by a bad spirit. They heard of us through folklore, myths, legends and abandoned him in the forest where we supposedly lived in isolation. I have a strong feeling that Kai is a hybrid.”

I began touching my face, looking at my skin, I even wiggled my fangs with my fingers to see if they moved slightly. I ran the fingers through my hair. I lightly brushed the hair that curled in waves on my arm. I looked up at Lucretius. “I don’t remember my childhood, I don’t remember my past, could I be a hybrid?”

“Other than observable, delayed, and atavistic traits coming through later in life, I can’t make a scientific determination whether someone is a hybrid or not. You should let your mind rest, though. You should be happy to know you are more vampire than not—you are content that you’re a vampire, right?” he asked me, keeping his eyes connected to mine, hoping for the correct answer.

I sat back down on the pillow and held my knees close together, wrapping my arms around them. I rocked back and forth, slightly. I exhaled slowly through my nose, pondering Lucretius’s question. There was something glorious and alluring about being human. They lived undisturbed throughout the world. Creative beings with purpose. They were not slaves to pleasure, generally speaking. Addiction did seem to be an undercurrent among some individuals, but for the most part, their natures were highly adapted to the world, to
their
world. This was their planet and these were their societies and we vampires lived in it, just like the bears, the lions, the chimps and the lowly, such as insects, viruses, and bacteria. We were playthings to them, hanging by a thread, based on their whims. Fighting, clawing, and struggling for the scraps of their excess was what every organism’s role on Earth seemed to be when paralleled to the roles of Earth’s masters: humans.

“
I don’t like what I am,” I said to Lucretius, with sorrow.

“
Our time will come, Jack,” he said, with an innate confidence. “You can’t shame what you are, ever. Humans were, at one time, in our position on this planet. They fought against the elements, against beasts, and others like them to assert themselves. They adapted to become the dominant species. As long as we are still alive and numerous, the potential is there to fight for equality.”