Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy) (4 page)

Meeting Sabetha’s intensely worried gaze for a half a second, I start to laugh.  This is the most alive I’ve felt in a while.  As someone who has very seriously contemplated suicide over the centuries, this is a rather amusing turn of events in an otherwise dull routine.  Sabetha begins to laugh too, but her amusement is short lived. 

I sigh and walk over to the rotary phone to dial a friend.

“Hey, it’s me.  I need you to come over for the day.”  I pause.  “I wouldn’t call you if it wasn’t.”  I hang up the receiver and then go change into some sweatpants.

Within fifteen minutes Val arrives – vastly quicker than he foretold, but I know him well enough to expect as much.  Val is short, only five-foot-five and five eighths, and his build is a slim one hundred forty-seven pounds.  There is nothing particularly threatening about his appearance at all.  He isn’t intimidating, his shoulders usually round off under baggy clothing, and his balding head is indistinguishably plain.

I met Val while he was working for Cynthecorp.  He was in R and D then, a really dorky guy, but made a remarkable – and necessary – transformation after becoming darkened.  He has a ruthless will to survive and it’s been enough for the past couple years.  Now he’s a reconnaissance operative in the darkened world; a black sheep working for wolves.  Because he is the most recent ilk to survive a pure darkening he’s also in my good graces.  But he’s not the type to
change
anything.

“Package delivery,” Val calls from outside the shredded fire door.  He’s dressed like a delivery man, complete with a fake brown box, but in his free hand, hidden by the parcel, is a silenced pistol.  He’s obviously distressed by the door’s condition but as I come to the threshold in my lounge wear and wave him in casually, he enters with the gun lowered.  He won’t put on the safety for the duration of his stay.

“What happened here?” Val asks, looking at the hole in the wall to his left.

“An intruder.”

“Am I disturbing any evidence?” 

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” I laugh.  “Feel free to dig around in the fridge.  The rifle’s under the couch.  My home is yours – you know how it is.”

Val nods, then closes the inner door.  I head back to my room, stopping to face Sabetha on the way.  Despite her nervous laughter from before, she isn’t enjoying this nearly as much as I am and it’s written all over her face.  Somewhat reassuringly I say to her, “Tomorrow night.” 

She nods.

I
have a fucking heart attack in the middle of the day as my senses alert me to the presence of a man standing over the outer threshold.  In an instant my eyes pierce the barrier between me and the intruder and I see that Val is talking with a repairman.  They remark on the door and then Val signs some documents on a clip board.  I throw my head back down on the pillow angrily and try to go back to sleep.

When I wake again, I dress, and exit my room, heading for the kitchen.  I look towards the couch to see the back of Val’s head.  One hand is in a bag of potato chips while the other waves at me.  The grandfather clock strikes seven just as I sit at the center island, breakfast-makings in hand.  Val joins me, walking over to the marble counter top and sliding onto a bar stool.  “I fixed your door,” he says as I shake a box of cereal into a bowl.  “Yeah, I know.  Thanks,” I reply, adding milk.

“Didn’t wake you, did we?”

“I’m a light sleeper.”

“You’ll be happy to know that it’s one-of-a-kind.  Best damned security door money can buy.”

“Shall I await the bill?”

“It’s
your
door.”

I tip the bowl to my lips to get the last bit of pink milk.  “Officially nighttime,” I say.  “It’s safe for Sabetha to get up.”

“How can you always tell?” Val asks for the eleventh time.

I tap my temple with my index finger.  “I’m an almanac.” 

He smiles.  “Will you need me tomorrow?”

“What, you don’t like hanging out with me?”

He shakes his head, defeatedly.

“Eating my food?  Buying me doors?” I continue.

Val walks to the inner door, grabbing his coat on the way.  “Goodbye, Delano.”

I
jump in the shower and let the steaming water drape itself over my neck and shoulders like a warm blanket.  As I emerge dripping from the tub, I quickly snatch a towel from the rack and wrap it about my waist.  I wipe a streak through the mirror with my hand and run my fingers softly over my chest and stomach.  Scars paint my pale physique like tiger stripes and leopard spots.  I got them when I was still young, the only reason they didn’t heal, and even after this long, they still feel foreign.  

As steam rises off my body in wisps I am reminded to be grateful for my body heat.  Sabetha, in all her beauty and grace, cannot warm the sheets she sleeps in, nor the lover she may lie next to.  I’ve studied chyldrin long enough to know that I can’t possibly understand the suffering they endure on a constant basis, however cursed my own existence is.  It’s the reason they have an insatiable need to consume.  And not just blood.  Chyldrin who possess the funds – fifty-four percent are middle class or higher – tend to fill the space where their souls used to be with material goods.  Those without the means simply feed on the life force of those around them literally and figuratively.  They are pools of empty where happiness goes to drown. 

Sadly, their decadence and cruelty are inevitable.  Since none of them were
born
as vampires and all were once ilk, they all lost something in the darkening.  Some less than others since many were predisposed to become vampires anyway.  Water seeks its own level and misery loves company, so the mixed-metaphor goes.  In order to survive as chyldrin, they have to rely on society for sustenance and at the same time tear at its seams to subsist.  I call it the cannibal’s dilemma. 

Though we immortals vehemently deny it, we were all once young, stupid humans, and with that bit of humanity come two things, be you a chyld, a gazer, or a sentiner: the range to do extraordinary things, both truly selfless and unspeakably vile, and the ability to adapt to any circumstance.  No matter how bizarre, painful, or seemingly impossible, humanity in all its forms, adapts.

If Sabetha has taught me one thing only, it is just this.  Darkened can resist the darkening.  They can resist the immense pressures that would force them to choose between what they were and what they have become.  As bipolar as Sabetha can be at times, it is her refusal to submit to herself
or
to society, and the strength it takes to continue that struggle for a millennium that I admire most about her.  Few other vampires have persevered for as long. 

I exit the bathroom and I slip into some black dress pants with a black turtleneck and dark gray blazer.  Under the jacket is a holster that holds my fifty-caliber pistol.  It’s loaded with incendiary rounds, but I keep a few hollow point mags on me too.  Low caliber firearms are only moderately effective against supernaturals, since the comic-book weaknesses died out long ago.  Best way to kill a supernatural now is massive trauma, or in the case of chyldrin, sunlight.

Sabetha emerges from her room as if stepping out of a
Cynthefashion Magazine: Businesswoman
.  High heeled, knee-high
Phobes
, pleated black
Manuela
dress pants, and a
Cynthefiber
button-down blouse under a one-button jacket.  Her trench is
Exo-tiq
leather, custom made like my waist-length bomber.

As we collect our gear, I sense some tension coming from her.  She’s carrying a duffle bag full of metal, and guns aren’t usually her thing.

“The canvas
really
clashes,” I say, nodding at the duffle bag.

She shrugs off the comment and waits in the hallway, tapping her toe while I check and recheck our new door.  As I lock it, though, I can’t help but think about how fragile the walls around the door are.  Feels like I’m locking a foot-thick vault door to a vault made out of chicken wire.  With a sigh, I face Sabetha who tilts her head and asks if I’m ready to go.

We exit through the back of the building and head over to Rolla.  Betha unlocks the doors and starts the engine with the press of a button and we take our places.  The duffle bag is placed lovingly on my lap and its weight is comforting to me.  The Velcro flap crackles as I tear it open and run the heavy gauge zipper down its length.  Inside is a jumble of gun barrels, handles, scopes, and magazines.  I pull out a slim black pistol with an extended, vented barrel and run through its firing system before sliding a clip into the underside of the handle.  Setting it down on top of the others, I use my other hand to retrieve my sunglasses, flip them open, and place them delicately on my face.

“So do you want to talk about it?” Sabetha asks.

My stomach tightens slightly.  I know what she’s referring to, but I play dumb.  “About what?”

“You froze up last night.  Haven’t seen that in a while.  What happened?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think it might matter a lot.”

“Well I don’t.”

She nods. 

“So who’s first?” Sabetha asks, slowing the car as three figures cross our headlights at the intersection.  “What the fuck is a pimp doing in our neighborhood?” she sneers, insulted by the man’s presence.  “I swear to god, they’re like cockroaches.  We should just kill them all one night.”  She’s said it a thousand times before and never meant it once.

One of the two girls collapses under a broken high heel and falls to the pavement in a heap of frizzled blonde hair and fake fur.  Sabetha honks the horn.  It’s a modified noise, deep and robust like a growl mixed with a trombone.  The pimp turns and erupts into a boisterous display of arm movements and shouting, walking towards the car with a nickel plated revolver brandished.  I step out and stand behind the door.

“You wanna get out tha car?” He threatens, cheap jewelry clanging
about his neck and wrists, gold teeth glistening under his lips.

I put the first bullet through his nasal cavity.  The webbing of bone there makes for a more…
dramatic
exit wound. 

I hate pimps.  I look at the two fish he was with, both diseased and hopelessly addicted to innumerable vices.  I pretend like I’m making a choice, but I’ve already done so.  With a disappointed shake of my head, I retrain the gun and put them down.

Getting back in the car and straightening my jacket, I answer Sabetha’s previous question.  “We’ll talk to the cyperas first.”

She weaves Rolla around the three bodies and continues on.

A
sentiner is really just a glorified historian.  Some say journalist, but we don’t publish anything we write down.  My peers and I make up the Hyperion, the secret and sole organization in Gothica which bothers to record anything beyond finances.  And as the highest ranking sentiner under the council members, I have quite a few… employees.  At my level, the job description changes significantly and while most sentiners, the rank and file cyperas, stick to the shadows and lead very secluded lifestyles, I am somewhat of a socialite.  To be successful, my job requires that I have a large network of informants even outside the Hyperion.

Nigel is my secretary, an official title within the Hyperion and by no means a misnomer.  He takes messages for me and filters out the crap.  He is next in line for a lieutenant position, having been with us for two-hundred and ninety-six years. 
My old lieutenant has been dead so long I might not even bother to put in the paperwork. 

Nigel is dark skinned with a mop of shiny black ringlets for hair and a honey smooth voice.  His mannerisms are humble and reflect a woeful un-appreciation for his own talents, but he’s still quick to make a joke and laugh at mine.  As a classic sentiner, he never interferes and just sits in the shadows, taking pictures and keeping up with documentation. 

“Delano, Sabetha.  I uh, I meant to get those reports to you…” he stammers after opening the front door to his row house.

I smile and hold up a hand to cut him off, “You’re not in trouble.”

“Oh.  So what’s up then?”

Sabetha laughs, catching him off guard.  Apparently she thinks it’s funny that I only talk to my subordinates when they’re in trouble.  She clears her throat and gestures for me to continue.

I overemphasize my words to make him understand
I
am not joking.  “We were attacked.”

“What?  Where?”

“Our home.”

Nigel’s mouth drops and he looks back and forth between Sabetha and me with little spurts of half words, a sentence failing to form amidst his disbelief.

He recovers himself, invites us in and I give him the details. 

“Definitely a flesh golem,” he agrees. “But I’ve never heard of one venturing out alone or disappearing like that.  Let me check the records.”  His answer for everything.

I agree with a nod but then grab Nigel by the shoulder as he absentmindedly heads for his - well my - collection of files in the basement.  “Nigel.”