Indigo Vamporium (9 page)

Bending, I lift a girl in a coma, her breath shallow and lost in damaged dimensions, hoisting her up above me on outstretched arms, I yell,  “Open your eyes and recognize your own damnation! You do this to yourselves!”

You are the cancerous coma, both destructive and oblivious to your own nocturnal demise.

The slaughter and rot burns my nostrils, stinging my eyes and turning my heart into a vacuous mausoleum.

The devil charges, brandishing the femur from a leg long since stripped of decomposing flesh. Willing the female in my arms away to safety, I ready for the brunt of the fetid and festering. My legs are sturdy, braced, and when he rams into me and starts thumping my cranium like his personal bongo drum, I close my eyes and pour stigmata from my hands into his chest.

Bombing the palace of persecution, I can't stop once I unleash the deluge of spiritual annihilation, the fountain of light flooding the cavity with endless tidal waves thick with human spume and flotsam.

They have desecrated the holy with their sacrilegious sacraments. Defiling the sanctified spirits of the chaste and cherished with their poisoned perversion.

Rage blisters out of me in grenades of angelfire, flaring wild light into arcs of obliterating chaos. They crumple, burn, smolder and shrivel, their eyes bleeding from the pure ethereal aura injected into their skins. The putrid scum living in their flesh is instantly vanquished, sending the last of their kind back to the soul river of slick sick, that channel of purged vomit, the sewer of the supernal and depraved.

My chest is heaving, I can't breathe, I feel like I've been drained within an inch of my existence. Wobbling unsteadily I stagger to regain my balance, the vamporium a nauseating smudge of satanic pastel.

Shunting against rock, inhaling harsh gulps, the images branded in my head refuse to dissipate. Bending, holding my legs, I quell the vertigo, harnessing the miniscule portion of energy left in my marrow.

“I'm impressed,” echoes hollowly through the majestic underground cavity.

Snapping upright, my heart lurching uncomfortably up to my Adam's apple, I swallow against a dry heave, clutching my throat in fright.

Uncle Venix stands upstairs, staring down at me with his eyes shifting through shades of melting alloy.

He was here? The whole time?

Why the hell didn't he help me?!

Leaning on the rustic railing, his hands clench into brutal fists. “I did not help because you do not require my help. This is a rite of passage for you, Seithe. I had to test you.”

“Why?!” Anger flares pyre back into my blood, giving me both fuel and fire to fight. “Why test me? You sent me in here
alone
, knowing full well I faced a legion of evil, a multifarious conglomeration of creatures ten times my size and strength!”

“And yet who remains standing? Just you. You were not alone Seithe. You are never alone.”

“Why?!” I holler, disbelief cracking my baritone and making me look once again like an incapable coward.

Why test me at all?

“You have earned your next clue,” he says, ignoring my question.

“Clue?”

“Yes, Seithe. Clue. You want answers so badly, well in this life you earn them. I had to know you had what it took to follow this passage into the darkness it will lead you to. You are looking for a creature that dwells deep underwater in the Atlantic. Your father chose Cape Town for a reason. Where two oceans meet you will find the creatures you seek.”

Two oceans?

Thinking fast, my head reeling, still trying to capture my breath and sedate my elevated pulse, I recall that the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet at Cape Point, at the Cape of Good Hope.

He nods, reappearing in front of me inside a blink, his build and stature still so much vaster than my own. His maturity is worn like armor on a seasoned warrior. “It takes the murkiness of two water temperatures. It creates a veil in the ocean. A veil called Halocline. It is in that chaos where two oceans try to repel each other that you will find the Halo. It's called Halocline for a reason, it holds the halos which belong to angels long forgotten. To become an elder you must dive down and retrieve a halo, but for that you will fight to the death.”

“Fight who?” I demand, dizziness breaching through my vision and diluting the room.

“The ningen.”

“Who?” I can't stand, I'm too weak. Swaying, I stumble two steps, falling when my heels connect with something rigid.

“The fathers of mermen, the very first form of life which resembles human. You will only find them in three locations, Cape Point, the Antarctic, and the underwater caverns of Suruga Japan.”

Sitting in the chair he manifested for the purpose, I stare up at the gloom hovering blue breath across the ceiling like a shroud of eerie holiness, hiding my tears from the all seeing eye of my warden.

“One was found and murdered in Panama, but she was an anomaly and was a long way from home,” he says, making idle conversation.

“She?” I ask, my tongue feeling too thick for my mouth.

Do they come in both male and female?

“They are larger than whales, Seithe. Do not go looking unless you are truly prepared to meet the prehistoric versions of mankind.”

Larger than whales? Really?

He sighs dramatically, filling the void of unnatural silence with impatience. “Seithe we were almighty angels, a whale was nothing to us in size, but you have to break the hold on your mind, break the hold on your physical form, or you will never retrieve a halo, and you'll probably die trying.”

Crouching to look me in the eye, he says, “The only boundary you suffer, that any human suffers, is the boundary of thought. You are half human and that is your failing, it constricts you. Our minds tell us something isn't possible and we believe it. Your original form is not a body, it is much bigger than that, your own thoughts hold the material image in its static state. You can change that with your will.” Standing upright again, he looks bored, “Oh.... and be careful you aren't caught by a giant squid. They hang out all around the tip of Africa, and the last thing you want is to die in the tentacles of a forty-eight foot squid.”

As if dismissing me, as if he has more important things to be doing, he turns, vanishing, leaving me alone in the temple of destruction. Forty-eight feet, that's over fourteen meters. This isn't fair!

No praise. No 'good job Seithe'. Nothing.

I could have died and he can't even say 'well done'.

“You don't need praise.”

My heart bottoms out when the vapid stillness is severed by a familiar male voice.

Refusing to betray my shock, I stay immobile, staring at my hands, battling my emotions back into their crypt. “What do you want, Arelstin?”

What is my sister's guardian doing here?

A warm and heavy hand squeezes my shoulder, “Dude, he's hard on you because he has to be. You had back up, you just didn't know it.”

So that's why you're here.

“Let me call the neuri to help. They'll erase the survivors memories, returning them back to the city... they've probably been missing for some time. I'll retrieve the girl you saved too.”

“What about healing them?” I grumble, turning to face the greatest archangel still on Earth.

He gives me a ruthless smile, “That's your job, Seithe. If you want to save humans then you have to do it right. No one said this was going to be easy.”

I'm too weak to heal myself, never mind a host of frail and broken humans.

“You are not weak, Seithe. Find the light, it's infinite. You never run out, just call for more.”

“Call? What rubbish you spew! How?”

Giving me another cold smirk, his eyes begin to glow, “Summon it.
Be
the power, or you will never wield it.”

Chapter 12

Seithe:

After telling Darise everything, the three of us sit together in the cellar, surrounded by Dad's collection of rare and valuable wine.

He loved going to the wine farms which stretch beyond the mountain, through Paarl, Stellenbosch, and the Franschhoek estates.

Lifting a bottle off the rack, I wipe at the dust, staring at the label with a picture of a witch flying across the full moon. The label says it's Spooky Mountain wine.

Seriously?

Twisting it, I read it really is a place, the Spooky Mountain of Franschhoek.

Dad believed that wine is the blood of a land. It tells you about the people, the weather, the soil, and the atmosphere. Without wine, the people of a land are spiritually dead, with no soul to celebrate or drink to.

He was weird that way. Wine was to him the IntraVenous injection into the bloodstream every visitor needed to try. Without the IV, there was no cultural transfusion and nothing worth sampling. He said the only thing on earth as old as us, is wine making. I carefully replace the bottle, wondering who it is that keeps adding to this collection of viticulture.

Eyeing out the enormous bottles, I vaguely recall their names. Rehoboam holds 4.5 liters of champagne. A magnum is 1.5 liters of wine, and jeroboam holds 4.5 liters of bordeaux, or 3 liters of champagne. Who cares? These are posh terms from a bygone era, a period when vampyres were elite land barons, personifying fine living in refined social circles. Now we're commoners.

“Don't do it,” says Darise, shaking his head.

Staring blandly back at him, physically and mentally drained, I shrug, saying, “What choice do I have?”

“You don't have to be an elder, Seithe.”

Scowling at him, twisting a piece of discarded straw between my fingers which I located next to an old wooden cask, I argue, “You're the oldest but you refuse to step into the responsibility shoes. One out of the three of us has to take the elder tests, one of us has to assume the weight of the future, for our family.” Angry, I lean forward and point accusation at him, “And as
you
refuse to do it because you're a selfish coward, I have to.”

He raises both eyebrows, giving me the 'I don't care' stare, “There's no law that says we have to become fully fledged. We don't have to. Venix will never die, there's always someone else to step into the shoes, people hungry for the power. I'm not. I couldn't care less.” Dropping his voice to a haunting whisper, he says, “Seithe, you can't do it.”

“I can, and I will,” I snap.

“The halocline, it's a border. A border between realms. Cross that veil and we could lose you forever.”

“Nice try,” I sneer.

He's trying to scare me and I'm onto him. The older brother routine is wearing thin.

He cups his hand to his ear, cocking his head, “Hear that? That's your soul crying. It's begging you not to fall into the underworld.”

“Underworld?” whispers Jowendrhan with big eyes. Buying Darise's rubbish, hook, line, and sinker.

Darise nods, pursing his lips, leaning in conspiratorially, “It started in Mexico at the Mayan temples. The Temple of Doom is a real place, where the sacrifices were thrown into the water caught from the ocean via underground tunnels. In that deep bottomless well lived the monster from the sea. Divers have gone down there and documented the halocline on camera. It's about three meters wide in a deep sea catacomb heading to the ocean. Once you cross that veil the water drops by plenty degrees, killing your cells, numbing your legs, slowing your reaction time, readying you for the slaughter to the sea gods.”

I reassure Jowendrhan, “There are no monsters in the sea. He's talking nonsense.”

Darise stands, his hands in fists, glowering at me with his eyes bright and murderous, “There are! What the hell do you think the ningen are? Love needs its sacrifices, Seithe. You and Ellindt are this family's sacrifices. I'm not joining you, I'm not dumb enough to follow outdated rituals and put my life on the line just to gratify the ego of our elders. Your hair will turn death white! It stains you forever, Seithe! Once you face death there's no turning back! No mercy!”

“What?” mumbles Jo, looking between us.

“It's true,” I nod. “Ellindt will never find redemption because the elders decided she needs to stay pure vampyre until the trinity are rediscovered. One of them has to have our children before she's allowed redemption. Ellindt is the matriarchal head of our unit so she's the one who isn't free until one of us has a daughter to replace her.”

Darise punches Jo hard on his arm, “And don't you say a word to her. She doesn't know. It's a secret, that's why we have to chaperone her everywhere she goes. We have to interfere if she looks like she's falling in love.”

Standing, I take the opportunity to give him the thumping I've been keeping in reserve, slamming my fist into his bicep, “Speaking of which, I want access to that software you have that lets us talk on cell phones.”

Hopping out of my reach, his smug smile is enough to set my blood boiling. “No can do,” he shakes his head. “If any of you have it, it just makes relationships easier. You'll never get it, I promised the powers that be none of you will get the software.”

“Why not?!” snaps Jo.

I step closer, threatening his space, “Yes Darise. Why not?”

He points at me, “You're all set to become the next big elder. If anything happens to you, Jowendrhan has to step in to fill your shoes. Ellie will only get freedom years from now. That means you have all chosen the hard road. Me, I'm not aiming for redemption, I'm not looking for a human, I'm here to play. I'm not interested in the groveling and trials you have ahead of you, which means out of all of us I'm the only one who can be trusted with this technology. The rules of redemption are plain. You can't use technology to your advantage, you have to win your human fair and square the way your ancestors did.”

That just stinks.

Our older brother is nothing like us, it sometimes amazes me that we can be such polar opposites. “You put material objects before the plight of your soul?” I frown at him.

“Give up your quest for love and redemption, then you can have my technology and toys. Until then keep your sticky fingers and curiosity to yourselves.” Finalizing his statement he swivels dramatically and vanishes, leaving me alone with Jowendrhan.