Minion (32 page)

“European and African council member, who led our transatlantic slave trade, conquest of the Americas . . . I must commend you on the recent topside wars in Rwanda and Bosnia. Oh, yes, and the modern plagues of rampant diseases visited upon impoverished, developing nations that cannot combat them. He does outstanding work. But as you can see, we are still missing a seat at our table, which means a sector goes vulnerable to peace. We cannot have unspoiled virgin territories in our midst—which present unacceptable environmental hazards.”

The chairman stopped walking and held Carlos within a riveting stare. “You see, we have a family member on each continent. Each reports to one of our council members. Each helps to keep the chaos of humanity in full strife, which is how we remain undetected. Until recently, all was in balance.” The entity smiled at Carlos. “You have a question?” It closed its eyes and opened them slowly. “You are granted permission to speak.”

Carlos glanced around and nodded, but kept silent. Fear began to edge away as the slow awareness entered him; he had not been summoned to the slaughter. There was obviously a problem topside, as they called it, and he had been brought to an even higher council than the one in the woods. Otherwise, why was he here and still whole?

Every instinct within him coiled itself tightly, readying his mind to spring at the first hint of opportunity to bargain for his own safety, if not his longevity. Survival was imperative. An alliance had to be forged; it was the way business was done—and again, he was the youngest man brought to the feet of the most powerful.

Readying himself to pose the question, Carlos forced confidence into his voice as his line of vision continued to sweep the group. He watched their expressions, body language, and every detail of their reactions before saying a word. He'd heard them speak. He'd picked up the way they strung the language together. Like being in court before a judge, you had to quickly learn the vocabulary—and one thing for sure, you had to show deference.

“I'm here, then, because you have a proposition for me, as you said upon my arrival, most notable council members?” He was no fool. He wasn't going to allow a lapse in showing respect to get him killed. Carlos told himself to just play it cool, and find out what they wanted. So he waited.

The chairman grinned and poked a long, gnarled finger into his goblet, stirred the contents, and withdrew a bloody digit and sucked it. “I like his style. He learns quickly. He shows the council the required demonstration of submission. He has finesse, unlike our rogue. This is a man who recognizes opportunity and craves power. One must give credit where credit is due—after all, he did offer his soul for power, and thus, must give the Devil his due as well. Interesting.”

“He's eager,” the attorney murmured. “Impatience can be a good or bad thing for us.”

The chairman nodded. “We have a concern, Mr. Rivera,” it said in a slow, even voice. “As I stated earlier, our world is a very orderly one, a balance of discretion and strategic aggression.
Twenty years ago—a moment in time, comparatively—one of our most gifted council members went rogue.”

“He went after a cleric and turned him,” one of the other members snarled in anger.

“Yes,” the chairman said in a smooth, even tone. “We may kill clerics, as they understand, as do we, that there is a hereafter. To kill one only adds that soul to
their
side of the spiritual equation. It is even foolhardy to kill them, for they only become stronger in the spirit form, and we try our best to avoid such casualities. But to turn one that had not been seduced properly is heresy in our world. A clerical turn requires that human to willingly give in, barter away his salvation for one of the lusts like power, money, fame, or another carnal desire, which properly compromises the cleric's soul—instead of sending his soul down here from a mere bite
after the fact
. . . which then attracts battalions of warrior angels. Our rogue member did not properly seduce his intended cleric victim; he stunned and bit him, but the cleric never gave his soul of his own volition. There was no willing exchange. As I said, we try to remain very subtle in our tactics.”

“Not to mention, this rogue almost ruined
the opportunity
, and almost sent our nations into a return of feudal law,” the attorney spat.

“It could have been chaos, so we doomed him to the corridor of unrelenting agony—where he could not feed,” another said.

“At his appointed time of incarceration, he was to be tortured in the sea of agony, and then banished to travel the fifth realms and upward—demon country,” the one at the far end of the table added. “He was locked from topside, could not feast on fresh human blood. But within days of his sentence, he escaped. We'd left him to perish in the upper levels; demon meat is all
that's up there.” The thing shivered and spit on the floor with disgust. “Yet the punishment was never exacted. Providence unlocked his prison.”

“And he was wise and formed an alliance,” the chairman corrected. “He was always a brilliant military strategist, I would have been disappointed if he'd done less. We must offer credit, where credit is due.” The chairman sighed and shook his head. “Brilliance gone rogue, however, is dangerous in any empire. He must be eliminated. We cannot sustain such variable risks to our way of life.”

Before he could censure himself, a question had rushed past Carlos's lips. “Why don't you just send a messenger to whack him?” Carlos waited as the group became still again and their focus went to the chairman. He instantly realized that he'd spoken out of order, and fear crystallized in his veins as the vampires gave him a disapproving glare.

“Our rogue got out under the most fortuitous circumstances,” the chairman finally chuckled, making Carlos relax a bit. The old vampire shook his head and then laughed with a bored sigh. “Stroke of luck, mixed with a stroke of pure genius.” The entity looked at Carlos with an open, direct gaze. “See for yourself,” it murmured. “Nuit killed a cleric and turned him twenty years ago. We immediately sealed his lair . . . but the man's wife, a church woman of all things, went to Nuit's mansion assuming her husband was having an affair, and did a ritual that an old, jealous witch had given her.”

At the mention of Nuit's name, Carlos's eyes locked with the chairman's. As he gazed at him, the chairman's eyes siphoned breath from Carlos's body. He felt like he was moving into the image that was cascading before him. Suddenly, he was no longer witnessing the image; he was inside the scene, feeling it all. The illusion made him experience the brief sensation of floating as
in a dream. Then the dream structure around him became solid. He could see the past as though it were the present. He was in a mansion, walking with a beautiful, but frightened, woman down a flight of basement stairs. She looked so much like Damali that it made his lungs hurt for her.

He could smell her perspiration; he could feel her anger driving her beyond her fears. He reached out his finger and touched the flame of her black candle and it burned him. This was real.

He watched her make a five-pointed star symbol on the dirt floor, saw her cast herbs, watched her lips move. He oddly understood the language. Bile rose in his throat as her hatred for her husband's lover grew. He could see above and below her. The woman's feet were planted on the dirt floor just above Nuit's sealed coffin. He could see a pair of glowing eyes open within the casket. The woman's voice was getting louder, the floor began to give way, and she cried out. Tears streamed down her face, and something else, not Nuit, but equally hideous, began swirling in an awful black cloud that came up from the dirt, toppling wine racks, obliterating shelves, unearthing Nuit and the casket at the same time. The woman covered her face as shards of glass from broken bottles exploded toward her, splinters of wood scored her arms and stuck in her hair. She was shrieking as two forms appeared.

Carlos was panting as the vision abruptly ended. Yet his mind was still sensing images, putting together the details, fitting the jigsaw puzzle together. He gaped at the chairman, who nodded with a wise smile. “Her husband was hiding his vampire hunting activities from her to protect her,” Carlos choked.

He looked at the council and shut his eyes tightly. The images would not stop careening inside his skull.

“Yes,” the chairman murmured. “Compelling drama, isn't it?
Lesson number one: dissolve the image; get it out of your system once you've tasted it. Remember that.”

“She was pregnant when it began.” Nausea and anger from the woman's hurt still laced his system as Carlos kept talking. He had to get it out, to say it out loud, lest it stay in his mind. The more he talked, the dimmer the images became, and the less he felt the woman's agony. “Her husband's lies that he was with parishioners got found out. All the people he'd claimed to be with, when she checked, hadn't seen him. The first clue came as an accident, and some people began acting strangely, which made her start digging.”

“Correct,” the counselor said in a weary tone. “Hurry. Purge, so we can get to the matter at hand.”

Carlos shook his head. “She had the baby, and one night she saw a man, Nuit, seduce her husband in their living room. She was upstairs, the child had awakened, she heard what she thought were lovers . . . Nuit carried her husband out the door in his arms to finish the bite—her husband didn't seem to resist, and she made assumptions. . . . The minister disappeared for three days. She found an address. His car was parked at Nuit's house. She went there on the third night.” He wiped at the trickle of sweat that had run down his temples. “She didn't know what she was walking into.”

The chairman sighed. “The foolish woman did not understand that what was seducing her husband was a master vampire. The pastor had stupidly gone into a master's lair alone during the day, leaving a trail, which Nuit later followed. The cleric's penchant for heroics, and not wanting to have another of his human folk hurt, allowed him to be led there on a suicide mission.” The chairman drew a deep inhale and let it out slowly as though garnering patience. “Alas, his wife thought her husband was having a male liaison.” Now it laughed. “That was before
such things were in vogue, so the poor woman lost her mind and sought out an old hag to work roots, of all things, on the situation. Country bumpkins, spare us all!”

Carlos nodded. “She went in there with vengeance in her soul, and to get her man back.”

“Correct. We've dealt with the root worker long ago. That is of no consequence. But what is perilous is the fact that, by her giving the dark ritual to the minister's wife, our seal on Nuit was compromised. The wife released a revenge demon right above a master vampire's crypt—
in his lair
. Unheard of.” The chairman's laughter immediately dissipated as he stood again and began to nervously pace.

“Do you have any idea of the irony of this event?” The chairman paused, looked at Carlos, and resumed his complaint. “We
never
cohabit with demons. It is unthinkable. They are locked to locations—which we avidly avoid. They, unlike us, can only be summoned by an entity possessing a soul, which we do not have. Hence, those compromised humans within the dark arts are very careful to never commingle them with us—they perform their rituals elsewhere, and all remains in balance.”

Suddenly the chairman whirled on Carlos and slammed his clenched fist against the table. The throbbing veins within it splashed blood against his fist. “
A church woman
—an innocent released Fallon Nuit
and
a revenge demon—stupid bitch! If we didn't know better, we'd swear that the warrior angels had a hand in this atrocity! And because she knew nothing of the dark arts, she did this . . . this . . .
ritual
without understanding the ramifications. Fool!”

“But—”

“Listen!” the chairman bellowed, cutting off Carlos's unspoken question. “Nuit bit her, and half turned her in his lair. He was overconfident, and wanted her to suffer slowly while he and
the demon made plans. The demon would get to have free access to movement within what Nuit calls
the Minion
—his own made, now rogue vampires . . . humans who have willingly traded their souls for something they want, which also now bear an ugly signature bite like a revenge demon, an Amanthra. The legions of Amanthras merged with Nuit's Minion, using the vampire bodies as hosts to freely move about unbound by locations, and have thus created a hybrid. That possession demon type is prevalent, as it lurks just below the surface and is drawn by human emotions of jealousy, vengeance, and blind anger. Those that could not find a vampire host, await more vampires to join Nuit's faction to inhabit.

“It is an ugly,
ugly
demon—because it has no finesse, no subtlety, and is not strategic, it acts without thinking, something that is totally contrary to our highly evolved vampire species. We do not consort with any demons, but especially not
that one
.” The chairman's breaths were now coming in short bursts of fury as it circled the table. “Nuit got released from our prison and was offered protection from our hunters. The Amanthras allow him to use their tunnels; they get to use his bodies. That was the barter.”

Carlos stared at the chairman, then let his gaze slowly appraise the concerned expressions of each powerful council member. This was some heavy shit. . . .

The counselor eyed Carlos. “
An innocent
performed the ceremony, and she still had purity of heart . . . her husband, who still loved her, heard past Nuit's call, came to her in that basement, and interrupted Nuit before he could finish the wife off. Nuit struggled with the minister, and committed the second grievous act in our world. He picked up a piece of wood from the shelving and drove a stake into the heart of his own second-generation made vampire!”