Sabre's Writing Blog

Nyteflight , Chapter 6, part 11

2007-07-14T16:24:00.000-05:00

“Looks like he’s living with it just fine,” Simon observed. “Doesn’t appear to be too bothered having Dr. Maher’s blood on his hands.” His eyes narrowed on David. “You wanted us to know it was you,” he seethed. “That’s why you didn’t bother hiding the tattoo. You wanted us to know you were one of them.”
Out of nowhere, the back of Ranier’s hand smashed into Simon’s cheekbone.
“C’est bien,” David said as he grasped Ranier by the arm and tugged him back away from Simon. “They have a right to be angry. Don’t you imagine?”
Evan looked up at David with an expression of complete betrayal. He shook his head slowly. “If I get out of this, I’ll kill you, you sonofabitch,” he said quietly.
“I don’t think we’ll need to worry about that, bougre,” David said and gave Evan a quick wink. He straightened and nodded at the two men standing behind him. “Michael, Dylan, we have business up on deck,” he told them.
“I can’t believe this,” Darla whispered as they watched David leave. “How could he do it?”
“Apparently, everyone has their price,” Sheba told her.
“I guess we know what happened to the missing SAS operative and the Seal,” Simon said. “Guess they had their price too.”

“Mrs. Tompkins,” Jonathan spoke into the telephone. “Jonathan Pryce speaking.”
“Y…yes....Elaine,” a shaking voice replied, “She told me you would help me if I couldn’t reach her. She gave me the phone number, god, well, years ago. She knows Dale….my husband. I….I need help.”
“What’s happened, Elaine?” Jonathan asked.
“Dale…it’s Dale. I didn’t know anyone else to call. Not for this,” she sobbed.
Jonathan’s jaw tightened. Scotty swung into the doorway and made a gesture like drawing a circle to let Jonathan know the C-21 was ready and waiting for them. He heard Sheba’s voice from an earlier conversation.
It took twenty stitches to close the wound.

Elaine Tompkins sat at the dining table, staring at the warm reflection of light in the polished, varnished surface of the table top from the small Williamsburg chandelier overhead. Her shoulder hurt, but they had told her to wait for them. They were coming, they said. On their way when she had hung the phone up. She had been right to call them and it would be best, they told her, if she kept this all to herself. It might be several hours before they arrived, but they said it would be best not to call her doctor. Best not to go to the emergency room. Best. Best.
She looked up to see Dale’s legs again, in the same position as an hour before, stretched out in front of him where he sat in his recliner, feet cocked out to the sides. His legs were all she could see from the dining room, but he was attached to them. He was still there. He hadn’t moved from that spot for several hours now.
She lowered her head, rested it on her forearm and began to cry again. They would come soon. Her shoulder hurt. What is wrong with you, Dale? It hurt and burned and how could he do this to her?
Another Valium. Yes.

Nyteflight , Chapter 6, part 10

2007-07-04T23:30:00.001-05:00

Youko threw her head back and laughed weakly.
Simon thrashed for a moment as Ranier ran his fingertip across the bend of his arm, seeking the vein. “You wish it to be rough for you?” he asked, “It would be my pleasure.”
With that, Ranier drove the needle in hard and probed roughly for the elusive casing of Simon’s vein.
“Screw you!” Simon growled, and the black red liquid shot through the tube.
Ranier looked up at Sheba. “He said you would come, ma soeur.”
“I’m sure he did,” she smirked, “Brother.”
Ranier lifted his chin and looked down his aquiline nose at her. “You expected to find us here.”
“Their only route to Primrose,” Youko observed with a hiss. “They let us take them.”
Ranier tilted his head like a curious dog, “You think you would have simply walked right in?”
Sheba nodded. “Yes. I will walk right in. And kill him with his own sword.”
Ranier raised a brow inquisitively. “Such confidence. You see this?”
“Call it more a feeling,” Sheba replied.
Youko managed another weak laugh. “And if we just kill you here?”
Sheba looked at her calmly. “I’m sure he would not be too pleased.”
Ranier yanked the needle from Simon’s arm, chuckling. “I see a lot of him in you.”
Sheba breathed in deeply, closed her eyes and shook her head.
A soft throbbing began to pound into the hold from above. The unmistakable beating of a helicopter’s rotors grew heavier until the sound became a vibration which pounded softly through the ceiling above them for a few moments. The vibration finally stopped as the helicopter obviously lifted off the ship’s deck and soon it faded gradually until it was gone.
Presently, the main door of the hold groaned open and a collective gasp moved through the space as David ducked in through the doorway. Two men followed him inside.
“Get us the hell out of here, man!” Evan shouted.
David stopped and looked down at him. His eyes swept over the scene briefly, then focused back on Evan. “Sorry, bougre. Can’t.”
“You sonofabitch!” Evan snarled.
“Welcome, mon frere,” Ranier nodded to David.
“Bon soir,” David replied. He glanced down at Klaus. “Looks like they gave you a little trouble.”
“Nothing we were not able to overcome,” Ranier smiled.
David moved closer to the group and stopped near Simon. “Don’t believe we’ve met.”
Simon stared up at David, his eyes filled with a calm ferocity. “ Traitor.....”
“What’d he give you, David?” Evan seethed.
“Does it matter?” David asked him.
“Don’t worry about it, Evan,” Simon growled. “He won’t live long enough to collect.”
“David,” Sheba said. “Whatever it is he’s trying to do, I know it involves harming a lot of innocent people. Can you live with that?”
David glanced down at Sheba. “I guess we’ll see.

Nyteflight , Chapter 6, part 9

2007-07-01T16:22:00.000-05:00

One by one, Sheba, Evan, Darla and Simon were treated to the constraints of a thick length of rope; the concession of a somewhat peaceful and intentional surrender. Not the most desired position, but certainly the only comfortable option Ranier had offered them. Le Rose set to sea just after Ranier had them all bound and placed in the ship’s hold and he set up watch there, being the only one of them left healthy enough to take on the task.
The hold was dark; lit only by dim, yellowish utility lights that lined the walls near the ceiling of a vast storage area. Palettes of crates and boxes stood along the walls, though at least half the space was empty. The ship had taken on very little cargo, in fact. Certainly much less than its manifest listed.
Ranier had brought in steel folding chairs to which he lashed his captives and a soft pile of blankets where he deposited Youko. The giant, he dragged in last and simply left lying in the floor across the room from the prisoners. The huge mound of bloody flesh lay like a wounded whale, gasping and wheezing.
He disappeared then and returned after a bit, a large metal case in tow and a grimace twisting across his face. He shoved a wooden crate across the floor with his foot and cringed at the scraping of wood against the bare metal flooring of the hold. Slamming the case on top of the crate, he threw a quick glance in Youko’s direction.
His thumbs snapped the locks open on the front of the case. His angular features darkened and black brows drew inward to meet in a strange, but solemn, expression as he removed four large measured glass vials and set them on the crate beside the case. He appeared as enthusiastic about the task he faced as a man on his way to the guillotine.
Youko watched; a slow, malicious smile spreading across her face as Ranier drew a plastic bag from the case and slit its side open with a sharp fingernail. He withdrew a large hollow needle which was attached in the center of a blue plastic winged tab that made the apparatus appear as if it could flutter away at any moment. A thick, clear tubing trailed from the rear of the needle, giving the little blue butterfly a fitting tail.
Ranier snatched one of the vials from the crate and moved beside Evan. Evan’s thick arms were wrapped backward around the backrest of his chair, his wrists bound tightly behind him. The ropes dug into the sides of his biceps, causing muscle and flesh to bulge away from the pressure. Ranier rubbed and slapped at the bend of Evan’s arm and watched for a vein to rise.
“I hope ya washed yer hands, Frenchie,” Evan snorted.
Ranier smirked and drove the needle through Evan’s skin. Evan winced slightly. Immediately, a dark stream shot through the tubing and began quickly filling the vial.
“Primrose wishes you more accommodating when you arrive,” Ranier said evenly as he concentrated on the rising level of blood in the vial.
“Why not just let us suck them dry?” Youko asked.
“Too dangerous,” Ranier replied. “They are our bloodline, but for one,” he said with a quick glance in Simon’s direction. “Apparently, he does not wish to risk a bond between us. He has forbidden us from feeding directly from them. You and Klaus can have all you want from the vials to restore your strength.” He leaned slightly closer to Evan’s face and flashed his sharp canines. “Though it is tempting, is it not?”
Evan turned his face to Ranier and stared hard at him. “Go ahead,” he growled. “Be the best meal you ever had. And the last.”
Ranier quietly chuckled in response as he watched the vial continue to fill with Evan’s blood. Finally satisfied with the amount taken, he slipped the needle from Evan’s vein and turned to Simon.
Simon snarled softly. “I can’t believe this. Bled like freakin pigs.”
“How is it they say to call the pigs home for dinner?” Ranier said.

Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 8

2007-06-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

Elaine Tompkins jumped at the sound of the front door opening. She hurried to finish the table setting, placing a napkin and silverware beside her husband's dinner plate. She straightened, reaching behind her to rub at the soreness in the small of her back. The front door slammed shut, startling her again.
“Jesus,” she breathed.
She rushed back into the kitchen and finished off the last few swallows of Chardonnay she had left in her glass and snatched a platter of baked chicken from the counter.
“Dale?”
“Yeah,” he called from the living room.
Elaine set the plate of chicken in the center of the dining table.
“Traffic?” she asked.
She looked up, finding him staring at her from the doorway, his fingers working at the zipper of his flight suit.
“The rolls aren’t quite ready if you want to change before we eat.”
“Dinner can wait,” he said. He walked around the table and slipped his arms around her waist, cinching her close to him.
She was surprised to feel his erection pressed against her even though this made the third evening in a row he had come home from work wanting to make love before she had even managed to set the table.
The first night had been a pleasant change. The second had happened, she reasoned, because he had been thinking about the night before as he drove home. He had been wild that first night, and even wilder the next. But three nights in a row simply did not make sense. Not after fourteen years of marriage. Neither of them had been particularly amorous the last few years.
A sickening thought struck her then as Dale nuzzled not so gently at her throat. What if he was having an affair? Men sometimes begin paying more attention to their wives in the bedroom then. Or the dining room? Either that, or they seem to lose their sexual desire completely. But then again, he was over forty; the prime age for a male mid-life crisis. Perhaps it was only that, though neither explanation seemed to fit him. Dale was not the womanizing type and his ego didn’t seem vulnerable to crisis. His staunch personality left little room for anything such as that. And that airplane of his seemed to be his only true love.
His hands slid down her back over her hips. He pulled her closer. The warmth of his breath moved over her neck. She pushed back and looked up at him. That wild look filled his eyes like it had the first night, though tonight they seemed even more ravenous.
“What have you done with my husband?” she smiled.
He smiled back at her and pulled her with him into the living room, maneuvering her toward the sofa. Without a word, he moved behind her and pushed her by the shoulders, bending her over the arm of the sofa.
“Dale!” she gasped, “What in the world . . .”
What desire she might have felt suddenly turned to repulsion as Dale jerked rudely at the waistband of her pants. She tried to push herself up from the sofa, but he held her there.
“Damn it, Dale! I’m not enjoying this. Just stop.”
She shoved against him and felt him move away. She lay there for a moment, disgusted and embarrassed. She felt Dale’s hand close around her arm and tug her to her feet.
“Elaine, I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
She jerked her arm from his grasp and stormed toward the stairs, straightening her clothes. A few moments later, she plopped down on the edge of their bed in the dark. Her anger grew as she replayed the scene over in her mind, but should she even be angry at all, she wondered? Maybe he just needed a change. Maybe the stress from his job had finally become too much for him. She groped for reasoning, trying to justify the whole thing.
She heard the stairs creek and she sighed. She had overreacted. Dale opened the bedroom door. She was suddenly relieved he had followed her up.
He sat down next to her on the bed in the darkness, silent except for the soft whisper of his breath. She felt his hand on her shoulder and she turned to him. She let him wrap his arms around her and she held on to him, wanting to forget what had happened.
Suddenly, it felt so wonderful just to be in his arms. He was a massive man, muscular and strong even at his age, and she had always loved the way it felt to be wrapped tenderly in that power.
She reached up and kissed him, finding herself at once aroused despite everything. Dale responded immediately and urgently, pushing her onto her back. This time she let him wrench her pants down and off and even his unrestrained passion couldn’t turn her desire from him now as it had downstairs. She wanted to surrender to him and he took advantage of that moment, moving into her roughly, pinning her arms behind her head and began a violent thrusting.
Elaine almost cried out in pain, but the pain gave way momentarily to pleasure and she found herself not wanting it to stop.
And it didn’t.
Dale seemed inexhaustible, his attack not easing even after Elaine’s second climax had peaked and subsided. He seemed only to become wilder, moving to some place beyond passion; his grunts and moans sounding more like an animal frenzy than the sounds of pleasure.
Elaine felt a sudden pain tear through her shoulder. She gasped and cried out. For a moment, she couldn’t grasp what was happening, but then she realized Dale had clamped down on her shoulder with his teeth. He bit down harder and she screamed again, summoning the strength to throw him off of her.
“What the hell is wrong with you!” she shrieked and scrambled out of the bed.
She bolted into the bathroom, slammed the door and locked it behind her. She felt a warm wetness tickle its way down her arm. She snatched a towel from the towel bar and covered the wound, still too stunned to wonder yet what had come over him.
She turned to the mirror over the sink. She was trembling; afraid to look beneath the towel. A growing, bright red stain had already begun to soak through the material.

“Nellis?” Jonathan’s voice rose sharply, “Why Nellis?”
“Don’t know,” Bishop replied, “Said he left the base just after he came in.”
Jonathan’s cell phone beeped. He reached down and snatched it from his belt.
“Pryce,” he growled.
“Jon, I got a scrambled call on Mother’s private line,” Scotty told him. “It’s Tompkins’ wife. She sounds bad.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 7

2007-05-26T18:02:00.000-05:00

Jonathan pulled open the bottom drawer of the old cherry wood chest that held a mess of old papers and photographs and little sentimental nothings he had collected through recent years. And not so recent. He squatted in front of the open drawer and moved the top layer of papers and miscellaneous junk items around, exposing yet another layer of the same. A piece of blue plastic caught his eye. He swiped more junk aside unearthing an old keychain, its blue tab sported a tiny embossed replica of the Eiffel Tower. He lifted the keychain by the ring and held it up. The little raised tower had once been painted black, but by now, only a few flakes of paint speckled the base of the tiny relief. It dangled from his finger for a moment before he closed his hand around it tightly.
Simon, he thought, I never expected to see you again.
He tossed the keyring back into the drawer and lifted out an old photograph. Its corners were ragged and the image cracked from bending. One crack ran in a jagged line from the top to the bottom border of the photograph, ironically, exactly between the image of he and Simon. Sheba stood next to Simon in the scene, yet no cracks separated their images. Nothing separated them.
Nothing but him.
He wiped his hand down his face and stared for a moment longer at the irony; the cracks; the man who had changed everything; the one it hurt so much to hate.
The image of Seven filled his thoughts then. A moment later, her essence filled his senses.
“Father.”
He tossed the photograph back onto the pile of junk, slid the drawer closed and looked up at her. She seemed so small standing there in the doorway. So innocent and small.
“That was Simon,” she said.
Jonathan nodded.
She stood in the doorway, staring at him for a long moment. Her eyes seemed not to leave him, though he realized they were focused elsewhere now; more inward than at him.
“You awakened me to spite Sheba, didn’t you? To get even with her for what happened with Simon.”
Jonathan swallowed hard. “No. Not….altogether. You called to me. Remember what I said to you that night? You called me and I came.”
Seven’s gaze turned back to him then; this time piercing too deeply; too knowingly. She shook her head.
“I thought it was so perfect. So romantic. Now I find out it was all revenge.” She smiled sadly and her eyes dropped.
“It wasn’t revenge, Seven,” he lied. But it wasn’t a complete lie.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I am still your blood and you are my sire. No matter why. If you hadn’t come that night…”
A quiet knock silenced Seven followed by Bishop’s voice.
“Jon. . .sorry. SAC picked up the Aurora coming in about twenty minutes ago.”
Jonathan frowned. “Already?” He didn’t like the look on Bishop’s face.
Bishop nodded. “She diverted though. Landed at Nellis instead.”
“Any word from Tompkins?”
“No,” Bishop replied, “And I can’t reach him.” He hesitated a moment. “Jon. . .he came back alone.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 6

2007-05-21T12:13:00.000-05:00

Simon flung the giant to the dock and straddled his enormous body. He looked up at Sheba. She stood watching, trembling. Her face paled and beads of sweat glistened across her forehead.
“Come on, Sheba,” Simon growled, “Come get it.”
Sheba’s fists clenched tightly at her sides. She shook her head. “I have fought too long…”
Her knuckles grew white. Blood began to drip from her fists onto the ground beside her feet.
Simon raised his hand, soaked in the giant’s blood and licked his fingers methodically, almost seductively; his long, ivory fangs flashing white against the shimmering scarlet.
“Come on, Sheba,” he breathed.
“Just kill him. We don’t have time for this,” Sheba replied. Her voice trembled as she spoke and she turned away from Simon, closing her eyes tightly.
“Sheba,” Simon whispered, “Remember the taste of it. Fresh. Warm. Coursing with life.”
Sheba shook her head once more, but she knew even then it was too late to stop it. She had already allowed herself to move beyond the point of control.
She felt the Beast rising inside, the convulsion of power coursing through her, its dark potency instantly permeating every cell in her body.
She threw back her head and roared then spun and snatched Youko up from behind. She drug the woman away from Darla and twisted her body around to plunge her long fangs deep into the flesh of her throat. Youko writhed against her grasp, pushing and clawing at her face, but Sheba only groaned and drew harder at the wound until she felt Youko’s strength dwindling, her heart slowing, beat by beat. She had forgotten how it felt. She let herself slip into it completely; to savor it as she had done so long ago.
Until the unmistakable throb of the Aurora’s engines jarred her back to reality.
She dropped Youko and stared up into the sky at the blazing light of Aurora’s afterburners, watching them grow dim and disappear into the fog.
“Tompkins,” she breathed and looked down at Youko.
She had expected a trap, but certainly not this.

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 5

2007-05-20T12:49:00.000-05:00

Sheba ducked beneath a clumsy swing of the giant’s massive arm. As he spun and reached for her, she took hold of the ramp’s handrail and hoisted her body up, striking out with both feet which caught the giant beneath the chin, sending him tumbling backward down the plank. Simon ducked out of the way of the rolling mass of flailing arms and legs and gnashing fangs. He looked up at Sheba, grinning.
“What’s so damned funny?” Sheba growled.
“You. In the old days, he’d have been gutted by now.”
Sheba’s eyes narrowed.
“Like this...” Simon whispered.
He let out a snarling hiss as his canines extended. He opened his hands and flexed his fingers as Sheba watched. His eye flashed as his nails became like claws.
With a roar like some enraged beast, he flung himself on the giant. A slash of his nails tore into the man’s shoulder and across his chest. His fangs ripped into flesh, raking and gouging like a rabid animal.

Darla’s nostrils flared at the sudden scent of the giant’s blood in the air. Youko obviously caught the scent as well. She glanced back at Simon’s savage display, a subtle look of astonishment replaced her normally emotionless expression.
“What’s the matter, Auntie?” Darla snarled, “Forget what we really are?”
Youko turned back to Darla and gasped.

Evan watched the arc of his gun as it fell. Ranier wasted no time striking again. His foot swung toward Evan’s face. Evan dodged the foot and caught it midswing in his hands. He twisted Ranier’s ankle and sank his lengthening canines deep through Ranier’s boot and into the top of his foot.
“Sacre!” Ranier cried out.
Evan spun him away and reared back, his body shaking as the bloodrage engulfed him.

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 4

2007-05-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

Simon rolled onto his side and pushed himself up, shaking his head.
The giant looked down at him. A low, growling chuckle rumbled up from inside him as he drew his foot back to kick.
A sudden parting of the air over Simon’s head prompted him to duck. He heard a sickening thud then a grunt from the giant. He looked up in time to see Sheba land in front of the huge man who now staggered backward away from her gasping for air.
She flew into him with a hail of spinning wheel kicks - left, right, high and low. The giant could only flounder about and flail his arms in an attempt to block her assault as she constantly changed the focus of her attack. His bulk did not allow him the agility to dodge Sheba’s speed, nor was he able to land a blow, but his sheer strength and size made his defeat seem like chipping away at a mountain of stone.

Youko circled Darla slowly. A low growl issued from deep in her throat, her eyes locked on Darla despite the chaos around them. Darla’s concentration slipped only for an instant as she cut her eyes in the direction of the commotion on the ship’s loading ramp and Youko lunged. Darla ducked past her and rolled to her back, slamming her heel into the woman’s stomach. She lifted and tossed Youko up and over her then leapt back to her feet with a snort as Youko rose and lunged at her once more.

Evan found himself locked in the same dance with Ranier as before. The Frenchman matched him evenly and their encounter soon came to its inevitable stalemate once again. The two played each other now like a game of chess; move and countermove at the speed of thought until Evan found the moment to reach for his side arm to end this game as he had ended their first meeting. He stepped out of Ranier’s reach and raised the gun.
Ranier leaped at him in a blur of motion, shortening the distance between them in an instant of time. His foot lashed out before Evan’s finger could move on the trigger. The pistol went flying end over end into the air.
Ranier smiled wickedly at him and shook his head.
“Not this time, mon frere.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 3

2007-05-13T10:41:00.001-05:00

Simon gauged the distance between himself and the ship’s deck. Evan glanced in his direction and gave a subtle nod. He bolted from out of the shadows and moved around the opposite side of the truck. Darla squatted near the front wheel-well and motioned with the barrel of her handgun toward the ship’s loading plank. The group of workers had gathered around Evan to see to the fallen man, but the distraction would likely not last much longer. Simon lunged silently toward the plank while the way remained clear and disappeared onto the deck of the ship.

Sheba watched from across the street as Simon trotted up the loading ramp. She glanced at her watch. Less than an hour remained before Le Rose was scheduled to depart for its listed destination - Siberia.
She looked back up just in time to see Simon fly backward over the side of the ship and land tumbling down the loading ramp, under the plank’s side railing and over the edge. She let out a gasp, watching in helpless horror as Simon pitched over the side of the ramp. He scrambled frantically for something to grasp onto. Then suddenly, he was gone.
Gone.
Sheba blinked, stunned for a moment before she could gather herself to move. With a whistle to Evan and Darla, she sprinted across the street toward the dock.

Darla spun in the direction of Sheba’s whistle and froze. Through the haze, a dark form glided like a specter toward her, parting the mist in swirls around it as it approached. As it moved into the light of the truck’s headlamps, Darla recognized Youko’s face.

Evan swept several of the dock workers out of his way and charged toward the loading plank. He stopped short of the plank when the dark silhouette of an enormous man appeared at the top of the ramp. The plank vibrated beneath his weight as he stepped from the deck and bound toward Evan. The man was easily seven feet tall and almost half as wide. He reminded Evan of some overgrown wrestler except this one gave off the distinctive aura of vampire.
The dock workers scattered. Evan backed up as the giant stomped down the plank. He stopped in the center between the ship’s deck and the dock, seemingly oblivious to Evan’s presence, focusing instead on the ramp in front of him.
“Dammit!” A voice called up from somewhere beneath the giant’s feet.
Evan watched a hand rear up from over the side of the ramp and grasp the waffled steel flooring. Another hand followed, clutching the nearest baluster of the hand rail and Simon hauled himself up onto the ramp, gasping and cursing. He collapsed in a heap on the surface of the plank. The giant looked down at him, his mouth twisting into a hideous grin.
Evan stepped in front of Simon and shook his head. “You come through me first.”
The giant’s horrid smile widened further as Ranier stepped out from behind him.
He nodded to Evan. “Again we meet.”
Evan opened his mouth to give his opinion on their meeting, but before the words came, Ranier lunged at him, knocking him backward over Simon who protested with a grunt as the two tumbled over him and rolled, locked together, down the ramp and onto the dock.

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 2

2007-05-10T21:04:00.000-05:00

A light haze had drifted inland during the evening hours, and by midnight, fog blanketed much of Italy’s largest and busiest seaport. Patches of heavier fog enveloped the port’s immense marine complex and just to the east where Tompkins set the Aurora down on an expanse of flat land cleared for a future aviation facility. Under the cover of fog and the incessant din of the seaport’s operation, the Aurora had come to rest only blocks from the piers without notice.
Evan moved through the fog silently, feeling his way more than seeing, toward the voices of dock workers and the purring rumble of a large diesel engine. He paused across the street from one loading dock and watched the activity for a moment through the haze.
Dock workers labored to shove pallets of wooden crates to the open rear of a tractor-trailer in reach of a forklift that buzzed back and forth from the truck to a wide loading ramp which stretched from the dock to the deck of a large cargo ship. The forklift motored up and down the plank, disappearing onto the ship’s deck to deposit its burden and reappearing momentarily to whiz back to the truck for another load. Other shoremen worked to hook the cables of a massive crane to a bright orange sea-land container resting on the back of the last truck waiting to be unloaded.
Through the mist and fog, the enormous cargo vessel appeared almost as part of the darkness, set apart only by the lights that flooded sections of its deck and smaller spotlights that shone on the ship’s identification marks. Evan squinted through the fog to read the name scribed high on the ship’s bow.
Le Rose de Minuit.
That’s our gal, he silently told himself.
He moved from the shadows and crossed the street, walking boldly up to a tall, scruffy dockhand. The man stood beside the tractor trailer away from the others; one hand stuffed down in the side pocket of his overalls while the other scratched at his unkempt scraggle of a beard.
“Avete un fiammifero, amico?” Evan said, asking the man for a match.
The man regarded him coolly, nodded and dug in one of his oversized pockets to produce a cigarette lighter. He raised it to the cigarette Evan held clenched between his teeth and thumbed the wheel.
When the flash of the lighter lit Evan’s face the man drew in a sharp breath in preparation to shout. Evan struck out with a short left, catching the man in the middle of his gut. The worker dropped at Evan’s feet, gasping and clutching his stomach.
“Hey!” Evan yelled. The man’s co-workers all turned at once to look at him. “I think your friend is sick,” He called out in Italian.

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Nyteflight Chapter 6, part 1

2007-05-07T09:20:00.000-05:00

The Aurora touched down almost silently in a vacant lot behind a cluttered construction site not far from Genoa’s docks.
“God Almighty! What a ride!” Evan laughed. He unsnapped his harness. “Tompkins, yer an artist! This is one bad bird.”
Tompkins smiled slightly. “Thank you, son. I do my best,” he said then immediately reverted back to his usual game face, studying an array of instrument clusters set into the side of the cockpit that apparently meant absolutely nothing to anyone but him.
Evan glanced at Darla who had only now managed to come out of her helmet. “C’mon, darlin’. Time’s wastin’.”
Darla snapped the harness loose and looked up at him, her normally pale complexion had taken on a slightly greenish caste.
“Give me a minute.”
“Are you all right?” Sheba smirked.
Simon grinned and shook her by the shoulder playfully. “Get sick, did you?”
“I didn’t have time,” she muttered, “Between Evan’s war whoops and that dive down.” She swallowed hard and grimaced.
Sheba glanced at her watch. “Well, pull yourself together. Our ship departs in one hour.”
Simon looked at Sheba, “Primrose has been running us in circles. Have you considered this might be a trap?”
Sheba smiled back at him almost wickedly. “I’m counting on it.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 13

2007-05-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

The door opened and Seven peeked inside, “I was just going to knock.”
“I know.”
She went to his bed and perched on the edge of it, looking down at the mounds of melted candle wax on the floor.
Jonathan watched her for a moment, thinking how young she was. How much like a little girl she appeared. A pang of sadness touched him as the past rushed forward.
“Why didn’t you go with them?” he asked.
“I’m injured.”
Jonathan shook his head. “You’re ready by now.” He studied her silently for a moment.
Seven fidgeted slightly, “Doc said…”
Pryce stopped her. “Doctor McKinley always errs on the side of caution.”
“Yes, I do.”
Jonathan smiled and glanced up. Donna McKinley stood in the doorway staring back at him, hands stuffed down into the pockets of her lab coat. Even at almost sixty years old, she was still attractive, her dark, almost ebony skin showed hardly a wrinkle and her curly black hair only slightly grayed at the temples.
The team’s resident physician; once a very promising hematologist until she was approached by PsyOps and offered a real challenge, Donna was now the leading, if not the only, expert in her current field – vampire physiology.
“I also worry when my patients refuse treatment,” she said, glowering at Jonathan in an almost parental manner.
“I’ll not be bottle fed like some infant,” Jonathan replied. “We have healed for centuries without those methods.”
Dr. McKinley set her jaw, “You could have gone with the others yourself. I’ve never known you to lay out.”
Jonathan felt himself smirk. “I’m sure they can take care of themselves just fine.”
The doctor folded her arms across her chest and gave Jonathan a too-knowing look. “Why am I suddenly having dejavu? It seems like our visitor has reopened a lot of . . .”
“That’s enough, Donna,” Jonathan abruptly cut her off. “Seven knows nothing of that time.”
“She’s a big girl,” Dr. McKinley said. “Maybe it’s time you told her.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 12

2007-05-02T14:29:00.000-05:00

The hideous face drew back and opened its mouth into a gaping grin and hollow, insane laughter issued from it.
It made no sense. Simon’s sire was dead and gone. Jonathan shook his head again and clamped his eyelids tightly together to escape the hideous vision. He felt himself struggling within the grasp of his dark gods’ embrace. He thrashed at the force of it in vain for a moment, then became still again as his own reality reminded him he could not escape this way.
Finally, he calmed himself and lay back into the warmth. He was slipping from the dark embrace even now, but still reached out with questions.
The voices were silent now. Then, as Jonathan felt his essence being pulled back into the cortex where his body remained, he heard a soft, fading whisper.
“It is but another beginning. When you give yourself to him.’”
Jonathan opened his eyes and stared blankly at the three small flames before him. Candle wax had melted down over the candle’s holders and spread on the floor around them. The dim light from the dying flames wavered and flickered as each slowly died away. The cortex he had conjured had disappeared as well and the room seemed as it had been before.
Except for one thing.
He tried to shake the thought away. But the Dark Ones had spoken it.
Childe of the Beast. See your death. Death, but no rest.
As in all things, he knew the meaning of it would come clear to him in time, but they had told him; warned him of his own death. He shook his head. Was that it? Was that the meaning they intended? And the vision of Simon’s sire. Look, Childe, at the face of your death. It made no sense.
Jonathan sighed and pushed himself up from the floor. He reached for a bath robe that hung over the back of a bedside chair and wrapped it around himself then looked up, almost smiling.
“Come in, Seven,” he called softly.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 11

2007-05-01T10:22:00.000-05:00

He opened his eyes to darkness where even darker shadow forms moved. The forms swirled around him and brushed past him giving sensations like cold, tingling caresses. The sensation chilled him outwardly, then moved inward until his insides quivered with it. This, too, he endured, until the feeling subsided and he felt warmth return.
From every direction, the sound of soft rumbling began and Jonathan waited, floating among the black, dancing shadows, as the noise grew louder, nearer. He felt the vibration of it and he held his arms outward from his sides, opening to its approach until the vibration trembled within his own ethereal form.
The rumble became a roar then, suddenly deafening like the snarling wail of a thousand beasts coming from no discernible direction. Then, just as suddenly, silence fell. For a moment.
He felt the sensation of an embrace then, as if enormous arms had enfolded him and inside him came a thousand whispers like the voices of the wind itself.
“Childe of the Beast,” the voices whispered.
Jonathan opened to the voices, touched them, breathed them in and tasted their dark sweetness as they rose up through him in rasping flutters. Of all the heights of sensation and rapture that could be reached, this touching of the voices was the pinnacle. And in their presence, he could not speak. But it was not necessary.
“See your death,” the voices said.
Jonathan felt a shudder move up through him. His death. Yes. He could see it. A dark, shapeless shadow that loomed above him, silent and terrible.
“Death, yet no rest.”
Jonathan clenched his eyes closed tightly and shook his head.
“Look, childe, at the face of your death.”
He fought to open his eyes again, but only darkness and the swirling black shadows moved before him. Nothing. Nothing there. Until one of the shadow forms became still.
Its form began to pulse and writhe as if it were changing its shape as Jonathan watched. The dark mass drew closer to him, and as it neared, Jonathan recognized within it the dark countenance of a man he had seen before.
Simon’s sire.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 10

2007-04-29T12:54:00.000-05:00

Jonathan sat in a lotus position on the floor of his quarters. Before him, three taper candles burned, arranged in an arc. The delicate, orange glow of candle flame cast soft shadows about the room and across Jonathan’s naked, unmoving form.
Each candle held a different purpose; the white, which stood to Jonathan’s right, attracted and gathered positive energy, the black candle to his left absorbed the negative. In the center, directly in front of Jonathan, a red candle was placed. This one represented his vampiric essence and served as his visual link to a deeper and darker realm than this physical reality.
He had stilled his breathing and cleared all thought from his mind in preparation. As he concentrated, his heartbeat gradually slowed until it beat only half its normal pace. The visual reality of the room around him began to change. Colors and forms that once were walls and furniture swirled together gradually, blending into each other and becoming a moving mass of gray like some gelatinous sphere that enveloped him now. Within it, energies, subtle and not so subtle, began to gather, some building from within the sphere itself and some, drawn in by Jonathan’s pull, seeped in through its pervious cortex and filled the space until the sensation of it tingled over his skin like faint electrical impulses. He let the sensation move through him as if his body was no longer solid and at the same time, reached outward from himself with tiny ethereal threads that passed through the sphere’s cortex and outward.
At once, he felt his body tense. To reach outside the sphere was to reach into another realm. To touch this place might compare in some small way to what a human would experience if he were able to encounter what he believed to be Heaven, though in such a comparison, this place could only have been described as Heaven and Hell combined. And it was a place very few could touch.
He rode out the initial force of the encounter and gave himself over to a burning sensation that saturated him entirely. When it finally passed, he found himself outside the sphere, or at least his essence had passed through it, leaving his body behind still surrounded by the writhing, protective mass.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 9

2007-04-24T13:37:00.000-05:00

David zipped his duffle bag closed and tossed it on the bed. He fished a cellular phone from one of the bag’s side pockets and entered a phone number on the keypad. After one ring, a woman’s voice answered.
“Da.”
“It’s me,” David said.
“Well . . . nice of you to call,” she told him. Her deep voice bore a heavy Slavic accent.
“How’s our guest?”
“He is fine,” she replied. “Asking too many questions I cannot answer.”
“Good,” David said. “Let’s keep it that way.”
“So you are not planning to tell me what is going on?”
“No.”
“I thought you would say that,” she told him.
“Just sit tight,” David said. “I’ll call you soon.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 8

2007-04-18T12:42:00.000-05:00

Simon gave him a sympathetic pat on the shoulder.
“Well, children,” Sheba said, “We don’t have all day.” She motioned to the Aurora’s open side hatch.
Evan felt a flutter in his stomach as he followed the others into the aircraft. The feeling reminded him of the anticipation of riding a virgin rollercoaster.
Once inside, he and the others strapped themselves tightly into the Aurora’s high-tech G-force seats and donned equally high-tech flight helmets. Tompkins checked each of their harnesses before climbing past them into the open cockpit.
A small tow cart pulled the aircraft outside the hangar and stopped it just short of the flightline. The driver released the tow cable and buzzed away. Tompkins strapped himself in and began flipping switches and checking gauges as the plane’s engines started to softly throb. Evan waited for the plane to move forward again, imagining Tompkins had a few more checks to perform before takeoff. Instead, the strange throbbing of the engines grew deeper and suddenly Evan felt the unmistakable sensation of vertical lift. His fingers dug into the armrests of his seat as the vertical motion accelerated and the craft began to move forward at the same time.
Simon glanced at Sheba. “The engines sound unusual.”
“Pulse jets,” she said.
“Oh. Right.” Simon nodded. “I have no idea what that is.”
Sheba laughed lightly as the plane began to accelerate, forward and vertically still, clearing the treetops and soaring up ever higher.
Evan felt the motion deep in his gut as the gravitational force began to push him back in his seat, gently at first, and then much more powerfully as a loud boom shook the plane. He opened his mouth as if to scream, but instead, even to his own surprise, the whooping sound of a rebel’s yell echoed inside his helmet.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 7

2007-04-16T09:12:00.000-05:00

“Good,” Tompkins nodded, “Now. . .this is the Aurora Two, codename Spectre. Its very existence is a lie. Most people would be shot for even looking at her from a distance.”
Evan raised a hand.
Tompkins narrowed his eyes. “Yes?”
“Tommy….uh….what happened to the Aurora One?” he asked nervously.
Simon and Darla both snickered.
“Son, haven’t you heard? There is no Aurora One. And don’t call me Tommy.”
Evan leaned down to Darla and whispered. “What’s so funny? I wanna know.”
Tompkins cleared his throat again. “Couple of things you ladies should be aware of before we take off. When we reach altitude, you should be prepared for the effects of this aircraft’s speed. When the rear thrust jets engage, you will experience five plus G’s and the booming sound you will hear will be that of the sound barrier falling six times. Now, it’s always a lot of fun until someone starts crying….or puking, so I want all of you prepared.”
Simon looked at Evan and raised a brow, mouthing silently, “Six times?"
“We have clearance from NORAD, SAC and NASA,” Tompkins continued, now pacing back and forth in front of his charges like a drill sergeant. “Once I drop you at the insertion point, my responsibility to you ends until you complete your mission. You will signal me then and go directly to the planned extraction site. I’ll have you all back here in time for the Today Show.”
Darla raised her hand.
Tompkins leveled his gaze at her, “Yes, ma’am?”
“You don’t seem too crazy about this assignment,” she said.
“No ma’am, I am not. This bird is beyond top secret. We have enough Black Triangle web sites out there without adding more fuel to the fire. But I was told this mission was critical, and it’s also a favor.”
“Favor?” Darla tilted her head.
“Tommy!” Sheba’s voice echoed through the hangar.
Tompkins’ craggy face broke into a wide grin. “Hello, Sheba.”
Sheba trotted toward Tompkins, gun belt jingling, and wrapped him in a warm hug. She planted a kiss on his cheek and his face flushed a bright red.
“You look absolutely wonderful!” she said, “Handsome as ever.”
Tompkins cleared his throat quietly and turned an even brighter shade of red. Sheba turned to run her fingertips over the skin of the plane.
“Tommy, she’s beautiful.”
“Mother,” Evan began, “Don’t touch. . .aw fer cryin’ out loud.”
Tompkins only nodded and might have actually beamed at that moment.
He treated Sheba to a brief tour of the plane, letting her run her hands across its frictionless surface to her heart’s content.
“After the Aurora One,” Sheba said, “I didn't think they would authorize another.”
Evan’s mouth dropped open. His fists clenched tightly at his sides.
“What the hell happened to the Aurora One?” he mumbled.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 6

2007-04-12T09:43:00.000-05:00

“How the hell are we going to make it to Genoa before the ship departs?” Darla asked as she and Evan rounded the corner around the front side of the aircraft hangar.
Immediately, four armed guards stopped the two of them with raised rifles. Evan did not recognize the four as base guards. He had never seen these men before. Their black fatigues held no rank or branch insignia, which was not so unusual here, but Evan was certain they were not base personnel. And it was very obvious they were guarding the hangar.
“Now just what the hell is . . .” Evan started.
Another voice cut him off. “It’s alright. They’re authorized,” the voice called.
Evan did know the man to whom the voice belonged. Jesse Chavez, the base guard regiment commander, motioned to Evan and Darla from the personnel entrance.
“Just doing their job,” Sergeant Chavez said apologetically as he moved aside to allow Evan and Darla through the door.
“Yeah?” Evan wondered. “What’s that?”
“Guarding your ride,” Chavez smirked and nodded inside.
In the center of the hangar a long, sleek aircraft squatted amidst a flurry of technicians. The craft’s smooth, flowing, black curves reminded Evan of something feline and raptor at the same time. Its deep black skin held no angles, nor did its wings, which gracefully curved out from behind the cockpit and swept back severely, making their span much shorter than their actual length.
“I guess that’s your answer,” Evan told Darla as he moved near the plane.
Beside the aircraft, an austere looking man, mid fifties perhaps, clad in a gray flightsuit, stood studying a piece of paper attached to a clipboard while one of the technicians looked on.
Evan reached up to feel the plane’s glassy smooth surface.
“Don’t do that, son,” the man barked without looking up from his clipboard.
Evan snatched his hand back like a kid caught digging in the proverbial cookie jar.
Simon walked out from behind the plane, laughing.
“Don’t feel bad, brother. He yelled at me, too.”
The stern-looking man finished with the clipboard and handed it over to the technician. He turned to Evan, Darla and Simon and cleared his throat. He stood stiffly, as if his spine were all one long, unbending shaft that would allow him no flexibility from his pelvis all the way up to the base of his skull.
Only one thought came to Evan’s mind. Marine. But as the man approached, walking toward them like a stiff-backed robot with something caught in his hind quarters, Evan realized he was Air Force; a Lt. Colonel, according to his rank insignia.
That would have been Evan’s second guess.
“Alright ladies, here’s the long and the short,” the man began.
His voice reminded Evan of an old drill sergeant from his days of basic training in the Army.
“I am Lt. Colonel Dale Tompkins. I am the pilot of this aircraft. My duty is to transport you to your assignment, drop you off and get you back home safely. That’s my second priority. My first is to protect this plane,” his military cadence never wavered as he spoke, “Is that understood?”
Evan blinked, then snapped a salute in Tompkin’s direction. “Yes, sir!”
Darla chuckled behind him.

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 5

2007-04-11T12:49:00.000-05:00

David walked up to stand beside Roger.
“Has Dimitri arrived?” Primrose asked him.
“Yes, he’s here,” David replied.
“Good. He can assume Roger’s duties.”
“I don’t understand,” Roger said.
“Your services are no longer needed,” Primrose told him.
Roger shook his head, confused. “You’re terminating me?”
A dark smile danced across Primrose’s lips. “I suppose you could put it that way.”
Roger glanced at David and Primrose watched the man’s face pale as David reached into his jacket. In one smooth movement David withdrew the silenced 9mm Browning, chambered a round and aimed the gun directly at Roger’s head. Roger looked back at Primrose, eyes widened in mystified horror.
“I can’t afford you another moment of weakness,” Primrose said. “I’m sure you understand.”
He glanced to David and gave an almost undetectable nod.
David stared down the Browning’s elongated barrel at Roger’s pale face and pulled the trigger without hesitation. Roger fell backward and sprawled on the floor. Primrose watched as David took a couple of steps closer, aimed the pistol again and fired a second round into the man’s head. Without expression, he slipped the weapon back into its holster and turned to Primrose.
“Interesting,” Primrose mused. “I thought you might do it another way.” He nodded at Roger’s corpse. “He would have made a fine meal.”
And he would have quite enjoyed watching David take the man down, though he had taken much pleasure simply seeing him kill Roger without hesitation or remorse, even if he had only shot him.
David glanced down at the dead man and shook his head.
“Somehow, I don’t think he would have suited my taste,” David said. “I’ll see you at the compound.”
Primrose nodded. “Bon voyage.”
David turned and started for the door.
“David,” Primrose stopped him.
He glanced back, waiting.
“Well done.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 4

2007-04-10T11:03:00.000-05:00

The long, slender shaft of a fencing foil slashed through the air with a whistle. Primrose smiled and pointed the foil at Salome.
“Ready?”
Salome nodded once and raised her foil, swishing it from side to side as she took her stance.
Primrose took a moment to admire her there. It was not her habit to dress for the occasion. She so loved to distract him when they fenced. Indeed, at most other occasions as well. And as he might appreciate the way the neckline of her blouse draped low across her breasts and the way the long, blood red skirt she had chosen opened up the side, exposing a sleek, muscled leg, the sight was only appreciated. It was hardly a distraction.
“Gaukler,” Primrose smirked.
“What?”
“Your stance, my dear,” he smiled. “Much too wide.”
Salome raised her chin. “I thought you liked my …”
Before she could finish her sentence, Primrose lunged in with his foil. Salome twisted to the side and barely dodged his thrust.
“Not for fencing, my lady,” he said, feigning left with the blade, then immediately slashed to the right.
The tip of his foil caught her skirt at the thigh. A portion of the fabric tore away with a hiss.
Salome gasped and lunged back at him.
Primrose slapped her foil to the side with his as he caught a glimpse of Roger from the corner of his eye.
“What is it?” he called out over the sound of metal striking metal.
“You asked me to keep you informed, sir,” Roger said. “Genoa is proceeding as planned.”
“Excellent,” Primrose breathed as he pressed Salome back with a fusillade of left-right slashes.
Salome snarled and drove back into him.
“I also have news from Cairo. Dr. Maher has been taken care of,” Roger added.
“I have already been informed,” Primrose said as he pressed Salome further.
She continued losing ground, but still furiously parried his expert thrusts and slashes.
“You know, Roger,” Primrose continued, “The Fechtbuch lists many forms of sword attacks.”
“I have not read it, sir,” Roger replied.
“You should,” Primrose said. “I had a hand in the writing of it, you see. Salome prefers Diego de Valera, the Spaniard. I find that too flashy, don’t you?”
“Uh….yes, sir,” Roger answered.
“I, however, follow no particular master,” Primrose said as Salome managed a close call, the tip of her foil coming within an inch of his temple. He slipped to the side an instant before she would have slashed the side of his face. “But, there are some I continue to practice. Schwetnemen, for example.”
“Schwetnemen, sir?”
“Literally, sword taking,” Primrose replied, and at once his blade sliced across Salome’s and wound around it with a metallic hiss.
Her blade trapped, he jerked his foil and sent hers flying into the air. Salome took a step backward and Primrose slashed downward with his blade, stopping the motion just before the shaft would have met her shoulder.
He traced the line of her collar bone with the tip of the foil until it came to rest in the hollow of her throat.
The double doors leading into the room creaked open.
Primrose lowered his foil and smiled darkly.
“David, please do come in.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 3

2007-04-08T14:31:00.000-05:00

“So all this time he’s been alone?”
Evan chuckled. “I seriously doubt tha boy was alone, darlin’.”
“I mean without us. No contact with his own kind.”
“He might have, but not with any of the team. He distanced himself from all of us.”
“And Jonathan? What if he does leave?”
Evan shook his head. “This time is different. There’s too much at stake. He can’t just walk away. I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t abandon the team when we need him most. He’s pissed right now. He’ll get over that.”
A knock at the door ended their conversation.
“Always open,” Evan called.
The door swung wide and Bishop leaned inside. “We’ve got activity. Genoa. You guys are on it.”
Darla slid off the bed to her feet. “Simon leading?”
Bishop shook his head and moved aside. Sheba stepped into the doorway clad in a black battlesuit with mid calf leather boots and a leather bolero jacket. A gunbelt, holding a single, pearl handled, nine millimeter handgun, hung low across her hips, strapped down to her thigh like a gunslinger.
“I’m leading,” Sheba said. “We go in twenty minutes. You’ll be briefed enroute. Any questions?”
Evan grinned. “No ma’am.”
“Good,” Mother nodded. “See you in nineteen minutes.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 2

2007-04-06T18:39:00.000-05:00

“Yep,” Evan nodded. “Jon stormed out. Vanished for a month. No word. Nothin’. Psy was pissed. Had to scratch the whole operation. They tried to track him down against Mother’s wishes. After a while, he was pretty easy to track. Just a matter of checking the ERs for critically injured suits.”
Darla frowned, “What do you mean?”
“Guess he just lost it,” Evan said. “Let himself go. Went on a feeding spree that lasted several months. When he finally did come back, things were bad. That’s when Mother brought Bishop in. Think she did it to get Jon’s mind offa things. Give him someone to train.”
“But it didn’t work,” Darla said.
Evan sat down on the bed beside her. “Nope. Jon did his duty, but that was it. He was like a freakin’ robot. After a while he started takin’ solo missions. Some even classified as no win scenarios.
“Simon finally realized Jon was never gonna forgive him. He still thought of Jon as a brother and he didn’t want Jon’s blood on his hands.”
“So Simon left,” Darla said.
“Yep.”
“What about Mother and Jonathan?”
“Mother tried to make Jon understand. I don’t know all the details, but I do know when it comes to Mother…. Hell, I’ve seen Jon take out whole special forces units by himself. I saw him shoot down a MIG 27 with a rocket launcher. I’ve seen him knee deep in mud and blood and still grinnin’. But when it comes to Mother......”
“I know,” Darla whispered.
Evan smiled at her almost sadly. “I know ya do, kid.”
“But why does she hate Simon?”
“She don’t hate him. But he left her, left the unit ‘cause of all this. To her, that’s a coward’s way out.”
“What about Simon’s sire?” Darla asked.
Evan shrugged. “There’s a rumor the guy was a psycho and Simon whacked him.”

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writing

Nyteflight Chapter 5, part 1

2007-04-05T14:39:00.000-05:00

Darla sat on the edge of Evan’s bed twirling a government issue forty-five by its trigger guard. Evan grimaced as she tossed the gun into the air and then caught it perfectly by the grip. When she raised the gun to sight an imaginary target on the wall, he reached up and carefully plucked it from her hand.
“Gimme that. Ya make me nervous. Damn thing’s loaded, ya know.”
He slid open the drawer of a bedside table and slipped the gun back into its holster.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Darla told him.
“Yeah,” Evan turned his head from one side to the other. The fractures in his neck had already healed for the most part, though there was still a good bit of stiffness. “Still a little sore, but I guess I’ll "live" .”
Darla let out a long breath. Evan watched her pick at a tiny thread along the side seam of her pants.
“How could he do it, Evan?” Darla asked. “It makes no sense. I mean, David is . . .”
Evan cut her off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Talking about it would make him think about it, and he hadn’t been able to do that either.
“I’m sorry. I know you were friends.”
Were, Evan thought. Damn you, David. How did he get to you?
“Evan, tell me something,” Darla mercifully changed the subject. “Jonathan and Simon. What’s the story with them?” she asked. “I didn’t know Simon even existed.”
Evan nodded. It was a delicate subject with both Mother and Jonathan; a subject no one seemed eager to bring up. In fact, never a word was spoken on the matter.
Evan pushed himself up from the bed without a word. He opened the top drawer of a tall chest and dug around in a mass of papers. After a moment, he held up an old, ragged photograph and handed it to Darla.
The picture had captured Jonathan and Simon, standing side by side in front of a sleek, dark Blackhawk helicopter. They were posed identically, arms folded across their chests, shades pushed down on the bridges of their noses and both dressed alike in black BDU’s. Sheba and Evan sat in the cockpit of the helicopter, Sheba in the pilot seat and Evan peering over her shoulder into the camera, holding two fingers in a “v” behind her head.
“When was this taken?” Darla asked.
“Danang,” Evan replied, “Right before the U.S. officially got involved in ‘Nam. The team was assisting with some covert ops there.”
“You all look so happy,” Darla said, still studying the picture.
“We were havin’ a ball. Seek and destroy missions. Sanctioned by the government to do what we were born to do. Hunt and kill.” Evan sighed and leaned against the wall. “They pulled us out before the troops came in. Next few years we did mostly intelligence work on a global scale. Then, one night in Paris…,” his voice trailed off for a moment as the scene from that night played through in his mind.
“We were on assignment there. Jon and me had been doing some recon while Mother and Simon stayed behind at the hotel doing research. When we came back to the room that night, we heard noises from inside like they were fighting. Jonathan SWAT-kicked the door open and there was Simon and Mother, going at it like a couple of animals. Real Discovery Channel stuff.”
“Gods,” Darla whispered.

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fiction

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 15

2007-04-02T13:42:00.000-05:00

“You don’t want the codes?”
Primrose smiled down at Salome with a flash of his small ivory fangs.
“No, my dear,” he whispered and nipped lightly at her shoulder, delighting in the slight gasp he received in response. “It was only a diversion. And perhaps, a test. I have already acquired all I need.”
Salome drew her fingers through the dark locks of hair that fell over his forehead. “You were testing me then?”
“What need would I have to test you, my love?” he breathed, “No. I wanted to determine how strong a force my childe had assembled and perhaps distract them for a while.”
Salome’s eyes grew dark.
Primrose smiled. “You still loath my calling her childe.”
She pressed her hips up against him. “You know I do, yet you continue to do it.”
Primrose pushed back. “But it fills you with such fire.” And one he could use; one he could feed from as he desired. The thought of it brought a twisted smile to his lips.
Salome’s long, lacquered nails bit into his shoulder. “I took her place at your side,” she gasped. “She is gone now.”
“Then why does she trouble you so?”
Salome snarled and arched into him. “Because I should have killed her that night. But I didn’t.”
Primrose pressed Salome’s body back down into the cool foliage. “And why did you not?”
Her eyes closed tightly, “Compassion.”
“Ah, yes,” Primrose hissed through clenched teeth, “And is that weakness gone now?”
“Yes,” Salome whispered, “Yes.”
Her body tensed and began to shake and Primrose opened himself to her release, drawing in the force of her passion as he would have drawn even from his prey. He stared down at her as his incisors slowly lengthened.
“I hope that is true, love,” he breathed as he focused on the pulsing beat at the side of her throat. “I hope that is true.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 14

2007-04-01T13:31:00.000-05:00

Simon sucked in an almost audible breath. His eyes locked with Jonathan’s.
“Well, we’re obviously in dire straits if we are scraping the bottom of the barrel like this,” Jonathan said quietly.
“Jonathan.....don’t,” Sheba warned.
“What the hell is he doing here?” Jonathan demanded.
“I sent for him,” Sheba replied, “With you three out of commission, we need help.”
Simon looked past Jonathan at the young woman standing behind him. He knew immediately who she was. The essence of her sire could not be denied.
Seven.
Jonathan raised his chin and sent Simon a dark, warning look.
“He doesn’t belong here.”
“It is not your choice to make,” Sheba almost growled.
Jonathan turned his gaze back to Sheba. “Then he can take my place on the team.”
He whirled and started out the door.
“Jonathan!” Sheba bolted after him and slammed the door behind her.

She grabbed him by the arm and spun him to face her. He jerked his arm out of her grasp and stood staring darkly back at her. A look of pain and anger flashed in his eyes.
“I know how you feel about this,” she said, “But we have more to worry about just now than what happened in the past.”
“No. You have more to worry about. You want him here, then I go.”
“Your past wounds and grudges are trivial right now. Innocent lives may be at stake. Can you walk away knowing that? Can you be that selfish?” Sheba shook her head. “I know you have more heart than this.”
“Maybe you’re wrong.”
“If I am, then I was also wrong to have sired you.” Sheba straightened. “Go and calm yourself. And if you are still here when I am done with this meeting, then I’ll know my blood was not wasted on you.”

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 13

2007-03-30T10:16:00.000-05:00

“At this point,” Sheba said. “I think we need to stop trying to determine a motive and just assume he has nuclear capabilities. The only way we can really know for sure is to find him, physically locate him. Psy hasn’t been any help, and I can’t . . .”
The ringing of Sheba’s cell phone stopped her in mid sentence. She looked at the number and frowned, then stepped away from the table to answer the call. In a moment, she returned, her expression darkening.
“We should be getting a fax any moment,” she announced.
“What is it?” Bishop asked.
“The Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities was murdered about an hour ago.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Simon asked.
“Maybe nothing,” Sheba replied. “But he was Halima Raine’s father.”
The fax machine behind where Bishop sat began to print.
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” Bishop said as he pushed his chair out and reached over to retrieve the fax.
He started to read. His face seemed to melt downward.
“Maybe it’s not a coincidence.” He looked back up at the others. “Bomb wired to the ignition of his car exploded. The Egyptian authorities are searching for a suspect. They have a physical description. It sounds like . . .” he seemed to choke on the words. “David.”
“What? No!” Darla shook her head adamantly. “That’s insane. How many men match David’s description? This doesn’t mean anything. Let me see that,” she said and snatched the fax from Bishop’s hand. She read through it. “Oh, God.”
Bishop looked at Sheba, “The suspect matched a physical description of David and had a tattoo on the inside of his right forearm. Same as David’s.”
“I don’t know the man,” Simon said, “But from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t think he’d be that careless. A spook wouldn’t expose a distinctive mark that would identify him, especially if he was about to take someone out.”
“Simon is right,” Bishop said. “David wouldn’t be that careless.” He looked at Sheba. “Could Primrose have gotten to him? Could he have done the same thing to David he did to Owens and Sharp?”
“No. If David did this, it wasn’t because Primrose is controlling him in that way,” Sheba replied. “But if it was David, Primrose must have had him do it. Why would he have the Secretary killed?” her face took on a look of sudden realization.
“Sheba?” Simon moved closer to her.
“We were assuming the obvious,” Sheba said. “That Primrose had Halima Raine kidnapped to force the Ambassador to steal information for him, the launch codes. If he never wanted the codes to begin with, it was a cover for what he was really after.”
Sheba began to pace once again.
“Then what was he really after?” Bishop asked.
“Something he wanted from Dr. Maher? Did he kidnap Ambassador Raine’s wife? Or did he kidnap Dr. Maher’s daughter?” she wondered.
“Jon said Primrose’s origins were ancient Egypt,” Bishop said. “The Secretary General of the COA basically controls everything having to do with ancient Egyptian artifacts and culture. It’s a very powerful position. He only answers to the Minister of Culture. They keep a tight rein on what happens to any artifact or archeological site, anything having to do with the ancient culture. So if Primrose wanted something from the Secretary, it had to do with that.”
“What about Raine?” Simon asked. “He was supposed to deliver the ransom himself. Surely he knew what he was handing over?”
Sheba shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t. He’s been questioned several times already and nothing has surfaced that would tie this in. Besides, he never delivered the ransom. So if Primrose got what he wanted, he must have taken another route.”
“Yeah,” Simon said. “Maybe he sent David to get it, then had him kill the Secretary when he had what he wanted.”
“That’s bull !” Evan’s voice thundered from the doorway. “David wouldn’t have done it!”
All heads spun in the direction of the voice at the same moment. Evan stood glaring at them, Jonathan and Seven behind him.

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 12

2007-03-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

The printer behind Bishop sucked a sheet of paper from the feed tray into its bowels.
“That’s your report on missing SOFs,” he told Sheba without taking his eyes from his laptop monitor as he continued tapping away at the keys.
“That was the easy part,” he continued. “I haven’t located much more on Primrose. I have an import/export company and a ship line in Genoa, Italy. Another shipping company in Siberia. That’s it. There are quite a few subsidiary companies that have ties to the import/export business, but I can’t trace them directly to him.
“No information on any residence or way of contacting him either. All his financial dealings for the companies are routed through several Swiss banks and we can’t access any of that information. I’m pulling customs records now for any outgoing shipments and departures from the freight companies.
“He has five freighters at sea now, but they’ve been out for over three weeks. There’s one docked at Genoa as we speak, but no cargo, customs or manifest information has been submitted for it just yet. Records are showing the ship was just released from dry-dock after an extensive upgrade and inspection reports state she’s ready to go. There are two others docked and loading for return trips from Hong Kong and Antwerp.” He shrugged. “That’s all I have so far.”
Scott pulled the sheet of paper from the printer. “Wow. Bishop found four SOF operatives reported missing and three others murdered all within a two month period before the time Primrose first approached David. One other murder reported about a month after.”
“Who are the four missing?” Sheba asked.
Scotty read from the printout, “Dylan Hawthorne, SAS Black Knights; Dimitri Glazunov, Russian Spetsnaz Vympel unit; Michael Young, Navy Seals; Kurt Loeber, German KSK.” He continued to read on in silence for a moment, then looked back up at Sheba. “All were demolition specialists.”
Simon stopped his pacing. “SOF demolition doesn’t involve nuclear weapons – typically.” He leaned over the conference table and glanced at the printouts. “This thing hasn’t made sense from the beginning. Primrose wants these launch codes, right?”
“So it seems,” Sheba replied.
“He has to know the codes would be changed,” Simon said. “Is it just me, or has it been way too easy to track his attempts to get this damned information? The guy may be a psycho, but he’s not stupid. I’d bet my ass he made sure Psy could track what he was doing all along.” He started to pace again. “I think we’ve been had.”
Sheba shoved her chair back and stood. In a moment, she was pacing as well.
“He has us chasing shadows,” she said.
Scotty frowned, “But why?”
“To keep us busy,” Sheba said.
“It would be much easier for him to simply gather all he wants on the black market,” Bishop said. “If it‘s nukes he’s after.”
“This just keeps getting more confusing,” Darla said.

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 11

2007-03-27T14:09:00.000-05:00

Immediately, thick scarlet beads welled in the tiny wound and Primrose held his finger above the petals, squeezing it gently until a droplet of blood fell perfectly into the center of the bloom. He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the inevitable trembling within his chest as the blood absorbed and disappeared as if the flower had consciously drunk it in.
The soft tap of a step upon the stone made him turn, though he had sensed Salome’s company a moment before. He smiled slightly.
“Welcome home.”
He met her just outside the edge of the small courtyard where she handed him a shiny, laminated piece of paper.
“The launch codes. Excellent,” he said.
With a smirk, he flipped the paper over his shoulder without even glancing at it. The paper looped in the air and landed squarely in the bottom of an empty pot.
Salome blinked incredulously.
“Ernest. . .” she shook her head in disbelief as she glanced from him to the pot and back, “This was what you wanted.”
Primrose lowered his head and looked at her from beneath his dark lashes, his eyes almost glowing. He reached out with one arm, wrapping it about her slender waist and pulled her close to him.
“Never think you know what I want,” he breathed into her ear and cinched her up against him.
His long nails trailed down her bare arm. He turned her face to his and brushed his lips across hers.
“I can smell their blood on you,” he whispered as he pulled her slowly to the ground among the roses.

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 10

2007-03-24T16:55:00.000-05:00

Primrose reached down to stroke the delicate crimson petal of an ancient Damask rose. He breathed in the various scents of other roses nearby, all at the peak of their bloom, fooled into believing it summer by the artificial lighting and controlled temperature and humidity within the conservatory. His heightened senses allowed him to isolate and enjoy the distinct aromas of each variety separately, and he did so with an expression of near ecstasy.
He closed his eyes and reached out, pulling in a bit of the life force from the flowers. Roses, he had long discovered, held more energy in their vigorous desire to exist than any other plant he had encountered, with the exception of trees. Here in the conservatory, he had taken the pleasure of surrounding himself with thousands upon thousands of roses; specimens of every variety of every known species, some even considered extinct. And some, hybridized and cultivated by Primrose himself, existed only here.
He followed a stone path to the center of the huge space to a clearing, like a small, formal courtyard. In the center of the space a single rose bloomed. Its breathtaking perfection stood enshrined in a stone planter upon which the likeness of the rose it held had been meticulously and beautifully carved. The plant itself offered only a single, perfect, raven-black bloom.
Primrose caressed the ebony petals with his fingertips, feeling its satiny texture as no human could. Smiling, he reached into a pocket and brought out a small, ornate dagger.
“Hungry, my love?” he whispered and drew the blade across one fingertip.

technorati tags: fiction, writing,

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 9

2007-03-23T13:43:00.000-05:00

“Bishop and Scotty filled you in on the way here,” Sheba said.
Simon nodded. “Yeah. Any idea yet what Primrose’s motive might be?”
“We’re just speculating at this point,” Sheba replied. “So far, nothing holds up to any reasoning.”
“Doesn’t sound like you’re dealing with a very reasonable kind of guy,” Simon said.
“The only thing that makes any sense is that he may be planning to use the threat as blackmail,” Sheba said. “We can’t come up with any valid reason why he would want to either use the warheads for a destructive purpose, or create a situation between the U.S. and Russia that would result in a war. He would have nothing to gain either way.”
“You’re dealing with a psychotic mind, Sheba,” Simon said. “Words like reason and makes any sense don’t exactly apply.”
“It’s a little hard to think like a psycho,” Darla said. “Unless you are one.”
“True,” Simon said. “But we can at least rule out any obvious explanations.” He looked back up at Sheba. “I’ve been thinking about this all the way from Sedona. Unless I’m here just for some added muscle.”
“If you have something to add besides that,” Sheba replied. “Then by all means, do tell us.”
She immediately regretted having said those words, seeing the effect they had on Simon. He gave her a look as if he had just been slapped in the face.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “No doubt I had that coming. But if you don’t want me here, why did you send for me?”
“I’m sorry, Simon,” she replied. “That was uncalled for.”
Simon stared hard at Sheba. She was certain at that moment he was considering simply getting up and leaving, but then, to her surprise, his expression softened.
“Look, I know you’re all stressing over this,” he said. “Let’s just loosen up and give it another shot.”
This was the Simon she remembered.
Sheba straightened, took a deep breath and nodded. “You had something to say.”
“I was just thinking you may be trying to reason this out from the wrong angle,” Simon replied.
“That’s becoming very obvious,” Sheba said.
“You’re assuming this is a power play. And that’s possible, I suppose. But I have to wonder if it might be something else. I think you’re right that Primrose would have nothing to gain by holding a country hostage with a nuclear threat. For some reason I don’t feel politics or war are on his agenda. I have a feeling it’s not really power he’s after. ”
Sheba arched a brow. “Then what is he after?”
Simon’s expression turned darker. “Maybe it’s revenge.”
Sheba’s gaze turned inward as if she were searching for some reason Simon might be right.
“He have any enemies that you know of?” Simon asked.
“Besides me, you mean?” Sheba replied.
Bishop looked up at her. “Does he have any reason to want revenge against you?”
Sheba shook her head. “No. This isn’t about me. I’m certain of that.”
“So he has no other enemies?” Simon asked.
“I don’t know, Simon. I haven’t had contact with him in . . . ages. If he does, I can’t imagine how they could be any real threat to him or how they could have managed to hurt him in a way that would cause him to seek revenge. Not as powerful as he is.”
“Jon said he’s one of the oldest and most powerful of our kind,” Bishop reminded them.
“No,” Sheba said. “Not one of the oldest. He is the oldest.”
“If that’s the case,” Simon said. “Maybe he has some very old grudges as well.”
Sheba sighed and shook her head, “Then he’s holding them against the dead.”
Simon nodded. “You think a psychopath wouldn’t be capable of that?”

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fiction

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 8

2007-03-21T13:17:00.000-05:00

Sheba glanced at her watch. “21:00 hours,” she said.
It was so like him to be late.
Bishop shifted in his chair. “He said he needed to pick up a few things.”
Sheba lifted her arms in an exasperated shrug at the same time a muffled rumble vibrated through the ceiling above them. She pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
“Please…not that.”
Darla tilted her head, listening, “That is a Harley.”
“Yep,” Scotty grinned, “Softail. Chopped and tweaked and . . .” His voice trailed off under Sheba’s scowling stare.
The last time she saw Simon she’d heard that same rumble. Then, it hadn’t grown louder but had faded into silence as he rode away.
The quiet that engulfed the room when Simon appeared in the doorway was tainted only by the pounding in Sheba’s chest. She hadn’t remembered him so imposing a figure. His form took up the space of the doorway almost completely. Had it not been for the long blonde wind-blown locks of hair that flowed over the black leather shoulders of his duster, he could have been mistaken for that infamous anachronistic android assassin from the movies.
Sheba’s breath caught in her throat. It had been almost two decades since she had seen Simon, but suddenly the time seemed so much longer. He had changed little, physically, though his eyes appeared different somehow; more calm, perhaps, with a touch more wisdom than before.
He gave Scotty a wink and Bishop a stiff nod then looked at Darla. His serene, blue eyes lingered on her for a moment and might even have taken the pleasure of a quick, though subtle raking, but just as quickly, his gaze turned to Sheba.
He went to her, standing a bit too close for her comfort.
“Dressing like a librarian these days, Sheba?” he whispered.
She stopped herself before she would have straightened her jacket.
“Sit down.”
Simon gave her a strange look. Something between disdain and betrayal.
“I thought I’d get a little warmer welcome than that,” he said.
“Why?” Sheba asked. The hateful tone of her reply surprised even her.
Simon nodded. “Fair enough. I guess I don’t exactly deserve it.”
He fell into a chair next to Darla and propped a boot on the seat in front of him.
Darla assessed him appreciatively, her eyes stopping on the thick, black leather boot resting on the chair.
“Spurs?” She smiled. “My, how rough we are.”
He regarded her with a one-eyed squint and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly upward.
“Excuse me,” Sheba interrupted, “The two of you can mate after the meeting if you wish.”
Simon sat up.

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Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 7

2007-03-20T12:28:00.001-05:00

That surprised him. There had been a time when he and Bishop were close. But that changed when Simon made his decision to leave the team. He couldn’t fault Bishop for feeling betrayed. Perhaps that was exactly what he had done. Betrayed them all.
Scotty’s usually light expression darkened. “Simon, you know we wouldn’t be here if we had any other choice. We’re out of options, man.”
Bishop glanced over his shoulder at Scotty. “Let’s just go.” He sent a quick, hard look in Simon’s direction. “Let him get back to his . . . business.”
Simon looked down at the weight bench. A thousand memories flooded his thoughts at once; ones he’d worked so hard to put in their place. He sighed and yanked the towel from around his shoulders and tossed it onto the bench.

It was well after dark when David finally spotted movement below him. He crouched behind the cover of a sparse grouping of tall thistle even though he knew he could not be seen from his vantage point atop the hill in this darkness.
The crescent sliver of the waning moon offered little illumination to the night, but David could easily see in this darkness. That ability was one of the few changes he had actually come to appreciate and it served him well at the moment as he looked out over the extravagant, sprawling residence below him.
From this spot he had a straight view of the house’s side entrance where a dark blue BMW 3 Series sedan sat parked. The home and the car both belonged to Dr. Omari Maher.
A man emerged from around the side of the house and walked to the parked car. Its parking lights blinked twice and its security system quietly chirped as the man used the keyless entry remote to unlock the car doors well before he reached the vehicle. David watched the man slide into the car and pull the door shut. A few moments later, the BMW’s engine started to quietly hum.
David’s gut tightened an instant before a thunderous explosion roared through the valley below him. The car lifted off the ground and pitched sideways, engulfed in flames.
David rose and released a long breath. The reality of no turning back sank into him as he watched the car burn.
"I’m sorry, Doctor."

writing

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 6

2007-03-19T17:25:00.000-05:00

Sedona Arizona: 12 hours later

The weight bar hit the bench press rack with a rude clang. Simon ducked from beneath the bar and sat up. He grabbed a fresh towel from his gym bag and threw it across his muscled shoulders.
“Five hundred,” said a voice from behind him, “Not bad for a warm-up.”
Simon half turned on the bench to look behind him.
“Sonofabitch.”
At once, he felt both elation and dread at the sight of two faces he expected never to see again.
Scotty grinned at him from the doorway like a kid and Bishop, with his ever unreadable expression stood next to Scotty, arms folded tightly in his usual guarded posture.
“Must be the end of the world,” Simon snorted. “For you two to come all the way out here.”
He rose and reached out for Scotty’s hand.
Scotty gave him a friendly whack on the shoulder. “God, it’s good to see you.”
“You too, man. You too.”
He extended the same welcome to Bishop, who ignored his outstretched hand and nodded shortly.
“Simon.”
Simon winked at Scotty. “I see Mr. Spock’s personality has really improved.”
Scotty laughed. “The sensitivity training is finally paying off.”
Simon chuckled and pulled a t-shirt over his muscled chest.
“Well, I don’t suppose you fellas are here just to visit. Might as well tell me and get it over with.”
“We need you, Simon,” Scotty blurted.
Simon’s smile wilted. “Yeah. I figured.” He shook his head. “I’ll save you the trouble of a long speech . . .”
“The team has taken heavy losses,” Scotty sighed.
Simon felt a knot suddenly form in the bottom of his stomach. “Sheba?”
“She’s fine.”
“Who, then?”
“Jonathan, Evan and Seven,” Scotty told him. “They’ll be alright, but we need help. And we need it now.”
“Seven?” Simon wondered. “New team member?”
Scotty’s reaction to his question made him wonder even more.
“Uh. . .yeah.”
“Someone’s making a global power play," Bishop said. “A group of vampires is responsible.”
Simon released a long breath, “Shoot.” He shook his head and then glanced from Bishop to Scotty and back. “What about Jonathan? How’s he feel about me coming back?”
A telling look passed between Bishop and Scotty. Neither volunteered an answer.
Simon nodded, “He doesn't know.”
“Bishop here suggested we pay you a visit,” Scotty said.

writing

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 5

2007-03-17T13:41:00.001-05:00

“Jonathan’s alright,” Bishop said. “Doc says he’s out for a week though. Evan and Seven about the same. Maybe a little less.”
Sheba nodded.
“That’s three out of commission,” Bishop continued. “And one on semi-active.”
“I am aware of that, Bishop,” Sheba said.
“That leaves you, me and Scotty.”
“I can count as well, Bishop. Thank you.”
“What’s this?” Darla’s voice came from the hallway. “I thought they all lived?”
Bishop sighed, “Just pointing out that we are down to three combat ready members.”
“Screw that,” Darla said. “We’re up to four. I’m good as new. A few days of type-O and I’m ready to rock.” Darla plopped down in a chair. “Just point me at the bad guys.”
Sheba turned to Darla. “You are not one hundred percent.”
“I’m better at seventy-five percent than ninety-nine percent of what’s out there,” Darla said.
“Darla,” Bishop sat down beside her. “An Elder did that to them.”
Darla smirked. “Good. I’ve always wanted to take down an Elder.” She glanced up at Sheba and winked.
Sheba shook her head. “Who would have you for lunch. Literally.”
Bishop looked up at her, “We need help,” he said. “We only have five days until Psy reverts the codes. We don’t have time to wait for the others to heal. There is another . . .”
Sheba cut him off abruptly.
“No.”
“Mother. . .”
“No, Bishop.”
“Another what?” Darla asked.
“Another team member,” Bishop told her.
“He left. He quit,” Sheba said evenly.
“We need him,” Bishop urged.
“He is no longer one of us.”
Bishop rose and went to where Sheba stood. He started to reach for her arm, but hesitated.
“He’ll always be one of us. No matter what has happened,” he said, “If there is any us left after this one. We need him, Mother.”
Sheba let out a long breath and sent Bishop an irritated glance.
“Fine,” she said. “You and Scotty go get him. But if he gives you any trouble, leave.”
“Don’t worry,” Bishop said. “He’ll come.”
He spun and headed for the door.
“That isn’t what worries me,” Sheba called after him.
But Bishop had already disappeared into the hallway.
Sheba turned to Darla who could only stare back at her, silent and questioning.
“That he will come,” Sheba answered.

Writing

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 4

2007-03-16T09:10:00.001-05:00

Not one wrinkle creased the plush red satin duvet covering the antique Louis XVI bed even though David had spent the remainder of the night in this bedroom. Though the Persian rug on which the bed rested might have been a bit more worn by his pacing.
As dawn’s light brightened behind the velvet drapery over the windows, David played Primrose’s words over again in his mind.
“You were barely twenty years old,” Primrose had told him. ”I found you inside the Temple of Amun, mortally wounded. Near death. My only son. You had not yet gone through the change. I gave you my blood. Tried to bring you through it, but it was too late.
“The others took you from me. They feared I would pass the secret to you, so they killed you. And I was to be next.
“I broke one of the oaths, you see. A Keeper was never to father a child, but I did. I hid the truth from them until they found your mother . . . and you. They killed her as well.”
It was all too much to think about. Too bizarre to be true. But it was. Primrose told him he had spent the next two centuries hunting the others down, one by one, to take his revenge, until he remained the only Keeper still alive.
“After all this time, why have you never released the Hand?” David had asked him.
“I didn’t have the means, until now,” Primrose had told him.
A knock outside the door startled David back to the present. It was Ranier. He could feel him. He was there, David knew, to take him to Primrose – to give him his answer.
Ranier escorted David back to the library where he had met Primrose the night before. This time, his sire was there waiting for him.
“I’m accepting your offer,” David told him.
Primrose nodded. “I thought you may,” he said. “Hoped.”
“So what happens now?” David asked.
Primrose offered a dark smile. “Is that eagerness or impatience?”
“Both.”
“More the latter, I believe,” Primrose said. “But either will suit the purpose. There is something I want you to do for me. I need you to prove yourself.”
“To gain your trust?” David asked.
“You can’t know how much I want to trust you, David.”
Primrose opened the top drawer of his desk and brought out a photograph. He placed it on the desk top and slid it toward David. The photo captured the image of an elderly man squinting at the dapples of sunlight that streamed through the brim of his worn straw hat. His sun darkened face seemed warm and friendly and his features hinted at a Middle Eastern ancestry. At some distance behind him stood the well known form of the Great Step Pyramid of Djoser.
“Dr. Omari Maher,” Primrose said. “Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. He has proven a valuable asset in the recent past, but that time has ended. And more than that, his very existence is dangerous to my purpose now. I need you to remedy that.”
David drew in a breath he couldn’t quite release. He looked up into Primrose’s waiting eyes.

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 3

2007-03-15T09:41:00.000-05:00

Salome snarled and crumpled the paper in her fist.
She felt a burst of sensation as if a door opened and wind screamed into the room, but there was no movement of air; no sound. She spun toward the doorway.
Jonathan stood just inside the door holding an envelope up for her to see.
“I must admit,” he said as he slipped the envelope into the inner pocket of his jacket. “I’m surprised Ernest sent you here.”
Salome smiled, “Good evening, Jonathan.”
Jonathan regarded her with a subtle sneer. “Doing his grunt work now, Salome? A little dangerous for his whore, isn’t it?”
“You have your mother’s tongue,” she said. “I, too, am surprised that you would wait in the shadows while I beat and tortured your friend and your childe.” She watched the reaction of her words in the set of Jonathan’s jaw. “That is,” she continued, “unless, perhaps, deep down, part of you took some pleasure in watching me do it?” She narrowed her dark eyes. “You can be honest with your Auntie. I know who’s blood flows in your veins.”
Jonathan roared and whirled, slamming a spinning kick into Salome’s shoulder. The impact sent her sprawling across the floor. He stalked toward her fallen form.
“Mother renounced his blood. He has no hold on her. Or on me.”
Salome lashed out with a kick to his stomach that sent him reeling back.
“Such anger!” she smiled, “A blow worthy of an Elder nephew.”
Jonathan’s eyes blazed. His nails and fangs lengthened in an instant before her eyes.
“Yes,” Salome hissed, “That’s it.”
She snarled back at him and let him watch her own sudden transformation.
At once, the two lunged at one another and slammed against each other; fangs tearing through clothing, nails ripping through flesh.
Somewhere, in the midst of her rage, Salome found her moment to strike. She drove her fangs into the side of Jonathan’s throat. Her teeth sank deeply into his flesh and she bit down hard until a spray of warmth exploded from his artery. He clawed at her, struggling almost helplessly in her grasp. Her lips massaged his flesh, opening the wound further and she drank deeply. The coppery sweetness of his blood filled her mouth as the wild scent of it filled the air. Jonathan was strong, but Salome was much older and more powerful, and for all his power, he would never find the strength to loosen her grasp of him now in the thick of her feeding.
His struggle grew weaker as Salome drained him and when he finally went to his knees, she followed him down, mewling and purring like a lioness feeding on her kill. She could not resist savoring him. His blood was hers, as it was Sheba’s, and Ernest’s, and being of her bloodline, the sensation it gave was more intoxicating than any other feast in which she could have indulged. And as she felt his heart slow and his pulse weaken, she found it near impossible to tear herself away from him.
At length, she did find the strength to release him. She laid him down gently and kissed him softly; his own blood wet on her lips.
“No final death from me, Jonathan. That is not my place. Just as you knew in your heart I would not kill Seven or your friend without a choice,” she whispered. “Tell Sheba to remember I spared her life this way once as well when I took her place at Ernest’s side.”
She slipped her hand inside Jonathan’s jacket and retrieved the envelope. She opened it with a long nail. A smile danced across her lips as she read the code.

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part 2

2007-03-13T12:52:00.001-05:00

But that was all the playing she would do with him.
She drove a powerful fist into his chest that impacted with a gruesome crack as ribs snapped. The pain put him off his guard just long enough for Salome to wrap her arm over his head. She braced his chin against her shoulder and dropped, snapping the vertebrae in his neck.
Evan’s body went instantly limp. Salome released him and let him slip to the floor then she rose, dusting her hands and looked down at him.
“Sweet, dark dreams, El Toro,” she purred, then turned her attention back to the bureau only to find, once again, that she was not alone.
A young woman stood directly in front of the bureau, arms crossed over her chest. She raised a delicate chin and her large green eyes regarded Salome defiantly. There were no photographs in Primrose’s files of this one, but the sensation of her essence was more than enough to identify her. She could be no other than Jonathan’s childe, Seven.
“Stealthy little thing, aren’t you?” Salome hissed. “But you’d be wise to stand aside. I have no desire to hurt one as fragile as you.”
“Can’t,” the girl replied.
“I see,” Salome nodded then lashed out suddenly with a front snap kick into the girl’s stomach.
Or would have, had the girl not suddenly vanished.
Instead of finding its intended mark, Salome’s foot slammed into the wall just above the top of the bureau. The sheetrock wall cracked and caved inward, catching Salome’s boot.
In a flash, the girl was behind Salome delivering a rain of painful blows to her kidneys. Salome roared as she wrenched her foot free from the hole in the sheetrock and spun to face the girl. She snarled and threw a straight right at Seven’s face, but Seven darted to the side, snatched Salome’s arm and twisted it to flip Salome onto her back.
Salome lurched to her feet with a savage snarl and swung wide at Seven with long, extended nails.
The girl slipped past every blow Salome threw at her as if she were liquid. With each missed blow, Salome grew more infuriated. But she knew anger would not win this battle. The more she allowed the rage to control her, the easier Seven could evade her.
She forced herself calm. Seven was fleet. That was her strength. But it was one easily overcome.
Salome focused and waited. When Seven struck, she caught the girl’s wrist in her hand.
Seven jerked in vain against Salome’s grip. Salome wrenched her arm. The pain bent Seven forward and Salome swung her leg up and over Seven’s arm, straddling it. She smiled sadistically and twisted slowly, giving an almost sexual moan as she felt the girl’s shoulder dislocate.
Seven cried out as Salome swung her leg back and dismounted her arm as if climbing from a horse.
“I believe I’ve changed my mind, darling,” Salome hissed, “I do want to hurt you.”
Still grasping Seven’s arm, Salome drove a boot into Seven’s unprotected stomach and the girl dropped to her knees at Salome’s feet. Another hard twist to Seven’s arm evoked more screams of pain.
“That’s it, love,” Salome purred, delighting in each gasp and groan she could wrest from Jonathan’s childe. “I would love to continue this,” she whispered, “but I do have so little time.”
She dropped a boot heel into Seven’s skull and released the girl’s arm which collapsed limply to the floor beside her head.
Salome reached down and wiped the tip of her finger across the trail of blood that seeped from the corner of Seven’s mouth and tasted it. Its bittersweetness did hold Jonathan’s essence. But there was no time to savor it now.
She stalked toward the bureau with only a casual glance at Evan’s still unmoving form before turning her attention to the bureau’s center cabinet door. She snatched the door open and smiled down at the safe hidden inside. Her fingers flew across the numbered keyboard on the door of the safe and the lock disengaged with a click. The prize was there as she expected; a single, unmarked envelope. She retrieved it almost gingerly and turned it in her hands, examining it intently for a moment before slitting it open with a sharp fingernail.
As she unfolded the sheet of paper inside, her smile faded. She read the words in silence.
" Have a nice day. "

Nyteflight Chapter 4, part1

2007-03-12T13:34:00.000-05:00

The mansion was silent but for the constant clacking of the pendulum that swayed in the belly of a tremendous grandfather clock near the staircase in the front foyer. Soft light from the outside security floods filtered in through the windows casting black, lacy shadows throughout the rooms that trembled and swayed in a leafy, wind-blown dance across walls and ceilings.
A light creak on the staircase stopped Salome. She paused for a brief moment, grimacing at the sound of her own step, then continued on a bit more carefully. The house seemed empty, but one could never be certain. Even one as sensitive as she could be fooled, though she was a master of that trickery herself. Of course, the owner of this house could not have masked his presence from her. General James Warneke was only human, or at least as human as a Joint Chief of Staff could be - and conveniently out of town.
Upstairs, Salome moved silently down the hallway, peeking into each bedroom as she went. She found the room she searched for at the end of the hall; a bedroom, converted into a small office, sparsely furnished with only a desk and two chairs and a long bureau positioned against the wall opposite the desk. Behind one of the bureau doors, the good general kept a safe, and before leaving for his trip, he had been kind enough to have left a small gift there for someone he had only met in the depths and darkness of his dreams.
Salome slipped into the bedroom and made straight for the bureau. A noise from the darkened corner to her left, like the scratching of a match being lit, stopped her mid-step.
Instantly, a warm, orange glow flared in the corner of the room. The light danced across the dark countenance of a man. He leaned casually against the wall there in the corner, having the semblance of some brawny, simpleminded cowboy.
He lifted the match to a cigarette he held between his teeth and inhaled deeply.
“Evenin’.”
Salome sent him a twisted smile. “Hello, Evan.”
She was only slightly surprised to see him there; more surprised that she had not sensed even the slightest presence in the room.
Evan raised a brow. “Appears you have me at a disadvantage, ma’am.”
Salome nodded. “In more ways than one, I would imagine,” she said, having no intention of keeping him at anything but a disadvantage.
“That a fact?” Evan smirked and dropped the cigarette. He crushed it out with the toe of his boot on the general’s expensive hardwood floor. “No chance then you’ll just give up peacefully?”
“Little to none, I would say.”
Evan nodded and crouched. Salome immediately slipped left and began to circle him. At the same time, she studied him. He was impressive. She had seen photographs of him. Primrose kept extensive files on as many of Sheba’s operatives as he could find information, but the photographs had certainly not conveyed what Salome found in person.
Evan was enormous. He towered over her, but as tall as he was, his width was just as imposing and he reminded Salome of a big, lazy bull. But the big ones fall with an even more pleasing sound, she reminded herself. This big bull would be no different.
He leisurely tossed a reverse punch at her head, testing her. She slipped beneath it and slapped his arm away. At once, he unleashed a flurry of punches. He moved well for one so large, but Salome easily countered him. Had she more time, she might allow herself some amusement at his expense.
The bull stepped back and narrowed his eyes. Salome raised her chin and waited for his encore and he obliged with a right cross which he threw at her head faster than a human’s eye could have followed. At the last moment, she slipped her head past his blow and let him feel her lips kiss his hand on its return.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 28

2007-03-11T16:38:00.000-05:00

“Do you know that the longest land meridian and the longest land parallel on the planet cross beneath the Great Pyramid?” Primrose asked.
David remembered reading it somewhere.
“The sides of the pyramid are very accurately located along the four Cardinal Points,” Primrose continued.
That explained why the model on Primrose’s altar seemed askew. It was positioned so its sides faced exactly North, South, East and West.
“Why?” David asked.
“The earth’s energy concentrates along these lines. They are considered places of power. The crossing of the longest lines is the place of greatest power. The pyramid itself is structured mathematically and placed precisely to draw that energy and to utilize it to contain the force our ancestors wished to imprison. What you felt before is the power of the pyramid itself; the energy its precise construction and placement summons. That very force is what gives the Great Pyramid the power to contain the Hand.”
Primrose moved away from David and walked up the stairs to the altar. He reached out and touched the face of the pyramid structure and closed his eyes. He seemed to be drawing that energy into himself. After a moment he took a step back.
“When the pyramid was finally complete and the Hand of Amun-Re was contained, most who knew the secret of it were killed. Only a few remained who carried the secret. They were the original Keepers. Since then, they have guarded that knowledge, passing it on to one worthy only if one of them died.
“Only another Elder could be made a Keeper. But they kept more than just the secret of the existence of the Hand. They also held the knowledge of how it could be released.”
He walked slowly down the steps toward David. His eyes seemed to take on a strange radiance.
“I am the only Keeper still alive. The only one living who knows how to release the Hand of Amun-Re. And the only one who can receive its power. And wield it.”
He stopped and stared hard at David. “And pass it to my offspring.”
David stared back at Primrose. He knew what the man said was true. Inside him, he knew it. For several long moments, he worked to digest it all.
“You’re going to take this power and pass it to the ones you’ve turned?”
Primrose shook his head. “Not those of my vampiric bloodline. Only to one,” he said. “To my son.” He placed a hand on David’s shoulder. “But only if he agrees to join me.”
Primrose’s words from before rushed again through David’s mind.
Because that power is what I am offering you to join me.
But another thought gripped him even more horribly.
It is the memory of your death.
A moment before, David had almost secured his denial. Even as Primrose’s words, the vision, his grandmother’s voice all gnawed away at the protective false reality he had almost managed to achieve, he tried to resurrect the lies and sustain the denial. He held on to it for as long as he could, closing that door inside himself as tightly as possible, but the force of the past swept into him, and the part of his spirit that felt the truth of Primrose’s words once before, now betrayed him and let the enemy slip inside.

It was a swift and silent defeat, but a poignant one.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 27

2007-03-10T13:38:00.001-05:00

“As tombs for the Egyptian kings,” David replied.
Primrose pursed his lips, nodding. “Perhaps that is true,” he said and nodded toward the pyramid. “But not for this one.”
“It was built for Khufu,” David said.
“It was,” Primrose said and he turned back to face the structure. “And it was not.”
“Then why?”
“Why indeed, and by whom?” Primrose asked. “Historians say it was built by Egyptian slaves and craftsmen. Perhaps it was, but our kind had more than a hand in the design and construction.”
David felt himself scowl. “Our kind?”
“Please,” Primrose said. “Come.” He motioned for David to join him.
David moved closer to the altar steps and stopped not far from Primrose. The closer he moved to the pyramid structure, he began to feel an energy, almost electrical, like static in the air. The sensation became more powerful the closer he came.
“You feel it,” Primrose observed.
“Yes.”
“If you were standing before the real thing, you would feel a similar sensation, only much more powerful. Go on. Touch it.”
David’s curiosity overcame his lust to kill Primrose for the moment, but he had reservations about going any closer to the structure.
“Please. You won’t be harmed. Touch it.” Primrose urged him.
Finally, David nodded. He ascended the marble steps that lead to the altar, stopping a couple of feet from the pyramid. The sensation of energy intensified. Part of him hesitated while another part seemed suddenly drawn to reach out. His right hand began to move forward, but something inside him compelled it to stop. Instead, he reached out instinctually with his left hand and placed it against the smooth gold surface.
An incredible surge of intense energy swept into him; hot but not burning. He felt it move through him in an instant and strangely it made him immediately think of the hunger inside him. He jerked his hand away from the pyramid and stepped backward. The hunger he felt only moments before seemed a bit less urgent. At the same time, he felt stronger - physically so.
“Our ancestors built the Great Pyramid to contain something,” Primrose told him.
David backed down the steps, staring at the pyramid in disbelief.
“To contain what?”
“An incredible power,” Primrose replied. “A force so tremendous, our ancestors feared it would be used wrongly. They called it the Hand of Amun-Re. They feared the greed of some of our kind would cause them to covet the Hand for themselves and exploit it in a way that would put all of mankind in danger. Their fears prompted them to find a way to contain it. And so they did. They built the Great Pyramid.”
David shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”
Primrose offered a knowing smile. “Yes, you do. You feel the truth of it.”
And he was right. David did feel Primrose’s words settling into him as truth as some part of his spirit opened in acceptance.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“In part, because that power is what I am offering you to join me. It is an offer I would not make to the others. But then, I chose you for different reasons than I chose them.”
Others. So Primrose had managed to enlist more than just him. None of what he was hearing made any sense. A thousand more questions swirled in David’s mind. He didn’t know which to ask first.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 26

2007-03-09T11:47:00.000-05:00

Primrose motioned to David. “Come.”
David hesitated for a moment, then followed Primrose through the doorway into a narrow corridor. The bookcase door swung closed, shutting them off from the library. Though the hallway offered no lighting, David’s sensitive vision quickly compensated for the lack of illumination. Up ahead at the end of the long, straight corridor, a soft orange glow beckoned.
“Other than myself, no one has seen this room but you,” Primrose told him as he stepped out of the darkness of the corridor into an open space that must have measured near forty feet on all sides.
That moment, David felt as if he had stepped back in time.
A pale gray marble covered the expanse of the floor, the windowless walls constructed of what may have been limestone blocks. He wasn’t certain. Straight ahead, two wide stone pillars, not so different from what he had seen in the vision, reached up from the floor to a ceiling twenty feet above their heads. On either side of the pillars, ten foot tall bronze statues stood watch. One depicted a woman sitting with one leg curled beneath her and the other bent as if she were beginning to rise. Her arms reached upward and beneath them, wings curved in an arc fanned out on either side of her.
Isis, David silently told himself.
The statue opposite represented a man, his arms crossed over his chest. His left hand held the crook, the shepherd’s staff, and in his right, the flail. He wore the nemes headdress of the pharaohs
. Osiris.
A third statue stood between the two pillars behind what appeared to be an altar. This one, even taller than the others, was the figure of a man with the head of a falcon.
Horus.
He stood watch over the altar and its one obvious focus, a massive, golden pyramid which sat before him.
The pyramid itself must have stood ten feet at its apex, only the upper chest and head of the figure behind it was visible. The square base of the pyramid sat at an odd angle to the steps leading up to it. Instead of being placed in a more aesthetically appealing position parallel to the straight line of the steps, one corner of its facing side sat much nearer than the opposite corner. The difference was at least a couple of feet. Any anal retentive worth his weight would not have been able to resist straightening the line if he could manage to move the thing.
David felt that same pull inside as before when he’d passed the statue of Anubis in the great room downstairs. This time, the sensation gripped him much more deeply.
Primrose had waited in silence as David took it all in. Now, he walked toward the altar and stopped at the foot of the steps leading up to the pyramid.
“It is a replica of the Great Pyramid of Khufu,” He told David. “Not an exact replica, of course. That would be impossible to accomplish.”
Primrose turned and looked at David. “Do you know why the pyramids were constructed?”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 25

2007-03-08T14:33:00.001-05:00

He saw himself reaching up to his sire, his own hand covered in blood and somehow he knew the blood was his own. In the vision, the man stared down at him, his face contorted in terror and a horrible, desolate look filled his eyes as if he could not bear what he was seeing. Then he said a word David knew he had heard before.
Sitanutamun.
It was a name. His sire was calling him that name. Not calling, crying it out. In the vision, David realized, he was dying.
“Sitanutamun,” Primrose breathed.
He took a step closer to David, still staring at him, seemingly amazed. His black eyes almost softened and also filled with that same desolation as in the vision.
David backed away, confused. Had the man read his mind? Had he caused him somehow to hallucinate?
“You saw it, did you not?” Primrose asked.
“I don’t know what I saw,” David growled.
Primrose moved closer to him.
“It was the memory of your death,” he said, his voice tinged with what David could only describe as sorrow.
For a moment, David could not grasp the meaning of those words. He didn’t want to grasp them. He fought back his grandmére’s words, tried to will them from echoing inside his head, but he couldn’t stop them from coming.
Or things they might have done a long time before they were born.
David shook his head. He could deny this. Already his mind was pushing the reality back. Denial was only a lie away. This reality could join those others from his childhood just as easily. He had become a master of denial by now.
He steeled himself with the lie and leveled his gaze at his sire.
“Why did you bring me here?” he demanded.
“Surely you know why now,” Primrose quietly answered. “Though I can see you’re not quite prepared to accept it. Perhaps that will change. You’ve been through quite a lot these past days.”
David tried to quiet the chaotic thoughts swarming through his head along with the rage, the hatred, the fear and the ever present hunger. He tried not to think of his own reason for coming here, in case the man could read his mind. Perhaps the confusion he felt would mask the truth. For the moment, that seemed to be the case.
Primrose’s eyes fell to David’s chest.
“Voodoun talisman,” he observed. It seemed to please him somehow. “I can see that in you. Creole. A touch of Caribbean blood. Tell me,” he nodded to the talisman, “Were you wearing it the night you killed my envoy?”
“Matter of fact, I was.”
“Do you believe it protected you that night?”
David shook his head. “No.”
“Nor do I,” Primrose said, moving closer to David. His dark brows drew inward as his stare intensified. “You’ve not fed.”
David felt the sensation of his sire’s awareness reaching into him, probing, searching. Then, for a brief moment, the look on the man’s face seemed to convey some dark pleasure.
“I can feel your hunger,” he said. “It is amazing you’ve managed to control it for so long. Perhaps you were hoping the bloodrage would be strong enough to carry you through your task.”
David was speechless. He knew. Primrose knew David had come to kill him.
“It’s quite understandable,” Primrose said. “I expected it. And I hold a great reverence for you, that you are prepared to die trying.”
David watched Primrose move behind the carved antique desk which sat diagonally across a corner of the room.
“Before you make the attempt, allow me at least to try to change your mind. I would like to show you something,” Primrose said.
He reached up to a panel beside the built-in bookcase behind the desk. In a moment, a three foot portion of the bookcase swung open, exposing the entrance to another room.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 24

2007-03-08T14:32:00.002-05:00

His five year old mind couldn’t grasp what she was saying then, but another part of him almost understood. He knew he had been there. But the memory always held a sense of some distant past.
David stared up at the statue. The same sensation he recalled when he tried to explain to Grandmére that he had seen the pyramids returned full force. He had almost forgotten that feeling.
Before he could contemplate the statue or the sense of dejavu much longer, Ranier was leading him up a flight of stairs. He finally stopped at a set of ornately carved double doors which opened into a plush library.
“You will wait here,” Ranier told him.
David moved into the room and Ranier closed him inside, leaving him alone at last. Though not entirely alone. David still sensed the man’s presence lingering. He knew Ranier waited just outside the door.
For the first time, David began to regret his decision to come here now. Perhaps his anger, his passionate hatred had caused him to act too hastily. He had little over a week experiencing this new existence. He had no idea how long his sire had lived, but the sense he received from his connection to the man told him it was an existence that may well have reached back into the ancient past. He wondered how he could he expect to destroy a man who had the experiences of ages when he knew so little. It was a position in which he had not found himself for many years. He began to realize the odds against him leaving this place alive.
As that realization grew in his mind, something else was growing as well. He could feel the man’s presence becoming more immediate. He was here, outside the door with Ranier now, and even though David’s senses gave him forewarning of the man’s arrival, the sound of the door opening sent a shiver running through him. He reached up and touched his grandmother’s gris gris where it hung over his heart.
The next moment, he found himself face to face with his sire.
David tried to steel himself as he faced the man. If he was going to die, he wanted to do it with some dignity, but he could never have anticipated his own reaction, looking up into those dark, almost black eyes; the feeling so powerful it swept even David’s hatred of this man aside for the moment.
The connection of their shared blood became suddenly electric and pressing. David felt a sensation as if their very souls were lashed together by unseen tendrils of energy and as much as it sickened him, he could not escape it or deny it. Even more sickening, some part of him became aware that it was a bond that would never, could never be severed.
Never.
A sense of foreverness washed into him. He could feel it, even in the essence of the man standing before him. He felt the very existence of the man reaching back in time to what seemed to him an eternity in itself.
The sense of his age was only a feeling. It was not visible. Physically, he appeared middle aged, forty. Perhaps even a bit younger. His ancestry was difficult to determine. The angles of his face, his dark eyes and the thick, wavy, jet black hair might have reflected a Mediterranean descent. David wasn’t certain. But at the moment, certainty of anything seemed beyond his grasp.
More confusing still, as David stared into those black eyes in stunned, confounded silence, his sire seemed equally moved. He stared back at David as if he were witnessing something truly miraculous.
That instant, David felt the reality of the present receding and fading into an image like something from a dream, clearer than some intentionally conjured image, though not quite real. His sire’s face disappeared into a haze, then rematerialized, slightly different, younger, his complexion darker. Behind him, instead of the rich wood paneling of the library, there rose a wall of stone blocks, a stone pillar, an orange glow of firelight reflecting from its surface. He saw it all so clearly.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 23

2007-03-08T14:32:00.001-05:00

He ducked into the car. Ranier followed, forcing David to slide closer to the woman. He was not happy to be sandwiched between them, but he imagined he would at least reach their destination alive. They had come to take him to the sire. Nothing more. He could feel it.
Neither of the two spoke another word to him for the forty-five minutes it took to reach the end of their drive. The Bentley finally pulled to a stop in front of a pair of enormous iron gates which began to open immediately. The driveway beyond disappeared from view around a bend, hidden by thick trees.
The Bentley traveled the snaking driveway for several minutes before the trees cleared and David caught his first glimpse of the house, though the term hardly described the residence that rose up like a king’s castle in the distance. From the soft glow of lights in the windows, David gauged the structure to be four stories.
An enormous marble fountain stood in front of the house centered in an expansive circular drive surrounded by a stunning, perfectly maintained landscape. The house itself seemed oddly out of place before the magnificent backdrop the Swiss Alps provided. Instead of the typical chateau, the architecture was distinctly Mediterranean.
The Bentley pulled onto a side driveway and stopped beneath the cover of a wide porte cochere. Ranier slid out of the car and waited for David. As David emerged from the car, the heavy mahogany door at the top of the steps slowly opened.
A white-haired, somewhat stern-looking man in black suit and tie stood waiting in the doorway. He was human. Obviously a butler or valet, David imagined. The man stepped aside and offered each of them a reserved bow as they passed through the door. Once the three of them were inside, he closed the door behind them and left without a word.
“This way,” Ranier said, motioning to David to follow him.
David glanced back at the woman. She gave only a terse nod then spun and marched away in the opposite direction.
Ranier led David across a massive expanse of room that must have been designed simply to house a single, enormous black marble statue that stood in the center of the floor. The moment David saw the thing, he felt his insides tighten. The statue depicted the body of a man with the head of a jackal. He knew well what the figure represented. Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead.
The sight of it suddenly awakened memories of countless hours spent as a child, and then a teenager, even into adulthood pouring over every book he could find on ancient Egypt, devouring every bit of information he could get his hands on. It had been a gnawing fascination for as long as he could remember. Even before he was old enough to read, he remembered gazing for hours at photographs of the pyramids, the Sphinx, the ancient temples and artifacts.
He recalled a moment from his childhood, sitting at his grandmére’s kitchen table. He was five years old. His grandmére sat in a chair next to him drinking her coffee as he showed her pictures of the pyramids. He remembered pointing to a photo of the Great Pyramid in an open book before him.
“I went there,” he told his grandmére.
“Is that so?” she had replied.
He nodded adamantly.
“And just when was it you went to see the pyramids, cher?”
He could only shrug. He could not quite remember. He only knew he had.
His grandmére looked at him oddly for a long moment.
“Sometimes folks remember things they never really did, cher,” she had told him. “Or things they might have done a long time before they were born.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 22

2007-03-07T16:52:00.000-05:00

He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the image and focused once again on the breath. He realized then the sensation of the women’s presence was fading; their voices and laughter dying away as they moved on down the walkway.
Amazingly, the breathing had helped in some small way after all. In the end, it had kept him, at least, from diving out of the niche and ripping the two young women to bloody shreds.
It took another several minutes of practicing Evan’s technique before he felt some semblance of calm again, precarious as it remained. Still, he found enough control at last to move from the confines of the shelter.
He sat down on a bench as far from the sidewalk and the passing pedestrians as he could manage. And he waited.
The sky was darkening and the glow of lights from the hotel and along Quai du Mont-Blanc shimmered in pastels over the water in the harbor. Colored lighting illuminated the water jet as well, changing hues from magenta to yellow to green to blue. Across the harbor where the long jetty led out to Jet d’eau, stripes of red, blue, green, white and yellow light radiated out from the far shore into the lake. The entire harbor seemed to shine with reflected light. Even the soft white silhouettes of swans gliding between the boats docked along the lake’s near edge took on an eerie radiance.
The scene could have been peaceful. But peace was the last thing David was capable of experiencing right now. His only consolation – a slight one – was that he had been led to such a public place. Even so, when the powerful presence of another of his kind flooded his awareness, what little comfort he did feel instantly vanished.
He rose and scanned the shadows up and down the quai and the walkway that ran alongside. Then something made him turn. Some instinct; some sense of the other pulled at him. He focused immediately on a tall figure striding slowly down the sidewalk toward him, a dark haired man clothed in a black trench coat. He watched the man’s dark form draw nearer. The hair stood on the back of his neck as the man’s eyes met his.
“Bon soir, mon frere,” the man greeted him.
This was not the man David sought.
“Who are you?”
“Philippe Ranier,” the man answered with a slight bow. “At your service.”
David studied the Frenchman warily. An immediate sense of something familiar stirred in him, a familiar essence, some strange connection with the man that made him realize his blood and Ranier’s was the same. He called David his brother. Perhaps he had meant it literally.
The longer David scrutinized the man, the more he knew he was right. The same blood which had transformed David also had changed Ranier. They shared the same sire.
“Where is he?” David asked.
“It is not far,” Ranier replied. “I will take you to him.”
He motioned to the quai where a silver Bentley Arnage T now sat parked. David was certain the car had not been there a moment before. Ranier accompanied him to the vehicle and opened the rear driver side door, stepped aside and nodded to David.
David peered into the car. The driver stared straight ahead. He was human. The other occupant, who sat at the far side in the rear seat, was not.
She looked up at him. Her dark, almond shaped eyes focused like steel on his. He immediately sensed she, like Ranier, shared the same bloodline.
“Get in, David,” she told him. Her voice was stern, but she hadn’t spoken the words as a command, more like an invitation which offered no other choice.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 21

2007-03-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

David handed the taxi driver a bill and waved him off. The taxi pulled away from the curb, leaving him standing across from the Noga Hilton and Grand Casino building. The hotel looked out over the Rade de Genéve where Geneva’s most well-known tourist attraction sprayed its 450 foot jet of water into the air.
David had seen the image of Jet d’eau in his mind almost constantly since the day before. He knew why it was there. The man who’s blood now ran in his own veins had been projecting the image to him. This is where he wanted David to come.
The warmth of bodies and swirling energy of movement drew David’s attention from the harbor. He moved back away from the intermittent stream of pedestrians and ducked into the small confines of an empty bus stop shelter.
The hunger gnawed at him. With each day since he had awakened, it had grown more demanding. He knew he could not keep it at bay indefinitely, but he continued to fight it for now.
His senses had sharpened with the deepening of his thirst. At the moment, it was his sense of smell which seemed to be working over all the others and the many passing pedestrians, with all their variety of enticing scents mingling with the pounding of blood through their veins proved too much for David to bear. He felt that wildness rising within him and the hunger suddenly spike.
He pressed his back against the solidness of the shelter’s wall and closed his eyes. He had never wanted anything so much as he wanted to lunge out of this niche and drive his teeth into the nearest throat.
Just breathe through it.
He recalled Evan’s words. Somehow, simply breathing seemed hardly an effective solution to the rising bloodlust, nevertheless, he gave it a try.
A soft, feminine laughter stopped his breath at the end of a deep inhale. Two young women paused in front of the bus stop. One pulled a cell phone from her purse and made a phone call while the other checked her make-up in a small mirror. Both were attractive, extremely so, and David found himself staring hard in their direction. Before the change, he would have appreciated the sight of them as any male would, but he found it was not aesthetics that drew his attention now. It was the throbbing essence of the blood in their veins.
It called to him, pulled at him; evoking a desire much darker than any mere physical attraction.
His already spiking thirst suddenly surged. He could feel his body begin to react. He fought to hold back the rising rage, the inevitable transformation, but he quickly found he had no power to stop it.
The muscles behind his upper canine teeth involuntarily flexed and contracted to push the razor sharp fangs downward, forcing their length another half inch. The same muscular reaction extended his nails. Having grown thicker and sharp during the time his body transformed before the awakening, they now became deadly weapons when the bloodlust struck.
David turned away from the women to hide the obvious transformation. He felt his own blood pounding inside his head. He could hear its rhythmic swish echoing in his ears. The warmth of the women’s bodies surrounded him. The sweet musk of their scent taunted him and the sensation of the blood pumping through their veins brought the need to a dangerous urgent craving. The hunger was quickly reaching a frenzied state.
He gripped the steel railing bolted to the wall of the shelter. The lust inched closer to the edge of his control. It was all he could do to keep himself from lunging.
Jesus Christ! Go away!
He focused on the breath as Evan had instructed him. His fists tightened around the railing as if he might simply hold himself there. He drew in a slow breath but only managed to breathe in that mélange of female scent and warm blood even more deeply. He could imagine himself sinking his teeth into that soft flesh; tasting the fresh coppery sweetness he craved so intensely now.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 20

2007-03-05T10:56:00.001-05:00

For the past twenty minutes Roger had watched the rigid form of Khufu’s great tomb grow larger through the Jeep’s front window glass. Rising up behind it in a straight line on the southwest angle, the pyramid of Khafre stood as if trying to peer up over Khufu’s mammoth shoulder and further still, the smaller form of Menkaure sat in the shadows of its elder brothers. The sides of all three pyramids faced the same directions so that their corners formed a line which seemed in some strange way to reach much further than the points where they physically began and ended.
To the southeast, the Sphinx’s majestic head rose higher as the Jeep drove further into the plateau area, but Roger could hardly take his eyes from the one, most remarkable resident of the Giza Plateau. Even had he wanted to, it would have been impossible as the massive structure seemed to fill the entire sky before him now.
He stepped from the Jeep into a sandy, rocky soil and began a long trek toward the base of the Great Pyramid. The area was eerily deserted now. It was just he and Khufu.
He stopped near the base of the pyramid and gazed up toward its peak. The sinking sun glared behind it, blackening its immense silhouette. It seemed a struggle for his mind to simply comprehend the size of it. He suddenly felt so small, and at the same time, perhaps even in the presence of gods.
He felt a tightening in his chest, realizing a tangible thumping as his heart began to pound harder.
“I can’t do this,” he breathed.
“It is already done,” a deep voice, heavy with a Russian accent spoke behind him.
Roger spun in the direction from which the voice had come. The pounding in his chest grew even more noticeable.
The man sat perched on the edge of a jagged stone, a dark hood drawn over his head. He regarded Roger from behind a pair of black shades. Roger was certain the man had not been there before. There was no place he could have hidden out of sight as Roger made the trek from the jeep and stopped here.
“Did I startle you, comrade?”
“Yes, Dimitri, you did.”
The man rose. He came to stand beside Roger and looked up at the pyramid’s enormous form.
“Breathtaking, is it not?” the Russian observed.
Roger nodded. “The only remaining of the seven ancient wonders of the world.”
“So I am told,” Dimitri replied.
Roger took a deep breath. He searched within for the desire he was certain he had possessed in the beginning to see this project through and for the confidence in himself that seemed now to be slipping so quickly away. It was the first time in his life he could remember feeling such a sense of uncertainty; of feeling so insignificant in the face of powers he only thought he had understood.
“There is an Arab proverb,” he said. “Man fears Time, yet Time fears the Pyramids.”
Dimitri looked down at Roger darkly. “And the pyramids? What do they fear?”
Roger shuddered. He shook his head. “Do you believe in God, Dimitri?”
The man offered a silent chuckle. Roger could see the flash of long canines in his smile. Dimitri jerked his chin in a motion toward Khufu.
“Not here.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 18

2007-03-04T13:19:00.000-05:00

Youko Matsuo was indeed lovely. Primrose had appreciated all of her attributes from the moment he had first seen her. He knew from the beginning what a treasure she would be. Her father had trained her in the art of Ninjustu and Karate from a very young age for her own protection, and ultimately, that training indeed saved her life countless times, even before Primrose made her one of his own. In her mortal life, she had survived even the Yakusa themselves.
After the deaths of her father and brother, she gathered what money she could and left Japan. Primrose found her only a few short months later, bitter, frightened and desperate.
And perfect.
Almost.
He found her waiting for him just before dawn in the open air of the western courtyard as he had instructed. She appeared calm, but it was forced.
“Please, childe,” he motioned to the stone bench in the center of the yard. “Sit.”
Youko nodded and seated herself, not taking her eyes from Primrose.
“I am confused, my dear,” he said. “Was the task so difficult? Beyond your ability?”
“We failed you, Father,” she replied. “There is no excuse.”
Primrose’s hand moved in a blur and struck Youko across the face. She pitched backward off the bench.
She rose slowly, touching a finger to the blood on her lip and stared at Primrose with a look of dark astonishment. She bowed shortly and waited.
“You let them go. And allowed them to take the codes as well,” Primrose said softly. “This notion of honor in battle is passé, my dear. Granted, it was once in your blood, but it is my blood that runs through your veins now.”
He reached and stroked her cheek, bending close to her so his breath whispered at her ear. “Forget that again, and you will find a slow, torturous death at the hands of the Yakusa would have been much more desirable than any punishment I could inflict.”
He straightened his jacket and turned his back to her. “Now, go and inform Monsieur Ranier that I wish to see him as well. Immediately.”
He listened to her footsteps as she stalked away. The sound of pride in her step had diminished almost entirely.
Ah, Tanutamun, you should have been an actor on the stage, he silently mused.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 17

2007-03-02T10:07:00.001-05:00

“So we have a week?” Darla asked.
“Not necessarily. We still have to worry about containing the knowledge of the threat. Psy is using every trick to keep the cover-up intact, but we don’t have any guarantees.” He glanced down at Bishop. “I want to know who Primrose might have already recruited. Get me a report of any SOF operatives missing in the past year. I want everything you can gather. U.S., SAS, Russian, PLA, France, Israel, Germany. You get the picture. Start at the top and work your way down. If you find anything, maybe we can trace some of them to him. And I need more information on his business ventures. Anything that might help us locate him. So far, he’s managed to elude psy contact. And we haven’t been able to trace any of his businesses to a location where he might be.”
“That’s going to take a while,” Bishop said, pointing out the obvious.
“We don’t have a while,” Jonathan said. “Keep that in mind.”
“Boss,” Evan spoke up.
“Yeah.”
“If David finds Primrose, he ain’t got a chance.”
“Don’t underestimate him. He did manage to kill one of our kind before he turned.”
“Someone needs to be out there lookin’ for him!”
“Out where, Evan? Psy can’t locate him. They’ve barely managed to sense him at all for some reason. All they can tell us is he’s still alive. If they can’t find him, none of us can at the moment. We don’t have another choice right now but to wait it out until he does surface. And he will.”
Evan nodded. His jaw tightened. “By then, might be too late.”
“We have other things to worry about, as bad as that sounds,” Jonathan told him. “If we don’t find Primrose before he does manage to get what he’s after, it might be too late in a lot more ways.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 16

2007-03-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

“The other is Philippe Ranier,” Jonathan continued. “His past is even more colorful than Matsuo’s. Psy gave us a lead we traced back to the French Revolution. Our Monseur Ranier is a descendant of Philippe, Duc d’Orlean. He actually attended l’Ecole militaire de royale de Paris at the same time as Napoleon and later had some military connection with Louis XVI. He disappeared after Louis was executed.”
“Which would have to be about the time Primrose found him,” Bishop said.
Jonathan nodded and reached up to rub at his forehead. He seemed to slip then into some dark place, staring off into an odd space that existed somewhere in the air between himself and the floor at his feet.
“Boss?” Evan rose from his seat at the conference table and moved beside Jonathan. He rested his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “What is it?”
“Evan,” Jonathan began, his voice took on an even more grave tone. “Sit down. There’s more.”
“Shit,” Evan whispered and sank back into his seat.
“You all know Psy hasn’t been able to locate David,” Jonathan said.
“What’s David have to do with this?” Evan asked.
“We all agree the man who injected David with the blood serum was sent by someone trying to recruit SOF operatives into his charge. We’re fairly certain David has gone after this individual. We also know that the blood David was injected with is ours. It came from our bloodline.”
“Yeah?” Evan stiffened.
Jonathan’s expression grew even more somber. He released a long breath. “It was Primrose’s blood. He’s Mother’s sire.”
Silence sucked the very air from the room.
Sheba’s blood flowed within each one of them. It had been known she had removed herself from her bloodline long ago inasmuch as she could, though the reason, she refused to convey. The revelation answered more questions than any of them would have dared asked.
Jonathan allowed them all a moment to absorb the shock, which now crackled around him like static electricity in the air. They would all have to deal with this later, on their own, but for now, a moment was all he could afford them.
“Primrose is the one trying to create a team comparable to ours. We don’t have a clue about his motives,” Jonathan said. “But somehow he knows about the START agreement breech and he knows about the Russian launch codes. If he gets his hands on those codes, he won’t even need to use them to start a war.
“We can’t contain this indefinitely. Sooner or later, either the U.S. or the Russian governments will discover the threat against the codes, and against their secret. Psy agents have managed to change the codes for now, but they are tested periodically, so we only have a seven day window in which to work until Psy has to reprogram the changes back to the initial coding. It would be another two days before they could change them again. During that time, a launch can occur using the original codes. And that’s plenty of time for the unthinkable to happen.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 15

2007-02-28T10:52:00.000-05:00

“Okay. . .let me get this straight,” Evan paced across the floor of the conference room. “There’s a psycho out there, evidently a rich psycho...”
“Blood filthy rich,” Seven added.
“...who’s tryin’ ta get his hands on nuclear launch code information that, according to the START Agreement, shouldn’t even exist.”
“And has come damned close, twice,” Scotty said.
“And now we are to assume, said psycho is one of us?” Darla asked looking up at Jonathan.
Jonathan nodded. “Psy first discovered the connection during their investigation of Halima Raine’s kidnapping.”
Jonathan motioned to Bishop and waited as he handed each of the group a folder.
“His name is Ernest Primrose,” Jonathan began, “At least, that’s the name he’s using now. The first profile in your reports is all that Psy has on him.”
“Sheeit,” Evan breathed as he sank down in a chair with his open folder. “Blood filthy rich was an understatement.”
Jonathan nodded. “Let’s just say he has the means to get done whatever he wishes to get done.”
“His profile only goes back thirty years,” Seven observed. “What about before? Who is this guy?”
“What’s in the profile is all Psy knows. That’s not necessarily all we know. Primrose is one of the oldest of our kind, and, subsequently, very powerful.” Jonathan said. “I’m sure some of you are familiar with the Priesthood of Amun.”
“Are you saying Primrose’s origin is ancient Egypt?” Bishop asked.
Jonathan nodded. “We don’t know what his involvement with the priesthood was, exactly. Details are vague, at best. But it’s believed he served directly under a High Priest of Amun. If that’s true, he would have been in a very powerful position himself.”
“They were a ruthless bunch, if I’m remembering my history correctly,” Bishop said.
“Ruthless, extremely powerful and wealthy beyond imagination,” Jonathan replied. “Of course, the history books don’t mention the fact that quite a few of them were vampire.”
Darla flipped through the pages in her folder, “Those two goons Evan and I met the other night are on his payroll.”
Jonathan nodded. “Not directly, but Psy did manage to link them with Primrose. Just a bit more evidence that he’s our man. We also believe he sired both of them. The woman is Youko Matsuo, formerly Youko Ishamaru. Her father was Jimi Ishamaru. He was a high ranked member of the Japanese Yakusa before he became a liability after a dispute over dealings with the labor union. They tracked him down after he took his family into hiding.”
“They whack him?” Evan asked.
Jonathan shook his head. “He killed himself. Came home and found his son murdered and his daughter missing. He was found in his dining room with a bullet hole through his head and his dead son in his arms. His daughter was never found.”
“Until now,” Darla said.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 14

2007-02-27T10:35:00.000-05:00

“That is perplexing,” Primrose mused.
Roger looked up at him. “The way I see death?”
“Yes,” Primrose replied. “And such a waste, all these deaths at your hands, if not once did you find the power of it exhilarating . . . even . . . erotic.”
Roger seemed to shudder and the feel of it tingled through Primrose’s senses.
“Yet your desire has not waned to taste immortality,” Primrose shrugged. “Well . . . the kill is not necessary, I suppose. But I promise you, you will want it.”
Primrose held out his hand and flexed his fingers. Before Roger’s eyes, his sharp nails extended like a cat’s claws.
“And this . . .” he said as he cut into his own wrist with a razor sharp nail just deeply enough to draw blood.
“Just a taste?” he breathed as he moved close to Roger. “Not enough to bring the change, but enough to whet the appetite?”
Roger stared at the dark crimson liquid welling at Primrose’s wrist and took a step backward.
Primrose chuckled darkly and raised his wrist to his lips.
“No matter. I believe your flight leaves for the Holy Land in only a couple of hours,” he said.
Roger frowned. “I don’t understand. My flight is to Cairo.”
“Exactly,” Primrose breathed.
In an instant, his hand darted out and grasped Roger’s arm. He jerked Roger toward him. “I need to know that you have the strength to carry out my wishes,” Primrose seethed. “Are you as cold blooded as I pray you are?”
Both of the double doors leading out into the foyer swung open then. A tall, elegant woman dressed in a dark blue, sequined evening gown swept into the room. Primrose released Roger and straightened his jacket.
“Salome,” he said.
Roger bowed shortly in her direction, his face pale, but his expression seemed relieved by the distraction. “Madam.”
She stopped short, and, as Roger had done earlier, took notice of the dead woman, but unlike Roger, there was no expression of repulsion, only the arching of a delicate brow. She looked back at Primrose, regarding him with vivid green eyes which stood out brightly against the dark skin that hinted at her Mediterranean ancestry.
“Ernest, I thought you were joining me downstairs. You are not even dressed.”
Primrose went to her and took her hands gently into his.
“I apologize, my love. But something has come up.”
Salome glanced at the corpse. “It appears you have finished.”
Primrose shook his head. “Business, my dear.”
“Ah,” Salome smiled wickedly, “The game proceeds?” She turned her attention to the chessboard. “Though not in our favor, I see.” She stalked to the board and studied it a moment. “Ernest, you know what is wrong here don’t you?” she asked, reaching toward the board.
“No, my love. But I am certain you will tell me.”
She lifted the black queen from the opposing side and held it to her full crimson lips. “One queen too many.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 13

2007-02-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

The tingling sensation of another’s presence warned Primrose, even in the depths of his immersion, of an approaching trespass. He had not wanted to let go of David just yet. He had wanted to savor the feel of him for a while. Nevertheless, he reluctantly slipped from that meditative state with ease, and a moment later, as he anticipated, there came a soft knock at the door.
“Come, Roger,” he called, not turning from the window.
“Mr. Primrose.”
He saw Roger’s reflection in the glass as he took note of the corpse that lay sprawled across the settee. The man seemed suddenly uneasy, perhaps even repulsed.
“It’s quite alright, Roger. I’m done with her,” Primrose said. “Now. . . I sense the news is not good.”
“Unfortunately so, sir,” Roger replied. “Philippe and Youko have failed.”
Ah, but they have not failed, Primrose silently told himself.
“Yet they still live,” Primrose said. “I feel them.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Need I ask about the codes, then?”
“They were taken.”
Perfect.
“And Youko and Philippe?”
“They will arrive before morning.”
Primrose nodded. “Then you’ll leave word for Youko that I wish to see her the very moment she arrives,” he took a sip of the wine, “And Roger. . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“We will be receiving company soon. Make sure arrangements are made for his arrival before you leave tonight. I want him made very comfortable.”
“Of course.”
Primrose turned and stepped down from the rise near the window.
“Our opposition is strong. But the sides are becoming more balanced now. The new childe will be our equalizer,” he said as he walked to the chessboard which sat in the center of a small round table. He reached to remove a pawn from the opposing side.
“Sir, if I might ask,” Roger began, “both sides of the board are black.”
Primrose smiled a narrow, tightlipped smile.
“They are indeed,” he replied and turned back to the woman lying across the settee. “There are many shades of black,” Primrose said. “Many levels of darkness.” He looked back at Roger. “Come here.”
Roger moved to his side and looked down at the woman.
“Is she not beautiful?”
“Yes. She was quite. . .beautiful.”
“Was? Oh, Roger,” Primrose laughed, “Do you still not see the beauty in death?”
“I see it only as a necessity,” Roger replied in a sober voice, still staring down at the woman’s lifeless form.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 12

2007-02-25T15:47:00.000-05:00

He sank his teeth into the still open wound deliberately at his leisure. The woman moved beneath him. A weak, protesting groan escaped her though she hardly had the strength to do more than protest now.
He let his hands move over her and he savored her softness while he indulged himself again in the pleasure of her blood.
Only one ecstasy could transcend this.
But not just yet.
He allowed his awareness to slip into her. She was too weak to move, though still conscious enough to fear and Primrose focused on that fear as it grew quickly into a silent, desperate plea. The chaos of the terror she felt, but could not express, filled his inner senses. He drew gently at the force of it, pulled it into himself and fed on it as he fed on her blood.
He took his time now to prolong the moment when her awareness would slip toward unconsciousness and take the terror with it, denying him any more of its pleasure. When that moment came, and the well of silent panic had gone dry, he stopped.
He drew back slightly and looked down at her throat choosing yet another spot. Without hesitation, he sank his teeth deep into the flesh. Blood exploded from the artery and he drank heavily at the warm, rhythmic flow, focused now on the one force remaining within the woman’s unconscious form.
Her heart still labored to pump the blood and as Primrose drew at the last of the life in her the moments of silence between the thumps of her heartbeat grew longer until at last her body gave an almost undetectable, involuntary shudder.
Primrose groaned as he drank in her final moment and the last pulses of energy from her failing heart. The moment it stopped, his own body shuddered in an eruption of blinding pleasure. The power and ecstasy of it saturated him as no other sensation imaginable and he fell away from the dead woman gasping for breath, his face flushed a deep scarlet.
He grasped at his chest and held it until the rush of sensation began to ease and he found his breath again. Even after the intensity of his reaction subsided there remained the sensation of great energy rushing through him. It would linger for a while before it began to fade, much like the effects of a drug.
Rising, he looked down at the woman and reached for the glass of merlot. His hand trembled only slightly as he raised the glass in a hideous toast to her.
He walked back to the window and gazed again out at the night. Sipping slowly at the warm, bitter wine, he reveled silently in the lingering pleasure of the kill, and again, he closed his eyes and moved back into the night’s embrace. This time, with the kill fresh inside him, he felt his own power rival that darkness and he allowed the thought, again, to come.
To have this always.
His senses were alive and open now more than other times. As much as it invigorated him to feel all that entailed, a certain chaos of energies accompanied the sensation. Yet it also afforded him the perfect opportunity to touch those he had sired. It gave him the perfect opportunity to reach out to his youngest childe.
David.
He reached out into the chaos, focusing his thoughts through the tendrils of astral pathways that connected him to his offspring through the blood. Then he felt him; the confusion and anger and fear that flowed through his spirit; the power and strength and virility. The perfection. David’s essence made Primrose shudder.
My son. I know you can feel me.
He wrapped his awareness around the sensation of David’s essence.
It’s time for you to come home.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 11

2007-02-24T13:03:00.000-05:00

Primrose’s flawlessly manicured nails tapped lightly against the window pane. In his other hand he held a glass of merlot which he sipped in slow, gratified swallows. He so loved to watch the night from here, from this window, to drink in its power as he drank in the bittersweet essence of the wine and with even more satisfaction. Almost as satisfying, he thought, as a midnight walk in the woods when the moon hid in shadow; when one could become part of the night itself; when one could walk as a phantom through a realm that belonged to the phantom alone.
He closed his eyes for a moment and put himself there, in that phantom’s realm. He felt the night around him as if it were a quiet river of warmth and his body fully immersed in it. Its gentle flow swirled around him as a constant caress and seeped into him through every pore to fill him with its power and transform him into its own likeness.
If only he could have this always.
Ah, but you can, he told himself.
A soft moan roused his mindfulness back to this place, this room. He turned and looked at the woman lying on the settee across the room and allowed himself a slight, catlike smile. He moved to where she lay and watched her for a moment. Her half covered body shifted slightly. She moaned again and her brow drew into a strange frown as if she were trying to escape the unyielding embrace of some dark dream.
Primrose set his glass on the marble top of the table beside the settee and kneeled next to the woman. He let his nails trail across her pale cheek while he studied her face. A lovely thing, he thought, as his nails traced an invisible trail down over her jaw to the side of her neck.
He brushed her hair back away from her throat. At the graceful curve where her slender neck met her shoulder, a few auburn strands swept through a moist patch of crimson drawing delicate, sanguine streaks across her skin. Primrose leaned down and licked gently at the trails of blood, following it to the wound that had almost stopped bleeding now.
His nostrils flared at the scent of the woman’s blood and he allowed the reaction to come, even willed it to come more quickly and in an instant he felt the not-so-involuntary muscle contraction force his canines to their full length.
Earlier in the evening, he had taken his fill from her, but the feeding, however necessary, had been merely foreplay. A deeper craving drove him now.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 10

2007-02-23T12:48:00.000-05:00

Seven blinked. “Dead?”
Jonathan squatted beside the other man. “Owens, too.”
Sheba nodded and glanced at Scotty.
“Take care of them,” she said and turned toward the door.
She froze in the face of Director Sauter. He motioned her outside the room. Jonathan followed.

“Massive cerebral hemorrhage, you think?” Sauter asked. But it was not as much a question as it was an observation.
“What just happened in there?” Jonathan said.
Sauter ignored Jonathan’s question. His eyes lingered on Sheba.
“You’ve seen it before,” he said.
“Yes.”
Sauter slowly nodded. “That’s all I needed to know.”
He studied Sheba for a moment longer, much too perceptively for her comfort. But then, he was one of the most gifted psys in the department. Perception was his business. And when all the nagging realizations creeping into Sheba’s awareness suddenly exploded into an immediate, sickening truth, Sauter easily recognized it. She could see it in his ever-darkening expression. He knew now who his enemy was.
He left them without another word and Sheba watched him go, staring blankly after him as the revelation swirled horribly in her mind. She thought of David then and a shudder of repulsion trembled through her.

“We have a problem,” Evan’s voice echoed through the hallway. Jonathan turned to see him jogging toward them, sliding his arms into a shoulder holster as he ran. “David’s gone.”
“Shit,” Jonathan breathed. “How long?”
“Maybe two or three hours now. I don’t know,” Evan said and started to turn. “I’m goin’ after him.”
Jonathan grabbed him by the arm and stopped him.
“No. If he’s been gone that long he could be anywhere. I’ll get Psy on it. They’ll find him. I need you here.”
Evan looked as if he might argue.
“I need you here,” Jonathan repeated with even more intent.
After a long moment, Evan finally nodded agreement.
Presently, he turned and stalked off down the hallway, cursing to himself.
Jonathan snatched the cell phone from his hip and dialed Bishop.
Once Bishop’s shock subsided over hearing David was gone, Jonathan continued.
“I know you have a lot going on, but I need you to start tracking missing persons reports around the area. And any reported murders. Keep this to yourself. Most importantly, don’t let Evan know. Just keep me updated with anything you find. You know what you’re looking for.”
Sheba looked up at Jonathan, concerned.
“David hasn’t fed yet,” he told her.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 9

2007-02-22T11:52:00.000-05:00

Lt. Colonel Matt Owens sat up in a straight-backed chair, eyes glazed and unfocused. Harold Sharp sat beside him, equally dazed.
“You think they can hear us?” Seven asked.
“Doesn’t much look like it,” Scotty replied. He leaned down close to Owens’ face and lifted one of the man’s eyelids. The pupil remained dilated.
“He’s been like this since they brought him in. Can’t get any kind of reaction from either one of them. Must be waiting for some call in the night,” Scotty said, mimicking a Romanian accent.
As if on cue, Owens stood, almost knocking Scotty off balance, and started toward the door. Scotty reached to grab the man’s arm. Owens spun with inhuman speed and smashed his fist into Scotty’s jaw.
Seven punched the call button on the wall comlink near the doorway.
“Mother, one of our guests just became hostile!” she yelled, then lunged at Owens and tackled him to the floor.
The man became a flurry of punches and kicks as Seven tried to straddle him.
“Hold still, you freak!”
She grabbed for Owens’ wrists and Scotty grasped his ankles to still his flailing legs. Seven inched forward and pinned his shoulders with her knees.
At that moment, Sharp came alive as well. His short, round body slammed into Scotty and knocked him off of Owens. Scotty rolled to his feet, lunged at Sharp and wrestled him face down on the floor. He twisted Sharp’s arms behind him and held the man down with a knee shoved into the center of his back. The man struggled and bucked beneath Scotty’s weight, but he was hardly strong enough in such an awkward position to loosen Scott’s grip on him.
Sheba and Jonathan burst into the room with Sauter not far behind. Jonathan sent Seven a confused look. Sheba motioned to her and she slid off of Owens. He immediately started to rise. Sheba grasped his head in her hands. He struggled only briefly, then suddenly became still as Sheba’s face moved down near his.
“Tell me who did this to you,” she whispered.
Owens only shook his head, his lips moving as if he were trying to speak, but no sound came.
“Who did this to you?” Sheba demanded, her eyes suddenly dilating.
Owens focused on Sheba. His eyes cleared and a demonic smile animated his previously blank expression.
“A rose by any other name. . .,” he said softly.
Suddenly, his expression changed. He drew in a wheezing breath and his eyes widened in agony or terror, or perhaps both at once. His body convulsed grotesquely and then fell immediately limp.
Sheba let the man’s body slip to the floor and rose to her feet. Behind her, Sharp let out a horrible wail. He thrashed hard against Scotty’s hold for a brief moment, but before Sheba or Jonathan could reach him, he became suddenly still.
Scotty reached for Sharp’s throat to feel for a pulse. He looked up at Sheba.
“Jesus, he’s dead!”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 8

2007-02-21T12:54:00.000-05:00

“That is exactly what it is,” Sauter agreed. “Both sides could very well suspect the other of foul play concerning these codes. The U.S. already suspects Russian involvement in Iraq. This will only add more fuel to the fire.”
“What has the reaction been so far?” Sheba asked.
“There has been no reaction,” Sauter replied. “Neither the U.S. nor the Russian Federation is aware that the codes were taken. And we intend to keep it that way until this is resolved. A war with Russia cannot be allowed to happen. We can’t afford any misunderstandings between us. Especially a misunderstanding concerning their stolen launch codes that our government was supposed to be safeguarding.”
Sheba’s brow drew into a concerned frown. “You’ve been falsifying information.”
Sauter nodded. “Out of necessity, yes. The intelligence we’ve gathered is not being shared with any other agency. This burden is ours alone. We’ve resorted to nothing less than a cover-up with respect to our associates within the intelligence community as a whole, military affairs, all the way up to the commander-in-chief. In essence, we are concealing information from our own government and the Russian Federation and intentionally misrepresenting our finds concerning the investigation of Halima Raine’s kidnapping and the acquisition of these launch codes.”
“Halima Raine?” Jonathan asked.
“The codes demanded by Mrs. Raine’s kidnappers were also connected to the Russian missile sites.”
“According to the CIA, those codes were linked to U.S. launch sites,” Bishop said.
“They received that information from us,” Sauter told him. “They were misinformed.”
“Intentionally,” Jonathan said.
“Intentionally,” Sauter replied. “I am sorry I’m forced to put all of you in this position, but I have no choice.”
“You’re asking us to commit conspiracy and treason,” Sheba said.
“No,” Jonathan sneered. “He’s forcing us to do it.”
Sauter shook his head. “None of us have any choice at the moment. This is the first time we have ever had to take such measures, but there is no other way.” He set his jaw and stared back at Jonathan sternly. “We can not allow the U.S. government or the Russian Federation to discover this threat. No matter how much we have to cover up, or to what lengths we must go, we must resolve this ourselves.”
Sheba looked up at Jonathan. “He’s right.”
“The one thing we do have in our favor,” Sauter added. “Is the fact that those responsible are preternatural, and slightly easier for our psys to track. The one who got to Owens and Sharp is an Elder. We’re very close to discovering the identity of that Elder. We should have more information for you shortly. In the meantime, two of my best agents are on their way here to question Owens and Sharp. Perhaps they can enlighten us a bit further.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 7

2007-02-20T10:27:00.000-05:00

“Some of the Russian missile delivery systems that were supposed to have been put out of commission were never actually destroyed,” Sauter replied. “More than some, in fact. The inspectors’ reports were falsified on almost half of the required decommissions. Those systems are fully operational, warheads included, even as we speak.”
“Almost half?” Sheba breathed. “That means Russia has retained most of their nuclear arsenal.”
Sauter nodded, “While the rest of the world believes otherwise.”
“Why is nothing being done?” Sheba asked.
“Because this was the agreement,” Sauter replied. “The U.S. allowed Russia to keep more of their arsenal than what the public is aware of.”
Jonathan squinted, incredulous. “We allowed it? What the hell is the reasoning behind that?”
“Psychological reasons, more than anything. To afford Russia a continued sense of power instead of the opposite, which might cause much more tension and animosity against our country,” Sauter explained.
Jonathan shook his head in shocked amazement. “You’ve got to be joking. We’re playing psych games with a nuclear armed superpower?”
Sauter shrugged. “If you want to put it that way.”
“That’s wrong on so many different levels I can’t even count them all!” Jonathan growled.
Sauter nodded. “I don’t disagree. But, right or wrong, the reality of it doesn’t change.”
“Why are Americans in possession of the Russians’ launch code information?” Bishop asked.
“Part of the agreement as well,” Sauter replied. “Our generosity didn’t come without some compensation. Our government holds the codes and the ability to change them. All written between the lines of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.”
“My God,” Sheba breathed.
“Then that,” Jonathan pointed at the confiscated codes, “is a war waiting to happen.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 6

2007-02-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

Bishop shook his head, confused.
“These are nuclear launch code overrides,” he said, studying the single sheet of computer paper which had been the only contents of the confiscated briefcase. He looked up at Sheba. “Russian?”
Sheba nodded. “It appears our friend Lt. Colonel Owens delivered the briefcase to Sharp with no compensation that we can trace. It looks as if he was not even paid for his part in this.”
“Okay,” Bishop replied. “But what are our people doing with Russian launch codes?”
“Good question,” Sheba said. “Save it for the Director. He’ll be here shortly.”
Bishop seemed to physically melt into his chair. “The Director?”
Sheba only nodded.
Jonathan walked into the room looking sour and closed the door behind him.
“How are our guests faring?” Sheba asked.
“Still tranced out,” Jonathan replied. “Scotty and Seven are keeping an eye on them.”
He perched on the corner of the table and glanced down at the piece of paper in front of Bishop.
“How did they catch Owens?” Bishop asked.
“His wife reported strange behavior to his superiors. She was concerned, given the fact that her husband was a member of a nuclear launch team,” Sheba told him.
Owens was picked up from his home in Arlington only a few hours earlier and flown to the base for questioning. Up to now, no questions had been answered. Neither he nor his courier had spoken a word. Owen’s courier, Harold Sharp, was brought in by the VDC, the team’s damage control unit, after Evan and Darla had managed to disrupt his meeting with the two still unidentified vampire. The man, identified by the driver’s license found in his wallet, was a civilian computer technician who worked in Owen’s Pentagon office. Both men were conscious, and their odd, trance-like states seemed identical.
“The report stated his sexual behavior had become rather. . .animalistic,” Sheba said.
“And the wife complained?” Jonathan wondered.
“After twenty stitches to close a bite wound, yes,” Sheba replied.
Jonathan grimaced, “It would take a powerful Elder to put a human so deep under,” he said, “Someone as strong as you.”
Bishop’s eyes grew wide. “An Elder is behind this?”
“It would have to be,” Jonathan replied. “Even Psy’s best agents aren’t capable of something like this.”
Bishop glanced back down at the codes before him and shook his head. He looked back up at Jonathan. “I guess we need to rethink our strategy.”
Jonathan smirked and looked at Sheba. “He thinks we have a strategy.”
Sheba nodded. “I wish we did. At this point all we’re doing is following up intelligence reports.”
Jonathan shrugged. “If we can get anything out of Owens and Sharp, maybe that will change.”
“Let’s hope so,” a voice called from the doorway.
The Director of the Department of Psy Operations and Intelligence marched into the room, a brown leather briefcase swinging at his side. Another man followed him just inside the doorway, took a quick look around the room, then stepped back out into the hallway and closed the door.
“Director Sauter,” Sheba greeted the gray-haired man with a quick handshake.
Sauter regarded her with a subtle nod, then offered the same to Jonathan and Bishop. He moved to the head of the table and placed the briefcase in front of him. His very presence was enough to answer some questions. He rarely made a personal appearance.
“I’ll just get right to it,” he began. “The codes you confiscated from Harold Sharp are connected to several Russian ICBM silos that were allegedly decommissioned after the arms reduction agreements between the U.S. and Russia.”
The room was silent for a long moment as the Director’s statement was absorbed.
“What do you mean, allegedly?” Jonathan asked.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 5

2007-02-17T12:07:00.000-05:00

The Asian snapped her head around at the sound of gunshots. Darla summoned her remaining strength and drove at the Asian’s cheek with her forehead. The woman wailed at the pain of shattering bone. Her hands flew to her face. Darla pushed against her, but the legs wrapped around her waist constricted powerfully. Darla cried out as her ribs cracked beneath the pressure. The Asian grasped a handful of white hair and drew her fist back.
A sharp crack echoed through the alleyway. The woman’s body jerked and fell to the side.
Evan stood over her grasping a splintered two by four.
“Damn, what a hardhead,” he mused, but suddenly wilted as Darla sank to her knees then collapsed beside the unconscious woman.
Darla lay at Evan’s feet, blood coursing in ghastly, rhythmic streams from the sides of her throat. A dark pool crawled over the ground beneath her, spreading quickly.
Evan reached down and took her arm.
“Jesus, look at this,” he breathed as he pulled her slowly to her feet.
She grasped his shoulder and steadied herself then drove a hard kick into the fallen woman’s ribs.
“No time fer that, darlin’,” Evan said.
He nodded in the direction of the sedan. The driver stood limply, holding a gun at his side in a loose grip, his eyes glazed and blank.
Evan dragged Darla with him to the car where the dazed man stood. He passed a hand in front of the man’s face.
“Homeboy here is out of it.”
He snapped the comlink from his belt and keyed it, “Bishop, I need VDC and pick up now.”
“On the way,” Bishop’s voice replied.
Evan snatched up the briefcase and wrapped Darla’s arm over his shoulder. He tugged at her gently and urged her toward the entrance to the alleyway. A loud, foreboding thump sent him whirling. The Asian stood on the trunk of the car glaring down at them, her lips curled into a menacing snarl.
“Look here, doll,” Evan said. “We can dance if you want to and let ‘em both bleed to death, or we can call it a draw and walk away.”
“They won’t die,” she hissed back.
“Maybe not, but I don’t think you’ll get tha same offer from my team when they get here.”
The Asian’s eyes narrowed. “You have some understanding of honor in battle.”
“Nah, I got some understandin’ of family.” He nodded to where the Frenchman lay curled into a bloody mass on the asphalt. “He’s part of yers, ain’t he?”
The Asian answered with a nod.
“Clock’s tickin’ doll. What’s it gonna be?”
The woman dropped from the car without a sound and gave a half bow in Evan’s direction. She turned and scooped the Frenchman into her arms as if he were a ragdoll. A moment later, she vanished into the shadows without a single backward glance.
“Sh...ould have killed ‘em, Evan,” Darla mumbled.
“Shuddup, gorgeous. Talkin’ just makes ya bleed faster.”
He patted Darla’s shoulder and released a long breath, squinting at the sudden brightness of headlights in his eyes.

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 4

2007-02-16T09:34:00.000-05:00

The Frenchman rolled away from Evan and onto his feet. “You move well, mon frère. Quite skillfully,” he breathed.
Evan replied with a snarl.
The Frenchman pursed his lips almost thoughtfully then sent an impressive barrage of kicks at Evan’s head with staggering speed. Evan blocked each flying foot and stepped back. He recognized the Frenchman’s technique as la Savate. And the man was quickly proving himself a master of the art.
“Chausson? Not bad,” Evan said.
“You know the art by its proper name. I am impressed.”
“Good,” Evan hissed. “Then you’ll really be impressed when I kick your ass, Frenchi" He lunged at the man once again only to be met with another onslaught of lightning quick blows from the Frenchman’s lethal feet.

The Asian woman leaped onto Darla and clamped her legs around Darla’s waist. Her ankles locked together behind Darla’s back. She drove her thumbs into the sides of Darla’s throat. Her long nails incised flesh like sharp daggers.
Darla staggered as the woman’s legs squeezed tighter. Her own legs began to weaken. Blood gushed from the wounds at her throat and flowed freely down her neck as she wrenched at the woman’s wrists. The Asian woman smiled down at her and cruelly twisted her nails in the wounds.

Evan blocked another exquisite series of kicks and took a step back out of his opponent’s striking range. Neither he nor the Frenchman had been able to land an effective blow against the other. The Frenchman paused and regarded Evan with a curious smirk then a wide grin spread across his face. He bowed slightly.
“A worthy opponent. It is a shame we are enemies.”
“Yeah, too damned bad,” Evan replied. “And I hate I gotta do this, but we ain’t playin’ fer fun.”
The Frenchman lifted a curious brow.
In a blur, Evan drew his handgun and fired. A clip full of nine millimeter rounds unloaded into the Frenchman’s chest. The man dropped to his knees, eyes wide, clutching at the bleeding wounds.
Evan slipped the gun back into its holster and looked down at the man.
“I know that ain’t gonna kill ya, but you won’t be able ta give me anymore shit for a while. Next time maybe we can end this the right way.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 3

2007-02-15T09:09:00.001-05:00

Evan pushed himself from the wall, growling. He moved back into his opponent’s range and crouched. The tall one smiled, giving Evan a brief glimpse of oversized canines.
That was it; the reason for his earlier sense of unease. He should have recognized the two as vampire. Mother had been right. They had become too lax. But even now, the sensation of the man’s essence seemed oddly vague. Obviously, he and the woman had masked their presence, and only the very strong were able to shield so effectively that another, equally strong, could not sense them.
“You wish to die, mon frere?” the man asked in a velvet soft voice coated with a thick French accent.
He was an imposing figure with dark wavy hair that hung partially down into his face and equally dark eyes that seemed eerily calm and at the same time burned into Evan with a strange fierceness as he looked down his hawk-like nose at him.
Evan smirked. “Again?”
The man nodded and responded with a spinning kick aimed at Evan’s head. Evan pivoted counter the spin and dropped, his foot sweeping the man’s legs from under him.

The Asian watched Darla, her dark, almond shaped eyes narrowing warily as Darla circled her.
“Come on,” Darla breathed.
The woman moved toward Darla and spun. Darla gasped as the tips of the woman’s ponytails stung across her cheek. She staggered backward and snarled angrily. Blood trickled down the side of her face. She could see now the tiny metal weights tied into the ends of the woman’s hair.
The woman only smiled mockingly and tossed her head in challenge.
Darla sneered at the Asian, “Now you just pissed me off.”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 2

2007-02-14T23:23:00.000-05:00

Movement in the alley snapped Evan’s thoughts back to the present. He nudged Darla. She acknowledged him with a nod.
They watched a black sedan turn into the alley from the street. Its headlights blinked off as it crawled to a stop.
Darla crouched lower as two figures moved from out of the shadows at the entrance to the alleyway. She held up two fingers to Evan and motioned toward the moving forms. They watched the two figures approach the car. One moved to the driver’s door and the other, the taller of the two, moved around the vehicle’s passenger side.
Both figures were cloaked in dark trench coats. Evan quietly cursed. He hated trench coats. They could conceal an arsenal of weaponry in their folds.
He found himself suddenly uneasy. Beside the fact that a very dangerous transaction may be taking place, something seemed out of sorts. He could feel it.
The driver side door of the car swung open and a man, fortyish and slightly overweight, emerged from the vehicle. He glanced around nervously then reached back into the car. Momentarily, he appeared again with an attaché case in tow which he offered to one of the trench-coated figures.
Evan held up a hand to signal Darla. She nodded, her lips forming a silent now.
Together, Evan and Darla vaulted from the edge of the roof, dropping more than twenty feet to the ground below. The smack of their feet on the pavement as they landed suddenly interrupted the exchange. Both of the dark figures whirled to face them. Darla sprinted toward the car and vaulted the hood. She shoved the short, balding man out of the way and reached for the case.
“I’ll take that,” she announced.
The other lunged backward out of her reach and immediately spun, slamming a straight back kick into her stomach that sent her tumbling into a pile of crates.
Evan snatched the taller one by the collar with both hands. An instant later, he regretted having left the man’s hands unattended. A fist drove hard into his solar plexus followed immediately by a front snap kick that launched him against an unyielding wall of brick.

Darla shoved the tumbled crates away and scrambled to her feet. Her opponent yanked the trench coat off and spun it like a matador’s cape.
Darla froze and gaped in astonishment at the first true glimpse of her competition; an Asian female, sleek and muscled, long black hair pulled into two ponytails that sat up slightly, giving the impression of a lion’s mane. She regarded Darla with a contemptuous snarl.
Darla gasped. “Evan!”

Nyteflight Chapter 3, Part 1

2007-02-14T10:02:00.000-05:00

A crisp, October breeze hissed over rooftops and through the narrow spaces between crowded buildings near the shipping docks along the northern curve of Chesapeake Bay. A faint scent of ozone mingled with the salty smell of sea water after the passing of a brief, but heavy rainfall.
Delicate clouds of steam rose from the asphalt surface of the alleyway that ran between the buildings and even more poured from the openings of the storm drains lining the narrow lane. The night was quiet except for the low, indefinable murmur of life on the docks and the periodic, distant clang of buoy bells.
Darla tapped a finger on the back of Evan’s fidgeting hand.
“Stop it,” she whispered.
He mumbled something under his breath and laced his fingers together between his knees, his eyes fixed on the alley below.
They had all been more than a little on edge since the morning meeting two days before when Jonathan had presented PsyOps latest intelligence reports. David’s awakening had only added to the tension.
Authorities had discovered some unnerving information concerning Halima Raine’s kidnapping. The ransom was not expected in currency. Al-Hashem’s organization kidnapped the woman in an attempt to force the Ambassador to turn over nuclear launch code information which he would have been forced to steal by way of his contacts. CIA records of bank accounts linked to Al-Hashem’s group reflected several substantial cash deposits totaling almost two million dollars wired to the accounts even before the kidnapping took place.
Al Qaeda and several other prominent terrorist groups had been under suspicion, but the investigation failed to link any of them with the deposits and none had claimed responsibility. At the moment, all that was known for certain was someone had attempted a potentially cataclysmic acquisition and the buyer was still in the market.
And then there was David.
Evan still could not relieve himself of the image of his friend writhing in pain, transforming and awakening into a blinding bloodlust. It was rare for one to awaken with the bloodrage manifested physically. Typically, it happened only in the offspring of a powerful Elder.

Nyteflight Chapter 2, Part 18

2007-02-05T00:18:00.000-05:00

Silence slowly gave way to a soft droning within David’s awareness. The noise grew louder until it again became a deafening din of indistinguishable sounds. The pain was gone now. He was aware only of that maddening, clamoring racket in his ears.
In an instant, his awareness exploded. His eyes flew open and he bolted upright. Every sense he possessed pumped its separate information into him all at once. A wildness screamed through his veins and a rage ripped through him like he’d never felt. But it was not an emotion. The rage itself was purely physical.
Hands grabbed his arms and legs and shoved him onto his back. He couldn’t grasp what was happening, only knew he must escape it. He struggled and thrashed against the hands. Voices became discernible amidst the din.
“David!” One screamed his name.
“Goddammit! Hold him!” Another called out urgently.
He managed to free an arm and blindly struck out. He felt his nails tear through anonymous flesh. Immediately, a maddening scent filled his nostrils and the rage intensified.
“David! Calm down!”
The voice was so familiar.
“Come on man. Just breathe.”
Evan.
He wanted to grasp the familiar sensation and hold it, but the intoxicating scent overpowered his reasoning, driving him ever wilder. He tried to lunge in the direction from where it came. The hands slammed him forcefully back down.
“Bishop, back off! Blood’s makin’ it worse!” Evan’s voice said urgently.
Blood.
“Breathe, David,” Evan said. “Slow breaths. Come on. Focus.”
Fragments of sanity began to merge in his mind and move up through the animal rage. He tried to breathe. He could only gasp. The rage was so strong. And the hunger, a craving like he’d never felt, deep and ravenous and insatiable, held him in its black grip.
“Breathe through it,” Evan’s voice urged again. “Just breathe.”
He drew in as much air as he could. His head was spinning. The scent of blood was fainter now. Though its essence lingered slightly, the rage began finally to recede. He felt it loosening its grip gradually until he could breathe again. Little by little, he found some semblance of lucidity and perhaps some precarious sense of control return.
“David,” another voice called his name. It was soft, deep, feminine.
He opened his eyes, felt his body begin to relax.

Nyteflight Chapter 2, Part 17

2007-02-01T10:57:00.000-05:00

Nyteflight Chapter 2, Part 16

2007-01-28T13:58:00.001-05:00

The rich scent of brewed coffee filled the room and even found its way into the adjoining lavatory where Sheba stood staring into the mirror over the sink. The bubbling sound of the last of the water draining from the coffee maker’s reservoir brought a touch of calm to her present state. Her anger at Darla and Seven still lingered. That, and a sensation of something wrong; something she couldn’t place.
She splashed a handful of cool water on her face and blotted it dry with a towel then looked up into the mirror once again. She focused on the tiny crow’s feet beside her eyes, and the one almost invisible wrinkle that creased across the center of her brow. She stepped back and studied the face and let herself wonder for the millionth time how old it looked. The answer was always the same. It looked as old as the woman it had belonged to the moment before that woman’s life ended, and this woman’s life began.
She would have been thirty-five her next birthday - that woman with the tiny wrinkles. But Sheba couldn’t quite remember how old the woman in the mirror was now. Not an exact age anyway. And she didn’t care to remember.
She left the mirror, and the question, behind in the bathroom. She would ask again tomorrow. Or perhaps not. Perhaps she would stop wondering altogether. It hardly mattered after all this time; after all the centuries. For the moment, all she really cared about was that cup of coffee.
That, of course, was a lie. And not the first one she had told herself today.
She walked into her small quarters and stopped for a moment. Strange. This room. How sparse it seemed after other places she had lived. But she had insisted it be this way. Her superiors had offered much more than this, but she had wanted no special treatment from them.
Superiors.
The very sound of the word still revolted her.
She wondered how her life would be now if Psy had never found her. They had, after all, recruited her all those years ago by means of nothing less than blackmail when their agents located Jonathan. They used his capture as their bargaining tool. But they had more to bargain with than simply the threat against her childe. The psyagents knew the locations of many of Sheba’s kind and would find more as time passed now that they had learned what to look for; learned the distinct psychic signature of a vampire’s essence. All they had wanted was to secure one of the oldest and most powerful of Sheba’s kind to create and lead a very specialized task force. Sheba was that one.
She glanced once more around the room. What good did it do to wonder how things would have been?
You know how it would have been, she told herself.
It would have been little more than an empty existence with no hope of any end. But even that would have been preferable to what would have happened had she had not accepted Psy’s terms.
She could have freed Jonathan herself. She knew it. PsyOps knew it. But they relied on the assumption that she would not have wanted to be held responsible for the resulting war between her kind and theirs. They were right. They relied also on the sense of purpose she would find to keep her here. They had been right in that as well.
Sheba took her coffee to a favorite chair and pulled back the drapes toward which the chair faced. The drapes were not hung over a window, but only a wall. There were no windows here. Instead, a beautifully painted tromp le’oie scene hid behind the drapery. The meticulously detailed mural depicted a window that opened onto a lush, green valley flanked by hazy mountains. Behind the mountains, the sun was just ready to rise, its presence made known by the colorful hues of pinks and oranges that blended into blue and then darker, as if night had not yet agreed to leave.
Sheba sat down in the large, wicker backed chair and imagined the sky changing colors. She took a sip of coffee and sighed. That gnawing sensation from before again overpowered other thoughts. She had tried to occupy her mind to keep it from reaching out, but still, it came. In an astral sense, some dark energy was rising and she could not discern its cause. She knew only that it was there. And it was familiar. That part of it was a force she hoped she would never feel again.

The phone on the table beside her chair rang, shaking her from her thoughts. Jonathan’s cell number appeared on the display, then two soft alert tones signaling the urgency of the call. As she reached to answer, the essence of that dark energy surged through her senses.

Nyteflight Chapter 2, Part 15

2007-01-25T09:08:00.000-05:00

The holding block was, in actuality, a long corridor lined with small rooms once used as treatment and convalescent rooms for the old infirmary’s patients. Now, the rooms served as temporary holding cells for prisoners, interrogation rooms and a few simply for storage. It was a seldom used part of the lowest level of the underground complex and Jonathan could not imagine what Evan might be doing down here.

He found Evan waiting for him at the far end of the corridor.
“I would have called you sooner,” Evan said as Jonathan approached, “Figured you’d be busy with Seven.”
He motioned to the open door leading into one of the small rooms and stepped aside for Jonathan to enter.
Jonathan froze in the doorway.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed.
A man lay on a cot against the far wall, curled into a tight ball on his side, his body shaking uncontrollably. His black hair was soaked and his face, pallid and drawn into an agonized grimace, glistened with sweat.
Jonathan knew that face. And he knew instantly what was happening. He could feel it. He felt the Sergeant’s essence merged with another’s, familiar to him. Too familiar. Even so, he could hardly believe his own eyes at the moment; or his own senses. It had been years since any of them had brought a human through the change. Seven had been the last.
“I brought him in this morning,” Evan said.
“You’d better have a damned good explanation for this,” Jonathan told Evan quietly.
It was one thing for Evan to make his own decision to sire a vampire. He was responsible for his own blood and the consequences of what he chose to do with it, but to bring the Sergeant here without authorization was another matter entirely.
“I didn’t have a choice, Jon,” Evan said.
He brushed past Jonathan and kneeled down beside the Sergeant. Retrieving a cloth from a bowl of water on the floor near the cot, he wrung out the excess water and wiped over David’s face.
“It’s your business that you gave him your blood,” Jonathan said. “But bringing him here . . .”
“I didn’t sire him,” Evan replied, cutting Jonathan off. “He’s not mine.”
“This is our bloodline!” Jonathan snapped.
“Yeah. That’s why I brought him here.”
“Then who the hell did this?”
Evan shook his head. “I don’t know.” He looked up at Jonathan. “And neither does he.”

2007-01-18T00:16:00.001-05:00

Wellllll....
Blogger seems to have wiped out all my old blogs.
Yep, everyone of them.
So I have recreated them here in the new Blogger2 neighborhood.
I e-mailed Blogger about this and am waiting to see if they can replace my archives.
But until that time, we will move onward and upward and just act like none of this ugliness ever happened.
I thank everyone for stopping by, and I ask everyone for their patience till I can get some good content back up for you.
I'll get everyones backlinks back up ASAP. I owe a LOT to those out there that have been kind enough to link to me in the past, and I will have everything up and running again PDQ.

Thanks again,

~~ Sabre ~~