Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

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“The day may come when I have to follow orders, or give them, and when they affect you, I will give as little apology to you as you are now giving to me.”

-Alexander Kominsky

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Orlando was walking up and down the living room, his heels clacking against the hardwood floor, and Chris Ashby was feeling what he rarely felt. Nerves. Impatience. As the dark skinned dark haired blood drinker, a magnificent, broad chested and high buttocked figure walked back and forth across the parqueted floor, Chris, tall, blond, pale, large nosed, large eyed, with hard solid features, turned to his dark shadow and closest friend, Lawrence Malone, the handsome Irish-Italian with his mildly sticky out ears and occasionally monkeyish expressions. The blue eyed and grey eyed men eyed Orlando and then each other, and Orlando continued:

“I have yet to reach Tanitha. I have heard nothing from her in all this night. Nor of Kruinh. And it is nearly morning.”

“Well,” Chris pointed out. He was in jeans and a grey turtleneck, looking very much like an Abercrombie and Fitch commercial for a Fall sale, “we actually can’t do anything until the sun is up anyway.”

Orlando eyed him balefully, and said, “That isn’t the point. We need to plan if we’re going to get this done.”

But it was then that they could hear the faint purr of an engine outside, and now the car stopped in the carport, and after a short walk down the path that went to the front of the house, there entered Kruinh Kertesz, master of the house.

“Kruinh!” Orlando nearly shouted.

“Kruinh,” Laurie said lazily, sliding from the table. The tall slender drinker was, as usual, in fitted dress slacks that showed off his well made legs and buttocks, and a fitted shirt that called attention to his shoulders and chest,  “Orlando thinks it’s time to act.”

“Act?” Kruinh said, looking not entirely present, looking dazed and, Chris thought, happy.

Then he said, “Oh, yes, yes, the act!”

“Yes, Kruinh!” Orlando said. “The very thing we’ve been planning for months, For a year really, since those first attacks and Dan coming to us.”

But when Orlando said his name, he pronounced it the eastern way, “Croin,” and it reminded Kruinh of Sunny, for not wishing to burden him with a difficult or strange name, he’d simply given the English form of it, “Crane.”

“I,” Kruinh waved Orlando down while he yawned, “I’ve been up all night, and we were going to do everything tomorrow. Why, then, are you so insistent on doing it tonight?”

“Today,” Orlando said.

Kruinh reached into his breastpocket and pulled out a cigarette. He followed Orlando into the kitchen where he swore

“Good God! What the hell is that?”

The discolored dead body of a red headed young woman, her throat gnawed out, was lain across the kitchen table and Orlando said, “That’s their new thing. And just a day after the boy, and also in Germantown. We know where they are. They’re getting bolder and bolder. If they draw attention to themselves, they will draw attention to—”

“Alright,” Kruinh waved Orlando to silence. “Alright, alright, you’ve made your point. Or rather they have.”

Kruinh had killed that night and taught Sunny to kill, and both times they had left the body. Often as not a body must be left. But the savaged throat, the bloodless corpse, the piercing marks which looked like teeth, which were not disguised, were bad form. Any murder that anyone called a Vampire Murder was in bad form.

“How do you know we can do this quickly?”

“They are staying at a warehouse on Burgess Street past the old beer factory. Today is going to be seventy five and sunny. The next few days cloudy and cold. Rosamunde and her crew are asleep and well asleep by nine.”

Kruinh nodded, listening to everything Orlando said.

“Have you heard from my daughter?”

“I’ve called Tanitha several times,” Orlando said. “She’s nowhere to be found.”

Kruinh nodded.

“We can do this without her,” he said.

“In fact, I’d rather we did.”

Rosamunde was sitting in a chair like a throne, and Carter, like a prime minister or, she sniggered, like a Queen, was sitting in a lower chair beside her when they heard the motor’s  roar.  Gabriel, who had been standing with his arms crossed over his chest, took a deep breath and Rosamunde said:

“Well, this is a relief. I was afraid I’d have to have Bartholomew kill his mother.”

As the motorcycle cut off, Rosamunde rose and told Carter, “Call Evangeline and tell her to leave that Grey Note place alone. She won’t be killing his friends tonight.”

Sunny strode into the large hall looking grand and glowing and Carter said, “You almost missed the sunrise.”

“Oh, I don’t think you were worried about that, Carter, old boy,” Sunny said. “I don’t think any of you was worried for my welfare at all.”

He smiled brightly.

“You’re wrong, Alexander,” Rosamunde said, striding past him and touching his shoulder.

“There is a strength in you.”

“Yes,” Sunny said.

“Still, it is a new strength. The rooster should not crow too loudly. Unlike the others, you have never tasted my strength. You have not drunk from me.”

“I’ve drunk from your brother,” Sunny said. “Many times. I cannot believe the quality of your blood is that different.”

“Oh,” Rosamunde laughed, and there was a little mirth in it.

“There is a change in you.”

The other newer vampires, the boys he had talked to on again off again, still looked scared, still looked like creatures half alive. Sunny understood the conundrum Rosamunde and Carter were in. They wanted strong drinkers, but how long would a strong drinker endure them?

Sunny saw Gabriel signal for him, but for once it was clear to him how much he despised Gabriel. He had learned to kill and he had met someone with whom he wished to spend a great deal of time and suddenly, spending the morning tangled in bed sucking and being sucked on by Gabriel revolted him. Sunny ignored Gabriel’s eyes and went toward the row of coffins the others were climbing in.

Carter came toward him, catching him by the shoulder.

“Yes?” Sunny smiled at him, blinking in innocence.

“I do not like what has come over you,” Carter said.

“No?” Sunny said.

Sunny only smiled as he climbed into his coffin.

Had he known that he would never speak to Carter again, his smile would have been even wider.