Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

Reader discretion is adviced, this story contain graphic content depicting violence which may not be suitable to all readers. This is a fictional story and do not portray real events or real persons.

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PART TWO

A thumping. In the dark there was thumping, and was it at the door? There was no door. No, there was the inside of this coffin. Someone was banging on it. Was it Rosamunde? Was it Carter? But should he not simply wake when night came? When had he ever had to be awakened? There was thumping again. There was screaming, and now a sharp rap over his head.

As Sunny pushed up the coffin lid, he saw Mitch on fire, dancing about like a whirling stick man in the sunlit streets. He saw Abel and Carl explode into flame and follow the fire dance.  Luke had leapt out of his coffin, and even as he came out the sun was scorching him, his hair blazing. There was a blond man cutting Nick down, and a dark haired man on Abel. There were hands on him as Sunny leapt out into the scorching heat. He lunged out, still strong with the feasting of last night, and took his attacker by the throat. Feeling the sun like a furnace, Sunny dragged his opponent under the shadow of an awning, and while this one tried to stab him, Sunny pushed up his arm and sank his fangs into his throat. He crushed his windpipe, and in his fury, rolled up his hand into a fist and then punched through the man’s chest. As he died, Sunny sank his teeth into his throat and drained him.

He smelled smoke, understood it was his own flesh, could feel the back of his neck badly burned. Now he sensed others on his back in the empty street. No one was coming out to watch. Were the people afraid, or were there just no people here? God what a bleak area of Lassador they must have been in! And surely that was an abandoned building where they had been kept. The blond one and the dark haired one were coming for him. Sunny did a handspring and kicked the dark one in the face, and then sprang across the burning surface of the street on his red hands, and into the shadow of the building, their lair, haha, leaving behind the scene of burning vampires and open coffins. He came into the house where Carter, or rather Carter’s body was on the floor, and Rosamunde was trembling, and the man from the other night, the man Crane—Crane was holding Carter’s severed head, and now released it at the sight of him.

Crane… Kruinh, the vampire from Dan’s journal. Sunny had always assumed it was pronounced like it it looked: Kru-inn. There were others out there… enemies… Gabriel had said.

Sunny and Kruinh looked at each other, and in this moment, Chris Ashby, who had been chasing him, came back and wrapped his hands around his throat.

“Get the fuck off of me,” Sunny growled.     

“He killed Orlando!”           

“Christopher, let him go,” Kruinh said.

“What?”

“I do not need to repeat myself. You are not deaf,” Kruinh said. “Let him go. He will be the only one to be let go. And apparently he can fight. He is strong. He survived you and Lawrence.”

Laurie was coming into the old abandoned house now, and Kruinh said. “Lawrence, take Rosamunde with you. She must be dealt with. This is the last time she will do what she has done. Take Orlando’s body with you.”

“Orlando?” Lawrence began.

“He killed him,” Chris said, accusingly, pointing at Sunny.

“Is Orlando the fucker who was trying to murder me?” Sunny asked. “Because if he was, fuck him too.”

Chris snarled and stepped forward, but Kruinh growled, “Enough!” and everyone froze.

When they were all silent, Kruinh spoke.

“Orlando was of my sister’s clan. We all knew the risk. If you attempt to kill, you face being killed. No crime was done. For my sister’s sake I am grieved, but I cannot pretend private sorrow. Orlando volunteered himself for this, and he was always quick to kill.”

“Miriamne will not forgive this,” Chris said.

“Of course she will,” Kruinh dismissed this. “She knows the ancient codes even better than I.”

“Who are you?” Sunny demanded, looking down at Carter’s head. “What’s happening?”

“Those are both fair questions,” Kruinh said, distractedly.

 “I… I made a great mistake. I really should have had them be on the outlook for you. How could you have been part of any other gathering but this one? I should have… I almost got you killed. Well,” Kruinh shook his head, still bothered, “come with us.”

“I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”

“You will,” Laurie growled.

Sunny hit him in the face.

“Stop being a bully,” Kruinh said to Laurie, who was picking himself off the floor and rubbing his jaw. “All I need you to do is take Rosamunde to Tanitha. She will do the rest.

“You’re right,” Kruinh said, turning to Sunny. “You shouldn’t have to come with us. I suppose you’ve earned that right. And much was done to you that shouldn’t have been done. But I would prefer it if you did come. At least for a little while.”

Sunny nodded. Kruinh was someone he instantly trusted, and the last time he had trusted a blood drinker—listen to him!—had been Gabriel.

“Gabriel!” Sunny said, looking around.

“Gabriel?” Kruinh raised an eyebrow. “My nephew?”

“Gabriel is your…? Rosamunde is your…”

Kruinh nodded and looked around the warehouse.

“I’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Kruinh said, looking as awkward as Sunny would ever see him.

“Yes,” Sunny agreed, following him, “You do.”

In the hotel room, Chris Ashby held out a glass of water to Sunny and said, “Sorry about—”

“Trying to kill me?”

“Yes.”

Sunny took the water.

Chris held out his hand.

“What the hell is that?”

“A handshake. A peace offering.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said,

Sunny drank the water and looked to Kruinh.

“Who the hell are you? You show up at my restaurant, tell me where I can feed and feed happy...” Sunny pressed past the time at Victor Terrace, the intimacies in the car.

“And then the next thing I know you’ve got these two assholes trying to kill me.”

“I would say it’s not as simple as all that except it almost is,” Kruinh said. “As I just said, I was not thinking clearly or else I would have been on the lookout for you. I would have told Chris and Lawrence to save you. The way they were able to save—well, that’s another story. Drink your water.”

“You killed my…” Sunny began.

“Family?” Kruinh lifted an eyebrow.

“No, but… Those guys were as innocent as I was. And you killed them.”

“I read the thoughts of two of them,” Chris said. “They had taken to killing anyone in order to live. One killed a homeless girl last night.”

“So you killed him because… you enforce the law?”

“Not that law,” Chris said. “I’m just telling you, none of us is innocent. Not really.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said dismally.

“I will explain it to you, then,” Kruinh said. “And I do not expect you to respect the explanation, but here it is. I am a blood drinker. I am what you would call a vampire. As are you. Because Gabriel took you and made you for Rosamunde and Carter. That is a forbidden thing.  We all, all blood drinkers, exist in houses, in clans, and each clan has a rule about how to kill, who can be killed and who cannot, who is allowed to make a new drinker and who is not. It stops us from murdering the whole world indiscriminately.  A drinker at full maturity can go without killing for a long time, as I told you, but a young one cannot. If one does not kill—”

“They go mad,” Sunny said.

“Yes?” Kruinh looked at him strangely.

“It was done to me. I went mad and they … made me do things,” Sunny said.

Kruinh nodded, and Sunny could tell that he was not the sort of person who pried.

“Also,” Kruinh said, “Only the head of a clan can make a new drinker. It is forbidden for someone not the head of a clan to make drinkers without the head of the clan’s permission. In the past, enemies went about dragging people off the streets, creating new vampire clans to rival their old families. Wars began this way. People unprepared, which are most people, were made into drinkers. Human life was wasted. And so now, if one attempts to create a renegade clan, then that renegade clan is destroyed and so is the one who made it.”

“That’s what you were doing,” Sunny said.

“Yes,” Kruinh said. “It is a hard law, but hard laws tend to be obeyed. Rosamunde is my niece, so I cannot kill her. She will be severely punished, but not killed. But she made Carter. Carter is no blood to me, so he is dead. And so are the others. Gabriel, when he is found, will be dealt with as well.”

“But you could kill me.”

Chris spoke now.

“No. You could give fealty to out house,” Chris said, “and then be part of us.”

Sunny looked to Chris, then looked to Kruinh.

“Ordinarily,” Kruinh said.

“That is… medieval.”

“But I am medieval,” Kruinh said. “Literally. And Christopher is over three hundred years old.

“However,” Kruinh said while Sunny absorbed this, “there are older laws. You have proved your courage, and your strength. You have proved your nobility. You survived two vampires older and stronger. I have no need for your fealty. But you must learn from me for a time. I must know you know the rules, know how to live, know our history, before allowing you to go out into the world on your own. You could be a danger to others as much as to yourself. As much as to us.”

Sunny understood this. When Kruinh spoke, he understood everything.

“Stay with us for a time,” Kruinh said.

Sunny heard Stay with me. Everything in his body vibrated with the words in his mind. If Laurie and Chris were not in the room, he would have gone immediately to Kruinh. He saw in his expressionless face, in his composed body and hands the same trembling. Could Laurie and Chris even tell?

Sunny only nodded.

Because he couldn’t say, Go to bed with me, he said, sullenly, “I still don’t think you should have killed them.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have,” Kruinh said. “If I had not taken care of it another clan or a member of mine would have, and it would have been my responsibility. And if I had not taken care of it or we had not, then they would have, in time, ruined themselves. One reason drinkers cannot be made… willy nilly” Kruinh seemed to be searching for the term, “is because most do not live very long. It is hard for a human to become a blood drinker.  Most made die quickly, or at least in the first century. Most make a miserable time of it.”

Chris Ashby tried to speak again and hoped he wasn’t about to be sworn at once more.

“Stay with us,” he said. “Help us to help you not make a shit time of it, alright?”

Sunny was still angry with Chris, angry with Laurie, even a little put out by Kruinh, but these were people of a different kind than the ones he’d been with. They explained things. They forced nothing, and what was more, he actually felt free in their presence, truly like the thing he was almost becoming in the last few days. They wouldn’t stop him from going to Nehru or Brad or David. They wouldn’t hold his mother’s life hostage. His mother! Brad and Nehru! He had to tell them about the others on the hunt for them. He had to… be cool.

“Fine,” Sunny said to Chris Ashby. “Fucking fine.”

Sunny headed back to Rawlston on his motorcycle, and behind him drove Kruinh. Chris and Laurie were dealing with Orlando’s body and came last, in a truck. Almost as soon as they reached the downtown expressway, Sunny went north while they went south, and when they arrived, at last, back in Glencastle and walked into 4848 Brummel Street, they were surprised not only by Tanitha, but by the tall, pale and shocked figure of David Lawry.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tanitha demanded.

“I might ask you the same thing?” her father said, pointing to David.

“Detective David Lawry, sir, and there’s a naked dead girl in your kitchen.”

“I know that,” Kruinh looked at him and scowled. “Orlando brought her. That was Rosamunde’s work.”

“Rosamunde!” David said.

“You know her?” Kruinh said, then, “of course you do.”

Then, “Daughter, can you explain why an officer of the law is investigating our house?”

“He’s not an officer of the law.”

David opened his mouth.

“I mean, he is, but that’s not why he’s here. He’s my…”

“Say it,” David said.

“Boyfriend.”

“Was that so hard?”

“It’s not that it’s hard, it’s that it’s modern.”

“Say it again.”

Tanitha studied him, frowning until David smiled, and against her will, herself smiled.

“Father,” she said, “This is David Lawry, my boyfriend.”

“I see,” Kruinh said.

“So that’s where you were last night,” Laurie crossed his hands over his arms and leered.

“Shut up.”

“Not bad,” Laurie assessed David. “Guy’s so pale he looks like one of us already. Well, a white one of us. Uh, he knows right?”

“That you all are vampires?” David said. “Yeah.”

“Is nothing sacred anymore?” Kruinh murmured.

“Not much,” Tanitha returned.

“We went to destroy Rosamunde’s clan.”

“What?” Tanitha and David shouted.

“When Orlando showed us this girl, we knew we couldn’t wait any longer.”

“But you were supposed to wait longer!” David looked almost desperate.

Kruinh looked at him strangely.

“I had a friend in there,” David said. “We were coming to tell you that so you could save him.”

Chris, who was the most contrite looking of them, said, “David, I’m so sorry. We didn’t know—”

“You killed Sunny, you son of a bitch!” David rounded on Chris, almost wailing, and it was at that moment Chris, Laurie and Kruinh said, “Sunny!”

“Yes! He came to avenge his friends. He came to get to figure out everything. They were holding him hostage. He was my friend. He was the best guy you could ever know and you bastards, you fucking assholes just killed him because—”

“No,” Kruinh said.

David stopped, Tears were stranding in his eyes.

“What?”

“Alexander Kominsky,” Kruinh said with quiet joy, “is very much alive.”

David’s face changed. He looked like a gigantic little boy.

“He’s on his way to his apartment to tell his friends he’s alright.”

“His friends?” Laurie said, dour. “So like now half of this county knows we exist.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Lawrence,” Kruinh said.

David, who really was a magnificent looking man Chris and Laurie were thinking, swept up Tanitha, dipped her and kissed her deeply, his dark hair falling in his face.

“I gotta go!” he said, reaching for his keys.

As he ran to the great oak and glass door, Tanitha said, “Oh, David?”

He raised an eyebrow.

She smiled, and holding out her hand in a benign claw, she murmured: “Tazi kŭshta da bŭde vidyana zavinagi i nikoga da ne e skrita ot teb. Zashtoto si krŭv ot moyata krŭv!”[1] 

David blinked, walked out the door, crossed the street, came back in and blinked again.

“How come it only half worked when I did it?”

“Because you’re not a drinker,” Tanitha said. “And also, because your medieval Slavic pronunciation is for shit.”

“I love you,” he said suddenly.

“That’s the second time you’ve said that, David Lawry. I’m pretty sure I love you too.”

He beamed.

“Great,” he said, and then pulled the door close behind him.

She was still smiling, and the three men were still looking at her, grinning.

“Shut up,” she said, distractedly, and then she turned around and marched to the back ot the house.

“I have a Rosamunde to deal with.”

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[1] “This house be forever seen and never hidden from thee. For thou art blood of my blood.”