Scene Three
Her first task in the morning was, as always, to feed the cat and the second was the make herself a cup of hot tea. The events of the night prior had weighed heavily on her mind throughout the hours stretched between the time that she had gotten home from the meeting at one in the morning until now, at 7 am, a full half an hour since she’d woken up; her fitful sleep had been disturbed by images of a faceless swordsman clad in blood-splattered golden armor and that strange, ancient sounding word: Dhampir.
Her fingers curled tighter around the curve of the warm clay in her hands; Sergio leapt up onto the table top to peer at her from a better angle than could be provided by the floor, his whiskers twitching in the hot silver steam rising from her mug.
“Mow?”
“I know, I’m not normally one to act like this but…I think I might have stepped in something.” Kennina watched the kitten tilt his head into her palm, purring loudly with his eyes half-lidded and heavy, for a moment before sighed and shaking her head. “Ugh, look at me. I know that something is going on that they’re not telling us-something bad that Kharon doesn’t want getting out, I can feel it in my bones-and yet instead of letting someone else know or doing anything about it I’m sitting in my kitchen talking to a cat!” Sergio abruptly stopped purring and pulled his head back to stare at her with wide eyes as if in offense. “Oh, don’t look at me like that! You don’t even know what I’m talking about do you?” Rather than responding, the kitten bounded off of the table and flounced out of the room with his tail pole-straight in the air. She watched him go with a roll of her eyes. “Guess I finally popped your little ego, huh pretty boy?”
Her cat, she felt sure, would recover from his wounded pride.
Rising from her seat and taking her tea with her Kennina proceeded out of her kitchen and into her foyer, retrieving her contact book from a drawer and flopping down onto her couch. Setting her mug safely on a coaster on top of the coffee table she sat back and began flipping through the small leather bound book; her green eyes scanned the pages quickly, taking in the neat lines of carefully penned names and addresses many of the people to whom they belonged she’d long since fallen out of touch with.
It was better this way, as she’d always told herself. No family. No lover, nor any prospects for one. No close friends beyond her team members. Associate with no one outside of the Guild and take vengeance as your sole purpose for living so that death, when it inevitably came, would leave no one behind who hadn’t seen it coming.
Yet it was times like these where she realized just how alone, and lonely, she really was. All that she had given up to be able to fight.
Who could she turn to for information? Alaric? Etain? She doubted that either of them knew any more about the matter than she did, not to mention that she didn’t want to get them involved before she had to.
That left…no one.
A rapid scrambling of small feet was all the warning that she had before his tiny fuzzy body crash-landed into her lap, ears up and tail twitching excitedly back and forth. Letting out a high-pitched mew as he righted himself, Sergio dropped the business card which had-by the look of the dust bunnies still desperately clinging to the bent edges-been lost beneath her bed for a number of months if not years, into her lap.
“What’s this, Serg?” Picking it up and turning it over, Kennina examined the writing on the card.
DR.VALORIE RYANS
HISTORIAN; PROFESSOR-HISTORY OF THE GUILD
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY NIGHT SCHOOL
Written on the back in curling script was a note: MS.LANE, IF YOU EVER FIND YOURSELF IN NEED OF ANSWERS THAT HISTORY’S ANNALS CAN PROVIDE TO YOU, BE IT BEFORE YOUR GRADUATION OR AFTER, MY OFFICE DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN.
How had she managed to forget about her favorite teacher? The woman’s classes had always been the one subject she’d found most interesting, if also the most challenging. Where she’d excelled near effortlessly in every other subject history had been her weak point, and if it hadn’t been for her willingness to devout a little extra time to one on one lectures to make sure she understood the most important points she likely wouldn’t have passed the course at all let alone with the flying colors that she had.
After checking over the office hours Kennina set the card down on the coffee table and picked Sergio up off her lap.
“You, my little lovely, are a kitty genius!” The kitten let out a rather smug-sounding meow as she replaced him on the floor, setting her mug in the kitchen sink before hurriedly rushing to her front closet to bundle up against the cold with a coat, scarf, hat and gloves.
Locking the door of her apartment tightly behind her and choosing to take the stairs two at a time rather than wait for the elevator she made her way down from the 7th floor and out of the apartment building onto the streets outside. Snow had fallen during the night, leaving the sidewalk paved with silver powder tramped down to slick ice by the footsteps of passing crowds and the gutters of the street filled with brownish slush.
Swept along with the ebb and flow of the city’s tide Kennina headed on foot towards the nearby University.
The campus was slightly less crowded than the streets outside it’s grounds, the tourists and businessmen giving way to a trickle of students; the white brick of the streets and buildings surrounding her on all sides like sun-bleached canyon walls as the blue banners depicting the NYU torch dangling from what seemed like every light post fluttered like boat sails in the winter wind.
Having only been away for just shy of a year the layout and positions of the buildings were still familiar to her, and it was with no difficulty what-so-ever that she found her way up to the Historian’s office and went inside. Through the glass walls surrounding the open space Kennina could see her former teacher sitting behind her desk grading papers; she knocked on the glass before opening the door and letting herself in.
“Oh for God’s sake Thomas, I already made it quite clear yesterday that no matter how much you pester me I won’t have the paper completed until Monday of next week!” The aging woman snapped tartly, her pen colliding with the wooden desktop with a resounding clatter as she tore her eyes from what she’d been doing to glare up at her for a moment before realizing who she was; immediately her expression softened somewhat. “Oh, Ms. Lane, I apologize. I thought you were-.”
“Thomas?” she supplied helpfully with a small smirk. “He’s a bit of a bother to you, I’d take it?”
“Oh, I’d call him more than that!” Her old teacher replied, pushing the chair back away from her desk and getting to her feet beaded chain connected to her glasses rattling as they slid further down the bridge of her nose, arthritic vein-knotted hands shaking slightly in frustration. “That upstart whipper-snapper doesn’t know who he’s dealing with; if he knew about even a fraction of what I do-what all Hunters do-he’d surely go insane from the terror of it all! Not to mention that he doesn’t teach a single class, let alone 5 separate ones!” Here she was, a woman of 70 more than old enough to be her grandmother with an age softened face and long white hair done up in a bun on top of her head, bristling with a fury that the much younger hunter knew for a fact she could easily express with a blade if pushed. “But internal politics of this school and the interactions between its daytime and after-hours affairs are, I’m sure, hardly why you came to see me. What can I help you with?”
“I can’t give you very many details because I’m not sure about the…dangerous nature of the circumstances but needless to say my ears were not the ones that their conversation was intended for.” Kennina informed her, mindful of every word she chose. “All the same, I need a few things put into clearer light and…I don’t know of anyone better to help me with that than you.”
“Oh, you know me Ms. Lane. I never was much of one for the front lines, so rather than heading off to war like the rest of them I made it my business to walk down the tunnels and pathways left by the passage of the ages and learn all that there is to know about our Order from its founding to the present. Whatever your questions are, I’m sure that I have the answers to them in some shape or form.” Her professor replied. “Coffee or tea?”
“Oh, coffee would be nice.” She watched quietly as the other puttered about her office for a while, pulling down mugs from cabinets and brewing a pot of the strong smelling liquid.
“Just how many questions have you come to me with today, Ms. Lane? If memory serves me correctly, you were always one with an insatiable thirst for whatever knowledge that you could arm yourself with regardless of how trivial it may have seemed to those surrounding you at the time.” A soft clatter of cup against saucer as the coffee was set in front of her. “You remind me a great deal of myself, though you’re far more of a warrior than I ever could have been.” Her chair scrapped against the floor as it was drawn back towards the desk. “Very well, ask your questions.”
“His name is mentioned in the incantation used to bid our crest open doorways and he’s brushed over as the father of our cause in basic histories, but beyond the founder of all of this,” she gestured around herself in an effort to non-verbally elaborate, “who was Eros AshHand really?”
The Professor’s face fell, a look of shock and horror flitting momentarily across her features. “Ms. Lane, why do you ask about the once Lord AshHand? We teach in histories that he was the original founder of our efforts against the Vampires and nothing more because no further knowledge is necessary. In fact, it would likely change the outlook of many towards what it is that we do; bring to bear such questions as ‘why is the name of so vial a monster mentioned in concert with that of the blessed Angel’ in the very incantation that you mentioned. It is best to simply leave the Dragon buried.”
Kennina couldn’t stop her eyes from widening. “You’re telling me that AshHand was evil? But if that’s true, why would he found the Order? Why would he take up arms against the Vampires?”
The other sighed. “Once Lord AshHand wasn’t evil. At least, not at first. He was a noble man; a valiant warrior; a paragon of Light, once. But so was Lucifer. And like the former Angel of the Dawn, he fell.”
“What happened after that?” but her professor only shook her head. Kennina’s chair shrieked in protest as she leapt to her feet. “Please Professor Ryans, at least answer my second question. What is a Dhampir?”
“Good Lord Ms. Lane, be quiet!” The professor shrieked, silencing her former student through the force of sheer surprise as her eyes darted to the doorway; she stared at it for a few moments more as if expecting an eavesdropping to suddenly materialize from thin air before speaking again. “The Dhampir are something that you are not supposed to know about. Nor am I, in all honesty, but they’ve done nothing about it as I’m nothing of the threat to them that you would be. It’s best that you forget everything you’ve heard about the matter immediately and never breathe another word of it to another soul-living or dead-again! Because it isn’t a matter of if, but when, you’ll regret the information you’re seeking.”
For a few seconds after the outburst Kennina simply stood in stunned silence before shaking her head to clear it and reorganize her thoughts. “I can’t just forget. Regardless of the danger it may or may not put me in, I swore a blood oath upon my graduation from the Slayer’s Academy that I would always from that point forwards put the safety of Humanity as a whole first and to defend the ignorance of society against any threat no matter what the cost to me might be. And from the sound of things, the Dhampir-whatever they are-most certainly constitute a threat.”
Professor Ryans sighed and shook her head, wringing her hands for a moment further before returning to her desk and quickly scrawling something down on a piece of paper which was promptly folded into tiny squares and passed to her. “The New York Public Library; do not unlock the book until you’ve returned home and keep it hidden as long as it is in your custody.”
Secreting the paper away in her coat pocket, Kennina nodded. “Thank you, Professor. I think it’s best that I take my leave now.”
“As do I.” But as she turned to walk out she was called back. “Ms. Lane, do be sure to exercise the utmost discretion in this matter; failure to do so will get you killed.”
She left the campus the same way that she’d come in, heading to the given address after doing a bit of checking on her cellphone to confirm the quickest route there.
The massive stone lions posted outside didn’t so much as flinch from their eternal watch as she rushed up the marble staircase towards the doors, heading directly to the front desk from there and flagging down the attention of one of the librarians.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a book.” Reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the paper, she read off the title while doing her best to keep her surprise from showing on her face. “The Lucifer Effect.”
“That would be located in the reference section along the back wall, by all of the other books on Psychology.”
Pointed in the right direction, Kennina waded through the sea of carefully arranged tables and chairs separating her from the shelves that stretched from floor to ceiling full of books. It took around 20 minutes or so, but after repeated attempts to determine in exactly what way the books were organized and a great deal of trial and error she finally managed to locate the Psychology references and the book that she was looking for in question.
She checked it out quickly before rushing straight home, clutching it tightly to her chest and looking over her shoulder every other minute to make sure that the sensation of being followed was nothing more than paranoia. Upon reaching her apartment door she fumbled for her keys for a few moments before finally managing to let herself inside.
The book hit her kitchen table with a harsh sounding slap, the leather covers rearing back slightly as the aged pages-brittle and yellowed to the color of weak tea-were riffled by a small cloud of dust which the action had expelled. All in all the thing was wholly and utterly unassuming, the title’s golden leafing chipping away from the generic pig-skin cover and the spine fraying at the edges and badly bent out of shape. For a solid five minutes she stared it down as if it were some exotic predator ready to pounce from the table top and claw her face off before she finally retrieved her crest and lowered herself into the chair positioned before it; pressing the little charm into the small indent along the crooked spine, she repeated the opening verse and waited.
At first nothing happened then the cover rippled as the leather moved, the letters of the title smoothing over and reforming into something else; the new title read Tenebris Suut: Eamdemque Vim Ruina. Dark Years: the Fall.
She twitched open the front cover and it fell limp with an unprotesting flop revealing a pointillism drawing of a graceful double-edged blade under the title, this time in black ink, in an internal introduction page. Referencing the table of contents quickly for the right section before flipping it open to the first page of writing on the desired subject Kennina pulled up short in dismay.
It’s…in Latin. Every single word penned in the ‘dead’ language of Rome, the language of the Church, recorded in a careful hand and likely originally written out with a feather quill.
In that moment two realities came to be starkly clear; the first being that the book was extremely old, and the second that gaining the information she sought after would not be as easy of a task as she had hoped. Beyond the opening verse and a few other frequently used phrases her Latin was, to say the least, extremely rusty and calling Alaric for help was out of the question now that she’d confirmed the danger that would come hand in hand with the matter-not to mention that, at the moment, he was no doubt suffering a hellish hangover-so that left her with one option; translate the thing herself.
Leaving the kitchen table and heading into her bedroom, Kennina paid no mind to the fur ball curled up in the middle of her bed as she unplugged her laptop and retrieved her old Latin textbooks and a notebook from her desk and shelves before returning to her post at the table.
“Veni, vidi, vici,” she muttered to herself, picking up her pen. “Let’s get started.”
Buckling down, Kennina flipped through pages and scrolled down websites and jotted down notes of syntax and translations until, hours after she had started at 6 in the evening, she’d succeeded in translating the section of the Guild’s original founder into legible text.
Reading over the finished product was 10 minutes of horror.
According to the unveiled histories Eros AshHand had forsaken the blessing of the Light in the name of raw power, turning to the shadows that fueled the creatures he had sworn his life to fight against. After losing his Humanity to a deal with the Demon Naberius and becoming a Vampire himself he created the Dhampir-a breed far more intelligent than the bestial Malformed-and proceeded to carve a path of destruction across the land, consuming all in his path until he was ultimately cut down by their current Lord’s ancestor.
Stark and terrible a revelation as it was, something about it didn’t feel quite right. Pieces to the tale didn’t quite fit. A part of her wasn’t satisfied with it, because it felt as if the information-blended with just enough of a kernel of truth to pass inspection-had been set out in a somewhat hidden location to satisfy anyone that might come sniffing around. To make them think they’d found the hidden secrets and turn them from digging any deeper.
Her questions about the AshHand had been sufficiently answered, but the offered explanation about the Dhampir didn’t pass muster in conjunction with what she’d overheard.
‘The Dhampir are safe’. As if they were being threatened by something. Something outside of the Slayers Guild. As if Kharon and his reptilian company-Veles-were somehow a party to the entire thing.
If anything had been made clear to her by the information she’d discovered in the book it was that she was being kept in the dark shadow of some greater plot, and that no matter what she couldn’t-wouldn’t-stop until she’d scratched clawed and bitten her way free into the light.
For better or worse, if she had anything to say about the matter, whatever it was that was going on behind the scenes would not remain exparte for much longer.
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