Descent Into Madness (28 page)

              “But he’s my dad; I cannot let him die alone!” She stood, brushing wet grass from her pants. Her soiled clothing clung to her as the storm picked up, thunder clapping in the distance. The downpour suddenly increased as the ambulance sped away and cops directed traffic around the wreckage. “You can stay, I don’t care. I’m not giving up on him.”

              “Do not go, Judith,” I insisted. “This is not going to be easy.”

              “I have seen death, Bree.”

              “I know.” I reached for her but she shrank away. “But this death will be too close to you. Those deaths – those close to us – they change us and we should not see them. We should not experience them.”

              “Why should we fear change? Fear death? If he is to die tonight, why should I fear being by his side?” she argued. “This monstrous blood has changed me, but it hasn’t stripped from me every ounce of my humanity. I can still love my father! I can still cling to the hope that he’s not dying in the back of that ambulance!” The rain trickled off her ruby lips, the droplets cascading with each syllable.

              “Judith,” I began, “now is not the time to argue and philosophize.”

              “You are right,” she interjected. “Right now, I need to be with him, not arguing in a sloppy rain storm on the side of highway!”

              Judith turned, watching the police cars working to clear the scene. The ambulance was on its way to the hospital; its sirens blared through the heavy traffic piling up on the busy Dan Ryan.

              “Judith,” I whispered, tugging at her sleeve. “Come away from the road. Look.” I motioned toward a car parked nearby, off the shoulder, its lights off. “It’s them.”

              “You’re right,” she said. “I hear them, too.”               “Listen,” I told her. “We need to split up and meet up at the apartment. Do not go to the hospital. Please, Judith. I know you want to be with your father, but these men,” I told her, “if Colin is not already dead, they will kill him for sure.”

              “I love my father too much to jeopardize any chance he has, Bree,” she said. We watched a flicker appear in the front seat of the car as the driver lit a cigarette. “Do you think he has a chance?” she asked.

              “I do not know,” I admitted. “I would not get your hopes up, Judith. The head trauma involved… I do not have Aleksandra’s training, but even I know the mortal body’s limitations.”

              “Why can we not kill them now?” she asked. “There are only a few of them!”              

              “I do not do an eye for an eye, Judith,” I told her. “That is not the way you should base your immortality. Plus, we need to know who they are working for.”

              “They are working for the Vatican. I found out that much already!”

              “The Vatican is not a mom-and-pop organization, sweetheart.” My voice boomed over the traffic’s ceaseless roar. “Do you really think the Pope himself signed your father’s death warrant? I think not. Someone is behind this, and I doubt it is the big man on the throne. I intend to find out who and why. Then I intend to end this war.”

              “Then interrogate them,” she insisted. “Interrogate them as they interrogated me.”

              “Did they get information from you?” I asked. “No, they did not. And we would not get any from them. The Vatican only hires the cream of the crop, Judith. These are trained men. If we even approach that car, I bet they will have a self-destruct in the works. Cyanide. A bullet to the head. Take your pick.” 

              “What do we do then?” She stared at the car, the cigarettes glow now extinguished. Cars whizzed past on the freeway, oblivious to the insidious nature of the stalled vehicle’s passengers.

              “We run, we meet up, we distract them,” I said. “Then I figure out what the amulet really does.” I fingered the amulet again, the coldness pressing against my jeans. The storm was moving off the lake as the rain began to ease.

              “Aksel knows, he has to,” she said.

              “He knows something and it is about time he tells me,” I said as I took off for the north of Chicago. She took off for the south to lead our stalkers astray.

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he storm carried me toward the shore as I traveled north before turning south, heading into downtown Chicago. Buckingham Fountain shimmered with moonlight, tourists surrounding its gate now that showers were fading. As the rain ceased, the Chicago nightlife began. Vendors opened umbrella-clad food stands while street performers – guitars and saxophones in hand – staked out their corners, collection boxes ready for the evening’s offerings. Soothing jazz mingled with rhythmic folk, just blocks from each other.               October evenings in Chicago can be a transcendental experience, especially after a fall storm. The scent wafting in from the lake after a storm cleared was always the sweetest. The way the shoreline soil felt saturated from the rain, squishing beneath my naked toes, tickling my feet was almost sensual. The skyline, lit up as a beacon, its buildings alive with movement and purpose and all dressed in shimmering glass and steel. The city, cooled by the autumn breeze, yet still showing no signs of slowing.

              I circled Buckingham Fountain, observing the tourists snapping pictures as the lights at the fountain’s base changed colors. A canceled concert on Lincoln Park Zoo’s south lawn was causing overflow traffic in the area. Out of town concertgoers – their hotel rooms booked months in advance – were stuck in the city overnight. They wandered downtown on their impromptu adventures. They tossed cash around hip bars and comedy clubs, padding the wallets of Chicago’s many cabbies. 

              My eyes had scanned the nearby streets for the car that was following Judith, and Colin and I on the Dan Ryan. I had tried flying low enough so they could follow me, but still high enough to avoid drawing attention to myself. Now I feared I had concealed myself form my stalkers too well and pulled them onto Judith.

              Finding a park bench near a crowded corner along the shoreline, I sat and waited. Across from me was a cart hawking tee shirts of the skyline, all ridiculously marked up. A couple tourists were perusing the cart’s wares but were not buying the cheaply made garments. They would be flying off the shelf come June, but in the fall and winter, tourists were discriminatory with their tastes and tighter with their cash.

              Ten minutes elapsed, and with no sign of the men, I strolled past the t-shirt vendor and into the welcoming darkness along Lake Michigan. I trailed the shoreline until I was certain no one had followed, and ascended into the dewy clouds – the vapors concealing me. The moisture stung my skin as I climbed further, reaching higher into the star-lit sky before perching atop Willis Tower.

              One-hundred and ten floors above Chicago, the ants scurried below. Watching traffic wrap around the city, horns blaring while tires squelched across freshly wet pavement. The thoughts of thousands hummed through the air, flooding my brain as I fought them away. I needed to hear those men, the men who had been after our car. I needed to hear only those men and the thoughts of countless Chicagoans struggled to bleed through.

              Sitting atop the skyscraper, the wind howled against me as I braced onto the buildings antennas. Clearing the static and noise, the humdrum from the greedy ants, as they scurried about took skill. And time. If the men had followed Judith, if she had remained lower, pulling them, then I would have the time; time to make their thoughts betray them. 

              For over an hour, I sat atop that tower as the wind pelted me, threatening me with its constant barrage, when finally I heard them. One man, a smoking man, repeated my name under his breath. Their car abandoned its course – whatever course it was on – and the men were heading toward my State Street apartment. They knew where I lived. They knew what I was. They knew how to kill me.

              Approaching from the south, I spotted their car parked along the street. They were inside, the three men, one of them striking a lighter – the petite flame singing the cigarette’s tip. They casually sat awaiting dawn’s golden crest, when they would cowardly sneak into the apartment and slay each of us – Aleksandra, Judith and myself, as we slept. It’ll be done in a snap, thought the one in the back seat as he popped an M&M in his mouth. The man passed the bag to the smoking man, who then shook a few candies into his palm and crumpled the empty bag, tossing it out the car window. 

              They laughed at our perceived security. They mocked our lives, these young men. Their lives were but hiccups compared to my own. They felt they had lived, had seen war, had loved women and slain great men. They knew nothing of love, of war, or of greatness. They were but blemishes, superficial and insignificant.

              Swiftly, letting the wind carry me into its cusp, I sailed toward the men’s thoughts. Stopping a few yards behind the car, concealed in an alleyway, I watched the one man light another cigarette. The blue flame briefly illuminated the front seat as the driver next to him rolled his window down. The back driver’s side door flung open, a man stepped out coughing loudly. “You’re gonna give us all black lung, Charlie; give it a rest!”

              “Get inside, son. Are you stupid?” growled the driver as I watched the backseat passenger climb in and close the door. “You have no clue what we are dealing with, so stay put and follow our direction.” 

              “I am over sittin’ in cars; sittin’ in buildings; sittin’ and watchin’. We found the apartment, no? Why not go in and do what we came here for?” the backseat man asked.

              “These one’s are too old, kid; we can’t go rushing in there,” the smoking man replied, taking a drag on the cigarette.

              “Vampires are vampires, Charlie,” backseat man replied.

              “No, they are not,” huffed the driver. “This will not be another Paris, Bobby.”

              “There was thirty of ‘em!” replied backseat Bobby.

              “Thirty young ones are nothing compared to one elder, Bobby. And we are up against at least two – possibly three.”

              “Elders, young ones – vampires are vampires,” backseat Bobby sighed, opening the car door and stepped out once again. “I need some air.”

              Moving from the shadows, I seized the man, sinking my teeth into his tender flesh. Charlie’s Marlboros lingered on Bobby’s olive skin, the odor of cheap tobacco mingling with his expensive Italian cologne. His blood was a pungent concoction leaving a luscious taste on my tongue reminiscent of honey and figs and sea salt, with a forethought of garlic and gypsy wine. 

              When he was near death, I released him. As his body slumped to the ground, the driver noticed his partner’s head violently smack against the car door. “We have company,” he pointed as the other men turned. The cigarette man took a final drag from his Marlboro before tossing it from the open window. All three men stepped from the car.

              “See your partner?” They eyed the man slumped on the ground, the wounds on his neck still bleeding.               “Who sent you? Why are you after the amulet? What does it do?”

              “We don’t know what the amulet does,” the smoking man replied. He pulled the red and white pack from his shirt pocket and withdrew a cigarette, tapping it against the cardboard before tossing the slender stick of tobacco onto the ground and smashing at it with the tip of his boot. “We were not paid to care, just to bring it home.”

              The man walked around the car as he placed the pack of cigarettes back into his shirt pocket.              

              “Where is home?” I asked. He paused near the trunk, cautious to keep his distance from me. “Who wants this amulet enough to kill for it?” Their blatantly insulting glares traversed the darkness.

              “Did you not hear me?” I called out to them.

              “Who sent you?” Rushing to the driver’s side, I clutched his throat. Raising him into the air as the other two watched, I cried out again, “Who sent you?”

              “He sent us,” a weakened voice whispered behind me. The man slumped on the ground had regained consciousness and propped himself against the car. “The father,” the voice continued its raspy whisper fading as the man’s heart struggled.

              “Which father?” I asked him, kneeling beside his near lifeless body.

              “You know him,” the man with the cigarette spoke from his position near the car.

              He was in his private chapel reciting evening prayers, his voice thick with ancient Latin. I watched him from the balcony. The Vatican Archivist knelt at the altar. The small room just off his bedchamber aglow with the soft light of a modern bulb, but its placement concealed. Prayer candles aided the natural, peaceful ambience one would expect from a prayer room, the familiar scents of incense did not hurt.

              His back toward me, I entered past the velvet curtains, the ruby fabric billowing in the wind. I stood in the corner as he finished his prayers. His words were mere whispers, inaudible to another human unless they were next to him. For me though, I could hear those words, that ancient tongue, from across the ocean. Being in the room with him now was an amplified reminder of my past. The closing
amen
stung into my heart as a knife’s blade would feel piercing your mortal flesh. Was I so removed from the world that these words, which I once recited with sincere earnest, now caused me excruciating pain?

              His weary knees cracked as he rose from the floor.               “They are all dead,” I admitted. This marked my first confession since Bergen, if you could consider this a confession.

              Clambering to his feet, he flipped around, eying me suspiciously. He rushed to the hallway door, reaching for the bell that hung near it; but I met him there, seizing his hand before he could grasp the gold cord. He pushed against me and I shoved him back into the altar until he relinquished. “Dedo,” he whispered as I released him. He stumbled to his feet, holding his arms against his chest. “I knew this day would come, just not tonight. Will you allow me first to prepare my soul?” he asked.

              “I am not here for your soul.” The door to his bedchamber was ajar. Opening it, I walked through and then sat down on a settee beneath a painting of St. Bridget. “I have the amulet,” I admitted as I fingered the jewel in my pocket. “Is it really worth all the blood that has been spilled?”

              “Blood?” the old man whispered, the years of church service showing on his wrinkled face, his snowy hair betraying the calm exterior he flashed to his papal father. Being the Church’s Archivist – keeper of records and secrets – wore heavily in his eyes. The sacrifice of love and of having a family, were becoming tempting regrets as he neared death’s natural door. And he earnestly prayed to erase the guilt of these Earthly temptations from his heart.

              “There was never meant to be blood spilled.” He shuffled into the bedchamber, sitting on the edge of the bed, its springs creaking beneath his weight.

              “Someone dear to me lays dying tonight because of this, father.” Pulling the jewel from my pocket, I dangled it before him letting light reflect off the rubies.               “Your men have stalked the ones I love, my family! They have threatened my peace, my joy, and for what? For this? Tell me what is it – its purpose. Why am I here?”

              “The man was supposed to have it,” the archivist replied, his eyes trailing the amulet as I placed it back into my pocket.

              “What man?” I knelt in front of him, my face inches from his own. “Father, did this belong to someone?”

              “It belonged to a Holy Father,” he replied, looking up at me. “Once…Can I hold it?” he asked, “Just once. The amulet is a legend, one I never thought I would ever see.” I reached into my pocket, fished out the amulet, and slipped it into his shaking hand. His palms quivered as he held the piece, his fingers unable to grasp it. “When I saw this on the manifest shipping to the museum, I never dreamt it was
the
amulet. Honestly, I thought it was but a legend passed down amongst the papacy.”

              “Why are you telling me this?” His candid reflections surprised me. He handed the amulet back and walked out of the bedchamber through the chapel, traversing toward the open balcony.

              “I sent those men to retrieve the amulet,” he admitted.

              “I know, that is why I am here,” I replied.