Archive for cigars

With a Little Lemon Twist

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags , , , , on July 17, 2011 by vampirony

“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Mordecai. I will handle this.”

Mordecai looked up to see Billy, the drunkard spirits distributor that was new to this area and nursing a broken heart and a thirsty liver, straighten up in his seat and swivel toward him. At least, that had been where Billy, fifty-five, grey to balding, paunchy, shabby old tan suit too tight around the middle, had been sitting. In his place, a younger, dark-haired but pale looking man tapped his cigar ashes into his glass and stood, placing the cigar back into his mouth.

“Huh?”

As the stranger unfolded out his chair, his clothing seemed to transform before Mordecai’s eyes, the suit reshaping to maroon with blue stripes, the fabric growing an expensive sheen as it stretched and fitted to exact tailoring as the stranger walked over to where the vampire lay prone and panting.

Mordecai looked down at the vampire as he tried to push himself up. Was his hair a little less blond? Earlier, it had almost been platinum, like Monroe. The stranger paused just above him, stogy in his mouth, and removed a case from his inside jacket pocket. His dark eyes glared disgusted at the figure struggling on the floor as he handed Mordecai a card, one side white, stating in black lettering:

Gypsy Twin Alchemistry: Spirits & Potables

Thomas Darnell, Purveyor & Proprietor

As he turned it over, Mordecai could make out a glossy black ribbon embossed over the black matte background, the recognized symbol of the Irregulars. His eyes flew up to the stranger.

“I’m so sorry, Sir. I didn’t know it was you.”

“Nor were you meant to, Mr. Mordecai,” Mr. Darnell answered, placing the case back in his jacket. “For your own protection. And as to that, I must ask you to leave now as I handle this…snag.”

Mordecai paused, caught up in the moment. The actual head of the Irregulars. Well, one of them. One heard stories about the woman, she seemed more accessible even as it was clear that she shared top responsibility in all endeavors. But the elusive man behind the curtain? No such sightings existed, at least documented ones. This was he and Mordecai was seeing him, face to face.

But something was happening to his face, as if it was melting from memory before his very eyes. The shatteringly dark eyes were no more. The handsome pale face, the dark hair…wait, what was the color of his hair…was there hair? Hair of what? Mordecai wondered why he was still here, so late. He had delivered the cigars and that was that.

“There’s a good man, Mr. Mordecai. Perhaps we shall renew our acquaintance at a later time.”

Sam Samuelson, Mordecai as his MMORPG persona, shook his fuzzy head and walked out of the bar, muttering about being late and wondering if his wife would be upset that his night out with the boys had been longer than expected. The elevator seemed to open to him as if by command and Chain, the elevator repair man and earlier the state trooper, gently grabbed Mordecai’s arm and pulled him into the car.

After the elevator had closed, Thomas Darnell, once known to a very very dear aunt as Maurice, kneeled down to the fallen vampire with an unsettled rage that he could barely suppress. He grabbed at Jesper’s face, turning Jesper’s chin towards him and blew cigar smoke into his face. The smoke held strong notes of cedar and oak and after inhaling a face full of it, some of the red in Jesper’s eyes faded.

“You will remember this night as the one in which we all saved Sophie Quinn,” Maurice spat.

Then, Maurice grabbed Jesper by the back of the neck and hauled him up to his feet. Jesper was blinking rapidly but still conscious, although still quite ill. Maurice shook him to keep his head from lolling. He grabbed across the bar, and produced a lemon. Using his short sharp fangs, he tore a strip of peel from the lemon, juice squirting out. His own eyes brightened to a dark blue as he shoved the naked lemon into Jesper’s mouth.

Jesper’s head shot up and after he swallowed, his eyes flew open, red eyes turned to glowing amber as his whole body convulsed. His hand grabbed at the fruit and squeezed more into his mouth as Maurice dropped him to his feet, seeing that he could now take his own weight. As Jesper devoured the fruit, Maurice swayed slightly and bent to a knee to keep steady.

Breathing heavily, he picked up the Jesper’s sunglasses. Then, bracing his hand on his thigh, he stood again, spreading his feet to support himself. He wouldn’t show this creature his weakness. When he met Jesper’s gaze, Maurice felt the rage recede, replaced with wonder.

Jesper’s hair had changed to a dark auburn, his amber eyes had turned back to red, the texture of jasper. Lucy had been right: this was no ordinary vampire. But Maurice saw a will there that he had not expected. As Jesper turned to go, Maurice held the sunglasses against his chest to stop him.

“You could barely best Lucy. You cannot hope to defeat a Carpathian in combat, even blood doped. We’re just keeping her away from him.” Maurice paused to take a shuddering breath, his pallor turning green. He slipped “We’ve taken care of the rest.”

“I am Vampire!”

The sound of Vox echoed through registers that no mortal could hear and both vampires looked around for the source. Then they settled eyes back on each other.

“Go!” Maurice said but Jesper didn’t wait to be bidden; he was already running through the restaurant at human speed, senses reaching out, trying to find another clue. The view from the restaurant was amazing, almost a full 180 degrees fully lined with windows. He could see the change in the night sky. He needed to hurry. He needed something more to go on.

At the other end of the restaurant, there was no smoke and his senses could clear. Oh now he smelled him, smelled the Carpathian. He was so close. Jesper put his hands to the glass on the south side of the restaurant. The lemon had cleared away all the cobwebs as well as some of his vampire strength. It didn’t matter. A conscious vampire was worth more to Sophie than a comatose one.

“Sophie, I’m here.”

Then he heard it, the faint drag of the vowels, the smell of jasmine in his memory, a voice from an age ago.

“Jesper. Help us!”

West side. He flew to the windows along that side of the building but didn’t have to wait too long. In a moment, he saw the Carpathian, carrying Sophie across the roof top, vaulting over to the construction site, up high on one of the unfinished floors. His vision focused in, like slides on a presentation, closer, clearer, until he could see the Carpathian, a struggling Sophie held in one arm. She clutched at something that dropped from her hands just before Skovajsa stepped into the open shaft that would become an elevator and disappeared, obviously going to ground.

He took a few steps back from the window and then launched himself just as he pitched a Vox scream at the window, shattering it. Arms outstretched, he took flight, gliding through the brightening sky like a bird aflame on a mission to save the one he could not save before, for a chance to do it all over again, to fix his fate, and finally be the hero.

clip_image002

Lucy raced into the bar side of the restaurant to see Jesper race past her. She through her gaze to her brother and watched him sink back against the bar.

“Maurice!” She put her arm around him as he shook. “What happened?”

“C poisoning. I’ll be alright.”

“What about Sophie?”

He shook his head. “It’s out of our hands. We’ve done everything we could to prepare.”

“The sun is coming. We need to go.”

Maurice let out a cry of rage, slamming his fist into the bar before nodding, letting his sister whisk them both away in a flight of crows. This was one game that they had played to within stalemate. The final positions were being set and a new piece had just entered the board. He had risked it all, years of anonymity, years of hiding away to put this piece in play. He hoped for his sister’s sake and for Sophie’s, his call had been a sound one.

Leave a comment »

The Problem with Technology

Posted in Fiction, Vampirony, writing with tags , , on July 11, 2011 by vampirony

Skovajsa, after a quick bite to eat to settle his nerves and improve his color, arrived at the Hyatt crisp and fresh from a quick toilet. He made his way calmly through the Wintergarden, perfectly tailored in a charcoal suit with maroon silk shirt and matching silk tie. He carried the bouquet of flowers under his arm and a very ancient looking wine bottle in the other, shifting the bottle under his arm as he pushed the elevator call button around four AM.

He stifled a smile as he shifted his weight. He was actually a little nervous, his feet tapping in anticipation as he balanced from side to side waiting. It had been a very long time since he’d been this close to such a boon and he’d never paid this much care to his approach. Sheer strength and ferocity usually got him exactly what he wanted. This wine and dining approach was all new to him.

He pushed the button again, tossing a casual, caustic glance at a maintenance man on a ladder just opposite him. Those beneath him didn’t deserve much more notice than that. He jumped slightly when moments later, the maintenance man as at his shoulder, his music blaring from his headphones.

“That one’s not working.”

Skovajsa recoiled, shifting the wine bottle away from the man. He wore just a non-descript gray one piece with a belt full of tools dragging him down into a stoop. His short cropped hair was mussed, and stood up on a side.

“That elevator?” The man pointed. He waited as if Skovajsa would address him. “Isn’t working.”

“Oh.” Skovajsa quickly moved around the little maintenance man to another set of elevators, pushing the button with haste.

“Um, don’t know if you want those either.” The man called to him.

“Why? It works, doesn’t it?” Skovajsa fired back, stepping inside quickly as the doors opened. The man waved as if to say more but it was lost to Skovajsa as the doors slide shut.

The maintenance man put hands on his hips, as his headphones blared R.E.M.’s “End of the World.” He looked at the elevator labels to read “15 – 21 Floors.” It wasn’t a music player connected to his headphones that he lifted up, but a cell phone. He punched a few keys.

“Yeah, he’s on his way up. Oh, it’ll take him a bit; I rigged it to go straight up to the top floor no matter what button he pushes. You still babysitting?”

On the other end of the line, a young man with silvered temples and wire framed glasses looked down the length of the bar at the blond man in the sunglasses who sat nervously waiting, listening intently to his ear bud although not having spoken a word into it. “Yeah, I’ll try to keep him distracted but he sure looks like he’s about ready to jump through that phone.”

“Whatever, Mordecai. Ritterreiter was clear. We leave that one alone.”

“Awrighty, Chain. I’ll do a smoke screen. Should confuse the other one to avoid any random encounters.” With that the bartender hung up the phone, pulled a box out from under the bar, and walked over to one of his regulars, sitting right next to the blond Viking. “Hey, Billy, have you tried these new White Star cigars?”

After which point, Billy took the proffered cigar and lit up, after being assured that he wouldn’t get in trouble for lighting up. The Blond man didn’t seem to notice anything around him, just gripped the phone he had sitting on the bar lightly. It was hard to tell with those sunglasses. After a few moments of smoking up the bar, the bartender wandered over to Sunglasses.

“You know, the bar officially closed a few hours ago. But I took pity on you; you looked like you had woman trouble.”

Jesper didn’t even turn his head to acknowledge the voice speaking to him. He wasn’t actually sitting there listening to the bartender, who decided to pour himself a tall glass of water and begin to spin some tale of marital woe.

Jesper’s consciousness was sitting in a chair across from Sophie’s bed, listening to her breathing, training his senses on anything nearby that felt or smelled or sounded Vampire. Which was why he smelled the twinge of bloody decay mixed with some musky cologne and the fragrance of lilies and roses before the elevator door alarm went off. He stood up walking towards the door to the hotel room.

Back at the bar, the bartender paused his story when he heard the cell phone in Sunglasses’ hand chirp.

“Hey, buddy, think your phone battery is going dead.”

His warning fell on deaf ears.

symbol_wedge-color

“Jesper?”

Jesper’s head swiveled to the bed. Sophie was still asleep, under the covers, but her sleep became troubled. She shifted, her arms stretching out, reaching around a pillow. He paused but the smell would not be denied. His sense of smell was the worst of all his sense when he projected which meant the Carpathian had to be close.

When the elevator alarm sounded, he sped to the door, but paused before going out. He turned back to the bed. He could take her, now, run. Get her to safety. Fly her away from here, to Morena. Why had he not enlisted help from Valerian? He felt the nerves knot together his stomach as he put his hand on the door knob.

Even without the smell and the elevator alarm, he could sense the Carpathian approaching. It was time.

Except, his hand suddenly wasn’t on the doorknob anymore; it was around his cell phone. He started.

“Hey, take it easy, fella. I tried to warn you.”

Jesper stood, feeling suddenly ill. The call had been disconnected and he had been snapped back into his skin. Without forethought, the transition produced ill effects that he termed Projection Sickness: dizziness, weakness, in some cases vomiting…fainting.

He reached a hand across the bar and grabbed the bartender in a panicked grip. “What happened?”

“Erk, I tried to tell you. Your phone died.”

Jesper swayed against the bar, the edges of his awareness blurring, fraying. “No,” he mouthed, hand still around the bartender’s neck but now slackening.

“Say, you wanna call her back, you can use my phone,” the bartender added. He dragged a desk phone over and dialed, without asking for the number. “I’m getting a busy signal.”

Jesper slid along the railing of the bar, and then toppled over, hitting the floor taking a stool with him. His face smacked hard into the wood but the pain helped him cling to awareness. No, he couldn’t abandon her to her fate again .

“Sophie,” he moaned.

The bartender came around the bar and looked down at the vampire at his feet. Then he used his own cell phone only to have it go directly to voice mail. “Come on, Greg, get off the phone!”

1 Comment »