Eternally Sensible
Or: the Incident at the Bentonville Conference Center
by WK Adams
Barely an instant had passed in real time. Morgana had opened her eyes; mine met hers briefly, and she gave me a nod.
She trusted me. I trusted myself. Still, there were so many ways this could go wrong.
I focused on the instinct, picturing the Hunter in my mind, and finding the most obvious weakness. With a snarl, I pushed myself up, and as quickly as I could, I leapt the counter.
It went wrong immediately. She hadn’t wanted me to attack; that was what she’d spent the last two minutes trying to get me not to do.
Everything seemed to slow to a crawl, myself included. In the half second before I made contact with him, I learned everything about what it felt like to be a “real vampire.” His carotid artery seemed to glow, beckoning me to rip and tear. I’d bite right through the blood vessel and continue on to his spinal cord, killing him almost instantly.
“How does Darkchaser work?”
I was still thinking, at least.
Lunging straight at him was the wrong move. That was the feral, unpracticed gut reaction that had seen so many new vampires killed by seasoned Hunters in times of old.
With a growl, I forced myself to turn my head, steering my body with it. I extended my left hand, clutching the barrel of the airgun, pushing it away. I felt the frigid compressed air through the metal as the gun fired, its projectile only missing my abdomen by millimeters.
When we landed, the gun made a complicated shattering sound, and I knew it was out of action. No matter what happened now, the Hunter would have to kill with throwing knives or with his bare hands.
My whole body shuddered as I realized what I’d just thrown myself into, the mistake I’d just made. I wasn’t a fighter. This guy had probably been training for this moment his whole life. The only chance I had was when I had first left the ground. If I had gone for his neck (and was incredibly lucky), I might have managed to bite through enough of his mass before the spikes from his airgun turned me to ash. From the moment I stood up, I was a dead man, but now he could take his time.
Suddenly, my stomach erupted into a different kind of pain. At first, I thought it was just hunger, my body protesting that there had been a meal right in front of us, and throwing a tantrum because I had denied my body the pleasure. But that thought faded as something pushed me, putting agonizing pressure right in the spot where the pain was centered.
The Hunter casually rolled my body from atop him, and I roared in pain as he yanked the spiked dagger back out of my abdomen. His laugh was full of indignant rage and cruel intention. I shuddered again as he looked at the wound, which had already coagulated shut.
The expression “murder in their eyes” never seemed quite right to me, but it was only in that moment that I understood why. The murder might end up in their eyes, but it always started in the chest. A quick, visceral breath, the quick shake of the body, and only then does one see in the eyes that the whole of the person was ready to kill a second ago, and you have even less time to live than you thought.
This was the end.
“You didn’t run,” The Hunter said, “Why didn’t you run?”
Unexpectedly, I had to fight back a laugh. He was angry, clearly, but there was something else there. He was asking…
“How does Darkchaser work?”
Or rather, his version: “Why didn’t it work on you?”
Despite my fear, I managed a timid smile. It seemed a greater victory than it was, to have confounded this psychopath just a little before he finished the deed.
“I hope I find out one day,” I said.
Those were acceptable last words, I decided, as he brandished the spike again.
******
Just a moment ago, he’d been ready to do it. Now it was too late.
No. It’s not too late. That’s ridiculous. I’ve got the blade in my hands. No one is stopping me.
Edward drew a ragged breath, his rage suddenly turning to something more complex than righteous fury.
Doubt had crept into the corners of his mind. Everything had been going according to plan. Everyone he’d Bellowed at had parted before him like a tsunami traveling away from an earthquake.
Everyone except this one feeble vampire, this pitiful creature. Dressed like an accountant, he was thin, even lanky. His large glasses only made him look a few years older, like he was a few years out of college, rather than a freshman.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The innate light of a Hunter’s Darkchaser reached into the soulless center of monster ilk, and filled it with righteous terror. It reflected the millennia of terror monsters had inflicted upon humanity back onto the monsters themselves. It exposed them for the cowards they were. No one of their kind could stand against it.
“How does Darkchaser work?”
The genie was out of the bottle. A question needed to be answered. If it didn’t work on all vampires…
For the first time in his life, Edward felt real fear. The elders’ manufactured fear and hatred against their visage of monsterkind was shown for the construct that it was, pale and two-dimensional when compared to what he felt in the face of the full, vivid, unpredictable world that was really out there.
Something had happened to him. This doubt shouldn’t have affected him so thoroughly, but someone had turned a splinter in his self-assurance into a spike, before driving it deep in a single hammer blow.
“You didn’t run,” He asked quietly, his growl subdued, “Why didn’t you run?”
The pause seemed to last an eternity.
“I hope I find out one day,” The small vampire said, its quiet voice shaky but descending towards calm resignation.
This was wrong. This was all wrong. This was supposed to be a snarling, rabid creature with its back against the wall, or else a coward begging for salvation as the holy flames licked its body.
Edward unsheathed the dagger, raising it with one hand. He’d stab it down into the vampire’s heart. The ashes of the Exalted Tree imbued into the dagger’s serrated tips would cleanse the blood of this creature, leaving nothing but the bits of human anatomy beneath its cursed flesh.
But his eyes began to wander.
Everyone had gone, fleeing in terror. The massacre was over, leaving only…
…only a convention center. Not even an impressive one. When he set out to perform this holy rite, Edward had known wouldn’t be venturing into the bowels of Castle Dracula like his ancestor Abraham 300 years ago. He’d known to expect something more ordinary, but this was downright boring. All around him, there were banners for insurance companies and advertisers. Someone had brought promotional materials for their multi-level marketing scam. Sandwich boxes littered the place; this event had catering.
He looked for signs of the evil they surely hid behind the veneer of the normal, but it just looked like… like the kind of world he’d grown bored with. It was all the things he couldn’t stand that the modern world concerned itself with while a race of abominations still ran loose, never having paid for the atrocities they’d committed so long ago. The banalities of modern living had infiltrated them, too.
Something fast hit the hand that held his knife. Time slowed for him, enough to see a red-haired woman in a blue blouse and black business pants, her right leg coming back down to the floor after the kick that had disarmed him.
Edward's mind broke. The zealous belief that he’d leaned on his whole life had not held up under the pressure. Now two monsters had defied his Darkchaser aura. He had miscalculated, misjudged… something.
All at once, the house of cards in his mind tumbled down, and all he could think of was how badly he needed to get out of here.
******
Losing consciousness was a deeply unnerving experience for a vampire. Because we never slept, our lives were a single unbroken experience. Any time that wasn't true, it felt like becoming something entirely alien, like the person we were before the lost consciousness no longer existed.
Morgana was sitting by my hospital bed when I woke up, turning to face me the moment I returned. When I groaned, she moved into my field of view as I turned to face her.
“How…many…” I croaked out through my parched throat.
“Don't worry about that right now,” She said soothingly, handing me a cup of water with a straw.
I wanted to tell her that I had to know how many people had died. There were at least a dozen, I knew that, and he could have killed many more on the way out.
Survivor's guilt. I was alive, and they weren't. Death felt harsher and more unforgiving when you were supposed to live forever.
“Looks like you have a new scientific mystery to solve,” Morgana said, pointing to my bandaged gut wound, “You'll make a lot of vampires happy if you figure that one out.”
I wanted to be happy to be alive. I had faced the ancient foe and survived; not many Mythicals through the millennia could say the same. There was a reason we were thought not to exist: Hunters were horrifyingly adept at killing us before we could live full lives.
“That was a brave thing, what you did,” Morgana said, perhaps sensing that distraction wasn't the best tactic. I wanted… no, I needed to think about that terrible night. I couldn't want to ignore the almost palpable thing gnawing at my gut.
“It didn't feel brave. Felt like…” I shuddered in a sudden chill, “Like grabbing a hellhound by the ears. For all the good it did.”
She must have sensed the burden I needed to unload.
“You were the one that stopped him, anyways,” I said, turning to meet her gaze.
“Only after you made sure he couldn't kill anyone else,” She squeezed my hand, and I could feel the love and admiration in the gesture.
All I could do was grunt softly; I was too tired and mortified for words just then. The horror, shame and fatigue all wanted to express themselves at once, but I was too small for their use. I didn't deserve her praise.
“He got away?” I asked wearily, trying to pull my hand away from her. She clenched it tighter.
At once, I saw why she was so beloved, so sought after. She cared. Here was someone of immense power and beauty, once a seductive creature of the darkness, now a beacon of humanity. She loved, and her love was strong. She could lead any man wherever she wanted…and she wanted them to be at peace.
In the Hunter, I had seen the other side of the coin of quasi-immortality: how the long life and supernatural powers could corrupt someone into a monster. Before that terrible night, I knew it was possible - thought it might even be inevitable - but I had failed to imagine how horrifying it was to look a monster in the eye. I'd never liked the idea that the “eyes are the window to the soul,” but I'd never forget looking into his eyes. Through those windows, all I had seen was my death.
I let her keep my hand.
“I wish I'd stopped him. I wish I'd killed him,” I said. The words were heavy, and they felt right to say, but not because of the allure of the hunt. He would kill again. I could've stopped that.
She clasped my hand in both of hers. I expected her to tell me that I'd done the best I could, or that it wasn't my fault.
“Don't worry about him,” Morgana said, her voice low and intense.
My skin turned to gooseflesh as something cold happened in by rain. I gulped, and did as she said.
******
Edward didn't know it yet, but he had been broken.
The massacre had felt ten times more exhilarating than he'd expected. He hadn't imagined that the Darkchaser within him would have such a devastating effect on the monsters’ morale. The wretched creatures were even more scared than their ancient ancestors had been in the histories.
But he wasn't supposed to see the humanity in them. He certainly wasn't planning to have a conversation with one of them.
As he drove the pickup into the night with the lights out to avoid the police, the conversation he'd had with the vampire haunted him.
“It all seems disappointing. I know; I feel it too. You read all these books and legends about-about magic, eternal life, and supernatural war, and then you get to the other side and find…this. Lab-grown blood, transformation curfews, and non-violent arbitration. But… this is our life. This is our world. Sure, we can’t do what we used to do, but we still have our abilities. You with your enhanced senses, me with my eternal life…we’re not suddenly useless just because the world has changed. It just means we have to change with it.”
Why had he allowed the vampire to speak so long, he wondered? He’d not indulged any of the other creatures in that building.
And yet, there was the troubling feeling that the creature hadn't said this. Like he had hallucinated these words.
No. He wasn't crazy, he told himself.
“Look. The way we’re going, this ends with one or both of us dead. And… we’ll just be one more vampire sent to hell, or another hunter drained of life and soul. Whatever a soul is. Is that what we really want? Wouldn’t it be better to see what good we could do with these ancient powers, instead of just using them to murder each other?”
Edward roared to himself. He couldn't get the words out of his mind. He couldn't shake the nagging voice in his head, the one that said he'd been wrong all his life.
Striking himself in the face, he grew ever more despondent as the voice in his head grew louder and louder, and its implications began to pile up.
“They were monsters!” He screamed to himself.
No. They were just people.
“They had to atone!”
They already were atoning. He already knew they were everywhere, doing every job that humans and Hunters did, too.
“They could hurt innocent, defenseless people!”
So could other humans. So did other humans, far more often.
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