The Malavide Pt. 02

Chapter Three

Thonos blinked his eyes; the garden lay deserted, but he watched for a time as a cat crept about, looking for a place to lie down, perhaps looking for one of the streams or pools of water to drink from.

Thonos never slept now B the Malavide did not need a great deal of sleep anyway, and as they grew older their need for sleep vanished completely. The scientists among them said it had something to do with the residual build up of the power of the souls that they drained. Thonos did not know and no longer cared.

He wanted a woman to hold, he wanted someone to take care of. He was tired of taking care of the dead, but he had made a pact with ahk'Tabur that night, an ancient pact that he had tried in the past to ignore. Tried and failed, because they were around him at all times; in all the places he tried to run from they came, as inescapable as the dawn, as surely as the sunset they were there, reminding him ever of his pact with ahk'Tabur, of his pact with Idriates.

He stared out at the intricate gardens, at the small cat now curled next to the statue of a turtle, and he remembered . . .

ahk'Tabur had done unknown things to him B he had not learned the process until later, but he literally died that night. That part of the legends was true, anyway. Died, and been reborn. His body had felt the same at first, but by the end of the second day he realized he was much faster than he had been, and much much stronger though his arms were no larger.

Thonos had been a soldier before, he knew the ways of sword and spear and knife already, and ahk'Tabur taught him other things; hand to hand combat the likes of which Thonos had never seen or heard of, combat that would have made him dangerous even if he were not now many times faster or stronger than other men. Taught him years worth in what seemed like a day and a half.

A week passed them by, a week in which Thonos finished growing as a Malavide, a week in which his senses sharpened unbelievably, a week in which he began to see more and more in the dark, slow to realize that he would never again in his life see darkness. The ability fell away from him, like his old life, and he did not realize what he had given up till many years later.

He had not realized he was making himself an immortal, but he was - he had.

One night ahk-Tabur brought two people to the camp; to Thonos' untrained eye, he could easily see something about the one on the right, a man who looked about him with wide eyes, but whose face was brutal and whose knuckles were scarred by battle.

The other man was much the same but did not have that strange, almost glowing overlay about him. He looked just as hardened a warrior as the first and just as frightened a one.

"What do you see?" ahk'Tabur said, shaking the men by the shoulders easily. Thonos saw that the one with the glow had both of his arms broken.

"I see two men," Thonos said, stepping closer to them, and one of them screamed as he stepped out of the darkness. Of course, Thonos thought - neither of these could see in the dark. It must have thought ahk'Tabur had been speaking to himself.

But only one of them had screamed.

Thonos pointed - "That one glows B I don=t know, its almost as if I can see a face beneath his real face, he has an aura . . ." Thonos' voice trailed off, and ahk'Tabur smiled approvingly.

"That is right, Thonos. Both of these men were in the attack upon your home. This one," he said, letting go of the man that did not glow, "We can only kill. This one and his kind, though - they were the ones responsible for the evil that befell your family."

Thonos nodded, and without being told reached out with deadly speed, broke the man=s neck that ahk'Tabur had just let go of. The man simply stood there and let him do it, but he could not have seen more than a lunging shadow anyway, exquisitely faster than anything he had ever seen before.

"This one, my friend B this one gives us our food." ahk'Tabur smiled, his teeth almost glowing in the dim light of the stars, his black eyes just as feral.

ahk'Tabur smiled his strange smile B and then he showed Thonos how to feed, how to eat as a Malavide; the taking of the blood was necessary but inconsequential. ahk'Tabur neither knew nor seemed to care why the blood taking was necessary for the taking of the soul=s power, but there it was B the acts, physical and spiritual, were wedded as one, and neither could take place without the other.

They both ate of the remaining man, and as they ate the glow diminished until it was gone.

AThat is all, Thonos,@ Tabur grunted, and grinned - "Now, it is time to learn your last lessons B it is time you learned to creep upon the midnight winds, to steal through the shadows themselves. That is what we were born to do, Thonos, to creep and steal.

"But tonight we will not be silent." ahk'Tabur reached out, and grasped his friends arm. Thonos started as he felt himself turning to mist, and knew instinctively that this trick could not be done unless power were stored B power received from the taking of one of the souls of Damned.

They floated as mist through the night air until Thonos saw below them a small encampment; three guards, all on the outer edges of the encampment, the rest of the men laying in their blankets asleep. One man, still drunk, was sitting by the fire looking into it with glazed eyes.

The rest would also be heavy of liquor; Thonos did not have to have this type of soldier explained, and in almost all of them he could see the strange glow. As evil as ahk'Tabur said they were, as evil as they had to have been, they were still creatures of habit, and some of those habits were bound to be bad.

Being drunk when you were hunted was a very bad habit to get into, but then the men scattered around the campfire had no idea what hunted them on that night; they had no idea they were vulnerable in any way.

The one by the fire was the first to go, by the hand of ahk'Tabur B then Thonos went to destroy the sentries while ahk'Tabur started in on the sleeping men.

Thirty men, almost half of them dead when one stirred and rose, and screamed at what he saw by the dying fire. He died of Thonos' knife, and then the rest were surging up. Thonos learned immediately that he was not invulnerable B he was a little to slow one time as three men rushed him with swords, and his right arm was cut deep.

But it made little difference to him. He sidestepped, and cut the three down before they realized he was behind them, and then the rest were short work. After the battle he and ahk'Tabur moved among the wounded, finishing them off by taking what was left of their life force.

The more of the life force Thonos took, the more clearly he could see the rippling aura surrounding the men. He would ask what that was later, he thought. For now, he was glad to know that he had killed those responsible for his wife and children=s death.

They escaped in the velvet embrace of the night; this one fire slipping behind them as they slid easily through the shadows thrown by hundreds of other fires. This one fire, this one squad of the giant army had been the ones responsible. There was no doubt of that. Thonos clutched a heavy silver horse the size of his hand as he walked B it had been Idriates' favorite of all the small sculptures they had collected.

It had been all the proof he needed, but he did not yet realize as he walked that ahk-Tabur had not set him on the mission of a night, or of a week or even a year. He had set him upon a mission that would not end until he made a mistake, a mission he could never give up. A mission he was realizing, and had been realizing for a long time now that he could not win.

Thonos did not know where the silver horse was now B he had lost track of it at some point in his long history, maybe in Germany when Hitler tried to take over the world or sometime soon after that when he went into the swiftly changing Russia B he knew he would have good hunting there, just as he had known he would have it in Germany. Anywhere there was brutality he was there, hunting, avenging deaths avenged long ago.

One more would not hurt, and a dozen more would never return Idriates to him, nor Shenna or Benote. He had tried to ignore those strange men and women with the glowing aura. He had tried to ignore them, and found that task as impossible as killing them all.

Thonos sat in his chair, and looked out at the garden and smiled a sad smile. America had been such a nice dream, but now he was here as well. And tonight B yes, tonight, despite everything, he would once again venture unto the shadow.

Tonight he would go hunting once more, and there was no telling where his hunt would take him.

CHAPTER FOUR

Some say that man has in him an instilled sense of what is right and wrong, an instinct of compassion and the true knowledge of good and evil - knowledge instilled by the creator himself.

For a long time Thonos did not believe in this theory B he was more of a mind that a man is part of his environment, that he learns right and wrong from those that came before him, and that there is no greater instinct towards compassion and mercy.

Thonos became a creature of cold emotions; he killed those that were betrayed by the aura; he hunted them out without mercy B he killed, not because he wanted to avenge the deaths of his wife and children but because he had learned that those men that held the aura B the Ourde, as ahk'Tabur had called them B really were the embodiment of evil.

He killed them because he had learned from sharp experience over the years that none of those people had the capacity in them for any of the finer emotions, any appreciation of beauty for the sake of beauty or love for the sake of others.

He learned from long experience, and he had had many years to test what ahk'Tabur and others had told him about the Ourde. For many years he had actually investigated their crimes, and kept journals of them. Those journals were kept safe. He would one day release them, or they would be released upon his death. He had written them painstakingly, recording the actions of the Ourde until he was sure that every single one of them was tainted by the evil, till when he saw that aura that surrounded the Ourde he knew evil was in their hearts and minds.

He saw them every day, this special breed of humans, and he saw them gradually becoming more and more numerous - and saw his own kind dying gradually away.

He kept those journals safe, and had translated them four times now B all four were kept as precious as anything, and through all the years since he had done his research they were the one thing that remained sacrosanct, bound and always kept by a lawyer or another that Thonos could trust. Mercenary men, who would see to his wishes bound by gold. Sometimes those were the trust worthiest sort. Thonos had learned that lesson long ago.

But never by men that held the aura, never by one of the Ourde or even one who was in contact with such. His journals would never be compromised if he could help it, but in the long run he had admitted to himself that they would do no good. If released they would merely be the ramblings of an imaginative mind.

Were we to come upon the garden of a night, when the silver disk of the moon is shadowed by slight cloud B when the shadows of the night hover and creep around plants and sculptures, when they seem to crawl along the ground itself as though alive B we would see one statue that sat in an attitude of stillness that no others could match, a stillness that was born not of earthly origin.

We would see the statue was of uncommon beauty, though the beauty was not conventional B the features of the statue blunt, the hair short but with a strong wave, nose and jaw strong and eyes wide set B eyes that gazed upon the night with an ungodly persistence; eyes that shone with the silver of the moon. Those eyes blink, and then the statue shifts, and the Malavide stirs from his chair.

His attention has been gathered. Some of the shadows are no longer shadows, and Thonos has roused himself fully from his muse. He will have no need to go hunting, for the prey has come to him.

At first the man standing seems exactly that, and three of the intruders fire at once. But they fire to late after all B the standing man moves with speed so sudden, ducking and flipping, arm grabbing something from the ground with such easy grace. The gunmen fire again, but then the slim dark haired man is behind one of their own number, the sword flashing in his hand as he beheads the stealthy but to slow assassin.

There are five of them, and they had a chance for just a moment, they had a chance to fire their guns while he was still sitting. They do not have a chance at all with the attention of the Malavide on them, though.

Thonos has to admit they are good B better than he has faced for a hundred years. Their bullets hit him twice before he gets them all, saving the last for nourishment.

Thonos hears the screams of the one he feeds on, but as always the feeding is too intense in itself for much to register upon him. He can feel the wounds knitting as he draws the life force from the Ourde, can feel the quicksilver strength flooding into his system.

He can also hear the wails of approaching sirens.

Thonos the Malavide finishes draining the life force out of the one he holds, and lets the body, so frail, fall back upon the stone pathway of the garden. The bodies of all humans, so frail, so unlike the body he inhabits as a Malavide which was similar and dissimilar at the same time.

Thonos turned and surveyed the house, looking at every detail of the giant structure, every detail of the moonlit garden. He would not see this place again B even if he could buy them from the imminent auction, the Ourde now knew abut this place. He had to find out how.

While the first police car was pulling up the driveway a shadow slipped from the small back door of the garden wall. There was another cop car less than ten feet away, but both the officers turned at some sound they thought they heard B neither saw the shadow slip across the street and disappear between two of the large houses there.

The cops shrugged, and continued to watch the gate, making sure nobody came through it until their sergeant poked his head out. "Anybody leave by here?" he asked, and the two shook their heads. "Keep an eye out - we're still searching the grounds."

"You got it, Sarge," one of the cops said, unaware that he had already let the killer slip by him.

CHAPTER FIVE

Thonos moved swiftly; he kept more than a sharp eye out, for he alone knew how close the men had come to killing him. All they had to do was fire an instant earlier B they were good, very good. He did not want to say how good they had been to get within range of him. He still did not know exactly what had brought him out of his meditation, some whisper of cloth against cloth, a breath a bit to hard or the slightest crunch of gravel. Whatever it was, it had been nothing he could pinpoint which was all the worse.

They could well have succeeded.

The most disquieting thing was that they even knew where to find him, and apparently knew what he was. It had taken Thonos a long time to come to the terms that the things he was hunting were not actually human any more - any more than he was human.

But he had abilities, physical and mental, far above the norm; and the Ourde, the demons that possessed humans did not have anything besides the natural human condition B and their own dispassionate drive and hatred of humankind, their own literally inhuman level of concentration and drive.

Thonos had studied that as well B he knew that once a demon possessed a man, that man was as good as gone, was as dead as though the body was already dust. Once Thonos realized that, the killing became easier B much easier. He did not know what the Ourde were, but he knew that they were not human.

He had seen the actual process of the infestation, had seen someone change right before his eyes, and acquire the aura which he knew that he could feed upon. Any creature with the aura was a demon, a possessed human B taken and used by the Ourde like so much shell. It was such that he had been created to kill, but even ahk'Tabur had not really realized what it was about the humans with the auras B he just knew that they were evil, that they were prey.

The one question Thonos could never answer was where the Malavide had come from, where they had started. They were designed to efficiently for killing the demons to be anything but a manufactured creature - but manufactured by whom? When had the demons first appeared? When had they discovered they could use the human soul as a conduit to this world? When had they decided to take this world from the humans?

For Thonos knew that was their intention B he was the last of his kind, as he walked along the barren streets, blending effortlessly with those around him, walking, always walking, shifting back and forth and going between buildings to double back yet again. He alone knew the world was under siege, and that the siege was at long last almost over. More of the demons, every year more of them, and only Thonos left, one last hunter, one last Malavide. As far as he knew that was true, and even if there were more there were not many. Years it had been since he had seen any of the kin, more years than he liked to think about.

The demons had found him somehow, they had ferreted him out but he was sure no one was following him right now. How had they found him? Was it by accident, or design? He had escaped their attention for so long he had grown contemptuous of them - even as he had seen them multiplying he had grown contemptuous of them, but there was nothing contemptuous about those warriors they had sent against him tonight. They were the best he had seen in a long time, and managed to get bullets into him even after he was attacking.

It had been so close, that which he thirsted for, so close he could feel the tug of Death=s scythe. But Death had been tricked again.

Thonos felt his soul singing, if he still possessed one. The energy from the Ourde he fed on had him buoyed almost to the point where he thought he would burst. He turned a last corner, into darkness; the shadow fell across him and seemed to absorb him, and a moment later a long winged, languorous shape rose above the dark outlines of the buildings, wings beating slowly, lifting it up into the night and away from the city lights; lifting it to the currents that drifted west with the fresh ocean wind, west and north into the black velvet of the night sky.

West and North, into the dying night.

West and North, into the oncoming winds of winter.

Well behind him another shape, this one sleek and silent also floated into the night sky. The silent shape stayed far behind for a good hour B and then it caught up.