Dark Paths Ch. 06

In the room Clay's eyes widened a little at this part of the tale, the stuff that Xavier hadn't told them last night. PJ was looking curiously at the phone, his expression saying plainly that he was suspicious and had a few questions of his own.

In Xavier's ear the soothing voice; that bizarre, cut-crystal English accent that was as different from Rayne's lilting Estuarine drawl as Xavier's own, neither denied nor confirmed anything. He simply said; "Xavier, I'm in a cab leaving San Francisco International now. Rayne asked me to meet up with a friend of his at a place called... The Happy Pig?" He sounded slightly incredulous. "Do you know it? Can you meet us there? We'll try to help you, I promise."

"I'm there now." Xavier said numbly. He felt a bit like he was surfacing from something. He couldn't believe he'd run off at the mouth like that. Usually he played it so close.

"You're with McNamara?" The caller sounded both relived and - Xavier couldn't be sure but he thought - a shade envious as well. "That's... great! Look, hang on Xavier. I'll be there in about 30 minutes, traffic permitting. Don't do anything rash until I get there. I promise you I'll do everything in my power to help."

"Okay." Xavier said, and Dominic hung up. He was left looking a little befuddled, with the phone in his hand and three curious faces looking at him.

He closed the cell with a little snap. "That was a guy called Dominic Warren. He's a friend of Rayne's, I think. He said he's on his way here, to help."

"He knows where we are?" Clay asked, perplexed by this.

Xavier nodded. He pointed towards PJ; "He knew you were here."

"I don't like this." Barclay was on his feet, moving towards the door. "It could be trouble. What if they tortured him? What if they come after us?"

"Why would someone ring and tell us he was coming if he was gonna kill us?" Chavez fired back at him with a nervous laugh.

"He has a point," PJ mused. "Rayne doesn't know how to fight these bastards. He'd be here with us if he did and we wouldn't be jumping at shadows. Where is this Warren dude?"

"On his way here from the airport." Xavier said distractedly. He was looking at the phone in his hand, turning it over between his fingers like a worry stone. The conversation bothered him now. He'd felt he could trust the guy on the phone, and that was extremely weird. People usually had to work hard before he trusted them, yet he'd babbled out a bunch of stuff to a complete stranger. "He's not a vampire though." Xavier said. How he knew that he had no clue, but he would have bet on it. And he was not a betting man.

They did not have to wait long for confirmation. A little before 1pm, a cab pulled up in the parking lot and as the driver huffed and puffed, extracting three large, samsonite cases from the trunk, his passenger slipped out of the rear door and stretched in the sunlight. The stranger ran a sun-tanned hand through the riot of silver and gold curls at his crown and tugged the travel creases out of his crisp, white linen shirt. He was tall, easily PJ's 6 foot plus height, but not as big as the vast bulk that was Clay. Nor did he have the muscle of either of those men; his build was lean and trim like a dancer or a distance runner, enhanced by the snug fit of his light blue, designer jeans. There was a small, black holdall slung over his left shoulder and he wore large, open, frameless sunglasses and a number of colourful, braided wristbands.

Xavier remembered that Rayne had some similar to these, along with his silver curb bracelet. He had played with them idly as they curled around one another in bed. Xav felt a little pang of loss and desperation.

Clay and PJ rose from the veranda to greet the newcomer but only the big black moved forward. As if by some unspoken command, PJ stayed at the top of the steps. The stranger held out his hand at once but Clay did not take it.

"Dominic Warren," the man introduced himself in that crisp, perfect English accent, like something from a period drama where the men wore top hats and the women bustled around in crinolines and curtseyed all the time. He smiled warily. "I know this must seem a little strange but Rayne did say that it was a matter of some urgency. He seemed to think that you had a problem. A rather nasty problem. One that bites?" He hesitated then added, rather less formally; "Forgive me, but aren't you Barclay Johnson Francis?"

He pushed his shades up into his hair, pale eyes twinkling with astonishment and no small amount of hero worship.

"Goddess! You are!" he exclaimed without giving Clay the chance to speak. "I have... positively drooled over so many of your movies! Oh my!"

On the veranda, PJ cast a small, sidelong look at Xavier, who had come to join him there. There was a half-incredulous smile just at the edges of his generous mouth. "This is our vampire hunter?" he murmured without moving his lips.

Xavier's expression was a mite more dismayed than PJ's. He wasn't sure what he been expecting. Someone built like an action hero, maybe, with a Uzi strapped to his back, cris-crossed with ammunition, stakes and mallet in one hand, machete in the other. Perhaps unrealistic, but it would have made Xavier feel a whole lot better. He took a step forward, drawing Warren's admiring gaze from Clay, "Um, you said on the phone that you could help?"

Dominic's pale, clear gaze moved at once from the impressive bulk of Barclay to the lighter, pensive form of the boy on the steps.

"And you must be Xavier," he said, abandoning the mild histrionics of a moment or two ago. "Oh yes, very much his type. Beautiful, in fact." He drew a short breath and exhaled it in a little sigh. "Yes, Xavier. I hope that I can help."

"I hope so too." PJ was still standing at the top of the short flight of steps with his arms folded across his broad chest looking down on them.

For a moment Dominic's eyes widened again and he shook his head slowly.

"Goodness... I didn't recognise you for a moment," he breathed at last, visibly flustered again. "I mean... I read that you'd been sick... I'm so sorry. I... oh my Lord and Lady! You actually look very well..."

"Let's skip all that, Lord Warren," PJ McNamara said amiably enough, demonstrating that he knew as much about British Politics as their visitor knew about the US Porn Industry. "I'm fit enough for the task in hand. The question is, as Xav delicately managed not to ask, are you?"

The willowy Englishman drew himself up to his full height with a little smile and narrowed his gaze on PJ as the cabbie was struggling up the steps with the last of his cases.

"I think I might pleasantly surprise you, Mr McNamara," he replied in a steelier tone, retrieving his wallet from the front pocket of his jeans and unfurling several large denomination notes which he passed to the cab driver without even looking at the man. "Appearances can be frightfully deceptive, as I've found to my advantage time and time again."

The driver fired a look at Warren, then checked the notes and brightened visibly. He was in his vehicle and gone before the crazy Englishman could change his mind.

Xavier, with a typical lack of patience, said "Great! Why don't you tell us how exactly you're going to do that on the way. I know where the building is, we can get in the car and go now!"

For this Xavier got three similar looks, in various stages of patronisation that told him without words that they weren't going to be rushing off any time soon. Only Chavez kept a carefully neutral expression that said he would go with the flow, as usual.

"Xav, we can't just go off half cocked here…" Clay started reasonably.

Irritation prickled up Xavier's back. "We got to move! Don't you get it? They are not just hangin' around sipping tea and playing cards."

He said this last part in a near-perfect imitation of Lord Warren's clipped, cultured tones. It would have been pretty comical under any other circumstance.

"There are guys that will hurt you because they can't handle booze, or because they got pissed, and there are ones that just get off on it. These guys like to hurt… and I left him there," he raged; which was where the near frantic need to hurry was coming from. Never mind that he couldn't have done a damn thing even at full strength, much less that he'd barely managed to stagger out of the alley they'd tossed him out in and make it back here.

PJ and Clay looked at one another again, rather more helplessly. The stranger had been watching Xavier throughout and his expression was rather more serious now. Ignoring the sipping tea jibe, he set a hand on the back of Xavier's neck, his fingers moving soothingly there.

Xavier stiffened but didn't pull away, torn between not wanting to be soothed and desperately needing to be. Surviving trauma was nothing new for Xav but the guilt that came with leaving Rayne behind was, and it was eating him up.

"Xavier darling," Warren said, in an entirely reasonable tone. "If we run in there without a plan then we run the risk of winding up in exactly the same mess Rayne is in. Except that he is one of them, and we are not. We can't help him if we're dead. Now I know that you're worried about him but you have to trust me on this one. Whilst they would have no qualms about squashing you or me like flies, they are very unlikely to kill him. True Death, Vampire to Vampire, is not an easy option for them, it violates their codes on so many levels. Now I know you don't want to hear this, but the hurting is something he can take. I've seen him do it. He'll be strong and he'll do it for you, my darling boy. What we must do now is make sure that he doesn't have to be strong for very much longer. Okay?"

No. No! Nothing was okay! Xavier swallowed back the words.

"Fine. Tell me what the plan is then." He forced the response out slowly but the impatience was still there, just beneath the surface. It was very clear that if he did not like what he heard, he was going to be done with listening, and short of tying him up and locking him in they were not going to stop him from going off on his own.

"This is not the place to talk business," Lord Warren exhaled, bending to pick up one of his cases.

As Clay lifted the other two, he uttered a little grunt of disbelief. "You planning on staying a year or is this just you travelling light?"

"You don't think I'm going to come all this way to take on a vampire like Lagrada Diaz with just my looks and my charm do you?" the older fellow chuckled wryly as Clay led the way back to PJ's rooms. Paddy put an arm around Xavier's shoulders and squeezed him consolingly as they went.

"It'll work out, hon. You're not on your own now," he said, almost tenderly in a low voice that was for Xav's ears only.

Once they were there, with the doors locked and Dominic had expressed an ironic appreciation of the motel's 'faux-rustic appeal', he crouched and unfastened the barrel locks on his cases. As he lifted the lid, Clay who was still hovering over the fellow, sucked in a sharp breath.

"Jesus Christ! How in Hell did you get that lot through the SFI scanners?"

The others moved around to examine the contents of the first case, which seemed to be mainly made up of military hardware set into precast foam packaging to keep it stable in transit. There were handguns with night sights and the broken down components of what looked like a pair of high-powered semi-automatic rifles in there. Dominic knelt down and opened the other cases, which held more parts and ammunition rounds the like of which they had never seen outside an action movie. The ammo-cartridges were made of glass, or some kind of hard perspex and the rounds they contained were clear and filled with a slightly luminous substance that looked like mercury. The final case held a series of long, slender chromium rods and a range of spikes and blades with a tubular, grooved fitting at the base designed to screw onto another appliance. As Chavez reached out to touch one of the rifle butts, Dominic slapped his hand away lightly.

"What's the point in having Diplomatic Immunity if you can't make practical use of it?" Their visitor looked up at Xavier now and winked at him. "Is this more the kind of thing you were expecting, darling?"

Xavier blinked at all the stuff and looked at Lord Warren with a judicial eye. He must know people in some very high places to have been able to get weapons of this calibre and quantity into the country. "Yeah, that's a little more what I had in mind." Xavier said at his driest.

Dominic Warren closed the cases and spun the locks on them then pushed himself to his feet with a little smile.

"I need to have a shower and get changed," he said, running a hand through his silver curls again. "I've been on the go since last night... that's yesterday afternoon in local currency! And then I need to make a couple of phone calls and acquire a suit."

"Suit?" PJ looked sceptical.

Warren was already exploring the en-suite and his sing-song voice echoed back blithely from the bathroom. "I can't go buttering up Master Vampires looking like I just fell off the Greyhound from Tucson, Arizona. For God's sake!"

Chavez, who was still sitting on the edge of one of the beds staring at the cases, now shook his head and murmured; "He is one crazy fucker!"

~~~

Lagrado stood before Rayne Wylde looking immaculate in fitted black trousers that hugged his hips and crotch suggestively and tucked smoothly into supple, knee-high black riding boots. His tailored black shirt was open to the navel in a style reminiscent of the mid 1970s and he wore a three-quarter length black jacket open over the ensemble. In his right hand he carried a proper, leather-bound hickory-shafted riding switch which he tapped against the top of his boot from time to time like an intermittent heartbeat. Rayne was painfully conscious that the struggle with Lagrado's young enforcers, then later with Steffen, had left him bloodied and dishevelled. His shirt and pants were torn and there was still blood on his skin. In this sumptuous room, surrounded by ancient and powerful Vampires some of them, like Lagrado himself, probably over half a century old, he was painfully aware of the fragility of his continued Unlife.

"You are here because you have shown us absolute disrespect, Mr Wylde," Lagrado addressed him coldly. "It is my task today, as the Master of this region, to bring you back into line. What makes you think that a creature less than twenty years beyond the Veil may ignore the rules of his elders and betters; rules that were set in place for the benefit of all our kind; rules that have been adhered to by Vampires in this great country for centuries?"

Rayne seethed silently, his entire body bristling with hostility. They could see and feel it in him and he sensed the hunger in their watching eyes but his own gaze was fixed solely on Lagrado.

"Get real, Old Man," he hissed through extended fangs. "Move on! This is the 21^st Century. People have the freedom to make their own choices; set their own rules. Get used to it!"

There was a low rumble of… something like anticipation from the assembled Vampire Elders. Some leaned forward in their seats to get a better look at the insolent British Fledgling, or maybe to better witness what Lagrado would do to punish him hard for his wayward behaviour.

"You are no longer mortal, Mr Wylde," said the older Vampire impassively. "Their petty rules no longer apply to you. Mortals believe, in their supreme ignorance, that they run this city. The Mayor and the officials, they all puff themselves up with their own self-importance. So long as they make money they are happy men and women. Their police have no power. They are merely fat, indulgent windbags with no real authority. All they are is food, Mr Wylde. But we…" and here he paused to gesture around the room including his peers in this generalisation; "we have the real power, my young friend. A power so great that we can make a man disappear and no one will question it; even a man of your moderate fame and immoderate reputation. And we maintain that control through strict discipline." He stroked Rayne's cheek with the paddle of his riding whip. It was a flexible switch such as the race-riders used in the days before plastics and polymers, hand-stitched and well maintained. He could smell the polished leather binding and feel the almost suede-like texture, like human skin against his own flesh. Lagrado held his eyes with that bottomless, dark gaze, breathing the words; "You have been brought here before us to learn some discipline, child."

"In your dreams!" Rayne sneered, sounding braver than he felt right now.

Lagrado glared at him, those empty eyes suddenly cold and hard.

"When you came to this city I gave you a warning," he reminded his young hostage. "Show me some respect, or go home. You are still here and still you deliberately offer me offence. I have been patient with you. I respected your marking of the dancer. He was released as you requested and still you bait me, Mr Wylde. My patience is not without limit. Today you will be punished for your insolence. Today, it will be my pleasure to teach you humility."

"You'll try, you mean!" Rayne snarled at him, his eyes flashing true anger and a little fear, searching now for potential escape routes or something he might use as a weapon. There were no windows visible in this panelled room. Although he had lost his bearings in the elevators, he suspected that they were still below ground. The only door he could see was the one through which he had been dragged, now guarded by the pair of muscle boys who had hauled him down here from his cell. The walls were banked on two opposing sides with carved benches rising from front to back so that all the seated Vampires could watch the entertainment unimpeded. At the head of the room was the long, polished table behind which Lagrado had been seated when he was dragged into the chamber. It and the seats were the only furnishings. The floor was smooth, polished maple, as were the wall panels. The light came from recessed fittings in the panels above head height. He felt the cold, bone deep as his mind cancelled the options for fight or flight one after another.

And then there was heat again. Cole Lagrado moved faster than even his sharp eyes could see. The crop struck him across the face from left to right. As the assembled Elders murmured their satisfaction, he reversed the stroke, lashing the other cheek with a stripe of heat that burned Rayne's blood. He stood his ground but he could already feel the blood trickling slowly down his face. His audience grew restless as they scented it. Fangs extended and he felt the hunger in their cold eyes as they watched him, eager to see his reaction.

"Is that the best you can do?" he forced out, trying not let them hear the tremor in his voice. He was shaking with impotent rage as much, if not more than fear.

Lagrado shook his head with a slow, humourless smile.

"Oh no, Mr Wylde. That was merely for my own amusement. I have a far more meaningful punishment for you, boy."

Rayne's lips curled back from his small, but lethal fangs. "Bring it on!"

Again the Ancient Vampire tapped a little rhythm on his boot with the crop. He did it when he was excited, Rayne thought curiously; it was a signal, a code for his growing eagerness to inflict pain. He tensed for another blow but it did not fall.

"Show every Elder in this room absolute obedience and servility and I will let you go free," Lagrado told him at last.

Rayne looked around the room, taken aback by this. He mentally counted at least twenty heads; mostly male although there were a couple of females in the assembly too. They all stared back at him eagerly, regardless of their age or gender.