Just an Old Legend Ch. 09

She hid her face in her hands and wept.

Dacia's own tears slid down for her friend as for once, she was the one doing the comforting as she held Lia tightly. She didn't think that she'd ever want to hear a sad love story ever again, now that she'd heard Lia's.

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Bucharest, Romania

Two days after, Lia was up at dawn, with a sweater, tight jeans and boots on her thin sweet frame, grinding through the gears of a battered light truck that she'd borrowed. She was on her way out of Bucharest. She smirked as she thought that life could be so odd sometimes. It had taken an aborted vacation to Tenerife to get her hands on that book. In Dacia's VIP duty-free shop in Bucharest, of all places. That book was now leading her on a pilgrimage of sorts.

Lia brushed her long black hair out of her eyes and leaned forward a bit to see through the smeared windshield on her way to someplace that she'd once sworn to herself that she'd never go back to again.

Her journey took her to old parishes and churches, and each visit required long quiet hours in the graveyards afterwards, checking names and dates, something that she hated to do. Finally, she began her hunt in earnest, checking hotel bars and country inns. A bill passed quietly often gained her more than she wanted to hear. Somebody always said too much, but Lia didn't mind.

For what she was after, it wasn't all that hard. This was something that she really ought to have done long ago, but there was an aspect to it that had always caused her to put it off. She finally ended up outside a ramshackle barn near a little town with a lot of personal significance. It wasn't anywhere near where she was from and Lia was trying hard not to think about that part of it, but it kept creeping into her thoughts as the day grew old. All that it accomplished was to keep her angry.

Finally, she caught her first glimpse of him as he hobbled out through the broken doorway to urinate against the wall. She was a bit surprised, since she'd expected to see somebody a little bit more powerful-looking. He just looked like a broken-down drunk to her, though she could see that he was the one. She could always tell. This guy just looked like a wreck, but she supposed that a century and a half of hard drinking could do that to anyone. He must have been a wreck when he'd been bitten and had certainly not improved any.

He heard her soft approach, and began to grumble, "I'm an old man. Having to piss a lot just goes with that naturally. I'll be on my way in a minute, just have some patience."

He tried to stretch out what he was doing as he gauged the distance to the sound of the footfalls. He hadn't seen anyone pass by here in a week, so that couldn't be a good thing for this one, he smiled to himself. It was a stroke of good luck to him, he wouldn't have to go far for a meal tonight, and he hoped they had a drop of something to drink on them.

He spun around to lunge as he changed, but saw only a young woman of maybe twenty-four or so, and she was about fifty feet from him. He wondered about his hearing for an instant. It wouldn't matter much anyway, he thought. He prepared to spring at her, but saw only a streak as she ran toward him. He found his vision a mess of bright flashes as her kick connected, and he flew through the rotted old wood of the barn to land on his back.

She landed on her feet and was in front of him in an instant. He felt the heat of her silver sword against his chest. The smell of his burning flesh was awful. The pain was far worse. He reverted to human form. There was no point to anything else.

He looked up in confusion. "Who are you?"

Her face was only mildly grim, "Nobody."

She waited for his fogged old brain to catch up to events. She saw it when it happened in his eyes as he saw hers, "You. You - you're - "

"A lot cleaner than you are, yes, you smelly old swine. Beg for your life."

He looked confused, but she was serious.

"Come on" she said, "show me what a man you are and beg me not to kill you. I can't wait to hear it. Let's hear you plead for mercy. You must have heard it often enough as you killed. Come on, it's your turn now, you bag of shit."

He thought about putting up a fight, he even began to shift but finally just wheezed at her, "P-Please, don't -"

"Oh fuck off," she said as she rammed the sword into his heart. She shook her head, even his last scream had been pitiful.

Lia pulled a point and shoot camera from her pocket and took one photo with the old face showing clearly, the sword through his chest and into the ground as he lay bent backward in his last agony. The next shot was only of his head after her lightning fast sword stroke had severed it.

Lia wiped the blade carefully with a clean rag which she discarded right afterwards. She got the old gas can from the back of the truck and poured that around until it was empty and then bent down to place the sealed white phosphorus packet onto his body with the tiny explosive charge and turned the receiver on. As she drove away, she hit the button on the transmitter. There was a bright flash inside the barn just before the sky lit up behind her. A quick turn on two roads and she was away.

Lia pulled out the camera and stepped through the photos as though she was afraid that they weren't there. Satisfied, she shut it off and just drove.

It didn't matter now anyway, she thought. The strange super-strain of the condition had been isolated in the laboratory and understood and explained. There was no reason for the derelict and self-serving drunkard who had caused such misery with his long trail of depredations to be ignored and allowed to live any longer.

She was sure that if the federation's scientists had figured this out as she had, they'd have wanted to bring him in alive, but Lia had prevented that forever. If they ever found that she'd been the one who had deprived them of their lab specimen of the original super-strain there would be hell to pay.

Lia herself couldn't have cared less.

She'd loved her grandfather when he'd been alive. The federation scientist's way of looking at the progression angered her for comparing this piece of shit to the love of a real biological grandparent.

This one had no biological tie to her. He'd only been in her chain of turned individuals.

In werewolf terms, from one bitten person to the next in a line, Lia had just murdered her grandfather, the one who had turned her cousin.

It was a start, she admitted, but the whole thing had still pissed her off. She checked her mirrors and headed for the larger roads back to Bucharest.