Mine...Yours Pt. 14

I fell back in the doorway and heard a high-pitched chittering shriek from inside the house. The image of the landscaper in the door fell away and I saw 5 men in full combat gear come storming in through my entrance. Full-face helmets hid their identities but I could smell them even as I called to my blood. I heard a small electronic voice that I assume came from a headset inside of one of the helmets give directions.

"Find the rat, and burn the house. Quickly, before the vampire regenerates! I can only hold the glamour on the area for so long!"

Ah...a wizard or a witch of some kind. Wonderful. Well, obviously they didn't know how quickly I can heal, or how angry I would be at this intrusion. So that must mean they do not know me much beyond the fact that I am a vampire...

Otherwise they would have sent more men!

My blood quickly slithered through the carpet, some of it misting as a vapor through the air back to my wound. Within moments my eyes opened and I stood, slamming my door shut and locking it. I heard a shout and several commands given and the sound of weapons cocking. Very distinctive that sound. Reminded me of a time long past when one would hear a blade being drawn from it's sheathe or scabbard. That sound always did make my heart beat a little more quickly, even now.

I was surprised they didn't even have someone guarding my corpse, or take the initiative of staking me through the heart or cutting off my head. Crude tactics, but very effective against the undead such as myself. I could hear them breathing a little harder inside the rooms, waiting for me to come closer.

"Greetings gentlemen! Welcome to my home!" I called out in a loud voice. I began preparing myself for the upcoming conflict.

"I took the liberty of sealing the entrance, and wanted to take a moment to thank you all for coming to visit me. I haven't had this much fun since I had a succubus visit me two weeks prior! Now, if you want to save yourselves, put your weapons down and come out into my sitting room. I will fix you all up a nice cup of tea. We can talk about the Who, What, When, and Why you came here."

I paused, and heard nervous shuffling down the hall, and some harsh breathing from the kitchen.

"Or we can go the other route to end this conflict. It will not be quick, nor will it be pleasant, for you all at least. So...answer now."

I waited for a few beats of my heart and nodded. "So be it..."

Then I felt a pressure against the back of my head, no...not a gun barrel. That would be so gauche! It was an atmospheric pressure. I turned to look at my door, and saw it warp in towards me, like it was taking a deep breath. I spun to the side in time to miss the shreds of wood and steel as my door exploded inward, filling my entryway with lethal shrapnel!

I smelled the sent of magic as the blast came by and the acrid tinge of an electrical fire, black flames tinged some of the debris on the floor.

I came around the corner, moving faster than thought and rushed the man coming in. Inside my head I was yelling at myself to stop, but it is hard to fight one's own instincts. I hit the man low in the stomach and felt no resistance. I at first thought I had struck him so hard that it was no surprise he had folded up like a playing card. Until I realized I was holding nothing.

Another glamour! He had played me! I was standing outside of my home and in my doorway stood a wide man with powerful shoulders, bald headed with a Cheshire cat smile. His suit was thankfully, not the typical villain black, but rather a warm dark brown three piece. He had a blue star sapphire in one ear lobe and a gold bracelet on his wrist.

I got to my feet, evening sun blazing down on me and was very grateful I had swallowed that little concoction earlier. His smile faded as he saw me rise. Obviously he was expecting blisters, and smoke and screaming...typically what vampires do when exposed to the burning light of day. His eyes looked me up and down as I walked back towards him.

"Impressive William, it seems you have more secrets than we might have guessed. My name is..."

"Inconsequential. Since I will shortly be lighting a funeral pyre for you and your men." I interrupted him. This time I had the scent of him! Sandalwood, lime and cedar are a very distinctive mix for cologne. Even if he escaped now I would track him for the remaining years of his life! I flicked my fingers at him, calling forth a few drops of my blood; they flew forward like bullets and struck a smoky screen that appeared in front of the man. I gritted my teeth and struck again, more droplets falling like rain and sent hurling from all sides at him, which he handily blocked with the damnable spell!

Normally my manipulation of blood would penetrate most defenses, this was new to me entirely! Only Gregory could stop my attacks, and I had found that out on accident. Even when I had dealt with Mother this trick had worked on her, and she was a Planar Lady! That screen came down and black fire was sent blasting from the Man's hands at me, which I was able to stay out of the way of by increasing my speed. I zigzagged across my front walk getting closer to my target when the very ground beneath my feet erupted in those black flames!

I screamed as my flesh turned to crisped ash where the fire touched it! Falling I rolled to the side out of the area of heat, my face felt like a charred ruin, one eye didn't seem to be working right as the other glared at the wizard.

In the past I did my beast to avoid wizards, not out of fear per se, but more out of a sense of self-preservation. There is a difference between the two, fear and self-preservation. Though a mouse would starve on the difference!

He began to walk over to me, and I called for my missing blood. It didn't come; it had been burned in the flames. Normal fire it takes time to burn blood, I should have gotten some to come back to me. I am guessing this black fire was hotter than that. He crouched down by my head, could see the men from earlier walking out of my ruined front door. One of them held a thick canvas sack with something squirming inside of it.

"We have the package sir!" One of the men said. My attacker just nodded, his eyes never leaving my face. The men continued to a parked panel van, and drove off. Leaving me alone with the wizard.

"So, William?" He asked, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. I gurgled a reply. "We have the rat, and now we want something else. Your grimoires, all of them!" I made a questioning gurgle, and cursed those flames that burned me.

"Hard to speak when burned with inter-dimensional fire isn't it? Handy stuff for either opening or closing gates." His smile widened. "I know you have been hoarding occult knowledge for centuries. Knowledge such as the true Abra-Melin Operation, also your first hand translation of the Book of the Dead. The autobiographies of Pontius Pilate and so forth..."

I groaned, shocked that he knew of this. I had been careful over the years and yet here was this stranger showing knowledge of my activities that no one else knew! Where had I slipped up? His hand came down on my neck, holding me still on the walkway.

"I could kill you right now Abernathy, right here in your own city, I could kill you for underestimating me!" He growled down at me. "I won't though, I want your texts. If you want your compendium familiar back...then you will deliver your grimoires!" The Wizard stood then and I weakly reached a hand towards him. He stepped back, avoiding my charred fingers.

"Pull yourself together old boy!" He chuckled. Then reached into an inner pocket in his coat. He withdrew a small cigar and lit it with a touch of black flame on his fingertip. He blew a puff of smoke in my direction and continued speaking.

"When you are ready to talk...my "Inconsequential" name is Matthew Woolrim. My information I had my boys leave by your phone. I was tempted to leave it burning in your flesh so that it would only go out until you had called me...but that would be a little over the top now wouldn't it?"

Then the bastard turned and walked away, waving at me over his shoulder! The setting sun shone brightly off of his bald head before he disappeared from view around the corner of my yard.

Chapter 2

I crawled through my front door since I literally did not have any feet to stand on. My skin and bones flaking and breaking apart off like soot or charcoal! I could feel my teeth growing long behind my upper lips. I hadn't been damaged like this in ages, in such a state! The last time I could remember was when I was in combat with another...ah...but that is a story for another time. I wriggled like a worm over the floor to my Cabinet of blood and pulled open the panel at the bottom. I pulled the central feed tube loose and every single kind of blood I had set up separately at the nozzles began to drain simultaneously down into me! I don't do that often, but as needs must...

...I needed!

Now, one may think that human blood is the most delicious and nutritious for a leech such as myself. Ordinarily you would be right to assume so. However I am very picky with my flavors, and human just doesn't do it for me anymore. Yes there are different blood types and some are more rare than others, but until you have had a nice mix of bison, kestrel, Gila monster, and Doberman? Please reserve judgment on my culinary preferences!

At the moment I was currently draining of 44 different animal blood types and feeling it pass through me and fill me.

Glorious!

My burns were healing very quickly, limbs regenerating and the other wonderful parts of me coming back to full "life" as one may call it. I gasped as I took the hose from my mouth, excess blood spilling over my face and hands as I reattached the hose. I stood, albeit a little shakily and looked down at my tattered clothing. I took them off and stood naked in a puddle of spilled blood. With a gesture it ran across the floor and began absorbing itself into the sides of my feet until there was no more mess for me to clean.

Outwardly I looked remarkably calm, inside I was a writhing mass of clamor!

I cursed myself for not taking the situation seriously! Though I had taken precautions against Outsiders I had done a remarkably piss poor job of making my home an inhospitable place for regular humans hadn't I? Not to mention a bloody wizard throwing around a form of sorcery I wasn't familiar with! That really irked me. I took it as a matter of professional pride that I was at least familiar with all forms of combat magic.

Familiar...that word. Ah...Compendium Familiar, Nancy! That was what they were talking about. They kidnapped, er...rat napped Nancy and that Matthew Woolrim had called her a compendium familiar? I had a theory about that, but first...a shower!

I scrubbed myself clean under hot water, running water does not bother my kind, so a shower is not out of the question. That is...unless someone blessed my water heater turning it to holy water, which would be a nasty surprise now wouldn't it? I toweled off and then dressed after a quick dusting of Oil of Thelema, which has another name but the misuse of the mixture makes me not mention it here.

I made a phone call then stepped into my study to go through some of my older Tomes.

"Compendium Familiar...Cockatrice...Companion...Compendia...yes!" I murmured as I found what I was looking for. I set aside a stack of astrological charts and pushed my collection of hanging shrunken heads out of the way of my desk lamp so I could clearly see what was written.

"A familiar is non sentient entity that is an extension of a practitioner of magic, wonderful...knew that already." I grumbled to myself and scanned further along the page.

"Here it is...in some circumstance in the use of the darker arts one may use a sentient being as a familiar and through the use of black geometry turn said familiar into an archival resource of information useful to it's master. A living Compendium of Knowledge..." I frowned for a moment.

I had spoken to Nancy about her old master, Allan Wade Dickson. A petulant child in all regards! Casting aside a familiar in exchange for a more socially acceptable one. It didn't make sense at the time, well it did, but being bound to ones familiar and to dispose of it would feel something akin to cutting off your pinky and ring fingers. Painful and not very helpful at all! To do so simply for something more socially acceptable seemed very short sighted.

That being said, I wondered if maybe Nancy had been passed onto the young wizard, when I inquired about her life before her master I was just told she learned to speak by being exposed to the spells and ritual workings the wizard had done. She had never referred to her master by name. I wondered if maybe there was more she wasn't telling me, or even if she could tell me?

More questions than answers and I am still no closer to learning where this Woolrim may be! Or even if it's just Woolrim. He had said "Us." to me earlier. He could have meant just the men he had as lackeys...or he could mean there were others of an arcane nature that were just as troublesome as him! Which most certainly set my teeth on edge...

Portland is MY home! I tolerate the current Gatewatch living near the borders of my city because it suits me to do so. Also they offer no threat to my authority. To have random wizards entering my domain and causing mischief of a destructive nature...?

I am MOST displeased! Well, I had something to counter that when the time came.

I was loath to use it, but at the same time it was so beautifully deadly I itched to hold it again. I looked to where I stored that artifact I had made with my own hands, and as if it were a living thing that could feel when my eyes crossed it...I could feel it's silent call to me.

I ignored it and waited for my visitor to arrive, busying myself by pulling out detailed maps of my city and the surrounding areas. I made another phone call while waiting for my visitor to arrive. Yes, the first phone call was for assistance. My second phone call was to my insurance man. He had sent over an adjustor not too long ago for the hole that Lucretia had put in my roof; wonder what story he would believe about my front door?

Perhaps an exuberant St. Bernard wanting my pork roast I still had simmering for dinner? Oh! An irate husband whose wife I had been having an illicit affair with? That would surely make tongues wag as it made its way through the circles of business in my city...

I played around with different scenarios while waiting for my help to arrive; after maybe 20 minutes had passed I heard a knock on the doorframe, which my front door used to occupy.

"Baphomet's branded butt cheek! What the hell happened to your door William?" I heard a man say.

"I had three little pigs under the dressing table and a big bad wolf huffed and puffed and blew in my door!" I called out. A few moments later I heard an old friend walk in. He was a little shorter than me with dark hair and creamy pale skin. His name was Trevor Malfour, and I had known him for over 50 years. He gave me a careful once over and smiled, holding out his hand to shake. I took it, and felt the tingle of his particular form of magic as it prickled over my fingers.

Trevor is a warlock, at least as near as I can tell you might call them a male version of a witch. Much more multi-purpose than a mage, but less strength than a wizard they still can wield their power with a ferocity that can be astounding. Trevor had been a part of the Gatewatch when he was younger, both him and my one time pupil Suzanne had been partnered with an obnoxious were-wolf named Michael Roberts. They had performed their duties well, and passed on the mantle of responsibility to their heirs as is proper. I would still call on him from time to time as the need arose.

Such as now!

Trevor held out a hand towards the remnants of door on my floor and muttered a few words in Sumerian before closing his fist and spitting sarcasm, "Portal fire! Wonderful!" He glanced back at me before picking up a piece of door and it crumbled in his hands like wet tissue paper.

"Wizard?" he asked.

"Matthew Woolrim...yes, he claimed to be one." I told him. I straightened my maps out on the large coffee table as Trevor continued poking about.

"It's not illegal to use magic learned from the other side William...as long as it's not used to make Gates. Sure makes a hell of a nasty weapon doesn't it?" Trevor sighed.

I grunted non-comitally. Trevor finished looking at the detritus and walked back over to me. I saw him looking me over closely.

"That fire is used to separate realities. If you had been burned by it, you would have fallen to pieces and your psyche would be..." I cut him off, not wanting to hear what he had to say. Some things are better left alone after all.

"Good thing he missed then isn't it." After filling in Trevor on what had happened he gawked at me a little.

"He stole your pet rat?" He asked incredulously. I bristled. I had not told him that Nancy was a sentient rat, nor anything else about her. It was none of his business, and besides...I hoard information.

"Yes, he did, and is holding her for ransom. I wish to find where he is and get back what belongs to me. Can you help me?" I asked.

He scratched the back of his head and glanced at my floor. "The residue of magic he used should be easy enough to get you a rough location of where he is. You would only have tonight to find him, and if he has gone very far..."

"All the more reason to do this quickly then isn't it? Shall the regular fee be sufficient?" I asked, wanting to speed this along. He thought for a moment then nodded his head once. I stepped aside while he got prepared to cast his thaumaturgy and I readied a few flasks. With a quick jab of a needle I began filling two pint sized flasks with my own blood, taken from my forearm. Why you may ask?

This is the form of payment Trevor wished. He is over 70 years old, both he and his wife have been blessed with long lives. Though they both look to still be in their 30's. This is a thanks, in no small part, to me. They each imbibe of my blood after running it through a screen of herbs and heat and other things, it kills the vampiric portion of it, and leaves the gift of longevity. I have my own secret reasons for wishing to bestow this on them, but again...secret knowledge has power. I keep power close to my chest.

Trevor held his hands out over the maps and began chanting. I didn't understand his words at all. He may have been intoning a recipe for sugar cookies! But as he chanted, he began to dribble the dust from my burned door down on the maps laid out. I could see the minute particles dangling in the air over the plastic laminated sheets of paper. Slowly the articles on the table began to shift, sliding over the tops of each other! They shifted from the back, all the corners laying out at different angles. Once stacked, the ash made a straight line down and then ignited!

A line of fire with orange bright flame that turned white like a welder's torch then snuffed out!

Trevor let out a sigh and moved his hand, now empty of ash. He leaned over and blew gently on the burn mark and wisps of smoke came up from the melted plastic. He slid the maps out from where they were stacked. A neat burn hole had pierced straight through a section on each of the maps. As I looked through them I saw they all pointed to the same destination. An area near Jantzen beach, a location near the Columbia River, just outside of the city of Portland proper.

"Well, there you have it William..." Trevor said faintly. I handed him the two flasks, one for him and one for his wife. He accepted them with a smile and a nod of thanks. "Do I want to know what you are going to do?"