***
Back at the hotel, Paul's noisy Nissan hobbled begrudgingly into a parking spot at the far end of the lot. Toma got out and opened the back door for Shuck, who gracefully hopped down out of the car, still on his awkward, red velvet leash. Paul exited the vehicle as well, and stood in front of Toma for a moment, obviously at a loss for words.
“It's hard to wrap your head around, isn't it?” Toma said in a soft, understanding tone.
“And then some,” answered Paul.
“Got any plans for the rest of your life?” Toma posed the question in such a blunt manner, Paul was taken aback.
“I, I... um, I had a few ideas,” Paul managed to stutter, “Why ask me that?”
“I need a partner, and I could hardly hope for a better one than you, honestly.”
Paul remained silent. He made direct eye-contact with Toma and saw a deep, seemingly unending well of both sorrow and joy, pain and ecstasy imprinted underneath the unassuming, comic-book-geek exterior. After just a brief moment of staring, Paul's eyes fell to the ground, ashamed that he was unable to take the intensity of Toma's unveiled soul any longer. “I don't think this is my line of work.” he finally managed to speak out loud, but Toma had already turned to walk the dog over to a small camper at the other end of the parking lot. Paul watched as Toma and the dog climbed up into the RV. A minute or so passed before Toma reemerged from the camper and headed back towards the hotel's main entrance, but Paul couldn't bring himself to produce any sound. He stood still for what might have been seconds or hours before he got back into his car and left the scene.
Later that evening, Paul lay on a beat-up, old couch staring at the ceiling. He yawned as he looked over at the clock on his cable box. It was almost five in the morning, and an infomercial for some sort of skin cream was on the television. He sighed, turned off the TV with a remote control, and reached behind him to switch off a small desk lamp. As he did, the room went dark... except for a red glow coming from outside. A worried expression found its way onto Paul's tired face, and he groaned as he stood up to investigate the source of the dim, ethereal light. He slowly approached the door to his incredibly small, studio apartment. As he cautiously opened it, he found himself looking out into a long, tomb-like hall stretching out beyond the limits of his sight. The walls were lit with small, black candles. He grabbed a gun from a small table adjacent to the door and stepped out into the ominous corridor.
He looked around, methodically surveying his surroundings as he followed this passageway down into a blackness that appeared to be fighting back against the failing candlelight. He glanced quickly over his shoulder and saw nothing but darkness behind him. No door. No apartment building. Just a cloud of nothingness that continued to advance toward him, even as he stood still. He was being driver forward by some invisible, intelligent will, and suddenly a sense of terror took hold of his very soul. He started forward again, at a slightly quickened pace. Following an instinct born of long years of military training, Paul held his pistol at the ready, finger on the trigger, safety switched off, round in the chamber. After progressing a distance which Paul found impossible to estimate (twenty feet, two miles, or the entire expanse of the Atlantic Ocean) he came out of the hallway into a cavernous, crypt-like space. Torches located along the far walls lit the entire area of the stifling, eerily still chamber in which he was now standing. Artistically chiseled pillars of stone held up a low ceiling. The ceiling itself was covered with awesome (in the classical sense of the word) relief sculptures and countenances of otherworldly creatures carved in incredible detail, seemingly embroiled in an Apocalyptic war of sorts. Peering through his pistol's line-of-sight, Paul followed with his eyes the tumultuous battle scene cut into the rock above him. His glare finally came to rest on the graven likeness of a snarling, black dog with fierce eyes, tearing a body to shreds with razor-sharp teeth. A hard gulp forced a rising sense of foreboding back in Paul's throat.
A sudden noise, very much akin to the unsettling snapping and cracking of arthritic bones, made Paul swing around to see a pyre of gold bricks behind him. On top of the bricks lay a body that was caught somewhere between perfect preservation and ancient decay. A face that was all at once both beautifully youthful, horribly deformed with age, and disgustingly decomposed. As Paul slowly approached for a closer look, a mild, stagnant breeze entered the room from some unknown source and blew the dry, dusty lips off the corpse like so much sand on a desert dune. Beneath the dead lips were brilliant white teeth, sharper and more threatening than those of a lion or wolf. A fear and terror heretofore unknown to Paul boiled up inside of his chest, and he instinctively squeezed the trigger of his pistol several times. The bullets stirred up waves of wind that blew the dusty, human remains around in swirling eddies. The whirling dust and debris inexplicably re-formed the terrifying corpse into a sitting position, then a standing position. The whirlwind caused by Paul's body as he turned to run away, swept the creature's inanimate body around yet again to a position now standing between Paul and (according to his best guess) the exit.
“Good Morning, Paul Auxten,” announced an echoing voice which encompassed the entire audio spectrum of human vocal range, from screeching, high-pitch whining to a rumbling, primal roar. Paul froze in his tracks, staring into the lifeless eyes immediately before him.
“What are you?” Paul asked loudly, raising his pistol out in front of him. The mouth of the ghastly figure was pulled back into a horrible grin, yet Paul couldn't pinpoint when the grin began. Was the smile present before this moment, or did the smile occur in response to his question? Paul shook his head in confusion, and a deep, chuckling laughter began vibrating through the air. He could feel the unnatural voice quaking underneath him and pulsating in his legs, chest, and head.
“The question is, what are you?” replied the voice.
As he tried to refill his reservoir of courage, Paul replied, “What am I?”
“A warrior of rare stock. You will assist Toma Pietruszka in a war against a force which currently holds hostage the souls of billions, across all borders and through all barriers.”
“What war?”
“The only war that has ever been, against the chief adversary of all order and life.”
“The Devil?”
“Yes.”
“I think you've chosen the wrong man.”
A gale of hurricane-strength wind burst into the room, disintegrating the corpse-creature into a cloud burst of dust. This sudden tempest snuffed all the torches in the chamber, leaving Paul cowering on the ground in complete blackness. He was trying, in vain, to shield his eyes from the swirling tornado of dirt and debris. Two hands reached down out of the darkness and grabbed him by the collar. Paul felt his body lifted off the ground and into the air as effortlessly as one might hoist a feather pillow. He looked down against the excruciating, stabbing pain in his eyes. Below, he saw a young man with brilliantly pale skin, burning blue from within. A painfully intense face stared up at Paul with a piercing clarity, funneling a burning, white-hot light through the whites of its unveiled eyes and highlighting in striking contrast a pair of pitch black pupils.
“We don't choose wrong men, Paul Auxten!” This time the voice came clearly from the mouth of the powerful being before him. “The merging of your skills and resources with those of Toma Pietruszka will move mountains against the Enemy!”
Paul closed his eyes and began to scream as an electric fire shot forth through inhumanly strong, supernatural arms into his own, limp body. He felt himself hurled backwards with the force of a gunshot, and he fell helplessly into endless blackness. There was no way of telling for sure whether he was falling straight down or floating on a cushion of unsettled air. He spasmed with that involuntary reflex against the sensation of falling and woke up with a violent start in his couch at home. After catching his breath and wiping a film of sweat off his forehead, Paul sat up. As he did, a sharp feeling of intense pain shot th
rough his neck and collar bones. A feeling of dread caused him to stand and run to his bathroom mirror, where he saw to his horror a pair of blackened, spidery vein patterns spreading outwards from the place where those superhuman hands of unreal strength had grabbed him and held him aloft... in his dream, or so he thought.
Confused, and wondering whether or not he was awake or asleep, Paul wandered aimlessly around his one-room palace for a bit. He managed to toss together some coffee, but forgot to press the 'start' button on the coffee maker once the filter, grounds, and water were prepped. He heard a shuffling outside and shot a quick, worried glance around the room. The morning light was attempting to sneak into the room through the space under the bottom of the door. For a brief moment, Paul saw a dog's black nose poke through, giving way to the much larger shadow of a certain creature he knew was lurking in the hallway beyond. Paul sighed and smiled a bit.
Outside, Toma was leaning comfortably against a wall in the apartment hallway, holding Shuck on a leash. The door to Paul's apartment opened and Paul stepped out, fully dressed and carrying a small, military ALICE pack. He locked up the apartment and turned to face Toma. “You're gonna have to explain the absolutely terrifying, dead, demon thing that paid me a little visit last night,” he said, bypassing any and all unnecessary small talk.
“His name is Romain, and he's a… um… a vampire.” answered Toma with a slight hesitation in his voice.
“OK. Thank you for answering honestly,” replied Paul nonchalantly.
Toma looked surprised at Paul's reply. “That's it? No explanation necessary? No skepticism?”
“I'm prepared to take you at your word from here on out, buddy. Until the day when I know more than you do, you'll be my primary source of information wherever supernatural beasties are concerned.”
The two of them, along with the dog, began walking out of the apartment building. Toma slowed down to remove a knife from its sheath on his belt and quickly sliced his hand as he extended his elbow to stop Paul from walking. Paul looked down and saw the blood as Toma handed him the knife.
“This is necessary,” explained Toma, matter-of-factly.
Paul slowly grabbed the knife and positioned it in his hand. “Not worried about AIDS or Hepatitis or anything?” he asked, before cutting.
Toma actually laughed a bit at Paul's inquiry. “No,” he answered, “Those who involve themselves in this line of work are generally destined to die sooner than later, before disease or old age could possibly make a difference. Honestly, chances are extremely high that neither of us will survive more than a few months.”
Paul smiled and drew the blade hard across the palm of his hand. The two of them shook bloody hands right there in the hallway of Paul's apartment building. “Now you're speaking my language, Toma. You're tougher than you look, you know.”
Paul opened the complex's lobby door for Toma and Shuck to pass through before him. “Thank you, Paul,” responded Toma in a happy, upbeat tone as the three of them exited the building, “The weather reports are predicting heavy rains today, but we should be able to stay ahead of the storm if we head West.”
To Be Continued...
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