“Because no one else could do what I can do!”
He realized that he had raised his voice but he carried on, indifferent to his outburst:
“Now, it’s my turn to ask questions”. He got the tablet out of his pocket and showed her the photograph with the crates handled by her people. “What have you been transporting?”
He was taking a risk by revealing that she was under surveillance, but he had to find some way to gain the upper hand in this.
“Dead bodies, human organs, blood, works of art, various resources depending on the current demand, beverages, weed, medicine, guns and… books. In some countries, they are considered contraband” she announced without blinking an eye, as if reading from a shopping list. “Now, if that’s ok with you, let me tell you what I need you for”.
She continued looking at him impassively, but Marcos took a couple of steps back, shocked.
“I don’t do business with criminals”, he said, annoyed, ready to leave or else arrest her.
“A young woman has been held captive, kidnapped, these past five years. She acts as a hostage. I’ve been trying to locate her, along with her captor. Help me in my investigation and you’ll be saving the life of an innocent woman. Help me enough and I shall hand over a serial killer, so you may pass him on to the authorities. You will not have to do anything illegal, while our contact will be minimal, so that your actions won’t be tied to mine. Now, if you’re not interested in dealing a blow to human trafficking in Europe…” She let her voice trail off and waved dismissively, in order to show him that she wasn’t going to beg for his assistance.
The evening was taking an ever odder turn for Marcos. Such a young and seemingly inexperienced woman had just admitted to an officer of the law enough criminal activities to guarantee her life imprisonment, but at the same time she had offered him the chance to work with her on something which was clearly his expertise. It wasn’t just his skill as a detective, but also his connections within the force. Apart from his reputation as an honest cop, no one would ever suspect him of working a case such as this. He could bypass all the corrupt colleagues working at the department and secure information to which Erica’s people did not have access. Now, it was his turn to ask why.
“And what will you be getting out of this?”
Once again Erica surprised him by answering honestly, at least as far as he could tell.
“This man has information essential to me and I’m looking for the girl because her brother asked me to”.
Marcos did not speak. His mind was working overtime.
Erica sighed, irritably, got up from the couch and approached him. Her scent was alluring.
“Look, I could have convinced you in many and various ways to do exactly what I want. Believe me, you wouldn’t had a choice to refuse me. Having said that, I’d preferred it if you acted on your own free will. I told you exactly what sort of cargo is handled by my companies. I didn’t say this cargo was mine. I simply transport it, make enough money and gain connections. Nothing else. I’m neither a serial killer nor a drug dealer. Yes, I have killed, but no one who didn’t deserve it. No, I’m not a saint. Yes, under normal circumstances right now I would be incarcerated. Despite all this, I’m not asking you to do anything dodgy, other than find an abducted woman and bring a murderer to justice. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s your job, no?”
The tone of her voice was short, imperative, brooking no dissent.
“Yes”, answered Marcos, looking at her somewhat numbly, almost scared.
“Good. The woman’s name is Lucia Burton. This will be our point of contact. Call me once you have any info”.
She took out a small cell phone from her shorts, handed it to him and then returned to her couch.
Marcos opened it, pressed a button to browse the contacts and saw just one number, under “Sugar”. He looked at her, confused.
“In case someone decides to snoop around your stuff”, was the answer he got.
He waited a while longer, in case she wanted to add something; all he got from her side was a prolonged silence, so Marcos turned around and left.
He knew what his first port of call would be, before heading back home: a café which served pastries around the clock. His stress levels had gone through the roof and so he had to get hold of something sweet!
Travis arrived shortly after Marcos had left and sat next to Erica. The policeman’s scent was still hanging in the air, making him scrunch his face. His boss remained silent, sitting still like a statue. They had spent enough time together for him to know that Erica was thinking at that very moment, so he did not interrupt her. A couple of minutes later, she turned towards him and looked at her associate.
“Are you positive he’ll make it?” he asked her. “Without knowing it, he is chasing after one of the Ancients” he added.
“Maybe, maybe not. He seems capable enough and, who knows, perhaps he’ll manage to find something we have overlooked, simply because he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for. Did you do what I asked you to?”
“The phone you gave him is bugged. You can hear on your computer whatever’s going on around him, whether the device in on or off, as well as track his position at any time. So long as he leaves the battery on”, he answered and saw her smiling.
“Good. Then, it matters not whether he succeeds or fails. The Ancient will track him down, one way or another”, said Erica.
Travis nodded, waited for a second to see whether Erica had something else to tell him and when he saw her look the other way, silent, he got up and went to a small room which served as storage and office, at the back of the club. There, amongst some boxes, stood a desk and some filing cabinets, while Travis had managed to squeeze in a computer for when he had or wanted to work from the club, instead of his place.
He knew perfectly well who Marcos was. Ten months ago, while he and Erica were still gathering resources, someone from Greece had tried to hack into his computer. They had failed, of course. With relative ease, Travis had turned the tables on them, discovering the source of the cyberattack, the department of cybercrime of the police force of a small country, Greece. Further investigation led him to the man who had organized this attack: Marcos. He had read a lot about him, enough to realize that the man knew little about computers and had merely asked some buddy of his at the department to do him a favor, but most importantly that the whole operation was not officially sanctioned. His investigation of the incident led him to find out what had been happening in Greece, with the ritual murders and the gruesome scene discovered in some storage unit, somewhere in Athens.
Travis was not pleased in the least with the turn this situation had just taken. For a while, before his association with Erica, he had been in contact with some creatures, initially thinking they were vampires. In an attempt to free himself from Lucas and the Ancient who had him on a short leash, Travis had agreed to help those strangers. He had been performing various services for them, the most common being locating people of interest to them. The longer he was cooperating with them, the clearer it was becoming that these creatures were not vampires, but demons, which walked the Earth by possessing the bodies of vulnerable people. Despite him discovering the truth, he hadn’t terminated his contact with them, for the very simple reason that they had promised to him what he had been dreaming of since the very beginning: power! He hated himself for being one of the weakest vampires in existence, the fact that his body, despite its vampiric transformation, remained weak and fragile. Furthermore, the demons had promised that they would train him in the black arts. They were acting on behalf of the demon prince “Andras”, or at least that is what they had claimed. None of them had given Travis their true name, not that he cared about that. Everything was going just fine, until he met Erica and almost forgot about them. Marcos’ investigation served as a grim reminder of that odd collaboration he had been maintaining.
Going against his instinct, Travis had told Erica nothing, partly because he
was ashamed of his collaboration with demons. Aside from that, there was a part of him wanting to keep that collaboration a secret, without being able to define the exact reason. So, he told her nothing about the demons, or Marcos. When the time came for them to come to Greece and Erica assigned him the mission of locating someone who could get them on the trail of the Ancient one residing in Athens, or at the very least someone they could use as bait, Travis had suggested Marcos, telling her:
“It would appear he’s good in his job and already trying to investigate our presence in Athens”, withholding all other information.
He knew he was risking everything by bringing Erica into contact with the man attempting to uncover his dealings, but as the old saying went, one should keep their friends close and their enemies closer still.
Erica left Travis at the club and went to the house she had bought shortly before arriving in Athens. A decorating firm had furnished it exactly to her liking. It was a maisonette, with two storeys, in an area which, admittedly, was not the very best. Not that she cared about that. She opened the secure door with her key, walked in and locked it behind her, an entirely human habit of hers, but she was feeling melancholic. She left the key in a little vase on the table next to the door and looked around. The first storey was filled with new, but vintage furniture. Made of solid wood, they made the room resemble an old mansion. Before her stood the fireplace, close to the open kitchen, with a large liquor cabin extending between the two areas. Apart from the furniture, the apartment was modern. A huge television dominated the living room, while the kitchen was equipped with all the latest appliances. The lights were plenty and soft, in the form of dozens of small lamps, mounted around the walls. She walked to the fridge and opened it. It was empty, apart from some bags filled with blood left on a shelf, with a note stuck on them: “Welcome home – Travis”.
This was but one of the many little gifts Travis had offered to her during the year they had been cooperating. Apart from the blood, he had filled the house with clothes, computers, even guns. Her power on him, apart from the advantages it afforded her, had this one annoying result. Travis was stuck on her, he absolutely needed her and his feelings for her served as a constant reminder of why she had to be very careful in using her powers.
She reached to grab one of the bags, changed her mind and slammed the fridge’s door. She felt annoyed.
She went and sat on a couch opposite the television set, in the living room. She could have used the staircase at the end of the floor to reach the upper level, where the bedrooms were situated, but she didn’t want to. She leaned there, but did not turn on the television. Her encounter with that policeman kept returning to her mind, along with the note Travis had left for her: “Welcome home”. How true! She and Marcos had talked in English; he had assumed she was some foreigner. He didn’t know she was half Greek and that she could have easily carried that conversation in Greek. The house around her may had been renovated, but it was the very same house where she had spent the first years of her life with her father. It belonged to a company controlled by the Order. With the Order occupied by more pressing concerns, Travis had little trouble acquiring the company, before dissolving it. The real estate owned by the company had been resold to random buyers. The particular flat appeared on paper to have been bought by one Eric Travopoulos, which was another silly idea of her associate, but Erica hadn’t bothered too much with that. The important thing was that no one knew she was back at her childhood home.
Memories from those years returned unbidden. Erica, still a little girl, sitting on the carpet, looking at her father talking to other knights in the living room. On the day her mother had died. Tears kept flowing from her eyes, even though it had been hours since they had told her that she wasn’t going to see her mother, ever again. Her father had sat with her, holding her in his arms the whole time, but when the knights had arrived he had left her on her own to converse with them. They would have to relocate, he had told her. Go to some place where she would be taken care of, while he would be otherwise occupied. He had announced that they would be going to the United States, the homeland of her mother and her family there. Erica hadn’t understood much, or why it was so important that there would be people looking after her. All she wanted was her mom. She was looking alternately between her father and the door, expecting her mother to come in any second now, carrying the bags from the grocery store, telling her that everything would be all right. She kept on hoping that she would see her, while her father was packing their suitcases. She hid her teddy bear under the bed, so that she would have an excuse for them to come back. On the way to the airport, at each and every traffic light, she would look at the people passing by, hoping to see her mother smiling at her from some corner. Even at the airport she went on hoping to see her, sitting patiently in the waiting room, with a suitcase in front of her. Only when the plane took off and she saw the city of Athens from the sky did she realize that she wasn’t going to see her mother, ever again.
She got up from the couch and headed upstairs. The corridor leading to the various rooms was covered by a large brown carpet. She left her shoes in a small closet by the top of the stairs so as not to stain it. She continued barefoot, as she used to do when she was a little girl, despite the complaints of her parents. But now her parents were not there to scold her, to tell her that she would catch a cold on top of getting her feet dirty. She approached her old room. The door was different to those in the other rooms, standing old and dusty. She turned the knob and opened it; a squeaky sound was heard.
Her room had been left untouched in the time she had been gone, those past eleven years. The small desk still stood in the corner, two yellowed notebooks on it, which she had left behind. Next to it was a bookcase filled with children’s books. Only two were missing from their places, the only ones she had managed to fit in her luggage. She realized that she hadn’t even turned the lights on, she could see all this thanks to her enhanced vision and, annoyed with herself, threw the switch next to the door. The lamp hanging from the ceiling refused to respond and Erica slammed her palm on the switch. The plastic frame cracked and the switch fell to the floor. She completely ignored the damage, took a deep breath and walked further inside the room. She went to her bed and lay on it, despite the dust covering it. She stayed like that, staring at the ceiling and outside the window, at the houses across the street. She had asked the company that undertook the renovation of the house to leave this room untouched. She wanted to find it the way she had left it. After a while, she turned on her stomach and brought her hands beneath the bed. She had little trouble finding what she was looking for. She pulled out the teddy bear which she had put there. The various bugs and a decade of neglect hadn’t treated the toy kindly, but despite all that it had maintained its original shape and some of its characteristics. Erica held it in her arms, squeezing it tightly on her chest.
She had spent an entire year battling other vampires, avoiding the authorities and setting up various enterprises, in an attempt to secure all that she needed. She had embraced completely the chaotic life vampires led, those very creatures she had been trained to hunt down and destroy; the creatures which had taken her parents away from her. Her soul had been irreparably stained; she was no longer able to channel the powers of her God. She hadn’t even prayed all this time. What would he tell Him, anyway? What would she ask of Him? Beg for salvation? Forgiveness, perhaps? Salvation was easy enough, she merely had to walk out to the street one day, allow the sun to pulverize her. She was but an empty husk, undead, her existence maintained by unholy powers. She had killed, fed on the blood of tens of people and she had done that unthinkingly, without any attempt at justifying her actions. Naram-Sin had taken much from her, but her humanity… she had lost it on her own. Therefore, it was hard for her to hate him. The only thing on her mind at that moment was what little Erica would have thought, seeing her like that. It was far from a pleasing thought. She put the teddy bear back under the bed, got up and lef
t the room, closing the door behind her. She would be sleeping in the living room.
Twisting and turning on the couch, Erica dreamt of a memory of Naram-Sin, for the first time in a long while. Again, she was cast in that man’s position:
She was standing in front of her army. The weight of the silver on her body neither tired her, nor hurt her. She was holding aloft her magnificent sword, its blade catching the sunlight. Her eyes were trained on the men arraigned before her, ranked and uniformly dressed. All eyes were on her and she could see it in the way they were looking at her that they were determined to fight to the bitter end. She could feel the Light inside her granting her strength and at the same time peace. She was not afraid of dying. She was fighting for a holy cause. It mattered not whether the next dawn would find her dead or alive. The only thing that mattered where those they had left back in their homes: the women and children who could not protect themselves, the farmers who had stayed to tend to the fields, the craftsmen who supplied them with the necessary equipment and weapons, the tradesmen who made sure that each and every settlement would have enough goods to last the winter. Without the Order of the Silver Sun, all would be lost. They had important work to do. Erica had left her kingdom behind to lead the army fighting the monsters of the night.
The sky above her was darkening as the sun was beginning to set, but she still held her blade high to catch its light. Gradually, the last ray of light was gone. Great fires were lit at the camp, illuminating the area until the battle would commence. When the fighting began, the priests would provide their forces with enough light. The men, ranked and ready, bid their time. They wouldn’t need to wait long. All manners of unhallowed creatures began emerging from the ground before them. Mutant beasts and humanoid monsters appeared, some of them burrowing through the ground, others floating like apparitions. They arranged their troops opposite their ranks, while the skies above were flooded by flying shadows. For a while, the two armies held their positions, like statues, staring at each other. Then Erica brought down her sword and a mighty roar thundered, as the Order of the Silver Sun charged the monsters.