Maker

Chapter: 12-5

The vamps were busy elsewhere, so Vermillion Falls was everything they had in the region. In a war for the world the Carolinas were of no great strategic importance. Vermillion Falls could smuggle things in, but Duke, the lord in the area, was actively staying out of it.

He wasn’t playing both sides, exactly. He was probably using the upswing in the war to take out his rivals and waiting for the day when the activity would abate and his standing would increase. Apparently, he was small enough that none of the higher-ups in vampire politics noticed or cared, but big enough for the plan to work without someone crushing him.

Duke was the worst thing a murderous demonic sociopath could be. He was patient, he was smart, and he wasn’t prone to the bouts of rash, senseless, emotion that immortality and near-limitless power normally inspired. He was the successful man who hadn’t yet forsaken the tenets that made him successful. Worse, he didn’t mind making more vampires, or killing them.

Most vampires were selective about who they turned. The majority of day-old vampires couldn’t handle the sudden lust for blood, and in short order, they ended up little more than feral beasts consumed by their hunger. Most vamps understood how quickly that could get out of hand and they had to have normal humans to kill and eat after all.

Duke didn’t care as much. He’d make ten vampires, order them to do a job, keeping his inner circle secure and well fed. If that didn’t work, he’d send a hundred. Any that survived the job were killed, unless they showed real skill.

Duke was dangerous. I avoided him as much as possible. Whenever disappearances increased, I knew he’d be up to something soon. After I’d disrupted his plans a couple times he started taking a certain number a day and harvesting from elsewhere.

He didn’t come to kill me. Not one attempt. I didn’t know why, but it scared me how fast he learned. I also had to wonder if I knew about this only because he wanted me to. To my knowledge, I hadn’t vexed him lately. The last time was about seven months ago. That was nothing in the life of an immortal, so it was entirely possible he was still upset.

Blackstar couldn’t possibly know that I knew, but he might know that I took his arms shipment. I would kick myself for spray painting inside the truck if it hadn’t burned down to the engine block. Though, given the fact that I just killed half his people and destroyed two of his hideouts, it was a silly thought. Since he knew I existed and had it out for him, he’d be on guard generally rather than specifically. On guard and waiting.

Another thing that bothered me was sitting in Zora’s bedroom. My pack. I still had it. Why kidnap me, torture me and not ask one question about it? I didn’t remember everything. I didn’t have enough memories to account for one day, let alone nine.

I knew that they hadn’t asked. If they had, I would’ve had to say something eventually and they’d have access to ten years’ worth of stolen gear, with me screaming on a table, begging to tell them how to use everything.

Blackstar also had three other warlocks left to help him. Not to mention a small clan of shapeshifters and any number of normals with delusions of grandeur. I had one small-time talent and one mystery man. I was becoming more and more certain that I couldn’t take them on. Of course, proper surveillance on them would be nice. Then I could…

“Wait, Zora, what makes you think Blackstar knows about the shipment?” She smacked her palm to her forehead and walked out grumbling. I looked at Neka who shrugged and closed his eyes again. He dropped in and out of that meditation whenever someone started or stopped speaking. It was kind of eerie. As if there was nothing going on here worth his full attention. Zora returned about two minutes later. I was still thinking—brooding mostly.

She had the satchel in one hand and tossed it to me. The other hand held the stack of papers from Blackstar’s refrigerator divided into three folders. She handed me one and set the other two on the couch between us.

“That’s where I think they’ll turn up. I was planning on following them back to you if I hadn’t found you by then.”

She folded up her legs and took deep breaths, staring intently at Neka then closing her eyes. He smiled as she did, but his eyes didn’t open. I felt the cold come off of them and shivered a bit. I would have to ask them to explain this later; it looked like the mental attacks Zora and I had forsaken years ago.

The folder was full of shipping manifests. There were a lot of them, and while the one Zora wanted me to read was clearly marked with a sticky note, I sat and read them all. By the end of the first few pages I was lagging. Too little sleep, too much torture and nowhere near enough food. It was only then I realized the last time I’d eaten I was here, and that was more than a week ago.

I got up, tucking the remaining folders back in the satchel. As I walked between Zora and Neka, she flinched back as if I’d struck her.

“Dammit, Maker move! I’m winning!” She snapped. The urgent tone in her voice was alarming, so I moved and a stab of pain went through my leg, chest, and stomach. I grunted and kept my teeth together.

“What are you doing anyway?” I asked, looking between them. Sweat was starting to form on Zora’s forehead.

“Training. Explain later,” she said, with the effort of straining against something. The big man still wore a smirk. They had obviously done whatever this was a lot in the week they’d been together. I limped out of the room and downstairs to where Miles was just finishing sweeping the latest pile of dust out the door.

“Just in time,” I sighed, and went to sit at the bar. There was no one there, so I took my normal stool. Third from the end. I opened the folder again and read. I smelled something with grilled chicken and onions, and it made my stomach ache all the more. A salad appeared with lots of greens, chicken, tomatoes, carrots, cheese, and avocado. I started shoving food in my mouth like I’d forgotten forks existed. Miles grunted and I picked up the fork. I was getting dressing on my hands anyway.

I resumed shoveling and finished off the salad in no time. Back to reading manifests. It wasn’t weird that Blackstar was attacking the vamps. It was weird that Duke appeared to either not know, or know and be doing nothing about it. Zora would have heard if he were in a lather about Blackstar.

Some deranged vampire would’ve shown up for my head thinking it was me by now. Trying to score some points with their boss and hopefully not be disemboweled for their trouble.

The blue statue and the disk were there also. Apparently, the disk had been stolen from Vermillion Falls itself. The manifest didn’t say what they were for, but nothing good was a safe enough assumption.

The folder had future manifests as well, though none were marked as the attacked ones were. There was also nothing of interest that I could see. Smuggled goods are notorious for not showing up on the loading documents.

Though often enough, things were labeled as other things for the purposes of customs and passed through by crooked agents. I suppose that was easier than all the lies you’d need for a boat that had a hundred crates on paper when it actually had a hundred five. I was done with the first folder, and put my head down on the bar. I sat up slowly as the lacerations on my chest complained. Hurry up. Stupid bandage.

Miles uncapped a beer and set it in front of me, along with the second course of chicken stew. I didn’t speak, but grunted something he took as thank you. I picked at the stew and sipped at the beer. Wasn’t easy, but gorging after a long period of starvation could be deadly. I went back to the papers in front of me.

There was something I was missing. I could feel it. Zora saw the manifest and realized Blackstar was hitting the vamps. An informant at the docks corroborates the story. Both groups are tracking this shipment and I’m running around as a loose end.

That partially explains the attacks on my labs at least. Since the fridge died in the fire, Blackstar may not know I have this anyway. I have… “Yes!” I said. It was a plan, it could work, and there was just enough time to get it done. I hobbled outside to my apartment to grab a few things. A deep cut on my bad leg opened on the way and stained my pants in blood again.

I sat down on the stairs for a while. This was going to take a long time to get over. Months. Years maybe. The physical would heal. It was the mental scars that were going to take forever. I wanted to run off, challenge Blackstar and company to a duel and win. That wasn’t realistic. I wouldn’t live past the second spell.

I limped up the stairs outside the house up to my attic apartment and collapsed on my cot meditating, concentrating on staying calm, keeping my emotions in check, not thinking about being tortured, largely failing, and running through my plan for anything that would violate the evil overlord’s list.

I was doing that right up until I passed out.

* * *

I woke up feeling a little better, and wandered over to my shower. The water was cold. I liked cold showers. I was a hard sleeper. Waking up wasn’t an event—it was a process.

I brushed my teeth and headed down the stairs, avoiding looking in any windows that would show me the Masons. I lived above a family that could be a black and white sixties sitcom. Sometimes seeing that the world could be a nice place was annoying. Sometimes it was inspirational. Sometimes nothing.

I got to the street and felt for my magic. I took a deep breath and felt the power in the air come to my call. I didn’t do anything with it; it was just a relief to know it was still there. It was evening, already starting to get dark. I was too hungry to have slept for five hours. It must be the next day. Monday maybe? I realized I had no idea. I had no phone.

That explained why I was well rested. Thirty-one hours of sleep would do that.

I stopped to eat. Miles was making soup in a ridiculously large pot for one of my shelters or another. He stopped for just a moment to slide a bowl down the bar without spilling a drop. Toast followed soon after. It was beef and vegetable, and it was delicious. As always.

The neighborhood’s surrogate grandfather went back to reading a paper that confirmed the fact that I’d slept an entire day.

I ate quickly and was still hungry, but I didn’t get seconds. There wasn’t much time to prepare if we were gonna hit Vermillion Falls today.

I limped upstairs. Zora’s door was cracked. I stopped when I heard the talking.

“…planning anything now that Maker’s back,” Zora said.

“He was obviously tortured, and quite horribly I suspect,” Neka responded. “He may have been bewitched by The Constellation and sent back to kill us. Even if his mind is unaffected—and I don’t see how that could be. He won’t be planning anything for weeks.” Neka had a good point actually. I was about to burst in and explain that I was fine when Zora interrupted, sounding angry.

“You don’t know Maker,” she snapped. “He’s strong. He plans better than me, he’s more versatile than you, and when the plan inevitably goes to hell like all plans do, no one improvises better. He’ll come up with some way to face off with Blackstar, get the ankh, get us out, and do it with so many contingencies even he won’t remember them all.”

“We should at least have a plan of our own for if he’s… well, if things go bad.”

“Do what you want. I’m not gonna bother. I follow Maker. I’ll step up if I have to, but if he’s around then I’m right back where I wanna be. Second in command.”

“Second?” He asked, incredulously.

“Second. All the power; none of the responsibility. All the reckless and no worries.”

“That’s crazy,” Neka said. “You have to take responsibility for yourself. You can’t just gamble your life on someone else’s decisions.”

Zora let out a hearty laugh. “I assure you I can. Besides, it’s smart to gamble if their dice are hotter than mine. I do it, you do it, and so does everyone else.”

“I don’t let other people live my life,” Neka snapped.

Zora scoffed. “Then you’re just willfully ignorant of the way power works and the ways people use it to control you. I’ll put it another way—in a few months we’re going to have an election and twenty pleasantly scented, piles of s**t, are going to try and convince us why they should be president. Think about that: twenty, out of a few hundred million! If leadership were so f*****g great it’d be twenty percent. The reason no one applies for the job is because deep down no one wants it—and why would they?

“Why would I want to spend my life catering to a few hundred fat, old men constantly whining about their own interests that are almost certainly in perpetual conflict so they can stay in power? Not to mention, while I’m juggling all their bullshit so I can keep my power, I get to be constantly looking over my shoulder for political rivals of my own trying to steal it? I’m getting an ulcer just thinking about it.

“We could all go off alone in the wilderness and make all our own decisions, but the best answer is to give up our authority to someone who we think isn’t going to screw us and find a new leader if they do. Everyone has this romantic idea that we should all be leaders, and it’s remarkably stupid. I found someone who’s going where I wanna go, so I follow them. It’s not rocket surgery.”

That woman read a lot of philosophy. Most people would hear that and think she was soft in the head, but it took courage to call things the way you saw them. We had both resolved to live our lives with the reality of a naked emperor and refused to believe he was fully dressed.

Neka was no doubt taking this all in, because when I heard him speak again, he didn’t sound so confident. “So… you’re like… in love with Maker?”

Zora sighed, and I choked down a laugh. Pretty soon she’d start hitting him. “Either you’ve still got fur in your ears or you weren’t listening. I’ll assume the former.”

“No, it’s just that I don’t get what happened to you that you could trust someone so—”

“The human condition happened to me.” She said in an exasperated tone. “You either have to trust someone or do everything yourself. Most people are followers; I’m just a follower who’s not ashamed to admit it. Leadership is not a sun-drenched picnic, it’s my idea of hell. I don’t want that job. No one wants that job, except Maker. He’s the only person in the world I’ve found stupid enough to do it, and you’re giving me s**t because I’m smart enough to let him?”

Neka didn’t answer. There was a long silence. I had the image of them staring daggers at each other, so I burst in.

“Zora, let’s go!” I said, throwing open the door. Other than being in a different apartment, they were both almost exactly as I’d left them. Zora was sitting on the couch Indian style with her sword across her lap. Neka was sitting the same way on the floor. They both looked up as I busted in. “Were you winning?” I smiled.

Neka looked at me, placid as a glass lake. Whatever his game, he seemed to be loyal to Zora at least.

“Of course I was winning,” she said as she got up. “Where we going?”

I smiled. “You aren’t gonna like it.”