Part 2
By Brian Campo ( bcampo@hotmail.com )
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. Sansker and all Spawn related characters are owned by Todd McFarlane productions and I do not contest that ownership. This story is in no way official, and should be taken as seriously as kids playing Spawn in their backyards. Please, do not sue me, I am hardly worth it :)
Warning: This story contains harsh language and EXTREMELY graphic violence. If you are easily offended, or think your mom might drop a load of hurt on you for reading this, don't. Consider yourself warned.
Sansker felt like he had been hit with a hammer. His face was slack, and his eyes just stared dead ahead. He could feel the world he had worked so hard to build crumbling and falling out between his fingers.
Seeing that he was in distress, Carl grabbed him by the arm and began to lead him out of the room. When they went into the stairwell, they could hear voices coming up from down below. After a moment, men came marching up the stairs, some carrying guns, others carrying equipment. It was the UN weapons investigators. Sansker heard a little moaning sound and realized that it was himself that was making it.
"Hello, Mr. Sansker. I mean Kasner." said Tyler, chuckling at his faux pas. "I hear you're having a little trouble today."
It was all Carl could do to keep John from jumping at the men. Carl tugged and pulled and Sansker allowed himself to be drug up the stairs to the roof.
"Ok, here's what I'm going to do." said Carl. "I'm going to go back in and get a copy of the security tapes. Ask a few questions. I'll be right back. Please, John. Don't get into any trouble. Just go sit on the transport until I get back." He turned and headed back toward the stairs. "It wouldn't hurt if you gave Jacob Moore a call." he called over his shoulder.
Sansker walked onto the transport and flopped down in a chair.
What the hell was going on? he asked himself. Someone had a real mad on for him, that was for damn sure. Who would be so angry as to kill all these people just to get at him? Maybe it was some kind of human liberation front or something, the kind of group like the old kkk, only against vampires instead of blacks. That might explain the "Liber" thing. He was already sick of this game, he knew that. They were keeping him running in circles, staying out of his reach. If he could only get his hands on them, it would be a whole other story. Sansker was very hands on type of person.
Twenty minutes later, Carl returned with the rest of Sansker's men. He didn't have any good news.
"They won't let me have a copy of the security tape, but they let me have a look at it. You couldn't see the killer or killers."
Sansker shook his head and said, "How could they not be caught on camera? There are camera's all over that building."
"It was a vampire that did it, John. We could see the victims being slaughtered, but we couldn't see the attacker."
"That doesn't make any sense. Why the hell would a vampire want to kill me? I've been doing nothing but good for them."
"That's what I hope we can figure out." He turned to Andrew and said, "I want you to get on the net and start looking for anything that has to do with this "Liber" thing. Anything. Where are we headed, John?"
"The Snake Pit." said Sansker. "Hong Kong."
Carl nodded and went to tell the pilot.
"Ok, here's what I got." said Andrew. He turned the monitor on the computer toward them so they could see the screen. "There were lots of revolutionary groups that used "Liber" for their slogan. America during the nineteen sixties, spain during the twenty twenties, tons more. There's also some mythology stuff. Liber was apparently some roman goddess or something. In twenty one forty there was a car company that made a vehicle called the Liber. It was a lemon, as I understand it."
"Nothing recent?" asked Carl.
"Nope." said Andrew, clicking off the screen.
"A lot of good that did." said Sansker, and he sat back to look out the window.
"Don't worry." said Carl. "We'll find out who is doing this and we'll grease them like a dry whore. That's all there is to it."
Sansker suddenly brightened up. "My political career is over isn't it, Carl?"
"Yeah." said Carl hesitantly. "I think they're going to keep digging now that they have your real name. Pretty soon, they're going to find out about your monster hunting career you had back in the nineteen hundreds. Your name's pretty much ruined."
"So, if I were to get really nasty in this fight, I really couldn't hurt myself any more than has already been done?"
"I think that would be safe to assume."
Sansker sat back in his chair and stared out the window. For the first time in a long time, Sansker felt a smile on his face, and it felt real.
The transport cut across Hong Kong's largest harbor and angled in to land on the Kasner industries building. It was a twenty story skyscraper that thrust up out of the middle of the city, dwarfing the other buildings around it.
Hong Kong was still very dark. It was very early morning here, and the sun was still a couple of hours away. Sansker looked out the window as they flew over the city, watching all the people that crowded the streets below. He knew that at this point, a good portion of them were vampires. Vampires who would soon be chased back into hiding because of what someone had done to him.
The high whine of the engines slowed to a low rumble and the transport began to lower toward the rooftop. Carl and his men were making last minute checks on the automatic weapons they were carrying, getting ready for whatever might be waiting for them in the Kasner building. Minutes later, when the engines were cycling down, Carl lead them out onto the roof, his gun held at his shoulder as he swept the roof for attackers. The rest of the men scattered across the roof, checking behind ledges and communications equipment. When they had satisfied themselves that the roof was clear of any danger, they returned to get Sansker out of the plane.
He followed them out, telling them what he wanted done in the next couple of hours. Andrew was to start asking around the vampire dives in the city for anybody who had been looking for Sansker. Carl would be working with Sansker's lawyers and accountants to cover any connections there might be between Kasner industries and any of the smaller businesses he owned. They might be able to shield some of the other businesses Sansker owned from scrutiny and this whole mess might not be a total loss. Sansker also wanted all of Kasner's accounts dumped into various banks around the world under pseudonyms. This all came very easily to Sansker. He had had to change identities many times over the last millineum. It was just that he had never had so much to lose before.
A faint voice pulled his attention away from his instructions. He paused in midsentence, trying to tell what direction the shouting was coming from. His men trailed behind him with guns raised as he walked to the edge of the roof. He looked down at the next building over and he could see a woman jumping up and down, waving her arms. It sounded like she was yelling his name.
"What the hell?" said Carl, who was sighting the woman through the scope on his rifle. "Oh, shit." he said. "Do you know who that looks like?"
The woman in question stopped yelling and jumping and reached into her pocket. She pulled out a little square box that Sansker thought looked like a cellular phone. She made a big show out of dialing the number and putting the phone to her ear. She reminded Sansker of some absurd mime.
A cell phone rang.
Sansker and his men checked their pockets, but their phones were silent. They spun in circles, homing in on where the ringing was coming from. The sound seemed to be coming from an air conditioning vent that was sticking from the roof. Andrew was closing in on it with rifle ready when the phone rang the fourth time. There was a faint clicking sound and the roof exploded.
A huge fire ball ripped out of the floor, blowing Andrew into ash in the blink of an eye. Sansker felt himself freeze, and he realized that he had fallen for a lion's trick for the first time in his life. The woman below had simply roared, freezing him in his tracks.
More explosions tore across the roof in all directions. One went off right under the transport, and the plane was thrown into the air and into their direction. Sansker felt hands grab him and he was tackled over the edge of the roof. The transport came flipping over them a fraction of a second later, wings snapping off and spinning away.
Sansker waved his arms frantically in the open space and hooked a hand on a fire escape. He grabbed hold and swung in toward the building, just in time to see the burning transport go falling past him to the ground 200 hundred feet below. He looked down and through the roaring fire, he could see Carl falling with the transport. He had thrown himself in front of the wreckage so that he could get Sansker out of the way.
"That bitch!" he said, twisting to get a look at the woman on the other building. He reached up with his other hand and pulled himself up onto the fire escape. He turned toward the building she had been on and saw her waving at him. She turned and skipped gayly away.
He let out a roar of rage and jumped from the fire escape. Waves of heat blasted up around him as he flew over the burning transport. His leap took him all the way across the street and crashing through the windows on the opposite building. Sansker rolled to his feet and found himself in a room full of little cubicle separated offices. He brushed the glass out of his hair and started looking for a stairwell.
A humming noise caught his attention. An elevator. He followed his ears and found the doors just as the car passed his floor. He grabbed the double doors and pulled them apart. The car was already descending rapidly down the hole when he stuck his head in for a look. Without a second thought, he jumped off the ledge and dropped down the shaft after it.
He landed on the roof of the elevator with a thump, and the car swung wildly on it's cable. His claws tore easily through the elevator's roof and seconds later he shoved his head in to the car. It was completely empty.
"What the hell?"
The sound of the world's longest zipper came from above his head and he looked up in time to catch a spiked boot in the side of the head. The woman had slid down the elevator cable, using the spear she carried to brace against the cable and slow her descent. She was still going fast enough when she kicked him to knock him down through the hole he had made. He got only the briefest glimpse of her before he fell into the elevator car.
The wind was knocked from him a moment later when he landed on his back. He was wheezing and struggling to his feet when his attacker joined him in the car. She dropped down next to him with cat like grace.
He finally managed to suck in a breath, and turned to defend himself. Recognition dawned on his face just before her first punch landed. He fell back away from her, arms waving to keep his balance. He stopped himself from falling and using the wall as a brace, he launched himself back at her with a snarl.
"What's wrong?" she said, ducking under his attack and drilling him in the chest three times with her fists. "Aren't you happy to see your little girl?"
He drove his knee up, catching her in the ribs and slamming her into the wall. He knocked the spear out of her hand and tried to get a clear shot at her with his claws. She was a ball of lightning below him, her quick jabs sending shockwaves of pain through his body.
Behind him, the door pinged and started to open. He felt her get a foot against his stomach and was thrown forcefully from the elevator. The car had stopped at the bottom floor and he was thrown out into a lobby of some sort. He landed on a coffee table, which turned to splinters under his weight.
She was out after him in a flash. She had retrieved her spear and now that she had room to move, she was swinging it at him in deadly arcs.
Sansker grabbed a couch and threw it at her. She jumped over it and it smashed into the wall behind her. Her spear thrust forward and across his chest. It dug deep and took a chunk of flesh with it. He gasped aloud, equally from pain and surprise.
Sansker staggered away from her, one hand clenched over his chest. He stared in amazement at the blood on his hand when he pulled it away from the wound.
"What the hell have you done, you little bitch?"
"Oh, this is just a little toy I picked up from your good friend, Alden Raspin." She hefted the spear up so he could get a good look at it's heavy, iron head.
"It's called the Spear of Destiny. It was used to administer the Coup de Grace to Jesus Christ. Naturally, it's very effective on our kind."
Sansker turned and began to run. She followed behind him, chuckling at the funny way he ran. It did look strange. Like a man who was trying to run with his pants around his ankles. He stumbled, tripped and fell behind a counter that was covered with computers and printers.
The woman jumped across the room and landed on the counter above him. "You're not running out on me already, are you? I've been planning all this for such a long time."
A scale covered hand flashed up from behind the counter and latched onto her throat. In a voice that sounded painful to use, Sansker said, "Well, then I wouldn't want to disappoint you. Come on down, honey. It's time for a family chat" He jerked her down behind the counter with him. Her eyes went wide with horror. Sansker had transformed into his snake form, and she screamed as his forty foot tail began to wrap around her.
He ignored her shouts and punches as he wrapped coil after coil of his long snake like body around her, tightening his muscles and constricting on her.
"I can't believe you're still pissed after all of this time." he said. The blond hair on his head was fading into the brown, scaly skin of his snake form, and his head was flattening and stretching out. "I mean, for christ sake, it's been eighty years!"
Another coil covered her head and she disappeared completely from sight.
"It's good that we have this time to talk." said Sansker. "I've been getting the feeling for a long time that you have some hostility toward me. I think I first noticed it when you wore white to Isabella and I's wedding. That was just plain rude."
He could feel her struggling within the confines of his coiled tail. He laughed at her, his laughter the cross between a cough and a bark.
"You should have just left me alone, Persephone. There was plenty of room in the world for both of us. But you just couldn't let it go."
Her movements were getting weaker.
"If it will make you feel any better, you were always right about me. I was marrying her for her title. And I had always intended to kill her."
He felt her move quickly and then he saw her arm thrust out from between two of the layers of his tail. Grasped in her hand, she held a hand grenade. She pulled out the pin with her thumb and dropped the grenade.
"Oh, shit." he said as she pulled her arm back into the cocoon of his body. He was to wound up to even move.
The grenade went off, injecting shrapnel into Sansker's exposed flesh. He hissed horribly and fell over. Racked with pain, his body involuntarily uncoiled and Persephone fell from his grasp.
They both lay on the ground, wheezing, her from suffocation and being crushed, him from his painful wounds. There are times he decided, that he would rather die of a wound than be forced to endure it until his vampiric powers could heal it.
Persephone grabbed the counter above her head and pulled herself to her feet. She swayed uncertainly, like her legs were sore pushed to hold her up. She must have decided that she didn't have enough fight left in her to continue the fight, because she walked over, picked up her spear, and disappeared down a hallway.
After a couple of minutes, the pain had subsided enough that Sansker could concentrate on turning back into his human form. He didn't mind admitting, he felt like he had been wrung through the wringer. There were a couple large pieces of his clothes that had been shredded when he turned into the snake, so he strung them together and tied them around his waist.
"Damn." he said, looking down. "That was a nice suit, too."
Outside, he was surprised to see Carl sitting in the middle of the street pulling pieces of glass out of his flesh, other wise unharmed. He looked up when he saw Sansker exit the building.
"Was that who I think it was?" he asked.
"Yeah." said Sansker. "Same old bitch with the same old gripe. She's still mad about me icing the Blood Queen."
"Some people just can't let shit go. Well, I guess that explains that 'Liber' thing. Liber was the roman name for the greek goddess Persephone." said Carl. He stood up and brushed his torn and burned clothes off. It didn't have much effect. "What do you want to do about this?"
"Tell me that my personal stuff has been shipped here from Chicago already."
"It has. It's in a warehouse by the bay. Came over by boat last week. What do you need?"
"I think I'm going to need some of my old hunting gear." he looked up and down the street at the carnage the bombing had wrought. "You know it's funny. I've been going legit for so long, I'd forgotten how much fun this shit could be."
Fourteen hours later, John Sansker stared out the penthouse window of the Hong Kong Hilton. He was dressed casually. Blue jean, a loose fitting black shirt and a light Jacket. He sipped at a glass of wine laced blood and watched the headlights of cars driving on the streets below.
She would be here soon, he knew. The sun was setting. Pure bred vampires like her couldn't go out into the sunlight no matter what kind of sunblock they wore. He had made every preparation for her that he could think of, and yet he couldn't get rid of the jitters in his belly.
Behind him on the television, CNN was carrying the story of the bombing at the Kasner building earlier that day. They were so smooth and professional as they outlined the events of his ongoing downfall. Like Carl had predicted, once the press realized how old he was, they started digging, and sure enough, they found out about his old monster hunting days.
The cameras switched to a reporter standing in front of a familiar building. They were camped out on the sidewalk in front of the Hilton, hoping for a view of the fallen political leader.
Sansker didn't care about any of this. Persephone had reminded him earlier of what was important in life. Not lying and manipulating millions of people. No, it was the pounding of your heart when you didn't know if you would still be alive in the next second that made you feel alive.
There was a knock at the door, and he knew that it would be her.
"Come in." he said without bothering to turn around. The door opened and in walked an albino beauty. There was not a hint of color on Persephone's entire body. Isabella had told him once that Persephone was a rare breed of vampire that only occurred with an exceptionally pure blood line.
She was dressed in black leather from neck to toe, and she carried with her the Spear of Destiny.
"Are you ready to get this over with, John?" She dripped with contempt when she said his name.
"Of course, dear. This has gone on too long as it is." He sat the wine glass on the table next to him and turned to face her.
And then she was in motion. She came in low, slashing with the spear at his gut. Sansker reached out with his foot and snagged the leg of the table next to him. He kicked and sent it skidding into her path. No good. She stepped up onto it and launched herself at him. He aimed low and met her charge by grabbing her by the legs and hauling her back across the room. Bones in her shoulder popped when he drove her into the wall. She raised her right arm and punched him soundly in the face. He grabbed a handful of her shirt, turned, and body slammed her into the floor. She swung the spear from where she lay on the floor, and opened a gash on his leg all the way to the bone. He fell backward as she did a backflip that ended with her on her feet. She lunged forward and drove the head of the spear straight into his side. Sansker bellowed with agony as she pushed him across the room and against the wall. He bumped into the television stand and a clay pot sitting on top of it threatened to fall off. He reached over and steadied it.
"Careful." he said. "That's Isabella in there."
Her eyes narrowed into slants and she wrenched the spear from his side. The blood that he had been drinking earlier poured from the hole in his side. She raised the spear and prepared to drive it through his heart. He waited until she stabbed before he made his move. He sidestepped out of the path of her thrust and grabbed the spear right behind it's head. He added his strength to her thrust and slammed the spear in the wall, where it stuck fast. He brought the edge of his right hand down on the spear shaft, snapping it in two.
Persephone twirled the remains of her weapon in her and raised it over Sansker hunched over back. She slammed it down, impaling him all the way through his torso. The jagged end of the shaft exploded from his chest in a spray of blood. The strength went out of his legs and he fell to his knees.
Sansker fell onto his side and lay there his chest heaving and his breath rattling wetly. Persephone squatted down beside him and smiled.
"John, I just got you through the heart and you'll be dead soon. I just want to know one thing. How did you kill her? She was a much better fighter than you so how the hell did you stand a chance against her?"
He laughed, coughing blood on Persephone's leather boots. "I beat her because she trusted me when she never should have. It was easy enough. I slipped her a huge dose of tranquilizer in her drink one early morning, right before she turned into her coffin for the day. Once the sun was up and she was asleep, I went around setting all the clocks in the house twelve hours forward. I closed all the drapes in the house and set her alarm clock for midnight. Then I caught a flight to Los Angeles. It was that easy. The alarm went off at midnight, which was actually noon. She crawled out of bed, opened the drapes to let a little moonlight in, and bang, instant suicide by sunlight. You stupid pure breds. You just don't have the tolerance that us human vampires can develop. Feel better?"
"Well, I know it was over quick for her, and she didn't suffer." said Persephone.
She stood up and walked over to the television. She reached for the urn sitting on top of it. There was a click from behind her. She turned back toward Sansker and saw that he was holding a large caliber pistol. Persephone threw back her head and laughed.
"Honestly, John. A gun? How pathetic." She shook her head and picked up the urn. A puzzled look went over her face. The contents of the urn were splashing.
Sansker fired his gun, shattering the urn and splattering pure, undiluted holy water all over Persephone. The liquid bore a hole through her where ever it touched. It burned like an acid, throwing up little tendrils of smoke. John watched in satisfaction. After several seconds, she fell to the floor, rasping.
Sansker reached up and grabbed a hold of the stake protruding from his chest. He yanked on it and pulled it out. He turned onto his belly and drug himself across the floor to where Persephone was fighting to keep breathing.
Sansker patted her on the arm comfortingly and said, "Fucking pure breds, you've got no tolerance."
Persephone's eyes rolled in his direction, and even as she was dying, hate burned bright in them.
"Let me tell you a little secret, dear. You know why they call me Heartless John? I have one weakness. My heart. Do you really think I'm going to carry it around with me?" He started to chuckle. "No, my heart is somewhere safe."
She spasmed and took in one big breath. "You mean, safe like Alden Raspin was safe?"
She died with a smile on her lips.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
So what do you think so far? If you have any comments or curse words, write me at bcampo@hotmail.com I welcome all commetn and r complaints, I just ask that if you tell me that I suck, you tell me why I suck or I'll never learn Nuthin' ! If you liked this story, you will probably like my others. Look for them at Bad Monkey Comics!!!
One more thing, whoever owns Persephone now, owns her, and I don't have a problem with it. Forgive me my trespasses and please don't sue me.