URBAN NOSGOTHIC 2 – CALL TO ARMS
Chapter 3
Disclaimer: Legacy of Kain created by Eidos & Crystal Dynamics.
Once again, thank you all for your encouragement and wonderful reviews. I hope to do proper reviews responses every few chapters, so watch this space. ^_^ I also apologise to everyone who wants longer chapters. I'm trying with Chapter 4. Honest.
And I really, really have nothing to say to that. My eyes turn to the little stack of game cases that are also sitting piled on the bottom rung of the bookshelf.
Janos follows my gaze, crouches lithely by the shelf and starts going through each box individually, obviously consumed with curiosity. His wings arch up so that they are not pressed uncomfortably into the floor, and they move, twitch, beat gently to mirror his emotions as he leafs through the little booklets. One of these, the Soul Reaver manual, he frowns at, presses it to his face and inhales deeply, eyes closed.
Raziel had kept that booklet tucked within his cowl for quite some time: Kain had leafed through it.
He can still smell them on it. I wonder what he's making of that.
Janos makes little noises of either surprise or, increasingly, dismay as he reads. I seem to be forgotten for the moment, something I am not entirely ungrateful for. I slump down onto the bed, staring at my visitor, wondering if I will be able to influence his actions in the same way as I influenced an unwilling Kain.
Janos…go away.
Janos…go rob me a bank.
Janos looks at me now, and his face is drawn with worry. "Is all this true?" he asks, waving my game collection at me. "I did not want to believe…"
Obviously there will be no controlling this one. Not yet, anyhow. I nod at him, dumbly. The fact that his world is a game to me has not unsettled him in the least – but then, I remind myself, Janos is about the closest thing Nosgoth has to a mystic. Travelling to other worlds and reading scriptures about his own is probably all in a night's work for an Ancient.
This is also (I realise, with a twinge of horror) why he thinks I can help him. He thinks I am some sort of oracle, with my game manuals and little statues of the main players in Nosgoth's game of destiny and death. He thinks I know something that he does not, and that may be all that's keeping me alive right now.
What will happen when he finds out that I am worse than useless to him?
He stands up, and suddenly he is massive again, those wings filling my small room. I hold my breath and skitter backwards on the bed.
Will he be angry now? He looks….
…he looks sad. Very deeply sad, as if his world is about to fall apart in front of his eyes. As if he's lost everything he had ever hoped for. As if he knows that all his bridges are burnt and that there's no going back, only going forwards, and that going forwards will be painful.
He looks…
I see that look in the mirror every day.
"Raziel…" he says, softly, and I don't think he's even aware I'm still here.
And then there is a knock on my door.
The door is not closed properly, and it trembles on the latch as whoever is outside pounds again, impatiently.
Janos crouches. His wings spike up angrily, and I'm suddenly reminded that, sad-eyed mystic or no, this is one of the oldest vampires Nosgoth has ever played host to. Removing his heart did not kill him. What could?
"Who is it?" he demands, not of the unseen knocker, but of me. For a moment my mind is blank and I have no idea what to tell him, then I look at the clock and I remember in a rush of acid panic.
It's my next appointment. My eleven o' clock. Oh, god. And my room is full of cobalt-blue skin and black wings.
Janos looks at me sharply. "Your scent just changed," he says. "You were frightened before. Now…you are terrified."
His eyes narrow, and my heart hits my throat. Does my fear excite him? The lost look is gone. Now he is a predator, an eagle, a lion. He looks blank and hungry, and nothing more.
The knocking stops. I hear footsteps draw back along the corridor, then with a crunch my door is kicked open, rebounding from the wall with an ugly splintering noise.
It's the guy who wanted to play on my PS2, the one who slapped me. Apparently I wasn't such a worthless cow after all, seeing as he's back.
I don't have to be a vampire to smell the beer fumes that are infused into every part of his being, his clothes, his thinning hair. He is ridiculously drunk, and, as a result of this, manages not to spot Janos for a whole sentence.
"You! Bitch!"
Okay, not a long sentence. And it seems my name hasn't changed from when Gary gave it to me.
He lurches at me. He has a five-pound note in one hand, and an open condom in the other. I guess I should be grateful for the condom, but I'd've hoped for more than a fiver…
He trips over Janos' foot, looks up, ready to be angry….
…looks up, into blazing vampire eyes, and up again into the glossy arch of those wings.
Janos opens his mouth and hisses, warningly. His long, pointed canine teeth are instantly obvious. My client goggles for a long moment. His eyes consult with the beer in his bloodstream and come to the conclusion that the beer is not responsible.
He belches, in what I presume is mild shock.
Janos snaps those teeth together once, and the man sways on his feet, leaning in with a bemused frown. One hand reaches out, wavering towards Janos' chest, as if he's about to see if he can touch this blue-skinned monstrosity.
His nerve fails him at the last minute, and he staggers back, head wagging in negation. He turns, runs out into the hall, and wastes a few seconds stabbing at the call button on the elevator before, seeing Janos following him out of my room, he makes a break for the open stairwell.
Bad move. All my animal instincts are clamouring at me, and those instincts have saved me more times than I care to admit. Right now, my poor abused brain is cheerfully giving me a Discovery Channel special on the hunting habits of Ancient vampires.
"Ancient vampires," begins the relentless commentator in my mind, "prefer to hunt in wide open spaces, where their huge wing span will not hinder their movements…"
Janos, in pursuit of my client, is smacking those huge wings into the doorframe and against the walls as he breaks into a run. I can't help myself. I look out of my door after him.
"They are uniquely developed to take down their human prey from above…."
In the open stairwell, Janos' wings fan wide to full extension, shining like a raven's. He leaps from the top step, hovering in midair for brief seconds as he looks down at the fleeing drunk below, who is taking the steps two or three at a time in his panic. His wings are so large that at full spread in the low ceiling space, his primaries brush cobwebs from the walls.
"An Ancient vampire has adopted a hunting technique similar to that of diving seabirds such as gannets and sea eagles…"
The wings snap closed, abruptly, and with them folded almost flat Janos dives like an arrow, directly down the middle of the stairwell. A few jet feathers float lazily down in his wake, clipped from his carpals by the handrails.
"The best thing to do if attacked by an Ancient vampire is to…well, just try not to get attacked by one, folks…"
From below, out of my line of sight, there is a high-pitched but unmistakably masculine shriek, and then silence. I fold against the doorframe, shivering, exhausted already with tension, and wipe the new tears away with a trembling hand as they fall.
Oh, god, oh god. Somehow even though I should have been expecting it after being exposed to Raziel and Kain, the complete incapacity of vampires to understand why they should not just kill humans randomly still has the ability to render me shaking and mindless. I suppose it's the ingrained culture of the battery chicken who sees their neighbour taken away to the block: if it can happen to them, it can happen to you.
Into the silence comes a new sound, a clicking sound, dull at first, then echoing as it approaches. It takes me a few seconds to realise what it is.
It's a vampire climbing the stairs, his cloven feet clicking on the metal.
Why is he using the st-
Of course. The stairwell is big enough for him to dive through with his wings folded, but too small for him to comfortably fly back up.
And so I wait, listening to his apparently un-hurried footsteps, and when I see him again at last I actually do manage to scream.
His beautiful sculpted face is covered with gore. The blood looks slick and purple against the blueness of his skin. It gleams across his chin, all along the right side of his jaw, and as I watch he actually lifts one claw delicately to his face and wipes some of the excess fluid away.
The claws, too, are spattered with blood, and the state of his arms indicates that he has been at least up to his wrists in it.
Sobbing, my breaths wailing in my throat, I turn my face away from the angel of death before me. To my complete horror, however, he crouches beside me, wings encircling, and pulls me gently against his chest with comforting arms. I can smell the blood, feel it clotting into my hair as he strokes my head with every appearance of compassion. The metallic, coppery stench of it makes me retch, and if I hadn't already been choking on my own tears I'm sure I would have thrown up.
"Do not be afraid. He is dead. Let me take you somewhere safe," he says, "and we can talk. I have so many questions."
He draws back his hands and brings them together in a single, applauding motion.
And, mercifully, I black out.