Prologue615Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYBtDeunlY3
A lone figure, hunched under a cumbersome burden, placed one foot ahead of the other in a slow, determined shuffle through ever-shifting drifts of snow. It would be difficult to say which had greater monotony: his gait, or the rolling hills of dead grass and particulated ice.
It had been years since the sight or sensation of snow or cold had bothered him. Once it was a thing of childhood wonder; then an environmental obstacle six months out of the year; for a season of his life it was nearly forgotten; later it returned as an inconvenience, but only a mild one; eventually, the absence of heat became an inexorable way of existence. Tonight, snow danced around him, noticed only for the hindrance to his vision. To any onlooker, he seemed every bit the stalwart arctic hiker, numb to the stinging bite of micro-bladed ice particles thanks to a potent mixture of practiced tolerance and intense will.
A warm breath tickled his neck; over the sad wail of the night wind he could make out a soft moan of contented sleep. Even though he had not been concerned, he nevertheless registered a fleeting moment of relief: she was still alive, and resting. The chivalrous spark within him flared at the affirmation his imperfectly steady plodding had not awoken her. The ball of ice that was once his heart could have melted into grateful tears, glad his one remaining companion in the world had not drifted into eternal slumber. A gnawing hunger growled in the pit of his gut threatened to drown out all of this, but he snarled back and silenced that unbidden beast - for the time being.
That brief reminder of whom and what he carried flooded his otherwise blank mind with memories. Brunette hair, almost black; dancing green eyes; lips sweeter than life; one child, then two; a beautiful family. Then red, an agony of the soul, the impotence of mortal flesh at war with a rage that could not, would not be denied its revenge. Blood, anger, guilt, grief, mourning, self-pity, cold, survival, subsistence, darkness, awakening; out of the swirling black waters of loss, he slowly emerged. What maddened mind he’d had before had been shored and safeguarded by his wife and daughters. Afterward, his moments of lucidity were punctuated by disordered flashes of memory of that night when they had been taken from him, their bodies as fractured as his psyche and their blood as spilt as his tears. And then there was the laughter; the cruel, mocking laughter of someone undecided on which was more comical, their macabre puppeteering of dissected tissues or their audience’s torment.
The finale was the betrayal of his own flesh, craving the blood of his children just as much as he himself craved to rain righteous fury on the monster responsible. He had known the struggle against his flesh before - not merely studied the theory, but wrestled with the schism between his impulses and his conscience. But this; it was as if someone had awakened a previously apathetic beast which inhabited his body all along, and fed it the power to undo him from within. Now the Hunger within salivated after things he had never before considered, using his own hidden appetites to open the floodgates of wrath, carnage, torment, and starvation for a singular nourishment: blood.
A particularly strong gust of wind brought him back to the moment. As if carried away with the snowflakes, the vivid images of his family dead faded, and he was once again alone in the black with this one final friend now carried on his back. Even despite the obliterate clouds above blocking any potential for moon or star to shine, and the complete void of light as far as the eye could see in all directions, the snowy abyss around him was but a grey dusk compared to the days and nights he spent awakening to his new existence. He pushed the tangled thoughts and roiling emotions aside with the practiced efficiency of rote catechism: the "wolves" who adopted him met fitting ends for the parts they had played in what he had become; what capacities he had acquired over the course of executing his plans had been but paltry recompense for the suffering they had caused, to others more than him; his utter betrayal of that entire secret, dark world was no less than was deserved by all who romanticized its debauchery and embraced its shadows. Even though he could never return to his former life, he would embrace the light of the sun and walk into heaven with his head held high before he would himself capitulate to a body now fully in rebellion to his soul.
On he plodded through the blinding snow and black night. Before, he would have worried about wandering in circles, forever disoriented without skyborne beacons to guide his path, or at least a compass. Now, however, even in spite of himself, he put to good use the abilities he had garnered during his relatively short tenure with the kindred of the night. Leylines of the earth lay visible to him in vibrant blues and purples, shifting with the miles and pulsing with the hours according to some deeper mechanism of the world he did not quite understand. Though for centuries explorers and researchers alike understood neither magnetism or gravity, the phenomenon were nonetheless consistent enough to be considered reliable; he treated these glowing trails as being no different.
Hour after numbing hour crawled by; his fear gripped the base of his skull that maybe, somehow, some ancient arcanist’s trick had trapped him in an endless loop of walking between the same two hilltops until the sun would rise and add his ash to the grey of dawn. His rational mind combated this by tiredly pointing out each subtle difference from one rise to the next. Again, Fear offered a paranoia that perhaps the magic was subtle enough to even mar perception if the terrain. It grew frustrated when Logic ignored it. Perhaps a second pair of eyes, Doubt suggested in a whisper from the attic-space of his mind. Yes, growled Hunger, wake our pet - use her before she expires.
“Enough!” he shouted into the night. The sound of his own voice roused him from his revery enough to realize he was standing still. How long had it been since his last step? However long he had stood there, it was long enough for the wind to begin drifting snow seamlessly over his boots, though his old tracks were not yet obliterated. “Doubt, Fear, Hunger; you will all burn in hell or stand trial before me and my king on judgement day for all your crimes. As even the smallest mercy, I will not allow you to add usurping my soul or enslaving my mind to that litany,” he said aloud. Paranoia fell silent, subservient once again; the ravenous Beast slunk back into its shadows to bide its time, the eternally patient hunter.
With the quiet returned to the halls of his mind, he resumed his frozen hike. Another fence bisected the rolling plain; another practiced step saw him and his passenger over the impotent barrier. Just then, his ears detected another sound over the ebbing moan of the winter breeze. The thrum of a well maintained motor; a fine, rapid crunch of snow under rubber tires. He scanned the black horizon in that direction for several long moments before he saw it: a dull glow that faded in and out of sight, the headlights of a car as the road followed the rise and fall of the landscape. He began to run down a series of rehearsed white lies - truth, but with certain unnecessary details omitted. He had known even in his life before that there was a difference between telling the truth with and without a filter. Sometimes, other people just did not have right or need to know explicit details when merely applicable truths were sufficient.
Just then, faintly over the sound of the first car, he detected the sounds of another engine starting, then the growling-crunch of snow and smooth grind of gears as another vehicle farther beyond was started, put into gear, and extricated from its parking spot, perhaps a driveway. Maybe the blowing snow was more of a visual obscurity than he’d thought, and he was far nearer an outpost of civilization than he’d thought. Like a lion tamer, he cracked a psychic whip at the gnawing hunger of his gullet as he channeled yet another ability. His sight zoomed ahead of him, first towards the sounds of vehicles, then again in the direction they seemed to be headed. Through the flashes of farsight, he gathered that the former featured a small-town gas station and convenience store, a fistful of houses, and sundry outbuildings, while the opposite featured more of the same bleak landscape.
Of course: he would be trying to walk cross-country through Wyoming in the dead of winter. No longer following the leyline, he turned to track towards the sounds of people, audible above the breezy snowfall only because of his predator’s hearing. By the time he had traded the lightless fields for incandescent street lamps, the eastern horizon had just begun to grey with hints of dawn. The town gas station wasn’t hard to find; it was, after all, the only business open at this time of night in a small farming community like this. Before approaching, he found a hedged-in yard and hopped over the barrier when he was sure there were no eyes cast his direction. A low growl followed by a sharp bark told him immediately he’d been too quick to assume. With the same poise he’d had so long ago, he turned welcomingly to the dog, which now stood on its back porch, hackles raised, in protection of its master’s domicile. Despite the gnawing in his stomach refusing to stay quiet, this time, he nonetheless bolstered his natural ease of calming animals with whatever preternatural energy now flowed in his veins and emboldened his flesh against him, into a potent aura of apathy and ease. The hackles went down, and after a few contented pants as the adrenaline subsided, the hound returned to the warm den of its carpet-scrap covered doghouse.
“Jules,” he whispered as he unburdened himself of his passenger. “Julia, time to wake up.”
“Hmmm. What is it, Chris? We make it to our next stop?” she asked groggily, then shivered slightly and snuggled back into the thick layers of the cocoon-like rig she’d been riding in all night, each night, for the last several nights.
“Close enough, I think,” he replied. “We’re in another small farm town. But, it’s time for me to call ahead, so we’re going to need to go into the convenience store together.” That news seemed to rouse her.
Still holding her bundled layers close for warmth, she looked intently at him. More accurately, she looked intently in his direction, still unable to see him in the deep shadow of the hedge. He shifted into the streetlight’s glow, careful to stay low enough to unseen by passing cars.
“You’re blue,” she commented matter-of-factly.
“It is cold out here,” he replied flatly, though with a smile at her blunt observation.
“So, what story are we going with?” she asked as she blinked sleep out of her eyes
“The usual, I suppose?” he replied with a shrug.
“Car went off the road; cells got smashed or ejected; girlfriend is shaken but otherwise fine; need to borrow the phone to call the insurance company. That one?” she asked, almost bored with the lack of creativity.
“If it works, why not?” he asked.
“Because a series of mysterious couples with similar stories sounds like either a fraud case waiting to happen, or one of those traveling hobo serial killer stories,” she answered, dubious.
“Genuine concerns, except our particular insurance company has the legal connections to make the majority of such unlucky tales either disappear or become non-consequential, and if other ‘interested parties’ were to pick up the trail, our ‘courtesy driver’ will have taken us far away,” he explained.
“You seem so sure,” she commented, partly worried and partly reassured by his bold confidence.
“I’ve been playing these games for a hot minute, babe,” he replied, then looked away. It was subtle enough she may have missed it, but to him, his reaction was as, if not more blatant than his slip of verbiage. She was a partner and aid in the best of circumstances; a thrall at worst. Pet names that put them on the status of lovers galled his still-painful grief of losing his former life; pragmatically, he understood getting that attached to anyone while playing this deadly game in which he found himself only heightened the danger hanging over those individuals.
“As long as you’re sure. We’ll need to do something about your blue skin, though,” she said as she pulled out one arm from the bundled layers and pulled up her sleeve enough to expose her wrist.
“I am hungry,” he warned as he gently took her hand. She visibly flinched at how cold his skin was, but kept her arm outstretched.
“I’ve trusted you this far,” she replied with a nod for him to continue.
He bent in and kissed the bare skin of her wrist as she took in a sharp inhale at his touch. As he sank his teeth into her flesh, he felt warmth flood through him at long last as her blood flowed hot and sweet into his gullet. As much as the gnawing in his belly begged for every last drop of her liquid life, he only sipped as much as he needed before licking the bite; as if by magic, the toothy gash stitched itself closed. His fingers, no longer blue and icy, turn her hand over and he gentlemanly kissed her knuckles. “Thank you,” he said as he did so.
From there, he helped her to her feet, then to adjust her layers so she could shuffle down the snowy sidewalks beside him, then to cross back over the hedge. The hound, who’d watched all of this from the opening of its doghouse head-on-paws perked up to watch them depart; sad that it’s new friends couldn’t stay longer or give it pets, it otherwise remained quiet and still.
Side-by-side, the two seemingly down-on-their-luck travelers made their way to the gas station. Julia, her fair and freckled skin further paled by the cold and mild blood loss, weakly made her way to the restroom while the gaunt but otherwise lively Chris made his way to the counter to ask to make a call. After delivering his selectively truthful yarn, the cashier handed him a cordless landline receiver, into which he dialed the memorized number and extension.
“Homeland Security, this is Trisha. How may I direct your call?” the receptionist asked professionally.
“Good morning, ma’am. Is my insurance agent available? He’s Davis Macovey, over in Special Claims,” Chris replied.
“Sir, this isn’t an insurance company, this is homeland securi—“ she began, but he cut her off and kept the pace as though everything were perfectly normal.
“Yep, that’s fine. My phone password is: Priest,” he said.
“I- Ah, I think I get what you’re saying. Special Agent Davis Macovey, Special Investigations, keyword Priest. My apologies for the confusion, sir, I’ll get you put through right away,” Trisha said with an audible clatter of keys at her computer in the background. Having only heard the one side of the conversation, the cashier gave Chris a questioning look with a thumbs up to ask if everything was going right, which he affirmed with a mirror-gesture and an enthusiastic nod
“Special Agent Macovey. Good morning, Priest. Isn’t it getting a bit late for you?” came the federal agent’s baritone timber over the phone.
“Hey Dave. Sorry for waking you up. You remember how you told me and my girl, ‘a city-kid has no business driving across rural Wyoming this time of year...’?” Chris replied, then launched into coded conversation for several minutes.
*end prologue*
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