A Guardian of Innocents (28 page)

“Don’t try to find me,” Agent Collins instructed as he approached the front door, “I’ll get in contact with you again soon. You can count on that. And I’ll have Aaron call you tomorrow.”

*          *          *

The night passed slowly. Even as exhausted as I was, sleep still eluded me. There was just too much shit to take in. My brain was suffering from a system overload, breeding a catastrophic failure. My life had changed so dramatically today I didn’t even feel like the same person.

I called work the next day to tell them I wouldn’t be in. Fortunately, my manager was cool and understood completely. Des had stopped in regularly once or twice a week to see me after she got off work. Everyone liked her, and most of them knew where she’d been employed.

My boss asked if her death had been confirmed. I said, “No, but she never came home yesterday. I haven’t heard anything.”

I neglected to inform him that his question was like asking a blind man if his lack of sight had been confirmed by a doctor. I didn’t need a DNA sample from her dead body to tell me she was gone.       

I imprisoned myself in the apartment, watching the ‘round the clock coverage of the
Attack on America
, flipping channels in the off chance one of them found something different to report.

The phone rang. The caller ID displayed the words PAY PHONE with a number running beneath. “I guess you must be Aaron,” I said as I answered.

“Ah, you really are a psychic,” a soothing voice declared, “We need to talk. The sooner, the better. Can you come down to Risky’s? It’s only a few blocks from—“

“I know the place. You’re at a bar? In the middle of the day?”

“I’m not an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just best if as few people as possible see us together. Business is pretty slow here right now, and they keep it nice and dark. I’ll buy you lunch.”

I agreed and walked the four blocks to Risky’s on legs still tender and sore from yesterday’s hike. The air outside felt gritty and thick; white smoke still blanketed the daytime sky.

I walked into the heavily air-conditioned, cigarette reeking atmosphere of the bar and found Aaron sitting on a stool beneath a muted television that hung from a wall, silently displaying the same barrage of images of planes hitting buildings that I’d been watching at home. I figured it was him because there was no one else in the bar who matched the hazy mental picture I’d created in my mind based on Aaron’s voice.

He had black hair like his father with a thick, yet closely trimmed beard. He was reading the Times at the bar, sipping whatever his drink of choice was from a short cocktail glass. He wore a stylish black suit with a collarless white button-down shirt. No tie. He looked out of place in this blue collar sports bar. He appeared to be about six to eight years older than myself. Early thirties most likely.

He didn’t look up as I sat down on the stool next to him and slid a cigarette out of the pack in my shirt pocket, but I felt his attention directed towards me nonetheless.

“Do you realize the piece of history I’m holding in my hands now?” he asked rhetorically, “The September 12
th
, 2001 edition of the New York Times? I wonder how many thousands upon thousands of people in the decades, hell, even
centuries
to come will go to look up this very newspaper.”

“Can’t say,” I replied, lighting up. An uncomfortable silence followed.

“My father told me Louis has offered you a gift. I’m curious, does that gift go by the name of Salyssi?”

“Yeah... It does.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Aaron sighed, “I have to tell you some things now you probably won’t believe, but I have to say them anyways. You’ll probably dismiss me as a crackpot.”

Feeling tired and weak, I laughed, “After all the shit I’ve seen over the past few years, I probably won’t.”

“Alright,” he said, bracing himself for the worst possible reaction, “What Louis intends to do, in effect, is turn you into a vampire. I know because for a short period of time I was one myself.”

The bartender came over and asked with a thick Brooklyn-Irish accent,” So whet kin I getch-ehh?”

I ordered a tap beer and he went to the other end of the bar to get it. I had a moment of silence to take in Aaron’s outrageous statement. After I paid for my lager, I asked him, “So is that what Louis is?”

“No. He’s too smart to try to become one himself. Besides, there’s too much he’d have to give up to do that. And there’s always a chance that even
he
wouldn’t be able to control a fallen seraph.” 

“So to keep this power, he needs somebody else to take in this demon,” I said, just to reaffirm what I already knew.

“Yes. And of course after that, you’ll be his slave. I’m sure he probably failed to mention that. Part of the ritual will consist of a binding curse that he’ll place on you just as the demon enters. It’s what he did to me at least.”

“Ah. There’s the rub,” I muttered, shaking my head, thinking about that old proverb: if something’s too good to be true... but I shook it off. I never really intended to accept Godwin’s offer, not seriously anyways. The inevitability of death is a lot less frightening to me than the thought of living forever.

“I remember he said you have to be a psychic in order to receive
the gift
, but you really don’t feel like one to me,” I stated, trying not to sound accusatory, only passively curious.

“Well, I’m not a mindreader like you. I’m just a lowly clairvoyant. I see things in my dreams sometimes, images of things to come,” he motioned towards the newspaper, “I’m pretty sure I saw this tragedy occur several years ago, but I didn’t understand what I saw until now.”

We sat silent for a few moments. I kept expecting him to continue. I peered into his mind and saw a slew of confusing images and sound bites, they flew around too rapidly, pattering my brain like fat rain drops from a torrential monsoon.

To change the subject, I asked, “So what was being a vampire like?”

“Probably the closest one can come to Hell while remaining alive,” he answered.

“That bad?”

“Oh, it starts out great. But the more you feed, the more Salyssi’s grip tightens on your body and mind. This demon that Louis seems to think of as a toy is one of the fallen seraphim. Do you have any idea what that is?”

“I was raised by Mormons. I was exposed to enough dogma in my childhood to know that a seraph is one of the high archangels, one of the giant ones.”

“Yes,” Aaron continued, “Like Michael or Gabriel. They were second in power only to God Himself, and an unknown number of them fell with Lucifer. Salyssi was one of them. He was known as Ysaellem before he fell. You can search through countless books on angelology and demonology, but you’ll be hard pressed to find even a brief mentioning of either name, unless you’ve found an author whose taken the time to do some kick-ass research. But I’m digressing.

“When Salyssi first enters your body, he’ll lie dormant for a time, kind of like AIDS does I think. But when you’ve consumed enough blood, he begins to stretch himself out, spreading like a fungus. Day after day, he begins to take control over you for brief spurts, little five or ten minute intervals. But even then, it’s not a complete takeover. In the beginning, you’re capable of taking your hand away from the girl you’re choking to death...

“But after enough time has passed, you become like a spirit trapped in the back of your own mind. All you can do is watch as the demon uses your body to do whatever he wants to whomever he pleases.”

He shuddered as he relived some painful scenes from his past, “So does that answer your question? What it’s like to be a vamp? I’m afraid it’s not the romantic, melancholic world of the Anne Rice novels.”

“You said you
used
to be a vampire,” I asked, “So how did you, you know, come back?”

“I got saved.”

“So who saved you?”

Aaron set his drink down on the bar to avoid spilling it as he chuckled. I surmised then he had meant
saved
in the religious sense. I was developing doubts about him. I felt he believed he was telling the truth, but hell, maybe he was just fuckin’ looney-toons.

“So what happened?” I asked, “Did Salyssi just hop out, find the nearest pig and drown it?”

But as I always did with Des, I instantly felt like an asshole. I stared down at the glass ashtray before me, hating myself for having uttered yet another stupid anti-religious remark.

Aaron sighed, “Let me show you something.”

He perused the entire bar casually to see if anyone was watching. Then he opened his mouth, revealing a set of slightly yellowed, average human teeth.

Just as I was about to inform him that whatever fangs he believed he had were imaginary—I saw them. They could have been snake fangs, about two inches long and thin, hanging from where his canine teeth should have been.

“What the fuck?” I gasped.

He tilted his head and let them fold back into their niches within the hard palate at the roof of his mouth, which wasn’t the soft pink of a healthy human being. It was an angry red, swollen with a black varicose pattern covering it like a net.

I was picking up tidbits of information from him, things that made me cringe.

“Venom sac. . .” I said.

He nodded yes, though he knew it wasn’t a question. “It’s a paralytic toxin. One bite will disable you for about twenty-four hours.”

“So if you’re not a vamp, then why do you still have those things? Do you still, you know, get blood cravings and shit?”

“No,” Aaron smiled, “Fortunately, those left with the demon. But they didn’t just evaporate overnight. By the time Salyssi had been driven out of my body, I had developed a certain psychological addiction to blood. Took me awhile to get over it.

“As for the fangs, I don’t know why they stayed. Over the years, the best theory I’ve come up with is that Salyssi’s presence in my body caused a permanent mutation of my genetic make-up. I was stripped of most of my special capabilities as soon as he was gone, but the teeth never went away.”

I believed his words only because I could so easily feel the truth flowing out of him. If I hadn’t been a mindreader, I would have gotten up and left quite awhile back, talking myself into the idea that he was just some wannabe vampire freak.

“So how did Tessa get involved in all this?” I asked in another effort to change the subject, “Your father said it had something to do with a falling out you had with the uhh—mean, whatshisname, Louis. He kidnapped her because you betrayed him.”

“Actually, it’s much more complicated than that, but Dad likes to keep things simple. Clear cut. Neatly boxed. But yes, I suppose he mostly did it to hurt me. But he also needs her I think. If he didn’t, he would have had her killed a long time ago.”

“She’s a powerful telepath,” I informed him, “You know that right?”

“Tessa’s capable of much more than that,” Aaron said thoughtfully, “But I’ve rambled on much too long. What I wanted to discuss, my chief reason for asking you down here, is to go into further detail about the offer my father extended to you last night in your apartment...

“Would you be willing to aid us in an attempt to get Tessa back? She’s my kid sister and both my father and I miss her a whole hell of a lot. And we can only imagine what he’s done to her. Or
had
done to her.

“I won’t lie to you. To cross Louis is beyond risky. It’s suicidal. But if we find him, we have every intention of
killing
him.”

“Don’t worry about that. The idea of dying doesn’t bother me anymore. To me it only means that I’d get to rejoin the one person I truly love. She died yesterday. She was on the eighty-somethingth floor of the North Tower.”

“I’m sorry. Damn, I had no idea.”

The pain bit into me again as I thought of Des. “I’ve already made the decision to turn down Godwin’s offer. And if he
is
the head of some porno ring that exploits children, then I want to see him dead too.”

“I’m glad to hear that. Thank you.”

“But that brings us to our next problem,” I said, lighting another cigarette from the smoldering end of the one I’d just finished, “How the hell would we even begin finding Tessa? He could have her holed up in Bumfuck, Alaska for all we know.”

“I thought about that while I was waiting for you, and I have an idea...”      

Chapter 14

As the next couple of weeks passed, my level of anxiety grew daily. I filled out a missing person’s report at the local precinct, explaining Desiree worked at the World Trade Center. I brought them some hair from her brush so they could have something to identify her with (if and when her remains were ever found.) It was the darkest, loneliest trip I’ve ever had to take.   

I worked as many hours as I possibly could, just to keep myself distracted. But the night of Tuesday the Twenty-fifth I made sure I had off. I scheduled it that way on purpose. I had a strong and rather ubiquitous feeling that if the man said two weeks, he meant two weeks.