My Familiar Stranger (3 page)

Elora’s consciousness waxed and waned. During moments of fleeting awareness she registered blinding, bright lights and masked people in blue milling around her body like it was an inanimate mound of flesh. She saw the remains of her clothing being cut away by one medic while another fastened a needle to her hand. When the locket was withdrawn from her watch pocket she tried to reach for it, but the protest came out as a moan so low it wasn’t heard.

There was a muted, rhythmic sound of a machine beeping, keeping time with the throbbing of blood being pumped through her ruined body. Every pulse was torment. Every breath was agony.

Images of the massacre of her family, most of the clan, slid across her mind like a slide show followed by the gut wrenching memory of Monq’s betrayal.

“Be happy!” was the last thing she heard as she was sucked into a giant vacuum hose. Mercifully, Monq had not seen that a layer of betrayal had been added to her stunned expression. In a matter of minutes, Elora Laiken’s life, which she would have previously described as boring beyond compare, had been turned upside down and inside out. Under other circumstances her mind might have begun trying to sort through these events and make sense of them, but pain trumps processing. And there was pain.

Perhaps she was screaming. She thought she might have been, but nothing could be heard above the roar. Over and over again she was beaten by the giant tumbler. Newly formed bruises, cuts, and abrasions became bigger bruises, cuts, and abrasions every thirty seconds until there was no part of her body that wasn’t bleeding, broken, or swelling. At times she thought she might have heard a thump every time the tumbler carried her up and dropped her again, but it was probably just the brain filling in blanks. Just as she had begun begging the gods to kill her and end it, she was blinded by a bright light, felt a blast of cold air, and was slammed onto a hard surface.

After a few seconds of stillness she realized she had stopped moving. That’s when the true punishment began. The pain was beyond describable, beyond mortal capacity to bear. But, through the curtain of anguish, she thought she heard voices, muffled, maybe far away. The noise in the machine had left her hearing partially impaired. If she thought she would live and be whole again, she might have cared.

The only constant was pain. Relentless, excruciating pain.

She might have been in that swirling tunnel for minutes or hours or days. Trauma overrides all sense of time passage. She remembered a sudden burst of frigid air that instantly chilled her wet body and, as a parting insult, she was dropped on a cold, smooth, surface that was hard as rock.

What little wind was left in her lungs was knocked out of her on impact. At first she couldn’t inhale and thought – hoped - she would expire from that. But, just when her vision was going dark, her body involuntarily dragged in an agonizing, ragged breath.

There were muffled voices. She tried to look around, but even the tiniest movement was restricted by pain, breakage, and swelling. Breathing hurt. Moving eyeballs hurt. She thought she was curled into the fetal position, but couldn’t be sure. Through wet strands of hair she saw a blood-covered arm lying on the floor in front of her face. Beyond that, large boots moved into view; well worn, brown, leather with squared-off toes.

First, she tried raising herself on an elbow, but fell back when her wet forearm slipped out from under her. Once again her body slammed against the stone floor. She probably hadn’t moved an eighth of an inch, an action that would have been imperceptible to onlookers.

The voices were saying, “…fuck. What is that?”

Next she tried to roll over onto a shoulder blade to get an idea where she was and who was speaking. Her first thought was that it must be assassins who had singled her out and were keeping her alive for ransom or torture. She opened her mouth to scream from the shooting pain of rolling over, but all that came out was a groan that sounded like it had originated somewhere else.

From the new position she could see blurred shapes. Oddly, she didn’t get the sense that she was in danger or that they meant her harm even though she thought she heard one voice say, “Kill it now”. Surely she could not be the “it” to which they referred.

She reached out to a large shape in dark colors, holding her hand toward the figure until her fingers slowly began to curl under involuntarily as if all muscle control wilted away with the last of her energy. Just before losing consciousness, she remembered thinking that was very likely the last thing she would ever do and she welcomed the peaceful escape of the silent blackness.

Suddenly she felt herself being pulled and lifted roughly, aggravating her injuries, jabbing the wounds, making the pain even worse than before. In her mind she was screaming. Just let me die. Please. Just let me be still for a minute. And die.

When her body came to rest it was against a surface softer and warmer than the stone floor. She was being jostled, pressed into the upper body of someone who now carried her. She smelled aftershave, a hint of cigar, and felt the timbre of a masculine voice murmuring assurances about being okay, calmly, but breathlessly.

The recovery room nurse looked at her face, noticed she was awake and said cheerfully, in a strange accent, “Hey there. How you doin'?”

Elora tried to say, “Hurts,” but through torn and swollen lips, it came out more like a hiss, “urrrrzzz”.

“I know, sweetheart. We’re taking care of you though. In just a minute you’re going to get some really good sleep.”

Now that she was lucid and responding to questions, they would grant the boon of deliverance drugs; drugs that temporarily allow the sweet mercy of sleep. She tried to ask for the locket, but, before she could make herself understood, she was claimed by a blissful wave of oblivion.

***

BLACK SWAN FIELD TRAINING MANUAL
Section I: Chapter 1, #1
The plural of vampire is vampire.

The Order of the Black Swan maintained fifteen operations facilities for paranormal investigations around the world. Jefferson Unit was located in the middle of Fort Dixon in New Jersey. There were a lot of advantages in housing an installation in a military no-fly zone with a doubly secure perimeter. Military personnel on base knew no more than that it was a Top Secret annex. It was forty five minutes from New York by train and seven minutes by whister.

It was named after Thomas Jefferson and funded in perpetuity with proceeds from his estate. He had personally experienced a paranormal event that shaped his spiritual and political perspective and believed that the future depended upon a greater understanding of mysteries that are denied by the collective while continuing to lurk on the edge of human consciousness.

For well over two hundred years the Foundation had worked with a series secret government liaisons, each serving an appointment for life or until a violation of the mandatory vow of secrecy ended their... appointment.

B Team had been trained to deal with several kinds of threats unknown to the general human population. One of those threats, their specialty in fact, was vampire. Knowing where to hunt vampire was easy. They like cities that stay open late with lots of pedestrian traffic. That narrows the hunting territory down a lot. In the Western Hemisphere, New York City was the number one qualifier.

Catalonius C. Monq was teaching at M.I.T. when he was recruited by Black Swan. They offered him unlimited funds and support for research in exchange for cutting edge innovation and weaponry. He was part philosopher, part inventor, part chemist, and part magician although he would never list the last descriptor on a resume. He also had enough training in psychiatry to function as resident shrink when necessary.

The death of a knight was one of those occasions classified as necessary. Surviving team members dealt with cross currents of grief and confronting the stark reality of their own mortality, at risk on every rotation of duty. That was why Monq was present in the Chamber for the debriefing when the “event” occurred. Hearing the recounting of the circumstances of death first hand meant that he would be prepared should team members arrive at his door one day looking for something needed, but not named.

He had attended many such debriefings over the years, counseled many bereft friends and peers, and helped many warriors come to terms with whether or not they could or should remain on active duty. It was the only part of his job that was unpleasant.

His work at Black Swan was challenging and never dull, but nothing could rival the excitement generated by the arrival of the guest who spontaneously materialized from nothing; living, organic matter springing into being where only air and space had existed the moment before.

Nothing could rival that except for the locket he’d been given after the patient was admitted to the infirmary. It was old looking, a mix of pewter and silver, decorated with a Celtic knot design. Handsome, but not particularly valuable. Certainly nothing that any adept thief would bother stealing.

What was valuable beyond his wildest dreams was the encoded data embedded in the design, an elegantly sophisticated and brilliant expression of “hide in plain sight”. It took several days to discern, then devise the means to extract and decrypt the data so that its mysteries could be analyzed.

It contained a lifelong journal of scientific notation including experiments in the theory of interdimensional intercourse along with the postulational and philosophical musings of one Catalonius M. for Mallory Monq; a name that was much too close to be a coincidence.

If the similarity of names wasn’t already shaved too fine for synchronicity, his mother had once told him that he, himself, was almost named Catalonius Mallory Monq because of her appreciation for Thomas Mallory, but that she had conceded to her husband’s wish to honor his late father, Chester. Had his mother been a hair more insistent, he would have been named Catalonius M. Monq, exactly like the owner of the journal.

At the moment he was the only one who knew the locket was something more than a simple personal effect and selfishly wanted a little more time alone with the precious find.

The data underwent thorough analysis along with blood and tissue samples drawn from the bearer of the locket. Within five days he could say with certainty that the information harvested was mind boggling even for someone such as himself who dealt in the supernaturally improbable every day. Knowing he couldn’t continue to keep a discovery of this magnitude to himself any longer, he scheduled a private meeting with Sovereign Sol in his sub basement level suite of office, labs, testing ranges, and living quarters.

The elevator opened promptly at three. Clocks could be set by Sol’s schedule. Monq welcomed him into the lab where he had been conducting the analysis, dismissed his assistants, and invited Sol to make himself comfortable in a wheeled, desk chair. Monq and Sol had a congenial, business relationship and occasionally collaborated.

Monq began with an intriguing tidbit - the near identical match between his name and that of the locket’s creator. When Monq paused to wait for a reaction, Sol emitted a small grunt as if to say, “If you’re waiting for me to emote, you’ll have to do better than that.”

“Among my counterpart’s notations was the theory of travel between dimensions and detailed specs on a device he was building to attempt such a journey. There was no indication that it had been tested or that there were plans to do so. The incident could have been a lab accident or there may have been some catalyst. We’ll know more when we can talk to the visitor.” Unsure how much technical information would interest Sol, Monq decided to give him the lecture and then dumb it down later if necessary.

“In order to explain what has happened, or what I speculate has happened, I need to tell you a story about P-Brane.” Monq’s eyes darted to an erasable board. He stood and wheeled the board closer, grabbed a blue marker, and spelled out P-Brane. “It’s a spatially extended mathematical concept that appears in string theory. The variable “P” refers to the number of spatial dimensions of the brane. String theory proposes eleven dimensions, but there could be multiple layers between dimensions vibrating at different rates which would make the number exponentially inconceivable.”

Monq sat down. “Did you ever play a musical instrument?”

“Trumpet. High school.”

“Okay then. As you know, musical scale doesn’t slide from a perfect middle C to a C sharp. There is a continuum range that exists between each step in the scale. That’s why piano tuners are so specialized. Perfect pitch means targeting a note and hitting it within its arbitrarily assigned center without wandering over or under looking for it. Most of us may not be able to distinguish all the infinitesimal changes in tone between C and C sharp, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

Sol nodded his understanding, prompting Monq to continue.

“This event is proof that there are multiple dimensions that parallel our own in similar, but not necessarily identical ways.

I believe our guest upstairs has come to us from another version of life as we live it. My findings indicate that the physical damage was caused, at least partly, from pushing a body designed for a different vibration, a different experience of reality, through the P-Brane. The fabric of her cells is slightly denser. Not much, but the tiniest variation would create the effect of being wedged through a giant cheese grater.”