Shining in Crimson: Empire of Blood Book One (A Dystopian Vampire Novel) (22 page)

The burly man pulled Toby away from the scene, still holding him by the arms. He muttered something to himself about seeing something like this coming from Toby all along. Toby was completely unsurprised to see another staff member waiting outside of the safe room as the man pulled him around the hall. The other staff member, a short, stocky, younger man opened the door while the burly man pushed Toby inside. The door clicked shut as Toby caught himself from falling face first on the floor.

After what had probably been only twenty minutes, but felt like forever to Toby, a knock came from outside the door. Toby had been lying on the bed doing the only thing there was to really do in this room: think. He looked up at the door to see who would enter. He knew it was too early in the day for any of The Enforcers to pay him a visit so he wasn't worried too much about who it might be. A moment later the door opened to reveal Mr. Sandburn, one of the senior staff members. Toby met him the night he was "admitted" as they called it. He wasn't completely sure, but he thought it had been Mr. Sandburn whose face he spit in that night. The middle-aged man looked down at him severely, the lines of stress showing on his face. His blue eyes attempted to bore into Toby, but failed miserably as Toby had more horrendous things to deal with at the moment.

"Toby, we need to talk. I'm sure you know what about," he said with deep authority. Toby merely looked through him as he wondered how long it would be until the news came on and if he would even get to eat dinner in the cafeteria after what had happened. Sandburn sat down at the foot of the bed and cleared his throat.

"I know you are under a lot of stress. I can only imagine how you must be feeling. But you could have killed that boy, Toby. Do you understand that?" he demanded. Toby couldn't help but feel a spark of defensiveness.

"He was wearing vampire teeth and last night he broke in here and beat the shit out of me!" Toby realized his eyes were exposing the extent of his pain by shedding massive blinding tears in quick gushes. Mr. Sandburn's face tightened with disbelief.

"How dare you make up such
nonsense.
No one but staff members
have
keys to this room and they are all of exemplary reputation!" he shouted, standing up midway through. "I suggest you sit in here and think about the consequences of hurting people and telling lies. You are
this
close," he held his thumb and pointer finger a centimeter apart, "to ending up in Necropolis like your father! Lucky for you Craig Thompson only suffered a mild flesh injury and had no concussion. However, he will have to spend the night in the hospital because of you," he said and then looked at the door. "Someone will be here to escort you to the cafeteria when it is time for dinner. Until further notice, you will spend all of your time either in this room or with a chaperone." Then, he turned and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. Toby lay back down, setting his head gently onto his pillow. Then, he released more of the emotional burden from within his chest and sobbed fiercely as he curled his body into a ball. His weeping worsened as his mind filled with a primal simplification of what he was feeling. Over and over the words
I want my Daddy
repeated in his mind and eventually he cried himself to sleep.

Toby woke to the sound of the door of his room closing. He flung into a sitting position to assess his situation. The room was empty of anyone other than himself. But one thing caught his attention after a moment's scrutiny. A piece of paper lay crumpled at the foot of the bed. He reached forward and unraveled the paper ball. In crude scribbles much like the artwork left on his door the other day, a message for him had been written. It said, "You're going to pay for Thompson!" and underneath in much bigger letters was scribbled, "Tonight!" Both exclamation points were almost ripped into the paper by its author. Toby was torn between his fear and the anger he felt at that moment toward Mr. Sandburn for refusing to listen to him. After a few minutes, the fear won over and Toby lay watching the door, his stomach twisted in knots.

Chapter 18

The Awakening

T
he sense of time in this new realm was proving to be unfalteringly chaotic to Simon. Either it moved incredibly fast or incredibly slow. He never had an interest in ancient history and was now finding what he saw around him to change this to his very core. The centuries had begun to speed up so much that the time Simon experienced Ishan’s mortal life seemed to last longer than the last seven centuries had. He was now seeing the ancient Mayan port city of
Tulum
through Ishan’s eyes as Ishan continued his search for the place of the ancestors.

Ishan had started his search shortly after hearing rumors from some of his kind who had traveled through
Rome
around the time the
Roman Empire
began to crumble. It wasn't the first time Ishan heard rumors of his kind having settlements in a strange land where sophisticated human civilization hadn't yet flourished.
A place where primitive natives still ruled the land and relied on their own hunting skills to survive.
Many of the tribes worshipped the vampires as gods and some of them told stories passed down from many generations of one who was greater than all of the ancestors and human vampires. This ancestor was said to be able to make the earth quake and to kill men without lifting a finger, just by willing them to die. The stories had been told to them by several different groups of vampires and they all seemed to fit together to make a whole.

Ishan had chartered a ship, a crew of human vampires, and a few humans to take him out west to find this strange land he had heard so many rumors about. That was how he arrived at Tulum. When they found the city, he ordered his crew to hide themselves in the nearby jungles and await his next command. At first, the people would have nothing to do with him, but he learned the native language quickly and began to use his gift to heal the sick. He healed many and so the people there thought he was a great medicine man sent from the gods. However, the Mayan society was run by its own medicine men
who
held great power. Fearful they would lose their power and following to Ishan, they told their people he was really a demon. Of course, this lie could have easily been confirmed in the minds of the Maya by simply catching Ishan in the act of feeding. It wasn't long before he found himself having to leave before the medicine men found him in his place of slumber. In the time he spent there, he only found one piece of worthwhile information anyhow. A raft floated ashore one day containing a very sick man. He was as primitive as the Maya but from some other place. Through vague hand gestures and drawing pictures in sand he claimed to be from land to the northeast. The Maya did not travel the sea and knew little about northern cultures. The man's bronze skin was much like the Maya but his tall stature and the furs he wore were quite different.

The man had been brought to Ishan to be healed, but he was too deep in delirium from a fever much like the one that had taken the life of Ishan’s father. Ishan had, for several centuries, hated the gift of healing he’d been given in what he then called his "afterlife." He had spent long periods of time brooding over whether his gift might have been able to heal his father had he possessed it before the fever became too strong. As the man was close to death, he seemed to see Ishan for what he truly was and called out the word "Stikini" as he sat up and pointed at Ishan, his head and chest drenched in sweat. It could have just been a hallucination, but it was all Ishan had to go on. So when he left Tulum, he knew he would be sailing northeast. If the man
had
seen Ishan for what he really was and Stikini was the word for his kind he must have seen others like him somewhere.

Ishan and his crew set sail one late night headed for whatever land they would find to the northeast. They brought along one of the Maya medicine men and some of his loyal guards to feed from on their journey. After a voyage of many nights floating along the sea only lit by the unimaginable number of stars hanging in the sky, they saw land in the distance ahead. They made the calculations necessary to change their trajectory in order to arrive at the shore the next night instead of the morning. Ishan and his brethren would have been quite vulnerable if they had arrived on land by the light of day.

As the land came closer and closer, Ishan watched it impatiently. The desire to understand himself and his kind had, by this time, overtaken even his thirst for blood. If there was an answer to find here, he would find it or die trying. As the ship hit land, Ishan commanded the unliving of his crew to join him for a search of the immediate area. While the living worked toward getting the rope ladder down to the ground from the hull of the mighty craft, Ishan and the six other vampires of his crew jumped down and landed in the swamp with catlike motions. They spread out with Ishan taking the middle as they searched the beach. There were sand dunes here and there coming up from the ground. The array of scents in this place was confusing. Ishan could smell the sand and the ocean from behind him, but he could also smell fresh water up ahead. But another scent caught his attention as he made his way up a nearby palm tree to look out ahead. It was the scent of the ancestors. He had only found a handful of them in all of the centuries since one of them had bitten and infected him with the venom, but it had been enough to allow him to recognize the scent. The smell was overwhelming in this place.
Stronger than he had ever experienced before.

Before he was completely down from the tree, it seemed to explode out from between his arms. The next second, he was falling to the ground and had to maneuver himself so he would land on his feet. When he looked up, he saw a human vampire he’d never seen before. The vampire was dressed much like the man who had washed ashore in Tulum, only his eyes were black with blood lust. Ishan put his hands out in front of him in a gesture of peace. Oblivious to this, the vampire jumped from the top of the tree and swung his arms inward in order to use his claws on Ishan. Ishan grabbed his arms and, with a great show of strength, he managed to break the vampire's fall by only holding his arms. The vampire tried to squirm but Ishan held him. Then, he tried speaking in all the languages he knew in an attempt to get through to him. But none of them seemed to spark anything but a high-pitched screeching from the man. The sound reminded him of the ancestors. Finally after a while, Ishan let him go and the vampire turned away and ran.

Ishan waited a few minutes giving him a head start, hoping to trick him into thinking he wouldn't be followed. Then when the man's footfalls sounded as though they were far enough ahead, Ishan sped after him. The reason the smell of fresh water had been so strong dawned on him right as his foot slammed full on into the marsh, making a loud splash. He then remembered he hadn't heard the other vampire splash at all. He spun around to see a large crowd of human vampires lunging forward to grab hold of him. The next thing he knew, he was fighting them off left and right purely by instinct. But there were too many of them and before long he was worn out and they carried him away. Once again, he tried to speak to them in all of the languages he knew, but the rest of the human vampires only seemed to speak in those strange screeching sounds the ancestors made.

After a while of traveling, they arrived at a large cave. The vampires put him down and seemed to be surprised that he was not struggling to get away. Upon entering the cave, Ishan noticed from the echoes that it was a very complex maze of tunnels and chambers. After a few moments, he felt himself lose control of his body, yet his body continued to move. It followed the others regardless of what he told it to do. The lack of control was nearly enough to cause him panic. But before he could, he remembered the stories of the one who could kill men by willing it and wondered if this strange force making him move now came from that very vampire. The tunnel they followed ended in what Ishan’s best guess was probably the middle of the cave system. It was a large open chamber with stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

There was a clear center to the chamber where the stalactites and stalagmites had been removed and a sort of altar was on the ground. Ishan found himself walking right toward the altar. The feeling of panic crept back into him. As he came closer to the altar, he noticed another cave in the far wall beyond it. He wasn't completely sure since he couldn't even control his own ability to focus, but he thought he saw movement. His body began to kneel down on the altar. He saw more movement coming from the tunnel. His head dropped as if to bow and he saw a small, pale pair of feet walking toward him from the cave beyond the throne. When the feet were right in front of Ishan, he felt his head begin to
raise
slowly. His view moved up the bare, smooth ankles. They connected to equally soft legs that slanted slightly outward as they came up to hips covered by a colorful, strangely weaved garment. The hips rounded up to a thin abdomen which slanted up to the chest in a v pattern. The navel was bare and the breasts were covered with a matching multicolored garment which strapped around the delicate milky neck which was draped in long, black wavy hair. Her face was the most beautiful thing
Ishan and Simon had ever seen. It was a perfect teardrop shape with upward slanted brows and shimmering irises of burgundy. Her lips were slight as she smiled revealing her fangs. The fangs caught Ishan’s eyes immediately now that he had some control of his body again. They were twice as long as a normal ancestor's fangs. To his surprise, she held out her hand as if for him to kiss it. He leaned forward unsure if he were doing the right thing. She spoke.