The Fifth Clan (5 page)

7

Long Beach, California: February 4, 2005

“I was born to this world in the year 1678, I am now three hundred and twenty seven years old. I have only been a vampire for three hundred and nine,” I said, pausing to take a sip of my bourbon. “I don’t know where I was born, only that my earliest memories are of Ireland and I lived there until I was eighteen years old when Threntü found me and took me to the Council.”

“The Council? Vampires have a governing body?”

“Of course. How else are we to avoid slipping back into war between the clans?” I asked.

“Clans?” she asked, leaning forwards on the couch, interest clearly evident on her face and in her posture.

“There are four that have survived the centuries. Many died out during the War Times.”

“Those were harsh times,” Claus interrupted. “You’re too young to have seen them Gabriel but I was alive before the Brotherhood was created and I remember the wars. All the fighting, struggling to stay alive when we had to worry about being hunted by humans and by our own kind.”

“You’re a vampire too?” she asked, looking over at Claus.

He flashed her a tooth filled grin and his eyes began to shine a distinct golden color. “No. I am a werewolf.”

She gulped and looked away from him, urging me silently to continue my story.

“Five hundred years ago the four oldest vampires, head of the individual clans came together with the oldest Werewolf, leader of all the wolf packs, and they struck up an alliance that came to be known as The Brotherhood of Vampires and Werewolves. The alliance was a peace treaty of sorts and the four vampires and head wolf became the council, the governing body that kept the treatise intact and ensured our continued survival.”

“At the time that I was created Threntü, leader of the Wind Clan, spoke to the other three heads and convinced them that
they needed a figurehead, something to show to the vampires of the world a united leading force.”

“What do you mean?”

“One vampire, created from all four clans, gifted with the special abilities of all of them. One vampire that would embody and represent all the clans in one physical form.”

“You?”

“Precisely. I was turned by all four heads at the same instant. I am gifted with all their special abilities making me a unique vampire. There is no other creature in the world like what I am nor what I can potentially become.”

“How do you mean?”

“I should perhaps break down the clans for you. The Vayun, or Wind Clan, have the ability to make their bodies extremely light and with a minor control over the wind they can float or hover. A kind of controlled falling really, it can’t exactly be called flight.”

“The Shadu, or Shades, are exactly like they sound. They can make their bodies appear like a moving shadow. They’ve still got all their physical mass but they go shade and stand in a dark corner and they are completely indistinguishable from any other shadow or dark patch.”

“The Vasith are the telepaths. Mind powers are their element. Their bodies are not particularly powerful in comparison to another vampire but they’re still physically stronger and faster than any human.”

“The Kargoni, named after their founding father, Kargon, have the ability to change their physical features to look like anyone else.” To illustrate I glanced over at Claus and slowly morphed the features of my face to his own, letting her watch the slow change. She gasped as I opened my now ice blue eyes.

“The voice however does not change,” I continued, my voice issuing out of Claus’ mouth. Something which must have really confused the hell out of her. To spare her I let my features shift back into my own, taking great care that they really were my features, and not my imaginations.

“So what clan do you belong to technically?” she asked.

“I belong to all of them, and none of them. See, the flaw to Threntüs’ plan is that while I have the abilities of all the clans, I don’t fit into any of them because I am different from them all. He hasn’t created a unifying figure with me. He’s potentially created the father of a fifth clan.”

“A fifth clan?” Claus’s voice shot up in both octave and volume to express his surprise at the suggestion of there once again being a fifth clan, one with the abilities of the other four combined. “You can’t be considered a new clan without
children, and a special ability, unique only to you and your children.”

I looked over at him and nodded. “If I ever decided to start turning people I could easily create a small group of vampires that would be able to overrun any one of the clans at any given time.”

Claus began to sweat, staring fixedly at me. “Please tell me you’re joking? You have a fifth ability? Aside from the four clans powers?” he bit out hoarsely, chest heaving up and down as he began to fall into the grips of a panic attack. Funny, I never thought I would see a werewolf subject to the fears of a normal creature. Of course a clan of vampires like me could spell the end for all werewolves if I decided that the treaty and alliance created by the founding of The Brotherhood didn’t apply anymore.

“I never said that. But it is possile if I ever began to exhibit a fifth power. I would never overrun a clan Claus,” I told him. “Calm down already, you know
dogs can’t hold their bladders when they get excited or nervous.”

He glared at me, suddenly the picture of calm in his annoyance. “That is a low blow blood sucker,” he growled.

“Look who’s talking,” I shot back. “At least I only drink a persons blood occasionally. You eat the random spleen or kidney, that’s just nasty.”

“Boys!” Rachel shouted, drawing our attention back to her. “If you two are done with the witty repartee perhaps we could get back to the matter at hand?”

“And that would be exactly?” I asked, searching my memory. I told her she was in danger, told her I was a vampire, told her about the brotherhood and Threntü and so on and so forth… What else was there?

“Why. Am. I. Here?” she growled, slowly pronouncing and biting off each world.

“Oh, right!” I perked up and my eyes lit up as the proverbial light bulb went off over my head. “Vera want’s to kill you.” I picked up my glass and took another sip.

“Who is Vera, and why does she wish to kill me?” she asked, slowly, as if she were speaking to a small child.

I glared at her. “I am not stupid you know, you don’t have to speak to me as if I’m touched in the head.”

“Then answer my question and I won’t,” she shot back at me.

“Vera is a werewolf. She and I used to be… involved,” I hedged around the topic. “She was in my loft earlier and she could smell that you’d been there. She sees me as her property and has decided that she needs to kill you to send me a message not to cheat on her.”

“Were you cheating on her?”

“I disemboweled, decapitated, maimed, mutilated, and then mauled her until she was spread over a 50 square foot room. Then I got out of dodge, knowing it’d take her a few days to pull her body back together from that kind of damage. I think the message that I was ending our relationship was rather clear.”

Rachel looked a bit green and gulped down the remains of her drink.

“So she wants to hurt me,” she said, as if confirming things for herself.

“No. She wants to kill you,” I clarified. “Slowly, painfully, and with as much attention to detail as possible.”

She turned a little more green.

“It’s ok. I won’t let her hurt you but we have to get out of town.”

“We?”

“Yes, ‘we’. Unless you want to try and fight off a four hundred and seventy five year old werewolf that can’t be killed by anything short of silver or mutilation to an extent that her body is spread too far for her to regenerate.”

“Ok where do we go?”

“Just like that?” I asked, arching an eyebrow at her.
Usually I had to knock people out after explaining my story to them.

She shrugged. “Hell, why not?” she asked. “I mean like you said, if you’d meant to hurt me you would have done so already, aside from that crack on the noggin’,” she added ruefully, gently rubbing her forehead.

“Sorry about that,” I said, feeling a bit bad for my behavior. “I was in a rush and really didn’t have time to explain things at the time.”

She studied me for a moment, sitting very still on the couch, empty glass dangling from her fingertips. “I’ll forgive you,” she said, holding the glass out to me, “if you’ll pour me another drink before we decide what it is we’re doing.”

“Your wish, madam,” I said as I sprang to my feet to accept the glass, “is my command.”

8

Long Beach, California: February 5, 2005

It took several hours of discussion and planning but eventually we were prepared to move. We needed to get out of town, we needed to do it fast, and we needed to do it unobtrusively.

“So helicopters, armored cars, and tanks are out of the question right?” I jokingly asked Claus.

He glared at me and told me in no uncertain terms, for several colorful minutes, that yes, those options were out of the question. Rachel sat and smirked at me during the entire tirade.

“Was just a question,” I muttered as I crossed my arms over my chest in a sulk.

“Are you two always two thirds of the three stooges? Or are you just entertaining me to take my mind off my imminent death?” Rachel asked, amusement clearly evident in her voice.

“He is,” I said, throwing a hand in Claus’s direction, “I’m usually more of the Jerry Lewis type of comedy.” I grinned at her as Claus threw an ashtray at me, which I ducked. “Hey, that could’ve hurt me,” I yelped.

“You’d have survived and it might have improved things if you’d taken a solid head injury.”

“Alright children.” Rachel clapped her hands to get our attention. “I think maybe we should try to stay on topic don’t you?” she asked.

“The lady has a point Gabriel,” Claus pointed out.

“That she does Claus. Shall we?”

“We shall.”

Rachel looked back and forth between us and threw her hands up into the air in a gesture of defeat.              

“I give up,” she said. She sighed heavily and dropped onto a couch.

“So we’re all set?” I asked Claus, taking pity on Rachel for the moment.

“Everything should be ready by the time you get there,” Claus assured us. “Take the scenic route though, just to be on the safe side. Ghost will be waiting for you.” He winked at me and I smiled and nodded.

“Come on Rachel, let’s get out of here. We’ve got a bit of a distance to travel yet tonight.” I turned to Claus. “Where’re your keys?”

“My keys?”

“Yeah I need to borrow your car.”

“Why can’t you take a cab?”

“Do you know how much it costs to drive all the way to San Diego from here in a cab?”

“You can afford it.”

“That’s entirely beside the point, now gimme your keys.”

We struggled for a moment as I started patting down his pockets in search of his keys. I’m sure Rachel got a good laugh out of watching the two of us bouncing around the room. Claus attempting to protect his pockets while I was determinedly searching through them.

Eventually I got a hold of them and held them high above me in triumph as I pushed him back into a chair.

“Thanks buddy, I’ll be careful not to scratch the paint. Come on Rachel, we’ve got a few hours of night left so we should
get going.”

She looked at her watch. “It’s barely Midnight, Gabriel.”

“I know, but we need to get there early so we can get on the way before there are any customers,” I said as I started for the door. “I’ve got a friend that owes me a few favors. I’ll call him when we’re on the road.”

* * * * * *

We pulled into Carlsbad somewhere around 2:30 in the morning. I’d done exactly as I’d said I would and called Beady from the freeway. Rachel had pestered me for nearly 20 minutes about him but I refused to give her any info, feeling it’d be more fun to see her reaction. After that she fell silent and sat quietly for most of the ride. I could feel the turbulent emotions rolling off of her. Fear, excitement, curiosity, helplessness and a bit of confusion.

I had thrown her a bit of a curve-ball though so I couldn’t blame her even if I’d wanted to.

“Here we are,” I said as we pulled up outside the shop.

“750cc’s?” she asked, peering through the BMW’s windshield at the neon sign above the shops door.

“Yeah. It’s a bike shop. You’ll find a fair number of surfers around here on a good day.”

“Surfing and Motorcycles don’t seem that they would mix too well to me,” she commented as we got out of the car.

“Of course not, most of them walk to the beach, we’re only about five minutes from there on a good day. Whenever they need to drive somewhere though a lot of them prefer bikes to cars. Kinda like me.”

She looked at me. “You surf?”

“Hell no. I sink like a rock in water. I can swim very well, just surfing was never my thing. I prefer heights to depths.” I walked up to the metal door and pounded on it with my fist. The resulting sound echoed throughout the interior of the shop and I heard someone cursing from the back. I smiled.

“Looks like I surprised Beady,” I commented as I listened to his footsteps approaching the door.

“Dat you, Gabe?” a muffled voice called through the door.

I raised my fist and punched the door hard enough to leave a very slight dent in the metal.

“Yah, dat’s you alrigh’. Crazy rat bastard, hold on man, lemme get da key.”

“He’ll be right with us,” I said to Rachel. While we waited I reached into my pocket and pulled out my pouch of tobacco. I rolled a cigarette and was still searching though the many
pockets on my bike jacket for my lighter when I heard a metal clang and the bolt on the door was pulled back.

“’Ere you go, man,” Beady said as he opened the door. He held out a lit propane torch to me so I shrugged and leaned forward to light my cigarette. “Dat a fatty?” he asked, squinting at the smoke.

“It’s a cig dude,” I said, dashing his hopes. “You gonna let us in?”

“Oh yeah, come on in.” He turned and headed into the dimly lit shop, the torch in his hands acting like a flashlight. Beady was born in Jamaica, and turned at the age of thirty four. Two hundred years later he still had the accent and a strange obsession with Marijuana, but I think the accent was a put on, trying to stick to his human roots.

I didn’t know Beadys’ real name, we all just called him that because of the glass beads that he kept braided into his dread-locks. I explained all of that to Rachel in an undertone as we followed him. The torch light glinted off various bits of metal and different bike parts shone in various states of polish or finish as we headed into the back.

Taking us behind the counter we followed him into a small back-room apartment, one comfortably furnished, but obviously inspired by Bob Marley. The large painting of Bob hanging on
one wall was a really good indicator. The room reeked strongly of weed.

The only thing out of place in the otherwise Jamaican stoner theme he had going on were the two Japanese Katanas standing upright on a rack against one wall. Next to that were several books on various martial arts and a folded piece of cloth that I recognized as a black belt.

“Da gear you ordered idn’t here yet, man,” Beady said as he collapsed onto a couch. He leaned forward and picked up a wooden box that he opened to reveal a plastic sandwich bag filled with what smelled like high quality weed.

“Why’s that?” I asked, calmly.

“Com’ on, man. You ask for some expensive shit. Da Colt M1911’s were easy, I got da customs wit’ da lights on em like you asked for. But da Uzi and da Rifle are gonna take a little longer. Plus I gotta have da vehicles delivered and dey won’t come in till tomorrow night, relax already.”

I glared at him as he packed a pipe and lit up, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs while Rachel made herself comfortable on a couch.

“He’s right, Gabe,” she admonished me. “I know we’re in a hurry but relax a minute. We can’t leave till tomorrow so what’re you gonna do?”

“Tear his head off and shove it up his ass?” I asked blithely as I settled into a recliner.

“Will that really accomplish anything?” she snapped. She turned her head when Beady held out the pipe to her and took it almost absently.

“Probably not but it’d make me feel better.”

“Relaaaaax, man,” Beady groaned as he expelled the smoke, dragging out the first word for nearly ten seconds. “It ain’t gonna do no good ta get riled up so just take it easy until tomorrow. Den you and da girlie can be on your merry ways.”

“Hand that over,” I demanded as Rachel finished taking a hit off the pipe. The next two hours passed in a haze of smoke and conversation, catching up on old times with Beady, and informing Rachel on more of what she’d fallen into when she fell into my bed.

It was nearing five in the morning when the attack happened. The window in the back burst in, shattered glass flying across the room as two men jumped into the room. I looked up at them, their entrance not quite registering in my weed soaked brain. Until one of them stabbed me in the chest.

That got my attention rather quickly, and my reaction was immediate, and violent.

I grabbed the wrist that was attached to the hand that was holding the knife that was lodged in my chest…

Sorry, still a bit baked as I’m writing this.

Anyway, I jumped to my feet, clearing the back of the couch as I did so, the werewolf’s, for that is what they were, wrist still locked tightly in my fist. The knife lodged in my chest came out as I moved and I twisted hard. I heard bones crack and muscle tear inside the captured wolfs wrist. Reaching out I locked my free hand around his throat and crushed his windpipe. Dropping him unceremoniously to the couch I turned and snatched something out of the air as it came flying towards my face.

The second wolf lunged at me and I lashed out with whatever it was that I held, jabbing him sharply in the throat once and again in the stomach. He made a strangled sound as his voice box was crushed by the blow and one hand wrapped around the oblong shape that I held, when I pulled it back it separated and I finally realized what I held.

I spun the blade in my hand and stabbed the werewolf, the silver edged weapon sinking into the soft space between the shoulder and the neck. He howled and fell back, screaming in pain as his friend slowly got to his feet.

“Beady,” I yelled.

“I’m on it, man,” he said leaping onto the back of the first wolf, a second sword in one hand. I stalked the wolf that I’d stabbed through the room as he scrambled back away from me. He wasn’t fast enough though. I jumped on him, grabbed the hilt of the sword and ripped it out of his body. Lifting him with one hand I threw him back through the window out into the back parking lot, then jumped out after him.

Headlights snapped on as soon as my feet landed on the blacktop and I lifted one hand to shield my eyes from the glare. Indistinct shapes moved about in front of me. I couldn’t make out how many but I didn’t really think that it mattered. I could smell them, and they’d made one fatal mistake.

They were in human form.

I lowered my hands, absently stabbing the moaning wolf at my feet in the head just because his incessant whining was killing my high as well as giving me a headache.

“We’re here to bring you in, Gabriel,” Someone said from the darkness.

“Under who’s orders?” I asked, calmly.

“Now, you don’t need to know that,” the voice said.

“Oh but why not?” I asked. “If I’m going to kill you and your friends I’d at least like to know who I have to thank for the entertainment, and who to repay for the work I’m going to have to do cleaning up your corpses.”

“It’s six to one Gabriel,” the voice scoffed, it was male, sounded young too. “You’re not that good.”

I grinned. “Second mistake.”

“What was that?”

“Your second, fatal, mistake,” I said. “You’ve told me how many of you there are. And you have no idea how good I am.”

I threw out one hand, the knife in my sleeve dropping into my palm and I tossed it at the headlights, shattering one, and then a second, reducing the bright glare to almost nothing. They moved in. I circled away from the building, giving myself space to move and analyzing the situation. Grim always taught me to analyze when I was younger, it was a hard learned lesson, but one I never forgot after that night.

“Ok,” I said, keeping up a commentary as I moved. “Six of you, one little ol’ me. Six werewolves, in human form, one, one-of-a-kind vampire. Still so sure of your odds?
”
Three on my right two on my left, where’s the sixth
?
I thought
.
Can’t see him but he’s gotta be somewhere behind the ca
r
.  I could see now that the vehicle in question was a black SUV of some kind, cars were never really my thing.

Two of the wolves rushed me, one from either side while a third attempted to circle around behind me. I moved forwards, rushing past the two before they could meet me and vaulted over
the car, coming down behind it directly in front of the wolf, exactly where I’d thought he would be.

“Still not going to tell me who sent you?” I asked as I sank the blade of the sword into his gut. He grunted and blood dribbled from his lips to stain the front of his expensive black dress shirt. I smirked. “I didn’t think so.” I pulled up, cutting him in half from waist to shoulder and spun around to catch the blade of a wolf behind me as their leader fell to the floor in a spray of blood and his own internal organs.