Dead Matter

19

Had I been wandering the halls of the castle, no doubt taking several wrong turns, I would have spent a good half hour finding Brandon’s private chambers. With Aidan dragging me by the arm at vampiric speed, however, we were there in seconds. He threw open the old wooden doors leading into them at the top of the stairs and entered the main room.

The lights were low, candles being the only source of illumination I could see being used. Several figures were at the far end of the room, sitting by the unused flat-screen. They turned to look at us and then returned to their conversation. Evidently, a lowly human being vamp-handled around the castle wasn’t much of a concern for them, which only angered me further. Aidan let go of me. I crossed the floor, pulling out my bat, extending it. I swung at an ebon dancer figurine sitting on one of the many pedestals throughout the room. It sailed end over end across the room, but never hit the ground. One of the vampires blurred into action as he crossed the room, catching it like a football in both hands. In the next instance, one of the other ones was standing in front of me. He looked like a man in his fifties, a tall man who had seen a lot of life… or taken it. His hand flashed out and he grabbed my bat, twisting it until something inside one of its three extendable sections popped with a metallic clang.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded, his eyes full of fury.

There was a commotion behind me as Beatriz and Connor arrived via Vamp Express. The vampire menacing me didn’t even turn to look at them. His eyes remained on me.

I spied Brandon over by a large tricked-out safe with gears all along the outside of it. He turned to look at us, and the vampire in front of me chanced a look at him while keeping me in his sight.

“Shall I dispose of this one, my lord?” the vampire said, the vehemence in his voice digging into me. I could feel the tug of his eyes as he tried to put me in his thrall. Thanks to some of my Fraternal Order of Goodness training, I was able to pull my eyes away, but the fact that he had tried it only increased my fury. I let go of my bat and shoved at the vampire instead. Hitting his chest was like shoving at concrete. The vampire didn’t move, but he seemed absolutely surprised that I had even gone there.

“You can’t dispose of me,” I said, pushing at him once more, again not moving him. “You dicks think I’m some sort of chosen one.” I pushed again. “Which means you need me more than I need you, so I don’t think you’re going to do shit to me.”

The vampire raised his eyebrows and gave an evil smile. He looked to Brandon. “Is he truly part of the prophecy?” the vampire asked. “Does it say anything about needing all of him? Surely he won’t need both of his arms!”

My hands were in midpush, but I let them fall to my side as the implication of what he was suggesting hit me. I felt the fire of my fury die a little and turned to look at their leader.

Brandon smiled at the vampire, his eyeteeth thankfully retracted. It did worlds to calm me. He looked to the vampire directly in front of me. “That will be enough, Gerard. Give the man his toy back.”

Gerard held my broken bat out and I took it back from him. While Beatriz and Connor crossed the room, I tried to collapse it, but it didn’t want to give. Finally, I pressed the end of it against the floor and leaned my weight on it. Something inside it gave and it collapsed down to its closed state. I thumbed the catch of it to safety lock and hung it from my belt, hoping it would remain collapsed, but I was dubious.

Aidan walked over to Brandon. “I had to bring him here,” he said. “Simon wanted to leave, but I couldn’t allow that, not with the prophecies at stake.”

Brandon looked at me. “I should think you would want to stay,” he said, “prophecy or not. Nicholas tells me there are some complications with freeing your girlfriend from our building’s systems…?”

I nodded, fighting my anger. “News travels fast.”

“At the speed of flight,” Nicholas said, scaring the shit out of me as he stepped out of the pack of shadows that was Brandon’s guests. As usual, he was working very hard not to look at either Aidan or Beatriz. “It appears, as I’ve said, that we have a ghost in the machine.”

Brandon remained calm. “And I trust you’ll be taking care of this situation?” he asked.

“Of course,” Nicholas said. He turned to me, his face serious. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to the building system checks.”

Before I could thank him, Nicholas blurred away out of the chamber.

Brandon changed his focus to me. “You seem agitated,” he said.

“I don’t particularly like being told I have to help you with your prophecy,” I said, “especially when I’m feeling a little like a captive here.” I shot Aidan a look, but his face was unapologetic.

“My apologies,” Brandon said. “The boy is a bit impetuous. He only meant to help the situation, I’m sure. Would it be safe to say you’re also feeling a little distressed by Jane’s situation?”

As much as I was worried about Jane, I had to focus on the situation at hand. “You want to circle this back around to why you think I’m part of this whole prophecy thing, Brandon?”

At my mention of the prophecy, the assembly became quite excited and their murmurs of reaction came out in a rapid burst of conversation among themselves.

“As far as Mr. Canderous being involved with the prophecy,” he said over the gathered crowd, quieting them, “what he said is true. It seems he has the power to read the history of objects, objects like books of prophecy.” Brandon turned to Connor and me, gesturing to a small group of chairs facing the large open hearth nearby. “Please, be seated.”

Connor and I moved to sit, but Aidan stayed standing where he was with Beatriz. Brandon walked back to the large gear-covered contraption in the far corner of his chambers. With his back blocking our view, Brandon began working mechanisms along the front side of the box. Gears and levers whirred and turned for several minutes, cutting the silence of the dark room. When he was finished, Brandon turned to us holding an ancient book covered in a faded stretch of something I hoped wasn’t human skin.

“I hope that’s bound in leather,” I said.

Brandon shrugged. “Depends on what you define as animal, now, doesn’t it?”

Brandon moved to a low stone table in the center of the chairs and placed the book carefully down.

“Story hour?” Connor asked, snapping. “Oh, good. Tell us the one about the vampires who kidnapped my brother.”

Brandon held up his index finger. “Technically, it wasn’t vampires. It was freelance gypsies, as I’m sure Mr. Canderous could tell you, but yes, we did the hiring.” He put a hand down on the book, almost caressing it. “This is our book of prophecy, or what’s left of it, anyway. You see, long before my time, there was a vampire with the gift of foresight. Wisely, he took the time to write his visions down.”

“Are we talking about a Nosferatu Nostradamus?” I asked.

Connor, Aidan, and Brandon all looked at me.

“Sorry,” I said. “Defense mechanism. Just trying to ease the tension back down in the room here…”

Brandon continued. “The book told us of what was to come. Bloodshed, for both our kinds, on an epic scale. One that would eventually see the end of me and my kind, but not before taking a massive toll on humanity. New York City would be reduced to a graveyard.”

I stood up, confused. “And so you kidnapped Aidan to get to me? That seems a little… indirect.”

“A book of prophecy is not a book of science, as I’m sure you and your colleagues at the D.E.A. are well aware. It is filled with much information, but there is much that must be read and calculated in the stars to get to any number of truths. At the time we took the boy, it was simply a matter of grabbing the right person at the right place at the right time. How that would exactly play out isn’t foretold, but over time we spent years working the prophecies out. When Aidan showed up with you two the other day and we found out his own brother was a member of an organization dedicated to keeping the paranormal peace in Manhattan, well, it seemed a natural sign. We saw our savior.”

“But what the hell do I have to do with all this?” I asked. “Selfish of me, I know, but I’d love to know.”

“Well, apparently, you’re supposed to save us all,” Brandon said, giving me a weak smile of encouragement.

Connor held up his hands in surrender, raising his voice. “Wait, wait… You took my brother from me for twenty years and turned him into a vampire because you think my work partner’s going to be your savior?”

He stood up and turned away in frustration, pushing over one of the heavy chairs next to him.

“You see?” Brandon said, walking over to pick up the chair. “This is why we needed to take him! So you’d have an investment in at least one of our kind. Without Aidan, you would have already stormed off to your department and started the end of it all.”

I shook my head. “All this to avoid World War Three, eh?”

“Try to see it from my perspective,” Brandon said, continuing to speak to Connor. “Aidan is your family. When he was taken from you, imagine all the things you would have done to save him if you could have. Now imagine our kind in that position, with all those familial ties amplified thousands of times from relationships lasting several human lifetimes. One thing in the book is clear… We need to avoid the mutual destructions of our races.”

“How’s that, now?” I said.

“As I have said, prophecies are not an exact science. With your psychometric power, you can read the past and get the true intent of what our vampire prophet meant. You can figure out how our mutual salvation comes about.”

As Connor stood next to me in silence, my mind reeled. Tremendous pressure, tremendous guilt, crushed down on me, almost too much to bear. Because the vampires had unknowingly wanted to get to me, Connor had lost a brother for years, eventually driving him to the madness of the last few months. The fact that I was somehow responsible for that tore me apart. “I… I have to get out of here,” I said, standing and heading for the door.

“I’m sorry?” Brandon said. He looked a little insulted with the way I was behaving in front of him, but I didn’t really care.

“Look,” I said. “The thing is I don’t really do this whole prophecy thing. And I have a little… no, a lot of trouble buying into the fact that your salvation lies on my shoulders.”

Brandon looked perplexed. “But the book says you’re supposed to use your powers to ‘read’ it…”

“I need time to think about this,” I said, waving him off.

Brandon looked a little angry. “What do you mean you don’t buy into precognition? For heaven’s sake, you practically possess the power of postcognition!”

Connor gave a weary sigh as he digested everything. “He’s got a point, kid,” Connor said.

“Reading the past,” I said, “that’s one thing. It’s like videotape. It’s recorded… It’s already happened. But the future? It’s unknowable.”

“But,” Connor continued, “you’ve seen it happen before. You’ve seen the future read.”

“What?” I said, laughing out loud. “From Mrs. Teasley as she sits in the back of the Lovecraft Café reading piles of cold, used coffee grounds? I’d be hard-pressed to call her predictions anything close to accurate. It’s mostly guesswork.”

Aidan turned to me. “I was made this way for a reason…”

“That’s just bad luck,” I said. I was burning with anger now. “Not everything happens for a reason. That’s a crock of shit, just like predestination. The future isn’t written yet.” I turned to Brandon. “And besides, if I’m supposed to believe your prophecy is real and you know the future so well, why did you send a letter to scare Connor away from ever meeting Aidan?”

Brandon’s eyes narrowed. “What letter?”

Connor crossed to him. “Allow me,” Connor said. He dug into his trench coat, rustled around, and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He held it out to Brandon, but I grabbed it from him, unfolding and reading it.

“It says: ‘Aidan is ours. Stop looking or he dies.’ ”

Brandon snatched it away from me in a blink and it was like magic as it disappeared from my hand. He looked at the words on the page. Aidan joined him and read it over his shoulder.

“I see,” Brandon said when he was done. He handed the letter back to Connor. “Interesting, but I didn’t send you this letter.”

“Yeah, right,” Connor said, taking it. He folded it and slipped it back inside his coat. “Well, someone sent it…”

“It seems we have enemies from within,” Brandon said. “Clearly someone is trying to sabotage our efforts toward a lasting peace.”

“Good luck with that,” Aidan said. Everyone turned to look at him. “All I mean is… no one can stop what will happen. It’s prophecy; all of this is written. It’s inevitable, right?”

“We can wait out inevitability,” Brandon said with a laugh. “Or have you forgotten what we are?”

“Listen,” I said. “I doubt the streets are going to run red with blood tonight, right? No one other than the two of us humans knows you’re here. I personally don’t buy into your prophecy, but either way, I’m a bit too exhausted to be your savior even if you’ve interpreted your book correctly. I’m leaving. Just let me get the hell out of here and get some sleep. I’m not tackling your fancy book or saving anything or anyone tonight.”

I walked off toward the chamber doors. Nobody moved to stop me.

“But the prophecy says…” Brandon started.

“Don’t say it!” I shouted, interrupting him.

“You’re the chosen one,” he finished.

I threw open the heavy wooden doors and turned to face the lord of the vampires.

I pointed back to the stacks of movies and the flat-screen television. “Someone’s been binge-watching one too many seasons of old television series,” I said. “Too bad you didn’t try Sunnydale High. You want the Slayer. I’m just a government drone with a stack of casework back at my desk and bags under my eyes.”