Chapter 6: Arise 2-1

I returned to my apartment, where this whole clusterfuck started. The bed was still messy from the...er, activities that Justine and I had partaken in. The sheet was off the bed and haphazardly thrown onto the floor. Clothes were everywhere, some of which were hers and some of which were mine. It was strange to think that, just a couple of hours ago, I was a living and breathing human being. Now? Now I was a vampire. Dead. A monster.

First, I took a shower. I was a mess with blood, and it was lucky that nobody saw me walking into the apartment building or else they definitely would've called the cops. I made sure the water was warm, but I was surprised to find that it didn't seem to make a difference either way. I felt the water, but I strangely didn't feel if it was hot or cold. It looked like enjoying hot showers was out of the question now.

Once I was out of the shower, I cleared the steam on the mirror and looked at myself. All things considered, I looked more or less...the same? My features were always angular and hawkish like my father's: a strong jawline, a cleft chin. My face was all hard lines and sharp angles, with my mother's high cheekbones and deep blue eyes. I knew I needed a shave and a haircut, but I was reluctant. Did vampires regrow hair?

My skin was also a pale gray, almost the color of ash. I was never a particularly tan guy in life, but this made me look like I never went outside. It wasn't something I minded too much, but it did make me wonder if every bone-pale or ghoulish-looking man or woman I'd seen at night was a vampire. Were they really everywhere and I didn't even notice? With their rules, it was likely. I wondered how many times I came close to being their prey.

"Get yourself together, Al. You have shit to do." I told myself, walking into my bedroom and grabbing a new set of clothes. What should I wear? Maybe if I wore red, the stain of blood wouldn't be so obvious on my clothes.

I grabbed a blood red button-up, black underwear, and a pair of black jeans. That should be good enough. I put on the clothes and buttoned up the shirt, opting to tuck it in my pants due to it looking better than leaving it un-tucked. Once again, I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked a little vampire-y, but it wasn't as if I was going outside in a black cape with a high collar, speaking in a Transylvanian accent. Did Dracula exist? So many questions, nobody to answer them. I decided to suspend all of my questions for the next Kindred that was willing to answer me. Annoying as it may be for them, it was their responsibility to guide me, right?

I walked into my closet again and grabbed my backpack. I didn't know what I'd need out there, especially since I was apparently going to be committing crimes or, on occasion, killing people. I grabbed a few things I might need: a spare shirt and jeans, my pocket knife, my flip phone, and a notepad and pen in case I needed to write anything down. I walked into my fridge and opened it, noticing that someone had placed three blood bags inside, next to the probably stale beer and week-old pizza. After wondering idly if I could still eat food and drink beer, I grabbed the blood bags and placed them in an insulated bag I kept on my counter, then I slid that bag into my backpack. For safe measure, I also placed my gun and lockpick in the bag as well.

I noticed that there was a new laptop on my desk by the window, which was interesting because I was positive I didn't have the money to buy one. I walked over to the desk and found a note.

Hey. The password for your computer is "sunrise". Keep the cash in the drawer… it's yours. I dropped you an email with my address. Come on over after you're settled.

-Mercurio

Mercurio. That was the man that LaCroix wanted me to meet with for whatever reason. I supposed that I ought to get into my computer and extract that address from my emails. I didn't know how long the Prince was giving me, but I was going to go out on a limb and say it wasn't "all night". I opened the drawer and found an envelope full of money. 100$. Nothing to write home about, but it was good enough.

I moved over to my computer and saw another note tucked under the laptop. The handwriting was neat and precise. Whoever wrote it obviously wrote letters often which, according to TV, was a "dying artform". I grabbed the note and read:

Dear Algernon,

At your convenience, please come and visit me in my home downtown. I leave you this to guide you:

Dark blood, our curse, a light this verse

Such power I sense in one so young

Come find me where burns the mystical sun.

M. Strauss, Tremere Regent

There went that word again. Tremere. Was it the name of a person? An organization? A secret society? I figured that talking to this "M. Strauss" would give me more of the answers I needed. I didn't know why the poem was necessary; why couldn't he just tell me his damn address? Even when I was a writer, poems and riddles had always been a weakness of mine. Whoever M. Strauss was, he would have to wait. I had to prioritize my meeting with Mercurio before going to Downtown LA.

24 Main Street, apartment 4. That was the address Mercurio gave me. He said in his email that he was going to pick up some astrolite, and that he'd be back by the time I came to town. As I approached the apartment building, what I saw was...not good, to say the least. There was a man, older than me but not old per se, keeled over a puddle of blood big enough to be embarrassing. I heard him strain as he crawled up the stone stairway to his apartment building. He finally forced himself up, barging through the large wooden doors.

That's not something you see every day. I thought to myself as I approached the building.

Before I was even halfway there, some guy ran to me, his green eyes as wide as dinner plates. For a moment, I thought he was going to attack me, but he stopped dead in his tracks once he was within earshot. Something about this guy's demeanor reminded me of an excited puppy. Or a crackhead.

"Need somethin', pal?" He asked.

I glanced over at the apartment building. I tried to move forward and ignore them - as I tended to do with his type - but he stepped right in my way. What the fuck did he think he was doing? I could tear his heart out right now. Warp his blood to strangle his heart. That grin wouldn't be on his face if I tore his fucking throat out.

I took a moment to comment the angered Beast within, then said, "I'm okay, I was just looking for someone."

"Aw man!" The guy said. "Wait. Say that again."

I blinked. Was this guy actually fucking strung out?

"Um...okay? I'm...looking for someone." I repeated.

"Aw man! You - you're a vampire, aren't you?" He asked, that grin of his reaching ear to ear.

Oh fuck. I thought.

What was going on? I couldn't have violated the rules already, right? Could this guy be someone that saw what happened back in Downtown? No, Jack would've taken care of him if that was the case. Was this a test then? Was he sent by one of the vampires to see if I'd spill? Or did someone else spill, and now he was running around telling anyone that would listen? Either way, all I knew was that I wasn't saying shit.

"What? Vampire? What the hell are you smoking?" I asked, playing dumb.

"Oh, c'mon!" He whined. "Aw man, you are too! Don't bullshit me man, just come clean, you know, mean… oh man! I ain't gonna tell no one. It's okay, man. I just wanna talk!"

I raised an eyebrow, very skeptical of his promise to tell no one. He was practically screaming it at the top of his lungs in the middle of the street. It was a good thing that not many people were here, and the people who were here were probably too doped up on opiods to be lucid. I sighed at the man and crossed my arms.

"Alright then, let's talk." I said.

"HELL YEAH!" He whooped. "Oh man, I knew it! I just - Oh geez, I knew you were! I could tell! I - oh man, this is great! And th-then I saw your teeth an-and I was, like, damn! It was like I could just sense you. The name's Knox Harrington. Pleasure to meet you. Aw man!"

I spoke with this man for five minutes so far, and already my Beast and I were wanting to tear this guy's throat out.

"Alright - hey, look, we can talk later, yeah?" I offered. "Right now, I've got something really important to do."

"Oh man! Dude - dude, I'm so sorry! Yeah dude, you can like, totally see me at the Asylum! We can talk and- oh man!"

Tightly, I nodded and advanced past him. As I walked past him, my shoulder would have lightly bumped against him, but it seemed that my body had other plans. I turned back slightly, my shoulder ramming against Knox's belligerently, almost knocking him off balance. He seemed undisturbed, but I was surprised. What just happened? I didn't mean to do anything like that. Was that my Beast? Did it have domain over everything I didn't have deliberate command over? My thoughts, my instincts, my unconscious actions? It looked like the Beast wasn't just something I'd be able to forget about. Ever.

By the time I'd gotten into Mercurio's apartment building, the hallway was a mess of blood. The floor was absolutely covered in it, and it was on the walls too. I assumed that it was from the guy that was bleeding all over the ground. The blood had a noticeable trail, leading to the apartment that was down the hall and to the right. Mercurio. Shit. Was Mercurio the one that was bleeding all over the floor like that? I followed the trail to the apartment, opening the nice, blood stained double doors.

The bleeding man, Mercurio I presumed, lay on his couch, looking like a corpse in a puddle of his own blood. The carpet, floor, walls, and curtails were all soaked with this guy's blood. Idly, I wondered just how much blood this guy had. It should definitely be enough to kill a person. Then I was terrified, not at the dead body but at the fact that I was completely undisturbed by the fact that there was a corpse in front of me, a corpse that I'd seen alive just minutes ago. If I was fast enough, I could've saved him, but that blowhard Knox just had to interrupt me.

I walked over to the man to check his pulse, and he suddenly came to life. He leaned up and looked at me, his face so beaten that he had almost no discernable features. From what I could tell, he was probably in his early to mid forties. Short hair that is parted at his forehead, strong features, and five o'clock shadow. In a way, he reminded me of someone from Goodfellas.

"Those mothers...ripped me off." He strained. "I'm dyin' here!"

He was dying, that was for sure. Maybe I could put him out of his misery. Take him as a snack while I'm at it.

Down, boy. I thought to myself, addressing my Beast.

"Are you Mercurio?" I asked him.

"Uhh...yeah. You're uh...shit...Algernon right?" Mercurio asked. He tried to sit up more, but cringed visibly from the pain. "You're lookin' for the astrolite? I'm...oh...I can feel a draft on my fuckin' insides!"

I looked down at his stomach. There were enough holes for it to resemble Swiss cheese. For a few of them, I could see straight through him. What the hell was going on? This guy should be in critical condition, if not dead.

"They shanked me - the bastards!" Mercurio hissed. "The blood ain't workin' no more - my head, it feels...cracked. Uh...I think my eye's popped."

Now I was beginning to panic. I couldn't have this guy die on me.

"I'm going to call an ambulance." I said.

"What? No!" Mercurio protested. "I got a record back east. I'm heat bait. Don't touch that phone! No-...no goddamn cops!"

"Mercurio, you look like a fucking corpse right now!" I chided. "Are you sure?"

Mercurio shot me an intense look. "No. Cops!"

"Fine! Fine. Fuck!" I hissed. "Okay - what happened to you?"

"I got...I went…" Mercurio's gaze drifted downwards, to a hole where some sort of growth was poking out. "What is this lump?" - he poked at it - "Is this my rib? Oh, holy shit, my rib is pokin' through my side?! Oh. I'm all numb...you gotta tell me!"

I knelt beside him and examined the growth, feeling along his ribcage. I spent long enough in medical school to know what a broken rib felt like. Not only was it broken, it was broken six ways from Sunday. Shattered. Anyone else would be dead by now, but this guy wasn't. Was he a vampire too? No, he couldn't be. There was too much color to his skin, and I didn't bleed that much even when I was shot.

"Yep, that's a rib." I muttered. "Look, man, I was pre-med. In my semi-professional opinion, I'd say you have five minutes to live. Tops. Who did this to you?"

"Goddamn chemist!" Mercurio growled. "Can't trust any operators in LA. I verified him, organization seemed reliable. Guy mixes up speed, his crew sells it. Occasionally does explosives. I set up a drop."

"Didn't go well, I'm guessing?" I asked.

Mercurio shook his head. "I show up at the beach with the money, right? Four of these guys, they come out of nowhere. Junkie pricks - hit me with a bat! Head feels like I got a friggin' horse kickin' it."

"That'd be a concussion." I guessed.

"I never shoulda gone alone…" Mercurio lamented. "Amateur move. I shoulda handled those pricks. Goddamn dirty Cali rat bastards."

He was going to say something, but he proceeded to cough up blood and bits of...something. At this point, I was just going over the police report in my head. "No, officer, I had nothing to do with his liquefied respiratory system," I'd say.

"Those cocksuckers…" He continued, soldiering through his pain. "Beat me rotten, left me for a stiff. I had to crawl to my car, crawl my ass up here. The vamp blood's the only thing holdin' me together. But shit, they got the money, they got the astrolite…"

I raised an eyebrow. "Vamp blood? You don't look like a vampire. You smell human."

Mercurio sighed. "Right. You're straight off the bus. Once a month, I get fed vampire blood. Heals me faster, makes me stronger than a normal human. I don't age. By lookin' at me, you wouldn't realize it, but I'm almost sixty."

My eyes widened. Holy shit. So humans could consume vampire blood to become...well, super-humans?

"Good to know." I said, filing that somewhere in my brain. "So, where do I find the astrolite now?"

"Those small-time sons of bitches live out in a dump on the beach." Mercurio said. "Four or five of 'em. The one's got the explosives is Dennis. Got my money too, that prick!"

"You gotta…" Mercurio heaved. That was probably a lung collapsing. "You gotta get it back from 'em. Maybe reason with 'em, maybe break in. Fuck if I know. God, I wanna kill 'em. Do whatever you people do. I blew it, I know."

"Right." I said. "What about you? Is there anything I can do to help? You won't make it to sunrise like that, my man."

"Yeah, if you could…" He cringed, moaning out in pain. "Somethin' just started leakin' - I need somethin' for the pain."

"I'll bring something back for you." I said, turning around to leave.

"Oh, one more thing!" He called out.

I turned around.

"About the deal…" Mercurio said. "I mean it - you tell anyone about this, I'm dead. I'm beggin' ya. I got a way o' gettin' people what they need. You don't say anything, I can help you out."

I nodded firmly, turned around, and left.

Santa Monica beach wasn't anything special, at least not the part of it I was in. The pier was nearby, its amusement park shut down due to the late hour. I walked down the stone staircase and through the walkway, approaching the beach. At the far end, I could see a couple of people I didn't recognized huddled around a bonfire, just speaking to each other. I didn't notice a woman quickly approaching me until she was within earshot.

"Up there." She said. "Through that chain-link gate and up those stairs."

I stared at her. She had a look that reminded me slightly of Justine, a look that seemed like she was gazing through me rather than at me. It was hot with Justine. With this woman, it was just creepy.

"Um." I said. "What?"

"Those men you're looking for." She said.

I frowned. Was she talking about Dennis and his crew? How did she know about that? And why was she telling me where they were?

"How'd you know I was looking for someone?" I asked.

"Never mind." She said quickly, dismissively. "You wouldn't understand."

"Probably wouldn't." I agreed. "What's new. Thanks."

And with that, we parted ways.