Blood of the Gods (The Vampire from Hell Part 5) (5 page)

Instead, a flurry of sparkling silver dust brushed over them.  It took a moment for me to realize what I was witnessing.  The silver dust fell upon them and a bone dropped off to reveal a patch of fur, then a healthy ear popped out, a black button nose appeared, and before I knew it the skeleton creatures were fully formed and fully recognizable grey wolves.

“Jax, and the others, were on their way to being G’s guardians before they were kidnapped and sent here to rot away for an eternity.  Jax was only a wolf pup.”

The words the man with the half face spoke stunned me. “Who did this?” I couldn't stop the question as it came out.  I picked up Jax in his new furry white form as he returned to my side and clutched him in my arms.  He looked a lot like a Siberian husky with a black button nose, big ears, long legs he had yet to grow into, and eyes as blue as an ocean.  However his fur had no highlights of grey.  It was entirely white.

Jax laughed and whipped his head back and forth.  He was a ball of fun and mischief.  He smothered me with wet kisses and hit the sides of my hip over and over with his tail.

“You will meet her soon, and then you and I will settle a debt.  And heaven help her when she sees the likes of you,” the man said.

This declaration by the man sent the other skeletons into a frenzy.  I had probably woke in the middle of a war or a nightmare.  This was certainly a nightmare, even a very weird one.  Jax and the other larger wolves who looked like mature adult canines rolled over on their backs in celebration.  Then they jumped up, howled a few times, and ran off again into the crowd.

A walking skeleton dog who was formerly a wolf pup? A guardian frozen in time.  A creature locked in a prison of bones? 
I looked over at the skeleton man with the cowboy hat.  I assumed the questions were written across my face.

Another cold chill ran down my spine as the man with half a face placed his hand on my shoulder again. 
The hand of death?

My former state of quiet deadness that I had been in faded into a memory.  The dreams of my ideal guy evaporated before my eyes.  My existence, if I had one before this moment, vanished like a whisper I thought I had heard, but had not.  This was the end.

The man with the half face smiled down at me with a mouthful of yellow stained fangs.  His one dark red eye radiated with some secret knowledge I feared I’d soon discover.  He moved his bony hand to the small of my back and pushed me forward.  More icy sensations tingled through me.  “Here they call me the Ice Man.  That’s rather obvious as I'm sure you can tell.  You may remember my name?  Beelzebub.  We have met before.  I’m one of the seven princes of Hell, the Hell your father stole from us.  My brothers and I are soul searchers actually.  You referred to me as ‘the best tracker you knew’.”

I shook my head.  “I’m sorry.  I don’t recall.  What do you mean a debt?”

“It probably doesn’t’ matter now, especially if you don’t know who you are.  I get that.  Really I do,” he said and waved his bony arm at me.  “But a bet is a bet, and I always collect.”

“What are you doing here?  Wherever here is!” I snapped.

“Currently I am the keeper of this realm for the Ancient Council.  We fabricated the documents so they think this is a Rest and Resurrection realm.  It’s not really.  Before that, you promised me a portion of Hell, your father’s domain in exchange for my help and you failed me.  Mehen put me in charge here and we have been waiting a long time for you.  Let me welcome you to Valeria.  And today, Rayea is your Judgment Day.”

As Beelzebub pushed me forward through the crowd of skeletal creatures, Jax and his wolf mates laughed and jumped around us.  They roared over and over, “Judgment.  Judgment.  Judgment.  Judgment.  Judgment.  Judgment.”

“What are you talking about?” I yelled over the thudding noise their chant made, a rhythmic beat of a drum calling my soul into allegiance and retribution. 
I should have stayed asleep,
I thought to myself. 
How complicated did death need to be?

“When we die, we all must be judged.  Your powerful friends have kept you from this day for a very long time.  But now it is here.  It doesn’t matter if we’re a human or a god, a dog or a cat, or a zombie or a vampire.  We are all judged.  After you killed J and G went into hiding, the council had to invent another ‘station,’ if you will.  We have looked forward to seeing you for a long time now.  After you are judged, I will have your soul.  That’s my price for helping you find your sister before she harmed your friends.  Mehen has signed off on it.  It’s a go,”

“Surely you have me confused with someone else,” I interrupted.  “What sister?  What powerful friends?  What are you talking about?”

He laughed and patted me on the shoulder, continuing to lead me through the crowd.  “The fire-throwing vampire?  Satan’s rebellious daughter?  J’s prodigy.  Oh no Rayea, we don’t have that wrong.  Besides we knew you were coming.  We are happy you are here.  It just took you longer than we expected.  How you made it out of that bar is still a mystery to me.  I’m guessing your ex-boyfriend probably had something to do with that.  Or maybe your beloved Blick did?  No matter.  I’m sure I’ll be meeting them soon as well.  Soul searching is my life.”

Author’s Note:
  To learn all about Beelzebub, you can see Rayea’s first interaction with Beelzebub in the chapter named ‘Change of Plan’ and the Epilogue in A Vampire on Vacation (The Vampire from Hell Part 3).

Waiting for the End (Blick)

***

“
Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.
” ~ John Lennon

***

September 2

1 pm

When Grace had handed me Rayea’s book, I could not put it down.  I paced the hardwood floors reading it all morning.  Her online blog being on the Internet was one thing I supposed, but in print?  Her words were in print?  I could not believe what the girls had done.  It was something I did not want to think about.  Really it did not matter.  It was too late.  Revealing the existence of vampires and werewolves to the world was rather outrageous, an idea that could be ignored.  Maybe.  Revealing the existence of celestial beings, gods like Ra, angels like Michael or Demetri?  That was another story entirely.  Finding a panel of curtains hanging over the front window, I raised my hand and pulled them off the wall.  I ignored a loud zinging sound as some metal flying past my face.  I reached for another panel of curtains and dropped Rayea’s book.  I stopped myself and sighed.  The girls had no idea what they had set in motion.  At some point, we would all pay for this evidence.

Controlling my anger lately had not been working.  I had not been sleeping.  I had not been eating.  I had not been hunting.  Eventually I knew it would catch up with me, but I did not care.  I had to find Rayea. 
Until I had a square meal, the anger would continue to grow.  Until I found Rayea, I did not care. 
Let the wolf come out.

I had asked Demetri to send me the bills for all my destruction.  He had not done that so I needed to figure out a way to thank him and Grace for their recent hospitality.  They had held me together.  What would I have done without them?

I grabbed my phone and sent Ra another text message.  It was not like him to not reply.  My intuition knew something was wrong.  Demetri’s concern about gods and angels being ‘unavailable’ was starting to worry me too.

‘Do gods die, Blick?’

I had ignored Demetri’s question that day.  I did not know if we could or not.  I had heard long ago that celestial beings fell into a prison of nothingness.  That’s all I knew, but I wasn’t worried about the gods and angels missing.  I was worried about finding Rayea.  That was my number one priority.

I sat my phone and the book on the kitchen counter.  While I searched for a highlighter in my room, I thought about that first time when J had tasked me with Rayea’s protection.

‘She’s in Satan’s possession right now.  This means a lot to me, Blick.  I have friends who want her safe, but we can’t remove her from Hell yet.  I need you to go there and protect her.  Do not reveal who you are, but do your best to use your shifting abilities to convince her you are helpless or scared.  I know she has a thing for animals.  Use that.  Hopefully she’ll take you in.  That way you will be able to be near her.  Can you do this?’

The buzz around the House of G at that time was all about this girl.  A daughter of Satan who rebelled against him every chance she got.  Others followed her online postings religiously and I heard many of the stories over and over.  She was an underground sensation so I was rather honored to be given such a responsibility by J.  I did not know what J’s interest was in Rayea, but I knew it was important to him and his father, G.  It was a part of a bigger plan that would be revealed to the world someday.  I kept it simple and decided that I could do what I always did.  I had been born a soldier.  I would always be a soldier really.  It did not matter what form I took as I evolved.  And once I met Rayea, I knew who I wanted to spend my life with forever.  That day by the river, she had picked up me, a scared hellhound puppy wandering around lost and had taken me home.  After I was given the okay by J to rescue her from Hell, I let her see my human self.  I let her believe I was an angel like many others in the House of G.  I had to do that for my protection, and for hers.  I did not want her to know too much.  Like Ra and the others, I kept hidden the fact that I have been a celestial being for a very long time.  But once she rescued me from the darkness, I shared with her as much information as I could.  I sighed again when I read what I told her.  She put it in her book.  When I could not find a highlighter, I grabbed a pen instead and read her words again.  I wandered back to the kitchen, searching for the exact phrase to underline:

“So this god thing, when did you become a god?  Are you a wolf god?  And more importantly, how freaking old are you really?”

Blick pulled me closer, letting me rest my head on his shoulders.  “I think I should start it like this.  When the world began, there were only animals.  The lion, the wolf, the snake, and the dragon.  They were born into a garden called the Summit and worked to help each other survive.  As the population grew, each group of animals created a kingdom or house, as you’ve heard us call it.  Once the first man was born into the garden, the snake grew jealous that he could walk upright.  The snake had to crawl around, and she was very envious.”

“Mehen?”  I asked.

“Descendants of Mehen, yes.  We are all descendants of our different houses.  Does that make sense?”

I nodded.  That explained a great deal, I thought.  One important reason being why my tats had been dragons and snakes fighting while Grace’s had been a lion.  Those were our respective houses.

“There was no good or evil until Satan showed up on the scene.  It was just life or death.  But he seduced Mehen just as he seduced your mother.  That’s how it began.  You know the rest.”

“So the animal shifting stuff?  What does that mean?”

“All gods, no matter what house they are from, can shift into the shapes of animals, large or small.  If the person has the celestial spark, they can do it naturally.  If they don’t have it, they can learn how to shift through magic.”

I swallowed hard before I asked Blick the next question.  I was afraid I already knew the answer.  “So my house is the snake or the dragon then?”

“Yes,” he replied, running his fingers through my hair.  “If you go dark, you’ll belong to the House of the Snake.  If you stay a vampire as you are now, you’ll remain in the House of the Dragon.”

“Hmmm,” I mumbled, closing my eyes.

Author’s Note:
  Above passage is from the chapter named ‘A Thin Line’ in The Vampire from Hell Returns (The Vampire from Hell Part 4).

***

I sent another text message to Ra.  I also texted J’s old number.  J too has been missing, almost as long as Rayea.  With the chaos going on at Cloud.com and the break in security at the House of G, everyone had scattered to the wind.  I notified G, J’s father, that I was taking an extended leave of absence until further notice.  He did not object to my decision.  After J’s disappearance, G was lost without his son.  He was a walking shell of the small jolly man who had dressed in Hawaiian shirts, khaki shorts, and beige loafers.

I had told G I would continue to look for his son too.  As soon as I had Rayea by my side, I vowed to do just that.  I owed a lot to J.

I had been in a lot of trouble before J had given me sanctuary in the House of G.  My brother, Seth had stirred things up and many of the houses were divided and fighting.  I knew if I did not escape that my brother would kill me too, just as he had killed our parents before he took control of the House of the Wolf.  With J’s urging, G had agreed to let Ra and I seek refuge with them.  No one would think to look for us there.  Once Satan had killed my brother, Seth, he had dissolved the House of the Wolf and had turned it into Hell.  From that point on, I knew my destiny was locked with that demon.  It did not matter that I had a less than great relationship with my brother.  He was still my brother and my blood.  I did not shed a tear when Satan had been destroyed.  On the contrary, I celebrated the fact that it had been his oldest daughter who had done it.

The noise of a few punks on skateboards racing down the walkway caught my attention.  I pulled my mind out of the past and glanced at the clock.  The morning was gone.  I knew I needed to get busy, but I could not put Rayea’s book down.  Reading her words made me feel so close to her.  Maybe if I read it a third time, I could calm down.  I flipped through the pages again.

I re-read the email I had sent to her so long ago, underlining my favorite parts this time.  It made me feel close to her.  My words to her were still true.  Despite the fact that I had told her to delete it, she had not.  I smiled to myself.  That was Rayea.  She had probably deleted the email after she had copied and pasted the contents into her blog.  She would do something like that so technically she had done what I asked.  Deciding I could buy Grace and Demetri another bar stool, I picked the one near me up and splintered it into a thousand pieces of wood.  If I had to wait one more day without knowing where she was, I thought I would die.

“When I took the time to surf through my inbox immensely filled with copies of various correspondences about the House of G activities including Blick’s instructions for logging into the new secure network, I discovered an email from Blick that was written on a more personal note.  It wasn’t like him to send such an email. 
I was stunned by its content on many levels
.  I had been considering blowing off the meeting until I read his email.  The email made me realize that facing Death was a reality, not some meeting I could skate my way around.  It also made me realize that even for a vampire,
I had many things to live for
, such as meeting my mother!  I’ll let you read his email.  This is what it said:

“I never should have left you alone on Earth, but I didn’t want you to think that I didn’t trust you.  I know how stubborn you can be. I had hoped, for everyone’s sake, that you could handle yourself, resist temptation, and survive without anyone’s blood for a few more months.  I know now I should have been shipping you smoothies in the mail all this time, despite J’s orders.  No, not soggy pink envelopes filled with smashed strawberries.  But I should have figured out something then. 
I hope it’s not too late.

Ultimately as your vacation dragged on, we searched endlessly for your sister and I was tasked with getting the new network in order.  You’ve probably guessed by now that we lost our trail of her in Purgatory and currently we don’t know where Stephanie is.  J has several of his primary teams working around the clock and is considering bringing in Special Ops if necessary.  We’ll find her.  Don’t worry.  I shouldn’t tell you about the SO thing, but you’ll learn plenty about that type of stuff in orientation once your vacation is over.

I’m not making excuses for my not contacting you.  Okay, maybe I am. 
But I realize now that you needed me,
and I was too wrapped up with work.  We didn’t leave you with any options, so when temptation presented itself, you jumped on it.  Michael and I both know that now.  We knew it could happen, especially if you met that human actor you go on about.  We tried to warn J, but he insisted that we not get involved.

Again I have failed you.  I know we had that argument about the actor, and honestly it got me to thinking.  I have so much I need to tell you. 
Over the years, I’ve ignored countless opportunities to tell you more, about myself and about some things you have a right to know.
  And now it may be too late.  That’s why I’m going to tell you a few things you should know.

When we heard rumors that your father wanted to create an army of vampires, we knew we had to act.  He boasted about it many times.  Lucifer needed a person who could handle the poison raging in his blood.  He’s tried this before and each test subject has either died at the time of transformation or has been destroyed by J’s team later.  J was certain that you’d die from drinking your father’s blood.  He said the only way you could survive would be if you weren’t human.  I thought the wine was diluted enough that it wouldn’t make you too sick.  When your father added his blood to the glass, I knew we had to get you out of there no matter what.  You were violently ill for several weeks.  You probably don’t remember.  Thankfully, Michael figured out a way to save you.  That I’m sure you do remember.

I’m risking everything by sharing this information with you.  You know that.  But it’s very important you understand.  J wants to know more about your firepower.  He doesn’t understand why it is linked to your powers.  It’s not a typical trait for a vampire to have.  Not that I’m saying I know that much.  J knows more about the subject than I do.  What I’m saying is that I realize now, after talking with Ra, where the source could come from.  Your mother.

I’m taking only Ra into my confidence. The others - J, G, Michael, and Death, I haven’t told them anything.  At some point, we’ll have to.  I owe J a lot and our alliance goes back a long ways.  But for now, please don’t share any of this with anyone.  We’ll explain it all when the time is right.

That’s why I’m sending Ra to meet with you.  He will tell you a few things that you need to know about your past.  I’ve also asked him to give you something you need.  You won’t have to guess what it is.  You’ll meet a man carrying a silver briefcase.  That’s how you can recognize him.  Obviously he won’t be in his dragon form.  As I said, J doesn’t know about this.  It’s a decision Ra and I made with your mother’s approval.  Yes, she is alive, but I can’t tell you anything more in this email.