Brutal Asset, page 26
“Go back to the description of his house and the fetishes,” Veleslava directed.
So I took them through that part of the story of where I had met Nakai, finishing with Professor Picairn’s comments regarding illusion. The Slovak witch was nodding her agreement at his conclusions. “What you describe is classic illusion spells, and it fits with the machine guard that he…what is it?...bamboozled,” she said.
Next, I had to go back over the names that Ahraman had called Tanya and me – Lailah and Malahidael.
No one had heard of them and no one knew what they meant. Chet ran a search and shook his head.
When I thought we were done, Senka immediately took a new direction. I was getting exhausted.
“So, Christian, young Chester has shown me the computer file, the ‘Brutal Asset’ file,” she commented.
I suppose I might have grounds to be upset with Chet, but he did work for her, and frankly, I’d defy anyone to hold out information from the ancient vampire if she really wanted it. She took persuasive to a whole other realm.
Chet, himself, interrupted that part of the conversation to tell us that he had just intercepted a DOD alert that Brianna Duclair had been spotted by a DEA agent in the Cananea airport, boarding a small private plane. Her proximity to the Spawn’s lair was obviously not a coincidence. The drug agent hadn’t gotten any details about the plane, its owners or its flight plan, but Chet was going to see what he could pull from his systems.
We spent some time talking about the file, the group that attacked me and Toni in New York ,and last, Duclair’s likely involvement, but we reached no conclusions. Then Chet talked about Nathan Stewart.
“I actually can’t find out that much about Stewart. He has records of working for the government at the end of World War II, but not a lot of detail. I find he has investigated a lot of fringe type phenomenon, like UFO sightings, Bigfoot and creature sightings, strange stories and that sort of thing. But his trail always disappears and none of the government systems I have access to have any information,” Chet said, frustrated.
“So he doesn’t work for the government,” Lydia concluded.
“I didn’t say that! I said I couldn’t find anything at all on him in the government computers! The odds of me not finding something, anything on a person are crazy wild!” he said, all worked up. He took in the vampires expressions and visibly pulled himself in. “Sorry, it’s just not feasible that there would be nothing. Those systems have been wiped – sanitized,” he finished.
“Which means he is highly placed and in some ultrasecret capacity,” Nika said.
We didn’t get much farther than that, although everyone had some speculation or another about the nature of his group. Senka was quiet and I could feel it when her gaze fell on me.
“Would you all give me a moment with Christian here?” she said, although it was more of a command than a question. Tanya stiffened next to me, but her grandmother gave her a little sharpish nod that conveyed ‘it’ll be just a moment, he’ll be fine’ in one motion. They all filed into other parts of the plane, Tanya last, looking at me over her shoulder as she left.
“Chris, I’m not much for explaining myself,” she began, moving over to sit next to me. “I could tell you it comes of twelve centuries of living and leading, but the truth is I’ve never been one to explain my actions. But I feel I should tell you why I made you retell the death of your friend so painfully.” She paused to scratch Awasos’s furry little head. “Vampires have great power and as you know that power grows with time and age. But you have skipped past centuries of learning and growing to reach the level you’re already at.” She paused to look me in the eyes, hers a rich deep chocolate color that you don’t normally find with blondes.
“One of the greatest dangers we face as we age is a certain deadening of emotion, a thickening of the skin as it were. It comes of losing loved ones to time and the dangers of the supernatural world. That’s one of the reasons vampires stay together. The loners get cold and detached, which is a sure road to death, either because they fail to take ordinary precautions, or they simply grow tired of living,” she said. “Okwari was a big part of your life,” she smiled at the ‘big’ part.
“Whether he is truly dead or not, he sacrificed himself for you. The biggest gift one friend can ever give another! It is important for you to capture that and hold it tight inside, always remembering that you had a friend that felt so strongly about your worth, that he unhesitatingly gave himself to protect you. That’s why I prodded and poked at you, and I’m not sorry for it,” she said. Then she patted my knee and slipped out of the room.
The rest of the flight went quietly, mostly because I fell asleep with the warm cub in my lap.
***
I spent the next day figuring out living arraignments for Awasos, gathering formula (the Central Park zoo was useful there) and trying to learn everything I could about raising bears and wolves. Of course, there wasn’t any information about were bear-wolves, so I made it up as I went along. Chet was no help at all, in fact, if I didn’t know better, I would have said he was avoiding me. He might have felt I would be angry about him sharing the Brutal Asset file with Senka, but I wasn’t.
Late in the evening (or about midway through the typical vampire ‘day’) I was playing with the cub in our quarters when Tanya came skipping in. Literally skipping, a big smile on her face.
“Hiya zayka,” she said, using the Russian term for bunny. Americans call loved ones honey, Russians call them bunny.
“Hi yourself,” I responded. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, I’ve been out among the Outer Guards,” she said, lightly.
“Really? Chatting with old friends?” I asked. She seemed especially light hearted tonight.
Her beautiful smile got even wider, which made my heart beat irregularly, like it always does.
“Exactly! In fact, I brought one back with me!” she said, her smile turning mischievous. She leaned out the door and grabbed someone, hauling them into the room by a hand. It was a brown haired girl vampire, who looked about seventeen. Very pretty, which isn’t unusual for vampires, but just a touch younger looking than most. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place it. Her expression was equal parts shy and defiant, with just a little fear thrown in.
“Hi I’m Chris,” I introduced myself.
“Yeah, I know, we’ve already met,” she said. I recognized her voice, but it was another face that popped into my mind. A much younger twelve year old looking face.
“Katrina?” I questioned, completely baffled. The twelve-year old had turned into a young woman, one who could pass for a high school senior or a college freshman.
She nodded, her defiant look shifting fully to shyness. I looked at Tanya in question, completely baffled.
“When you blasted her in the tunnel, you knocked her back to human for four days,” Tanya said, which I already knew.
“I aged about a year for every day I was human. Doc Singh thinks it was my pent up vampire age accelerating my physical age when I was temporarily a human,” Katrina said.
I was stunned, not knowing what to say, completely at a loss for words. Tanya was radiating happiness and Katrina wasn’t exhibiting the same chip-on-the-shoulder attitude she had the first time I met her.
“This is good?” I questioned.
“Of course it’s good!” Tanya said. “Trina is now looking like an adult, or almost an adult. That’s huge, Christian!”
“It’s the almost part we were wondering about?” Trina said, a little shyly. “Do you think you could give me another little blast and move me up to my early twenties?”
It took some time, first for them to convince me to try, which I wasn’t excited about. I don’t have great control over my gifts. Then it took a number of shots to get enough power to knock her human. It’s easy when I’m mad, then I have to dial down the power, but under normal conditions it’s awkward and unfamiliar to try generating the right kind of aura burst. Trina finally got angry and turned on Tanya, telling her she knew it wouldn’t work and that Tanya didn’t really care if she ever achieved an adult body. That made me mad enough to jolt her a good one. That’s when I found out the angry bit was an act. They both started to cry, but with tears of happiness. Tanya took her friend somewhere safe to wait out the day or two she would be human and vulnerable to her enemies. As they left, Trina threw out a remark about how all the child vampires would be seeking me out. Great, now I was running an aging service for ‘underage’ vampires!
Epilogue
The Sweat Lodge was a ten foot diameter dome, made from willow saplings bent into an arc, about four feet high at the center. When I arrived with Wade Pitcairn it had been just a skeleton of wood, lashed together with rawhide. But the Abenaki Elder that Pitcairn introduced me to as Tom, had quickly put us to work covering it with canvas tarps and wool blankets. The dirt floor was covered with hand woven rugs, except for the small pit in the center.
Tom explained to me that the opening to the Lodge always faced East, the tradition in this part of the country. We were three hours North of New York city, having driven up in my Xterra earlier in the morning. Wade had called me two days before to tell me he had been invited by Tom to a ‘Sweat’ which was the short name for a ceremony. Oddly, Tom had extended the invitation to include one individual that Pitcairn thought might benefit from the experience. My name had popped into his mind.
About fifteen feet in front of the Lodge opening was a smoldering fire pit, the bright red coals piled around and among a group of lava rocks. Halfway between the fire pit and the lodge was a small mound of dirt with pair of forked sticks shoved into the mound. Balanced across the forks, was another stick, this one straight. Tom explained that this was the barrier alter, which both honored the ancestors of the sweat participants and prevented any heat dizzied individuals from falling into the fire when leaving the lodge. Leaning against the tiny barrier post was a bundle of native tobacco, a rolled bundled of sage, another bundle of sweetgrass and an Eagle feather. The three of us wore only baggy swim trunks, and a stack of worn but clean beach towels waited for the end of our sweat on a wooden bench. The incongruity of a Myrtle Beach towel in the decidedly Native American setting made me smile. The other two were looking at me curiously, which I thought at first was because of the grin, but then I realized it was my fairly radical physique. Pitcairn was in pretty good shape himself, but Tom was a surprise. From what I pieced together of his background, he must have been in his sixties, but his physical condition was excellent, looking more like a really fit forty-year old.
Pitcairn had explained the procedure to me during the ride up. First, Tom said a prayer in Abenaki, requesting the presence of the spirits of our ancestors, of Earth Mother and the Creator, asking that they listen to our questions and supplications. He pinched off a portion of the tobacco and offered it to the spirits by putting in the sacred fire. Then he lit the bundle of sage with a burning brand from the fire, and using the eagle feather, began to smudge Pitcairn. “This is to remove negative energy or bad spirits,” he explained, having Wade hold his arms straight out from his body and then standing on first one foot, then the other. The purifying, sweet scented smoke was wafted under arms and feet with the help of the feather. I was next, lifting my arms, then each foot, while the smoke tickled my sense of smell. Finally, he smudged himself, only asking for help from Pitcairn to waft sage smoke over his back.
Awasos, in wolf-dog form, watched all this from his spot on the ground twenty-five feet away. I had tied him to a tree and put a big bowl of water near him. Only a month after his birth and he was already almost the size of a full grown golden retriever. His intelligent brown eyes watched my every move, but he kept his head on his paws without appearing overly anxious.
I’ve had dogs my whole life, but Awasos was so much smarter than any dog I’d ever seen. Of course, he wasn’t a dog, more like bear mixed with wolf mixed with something else – something I couldn’t quite name. He had learned within two weeks to be adept at maintaining his ‘doggy’ role, at least in public. Inside the Citadel, he would shift at will between his bear and canine forms. Big for his age as a wolf or dog, he was even bigger in bear form, already over two hundred pounds. His collar was specially made from stretchy fabric that would expand when he shifted. Lydia had arraigned rabies and registration tags which would stand up to investigation, although no rabies vaccine had been anywhere near him. His body was riddled with the LV virus, which like V-squared, was a jealous host. No other pathogens would be allowed inside him.
He lifted his head to watch me enter the lodge, relaxing only a bit at my soft words. I turned back to the entry of the lodge and spoke the words Tom had taught me. “Mitakuye Oyasin,” which was Lakota for “All my relatives”.
The Lakota had retained their traditions of the sweat ceremony long after other tribes had been forced by the federal government to stop. The revival of the ceremony had been strong, sweeping back to the East coast, but retaining some Lakota nuances.
Inside, after crawling clockwise to the Western point of the lodge, I sat cross-legged and watched, curious. At Tom’s direction, Pitcairn used an old pitchfork to drag hot chunks of lava from the fire, then picked them up and dropped them into the pit in the center of the dark lodge. Tom guided each stone with a pair of deer antlers, murmuring words in Abenaki as each thumped into the hole. When he was satisfied, he called to Pitcairn, who propped the pitchfork against a tree and entered the lodge, flipping the door flap closed behind him. The darkness was almost complete, only the glow of the red hot rock offering any illumination. I avoided using any of my vampire senses, instead attempting to experience this ceremony as ‘human’ as I could.
Tom thumped a small skin drum, then dipped four ladles of water from a birch bark pail next to him. Huge clouds of steam rolled over my face, the heat immediate and thick, making it very hard to breath. I closed my eyes, lowered my chin to my chest and concentrated on taking slow breaths of the hot, moist air. In the dark, cloying lodge, the first sensation was of claustrophobia, but as I slowed my breathing and centered myself, the feeling became one of openness and vulnerability. I was packed in a tiny hut with two grown men, but it seemed almost like I was alone, hidden in a safe, warm pocket in the Earth.
Tom spoke quietly. “Great Creator, we come before you to give thanks and seek guidance. Please hear these supplicants and give of your wisdom should it please you to do so,” he said, then went quiet. That was apparently Wade’s cue to speak.
“Creator, I thank you for my life. I thank you especially for bringing Theresa into my life.”
Theresa was his new girlfriend, an assistant professor at Columbia and a major downer to all the hopeful coeds in his classes.
“Two dips please,” he requested. Steam poured up from the pit as Tom poured the water onto the heated rocks and the temperature went even higher.
It was my turn next and I struggled to put together the words that I wanted to say. There would be four of these rounds, Wade had told me. Each round was for questions, honoring relatives or just expressing oneself.
“Creator, thank you for Tatiana and thank you for Gramps. One to go to and one to guide me there,” I said, feeling vulnerable at saying the words in front of relatively unknown people. It also struck me that I was, in fact, praying to God, something I hadn’t done since I was eight. Somehow it was easier to do, addressing him as Creator and speaking in the dark safety of the sweat lodge.
“Two dips please,” I requested. More steam rolled over us. Tom spoke next.
“Creator, thank you for speaking to me in your many ways. Thank you for putting me in this place and time to do whatever small things I can to advance your will.”
I heard the each separate splash of water as he dipped three small ladles of water with his hand carved wooden cup.
We all sat in the hot dark, concentrating on our own thoughts and struggling with the process of just breathing the super heated air. After a time, Tom requested that Wade open the flap and the round was over. Cool air flowed into the lodge, displacing some of the steam. Wade, as firekeeper, crawled out, after speaking the Lakota phrase to honor his ancestors, and at Tom’s direction selected three more rocks from the fire. He then spoke the phrase and reentered the lodge, sealing the flap behind him.
In the second round, Wade honored his father, who I surmised had passed on a few years prior. I gave thanks for my small circle of close friends; Lydia, Chet, Gina and Brett.
Tom spoke of his wife and two adult sons.
The third round was especially difficult. “Creator, I have never thanked you for the eight years I got to have with my parents and my brother,” I said, my throat threatening to close as I spoke. “So thank you for that, although I am still confused on why you had to take them from me. They sacrificed their lives for mine, so I especially thank them. May they be at peace and may their afterlives be as grand as they deserve.”
Tom was silent for a several minutes after pouring the three dippers of water I requested, finally saying what sounded like a prayer in Abenaki.
