Rise of the Dunamy (17 page)

Lucian began to laugh as he considered her explanations. “Those are actually really good, but no. The fangs are a weird issue. My canines do actually extend when I’m really goin’ at it. I got nothin’ for that one. I suppose you can chock it up to evolution. They damn sure come in handy on a predatory level.” Now it was Sofia’s turn to laugh, only instead of being a jovial sort of laugh it was more maniacal as she scoffed at him.

“That’s it?! What happened to all of your logic, Lucian? You have all of these elaborate stories about everything, and then it’s ‘Oh, my teeth just grow’?” She spoke in a very strange, condescending tone as she taunted him.

“I don’t think that’s fair,” Lucian responded calmly. “I mean, teeth are a mystery anyways. They grow for a while when you’re young; then a second set comes in, pushing the first set out; then they never do anything ever again, aside from falling out. Certain teeth come in to every person’s head around the same age, and in the same order; it’s all very weird. I don’t think anyone can explain what’s going on with teeth, so don’t expect me to know what’s going on with that one.” She stood in silence with her arms crossed. She tried to come up with something to say in rebuttal, but she had nothing. Walking back over to her chair, she sat down and motioned for him to go on.

“I’m not gonna go over everything; I just wanted you to have enough information to know that I’m serious. I just want to tell you a little more, and then I want to get you home. I know you must just want to get home.” Sofia did want to go home, but her overwhelming curiosity wouldn’t let her. She had to hear more.

34

“L
ike I’ve already said, it’s my body makeup that makes me the way that I am. One of the most useful and most obvious effects that I experience is that my body heals very quickly compared to normal people.” Sofia’s eyes shifted down to his arm which was still red and clearly not healing and then back up at him. Lucian addressed her unspoken comment, “Okay, now I’m going to heal from that faster than you would. If I was worked up, it would be almost instant. When I get my blood pumping really good, it’s damn near impossible to do any serious or long lasting damage to me; and from what I’ve found, impossible to do permanent damage. This is the source of the vast majority of the myths about our amazing strength and speed as well as the fact that it is extremely difficult to inflict any long lasting wounds. Our bodies generate T-cells and antibodies much faster than the body of a normal human being. Our bodies run all the time as yours would in a moment of extreme duress. By that, I mean extremely extreme duress, and that’s just when we’re at rest. When we’re provoked, things escalate quickly.”

Sofia was entranced. She didn’t know if she should let him continue or not. He was so convincing that she feared if she let him continue, that she may begin to lose her intense anger and disgust; and that was something she wanted to hold on to. She knew that she would need to keep that going if she was ever going to be able to take him in. However, she had to admit that what he was saying was too intriguing to stop him. “No, go on. I mean I would hate for you to have prepared this great elaborate story and have no one to tell it to.” Although she was attempting to appear very sarcastic, she couldn’t deny that she genuinely wanted to hear more.

“It’s hard for an intelligent person to let go of their beliefs and buy in. I understand that. What I’m going to do is give you the main facts, that way you’ll know some things. Then, there will come a time where you will either choose to believe me or simply be unable deny that what I have told you is the truth.” Lucian began to recap in an effort to ensure he had given Sofia enough basic information to make a decision.

“So, I was telling you about the healing thing. I think that just about covers that. I believe I covered the reason that I ate parts of the body, but I imagine that you would like to know a little more about that particular part.”

Sofia breathed deeply, resituated in her seat, and crossed her legs and arms.

“Sure.” She sighed. Sofia was making her discontent with the entire situation very obvious, but Lucian no longer cared. He had her listening, so he continued.

“So, I take the muscle off these guys for a good reason. Once I get like that, I have a very urgent need to give my body something to feed on. Once I’ve burned off the energy provided by food I’ve eaten throughout the day, my body turns to the fat. You may have notice, not a lot of fat here.” He said indicating to his lean physique.

“Once it burns through the zero percent body fat that I have to offer, it starts breaking down muscle, and that shit hurts. It’s like the feeling you get in your stomach when you’re really, really hungry; only it’s all over your body, and much more intense. So, rather than give my body time to turn on itself, I start eating. The reason I focus on the muscles is they contain the most nutrients. It’s kind of like setting fire to a piece of paper, or a puddle of oil. Fat would burn like the paper, that muscle burns like oil.”

“So is that the way that you get the blood that you need, also?” Sofia had asked in a sarcastic tone, but was unsure if she had asked that question mockingly or if she actually wanted to know the answer. Lucian’s face slowly dropped until it was painfully obvious how disappointed in her response he was.

“No.” He said, shaking his head slowly. “No, that’s not…uh… that ain’t real. That’s one of the most irritating myths.” Seeing his frustration caused Sofia to become very arrogant. She was pushing his buttons, so she decided to continue.

“What? You don’t drink blood?” She asked, maintaining her sarcastic tone.

“Nope.” Lucian’s mood was beginning to reflect his irritability. He placed his hands on his hips and lowered his head. “See, the thing that I do, eating the muscles, that’s more along the lines of what one of us would do when it comes to it. That’s not something that I just came up with out of nowhere. I mean, that shit’s gross; I’m aware. The first time it came down to it, I had a hard time comin’ to terms with it. But if you ever felt that pain, that ‘hunger’, you’d do it. Had it been up to my emotions and my reactions the first time that I lost control, I would’ve had no idea what to do. My mentor had to teach me about what was going on and how I should go about stopping the pain. But, that’s just how we have to do things to rebuild our energy. Actually, the way that I do it is my own adaptation of how it’s normally done. They used to just devour whatever they needed until the pain stopped. I mean, honestly, I could probably run into the woods and kill some kinda animal and get the same effect; but I don’t live in the woods, and these dudes are dead. As far as drinking blood is concerned, that’s just a ridiculous mutation of the truth. In the original stories, people had it right. Someone saw what happened and they told other people, and their stories reflected that. Then you get some jackass that wants to be a storyteller, and they change things up. By the time the stories made it into television and movies, they tried to make that part of things a little less gruesome and a little more ‘sexy’. It was much easier to look at a person with two tiny holes in their neck than it was to look at a person that has had their body ripped to shreds. The biggest problem I have with it is that drinking blood makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. People don’t drink blood! If you did it would make you sick! That same fact is true for us. Plus it’s gross and creepy. So, there’s that. We are humans first, Sofia. That’s what I want you to understand. We’re different, that much is true, but we’re fundamentally just people. If you took nothing else from this conversation, I would hope it was that.”

Lucian maintained his intensely serious look. He even looked hurt in a way. Sofia wouldn’t allow herself to feel any remorse for him, so she continued to probe. “So how old are you? Are you one of the first? Have you been around for hundreds of years and lived all over the world? I mean, you must be since you know these things, right?”

“No, no, no, but those are excellent questions!” He responded with some renewed excitement in his voice. “I’m actually not. I’m still relatively young, depending on how you look at it. I’m forty-seven years old. Contrary to popular belief, we’re not immortal. We definitely do live longer than an average person and we don’t show age as quickly as normal people, but we do eventually die. The reason I know the things I know is because I’ve been tapped.. er.. selected, as the next ancient.” Lucian paused and scratched at his head, realizing how deep his explanation had to go in order for Sofia to understand. “Okay, for you to understand that, I need to tell you this: A long time ago, there was a civil war among my people. It wasn’t long after the English settled in America. Many of our kind gathered and formed a colony in the new land. For a long time, everything was cool and they flourished. It didn’t take long for people to hear about how well the town was doing and start showing up. When they first showed up, they were received with open arms. My people had, after all, lived among the normal humans for many years before coming there. After a few years of allowing settlers to join the colony, some things started goin’ sour. Basically, some of my people were gettin’ pissed that the normal people couldn’t offer as much to the community as they could. Typical stuff; some people doing all the work, others were benefitting from it. Anyway, through no fault of their own they were causin’ some issues. Over time, the anger increased and began to infect others, eventually causing a split in the community. Those against the normal humans began to think of themselves as Gods. They saw their abilities as a sign that they were far superior to the regular humans, and felt that they should be shown more respect. The others saw those same abilities in a different way; choosing to believe that they were a devolved version of man because of their primal needs and predatory urges. Those who believed this also believed that we should be the protectors of men; that we were born to be Guardians, not Gods. That’s the way they started identifying inside the community, the Gods and the Guardians.

After several years with a few minor dust ups between the groups, the God’s started making some pretty aggressive moves. At one point, a few attacks occurred against some of the humans. Nobody died, but it was enough to cause some concern among the humans as well as among the Guardians. In the end, the humans were driven out by the Gods, and allowed to leave by the Guardians; who felt that it would be far safer for them to leave because of the way things were escalating. The bulk of the humans left, but there were several who had married members of the Guardians, so they stayed. Even though most of the humans were gone, the Guardians knew it wouldn’t stop there. Some time went by, the groups never really broke up, and ideas kept flyin’ around. Eventually some of the Gods got it into their heads that humans were put on Earth to serve them, which was enough to push the Guardians to take action. Eventually, civil war broke out between the two groups. One believing that normal humans should be enslaved or eradicated, and the other believing that they should live in peace with them and protect them.”

Lucian’s mood became a bit more somber as he continued. “No clear winner. Most of our people died, and it’s believed by those who survived that all of the Gods were killed. The survivors decided they had to do something to prevent such a thing from happening again and elected a group of elders. The elders would be in charge of maintaining the history of our people. Once the council was chosen, everyone promised to never pass along the knowledge of how to unlock their hidden powers and reach their full potential. The elders then decided to take the story of what had happened in their community back to their homelands and share with the broods of the area in an effort to prevent such a thing from happening again. Every elder knows the story of our history and when they start reaching the end of life, they select an heir to teach it to and carry on. The elders became known as the Ancients.

There are tons of people in the world that are like me, but don’t know it. Even though they were never taught to tap into it, the potential is there. They just know they’re better at things than everybody else. It can show up in tons of different areas. Some of us are physically gifted due to the extremely high metabolism that accompanies our chemical composition. Some are just ridiculously smart. Like I said, the potential is there, they just don’t know to release it. I mean, if you were the most athletic person around, would it even consider to you that you hadn’t even touched your real potential?” Lucian didn’t wait for a response for fear that it may end the conversation when he was so close to the end.

“Anyway, once they’ve been taught to unlock their ability, they truly become one of my people. The thing is, the Ancients are the only ones who know how to make that happen. The only reason I know any of this is because I was tapped to take over for one of the Ancients. The current Ancient is the man I referred to as my mentor. He’s the one that unlocked me so I can take over his responsibility when he’s gone. That’s why I know so much about all of this.”

“This mentor is the guy you talked about at the museum?” Sofia questioned unenthusiastically as she rolled her neck after the extensive explanation.

“There ya’ go.” He replied quickly, pointing at her approvingly.

Lucian’s story was so well thought out and he told it with such conviction that it was almost believable. He had answers for so many questions, but it was all based on something so fantastical that Sofia would never allow herself to buy into it. She knew that no matter how well thought out a story was, there were always holes to be found. Continuing to draw his story out was the only way that she would be able to expose them, so she continued to ask questions.

“All right, so how is it that you took out so many people at one time? Some of those crime scenes consisted of several bodies. The group that attacked us in the park, how did you manage to handle that? I mean, I hate to offend you but you’re not what I would call physically imposing by any stretch of the imagination.”

“Yeah, I kind of glazed over that a little. It really goes back to how fast my body regenerates tissue. If I tear my muscle tissue in any way, it immediately begins to rebuild. My muscle tissue can rebuild, like, really quick. So, when I star tearin’ muscle, I get ripped quick. Part of my training with the Ancient is about learning different techniques that he’s learned so I’m ready if something like the Gods and Guardians thing ever goes down again. Some of those techniques are about increasing my natural speed. So, whenever I’m full form, I’m really fast.”

“So, give me a test drive. Do some pushups or something. I would honestly really like to see that.” Sofia’s comments were once again sarcastic. She saw no need in masking her feelings about it. Whatever was driving her to sit and listen to this madness, whether it was curiosity or her attachment to Lucian, wasn’t going to keep her from trying to get some viable proof of what he was proposing.

“That seems a little silly. If I do that, then I gotta go through the pain after. Like I said earlier, once I burn up that energy and build up some muscle my body’s gonna start looking for payment with the quickness. That’s the reason that I stay, as you have so kindly pointed out, so physically unimposing. I really don’t care to go through that just to prove something to you that you’re eventually gonna believe anyway.”

“You seem awfully sure of that. A little overconfident for someone that has failed to provide one single bit of tangible evidence that what he is saying is true.”

“I suppose it does come across that way. I guess I just feel like you’re gonna have all the proof you need at some point and I really don’t need to put myself through that to prove it right now.” Lucian’s eyebrows bolted up his face as he realized another point. “And I would say surviving that little situation in the alley would serve as some of your reasonably tangible evidence.”