Rise of the Dunamy (20 page)

39

“W
hat is your name?” Lucian spoke just above a whisper but it was a nerve-racking sound. The man attempted to spit at Lucian, but couldn’t muster the strength or wind to reach him due to the blows that Lucian had delivered, which Sofia was almost certain had cracked his sternum and broken several of his ribs. His feeble attempt resulted in the spit dribbling over his lips, down his chin and neck and coming to a rest on his collar.

“What an original response.” Lucian said as he struck the man in the face with such force that he nearly caved in the same eye socket Sofia had struck earlier. Sofia heard his facial bones crack beneath the force of Lucian’s fist.

A wave of anxiety rushed through Sofia, fracturing her thoughts. She had encountered the sensation before as a child and recognized it as the first stages of a panic attack. When she was young she went through a time in her life where panic attacks were common. Her family did not have the means to send her to a therapist, but she was fortunate to find a guidance counselor that knew something about such things. The counselor taught her a breathing technique that helped her overcome the attacks when she was able to catch them early enough.

Breathe deep through your nose. Hold. Out through your mouth. Sofia told herself.

The man groaned as he slid down the wall towards the ground from his seat on the pavement. Lucian caught him as he dropped and brought him back to his eye level. “How bout I just call you Spit? Spit, whatcha think is a good way for Sofia to repay you for your hospitality today? Do you think you should be allowed to live, or do you think she should be allowed to gut your sorry ass? I mean, it’s pretty clear that you’re not makin’ any good use of your life, so why keep it?”

Breathe in deep through your nose. Hold. Out through your mouth. She repeated in her head as she contemplated what Lucian was trying to say. She was becoming more panicked as she considered that Lucian was about to tell her to kill this man. She had wanted revenge on these demented bastards from the second they put their hands on her, but could she actually go through with murder? Could she go against everything that she believed in and take this man’s life instead of allowing him his day in court? But what if she allowed him to live and he got off? If by some chance he were able to get off and go back on the street he would inevitably do this again to some other woman. Probably to countless other women! She had seen it too many times to pretend that, not only was it a real possibility, but a likely one. These men had funds that they could tap into to get an attorney that would get them off and back on the streets in no time. Even if they didn’t, they would go to prison where they had just as many friends as they do on the street. Prison was no threat to these men. The law meant nothing to them. Nothing phased them because the life that they were a part of was nearly the same in prison as it was on the street. Sofia looked over at Spit. He had made no attempt to answer Lucian. He just sat there wheezing and fighting for air.

“Nothing to say, huh? Well Sofia, I believe Spit is leaving the decision in our hands.” Lucian reached over and took Spits gun from the ground beside him. He handed the gun to Sofia. “I say he dies,” he said bluntly.

Sofia stared at the gun. She had held her own so many times and never thought a thing about what it represented. Now she looked at this gun and realized that it represented the end of two lives. While it clearly represented the end of Spit’s revolting, undeserved life, it also represented the end of the life that she knew and had worked so hard for. If she fired that weapon it would mean that she no longer believed that the system would work or that people deserve a second chance. She sat staring at the gun in silent thought as she listened to Spit’s labored breathing. Knowing what it would mean if she fired that weapon, Sofia placed the gun on the ground and looked away from Lucian’s patiently waiting face.

“I can’t do it, Lucian.” She whispered. “I don’t believe in this. He deserves a shot at rehabilitation.” Regardless what she thought about the prison system, Sofia believed in the judicial process. She believed that some men took advantage of the second chance, and it was because of those people, everyone deserved that opportunity.

“I know what he was about to do, but he didn’t do it. You came in and may have saved my life, but he still could have stopped. I’m not this man’s judge, and I cannot take his life, Lucian.”

Lucian looked at her acceptingly. “I understand, and I admire you for your strength” He said. Hearing this, Spit began to stir in an effort to move to his feet.

“Get off me!” Spit tried shouting the words, but they came out as a whisper and caused him a great deal of pain which was evident as he fell back hard against the brick wall. Lucian slowly panned his head back to Spit. Tilting his head slightly to the side, Lucian raised his eyebrows quizzically.

“You heard that bi…” Lucian’s hand shot out and clenched Spit’s throat, stopping the word before he could finish it.

“What she said was that she could not be your judge. I on the other hand, have no problem with that position.” Lucian tightened his grip slowly, crushing Spits’ windpipe and causing his short choppy breathing to create a gurgling noise that horrified Sofia. Lucian stared into Spit’s eyes with a boiling hatred.

“”Lucian, stop!” she cried, reaching out and grabbing his forearm. She pulled at his arm weakly as he continued squeezing and maintained his unwavering gaze. It almost seemed as though he was in a trance; as if nothing Sofia said or did could reach him. Sofia was no match for Lucian’s strength even at her best. Now, at her weakest, she was hardly even noticeable. Lucian continued squeezing tighter. Sofia was forced to listen as his windpipe collapsed. Spit’s eyes began to bulge in their sockets as Lucian continued. Finally, Lucian’s hand closed so tightly that he was all but holding Spit’s spine in his hand, and with a simple flick of his wrist he snapped it in two. Sofia leaned back against the wall once more, covering her mouth with her hand and staring at Lucian, whose face was now calm as he continued to stare into the lifeless eyes of his victim.

“Now, you may wanna look away. I need to take care of my hunger and it’s not something you’re going to wanna see.” Lucian said calmly, never turning to face her. Sofia turned quickly, shifting her face towards the brick and shielding the side of her eyes with her hand. If Lucian had not felt the need to keep her from seeing what he had just done to Spit, she felt certain that he was correct about seeing him eat. The sounds that followed were disturbing to say the least. Each began with the tearing of cloth as Lucian ripped away the sleeves and pant legs that covered his usual focal points. Sofia expected the sounds to be completely different than anything she had heard before, but they reminded her of the sounds of any other meal. She could identify when he sunk his teeth into the meat as easily as she could identify the sound of the tearing flesh as it tapered off before snapping loose. Lucian seemed to be doing all that he could to keep from making too much noise, but the sound of his chewing was hard to cover up. The meat was uncooked, therefore extremely juicy and the sound reflected that. It wasn’t long before Sofia’s imagination could no longer manage to trick her into believing Lucian was simply eating an extremely rare steak of some sort, so she covered her ears. This only provided a small amount of comfort as the smell of blood consumed her nostrils, which completely negated any progress she was making with her breathing technique. Glancing around briefly for some way to mask the smell, she spotted the coat she had been wearing, several feet away from her. Considering it briefly, she opted to see how much longer she could handle the smell of blood.

As badly as Sofia wanted to simply get up and run, leaving Lucian to his disgusting process, the fear of being attacked again was too powerful, and her strength was drained, so leaving him was not an option. There was no way that she could force herself to get up and go on alone. She knew that she would have to wait for Lucian so that she could proceed.

After what seemed like an eternity of waiting for Lucian to finish this disgusting process, Sofia spoke.

“What is taking you so long?” She whispered with her head still turned towards the wall.

“It’s not a matter of eating because I’m hungry, or I’d be done. This ain’t me sittin’ down for a pleasant meal, Sofia.” Lucian responded, “It’s about giving my body somethin’ to feed on instead of going directly for my muscle while I’m like this. I have to take it in slowly. I’m sorry, but I gotta take my time. It’ll be over soon, and then we can go.”

As he continued to feed, Sofia gathered the courage to peek over at him. Lucian had moved away from her and now had his back towards her. She was unable to see him clearly, but she could tell what he was doing. He was not feeding on them as she had imagined. He didn’t tear the meat from the bone with his mouth like an animal, he removed the muscle using his hands and fingernails, which appeared to have grown out somewhat creating more of a claw than a nail. She had wondered why there had been no trace amounts of saliva on the bodies at the scenes of the other crimes, and now she had her answer. He was actually quite careful about how he went about his process. As she looked on, Lucian spoke. “Please don’t watch. This ain’t somethin’ I want you to see.” Sofia was puzzled by his remark.

“Are you embarrassed?” she asked quietly.

“No. Not at all. But I’m not dumb enough to think you can see this without it messin’ with your head. So, please just turn back around.” He replied. Sofia hid her head again.

As she sat, pressed up against the cold brick wall she began to go over what Lucian had told her earlier that evening. The situation was absolutely unbelievable. There was no way that what she had just seen was possible.

“How can this be, Lucian? How can you be a…” She stopped, realizing that she had no idea what to call him if not a vampire.

“What are you?” Lucian paused momentarily to consider the question before answering.

“We’ve had a bunch of names. Just like with anything, there’s a word in every language for us. Here, I guess it’s vampire, but that name was given a long time after the truth stopped having any place in the stories. The oldest names were more accurate and there was one for every, like, sub unit…I guess? Like I was telling you, some are physically gifted; others are smart; then there are others. Anyway, the Greeks had names for all of them, but when they were talking about the whole group in general, they called them the Dunamy. It’s based in the Greek word that means explosive power, which is dunamis.”

He approached Sofia, removing what was left of his shirt and using it to remove the blood from his hands and face as best he could so that he didn’t appear to be some sort of monster. Tucking the shirt into his back pocket, he gently lifted Sofia to her feet.

“I can explain anything else on the way home. You really need to get home and get some rest and we have a good ways to go before we’re out of this place.” Sofia would not resist him, so the two began to walk in the direction of Sofia’s apartment.

40

“H
ow can you be a vampire, Lucian?” Sofia asked quietly as they continued down the road.

“It’s just like I said before. I’m just a person, same as you, but with a very different genetic makeup. Our bodies produce the same chemicals, but my body produces more of them and much faster. That’s the biggest difference. You really have to try and stop thinking of me the way that you think of vampires in general. I’m not the myth. I’m not pure evil, preying on every single blood pumping human being on the planet. I don’t have to consume blood in order to survive. I’m honestly not sure if I’m a part of the evolution of man or some sort of devolved version that got skipped over in the evolutionary chain. Sometimes I see the things that I’m able to do and think that maybe I am the next step of the human race. Other times I look at myself and realize that I’m still very much an animal. Sometimes I see both. What you just witnessed was one of those times where I saw both.”

“But you’re a murderer.” She protested calmly. “A murderer that feasts on the corpses of your victims. Do you see how ridiculous your argument is?”

“But I don’t do that because of what I am. Do you see what I mean? I do that because I feel like I have a purpose. I’m only trying to make the world a better place. These guys go out and prey on the weak and the unsuspecting, hard-working, law abiding citizens of the world, so I prey on them and bring some level of justice to the situation; some balance.”

“No, that’s what
I
do. It’s
my
job to stop these people and to make them pay for what they do, not yours. Your way doesn’t allow for people to repent or for them to have another shot at life after they’ve made a mistake. That’s the reason that the laws are the way that they are, they factor in some decency.” Sofia was insistent, but not angry. She simply couldn’t find the energy to be angry at this point.

“So you think that when they’re given a second chance, people usually take full advantage of that and make a better life for themselves?”

“You know exactly what I mean. No, not everyone takes advantage of a second chance but some do, and those people make it necessary to give the others a chance as well.”

“So you mean that you’re willing to sacrifice the many for the good of the few? Is that what you mean, because that’s what I’m hearing? Those very few that take advantage are a good enough reason to allow the vast majority of criminals to go on doing what they do and putting so many people at risk?” Lucian’s passion was undeniable about the situation. “Plus, I don’t go after people making their first tiny mistake; I don’t even go after people who have a chance at being innocent. I research people before I ever make a move.” Lucian paused briefly. “That is, unless a situation such as the one we just had, comes along.”

“See, why couldn’t you have just beaten them up? Why not just teach them a lesson?” It’s still not what I think is right, but at least they would be alive.” The strain of the day had worn Sofia down so much that her accent began revealing itself.

“And what lesson would that be? I can tell you exactly what that’s gonna teach them; we need to walk around with bigger guns. That’s it!”

“What about the fact that you’re killing people? You’re taking lives, don’t you worry about that?” Sofia looked over at Lucian, but didn’t wait for a response. “What am I saying? Why would you care about any sort of long term effects from your actions?”

“If you’re talking about on a spiritual level, which I assume you are, I actually do think about that. I’m not going to get into my personal beliefs on the matter, but I believe that my soul will, inevitably, be condemned for what I’m doin’.” Sofia stopped instantly. She looked at Lucian in disbelief.

“I really don’t want to get in to this right now.” Lucian said as he continued walking.

“How do you think we can do that?” Sofia was appalled at the fact that he thought he could say something like that and expect her to simply not press him for some explanation.

“We can just move on to the next subject, or we can simply go back to the last one; pretty much the same way you move around any subject.” Sofia continued to stare at him.

Lucian sighed deeply, knowing that they could not proceed until he had given some sort of explanation.

“Well, come on, and keep walking,” he said, beckoning her forward. “No need to stop just so you can listen.” Sofia walked slowly toward him, still dumbfounded by his reponse. As she caught up to him, they continued on.

“It’s like this. Your emotions are nothing more than the feelings that your body creates in response to the chemicals that your brain releases in a certain situation.”

“What does that have to do with what you just said?” Sofia interrupted.

“I’ll get to it.” Lucian replied calmly. “So, the brain releases these chemicals, your body and brain react; boom, emotions. Since I have more of those chemicals and they’re present at much higher levels in my system, my emotions are much more powerful than yours. All of my emotions. Love, for me, is this unimaginable high. Sadness, on the other hand, is absolutely unbearable. So, the people that I love; those people are very important to me. They’re the reason I started doin’ this. I decided a long time ago that I would gladly give the ultimate sacrifice for them….”

“Lucian, you’re not the only person that would give their life to protect someone they love. I myself would gladly risk my life for my loved ones. The difference is, you’re not risking your life because you can heal from your wounds so quickly, and you’re killing people.”

“That’s why you need to listen, and stop all this interrupting. See, if you’re someone who believes that your soul is going to survive for all eternity after your body dies; and the circumstances of that eternity will be influenced by your actions during your life, then sacrificing your life isn’t that big a sacrifice. I mean, if you think that sacrificing your life for someone else is going to get you to Heaven, where you will eventually be reunited with everyone you have ever loved, you ain’t makin’ a sacrifice, you’re trying to jump the line. I don’t know what I believe, but I do what I do knowin’ that one possible outcome for me is that my soul could be condemned after this life. So, I’m sacrificing my eternity, not my life.”

Lucian’s comments caught Sofia completely off guard. His logic was insane, and at the same time an unbelievable testament of love and devotion. Who would consciously condemn themselves for all of eternity? She opened her mouth to rebut his comments, but could honestly think of nothing to say. She decided instead to simply turn her attention back to the walk that they had before them.

Sofia followed Lucian’s lead as he soldiered on through the treacherous neighborhood, taking her down a route he seemed all too familiar with. They ducked down alleys and through backyards of houses Sofia would have avoided altogether had she still been on her own. At one point they walked past a group of young teens out much later than they should have been, some of them commented on Lucian’s muscles, to which he just smiled and flexed for them. None of them had much of anything much to say about Sofia’s disheveled appearance. It was too dark for them to see the traces of blood on his clothes and hands, and he acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Finally, they reached a point that Sofia knew was a safe place and she paused for a moment and looked around. Lucian fully expected her to call her cab or suggest he leave so she could flag down a fellow cop for a ride home, but she didn’t. After getting her bearing, she worked out the fastest way to her apartment and continued walking. She wasn’t going to say it, but she still had questions she needed answers to. She knew it would be impossible to get back into this frame of mind with Lucian, and if they parted ways at this point she would never get the answers she needed.