The Alien Agenda (14 page)

A  machine
gun opened fire from somewhere in the rear of the dacha, a heavy caliber belt-fed weapon, if I knew my weapons, and swept the entire second level from one side to the other.  The wall above me exploded outward in bullets and debris as the weapon strafed by me.  I scurried to the very front of the side wall in time to look around the edge and see the bullets marching down the front facade of the dacha, blowing out chunks of the wall as it went and raining debris out onto the ground.  The line of bullets marched back and forth through the entire level four times before running out of ammunition and falling silent.  The silence was surreal, eerie and overly pronounced.

There was no answering fire.  No noise at all, for long moments, but then the whole second level of the dacha seemed to settle, creaking and groaning dangerously, and I had to revise the thought that I had to re-enter the structure.  Most of the supporting beams must have been blown out, or nearly so.  I did not think the second story could long hold together.  I could feel it teetering on the brink.  I leapt free, somersaulting in the air, and as I did so opening my mind to Sonafi, that she might know too, what I knew.  I hit the ground, rolled once and came up in a crouch.  'Get out of the house!'  I told her.

“Psst!”  She whispered beside me.  “I think the house is going to go.”  She said.  “I think you should be careful.”

“Thanks.”  I said sarcastically.  “I'll do that.”  Ignoring her warning I returned to the side of the dacha to retrieve my shoes.  At my side, ignoring her own warning, Sonafi retrieved her own shoes.

“Those were big bullets.”  Sonafi said as, cocking her head, she listened to the minute sounds of the overburdened remaining structural supports giving way under the weight of the roof and joists above.  Then the sound of snapping timbers heralded the beginning of the end of Rostov's dacha.  Sonafi grabbed me and yanked me away even as the remaining supports gave way and the entire upper level collapsed into the first.  I let myself flow with her, like liquid motion, pliant and unresisting, though I could have escaped the debris falling from the second level had I even waiting until it was nearly upon me.  We paused at the same tree-line we had used to sneak up in the first place and then hand in hand we watched the destruction unfold.

The upper walls buckled outward, starting first on the front of the dacha, where the machine gun had done the majority of the damage then exploding out the side where we watched.  Then the entire thing fell in on itself.  It created a kind of thunderous roar as the trapped air was instantly compressed and clapped explosively outward.  As soon as the second level fell in on the first, the first succumbed to the weight of the second and it, too, fell in with a roar.  Then there was a whoosh of flame as a gas line was severed and ignited.  It roared like a thing alive.

“Let's be sure.”  Sonafi said grimly.  “I would not want to have to face these guns again, somewhere else.”  She made a good point, and I understood her anger.  Those had been large bullets.  A head shot would have certainly killed us.  The exploding Russian car would probably have killed us.  Rostov had to be dealt with once and for all.

“I agree.”  I said.  “I do not wish to have to be looking behind myself, wondering, always, if or when he might arise.”

The flames were quickly spreading as the gas line, flamethrower like, sprayed it's fiery spew into the debris and quickly ignited the entire front of the wrecked dacha.  If Rostov was alive but trapped the flames would soon do our work for us, but we still had to know.  We were not long in finding out.

The dacha had a huge, separate garage on the opposite side of the home from our own location, and it was there, even above the roaring of the ignited gas line, that I heard a different kind of roar
- that of the engine of an expensive sports car coming to life.  Barely did I hear the sound of an electric garage door beginning to open, and I knew that Rostov was within moments of escaping.

I turned to Sonafi and reached within her clothing to remove one of her long knives.  I did it so quickly that she only detected the theft after it had occurred and I was already sprinting away from her.  As I began to run a car rocketed out of the garage, its tires spinning and burned rubber roiling out from under its rear end as the friction superheated and vaporized it.  I couldn't determine the car's make or model, only dimly seen in the darkness and billowing smoke now pouring from the wreckage of the dacha, as it slid spinning out of the garage and rocketed down the beginning of the curving drive.  The car's tires chirped and caught traction as it hit second gear and I saw that it was going to get away from me.  As fast as I was the car was faster and moving away quickly.  I would not be able to catch it, I saw immediately, but that was why I had appropriated Sonafi's knife.  I threw it on the run.  I threw it with every ounce of my strength and was rewarded to see it fly true to its target.  It flipped end over end and struck and sank into the driver's side rear tire with an explosive whump.  The car was powering around one of the many curves of the drive and losing its traction suddenly spun out of control and slid into the lawn.

“Damn you!”  Sonafi said, suddenly at my side.  “I have weapons better suited, and which wouldn't have left me undefended.”

“Undefended?”  I asked.  “Now there's a thought I would have a hard time imagining.”

“Still!  I didn't appreciate it.”  She said, her hands on her hips.

“I'll try to remember that the next time the bad guy is getting away.”  I said as I kept my eyes on the sports car.  The bad guy in question here hadn't exited yet, but as I spoke I unsheathed my Cumosachi Katana and tested its comfortable weight once more within my hand.  It seemed almost weightless was its balance so superb.  It was a living extension of my arm, and I as skilled with either arm.  I have lived a long enough life to have honed to perfection every aspect of my ability.  I now approached Rostov's car with the confidence and assurance born of that knowledge.  I had covered half the distance when the driver's side door flew open and Rostov stepped out.  He was armed similarly.  If he had a gun in the car, he realized the futility of attempting to use it against me out in the open, and had left it behind.
  His sword was an old weapon of European design but could have been fashioned last week for all I knew. I wouldn’t be able to judge its true value without holding it in my hand and testing its balance and craftsmanship for myself, but I could be sure that Rostov would know how to use it.

“So you have finally come to murder me.”  Rost
ov said, advancing towards me in a slow but purposeful walk, giving his blade a twirl that showed in every way his expertise with it.  Rostov was blondish and curly haired.  He had blue eyes but I could not see them in the dark.  A line of trees now separated us from the inferno that had been his dacha and the light from the burning house had little effect here.  There was smoke everywhere, though as if it sensed what was about to occur, it had made a place for us within itself and had closed away the rest of the world outside the little drama that was unfolding within it.  Rostov was heavier than I, blockish and stolid seeming, but I would not be deceived into thinking that meant he would be slow.  He would be fast.  He was older than Sonafi.  One of the Eldest Vampires alive!  I was sorry it had come to this.

“We did not come here to murder you, but to attempt to enlist your aid,” I told him, “but it is obvious you have grown sick.  Was their threat so great?”

“I am the Master here!”  Rostov snarled and spittle flew from his lips.  It was then that I knew he was mad.  He had completely lost his mind, but he wasn't finished speaking; “I do not have to validate myself to you to regulate my own city.  They were conspiring against me.  They planned to kill me.  I caught them at their treachery and executed them.  You have no right to be here.  No right!”

Though Rostov had lost his mind he wasn't out of his mind.  I could see the fear glittering in his eyes even if I couldn't see the color of those eyes.  It was in his eyes.  It cracked within his voice.  I smelled his pheromon
e response as the breeze wafted across him and carried it to me.  The musk of his fear-sweat.

I had created Rostov myself.  Not my biological child but of those Vampires I created in my first wave of Vampire-producing insanity.  Insanity for many reasons, but mostly because I had chosen so poorly.  Most of those I had created went rogue immediately.  Those were the Vampires which had created such havoc, and made such a terrible reputation for us, that we were feared ever after.

It was a strange twist it should come to this.  Rostov had not been one of those with immediate sociopathic tendencies.  His megalomania grew with the eons.  Now, all this time later, and knowing something more of how the Vampire ego worked, and having watched Sonafi struggle to become the good being she was evermore becoming, I wondered if I had weeded the wrong vampires from the gene pool. The children Sonafi now bore were evolved beings.  The entire Vampire line is a work in progress and it has made remarkable progress considering our origins.  Two species not even evolved on the same world or even, most likely, within the same Galaxy.  I had failed with Rostov.  I knew that now.  The insanity twisting his features became ever clearer as he approached.

Rostov would not run.  That much could be said about him.  He knew the futility of that effort.  He could not outrun me.  He would not try.  He advanced.  Hate marred the otherwise aesthetic features for which I had chosen him in the first place.   I had meant that my new vampire society would be comprised of only the very best specimens humanity had to offer.  I had not chosen spontaneously, but had studied each individual in-depth.  Rostov had had many admirable seeming characteristics. 
His aesthetic appearance.  Intelligence.  Cunning.  A clean and fastidious dresser, and this at a time when, as a whole, humans were among the filthiest, meanest animals alive on this planet.  It was Humans like Rostov whom I emulated to acquire the exterior facade of sophistication I mistook for so much more.  That I mistook for humanity, before I understood what that could mean.  I was not happy it had come to this, but Rostov had gone completely rogue and had to be stopped.  He had learned to rule by terror and murder and that left an indelible mark upon a being.  He could never be trusted again.

I did not need to twirl my blade in my hand, or cast it from hand to hand, or do any of those other fancy things television and wide screen like to show of the masters of old as seeming to find necessary before they fought, nor did Rostov, after the one to settle the blade in his hand.  We met one another surely, our blades held loosely but securely, on guard sizing one another immediately.

“You're the worst tyrant of us all!” Rostov snarled as we began to circle one another and then came at me with a flurry of attacks that banished any thoughts that this would be for me an easy contest.  I'd forgotten what it was like to face an opponent of Rostov's caliber.  Though I was the Elder, Rostov was still the same Vampire whose human characteristics had appealed to me in the first.  His fastidious habits for cleanliness, his cunning and intelligence, his work ethic, had kept him in his dojo, or his gym, or whatever Russian equivalent he now used.  His attacks were confident, sure and powerful.  If I had not maintained my own practice (on the flat of my roof since I had lived in St. Louis) Rostov would've made quick work of me, despite my advantages.

As it were I found myself pressed back as I parried his furious attack. The ring of steel as blade met blade was the purest sound I have ever heard.  Here was a
blade, it became obvious, which was an equal of my own.  I did not have much time to think about it, however, as his blade continued to pursue me, and I, to give ground.

The fight was entirely one-sided as he continu
ed to push me back, I realizing belatedly that Rostov was the superior fighter.  It wasn't the amount of training, or the school of instruction, but that he was inherently better.  He had inherited better genes from his human parents than I had.  The fight was not going to be over quickly and the outcome was still to be determined.

Our blades were dancing blurs around us, their song a primordial one. 
One of violence, conflict and ever surety of looming death.  The symbolic music lashed against me in an ever increasing tempo that pulsed through my blood as much as it sang in the air around us while we danced our macabre, seemingly choreographed rhythms to the accompaniment of the ringing clash of the swords as they met, sang and then met again in an arpeggio of riposte and parry.

Rostov's attack was furious to control.  He was attempting to finish me quickly, yet
at the same time pacing it for the long fight.  He knew I was the stronger.  That I would tire more slowly.  I saw the growing light of understanding within his eyes, even though I could still not see the eyes themselves.  It was more the reading of his body language, desperation of his attack and what I could read of his closed mind.

Words cannot fully or adequately describe a contest between two beings that occurred beyond the range of what a Human being could perceive.  It would take months, maybe years, to describe, blow for blow, what occurred at hyper-accelerated speeds in only short minutes.  The crash as the blades connected would've been as one continuous ring to a human's ears.  A Human would only have seen the blurring of the air in a small area in which we fought.

We hammered the ground under our feet to compacted, solid soil, trampling underfoot what had been beautifully manicured lawn.  To a Human it might have appeared as if a small tornado churned along the ground, ripping up the grass and leaving naught but barren earth behind.  A few of Rostov’s surviving Juveniles had gathered around us now and to them our movements would be impossible to follow.  They were far too young and none attempted to interfere.  This was now a conflict between Elders, of challenged and challenger, and the rules were clear.  They would complacently await the outcome.