The Alien Agenda (2 page)

“No.  I have felt nothing.”  Sonafi said reassuringly, reaching out a hand and placing it on my own.  “It is just a feeling.”

“Your feelings have often been more than just feelings.”  I said.  “Are you sure that is all there is to it?  Just a feeling?  No more?”  The reason I made such a point of my question was that Sonafi had proven, through the long years, to be especially attenuated to the Others.  She was our early warning detection sentinel in a very real way.  She could almost always be counted on for an advance warning, sometimes earlier than other times, however.              

“I just fear that we grow complacent.”  Sonafi said.  “It has not been so very long, after all.”  She meant since the
Others had found us last.

I looked around the house we had called home
for fourteen years and felt its loss like a physical blow.  Sonafi was correct.  We had remained stationary for far too long.

I was the oldest Vampire.  In a very real sense I was the cemen
t which bound our loose society and perpetually hunted.  Fourteen years without discovery is a long period, one of the longest, but it has also been becoming easier to hide within the human population as that population swelled, we few more easily missed in the crush of overwhelming Human numbers.  More easily missed but I was sure not forgotten.  If we remained stationary too long we would eventually be found.  We always were.

“Where will we go?”  I asked.  “I have dreaded this day.  I hate to leave.”  Now would it be as easy as it once was, merely to pick up and go?  We would require the aid of other of our kin to make that possible, I am not technologically inclined.  I have not well made the transition to the modern world.  A creature of long habit, I read, I write, I ponder philosophically, delving into the deeper mysteries of the world, the Universe, Time, Physics and Mathematics, subjects which hold endless fascination for me and probably why I find little time for modernization.

The youngest Vampire generations, like their Human counterparts, brought up with these mediums, the computer, cell phones, the internet and all of the other technological wizardry of this the modern world, had become as technically literate as some of humankind's finest scientists, programmers, engineers, biologists, geneticists, and the whole plethora of Human endeavor.  We had been endowed with the technical inclinations of the Others and with our forced daily hibernation, the time to pursue those studies.  We need varying amounts of sleep, like Humans, but generally far less than the entirety of the daylight hours.  For those of us so inclined, and that is a great percentage of us, we are afforded ample opportunity to pursue these endeavors.  Documents and new identities would not be a problem.

We were already getting too old for the identities we were using anyway.  Our apparent longevity set us at odds far more than our aversion to the sun. Many Humans were night
-lifers, third shifters, but none did not age!  They all aged.  All but us!

“I thought we might return to the Old Country.”  Sonafi suggested.  “It has been a
very long time.  I yearn for its old familiarity.  The comfort of its superstitions and fears.  The hysteria and undercurrent of constant suspicion.”  At this she smiled, her long eye teeth overly white and prominent.

“That's not one of the things I have particularly missed.”  I said.  The superstitious people of the Old Country had often been as dangerous as the
Others themselves.  But that was something I had brought upon myself and not really a natural state for Humans.  I was Vampire born, not transformed, and I had rampaged unchecked for centuries.  I had done horrible things.  I had killed indiscriminately, like a rabid animal.  The enmity Humans felt for me was well earned.

In those earliest years of my existence Humans and I were very much different.  I did not see them as anything more than a food source.  No different than any of the other animals I preyed upon, even though I could recall my birth of them.  It had been no more than one more of the many things I did not understand.  Like a reptile, I cam
e to this world fully prepared to fend for myself.  From the very first moment!  I can only thank providence that it was the custom of my mother's people that the woman went into the woods alone to give birth and also that I was in the shade of the canopy of branches above when I came out and not within the sun's direct glare.

The shock I had seen on her face, the confusion I felt at that moment, when I realized I was rejected, had haunted me for more years than I cared to count.
  It was the reason I had predated the early pre-Humans, when the forests were full of easy prey.  I had hated them and I had made them pay.

Those earliest Humans knew true terror when they thought of me.  I was relentless.  I hounded every Human settlement within thousands of miles.  I had nothing but time, after all, and it became much like a game.  I would kill randomly. 
One here.  One there.  Keeping them always on edge.

It was while persecuting those earliest Humans that I realized, suddenly, that I could understand them.  Having listened to their seemingly meaningless noises from the outskirts of their caves, their villages and their camps when they traveled, one day I simply made the mental leap that they were communicating, and I began to study them.  After that it was only a matter of time.  Then it was that I quit persecuting Humans.  Suddenly I was more intrigued than angry.

They had begun to change as well by then.  They had begun to look more like me, but I had not noticed.  I had been living like an animal.  I knew only the thoughts of the predator.  Yet suddenly my mind had been awakened.  Vast potentials opened before me.  I began to study them and to learn.  It was during this intense study of Humans that I first saw the Others.  I heard them in my head before I actually saw them.  I heard dozens of voices in my head all at once, wordless yet completely understandable.  They heard me, as well.  They were suddenly aware of me as I was aware of them.  This was before I learned how to control myself.  Learned how to control my thoughts.

“This is the modern era.  Humans have put their superstitions behind them.”  Sonafi said, but she wasn't really pushing the issue.  The New World had been good to us.  We have thrived here.  I could think of nothing which would convince me to return to the land of my birth.  I had ceased to hunt them, but the Humans of the Old World would never forget me.  I had hunted them too long.  Verbal histories had been passed down.  The fear those earliest Humans had felt for me was still strong in the peoples of the Old World.  We may have been forgotten here in the United States, but we were still remembered there.

My eyes shifted to and lingered momentarily on the detail and craftsmanship of the exquisite weapon under my hand.  It was the finest blade I had ever seen and made by my friend.  He had been the finest blade-smith who had ever lived.  I had offered the gift of eternal life, but he was only one of the few who having been made the offer had declined.  Hamaterara Cumosachi had been his name and a Human who had nothing to fear from the afterlife.

I well knew that
Hamaterara would have nothing to fear in the afterlife, and he had assured me of my own goodness, even knowing how I fed, but I have always wondered how God will greet me when my day does arrive.  Could those things I had done before the dawning of reason ever be forgiven?  I returned my hand to my side, my attention to my wife.

“They will never put us behind them.  We have done too much.”  I said.  Nor was it only what I had done personally.  To add to my crimes I had unleashed a wave of Vampires I confusedly had thought would become my new family.  I had been wrong.

“You are probably correct.  I do not know that I would ever wish to return to those turbulent times.”  Sonafi said.  “We were never safe in those days.  Always running and always looking over our shoulders.”

“It may not be good that we grow complacent, but it has been restful.”  I soliloquized.

“I don't think you will ever really grow complacent.”  Sonafi told me.  “I do not believe you are capable of complacency.”  Her eyes flickered to the Katana on its stand behind the sofa and then back to my own eyes.  Amused, I could not help the smile which rose to my lips, or help noticing the fascination with which she beheld it, and the teeth my smile revealed.  Even a Vampire could not resist her fascination with another Vampire's teeth; so white and milky, flawless and symmetrical, ideal and perfect, like everything else about a Vampire.  If it weren't for our aversion to the sun, we would be the most perfectly crafted creatures on the face of this world.

“We don't need the superstitious peoples of the Old World to keep us vigilant.”  I said.  “We have the
Others for that.  I can remember every visitation as if they had only occurred yesterday.  I would never be able to forget the Others.  Not ever.”

“Nor I.”
  Sonafi said softly, vehemently, the memories flooding her mind.  A mother does not soon forget the children she watched murdered right in front of her own eyes, no matter how long ago it had occurred.

Even if I were somehow ever able to become complacent, I would have Sonafi to remind me, to keep me vigilant.  I had sometimes even to walk on eggshells around my own children.  Sonafi became almost mindlessly ferocious directly after child
-birth.  I was sure to keep my distance during these times.  Though I love her dearly, I cannot fail to notice the look of insanity, the pure primal madness, which comes into her eyes when she is guarding her newly -born.

Were it up to me entire, I would engender no more offspring, the entire Vampire race already sprung from my blood, my loins, to begin, but Vampires are not plagued with the same genetic deficiencies as Humans, the genetic influence we received from t
he Others much more complex, older, more evolved, there can be no problems with inbreeding, nor do I have control over Sonafi's reproductive cycle.  Unlike Humans, a Vampire woman consciously controls her fertility.  I wouldn't have a say in the matter even had I wanted.  I did not attempt to dictate to Sonafi.  It would do no good if I did and our relationship is one of mutual respect, so I don't.  She makes these decisions and I abide them, for good or bad.

My part in the process is a brief one, relatively.  Then I tend to steer a wide berth around her, especially right after she has birthed.  She will look at me in a way, sometimes, that makes me think that it is a struggle to recognize me, her instincts rising and trying to take complete control of her.  It was losing children to the
Others that changed her.  Something of her had been intrinsically altered.

“I see that you are determined that we should relocate somewhere else.”  I said to steer the conversation away f
rom the old hurts.  Our offspring are born ready to fend for themselves.  They are born ready and willing to fight.  Ferocious.  Independent.  But no match, when they are young, for the Others.  The only reason the Others had not eradicated us entirely was our too similar likeness to themselves.  They can no more tolerate the sun than we.  When they come, they must come in the night, and the night is the Vampire's friend.  We are the night walkers.  The night is our home as much as it belongs to the Others.  The old legends are absolutely correct about that, at least.

“Will we never return?”  Sonafi asked.

“Never is a long time.”  I said.  “I admit I miss the Old Country.  The New World does not fulfill me the way the Old Country did, but here there is only one enemy.”

I was descended of the race of Humans who would later become the fierce nomadic Kurds. 
Black hair.  Light brown skin.  Dark blue eyes.  Nowhere could I go in this new land without generating curious looks.  I would never be fully at home here, but neither would I be persecuted or hunted by its Humans.  Not unless I stirred them, and then like a swarm would they attempt to rise and engulf me.

“There are hundreds of us now in the U.S.  How long can we remain unnoticed?”  Sonafi asked.  “And then what?  Where will we go then?  Imagine a television show 'Most Hunted' with us as the guests of honor; 'Root out the Night Walkers in your neighborhood!'  We wouldn't stand a chance.”

“They have television in Europe and the East.”  I pointed out.  “Plus they remember us.”

“I guess you have a point.”  Sonafi agreed reluctantly, a smile that revealed her own milky, predominant teeth warming her mobile face.  I had successfully changed the subject. 
Diverted it from those old anguishes.  It would never matter how many children had come before or after.  My Sonafi would never forget those which had been lost to the Others.  Once they left the nest, they were on their own and Sonafi divorced herself from them, but while within the nest, while still young and defenseless, they were Sonafi’s to guard, and she did so jealously.

CHAPTER 2

The night was our home and we walked within it fearlessly.  St. Louis is a cosmopolitan city and our brown complexions did not mark us as different, as they had in some of the places we had lived.  We were trapped indoors during the daylight hours.  The hours I did not sleep I spent with book or pen in hand, but the night was our friend.  We roamed it in its entirety.

The night life of St. Louis, the clubs, the social houses, the water
front and the danger all had an allure for us that never seemed to wane.  I was lucky to have found in Sonafi a kindred spirit, someone who could appreciate the smaller things life had to offer and to be content with those things.  Perpetual youth, or as close to unending as may be asked, may seem glamorous at first glance, but the blazing light of reality glared mercilessly through the transparency, the thin veneer of sanity separating an intelligent being from madness, as the unending parade of years march by.  Few Vampires could live with themselves for truly extended periods of time.