A Toreador's Story

Simon le Gris

The Resurrection

Seconds ticked by as Simon slept and dreamed of a magnificent medieval castle sitting at the summit of the higher of two twinned mountains. Then as dreams are wont, he was walking its seemingly new halls, through endless corridors, past great libraries and the workshops of hermetic wizards. He was looking for something, or was it someone important? In his hand he carried a odd, ivory dagger, like the tusk of some extinct animal it must have belonged to a saber-tooth tiger or prehistoric bear. But it felt right in his hand, like it belonged there, had been there his whole life. His thoughts refused to run in straight lines and he couldn't recall exactly what he was supposed to do when he found what he was looking for. As in many dreams, suddenly there was a spontaneous, if incomplete recollection of his mission, he was here to kill a woman with the knife. Which woman? And why? Who gave him this mission to murder some medieval woman in cold blood? There was that bizarre realization that sometimes occurs during somnolent sojourns like this, that if he just had enough time to wander this dark medieval fortress, that all his fleeting memories would return to him like a murder of crows. Unfortunately, and predictably, as he rounded the next corner he heard his own hoarse scream and everything went black...

...There is an old Romanian folk belief that dreams are harbingers of future events, that their portents are the clues that Providence provides us as tools to save ourselves from an otherwise dark and terrifying world. If Simon believed such things, when he awoke, he would have spent the precious seconds necessary to memorize every detail of that strange, seemingly irrelevant dream. But there is a dissonance between the two states of our mind, the transition from the unconscious to conscious can be fraught with stops and starts, and unless trained to reflect upon the details of dreams they slip away like wisps of smoke dissolving in a cool morning breeze.

Simon's eyes were still closed when his conscious mind fully reasserted itself. Rather than his eyes, his other senses went to work providing him with relevant input, the ticking of a slowing cooling engine, a cold blast of wind smelling faintly of snow, the growing scent of smoke and the slaughterhouse stench of blood. Gravity seemed to reassert itself and something held him tightly in a sitting position. His first thought was: "was I just in a car accident?" The truth was far worse. In opening his eyes there was pain, and despite the dying twilight of a early winter evening, it was much too bright for Simon to open his eyes fully. The white, light gathering properties of snow magnified the light so much that he had to squint as he looked around himself. Simon was in a car, and while it was badly damaged, it hadn't been a car accident that led this Cadillac to its final doom. The vehicle had obviously been someone's prize possession for other than the broken glass that lay everywhere, and the bullet holes that riddled the driver's side of the car, it had been well cared for, even tricked out by the look of the interior.

As Simon studied his surroundings, he came to understand from whence the charnel stink emanated. A trio of young Hispanic boys shared their dying place with him, each had clearly been shot several times and their blood splattered the inside of the car and had begun to pool in the foot-wells. Horror wasn't Simon's first reaction, he had seen death up close and personal before, and even if it had not been so obviously violent, he had always observed such things from a emotional distance. In a response he wouldn't even admit too himself, the sight of so much blood sent a strange, but familiar thrill through his nervous system. His mind rationalized it as shock and he unbuckled his seat belt and decided it wouldn't do to be found covered in the blood of a trio of Latino gang-bangers by the police who most certainly must be on their way as the thought passed through his sluggish mind.

As he exited the car into the slushy, snowbound street, the source of the smoke loomed into his awareness. Across the street from the ruined Cadillac, was a dilapidated three story Victorian brownstone that was fast becoming a pyre. Flames of yellow, orange and red roared from every window and thick black smoke boiled from the open ground floor door. An electric charge of fear traveled the length of his body and back again, before he made the irrational and unconscious decision to enter the building. Later, for many years afterward, he would sit for many dark hours and contemplate why he had made that particularly insane choice. But in the heat of the moment, Simon found himself across the street and standing before the burning building without anything like a plan. Without thinking, he ripped a long strip from the blood-soaked remains of the t-shirt he was wearing and grabbing a fistful of snow from the dirty sidewalk, into which he poured the snow to act as a makeshift filter and wrapped the whole mess around his nose and mouth as he entered the ground floor of the burning house.

The ground floor of the house was a maze of smoke filled rooms and passages lit by the orange glow of the burning second floor. The ashen smoke stung Simon's eyes, blinking out tears just to see a few feet, he was surprised that he didn't stumble or fall as furniture made barely perceived obstacles in the fire-lit gloom. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Simon was trying to remember which circle of Dante's hell had been a burning one, with a wry sense of humor he realized it had been the one predestined for the terminally stupid. He did not dare laugh however, the makeshift breathing mask could not protect him from the toxic smoke and the air he was receiving wasn't completely breathable.

Suddenly sweating like a pig, he got down on the floor where the air was cooler and the smoke blinded him less. As he moved forward deeper into the house, he let instinct guide him, he had come in here for a purpose after all. It was then that he felt rather than heard a muffled sound through the old floor boards of the house's back hallway. There not twenty feet from him was a balustrade that heralded an unlit stairway, that would undoubtedly lead him down into the bowels of the house. While there was smoke in the basement stair, it wasn't very thick and it was cool. When Simon reached the bottom, he stood up and tried the light-switch, but found the power off. By feel, he tried the old porcelain door-handle and found it unlocked. As he opened the door, he quickly stepped through and shut it firmly behind him.

The air inside the basement was both cool and breathable, and Simon coughed as he removed the makeshift mask and drew in his first real breath of breathable air. As he did so, he blinked the last of the smoke from his eyes, while they still stung, he could see reasonably well in the faint gloom. He had expected pitch darkness, but instead he found a well appointed antique hall lit by oil lanterns affixed to the walls by beautifully crafted brass holders. Simon's first thought was: "some fool was lighting his house with kerosene." During the more difficulty portions of his childhood in Colorado, he and his mother had of necessity used kerosene to light their home when the power was cut off due to unpaid bills. Still, while the lighting was familiar, it spoke volumes about those who lived here. However, that made time even more of a factor, when the fire finally reached the storage place for the kerosene, and to light so many lanterns whoever lived here would need barrels of the stuff, the house would go up in one hot explosion.

Simon moved fast down the hall and as he turned in the direction he felt certain the muffled sound had emanated from, the wall in front of him erupted as two individuals smashed their way through it as they wrestled with each other. Both were covered in blood, dust from the sheet-rock and bits of plaster or paint. They moved fast, too fast to be human, and Simon couldn't help but stare in awe as they battled each other completely ignorant of this presence. It was then that Simon noticed a third and fourth individual entering the hall through the ragged hole from a unseen room. One of these latter two, a petite woman dressed in tattered denim and a face full of piercings finally noticed him. When she smiled there was an animalistic glitter in her eyes and it seemed in the guttering light as if her eye-teeth were growing in size.

Simon didn't even know he was wearing a holster until the huge gun bucked like a horse in his hands. The first shot went wide and buried itself in the beautiful wallpapered walls. The petite vampire vixen was suddenly there in front of him, and she was saying something to him, but he had been deafened by the .50 caliber's report. As she reached for him, all Simon could see was the perfectly white razor sharp fangs and then there was flash as a powerful vibration passed through both of them, a strange intimate moment that only they shared in all the world. They were so close, that he could see the look of surprise and then pain in her emerald eyes, as she opened her mouth to say something, acrid smoke smelling of gunpowder drifted from her lips. It came as a surprise to Simon when he looked down and saw that he had pressed the dessert eagle's barrel under her chin and that a hole large enough for his fist had opened itself in the top of her red-headed skull.

As her body began to collapse like a puppet without strings, it revealing the approach of a tall man of African descent, whose face bore some kind of animal like mutation. His snout-like mouth bore a rictus grin filled with sharpened teeth and his eyes held a bestial hunger. But with the girl's collapse he seemed to lose all reason and while Simon could not actually hear him scream, from the stretching of the man's mouth he assumed it sounded like a cheetah might. Unlike the girl however, the African man wasn't so fast that Simon couldn't follow his approach, and with just one or two seconds to react, he grabbed one of the kerosene lanterns from the wall and hurled it at the dark man's midsection. Although Simon's opponent tried to dodge the oil lantern, he couldn't stop his own headlong rush fast enough and the lamp shattered against his groin as burning kerosene engulfed the lower half of his body. This time, Simon could hear the man's screams and that sound would haunt his dreams for years to come, but the sight of the dark man as he began to burn left Simon paralyzed with morbid fascination. The mutant man's death wasn't pretty to watch, as he tried in complete panic to put out the flames, first with his hands, which caught fire as well and then by throwing himself like a mental patient against the walls until he collapsed and ceased to move.

As complete detachment came over Simon, he noticed a strange glittering in the firelight cast by the dark man's burning body, it came from something lying in the red-headed girl's outstretched hand, as if she were offering it to him. Simon reached down and neatly plucked the object from her hand, which was cold where their skin made contact. Standing up, in the flickering light he could see that the object was a finely crafted ivory handled straight-razor engraved and inlaid with mother of pearl and antique gold. Having owned and used a straight razor himself in college, Simon pocketed it without a second thought and then looked down the smoky hall to where the first two combatants lay entwined on the floor. As he approached, he realized that one of the individuals was kissing the other individual's neck and as sound began to fully return to Simon's ears, he could hear the unmistakable noises of sucking.

So completely detached was Simon that he stood a few feet away and watched this intimate and perverse tableaux unfold. When the sucking finally stopped, Simon leveled the desert eagle at the vampire as he turned from the creature he had been feasting upon to look at Simon with hungry eyes. No words were exchanged, but the look in the vampire's hazel eyes seemed to capture Simon and he suddenly knew that this was the person he had come into a burning house to find. "We have to get out of here before the place blows up, the fire cannot be far from where the kerosene reserves are stored." Simon offered the vampire his hand up off the floor, the man looked at it as if he had never seen a human hand before and then took Simon's help getting up. The vampire didn't release Simon's hand right away and he said: "I'm Leslie Wilkes, and there is a escape tunnel this way. Who are you? Who sent you?" Simon hesitated and then offered lamely, the first name that came to mind: "I am Simon and no one sent me, I just knew that you were here and needed help..."

Together, they passed back through the hole in the wall and into a lovely room filled with Victorian furnishings and Simon felt a deep sense of sadness that all these beautiful antiques would be left to the fire and said so to Leslie. In the interim, they crossed the floor to find a stunning beautiful and full figured blond lying on the old Turkish carpet with a wooden stake driven into her full bosom. As Leslie effortlessly picked up the woman and threw her over his shoulder, he gave Simon a hard, appraising look and said: "Yes, but we haven't the time to save them, better they burn than end up in the hands of the Sabbat - the monsters that attacked me and my sire. But you are welcome to anything that you see, I owe you at least that much, if not...far more." Burdened by only a few first edition books, a painting and the desert eagle, Simon followed Leslie through a sliding wall panel and into darkness.

And Into Darkness

The panel slid shut, leaving all three of us in the dark. I could see nothing but unrelieved black, but against my face I felt the hair fine caress of spider-webs. And as I drew a deep breath, I took in the air of the tunnel which was heavy with moisture and the mustiness of long closed spaces. I was conscious of the fact that I alone drew breath here in this subterranean passage. Then Leslie Wilkes velvet baritone came to me as he drew the breath necessary to speak. "I must remove the stake from her chest. She could lose control, the horror of the paralysis inflicted by a wooden stake is second only to the terror we the undead feel when confronted with fire or sunlight. Simon, you should prepare yourself. Stay absolutely still, I won't let her hurt you, but if you move suddenly or try to run, her instinct will be to attack. Are you ready?" I gave a silent nod and then felt foolish for it, but Leslie seemed somehow to know that I had answered in the affirmative.

There was the wet carmine sound of wood being pulled from puckered flesh, and a hoarse feminine scream. He must have laid her down on her back and knelt over her to pull the two-by-four stake from her chest. Her wail of fear and pain made my skin crawl. And the thrashing of her limbs on the brick floor made it sound like she was having a seizure. But the heavy throaty growl that followed was worse. His confident and reassuring whispers to her in that benighted tunnel echoed strangely, but seemed to work a soothing kind of magic upon the injured woman. She quieted slowly, the animalistic behavior replaced by the sobbing of a woman who had just endured a terrible ordeal. The shock of the evenings adventures finally seemed to be wearing off, for I felt a terrible empathy for this vampire woman even though I couldn't imagine the specifics of her pain.