0 comments/ 3383 views/ 4 favorites The Malavide By: chunkyd1 The Malavide waited; he looked much like a normal man, and he had the same heritage, but there nearly all similarities ended. The Malavide could disguise itself well, and the rumors about them, the myth and that silly name that humans called them - all that was nonsense. Some of the myths, though - some of them were right on the target, frighteningly so. The Malavide dismissed that thought. His colleagues, what few of them were left, disdained him for thinking too much. But it was not that he thought too much, it was what he thought about - that was what bothered them, that was what had them avoiding him for these past years. The Malavide's name was Thonos, and he had been alive for nearly three thousand years. He had prowled the streets of Greece, and loved women who bore him children, and then lost them all. That was one thing Thonos did not like to think about - but when he felt his resolve weakening, all he had to do was summon the images of his children, laughing and playing with their mother, sweet Idriates - picture them then, and then picture them afterwards. When he saw them, even in his minds eye his will to fight was constantly renewed. The Malavide's jaw clenched; to all intents and purposes he was a normal appearing man, just under six feet with a slim build that moved with what seemed to be more grace, perhaps, than normal. Right at the moment he was sitting still, sipping at a small porcelain cup of coffee. That myth about his kind not being able to eat; that was one of the ones that was poppycock. One of the things that kept him going, year after year, was the simple ability to eat food. It was his single greatest pleasure since he had given sex up. Thonos had a shock of black hair, a square jaw and dark eyes that noticed everything. He was dressed for the moment in what he considered golf clothes; khaki pants, collared slipover shirt, soft fleece jacket. He sipped the coffee, and he waited, and waited, and finally he saw his prey. It was strange, Thonos thought with the usual despair hanging over him - it was strange that females among the Malavide were unknown - he had never even heard rumors of a female Malavide, much less seen one. But agents of the enemy were just as apt to be female as male. Either one, Thonos did not care - it was not his to question, and he had seen the work of the enemy first hand, knew of their evil from long dealings with them. As far as he knew, he was the oldest of the Malavide - he was so old he had long since forgotten exactly when or where he was born. And right now, none of that mattered. He stayed exactly the same from one moment to the next. He had been waiting for over an hour for this woman to arrive, but no person watching him would be able to tell from his appearance that his quarry had finally appeared. He was, for all intents and purposes a simple man sitting drinking coffee at an outdoor café. But if you could see a difference you might notice that he seemed suddenly even more intense, that his eyes took on a new feral longing. The honey haired woman across the street, getting out of her cab - she was the focus of his attention; she was the one he had been hunting now, hunting for the past three days. All of the Malavide were patient, but Thonos had taken that to a new art. He had watched the woman carefully, to see whom she associated with, to see if there were others in her circle he could take. That was a myth also, that his kind could feed on anyone. Only a few people had the proper aura, and only those few would ever become victims. Sometimes there were others, clustered in a group, and sometimes there were not. This time there was not, and he had decided that enough was enough - he would take the woman tonight. With a small sigh he stood and glided across the road. None of the other patrons saw him, and the waitress forgot he had ever been there less than a minute after she cleared the table. None of the people in the cars saw him either, and though it was a busy night he moved smoothly across the road, missing cars by inches or feet but never having to slow or stray from his path. The doorman opened the door for him without really seeing him, and held it open for two women coming out. Thonos smiled to himself - he did not have to disguise himself as such, but it was such an easy precaution, and one he had learned the hard way to take. He had actually been questioned one time in one of the murders, and that questioning had come to close. He had not taken the proper precautions, in disguise or choice of prey - the man he had killed that time had lived in the same apartment building as Thonos. Since then, he let no image of himself remain in people's minds when he was hunting. Thonos slipped up the stairs, almost wishing this one would put up a fight - fearsome enough the creatures he fought were those same type which had slaughtered his family - but few of them stood even a small chance in hand to hand combat against one of the Malavide. They had other ways of killing the Malavide, and occasionally they were too effective. Thonos had seen the numbers of the Malavide slip to steeply in the last few centuries, and the more technology gained ground the harder it was to bring new recruits in to the war. He had never been a good recruiter, but he had known them, the old and the new, and had kept track as most of them died over the last centuries. The greatest number of which had died just in the last hundred years or so. Thonos knew what others did not - that they had all but lost the long, long war. There were some pockets left - at least, that's what Thonos had told himself, but he was really only aware of one other small group of Malavide; all the other little pockets, here and there about the world could well be gone, killed off by their prey. Thonos spent most of his time now watching the natural beauty of the world, seeing museums, listening to music - and wishing that there were some way he could kill himself. As he slipped up the stairs, his dark hair gleaming in the lights of the huge apartment complex (if anyone had been able to notice, which they weren't) he thought that perhaps tonight would be the night. He had encountered prey before that had almost been good enough to end him. His kind was not invulnerable, after all, nor were they immortal. Harder to kill, yes, and quicker to heal - and they did not age or get sick at all. They were better, faster and stronger than any normal man with a wealth of tricks they could use to attack or to flee, tricks they could use such as the ability to go unnoticed when standing right in front of someone, tricks such as not being able to cast a shadow or appear in a mirror - tricks that almost all of the Malavide did now without conscious thought. That one had made it to the legends, but twisted like almost all the truths about the Malavide was the mirror trick - making yourself invisible and making your reflection invisible were two different things, but invisibility was only used when stalking or killing. It took to much power otherwise. Thonos glided up the stairs; upon the wall there was heavy golden wallpaper with various scenes of trees and flowers on them, and the heavy red carpet had twisting gold vine designs which accented the walls. The sconces were actually gas in this building; it was a place of money, which was not always the case with Thonos' victims. He found his prey in all walks of life, bums and working Joes and ho's and, like this one, rich bitches. He was waiting for her when she got off the elevator; he was right behind her when she shut the door to her apartment. He flowed into her senses like the faintest scent of cinnamon upon the air, like the scent of lilacs on the gentlest of breezes, a scent so light that the woman's subconscious barely noticed it. The woman was suddenly tired; she did not see the handsome man right behind her, smiling benignly as she went to the couch; as she stretched out upon it for just a short nap. Thonos stared down at the woman, the muted light in his dark eyes suddenly growing more intense, until his eyes glowed in the dim room; he could feel his canines now, could feel them at their most. He stared about quickly, but there was no one else in the apartment. With his heightened senses, he would have been able to tell, if not by the smell of them then by the sound of their breathing. Thonos fell to his knees beside his victim, who was stretched out on the couch. Her half open eyes regarded him, and deep in them there was the glint of awareness, the frightened light of terror. He pulled her hair away from her throat, and all she did as he sank his fangs into her throat and began drawing her life's energy away from her was moan softly. The blood of the woman carried her life-force; like a tree's branches withering away in the wintertime the woman faded and her body turned gray and cold. Unlike the tree, there would be no renewal in springtime, no renewal ever again. Thonos thrummed with her energy; he heard the door open, and hastily slipped backwards - there had been little blood spilt, there never was with Thonos. He was very careful. He just wished the transference of blood was not necessary for the transference of the life force, but there was no other way around it. His kind had been researching it for thousands of years, and they had discovered nothing at all new in all that time. They were as they had always been. Thonos slipped through the open window. He would not even go near the man entering the doorway - he did not have to now, he could do almost anything he wished. The window in the guest bedroom opened easily, and Thonos slipped out the window calmly. He looked at the street ten floors below where he stood, and just as calmly stepped off the ledge. The wind tore at his coat, and he smiled as he fell. Chapter 2 Only one man saw the figure on the ledge, high up on the building. Only one man happened to be looking up at that exact time. Donny had been a drunk of most of his life, and he had every intention of staying a drunk until the day he died, and that was one of the reasons he saw the man. He was leaning back at the mouth of an alley, leaning on his backpack and sleeping bag. He had stolen them from a naïve college student about a week ago and had had to fight three times to keep the treasures - but at the same time they allowed him to sleep where other bums could not. With the super thick sleeping bag he could stay warm on the coldest of nights, in the remotest of areas. So he was reclining back catching a good buzz on the mad dog and a joint he had shared with a hooker he knew on Jameson Avenue, not yet ready to go find someplace to crash but still at that part of the buzz where he was deliciously alert - and he suddenly saw a slim man in preppy clothes standing on the ledge of the big apartment building diagonally across the block from him, eight, maybe ten floors up. Now, here was the odd thing - the man had not been there just a second before when Donny's glance had last rested upon the building - but now he was standing there just as casually as though he was on the sidewalk. Donny would have sworn the man was not there before, and he was afraid even to blink now for fear the fellow would disappear. He had heard of people having hallucinations and prayed that this was not the case. He did blink as the man stepped casually off, and cried out involuntarily, but the man was still plummeting, gaining speed. Donny cried out again, and pointed, but he was the only one that saw the slim man become cloudy, and almost . . . transparent, and he blinked again as suddenly there was just the slightest trace of fog, whipped away by the wind. Other people were looking at where he was pointing, but Donny knew - he knew he would be the only one to have seen that, though he could not say why. He got up and staggered away into the night, leaving behind his precious backpack and sleeping bag, and he did not stop walking for three days. _______________________________________________________ Thonos always breathed easier when he was in his library - he had books there that would have made scholars have heart attacks, books preserved by ways that Thonos himself had invented. Had he not, after all, been one of the original paper barons? What they used for paper nowadays almost made him gag, and it was a bittersweet relief that almost nothing was printed or published now that had any redeeming value. A gem here and there, but for the most part dross, not worth his time or consideration. Thonos smiled - of course he knew he was being judgmental, but he did not care. His opinion affected no one but himself, and he had long since quit trying to talk people into his way of thinking. He had learned that early in his long, long life. He stopped in front of one book; it had a different look to it, and there was no writing on the binding. If anything could be said to be magical in this world, it would surely be books; and this particular book radiated the quiet power of age. Were he to reach out and open it, were he to pull it from the shelves he would find the finest hemp paper, the best paper that money could buy. The words were not standard type, but rather copies of diary pages; the hand that the thin letters were penned in would be the embodiment of grace. Thonos touched the binding of that book briefly, but did not pull it from the shelves as he often did. He was not in the mood tonight, and he knew the contents by heart anyway - the pages, page after page of flowing script in a language long dead, were pages penned by his first wife. Shenna had been her name, twenty years before Idriates, twenty years before he had fathered his children. He had come to love Idriates dearly, had loved her, he often thought, as much as he had loved Shenna. But she had not been Shenna, and he would never put the memory of his first wife aside. She had died in childbirth, and she had taken with her to heaven the companionship of his unborn son. A strange smile played itself across Thonos' lips as he thought of how many names he had considered for his first child, and those not even girl's names. If his son had been a girl Shenna would have named her. But no name had been necessary, none of the hundreds he and Shenna had tried out on each other, shouting them across the yard as though the unborn child were already playing past dinnertime. None of them necessary - no name, no child and no Shenna. Idriates had been the next woman he slept with, the next woman he had fallen in love with, and in the end the result had been the same but worse - for there was not tied up the love of one person, but of three, Idriates and son and daughter. Not a mere mental image of what a child would be, but the laughing, sweet faces of his children, named Shenna after his first wife and Benote after his uncle, his children had been fully developing little minds, people that he knew, and had not just imagined. Thonos turned from the bookshelf, and went to sit at the window. He looked out at the darkened back yard. The yard was a work in progress; for the eighty years that Thonos had owned this house he had kept planting trees and bushes, kept installing fountains and statues and flagstone walkways; small bridges spanned manmade streams, and trellis' hung heavy with climbing roses and ivy, with the dark purple blooms of the morning glory. The yard looked at times much larger or smaller than its two-acre expanse. All in the expansive back yard was covered in shade of varying degrees - there were no lights on in the back yard and the starlight was fitful, the moonlight almost nonexistent - but Thonos could see all nearly as well at night as he could during the day. Even the colors, even in the velvet grip of night were remarkably close, just not as vibrant. There was none of the washed out grays that most people see when the cloak of night falls, but colors that pulsed with just a bit less life than if the sun were shining upon them. Thonos did not know how that was so, just as he did not know how the Malavide did many of the things they did - but it was an immutable fact nonetheless. A fact that the few scientists who numbered among the Malavide had not studied to any great degree. Thonos' dark eyes were depthless. He saw everything that was in the garden, but at the same time he saw none of it. He shut his eyes, and imagined once again what it would be like to see darkness - true darkness, where you can see more with your eyes closed than with them open, when your open hand cannot be seen a foot from your face, for that balm was denied him when he had never even thought about it before. It was just one more example of Thonos' humanity, long since dead. He could not remember when he first felt that he missed the sensation of darkness. It was something that had been taken from him, and now it was one of his biggest regrets. He remembered the last night he saw the denseness of shadow, the washed out colors of a moonlit evening. He remembered the night he met ahk'Tabur. ________________________________________________________ The glow of his house behind him lit his steps ahead, his house that he had built with his own hands, with the help of his neighbors. Built with his own hands, his own spirit - the house represented a new beginning for Thonos, a beginning that Shenna had promised him to make. But now the house was burning, and had been for over an hour. It was a big house, and burned all the longer because of that. Thonos no longer cared. On that night, when he was thirty-eight years old, Thonos cared for nothing. As he sat in his expensive leather chair, thousands of years later and thousands of miles away Thonos remembered everything about that night in horrifying detail. He had arrived home from Tenestia, a town where he had business dealings. He had left his house as always under the care of his dearest friend, Sorba Lentenin. His wife, his two children - they were Thonos' world, and Sorba knew this. Sorba would do anything for Thonos - they had saved each other's lives more times than either cared to count Thonos found Sorba that afternoon lying a half a league from his house - the nearest neighbor was almost three leagues further away, and for a long time he did not realize what the pile of rags lying in the road was - then realization came like a hammer blow, and he turned his dearest friend over. Sorba was almost unrecognizable. Thonos had seen enough of war to know that his friend had been ridden down, by horse and chariot; that he had been mutilated beyond that. Thonos laid his friend by the side of the road, and steeled himself for what he knew he would find. A great blackness welled up inside the breast of Thonos as he traveled the last distance to his house, to Idriates and his children. A great blackness, so that he could do what he had to do. He ignored the wounds on his family as best he could; he arranged them in the great room that had been Idriates favorite room because of the afternoon sun, and then he had set the house on fire - and the brighter the flames burned the darker his despair became, the darker the blackness that was gripping his soul and his heart. He set his back to the blaze, wandered away in the gathering dusk. The long fall grasses brushed his legs, but he paid no attention to where he walked - he only knew that he walked uphill, that as the darkness took over he could see the glow of the fire reflecting off the grasses and trees which lay before him. The reflections became dimmer, and dimmer, and Thonos fingered the knife at his belt. He wished he had the strength, or the weakness perhaps to end his own life. But as much as he wanted to sink the slim blade into his vessels, as much as he wanted to join his Idriates and his children he could not; he could not even seriously consider it. The Malavide Pt. 02 Chapter Three Thonos blinked his eyes; the garden lay deserted, but he watched for a time as a cat crept about, looking for a place to lie down, perhaps looking for one of the streams or pools of water to drink from. Thonos never slept now B the Malavide did not need a great deal of sleep anyway, and as they grew older their need for sleep vanished completely. The scientists among them said it had something to do with the residual build up of the power of the souls that they drained. Thonos did not know and no longer cared. He wanted a woman to hold, he wanted someone to take care of. He was tired of taking care of the dead, but he had made a pact with ahk'Tabur that night, an ancient pact that he had tried in the past to ignore. Tried and failed, because they were around him at all times; in all the places he tried to run from they came, as inescapable as the dawn, as surely as the sunset they were there, reminding him ever of his pact with ahk'Tabur, of his pact with Idriates. He stared out at the intricate gardens, at the small cat now curled next to the statue of a turtle, and he remembered . . . ahk'Tabur had done unknown things to him B he had not learned the process until later, but he literally died that night. That part of the legends was true, anyway. Died, and been reborn. His body had felt the same at first, but by the end of the second day he realized he was much faster than he had been, and much much stronger though his arms were no larger. Thonos had been a soldier before, he knew the ways of sword and spear and knife already, and ahk'Tabur taught him other things; hand to hand combat the likes of which Thonos had never seen or heard of, combat that would have made him dangerous even if he were not now many times faster or stronger than other men. Taught him years worth in what seemed like a day and a half. A week passed them by, a week in which Thonos finished growing as a Malavide, a week in which his senses sharpened unbelievably, a week in which he began to see more and more in the dark, slow to realize that he would never again in his life see darkness. The ability fell away from him, like his old life, and he did not realize what he had given up till many years later. He had not realized he was making himself an immortal, but he was - he had. One night ahk-Tabur brought two people to the camp; to Thonos' untrained eye, he could easily see something about the one on the right, a man who looked about him with wide eyes, but whose face was brutal and whose knuckles were scarred by battle. The other man was much the same but did not have that strange, almost glowing overlay about him. He looked just as hardened a warrior as the first and just as frightened a one. "What do you see?" ahk'Tabur said, shaking the men by the shoulders easily. Thonos saw that the one with the glow had both of his arms broken. "I see two men," Thonos said, stepping closer to them, and one of them screamed as he stepped out of the darkness. Of course, Thonos thought - neither of these could see in the dark. It must have thought ahk'Tabur had been speaking to himself. But only one of them had screamed. Thonos pointed - "That one glows B I don=t know, its almost as if I can see a face beneath his real face, he has an aura . . ." Thonos' voice trailed off, and ahk'Tabur smiled approvingly. "That is right, Thonos. Both of these men were in the attack upon your home. This one," he said, letting go of the man that did not glow, "We can only kill. This one and his kind, though - they were the ones responsible for the evil that befell your family." Thonos nodded, and without being told reached out with deadly speed, broke the man=s neck that ahk'Tabur had just let go of. The man simply stood there and let him do it, but he could not have seen more than a lunging shadow anyway, exquisitely faster than anything he had ever seen before. "This one, my friend B this one gives us our food." ahk'Tabur smiled, his teeth almost glowing in the dim light of the stars, his black eyes just as feral. ahk'Tabur smiled his strange smile B and then he showed Thonos how to feed, how to eat as a Malavide; the taking of the blood was necessary but inconsequential. ahk'Tabur neither knew nor seemed to care why the blood taking was necessary for the taking of the soul=s power, but there it was B the acts, physical and spiritual, were wedded as one, and neither could take place without the other. They both ate of the remaining man, and as they ate the glow diminished until it was gone. AThat is all, Thonos,@ Tabur grunted, and grinned - "Now, it is time to learn your last lessons B it is time you learned to creep upon the midnight winds, to steal through the shadows themselves. That is what we were born to do, Thonos, to creep and steal. "But tonight we will not be silent." ahk'Tabur reached out, and grasped his friends arm. Thonos started as he felt himself turning to mist, and knew instinctively that this trick could not be done unless power were stored B power received from the taking of one of the souls of Damned. They floated as mist through the night air until Thonos saw below them a small encampment; three guards, all on the outer edges of the encampment, the rest of the men laying in their blankets asleep. One man, still drunk, was sitting by the fire looking into it with glazed eyes. The rest would also be heavy of liquor; Thonos did not have to have this type of soldier explained, and in almost all of them he could see the strange glow. As evil as ahk'Tabur said they were, as evil as they had to have been, they were still creatures of habit, and some of those habits were bound to be bad. Being drunk when you were hunted was a very bad habit to get into, but then the men scattered around the campfire had no idea what hunted them on that night; they had no idea they were vulnerable in any way. The one by the fire was the first to go, by the hand of ahk'Tabur B then Thonos went to destroy the sentries while ahk'Tabur started in on the sleeping men. Thirty men, almost half of them dead when one stirred and rose, and screamed at what he saw by the dying fire. He died of Thonos' knife, and then the rest were surging up. Thonos learned immediately that he was not invulnerable B he was a little to slow one time as three men rushed him with swords, and his right arm was cut deep. But it made little difference to him. He sidestepped, and cut the three down before they realized he was behind them, and then the rest were short work. After the battle he and ahk'Tabur moved among the wounded, finishing them off by taking what was left of their life force. The more of the life force Thonos took, the more clearly he could see the rippling aura surrounding the men. He would ask what that was later, he thought. For now, he was glad to know that he had killed those responsible for his wife and children=s death. They escaped in the velvet embrace of the night; this one fire slipping behind them as they slid easily through the shadows thrown by hundreds of other fires. This one fire, this one squad of the giant army had been the ones responsible. There was no doubt of that. Thonos clutched a heavy silver horse the size of his hand as he walked B it had been Idriates' favorite of all the small sculptures they had collected. It had been all the proof he needed, but he did not yet realize as he walked that ahk-Tabur had not set him on the mission of a night, or of a week or even a year. He had set him upon a mission that would not end until he made a mistake, a mission he could never give up. A mission he was realizing, and had been realizing for a long time now that he could not win. Thonos did not know where the silver horse was now B he had lost track of it at some point in his long history, maybe in Germany when Hitler tried to take over the world or sometime soon after that when he went into the swiftly changing Russia B he knew he would have good hunting there, just as he had known he would have it in Germany. Anywhere there was brutality he was there, hunting, avenging deaths avenged long ago. One more would not hurt, and a dozen more would never return Idriates to him, nor Shenna or Benote. He had tried to ignore those strange men and women with the glowing aura. He had tried to ignore them, and found that task as impossible as killing them all. Thonos sat in his chair, and looked out at the garden and smiled a sad smile. America had been such a nice dream, but now he was here as well. And tonight B yes, tonight, despite everything, he would once again venture unto the shadow. Tonight he would go hunting once more, and there was no telling where his hunt would take him. CHAPTER FOUR Some say that man has in him an instilled sense of what is right and wrong, an instinct of compassion and the true knowledge of good and evil - knowledge instilled by the creator himself. For a long time Thonos did not believe in this theory B he was more of a mind that a man is part of his environment, that he learns right and wrong from those that came before him, and that there is no greater instinct towards compassion and mercy. Thonos became a creature of cold emotions; he killed those that were betrayed by the aura; he hunted them out without mercy B he killed, not because he wanted to avenge the deaths of his wife and children but because he had learned that those men that held the aura B the Ourde, as ahk'Tabur had called them B really were the embodiment of evil. He killed them because he had learned from sharp experience over the years that none of those people had the capacity in them for any of the finer emotions, any appreciation of beauty for the sake of beauty or love for the sake of others. He learned from long experience, and he had had many years to test what ahk'Tabur and others had told him about the Ourde. For many years he had actually investigated their crimes, and kept journals of them. Those journals were kept safe. He would one day release them, or they would be released upon his death. He had written them painstakingly, recording the actions of the Ourde until he was sure that every single one of them was tainted by the evil, till when he saw that aura that surrounded the Ourde he knew evil was in their hearts and minds. He saw them every day, this special breed of humans, and he saw them gradually becoming more and more numerous - and saw his own kind dying gradually away. He kept those journals safe, and had translated them four times now B all four were kept as precious as anything, and through all the years since he had done his research they were the one thing that remained sacrosanct, bound and always kept by a lawyer or another that Thonos could trust. Mercenary men, who would see to his wishes bound by gold. Sometimes those were the trust worthiest sort. Thonos had learned that lesson long ago. But never by men that held the aura, never by one of the Ourde or even one who was in contact with such. His journals would never be compromised if he could help it, but in the long run he had admitted to himself that they would do no good. If released they would merely be the ramblings of an imaginative mind. Were we to come upon the garden of a night, when the silver disk of the moon is shadowed by slight cloud B when the shadows of the night hover and creep around plants and sculptures, when they seem to crawl along the ground itself as though alive B we would see one statue that sat in an attitude of stillness that no others could match, a stillness that was born not of earthly origin. We would see the statue was of uncommon beauty, though the beauty was not conventional B the features of the statue blunt, the hair short but with a strong wave, nose and jaw strong and eyes wide set B eyes that gazed upon the night with an ungodly persistence; eyes that shone with the silver of the moon. Those eyes blink, and then the statue shifts, and the Malavide stirs from his chair. His attention has been gathered. Some of the shadows are no longer shadows, and Thonos has roused himself fully from his muse. He will have no need to go hunting, for the prey has come to him. At first the man standing seems exactly that, and three of the intruders fire at once. But they fire to late after all B the standing man moves with speed so sudden, ducking and flipping, arm grabbing something from the ground with such easy grace. The gunmen fire again, but then the slim dark haired man is behind one of their own number, the sword flashing in his hand as he beheads the stealthy but to slow assassin. There are five of them, and they had a chance for just a moment, they had a chance to fire their guns while he was still sitting. They do not have a chance at all with the attention of the Malavide on them, though. Thonos has to admit they are good B better than he has faced for a hundred years. Their bullets hit him twice before he gets them all, saving the last for nourishment. Thonos hears the screams of the one he feeds on, but as always the feeding is too intense in itself for much to register upon him. He can feel the wounds knitting as he draws the life force from the Ourde, can feel the quicksilver strength flooding into his system. He can also hear the wails of approaching sirens. Thonos the Malavide finishes draining the life force out of the one he holds, and lets the body, so frail, fall back upon the stone pathway of the garden. The bodies of all humans, so frail, so unlike the body he inhabits as a Malavide which was similar and dissimilar at the same time. Thonos turned and surveyed the house, looking at every detail of the giant structure, every detail of the moonlit garden. He would not see this place again B even if he could buy them from the imminent auction, the Ourde now knew abut this place. He had to find out how. While the first police car was pulling up the driveway a shadow slipped from the small back door of the garden wall. There was another cop car less than ten feet away, but both the officers turned at some sound they thought they heard B neither saw the shadow slip across the street and disappear between two of the large houses there. The cops shrugged, and continued to watch the gate, making sure nobody came through it until their sergeant poked his head out. "Anybody leave by here?" he asked, and the two shook their heads. "Keep an eye out - we're still searching the grounds." "You got it, Sarge," one of the cops said, unaware that he had already let the killer slip by him. CHAPTER FIVE Thonos moved swiftly; he kept more than a sharp eye out, for he alone knew how close the men had come to killing him. All they had to do was fire an instant earlier B they were good, very good. He did not want to say how good they had been to get within range of him. He still did not know exactly what had brought him out of his meditation, some whisper of cloth against cloth, a breath a bit to hard or the slightest crunch of gravel. Whatever it was, it had been nothing he could pinpoint which was all the worse. They could well have succeeded. The most disquieting thing was that they even knew where to find him, and apparently knew what he was. It had taken Thonos a long time to come to the terms that the things he was hunting were not actually human any more - any more than he was human. But he had abilities, physical and mental, far above the norm; and the Ourde, the demons that possessed humans did not have anything besides the natural human condition B and their own dispassionate drive and hatred of humankind, their own literally inhuman level of concentration and drive. Thonos had studied that as well B he knew that once a demon possessed a man, that man was as good as gone, was as dead as though the body was already dust. Once Thonos realized that, the killing became easier B much easier. He did not know what the Ourde were, but he knew that they were not human. He had seen the actual process of the infestation, had seen someone change right before his eyes, and acquire the aura which he knew that he could feed upon. Any creature with the aura was a demon, a possessed human B taken and used by the Ourde like so much shell. It was such that he had been created to kill, but even ahk'Tabur had not really realized what it was about the humans with the auras B he just knew that they were evil, that they were prey. The one question Thonos could never answer was where the Malavide had come from, where they had started. They were designed to efficiently for killing the demons to be anything but a manufactured creature - but manufactured by whom? When had the demons first appeared? When had they discovered they could use the human soul as a conduit to this world? When had they decided to take this world from the humans? For Thonos knew that was their intention B he was the last of his kind, as he walked along the barren streets, blending effortlessly with those around him, walking, always walking, shifting back and forth and going between buildings to double back yet again. He alone knew the world was under siege, and that the siege was at long last almost over. More of the demons, every year more of them, and only Thonos left, one last hunter, one last Malavide. As far as he knew that was true, and even if there were more there were not many. Years it had been since he had seen any of the kin, more years than he liked to think about. The demons had found him somehow, they had ferreted him out but he was sure no one was following him right now. How had they found him? Was it by accident, or design? He had escaped their attention for so long he had grown contemptuous of them - even as he had seen them multiplying he had grown contemptuous of them, but there was nothing contemptuous about those warriors they had sent against him tonight. They were the best he had seen in a long time, and managed to get bullets into him even after he was attacking. It had been so close, that which he thirsted for, so close he could feel the tug of Death=s scythe. But Death had been tricked again. Thonos felt his soul singing, if he still possessed one. The energy from the Ourde he fed on had him buoyed almost to the point where he thought he would burst. He turned a last corner, into darkness; the shadow fell across him and seemed to absorb him, and a moment later a long winged, languorous shape rose above the dark outlines of the buildings, wings beating slowly, lifting it up into the night and away from the city lights; lifting it to the currents that drifted west with the fresh ocean wind, west and north into the black velvet of the night sky. West and North, into the dying night. West and North, into the oncoming winds of winter. Well behind him another shape, this one sleek and silent also floated into the night sky. The silent shape stayed far behind for a good hour B and then it caught up. The Malavide Pt. 03 CHAPTER 6 Jon Pedderse studied the slim man sitting at the table from the other side of the two-way glass. The man was in his thirties, if Pedderse was to judge by looks. The man was much older if he was to believe what the science boys said. Pedderse was not sure what to believe yet, but he had a job to do and he meant to do it. The fact that the man seemed so completely at ease was one of the things that was throwing Pedderse off. The man had to know what was happening - there was no way the government was going to let him go, ever, and the man had to know it or suspect it at any rate. But he sat perfectly at ease, hands folded loosely on the table, his roman features relaxed, his dark eyes staring through the wall at something no one else could see. Pedderse shook his head, and looked at the heads up display on the sheet of glass; it would show him the same thing as the super-shades had shown, it would show the fact that the man's body temperature was nearly a hundred and eight degrees; it showed the brainwaves of the man, completely relaxed, no sign of the tension he must be feeling. That, or the man had perfect control over his subconscious emotions. That was something Pedderse was not able to believe in. And the electromagnetic aura - everyone had one, and the man in the room did as well. The computer turned the small fluctuations in the electromagnetic field into color variations, much as weather radar turned different weather patterns to different colors on the radar display. These colors that originated from humans varied somewhat depending on whether you were alert or sleepy, in a state of relaxation or filled with adrenaline, whether you were thinking about something with all your concentration or letting the mind drift - all these things, the scientists had discovered, made slight variations in the blue or green field that surrounded all humans. They had not been able to determine what caused the slight variation between humans which had the blue aura compared to those of the green. None of that mattered to the man sitting in the small room, for his aura was for the most part red, a pulsing, deep red shot with shades of blue, the blue so slight as to be almost unnoticeable. The man had been noticed on a routine test of the portable super-shades, the technology that the science boys had been perfecting. They had followed this unique specimen, followed him and watched him very carefully, to see if there was anything else that would set him apart. As indeed there had been. Pedderse shook his head. He had seen some of the video, and had seen the video of the capture. He was glad - more than glad - that the man was constrained to the table and chair by slim yet super strong links of thin metal. Pedderse drank the last of the cup of coffee, and then poured another - he liked it black and hot as hell, and this coffee fit the bill. Pedderse stepped into the room to do battle with the strange, magical creature sitting so calmly at the table. "Good afternoon." A silent nod, the dark eyes not yet focusing. "I don't know if I would want to talk either, you know - it's not every day you're caught flying around in midair after all." No reaction to that, literally none at all. But the eyes had shifted in some way, Pedderse realized. He did not know exactly when it had happened but he was quite suddenly aware that those dark, impenetrable eyes were concentrating on nothing but his own gaze. Focusing like a laser, and no flicker of emotion on that pale, gaunt haunted face. In age, the man looked thirty five, maybe a well fit forty, but in that moment, in the pale light of the interrogation room the face looked more than forty - more than forty by about a thousand years. The features held a strange stillness, though " one that Pedderse described in later senate hearings as being the same stillness as that before a sudden clap of thunder, before the earthquake strikes, before the wave sweeps to shore. Pedderse allowed himself a small smile - no matter how silent and obstinate the man was, Pedderse had the advantage for all that. He just wished he didn't have to repeat that again and again as he sat there. "So, who were the people that tried to kill you? Samuel Arkin, that's the name you were going by, so I can call you that - or I can call you by your real name. Ha!" Pedderse barked a sudden laugh at the sudden tilt of an eyebrow. "Call me Samuel," the voice smooth like silk, but with a strange roughness to it. Pedderse could not figure out whether it was the voice itself or the accent the man spoke in, almost a total lack of accent. They already had linguists listening, trying to figure where this guy was from. "Seven dead," Pedderse said softly, and shook his head "I could see how you would want to run away from that. Believe me, if we had known they were coming we would have intercepted them. Hell, though, you did a better job than we ever could," Pedderse shook his head again. "That flying, though, that really took us by surprise. And you know, it was the same stuff that allowed us to catch you flying that allowed us to see you in the first place." "Electromagnetic fields," the Malavide said softly, and Pedderse blinked. Why had he said that? He thought with a chill that there was no reason - why had he said it? But he had obviously given something away for the still man to make such an accurate guess. "That's how you spotted me, isn't it? My electromagnetic aura was different - obviously, different enough for you to take notice of me. How many different fields are there? Eh?" Pedderse clenched his jaw " he had to get control of this interview back, but Samuel, as he called himself, was still talking " his words came quick, and the accent had intensified a bit. "I'll bet there are two different variations in your findings, my dear man." The black eyes bored into Pedderse until the cop thought he could see nothing else. "What color are you, I wonder?" the Malavide whispered, but his voice was much too loud, and when Pedderse spoke he surprised even himself. "I'm blue," he said before he could stop himself, and Samuel nodded as a voice in Pedderse' earpiece said suddenly, "What the fuck are you doing? Get the fuck out of there, Pedderse, we need to regroup, your blowing it," the voice said in his ear. And at the same time he saw Samuel mouth the words behind a hand scratching at his chin, "Don't trust the others!" Pedderse stepped out of the room, into the hallway, and then into the now cramped room behind the length of glass. Phillips, the regional director was there; he was the one whose voice had come through Pedderse" earpiece. "Christ, Pedderse, what the fuck was going on in there?" Phillips said, his voice quieter than usual. That was not a good sign with the director. "I'm not sure, he . . ." Pedderse trailed off as he glanced through the glass. The man, Samuel Arkin as Pedderse knew him, was once again sitting as still as a statue, hands folded loosely on the table, not moving by so much as a millimeter. Not even trying to appear normal, not demanding his release. Pedderse wondered what the man knew, to be so sanguine about his own fate. "There were no fluctuations in either of them," one of the techs said, and Pedderse shook his head suddenly, clearing the cobwebs out of it. "No, he didn't do anything to me, I just got spooked is all," Pedderse said. "Perhaps we should not resume until tomorrow. I don't want anyone else to interrogate him for now, let him cool his heels in that fucking room all night. Pedderse, get the fuck out of here and get some fucking rest. Be back in at first light tomorrow." The regional director always knew exactly when sunrise was, and delighted in telling people to be in at first light, thus making them look up when sunrise was. Pedderse already knew. He had been working with the man for long enough. He told himself it was the kind of thing a good leader did, but he didn't believe himself. "Don't trust the others," the man had said, as though they were sharing some type of secret. Pedderse tried to forget the words as he drove to work the next morning. He had on a pair of the super-shades. The contractor had given him a pair in a different style than the others because Pedderse was an evaluator of the technology. No one at the agency knew about it, and he was still not sure why he had slipped them on this morning. The name of the things was extremely stupid, Pedderse thought, but he had not yet come up with a better one himself. He had never been good at naming things, and that went with the feeling this whole case was giving him. Unease - something was wrong It was not yet first light, but the super-shades took care of that to, changing everything to a washed out grayish green image that nevertheless kept its three dimensional perspective, unlike other night vision goggles. He guided his car through the streets, barely thinking about the act of driving. There was virtually no traffic at the moment - that would not hit heavy for another twenty to thirty minutes, and by then Pedderse would be safely ensconced inside the agency's headquarters. Normally, one out of eighteen people possessed a green aura; looked at in smaller populations it was easy to see that sometimes green auras gathered almost exclusively. The government and the contractor that built the super-shades had looked for anything different than the auras about the people that were green or blue, but so far as either could tell they were just normal people, perhaps no different, the scientists theorized, than a left handed person and a right handed person. One of the science geeks had tried to explain it to him - "The colors are arbitrary, they could have been anything, but the guy who designed the system had a sense of symmetry, so he matched the frequencies as well as he was able. The machine is just reading the magnetic signatures we all possess. Think of them as large groupings, more like blood types than fingerprints. All the frequencies are very close together, just as human blood, no matter what type, is human blood and not at like dog blood." Pedderse guided his car through the gate, flashing his ID at the guard, who was a blue. The guard at the car garage was also a blue, the tinge of the aura overlaying faces he knew and had worked with for years. He stepped into the large foyer - it took him a long moment to notice, and he did not think his step had faltered. His chest was suddenly extremely tight. "They're like a blood type in other ways as well - as near as we can tell, they never change, just like the color of your eyes. Our equipment can't measure to a fine enough point to distinguish individuals from other individuals, but we can easily distinguish the types." The receptionist was a green. He had known the woman for more than twelve years; she reminded him of his mother, slim and elegant no matter what she was wearing. And he was sure that her aura the week before had been blue. He was more than sure. "The director is waiting upstairs," she said. "Have a great day, Jon." "Yes, I shall, you to Rose," Jon said, barely looking at her as he headed for the stairs. On the second floor he caught the elevator. There were two uniformed men, gold badges gleaming and guns fat on their hips. They were both green. Pedderse" heart started beating faster and his stomach stopped quivering. Something was going to happen, something that he did not like. Out of the elevator, and his cell phone rang as he walked down the long hallway towards the interrogation room. Phillips was standing at the door, and Pedderse almost cried out when he saw that Phillips had assumed a green aura, when Pedderse knew as plain as day that Phillips had been blue the day before. His hands were itching, and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing straight up. Watch out for the others," the sly voice said, tickling in the back of his head as it had been all night. Watch out for the others." He studied Phillips, but could see no difference in the man other than the aura which was shown by the smart shades. He though idly that he liked that name better. He quickly took them off; there was only so far he could go before someone drew attention to them. Before he did he looked into the meeting room; five people standing in the same room as the Malavide, and four of them were green. "Are you ready?" Philips said, and drew Pedderse inside the room. For all intents and purposes, the man sitting at the table looked as though he had not moved, not a muscle all night long. For all that, he looked as fresh and alert as a daisy while Pedderse felt as though he had been wrung through the ringer. The captives" eyes, dark and compelling, found his, and that dry voice whispered its silent message once again in his head, Watch out for the others." Pedderse tried to maintain his concentration, but it was increasingly difficult. One of the other men was talking, the only other blue aura in the room if Pedderse could remember right, and he realized now that the man was not even on their team " he must be a lawyer. How had the others turned green? That had not yet been recorded. Greens were greens and blues were blues, but even Pedderse had to admit the devices had not really been tested thoroughly. Who had tried to kill the captive, before they had scooped him out of midair? Seven, and from the look of them nothing but professional killers but the captive had taken them apparently without trouble or injury. At least, there had been no injury in the initial physical examination. The doctor had theorized, Pedderse knew, that the man could have extremely high regeneration capabilities. "Like a werewolf," Pedderse had said, and the doctor looked at him blankly. Pedderse had thought about explaining the movie about mutant superheroes and decided instead to give up while he was ahead. Regenerative powers, the ability to fly - how many other things could this man do? How had he known top secret data when Pedderse had barely alluded to the technology that had enabled them to seek him out? Pedderse had answers for none of it. God, his head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. The man was saying something, about some town in the mid eighteen hundreds that had gone belly up, describing a storm - lowering clouds, stark against the sharp outlines of the Desert Mountains. His dark eyes bore into Pedderse", and in the small room the walls fell away, revealing dry dusty ground. The grit struck his legs and face, the wind whipped at Pedderse short hair. He was barely aware of putting his glasses back on. He was standing in a small ravine; the ravine was about twenty feet wide at the mouth and twelve feet deep; over the right shoulder of the ravine he could see the jagged edges of close by mountains. The ravine opened up into a small valley and nestled in this valley was a town, just a few scattered buildings and a false front or two. Sitting before the town, high up on one shoulder of the valley there rested a church. Even as he watched, a thick fork of lightning slipped from the sky, and Pedderse could actually feel the rumble of the thunder deep in his chest. Lightning licked again, striking near the church but not hitting it. Pedderse realized he was moving towards the church. He tried with no avail to stop himself and the terror that had been waiting in his chest all morning sprang outwards. His palms were sweating in the super-hot, dry air and he felt the adrenaline rushing through his system. He entered through the dark portal of the church's door, eyes wide with fright, but his hands were calmly fixing glasses to his eyes. The bodies hung from the rafters. At first Pedderse thought they were decorations of some sort, and then he thought it was perhaps a sick joke. But there is something about an actual body that looks like nothing else. It has a certain . . . weight . . . upon the rope that can be seen. Perhaps it is the residual motion of that last kicking struggle for life, struggle denied and told so cruelly by the writhing features of the damned as they hung in that silent edifice. Hell was never so quiet; there was one tiny little squeak, the squeak of rope upon wood. Some of the bodies dripped fluid; all of them had expressions of horror and bug eyed misery upon their faces. Pedderse noted that all of their arms were broken, except for the smallest children, and he felt tears well in his eyes. No sign of life left, barely above room temperature, the people of the little town hung like so much fruit. Pedderse clenched his fist and realized he was moving further into the church. Why would their arms be broken? He asked himself, and then realized the answer, and wanted to vomit. It was an easy way of controlling them, of not having to tie their arms when they were hung. They might still be able to reach up and claw at the ropes, but with broken arms they would not have had the strength to free themselves. They had died hard, and long and it showed in their faces and bloody fingers. "They are evil," he heard the captive's voice filling his head. "They are evil, and they must be killed . . .," And Pedderse saw a movement, to his left and his right, and he reacted without thought, hands going swiftly to his guns, pulling them free from leather and coat. Pedderse fired instinctively, fired at figures moving among the swinging corpses. He shot three times with each gun, and then blinked as he realized that he was still in the small interrogation room. There were alarms everywhere and the room was filled with gun smoke. He realized he had been hit three times, all in the chest, all in the vest, and that everyone else was dead. Well, not quite. He stepped forward and looked past the table to see the captive was a captive no more. His face was buried in the curve of Phillips throat, and his eyes once again met Pedderse as Phillips breathed his last sigh. The captive let the corpse fall away and stood up, casual and with an easy elegance that ignored the carnage around him. "You had better run, Mr. Pedderse," the Malavide said softly, and reached out and plucked the glasses from Pedderse' face. "Even these wouldn't help you, I'm afraid," Thonos' smile was easy and casual. "I can alter my electromagnetic field; I just haven't had to until now. It takes little enough energy. Real invisibility takes much more." Thonos grew faint around the broad grin and Pedderse blinked and stumbled backwards, almost tripped over someone's arm. He could hear yells and feet pounding own the corridor, but he could not take his eyes off the quickly fading form of Thonos. "It took me years to perfect this trick," Thonos" voice was soft as his body faded around the smile. "I can only turn really invisible just after I've replenished my energy. You could have at least left me two of them alive. Good bye, Mr. Pedderse, and I am sorry that I had to use you. At least you know what you are fighting now." And with that the grin vanished from sight, and Pedderse was left in the small room. He dropped his guns and put his hands on top of his head as the first agents burst into the room. The Malavide With what seemed like the last of the glow from the burning house behind him he saw a short, stooped but somehow graceful figure step from behind a clump of Joshua trees. The man was dressed strangely, in a short coat and breeches instead of the normal toga or flowing robes. He had light colored hair and a pale face. As the moonlight took over the man stepped closer, and Thonos wondered as he drew his knife whether this was one of the bandits. He put that thought aside almost immediately. Whatever this man was, he had not come to kill Thonos. He spread his arms out, and his old, lined face gazed solemnly at the grief stricken man. "Do you want the ones that did this, Thonos?" the old man asked. "I tried to stop them - I killed three of them, but there were to many, and trained well as soldiers. Your friend killed one, which is better than most could have done. I can show you where they are, though" the old man said. "I can show you where they are, and I can give you the power to kill them and their kind. We can both go through them with not much problem now." Thonos looked up at the old man out of wide, dead eyes. His soul, his heart was swallowed by the darkness that had first overtaken him when he saw his friend lying in the road. That darkness demanded sacrifice of heart, sacrifice of soul and happiness. That darkness demanded of Thonos everything. "I will do anything," Thonos said, and his fate was sealed. ahk'Tabur, the oldest of the Malavide, ahk'Tabur, who had been old almost beyond reckoning when the idea of Greece was still not founded, stepped forward through the darkness; he stepped forward to tear apart and rebuild. He would do as he had said; he would allow Thonos to find and kill those that had taken his family, them and those like them. He had not told Thonos everything yet, and he would not for years to come. He stepped forward, and ripped from Thonos the thin shred of humanity. He stepped forward, and another Malavide was born; and thereafter Thonos would never know what it was like to walk uncertainly in the dark.