RBVS 07
What the Seven Thunders Said
Chapter Four
It was a sex club, of all places, and I should have suspected as much from a degenerate like Nicolai. My waitress was a man, but I was content to call him a her, just for decorum's sake. It was hard to miss her cock though, pierced as it was through the glans and chained to the hard nipples topping her rather too perfect D-cup tits. It stood upright and away from her smooth tummy, swaying side to side as she walked around, showing off for the late evening crowd. Her low hanging balls, pink and clean shaven, swung between her creamy thighs when she moved and they were actually attractive, I thought. She wore black silk stockings and high heel shoes, and not much else but her jewelry and her smile.
"You got some balls, eh?" she laughed, my waitress looking like blonde Marlene Dietrich with an eight inch cock.
"I'm always lookin' for more," I shrugged.
"What can I bring you?"
"Blue Angel," I said. "No ice, just the vodka."
"Right."
"A big glass."
"You want a double?" she smiled, arching her thin brows.
"More like a triple double." I dug in my purse for a cigarette. "A big fuckin' glass."
"Right." Marlene gave me her ass walking away. At least she looked okay, as the sissy had to, I suppose. For being a fag bar, the place was kind of tough.
Germany was like that though, taking everything to the extreme all the time. They couldn't do something halfway, you know? Fuckin' Germans. Militant queers just looking for a fight. Women weren't real popular in this place, I'd figured that much out quickly enough. The club, Die Buchse der Pandora, wasn't lesbian friendly, as they say, but then again, I wasn't exactly a friendly lesbian either.
"Lazarus." A man chuckled. "I didn't know you were coming in drag."
"Shit." I held up my cigarette as he sat down. "Got a light?"
"Yeah," he said, digging in his leather jacket for a Zippo. He snapped it open with a flourish and rolled the flint.
I sucked hard on my Marlboro, drawing the flame deep so that old tobacco sizzled. He flicked his wrist and the lighter closed a half second later while I blew the smoke out the side of my mouth, looking at the lipstick stained filter under the dull red lights. These underground clubs were all the same. Mortar walls and sawdust floors, red lights on the ceiling and lightning boxes in the corners. Some band was setting up on the little stage and the place was filling up with punks and Goths and fags who got danger out of comic books.
"So how you been, Nicolai?" I leaned back in my chair, balancing on two legs and rocking back and forth.
"I've been better, I've been worse..." he held up his hand horizontally, tilting it back and forth, "...you know."
"Here's your drink…Excuse me…" Marlene was back and making eyes at Nicolai as she put a napkin down in front of me and then a reasonable glass of vodka on top of that.
"Gut knaben, Fraulein," Nicolai grinned and it was kind of funny, but Marlene didn't get it.
"Hold on..." I stopped the waitress, picking up my drink. "Do you mind?"
"Mind what?" She narrowed her eyes as I moved my glass down between her legs.
"Laz, you're so bad," Nicolai laughed.
"Ohhh…" Marlene licked her lips as I caught her balls in my vodka, lifting my glass so they were submerged in the cool alcohol for a moment.
"What?" I pulled my drink back, lifting it to my lips and taking a large drink. "Perfect…Thanks."
I smiled at Marlene and she was actually blushing, which seemed so totally out of place I almost coughed up my vodka.
"Only in Germany," Nicolai nodded.
"You know why they call it Germany?" I breathed, putting my drink down and drawing hard on my cigarette.
"No," Nicolai shrugged.
"Cause Israel was already taken," I said with a wink.
"Heh." Nicolai leaned close on his elbows. "You know, Lazarus, many people don't understand your jokes."
"I told that one to Hitler," I nodded seriously.
"You lie!" Nicolai laughed.
"It doesn't matter," I made a face. "I need something of yours."
"Mine?" Nicolai put on his own serious face. "What do I have? You see me here. I'm a peasant."
"The Siddur of Saadia Gaon." I picked up my drink. "I need it."
"Ah," Nicolai nodded and rubbed his square jaw.
He was a handsome man, roguish with broad Slavic features and steel grey hair, a full head of it above his coal black eyes. He dressed like a gunman for the Russian mafia these days, but he'd once been a Boyar in the time of Ivan the Fourth, the Terrible one, and Nicolai was very proud that he'd survived those difficult times…Until one reminded the old vampire that he'd only survived because he'd already been dead. It was ironic that the punchline always ruined his best stories, but he was that sort of man, almost tragic in a romantic, random sort of way.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Nicolai asked me after a half minute of silence.
"It was in your house, the one in England." I stared at the man. "I used it to summon that girl you killed, what's her name..."
"Virginia," Nicolai frowned.
"Virginia, yeah. You wanted to apologize and I used those scrolls, remember? I need them again."
"I was drunk," Nicolai cleared his throat.
"You were drunk?" I laughed. "I was drunk, you were crying, it doesn't matter. The girl was better off dead."
"No…" Nicolai frowned at me. "I was drunk and, uh…I lost the house."
I blinked at him in surprise and Nicolai shrugged with one of his smiles, and he was good at it. That was his power, his great ability, the vampiric thrall that sapped the will of young men and women. He was the original date rape and could seduce a single person with a glance, or an angry mob with a whispered word. All vampires could do it, but only a few were very good at it, and Nicolai was the very best.
It didn't work on me though and he knew it.
"I'm sorry," he said finally.
"Nicolai, you can't even drink a glass of fuckin' wine. Second of all, nobody loses a fuckin' castle." I stared at him. "They tend to stay where you leave them."
"Look, Lazarus, I was drunk, sucking down this girl, I dunno…She had a blood disorder, a fucking hemophiliac or something and she was taking this shit, I don't now what it was, but I swear, this girl got me higher than a pie, okay?"
"Higher than a kite?"
"Yes, thank you. Higher than a kite and I kept her on a leash, ohhh…This girl. I killed for her, a hundred times…A thousand…"
"Yeah, yeah…"
"…You haven't seen a girl like that! What she can do to a man…"
"Her name wasn't Uziel, was it?" I asked, suddenly suspicious for no real reason at all, except I did know a girl exactly like that.
"Uziel?" Nicolai shook his head. "No, no…This was Saffron, my wildflower. So delicate, you couldn't kiss her too much…"
"Nicolai…"
"…Because she would bruise, you see?" He was smiling at me, flashing his fangs and his eyes had taken a crimson hue, changing as he remembered. "She would weep if the wind blew too rough across her cheeks. And her lips…"
"…What happened to the house?"
"The house? I lost it in a card game," he shrugged. "Easy come, easy go."
"And the library? The books and scrolls?" I was staring at him, my drink long forgotten.
"Still there?" he smiled. "I do not know. I never went back, you see."
"They're not," I said softly.
"You've been to my house?" Nicolai blinked at me. "You broke into my home?"
"It isn't yours, remember?" I picked up my drink, needing to remember it now because I wanted to forget.
"But you didn't know that!" Nicolai's perverse sense of pride was annoying sometimes.
"Who?" I drained half the vodka, shaking violently at the sensation.
"I am insulted by my oldest friend." He looked up as if beseeching God Almighty for justice. "I am too long for this world, I see that now."
"You're still a kid," I told him. "Who'd you lose the house to?"
"You will make amends," Nicolai told me. "If you kill a dead man, it is still attempted murder."
"What? Just give me the fuckin' name."
"Apologize." Nicolai crossed his arms and tucked his chin into his chest.
"Give me a name or I'll kill you and get it from your bones," I told the vampire and I wasn't exactly joking.
"You wouldn't…" he stared at me, "…Laz, that isn't funny."
"I need the Siddur," I told my friend. "More than I need you."
"Ah…" Nicolai laughed loudly, "…it wasn't my house anyway. I will forgive you this time," he said with a sweeping gesture, as if warding off my unspoken apology. "I dislike England anyway, you see. I have allergies and of course my weak constitution…"
"I'll bury you in England in a minute."
"Yes, yes…He was a foreigner, a Magyar, I think."
"Hungarian?"
"Or…Romanian, perhaps," Nicolai shrugged. "His family was very well connected. I tried to turn his sister, she was such a fire!"
"Name?"
"But a pure soul," he clucked his tongue. "She didn't survive and I was inconsolable for days afterward…"
"Nicolai?"
"Petofi, uhhhh…" Nicolai closed his eyes for a moment, "…Janos Petofi, the Elder."
"There's more than one?" I snorted.
"In Hungary?" Nicolai laughed. "There always are, my friend. There always are."
I toyed with my glass, considering the best way to find one Hungarian lose in the world. Nicolai was lifting a finger, drawing Marlene's attention and that wasn't difficult because she could barely take her eyes off of him for more than ten seconds at a time. She'd been circling us like a dying crow and Nicolai was hungry, not so much for blood, but just for attention.
"Sir?" she breathed, her pale features flushed beneath the lights.
"More Lethe for my friend," Nicolai smiled, running a hand up the back of her thigh and she went tip-toe for a second as the vampire fingered her ass slowly. "It is a sin you were not born a man, Lazarus."
"Save it," I shook my head. "I need a mirror. A big mirror…And holy water." I was talking to myself more than anyone else, pushing my chair back so I could rise from the table.
"Where are you going?" Nicolai pouted. "We're just getting started!"
"Magdeburg."
"A God forsaken place! Why? Come with us instead." Nicolai pushed the waitress down, bending her across the table in front of him and spreading her legs as she giggled. "Let me bugger this bitch and we'll be off to Moscow, the three of us!"
"Moscow?" I laughed. "Why?"
"I want to go home," he shrugged. "Come with me."
The vampire was standing up now as well, freeing his swollen penis while Marlene looked at Nicolai over her shoulder, panting with a lust not entirely her own. Sex club or no, this wasn't really the sort of thing that was encouraged, at least in the main bar. There were backrooms and by-the-hour hotels on the street outside for quick sex, but no one would even notice unless Nicolai wanted them to. We'd been sitting there invisible for the better part of an hour, other patrons looking through us without even a passing interest. Only Marlene had really noticed us and then only because Nicolai had wished it. It was one of the little benefits of hanging out with the man.
"I can't." I pulled my coat over my shoulders, watching as Nicolai lined up his cock with Marlene's ass and gave her a hard thrust, impaling her rectum quickly on his thick penis.
"Mein Gott!" she groaned, wincing and giving Nicolai a dirty look.
"Tight little…Ugh!…Whore…" He slapped her ass hard, driving his cock several thick inches deeper all at once. The waitress screamed, although with pleasure or pain it was impossible to tell.
"See ya round, Nicolai." I left him there, butt fucking a fag in the middle of Berlin. Some things never change.
Chapter Five
I'm not in the habit of measuring time, but sometime later I found myself where I most needed to be. That seems as if it should always be true, but it isn't, and if I needed anymore proof that Fate, unlike God, has purpose, this was it.
"You can't keep me forever, Laz."
Uziel was painting her toenails black, sitting in the passenger seat of my El Dorado, a '57 convertible that I'd bought brand new on an Easter Sunday some fifty years before. I always gave myself a gift for Easter and I remember I'd had to find a Jew to make the sale, because it was 1957 and all good Christians were sure to be in church in those days. My goodness, how things change.
"I'm not keeping you."
I tried to keep the hair out of my eyes as the wind whipped it across my face. I'd forgotten what driving a convertible was like and I should have tied it back. I liked my hair though, long and raven black and still thick after all those years. My nails and my hair, they kept growing, kept changing, and after two thousand years I'd learned to appreciate little things like that. The rest of me looked just the same as when I'd walked out of that cave wrapped in dirty linen and stinking of sour vinegar and rotting corpses. That first bath had been the best one of my life, believe me.
"What plus ever," Uzi sang softly, her little toes wiggling on the dashboard.
"I'm trying to free you," I said, but angels were suspicious by nature, at least the demonic ones.
"You've been trying for six hundred and, um…" she looked up, frowning, "…forty one days?"
"So?" I glanced at her. "We still have three weeks and once I have the Siddur…"
"Even if it works, they're going to come looking for me," Uziel said, and we'd had this conversation before so I didn't answer right away.
I'd summoned her, well, actually I'd had some college kids do the actual summoning, it was easier that way and I'd wanted to avoid attention. Uziel had killed them immediately, of course, since they weren't exactly bright, but merely greedy. They'd released her from the First Circle, which hadn't been a very strong spell anyway, Uzi probably could have broken it without tricking them the way she had, but it was so much fun seeing her do her thing.
The Second Circle was much stronger and I'd bound her to my service for six hundred and sixty-six days, which was only a disguise, really. Uziel would have stayed with me in any event, but this way everyone could feel good about it. Nobody wanted the Angelic Demon of Blood running around loose for a very long time. Not God, the Devil, or anyone else…Except me. I'd been working on breaking the tenuous chains the bound her to Hell, the metaphysical umbilical that would draw her inexorably back to Sheol, where she would be lost to me for another thousand years.
I was going to loose her, finally and forever, and not even God Himself would be able to take her away from me. All I needed was the Siddur of Saadia ben Joseph al-Fayumi and the one decent spell that old Jewish scholar had penned in his own blood. I knew it would work. It had to. Of everything I'd seen in two thousand years of walking the earth, of all the people I'd known, mortals and immortals alike, Uziel was the only one who had ever brought me comfort. She was my eternal twin and lover, and Fate would not be denied.
Of course, being an Angel and therefore something of a fatalist, Uzi was easily discouraged by my romantic notions.
"They're going to come looking for you too," Uziel smacked her lips. "Are we there yet?"
"Yeah," I answered, turning into the docks of San Pedro, which were large and busy, even at midnight.
"What a crappy place." Uzi leaned forward, blowing on her feet as I drove slowly past cranes and stacks of old rusty containers waiting to be loaded.
"Do you know where you're going?" she asked me a minute later, tossing her milk white hair and flashing me those golden eyes that I'd risk anything for. Everything.
"I know." I licked my lips, sliding my big El Dorado between a couple parked semi-trailers, emerging into a large square open area, like an arena in the center of an industrial wasteland.
"Is that them?" Uzi leaned back. "They look like they're in a movie or something."
"Heh!" I grinned, because they did. "Just stay in the car. I'll be right back."
"Whatever, Laz," Uzi shrugged, bored with all of this already. She wanted to go dancing.
I stopped about fifty meters away and it was well lit, with a lot of lights high all around us. There were four of them, standing around a black BMW and a white panel van. It had taken some time to set all this up and what I was doing was going to make a lot of people unhappy. Not just the bit about freeing Uziel once and for all, but the rest of it…Well, I wasn't in the habit of worrying too much about other people's feelings and besides, I told myself, maybe I'd get lucky and nobody would ever know.
I was dressed for clubbing, which seemed to surprise the men somewhat, but they didn't know me anyway except as a voice on the telephone. Petofi hadn't been hard to find and once I'd made it clear how much I wanted the Siddur he'd been quick to tell me what he wanted in exchange. I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just taken the scrolls, but there was a risk of failure and a very real possibility the man might destroy them, which had been his real bargaining chip. His implied threat of denying me what I most required.
"Who's that in the car?" one of the men asked me when I was close, a dozen feet away.
"My lawyer," I shrugged. "Let me see the book."
"Did you bring it?" another one asked.
They were mercenaries, these men, none of them were Petofi, just his servants, and that was a little disappointing. I imagined they were all ex-soldiers, or secret agents or some such nonsense. Professional bodyguards and killers and that seemed a little melodramatic, but people are like that; obsessed with the theatrical at the expense of the practical. Four men with their black machine pistols and radios and crisp tailored suits. It really was like a movie and so I was playing my role.
"Of course," I nodded. "It's sleeping."
"Sleeping?" The first man stepped closer. "Show me."
"The book?" I tilted my head with a patient smile.
"We have it, don't worry," he replied, and then looked at one of his friends. "Get ready to bring the van around."
"As you say," I sighed, but I wasn't going to push it now, not with the Siddur so close by.
We walked together back to my car and he was a large man, confident and black. He watched me from the corner of his eye, trying to see Uziel as well, but she was a shadow now, barely evident like a flickering darkness that he couldn't focus on. It was a mildly disturbing sight and I could sense the man's confusion, but he was well disciplined and gave no outward sign of it. Uzi would show herself plainly only as the man died, if it came to that, and I rather hoped it wouldn't.
I reached into the pocket of my coat, a luxurious silk redingote, black and light as a whisper over the crimson dress I wore beneath. My keys were on a small chain attached to a pink rabbit's foot and I opened the trunk unceremoniously to reveal the boy inside. He was beautiful and young in his appearance, perhaps sixteen or so, perhaps even younger than that. His long black hair was askew, but hardly concealing his lovely features as he lay there, curled up in a fetal position and utterly naked. It had been difficult getting him, but my choices had been severely limited and I hadn't any real desire to betray a friend, more than I already was anyway.
"It's a boy." The man swallowed hard and I looked at him.
"What did you think you were getting?" I laughed lightly. "He's weak now and he'll sleep for several hours yet before the incantation wears off. Do you understand?"
"Yeah," the man breathed and plainly he hadn't really expected this.
"Whatever you do with him…Look at me…" I waited until the man turned his eyes towards me, "…Do it quickly. If he isn't bound when he wakes up, he's going to kill all of you."
"The doctor, he knows what to do," the man said, but his voice didn't sound so sure and it wasn't my business anyway, except for the fact that this boy was going to be one very pissed off vampire when he woke up.
He'd come looking for me someday, if he survived whatever the Hungarian was planning. That was my problem though and I wasn't too worried about it, really. The boy's mate was a much more immediate concern because Nephthys had real abilities and she was looking for him even as I stood there selling the child. If she found him…When she found him, I corrected myself, there was going to be a lot of blood spilled, and not right away. The Egyptian Princess had a thing for suffering.
But she was their problem. I just wanted the book.
"Bring the van," the guy spoke softly into his little radio and a second later the van came to life, headlights off as it moved slowly towards us.
"What did you give him?" the man asked me a second later. "The doctor will want to know."
"What?" I narrowed my eyes.
"You said you drugged him. What did you give him?"
"I said the incantation will wear off soon," I smiled. "Drugs don't work on vampires."
"Incantation…" he was really staring at me now, almost smiling, "…That's like a…spell?"
"It is a spell," I nodded, sort of enjoying this.
"Who are you?" He seemed to shrink back slightly, believing my words, although he didn't want to.
"Me?" I shrugged. "I'm Peter Pan."
Uziel laughed behind me, spoiling my joke because it made me laugh too and the guy just nodded slowly.
The inside of the van resembled an ambulance more than anything else and they even had a gurney for the boy, strapping his sleeping form down quickly and rolling him inside on the stretcher's folding legs. One of the men started an IV and another filled a syringe with something, presumably some chemical to keep the boy unconscious, but all that effort was wasted. They couldn't find a vein, for one thing, the boy hadn't fed in several days and he had very little blood in his body. He wasn't breathing and they couldn't find a heartbeat either, and for a second I thought they were ready to accuse me of giving them a dead vampire, which would have been vaguely amusing.
"My book?" I reminded the black man and he nodded.
"This way, it's in the car."
He had thoughts of trying to kill me, but the man had already seen enough to convince him that any reward he might get for returning with both the boy and the book would hardly be worth the risk. I was glad of that, although it might have relieved Uziel's boredom for a few minutes. I was going to make it up to her anyway, a long night of drinking, dancing, and later on, hardcore fucking was in her future and once we'd recovered from that I'd set about breaking her bonds. That would take a week, maybe a little more, involving a lot of spells and no small amount of blood. It would exhaust me I was sure, but at the end of it…My love would be free for the first time in her eternal memory.
"Here…"
The man pushed a button on his key chain, popping the trunk so it opened by itself, and there lay the Siddur, eighteen parchment scrolls nearly 1200 years old. The paper had been flattened into a rectangular book, stitched and bound by hand with lambskin covers and binding. It was wrapped in oilskins and knotted with hairy twine. I opened it slowly, holding my breath until I was sure of what I held in my hands.
"Good," I breathed with a smile, wrapping it back up. "We're finished."
"The, uh…The boy, does he have a name?" the guy asked as I started to turn away.
"Stephan," I nodded. "It's been a pleasure doing business with you."
"Right. Yeah…You too." The black man didn't smile, but just closed his trunk and watched me as I walked away.