My earliest memory:
I’m looking around at all the other children. Some of them are eager for what is to come. Some of them are already getting sick. The smells of bile and ammonia mix in the air with other less identifiable smells. My present mind replaces this remembered smell with blood. I now know the smell of blood so well that I could never mistake it for anything else.
I read a book once, long after this memory took place, where a vampire told a human that humans aren’t able to smell blood. I was punished severely for that, but I’ve never forgotten that moment. It was a conceit by the author trying to make a greater difference between humans and vampires.
I know vampires and they don’t sparkle.
One of the other little boys has fainted. Another has collapsed to his knees and is retching again into the sand. It’s not me. I won’t allow my captors to get the satisfaction. Some of the others have already forgotten that we were taken, but not me. That could be because I was the oldest in my group. The other children were surprised when I was brought into the group.
It had been over a year before that the previous child had been brought in. At six, I was the same age as these children, but I was emotionally much older. It seemed as though they were stuck at the age when they were taken. A number of the other kids looked to me as an older brother.
The only light in the natural cave came from the torches on the walks. It was a flickering light which I allowed to distract me for a while. Fire is the reason that they picked me so late in the cycle. Somehow I set fire to my parent’s home and didn’t get burned.
That is what the old guys tell me anyway. The folks at the orphanage told me it was an electrical fire. Me, I remember the man who came through the flames and took me out of there. He was wearing a cloak, which became singed a little, but nothing else.
I didn’t tell anyone about the man.
They stake out a wolf in the center of the ring. The Rector is walking out into the center of the ring. He turns slowly so that he can look each of us in the eye. The retching boy is dragged to his feet by one of the Hands who stand around the ring.
The unconscious one is thrown into the ring with the wolf.
“There are only two choices here: You kill or you die. Our war is too important to coddle you. In ages past, only one of you would graduate. In this age we need soldiers too much. Realize though, that if we lost all of you to your training, I will not shed a single tear. If you are too weak to kill, you are dead to me already.”
As he was spoke, he raised his voice to be heard over the sounds of terror from the boy and they sound of the wolf attacking.
“We must be strong in order to save the weak. You were chosen for your strengths.”
The boy begins to scream as the wolf tears off his arm. The scream doesn’t last long.
“One of you versus a wolf is not fair. Many versus a wolf is using his own tactics against him.”
I feel a knife pressed into my hand. We’ve had talks like this in the past and we know what we need to do. The wolf is still busy with the other little boy; I think his name was Albert. We kill the wolf.
It was, of course, training for the war. Much like a six year old alone is no match to a wolf, a human is no match for the spawn of Satan that run around in the shadows of this world. They call themselves Unseen.
It almost makes them seem…nice, doesn’t it?
I mentioned the vampire book before. The reason I was punished is that we are here to fight Vampires, and Weres and Witches and whatever else Satan himself spits upon us. We are here so that the normal people are able to read books about Vampires and think them romantic.
I’ve never been to school. The only learning I received was how to kill efficiently and cleanly. That was the entire goal of our training after all. We were raised to the absolute best that a human being could possibly go.
I’d just received a new diary, as I did every year. I’m not sure why they gave us a new one every year, but they did. I’d just received my tenth diary. I knew that it was my tenth because I would soon be sixteen. I received my first just after I arrived before my sixth birthday. This was just before my sixteenth birthday.
“I looked around me at the other boys who were still with us. Two had somehow failed their coming of age ceremony. Fourteen had died, including Albert, during the course of our training. There were only three others left in my dorm room.
You don’t try to learn the names. None of the three were with me on that night almost ten years ago when I assisted with my first kill. I didn’t even know if any of them would care if I died during my own coming of age.
There were still five from that first group I was in. They’d all survived their coming of age, but they were no longer my friends. They were cold. Something had gone out of them even as they became faster that they’d ever been before.
I was, by far, the best fighter in our group, but now, when sparring, I couldn’t even get in a single strike, and they would cut my sparing clothes to ribbons.
We always trained with naked blades any more.
After writing my first entry in my diary, I went outside the compound for a walk. They never feared that we would run. I used to wonder why that was before I realized that we really had nowhere to run to. I didn’t even know where we were.
I finished my normal run and made my way back to my rack where I lay down to try and get some sleep. Sleep never came easily to me.
It was the memories that kept me up:
I sat in the classroom. It was the only word I had for it, and I’m not sure where I heard it first. A lot of my life is like this. I don’t know how I know what I know.
The Rector is in front of the class. It is always the same man, always the same droning voice. The Hands stand around the back of the room. They are there in their white cloaks with the black gloves. I only know they are alive because they move slightly every now and then. It is frowned upon to stare at the Hands.
“Gideon started our order. He stood between humanity and the darkness, but then he was gone.”
“Very good, Michael. Does anyone else remember what came next?”
I raise my hand. We are punished if we fail to answer.
“Yes, Seth?”
“An angel of god came to the first Rector and told him a better way. If we perfected ourselves as much as we could, then we could be lifted up by the angels and made into weapons to destroy the spawn of Satan.”
He smiles at me, slightly, but it is a smile. I’ve put a little passion into my speech. I don’t feel it, but it pays to let them think it.
I fall asleep before the end of the memory. It’s okay. I never enjoyed remembering the beatings, even if it was someone else. If you weren’t fast enough to answer before the end of the class, then it was as bad as not trying to answer.
They let me out of the punishment because I was the one who killed her.
I still see the fear in her eyes in my dreams.
It was two days before my sixteenth birthday, and I was ready to get it over with. I was excused from training because I was “the most promising pupil in sixty years,” or so the Rector told me. I can’t look at the skulls on his lapels without gagging. He beat me half to death with his heavy leather jacket once, and the last thing I remember from that beating was the sight of those silver skulls slamming into my face.
I hate him more than I hate the Unseen.
After breakfast, I left the compound again. It was a deviation from my normal routine, but I was tired of the stares of envy from the other students. The forest cleansed me. Whether it was nature herself, or the fresh air, or the illusion of freedom I still don’t know, but I loved to be out in nature.
Sneaking up on a wild animal is a combination of a couple of things: You can’t be heard, and you can’t be smelt.
Sneaking around will become second nature to anyone who goes through the order’s training program. The Sacred Heart does not suffer failure well. If you fail to sneak…no, you don’t want to know what they do to you.
You don’t fail a second time unless you have a death wish.
Some of the other boys gave up and let the Hands kill them. Not me. I wanted to live too much for that.
The cool air had a slight tang to it that morning. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I was guessing that there was an electrical storm the night before. The walls of the compound are thick enough that it could survive a nuclear blast.
I wondered, that morning, if they could survive Dragon fire. That is what they were designed for, after all. When the compound was being built, no one knew that the dragons were dying out in the world. Well, dying out isn’t the proper term for it.
They were leaving.
The only thing they’d done in the last four hundred years, as far as I’m aware, was kill us. I didn’t know why at the time, but I have a pretty good idea now. I think that Dragons are the reason that people believe in angels.
It’s just a theory, mind you, but I really think that Dragons are forces for supreme good in the world.
So, I was wondering if dragons could have destroyed the compound. St. George aside, I knew of no true stories where anyone had killed a dragon in one on one combat. I’m not even sure if St. George really did it.
I do know he was real. He was part of the reason that I tried my best not to become the center of the Rector’s anger.
There was a slight smell of ozone in the air and a small crack of thunder. I turned to the sound and saw a naked woman standing in the forest.
I’d seen women from time to time. We did not live a Spartan existence. Even the Rector brought in his prostitutes upon occasion.
The sight of a naked woman would normally have set my teenage hormones racing, but mostly she just terrified me. Somehow she was completely clothed in her contempt for me.
“Well, let’s have a look at you.”
“Who are you?”
Her eyes glowed for a moment, and that was all the answer I needed. My sword jumped into my hand, or so it seemed to me at the time, and I lunged at her. Her eyes widened slightly before she went into motion and leapt out of the way. My left hand was already releasing the throwing knife that I held there.
It was a little trick I figured out while sparring with one of the instructors. I hated to lose, so I made it my task in life to find ways to win. The instructor called me a cheater as he pulled the knife out of his shoulder. The Rector stopped him before he could do me any harm.
I drew another knife from the bandoleer across my chest as I went after her again with the sword. She’d seen the knife coming so I would have to look for it after I killed her.
“That was an unexpected move. I didn’t think a novice could focus on two things at once. Limitations of a human mind and all.”
“Don’t let me change your mind. I enjoy being underestimated.”
I drew back my arm as if to throw my sword at her, and release. I never let go of the sword, but she flinched away from it. I made sure to telegraph that throw so she ended up in the path of the knife I’d released a moment later.
It nicked her on the outside of her arm. The blood was off, somehow. The color was too black. The slight cut only bled for a moment though, because when she wiped the blood away the cut was already gone.
I telegraphed both my sword throw and my knife throw this time, timing it so that it would release the moment she opened her mouth to speak. She stepped directly into the path of my sword, expecting me to keep it in my hand.
“It never pays to underestimate me,” I said as I walked up to her. The sword had gone cleanly through her heart and impaled her to the tree behind her. The dark red blood oozed from the wound as I worked the blade around a little to free it from the tree. I twisted it for good measure as I removed it.
She let out a slight gasp as I did so.
“I’ll remember that for next time, Seth. You would do well to remember that it is the beings that are immune to silver from the beginning that are your true enemies…not that the warning will do you any good.”
She laughed at me as she disappeared.
The first knife I found in no time at all. That was the one that I’d nicked her with. The other flew a lot further than I expected. In fact, I doubt that I actually threw the knife that far. The woman seemed to have a sadistic streak in her, and she might have moved it to make my life more difficult.
“You’re late,” said the Hand at the door.
“I had an encounter in the woods,” I said, showing him the blood on my knife. I’d cleaned the sword before sheathing it.
“The Rector told me to send you to him as soon as you finally showed up.”
I felt a sinking in my stomach at the mention that the Rector was waiting for me. It wasn’t unheard of for a novice to have a one-on-one meeting with him, but I dreaded them none the less.
The door was slightly ajar when I reached the office. I could hear voices on the other side of it.
“He is more than ready, Paul. I want to feed his soul to my minions. If I could, I’d take his meat suit for my very own.”
“It must be on his sixteenth birthday, My Lady. You know that: Three fours plus one is the magic number for a full possession.”
“I told you that, so don’t get uppity, my little minion. Perfection plus one times perfection plus one.”
“And I always thought it was seven that signified perfection,” the man said with a dark chuckle.
“One for beings of light, one for beings of dark, one for mankind: Three races given this world as a battlefield.”
“I still say we must wait until his birthday if you want to completely subsume his will.”
“I don’t think that will be necessary. I think that Seth is strong enough to be the next Rector.”
“My Lady…”
“I’m not replacing you yet. Seth hasn’t yet been fully corrupted. His first impulse was to kill me after all.”
“As you wish, My Lady. What do you think…”
I didn’t stay to hear the rest of their conversation. I had to figure out what I was going to do. Apparently the woman I had fought, the woman talking to our Rector, was one of the very beings that we were supposed to be fighting.
It’s a funny thing about memory, the strangest things trigger it.
After leaving the Rector’s office, I went to my room to grab a long coat and a change of clothing. I didn’t like the idea of wearing the same clothes for weeks on end, and it would give me the opportunity to clean one while I wore the other.
I grabbed a torch from the sconce in the hallway and tossed in on my bed. Then I began to yell, “Fire!”
The boys woke and added to the confusion. Like good little soldiers, they went about their assigned duties, rushing to the other rooms to wake the younger students. I just walked to the entrance. The same Hand still stood there and turned to look at me.
“You were supposed to go to the Rector…”
He never finished his statement. There is a saying about surprise, “It is the thoughts that go through your enemies mind when you execute your plan flawlessly.”
His eyes had barely begun to widen when I thrust my sword through his heart. The thing about silver is that it is corruptible. I immediately cleaned it before putting it back in its sheath. I didn’t want to have to deal with corrosion on my blade. I really didn’t know how long I would need to use it.
There were worse things in this world than the Order of the Sacred Heart.
The first wisps of smoke fluttered past me as I opened the door and looked out. The smell of it, so much different that the fires that I’d run into so many times in the intervening years, brought a memory flooding back to me:
I look around me, seeing the fire on everything in my view. My bed is an island in this sea of fire. I cry for my parents, but there is no sound but the roar of the fire lions on the walls. They taunt me and tell me I am about to die.
I don’t want to die. I want to live with my Mommy and Daddy and Hannah, my sister.
A man comes through the door. His face is covered in cloth, and his body is dripping wet. His coat steams a little. He picks me up and kicks out my window. With me still in his arms he jumps through it and then sets me on the ground.
I cry for my parents, but he is already gone back into the house. Soon after the fire truck comes.
“He’s over here!” I heard a call from my right.
They were faster than I thought. I leaned forward and pushed myself. Sprinting wasn’t something that they really worked on with us. Sometimes we ran for a few miles, but that was to build endurance. They wanted us to be unflagging, not fast.
Right now, I was trying to be fast.
I knew the abilities of the Hands, or at least I thought I did, especially after they’d injected a dose into their systems. If there was ever a time that the Rector would let them juice up, now was the time.
He guarded the doses well. It was a necessary part of our training to watch one of the older Hands take his last dose. I never knew how the Rector knew when a Hands last dose would be, but I’d seen it happen three times.
We were required to clean up the resulting ash.
Other than the Rector, there were no members of the Order who were older than twenty eight.
If he allowed a dose to the people who would be chasing me I was in real trouble. It was the reason that the people who went through their coming-of-age were so much better than the rest of us. Their speed and the quickness of their reflexes were all enhanced by that straw colored liquid.
You could still surprise them, though.
I’d killed the Hand at the door. I could do it again. Just because you were faster than me didn’t mean you were better than me.
I ducked behind a tree and strove to quiet my breathing and the pounding of my heart. Not because I wished to hide, but because I wanted to hear.
It was only a moment or two, or so it seemed, and there was a pounding on the ground from behind. I closed my eyes, imagining where the sound would place my adversary. At the perfect moment I lashed out with my sword from my cover.
The next sound I heard was my sword striking his. Somehow his sword had been there to block mine. I opened my eyes quickly, even as I fell into a guard stance.
The white of his tabard was the first thing to alert me to the fact that this wasn’t a Hand. He was in a guard stance himself. We stood there looking at each other across the intervening space.
He was old. Not as old as the Rector, maybe, but he was definitely older than thirty. I could see wrinkles around his eyes, and a few wisps of grey in his hair even in the gathering twilight.
The next thing I noticed was the device on his left breast. The simple sword there was confusing enough to me that I let the point of my physical sword drop.
“I suggest you put away your sword so we can get out of here.”
I nodded mutely and sheathed my sword. I ran beside the other man, for that is what I felt myself to be, a man. The Order would have treated me as one after my ceremony. I took this as my ceremony now. This first act of rebellion against that corrupted Order was my declaration of manhood.
We ran until my lungs burned. We ran until I was sure that if I took another step further I would collapse. We ran until running was the only thing that existed in the world, and the thought of sleep seemed a distant memory. When I decided I was done for, we picked up the pace and ran some more.
A part of my mind continued to work beyond just keeping one foot moving in front of another, and I realized something. The greatest difficulty in long distance running isn’t physical. Your body has a finite amount of energy to use, sure, but it has so much more energy than we normally use.
The greatest difficulty in running for a long distance is mental. You mind tells you ‘that’s enough, no more’ even as your body is only beginning to get going.
I found this out through experience that night. My entire body ached, my throat was raw, my vision began to swim, and then, only then, did my tormentor come to a halt. He didn’t say a word to me. His hand was stretched out to me holding a bottle, which I drank from greedily.
“Keep moving, boy. We need you still capable of movement.”
He put a hand behind my back and gave me a gently shove. I stumbled forward and began to walk. Everything seemed to go by at a crawl after so long running. Looking around us for the first time, I realized just how long we must have been running for. The moon was well past the horizon, and all traces of the sun had long since left the western sky.
It was tranquil, almost, walking through that forest. The heat of the day was just beginning to leave, and I shivered in my sweat soaked shirt. The coat I would helped ward off the chill a little, but I think it was more shock than anything else.
I had killed a man in cold blood this evening.
For the first time I actually considered what was being expected of us. They had their games that they made us play, but every time that I’d acted to take a life, the life of a friend had been taken already. I acted as the hand of retribution, not with murderous intent. I had approached the Hand this evening fully intending to kill that man.
I dropped to my knees and retched.
The only thing that came up was water and bile. I continued to heave long after my stomach was empty.
I had killed a man.
“Get up, boy.”
“No. I won’t.”
“Get up!” he said, pulling me to my feet.
“Leave me alone.”
“We don’t have time for this. We have three more miles to the rendezvous point.”
Three miles. I could do three more miles. I got to my feet and shuffled forward. I almost hoped that they would catch us now. It would take away the ache that I felt. It would remove the hole I felt growing in my chest.
Sure, I didn’t particularly like the man I had killed, I’d known him though. I’d killed someone who had been a part of my life almost continually for the last ten years.
The Order had never had more than a hundred people. With that few people living all in the same place, I’d come to know each and every one of them. I was leaving behind my family, a messed up family to be sure, but my family all the same.
I shuffled along behind him as I remembered all of the people that I’d spent so much time with. I didn’t miss the beatings or other abuse they had put me through, but I did miss them.
As I walked I pushed those feelings away. The Rector had been perfectly willing to feed me to that Demon. The Hands followed the Rector’s orders.
I would not mourn a pawn of Demons.
They relieved me of my sword, which I would have felt really uncomfortable with if each of them hadn’t removed their own swords. A couple of them even had pistols that they stowed with their swords. They were removing their weapons. This was so strange to me. I’d worn that sword continually for the last four years. It made me feel apart from them, as they were obviously comfortable with the lack.
I felt even more the outsider as I sat there listening. They tried to get me to join in the frivolity, but I didn’t feel like it.
“It seems we’ve got a little Captain on our hands here, boys,” the man who slipped into the driver’s seat said. As soon as he began moving, the rest of them took off their tabards revealing normal everyday clothing underneath.
The tabards were each carefully folded, as if they were the most precious thing to each of the men, and stowed.
These men were deadly. It was obvious from the way they carried themselves. Even without their swords, I could tell that they would be difficult opponents in a fight.
I must have dozed off because the next thing that I remembered was waking up outside a motel. Everyone piled out and for a moment I actually thought that they’d forgotten me.
“Hey, kid. You’re in room 11 with me.”
I looked up. The driver was talking to me. Everyone else had moved off, so we were left alone. I followed him into the room, not really paying attention to what he said. I was tired, in pain, and not a little bit sick at heart over my actions of the past day.
Maybe if I went back to them now, begged them, maybe they would take me back. I would accept their punishments if only to know where my life was going from here.
”Where are you going, kid?”
“Home…” I said, or something like it. My mind wasn’t fully functioning.
“That’s where we’re taking you, kid. Your new home.”
“I’m no kid.” I said bristling.
“Then act like it. There are no free passes in the Knights, and if you want to be a part of us, then you need to prove your worth.”
“Prove my worth? I have been trained since I was six years old nothing more than how to kill. I am expert with the knife and sword. I am the best fighter in my class.”
“Which doesn’t prove anything of your worth. If you don’t want me calling you kid, then what’s your name?”
“My name is Seth.”
“Well, Seth, a Knight’s honor is his name, and his name is honor. If you vow to do something, then you’d better do it.”
“We are in a war, and there is no honor in war,” I repeated by rote.
The man laughed. “So, you believe that all Unseen are evil? You know that your Order is currently in league with an Unseen?”
“I know,” I said quietly. The real reason I’d killed the Hand was I knew that I had neither the weapons to kill the demon witch, nor the courage to face down the Rector. I had taken on a weaker foe to assuage my own guilt at following a corrupt man.
“And you would willingly go back?”
“I am a broken tool. I no longer have purpose.”
“Kid, you have more purpose than many. You still know of the war, even if your views of it are a little skewed.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are two types of people in the world: The unseen and everyone else. You, me, the Rector, the Captain, and most of the rest of the Knights are all part of everyone else. We were formed into a group by Gideon to fight the vampires.”
“But that’s the story of the Order.”
“Of course it is. Who did you think we were? We are the Knightly body of the Order without a true Order to serve.”
“I thought…”
“You’ve been lied to your entire life, Seth. It is partially my job to teach you about your birthright.”
“You didn’t know my name, how could you know my birthright.”
“We were sent to get you, Seth. We may not have known of your name, but we knew your birthday, and with that a lot more about you than you know yourself.”
“Bull shit.”
The driver snorted at me.
“The Order as a whole was tasked with hunting Vampires, as that was who our founder most feared. A select group of the Order was tasked with a more difficult job; we were tasked with rooting out all evil Unseen wherever they might be.”
“I thought…”
“That all unseen were evil? Not hardly. They’re people, like you or me. Unli8ke our brethren, we were expected to use our judgment in meting out death. Not every vampire is evil, and not every Were is good.”
“How can you tell?”
“By their actions, mostly. Although sometimes it is hard to tell. Evil masquerades as good, and good can occasionally do evil with the best of intentions.”
“But an evil act is an evil act.”
“So, you should be put to death because you killed a man?”
I had nothing to say to that statement. I would have loved to have the turmoil end. I kept trying to decide once and for all that I would not mourn the man I killed, but when I wasn’t focusing on that, I did mourn him.
“Why do I feel so horrible about killing that man?”
“Because you are good. You realize that every being has a right to life. Even Vampires.”
“But I thought…”
“We are Knights, Seth. It is ours to decide. Vampires have a greater potential for evil than other unseen. It is in their nature. They are predators. What they do is only evil as they are thinking beings. While you would not punish a wolf for eating sheep, a vampire knows the difference between allowable and prohibited acts.”
“Ok, that is confusing. First you say they are good, and then you say…”
“I never said that Vampires are good, Seth. Some are just not evil.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Nope. It’s not. Good and evil are merely the end points on a spectrum. You have Demons on the one end, thankfully few and far between. Everyone else is somewhere above them.”
“If Vampires can be not evil, then why not Demons?”
“Because they corrupted themselves in the search for power. I personally don’t know the particulars, but suffice it to say that demons are beyond redemption.”
“So, I am honor?”
The guy smiled at me.
“There are four tenets of the Order. Over the years we have dropped most of the rest of the chivalric code, especially when we started letting female knights into the Order in the forties.”
“So, the first is about honor, what is the second?”
“A Knight is merciful. While evil cannot be spared, neither is torture condoned. A swift death is a kindness that all beings in creation deserve.”
“But what if…”
“No ‘but’s or ‘what if’s. You do not torture or draw out an execution. The more that we choose to inflict pain on our enemies, the more we bring evil into our hearts. The use of torture by our brethren in the Order was what lead them to their demise. They decided that Vampires were not human, and therefore not deserving of mercy.
“They began to revel in the tortures they inflicted. It was a short step from there to taking this pain to others of the Unseen.”
“Honor, Mercy, and then what?”
“A Knight is kind. It is not our calling to feed the poor, but neither is it our calling to debase them further. All beings in creation are our brothers and sisters and deserving of our respect.”
I looked thoughtfully at him. I could point out how there was a disconnect in his definition of mercy and the fact we were supposed to be kind, but I chose not to say anything about it.
He answered my unasked question.
“Is it a greater kindness to allow a killer to run free, murdering the innocent as he sees fit? Or is the greater kindness to kill the murderer and thereby not inflict his sickness on himself or others?”
“I don’t know.”
“A good place to begin. Many have spouted in the past that it is best to lock them up. What good does that do to the man or to society? If locking him up is bad, what about leaving him loose? As I see it, there are only two choices that are at all merciful: Leave the man alone to torture and debase the other members of society or provide a swift death for him.”
“But most murderers are just normal people.”
“And there are police to handle them. We are here for one purpose, to take care of those that the police can’t.”
“What is the last one?” I asked, still unsure as to whether there was a disconnect between the two concepts he’d shared.
“A Knight is flexible. Just as his sword is not a rigid piece of metal, the Knight is not unbending. Any Knight who puts his principles above his heart or his mind is a fool, and not to be trusted.”
We talked for a few more hours before tiredness took me and I lay down to go to sleep.
If I were still at the Order, they would be giving me all the food I could eat, as the ritual required a lot of sustenance. No one outside the Order really knew what the ritual was, but it had something to do with preparing our bodies to take the Dose. I had some idea now that it included giving myself over to the demon.
Parts of me thought that wouldn’t have been such a bad idea. She was beautiful in a cold, alien sort of way.
The rest of me realized that it would have cost me my soul to do so.
After breakfast, which was decidedly meager, we again piled into the van and continued our journey. I didn’t know where we were going, exactly, but I could tell we were heading north.
I watched the other Knights, for that is what I now assumed they were, as we drove. They were friendly with one another. They laughed and smiled. They were so different from the Hands of the Order. They were…human. That was the only word I could think about for them. They were so very human.
I even tried a few jokes of my own as we traveled, but they really didn’t go over too well. Apparently being locked away from the world for ten years will do that to a person.
About noon we arrived at a small airport outside of Livingston.
A private jet waited for us there. I don’t know how the Knights made their money, but they were obviously well off. The eight of us piled into the Jet and were soon moving down the runway.
“So, where are we going?”
“Kevin, you never told him?”
“He never asked,” said Kevin, the driver.
“We’re on our way to England, Seth.” The first to respond told me.
“Wait, what? I’m pretty sure I need a passport…”
“The Knights still have some influence in certain parts of the world. People still remember the good we’ve done.”
“What does that have to do with…”
“What he means, Seth, is that as long as you wear a tabard of the Order, then it is your passport into a number of places.”
The other seven knights dropped to a knee at the appearance of the individual from the cockpit.
“My liege, we did not expect you until we landed.”
“I needed to see the young one for myself. So, he really almost took your head off, David?”
“Yes, captain. He did. If I hadn’t already had my sword up…”
“I’ll have to keep my eye on him then. Kevin, my sword.”
Kevin arose and walked to the back of the plane where a gold embossed sword hung. I would have assumed it to be ceremonial if not for the sheen off the razors edge.
“Do you wish to join us in our fight, Seth? Normally there would be a rather lengthy trial period, but it seems that events get away from us. Midsummer is only two days away, and I don’t personally relish waiting for a full year to retrieve your birthright. We were late picking you up, for which I apologize.”
“Do I have a choice?”
The man smiled. There wasn’t a trace of grey in his hair or well-groomed beard, but he seemed to be much older than the other men.
“If I am pledging myself to you, then I would like to know your name.”
He smiled at me, with that soft smile of his, “Call me Peter.”
“Ok, Peter, I will join your fight.”
I took a knee before him, and he lay the flat of his blade on my left shoulder.
“Seth, I pledge you my support as you pledge me your life.” He moved the blade to my right shoulder. “Arise, Sir Seth, Knight of the Order of the Sacred Sword, bound as our brother. Your fights are our fights. Your pain is our pain. May your life come dear to our enemies and last long upon the land.”
The rest of the trip across the Atlantic was pretty tedious. So, technically speaking it wasn’t across the Atlantic. It was one of those great circle things that I’ve never understood.
The problem is, I think, that any time you see it on a flat map, it just looks so weird. You think you’d had to keep turning to get to your destination.
Logically, I guess, it makes sense; it just doesn’t look like it should make sense.
I watched the other Knights as they interacted. These men had been together for years. The next closest to me in age looked to be in his mid twenties. They knew each other, and trusted one another. Would I ever have that? Would I deserve it if I did?
I spent part of the trip just looking out the window at the clouds. We were above them, and the sun shone brightly upon us. I can’t really describe my feelings looking out and seeing our shadow following us across that sea of white.
It was intense to say the least.
I guess it would be a good idea to explain a couple of things about my growing up. No, I had no television or Internet, but that doesn’t make me ignorant of everything in the world.
I knew how to drive from the time I was ten. We all knew what airplanes were, as we might be called upon to fly at some point. We had a basic understanding of the world that you live in, we just weren’t part of that world.
It’s kind of like being Amish, but without all the farming.
As we were coming in for a landing Peter handed me a white cloth, neatly folded. I knew what it was before I unfurled it, but even so as the weight, more psychological than physical, settled on my shoulders I knew that I was something different than I was before.
Kevin had explained the precepts of our Order to me, if only briefly, but I knew that I wanted to live in their bounds.
I was a Knight. Everything about my old Order that had bothered me like the deaths of children, or killing of kids near our own age, wouldn’t be repeated here. I smiled as I realized that I was a part of something greater than myself.
One of the other Knights glared at me, but I just turned away. I’d been the target of hateful glares my entire life, and one more wouldn’t faze me. This was my moment. That moment of perfect bliss that every moment in your life is leading up to, and every moment after is a steady downhill path.
We walked off the plane and to the gate in the airfield fence. The airfield seemed mostly deserted, just like the one in America had been. As we approached the gate in the fence, I began to feel a little self-conscious. People were going to see us in our uniform.
In the Order, they had told us to blend in, not let anyone see your weapons. Become part of the background noise.
We were walking bold as anything to the edge of the field where a couple of men stood in what I assumed were military uniforms.
My steps faltered for a moment, but the soldiers just saluted Peter and we walked through.
“They know who we are?” I asked after we had passed the gate.
Peter smiled at me for a moment and then walked on. Kevin fell back and walked beside me.
“They think we’re SCA. The commanding officer on this base is a former Knight.”
“Former?”
“What, you thought you were in the Order ‘til the day you died? That would be foolish. Fighting the Unseen is a young man’s sport. There aren’t many who live long enough to have retirement forced upon them, but many of us decide that we need to live life. You find a girl, or one finds you, and you decide that it’s time to leave and start a family.”
“If there are girls in the Knighthood…”
“While not unheard of, it is frowned upon. We are a squad. It is our duty to protect everyone on the squad, and sometimes that means leaving someone behind. Fraternization in the ranks can cause divided loyalties. Best not to borrow trouble I always say.”
“That’s the first time you’ve said it.”
“You just haven’t known him long enough, Seth.”
The others laughed at this so I just smiled.
“Where are the girls, then?”
“Don’t let them hear you calling them girls,” David said to more general laughter.
“The women are after a solitary female vamp. Normally we’d send in the whole squad, but our intel this time was solid. Apparently she kills anyone she turns before his, or her, bloodlust fades. She enjoys the challenge.”
“Why…?”
“Surely you know that a female vamp can only mesmer a male.”
I blushed. I had known that, but it never occurred to me to worry about it. In my former Order they would throw people at the problem until it went away.
“We’ll be meeting up with them at the castle.”
I smiled assuming it was a joke, but no one else was laughing.
We didn’t walk for long. As soon as we were completely out of sight of the gate we found an SUV. We piled aboard, and once again Kevin drove us. I’d spent most of my life looking out windows and wanting to get into the world. Now that I had some level of freedom, I wanted to take advantage of it. The forest that went by on either side of our car beckoned me.
We arrived, and I finally understood what they were talking about. It wasn’t a castle in the traditional sense, but there was something about the manor that just screamed “castle.”
“How is it that we have a castle?”
“In the past we were a part of the nobility. The kings and queens knew who we were, and supported our cause. Our lands have never been ceded, and we continued to own them through wars and peace time,” Peter said from behind me.
“I am the current duke of something or other in England. In France and Germany I am just another land owner.”
“But…”
“Don’t worry about it, Seth. I’m working on your paperwork to get you dual American and British citizenship.”
I was floored. There was so much about the Knights that didn’t make sense to me. I doubt that my former Order had ever heard about them, but here they were working almost out in the open.
“How do the Unseen react to all of this. We are so exposed…”
Peter shared a look with Kevin. Kevin took me aside as Peter and the other Knights went inside.
“We are only in the open with the other humans. The Unseen have a really bad relationship with us at the moment.”
“It’s because of the Sacred Heart, isn’t it?”
“Mostly, yes. There have been some…incidents…in the past; they were dark days for our Order. We don’t like to remember them, but the Unseen involved won’t let us forget.”
“We made mistakes?”
“Mistakes would be easily rectified. We blamed the wrong people for the schism in the Order, and before we discovered our mistake we made enemies. Some very powerful enemies.”
“What kind of enemies?”
“The kind that you should hope never to meet. We’ve only recently begun to really recover. There were decades where there was only a single squad of Knights.”
I looked around us at the forest. I felt safe here, but what eyes hid there, watching us. A shiver went through me at the thought.
“Come inside. Let’s get you warmed up.”
“If you don’t mind, I’ve had enough of walls for a while. Can I walk in the woods for a while?”
“You’re a Knight, Seth. As long as you are not under orders you can do whatever you want.”
I smiled at him, and began walking. The tabard was so comfortable on me that I’d completely forgotten I was wearing it, and when I did remember, I was miles from the castle.
Shrugging my shoulders, I continued my walk. The forests weren’t the same as those I’d grown up in, but the similarity made me feel at home. I loved the sounds that forests made. There was a stillness to them that felt right to me, somehow. I knew I wasn’t an Unseen, or at least I assumed I wasn’t, but it was as if I were born to walk these forests, or any forests for that matter.
I don’t know why I started, but before I knew it I was stalking. It was something I did at home, trying to sneak up on the animals in the forest. Not the easiest of things. Animals are wary of predators, and humans are some of the best predators around.
No, we don’t have the natural weapons of a lion or a vampire, but we have intelligence. Well, I suppose that a vampire has intelligence as well. There’s a reason I don’t call us the best predators. Just in a select group that includes the Unseen and us.
The tracks I found were those of a rabbit.
I’d never successfully caught a rabbit before. I’d tried a lot, but they always seemed to hop from my grasp the moment that I was about to take them.
This one, however, seemed to be completely unaware of my presence. How that could really be, I don’t know, but it was the case as far as I could tell.
As I drew ever closer to it, a smile spread across my face. I was nicely downwind, and I know I wasn’t making a sound. My soft leather soled shoes allowed me to feel the terrain. I could feel the branches and twigs that might have betrayed me.
I ever so slowly reached out my hand and grabbed the bunny.
My elation only lasted for a moment or two before I wasn’t holding onto a rabbit anymore but a naked girl. My arm had been around the rabbit’s torso, so you can imagine where my hand ended up.
She let out a bloodcurdling scream and began to struggle in my grasp. I was trying to get out from under her at the same time, so we ended up in a tangle of limbs. The more we struggled, the more difficult it became to concentrate.
You try wresting with a naked woman and tell my you have any more luck at it.
Everything came to a screeching halt when I heard the tell-tale click-clack of a round being chambered in a shotgun.
“Unhand my daughter,” I heard someone say in a British accent from behind me.
I figured that if I did anything other than simply stop moving I was a dead man. Trying to let her go had just resulted in more confusion previously. She got up and ran into the woods, but not before she gave me an excellent view of her backside.
Trying not to grin, I turned back to look at her father.
He was equally as naked, and had the barrel of his shotgun pointed at me.
“If you could put down your gun, I promise not to draw a weapon and we can discuss this like civilized people.”
“Like you could…”
I drew and threw a knife in a fluid motion and sent it into the tree a couple of feet to his left. He threw his hands up to try to block it, firing the shotgun into the air above my head.
“Now, I realize you are Unseen. You likely know I’m not. I never meant to harm your daughter.”
“You stalked her for over a mile.”
“I thought she was a rabbit…you know what I mean. A real rabbit, not a were-rabbit.”
“Why would you…”
“I like to sneak up on animals and I’ve never successfully caught a rabbit with my bare hands.”
The man began to laugh.
“No, seriously.”
A moment or two later, the girl, now dressed, returned to see what the fuss was all about.
“Watch this one, he’s tricky.” He said and left the two of us alone.
She had the most beautiful ash blond hair I’d ever seen, and flawle4ss skin. I had to find out more about this girl.
“What’s your name?” I asked politely.
She glared at me.
“Look, I’d like to at least know the name of the first girl I got to third base with.”
She blushed prettily and glared all the more at me.
“Come on. If your going to kill me, doesn’t the condemned man deserve at least one last request?”
“You don’t deserve anything, Hunter.”
“I’m not a hunter. I don’t even have a gun.”
“Are you an idiot? We know you came from that group of Hunters at the castle. Order of the Heart or whatever…”
“You think…” it suddenly dawned on me who she thought I was, and I think I was afraid for the first time in what felt like days. I’d just been angry outside the Rector’s office. Now I realized they wanted to kill me and there was likely nothing I could do short of killing them.
And I wasn’t going to kill them.
“Wait, you’ve made a mistake. We are the Sacred Sword, not the Sacred Heart.”
“What’s the difference? You still kill Unseen.”
“Only bad Unseen.”
“And who are you to judge who is bad or not?”
“I don’t judge. We research an Unseen before we pass judgment. Mostly we kill vampires from what I hear.”
“What you hear?”
“They just inducted me into the Knighthood. I’ve never…”
My look must have told her what I’d just realized. I had killed an Unseen before. The girl in front of me reminded me of the other girl. There had been hatred in her eyes as well.
“I’ve never killed an Unseen that hasn’t tried to kill me first.”
It was technically true, but I wasn’t going to go into the specifics. There had been no fault in that other girl. Of that I was sure.
“Look, either tell me your name or kill me. I’m not here to hurt you, but if it makes you feel safer, then remove me from this world.”
I felt drained of all emotion. I’d thought that I would finally be able to live a life I could be proud of, but if that wasn’t to be then at least I would die a death I could be proud of.
There was no more defiance in me. I looked into the face of death and realized that I never expected it to be so beautiful. I smiled at her.
“Damnit, father, hurry up.” She said quietly.
“Fine, if you’ll not give me your name, then I’ll try and guess it. How about…Jasmine.”
“A flower? You think me named after a flower?”
“No, not a flower. But another plant…Sage?”
She smirked at me, but something in her eyes told me that she was enjoying the game, and that I was getting closer.
“Rosemary.”
“Not a flower remember?”
“Rosemary is an herb.”
She rolled her eyes at me and was actually grinning. This was the strangest flirting that I’d ever imagined let alone heard of. She was still pointing a gun at me, and I was trying to guess her name.
“Ginger.”
She wrinkled her nose at me, “Too Eastern.”
Was she giving me hints? I began to smile myself at this point.
“Thistle.”
“I really think that one is a flower.”
“You might be right on that. Um…Olive.”
“That’s a fruit.”
“And you’re not a fruit? You’re pointing a shotgun at me.” I said it with a smile though.
“Be nice to the girl with the shotgun.”
“Yes your majesty. Not a fruit, not a flower, but a plant. I don’t know…Laurel.”
She started as I began, but calmed as I ended. I’d almost hit upon it but what could it be…and be a plant?
“Laura…Lauren…Lauren isn’t a plant.”
“It means Laurel, which is kind of a boys name anyway.” I looked at her strangely, but shook it off.
“Pleased to meet you, Lauren. My name is Seth which I have no idea what it means.”
“It means Appointed.”
I just sat there on the ground, which I’d never stood up from, and looked up at her. Have I mentioned yet that she was beautiful.
She offered me a hand and I stood up. I was just taller than she was, and I could smell the scent of her. She smelled like the forest and it made me smile.
It only lasted for a moment or two, but those moments cemented something in my mind. I did not want anything to happen to this woman.
And no, I’ve never heard of ‘love at first scent’ before, but that is what it was like for me.
She smelled of home to me.
Someone behind us cleared his voice, loudly. “Lauren, the gun if you please.”
“No, Dad. I’ll not give you the gun I think. Seth and I are going to go talk to the Hunters and figure out what’s going on from there.”
“I told you, we’re Knights, not Hunters.”
“No you didn’t.”
“I was sure…there are two groups of normal humans who train in how to kill Unseen. The Order of the Sacred Heart are the bad guys. They torture, kill, and generally make pests of themselves from what I hear.
“The Knights of the Sacred Sword are the good guys; we do not torture, we kill only when necessary, and we get to wear these really cool tabards.” I said with a grin to Lauren.
She smiled back to me.
“Fine, Lauren, but be aware that I am letting the council know where you’re going.”
“I know, dad. I’ll be careful. Move, prisoner.” There was something in her eye as she said that. Almost as if she were enjoying this a little too much.
I’ll admit that I was enjoying it as well.
We walked back to the castle in silence. When we got out of sight of her father, she dropped the gun to her side and moved up next to me. I wondered a bit how the rest of the knights were going to react to Lauren.
I got my answer possibly a little sooner than I expected to. We walked through the big double doors not quite hand-in-hand but close enough. The other knights, however, were more interested in the shotgun.
The tableau would have been funny if I were not so intimately involved in it. Men and women were arranged haphazardly around the hall doing menial tasks like caring for their weapons. The talking that had been going on up to that moment ceased abruptly. Swords leapt into hands from tables and scabbards, and Lauren raised her shotgun.
“Seth, get down,” Kevin called, reaching for one of his knives.
I calmly stepped between Lauren and the knights and held out my arms. Without realizing it, I’d drawn my sword in my right hand, and one of my knives in my left.
“That’s enough!” bellowed a voice from the stairs.
Peter descended assisting one of the oldest women I’d seen. “You know we’re not to draw weapons in anger inside the castle,” Peter said, still obviously angry, “What is the meaning of this?”
“The girl has a gun.” One Knight said.
“He’s brought a norm in here,” another said.
“I’m no Norm,” Lauren said, and then colored.
Everyone turned and looked at me…and then people started chuckling around the room.
“You don’t start small, do you,” David said.
“Leave the boy and his future bride alone,” the old woman said and everyone shut up, stunned.
“Grandmother…” Peter began, only to be shushed.
“I am neither dead nor senile, Peter. You of all people should know that, else why would you have wanted me to come check the young man out. Or over. Or whatever you young people say these days.”
“Grandmother, I don’t think…”
“Well I do think. If ninety-six years has earned me anything, it’s a little freedom from the rules. I’ve Seen enough tragedy in my life to deserve it.”
The way she said it left no doubt that she wasn’t just talking about her normal sight. I wasn’t even sure she could actually see anymore. Here eyes were milky orbs.
Lauren let out a small gasp behind me as she realized the import of what had been said, “Do you know what that woman is?”
“Peter’s grandmother, apparently.”
“No, she’s a Seer. And she said…” Lauren blushed very red, and turned away from me.
“Well, boy, let me get a look at you.” The old woman said.
I walked toward her, sheathing my weapons as I did. It was harder to put away my knife than it had been before I began wearing the tabard, but I adjusted.
The woman mumbled to herself as she walked around me. I could only catch one word in three and the words I did hear just made no sense.
After she was done with her second circuit, she looked up at Peter with her milky eyes. “He’s the one. A direct descendant of Saint George himself.”
“What about me?” Lauren asked, “How can you declare that…say that…I just met him!”
“It’s easy to see with you two. He excites you. He’s not only the bad boy your father will hate, but he’s the knight in shining armor you have always dreamed of secretly. I mean he is carrying a sword.”
She turned a gaze to me, “And you have been smitten by her in a way that no medicine can cure. If you two don’t get married you’ll both regret it for the rest of your lives.”
“I’ll just leave,” Lauren said, “if we never see each other again.”
“That would be kind of difficult since you’re destined to become the first Unseen Knight in the history of the Order.”
There was an uproar at this declaration.
I looked back at Lauren with a smile on my face only to see her fear. I did the only thing I could. I gathered her into my arms and held her as she cried.
“But I don’t want to be a Knight!” she wailed.