Birth of a Dark Nation (12 page)

"Are you ready?" Steve asked.

"I know he's ready!" Cissy said.

"You guys…I don't know…this is so much…" I
said.

"Think of it this way," Cissy said. "You
can't do any worse than Ernie."

"Nothing gets much worse than Ernie," Steve
added.

I looked at the offer letter. Then at Cissy
and Steve. Then at Dante, who smiled.

"Okay. If Steve and Cissy are in, then I'm
in, too."

"Hot damn!" Steve said. Dante smiled and
nodded in approval.

"But we've got a lot of work to do. Our brand
is wrecked. We've got to change everything. Meetings after
meetings. Press releases. Maybe even give this place a paint job.
Have an open house. We need to let DC know that Magdalene House is
under new management."

Victor smirked.

"I'll be sure to let Uncle John know all of
your decisions. He hurriedly left the room. Dante followed him, but
not before placing his hand on my shoulder and giving it a light
squeeze.

"Nigga…" Steve whispered to me.

"What?"

"You were behind this whole thing, weren't
you? From Ernie getting arrested to this takeover!"

"Like hell I was! I didn't ask for any of
this man, I swear!"

"Tell me this, though. Dante…he a corner boy!
How the hell does he come from a wealthy family?"

"I don't know, Steve."

"You don't know?! Y'all are dating!"

I shrugged. Annoyed, Steve turned back to his
offer letter and searched for a pen to sign it with.

"Do we need to research conflict of interest
policies?" Cissy whispered. "You know…I'd hate for you to lose this
job if you stop dating Dante."

"I'll be fine, Cissy. Trust me."

Life was changing for me at a break-neck
speed and I was fine with every moment of it.

Dante and I were relaxing in front of the
television at his place. I watched the news as I usually did,
watching Annette Mitchell fill in for the regular anchor. I jotted
down notes in my pad related to work while Dante peacefully read a
book.

Questioning him about the events at Magdalene
were fruitless. All I got from him was that his Uncle John Smith
was influential and they did what he asked.

For me, it was a job—a good job—and I wasn't
going to challenge that too much.

I never knew that being an executive director
was what I wanted most out of life, but I loved all of the work I
had to do. Assembling my new team was like casting a reality show.
I wanted a Technology Director who would take over my old job, but
also be responsible for rolling out a brand new training that
would've made sense when he got the envelope. But maybe he doesn't
want to look a gift horse in the mouth program for our clients so
they could be certified in various Microsoft and Adobe products.
Even if all they did was know how to design party fliers, I wanted
them to be more useful to society.

I also needed an Executive Assistant. I
didn't need someone who answered the phones. I wanted an ambitious,
driven assistant whose sole goal was helping the organization
shine. I was looking forward to diving into the stacks of resumes I
received for both positions. Cissy and Steve, too, were looking
forward to creating their own departments.

We were taking our time, though. Cissy was in
the throes of creating a grand reopening for the organization. In a
manner of weeks, Washington would know that Magdalene was back.

In the midst of my jotting notes, Victor
bounded up the stairs from the basement.

"It's time for Sunday dinner," Victor
announced to Dante. "And he's coming."

"Me?" I asked. "I already ate."

"It's not your meal, dumb-dumb. It's for us.
I don't like to eat and drive."

Victor tossed me a set of keys.

"Where are we going?" I asked. "And I feel
like you didn't say 'please.'"

"Oh, I'm sorry. George Washington University.
Now
."

"No!" I shot back. "I'm getting tired of your
funky ass attitude. I am done for the evening and I don't feel like
driving across town all the way to GW to take your ass to dinner.
Now maybe, if you fix your lips to say please, I might feel like
it."

Victor bared his fangs.

"Please," Victor hissed.

"Okay. Maybe now I feel like it."

~

A little over 20 minutes later, we sat in a
white van in the tony Foggy Bottom neighborhood of DC, right off of
Virginia Avenue, just steps from the State Department.

"I…circle thing…B. Is this it?" I asked.

"Iota Theta Beta," Dante corrected.
"Sorority."

"Why are we here?" I asked.

"Dinner," Victor answered while hopping out
of the van. "Stay silent and watch."

Victor and Dante produced brown work jackets,
brown caps, and clipboards. From the back, Dante got flat cardboard
and swiftly popped them into empty boxes.

"Follow me," Victor said. The guys walked to
the front door of the Victorian row house and rang the doorbell.
Shortly, the door opened and revealed a pretty brunette girl.

"Can I help you?" she asked.

"Yeah, I got packages here for Iota Theta
Beta?" Victor said.

"I'll sign for them," she said.

"Hold on, let me get a pen," Dante said. He
put down the empty box and pulled a small flute-like instrument
from his pocket. He put it to his lips and played four notes.

The girl froze.

"What's your name?" Victor asked.

"Lindsay."

"Lindsay, how many girls are in the house
today?" Victor asked.

"Eight."

"Call them to the parlor. Tell them it's a
house meeting with special guests."

"Sisters!" the girl shouted. "House meeting!
Quickly, we have some guests!"

Within three minutes, the parlor was filled
with puzzled girls. White, Asian, Latina. All pretty. All slender
or athletic. Lindsay sat quietly with the same glazed-over look on
her face.

"So, what's going on?" a blond asked Lindsay,
while glancing at the three of us.

Again, Dante played his four notes. The
entire room became still and silent.

"We greet thee in the spirit of Dominique
Bellanger," Victor said.

"We welcome thee in the spirit of Dominique
Bellanger," the girls responded in unison.

"We have traveled across burning sands and
dangerous savannahs to be here today," Victor continued.

"And we have waited patiently for you."

"We have survived the middle passage and
decades of danger."

"Yet we never doubted that you would return
to us."

"We are your protectors, forever and
ever."

"And we offer ourselves to you, the living
legacy of Dominique Bellanger. We present ourselves to you: one
body, one flesh. Iota Theta Beta. In the blood."

"What…the hell…" I whispered.

"Shut up," Victor hissed.

Each woman had her eyes closed, her chin up,
and her neck exposed. Dante moved toward the women on one side of
the room and Victor to the other. They sniffed the air around each
one.

"I want those three. Maybe the one by the
window," Victor said.

"Fine. I'll take these three. Not this one
though," he said, pointing to a blond wearing a green t-shirt.

"HIV?" Victor asked. Dante nodded.

"I could tell as soon as I came in the house
that one of them had it," Dante said.

"You can smell HIV?" I asked. Dante and
Victor looked at me, puzzled for a second.

"That's right…you guys can't smell it,"
Victor said. "Such a pity."

"Justin, I need you to stand watch by the
door, make sure nobody else comes in the house for the next twenty
minutes," Dante requested. I nodded.

Victor had already buried his face in
Lindsay's neck. Judging by the bob of his Adam's apple, he was
drinking slowly, but deeply.

I stepped back into the hallway where I could
keep watch at the door while watching Victor and Dante drink the
girls' blood. I watched Dante bare his fangs and plunge them into
an Asian girl's neck. She winced and exhaled slowly as he drank. He
didn't caress her. Didn't hold her. Just held her head at an angle
and drank. She was just a vessel to him. He didn't look at her like
he looked at me. He did, however, behave with a certain grace
throughout the whole process, as though he was sorry he had to do
it. He always fixed the girl's hair and straightened out her shirt
when he was done. Victor, on the other hand, just drank and moved
on.

It took about five minutes to properly drink
a girl without draining her too much. I noticed that Victor and
Dante showed a lot of restraint. I knew they wanted to just drain
them and be done with it, but it seemed that this set up was
consensual, somehow. I made a mental note of it.

When Victor was done with his first girl, he
used his fang to prick a hole in his index finger. He used his
blood to heal and seal the puncture wounds he had made in his
victim. Slowly, right before my eyes, the teeth marks
disappeared.

In about twenty minutes, they were done, and
it was time to go.

"Fare thee well, my darling sisters," Victor
said. He was staggering toward the middle of the floor, trying to
address the women again.

"This is the tricky part," Dante whispered in
my ear as he leaned on me for support.

"Are you guys…drunk?" I asked.

Dante smiled.

"Blood drunk," he said. "Like…euphoria."

He leaned closer to my face and inhaled
deeply.

"What do you bathe in? I've always wanted to
ask you that."

"Soap and water," I said, looking
askance.

"Like…regular soap?"

"Zest. I told you that before. Remember?"

He smiled and let his eyelids droop shut.
Victor tried to continue his monologue to the ladies.

"In the name of…Dominique Bellanger…" he
started, and then stopped.

"Shit, what's the words?" he said to himself.
He looked down at his hands and appeared to be counting with his
fingers.

"Oh yeah, okay…fare thee well, my darling
sisters. In the name of Dominique Bellanger, I bid you blissful
rest. Keep the lights burning for your brothers in the blood."

"Fare thee well, darling brothers. Your
sisters ever wait," they responded in unison. As one unit, the
women passed out.

"Oh my God," I said. "Are they okay?"

"Yup," Dante said. "Now we have about five
minutes to get the hell out of here before they wake up."

"Then let's go!" I said. Me, Victor, and
Dante high-tailed it out of there and were on the road back to the
house in no time.

As we drove, Victor lay in the back of the
van, fast asleep and snoring. Dante sat up front next to me.

"What did you think?" he asked me. His eyes
were still half shut, like he had smoked a blunt.

"That was interesting."

"Did it creep you out?"

"Drinking the blood? That part? Naw. I mean,
it's what you do. It's who you are. Never seen it before, but if
that's how you gotta eat, then it is what it is."

He nodded.

"You know I don't like none of them girls,
right?"

"I know."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

"I only like you."

I kept driving.

"I said I only like you."

"I know Dante, jeez."

"I just want to make sure you know I was just
eating."

"Dante, are you apologizing for having
dinner? I said it's okay, I know you gotta eat, shit! Yes, it was
weird seeing your lips on those bitches, but I swear, I am good.
For real."

In a flash, he slid next to me and had his
nose buried in my neck.

"Dante, you are gonna make me have an
accident!"

"I just wanna be next to you."

"You're being weird."

Dante put his hand on my knee and slid it up
my thigh.

"Dante…"

"I just wanna…"

"Dante." In another flash, his hand unzipped
my pants and pulled my penis out.

"Dante! What are you…stop that!"

I tried to move his hand, but he was too
strong.

"Just want to show you who's number one. Just
don't crash."

I placed both hands back on the wheel and
tried to concentrate on driving while Dante gave me one of the best
blowjobs of my life. His hot mouth slid up and down on my shaft,
making me hard in an instant. His superhuman strength and speed led
me to climax just as we pulled into the driveway.

No—I didn't crash.

"So, where are we with the development
team?"

I sipped my tea slowly during my senior staff
meeting with Steve and Cissy. We'd been working diligently toward
our grand re-opening of Magdalene House and I was eager to hear
where we stood.

"The development team has been assembled and
will be ready to start after Labor Day. We've got Jules St. Jean in
the communications manager role. Morehouse grad. Formerly with a
charter school network. Wanted to work in the HIV sector after
volunteering in Haiti for two years."

"I like him so far," I said. "And development
manager?"

"Erin Rogers. Spent six years at an HIV
organization in Kokomo, Indiana. Expanded their capacity from six
figures to seven."

"Damn. I like that."

"Hell yeah, me too!" Cissy smiled a lot these
days. She finally got the staff she needed to perform her job. I
liked to see her smile.

"And your intern program?" I asked.

"Everything's good with our Georgetown
partnership. These kids are just itching to learn grant proposal
writing."

"Good. Definitely wish I had been as
motivated at their age. Steve, what's up with the programs?"

"Everything's good. I've got five newly
minted social workers ready to go: two from Howard, two from
Catholic, and one from George Mason."

"I trust at least one is male?" I joked.