Birth of a Dark Nation (41 page)

Ogundiya stared at me from his side of the
bed.

"What?" I asked.

He shook his head and turned over. I heard
Aborişade close his drawers and then leave his room. His footsteps
went down the stairs. I shot out of the bed and ran after him.

"You want to be their Jesus so bad. Well go,
be a bloodsucking Boy Scout to them if you want to. You'll be back
soon. I know it."

"Maybe I will be," he said. Ogundiya came
down the stairs behind me. He reached around me and silently shook
Aborişade's hand. They locked hands and nodded.

"I love you both," Aborişade said. "Please
tell Aragbaye I said goodbye."

"Fuck you," I said. Aborişade softly closed
the front door behind him. I went back upstairs and went to sleep.
Ogundiya came in a little later and hugged me tight for the rest of
the night.

~

A few days later, Ogundiya, too, was gone. I
came home from orchestra rehearsal to find a note on my pillow.

.

Eşusanya,

.

You are the most complex man I have ever met. I know
that your sharp tongue only protects a soft heart. I hope that in
my travels, I can meet people as sensitive as you truly are.

.

You will think that I am a coward for leaving you
and Aragbaye as I have. And that is true, for I cannot bear to see
your disappointment in me.

.

But I want you to know that I, too, believe there is
more for the human race, and that I am to help protect them as they
evolve into what they were meant to be. I am hoping to catch up to
Aborişade, but if I can't, I will go it alone.

I will write you when I reach my destination.

Ogundiya

.

I picked up a dumbbell and hurled it across
the room, shattering my mirror into millions of pieces like stars
across an African sky.

Ogundiya did write to us with regularity over
the next few months, but I never wrote back. I am sure Aragbaye
did. I felt no similar sense of obligation or loyalty. They left us
in pursuit of some dream of saving humanity, one fragile human
being at a time.

I wasn't about that life.

A few months after that, I felt it was time
for me to leave also.

"I knew it would one day come down to me,"
Aragbaye said with a sigh, as I packed up my car.

"You can go stay with Babarinde, you know. Or
transfer to another cell."

"I don't know them like I know you."

"You can get to know them."

"I like DC. Plus, Baba thinks The Key is
here. Somebody's got to wait. DC has potential."

"Yeah…it does. I'll miss it. But you'll be
waiting a long time for a key that doesn't exist."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Will you be back?"

"I will. One day. But there's a whole country
full of girls, boys, and blood, and I hope to taste a little bit of
all three for as long as I can."

"Be safe."

"I will."

"And…Eşusanya?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for giving me a proper
goodbye."

I rushed to my baby brother and gave him a
tight squeeze.

"You will be fine, I promise you. Now man up
and make a life for yourself."

Aragbaye nodded and shook my hand. I carried
my last bag to the car and threw it on the passenger seat. I got in
on the driver's side and sped away. I didn't look back once.

I wouldn't see our house again for three
years, until the day I met Justin Kena for the first time.

Sometimes, it felt like a million maggots
were crawling over me, threatening to impregnate my body through my
ears and my nostrils. I screamed out, but nobody came to my rescue.
I would fall asleep again, even though my eyes hadn't been allowed
to open in weeks, months, years?

I slept, dreaming of green grass, blue skies,
my brothers and sisters, my Africa. I ran across the savannahs that
I called my backyard. I saw my mother and my father once again. I
was home.

I slept, dreaming of the terrible voyage that
ripped me from my homeland forever, depositing me on these foreign
shores that had taken so much from me, yet also had given me so
much to fight for. Because of that voyage, I learned just how
strong I was. Because of that voyage, I loved my brothers even
more.

I slept, often dreaming of nothing at
all.

I fought back every time I knew they were
near, resisting their needles with every ounce of strength I had,
but the nearly lethal doses of morphine they gave saved their
lives.

I slept.

Demons taunted me, sometimes, their tentacles
being the restraints that kept me tethered to this prison, my bed,
this house.

They spoke to me, teasing me about secrets
that I did not know and answers I did not have. They caressed my
neck, sometimes choking it until I passed out, sometimes scratching
at me, and sometimes just beating me. I slept.

Holy Mary…
she came to me a blinding
white light in the darkness of my madness and in the hopelessness
of my bondage.

Help the miserable…
she covered me
like the vast wings of an eagle, protecting my mind from further
descent while they poked and prodded and taunted and slapped and
raped and stole.

Strengthen the discouraged…
the
maggots fell away to peace and quietude and stillness.

Comfort the sorrowful…pray for your
people…
I no longer feared the nightwalkers who controlled my
body, for my mind was free. I had been locked in the belly of a
slave ship. At least this place had a mattress.

May all who venerate you feel now your
help and protection…
I would be safe. I would be strong. Help
was on the way.

Be ready to help us when we pray…
and I
prayed and I prayed and I remembered who I was and I prayed some
more.

And bring back to us the answers to our
prayers.

"Search every room!"

And bring back to us the answers to our
prayers.

"Break it down!"

And the knocking of the door was really my
brother's foot crashing through it.

I knew I heard them. I knew there was a
crashing sound, like a window being broken down the hall. I knew
it. I knew they'd come for me.

They removed the tentacles from my legs
first, freeing them. I could barely move them. I could hardly
understand what they were saying, but I knew things were changing,
then and there, in that instant, in that moment in time. I was
being freed. My body was matching my spirit.

They loosed the bonds around my wrists,
freeing them, letting the blood flow freely again. They spoke, but
still, I didn't understand.

They reached around my head and removed the
hood. Even in the darkness of night, the light from the moon, the
stars, the far off streetlight, blinded me for a second. I adjusted
rapidly.

"Aborişade? Aborişade?"

I blinked several times. The face in front of
me was one I didn't recognize, but I knew was a friend. His head
was crowned with short dreadlocks, newly begun. I could smell the
scent of my people on him.

"Yes…that's my name," I said softly. He
touched my face and then my chest.

"It's nice to finally meet you. My name is
Justin Kena. My crown name is Ominiyi. But we've got to get you out
of here. Can you walk?"

"Ominiyi…I can try." I moved my legs off the
side of the bed and tried to put my weight on my feet. I stood up
and immediately stumbled. He steadied me.

"I got you. But what's this? Under the
pillow?" He asked. My new friend reached under the pillow and
grabbed a short strand of green and white beads.

"Hold it for me," I requested. He scooped me
up in his arms and walked with me to the door, where I saw a masked
figure keeping lookout.

"Where's your mask?!" said an annoyed
voice.

"I took it off so he could see me. Nobody's
going to get carted off willingly by a masked crazy person,"
Ominiyi said.

"True," the other man said. He carefully
lifted his mask up to his forehead and showed me his face.

"I know you," I said. "You're Aragbaye."

He smiled.

"Eşusanya is here, too. We've got to go."

He pulled his mask back down and drew both
his guns. My vision was blurry but I could see that each of them
had two holsters on their hips and two more strapped to their
thighs. They were dressed in black from head to toe.

"They're coming!" said another familiar voice
from down the hall. I looked down as Ominiyi tried to take me to a
safe corner. The tall and lithe shadow was Eşusanya, just as
courageous and hotheaded as I remembered.

Two nightwalkers reached the top of the steps
and were each shot by my brother. His aim was still impeccable. The
tall, Asian vampire was hit right between the eyes. The red-haired
vampire was hit in the chest. Both shriveled, blackened, and turned
into sludge there on the stairs.

"Let's go!" he shouted as a chorus of
additional footsteps traveled up the stairs.

We were nearly at the open window when shots
began to ring out. Ominiyi dove to the floor and pushed me over to
a corner, behind a hallway table, in an attempt to keep me safe
from the onslaught. Although I knew wooden bullets had a minimal
impact on us, it would be terrible if I got shot in my current
state of vulnerability.

A white woman with curly black hair and a
muscular black man, near her in height, were at the front of the
approaching platoon of nightwalkers. Their faces looked enraged on
the surface, but something curious was happening.

Their hands recoiled as though they were
shooting, but no bullets were coming out. It was as though they
were creating a path of safety for us.

Ominiyi, Aragbaye, and Eşusanya shot around
the pair, aiming only for the outer section of the rapidly
approaching platoon of multicultural nightwalkers.

When they were ten feet away, the man and
woman stopped, looked at each other, nodded, and then performed a
standing back flip, tumbling all the way over the six vampires
behind them, creating a clear shot for the brothers.

They landed behind the half-dozen
nightwalkers, paving the way for their deaths by wooden bullets.
After my brothers were done, all that was left were gelatinous
puddles.

"Eight down," the woman said. "Nigel is out
feeding, but he will certainly be on his way back. Cassandra is
downstairs."

Her companion stared at us as Ominiyi tried
getting me on my feet again. I stood by myself this time.

"You must be Andre," Ominiyi said.

"Yes, I am."

"Thank you," Dante said.

"It's not over yet," Eşusanya said. "Now,
come on, the window."

"No!" the woman said. "Orlando is too weak.
You're going to walk right out the front door."

"But Cassandra and the others…"

"You have to take us hostage. It's the only
way we can all make it out of here. Walk us straight down the
stairs with your guns on us."

"Sasha, that will never work!" Eşusanya
said.

"Listen! We got you in here and we saved your
lives. You owe it to us to get us out of here, too! Now what we're
going to do is walk down the stairs with our hands over our heads
and you're going to threaten to kill us if Cassandra doesn't step
aside."

"Goddamn it Sasha, if you get us killed I
will fucking kill you!" Eşusanya hissed.

We began walking down the winding stairs to
the first floor of the house. The menacing lady of the house was
frozen at the bottom of the stairs while we descended. She was
beautiful, yet frightening, in her charcoal gray pantsuit and
pearls.

"Sasha! Andre, what have they done to you?"
she asked incredulously.

"Mistress, we-"

"Shut up, bitch, before I put this wooden
bullet through your skull like your friends back there." Eşusanya
acted convincingly.

"Oh my goodness, no!" Cassandra said.

"Stay back, Cassandra," Eşusanya said.

"Victor! There's no need for further
violence. You have what you want, please just let my children
go."

"And there's no need for us to trust you.
They're coming with us until we're far away from here."

"We could be helpful to each other, darling.
Put down the gun."

"You think I'm stupid?"

"Then leave it up. Listen. I know we did you
all wrong, and I'm sorry. I follow Nigel. But we took care of
Orlando, I swear we did. We were always going to send him
back."

"Once you drained him?" Ominiyi asked.

"You're Justin!" she exclaimed. "So they did
turn you!"

"Never mind him, you focus on me. Look into
my eyes. Tell me what you were going to do to him."

"Your hypnosis won't work on me darling; I'm
far too old for that. But I'll gladly tell you. Nigel wanted to
identify any weakness of your people so that he could destroy you.
He believes that the Razadi will be the downfall of our
people."

"And you?" I asked.

"I think otherwise. I think we can study your
blood, your DNA, figure out what mutations allow you to walk in the
daylight. Together, we can be unstoppable, Victor. Daywalker and
nightwalker living together in peace. Conquering the world. All
mankind serving us."

"Razadi don't want that!" Dante shouted. "We
just want to live in freedom. And you shattered that when you took
our brother!"

"For the betterment of us all. Listen. It's
not too late. We can work together and show Nigel, show
all
of them who believe in the old ways, that
this
can be the
new dawn! Not the destruction of any of us, but the birth of an
entirely new nation!"

"You know nothing, Cassandra," I said,
standing up tall with my hand on Ominiyi for support.

"And Orlando speaks," she said smugly.

"You think that our blood will let you walk
in the sun? Well…what do you think will happen if we drink your
blood instead? Hmm? Maybe we don't want to own the sun. Perhaps we
want to own hell!"