King's Blood: Vampire Descent (A Serial Novel, Part 4) (12 page)

We walked out of the compound in the early morning, stopping underneath the trees whose bushed arterial branching shaded the small stony house. Jenny put on her sparkly, pink motorcycle helmet and handed a spare green one to Holly. Holly turned to me, her face flushed pink, and her eyes still moist. . She walked up to me and  reached out and caressed my hand, the same hand I had used to impale myself. She leaned in closer and gave me a kiss on my cold cheek. My eyes drew down and I kept my hand limp. I began to hold back tears as she began to sniffle. She carefully put on her helmet. Her moistened eyes were highlighted and magnified through the helmet’s visor. She slowly backed away from me, eventually turning her back as she sat on Jenny’s Stryker. Jenny and Ted simultaneously started their engines. Holly grabbed onto Jenny’s waist as soon Jenny stepped her foot on the accelerator, turning the motorbike down into the road’s initial mud-streaked slope. Ted gave me a nod as he followed close behind. Holly turned her head toward me one last time, and left a permanent imprint of her sharp, piercing green eyes in my memory…
forever
.

Chapter Twelve

I drew Holly in my journal. My amateurish talents didn’t do her pristine features justice. She looked quite sad in my drawing. This was the last memory I had of her face. The last few days had devastated her. I had always felt that if I was able to tell her that I was a vampire on her terms, she would have eventually come around. She was that cool, that open-minded, that intelligent. But now, I had doubts I’d see her again. I had her email and when things blew over and we settled into another routine, maybe communication wasn’t out of the question.

I skimmed through the old, crispy pages of my journal. I found there were a few pages missing. Five torn out, in all. I didn’t remember tearing out pages from my journal. Maybe Rald tore them, or someone at the archives in Bogota. The page before the first tear was me writing about some farm in Colorado. I had talked about an old barn I was staying in and how the family that let me stay in their barn were Quakers. I wrote how the family reminded me of my family but that was where it ended. Strange, because I didn’t recall my origins at all. As I continued to decipher my own journal with the utmost scrutiny, Milton walked into the room.

“What you got there?” he asked.

“
Nothing, really. Just my diary.”

“
Can I see it? You got some nice pictures in there.”

“
It’s kind of private.”

“
Come on, Jack, what you got hiding in there?”

“
There is nothing of value for you in here, I assure you,” I said, closing the journal and putting it down at my side.

Milton raised his eyebrow with suspicion, but didn’t feel it was worth pressing the matter forward. “You ready for a hunt?”

“A hunt? What are we hunting?” I asked, hoping he didn’t say humans.

“
We’re gonna get some boar.”

“
Why boars?” I asked.

“
Because it’s the closest thing crawling in the forest that tastes like human flesh,” he said. “Also, a boar’s disappearance won’t show up in the newspaper.”

I stood up and put on the gray pullover sweater Milton had found for me, probably from some dank, musty corner of the cave. I scanned the room of the floor, looking for a pair of shoes, boots, or even a crappy pair of sandals. Even though I’d been barefoot since I left Guangzhou, and walking around the floor of the cave was quite uncomfortable, I couldn’t imagine the pain awaiting for me on the forest floor. “You got a pair of shoes I can borrow?” I asked.

“Under the cot,” he said, pointing to a ragged pair of red running shoes. Luckily, they still had laces—I put them on.

I followed Milton out of the cave. We walked up the stony incline. Patchy clouds obscured the pale moonlight as the stars revealed constellations I had never knew existed in the opaque, rural sky.

“So, who else is coming along?” I asked.

“
The usual hunting clan: Kai, Ming, and Ru.”

Milton exited the cave first. He stood over the opening and looked at me like a caped ninja as I emerged from the large hole in the ground. Kai and the hunting group were conversing and leaning on their bikes as we made our way from behind the old stony house. Ming and Ru looked rugged and both had long hair that went all the way down to the middle of their backs. They stood confidently and most worrisome of all, they looked battle-tested.

“These guys look like they mean business,” I said, giving them a nervous smile.

“
They’re our best hunters,” Milton added. “Ready?” he asked the group.

All five us walked in the dark toward the large wooden bridge outside the compound. The closer we got to the bridge, the louder the rush of the river became as it began to drown out the chirps and chatter of crickets and the hoots and the nightly warble of the nocturnal birds in the trees.

Pebbles crunched under foot as we walked down to the edge of the river. Milton faced me and continued to walk backwards and said, “The boars like to dig in the soil for grubs downriver.” He grabbed something from his thick belt he had around his waist. “Here,” he said, tossing me a dagger. Its sharp blade missed my wrist by half an inch as I deftly caught it by the handle. “Slit their throats quickly,” he said. He effortlessly turned around and continued walking down the river toward a dark silhouette of dense trees, just a few meters ahead.

The compact, thick forest grew in a small ravine between two mountains. The overgrown forest was lush with deep green banyan trees covered in vines. There was a narrow red clay trail hidden in the tall grass, which led straight into the heart of the forest. Its mineral deposits resembled miniature crystals in the moonlight. “Enter one at a time,” said Milton. “The boars have good ears, we must walk silently and alone.”

“What do I do once I capture one?” I asked.

“
You must hunt two and bring your kill out here to the clearing.” Milton grabbed his dagger and swung it compactly in a curved motion. “You must tear into its neck like this. The boar will collapse immediately.”

I scanned the faces of the group. Each one of the men’s eyes fastened on the patch of green in front of them. All ears focused on the sounds made by the jungle floor. They didn’t flinch or look at me or each other. I’d never hunted wild game before. I was ready to do it and show Milton that I was not just
Tonghua,
as Jon had called me back at the compound. They had brought me along as a kind of initiation. I was prepared for the task at hand.

We all crouched and slowly walked in the tall grass leading into the forest, our shoulders and heads barely visible in the moonlight. We diverged once we reached the sweeping darkness of the forest canopy that towered over the clay forest floor. I looked to my left and to my right, the Jiang-Shi disappeared into the brush like ghostly apparitions. Their footsteps were drowned out by the cold wind that stirred up the crackle of dry leaves.

I ventured into the darkness. Adrenaline heightened my senses. The smell of decaying bark, wet grass, and rotting fruit tinged the inside of my nostrils. My eyes translated the slight movements of the leaves on the floor as the locomotion of a snake’s scurry. My ears picked up the sound of every twig’s snap, the grinding of branches rubbing in the wind, but still no snort of a boar’s snout or the dull intermittent taps of small hooves.

Thirty minutes passed as I sat on a rock covered with moss underneath a large mango tree. The other Jiang-Shi were nowhere to be found and I did not hear the death throes of a pig which was marked for death. I got up and began collecting ripe and spoiled mangoes from the floor and placed them in a pile in the middle of a small clearing surrounded by trees, hoping that a centralized grouping of the sweet-smelling and pungent fruit would attract the boars. I sat, waiting, against the trunk of one of the larger trees in the area. There was a feeling of tranquility as I waited patiently for the animals to reveal themselves.

As I placed the last fruit on my pile of spoiled fruit salad, I began to hear the murmur of helicopters in the distance. I stood up and slowly turned in a circle, trying to gauge the direction of the rapid dull beats of the chopper’s blades. It was difficult to see the sky through the covering of trees. Suddenly, the sound of helicopters stopped, but the sounds did not trail off, they just ended abruptly. I was not overly concerned since the helicopters sounded as if they were a few miles away. I began to hear the dry brush move behind me. I quickly turned around and crouched. I took out my dagger and stared at my mound of fruit. As the movement in the brush intensified, I heard footsteps above my head in the canopy. I looked up and just saw large branches swaying up and down. I turned my attention at the brush behind me and the noise had stopped.

“
Milton?” I cried out. “Is that you?”

I stood in the middle of the forest slowly turning 360 degrees, analyzing each shadow, and carefully listening to every sound. I had enough of the area I was in as it produced no boar and only hauntingly inconspicuous sounds. I decided to get back onto the trail and deeper into the forest.

As I walked on the trail, I heard a loud thump behind me. I turned around and a figure of man began emerging from the darkness. He charged at me with his right hand in the air. He struck at me with a dagger and I quickly ducked out of the way. The man quickly turned around and lunged at me again. I instantly grabbed his forearm. We struggled until our stomachs connected, our faces came within an inch of each other.

“
Ru. What are you doing?” I asked. I restrained his arm up with both of my hands. He punched me in the rib with his left hand. I staggered backwards. He lunged at me again and I leaped straight up into the air. In the few milliseconds I remained in the air, Ming, the other Jiang-Shi, missiled straight into my midsection as I remained suspended in the air. We both violently landed onto the ground, my back sweeping up mud and clay as it scraped the forest floor. I instinctively kneed Ming under his chin. His head rapidly whipped back and the dagger he had in his right hand flew off and dropped to the forest floor. I briskly got back on my feet and pulled my dagger out. I ran down next to where Ming landed, my knees sinking into the mud, and I placed my dagger over his neck. “Cut this shit out or I’ll slice your throat,” I said. Ming smiled and my back felt the splintery wrath of a large, thick piece of tree as Ru broadsided me with an enormous branch. I laid on my back, clutching it with my right hand as I writhed in pain. Ru held the large branch over his head with both his arms as he readied to strike my head. As Ru struck downward, I rolled to the right, the branch impacted the ground so hard it remained stuck in the mud for a few seconds, allowing me to get up and gather myself.

A metallic shimmer caught the corner of my eye. I noticed Ming’s dagger a few feet away from where Ming was gingerly getting up and where Ru was struggling to pull the branch from the ground. I grabbed the dagger and faced Ming and Ru as they composed themselves. I brandished my dual-wielded daggers at them. “You step any closer and I will assure both of your hearts will cease pumping your old, rancid blood.”

Ru and Ming stood tall and I remained still, settling into a modest crouch, waiting patiently, watchfully, for their next sudden move. Ru dropped the large branch from his hand and in one motion, grabbed his dagger by its blade and spastically flicked his wrist, launching the slender blade at me through the air. I immediately heard and felt the trajectory of the dagger against the wind. I quickly moved my head to the side, as the dagger whizzed right past my ear. Ming reacted to the missed throw by bellowing out a warrior’s yell and charging straight at me like rabid dog. I swiftly grabbed his right arm and slung him toward a large tree that was behind me. His entire body violently wrapped around the trunk, his face planted deep into the wet bark. The dazed Ming tried to shake the impact away, I ran at him at full speed with my dagger aimed straight at the back of his hand that he was using to rest against the tree. Ming belted out a hellacious scream as I impaled my dagger through his hand, sticking it to the trunk. Ru, seeing that I had stuck Ming against the tree, bolted toward me and cocked his fist aimed squarely at my face. I quickly ducked and turned around, punching him in his lower back. Ru staggered and gathered himself quickly, he turned around and swung at me with his right hand. I managed to block his strike. My closed, tense fist slammed straight into the soft part of his stomach, pushing his flesh and innards all the way to his spine. Ru fell to his knees and I pulled my weapon. As I lifted my dagger into the air, ready to strike the nape of his neck, a loud booming voice resonated and echoed off the trunks of the trees, “Enough!”

My hand trembled as it held the dagger over Ru’s neck. My eyes scanned the forest trying to pinpoint the source of the deep, masculine voice.

“Put your weapon down,” said Milton’s voice from the shadows.

“
No,” I said. “I’m tired of this bullshit. I don’t want to deal with your games anymore. I’m going down to Guilin City and our deal is off.”

“
Jack, you have proven yourself. Sheath your dagger,” said the thick, rich baritone voice in perfect English.

I continued standing over Ru as he remained kneeling in pain. I was still breathing rapidly, adrenaline coursing through my veins. Ming’s painful groans echoed over our voices.