The Vampire-Alien Chronicles (11 page)

“Sure.”  I heard him say as I lowered the phone and was reaching for the red
end
button.  I put the phone away and returned over the peak to the front deck.  Sonafi was watching the Burns drive away as I rejoined her, the big rental truck lumbering away down the street and taking a left hand turn at the first corner.
“Brid wants to ship us air freight.”  I said.

“You told him he was out of his mind.”  Sonafi said.

“Well, not exactly Commercial Air Freight, but he does want to fly us as freight.”  I said, not exactly answering her question, but not exactly not answering, either.  “He wants to put us in a box and fly us by private jet.  I told him I had to speak to you first.”

“Fly us freight?  We have made the journey in less dignified circumstances, I guess.”  She said only, not as dead set against it as I had thought
she would be.  In truth, making the journey by ship, and trapped inside another freight crate the entire journey, which clearly would take much longer than a jet plane, now left me with the first thought I’d had when hearing the jet plane idea.  I was suddenly thinking that the least amount of time spent in any crate would be the best.

“He has it arranged for tomorrow evening.  If we approve.”  I said.

“It sounds efficient.”  Sonafi said.  “I've come to expect that from Brid and his co-conspirators.  I doubt there will be any problems.”

“Co-conspirators?  They call themselves the Network.”

“Yes I know.”

“You do?”

“Well, I'm a little bit of a member myself.”

“I should have guessed.”  I said.  “You've grown quite attached to your computer in recent years
while I plod away with pencil and paper.  Maybe it's time that I’m put out to pasture.”

“I'd like to see the Vampire capable of that.”  She said to make me feel better, but the tru
th was, I was behind the times.

“Tomorrow evening?”  She asked.

“Tomorrow evening.”  I agreed.

“Then we had best make some use of our new home before we have to abandon it.”  Sonafi said, standing up and at ease on the steep slope.  She smiled at me seductively and then walked down to the edge of the roof.  Before disappearing completely over the edge, with only her head still above the roof line, she added; “Are you coming?”

CHAPTER 9

The car pulled up in front of our house even as we climbed out of a window just down the street.  We would not normally have used such a close neighbor, but we were moving and we were in a hurry to make the flight schedule which had been arranged for us.  It would not be able to be explained to the airport flight controllers that their Vampire freight had not been able to come out until after dark and that they had then had to feed before they could make it.

After gaining the ground we slipped on our shoes and quickly made our way to the car which was awaiting us.  A Vampire I had never seen before was at the wheel.  He began exuding fear stink as soon as we got in the back seat.  I rolled down the window on my side.

“Sorry.”  He said, realizing why I had rolled down the window.  He could smell
his own pheromone fear stink as well as we though not to the extent as we.  “I never realized just how terrifying you would be.”  It was no disrespect to tell another Vampire that he or she scared you.  Every Elder but myself had once been a Juvenile who had experienced the fear of another Vampire.

“There's nothing to apologize for.”  Sonafi said as the Vampire pulled the car away from the curb and the suction of the open window drew out most of the stin
k.  I did not find it pleasant or intoxicating as some did but then I had long outgrown that Juvenile desire for dominance.  I did not actively participate in the hierarchical game of dominance and submission.  I believe I fully cleansed myself of such impulses in my early years and my terrorizing of humanity for so very long.  To me it was no more than an ugly stench.  The smell of inequality, and that, in the final say, always reminded me of the Others.  Of the ultimate inequality they felt gave them the right to steal an entire species very existence.

The ride was a short one and ended at a darkened factory.  Shut down for the night, though not entirely empty.  There were a group of Vampires, and several Humans, waiting on a loading dock at which was parked a delivery van.  They were in the process of loading a large crate into the back of the van when we pulled up.

“That's for us, I guess.”  I said.

“Doesn't look First Class to me.”  Sonafi observed.

“First Class Freight.”  The driver said with a smile I noted in the rear-view mirror.  The smile flickered away and his eyes turned forward when neither of us smiled in return.  We weren't trying to be rude but neither were we too amused.  I know that I for one was not particularly looking forward to climbing into that box to be flown across the ocean.  The car pulled up next to the van and we got out.  Brid was waiting for us.

“What kind of hare-
brained scheme have I let myself be duped into?”  I asked as we gained the loading platform and I got a better look at the crate now resting in the back of the van.  It looked even smaller up close and I had to admit to second thoughts.  It would be cramped and tight.

“I don't think it's hare-
brained at all.”  Brid said boldly, challengingly holding my eyes.  I held my temper as the other Juveniles around Brid involuntarily stepped away from him, expecting an explosion.  He realized belatedly how challenging he had been and toned himself down.  “If I were making the trip, I would not want to go any other way.”

“It'll be fine.”  Sonafi said.  “Your father only balks because he knows he will not be able to escape my nagging once the lid has been closed.”

“I have not been able to escape your nagging for thousands of years.”  I said with a smile.  “I don't know why this should be any different.” 

“Do not worry,” Sonafi said, stepping close and running a finger along my jawline suggestively, “I will endeavor to try to find a way to keep you amused.”

“That's disgusting.”  Brid said.

“That is how we came to be
blessed
with you.”  I said sarcastically.  “So in a sense, you are absolutely correct.”

I saw the slight narrowing of Sonafi's eyes before she moved.  She took two quick steps and no more than a flitting shadow to the
Juveniles around us, materialized in front of Brid.  Before he could react she reached up and pinched his cheek between her thumb and forefinger.  “Disgusting?  You ingrate.”

“Sorry Mother.”  Brid said.

“You should be.”  She said, letting him go.

“Yes Mother.
”  He said.

“Shall we?”  Sonafi asked, leading the way.  We climbed into our crate and attempted to make ourselves comfortable.  The bottom was layered in thick foam.  We sank in as we settled into our places.  Mounted on the interior walls of the box were four oxygen canisters with two oxygen masks trailing from two thin, clear lines.  A Vampire could slow his metabolism to a point very near what might be confused
as death and maintain that status for an extended period of time, but the added precautions were reassuring.  It showed me that thought and preparation had gone into the planning of this expedition.  That this wasn't a slap dash operation.  My confidence was suddenly high.

It was a tight squeeze and there would be very little room to move around once the lid was put in place, but we were not, as Vampires, unaccustomed to tight, dark places.  Brid came into the van and slid in between the side of the box and the interior wall of the van.  He had a screw gun in one hand and a handful of screws in the other.  Two of the other
Juveniles joined him around our crate, similarly equipped, and looking nervous at being so close to us, in such cramped quarters and nowhere to go if we suddenly went rogue.  I admired their courage.  Other Vampires slid the lid up onto the crate but held it back from completely covering us.

“Are you ready?  No last requests?”  Brid asked.

“Funny.”  I said. 

“No light?”  Sonafi demanded.

“For what?”  Brid asked.  Vampires could see in the thermal, of course, but we would not be able to read in thermal.  Sonafi had produced a book from somewhere upon her person and waved it meaningfully under Brid's nose.  The way she could hide things away in plain sight often astounded me.  I had no idea where she had kept it.  “Oh.”  Brid finished lamely.

“I guess I'll just have to find other ways to amuse myself.”  Sonafi decided, throwing the book aside.

“Ugh.”  Brid said.  Then he motioned for the lid to be drawn into place and the screw guns went to work sealing us in.

“Uh, would you like to do s
omething with all those weapons!”  I said as she moved towards me.  I would rather embrace a porcupine with her so encumbered.  She could only laugh.

The crated journey itself might have been unremarkable, but not so the events which transpired within it.  If nothing else had kept our union strong after all of these eons, our physical attraction for one another had not dimmed in the slightest.  We still burned for one another as hotly as the day we had met, those thousands of years gone.

The different legs of the journey we took were easy enough to distinguish one from another.  The van ride to the airport.  The offload from the van and the reloading into the jet.  The taxi down the runway and the unmistakable leap into the air.  Hours of flight and then refueling on the East Coast, but no one bothered with us.  Then airborne again, flying, we knew, into the rising sun.

The flight over the ocean took a lot longer than the first hop, from St. Louis to New York, but ended, as all things must, soon enough.  Vampires do not sweat very much.  It takes a great deal of effort to rouse a Vampire to exertions requiring the cooling effects of sweat, but I had to admit that by the time the jet's wheels touched the ground again, it had begun to become a trifle stuffy in the cramped, enclosed crate.  It was not without some relief that I felt those wheels touch the ground again.  Sonafi, languishing in my arms, hardly noticed.

“Do you think they'll send us round one more time if we ask especial nice?”  She asked, yawning.

“I wouldn't be too eager.  It may be hours yet before we get out of this crate.”  I cautioned, but her exertions, and the soothing rhythms of the flight, had tired her, and she fell asleep.  She had that enviable ability.  She could fall asleep without the slightest notice.  She slept quietly within my arms.

Sleep was probably a good idea, I thought, since we were changing Time Zones and there was no telling what stresses and strains we were getting ourselves into, but I was simply incapable of it.  Like many Humans, I have needed less and less sleep as I have grown older, to the point where I could now go for days, or even a week without it, without too much effort.  For the moment I was simply too wide awake.  I was not tired.  The change in Time Zones would prove no problem for me at all.  I wouldn't even feel the effects.

Sonafi awoke and dressed herself when they began the process of unloading us from our plane.  I watched with interest as she found places to put all her myriad of weapons I had forced her to disgorge before I would allow her to come near me.  I had imagined the danger, and not without some validity, of losing fingers just by placing them in the wrong places.  She smiled prettily now under my watchful eye, visible only in thermal, yet aesthetically perfect and deceptively dangerous.  I was forced to smile back.

Once offloaded we were immediately reloaded into a ground vehicle of some sort, a diesel, I could both hear its engine and after we departed, smell its bio-fuel emissions seeping through even the tight fitting seals of the closed crate, and we were, apparently, on our way to our safe house, or safe wherever, that Brid had arranged for us.

“I have never allowed myself to be so fully within someone else
’s power.”  I said, wondering how I had allowed this to happen to me.  I have been in similar circumstances, I amended, but never once when I had not myself made the arrangements, and knew exactly what I could expect.  “I didn't even think to ask where we would be going first.  Where we would be staying.  I just blindly followed along like a lost lamb.”

“I don't think we're being sent to the slaughterhouse, dear.  You know, you did it to show your son how much you trust him.”  Sonafi said.

“Is that why I did it?  I suppose, but I have to wonder what I was thinking.”

“You were thinking it was about time you gave your son some respect for what he has done.”

“No, that really wasn't what I was thinking, but you do have a point.  He seems to have done something none of the rest of us has been able to do.”  I agreed. 

Our ride in the diesel tuned out to be a relatively short one and soon we had arrived at our destination.  Wherever that was.  We heard a chain link fence gate being opened, and then we were in motion again.  The diesel drove maybe a hundred yards and then stopped again, this time to wait for an electric garage door.  When it had opened, we were driven into a large, enclosed area.  I could tell by the echoes given off from the sound of the running engine.  Then the motor was cut and the only sound was that of the garage door closing itself.  It sealed with a clunk and then all was quiet.