Requiem Excerpt

            It smells like shit.
            And no, I’m not using that as a euphemism like mortals are so fond of doing. I mean it literally reeks of human excrement. That horrid pungent aroma that comes along with the final act of digestion. And under that, the softer aroma of piss, peppered with the smell of the air fresheners used in a futile attempt to mask the smell.
            Jesus Fucking Christ, it stinks.
            Give me a break. I do have an excuse for my reaction.
            Logically, I know that humans have to excrete fecal matter and urine. Their bodies absorb what they need and gets rid of the rest. Rather inefficient if you ask me. Why put things in your body that it can’t use? I myself haven’t had to deal with these body functions in ages. My homes had modern plumbing: sink, shower, and toilet. But the toilet served merely as a decoration rather than any actual function. There were plenty of times I contemplated ripping it out and putting something more useful in, like more cabinets. One could never have too much cabinet space.
            Granted the last time that I even had to think about the smell of such vile functions was in the Europe of old, long before they figured out what the Romans had known centuries before them. But once Europe and America discovered the joys of indoor plumbing, I never had to think about it again. No more cities knee deep in chamber pot waste. It was much like an animal in the woods. Who thinks about animals shitting in the woods?
            And the smell was always much worse for me. Mortals would turn their noses at the smell, complaining of the stench. But imagine if your sense of smell was one hundred times more sensitive?
            I glared at Nick, pissed at him for bringing me to such a place. It was a place where mortals went to be cared for while they waited to die. He had brought me to a skilled nursing facility, a convalescent home. A place where their most treasured loved ones could dump them, so that they would be out of the way and not an unpleasant reminder of their own mortality. A place whose halls reeked of piss and shit and potpourri.
            We stood outside of a room staring at a young man lying in the hospital bed. I could smell the putrid scent of his sickened blood. Every blood cell in his body had been corrupted and would not be sweet on my tongue if I drank it.
            “Please.” Nick pleaded. He needed to collect on this soul before the angels arrived to claim it.
“Absolutely not. He won’t survive the change.” I asserted not looking at Nick, but the man in the bed.
“He wants to die.” Nick said.
“He wants to be a vampire. He won’t survive the change. He’s too far gone. Can’t you smell it?” I turned to face Nick adamant that the young man would not become a vampire.
“Argg. Let me look at the terms again.” He pulled out his Blackberry to bring up the man’s contract. He hadn’t signed it yet or else Nick wouldn’t be in such a hurry. There was still time for the angels to intervene.
            Nick put his Blackberry back in his pocket and produced a paper version of the contract in question. “It doesn’t specify that he has to become a vampire. Only that he wants to die by the bite of one.” Nick informed me.
            I rolled my eyes. This was just great.
            I could smell the sickness in him. Vampires could smell disease, and we tended to be especially sensitive to blood pathogens like HIV or AIDS. We couldn’t catch it, we were immune to all that. It just soured the blood. AIDS attached itself to the blood cells and ruined the taste. We tended to stay away from “donors” who had blood borne diseases, just for the sake of avoiding the taste of sour milk in our mouths.
            I hesitated, contemplating the decision at hand. I could be an angel and provide mercy, but that was not my job. I was a devil in this game, mercy was not my gig.
            “No.” I said deliberately.
“Come on. Show some compassion, some mercy for this poor soul.” Nick tried his best to be persuasive.
            Ah, Shakespeare said it best. The quality of mercy is not strained.
            Still, I only helped Nick when it benefited me. What benefit would it be to me to have the rancid taste of sour milk on my delicate taste buds?
            And yet, I did feel an ounce of pity for this poor human. What pain he must be in to make such deals with devils. Such painful mortality. Was it not enough to know that you would soon die? Did it really need to be painful?
            I sighed heavily knowing that I would pollute my tongue until his heart had stopped beating. “You’d better have mouth wash.” I’d say before slipping into the room.
            But I didn’t.
            I just slipped quietly (as quietly as my stiletto heels clacking on the linoleum would allow) in to the room, and examined the slow breathing from the patient.
            I could feed my taste for lust off of him. One last fling before the afterlife. It wasn’t like I was going to catch what he had.
            But I wouldn’t. This man wasn’t going to sign his life away for one last fling with a succubus. He wanted to die. To truly die. He wanted a guarantee.
            With my succubus I couldn’t guarantee death would come as quickly as he wanted. But my bite, that was a different story. With my bite, it would be guaranteed, alright. A one hundred percent money-back guarantee. Of course he wouldn’t be getting his money back. It was a done deal.
            Nick gets the contract signed. He gets John Doe to leave his mark making the deal a done one, unless I back out.
            But I won’t back down. It is the least I could do for this poor soul in his filthy hospital bed. I could show some mercy.
            The quality of mercy is not strain’d…
Ah, the bard’s words are in my head again as I slowly approach the man. He looks up at me, his eyes absent of fear. He opens his mouth, “What is your name?”
            A name!? He is on the threshold of death and all he wants is a name! Why doesn’t he fear his impending end, the great beyond, anything?
            “Bellatrix.” I whisper quietly in his ear so that Nick wouldn’t hear. Nick didn’t need to know that name.
“Thank you.” The man said quietly as he turned his head to give me a better angle of his neck.
            The veins in his neck are bulging, throbbing with blood. Tainted blood. Act four from “The Merchant of Venice” runs through my head, Portia’s speech to the court and the Shylock.
            The quality of mercy is not strain’d…
Nick has closed the blinds and the door now. No sense in upsetting any passing staff. They are, after all, trying to prolong his life.
            It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest…
My lips curl and my fangs extend. There is a moment of hesitation. A moment where I think to myself that I could just turn around and leave. I didn’t have to follow through with this. It was Nick’s deal; let him find someone else to help him.
            It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…
My mind was racing. I’m sure that if I had a pulse, it would have been faster, and yet there was a calmness to the whole thing. An unsettling calmness.
            … That in the course of justice none of us should see salvation: we do pray for mercy…
He had told me thank you! Who says “thank you” to their murderer! That should have been enough for me to stop this unholy charade. Angel of mercy, my ass. Let the angels do their own damn jobs. But I had committed the moment I walked through the door.
            …And that same prayer doth teach us all to render the deeds of mercy.
            I plunged my fangs into his jugular. I was not doing it in my usual precise manner. I was being sloppy, trying to let the blood touch my tongue as little as possible, and swallowing it much too fast. I wanted the bitter taste out of my mouth.
            The man relaxed. I could feel his body go limp as he went unconscious. His heart sped for the briefest of moments, trying to keep up with the demands his body made, but eventually that slowed and stopped. I felt the moment his heart stopped working to pump blood through his veins. The moment he had died.
            And then I released. I pulled myself away from his body and used the bed sheet to wipe away the excess blood from around my mouth.
         Nick smiled. Another job well done. He had gotten his deal and I had done the dirty work for him. Damn him.
         The man said “thank you”! Who the hell says that when they are about to be killed?!
         That one little phrase of gratitude irked me. I had killed more than my fair share of humans over the years. Always it had been the same. Fear, panic, pleas, wide eyes, struggle-- those were the things that I had received. Never once did anyone actually thank me.
         No, not until now. Not until that John Doe, the man whose name I had not known, asked me my name and I gave it. Then he said two little words, “thank you”.
         There was no fear, there was no panic, no pleas or wide eyed struggle. Just a calm resolve and a thank you. A fucking thank you.
         I could have handled the fear. I could have handled panic. But that peaceful gratitude was something I wasn’t prepared for. Never in my centuries of life had I encountered it.
         “Kate.” Nick’s voice was curt as though he had been trying to get my attention.
“What?” I responded.
“I asked you if you wanted some Altoids or something.” He held out a slender tin case of breath mints.
I picked one out and popped it into my mouth. It helped with the bitter after taste a bit, but not enough to wash it away. 
         Nick had his contract in hand, the deal was done. Another satisfied customer, another soul to serve his side in the game. I was almost curious to know who was winning, but what was the point of knowing, if you weren’t privy to play.
         I had learned a long time ago that the so called battle between good and evil was more like a game. Both sides had jobs and objectives, but at the end of the day they were all drinking at the same watering holes like old drinking buddies. Demons and angels, when not on the clock, were all really just players who happened to be on opposing teams, but were still buddies.
         So where did vampires fall in this game? We were the wildcard. We were the neutral parties who stayed in our own little worlds, only playing when it piqued our interest or benefited us.
         I left Nick in that room, to finish straightening out his affairs. There was no more for me to do.
         The scent of jasmine floated down the hallways, growing stronger as I drew closer to the nurses’ station. It was a familiar scent. One that I knew as well as my own.
         I rounded the corner to find the familiar sight of a lean yet sturdy frame, with sandy hair cropped close to his head.          He wore a lab coat, Dockers, black dress shoes; sights unfamiliar to me on his body. But I knew who it was. His scent gave him away from the start.
         He was hunched over the nurses’ station, writing on charts, not paying any attention to me as I drew closer to him. I positioned myself so that I was leaning against the counter.
         “That’s a patient privacy violation.” His voice was thick and luscious. It was a shame he was such a boy scout.
“I hadn’t realized that you would care.” I smirked.
He closed the chart and met my eyes with a sardonic grin. “You have a little spot on your dress.” He pointed to the red stains on my white designer dress. “You’ve been busy, Kathryn.”  He touched the stains and they disappeared. Bloody angels.
“Thanks.” I mumbled. “Are you still calling yourself Jack?”
He nodded. “Are you still calling yourself Kathryn?”
I nodded, “Katie to you. Always Katie to you.”
         He smiled a sad smile.
         It was the same smile I had seen every time we met. It was a smile that we had both taken turns having in the last two thousand years that we had known each other. We, quite literally, had known each other since the fall of Rome. But of course then we had different names, names that changed with the times until we had found the two names we liked best. Kathryn and Jack.
         But we were never constant. We could never be a constant to one another. We were destined to forever drift in and out of each other’s lives, unable to stay with one another. Yet unable to stay apart. But at the root of it all, we were the best of friends.
         “I thought hospitals weren’t your gig. Aren’t you more of a freelancer?” I asked.
“We have a new guardian. I have to get her trained.” Jack answered.
“But you aren’t a guardian. You’re an actual angel. You aren’t just some human who got to play.” I responded.
“This one is a special case.” He said. He bent down so he could whisper in my ear. “I had to see you again, old friend. We haven’t seen each other--”
“--In one century.” I completed his sentence. We did that a lot when we were together.
“Not so long.” He smiled.
“Nope. Not so long at all.” I remarked.
         I hugged him for a brief moment and then stepped back from him. “So you’re a doctor now?”
“For now. Yes.” He answered. Jack smirked, “I see that you’ve been doing some charity work.”
“I condemned a man to hell. I murdered him and sent him straight to hell.” I said coldly.
“You gave him mercy. He was suffering greatly. You ended it for him.” Jack’s voice was calm and quiet.
“I sent him to hell. Aren’t you going to get mad at me for sending one to the other side?”
“It wasn’t your choice. He chose to sell his soul. You chose to show him mercy. A very angelic quality by the way.” His voice was reassuring. “Why are you so bothered by this? We both know he’s not the first you’ve killed. He won’t be the last and he’s not the first you’ve sent to the other side.”
         I sighed heavily. The man’s final words replayed in my head. My voice was low and tight, “He said, ‘thank you’”.
“You killed him out of mercy. You gave him what he wanted most in the world. He was tired, Katie. Of course he was grateful.” He rested a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s just not natural.” I manage to squeak. He should have been frightened, not calm.
         Jack smiled, flashing perfect white teeth. “Come on. Let’s go get you a drink.” He took my hands in his, preparing to do his angelic teleportation.
“No way. I get nauseas every time you do that. We’re taking my Ferrari.” I said.
“You still have a taste for the finer things I see.” He chuckled.
“Hey, humility is supposed to be your department. Not mine.” I smiled.
                                                 *****
          The bar’s name was The Watering Hole. The name itself was original and unique in its attempt to be unoriginal and mundane. It was clever for a bar that catered to the invisible citizens of Los Angeles.
            I tossed back my third glass of whiskey. It was a smooth burn as it made its way down my throat. Good old Johnny Walker. If there was ever proof that God existed, it could be found in a bottle of Blue Label. Of course that could be said about any truly good liquor. I would have said it about a bottle of Grey Goose, my drink of choice. But Jack was a whiskey man and had ordered a bottle of whiskey. He was paying, so whiskey it was.
            A group of young vampires sat in the booth next to us. I could tell they were young, recently made in the last ten years or so because they hadn’t yet grown jaded. They were still idealistic about what immortality really meant. They still thought of it as some great adventure, where they would spend their lives helping to shape the course of history. Give them another forty years and they would soon discover that immortality, much like mortality, was full of routines. Monotonous routines, only it never ended. The routine was the same no matter where you went or how long you lived.
            And as for shaping the world, that was something left to mortals. We simply existed and adapted when change occurred.
            They spoke of revolution. Of what the world would be like if humans no longer existed. Change them all, they said.
            I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed and snorted.
            It was a discussion that many a vamp had had before them. A conversation dating back thousands of years, much like the proverbial chicken or the egg. All of us, each and every one, had brought up that great proverbial question at some point in our youth. It was our form of philosophy. What would the world be like if it there were no humans.
            The answer always came down to the fact that that there would be no one left to hunt. When I was young, the solution would be to hunt animals, but animal blood could not sustain us for long. In this modern world, the solution would be to stop hunting. To put plasma on tap. It wouldn’t be real plasma, just some synthetic crap made in a lab. Let’s feed the masses with blood in bottles, like bottles of beer. We can all just head down to the local supermarket and find nothing but alcohol and blood.
            That would be ever so boring. I mean, eternity is long enough without having to be babied and left without something to do for fun.
            And even if we were all content to have blood on tap, even if we all were willing to give up the thrill of the hunt, it still wouldn’t work. The angels and demons had a game that they were locked into. It had lasted since the beginning of mankind’s existence and would probably last until the end of it. If it ended too soon, there would be nothing left for them to do. They would never tolerate that, not for a minute. So they would all suddenly be the defenders of man, taking out in malevolent vampire threat. Anyone caught trying to help vampirism run amok would be smited in due time, not just killed, but thoroughly smited.
            So, no vampire only world. Good riddance.
            Jack and I finished the first bottle of whiskey and moved onto the next. Neither one of us had really said anything. We just sat there, knocking them back.
            No one says anything about our alcoholic talent for drinking, but that’s to be expected when you’re in a room full of immortals that can all do the same thing. We all can sit there and toss him back, not worried about whether or not we would get drunk. Unfortunately, we can’t get drunk, or high, or even tipsy. We could finish a whole keg by ourselves top that off with a pound of cocaine and not feel a thing. Jack and I had tested that theory two hundred years ago with absinthe. Not the imitation crap they sell now in the States, but the real, make you see shit kind. We decided we were going to sit at the Moulin Rouge and polish off bottle after bottle until we felt even the least bit tipsy or got sick of drinking the stuff. Guess which one came first.
            We’d been there for hours. Not speaking. Just sitting there and drinking more than our fill of Johnny Walker. It goes on like this until Jack’s leg brushes mine and sends heat radiating around that normally cold spot. And I’m not talking about that warm and gooey feeling. I’m talking about actual heat.
            I had forgotten that his body temperature was somewhere around 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
            I can’t help but back away, not because his touch bothers me, but because we can never touch. We could never touch. We would never touch.
            But still, with this slight touch, this brush of his pant leg against the bare skin of my thigh, I can’t help but ask a single burning question.
            “Do you have anything down there?” I craned my neck to see his reaction.
“Any what?” Jack smirks.
“You know,” I said, “Any equipment down there.” I pointed to his crotch.
He rolls his eyes and then smirks. He simply answers, “Yes”.
“Seems like a cruel joke to me. I mean…well you know what I mean.” I slam the empty glass I’d been holding down on the table.
“I know what you mean.” He grins, “But I’ll let you in on a little secret,” his voice gets lower, “There are no rules against masturbation.”
            Ah ha. That’s how they work out that sexual frustration that I know they have to have built up.
            Jack and I slowed down and stopped finishing off a bottle of whiskey every hour. We had grown tired of the taste.
         Jack looked at me with a wistful expression. “You’re glowing.” He commented on my skin’s glow from feeding. “So, have you run into anyone else from the past?”
“Quint is in town. Claims he wants to live here for a while.” I replied.
“That explains the shimmer in your skin.” He smirked. “You always feed the succubus needs when Quintus is around.”
“I feed it when he’s not around.” I shrugged.
“You feed it more often when he’s around. I have seen you go through years without feeding your hunger for lust.” He retorted.
“And I have also gone through years where that is the only lust I feed.”
“Touché.” He conceded.
“Would you have me a celibate virgin rather than a wanton slut?” I snapped at him.
“That’s not what I meant.” He defended himself.
         Shit, I was still in a bad mood.
         I thought I was in a better mood, but that man with his “thank you” put me back in a very bad one.
         I shook my head and sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’ve been in a rotten mood for the last five years.” I said it as though I were talking about just the last couple of weeks.
“Mid-life crisis.” He suggested.
“Can you have one of those if your not really middle aged?” I questioned.
“You , my dearest Katie, can have a lot of them.” He slammed down his empty glass.