Saints of Evil | Trepidation Trilogy | The Empty World Sequence

Fifteen

     Only last year, Mara had begun the occasional psychic feeding, Trip had agreed that they should start then, because they had no idea what would happen in the future, and if they should be separated for a time or put through great stress that would age Mara some amount.  It was best to start fighting the aging when she was still quite young so that unavoidable stresses didn't steal her beauty or power. 

     Trip liked it this way, that Mara was a different sort of vampire.  They were both sorts of vampires, and both breathing creatures.  The villagers respected Mara now.  The Naphaim greatly respected her ability to draw or give life with the laying of hands, as this was their talent.  The vampires thought her relationship to Trip quite beautiful.  The Wolfbreed were grateful that she had used her newly perfected talents to heal several of their kin. 

     Now more than ever Trip felt the Village was a safe haven in the world, he felt at home.  Sadian was doing well, that pleased him more than anything.  Without his fear, she was more easily accepted into homes.  Thierry and Monique had broken up, but they were friendly, Monique still ran her club and occasionally watched over Sadain.  Thierry had a new lover, a young German-Indian named Calvin who had starred in nearly pornographic films that Orchid called artistic and which had all been filmed by a human friend of his who was part of the Karachi art community. 

     Mara didn't want Thierry bringing Calvin over if they were going to play their hurting games, not with a telepathic ten year old in the house, so they only stopped in occasionally for food, or to listen to music.  Most of the time Thierry was getting rides to Karachi to go to art galleries or dungeons, or Calvin's apartment.  Thierry was behaving.

     Every other once in a while Thierry would be seen in the Village quite close with one of the local coven of vampires, Laila, who was quite young.  And David, and Miko, who had turned Laila, would get upset and jealous.  But the small coven were close and love and fear of Orchid kept them all from holding grudges.

     Fear and love of Orchid kept all the Village from holding grudges. 

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This control room was even more complicated than all the other ones, it seemed it should be the bridge of a  starship.  There were no starships, advanced as they were in the habit of now imagining themselves, but there were a myriad other technologic wonders.  To think, in this borrowed room, that just decades ago there had been no Nation called Goth, that the Union of Darkland Nations had been near to collapse, and all of the continent of Europe had been at war.  All that changed, and the enormous monitors suspended from the ceiling at the most ergonomic angles displayed in clearly recognized graphics the state of the world as updated by the second and projected by vast computers. 

     It was Rozz's control center now, borrowed for the duration of winter with permission of those in the Union's capital at Alexandria.  The control room itself was dark, walls of wood coated in a  shiny new coat of black paint that hid the years of  grime and wear, marble tiles on the floor covered in worn stained carpets and no artificial light but that which radiated from monitors and displays.  It had once belonged to that Vampyre they had called their General, and before that it had belonged to the Catholic Pope,  before the war, before he had fled to sanctuary in Russia, before the Vampyres had captured his city.

     Rozz, Third Leader of Goth, stood just under the largest screen, his dark eyes flashing over the orange symbol that told him a small war had broken out five seconds ago in China.  The Chinese were still fighting for their independance lost in the War with Arabia; though it was the awesome air power of Japan they were fighting against, their appointed governors.  Rozz was satisfied in knowing that the leaders of the Union had seen to it that the UN had been disbanded, ridiculous that such a small country should rule one so vast.  Rozz had been born when the nation of Goth was only days old and considered himself half American despite the fact his father had sworn loyalty to the Goth before that.  America had once been ruled by a small Island.  The Goth in Rozz would have reminded his other half that such that any favoritism to that particular century of government was insulting to the Native Americans that were so like the Goth in their tribalism and love of their land.  The present century kept him from it. So many Americans were now very beautiful shades of bronze and gold and copper, and they  appreciated the land much more than their fathers.