'Passengers, could you please fasten your seat belts, it will only be for the duration of take off. Came the static voice over the microphone. 'There is one one thing you must understand before we land in Peru, Lance.' said Ben, deadly serious.
'Hmm?' Asked Lance, looking up from his book, Homeland by R. A. Salvatore.
'Nothing is illegal in the town we're going too. Callao is a port riddled with drug dealing, black markets and corruption. Some of the people we're going to meet are going to have ....unsavory.... backgrounds. I ask you not to be prejudiced. In my travels I have found that backstreet thieves and thugs can be the most loyal of friends, if you pick the right thieves and thugs... some are just.... bad to the bone.'
'Okay.....' said Lance, not knowing what to think. 'the bad people that you told Nathaniel you were running from, do they live in this city?' asked Lance, tentatively.
'Oh, no, Lance. They live very far away, and are a lot worse than the people you'll find in Callao. Don't ask any more question about this trip until we've met my friend.'
'Okay.' said Lance, A little deflated. 'Your friend, who is he?' asked Lance, not sure if this classified as questioning the trip.
'His name is Lakune, and he has a major in ancient history, focusing on the Egyptian, Greek and Roman empires. There are many things that he contributed to the database about them.'
'For example?' asked Lance after a pause.
'Ohhhh, you know. Little things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, the tomb of Tutankhamen, Tomb of Genghis Khan, Tomb of Imhotep. Little things like that.'
'Woah. But I thought the locations of the tombs of Genghis and of Imhotep were unknown.'
'They are -to most-, only he and a few of his inner circle know the locations of them.
'And we're going to meet him, that's why we're going on this trip?' asked Lance, suspicious about the no-question rule. Ben's eyes slipped away from his.
'Yes. I thought you'd be interested in meeting him. No more questions.' He was lying, Lance could tell. Ben's eyes slipping away from his like that, and who buys two plane tickets for Peru just to introduce his son to a college professor and exclude his second son, saying the trip was too old for him? And then there was the perplexing presence of Scar, why was he coming?
Lance let it go for the moment, and went back to his book. Lance read a lot and he knew a masterpiece when he found one. Lance thought this book, Homeland, was on-par with Tolkien's LOTR. It was truly amazing. In what seemed no time at all the plane had landed and Lance was walking to a hotel on the outskirts of Lima.
In their room was freshly-washed towels, soap and a tiny panther figurine that Lance found. Examining it closely, Lance saw that it was made of a lustrous material, but not a normal material, obsidian perhaps. 'Hey Dad have you seen this?' called Lance, wondering if Ben had dropped it. Ben walked into the room and instantly his face turned from jet-lag to a look of apprehension and even fear of this tiny figurine. Ben snatched the figurine from Lance, masking his fear quickly, but not quickly enough. Lance saw it, and wondered what inspired it. It was just a small figurine, albeit made of an unusual and unknown material. Lance swayed his arm back, just a tiny bit, so the figurine was out of Ben's reach by centimeters.
'What is it?' asked Lance.
'It's none of your business and highly dangerous, thats what it is. NOW GIVE IT TO ME!' shouted Ben, flustered by the appearance of this figurine.
'Okay, I'm sorry, I didn't know it was so important to you.' said Lance meekly, handing over the figurine. Ben, jolted to his senses by the meek and apologetic tone of his son, regretted his shouting.
'That's alright, you didn't know what it was. Lance, If you find one of these at another point of our trip, don't touch it, just call me, OK?' and with saying so, Ben hurled the figurine out the open window to be picked up by a homeless scab.
On the way to the hotel, Lance had been stunned by the amount of homeless people lying, and in most cases, dying on the streets of Lima. The roads were dirt roads, and most buildings were built from dirty, rusting corrugated iron. Lance had known that Peru wasn't the richest country in the world, but Lance had thought that it would have a decent income from the wash of Brazil and Chile tourists.
'You should know better than to throw away a calling card, Benedict.' Lance was jolted out of his appraisal of Lima when a huge man stepped into the room. He was 6'9 at least, he weighed 200 kilos minimum, and he was built like a mountain. This guy could have beaten Dwayne Johnson in a wrestling match without breaking a sweat.
'I don't need second guessing from you, Scar.' retorted Ben heatedly, acting like a mountain walking into their room was completely normal.
'Wait, Scar, like, Great Dane, Scar?' asked Lance, completely bewildered, for the man at the door had elements about his face that were strikingly familiar, and his hair was exactly the same chocolate brown as Lance's dog's.
'Yes, like Great Dane Scar.' answered he, not at all offended as some might be in this situation. 'Lance needs to know.' said Scar, turning to Ben. 'Do you really think he was going to go into his own world and not remember or realize that, oh, wait a second, werewolves and vampires don't exist in my world, perhaps I've changed worlds? You didn't think he'd come through this un-scathed?' asked Scar, in a firm tone.
'Yes, I did think I could get him through this, dart in, register him, dart out, all over in two weeks.'
'You really thought it'd be that smooth? You know they want us extinct, you in particular.' said Scar, and, sensing that Ben was starting to tip towards his point of view, dug deeper. 'He needs to know, Ben. He isn't going to survive this without knowing.'
'But we'll be here-' began Ben.
'Especially because we're here. Do you think that a civilian will survive a hike across the country with a lordand his bodyguard?'
'That's true' said Ben, but Scar was on a roll.
'I know I'm a good bodyguard, but I can't protect both of you, and if we do get in a fight, wouldn't you rather he knows what he's doing rather than go through what you did?'
'Scar, my oldest friend, you have truly convinced me, now shut up.' said Ben, his face going from a gentle smile to a straight wall of stone. Scar just laughed.
'Woah woah woah, slow down a second here. What the hell is going on?'
'We were just about to tell you.' said Scar
'Yeah, I got that part, but I din't get much else of it.'
'Ok. You know the idea that everything is balanced, there can't be good without evil, light without dark, etc.' said Scar, gesturing for Lance to sit.
'Yeah. said Lance
'We're part of that idea. The Beings that made the world believed this idea, unfortunately they were at war with their brothers. The Beings were generally good, and so the Brotherhood were generally bad -there were the odd exception, but not many. The Brotherhood, sour that their reality was less beautiful than the Beings', created bad creatures to spoil the Beings reality. Unable to reverse the Brotherhood's destruction, they made "Countermeasures" who balance out the evil creatures that seek to maraud and despoil this world's beauty. For every single thing they made, the Beings also made an opposite, a countermeasure. This world, for example. there's another world, a world that has tried to be described in this world for eons, but the descriptions have been dubbed "fictitious" and "fantasies" by the humans. Anyone who now tries to describe the other world is not given any credit.'
'Why should I believe you?' asked Lance
'Do you have any other theories? Any explanatory ideas?' asked Scar.
'True' conceded Lance.
'Ok. So all through your life you have had strange occurrences, like high pain threshold, accidental reflex actions, a craving for meat.' said Scar.
'Yeah.' said Lance tentatively.
'Thats because you are one of the measures. '
'If we're the measures, than what are the counter-measures?' Lance asked, not knowing if he wanted to know the answer.
'Vampires. Conventional, blood-craving vampires.
'How do we balance vampires, we're quite similar, aren't we?' said Lance.
'Yeah, but, werewolves are vicious, powerful, and, although I certainly hope not, have a taste for human flesh in fairy tales, and so do vampires, so how do two things so similar balance each other?'
'Do things have to be dis-similar to be opposites? Think about it. When you turn on your light at night, light fills the room, but before darkness filled the room. They both want to fill the room, and they both come at their appointed part of the day, filling the world. Now think about cats and dogs. They both have pack instincts, shown most in wolves and lions, they both hunt meat, have fur, and have better physical abilities than humans, Yes, we are similar to the vampires, and though we don't eat humans, they would certainly eat enough of them for both our races. You have to understand something Lance. We balance the vampires because want to preserve the world. They become whirlwinds of destruction and death, spoiling this and all those in it. Your father had to leave you and your family because they were spawning an army, breeding a single minded siege engine to assault all that is just in the two worlds. Your father came back to lead his clan against the vampires. We had won last time only because the clans stuck together, but now, the vampires have started slowly, more patiently, they took out all the clan leaders beforehand, which is why your father had to run back to your world. Lance, he brought you because your father's special. Half-breeds with humans are exceedingly rare. You may just be normal, with no shapeshifting abilities, or you could be the best of us.'
'But first, we have to get through the portal in one piece.' said Scar, after a breath.
'Don't worry. I know a guy.' said Ben, getting ready for bed.
'You cannot be serious.' said Scar. 'Remember what happened last time?'
'How could I forget? But you have to admit, those pit fights were fun.' said Ben, trying to reconcile his idea.
'What happened?' asked Lance, his natural curiosity piqued.
'The second time your father came through the portal, he had a friend that he thought would help him get through if we paid him enough. But we didn't pay him enough. He kidnapped us and threw us into a pit to fight.' said Scar
'Man, but they were fun. The other pit fighters had no proper training, but we had been trained by the best fighters of our race. We thought it great fun, but then they started doing groups versus us two. We each had to take out three men in a fight, then four then eventually we were beating twenty versus two.'
'Then what happened?' asked Lance, ever interested in gladiatorial activities, even if his father was the gladiator.
'We won. There were no more fighters. The "friend" came groveling back and begging for forgiveness. He said that it was a mistake, then he said he was forced at sword point to turn us over.'
'What did you do to him?' asked Lance, hoping for a bloody end to this cretin.
'We let him go. What else were we going to do?' said Scar, as if it were obvious.
'Kill him' said Lance, under his breath, even though Scar's question had been rhetorical. Scar heard him, and stood up from his chair.
'You think this is a game? That because we have greater strength than humans, they should kneel in terror?' challenged Scar, raising his voice to a shout. 'Or maybe you thought that because he was human, his life was worth less than ours?' Lance recoiled at the sight of Scar, who seemed to grow when he was shouting. Then Scar's expression softened. 'Lance, we're merciful. That's what sets apart from the vampires. If we killed everyone we could, the population of the earth, and our world would be a lot lower. We help humans and animals, because that's what we're here for. To balance the viciousness and brutality of the vampires. They were put on this world to make it less beautiful, and we were put here to keep it beautiful. This isn't a game, Lance, this is do or watch your world die.' Scar finished gently. Ben gave him a hard look, though Lance didn't know why, and Scar stepped back.
'Get some sleep, Lance. Tomorrow night, you won't recognize yourself.' Said Ben.
Lance believed him. Partly because he believed what Scar and his dad had told him that night, and partly because he already was starting to not recognize himself.