Chapter Forty-nine
Abel had been made a Nomad, a Traveler, weeks ago, and this was something beyond most people’s imagining. A Nomad was so vast and powerful, it was likened to a god in some respects, especially by those who had to go up against them.
As one of their kind, he was of the few who recognized the change coming over the world in that moment. There were little things all around. Different flowers. Different trees. Different colors of paint. He saw an owl on a lamp post. It was watching him. It was black.
The people were different too. Not that he would have known their current forms from their old ones, but he sensed the melding taking place inside them. The Traveler in him felt it. They had been ripped apart in a sense, and shoved back together different. To them, the day was a little off or they needed more coffee or they were experiencing déjà vu. But it was none of those things.
It was the Time King and his Queen. The shit had hit the fan with them somewhere, dimensions had literally collapsed, and…. And the Traveler in him felt his own change as well.
His reflection cast more thoughts into the recesses of his expanding mind. A month ago, he’d been old. But not ancient. He’d been a dragon, and they lived a long time. Very long. But nothing in comparison to a Nomad. He was older now, to be sure. But his reflection was that of a relatively young and very handsome man.
Who was in fact not a man at all, but a vampire.
The Triad moved silently, stealthily through the streets of Chicago, following the trail of the prey they hunted. The separate traces of the magic they followed were like sparkles on the wind, shimmers of diamond dust caught in an errant breeze. They smelled like goodness and night and absolute power. They were Helena, Cain, and Solan.
Cain still wasn’t answering their call. And now it felt as though the First Born were further away than ever. His magic was a comparatively faint whisper where it was left on the wind, and Abel could sense Ahriman and Amunet’s intense displeasure over this.
Abel had mixed feelings about it. He shouldn’t. He didn’t have any mixed feelings whatsoever in his prior incarnation as Arach the Nomad-vampire.
But now… well, again, things were changing.
He’d never met the First Born. He had yet to come face to face with the man who was the full blooded Nomad child of Amunet and Ahriman. He was infamous, he was dangerous, he was all-powerful, and to Abel he’d always been a mystery. He’d wondered what the man would look like. He’d wondered what his voice would sound like, how tall he would be. But that was all he’d done – wonder. There’d been no emotion attached to his thoughts. He had neither hated nor loved his would-be brother.
Until now.
Now when he thought of Cain, he saw him clearly. The image drawn up in his mind was absolutely perfect, no blurriness, no vacillation. The picture appeared instantly. Cain was six and a half feet of hard-honed muscle, towering as tall as Abel if not taller. Blond hair, piercing blue eyes, five-o-clock shadow on a strong chin. Jeans and a T-shirt are what the ultimately powerful man chose to wear. Not a suit worth thousands. Engineering boots, scuffed and well used. Sometimes he also wore a leather jacket with some kind of patch on the back. And at times, Abel thought he heard the sound of a V-twin engine revving in the distance. He even smelled burning rubber and automotive oil, and a hint of leather.
And every time he thought of him, he felt toward him absolute hatred.
Ahriman and Amunet were furious. The evidence was all around them where they moved through the dark alleys of Chicago on their quest for revenge. They themselves went quietly, but the world around them sensed their fury like an echo as they passed through it. Every now and then, car or shop windows cracked, the asphalt split open and emitted coughs of steam, and the storm that had been raging over North America for weeks would let loose with a barrage of electricity that was soaked up by skyscraper lightning rods.
Abel was the only one managing to keep his head. Strangely enough, it was because he couldn’t have cared less that Cain seemed to be vanishing from the realm. He had respect for his Nomad creators and he was loyal. But as for their First Born?
Good riddance, he thought.
And he had no idea why.
Behind him, the Nomads stopped. He caught the cessation of their movement and turned to face them. Both had their faces turned to the sky. Amunet looked truly panicked. “It’s gone,” she said. “Cain is gone.”
Abel’s gaze narrowed. He closed his eyes and sent out mental feelers. She was right. Cain’s presence had utterly and completely vanished. All remaining traces of his existence had been wiped away as if the man who had once been Death was simply no longer. Either he was someone else entirely and hence unrecognizable or he was dead, himself.
Abel hoped for the latter. But he said, “I suggest we find Solan.”
However when he spoke, Ahriman’s head snapped down, and his dark brown eyes turned instantly red. He eyed Abel carefully. “Abel, how do you feel?” he asked. He was a Traveler, so his handsome face remained relatively expressionless as he asked the question, but the glow in his eyes gave away his concern. His second son seemed off to him.
Abel blinked. He considered the question. How do I feel? he repeated in his head. But he didn’t know how to answer that. In all honesty, he was feeling a kaleidoscope of things.
Even as he considered his reply, he began to have doubts – about everything. Not just his reasons for being there in that alley and for targeting the Kings and Queens, but about things like who and what he even was. A dragon. A sovereign. A Traitor.
Ahriman’s question seemed to push over a domino that had been wobbling for a while now.
Dragon? Traveler, even? No, he thought. That wasn’t who he ultimately was. He was something else. He was someone else.
Now he felt both Nomad gazes on him, but he was lost already, unable to respond, trapped in a yawning-open maw of realizations. Memories came pouring forth from that widening chasm, and they swirled around him like a thousand movies playing at the same time.
He saw ages of things, history experienced first-hand, and all of them witnessed as the same man. In these memories, he was so much older than the dragon. So much older than the one standing in that alley. He was one of the first of his kind ever created. He was the second ever created, in fact.
The Second Vampire. Abel.
Killed by his brother, Cain.
Son of a bitch, he thought with dark, red, and ancient menace. It was anger tamped by the turning of time, so that it was no longer chaotic or brutal or uncontrollable. Now it was systematic. Now it was so much more dangerous.
Like the man and woman standing before him, Abel also wanted revenge. But for something completely different. He wanted revenge against his brother.
How do I feel? he thought with a sneer that revealed a glimpse of fangs. The answer was a tricky one. He no longer cared about the Kings and Queens, even the one called Evangeline. But he cared a whole hell of a lot about something else.
And as his form began to lose cohesiveness, and he felt the painless dissipation of his tall, strong body, he laughed. The laugh echoed long and low and vitally wrong. He wasn’t dying. He knew that. He knew full well what was happening and he welcomed it.
He knew where Cain had gone. Just like the First Vampire, Abel was leaving this life, this existence, and returning to the one he was supposed to have all along.
And once he did, he would track down his long lost brother once and for all.