A Contract On Exile

A Contract On Exile

By

Michael A. Burt.

SMASHWORDS EDITION

*****

PUBLISHED BY:

Michael A. Burt at Smashwords

A Contract On Exile

Copyright © 2012 Michael A. Burt

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

Adult Reading Material

Table Of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

* * * * *

A CONTRACT ON EXILE

Black blood flows from his unmoving body like a current of rain water along streets after a downpour. There are so many holes in his body it won’t take long for all the blood to be gone. Sophia wants to touch him, needs to touch him, but there’s nothing she can do to help him. The damage is done. There’s just so much blood, too much for just one person. That fucking beast, why did he do this? Tears flow like a river along side the banks of despair.

How she could’ve felt so compassionately for the monster that’s killed her love she may never know. If Shakespeare could’ve come up with something this disastrously tragic maybe she would’ve been warned. You’ll pay for this, she thinks. First they killed her entire family, now her love. Was she meant to never have someone, to never find happiness?

This place, her apartment once upon a story so long ago, held so many memories of times well spent in happiness. Now it’s a house of death, a dwelling of horrors meant to haunt.

Like a cannon launching the shell of doom and unholy wrath the sound was, too loud to be what she knows it is. With her gun in hand she goes toward the stairs leading to the bedroom. Something turns in her gut, tightens inside. She doesn’t want to go up there, but she can’t stop her feet from moving.

Everything is normal. As if the word holds any true meaning for her now. The room looks undisturbed, as it always did. An odor creeps into the room from behind a closed door, like a death rattle the silence seems. Not wanting to, but compelled to know, she opens the door from which the sweet copper smell comes from.

Curiosity killed the cat, and now she wishes for death.

Blood and carnage, like decorations for the devil, paint the walls and floor. It drips from the ceiling in single loud drops, they echo in the silence. Where the handsome face used to smile and look at her so lovingly from is nothing more than blood and bone. Concave, with at least half of it missing. The death stench high in metallic content creeps not only into her body, but mind and soul as well. The world begins to spin, to lose balance, twirling into chaos while laughing at her struggle to stay sane, to stay in control.

She can feel it coming. Like Thor on the rampage with his mighty hammer looking for someone to punish, to annihilate. It builds deep from within, waiting for its moment of release. Horror bounds her to move everywhere, closer and further away, but she can’t move. Then comes the release. Glass shatters with such a banshee’s cry.

ONE

Sophia wakes in a sweaty panic. The scream an echo in her mind, her heart racing like cars on a drag strip. Memories of the event corrupt her sleep like a disease you can’t get rid of. AIDS of the mind, cancer in the soul. The nightmare is a part of who she is now. There’s no escape from the horror of that one event as it plays out over and over gain. Every time she’s unable to do anything different, always the same actions. Her breath is sporadic and uncontrolled, she panics with the dread.

In her rush to consciousness she griped an object like a teddy bear. Even now her fingers seem ghostly her hold is so tight. Why this was the only thing from that red carnage that wasn’t covered she can only guess. She looks at it, remembering the first time she ever held it. He was lying bloody and unconscious, on the brink of death, but at least then he was still alive. At least then there was still hope.

Nancy…

He left it for her, she knew. In the last few months he was acting like such a heartless jackass to everyone, especially her. She knows in her heart he still loved her, that he always would. Why he would use the gift from her instead of his own weapon she can only speculate. Using Roxanne instead of Nancy was like a last fuck you to her. Only Love can be that twisted.

She can hear the last thing she said to him, so vivid in her mind from the constant replays. You fucking animal, I’ll kill you. And maybe by saying that she did, the last straw to his proverbial overloaded camel’s back. It’s just like when he was here, so many questions and no answers. It seems so unfair after the life he led, some how so wrong to leave it like that. He never got the chance to remember.

After dressing in the darkness of the apartment, black out curtains keeping those dangerous rays out, she exits that abysmal place. The heat of the day is bad enough, but the pure light of a cloudless sky is blinding, even with his sunglasses on. She may not be a vampire like the others in this secluded desert complex, but it sure seems like it sometimes.

The courtyard, once empty and lifeless, now decorated with marble benches and a elaborate garden of night blooming flowers. Some cultures burn incense to honor their dead. Sophia lights one of Seth’s cigarettes and lets it burn just to have the smell around. How many hours were spent creating this for him? No one wanted a headstone to look at every time they went outside. They needed something to mark the grave, and his burial needed to be close by. No tombstone, no beautiful depressing statue with eyes that follow you everywhere you go. She took it upon herself to do this for him, to create this garden, but the others lent a hand when she let them. It wasn’t often, but she did realize it wasn’t only her that was hurting from his loss. Even though his final days were chaotic for the group, they still miss him. After all, he was part of this dysfunctional family. Seth was the crazy cousin that no one wants to show up on the holidays, but still family.

Her dreams, like so many others, make the memories seem worse. In them Max was dead, never to recover from the injuries. This may not be far from the truth. Three weeks now he’s been on life support with no change. Seth would’ve seen the humor in that. A vampire, creature once dead and now the undead, on life support. Maybe when Max is no longer a vegetable she may chuckle at it.

Thirty bullets in his body, Seth didn’t miss once. There was minute damage to some of his vital organs, that alone would’ve taken days to regenerate. The silver bullet that blew part of his skull off prevented him from being able to recover on his own at all. In this particular situation a vampire will need constant transfusions of their original blood type to have a chance at regenerating. Max’s blood type is AB negative, they’re lucky he’s made it this far. The blood that’s kept him alive thus far has been O Positive, but the AB Negative is what he needs to fully regenerate. Even if they did have an abundance of it, it would take a lot of time to repair all that damage. As it is he’s shown almost no improvement. Ironically, most of the population that is AB Negative are werewolves.

A vampire can live on werewolf blood for a short time, but it doesn’t taste nearly as good as human blood. Border lining repulsive to most of them. There won’t be any long term effects to the vampire if they only feed on it for a short time. Nothing like what it was for Seth when the werewolf blood got in his system. Most that would happen is his scent will be tainted for a time and the vampire will be more prone to beastly hunting methods. In some cases, depending on the vampire, violent mood swings could be another reaction. Some may construe a tainted scent as being marked as the creature’s property or territory. What self respecting vampire would appreciate that? Long term feedings from werewolves have more repercussions than beastly hunting methods. Most of which are forbidden, and carry a death sentence if not properly kept in check. There’s even one documented case, some fifty years ago, when a vampire suffered from madness and slaughtered nearly a hundred humans. That much blood got rid of the taint, but she was put to death anyway. Blood madness they called it.

Clan activity has been minimal, but with their best Brute snitch having disappeared, Section Eight may just be missing out on everything. Last they heard from him he successfully infiltrated the clan, but nothing after that. It’s possible he’s been killed. Hell, anything’s possible with the Brutes, they’re an unpredictable bunch at times. There’s no telling what they’ll do.

In the last week Sophia’s anger toward Seth has diminished to complete despair. If it wasn’t for her he would still be alive instead of haunting her. She’s responsible for a considerable amount of the pain he went through in his short time with them. It took a while, but she realized something she believes to be the truth. Seth loved her very much, too much for the short time he had in this world. He only wished to make her happy, even if it was with Max. At least that’s what everyone thought, even him. It wasn’t him that kept her from Max, but herself. That all changed when she betrayed him, or did it? How else does a tortured soul deal with love?

By taking himself out of the equation, the fighting between her and Max would cease. That is, when he gets out of the coma it probably will. Sophia needs, not wants, to believe this is true. He wanted to give them a fresh start, and rid himself of the misery he lived with every day. Seth suffered so much so often, the pain of not remembering who he was taunted him with every second of every day. It’s a wonder he lasted so long.

Sophia appreciates his purpose of the actions he took, but like most of the time, didn’t agree with his methods. Who would this time? Maybe Max, aside from the coma part. He always did have questionable methods, there’s no doubt about that. These things always get worse with time if they aren’t properly addressed and handled. No one could get through to him when they did try. He wasn’t a closed book, but the text was set in stone, no one could change it.

They say that absence will make the heart grow fonder, but Sophia’s left with a puzzle to find out. Is she missing Max or Seth? That’s always been the question, but Seth made the decision for her with a bullet. There’s only Max left now. She hasn’t gone to see Max in a while, though, but has constantly thought about Seth. Even his death won’t keep her heart from him, was his efforts for nothing? Was everything for nothing? At first she went to see Max every day, but seeing him with all those tubes in him and his skull slowly reconstructing made everything seem all the more real and devastating. She’s responsible for his condition too.

On that fateful night, when she saw what was left of Seth’s head, it mortified her to her very soul. Now she can’t picture his face anymore. It’s not like there are any pictures of him around. Only time they ever used a camera was for surveillance work. Not even a photo for the HAVOC database aside from his fake IDs, and no one ever photographs well for those. Even after looking at the few pictures for Seth’s Darkness, even for hours, she can’t picture his face in her mind. The younger version of him isn’t the person she came to know and love. That was someone she never knew, could never know. Just that bloody mess left now. This seems to pain her more than anything else, even seeing Max with tubes in him and not moving isn’t as bad. Is this what it was like to be you, not being able to picture someone you loved? The tears seem endless.



Exurt sits on the roof of his apartment smoking one of Seth’s cigarettes. The boy had an entire closet full of them in his apartment. The only person taking his death harder is Sophia, but she’s been keeping to herself so much he can’t be sure if it’s Max she’s missing, or Seth. He’s almost positive it’s a combination of both, but which one she misses more is a mystery. Constantly Exurt tries to convince himself there was some way this was his fault, that there could’ve been a way to prevent it. Maybe it was everyone looking at him sideways after the incident at Bloody Sabbath. He started walking around the complex partly changed, sometimes fully changed. Became more and more distant. Even went off on his own more times than even Exurt knew, and not just to spend time in the woods. He worried someone was snitching strictly to him, but when he asked all those he knew, no one said they were.

Worry about him went all around the team. They were constantly finding dead werewolves in the woods not far away from the complex. It was no secret he went out there a good amount of the time, but they never asked what he was up to. Suspicion about him only increased, he always smelled like blood. They were starting to suspect he was becoming a killer, crazy. Basically turning into the animal he could’ve always been. The more time a werewolf spends in wolf form the more they lose touch with their human side. Never did they think it would go this far.

That night Sophia wasn’t the only one that lost two people. Daisy revealed the secret she’d been keeping