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The Summoner's Tale The Order of the Black Swan #3
Victoria Danann
Paranormal Romance
7th House Publishing
Ebook, 300 pages
Release Date: February 14th, 2013
Purchase: Amazon
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EXCERPT:
CHAPTER ONE:
BLACK SWAN FIELD
TRAINING MANUAL Section I: Chapter 1, #1
The plural of vampire is
vampire.
When the rush of
activity subsided, he found himself alone with his own thoughts; a condition
that was more than familiar since he had spent hundreds of years that way.
Without the distraction of his friends' banter, since his proposed staff had
left Edinburgh,
he had begun to see his task not just as a job, but as a mission, one immersed
in the duality of joy and gravity.
He had never considered
himself to be impatient. Quite the contrary, everything he had ever pursued in
earnest, from painting to music to writing, had depended upon patience. But,
his cognizance of the enormity of the burden he had accepted had grown over the
past months and he had turned to brooding about the time that was passing.
Every day that nothing
was accomplished was a day when more people had their humanity taken from them,
another day when vampire remained imprisoned in bodies infected with the
foulest disease imaginable, and, also, another day when people died.
The project was moving
painfully slowly. Everyone who had originally been assigned to work with Baka
was gone: married, retired, whatever. Everyone except Heaven - who had turned
out to be anything but.
The large work space,
intended for several people, seemed deserted with him alone most of the time.
He worked from early in the morning till late at night, challenging both the
hours in the day and the fact that he was one excruciatingly short-handed task
force leader.
When Heaven was present,
her moods ran the range of a shallow bell curve from disagreeable to surly to
sullen. He admitted that he had provoked her on their first meeting, for
reasons that were a mystery to him. Something about her instantly put him on edge
and made him feel anxious.
Even though that feeling
persisted, he had attempted to make amends so that they could work together
amicably. To no avail. She was prickly to the core, spurning every effort on
his part to develop a rudimentary standard of civility. She behaved as if
simple courtesy was more than she could manage which meant that
"nice" was a goal way too distant.
He not only had to work
with a person who detested his very presence, but, adding insult to injury, it
seemed he couldn't shake an inexplicably strong attraction to her. He found
himself staring at the curve of her cheek with her head bowed over work. Or the
shine of her chestnut hair when she walked through a ray of light. Or the way
her lips pursed whenever he gave her something to do. It was damned
aggravating.
To make matters worse,
he seemed to have lost interest in pursuing other women.
At exactly fifteen after five she double
checked her wristwatch, closed an open folder, rose, pushed her arms into her
sweater jacket, put her purse on her shoulder and, like every other day, walked
out of the office without saying goodnight.
He perpetually struggled
to concentrate because the space seemed to vibrate with a low level, but
annoying irritation when she was there. It was stand to reason that he
would be glad to see her gather her things and go, but, in fact, he hated it
even more when she left. He heaved a big sigh. Fuck me.
Baka had been a person
with a well-developed sense of morality, and a well-functioning conscience
before he became a vampire. During the last hundred years of life as a vampire,
having survived long enough to blessedly recover his understanding of right and
wrong, he had voluntarily turned himself into The Order and served as
"consultant" voluntarily consuming only artificial sustenance.
No. He had never been
short on conscience. And that conscience was rubbing a hole in his brain
telling him that it would be wrong to simply sit at a desk and plan a strategy
on paper while, at the same time, doing nothing. So, keeping his own counsel,
for better or worse, he determined that he would continue to work as a
bureaucrat during the day, but would spend his nights - at least part of them -
looking for others he might help back to the light.
He had worked with Monq at Jefferson Unit labs to develop a
delivery solution. Taking a page from the methodology of the late Gautier
Nibelung, they had decided that the safest and most effective approach would be
dart gun. Each dart was outfitted with a tiny canister that would puncture on
impact releasing a formula that was part stun and part cure. The proper dose of
stun solution had been determined by tests on Baka himself. So he knew it
worked. First hand. Obviously vampire must be incapacitated while the viral
antidote works. As medicinal remedies go, it is fast working, but not instant.
There is a delay of two to four hours between introduction to the system and
complete reversal of the disease, depending upon the age and constitution of
the individual.
His plan wasn't perfect.
It depended on encountering one vampire at a time and extracting him, while
paralyzed, without engaging other vampire. Tricky, but the alternative was
waiting for a task force to be vetted, assembled, and trained. And waiting was
the one thing he couldn't manage. Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing he'd ever
done, but, hell, he'd had a long life.
To
his advantage, he still had certain attributes that were extra human. Not like
comic book heroes. More like human plus. No one knew if these benefits would fade
away over time, but, for now, he was a little stronger, a little faster, and
could see in the dark a little better than most people. All traits very useful
for vampire hunting.
It just so happened that he found his assigned base of
operations in prime territory that qualified as a vampire magnet on all counts.
In Edinburgh's Old Town
there was a large pedestrian population that came out at night and it was built on top of an underground
system that was not utilized to any extent that would interfere with the needs
of vampire. All this was literally in sight of his office - five minutes' walk
away.
In a darkly poetic way,
it was fitting that vampire would thrive in Edinburgh's underground city which consisted
of a system of tunnels, caverns, and cells cut into the much softer sandstone
under the rock that the above-ground Old
Town is built upon. It's
a place with grisly history where thousands of hapless poor lived in darkness,
packed together without sanitation and with the vilest of criminals. Plague victims
were not removed and buried or burned, but just sealed in their cells.
Modern day Ghost Tours
offer a shallow excursion - shallow because individuals don't want to stay in
the underground very long. Words like "creepy" are frequently used
even by hard-core insensitives. That leaves miles of maze for a vampire haven.
Baka had been a vampire
long enough to know all about how they think. He knew that the days of the
Beltane festival would be a gorge fest for vampire. The Royal Mile, just over
the heads of vampire living in the Underground, would be crowded with visitors
to the city, visitors intent on celebration and revelry, danger being the last
thing on their minds. It would be a blessing to vampire in the original sense
of the word which was bloodletting; when, as a rite of passage, young pagans
would stand in a pit under a grate where a bull was sacrificed and bathe in the
blood that fell.
So Baka finished his
day, went to dinner alone, and slowly savored every bite of his of actual food.
Afterward, driven by a heartfelt desire to do some good in the world, he pulled
on a pair of cargo pants and equipped the dozen pockets with two dart guns and
as many canisters as he could carry without being slowed down. He descended the
stairs to the main foyer wondering if, even partial redemption for a long life
of misdeeds, is possible. The fact that he was not accountable for that
infamous history should have given him some peace of absolution. But didn't. He
said good evening to the doorman and headed out into the night.
About this Author:
Though works
of fiction are a departure for me, I have had this series simmering on the back
burner of my mind for years, but time is at a premium. In addition to authoring
and illustrating Seasons of the Witch and writing course work for Seasons in
Avalon, I play Classic Rock music and manage Houston’s premier variety and R&B band.
This series
will include some of my education in the paranormal and fictionalized anecdotes
from my journals during the years when I was a practicing “metaphysician”, but
most of the material is fantasy – of course.
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