JANUARY 29th 2005
LOS ANGELES, SUBURBS OF LONG BEACH
The ocean washed the beach, pulling and depositing sand as it saw necessary.
The sun was brightly shining in the skies, and just a few miles away, the loud sound of chatting humans, music and general enjoyment could be heard.
It was a sharp contrast to the suffering being experienced.
GROAN
GROAN
Two groans were pushed out of the water with a particularly large crashing wave, and Sam and Xavier crawled their way across the wet sand.
Their clothes were torn as if they had been through the most difficult battle of their lives, but in their experience, it was more likely they had been introduced to the most efficient blender in the world.
“FUCK!”
It was a struggle for them to even manage crawling.
A Shapeshifter Alpha and an Eternal appeared weaker than the average man as they desperately crawled across the sand – such a sight was unthinkable.
And The VEIL had rendered them such.
COUGH
COUGH
COUGH
Their drowning coughs were brutal, and the amount of water that exited their mouths would have killed the average human a thousand times over.
Their tenacity provided for their survival.
Sam’s shapeshifted body shrunk as he crawled across the sand – his mouth shortened, razor-sharp teeth disappeared, and his hunched back gradually straightened.
It had been a smart move on his part – his shapeshifted wolf physique could survive a lack of oxygen much longer than his human form.
“How deep was that?” Sam was gasping with each breath.
He didn’t even want to bother thinking about what he saw as they were churned violently in The VEIL – it simultaneously made sense and didn’t.
“Sixty feet…” Xavier replied.
The Eternal was in much better shape than The Shapeshifter, but the ugly expression on his face could only be concealed to a certain degree.
Unlike Sam, Xavier was able to get glimpses of what existed between layers of The VEIL, and it was a sight straight out of the apocalypse.
Needless to say, he was not looking forward to the return trip.
“I will murder that vampire!” Sam yelled.
“You will kill a child?” Xavier was suspicious, and his suspicions proved true.
“What?” Sam seemed confused for a couple of seconds before realization dawned on him. “He wasn’t a child… I can see it now. It’s like my memories were clouded.”
Suddenly, Sam could see, with vivid detail in his memories, how foolish he looked referring to Alcides as a child – The Shapeshifter shuddered at the thought.
“My memories are clearing too,” Xavier mentioned, though he left unsaid that the pressure in his head was building. “I guess when we cross The VEIL, it un-fucks our minds.”
“Is the vampire dead?” Sam glanced around, noting their party of three only had two remaining. “I would welcome it if he was.”
For a while there – in the bitter deep… up and down seemed a matter of luck - Sam genuinely thought he would die.
Luckily, Xavier had the canny ability to always tell up from down, and though he was disoriented, The Eternal could rouse the gravitons to force his body and Sam’s to the surface much quicker.
“We need to find the vampire,” The Eternal voiced. “He is the only one experienced in whatever shit storm we have found ourselves in.”
“Did you really mean it when you said this could affect the pack?” Sam inquired, frowning with uncertainty.
“I would never lie to someone whose teeth can pierce through my skin,” Xavier’s reply was blunt.
Sam rose from the ground, noting the dryness of his suit.
“Seriously, what is this suit made out of?”
“Unstable Nano-Molecular Cloth, or in other words, smart cloth,” Xavier explained. “It’s unstable so it’s hard to distinguish from the skin so it can shapeshift with you. It was discovered about a year ago in Russia.”
“Yeah, but how did you get it?” Sam glanced around, maintaining the conversation as he cautiously scanned the environment.
“There are a lot of things in that house that you can hardly imagine,” Xavier was vague, but mostly because he couldn’t answer the question with any certainty.
“I thought it was your house.”
Xavier shrugged.
Sam shifted the gears of the conversation. “It feels different – it’s like we’re seeing through a different lens.”
“Nope, it’s just brighter over here,” The Eternal corrected. “We are still in the same place more or less. You would know that if you were conscious between The Layers of The VEIL.”
“And you were conscious?”
“For half the time,” Xavier admitted. “And even when I was unconscious – being what I am, means my body and mind would remember everything for me.”
“A nifty ability.”
“It’s really not…”
Sam grabbed a handful of sand, watching as it slid through his fingers to test if it really was sand.
“This beach is long…”
“That’s the name of it,” Xavier added.
“What?” Sam frowned.
“That is the name of the beach – haven’t been out of Forks much, huh?” Xavier’s eyesight drifted from one end of the beach to the next – his senses allowed him to hear the bustling noise of the city, and see the party happening miles down the beach. “It’s called Long Beach – we are in Los Angeles.”
“How do we get from Forks, Washington to Los Angeles, California?” Sam inquired.
“By drifting in another dimension’s endless ocean for two days, I would say…”
Xavier rolled his eyes, and Sam couldn’t tell if The Eternal was joking or not… but more than likely, The Shapeshifter knew Xavier wasn’t.
“We need to get out of here,” The Eternal decided.
“And go where?”
Xavier pointed over the water to the very conspicuous, shining buildings shooting for the skies.
“Cities are confusing places,” Sam shook his head, trying to steady his mind. “I have trouble navigating in populated places with my senses.”
“What better time to adjust that with death possibly imminent?” The Eternal voiced.
“So, what are we going to do? Are you going to…” Sam made mock wings and fluttered his hands. “Across there?”
“This is Los Angeles, not Forks,” Xavier scoffed. “Every nutjob with a gun will be shooting for us as if we were a turkey in the countryside.”
WHOOOOOSH
A particularly strong wind brushed across Long Beach, and it had Sam and Xavier as if a hammer to the nose.
Xavier could manage, but to Sam whose senses refined to hunt the creatures, it was equal parts stunning and terrifying.
“Wha—”
“Wha—”
“Wha—”
“I know…” Xavier’s expression was grim. “I smell it too.”
“A city full of them,” Sam’s jaw lengthened slightly as his teeth gradually started to shift.
“Get yourself together!” Xavier yelled. “Now is not the time to lose it.”
Sam instantly took control of his instincts – something he could do only because the incident with Emily had led to him dedicating more time to controlling the wolf inside.
Any other member of his pact would have gone into a rage.
“You’re right…” Sam breathe slowly as his teeth returned to normal. “We can’t go into the city – we will die there.”
“You’re no longer human so you have to stop thinking like a human,” The Eternal encouraged. “In my experience, running from your problems only makes them bigger and chase you faster – case and point, now. Most of all, you never know whom you will drag down with you.”
“So, into the deathtrap?”
“Better than the deathtrap into us,” Xavier commented.
The Eternal and Shapeshifter departed the beach with long strides, and not even a couple of seconds later, another wind brushed past them and Sam collapsed on the ground.
He struggled to rise once more.
“Rest… you need rest,” Xavier comforted, placing a hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I would take care of things from here.”
۞۞۞
Sam snapped awake, launching himself to his feet, and then, immediately into a crouching position that would be optimal for his shift into a wolf.
The smell was the sharpest yet.
GRRRR
A growl from the depths of Sam’s throat ripped free.
“Okay… okay…”
“I will check on him every hour, but if he doesn’t make it back, then he doesn’t make it back – get a cover story ready.”
“I am sure… I brought him since I wanted to know what would happen, and now I know.”
Sam took a couple of seconds to realize he was overreacting, and when he came to his senses and followed the voice, The Shapeshifter found Xavier on the phone.
“I will talk to you later…” The Eternal ended the call and turned to Sam. “The good news is – the phone works. I was able to call Emily and Angela and notify them of what’s happening.”
“I doubt that,” Sam scoffed.
“Of course, I told each of them varying truths,” Xavier added. “You can tell Emily everything when you get back, but be careful what you say.”
“You’re talking as if we will survive this,” Sam voiced.
“speaking about it brings it into reality, right?” Xavier smirked.
Sam sniffed the air, and the smirk about to grace his lips turned into a scathing scowl. “What the fuck is that smell?” He questioned semi-angrily. “It smells like a vampire died in here.”
“Because it – whatever it is – did…” Xavier replied, stunning Sam into silence. “And we are underground so the smell has nowhere to drift to. Best I can tell, we are beneath a recently abandoned club – a secret room to boot.”
“What happened while I was unconscious?” Sam was dizzy from the rapid changes.
“Nothing – we walked and I passed this place on the way to a hotel, and I smelled it,” Xavier’s eyes narrowed. “It was a knife to the gut, and if you were concentrating, you would realize why I came to investigate.”
Sam sniffed the air. “The corpse is too overpowering,” He admitted. “I am off my game today. Too many strange smells to get acquainted with. The forest back home makes it easier to distinguish things that don’t belong.”
“Like me?”
“Like you,” Sam confirmed.
The Shapeshifter followed the pungent scent of the corpse, passing by freezing units until a turn around a corner revealed a complicated layout of computers and the obese, deceased, cooked creature in a king-sized bed of the finest quality.
“I don’t even know what the fuck it is,” Sam scowled. “Smells something akin to a vampire though – different from The Cullens, but close enough that I can smell the relation.”
“This thing is nothing like The Cullens,” Xavier added, a strange look on his face.
Sam tried to read the look on Xavier’s face, and found his expression too hard to discern – he appeared… sympathetic.
“Should we bury it?” Sam inquired.
“Why the fuck would we do that?” Xavier scowled.
“I thought your expression was one of sympathy,” The Shapeshifter replied.
“It is, but not for this fucking cooked turd!” Xavier squeezed the angry words from his throat with utmost disgust. “Why don’t you check one of those freezers we passed.”
Sam had a sinking feeling in his gut that was made worse by the rapidly distinguishing scents in the air. The freezer’s door was tossed open, and Sam retrieved a bag of something mushy from inside.
He brought the bag to Xavier.
“Open it,” The Eternal ordered.
Sam tremblingly tore open the bag, allowing the mush inside to plot to the ground with a disgusting sound.
“I don’t—”
“You have to learn to memorize this smell,” The Eternal’s voice was cold – a type of coldness that he had never displayed before Sam. “Flatten the mush on the ground – let it guide you to the correct shape.” He ordered.
Sam steadied his shaking hands, sniffed the deafening scent in the air as he arranged the mush on the ground, and when he finished, it took a couple of seconds to truly click.
BLARGH
Sam threw up…
“You shouldn’t throw up yet,” Xavier frowned, but the iciness in his eyes increased as he mentally started to count. “Look at the size of the heart.”
Sam’s ears perked up upon hearing that, and as soon as he glanced at the heart once more, it struck him – it was too small to come from the chest of an adult.
“A ch-child’s he-heart?” His mouth went dry.
“Children…” Xavier corrected, causing Sam’s frown to turn into a wolfish maw of razor-sharp teeth.
“What?”
GRRRR
Xavier gestured to the dozens of freezers that stretched all the way to the entrance and then pointed to the heart on the ground. “Every single unit has a heart in it – that’s approximately fifty-four,” He voiced.
Sam saw red…
“Don’t worry,” The Eternal comforted. “There is a special place in hell for trash like him…”
Though what Xavier left unsaid was the fact that he actually knew the vampire whose corpse was sprawled on the bed, and he knew who had killed the vampire as well.
Admittedly, it was denial that kept him from sharing his suspicions with Sam.
‘Pearl…’ Xavier dug the name out of his memory.
The name was all he could remember, and only because it was the ugliest iteration of a vampire he had seen in any vampire-based movie.
And of course, Pearl was even uglier than he was in the first Blade Movie.
“Fifty-four kids?” Sam was appalled and upset, but he couldn’t tell which he felt more of.
“And that’s his shipment for about a year,” The Eternal revealed. “I would imagine he has been at this for a while…”
“FUCK!”
Xavier channeled Cosmic Energy into his eyes and the veins around his pupil turned a bright golden hue until the beam tore free from his eyes.
SHHHHSHSHSHS
It was as if a hush passed through the air.
The golden cosmic beam of three thousand degrees Fahrenheit incinerated Pearl’s body to ashes, and Xavier forced himself to keep the Cosmic Beam active until even the ashes were no more.
It felt exhausting to utilize a power he had little control over as of yet, but The Eternal was determined to make sure nothing remained.
Xavier’s Cosmic Beam tore through the computers on the wall, and the frame of the bed, melting everything where it passed.
The Eternal stopped his Cosmic Beam to recharge, levitated off the ground, and slowly advanced through the underground structure.
SHSHSHSHSHSH
His Cosmic Beam returned with an intensity, burning through the freezing units, underground load-bearing walls, and everything in between.
“Wait…” Sam hurried along. “Don’t these families deserve to know—”
“They don’t…” Xavier’s reply was strong. “And they shouldn’t know how their children died – anything they can image is better than what happened down here.”
The Eternal burned through everything, and by the time he and Sam had arrived on the stairs to ascend, the underground structure was crumbling – taking the abandoned club above with it.
Sam and Xavier departed in silence, leaving ashes and destruction in their wake.
As they departed, The Eternal subtly placed a hand on Sam’s shoulder to use the Shapeshifter as a guide.
Utilizing his Cosmic Beam with little preparation had caused his ocular nerve to sustain some damage so until it healed, he could only see in vague blurs.
