Chapter 9 #3
“Guess that’s what we’re gonna have to do then.”
“Did you get dreams or visions while you were sleeping?” Brent asked. “We’re grasping at straws here, so every little bit of information counts.”
“I dreamed about a large open field with the night sky overhead,” Travis replied. “It looked like stars were falling, don’t know whether that was meteors or space junk. It should have been pretty, but it made me shiver.”
“More omens,” Brent said.
Travis nodded. “Then tongues of fire burst out from the lawn, shooting up into the air. That’s when I woke up.”
Brent took another swig of his coffee. “Yeah, nothing creepy about that at all,” he said sarcastically.
“And I saw a book,” Travis went on. “It’s been in some of the other visions, very old, looks like a book of spells. But not one that I’ve seen at the Sinistram library. I’m not sure what to make of that.”
Travis’s phone rang, making him jump. When he realized the call came from Cassidy, he glanced at the window, unaware that the sun was already down.
“Hi, Travis, Brent. I have Sorren here with me,” Cassidy told them. “I’ll put him on speaker.”
“Travis, Cassidy said you had questions?” Sorren’s voice was deep and soothing, and Travis wondered whether it had sounded like that in life or if that was a vampire adaptation.
“Thanks for calling me back. Have you heard anything about vampires infiltrating and taking over the Pittsburgh chapter of Sinistram?” No matter how often he said it out loud, it still sounded absurd.
Sorren didn’t answer right away. Travis and Brent exchanged a look, and Travis wondered if he had exceeded the vampire’s patience and made him think this was a prank.
“It’s possible,” Sorren replied a moment later.
“My kind are more solitary now than we were in life, and we tend to avoid groupings, because they present a target. But there are radical factions, something that, unfortunately, didn’t end with being mortal.
” Another pause. “Tell me what you’ve learned, or suspect. If I know anything, I will confirm.”
Travis and Brent took turns laying out what they had discovered, as well as their theory on what the vampire-infiltrated Sinistram stood to gain.
“I know that sounds crazy—” Brent said.
“Less so than you might think.” Sorren sounded worried, which made Travis even more apprehensive. “While I considered such plans to be improbable, what you’ve pieced together is in line with rumors I’ve heard about the more fanatical players.”
Sorren paused. “Vampires are just people with special abilities. Unfortunately, the ‘dark gift’ doesn’t convey special wisdom along with the speed and strength. Vampires can be just as susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories as mortals.
“What you’re talking about sounds very much like a theory that I’ve heard mentioned over the years.
I’ve never paid much attention to it myself, but apparently others did,” Sorren went on.
“There was a monk in the 1700s who was said by some to be a prophet, and was widely also believed to be a vampire. His rantings were ignored by the Vatican, but they may have found their way to the Sinistram.”
“What did he believe?” Travis asked.
“He believed that the literal end of the world was coming, and that the only survivors would be vampires. After the end of everything on earth, the vampires would ascend to become demigods. I’m not sure what good that does if everyone else is dead, but that didn’t seem to deter believers,” Sorren said.
“There were rumors of apostate vampire priests who looked forward to the Apocalypse and saw it as the eventual triumph of immortals over mortals.”
Sorren’s expression of distaste made his opinion clear.
“I’ve outlived enough prophets to see their prophecies proven wrong.
But there’s always a group that buys into that kind of thing enough that they sell all their possessions and go sit on top of a mountain waiting to be taken away from the stress of mortal life—only to end up deeply disappointed. ”
“The elders chose to be turned into vampires so they would ‘survive’ the end of the world?” Brent echoed. “That’s dingo-ate-my-baby crazy.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a crazy idea caught hold,” Sorren observed.
“I can see how the Sinistram elders could have found that appealing,” Travis said after a moment to think about what Sorren had said.
“After all, they loved feeling more special than regular people and knowing secrets. And it’s definitely got roots in the idea that ‘believers’ would survive the ultimate destruction and take over a purified world. ”
“The crazy just keeps on coming,” Brent muttered.
“How do we stop them?” Travis asked.
“With a team,” Sorren replied. “I will gather some allies here. I’d suggest putting together your most trusted witches and people with supernatural abilities. If we each take on the Sinistram from our respective strengths, we stand a good chance of overturning their control.”
“I have a couple of powerful witches who will help, and Archibald Donnelly, who’s a necromancer,” Sorren went on. “I know you have a number of people who have fought beside you against prior threats. We don’t need an army. We just need to hit the right weak points hard.”
“Okay,” Travis said. “How do we figure out the plan and the timing?”
“We’ll call you back at midnight,” Sorren said. “Let’s see what’s come together by then.”
Travis stared at his phone after Sorren ended the call, then looked at Brent, feeling adrift. “I guess a slim chance is better than no chance at all, right?” He gave a weak smile.
“We can’t just call people and ask them to stand by for the end of the world,” Brent said. “Who do we know who has gifts and might be able to help in a fight?”
Travis made a list of the people from his Night Vigil with pre-cognition, visions, omens, as well as magic.
The team he had assembled wanted to use their abilities for good, and Travis paid them a small stipend for being part of the team.
The ghostly part of the Night Vigil surrounded the St. Dismas church and halfway house, frightening away ruffians.
“Angie and Roger are in,” Travis reported. Angie got glimpses of the future, and Roger saw omens. Both had called him, having gotten an insight that something big was brewing and offering to help, a testimony to their abilities.
“Aricella says she’ll rally the covens,” Brent set down his phone to take a sip of coffee.
“Good. I know Sorren said he’d bring Archibald Donnelly with him, but I was going to give Dr. Peters a call anyhow. Two necromancers are better than one, and although vampires don’t like to admit it, they are technically still dead,” Travis replied.
“How about I call Peters, and you call Father Jacinski and Father Leo, see if we can get any backing from the Occulatum or the Logonje?” Brent said.
If the Sinistram was the Church’s black ops, the Occulatum was its FBI, less extreme and more attuned to stopping supernatural threats.
Priests from the Occulatum often helped out local monster hunters.
The Logonje were Polish priests with arcane abilities, and Jacinski was part of that group as well.
He was located in Pittsburgh, although Travis and Brent hadn’t worked with him in a while.
After a couple of hours, Brent set his phone aside and let out a deep breath. “Well, that’s everyone on my list. They’re on standby and said they’d been expecting a call since the sea monster showed up.”
“A benefit to knowing so many people with pre-cog,” Travis observed. “Jacinski and Leo said they’ll check with other priests they trust in the Occulatum and Logonje to see what people have heard and who can help.”
They still had several hours before Sorren was due to check in, so Brent went back to monitoring the news while Travis opened up the Dark Web, a corner of the Internet specializing in questionable supernatural information.
Ensorcelled encryption was supposed to protect users from picking up a demonic virus or dark magic file corruption.
The people and information were notoriously dodgy, and Travis only risked the danger when the situation was dire.
“Hey, I think I might have something,” Travis said after a while. “I’m on the Dark Web—don’t judge. Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“As long as you exorcise your own computer if it gets possessed,” Brent replied.
“Yeah, yeah. But I remembered that some of the priests I knew in the Sinistram went online even though they weren’t supposed to, including me,” he confessed. “As far as I know, the others stayed with the Order. So…I thought I’d see what they’re talking about.”
“And?” Brent sounded intrigued.
“I found them in an ‘End of Days’ conversation thread. But get this, one of them let slip that his organization had been preparing for an apocalypse that hasn't come, and so they’ve started to question whether a cleansing or reboot is needed and if they should start it,” Travis told him.
“He said they feel like they wasted their preparations, but then they realized that instead of stopping an apocalypse to protect humanity, they could cause one to cull the number of humans and make them subservient to the higher-level immortals,” Travis reported.
“He was also pretty clear that they also have a distaste for the lesser monsters but see them as useful for culling the humans.”
“He just put that out there? Said the quiet part out loud?” Brent said, incredulous.
“Guess he figured he was among friends,” Travis replied. “But think about that, it’s the missing piece to explain the ‘why.’ They got tired of being on standby, so they decided to bring the End of Days about themselves and use it for their own ends.”
“Regardless of how many people it killed.”
“The Sinistram never let the little details get in their way,” Travis answered, with an expression that made his disgust clear.
“Wow. That’s…psycho.”
“The Sinistram keeps being even worse than my lowest expectations,” Travis said.