Arthur would not be intimidated. As the day wore on, he tried repeatedly to reach his Belial source — a man named Simeon — to move up their evening meeting, but he could never reach the man. By that afternoon, Arthur considered simply fleeing, but he realized that there was no point in trying to hide. He was already in too deep. Besides, a recklessness had settled over him since Marnie’s death — he just didn’t care anymore.
So he waited for the night, enjoying his favorite meal from an Italian restaurant down the street, complementing it with a bottle of his finest pinot noir. He saw no reason to skimp. If this was to be his last meal, he might as well enjoy it. He ate it in his kitchen while watching the sky turn orange behind the Golden Gate Bridge.
Finally, a knock sounded at his apartment door.
Arthur crossed from his study and peeked through the peephole. A man dressed in a navy blue suit stood out in the hall. His face and shorn black hair were familiar from a grainy photograph passed to Arthur at a bar in Berlin. It was Simeon.
Arthur opened the door.
“Mr. Crane?” The man’s voice was low and hoarse, with a Slavic accent that Arthur couldn’t quite place. Maybe Czech.
“Yes,” Arthur said, stepping aside. “You should come inside, quickly now. It might not be safe.”
This earned a soft smile from the man, possibly amused by Arthur’s caution. But the man did not know about Christian or the orchid.
As his guest entered, Arthur checked the hall outside and the stairs leading down to the old Victorian’s stoop. All clear.
Still, a chill ran up Arthur’s back, a prickling of the fine hairs on the nape of his neck, a sense of immediate danger. He quickly followed Simeon inside and closed the door behind him, locking the dead bolt.
Simeon waited in the foyer.
“Let’s go to my study.” Arthur led the way.
Simeon followed him and stepped to Arthur’s desk, staring around the room. His gaze settled upon the marked-up page showing The Raising of Lazarus. He motioned to that sheet.
“So I see you already know of the bloody origins of the Sanguinists,” Simeon said. “That Lazarus was the first of them.”
“I’ve heard fantastical rumors,” Arthur said. “Dark stories of monsters and creatures of the night. None of it to be believed, of course. I suspect the stories are there to scare people away from the truth.”
Arthur stared expectantly at Simeon, hoping to hear that truth.
Instead, Simeon touched Christ’s face on the page with one curiously long fingernail. “There is much about the Sanguinists that defies belief.”
Arthur did not know what to say to that, so he kept quiet.
Simeon scratched his nail down the notebook page. “Show me what you already know.”
Arthur handed him a folder of the manuscript he was working on, with notes scribbled to indicate where documents and pictures should be inserted.
The man riffled through the pages swiftly, too fast to truly read it. “You have passed this along to no one?”
“Not yet.”
Simeon met his eyes for the first time. His eyes were brown and fringed by thick lashes, handsome eyes, but what struck Arthur most about them was that they did not blink. The hair rose on his arms, and he took a step backward from the man, suddenly realizing the prickling danger he had sensed earlier had come from this man, not from some hidden threat beyond his apartment.
“You are close to the truth,” Simeon said, no longer hiding the menace in his presence, looming taller. “Closer than you know. Too close for our comfort.”
Arthur took another step back. “The Belial…”
“The Sanguinists defy us at every step, but that war must be kept secret.” Simeon stepped after him. “Our darkness cannot thrive in the light.”
The buzz of a motorcycle on the street distracted Arthur. He glanced toward the sound — and Simeon was upon him.
Arthur crashed painfully to the floor. Simeon pinned him there. Arthur struggled against him, but Simeon had an implacable strength that Arthur had only experienced once in his life — on the day Christian nearly killed him.
“You want the truth,” Simeon said. “Here it is.”
The man’s lips split to reveal sharpened teeth, impossibly long.
He flashed to that moment with Christian, suddenly remembering what he blanked out, what his mind would not allow him to fully see.
Until now.
There were monsters in the world.
Arthur redoubled his struggles, but he knew he was at his end.
Then a crash of shattered wood and glass rose from his bedroom. He pictured his window exploding. But he was on the third story.
Simeon turned as a dark shadow flew into the room, tackling the monster off Arthur. Gasping, Arthur crabbed on his hands and feet away from the fighting, backing into his study’s cold hearth.
The war raged across the tight room, too fast to follow, a blur of shadows, accompanied by flashes of silver, like lightning in a thundercloud. The battle smashed across his desk and crashed into his bookshelf, scattering volumes across the floor.
Then a feral scream, full of blood and fury.
A moment later, a head bounced across his wooden floor, spilling black blood.
Simeon.
From beyond Arthur’s desk, a shadow rose and shed its darkness. The figure wore a black leather motorcycle jacket, open, revealing the Roman collar of the priesthood. He stepped around the desk, his pale face scratched, bleeding. He carried two short swords in his hands, shining like liquid silver, marred with the same black blood as seeped across the golden hardwood floor.
Impossibly, the figure grinned at him, showing a familiar glint of rakish amusement in his green eyes as he sheathed the swords.
“Christian…?”
Beyond fear now, Arthur gaped at his brother. Despite the passing of forty years, Christian was virtually unchanged, no more than a boy in appearance compared to Arthur’s lined and aged face.
“How?” Arthur asked the mystery standing before him.
But Christian only smiled more broadly, crossed over, and offered Arthur his hand.
He took it, gripping his brother’s pale fingers, finding them cold and hard, like sculpted marble. As Arthur was pulled to his feet, he saw the old scar on his brother’s wrist, a match to his own. Despite the impossible, it was indeed Christian.
“Are you hurt?” his brother asked him.
How did one answer that when one’s life was unhinged in a single moment?
Still, he managed to shake his head.
Christian led him back to the kitchen, to the table where the remains of his last meal still sat. He settled Arthur to a seat, then picked up the empty bottle of pinot noir.
“Nice vintage,” he said, taking a sniff at the bottle. “Good oak and tobacco notes.”
Arthur found his voice again. “Wh… what are you?”
Christian cocked an amused eyebrow — a look that ached with the memory of their shared past, as perfectly preserved as the rest of his features. “You know that already, Arthur. You just must let yourself accept it.”
Christian reached to his leg and unhooked a leather flask. Branded into its surface were the crossed keys and crown of the papal seal. Christian took Arthur’s empty goblet, filled it from the flask, and pushed it back toward him.
Arthur stared warily at the glass. “Wine?”
“Consecrated wine,” Christian corrected. “Turned by the holy act of transubstantiation into the blood of Christ. It is what I’ve sworn to drink. It’s what sustains me and my brothers and sisters.”
“The Sanguinist order.”
“The blood of Christ allows us to walk in daylight, to do battle with those who haunt the shadowy corners of the world.”