Bloodfire (Empire of Fangs) by Andrew Domonkos Read Free Book Online Page B

be melting doctor, are the lodgings not to your liking?”   Damon cracked a smile and looked around at the interior of the dirty room.
     
    “No, no, it’s great.   I love it here,” Jonathan said, his voice cracking.   A shot rang out and tires screeched.   Jonathan ducked down cowered.   Damon looked curiously back into the night, scanning the dark streets for the source of the noise.   He shook his head and looked back at Jonathan.   “Are you going to invite me in or what?”  
     
    Jonathan blubbered, “Yes, yes, of course, come in, sir, mister Caspari , yes come in.”   The words rushed out of him like a flood, and he even bowed a few times like a servant.   His visions of a sunny beach in Mexico evaporated in the moldy air of the room.
     
    “Enough of that.   Have a drink, see if it hardens that noodle of a spine.   Do you realize how terrible you look?   If you weren’t already an eminent psychologist I would bring one here to take a long look at you.”   Damon produced a bottle of wine he had hidden behind his back, and two little glasses he had in his pocket, which Jonathan received with shaking hands.   Damon walked over to the little table in the corner of the room and had a seat on the ugly orange and beige chair.   He slid a long cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it up.   “Make me one too,” he said, and Jonathan fumbled with the two little glasses and set them on the table.   “Gads, pour it straight man,” Damon complained as Jonathan tried to steady his hands.  
     
    “Sorry, it’s the gunshots, I’m sorry sir but it sounds like a war out there.”  
     
    “Yes,” Damon agreed nodding his head.   “And what do you suppose it’s over?”
     
    Jonathan sat and took a hard slug of the whiskey.   It burnt his throat and he gagged, and then quickly took another one.  
     
    “That’s the spirit,” Damon said.
     
    “I guess…it’s over money.   Or drugs,” Jonathan said carefully.  
     
    “Maybe for the leaders of these peasants.   But not for their soldiers.   They fight for something far less tangible.   Pride…honor…ego, take your pick. War is this way, it hasn’t changed in a thousand years and won’t change in a thousand more,” Damon sipped from his glass and stared at the sweating heap Jonathan had become.   “And in war we all become devils.   And no true solider is not haunted by himself.   No wound festers quite like memory.   But as a healer of memories, I’m sure you are aware of this truth.”
     
    Jonathan couldn’t place it, but there was a hint of something strange in Damon’s voice.   For a moment, he thought it might be fear.   Was such a thing possible?   What could someone like Damon possibly be afraid of?  
     
    “Sir, I mean no impertinence, but is there something on your—” Jonathan began to say, reaching out for the bottle which Damon snatched up with amazing speed.  
     
    “I was once a soldier myself, you know,” Damon said wistfully.  
     
    Jonathan nodded.   Although he was still very much afraid of this man, he was still very curious about Damon’s bizarre past.   He knew when to keep quiet and when to grovel, and kept silent while Damon continued to talk of bygone eras.
     
    “It was serendipity that whisked me from the battlefield and into the wizened graces of Vlad Tepes ,” Damon said, now standing and orating as if the room was full of spectators.   “He gave me life everlasting, taught me the power of fear, the importance of loyalty.”   He pounded his fist into his hand when he said loyalty.   He gave Jonathan an accusatory look and asked: “You know his story?   Not that Stoker rubbish?”
     
    “Yes sir, I did graduate work in—”
     
    “Spare me your resume,” Damon grumbled.   “A simple yes or no will suffice.”
     
    “Yes, I know it.”
     
    “Anyway,” Damon grabbed a fly out of the air and pinched the life from it, “he was betrayed by those he fought for,