SEMPITURNUS

Prologue: New Orleans, 1983

It was an old cemetery dating back to pre civil war times. It had seen fires, floods, hurricanes and much death during it’s silent tenure. Marble figures of angels or replicas of the deceased entombed below them would probably tell surprisingly little in spite of the fanciful wonderings of those imaginative enough to ask, ‘if only these monuments could speak, what secrets would they tell?’ Would the tale they witnessed in stony reverence this night be one of the first they would relate?

            A gust of wind and blur of motion disturbed their hushed vigil, parting the fog from the river like a scythe through delicate flowers. The vacuum created by the fast moving body sucked leaves and grass clippings in it’s wake and deposited them at his feet when he came to rest against a tomb topped by a large cross. The man who had moved so quickly seconds before leaned against the clammy stone of the tomb clutching at his throat. Blood, black in the moonlight, seeped between his fingers and splattered the ground at his feet. Isaac had hurt him badly, escaping the trap the old vampire had laid out so carefully. Few wounds could be considered life threatening to a vampire as powerful as Valerius, but Isaac knew how to fight his kind. He had harried Valerius for the last two years all across the eastern seaboard with a need for vengeance colder than the tombs surrounding him.

            Valerius needed to go into hiding. He needed the coma like state that would allow him the time he needed to heal. His throat, brutally torn by Isaac’s hand would take only a few weeks to heal completely, but the loss of blood would be years in regenerating. He was only able to enact an escape because he had torn Isaac’s face open during the fight. Valerius glanced around, ensuring there were no witnesses. His enhanced senses picked up no human voices, or the scent of people anywhere near. He was alone for the moment and was growing weaker. Glancing at the huge cross that adorned the tomb, he felt none of the fear or revulsion popular tales related that a vampire would. It meant nothing to him.

            He held forth an index finger and willed one of the cruel talons to elongate from it as he watched for any movement on the deserted streets around him. Valerius dragged the talon across the sealed joint of the tomb, shredding the mortar to dust that was scattered by a wind from the south. Even in his emaciated state, it was a mere flick of his powerful wrist that shoved aside the top of the tomb, shedding light to it’s inside for the first time in over a hundred years. He shredded the top of the casket contained within and shoved the splintered wood aside. The withered corpse inside held no fascination for him. Still clutching at his throat, he shoved it to the side to make room for himself. It collapsed inside the withered suit with a crunching sound, releasing a stale, musty scent of decay into the air.  Valerius vaulted to the edge and eased in to lay beside it. Reaching up, he slid the ponderous weight of the lid back into it’s place and settled into the darkness for the long recuperation ahead. He would awake someday when his body had recovered and one of his own would come to retrieve him. On that day, he would exact his revenge against the Order of St. Simon for sending Isaac after him.