The Discussion

  James could feel the hairspray crack and loosen. Soon his electric red hair would begin to fall in his face, annoying him while he drove his SUV. 

  “It’s me, of course,” he said into the transceiver at the side of the gate. 

  The wrought iron gates shuddered open. 

  He could have just appeared here and saved himself the trouble of messing his hair. 

  He was beginning to think this would have been a much better idea as he moved the vehicle up the low hill. 

  James was in the mood to drive the SUV that day, since he was also at his own Barcelona home during the summer. 

  There was another black SUV in front of the villa. 

  It was so similar to his own that he’d likely get confused when he came out. 

  The front entrance doors were too bold and heavy to open by himself - besides, they were probably locked. 

  His fingers near clasped around the phoenix head door knocker when the door opened. 

  “James? What are you doing driving up here?”

  Ian Miller hadn’t changed much about his appearance in the last year. 

  He was smart and sharp in a black and grey three-piece. His hair had been left to grow, forcing it into buttery waves, and it now stopped just under his chin.

  “I haven’t used my SUV for months, and I had a full tank to burn,” he said, moving past Ian into his home. 

  Ian threw him a reproachful look to his back, closing the door. 

  James stopped where he was, then turned to Ian. 

  “So. We have things to discuss?”

  “You’re the one that wanted to meet with me, you tell me,” said Ian. “Let’s go to the dining room, at least.”

  The pair moved swiftly into the dining space Ian so frequently occupied, despite never eating there. 

  Scattered across the glossed deep wood were piles of paper, stacked but disarrayed in form. 

  “You have an office along the hall, don’t you? Don’t know why you insist on doing paperwork in here.”

  “I prefer the lighting quality,” said Ian, showing James to a seat in the clear half of the table. 

  Once James sat in the head space of the table Ian sat adjacent to him, his view the Spanish coastline rather than a pile of business documents and a bowl of water lilies.

  “James.”

  The cool green eyes switched to him. 

  “Yes, I know. We need to discuss what’s happening next. Naturally we also need to discuss Kate and Varjak and their little posse, and what they’re capable of doing, disbanded or not.”

  Ian gave a nod. 

  “So you did find them, eventually.”

  James smirked. 

  “Considering you’re my second in command, I don’t seem to really update you, do I?  And you often have your nose far too buried in your own business to take note anyway.”

  Ian’s head reeled back an inch. 

  He regarded James blankly. 

  “I do my job well enough for you. Part of that job is maintaining a high role in the human community -”

  “Yes, Ian, I know,” said James, tiredly. “I was only joking. Anyway, we have a lot to discuss on the topic. We’ve talked about what’s going to happen in some detail, but seem to have let the potential stoppers in our plans fall by the wayside.”

  Ian stared. 

  “Well you did a grand job of disbanding them. At the very least, that will shake them up.”

  “That’s very true. What they don’t seem to realize yet, though, is that numbers mean diddly squat.”

  “Even the two of them could bring us down, if they knew about the stone,” said Ian.

  James nodded. 

  “They do know about it, I was there when Ben Lambert explained it to them. Although they’d be killing themselves in the process if they destroyed it - perhaps they’ll take that into consideration.”

  “It’s not a matter of them considering it, that’s a given. It’s whether they have the capacity to sacrifice themselves or not. And I suspect, at least in Varjak’s case, they would.”

  James fell silent for a moment. 

  It was true, from the valuable time he had spent with Varjak last year, it was apparent that he hated his own undead existence. 

  Varjak would give up his life in an instant, but what about Kate?

  She could well follow Varjak to the grave, thought James. 

  It had been a year since he’d seen them, but they were almost definitely still together. Their bond would have grown stronger by going through so much together.

  What if they were a couple now? 

  The thought stuck in James’ chest, catching his breath. 

  If they were, it would be even more likely that Kate would die with Varjak, even if she didn’t need to.

  James could not allow this to happen. 

  There was more at stake for him than the prospect of his secret empire crumbling.

  And even on that topic…it was something he would never admit, he never could admit.

  James had been alive for one-hundred and seventy three years. 

  When he was first transformed, he hated the undead. Then he saw the suffering of the human race and how pitiful they were as the lower classes starved and stole to feed their offspring, while the upper classes bathed in money. 

  He had been disgusted, a middle class man himself, and it hadn’t been until he was banished from the human world that he saw it for what it really was.

  A hatred was born, and James found others who thought similarly to him. 

  Over the years their number expanded, the undead and the human-hating ideology seeping into the cracks of the world while the humans remained selfish or pathetic, but in union, unaware. 

  The problem lay within the fact that James had been alive for that long. 

  It meant his opinions changed, and his personality was different. That was definitely one of the many problems of immortality, he noted. 

  He privately no longer drove the idea of a world of undead. 

  A feeling that would see him killed by his own followers. Even Ian. 

  So James had to hold his old beliefs, like an ancient scar tightening whenever he moved. The undead relied on him, and he was indifferent enough to keep up the charade.   

  “Yes, I agree,” James said eventually. “We can’t let them get anywhere near the stone. They’ll take themselves down along with the rest of us.”

  Ian’s eyebrows raised lightly. 

  “You sounded almost worried for them there.”

  “Whether I’m worried about them or not is beside the point,” said James. “They’re the only thing standing in the way of us taking over the world. We keep them away from the stone, follow through with our plans, and they’ll see a world of undead is much simpler than the world of humans.”

  “Yes,” Ian agreed. “I can’t imagine you’d want either of them to die, though. Forgive me James, but I don’t sense you hate them. Killing them, if it ever came to that, would be a necessary evil for you, am I right?”

  James started. 

  His first thought was to fly across the table and lunge for Ian’s throat. Then he began to consider. 

  Ian was right. 

  He had never hated Kate, he’d always known that. He’d even given her the option to come to them, all those months ago. 

  What about Varjak? James never had the time to sit and think about Varjak in any other way than being his enemy, so to speak. 

  Varjak hated him with a passion, even if he couldn’t detect that James was undead, he could sense there was something wrong with him.

  That in itself was an embarrassment for James. 

  It was a massive irony that the leader of the undead, the human hating race, had the ability to turn human for up to forty-eight hours. 

  Once the forty-eight hours were up, he had to turn undead again for a few minutes before he could go back. A high risk strategy, but he had pulled it off. 

  Ian was the only other undead who knew about it. 

  If any other undead knew about his ability or his time with The Betrayer (without killing him, at least), they would revolt against him.

  But why hadn’t he killed Varjak? The possibility he had always thought about, but never followed through. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his fair share of opportunities.

  He guessed he never wanted to do it unless he had to, like Ian said. 

  But then, why was that? 

  Without Varjak, Kate herself had little chance of finding the stone and destroying it by herself, or even with the other cronies they’d picked up along the way.

  He guessed the answer lay with the fact that he and Varjak were more alike than they realized.

  James didn’t want to be human again. 

  Being an undead brought superiority in so many ways, the most notable instance being their secrecy from the human world. 

  They didn’t need sustenance or sleep - they were constantly alert, ready to attack, ready to be attacked. 

  They could live life to the capacity a human could not, no sleeping away a third of your life, no health issues with obesity and illness.

  James adored it. 

  But there was still a feeling that he shared with his made-to-be opponent. 

  When he decided to use his ability to become human to follow Kate and eventually Varjak, he realized how much he missed the feeling of humanity.

  The warmth provided by blood in your body, feeling the heat on your cheeks when you felt embarrassed or shameful, having trivial habits like biting your cheek and picking your lips, running as fast as you could and having to stop to breathe. 

  Those things were taken away from you when you half-died.

  Having them returned to James for a year or so very nearly convinced him to call off the impending undead attack. 

  “James?”

  “Sorry. Yes, you’re right. But that won’t stop me doing it if they get right in our way.”

  “Of course. Another thought struck me just then - what if they attempt to tell the world about the undead attack before it happens? If they work it out?”

  James’ eyes fell on Ian for the first time in a while. 

  “They would have intense trouble getting anyone to believe them. They could display their abilities to prove it, but most certainly they would be taken to somewhere like Area 51 and given an autopsy. No, I can’t see a way they could inform the world without putting themselves at hideous risk.”

  “Absolutely,” said Ian. “So we’re cleared up on our enemies, then. We just have to find the Necrosis Stone before they do and guard it.”

  A smirked curled under James’ soft crimson fringe. 

  “Exactly. And I know exactly the person to go to to find out where it is.”

  Ian stared. 

  “You do? Who?”

  “Julien Lambert, uncle of Ben Lambert. He’s alive and resides in Milan. He’s been researching us for years.”

  “Then, why haven’t you killed him?”

  “Same reason I didn’t kill Arnaud or Ben until the last minute. I wanted to find out what they knew. Their perspective is bigger than mine or your’s, plus some of them had been researching ley lines and tracking the stone. Julien was the main one on the search for the stone, that’s why I’ve kept his death until last.”

  “It still surprises me how I managed to pull that one off,” said Ian, thoughtfully. “Arnaud was already dying of cancer, but had a few years. I stopped his heart and no one thought to check the cause of death because it was seemingly obvious.”

  “Then why does it surprise you?” enquired James. “I applaud you for it, and it’s why you’re my second in command. No one else I could think of could carry it off with such finesse.”

  Ian bowed his head. “Thank you. So now I presume the idea is to find Julien Lambert, then kill him once we have the information we need?”

  “Absolutely,” said James. “Then we and George’s little manly posse are heading to the location. And we’ll wait for as long as it takes for Varjak and Kate to arrive. Then, if necessary, we‘ll kill them.”

Reviews

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Woo, plot hole filing chapter... Woo... Distasteful Ian. James is tolerable, I enjoy this new dimension to his character. Clean up the pronoun use in the introduction. You give excessive information about the objects around the speaker, but it was unclear of who the speaker was (because of many pronouns). Not a real exciting chapter, but I see your reasons for including it (such as my unhappiness with Ian's presence.) haha