The Sainted Confessor, part 3

[tinhuvielartanis]

The cab ride took approximately 25 minutes from Studio 54 to Faust’s modest domicile on Bleecker in Soho. An overly renovated building, it was just this side of being ramshackle, artists’ paint literally holding it together in places. This was a domain for creative souls, souls who embraced their phoenix and flew with it from the ashes of their mundane existence.

The moment the cab stopped, Faust thrust a hefty sum of cash at the driver, thanked him profusely. The driver grinned and nodded in appreciation at the Darkling, gave him his name and number, and said in a thick accent, “You ever need ride, you ask for Draggan, k? I’ll be good to you, young man. You? You good soul.”

“Thank you, Draggan! I’ll be sure to call just you next time I need to go somewhere. You’ve been wonderful to my companion and me, and I really do appreciate it.”

As they exited the cab, Draggan scowled at Cadmus and gave him the Romany sign of the Evil Eye. Cadmus just stared blankly back at Draggan, searching for any flaw in his body that could be touched just a little. There.. right there. A clot in the man’s leg, ready to break free. Cadmus nudged it with his mind and felt the tiny killer float into the man’s blood stream. It would reach his lungs shortly and that would be the end of Draggan and his Gypsy Evil Eye.

Cadmus pretended a sweet smile, even lifting his lower eye lids the way he’d seen so many humans in full mirth do. “Have a nice life, Draggan,” he rasped, illiciting another sign of protection from the Gypsy cab driver as he followed Faust onto the street in front of the Darkling’s apartment building.

“Here, here!” Faust motioned for Cadmus to follow and they were soon climbing the stairs up to the third and top floor of the decrepit building.

“Sorry there’s no elevator,” and Faust stopped suddenly, which seemed to be a habit of his, Cadmus was beginning to realise, and turned on the step. He smiled, his blood-stained lips shining in the half-light. “Not yet anyway.”

An optimist. This building would die soon after Faust would, Cadmus could feel it in the abused bones of its architecture. Cadmus drifted just enough to capture the language of the city that whispered beneath and around this dying place, and all he heard was the promise of passing and forgetfulness. Faust had chosen his place wisely.

Faust continued on, his boundless energy never allowing him to see the predator in his midst. “This place, it has real history. Not history as in ‘official’ history,” he said, making the quotation symbols with his fingers. “No no. It’s a creative history. I remember it when a lot of the radio stars of old would come to practice their songs and work on their scripts. It was a kind of an unofficial watering hole for the voice actors and song-writers. Real Busby Berkeley vintage goodness. Ah!”

Faust tilted his head back, rolling his eyes upward, suddenly enraptured in a memory as apparently real to him as the ancient Vampire standing on the step just below him. “Well, that was in the 30s. Then in the 40s and 50s it became more of an artists’ retreat, but the songs played on.” He continued the climb up the narrow stair well, talking the entire time. “The 60s saw the Hippies move in and boy, was that the berries!”

He still spoke in a manner befitting of someone at least 30 years out of his element, which reminded Cadmus that it was time for him to reinvent himself. His Mod persona was a little beyond stale and the Psychedelic era of London had begun to perish with the growing madness of Syd Barrett. Guess that’s what happens when you ingest substances to see the eyes of God and, instead, gaze into the event horizons that were Cadmus depthless pools. Cadmus got lost in savouring Syd’s spirit, imprisoned with so many others inside the empty, hungry pit where there should have resided a soul, and he lost track of Faust’s one-sided conversation.

“And now here we are, the 70s… Who knew they’d be even freer and crazier than the 60s? I mean, how far can it go, really? Do you think we’ve finally reached a point as a species that we can embrace true Free Will and not lose our connection to God? Or do you believe that true Free Will is the only surefire way of finding God? Because it’s been said that the only thing God gave us really, besides life that is, was Free Will. It’s up to us what we do with it. Here we are.”

Faust opened the door to his apartment and bowed a little, his hands going out in a gesture of welcome. “After you, Cadmus!”

Before Cadmus began to explore the apartment, he said to Faust, “You speak as though you were still human Faust. The debate surrounding God, whether or not it exists, and what it may want from the humans, is really none of our concern. Quite honestly, we’re better than now, you and I, and our kith and kin.”

The door closed behind him and Cadmus turned to see a genuinely troubled Faust standing before him. Despite being an inch or so taller than Cadmus, Faust seemed so much smaller. It was quite astounding how a person’s inhabitance of their body could dictate the spiritual size of that body. And, even though Faust was big in spirit, perhaps the biggest Vampire Cadmus had ever met in that respect, his naïveté diminished his stature to an almost childlike size compared to Cadmus’ compact force of nature.

“You don’t really believe that do you? I mean, you were human once, which means that, despite your Vampiric existence now, you’re still bound by the laws of God and man in some small way, don’t you think?”

“I think,” Cadmus said, not wanting to give much away until he had Faust where he wanted him. “That is a matter for another conversation. Right now, I believe you had some questions about your Blood family.”

“Yes! You’re right. Before we begin, can you get you something from the kitchen? I have some spirits of a variety, and some cheeses. Shrimp cocktail. Or there’s a great Chinese place a half a block from here. I could go get us some take-out, if you’d prefer.”

-Saying what he always did in situations like this, Cadmus responded graciously, “I’m not hungry, young Faust, but I will take a tiny bit of Brandy, if you have it.”

Faust pointed a finger at Cadmus and smiled impossibly again, turning in the direction of the kitchen. The minute he left, Cadmus walked back to the front door and tapped the top two corners of the frame, creating a geasa of silence. He then moved to the small windows in the front room and did the same to them. Slipping into the adjacent room, which was Faust’s bedroom, he quickly placed the geasa on the windows there and on the small window in the bathroom that connected the bedroom to front room. The apartment was tiny. The only other windows that may be left would be in the kitchen, so Cadmus followed Faust into the kitchen out of feigned friendliness.

“May I help with anything?” he asked the young Vampire, who was gathering tools for what Cadmus recognized as the Ritual of the Green Faery. Spying the window over the sink, Cadmus leaned in as though to stretch and tapped the top of the frame in each corner. This place sonically did not exist, which was just the way he wanted it.

“Oh no no no. No. I got it. Please just make yourself at home and I’ll be in three shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

Cadmus offered a conciliatory smile and returned to Faust’s front room, where he began to explore. The walls were lined with book shelves as far as a book would go on them, placed with great care and not a small amount of love. The topics ranged from old to new fiction, art books, books on music and film, philosophy, religion, the occult. There were little books of nothing but quotes and huge tomes of cooking recipes. Dictionaries, encyclopedia, trivia and joke books, books on how to speak Greek, Russian, Portuguese, and he could go on…. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to Faust’s literary taste except that he had a taste for anything remotely literary.

In one corner of the room was a large canvas on which was a partially-completed painting of … something. It reminded Cadmus a lot of what Syd would paint when dropping acid. Perhaps what Cadmus was looking at was the unfinished work of God, not a representation of or a work thereof, but God itself unfinished. If he could have been, Cadmus would have been greatly amused by this thought. The very idea of God sitting unfinished in a forgotten pad in a crumbling building in Soho was ironic to the point of being absurd.

There was also an entertainment center which comprised of a 19-inch television with insectoid rabbit ear antennae, adorned with the obligatory tinfoil on the ends to boost reception for the three networks ABC, CBS, and NBC, and maybe the Public Broadcast System if you were lucky. Everyone needed happy trees, Snuffleuppagus, and Easy Reader in their lives. In the adjoining nook sat a record player sitting atop a receiver to boost the sound. Cadmus moved closer to look behind the turntable and receiver. He followed the wires to their logical conclusions of two modestly large silver speakers strategically positioned for the best sound quality of Faust’s music. A small cabinet area underneath the sound system revealed Faust’s record collection, which comprised primarily of Jazz from the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s. But there was a fair smattering of 60’s pop and psychedelia, 70’s AOR and, of course, Disco. It wasn’t as if Faust weren’t trying to fit into this new age, he just wasn’t trying very hard.

“Oh I see you found my music,” Faust said from behind Cadmus. His voice almost made Cadmus jump, which hadn’t happened since the days when Nissius would wake the dark child before the sun had set, jolting him into painful confusion and the anticipation of the misery to come. Faust set Cadmus on edge and Cadmus found it increasingly irritating that this youngster would have such an effect on one as lofty as he. “Feel free to put on any record you want. We can enjoy some music while we drink and talk. Just don’t play it too loud. I’ve got some neighbours, oh you have no idea. Things get just a little noisy around here sometimes and it’s like you’ve put a bug in their butts. You’d think this being the Village, no one would care.”

And Faust made a muted snort in the back of his throat to emphasise what he was saying. “No such thing as creative expression when it comes to some residents.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” Cadmus replied, pulling a Kool & the Gang record out of the eclectic collection and placing it on the turn table. Funk flew out of the speakers like flamboyant jungle birds, but not too very loudly, not that it mattered. As for Faust’s neighbours they’d appreciate how polite he’d suddenly become regarding his noise levels. The boy would be downright….silent.

With the music softly playing, Faust set in to the tray before Cadmus and himself. Offering Cadmus his modest Brandy, Faust then prepared the Absinthe in the French ritual, creating a pale, milky green concoction of he instantly began to partake with special relish, leaning back in his worn easy chair and closing his eyes for a moment.

“Star Wormword,” Cadmus remarked, watching the young Vampire pollute his body with human potions that had never personally had any effect on Cadmus.

“The portent of the End Times,” Faust replied, raising his crystal of jade liquid in Cadmus’ direction. “You’re right, of course, this is a dangerous drink, if that’s what you’re getting at. But I’m just too tempted not to keep trying! When the Indians had their peyote, Europeans had Absinthe. How else was the White Man ever gonna hope to see the face of God?”

“Is that why you do it, then? To see the face of God? What if God has no face?” taunted Cadmus. “What if there’s no god at all?”

Faust scowled at this, knitting his eyebrows again in an almost caricature of a dismayed comic strip character. “I….I honestly don’t know how to answer that, friend. I just know what I feel, and I feel that there’s got to be something out there greater than all this. Everything makes too much sense for it not to.”

“You really think all this makes sense?”

Cocking his head and turning his mosaic eyes to and fro as though to study every shred of creation at his fingertips, Faust fell silent for what seemed like an eternity. Cadmus watched has face study as much of his inner world as he did the world that surrounded him. Faust wasn’t one to rush into an assumption about a subject he considered important, nor was he one for snap judgments. If he’d been given the opportunity, Faust would have been a formidable Dark Philosopher. “I think…. No… I believe… that this existence, this song of which we are all a part, could not have just written itself. There has to be a songwriter somewhere, or a Great Author or Divine Playwright. It seems only logical to me. Only someone keen on the most unusual story in the universe, would cook something like Vampires up in their imagination kitchen, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would not,” Cadmus said simply. “But it isn’t for me to change your mind about the nature of God, or even whether or not it exists. What I would like to know is how you came into your current Darkling state before I tell you a bit about your progenitors Rebekah of Judea and her Ethopian Soulmate Mephistpheles. How old are you, for instance? From where to you originally hail? What is it you’re trying to do now, in this incarnation?”