hellbound: the chronicles of vincent black
Where do I begin my story? Hmmm... A good question, indeed. I suppose I should start at something resembling the beginning. Not the true beginning, mind you - we'll come to that soon enough - because to start that far back would take longer than you have. So for now, I suppose I'll start with where I first met my long-standing, ahem, "rival".
And what a black day that was...
It all began on a Tuesday. I distinctly remember, because Tuesday was the day that I always went to forage for food. It's hard, you know, being wanted in twenty-seven countries; even simple things like buying groceries become a whole day's operation. Oh, how I hated it. The running, the screaming, the abject terror of everything that surrounded. And those were the days that everything went well.
Yes, I used to be quite a bit more unstable in those days. I wasn't well. You know you're not well when a paper bag with holes cut in it seems like perfectly suitable headwear. And so I ventured out into the cold, scary world, in search of the basics of life. Like food, and cigarettes.
Everyone's gotta make a living, right? Well, some jobs are more glorious than others. Some jobs you brag about. And some... some are just disturbing. It's amazing what the underbelly of society will do to its own cattle, without their ever knowing. Horrible things that no one - certainly not prim n' proper John (or maybe Jane) Smith, walking about in daylight without a real care in the world - would ever even dare venture a guess about. There's a whole world of darkness out there, kids, that exists below the surface. And it's angry. Angry because it's lost, stuck beneath the place where twilight falls for the last time, just under the asphault-ridden skin that people walk over ever day, unknowing, uncaring, like a mass of gratefully-opiated lambs. Or pedestrians.
Let's put it like this.. I worked for certain policital extremists who wanted to get things done quick and easy, without getting their hands dirty. A contract killer by profession... and that was just my day job.
Yup, I was definitely going to Hell sooner or later. I just... would have preferred later.
But, I'm getting sidetracked. Where was I? Oh, yes... one of my last jobs. You'll forgive me, I hope, if I've forgotten some of the details. I remember a great deal of alcohol, of that I'm certain. I tended to met my clientele in bars. I liked bars. They were crowded, out-of-the-way, and by city ordinance usually had many exits - which was good for me, in case something went horribly awry. Plus, there was lots of booze, of course - that's always good. A little drink makes me happy. Besides... being piss-drunk, I doubt anyone would have thought twice about it if they had overheard some of my conversations. I would have been forced to kill them afterwords, of course, but at least they wouldn't have felt it.
It was in one such bar that, to my then-present memory, I first met Hilda von Grengere. You can always peg the scientist-types the moment they walk in. They're usually tense, for starters. Anyone who's tense in bars like the ones I chose probably doesn't frequent bars very often. And they always look as if they're trying to dress casual so badly it physically pains them. I swear, I had one guy proposition my employeement in khaki shorts and a bright red Hawaiian shirt. I had to leave him in an alley later, he gave me no choice. I didn't feel guilty, though - at least I knew the rats wouldn't bother their own kind.
Hilda, though... she didn't care for flowered shirts, and she certainly wasn't tense. And she smelled more like trouble than cheap cologne. That peculiar smell of brimstone that just seems to linger on certain people. Say, Adolf Hitler, for example. Or newspeople.
And yet, somehow, I knew right away that she was a scientist-type. Not a normal scientist-type though, who was content merely to torture small rodents by putting superglue in their their rectums. And, you know, other humane stuff like that. No, the depths of Nurumberg would have likely been small potatoes to her. Hell, I wouldn't be suprised if she'd been there.
Why? Because she was one of the Dark Ones. You could see it in her eyes that she was not a participant of the human race. More like an overseer. Yup, those cold, calculating, uncaring eyes - you can always spot them if you look hard enough, even though the Dark Ones rarely show themselves in public. You see, those were my true employers. The puppet-masters, the string-pullers, the controllers of human destiny. The beings that everyone conspires and fantasizes about, in their dreams of "little green men" and evil governmental plots, but never see.
But that doesn't mean they aren't there.. they're just a lot nastier than you could ever imagine.
Anyways, Hilda was one of these. And she was very hush-hush. The fact that I was to be a bodyguard for some sort of bizarre expedition was all I could get out of her. I agreed to the contract, reluctantly, against every gut instinct I've ever had, and the next thing I knew I was on foreign soil. I won't bother you with the details of how I got there, that's a whole different mess entirely. For the time being, let's just say 747s now have a reputation for being "unsafe".
But I arrived there in one piece, much to my surprise. So there I stood, on the sandy, sun-blasted surface of some third-world country whose name my employers had chosen to withhold, in a town that looked too weak for even Sally Struthers to champion. My only friends, the battered guitar case that I clutched tightly in my arms, and the vast arsenal hidden inside. The thought crossed my mind, then and there, as it always did during those turbulent times, that I might die. But if I did, it certainly wouldn't be without a fight... and a hella lot of property damage.
Hilda had planned to have the outgoing squad meet in a tenty, pavillion-like thing outside of town. Bodyguards and scientist-types -everywhere-, I've never seen anything like it. Well, maybe I have, but I don't remember. A glaring fault of mine, I must confess. At any rate, it looked like a rather large operation, far too large to ever need the likes of me. I was beginning to have my doubts as to the sincerity of their motives... especially when she decided that none of us would meet until we arrived at the operation point. But, I went along with it.. though I'm still not sure why. After all, it went against everything my paranoid self had been trained to avoid thus far. But, as I said, something was drawing me.. something too powerful to ignore. For the first time, I was more curious than frightened.
Oh, how foolish of me.
She loaded us up one at a time, into canvas-covered supply trucks (probably military surplus), outbound for god-knows-where. After three long, agonizing days of heat rashes and various other sordid desert nastiness, about which I'll spare you the gruesome details, we finally arrived at our destination. Right in the middle of the goddamn Sahara. Well, maybe not the Sahara, exactly - mind you, they wouldn't tell us where we were, and I spotted the black crags of desert moutains looming nearby - but you understand my point.
We stepped out, uncertain of what to expect, and found ourselves inside the base camp: a collection of tents (probably more military surplus), all aggregated around a giant, central pit of sand that spiralled downward toward a temporary structure. The scaffolding that comprised the structure appeared, even from that distance, surprisingly well-constucted. Obviously, someone had funded a costly effort there.
And in the center of all that effort, a stone structure had arisen from the sandy hole, old and chisled. Newly unearthed from some timeless, forgotten place that it had been lost to, I suppose, under the shifting oceans of sand. Ugly, and cold even in the extreme heat... I guessed it had last seen under a sun that shone, oh, who knows how long ago.. and I wondered what it thought of the sun now. God, my head ached that day.
One by one, Hilda directed us out of our respective vehicles, and shooed the workers away. We were left alone with but each other and Hilda, at the top of the excavation pit. There were five of us, all told, and it appeared that we were going to be the only ones to enter. This did not please me, needless to say.
Hilda didn't waste her time with the introductions; it didn't seem terribly important to her that we get to know one another, even though I felt it certainly wouldn't have hurt morale. Oh well. No one ever listens to me. Instead, she brief prattled off who we were, and why we were there.
She began with Vladimov, or Vlad, a tall, circumspect man wearing glasses who was, apparently, not Russian at all. That part, I never figured out. A well-spoken fellow, his word choices were a bit too well-defined for him to be a bodyguard, and yet... he was a bit too above-average build to be there for academic reasons either, if you know what I mean. Of all the team, he seemed the most amiable. Not that that made him at all trustworthy.
Next, there was Ahmed-Buffak-something I didn't catch, also known by his occupational name of "Brand". I chose to call him Brand. Now, unlike Vlad, his reason for being there was fairly obvious. He was a bodyguard, pure and simple. Well, maybe not pure, but he was definitely simple. A man of few words, you could tell by the seven-inch daggers jammed in his belt that he was there for business, and business alone. I had actually heard his name before once or twice, from which I knew that he was a top-notch assassin... that is, if you had the money, and rather unusual tastes in human disposal. Why he was there baffled me at the time. I realized later, much to my regret.
Lastly, there was a quiet fellow by the name of Kain Macrae. I knew right away that there was something odd about him, more so than the rest of the lot. He carried something slender and very long, wrapped in a black cloth of some kind and hoisted over his shoulder. Judging by the way that he held it, if I had tried to take it - or even motioned as if I intended to do so - I would have instantly regretted it. Also, I noted that he stood unusually close to Hilda, devoid of emotion or intention though he was. Never once did I see him blink behind those black shades of his.
Finally, Hilda came to my introduction. She described both Brand and I as "defensive units", into which I read "expendable". Again, not pleased. She claimed that I came quite highly recommended by someone, though she refused to say who. Judging by the doubtful looks I received from the others, this was somehow interpreted as "most expendable". Hmmm... did I mention that I was a bit less stable in those days?
Lastly, we went through basic operational procudure. Hilda explained that we were to enter the Temple, proceed cautiously, and set up interior camp where the previous expedition had lost contact. That seemed simple enough, until I started wondering (out loud) what had happened to the previous expedition. Hilda merely frowned, and replied that that was what we were there to find out.
Lovely. It just gets better and better, doesn't it?
Hilda was the self-designated team leader. Apparently, she had had experience with this sort of thing previously, though I wasn't about to ask how or why. Not with Kain standing right there, anyways. Somehow, that fellow didn't strike me as the "chummy" type.
We braced ourselves, physically and mentally, and gathered together the last of our equipment. We were advised to pack lightly, but I told Hilda that I'd be damned before I'd leave my case behind. Oh, sigh. And so I took one last gasp of sandy, heat-choked air, and one last look at the clear skies above, before following the others naively down the slope. Toward what I had no idea, at the time, would be only the beginning... of the end.
And here, the black day begins.
episode 01: in the beginning...
Vincent Black is my name. Of this, I am certain. Sort of. Rather. Maybe. Why this is my name now, I can't really say, but sometimes you have to choose who you are, before someone else decides to choose for you.
