“Nearly Safe From You”

“Nearly Safe From You”

Acknowledgements

The character of Adam Pierson is the creation and property of Panzer/Davis of Highlander fame. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. Kick and Arturo belong to themselves and to Rain (me). Originally written in June 2000, it was revised through August 2000, but beta readers determined it had serious flaws. Nearly Safe From You sat, practically forgotten, until April 2020 when I was redesigning my Methos Pages and I no longer considered it a failed story, but a story worth breathing new life into.

Thank you to all my invaluable beta readers: Helene and my mother as always . . .

The setting is 1994, a summer night in Paris, before Adam/Methos meets Duncan MacLeod in episode “Methos” (March 1995).

I am Kick. I am a relatively young made-vampire, a huntress, lithe, built for the chase and the pounce. The vampire who made me, Arturo, my intimate and platonic companion, the man I held and followed unquestioningly as my dear father for twenty-four years, is dead. Skewered and burnt by mortal vampire hunters in Bruges. Being an obedient daughter, I hid and I ran. I’ve been running in the shadows across the Low Countries for a full cycle of the moon. But tonight I stalk Paris.

I am starving. I have not taken a victim since Arturo left me; too hesitant to hunt and feed alone despite countless opportunities in Bruges, Antwerp, and Rotterdam. Blood-tinged tears fall down my cheeks with the wrenching pains inside of me. I wipe them away, barely noticing the red stain the wetness leaves on the sleeve of my fitted blouse. A sign reads I am in Pantin, outside of the center of Paris. Finally, I see a person, a man, stepping out of a pub and turning away from the transit stop to walk down the next street. I take up his trail, gaining slowly. A drunken prey is easier prey according to Arturo’s teachings. The man is thin and lanky, with an extremely smooth, not quite hurried, gait. From what I can see of his face, he is about thirty, maybe older, bookish with pale skin. The scent of his intoxicated blood invigorates me, and I feel my teeth growing heated against my gums. I want to take him down now, in the darkness, before he gets to his car or his home or to a crowd.

The man abruptly halts beneath a streetlight. He turns around slowly as I blend easily into a doorway. His arm rises to touch the breast of his long brown coat, but he does not reach inside. I do not plan to mug him if it is his wallet he checks. I survive without money, but not without blood. I will be swift and thorough in my attack.

The man takes off running, and I choose this moment to swoop upon him. I land squarely on his shoulders, my legs wrapping around his waist. I place my palm against his temple and wrench his head back for a clear shot at his neck. Before I can bite the man throws us both to the ground. He lands on top of me, and we roll across the pavement. He struggles to his knees with my arms still enfolding him. His short-lived frantic flailing halts as he silently relinquishes control over to me. I am actually surprised, as my talent for the seductive assault is not nearly as developed as Arturo’s was.

My sharp canine teeth delicately and powerfully puncture his throat and I partake of the sweet crimson blood that flows out of him. Instantly I feel the familiar sensation between a vampire and its victim, the merging of two souls, the tendrils of each reaching for the other. I intuitively hold my tendrils back and try to block the thoughts coming from the man’s head, but images are being thrown at me. I concentrate harder to ignore him and only feed, but his thoughts are overpowering. They are ice cold and ferocious. He has tasted blood himself, this man. He has survived millennia. He has bathed in blood—killed tens of thousands and watched so many more die at the hands of others. But he considers himself... reformed?

How does his panicked, dying brain lie to me in this way? This man is not a murderer. He is not older than Christ. His mind also tells me he is an observer, a student, an historian. He wants only to be at home in his small dark apartment surrounded by ancient manuscripts reading aloud in the otherwise dead languages. He has a phone call to make. To the northwestern corner of America, where it always rains. He personally detests the constant downpours, and is glad he has never traveled there. He’s forgotten to buy another six pack of that strange dark brew he liked last week at the bar.

Why doesn’t this man think instead of fighting me, of escaping my monstrous grasp? I am confused with this mental checklist of things to do. No human has ever appeared this calm before. No human has pushed such vivid montages of fantasy or the mundane across our thought-bridge. They have always been afraid. Afraid to die, afraid to realize their childhood fairy tale demons are real and draining their life force.

This man is different. He does not wish to die, but he is not alarmed. He is even curious of ME. He wishes to write about me in ancient Greek. I would not be able to read it. I am neither that old, nor that educated. I was twenty, a high-school dropout (not because I wasn’t book smart), when Arturo decided I should leave humanity for vampirism. The man, very clearly now, points his thoughts to a story he once painstakingly composed, for a ghost writing contest amongst friends, with creatures of night, creatures of fright, creatures of blood, money and titles, surgeons and electricity.

I am full of blood now, but so entranced by him, I continue feeding. His once vigorous heartbeat has been slowing as I tried to make this meal last. I didn’t want to kill, but I think I have.

I drop the man to the street, his eyes closed. He doesn’t breathe. I should move on, but for some strange reason I can’t. His blood is hot and pumps furiously through my arms and legs as I continue to kneel over his body. He looks even younger and paler now, a finely chiseled face, his nose a little too large, but not taking away from his beauty in the least. His brown hair is short and feathers with a strange swirling pattern. I run my hand through it. It is as soft and fine as his skin felt against my lips moments ago.

I remember the man had started to reach inside his coat earlier. What had he been searching for? I take my hand and plunge it between his coat and sweater. My fingers feel something cold, hard, and sharp. I use my other hand to gently tug the coat away from his chest, but before I can reveal the weapon, the man breathes; sudden and deep. But he is DEAD. I killed him. I heard his heart stop not a minute before.

His eyes fly open to stare at me, horrified. His hand shoots up to grab a hold of my wrist, still attached to his coat. I am so astounded I do not even think to wrench away. I want to run. But the desire to know how he has tricked me supersedes anything else.

Is he the demon, and not I? Has he truly killed tens of thousands? Am I next?

“What are you?” I hiss in French.

The man twists himself to a sitting position, still keeping ahold of my wrist. His dark eyes never leave mine. Can they see his blood still on my teeth? Before he speaks, he reaches with his free hand to brush his neck, the spot I had torn open as my fount to drain him. I follow his hand and see the two wounds have disappeared. He IS a demon, or a witch controlling my mind. Yes, that is it. I am really still feeding and he is sending me these images making me believe I’ve killed him and watched him live again.

Now I do wrench myself away from him and try to stand. He will not let go. For a slender man he is very strong.

“Let go of me, now!” I say, barely audible.

“Not until you tell me who you are,” he answers. He is not French, but British.

I let my eyes reveal more of their intense preternatural power. I switch to English; I speak English better anyway. “I am no one. And neither are you. Now LET ME GO.”

“I know exactly WHAT you are,” he surprises me. “Though I never thought it would take so many years to meet another one. What I meant was: what is your name?”

“What is your name?” I echo.

“Adam,” he readily admits. “Did no one ever teach you to ask permission before taking sustenance?”

“Does a farmer ask the hog before butchering and making sausage?” I huff. His hand is still on me. I spit, “You are a killer.”

“And you killed me.”

“You’re not dead now. And you have lived too long or you are convincingly delusional.”

“How long have you lived? Since 1970? 1900? 1800?” Adam pauses, before moving backward to, “1700?” He furrows his eyebrows, studying my near-perfected, youthful vampiric visage. “I say my first guess is closest.”

And of course it is. He’s a demon, I dislike recalling. But age is relative. Maturity is relative. Since Arturo’s death and my wandering the Low Countries keeping it low-key in the shadows, I’ve been sneaking these unwelcome suspicions that Arturo had kept me sheltered, controllable, even long before he turned me into a vampire. Am I a child of 40 who is only now learning to live after I’m dead? What am I even doing and why?

“Wisdom teaches sentient beings,” Adam was saying, “to respect a certain protection of unnecessary suffering. Morality teaches intelligent beings, such as you and me, to respect one another’s feelings and the concept of consent.”

“Okay, I acknowledge that you’re angry I bit you without asking first and please let me be on my way!” My lack of special seductive powers annoys me even more in this line of conversation and I ache for Arturo’s gifts which in his company, I used to take advantage of, skate on, and depend on.

“Not yet. What is your name?” he demands for a second time. Adam’s face remains cold and calm, dark hazel eyes penetrating me. He is definitely a witch. A witch with low level mind powers. A witch with a sword in his coat.

My Arturo was killed with a sword. But this man was not there with the vampire hunters; I would recognize him, I would recognize their detestable scent on him.

I still don’t answer him, and he asks if there are more vampires in Paris.

“Vampires?” I laugh. Then I laugh again simply because of the lunacy of this whole situation. The two of us, sitting like mentally deranged homeless on a city street, paying absolutely no care to who might see us or overhear us.

“Yes, vampires, like yourself. I know you’re a vampire. I once knew one. I liked him. I could like you. Are you alone in Paris?”

“Probably not. I just got to town though. Saw you. Dug in. Let me go.”

“Get yourself free,” Adam taunts.

“I don’t want to hurt you.”

“NOW, you don’t want to hurt me,” he smiles, pats my leg with his other hand, his first hand’s fingers wrap completely around my wrist.

I swallow, still tasting the elixir of his blood. If I tell him about more of my kind or if I don’t tell him, will he cut out my heart with his blade? Maybe that would be for the best. I am free from Arturo and that terrifies me; I’ve been running in terror, not knowing if the hunters follow, or if new hunters catch my trail. Alone I have no guide, no partner, and no direction. And yet, alone I have all directions, endless paths. If I survive this night, I ought to pick one and start running to something instead of away.

“You aren’t very afraid of me,” I tell him.

Adam smirks slightly. “You drained several liters of my blood. You’re not so hungry anymore.”

Well, he has me there.

And what is Adam anyway? His confidence now, and his thoughts a moment ago, makes me fear he could be more powerful and more dangerous than me. I could end up Adam’s slave or a traitor leading this sword wielder to a nest of unsuspecting vampires or even a network. Arturo had hinted of networks of the nests.

“There definitely USED to be vampires in Paris,” I throw him a tidbit. “They ran a theatre. It burned down in the late 1800s. The leader ended up in the New World on an island someplace.” Arturo had lots of stories of our kind to fill our years together. Who told him, he never told me.

“What about Geneva?” Adam asks. He is serious, his voice still sharp, but less furious, and he obviously has genuine reasons why he wants to know.

I don’t want him to have a reason to keep me, but I want him to have a reason to keep me alive. “Haven’t been to Geneva,” I say. “And we’re not Hollywood, we don’t all know each other. So, if you want to find more of us, your guess is as good as mine.”

“My guess is you’re only recently a solitary vampire. Are you looking for more of your kind as well?”

I don’t argue with that, and only answer, “My kind doesn’t always welcome outsiders.”

Adam sighs, “We have more in common than you think.”

Well, we’re both older than we look, we’re not entirely human, if he ever was, we’ve both met and liked at least one vampire, and I find myself much too curious about some of his jumbled but incredible dying thoughts. And now I notice that Adam is no longer holding my wrist. He’s let me go. I don’t bolt. And he does not rise from the sidewalk pavers to leave either. He simply swings around so his feet are off the curb, lower and more comfortable to sit with me. His legs are thin, in black denim, and on his feet he wears worn brown rubber-soled boots.

My eyes and ears quickly search the street for movement, for risk, I perceive little; the canal water laps, the train yard clanks lazily. I return to concentrating on Adam, letting my body relax in an almost cat-like way. When he opens his mouth to speak to me again, his voice is inviting and soothing and only slightly tired. The intense, silky British accent nearly knocks me over.

“I only live a block from here. I was nearly safe from you.”

I find myself smiling at him. What is wrong with me? “Nearly,” I echo. Then, bravely, “I’m Kick.”

“Kick?” he repeats. “Uncommon name.”

“Yes it is,” I agree. “Short for Katherine.” My mother had admired the Kennedys and American President JFK’s sister Kathleen called Kick. Until now, I had pushed all thoughts of my mother deep down, all my requirements and affections determined by Arturo. Did I still have a mother?

“Who made you?” he wants to know. That’s too personal a question, especially after my last reflection. So is his next. “Have you made others?”

Arturo forbade me to make a fledgling, at least until I am much older. Something about “potency” and “durability”, but his reasons seemed foggy and secondhand. I counter, “Why do you say we have things in common?”

“I told you I’d met a vampire before. That was Geneva.”

“And he knew what you were?”

“I am Adam, a grad student at the University. I’m just a guy. I am not anything else, Kick.”

He lies, but so do I; although I can’t help wanting to trust him. I no longer believe he is employing any witch mind powers, but he absolutely has compelling personality traits.

“Could have fooled me. Why do you carry a sword?” I ask.

“It’s, umm,” Adam stammers. “It’s a hobby of mine. I was just bringing this Ivanhoe back home after a get-together of sorts.”

“You don’t lie very well, Adam.” It is the first time I say his name out loud. It reverberates silkily across my mouth. “I killed you. And now you’re here talking to me. How?” I get to the point.

“Oh, you wouldn’t believe the lies I’ve had to tell over the years, Miss Kick. I’m quite the ac-tor,” he embellishes the last word theatrically.

“And you’ve killed countless times; fields and villages ran with blood. You study dead languages at University, but you are really scouring the brittle pages for mentions of yourself,” I bite my tongue, not having wanted to reveal how much I saw in his mind while we were connected by my feeding. If all of this is true, it makes him a creature far more evil than even I was embraced to be. Vampires kill to eat. He killed to laugh and spread terror and maintain power and respect amongst his brothers. I fight back an unwelcome shiver.

He reminds me, “And you did not have permission to see any of that in my mind, or to bite me in the first place.”

I almost apologize. “Just start explaining,” I bare my fangs to remind him of who he is speaking with. “Or I will kill you again, as many times as it takes to make you tell me.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Adam chuckles, not in the least afraid of me. I’ve lost my advantage, my vampire credibility, and I’ve lost my mind. I do my best to glare at him and for some reason, even though he doesn’t have to, he finally agrees with my terms. “Alright, alright. I’m an Immortal. No super human powers besides the fact that I can’t stay dead. There are a bunch of us running around. I carry this sword to protect myself from the others. I’ve done a pretty good job of it so far. What?” Adam cocks his head at me, his eyebrows raised. “Don’t believe this story either? Too far-fetched? Well, at least I don’t have to drink blood to stay alive. Bacon and eggs work just as well for me,” he smirks.

“And beer,” I add.

“I’ll buy you one,” he offers. “I’m thirsty myself ever since you drank me.”

“I get it,” I roll my eyes. “I’ll ask, I’ll ask twice next time.” Might there be a next time? Are we becoming friends? “Did your vampire friend in Geneva feed on you?” I dare question.

“No. But I helped arrange a willing donor.”

Extraordinary.

“It was a year without a summer,” Adam continues. “Darkness at noon was the norm, constant rain and damp, unusually spectacular sunsets. And devastating crop failures led to famine, migrations, death. A desperate person would practically sacrifice their soul in exchange for the money to provide for their family.”

I am speechless, transfixed. Am I covetous as well? Vampires might pay victims for their blood? In an accepted, if inevitably covert, social contract?

“Your maker emphasized the primal, violent hunt for blood, didn’t they, Kick? Did they ignore the civilized option or were they ignorant themselves?”

“I don’t know which,” I whisper. I know this upheaves everything. Arturo’s averseness to humans as anything but food and enemy seems now an unfair philosophy. Pouncing on unsuspecting victims, imposing unbridled horror and probability of death is not the only way. Humans making themselves available, agreeing to let me take the ‘little drink’ often enough I might learn to control my thirst? “Would you help me?”

“I don’t know,” Adam replies. “Can you help me?”

I consider which of his earlier questions to answer. I tell him, “There’s one obvious vampire in Reims. I didn’t introduce myself. And there’s one less in Bruges.”

“Your maker?”

I nod. “Destroyed by hunters.”

“I’m sorry for that. A maker, a mentor, is a profound loss. I’m hunted too.”

“You said so...”

“I mean currently.” Adam’s worried eyebrows are back.

“You’re changing the subject,” I accuse.

“I’m actually bringing it back. Stay with my line of explanation and you’ll see. This is my asking for your help.”

“I’m listening.” I listen to him. I listen to the Paris street. There is still no one around but us. It is as if we’re in our own shadowy bubble at one in the morning in “La Ville-Lumière,” enlightening each other.

Adam wonders, “How many vampires do you think there are, per capita? How likely are you to bump into them?”

I am sure Adam is not the kind of vampire hunter I’ve encountered personally or heard about from Arturo. He isn’t of the same training as the rest; he’s the con man, or he’s the rogue, or he’s the innocent. All the evidence, stolen thoughts and conversation, points to something besides hunter, more like what he claims to be. But his questions are still similar to what a hunter would ask.

“In America, not often. Europe is more densely populated, but still not often,” I reply plainly. “May I look at your sword? You did manage to stop me the first time.”

“No,” he kindly refuses.

“You’re an immortal man. You claimed only other Immortals can kill you. What’s the harm in me, a vampire, looking at your sword?”

“No harm, Kick, if you mean no harm. Alright.”

With olive-green irises never leaving my eyes, Adam peels back the breast of his overcoat. Even from where we rest in the scant light, my vampire eyes discern the weapon’s ornate craftsmanship immediately. I know little of swords, but this Ivanhoe, as he identified it, displays more aesthetic qualities than I have ever seen in a hilt. It is cast of antiqued bronze with two slender lions, each creeping toward a central crest. The grip is wrapped in golden strips of leather leaving maroon-colored leather diamonds showing from underneath. It makes it look like a lattice crusted cherry pie. The extremity of the hilt is rounded, and in it is set a large, round green gem. It radiates antique energy. And it must be worth a huge sum.

I set my gaze back on Adam. He covers the sword again with his coat. “What else?” I urge him to keep talking. “What can a vampire possibly help you with?”

He says, “Don’t you feel rather exposed out here in the open? As I said my apartment is close. I live alone,” he adds as an incentive of what – my safety?

“Hmmm,” I consider following him home. I do want to be inside. I also do not want to lose track of time and come face to face with sunrise.

“That’s not a ‘no’,” Adam elects. “Let’s go.”

I accompany him to his apartment, number 3. It is an erroneous rumor that we must be invited into a person’s home, but still, the politeness is appreciated. When he flips on the lamps I am in awe. The white walls completely envelop us. Most of the floor and furniture is a dark metal gray or clear glass. I step down the few stairs from the entryway landing and swiftly circumnavigate the space, noting in particular the big warehouse-type windows surrounding a bed, set of stereo components, desk and computer, and a closet with a solid door. But most fantastic are his sculptures in multitude: modern and ancient marbles, painted screens, things that look more like scientific gadgets and pieces of larger mechanical feats. There is also what I already expected to find: towers and haphazard shelves of books, drawers of letters, mink oil. It smells of leather and mustiness, but also grass and vanilla.

I choose a soft, clean chair in the middle of the room, facing both the bed and the door, statues looking over my shoulders. I can hear the canal just below and the creaking of a metal truss bridge.

Adam opens the fridge and gets himself a can of beer before he perches on the foot of the bed.

“Well, Kick, one of those other Immortals I spoke of is presently hunting me. I’m not running exactly, more like avoiding, staying out of his way where I can. But it’s complicated in Paris. At the moment, this is my home base. I’m deeply embedded here,” he explains. “I’d prefer a confrontation with this Immortal not become my burn notice.”

“So I kill him for you?” I offer immediately. That sounds fun.

“No! What have I just been trying to teach you?”

“Refrain from making other creatures suffer unnecessarily,” I paraphrase with pride in remembering.

“And...”

I pout. “Respect his choice in feeding from him or not,” I unhappily recall.

“Yes, Kick,” Adam says. He takes a long swallow from his beer. “What I need is a second set of eyes, a guardian, or even an accomplice. That’s you, if you accept.” He waits for my response, but I wait, unmoving, to hear more. “This Immortal has his own partner following him, Watching out for him. I need the pair surveilled. I need them distracted. I need an opportunity to turn the tables and strike first, but essentially undetected. Are you interested in being that distraction?”

“Maybe. If it doesn’t put me in danger,” I apply conditions.

“It shouldn’t. And I’ll protect you any way I can before and after our... operation ‘Hunt the Hunter’,” Adam truly makes the quote signs in the air.

“And I don’t kill them, but you do?”

“Right. I’ll take down only the Immortal. Our kind play within a set of rules and he’s opted in to the Game. He’s on the offensive, so that’s a kind of consent.”

“I have a lot to learn,” I decide; a lot to learn about life (life after death for vampires) and about Adam. He is beyond complex; and enticingly captivating. I should help him? “But why would you want to protect me?”

“It’s an odd impulse, isn’t it?” he replies. “But as I couldn’t help but notice, while you fed on me, there was a connection. I felt more than your fangs. Your mind reached into mine.”

This revelation disturbs me. I put a lot of effort into shielding my own thoughts from my victims. But it’s over, he saw what he saw. Our building plans are of a new level of friendship and conspiracy, and I accept the intimacy began sooner than I realized.

“Your fear of hunters is strong and it is real,” Adam goes on. “It’s consuming you. With my own martial training, I believe I can protect you.”

“But why?” I demand again. My grief and my insecurities cannot be enough motive for him.

He sets his beer can on the table. “Do you know the author Mary Shelley? I did.”

“Frankenstein,” I say. I’m not great with literature, but Shelley’s creature is infamous.

“Yes. Well Frankenstein was fiction. But Mary’s compassion of poor tormented creatures was quite real. She often spoke of it, and it drove her novel. Neither Immortals nor vampires should be hunted merely for the perversion of nature that we are.”

I mull over what he has said. No one has ever been so kind towards me in a very long time. I tell him, “You’re kind.”

“I can be kind. In my long existence, I’ve also been the extreme opposite of kind, but it proved far less satisfying to live with myself. So, Kick, will you help me?”

“My thirst will return by tomorrow night.”

Adam holds out his arm, pulls up his sleeve as if offering his wrist. While there is a tattoo on the inside of his arm, just above his palm, like a fork whose two tines curve outward within a circle, I fixate on the alluring, pulsing veins beneath. His voice interrupts my increasing focus, “I have more blood. Don’t take me by surprise again.” I force my hungry eyes to rise up to his determined hazel ones again. He vows softly, “I’ll look into more sustainable sources of donors for the future.”

I say, “I’ll help you, Adam.”

“It’s a deal.”

We shake hands; his is hot, still pulsing, and resolute. I inhale of the beer on his breath: ripe fruit and grain, a little bit sour. It helps the craving.

“Will you stay here this morning?” he wonders. “I saw you scoping out my dark closet. With all my delicate research materials around here, I usually keep the shades drawn all day. I don’t have a coffin to lend you.”

“I don’t sleep in a coffin,” I huff. Well, I have, but I really don’t prefer the stench of cemeteries and decomposing bedfellows. I might also accuse him of trying to add me to his collection of light-sensitive objects.

“Sorry, a poor joke.” Adam grins, his face scrunching up, the lines at the corners of his mouth multiplying exponentially. I can’t stay mad at him.

I accept his invitation. We discuss in deeper detail tailing his Immortal hunter, tailing the Watcher whom shall not be touched, and taking the next steps in our operation. I even try a beer from his fridge to celebrate our alliance. It’s not living blood, yet I enjoy it.

Ça s’arrose! [French: That deserves a drink!]

FIN

first penned June 28, 2000
revised through May 20, 2020

Images of blonde woman by beegaia from Pixabay

Copyright 2020 Rainofhearts

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