#bdbau

Written by @My_Own_Male.

https://tl.gd/n_1sruv8m

I sit at the great desk in my darkened study staring down at the two lines of powder carefully drawn out on the mirror lying atop it. I craved it. Needed it. It called to me like a lover, like a siren. I catch sight of myself in a dark reflection of the mirror across the room. I almost do not recognize myself. The male I had been is gone. All that is left is a shadow, a gaunt reflection with cheek bones too sharp, a jawline too defined. I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. I cannot think of anything other than ahvenging my mate. My temper is uncertain, any claims I’d ever had to charm long gone by the wayside. I bark at Ehric and Evale. I have hurt Markcus with my rudeness when he diffidently brings me a tray in an effort to get me to eat. And I have avoided all contact with the Brotherhood. I do not want to see the pity in their eyes and I do not want either their help or their interference. I only want rehvenge. And then to die.

My task was nearly complete. Benloise’ mother, Maria, now ran the cartel with an iron hand from a penthouse in Rio. Thanks to a heretofore unknown talent for computers, Markcus had managed to hack her emails. Though she’d had no direct contact with my prey, the ancient bitch had made an overture to him through an intermediary. The intermediary was to meet with the would-be heir to the throne and deliver 30 kilos of uncut cocaine. I had intercepted him and now /I/had the 30 kilos /and/ the intermediary. He had been most helpful, if unintentionally. His mind was not particularly strong and I had rummaged through it with the deftness of a butcher with a meat cleaver and thoroughness of a surgeon with a scalpel.

He’d been left alive. A vegetable, but alive as a warning to the old woman now in charge of the South American operation should she be tempted to take further action. This man had not been a middle man nor was he a dealer. He had been a highly placed lieutenant tasked with delivering the drugs as a small test of the boy’s ability to assume his half-brother’s place in the organization. My foray into the psyche of the middle-aged human had revealed a great deal about both the Benloise operation and the young man who murdered my mate. Not only had the emissary been trusted by Maria Benloise and entrenched in the distribution channel of the cartel, he had raised the monster that had destroyed all that was precious to me. His name is Luis Silva, adopted father of Alejandro.

Alejandro Silva, better known among the denizens of the Florida juvenile penal system as Alex Silver, was the unacknowledged bastard child of Arturo Benloise, the father of Ricardo, Eduardo and Victoria Benloise. Arturo had abandoned his wife and children decades before Alex’s birth, and, though he had moved from Columbia to Brazil, it was a pattern he’d carried with him. Alex’s mother, Juliana, had thought she was Arturo’s legal wife until she became ill two years after the infant’s birth. Although Arturo had traded countries and become well-to-do enough to afford a young trophy wife, he was not willing to deal with a female who was going to require expensive, and likely fruitless, treatments and a toddler he considered more a nuisance than a son. He’d revealed the marriage had been a sham, the priest a fake and their child illegitimate as he threw her onto the streets without even a fresh diaper for the child.

That had been 23 years ago. Ricardo had been only 30 years of age but his drug trade had been flourishing. The devastated and desperately ill female, having been made aware of her ‘husband’s’ legal wife and legitimate progeny, made the journey from Brazil to throw herself not on Ricardo’s mercy, but his mother’s.

Maria had been a hard woman as Ricardo, Eduardo, and Vitoria grew up. The depths of their poverty demanded she show no weakness if she were to keep her children alive, but Ricardo in particular had revered her. As his business grew she found herself living a luxurious existence with homes in various South American countries. However, wealth and age hadn’t dulled her edge and, as Ricardo adored her, she had wielded a great deal of power in the growing cartel. While she hadn’t wanted a rival for her children’s power she could not hate the young woman who came humbly before her begging for a chance for her child. Juliana had been as duped by Arturo as she herself had been some 30 years before and now brain cancer would take the young mother’s life before her son’s third birthday. Though she could not save Juliana, she took pity on the child and promised she would see him cared for. What she did not promise was a place for him atop the empire Ricardo was building.

Instead, she arranged a situation for the boy. One that took him away from the South American base of operations and him well south of Ricardo’s American base of operations in Caldwell. The drug pipeline ran from Columbia through Miami and the head of the operation there was being replaced by Luis Silva, a nephew of Maria’s in his 20’s. He had a young wife, but no children. It had been a simple matter to forge birth documents for the toddler and ship him off to America with Luis and his wife.

It had been painful to view Luis’s memories of his wife. They had been warm and content, a lifetime of loving that I was forever denied now but I took some satisfaction in seeing the memories he had of the demon-spawn he’d harbored were filled with a strange mix of disappointment and anger. Even though he’d been kept in ignorance of Luis’s business, as a young teen the boy had become a junior member of a local gang. And as a junior member he’d escaped arrest when the gang had been raided only because a cop on the Benloise payroll recognized him and shielded him. Rather than arrested, the 14 year-old was hauled home in the back of a police car and given into Luis’s custody. Alex’s surly, unrepentant attitude had been the least of Luis's problems. Alex’s involvement with the gang had endangered the Benloise pipeline. It had been concluded that Alex had to be informed of his father’s connection to a larger, wealthier organization and his potential future in it if they were to persuade him to renounce his gang affiliation. And it had worked. Alex turned into, if not a model student, at least one that was only a bully and not an obvious criminal. That he lacked the subtlety required of a Benloise drug lord was apparent so the decision not to tell him of his relationship to the Benloise family was made. Instead, he’d been groomed to be a future enforcer and eventual right hand to Luis. But when Ricardo and Eduardo disappeared and Vitoria was killed Luis had taken it upon himself to tell the now 25 year-old of his true connection to the cartel. That had been all it had taken for Alex to take himself to Caldwell and declare himself the unrecognized heir to the empire.

Perhaps if I had been a better male I would have pitied the toddler who lost his mother, the boy who had been guided into a life of brutality, but I doubt it. As it was I was grimly satisfied to know the identity and weaknesses of the monster who had taken my reason for living from me. Knowledge is power. I now had great power over Alejandro Silva. He just did not know it yet. But he would. Soon.

The merchandise and terms were originally to have been delivered to a 12th floor condo in the Commodore. That would not do. Never let your opponent set the field of battle. Besides, I need a visual to be able dematerialize into it and the ability to appear out of thin air is not an advantage I am going to give away. Fortunately, I now had the courier’s phone and after studying his texts I had the rhythm and style of his communications down. It had been a simple matter to let Tony know that the meeting was to be kept away from prying eyes and a cabin a few hours’ drive to the north had been rented to transact business in. We would meet there tomorrow at 11 PM, as there was some other business to take care of for his grandmother in the interim. His response had not been a happy one but what was he going to do? He needed this connection if he was to take the final step and he thought he was speaking to the man who had raised him. After texting him directions I had turned off Luis's phone and pocketed it. Alex would be there. And I would be there first. I knew the cabin well. It’s where Ricardo Benloise had once held Marisol. His rotting body would provide Alex Silva with an appropriate visual of his brief, but painful, future.

But that still left me with an entire day and a half to wait. To think. To try to turn off that terrible insanity that threatens every time I lower my guard. I could not sleep without damning visions of Marisol. Dreams of her with our young in her arms that turn to nightmares with her screams as she is raped and tortured, her eyes glassy as they stare into mine and glaze over as death takes her, a sea of blood surrounding her. During the nights I try to keep my memories, my pain in a box buried deep so that I may focus on strategy to ahvenge her death but there are moments it fights its way to the surface. Even now my helplessness to save her threatens to overwhelm me, to paralyze me, and that, I cannot afford, not when I am so close. And that is why two lines of cocaine are on the glass desk top before me.

If there was one thing it had done for me, it was to give me the exhilarating sense of strength, even if it was only from hit to hit. At least it had done so for a time. Eventually it had destroyed me, driven me mad, and murdered me. Only my Marisol had resurrected me from the dead. But it had taken time for me to reach that point and I only needed a little more. Afterwards it would not matter. I would not be alive long enough for the drug to take me.

Carefully, as though it would break the glass, I lay a tightly rolled one hundred dollar bill next to the lines.

“Marisol would not want this for you.”

My head jerks up at the voice. Ehric stands in the doorway, his face grave. Evale comes to stand at his shoulder as I answer.

“Marisol is not here. What she would want does not matter.”

“It is the only thing that does matter/because/ she isn’t here.”

If Ehric is a male of few words, his twin Evale is essentially mute. A sensation of shock runs through my troubled mind that he would speak to me thus.

“You do not honor her memory if you let your demons in, cousin.”

Ehric subtly reminds me that I am not alone, that I have family. And still it is not enough. Ignoring his comment, I address him.

“Did you cut and move the product?”

He nods, “All but the kilo you have in your desk.”

It is worry I hear in his tone, not judgement, but I no use for either.

“Good. The final meet is set for 11 tomorrow night. We will meet at Beneloise cabin. I will depend on the two of you to take care of his muscle while I take care of matters inside.”

“We will take care of his men but it will not take long. We will join you in the cabin. We will not interfere but you will not do this alone.”

I frown at his quiet assertiveness. It is quite unlike him to question my instructions.

“I do not need your assistance.”

“You do not need /that/ either,” he nods at the lines on the mirror. “What you need is to feed. Even when Marisol…” he swallows hard and continues. “Even when she was with you, you still needed to feed from a vampire female.”

My anger is almost a tangible thing in the room. “You would dare…”

“Cousin, we would dare anything for you. You know it. But you need strength for what is about to happen and you have not fed in months.”

“I fed from a Chosen three months before … before. Their blood is very strong. I am fine.” The nausea I feel at the thought of feeding outpaces the anger.

“You are /not/ fine. It has been six months since she left us. Even Chosen blood can’t sustain you that long. You need to feed. We will bring someone to you.”

My jaw sets and through gritted teeth I speak.

“You will not. What you will do is gather what weapons we will need and put them in the Range Rover. There was a rocket launcher in the last weapons shipment we intercepted. Include it. Now leave me.”

Ehric glances at Evale. Evale shakes his head and the two turn and leave me. I give my attention back to the white, powdery lines before me. My hand trembles as I reach for the rolled bill and bend to answer the drug’s siren call. Addiction – because a recovered addict is always an addict – wars with the thought of what Marisol would think, would have said.

‘I’d say “Don’t be a fool.’

My head jerks up and she is there, in the mirror. I jerk around, expecting to see her behind me but there is no one. Looking again at the mirror, I see the image there is shimmering rather than stable, but it is her. Her dark hair falls in waves on her shoulders, her eyes filled with that steely brand of love I knew so well. I half rose form my chair, hands on the desk as I lean over it towards her.

“Marisol!”

Her gaze softens a touch. ‘Don’t bother getting up. You won’t be able to touch me and I won’t be able to touch you. But I can’t rest while you are in such pain, my love, so I have watched and wept for you, been with you every step you’ve taken to this point. But I couldn’t let you do this.’

Stunned, I lower myself back into my chair.

“The bastard must pay, Marisol. He robbed us of our future. He hurt you, killed you and our young, your grandmother.”

‘Yes, he did. And you wouldn’t be the dark, dangerous man I fell in love with if you didn’t wipe that piece shit from the Earth. No, I’m talking about /that/.’ She points to the lines before me. ‘You don’t need that. You never did. And I didn’t bring you back from the Fade for you to take yourself there again with it.’

Her image wavers again and she steps from the mirror. She wears what I had her buried in, her long legs encased in her favorite jeans and tall boots, a deep red silk shirt, the baby-fist sized teardrop ruby that I had given her for our first anniversary as mates suspended on a chain around her neck, a shimmering drop of blood against her skin. The people who had prepared her body for burial had balked at the attire but I had been adamant she would go into eternity as herself. I rise and go to stand before her.

“The end is near. I need something to boost me through.”

‘What you /need/ to do is feed.’ It came out flatly, as though I was being an idiot, and perhaps…. perhaps I was.

‘Look at you. Really look. You’re gaunt. Your clothes are hanging off of you. You don’t eat regular food, you don’t sleep, you haven’t fed. The only thing keeping you alive is your anger and that’s not going to cut it tomorrow night.’

“I cannot. Do you not see? I…cannot, Marisol. Even the thought turns my stomach.”

Her face softens and she raises a hand to my face. In another life it would have been a caress but now it was the brush of wind against my skin.

‘I know, baby, I know. But there’s nothing intimate about feeding if you don’t let there be. You’ve done it before to stay healthy while I was still here. It’s necessary.’

My voice comes out roughly “You were there when I fed. I insisted.”

‘Yes, you did. And now you can keep your cousins with you to protect your modesty.’

She says the last with that lilt of teasing humor in her voice that I knew so well. I reach for her. I cannot help it. Her form wavers and dissolves under my hands.

“MARISOL!” I shout despairingly. Her voice floats in the air of the room.

‘Do this for me. Feed.’

I turn and brace myself against the front of my desk, tears coming as I bow my head.

“Marisol...” Her name comes out brokenly, echoing my soul and then the wind comes from nowhere and scatters the lines of cocaine, carrying the powder away with it. When I look again, a baby-fist-sized blood red teardrop shaped ruby lay on the mirror where the cocaine had been and I breathe out a prayer.