Chapter I

And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh; and they shall be drunken with their own blood, as with sweet wine.

Isaiah 49:26

Once I was a mortal man.

I walked the streets without a plan.

I lived my life day by day,

Craving excitement in every way…

B.F.R., "Thirst for Blood"

I was living in Nashville, playing in a band called Bugly with Victor Richards on drums and some guy you never met named Dimitri playing lead guitar. When my brother Chuck got murdered I quit my job at the Entropy Guitar factory and went back to West Virginia. As much as I hated that place, it was where I came from, and where most of my family still lived, and we needed close contact to deal with my brother's pointless death. I also needed to put some distance between myself, and the girl I had been dating in Nashville. Jennifer just happened to be married and had dumped me to get back together with her husband, in spite of the fact that she was pregnant and the child was almost certainly mine. Distance was the only way to guarantee she didn't show up on my doorstep one night with a change of heart. I couldn't have dealt with that after what she had put me through, so I made sure we would stay well away from each other by going home.

I got in touch with a drummer named Victor Richards and talked about putting a band together in memory of my murdered brother. Victor had been playing with another friend of mine, David Dean, on bass and they had a young guitar wizard named Damon Marcus throwing phenomenal lead solos on top of anything they could come up with. Until I called they had been playing instrumental pieces. What they desperately needed was a lead singer. David Dean was an excellent bass player. He learned his licks from Geddy Lee, Cliff Burton and Steve Harris, just as I had, so I offered myself as their lead singer and rhythm guitarist, a position called 'frontman', for obvious reasons. I had never played a six-string guitar before, but a few days of coaching from Damon was all it took to translate years of bass playing into the rudiments of playing rhythm, and not a soul could object to calling ourselves Malingen in memory of the band I had originally formed with my late brother.

We started playing the local clubs, making a living at it, but it was a far cry from fame and fortune. But we hung in there, doing whatever we had to do to make some quick cash and keep the dream alive. David Dean got us a gig playing a birthday party one night. It was for one of his college buddies, and I didn't know anyone there. But David Dean was a figure larger-than-life to them. They had nicknamed him 'Coal Truck' because he had been hit by a 21-ton Mack truck while hitchhiking and bounced up out of the ditch as if nothing had happened. But I knew Dave, and this story was minor compared to some of the things I had witnessed. David Dean was indestructible. He had a tolerance for pain and punishment that was absolutely unbelievable, and he could kick ass like some sort of Viking Berserker. He never took shit from anybody, but he had a heart of gold with anyone he considered a friend, and he could drink anybody (with the possible exception of me) under the table.

I was a stranger at this party, but being a friend of Dave's made me accepted more so than the fact that I was the 'frontman' for the band. I hate that term almost as much as I hate to be thrust to the front. I have never come up with a better word for it, and believe me. I have tried. I have never been comfortable up front in the spotlight; I feel more at home in the shadows, hanging out with the drummer and pounding out the bottom end of a song, even when it's a song that I wrote myself. I was accepted without question, but the party was rather boring. I felt out of place in a house full of college students. The girls were pretty, but they looked so damn young to me, so shallow and inexperienced. But it wasn't so much a difference of age as a difference of attitude. At 29 I was less than ten years older than most of those girls, but it had been a very enlightening ten years for me. And with Jennifer on my mind, I could not bring myself to even pretend that I was interested in any of them. I started drinking heavily, trying to flood Jennifer out of my head with alcohol.

I was standing in a circle of Dave's friends (my band was taking a break), vaguely responding to questions about the places I had been and the things I had done as a sniper in the Marine Corps. Dave had told them some stories about me, and they wanted to know more. But I wasn't interested these people, so for the most part I was trying to ignore them as politely as I could. And then she walked through the door.

At first glance I thought her to be about my age. But a closer look told me that she was older, mid-30's or maybe a young-looking 40. Her waist-length hair glistened like delicate strands of silk in the pale light, a rich shade of walnut so dark that it was nearly black. Her unrestrained tresses danced in waves of loose curls, the air itself their partner as she moved across the room in my direction.

She took off her knee-length fur coat and underneath she was dressed rather simply in faded jeans and an emerald green velvet sweater. Yet there could never be anything simple about her, not even her clothes; her jeans clung to every curve as if tailor-made, without squeezing a single inch of her perfect form. Her sweater was also a snug fit, not hiding her voluptuous figure, but rather outlining her perfect curves with delicious fuzzy ambiguity. Her eyes were deep pools of unfathomable shadow, compelling me to drown in their depths; so wide and inviting, so dark and mysterious. So many powerful emotions, so much worldly experience I could see reflected within these mesmerizing orbs as she returned my stare, our eyes locking for an electrifying moment.

I realized that I had stopped a conversation in mid-sentence, but no one had noticed. All other eyes around me had also seized upon her, but they all quickly looked away, pretending that they had not even noticed her. Yet I couldn't help but stare. I wondered who she was, what she was doing here. It wasn't until she walked past me that I realized she had someone with her, a tall, nervous young man with haunted eyes.

I asked around discreetly, but no one seemed to know who she was. She caught me staring at her several times. Our eyes locked. Her smile told me that we were sharing a secret beyond the grasp of those around us. We were like two wolves in a room full of sheep.

I watched her slip casually into a room, leaving the door cracked open behind her. After a moment I followed her inside. It was a bedroom, and judging from the posters of half-naked women and the cluttered mess, it was the bedroom of a teenaged boy, probably the birthday boy at tonight's party, whatever his name was.

She was standing in front of a computer keyboard, tapping keys in what appeared to be a totally random fashion, as if it were some alien artifact from another culture. I stepped up behind her, so close that I lightly sniffed her hair as I leaned over her shoulder. It smelled like autumn, full of rich, earthy scents that spoke to me of open spaces and brisk fall nights, even though it was mid-winter outside.

I whispered in her ear, "What are you doing?"

"Waiting for you," she replied. She turned to face me, rubbing her hands down my back. I had not expected such boldness, but I tried not to let my surprise show. Instead, I followed her lead and placed my hands on her hips, pulling her closer. "I thought you might have the courage to follow me in here," she said, "and I wanted to get you alone." Her hands slid down to my ass, and squeezed.

Copyright © 2005 Jerod Scott