“What the fuck is The VEIL?” Xavier questioned.
The Eternal preferred to know all the answers, or at the very least, most of the answers. What was even more frustrating was the fact that his memories wanted to tell him what was happening.
Alas, Xavier could not trust the memories.
Was it more Ikaris than Xavier?
Would it change him forever?
Was it Xavier to begin with, and the current him was just a very strong disassociation?
It was frustrating to know everything and nothing at the same time, and while it seemed that Xavier could learn what he needed with just a bit of acceptance, the reality was vastly different.
“The Veil…” Alcides mused, stopping for a couple of seconds to give the most frustrating answer he could. “The Veil is The VEIL – can’t really describe it better than that.”
Xavier’s face deadpanned. “Now, I really wished I would have killed you,” The Eternal joked.
“Try harder next time?” Alcides' reply was serious – his humor had dulled from centuries of life.
“I finally think you’ve gone senile,” Xavier commented.
Alcides and Xavier had fallen into a natural rhythm of sorts – an initial mutual understanding of cooperation. Still, both men remained on their guard at all times.
Alcides did not allow Xavier’s fifteen-year-old appearance to fool him, and Xavier didn’t let Alcides’s middle-aged appearance dissuade him from the truth – the man was an immortal vampire.
Immortal meant a lifetime to learn how to kill.
Xavier knew he was at a disadvantage when it came to combat since he was not Ikaris, and while his body could react in all situations, there was a disconnect between mind and body.
“You call me – senile,” Alcides commented as he knelt on the brown grass and tore away chunks of Earth with his hands. “But you can’t even remember that you never had an ex-girlfriend…”
“Are you talking about Rebecca?”
“I don’t know who that is, and I can tell you she hasn’t appeared in the year since I met you,” Alcides revealed in a lazy manner.
With this comment, Xavier was finally able to confirm something – something he should have expected from all immortals.
Carlisle was perhaps the only immortal who acted with a sense of urgency while Alcides – even when talking about their potential death – spoke with the leisure that said 'what will happen will happen'.
“Was there a girl in the first place?” Xavier sighed, wondering just how much of his memories he could trust. “What is happening to me?”
“There was a girl, though I never met her,” Alcides admitted, not pausing his digging actions in the least. “All I know is that your parents found me, and they are from Solaria. I checked, and it isn’t on any map I could identify… then again, a lot of places aren’t.”
“Agreed,” Xavier nodded solemnly and then questioned. “What exactly is The Veil?”
“It’s hard to describe.”
“I can glean the best information from vagueness,” Xavier added, and he was telling the truth – with his comic, movie, and fandom knowledge, few of his supernatural guesses were wrong.
“It’s a complicated story.”
“I will listen anyway.”
Alcides sighed and stopped digging, staring into Xavier’s eyes to check if The Eternal really wanted answers, or simply wanted more information to make an informed decision.
One thing that didn’t change with immortality was the value of information.
Alcides knew Xavier had all the answers in his head, but Eternals took time to mature, and while Xavier was an Ancient Being, the current him was akin to an immature child.
Telling The Eternal too much may scare him away.
“The story starts in a Nazi Lab,” Alcides explained, and Xavier could see the images flashing in the vampire’s mind. “My kind tends to only truly die when drained of all blood, and The Nazi had drained me to the brink. Then, I felt disgusted and the need to escape. I thought the disgust was for death and the buzzing for the oncoming Reaper…”
“But it wasn’t…”
“It wasn’t…” Alcides confirmed. “Just above the table appeared something – a churning of air with a black sphere in the center. I reached for it with all my might and—”
“And?” Xavier was curious.
“And I was in a new layer of reality – it was strange, almost as if—”
Xavier raised a hand to silence Alcides, gesturing to the planes hidden behind the thick vegetation of trees and bushes.
“Oh…” Alcides quirked a brow. “I guess you will get to see firsthand what The Veil is…”
Xavier shrugged his shoulders, and took a few steps away from Alcides, signaling rather blatantly for something to exit the nearby forest.
It was Sam.
Well, not precisely Sam – a six-and-a-half-foot tall wolf of shadow black coating, and glistening, razor-like teeth marched out of the shrubs, eyeing Alcides viciously as it did.
Xavier carefully measured his steps, walking to Sam’s side while maintaining a constant distance from Alcides.
The Eternal had been observing his vampire companion, and after some basic extrapolation to understand his speed, Xavier had determined a distance of sixty meters would be enough for him to react.
Hence, The Eternal stood sixty meters from Alcides.
“This level of cautiousness is understandable but not required,” Alcides mentioned. “We can talk this out.”
GRRRRRR
Even Xavier had to admit that a shapeshifted Sam was intimidating so there was no way Alcides could remain as nonchalant as he looked.
That made Xavier distrust the vampire even more.
“I would never trust a strange vampire I just met,” Xavier stated the obvious.
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The Eternal had seen plenty of movies, but he learned long ago that Forks, Twilight, The Cullens, and everything else was no movie.
It was reality.
And one didn’t simply trust random people for a plot point in reality. Actually, the first instinct Xavier had when meeting Alcides was to kill the vampire.
Sadly, The Eternal didn’t think he could achieve such a feat without paying a costly price, hence… Sam.
“What is this about?” Alcides furrowed his brow, seeing that Xavier didn’t really intend to attack. “Is this for negotiations?”
“You don’t see us as equals,” Xavier stated his observations. “You walk and talk like someone who believes in something – I hate religious people the most, and you rub me like someone of those tastes.”
“I am…” Alcides admitted.
“Then, who is your God?” Xavier inquired.
If a single syllable left Alcides’s throat with a name Xavier could not recognize, The Eternal was prepared to kill the Ancient Vampire to avoid future risks.
Keeping variables alive was not something Xavier could entertain, and this was not something learned as an Eternal, but something that came with him from his previous life.
GGGRRRRR
Sam’s massive shapeshifted form crouched, and Xavier circled away from the wolf, trying to find one of the well-hidden blind spots Alcides had unconsciously revealed.
The first attack would be pincered.
Alcides raised a brow, seemingly indifferent about his impending doom, but The Vampire still subtly shifted to flick a dagger into his hand – a dagger Xavier didn’t know the vampire had.
“You should be asking which God is my enemy,” Alcides revealed.
“And which God is that?” Xavier was prepared to attack regardless of the answer.
Sam knew the moment had come due to a very subdued mental connection between his and Xavier’s telepathic abilities.
However, just before The Eternal and Shapeshifter could pounce, Alcides opened his mouth and whispered a name – the only name – that could force Xavier to re-evaluate all he knew.
“La Magra…” Alcides mentioned, not expecting anything to change, but to his great surprise, it did.
Xavier froze… chills and cosmic energy rushed through his Eternal veins.
Sam froze… though it was because it was the first time the Shapeshifter had ever seen The Eternal spooked.
As for why Xavier was spooked, it wasn’t the enemy as much as it was which movie this particular enemy belonged to – Blade, The Wesley Snipes Version.
“Well, fuck…” Xavier cursed with utmost vulgarity that, though he had said the word plenty of times before, it still somehow felt more obscene than usual.
-----------
Minutes passed, and at some point, Alcides perceived the danger had passed and resumed ripping chunks of dirt from the ground.
Xavier sighed and signaled the less-vicious-looking shapeshifter to his right. Sam’s large wolf eyes squinted before bolting for the forest of trees.
Sam returned a couple of minutes later with two neatly folded pieces of material in his hands.
The Shapeshifter made a point to stop some distance away from Xavier since The Eternal disliked the height difference between the two of them.
Xavier sat at a confident six-two, but Sam was a startling six-five with undeserved muscles from Shapeshifting genes. It didn’t help that Xavier appeared slightly childish with his still-maturing features.
“Why did you call me out here?” Sam inquired.
Xavier wanted to make a sarcastic joke, but when he saw the seriousness of Sam’s question, The Eternal wondered if The Shapeshifter had gone crazy, or if he had.
“What do you mean?” Xavier frowned.
“Why did you call me out here?” Sam inquired once more, frowning as he noticed the disconnect in their assumptions. “I am just letting you know, I wouldn’t kill a child even if she smells like a threat. You need to call someone else for something like that … like those blood-sucking Cullens.”
Xavier frowned. “What child?” He looked around for confirmation, and as far as he could tell, there were only three people present, and all Supernatural Beings.
Xavier - Eternal…
Alcides - Vampire…
Sam - Shapeshifter…
“You asked what The Veil does, and I mentioned you would get to see firsthand what it does,” Alcides stopped digging for a moment and turned to Xavier and Sam. “Now you know…”
“Wait! Wait…” Xavier caught on to something strange and gestured to Alcides while looking at Sam. “What do you see when you look at that old man?”
“What old man?” Sam furrowed his brows. “She’s a little girl – although, she smells dangerous… more dangerous than The Cullens.”
“You understand?” Alcides shrugged.
“I understand – this is a rip-off of Glamour from Riordan’s Books,” Xavier muttered.
“What did you say?” Sam had, of course, heard Xavier, but the words were unfamiliar to him.
And he was not the only one, Alcides was also confused by the recognition in Xavier’s eyes. As far as the Ancient Vampire knew, The Eternal had yet to recover those memories.
If they could even be recovered…
“Let me guess,” Xavier recalled the characteristics of Glamour and stated. “It clouds Supernatural existences…”
“You’re right,” Alcides was surprised by his own confirmation.
Sam still seemed at a loss, but he settled for doing what he knew – The Shapeshifter handed Xavier the folded material in his hands, and The Eternal took one of the fabrics and left the other in Sam’s hands.
“It’s for you…” He stated.
Sam shrugged and unfolded the material, revealing a skin-tight black and gold suit with strange padding locations.
“And not just Supernatural existences,” Alcides added, breaking the state of preparation that was developing. “You have entire mountains on the African continent hidden – places, people, things, certain movies, and even the smallest of things that can point to something bigger.”
Xavier frowned since he never read the books beyond Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief – maybe if he had, he would know more about the Glamour than he currently did.
“What comes next?” Xavier inquired, slipping the skin-tight spandex under the suit he was currently wearing. “Where do we go from here?”
“Twenty feet down?” Alcides shrugged, gesturing to the location he had been digging.
“Now I know what the grenades are for,” Xavier mentioned.
“You have grenades?” Sam questioned, eyeing Xavier and the little blonde girl wearily, but he could hardly pay attention to them with the spandex in his hands.
Xavier was watching The Shapeshifter with great expectations, but honestly, Sam was more prepared to die in a battle than wearing something so cringy.
“Your face says you would rather die than wear it,” Xavier commented. “But little do you know that you’ll probably die if you don’t wear it.”
Sam frowned.
“You’re bringing this… creature along?” Alcides inquired, reaching for the nearby duffle bag and retrieving five grenades.
“Save some for later, why don’t you?”
Alcides smirked.
“Going along to where?” Sam inquired, squeezing his body into the spandex, then placing his clothing atop it.
“You should call Emily and tell her that you won’t be back for another week,” Xavier added.
“Why?”
“Because you will do anything to protect your tribe,” The Eternal faced his friend. “And there is nothing that can protect your tribe more than knowledge – The world is bigger than Cullens… that’s something I only learned a few hours ago.”
“From the little girl?” Sam gestured to Alcides sticking five grenades into the holes in the ground.
“From the little girl,” Xavier’s lips twitched, but he managed to confirm without bursting into a laughing fit.
BOOOOOOOOM
BOOOOOOOOM
BOOOOOOOOM
BOOOOOOOOM
BOOOOOOOOM
Sam and Xavier felt blood in their ears, then hot air churning around them, and finally, The Shapeshifter and Eternal were kicked into the air by the explosion.
THUD
THUD
The men barely managed to find some semblance of balance in the air, avoiding compromising landing positions.