The stranger stared at him without emotion, appraising.
Baka went to his knees and folded his hands in prayerful supplication. With tears streaming down his face he waited, but the knight did not strike. Perhaps the man needed absolution.
"Please." Baka pleaded with his eyes as well as his words and impressed upon the heart of the man that he was bearing witness to an extraordinary, perhaps miraculous, event.
After a few seconds the stranger seemed to make up his mind. "Bite me. And I shall."
Gradually a look of horror replaced Baka's tears.
"No." He shook his head to punctuate the resolve behind the word.
"Why not?" asked the stranger.
"I... cannot."
"A vampire who cannot bite?"
"Vampire." Baka said it so quietly it was almost a whisper. "Make me a corpse, Angel. Lend me your mercy and you will be commended by the god. Let me join those I have sent to their deaths."
As it happened, Baka was lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to encounter a Black Swan knight named Rudyard Hallows who was running a jewelry errand to assist him in the pursuit of a lovely, but somewhat aloof Flapper. He thought an emerald bracelet might relax her ladylike determination to keep her knees locked together at all times.
The vampire was a riddle worthy of being sidetracked. The more it begged for death the more Ruddy's resolve that the poor devil should not be killed solidified. No. The vampire would be taken in tow and transported to the new facility at Fort Dixon for a verdict by someone wiser than himself.
Needless to say, the knights of Black Swan were surprised when Sir Hallows arrived at Jefferson Unit with the most infamous vampire in the annals of The Order. In a taxi. Ruddy paid the driver then grabbed the coat sleeve of the miserable vampire, who had never ceased talking to himself for an instant, and pulled him from the car.
There was no holding cell. Who could have guessed they might need one? By the start of the eighteenth century, The Order had gained all information possible as the result of holding vampire captive. At that time they wisely amended the policy to 'take no prisoners'.
Of course Ruddy was familiar with the policy, but Black Swan knights are not automatons. As second sons, they are born rebels who know there is a time to follow rules and a time to think for oneself. This proved to be one of those times when The Order was pleased that their knights recognized that the rules were put into place as guidelines to serve them and not the other way around.
They finally decided the best solution would be to temporarily house the freak vampire in an infirmary room with teams of four knights guarding him on eight hour rotation until they could decide what to do with him.
The vampire was in such a state of misery and confusion that even the most calloused of the battle hardened knights felt twinges of pity after spending several minutes in his pitiful presence. To each other, the knights said that listening to his tears and talking to himself about his sins was, by far, the worst duty they had ever pulled and they dreaded reporting for guard change.
She had sat on the carpet in a quiet corner of The Chronicles stacks until she had lost partial feeling in her rump. It was a room that didn't get much traffic which was why Heaven knew it was a good place to go when she wanted to spend some time alone. As usual, she hadn't seen or heard another soul during the entire time she'd been there reading.
Most of the room was sublevel basement, but two feet at the apex of the high ceiling were above street level so that there was some natural light that came through the shallow wrought iron windows. As she rose to get a cup of coffee she looked up toward the windows and saw that the day had turned gray.
Pulling her intelliphone out of the pocket of her knee length, cable knit cardigan she looked to see if she might have missed a call or a message. Nothing.
She replaced the phone, fixed her coffee with extra sugar since she was skipping lunch, and walked around until the feeling was fully restored to the derriere she believed was far too ample.
Setting the coffee down carefully in such a way that she could be certain it wouldn't spill, she reclaimed her space on the floor. People were assigned to scanning copies of the documents and making them available on computer, but considering the age of the organization and its commitment to record keeping, it would be years before that project was completed. It wasn't like they could pick up the phone and get temps from a staffing agency. Even a liberal estimate for completion depended on nothing more pressing taking priority which, let's face it, happened often at The Order.
Settling back into the nest she had made with three large books open on the floor, she began to learn about Istvan Baka's first days in captivity. Tears formed in her eyes when she read the interview account given by Sir Hallows concerning his capture of the vampire, caught in broad daylight on a busy street, who not only refused an invitation to attack, but called him 'angel' and pleaded for a mercifully swift end.
Subsequently she began to read the journal notes logged by the team assigned to study him, along with random comments by the knights assigned to guard him. The research team apparently consisted of several Order associates brought over from Edinburgh for the specific purpose of uncovering the mystery behind the uncharacteristic behavior.
The vampire, whose name is Istvan Baka, is a most curious case. His moods range from spells of mute melancholy to fits of screaming while begging to die. We have been managing the latter with sedatives, but have no remedy or treatment for the former.
During brief periods when he is relatively lucid, he says he was possessed by a demon for many centuries, but that, one day the demon was simply gone, leaving him with the memories of everything it had done while controlling his body. He states that he cannot continue to live with visions of the demon's sins in his head, that the depravity of the deeds performed using his body without his knowledge or consent is more than he can stand.
The cycle then begins anew, the vampire alternating between pleading with us to execute him and praying to his god to crush him and cast whatever remnants remain into the oblivion of the abyss. He prevails upon us to end his suffering and, even the most experienced vampire hunters, seem to be affected by his condition.
So far he has refused all offer of sustenance. If he doesn't ingest something life-sustaining within the next few hours, we shall have no choice but to force him to drink the animal blood we have procured for this purpose.
As Heaven read the eye witness accounts of Baka's torment, she was filled with compassion and the shame she felt for her behavior toward him was redoubled. It was one thing to be presented with an idea intellectually and something else to internalize it emotionally. She began to realize that he truly had no more control over the vampire virus than a person who contracts pneumonia; that holding him accountable, as she had been doing, was a textbook case of blaming the victim. And may have even been cruel. Something she never would have thought might be said about her.
She wondered why she hadn't read these sections when she had studied his biography as an intern.