CHAPTER 25
Throughout the flight from California to Atlanta, Ariel sat holding the two mementoes of his parents—his father’s Tanakh in his right hand, and his mother’s menorah in his left. His eyes were closed, and he was remembering everything he could about them.
Ariel thought he had grieved before when he had cut himself off from his parents. The thought that he would never see them again had been very painful. But he discovered that that emotion was but a pale imitation of the grief of knowing they were gone, that he would truly never see them or anything about them again, and of knowing that they had died in such a meaningless fashion. His heart was filled with rage that burned but was yet cold. It was little consolation that their killers were likewise dead. Likewise it brought little balm to his soul to know that he had had a major part in enacting justice on their killers.
Grief, pain, horror, and rage alternately danced within his memories. He kept having to force his hands to unclench from the book and the menorah. With his current strength, he could actually damage them, and he didn’t think he could stand that.
By the time Ariel felt the pilots begin the descent, he had wrestled the rage into submission, and the pain and horror were beginning to pale. He knew the grief would be with him for a while, but that felt normal to him. He felt that that was part of the price of being who and what he was. Right then, he felt it reminded him of his humanity. Not that he was a candidate for the new Job, or anything like that. But sorrow was a part of the human existence, as the history of the Jews had proven over and over. It was a mantle he was fit to wear, he decided.
While they were on the ground getting the plane refueled, the pilots got out to stretch their legs and take a meal break. Ariel put his keepsakes back in his bag, and returned to his seat.
“Through sitting shiva?” Mordechai asked, looking up from his laptop.
“Not really that,” Ariel responded. “Just…remembering them.”
“That’s what shiva is all about,” Mordechai responded. “The ritual is just a framework. It’s the remembering that’s important. Whether it lasts a week, or three days, or just an hour, that’s what’s important.”
“That’s not what the rabbis say,” Ariel said. “They say immediately, and the full seven days.”
Mordechai snorted. “The Orthodox do. There are differences of opinion among the people, of course. We’re Jews—of course there are differences of opinion.”
Ariel looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “Are you Orthodox, Mordechai?”
“I was reasonably Orthodox before I became what I am. Now, after all these years, I am as Orthodox as I can be. Orthodoxy fits me like an old comfortable suit, but there are times and places where I have to move beyond it. Not to replace it, not to disparage it, but to help it remain a proper fit for the man I am now, as opposed to the man I started out as so many years ago.”
Ariel blinked. Suddenly Mordechai’s age seemed to weigh on him. It pressed him into his seat, somehow.
After a moment, Mordechai looked at him over the top of the laptop, and sighed. “You do realize this is going to happen again and again, don’t you?”
“Huh?” Ariel titled his head, trying to catch up with the topic change. “What do you mean?”
“You’re not immortal. But you are going to be longer-lived than anyone you know. Every friend you have or will make will grow up, age, fade, and die before you, sometimes before your very eyes. And there’s nothing you can do about it.” Mordechai’s eyes for the first time showed Ariel deep emotion. “There’s nothing you can do about it, but remember them, and pray.” He whispered.
For the first time, Ariel really saw Mordechai bearing the weight of his nearly three hundred years. For the first time, he truly understood the price the older vampire paid to be what he was. It awed him. It challenged him. And it more than a little frightened him. He stared at his mentor, wanting to reach out to him, but was void of words.
* * *
Several hours later they were well across the Atlantic Ocean, almost halfway to Israel according to the flight map on the big screen at the rear of the compartment. Ariel was reading in his father’s Tanakh, seeking solace in the Psalms. Mordechai was apparently engrossed in his laptop whenever Ariel glanced up, his finger scrolling the feed.
Ariel was midway through Psalm 47 and had just read the selah after the verse describing the fortress of Ya’akov when Mordechai exclaimed, “Ha!” and tapped a few keys. “Watch this!”
The flight map flickered, then was replaced by a video with a banner across the bottom of the screen that read Blue Lance. Above the banner was a shot of a studio with two people sitting at a table across from each other. Ariel recognized the man as James McLeod wearing his gang jacket. The other person was what seemed to be a youngish Asian woman in a sleeveless black leather vest and long hair dyed almost an electric blue.
“Hey, and welcome to the Blue Lance blog,” the woman said, “where we don’t care if you’re a left-winger or a right-winger or a wing nut, we’re here to burst your bubble and get at the real truth. I’m Azure Wong, and we’ve got some interesting stuff going down today. In a little while, we’ll be talking to some folks about some problems down Bakersfield way in one of the oil fields. Stay tuned for that. But to kick things off, if you haven’t heard about it, there was some real heavy action going down in Santa Carla in the last couple of days. Someone walked into the hangout of a motorcycle gang called Los Dracos Negros and executed them all. We’re about to show a video which has been an internet sensation for the last few hours. It shows the results of extreme violence, and we suggest you not watch it if you are sensitive or have children in the room.”
What followed was the video that Mordechai had shot with his phone, panning around the corpses spiked to the walls of the warehouse and ending with the corpse of Campbell hung with the Nazi flag. Ariel felt a certain warmth at seeing that, nodding his head in some satisfaction.
The picture flipped back to the reporter and McLeod.
“That’s what was released by unknown sources,” Azure said, “and I don’t know about you, but that’s pretty damned bloody. To try and get some background and understanding of the gang dynamics in Santa Carla and surrounding areas, we’ve invited the leader of the local chapter of The Devil’s Legions, Mr. James McLeod, into our studio. Welcome.”
“Call me Jake,” McLeod said with a grin.
“Okay, Jake. Can you tell me what your feeling is about the terrible things that happened to your enemies in the Los Dracos Negros gang?”
“Well, first of all,” McLeod drawled, “while it’s true that there wasn’t any love lost between us and them, they weren’t really our enemies.” He paused for a beat. “They weren’t that important.”
“What do you mean?”
“They were a new club, they only had a few members, and they really didn’t have the muscle to cut in on our turf, our activities. They talked a lot of trash, but they didn’t stand behind it.” McLeod shrugged. “More like a gang of wannabes, than anything real.”
“So you didn’t take them out? You didn’t kill them?” When McLeod pursed his lips and shook his head, Azure continued, “Do you have any ideas who did?”
“I can tell you it probably wasn’t any of the organized gangs in the valley,” McLeod said, “whether bikers or the others. We could have taken them out, sure. So could most of the others. There’d have been a big brawl, blood would have been everywhere, and bodies would have either been scattered around or found in the river. But that’s not what happened. You’ve seen the video.”
“So, Jake, you’re saying your gang didn’t do that?”
“Hell, no,” McLeod said.
“And you don’t think any of the other gangs did?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
McLeod held up a finger. “First of all, it’s too controlled. If cops or SWAT or FBI did it, Cord Campbell and his buddies would have been filled with bullets. The cops haven’t made an official announcement yet, but the rumors all say they were killed by hand—no gunshot wounds. You have to get up close and personal on purpose to do that.”
He held up another finger. “Second, it’s too neat. Gangs or cops would have come in with twice their numbers, and would have made a real mess of things. This is like one or two OCD ninjas came in, wiped them out, and then nailed them up on the walls to get them out of the way or something. It’s too clean.”
McLeod dropped his hand. “Nah, it’s nobody from around here. No rumors, no encounters leading up to it, not even with the cops.” He shrugged.
“So you don’t have any ideas, any guesses?”
Jake grinned. “Oh, I have some ideas about what happened, but there’s no way to prove them.”
“So what do you think went down in that warehouse?” Azure’s head tilted and she leaned forward a little, showing a little more cleavage to Jake and the camera.
“I think they did something that pissed off someone, somebody important, somebody with a lot of juice.”
“Someone in politics or government or organized crime?”
McLeod shrugged again. “Maybe. Who knows? But I think whoever it is has resources like not even the Feds can get. I mean, I’m not sure even somebody like Seal Team 6 could have or would have done this job this way.”
“But why?”
McLeod grinned. “That’s easy. It’s a message.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, come on, Azure…it’s obvious. If you do something like this, and you leave a message like ‘They Were Warned,’ like they did, they’re obviously saying, ‘Don’t do that again, or we’ll be back, and we’ll really be pissed next time.’”
“So who are they warning?”
“I don’t know, man,” McLeod sobered. He tapped his chest a couple of times. “Not us. But I’m pretty sure they had a target, and as much airtime as this is getting I’d be willing to bet that the message has been received.”
The picture froze there, and Ariel looked over at where Mordechai was sitting, grinning. “Well, if Jake figured it out, I suspect others will as well.”
Ariel nodded. “Will they figure out who did it?”
Mordechai shook his head. “That’s doubtful. They might guess that someone from outside the country did it. They might even guess Israel was involved somehow. But being able to link it to you and me?” He repeated his headshake.
“Never again,” Ariel said.
“Never again,” Mordechai echoed.
* * *
Ariel jerked awake as the plane’s wheels kissed the runway at Ben Gurion Airport. As his eyes flew open, he felt the book shift on his lap, so he made a panicked grab to catch it, which he managed to do.
He didn’t know for sure when he’d dozed off. The last thing he remembered clearly was they were still a couple of hours out. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it from the sleep fog, then turned to put the book in his carry-on bag. He gave a big yawn as he zipped the bag shut.
By that time the plane finished what seemed to be a lengthy taxiing process and pulled into a small hanger building rather removed from the main terminals. Once the plane pulled to a stop and the engines spooled down, he and Mordechai arose, grabbed their carry-ons, and met the pilots at the door.
“Great job ferrying us around, Michael, Yonatan,” Mordechai said with a pleasant smile. He headed down the steps.
“Thanks, guys,” Ariel added as he held his hand out.
“Our pleasure,” Michael said with a grin. “Literally. Don’t tell anyone, but we’d probably fly this baby for free if it was the only way to get it.”
“Speak for yourself,” Yonatan said with a snort as he in turn shook Ariel’s hand. “I have three kids to feed.”
Ariel laughed, and followed Mordechai down the steps.
He was surprised to find Rabbi Avram waiting on them by the doorway into the office and waiting area. Mordechai was standing talking to him, but as Ariel approached the rabbi turned toward him and held out his arms. Ariel set down his bags and stepped into the embrace.
The old man’s grasp seemed light to Ariel, undoubtedly because of his age, but also no doubt because of Ariel’s own strength and strengthened stature because of what he now was. Nonetheless, Ariel welcomed it, and moderated his own embrace to avoid crushing what he now knew was an increasingly fragile old man.
“I am so sorry, Ariel,” the rabbi said, his whiskers brushing and tickling Ariel’s cheek as his jaw moved. “So sorry to hear about your parents.” He went on to murmur, “Ha-makom yenachem otcha b’toch she’ar avlei Zion v’Yerushalayim,” Ariel’s mind was still treating Hebrew like a second language, so the back of his mind translated it as “May God comfort you among the other mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” but the front of his mind was so drinking in the feeling of the embrace and the warmth and care that the words didn’t register deeply at the moment. He felt like a man parched of thirst who was being showered with cool water. Standing there was almost like when his Zaydeh, his father’s father, had embraced him after his bar mitzvah.
Ariel wasn’t sure how long they stood like that, but finally Rabbi Avram released his clasp and they each stepped back a half step. “Thank you,” Ariel murmured.
After a moment, Mordechai looked at Mendel. “Did you get it?”
Mendel nodded, pulled a small wallet-sized folder out of his pocket, and handed it to Mordechai. He flipped it open, nodded, and handed it to Ariel. “Here. This is yours now.”
Ariel discovered he was holding an ID card that indicated that he, Ariel Barak, was a shoter, or constable, in the Special Police, the Yamam. “This is real?” he asked.
“Absolutely. You’re the lowest rank possible, so you have no authority, but you also have no responsibilities. And in their records, you are seconded to Mossad. And in Mossad’s very restricted files, you are assigned to…me,” Mordechai said with a smile.
“So this makes me official, though, right? Do I get a badge?”
“As official as a lowly shoter can be.” Mordechai grinned. “No badge. You can’t give any orders yourself, but you don’t have to take anyone’s orders but mine. What it does do, however, is make your weapon license a little more official.”
Ariel looked at the card another time. The photo looked like the same one that was on all his other documents. He shrugged, closed the folder and put it in his pocket.
“Ah,” said Mendel, looking over his shoulder, “there is the rest of your baggage.” And indeed, their larger bags were being placed right behind them at that moment. “Come, the car is waiting in the parking lot.”
It was only a matter of a couple of minutes to trundle their bags through the office and waiting area to the front door and out into the parking lot, where they found a large Mercedes sedan waiting on them.
Mordechai gave a whistle, then said, “Fancy,” with a grin. “Stepping up in the world, are we? Next thing you’ll have us flying in and out of the fancy private aircraft VIP lounge.”
“haShem forbid it,” the rabbi pronounced. “And your sense of humor is going to get you into trouble, Mordechai Zalman.”
“Probably,” Mordechai said, his grin broadening.
The driver of the car stowed their bags away, and ushered them into the passenger compartment of the car. The rabbi and Mordechai sat in the rear seat facing forward and Ariel sat in the middle seat facing them.
“This is pretty fancy,” Ariel said. “I know renting one of these in California for prom night would have cost a lot.”
“Meh,” Rabbi Avram said. “We had someone donate several rides to us for use with important guests. We don’t have anyone coming in any time soon, so I decided to use one tonight. It saves you having to drive after a long flight, and it cushions my old bones.” He shrugged. “Nothing in Torah says we must be uncomfortable in our work, after all.”
“But surely there is something in the Talmud that draws a line between comfort and luxury,” Mordechai murmured, looking around the plush compartment with his eyebrows elevated. Ariel grinned and suppressed a chuckle.
The two older men spent most of the ride discussing some aspect of the job they had just done in New York. Apparently the immigrant community’s leaders were trying to blame the city government for the disappearance of their patrollers. Mordechai found that to be hilarious, but Mendel was concerned that it could still twist to become a problem for them.
By the time the car pulled into the parking lot of the foundation building, they had agreed to table the discussion for a month to allow time for more developments. “Just leave your bags in the car,” Mendel said. “The driver will take you home afterward.”
“After what?” Ariel asked, climbing out last and joining the two older men as they walked toward the entrance.
“You need to meet someone,” Mordechai said.
“Tonight?”
“You have anything else to do tonight?” There was a hint of a laugh in Mordechai’s voice.
“No,” Ariel said with a shrug.
“All right, then.”
They took the elevator down to the basement. Ariel followed the others down the hall and into what he knew was the door to a small gym and workout room. There he found two older men standing in the middle of the room who broke off a conversation to look at him.
“Ariel,” Mordechai said in Hebrew, “let me introduce you to Menachem Aronson”—he pointed to a wiry man about Ariel’s height with a full gray-shot bushy beard—“and Eleazar Katz.” Katz was shorter than Ariel, and built like a fireplug: short and squat, mostly bald with a fringe of iron gray hair and full beard and thick black eyebrows that almost met over his nose.
“So you’re the new one,” Aronson said in a nasal tenor. “Good. In another hundred years or so we might be able to form our own minyan.” He emitted a dry chuckle. His Hebrew had a different accent than Mordechai’s, but given that he was at least a hundred years younger and was born in a different country, that probably wasn’t too surprising.
“I am pleased to meet you,” said Katz, bobbing his head and holding out his hand to be shook. “And while I am glad after a fashion to have another of us, I would not wish this on an enemy, much less a Jew, so I am sorry, as well. I am sorry, too, to hear of the loss of your parents. To lose them so young.” He shook his head. “It makes me think of the times generations ago.” He stepped forward to place a hand on Ariel’s shoulder. “I shall pray for you, young Ariel. And soon—soon we will sit shiva with you.”
“Thank you,” Ariel murmured. He looked to Mordechai after Katz turned away. “Is there a reason why”—he waved a hand at the gym—“we’re here? I thought you said they wouldn’t be meeting me?”
Mordechai shrugged. “After word of what we did, they decided they wanted to meet you. It’s not every day that someone joins our ranks, after all. Besides”—he grinned—“you need to spar. You need to burn up some of that energy, some of that emotion that is riding behind your eyes.”
“And what do they need?” Ariel nodded toward the others.
“They needed to meet you, you needed to meet them, and this will help them get a feel for you as much as you for them.”
Rabbi Avram walked over and sat in a chair that was in a nearby corner. “Don’t mind me. While you lads play, I’ll just take a nap.” He sat down, leaned back, and tipped his hat forward over his eyes. That caused snorts and grins from the older vampires, and even Ariel felt the corners of his mouth twitch.
Mordechai took off his coat and tie and laid them on another chair, then began unbuttoning his shirt sleeves and rolling them up.
“Any rules?”
“No eye-gouging, no biting, no hits to the stones,” Aronson said. “Other than that, if you can land it, it’s fair.”
Mordechai walked out to the center of the mat that covered most of the floor. He turned and beckoned.
Ariel saw that all three of the older vampires were displaying their fangs. He took off his own coat and laid it atop Mordechai’s, then followed him to the mat. “No armor, not barefoot?” he asked as he settled into stance.
“Shit happens everywhere, anywhere, anytime. Practice for real. Clothes can be replaced if necessary.”
“Heh,” Ariel said. “That’s what Gil said.”
“Gil does get things right more often than not.”
“All right,” Ariel smiled at Mordechai. “Just wanted to be clear on that.”
Mordechai flicked his right hand out, and the sparring began.
Ariel had no idea how long they sparred. He was too busy to look at his watch and the gym didn’t have a clock. As usual, sparring with Mordechai was like fighting a machine: it didn’t matter how hard you hit him or where you hit him, he just kept coming at you, with blows and kicks that were just hard to block without getting knocked off-balance or to the ground. So the majority of the time he was ducking or evading the older vampire’s strikes, while occasionally attempting one of his own. When Mordechai held up a hand and waved Aronson onto the mat, Ariel felt his heart rate elevated and he was breathing through his mouth. He was disappointed that he had only landed four solid hits, though.
Aronson started out as more of the same, but they weren’t very far into their bout when he landed a slap on Ariel’s left cheek that spun him around. “Guard up, young man,” he snapped, before landing a backfist to the other side. “Faster!”
For all that Aronson was about Ariel’s size, so therefore was shorter than Mordechai with a shorter reach, that did not mean that Ariel found it any easier to touch him. If anything, Aronson was quicker. Ariel felt as if Aronson’s every strike was penetrating, was landing, was punishing him. He finally began to feel a bit of rhythm toward the end of the bout, and managed to land one good fist to Aronson’s abdomen.
Aronson immediately held up his hand and stepped back, and Katz charged onto the mat. Where Aronson was a striker, Katz was a wrestler. He was also incredibly strong, Ariel found out the hard way. He managed to evade or block the first three grabs Katz made for him but not the fourth. A couple of dizzying seconds later, Ariel found himself lifted up then slammed to the mat with enough force that even his vampire- strengthened frame was shocked and his mind was stunned.
Katz knelt and touched his fist to Ariel’s throat. “You’re dead, boy,” he said with a chuckle, then stood up and reached down a hand.
Ariel coughed, then reached up to take the hand. “Yeah,” he said as he was pulled to his feet, “I’d say so. You guys are tough. And I don’t know as much as I thought I knew.”
Mordechai laughed from the side of the room. “Now you know who I work out with. They’re both better than I am.”
“Eh, we started working with Imi Lichtenfeld before you did,” Aronson said. “And he’s meaner than both of us anyway.” He jerked a thumb at Katz, who jerked a different digit back at him.
“Wait a minute,” Ariel said. “Imi Lichtenfeld, the creator of Krav Maga? You guys all studied with him? All three of you?”
“Studied with him?” Katz replied. “I’m not sure that’s the best word. He was developing things in the thirties. It wasn’t very formal then. He was still trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. So study? No. Worked with him, yes. In fact, that’s where we met.”
“Actually, Mordechai and I had met once earlier,” Aronson said. “Before I knew he was a vampire. But yes, working with Imi was when we first met and first realized that we were all vampires. Dark times.”
“In more than one way,” Katz said. “The thirties were dark, but the war…” He shook his head. “That was darker.”
“And Warsaw was darker yet.” Mordechai’s tone was very somber.
“Zichronam livrachah,” came from behind them. “May their memories be a blessing.” Rabbi Avram stepped forward. “And yet, in a way, that time is what led to the establishment of Israel. So there is a good that comes out of even great evil.”
There was a moment of silence, then Mordechai responded, “Blessed be haShem.”
“Amen,” the others murmured, including Ariel.
“Now, let me order your sustenance,” the rabbi said. He left the room.
“The rabbi is a good man,” Aronson said.
“He’s a great man,” Katz replied.
As they bickered like a couple of very old men whose friendship was also very long, Mordechai stepped alongside Ariel. “So, do you feel a little worked out now?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ariel said with a wince as he moved his shoulders. “Very worked out. I guess I should say thank you, but really, we probably need to do this more often. If I’m going to get better at this, I need more than one sparring partner.”
“I agree. I was just waiting for the right time to introduce you. As I said some time back, they are very private men.”
“I’ll meet with them whenever I can, but I don’t know for sure what my schedule for the next school session will look like.”
Mordechai nodded, but before he could respond the door opened and Mendel entered with a carrier of four bottles of blood and four bottles of water. Ariel allowed the others to make their selections first, then took the last bottles.
Aronson looked to Mordechai. “You are eldest; you say it.”
After a moment, Mordechai lifted up his bottle in both hands and said, “Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, Creator of life.”
Aronson, Katz, and Mendel all murmured, “Omayn.” Ariel belatedly followed suit.
With that, they all removed the tops from the bottles and partook of the blood.
There was no conversation. Ariel saw that the others did not gulp the blood, but did not sip at it either, so he imitated them. Even when drunk with respect, it did not take a long time to consume a half-liter of the blood.
Once they were all holding their open water bottles, Katz said, “That was good work that you did, Mordechai, you and young Ariel. Righteous work.”
“Indeed,” Aronson said, holding his bottle up in salute. “So, have you been to the Wall yet?”
“No,” Mordechai said. “We came here directly from the airport. Perhaps tomorrow.”
“Good,” Aronson said. “You spend some time there. It will help. You, too, young Ariel.”
Ariel sighed as it dawned on him that he was probably going to be known as “young Ariel” for the next century or so.