Time Has Come

“I’m tired of trying to see the good in people.”

The words rolled off Caleb’s tongue as he leaned against the brick wall and looked down to the streets below, watching people scurry about like ants. He unfolded his arms from their position across his chest and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from the inside pocket of his jacket.

“How can you say that?” Wendy asked, sitting on the ledge, swinging her legs back and forth in a lazy manner as she too looked down to the streets below.

He slipped the cigarette between his lips and lit it, the flame providing a subtle glow to his rugged features, his dark eyes focused on his cigarette as he inhaled deeply. Flipping the Zippo closed and putting his cigarettes away, he withdrew the cigarette from between his lips and exhaled the smoke. “What do you mean how can I say that?” he threw back, shifting his gaze to her momentarily before looking back to the city streets.

“Well, you didn’t really give it a shot, now did you?” she shot back, toying with a feather she’d found.

“I think three hundred years is a fairly good amount of time trying to see the good in people Wendy, don’t you?”

She shrugged a shoulder. “Our maker has been around a lot longer than us and he still believes there is goodness in people. He still thinks that we need to protect them, only take the evil ones and leave the innocent alone, protect them from the monsters that prey on them.”

“Our maker is a fool,” Caleb replied, taking another drag from his cigarette.

There were too many times in Caleb’s existence on this earth that ‘good’ people showed their true nature. There were too many times that Caleb had fallen victim to the charms and kind words, found himself ensnared by the intoxicating words of people that were meant to be so kind-hearted and caring, only to feel the sharp pain of a knife driven into his back both figuratively and quite literally, with said knife being the cause of his death and rebirth into the darkness that he now called his mistress and his home.

He had been robbed of money, robbed of a family and of a home. When Caleb was twenty, he had watched his new wife and their unborn child killed right in front of him by a group of men that had been so very ‘kind’ to help them find their way to their way when they had gotten turned about in the streets of a new city and could not find their lodgings. After they killed her, they had turned their attention to him and proceeded to beat him within an inch of his life. Had they not left him for dead upon a rather public road when done with him, he might have died and there was a part of him that wished he had.

He was nursed back to health in the hospital and returned home with his wife’s body in tow within a wooden casket which he buried in their garden where she loved to spend her days. And then came the supposed family who was there to ‘support’ Caleb during his sad days, to be there for him and to try and help him through it all, help him heal the pain that lingered in his heart and soul. At first, they did but, where most would leave after a few weeks, they remained. Caleb didn’t mind. He feared to be alone, worried that if he was alone, he’d slip back into a very depressed state or be driven crazy by the silence in the large house. The problem with that was, Caleb was so wrapped up in his sorrow that he was fighting and his fears, he didn’t see the family snaking their way into a permanent position within the home, did not see them weasel their way into getting the rights to the lovely home he and his wife had until it was too late.

And that’s when Caleb found himself staying in a crummy little apartment above a bar where he spent most of his days drinking himself into a stupor with the little money he had left to his name and when that ran out, he resorted to card games to get the money needed to keep himself drunk. There were days, in the past, when Caleb would be sober enough to watch the people on the streets and see random acts of kindness, see a sliver of goodness in his otherwise dark and evil world that surrounded him. He would think of his wife then, about the kind, warm-hearted person she had been. How she would always help those who needed it without expecting a thing in return and she’d help those who were too frightened or too proud to ask, somehow knowing that they needed help. Meredith had been an angel sent from Heaven above to this dark place and it killed her in the end. Caleb would get a flicker within him, a spark of his old self, a momentary rush of guilt for he knew his wife wouldn’t want him in this position, wouldn’t want him giving up. But then, his mistress would whisper to him, entice him to her and the moment the bottle touched his lips, he was drawn back into the fold of darkness and emptiness.

It was in the darkness he had come to know that Caleb lost his life, once again by ‘good’ souls helping a drunkard to his room. Friends they had been but enemies they became. A knife in the back and left to die and all for money.

Greed, it was a terrible monster in the world and one that lived in the hearts of every man.

The darkness he had dwelled in became his permanent residence once his savior embraced him within his black wings and gave to him immortal life and Caleb became his Sire’s newest fledgling and project. To his Sire, Caleb was sure he appeared to be an injured animal in need of care and rehabilitation. Or perhaps he was viewed more as an alcoholic that needed to be cut off from the toxin that had poisoned his system for so long. Either way, his Sire spent time with Caleb, telling him of the stories of his past. He shared with Caleb the good and the bad, in the hopes that his little fledgling would see that, despite all the horrors that had befallen his Sire, there was goodness in this world. He hoped that he could rescue Caleb from a world where he viewed everyone in a negative light.

It wasn’t easy work for his Sire, Caleb was a rather stubborn individual but, his hard work had begun to pay off. Caleb was being drawn from those shadows in his heart, beginning to see the world in the light he had once viewed it. He had begun to see good in people. Progress, it was made and his Sire had been quite proud of Caleb and the effort put in on his side to make a change, to try and reconnect with the human he had been before darkness had poisoned his heart.

But all it takes is one unfortunate event to have all of that hard work shatter into a million little pieces.

Caleb met her, a woman very much like his darling Elizabeth whom he had lost many years ago. She was kind and warm. She was passionate and had a spark to her that just drew him to her. They grew close, he fell in love and she helped him in ways that his Sire couldn’t help him to regain his faith in the goodness of humanity, helped him to see it was still very much a reality in the world. Her name was Clair and she was his saving grace, an angel sent to the earth to help him.

And then history repeated itself.

Clair knew what he was, learned of his secret and she loved him so that she wanted to be granted the same gift he had been given. Caleb’s Sire knew how much she meant to him and so gave his approval for the turning to be done. The process had begun and Clair was in her transitioning stage when all hell broke loose in his home. Hunters.

They had been tracking her, his precious Clair because she was the daughter of one of them. It broke Caleb’s heart when he heard that she had been sent out into the city just to bring them down. Her meeting him was all planned. They knew who he was, and they wanted her to use Caleb to get to his Sire, to find where they were hiding. She was the bait, he had taken it and all they were doing was waiting for Caleb to lead them right to his coven. But what they didn’t bank on, was Clair falling for Caleb and her father, who looked at her with disappointment and disgust, did not think his daughter would take the bite. But, the cold-hearted old man took pleasure in knowing that she had kept all of this from Caleb, had played him like a fiddle right to the very end. And it was the end...for her.

Caleb had screamed in a fit of rage and pain, thrashed his weakened body against the restraints that held him in place as they killed Clair right in front of him. Caleb had been broken by the betrayal and the fact that the woman he had loved lied to him, but watching her get killed right before his eyes, that was the shattering point. That was when the man Caleb had been, died completely. On that day, Caleb saw nothing but darkness in every human soul he passed on the city streets.

Their Sire had tried again and again to bring Caleb back. He worked hard to find just a sliver of the old Caleb, searched within the dark and broken man he was in the hopes of finding just a piece that he could work with. But eventually, their Sire resigned himself to the fact that Caleb was beyond his help, that he would never again see the goodness in people and, with a heavy heart, had no other choice but to treat his Childe as a foot soldier which needed to be commanded. Caleb had been a soldier once before and, unfortunately, the inability to disobey direct orders was ingrained within his very core and he simply could not disobey orders.

And so, his Sire commanded him to take only the evil and leave the innocent and Caleb would do just that, even if he could pick up on the faintest scent of evil within the innocent that walked by. But, the problem here was, the more he let them be, the more he followed his Sire’s command, the darker and more aggravated he became until finally, he sought the aid of a rather despicable character.

It made his skin crawl every time he was in the presence of the rather greasy looking man’s company. He was a short, pudgy little thing with crazy eyes and thinning hair, a man that had once worked for the government but, due to his ‘theories’ about its plots to take over the world and throw humans into slavery, he was discharged from his job. Then, there was also the matter of him attempting to create some virus that would kill everyone. His words being that he wanted to ‘save humanity from the bonds of slavery.’

It was the virus part that had caught Caleb’s attention.

He sought out the man and told him he believed his theory and he’d pay him to create the virus he’d begun. He’d give him everything he needed to do the job and so, the partnership began. What the little man didn’t realize, however, was that once the job was complete, he’d be a dead man. After all, Caleb could not let such a corrupt and evil soul go free. It was what he was ordered to do.

“Caleb? Caleb? Caleb!”

Caleb blinked and looked at Wendy who gazed at him with narrowed eyes.

“What?”

Wendy nodded towards his hand. “What is that?”

Caleb looked down to his hand and saw, within it, the two vials that contained the virus he’d gotten the good doctor to create for him. “This, this is the future of the world, Wendy.”

Wendy stood up now. There was a shift in the air about them and he knew she could sense that something was wrong, that whatever was in those vials, it was not anything good.

“Caleb, what have you done?”

Caleb sighed. He looked at Wendy and, for the first time in a very long time, he gave her a semblance of a smile. “I told you, I’m tired of trying to see the good in people, Wendy. The things scurrying around in those streets below us, all of them are tainted and corrupt. There is not one pure soul.”

Wendy licked her lips and shifted her gaze to the streets below and then back to Caleb. “Yes, there are, Caleb. Children are innocent and pure.”

“But they grow and are corrupted.”

“Caleb, just…give me the vials and walk away from this. Don’t do whatever it is you are going to do. If you’re not happy with the world, then go to sleep and don’t wake up or step into the light you know will end your existence but don’t… don’t do what I think you’re going to do.”

Caleb licked his lips, chewing on his bottom one as if mulling her words over, but, his mind was already made up.

“You can’t stop this, Wendy. Even if you kill me and managed to take the vials, it would all be in vain. There are other ways to distribute this virus. I’ve thought of it all and, I’ve put it all into motion.”

“Caleb…”

“I tried.”

Caleb swung his arm quickly and threw the vials out of his hand. Wendy screamed and ran for them but, even with her supernatural speed, she could not get to them in time. The glass shattered, and the virus was released, carried out to the city on the air. She could smell it, the rancid smell of the dooming monster that had been unleashed. She looked at Caleb with horror in her eyes. He’d just doomed the entire human race, their source of nourishment and so, in turn, doomed them. Vampires would not survive, they’d either die slowly from starvation or they’d walk into the sun to end their suffering.

Caleb leaned against the wall and, as Wendy stared at him now in shocked silence, she noticed that, for the first time in over two hundred years, Caleb looked…happy.

“I’m tired of trying to see the good in people,” he muttered the words once more and sighed softly. “Now I won’t ever have to try again.”

With those final words, he slipped disappeared, slinking off into the shadows of the night. Caleb had no intentions of sticking around to really watch his plan unfurl, watch as the virus claimed one life after the next. No, he had done what he wanted and ensured that the doctor and all his notes were disposed of.

Tonight would be Caleb’s final night on this earth. He’d return to his old, family home and there he’d welcome the sun.