Beyond Her Kiss

Chapter 2-Three Months Ago

Three Months Ago

Afghanistan Desert

The roar echoed from the cave walls. Sitting by the detonator at the mouth of the cave, the old man was attentive until all calmness returned to the desert and the surroundings. The sound of his heartbeat was overwhelming in the silence. Yet, he was sweating visibly, though not from the humidity. His younger colleague, on the other hand, was unnaturally relaxed and calm. Which made him more anxious.

They had been on a long mission together, from the solitary solitude of his museum office to this equally deserted place. A quest that began many years ago with the guarantee of extraordinary worldly things, money, and fame, but that had since drifted into savage illegal territory.

The balding man couldn't put his finger on how they'd reached this point of no return, how it had all worsened into a complete disaster and was inhumane. The man glanced at his younger partner. He was worried there would be more to come. Death and tears.

"What have we done now, my friend?" he mumbled, frightened even as the word snuck past his lips. His voice shivered. He had begun worrying about his existence. "How could this happen to us?" He added.

His partner turned to face him. For a man of such superiority and importance, a man who had become a personal comrade and confidant of the Vampyre tsar, he was unusually dressed, an old greasy jacket, tattered around the cuffs. Baggy brown pants that hung short at the back. An army's shiny boots. Then there was the ridiculous wild silver knotted beard and oiled silver hair parted down the center, stupid really.

The old man knew it was all strategy, of course, all the role of the intentional look. A prudent honed appearance for a master of deception, one in which the man had become a handler and an accomplice. It is custom-designed to convey the humbleness and humility of a true man of God.

After an hour of searching for the urn of Lehenengoa, or the first vampire, they began to panic. There were no indications of it and the old man felt a numbing weakness overcome him. All he could do was look at the ruins and shut his eyes. Could they be mistaken? Are they?

The stone map suggested that they were in the right place. But as he began to digest what they had just done, impending darkness came down upon him, and he wondered what dreadfulness lay if the urn of Lehenengoa was driven or drifted into the air when the cave was detonated earlier. Fears tumbled upon him about what horrors lay ahead, horrors the old man would never reckon possible back in his isolated office in the museum, where he'd first met the tsar. Where he brought the old man back from the edge, showing him the wonder of his heritage, if

they returned without the urn of Lehenengoa, they would be as good as dead without a doubt. After all these years of searching and a never-ending midnight stroll, when the old man was almost on the verge of grasping it, The urn was gone. He began to panic.

"Where the hell could I have been? Dammit! We've been searching for it for almost an hour now." He murmured.

His

panic was tangible. His hands flailed in the air before grabbing the person beside him.

The ache in the bottom of their gut told them that something wasn’t right.

"We both knew we were dead the moment the Lehenengoa vanished."

His eyes darted around, looking for an escape. An oddly primitive warning sounded in the older man's