“Come, come my guests!” Sombrala’s voice rang through the room.
Vixerai and I stepped inside, ever on guard. “Ornios, offer our guests something to slake their thirst.” The incubus poured what looked like strong red wine into a goblet, and held it to me.
“I do not thirst.”
The Incubus, Ornios as Sombrala called him, was aghast. “You dare refuse a drink from the queen?”
“I dare. And she does not thirst either.” I gestured toward Vixerai, then looked back to Sombrala. “Now, Charlotte!” I demanded from Sombrala.
“Of course.” Sombrala’s eyes narrowed subtly for a moment, as if she were offended. “I should hope you are more courteous on other occasions. Charlotte, come!” The doors opened, and Charlotte walked in. She seemed unharmed, and she hurried to me and Vixerai.
“Oh, Rothan! Vixerai, I’m glad to see you both! Forgive my leading you to such dread dangers!”
“It’s alright, we live, as do you.” I put a hand on her shoulder, feigning affection but truly to test if she were real or just another illusion—however a paltry test it might be. She was solid to my touch, flesh and blood. I turned to Sombrala upon her throne. “Now, bring One Eye and Abalo to us.” Then grudgingly, I remembered the other. “And Sirucan.”
“Careful, Rothan.” Sombrala’s red talon fingernails caressed her white throne. “Your mistrust is becoming insulting. But if you truly insist.” She gestured to her Incubus. “Ornios, bring the other guests.”
“As you command, my Queen.” The Incubus swooped through the doors Charlotte had entered from.
“Rothan, it’s alright,” Charlotte said. “Abalo wished to see some artifacts in Queen Sombrala’s collection, and the other two went with him. It was better that way, so that she and I could speak. Sombrala has told me everything that happened, Rothan, and now I understand. Sombrala means us no harm. I even told her how you and Vixerai were sneaking about. You see, she has known me for many years. I was a wizard girl. She… she was to turn me, to transform me to a Sanguinar vampire…”
“How can you trust her then, if she was to do that to you?”
“Because I wanted it. I know it sounds… strange, as it did to me at first. But I have always been fascinated with magic and the arcane, and I can see how… I must have wanted to reach the pinnacle of it. So I traveled to the Black Tear and sought Sombrala out, to change me, to transform me. But her rival Tiloshar grew jealous and wanted me for herself. They battled, and Sombrala brought me here to Malfeon to protect me from her.”
I looked from Charlotte to Sombrala. Sombrala seemed almost hurt at my accusing gaze. “Then… why was it that Tiloshar’s memories were erased? Why were yours?”
“Tiloshar is adept at mind magic, as no doubt you have witnessed yourself,” Sombrala answered. “We fought on the Black Tear. She wiped Charlotte’s memories to turn her against me and take her for herself. As I escaped here, she was going to pursue us, so as my last act in Hourne, before stepping through the Planar Gate, I blasted her with my most powerful memory void spell. I knew I could not slay her, but at least if I made her forget all she knew she would not come hunting for us. However, the Planar Gate is dangerous, and chaotic, it did not transport us to the same spot here in Malfeon. I searched for my dear Charlotte, but as she had no recollection of me, she hid instead, aided by the foolish harpy tribes.”
“Why did you cull them then? Why not make peace with the harpies rather than prey upon them?”
“I have no need to parlay with beings who are beneath me. It is not that I hold them in contempt, but that I cannot treat them as equals, just as you would not treat a mouse or hog as yours. Do you judge a shadow lion for feeding upon a spotted ox? What of a tundra wolf sinking its fangs into a singing deer? This is the way of the world. This is cosmic nature. Just as humans lord over lesser beasts, pack animals, slaughter animals, so do we, the great Sanguinars, lord over them, over all peoples.”
“But humans are not beasts—they suffer!”
“Have you ever kicked a hound, Rothan, and heard its whimpers? Have you ever castrated a boar and heard its shrieks? Do humans heed any of these cries of beasts? Do they heed the cry of the lamb as they slit its throat, do they heed the brays of the cow as they stake it to the ground and enslave it? I am not evil, Rothan son of Fenris, I am simply a higher life form, above humanity. Just as you are. Accept this. You can become a great being of destiny in time and lord with us Sanguinars.”
There was a promise of such power, such wanton pleasure on her face that I had to strain to return defiant words.
“I have never claimed to be such a thing. And in truth your philosophies are not my concern. I return to Hourne, as soon as my companion One Eye arrives.”
“You will take me as well, will you not?” Charlotte touched my arm. “As much as I have come to love my harpy people, I belong to that world Rothan, just as you do.”
“I’ll take you then.”
“And you’ll take my vampire sire of course? You’ll take Sombrala?”
“What?” My heart nearly leapt out of me.
“I must come with you.” Sombrala commanded. “I will not have you hand Charlotte over to Tiloshar’s grasp. I am the only one who can protect her.” To this I did not reply, but only stared at the pale queen whose gaze was multiplied in the mirrors that were spread all throughout the room.
Vixerai stepped next to me, the look in her eyes and her touch on my arm told me I was not leaving Malfeon without her. Hells, it was one big caravan from Malfeon back to my home world.
The doors parted, and Ornios the Incubus stood before them. “My Queen, I bring you the rest of Charlotte’s party.” He gave a small bow, and One Eye, Abalo, and Sirucan all stepped out from behind him.
“Ah, Rothan!” Abalo said in his elderly, intellectual voice. “You should see the marvels Sombrala has within the castle!”
“I have seen enough of them.”
“Rothan,” One Eye said in his terse way, and gave me a nod.
Sirucan merely folded his arms and did not meet my gaze. I looked about the room, took in the mirrors, the several beings, all the many destinies that had come together, surely proof that the gods were sometimes mad in the way they played with mortals, and immortals in the case of the two vampire queens that were entangled in all of this.
“Prepare yourselves, then.” I raised my ghost hand, which had the Planar Ring upon it. “We travel to Hourne.”
“I will not leave Charlotte’s side. I travel to see this strange world of yours,” Sirucan said.
“And I must explore it before I pass on. What a dream for a scholar.” Abalo adjusted his goggles.
I looked to Vixerai’s eyes, and she seemed frightened and thrilled at the same time. “Will we not get to say… goodbye, let others know where we’re going?”
“There’s no time for that, Vixerai.” I looked away from her and focused the arcane power within me.
“Wolf man,” the Incubus said, “why does your gauntlet glow?”
“That is the Planar Ring. I am summoning its power, to open the portal back to Hourne.”
“Finally, you are becoming a hero, and a gentleman.” Sombrala smiled and gazed upon me so that any man would have melted with lust.
I merely stood as the ghostly light around my gauntlet grew brighter. “Any affair you would set in order before we leave, Sombrala?” The pale light from my ghost hand was becoming bright as a torch. “The moment of the portal opening draws near.”
“No, all will be taken care of, once I reach Hourne and deal with Tiloshar.”
I nodded, my gauntlet reaching a burning intensity. I glanced one last time to the mirrors and saw my reflection, but not Charlotte’s, nor the other three. “Hold. You did forget one thing.” Sombrala’s eyes perked, her ruby lips parted ever so slightly with confusion. “You forgot to give your illusions reflections!” My ghost hand became a swinging torch as I slashed. I had been gathering its spectral power, concentrating it so tha
t I now unleashed spectral claws upon Sombrala that were thrice their normal size and intensity. I aimed for her throat as I slashed. She instinctively ducked back, just enough that my claws did not tear clean through her neck, but they still raked her face open, gouging her eyes, letting out a spray of blood.
The scream she belted was so loud, so otherworldly, that the room shook and great howling winds began snapping all about as if we were in a great storm. Charlotte wrapped her arms around my gauntlet. “Rothan, don’t!”
With a shrug, I freed my arm and backhanded her so hard my black gauntlet tore her chest open in a gush of blood. One of her breasts popped like a ripe tomato, spilling red all over her white dress.
“What have you—” Vixerai began screaming in panic, but an instant later Charlotte’s blood along with the rest of her body vanished as did One Eye and the rest—gone back to the arcane mists they were summoned from.
I lost no time. Sombrala was wounded. “This is our chance!” I took two blurring steps, then leapt. As I soared through the air, straight for Sombrala, I felt the murder pulsing in my eyes, felt the familiar grip of my ax in my hands as I unslung it and coiled it, ready to unleash a final death. “Die!!!!!!” I swung, but just as I would have taken her head, the cursed Incubus stepped between us with blurring speed. The poor bastard held his hands out, his fingertips beginning to glow with some kind of spell. He was fast enough, but his spell was not. My ax’s thirst however, would not be denied, and its twin blades came flashing before me, cleaving his head and shoulder from the rest of his body. A band of red streaked before me as he was split in two.
My metal boots clanged as I landed. Sombrala was reeling back, black lightning writhing from her fingers, wildly, as she aimed blindly. “You worm! You worm!!!” She cried out. The black lightning pulsed, forming streaking pillars of that were filling the entire room, splintering chairs, crushing her throne into sharp shards of alabaster.
“Rothan!” Vixerai’s voice came shrieking from above. As she landed next to me, she intoned an arcane word, spread her arms above her head, and a dome took shape over us, a near translucent dome which shielded us from the sparking lightning. As the lightning began fizzling out, Sombrala was already fleeing, flying straight for one of the mirrors in the room.
“We can’t let her flee!” I ran out from the dome, risked the lingering lighting in the room, and threw myself into the mirror just as her form was sinking into it.
I floated through the shadowy realm’s scintillating mirrors. It was a flashing instant and an achingly slow moving moment all at once. Far ahead of me, a mile perhaps, though perhaps it was only a few paces—it meant little in this realm—was Sombrala in flight, her dress rippling through this empty space, droplets of her blood trailing behind her. As slow as dreams, I pursued her, and whipped my chain. Link by link it slid out from my gauntlet, moving as if we were under the sea. It wrapped around Sombrala’s ankle.
She pierced into a silvery rectangle—a mirror somewhere within White Tear. I came bursting out of the mirror behind her. We were in a cavernous room with various coffins within it and arched ceilings.
She crashed to the floor, falling from the mirror, and I crashed with her. I stood, was still holding her by the chain. As I glanced about, I saw that Charlotte and the other three were resting in golden coffins. “It’s over!” I began retracting my chain, pulling Sombrala toward me by the ankle, readying my ax to take her head. But she resisted, and she was strong beyond mortals.
“You bastard… your fate now will be a thing of terror; even demons will have nightmares of your torment!” She looked up at me, her fangs bared, her bleeding eyes now no longer physical but two black pits that had within them small diamond lights. They were haunting, as if peering into them one was gazing at some small fire at the bottom of an ethereal pit. I snarled and kept pulling at my chain.
“You would enchain me… like a common slave?!” She tensed and willed for black lightning to crackle from her body, through my chain, and to me.
I cried out as black lightning snarled all around me, turning the world to a madness of alternating light and dark, sending tremor after tremor of pain through me as I was hurled through the room. By some sliver of remaining intelligence, I retracted my chain so that she could pour no more lightning into me. I came crashing down, bounding once or twice until I came to a dead stop.
I struggled to get up. Glancing up at the bloodied vampire Queen, I saw she was gathering black lightning upon her claws once more. “I will not kill you, not yet. I will take my time, prolong your life to eternity if need be, delve into every horror in your mind and make you live it!” She aimed at me with her fingers. “But surely, you can take a little more before I begin your true torture.” Fiery orbs came whirring through the air. She had to spend the lightning she had gathered on intercepting the volley of fire. It was Vixerai. She had come through the mirrors, just as we had.
She landed before me and immediately her hands raised a translucent dome shield. It lit up all around us, black lighting sizzling as it swirled around the dome. We were protected inside, but Vixerai clearly strained, a drop of blood pouring from her nose at the sheer exertion of holding the shield up.
Sombrala closed her hand and the lightning ceased, leaving only flickers of black lighting around us, like the lingering embers of a great flame. “You would have been useful, you would have been a fine addition to my royal court. But now, now I see you are no noble.” Her eyes healed, first blue and red veins clustered in the sockets, then white bulbous eyeballs growing as a flower blossoms. Finally, eyelids draped over them as fine sheets over a royal bed. “Let it not say I am not truly merciful. You have one last use to me: give me the Planar Ring, and I will forsake your eternal torture and grant you a swift death.”
“That’s what you wanted all along.” I held my ax to steady myself. “The ring.”
“Not true. I truly do love Charlotte as my own. But I must return to Hourne and face Tiloshar once more. This I must do above all else. And you, oh tragic, forsaken fool, are my path to do so.”
I began charging my ghost hand once more. “I’ll take part of you to Hourne. That I’ll grant you!”
“You think the same ruse will work on me twice?” She cackled and the stone slabs throughout the chamber cracked under the vigor of her arcane power. “The mental effort needed to hold the illusions kept me from probing your mind. I did not think you were so cunning. You saw through my illusions, Son of Fenris, and for that I underestimated you. But these that lie in this chamber, these are truly the companions of yours. They are flesh and blood. I have only put them to a gentle sleep. Saving them as a queen spider does. But perhaps their use has come.” She pointed at one of the coffins, Abalo’s, and she raised her hand, gracefully, so that Abalo’s limp body came rising up out of the coffin, supported by invisible hands. “Wake, winter harpy.”
Abalo stirred there in mid-air. “What? Oh…” he gazed around him through his thick spectacle goggles. “Elders, save me!” He writhed in useless defiance, as Sombrala held him in her invisible grasp.
“Leave him be!” I roared.
“Oh, but he needs my aid. His eyes, if they need spectacles, they must not work properly. Surely we can find him a better pair.” She grinned and a spectral hand like that of my ghost hand appeared before Abalo’s face. Its two longest fingers stabbed straight into his eyes. The old harpy cried out in a wheezing agony as blood spurted from his eye sockets.
Fury came roaring from my chest as I went charging out from the protective dome. The vampire queen held her ivory fingers out and conjured lightning. It was nothing to me. Pain. Death. I kept charging, holding my ax before me. It swallowed much of the lightning, soaking its black currents like a thirsty maw. That lightning which it did not swallow burned me with its horrid black touch. I trembled with a bloodlust that drowned out any thought of pain. My flesh was sizzling, but I charged on. Sombrala did not expect this and her eyes rounded—and for one split moment, she knew true
fear. My ax crackling with stored up lightning in its blade, I unleashed it in a great murderous arch. It tore through her, sending her entrails spilling, blood and gore trailing the top half of her body as it went flying from her legs.
“Wllaaaaaaagh!” she went screaming, her face in a wild contortion.
But rather than fall lifeless, she soared into the air, then perched herself horizontally on the wall, calling her legs to her by her invisible power. The dress covering them swooped and fluttered. As her two halves met, blood streamed between them, and began reforming her body.
“No…” I muttered, my legs suddenly failing me with how overwhelmed with defeat I felt.
“You have wounded me… as no other has before… Son of Fenris. Now watch me finish breaking your companions one by one.”
“You won’t!” Vixerai’s voice cried out, and I saw her swoop up toward Sombrala, launching orb after orb of her fire.
Sombrala waved before her and a great mouth, like that of a shark, conjured itself before her. It opened its black jaws and swallowed every fiery orb before it, then vanished in an instant. Sombrala then conjured a spectral claw and sent it flying down. It was the size of a giant’s, and gripped Vixerai’s torso like a girl would a toy doll. This claw plummeted to the ground, smashing Vixerai into it. My succubus’ pained cry was broken by her gasps as the breath left her body.
“Vixerai!” I sent my chain claw flying at Sombrala as she perched there like a flagpole on the wall. My claw’s razor tips would have impaled her, but she became half ethereal and she darted from the spot. The claw went smashing into the spot where she had stood, and I willed it to latch on and pull me up to it. The chain hissed. As my boots hit the wall I leapt off from it, hurling myself at Sombrala’s new spot on the opposite wall. She laughed and flew from it as well, just as I slashed at her with my great ax. Falling through the air, I twisted and flung my chain claw at her. She dodged effortlessly, letting the claw whip past her, and returned a fork of black lightning my way. Having no time to will my ax to absorb it, and still falling through the air, I had to use my ax head merely as a shield. The lighting sparked upon me, and its impact sent me crashing to the ground. I rolled, half of my own will, half by the force of my fall. Propping myself up on an elbow, I glanced at Vixerai’s fallen body. I could not tell from here if she lived. I stood to run to her, but Sombrala was already lifting One Eye from his coffin by the power of her mind.
Wolf Blade: Chains of the Vampire Page 23
