by Aderyn Wood
He had long black hair past his shoulders. He was handsome and stood with assurance. His dark eyes were almost black, and a look of fervour burned within them.
Nathaniel.
“Nathaniel,” Asha’s tone grew sultry. “Bring it to me.”
Michael’s breaths came faster. To see the vampire responsible for turning Emma… Here was the monster, the reason for Michael being here at all. Once again, his hands itched, this time with the desire to punch something.
“At once, my lady,” Nathaniel responded, the fevered look in his eye intensifying. He strode forward with the lance held high, coming so close Michael could reach out and take it from him. Or reach out and connect a fist with that arrogant face, if his hands weren’t bound behind him.
Michael focused on the lance. The gold casing around the blade almost seemed to glow with its own light. Nathaniel moved on and the desire to take the lance died as Nathaniel came to a stop before the skeleton, going to his knees, and holding the lance aloft.
“You are and always have been my most faithful servant.” Asha smiled down at him as she stepped around the rubble to stand by Nathaniel. She reached down and cupped his chin in her hands. She bent and gave him a long kiss and Nathaniel gasped when she stood, leaning forward as though eager for more.
Asha took the blade from him and held it up to the light where the gold seemed to fade. She then focused once more on Nathaniel. “You may return to watch the ritual,” she said. “With fortune, we will not need your blood, Old One.”
Nathaniel nodded and stood to return to his spot among the other zombies.
Schleck nudged the back of the young vampire who stood waiting and he stumbled forward without complaint. Gerold gripped the vampire’s arm and led him to stand by the rubble. Observing the skeleton more carefully, it seemed to Michael the permanent gaping of its mouth, indicated its readiness for sustenance.
In loud booming tones, Gerold spoke once more, “Oh Lumiel, may this gift of blood, this most holy sacrament sate thine hunger, and thou flesh render anew. May ye walk the Earth and take thy rightful seat in this realm as Overlord of Chaos.”
“Lumiel?” Michael whispered.
Gerold pushed the vampire’s shoulder, who knelt by the skeleton, and extended his head over the gaping mouth, while Asha smiled down once more, a red glow in her eyes.
Michael shivered once again hoping Georgette was somewhere safe. He glanced at Amynta, but the slayer hadn’t woken since she was hit by Schleck. Michael blamed her for losing Georgette, but his former anger for Amynta faded. They were both Sicarii.
“The dead will bring new life.” Asha’s voice rose and in a flash of movement she sliced the vampire’s throat with the lance.
Michael heard himself gasp, but there was no noise from the vampire. Blood poured out of him at an alarming rate, and soon enough he buckled, his body falling over the skeleton. His face wore a vacant stare, and the wound at his throat pumped a sluggish stream of blood.
The wound didn’t heal. It was an ugly jagged slice that looked far too mortal. It should have been halfway healed by now.
The stream of blood had flown into the skeleton’s gaping mouth. Red had splashed on the black teeth, the vacant nose and the topmost ribs.
“He is spent,” Asha said. “Bring the next.”
Schleck instructed two vampires. The same two who had bound Amynta, to move the now spent Young One, who appeared, for all intents and purposes, dead. His eyes vacant, his body still. Michael studied the wound on its neck, which he got a good look at when Schleck’s dogs moved him, his head falling back, dropping like a rag doll, and the wound exposed. It still hadn’t healed.
Michael shifted his gaze back to the lance that now dripped with dark blood in Asha’s firm grip. It had some strange power to inflict mortal damage on vampires. The spear of destiny indeed, but what destiny would it invoke?
Once again, the chanting filled the cavern. “The dead will bring new life.” It took on a new meaning. Michael’s gaze fell to the skeleton, and the wide, hungry mouth. A fresh vampire was brought forward, and she held her head willing over the ancient corpse.
Ashayet. What had he read about her? She was a priestess of the underworld, a herald of death. Here she was, practicing her specialty, but it would bring a new terror into the world. Suddenly all the reading Michael had pored over, all the conversations he’d suffered with Amynta and Gerold. All the sparse knowledge he’d acquired through his meditations – it all came to a head as he turned to face the monk. Michael was here for a purpose.
That demon tried to warn him to stay away. To turn back. And the first thing Gerold himself had done was to place this damn talisman on his neck, rendering his gift useless. But he had influence here. He had the power to stop whatever was happening. He just had to work it out.
Asha sliced the woman’s throat and once again the dark velvety red that was vampire’s blood spewed forth, filling the gaping mouth beneath.
Time and again more vampires were called forth to give of their blood, their very life. And soon Michael’s own mouth gaped in frightening awe. The bones on the skeleton were changing, becoming white. The dust, too, seemed to morph into something fleshy, corporeal.
Gerold’s voice boomed as the flesh grew slowly over the corpse. “Welcome, Our Lord of Darkness, may you walk among us at last.”
I have to stop this. Michael knew it, but how? His hands were bound and all access to his gift had been denied him. The heavy circle of iron Gerold had hung about his neck had grown in weight and felt as if he held an iron ball on a chain. His spine could barely hold himself upright.
“You have to stop this, mon ami.” The whispering voice tickled his ear and the scent of cinnamon wafted to him in circles.
“Georgette?”
He felt a release at his wrists as the binds were snipped and his muscles cried out in pain as he brought his arms forward. He glanced around at Victor, Schleck and Gerold, but they were all too focused on Asha and the corpse. Michael slowly turned the other way and his eyes fell on the form of his friend.
“Georgette.”
“Michael. Let me help you out of that.” Her green eyes were focused on the talisman. The scent of cinnamon grew stronger as she leaned forward to pull the heavy iron chain over his head...
An electric bolt spiked through Michael’s body and he gasped loudly, stumbling with the force of his gift.
Georgette held him. “Are you all right?” she whispered.
Michael’s entire being vibrated with electricity. The power in his hands was so strong, it seemed he could raise his palms and bolts of lightning would fire forth.
A darkness filled his awareness. That part of his mind that was a window to the cosmos opened wide to him and he felt the force of evil filling the earth. With pinpoint precision he identified its source. The corpse and the being that filled it.
Satan himself.
“You know what you must do?” Georgette’s green eyes seemed to shine with a white light. Something glinted at her chest. It was the silver chain she wore with the little kitten, but on the kitten’s body a cross had been imprinted. A cross with even arms – a natural defence against vampires and demons that had nothing to do with the crucifix and everything to do with centring one’s aura to resist such evil – it was effective too, if one knew how to do it.
“Who are you, Georgette?”
She pursed her lips at him. “There’ll be time for explanations later, mon ami. Right now, you’ve a job. Smite him,” she gestured to the corpse whose skin now covered most of its body. “But first you’ll need that lance.”
Michael nodded. He could feel the truth of her words through him, through the very cosmos around them. He had to kill that thing. Now. The ache that had filled his spine and his limbs was replaced with a strength, a vitality he’d never known. He looked around. Half the vampires had now been sacrificed and Schleck was heading to Emma.
“No,” Michael whispered.
“Michael,
” Georgette’s voice was a warning behind him. “You must focus on the demon, he is your target now. Forget Emma.”
“No,” Michael whispered again as Schleck removed the netting around Emma and gestured to the two brutes to pick her up and take her to the corpse.
Georgette hissed another warning, which Michael, hands now pulsing with blue streaks of electricity, ignored.
Chapter 25
Visions filled the old vampire’s mind as though he dreamt on his feet. He saw the tomb, the same tomb he stood in now, but in his mind’s eye it was the distant past.
Ashayet stood with her lover for the last time. The lanterns were aglow, and the cavern walls had been painted with the promised path for salvation.
Streaks of bloody tears lined her cheeks, but she had finished with crying. Seth had answered her prayers. She had made her deadly deal with the Dark Lord and she was ready to do His bidding until the time came in the long tunnel of the future, for her to return and wake her lover.
Nathaniel blinked as his mind returned to the present. Ashayet looked just as she had all those centuries past, only the bloody tears were gone and a beatific smile lingered on her face as she stared down at the entity growing ever more corporeal by her feet.
His gaze fell to the now fleshy corpse, and something twigged in Nathaniel’s consciousness. But the jubilation he held for Ashayet battled the fledgling thought, battled to keep his mind in this state of adulation. “Praise be to Ashayet. Praise be to the Lord of Darkness, the Lord of Chaos,” he whispered.
But the words were sluggish, and his lips lazy as he took up the chant. “The blood of the dead will bring new life.” The fracture in his mind refused to mend.
It tugged more strongly when he looked at the monk. Nathaniel failed to pinpoint the reason, but he knew he was supposed to hate that little man with all his being. Azazel was his true name, though he’d gone by many others. His eyes were rolled back so that only the whites showed, and his body swayed as he chanted his own strange song.
Nathaniel’s gaze returned to Ashayet. Her black hair flowed with the wind that continued to whip up the dust. Her beauty burned bright and his heart flushed with adoration, but his mind fractured once more. I’m supposed to hate her too.
He shook his head. How could he think such a desecration? But the thought persisted. He was meant to hate her.
A shout pierced the drone of chanting. The tall human who reeked of vampire blood – her name came to him – Schleck, struggled to bring another vampire forward for the sacrifice. Schleck barked orders to her two vampire servants to move, but the vampire they clutched had allowed the red haze to take her. Her eyes turned to black glittering stones, her talons raked the earth as the Young Ones grappled to constrain her.
The fracture widened. Panic, fear and rage penetrated Nathaniel’s cognisance. Familiar emotions all of them, yet their source was doubly familiar and it yanked Nathaniel’s mind once again. A crack had cut open in his consciousness. A window to his old self and the most strange phenomenon now played out as he was split in two.
He was, at once, elated by Ashayet’s actions and the rise of the Dark Lord to come, but like a shard of ice splintering a raging fire, a new awareness grew, and would soon fight to dominate his mind – Emma was in trouble. Emma’s blood was calling him. He was her maker. He’d only ever made two others, and both had suffered at the hands of the Alguaciles in the Inquisitions. The pull of their terror, their need for him, had been as crippling then, as Emma’s need was now.
But the other part of his mind, the part that elated in the power of Ashayet, wanted only to destroy Emma. She had to comply. She must give of her blood to this most holy sacrifice.
The fracture threatened to tear him apart, but Nathaniel moved, one foot in front of the other until a thunderous roar stole his attention. The priest moved with the speed of a vampire and his fists sparked with blue bolts as though he held lightning in his very hands.
With a flourish of those flickering arms, the priest sent Schleck’s two vampires flying through the cavern. They hit the wall, blood spurting from their mouths. Schleck was next. The priest hurled her to the rock, and her bones broke with a snap that echoed throughout the cavern as she fell to the ground, dead. The priest then rushed to Emma and lifted her mouth to his to throat. An urge to stop Emma from drinking the tainted blood bubbled in Nathaniel’s mind, but whether it was to save her or not, he couldn’t say.
Emma fed, and the action seemed to make Nathaniel’s mind splinter all the more. But the tug from Ashayet also pulled and Nathaniel took action, flying across the cavern to the priest. He had to stop this. Ashayet must not be foiled.
Nathaniel landed and stepped closer to Emma, intending to throw the priest off, but all at once Nathaniel could sense the priest’s essence and he paused.
“Slayer,” Nathaniel snarled as he leapt for the priest. Too late.
Time stopped as Nathaniel’s two minds absorbed all that played out in mere seconds.
Emma finished feeding, and her power reached its peak. So too did the priest’s. His hands sparked with thick blue bolts of electricity that streaked the cavern at all angles, causing bright flashes of light, and singeing the flesh of all they touched. Nathaniel shielded his eyes to look more closely – a golden glow hummed around the priest – an aura of some kind, and his hair shone like a halo. He strode to the monk, Azazel, and thrust his electrified palms on the monk’s forehead. “Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto præsidium…” The priest’s voice boomed over the monotony of chanting.
The sparking electricity intensified, and a streak of lightning burned Nathaniel’s shoulder. The fracture split further, and instinct made him crouch behind a boulder
“Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, princeps militiæ cælestis, Satanam…”
The wind whipped Nathaniel’s long hair into his eyes, and he clung to the rocky surface as he leaned to the side to watch the maelstrom play out.
The monk was on his knees, his mouth as wide as the corpse’s gaping jaw. The blue light cast by the priest’s hands was impossible to look at, as was the bright glow of his aura. But Nathaniel could see Azazel well enough, could see him as his body crumpled to the ground. A shadow seemed to rise from him and pass out of the cavern into the night beyond. The shell of Azazel’s long possession, the body of the monk, aged centuries in mere seconds, like a leaf withering in fast motion, and the monk was dead.
That’s when Emma moved.
She flew across the space and Nathaniel froze.
Emma would kill Ashayet.
Chapter 26
My blood fires my limbs, which act before I can think. I feel connected to everyone. To my maker, Nathaniel. He watches me with growing confusion, not knowing whether to protect me or kill me. To Asha. I now know her history in full. A sad story, but I hold no sympathy. I am also connected to my lover, Michael, and I sense Asha’s desire to destroy him. He must be protected.
Asha has deemed Michael a threat. He has killed her minion. I read Michael’s mind as easily as I read his body language. The monk was possessed of a demon all this time. Asha moves to intercept Michael and kill him before he can turn on her and her ancient lover who lies at her feet, slowly returning to life with each new feed of vampire blood.
But I will not allow such harm to come to him. And so my limbs move with powerful strides until I lurch through the dim space and hurl myself at Asha.
She thrusts an arm up and swats me as though I’m a mere insect. Her strength is seemingly impervious to any attack. But I am unaccountably strong. Michael’s blood has fortified me. The blood of a slayer. Sangusi Sacarii. And I don’t doubt it will kill me.
But not before I kill her.
She has turned. Her beauty has morphed into a monstrosity. Her skin is grey with thick black veins, a menacing web of ancient blood lines her flesh. Her eyes are red on black, like a poisonous spider. Her talons and fangs, dark blades.
When she speaks the sound is guttural and raw. “You will die.” And she lurches at Michael.
He dodges and races to the corpse, Asha’s lover.
I intercept Asha, before she attacks Michael again, and thrust my fist, but Asha is too quick, and her outstretched fingers graze my arm, her talons slicing my skin.
I tumble to the ground but roll quickly to my feet. The wound in my arm is deep and stings with sharp pain for a moment before it begins to heal.
Asha watches me with a snarl and brings her talon to her mouth in a deliberate manner. She sucks my blood clean off, then draws back her lips and hisses. “The blood of spawn. You will be dead soon enough. Why do you protect your killer?”
“Why do you protect yours?” I snarl as I glance down at the recumbent figure on the ground. It moves. A leg moves. But I don’t have time to observe further. Something comes at me from the right and I am knocked with force to the ground.
A low growl assaults my ears and the familiar scent of my maker is all around me.
Nathaniel covers me with his body. He, too, has transformed, but I am uncertain as to whether he attacks me or protects me from Asha. The uncertainty battles within him too. I sense it.
I’ve no need of his care now. It is too late for him. He should have tried caring before.
I push him off and he flies so hard he hits the roof and blood spills from his mouth, his face twists in pain from the internal haemorrhaging and I realise I am stronger than he. He, an Old One.
I glance at Michael. He is crouching over the corpse whose flesh has almost covered the bone, muscle and sinew beneath. Asha flies at me again and I am pounded into the wall. “You will die!” she growls before throwing me to the other wall. I crumble to the ground with rock from the cavern exploding around me as I try to get to my feet, but a shadow blooms above and Nathaniel lands atop me once more. He’s still trying to both protect me and stop me from harming Asha.
