by John Booth
“You know damned well it isn’t! The Bird Cage was raided even though Han No bribes everybody below the rank of Chief Constable. They took his girls away in handcuffs, Peter.” Solly said.
“Really? Did they use proper police handcuffs or the ones the girls use?” Keeping a straight face during Solly’s tirade was proving difficult, but Peter determined to keep it up as long as possible.
“That’s it. Keep on joking! You won’t be laughing when Han No brings an army of Warlocks through your windows and reduces Castle Cragus to rubble.”
“Warlocks can’t fly, Solly. They’d have to use the tradesman’s entrance. However, it’s in much better shape these days. Ilarna has the builders in, the good ones too, not English ones. They’ve done a wonderful job.”
“Is everything a joke to you? You’ve made an enemy of the most dangerous creature in this godforsaken universe and he’ll take his revenge on you.” Solly subsided into unintelligible grumbles as the alcohol began to affect him.
“No, it was never a joke. You may remember when we spoke a week or so ago I told you to tell Han No that if he wouldn’t talk to me I’d force him back to the table. Han No’s brought this on himself by underestimating me. Go back and tell him that, Solly. Tell him, unless he comes to talk to me, his businesses on Earth will cease to exist. Tell him this is only the beginning and worse is to come.”
“I can’t tell him that. Peter. He’d kill me on the spot.” Solly poured himself another large glass of brandy.
“I think you underestimate your value to Han No, Solly,” Peter replied soberly. “You have no choice anyway. Because it’s the only message I have.”
Chapter Twenty Five
Reconnoitre
“I want you to fly with me,” Peter asked Lady Ilarna and was puzzled when her faced flushed and she turned her eyes away from him.
“Is there a problem? I need you to show me where Zandar is. Female Vampires do fly, don’t they?” Peter wondered what he said to cause offence. It was clear he had broken some kind of local taboo, especially when Ilarna giggled like a schoolgirl at his question.
“Yes, my Lord Cragus, Vampire females do fly when they get the desire.” Ilarna attempted to keep a straight face and failed. “And I am more than certain quite few of the women in this castle would be more than honoured to do it with you.” Ilarna turned away and Peter was certain she was laughing, though she kept any significant sounds from escaping her lips.
“Yes, well. I don’t want to fly with just any Vampire girl, however much she’d like me too. I want to fly today and I want to fly with you.” Peter explained to Ilarna’s back. He hated people laughing at him. “So are you up for it or not?”
Ilarna turned and gave Peter a deep and formal curtsy. “I would be honoured to fly with you. Be it only to the Warlock stronghold at Zandar. Would my Lord Cragus like us to have it away now, or are you planning to save this flight for later in the evening when the stars are visible in the sky?”
Despite her formal tone, Peter knew there was more than a hint of laughter in Ilarna’s eyes. He decided he would find out what amused her while they were on their way to Zandar. Lady Ilarna was far less likely to play games with him when she was away from home ground.
“Thank you Ilarna. I’d like us to go now, if you’re sure you’re ready for it.”
“I have been ready for it with you for some time, my lord,” Ilarna replied and Peter became certain she was laughing at him. “Perhaps you would prefer us to leave from a more private place?” He could tell Ilarna meant that question seriously.
“No, the battlements are just beyond this room and we can take off there. I’ve seen one of two youngsters furtively taking off where they think no one can see them, but I don’t see what there is to be ashamed about flying.” Ilarna convulsed at his words and her face changed colour to a bright pink.
I’ll never get to the bottom of this, Peter thought. He decided the best way to stop this humour was to go quickly. With a deep bow to Ilarna, he indicated she should walk out onto the battlements.
Once they were airborne, Peter discovered the two of them had to hold each other to fly together. At first, they drifted across each other’s paths dangerously and there was a real possibility of collision. As soon as their hands touched, their flying fields merged and encircled them. Peter found he had to put his hand around Ilarna’s waist to stabilise them completely. He quickly discovered the merging of their fields was an intimate sexual experience.
“Thank you, my lord,” Ilarna said as he drew her close to him and their flight steadied. Peter couldn’t help but notice Ilarna’s lips were swollen. She began breathing heavily as she guided them through the sky.
“Okay, out with it, Ilarna. What is there about Vampire flying I don’t know?”
“Vampires cannot fly for long, perhaps two hours during a single day, before the magic wears thin,” Ilarna began. Peter wondered if flying with Ilarna was such a good idea as the sexual tension increased. He heard Ilarna’s blood pumping and she sounded excited and breathless. He sported an erection he didn’t anticipate or want. There was something like foreplay in the act of flying together.
“And mainly, almost exclusively in fact, my lord, we use it for skupping.” Ilarna turned her face away from Peter in a display of feminine modesty.
“What’s skupping?” Peter felt embarrassment building in him like a million butterflies. It was, when he thought about it, pretty obvious.
Ilarna gave him a coy look as her fingers began to trace a circular pattern on the back of his hand. “Surely you would know what skupping is, my Lord? You practise the ground version with your tame Warlock every chance you get. Skupping is simply doing it in the sky where it is a lot more fun.”
Peter let go of Ilarna and the two tumbled away from each other. For the first time, Peter experienced the exhilaration of flying as he almost crashed into a tree before recovering his balance. A few seconds later, Ilarna put her hand around his waist and they flew together once more. Her fingers touching his skin through his thin shirt made his erection bounce as more blood flowed. It felt twice as large as usual and was becoming painful from unfulfilled need.
“Surely,” Peter gasped, “Vampires don’t only fly to have sex? What about the young men taking off from the battlements at night?”
“Male and females in need of sexual release without a partner often fly alone to…,” Ilarna told Peter with a nervous giggle. “I’ve done it once or twice, but never often you understand.”
“Jesus, and all we have to worry about on Earth are pigeons. But flying is so useful. Surely you use it to travel quickly to places, or in the heat of battle?”
“It’s considered perverted to use it like that, my Lord. We sometimes use it in battle, but you can’t rely on it because the magic can fade out if you aren’t paying attention. Even lovers have been killed flying.” Ilarna smiled and squeezed Peter a little tighter. “Everyone in the castle will be gossiping about us flying from the battlements.”
“Oh no! Someone is bound to tell Sal, and you can bet your life if she hadn’t heard of skupping before, her damned slaves will explain it to her in gloriously dirty detail.” Peter blanched at the thought and his erection shrank. “You have to go back and explain.”
Ilarna was outraged. “You want me to dishonour myself in front of the whole castle? I certainly will not.”
“I could order you to be whipped instead. The whipping post hasn’t been used for a few weeks. Perhaps it needs to be.” Peter said, desperately attempting to bend Ilarna to his will.
Ilarna replied tartly. “A girl who comes back from a skupping to be whipped on her Lord’s orders is given every consideration within the community. Everyone knows it means she refused to carry out her Lord’s perverted requests. There is nothing you can do that will make me tell anyone you refused my body having taken me into the air. And here is something else. Your damned Zandar stronghold is over there in the distance, if you’d care to look.”
Peter realised he was just going to have to get Sal to believe him. If only there was a handbook to consult, he could have avoided all this. There was nothing to do now but grin and bear it.
“Go to Castle Cragus Lady Ilarna. I have things to do here on my own.”
“Should I report for a whipping, my Lord Cragus?” Ilarna asked, though it was clear from her tone she knew who had beaten whom.
“Not this time, Ilarna. However, I do owe you some kind of punishment for not warning me about this. Be sure I shall get my revenge on you at some point.”
“As my lord wishes,” Ilarna said, laughing at him as she said it. She let go and swooped low against the trees flying towards the castle.
Peter spotted a large distinctive man riding a horse. He hadn’t expected such luck on his first visit, but neither was he going to ignore it once it presented itself to him. Peter shot through the air and landed in front of Jorge Dallman.
Jorge pulled his horse to a halt and looked at Peter in surprise.
“Well, boy, I would have thought you were a bit old for solo flights. But if you needed to come, I suppose you needed to come.” Jorge started laughing and nearly fell off his horse, as his laughter grew louder.
Peter’s face turned a brighter shade of red than Lady Ilarna had managed earlier. It would appear Warlocks were familiar with Vampire habits.
Jorge dismounted from his horse as soon as his laughter died. The two men walked away from the road until they found somewhere they could talk.
“Have you thought on the things I told you?” Peter asked. It was vital to his plans that Jorge recognise the truth of his words.
“That I have, little solo flyer. As I promised you, I’ve kept the hot heads from attacking Castle Cragus and when I wasn’t doing that I probed into our archives.”
“You have archives?” Peter was unconvinced Warlocks could read. It seemed unlikely they would have scholars and records.
“We have not always been as we are now, young Lord Wanker. The Warlocks were once a scholarly species. However, reading books has not proved a survival trait. One of my more elderly warriors, Tamus Gret, has always had a passion for reading history and he confirmed to me the four species once lived in peace and harmony. It appears you were right in your estimate, it was a little over two hundred and fifty years ago that the war started.”
“Did you find out how it began?” Peter would have given a lot for similar records in Castle Cragus. An earlier Lord Cragus burnt down the library because his wife was always ignoring him with her head stuck in a book.
Jorge stroked the stubble on his chin and looked embarrassed. “That we did. As leader of the unaligned Warlocks, I have access to the secret leadership records. They’re kept in a locked room and only I am entrusted with the key. I must confess that in the twenty years I’ve been in charge, I only opened that room once before. Even then it was to check the key worked. I asked Tamus to take a look inside and see what he could find out.”
Jorge leaned back on the fallen tree trunk and looked uncomfortable. “Before the troubles, the Warlocks were considered the least of the four species, though we were by far the most numerous. The books say we were twenty million strong, though I think that must be an exaggeration. Whatever the truth, there were far fewer of the other species. The records say that there were a hundred thousand Vampires, sixty thousand Grimms and a few thousand Dragons.
Apparently, there were never many dragons and sometimes their species dwindled to one or two members before a new generation of young dragons would appear.”
“That confirms my working hypothesis,” Peter said, nodding his head.
“Well, it is beyond me. The Dragons have always been the intellectual heart of Hellogon and were the greatest of the species. The Vampires were the most powerful with their incredible strength, fast reactions and the ability to suck the vitality from a man. The Grimms made the Vampires look slow, could fly like birds and trade you out of your heart while leaving you thinking you got a bargain. The Warlocks, on the other hand, couldn’t do more than a few magic tricks.”
Peter disagreed with Jorge’s assessment. “That’s hardly a fair description of your species. You can petrify anyone or anything, even if it only lasts for a short time and you created the portals to Earth, which might be regarded as the greatest of all the abilities.”
“That’s not how it was seen back then or, in truth, how it is seen now. The Warlocks introduced human slaves to Hellogon so they no longer did the menial tasks. We have a major inferiority complex when dealing with the other species.”
“I gather the Warlock leaders decided to do something about it,” Peter ventured. He wondered if Jorge would tell him the truth if he knew it. If what Peter suspected was true, it wasn’t the kind of thing you would tell any of the other species, in case they decided that even one Warlock left living was one too many.
“They did,” Jorge said with a large sigh. “It isn’t clear what they did, but it involved attacking the Dragons and the Grimms.”
“You believe your ancestors removed all those female Grimms, that virtually destroyed their species and they’ve never recovered?” Peter paused and asked the question really bothering him. “Why did they attack the Grimms? They were the least of the other species and weren’t any kind of threat.”
Jorge sighed yet again. He did not want to tell Peter any of this, but he suspected the lad already knew it. Jorge needed Peter’s help if any of the species were to survive. “The Grimms have always had a special relationship with the Vampires. It is rumoured Grimms and Vampires fly together. The two species are bonded to each other.”
“The Grimms act as the Vampires enforcers when violence is required, or rather they did. The two species are so close emotionally you can almost regard them as one. The truth is that without the Grimms constantly at their side the Vampires are much less of a threat.”
Peter kept his face impassive as he remembered Solly telling him back at the docks how he used to fly with his father. Undoubtedly, Solly never expected Peter to unravel those words and discover Solly and his Dad were interspecies lovers. That opened up a host of new possibilities.
“The Grimms and the Vampires don’t compete. The Vampires like to rule, the Grimms like to run businesses. Their desires and skills compliment each other and the two species truly enjoy each others company,” Peter said. There was more too it than that though, Peter knew. There was a deep affinity between the two species. Peter loved being around the Grimms and it appeared the Grimms loved being around Vampires.
There was one important question left to ask Jorge. “Do you know what the Warlock plan was against the Dragons?”
“Not yet. I am waiting for Tamus to uncover it. What we know is that it involved taking advantage of something the Dragon’s call ‘The Cycle’. The Dragons inhabit the part of Hellogon corresponding to China on Earth. They live high in the mountains. There are no Warlocks, Grimms or Vampires there, unless taken there by Han No.”
Peter nodded. “Your race must have set up the portals for the Dragons; yours is the only race capable of creating them. And wherever you set up major portals you always set up minor ones only Warlocks can use,” Peter reasoned out. “So, in those days, there must have been many ways the Warlocks could get to the Dragons’ home.”
“However,” Jorge said, “in a fight we always lose against a Grimm or Dragon. If we petrify them, they wake up a few moments later, track us down and kill us. I don’t see how we could have eliminated the Grimm females or the Dragons, whatever the records say.”
Peter decided not to tell Jorge how they did it. It was better the method stayed forgotten.
“I think there may be ways to bring peace to Hellogon,” Peter said. “It relies on Han No and how successful he has been in his quest. His species has been destroyed and I suspect the circumstances needed to give him any chance to restore it are remote.”
“His species has been destroyed?” Jorge repeated.
“Oh yes. T
he Warlocks killed all the Dragons but Han No. He didn’t discover it was the Warlocks until a few years ago. I think he thought the Vampires and the Grimms were behind it. Unless he can restore his species to life, he will certainly take the Warlocks with him in revenge.”
“You are certain of this?” Jorge asked.
“Absolutely certain,” Peter replied with a sigh. “It’s why he refuses to discuss anything with me now. I was the lever he wanted to use to get the Vampires and the Grimms to wipe Zandar and the Warlocks off the face of Hellogon. While the woman at my side is a Warlock, he knows he’ll never get me to carry out his genocide for him. I’ve become a bit of a disappointment, I’m afraid. And after all that work to get me to hate and distrust Warlocks.”
Jorge Dallman and Peter talked for another couple of hours, discussing the way forward. When they finished, Peter flew back to Castle Cragus.
Jorge shook his head in sorrow as he watched Peter fly away. “He’s a nice enough boy, but he has to stop this self-abuse if he wants to be considered a man.”
* * *
Peter landed just before reaching the castle in the cover of some trees. He didn’t want to create any more gossip. He strode past the guards on the gates and heard the men giggle.
He was walking back to his office when he was grabbed by an angry Sal. “I didn’t do anything with her, I promise.” Peter protested putting his hands up in the air in a gesture of surrender. Sal said nothing in the corridor, choosing to drag him back to their apartments.
When the door closed, Sal spoke furiously. “Get those trousers down. If I can’t toss you off in your usual ninety seconds you’re going to be in so much trouble!”
“Sal, you can’t expect me to perform under duress,” Peter protested as he started to loosen the belt of his jeans.
“Hah!”
A short time later, Peter and Sal lay on their bed looking at the highly erotic picture painted on the ceiling. Now Peter understood about skupping, the mural was easy to interpret. He thought the reason none of the Vampires ever had their feet on the ground in all the paintings was something stylistic.
