by Nick Stead
“Lady Sarah, are you yourself again?” he asked.
“Perhaps,” she answered. “Or perhaps not. I am… changed.”
“Changed?” I growled.
“My will is my own, if that is what concerns you both.”
I wanted to glance across at Zee to see his reaction to that, but my instincts won out, keeping my attention on the potential threat. Even though I knew full well there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do if she did decide to kill me.
“Well, good to know I didn’t almost bleed out for nothing,” Gwyn said, appearing behind us.
“Your face is familiar, yet I do not believe we have met. You bled for me, why?”
Gwyn shrugged. “These two nerds needed you alive and they weren’t going to give me much say in the matter.”
“Never mind that, what do you mean changed?” I asked her.
“I mean exactly what the word implies. I am not the same as I was before our enemies captured us.”
Her cryptic response set my anger rising again in frustration at her unwillingness to open up to me. Both Gwyn and Zee seemed to be aware of my temper flaring up but the Welsh undead was the nearest and he placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Now is not the time, mate,” he whispered. “Remember your sister.”
“The important thing is you are no longer under their control,” Zee said. “Your sister is here, Lady Sarah. She’s just up ahead, with Nick’s human sister. We should go to them, now that you are healed and free of the necromancer’s power.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I hope Selina is well after the Slayers shot her that night we were captured. How many nights have passed since then?”
We started back towards the chamber which held our sisters, the other vampire answering “We do not know in this eternal darkness.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me: what is this place?”
“Our lupine friend believes it to be a game of sorts,” he replied, gesturing at me.
I nodded and added “I’ve learnt something else since then though which I hadn’t had chance to tell you, Zee. I think it was designed specifically to punish me, in revenge for one of the humans I killed back home.
“The Slayer running this show is called David and I once called him friend. It’s safe to say our friendship ended the day he found out about my lycanthropy and realised I was the wolf running around the town attacking people, and the one responsible for killing the girl he loved.”
They didn’t seem to know what to say to that.
“I have never known anything like this before,” Lady Sarah said after a brief pause.
“Points to them for creativity,” Gwyn chimed in. “Look at it this way – at least it makes for a more interesting incarceration than their usual cages and science labs.”
Silence fell. I was still burning with all the unanswered questions I had for them all but my sister’s life was more important than getting answers from either Lady Sarah or Gwyn, so I refocussed on the need to return to her side. But of course, when I wanted a door to automatically open for us David wasn’t going to make it that easy, just to frustrate me. This one was different to the others though in that it was clearly visible and had a little barred window set into it, like a prison door. And what I saw through that window made my blood run cold.
Chapter Seventeen – Dark Truths
Amy lay still and pale, no rise and fall of her chest indicating she was still breathing. I strained my ears to detect any signs of life but couldn’t hear anything other than my own pounding heart. Just beside her lay Selina, a bullet hole in her top from where she’d been shot the night we’d been captured. I’d completely forgotten about her gunshot wound when we’d spoken telepathically before, too concerned for Amy’s life at the time. As far as I could tell, the bullet had hit her in her abdomen in a place that hadn’t proven instantly fatal to her mortal human body. I guessed the Slayers had patched her up so she could play her part in David’s puppet show, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have been able to save herself from what she’d said before, let alone Amy. Yet despite the lack of open wounds in her body, she was as deathly still and pale as my sister. There was no sign of the barghest in there with them and I couldn’t see any immediate threats within, other than the apparent closeness of Death himself.
“Amy!” I roared, even though the rational part of my brain knew she was beyond hearing. I threw myself against the door in an attempt to force it open but it held fast.
“Stand aside,” Lady Sarah commanded.
I was too desperate to reach my sister to react to being ordered around and besides, part of me had considered her to be my alpha for a time. The power of vampires like her deserved respect, if not the vampire themselves. Even Ulfarr had garnered some of my respect for the great power he wielded, despite the way he’d treated me.
The medieval vampire took my place in front of the door. There was a look of concentration on that newly formed, flawless face, her blue eyes glowing with power in a way I’d not seen before. Then the door crumbled into a pile of dust which she stepped over with all the confidence and surety of an apex predator, stalking over to her sister and kneeling beside her. Rushing to my own sister, I crouched over Amy and frantically searched for a pulse. I had that feeling of my stomach dropping as my clawed fingers found nothing, dread turning to shock and disbelief at the situation. Her skin was so cold beneath my touch, even with the fur covering my body, yet still my mind just couldn’t accept what my senses were telling it.
“What have you done?” Lady Sarah hissed, rising from Selina’s corpse and fixing those shards of ice on my own lupine amber.
“Me? After everything, how can you think this was my doing?”
“Don’t deny this was at your request. How could you let her do this?”
“I didn’t let her do anything,” I snarled. “I asked her to save Amy’s life. She said it would be dangerous but that she’d try if I swore to save you in return. I guess whatever she was trying failed…”
My voice tailed off as emotions I was no longer accustomed to took hold, choking off my voice and coiling round my heart with icy tendrils. All traces of my anger left me until I felt as cold and empty as the two bodies.
“No, they are not yet dead.”
It took a few minutes for those words to sink in, a spark of hope igniting in the black smog of grief and burning need for vengeance that was still there, deep within. At first I feared I might have imagined them, both Selina and Amy so utterly devoid of life as they were. I couldn’t keep the disbelief from my voice as I manged to growl out “What?”
“I can see your sister should have died from her wounds after losing so much blood. It seems my sister knew there was little hope of saving her, especially in here where she has no access to the tools of her craft she often relies on to channel the power needed for the most complicated of incantations. And messing with the balance of life and death is as complicated as it gets.”
“So how do you know they’re not dead? My senses tell me otherwise.”
“Necromancy cannot save lives, it merely reanimates the dead, binding souls back to their flesh for so long as the power holds. But the necromancy I was granted through vampirism allows me to sense the dead when I tap into it, in a way that goes beyond the five earthly senses you rely on. And neither of our sisters have entered a state of true death, nor would it be possible for myself or the enemy necromancer to take control of them.”
“Then there’s still hope for them?”
“All is not lost but do not rejoice yet. Without any other means of perverting the course of nature, Selina was left with but one option. I believe she teeters on the very edge between life and death as she bargains for your sister’s life with the reaper himself. This goes beyond the state between life and death as mortals understand it and a human physician would indeed pronounce each of them to be clinically dead, but I give you my word they have not yet entered true death.”
“Is this what Selina did to
save me?”
“It is not my place to talk about that.”
“What the hell does that mean? That she used some other black magic to save me?” I growled, my anger flickering back into life in response to the vampire’s reluctance to open up to me yet again. “She said I wouldn’t like her to do the same to Amy as she’d done to me, but what could possibly be worse than being clinically dead for long enough to bargain with Death?”
“I have already said too much.”
“You haven’t said anything, as fucking usual!”
“Nick, now is not the time,” she snapped. “Your temper will not help anyone here.”
“Again with the bitching!” Gwyn interjected. “May I remind you both we are still being held captive by a bunch of humans with the means to see us all truly dead if it takes their fancy?”
“Gwyn’s right,” Zee said. “Arguing amongst ourselves will solve nothing. What’s done is done and now we must trust the witch’s skills to bring them both safely back to us.”
Lady Sarah breathed deeply, surprising me with an apology. “You are right. Nick, I’m sorry but this is a matter for another time, and one you must take up with my sister. There is nothing we can do now but wait and see what happens. If we are lucky, both our sisters will come back to us, though striking such a deal will surely carry a high price. Death will not release his hold on either of them lightly and he will demand at least one life in return for each of theirs, possibly more. The universe hangs in a delicate balance and not all lives are equal. My understanding of it is not so great as Selina’s but I know enough to understand just how dangerous and drastic a move this was, and why many with the power have been reluctant to attempt it in the first place. Of those that do, few have ever returned…”
My heart sank again, my hopes quashed by her words.
“So we wait then,” Zee said. “We should make the most of the time to rest and recover our strength before we move on.”
“I’m not leaving Amy again, not even just to nod off. How about while we wait, you give me those answers you promised, Gwyn. No more excuses – we have the time now so let’s start with how you know so much about this place and what type of undead you are exactly, if you truly are one of us.”
Zee turned his gaze on the Welsh man. “I would like to know more as well. How is it you appear so human but are still one of us?”
Lady Sarah also fixed her icy glare on him, though she didn’t deign to speak.
“Oh sure, gang up on the outsider. It’s okay for you vampires and werewolves. You can make more of your kind. You’re not the last. I can’t make more of mine.”
“Is that supposed to be funny?” I snarled. “Maybe they can make more of their kind but not every human can become a werewolf, and there’s none left who can be turned.”
“Really? Hmm, maybe the Slayers have grown more competent than I’ve been giving them credit for. At least you can still father some little werewolf pups with a human.”
“They’d never survive to adulthood. I am the last.”
“I’m sorry, chummers, I didn’t realise things had gotten so bad on the surface. I suppose I should explain myself then, if it’ll help gain your trust. You might want to get sat comfortably first though – it’s kind of a long story.”
“Just get on with it,” I growled.
All sense of merriment drained from his face then, a darkness creeping into his words as he continued “You ask me if I am undead. If I am kin to vampire, to werewolf, to zombie. I mock you. I am something far older, more primordial. I am the superstition and fear as old as civilisation itself. My home is down here in the very roots of the planet, the yearning chasms sunlight has ne'er caressed. I am the planets’ toll collector. For all the riches that lie beneath the crust, a price must be paid. I am the creaking of the bows as they strain against the weight of the earth. I am the fumes that kill the canary and suck the breath from your lips. I am the cries of the long, long buried dead, deep below the surface of the world.
“I am a knocker. And my time has passed.”
“A knocker? I have not heard this term before,” Zee said.
Judging from the less than impressed look on Lady Sarah’s face, she hadn’t either, and it was not a name of any mythological creature I recognised.
A flicker of anger passed across the Welsh spirit’s features before they settled back into their usual good humoured countenance and he answered with a return to his former jovial tone. “Not really surprising for two vampires stuck in the past but I’m disappointed they don’t even whisper our names in old mining tales anymore. Actually, now that I think of it those tales might only get passed down in families who grew up in mining communities. I guess not all towns are mining towns.
“Anyway, that’s what the miners used to call me – a knocker. They blamed all manner of accidents on my kindred from fairly innocent acts of mischief to causing the disastrous cave-ins that claimed so many lives and, to be fair, they were usually right. But I’m actually much older than the first human mine and I haven’t always lived underground. Now, in folklore knockers are sometimes depicted as fairy creatures like hobgoblins, which I’m obviously not. Other stories paint them as malevolent spirits which would be more accurate. You could call me a spirit of sorts and there’s another bit of folklore my kind fits into, separate from the mining tales ’cause we all know humanity ain’t that bright. Outside of the mines, in Wales I’d be known as a pwca.”
“What the fuck’s a pwca?” I growled, struggling to pronounce the Welsh word.
“I’m less upset you don’t know about these tales – we’re probably less well known in your neck of the woods. Pwcas are also considered fairy creatures by some and a type of spirit by others. You’ve seen my true form now so yes, I am a spirit of sorts but not the kind that was once a living creature who died and became a spirit. I’ve always been a spirit creature so I guess I’m not truly an undead like you three, but I’ve always felt more at home around you guys than I have humanity. And my own kind, well. They aren’t really around anymore.”
“So you inhabit mines just to wreak havoc and generally have a good time?” Zee asked him.
“Not exactly. In the good ol’ days I was a force to be reckoned with, full of power and troubled with few weaknesses.”
“So can’t you just break us out of here?” I interrupted.
“Ah fluffy, if only it were that easy. I’m cursed too you know. As you’ve already seen, the darkness reveals my true self, an unstoppable spirit capable of wanton destruction whenever I feel like it. Though I have always enjoyed a good practical joke so the stories humans tell are kind of true in that respect as well.
“But since witches like Selina over there found a way to bind me in human form, I’ve been left vulnerable in the light. Just as you three no doubt consider yourselves cursed to have become monsters who have to feed on humans to stay alive, I’m cursed to exist as a weak human for as long as light shines on me. My curse also makes me weak to the light itself, so I can’t just smash these artificial lights to grant myself the freedom to return to my true form – I need someone else to do it for me. Now, as you might imagine, being stuck as a human is far less fun than being a powerful spirit so after the witches cursed me, I retreated underground. Human mines became a good haunt since I could be myself and enjoy wreaking havoc, as you put it Zee, but I didn’t take to living in mines purely to enjoy status as a knocker; I just wanted the shelter of darkness to escape my curse.
“As for how I know so much about this place, well: this used to be a mine back in the day, until there was a certain mining disaster which I might have been responsible for in a moment of boredom. That really did cause a lot of havoc for the humans but once the dust settled and they gave up on rescuing their people, they closed the mines down and left them be. I was happy enough down here living in darkness and probably would have been content for many more decades to come, if your friend David hadn’t come along and set about turning these old mines
into his own real life version of Dungeons and Dragons, slash video game.”
“Hang on, how come you know so much about the modern world if you’ve been down here all this time? I’m guessing you’ve been down here a while.”
“You’d be surprised how much an old pwca can learn from the internet when left to his own devices,” Gwyn winked at me. “I took an interest in the new humans bumbling along in the dark down here so I watched as they built chambers meant to test and punish you, and whenever I had chance to sneak into the part of the building where they keep all their technology, I had a play around with their computers. That is, until they realised I was down here and they imprisoned me in that room you first found me in.”
“What I don’t understand is, why torment the humans at all,” Lady Sarah said. “We prey on them because we must. Why risk your own existence if you do not need to feed as we do?”
“I can feed off human emotions but I don’t have the same hunger you guys do. I don’t need to prey on them regularly so I could quite happily have stayed alone down here until boredom got the better of me. But what can I say, tormenting them is fun. Everyone needs something to live for, right?”
“And how come you didn’t warn me about that trapdoor you must’ve known was there when we sent Amy through here?”
“Because it was more entertaining to watch you fall through and you needed to be down there anyway to reach Lady Sarah.”
I supposed I couldn’t argue with that, though I still didn’t entirely trust him and I certainly wasn’t warming to him. “Come to think of it, why didn’t you point out the hidden door to us in the tunnel full of zombies? We could have escaped through as a group instead of letting it play out the way the Slayers wanted with the four of us split up and Zee taken as their captive, and Hannah dead. I assume that is what happened to her after I fell through into the other passage?”
