Then, the door began to move.
Stanza grabbed Mavis' shoulder and pulled her back...pulled Jonah back, too. Tremendous rumbling and grinding sounds filled the tunnel, as if an ancient mechanism were turning after centuries of being frozen in place. Then, there was a deafening crack as the ancient seal broke and the door shuddered inward, away from its frame.
Instantly, a draft of cold air swept out through the cracked door with a whoosh, smelling of dust and sulfur. Terrified of what might burst forth when the door opened wide, Mavis flung her arms around Arthur and hugged him tight.
*****
Chapter 83
The half-hour was up. Shakespeare's forces had followed Stanza's orders and held off Genghis' troops for exactly that long. Now, still following orders, they were in retreat.
But Genghis' people were close behind...and some were closer than that. As Shakespeare and his allies fell back, charging on horseback up the mountain toward the castle, a handful of Genghis' best riders managed to pass them, racing along the length of the column. In no time at all, they had galloped past Shakespeare himself, cutting him off from the only other horse ahead of him.
The one carrying James and Thomas.
So it's five against two...make that one. Five horsemen against James, with Thomas still unconscious. My charge and his twin won't likely survive those odds.
Shakespeare spurred his horse but couldn't catch up that way. He had to try a new approach or risk losing the twins for good.
Let's see how fast they ride with Hell's Tempest striking from above.
Vaulting from the back of his horse, Shakespeare changed into his full bat-form and took to the air. His leathery wings expanded fast and caught the wind, lifting him high while his gray horse continued toward the castle.
With great sweeps of his wings, Shakespeare closed on Genghis' riders. The five of them were bent low like jockeys at a race track as they hurtled toward their prey.
Shakespeare matched their speed, then rocketed downward. He angled and swooped along their path, raking every one of them with his claws before they could react.
One man fell away screaming and clutching his face. The other four wobbled, grabbing at their head and chest wounds, but kept up the charge.
On his next pass, Shakespeare snatched up a rider and whisked him skyward, then dropped him in the path of his comrades. One of the three horses still in formation stumbled on him and went over sideways, catching its rider underneath when it crashed.
Looking ahead, Shakespeare saw that the twins were within three hundred yards of the castle gate. Unfortunately, Genghis' two remaining riders were almost upon them.
Shooting forward, Shakespeare blinked away the raindrops that had started falling. When he'd gone well past the two riders, he whipped around and dove at them with fists clenched.
It was only then that he saw one of the riders had drawn a crossbow and was pointing it at him. The crossbow's wooden bolt would be as good as a stake for killing a vampire like Shakespeare.
As Shakespeare raced toward the bolt, the feratu in his chest pumped his veins full of fire. Shakespeare realized he might be about to die, and he found it funny.
Here lies the man who wrote Hamlet and lived over four hundred years. Killed by a stick of wood on a tropic island not fit for Prospero.
If I wasn't the one about to die, I'd write that play and make it sing.
Shakespeare blazed forward, determined to drop the shooter and his partner on the way to his mortal end. But he did not end as expected.
Suddenly, the point of a spear plunged through the crossbow shooter's chest. The man fired his weapon, but the shot went astray, flying wide of Shakespeare.
Glancing in the direction from which the spear had come, Shakespeare saw who'd thrown it: Hercules, riding hard and roaring with laughter, racing up from the rear guard in the nick of time.
As the speared shooter bounced off his horse and hit the ground, Shakespeare swooped around and blasted the final rider like a battering ram, both fists plowing into his skull. Shakespeare hit the rider with such force that he blew him right out of the saddle without slowing down. As Shakespeare veered off, the rider's momentum flung him fifty yards further before he finally dropped and slammed to the ground.
Hercules' horse leaped over him without breaking stride. "Well played, friend Shakespeare! You fight like Ares the god of war himself!"
Shakespeare waved him onward. "Come on!" He beat his wings harder, redoubling his speed toward the castle. "We've got to beat Genghis to Empyrea!"
*****
Chapter 84
Mavis had half-expected some kind of creature to burst out from behind the ancient door and attack her and the others. She had held her breath and clutched Arthur's arm, shivering as she watched the door swing open in the beam from Stanza's flashlight.
But no attack had come. She'd seen only absolute darkness beyond the doorway.
Maybe there would be no attack...or maybe, a monster lurked in the darkness, waiting for them to come closer so it could spring a trap.
"So, uh...what's in there, anyway?" Mavis tried not to sound nervous.
"The heart of Empyrea. The core of Heaven." Stanza stepped through the doorway. "The crucible of God."
Jonah hesitated, then followed her. Mavis entered with Arthur, against her better judgment. It was either that or stay in the hall, alone and without light.
As Mavis entered the darkness, she felt something crunch underfoot, something like autumn leaves or dry sticks. She kept walking forward, holding tightly to Arthur's arm, looking all around for glowing eyes or telltale flickers of light in the blackness.
"Here." Stanza's wrist light picked out an object a few yards away—a gleaming, smooth-faced box atop a waist-high pedestal of the same black metal as the door. "Keys, could you give us a hand again?"
Reluctantly, Mavis let go of Arthur and walked with Jonah to the box on the pedestal. Up close, its polished surfaces looked like they were cut from the same glassy, scarlet material as the locks on the door and the outer gate.
"Put your hands on the sides," said Stanza. "Your bloody hands."
Mavis pressed her bleeding right hand against one side of the box. As soon as Jonah did the same on the opposite side, Mavis' hand tingled, and the box pulsed and danced with red sparks.
The tingling quickly became uncomfortable, but Mavis didn't pull her hand away. Gritting her teeth, she looked to Arthur for strength; she could barely see him as he nodded in the shadows.
Then, as Mavis watched, the darkness slowly faded around him. A dim gray glow spread out from above like the first hint of pre-dawn gloom in a newborn morning.
Looking up, Mavis saw the glow was coming from enormous, concentric circles in a distant, domed ceiling. Looking down as the light continued to rise and spread, she at last saw the scope of the place she'd entered, the vast space concealed until now by darkness.
Mavis stood at the edge of an enormous, circular chamber, a cavernous expanse that looked too big to be contained by the castle around it. What looked like thousands of slender crystalline pillars descended like stalactites from the domed ceiling, glittering in the gray glow from the lit concentric rings above. The pillars were separated at most by a few feet, and they reached all the way to the floor. Piles of crumpled black debris were heaped around the bases of the pillars; the same debris covered the entire floor of the chamber from wall to wall, extending even to the edge where Mavis stood.
As the light came up, she finally saw what the debris was made of, the debris that had crunched under her feet like dried leaves or sticks. The same debris that blanketed every square inch of the chamber before her.
There were no sticks or leaves at all...just a carpet of gnarled black bodies, twisted and tangled. Each one a shriveled, hairy bulb surrounded by twelve withered tentacles. Each one a creature, wicked-looking as a giant tarantula, bigger than her fist.
And she was surrounded by them. They were everywhere. No escape e
xcept back through the open door.
"Oh my God." Chills shot up Mavis' spine as she gaped at the creatures. "What are these things?"
"Feratu," said Stanza. "The parasites that transform ordinary people into vampires."
Mavis was seized by uncontrollable shivers. "There are thousands of them." She moved, and a feratu crunched underfoot. "Are they sleeping?"
"All dead." Arthur kicked at the tangled black bodies. "Mummified. See how dried out and brittle they are?"
"Preserved by the conditions in this chamber," said Stanza.
"Yet once, each was alive and potent." Arthur speared a feratu mummy and held it up on the tip of Excalibur. "Each inhabited a vampire host, pumping inhuman power into his veins and sinews...power fueled by the blood of others, taken by force."
"You mean...these are the same as...as what's inside you?" said Mavis.
Arthur touched the dead feratu to his chest. "Yes." He flicked it away. "Instead of a heart, I have one of these."
"Just look at all of them." Jonah turned in a circle, gaping at the feratu-covered floor. "How did they get here?"
"The same way Arthur's did," said Stanza. "Inside the bodies of human hosts."
"And then what?" said Jonah. "The hosts had to die for the feratu to leave, right? Then where are the bones of all the dead vampires?"
"I don't see any." Stanza started forward, shuffling through the carpet of desiccated remains. "Just feratu."
"This doesn't make sense," said Mavis. "Isn't Empyrea supposed to be a vampire paradise?"
"There are many definitions of paradise," said Stanza. "Sometimes, it's nothing like what we expect."
"Wait a minute," said Jonah. "Genghis said this place will give him godlike powers."
"Yes," said Stanza. "He did say that, didn't he?"
"So if there are godlike powers at stake," said Jonah, "why aren't we trying to stop Genghis and his men from getting in here?"
"Is this a trap?" said Mavis. "Is that what all the dead feratu mean? Will this place lead to the destruction of Genghis' forces?"
"Not at all." Stanza kept heading toward the middle of the chamber, kicking through the mummified feratu. "It will lead to their salvation."
*****
Chapter 85
Jonah, Mavis, and Arthur followed Stanza as she wound her way through the forest of crystalline pillars in the chamber. Crunching feratu underfoot, they threaded through the glittering maze, aiming for the center of the vast space.
Up close, Jonah could see the pillars were rough and of varying sizes—some skinny enough to wrap his hand around, some too thick to bracket with both hands and still have thumbs and fingers touching. When he pressed his fingertips against the sparkling substance of the pillars, it felt cool, but not freezing cold; when he rapped his knuckles on the pillars, they felt sturdy as stone or solid metal, though they looked like glass or ice.
"What's it take to shatter these things?" Jonah knocked on a nearby pillar; it sounded solid as a block of granite.
"They're supposed to be unbreakable," said Stanza. "By vampires, at least."
Jonah heard a crack behind him and turned to see Arthur swinging Excalibur against one of the pillars.
"Unbreakable by Excalibur herself, as well," said Arthur. "That alone tells me these bars are reinforced by sorcery."
"It's all part of the design of this place," said Stanza. "It makes it harder to reach the final locks."
"What final locks?" said Jonah.
Stanza pointed at the middle of the ceiling, a distant point at the heart of the glowing concentric circles overhead. "The final locks of Empyrea. The ones you'll have to activate."
Jonah gaped at the faraway heights. "I will?" He sounded amazed. "I'll have to activate something up there?"
"You and Mavis both," said Stanza. "Three sets of locks, placed where vampires can't easily get to them."
"Why can't they?" said Mavis.
"Because of the bars." Arthur partially transformed and opened his wings. They folded and crumpled around the crystalline pillars, unable to fully extend. "The bars are too close together to spread out a wingspan and flap."
"Then how are we supposed to get up there?" Even as Jonah asked the question, he didn't want to hear the answer. He knew he wouldn't like it.
"You'll climb." Stanza shot him a grim smile and continued her threading march among the pillars. "Shinny up the bars to the top."
"You're kidding," said Mavis. "That's a long way up."
"The bars are rough," said Stanza. "Plenty of handholds and footholds. You can make it."
Jonah's hands were sweating as he considered the climb. "Vampires can climb just as well as we can, can't they?" He secretly hoped his logic would give Stanza second thoughts about the plan.
But Stanza didn't reconsider. "They won't catch you in time if you get a good head start. That's why we need to get you up there ASAP."
At that moment, Jonah heard voices in the distance, from the direction of the door. Turning, he looked back through the field of transparent crystal pillars, glimpsing new arrivals in the brightening gray glow.
He recognized them immediately: Hercules, Alexander, Shakespeare, James, and Thomas. As they stood near the door and caught their breath, more ran in after them—the dozens of men and women who'd surrounded Genghis' caravan in the jungle and fought his army to a standstill.
As Jonah watched, a final few stragglers raced into the chamber. Then, Hercules slammed the metal door shut and flopped against it, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.
"We made it!" said Hercules. "By Jupiter, we outraced those lunatics!"
"By the skin of our teeth," said Alexander.
Suddenly, Stanza shouted at them, catching Jonah by surprise. "Open that door!"
Hercules shouted back at her. "Stanza?" Stepping away from the door, he peered into the crystalline field. "Is that you?"
James jogged a few steps ahead of him and pointed. "There they are!"
Stanza shouted again. "You need to open that door!"
"But Genghis and his troops are right behind us," said Alexander. "They'll rush in any minute now!"
"That's what we want!" said Stanza. "Seal the door after they're all in here."
"Do you want them to obtain godlike powers?" said Shakespeare. "Do you know what Genghis Khan and his ilk will do with powers like those?"
"You'll have to trust me!" said Stanza. "Just do it! Get them all in here, seal the door, and keep them preoccupied till Jonah and Mavis finish their work!"
"But that's nuts," said Thomas. "What the hell?"
Without another word, Stanza whipped around and continued rushing through the crystal array. Jonah shrugged and followed.
As they ran onward, Jonah heard last words from Hercules, carried across the chamber by his booming bass voice. "I'll open it! But I hope you know what you're doing! This place could be a death trap for us as much as them."
Hercules grunted as he strained to pull open the door. Jonah heard the familiar whoosh of air as the seal broke between door and frame.
And then, for a moment, there was silence from that direction. The crackling of dried feratu corpses under the feet of Jonah, Stanza, Arthur, and Mavis was the loudest sound in the chamber.
But the quiet didn't last. A chorus of howls, shrieks, and roars echoed down the corridor beyond the door, getting closer. It was a cacophony of pure pandemonium, a riot of vampires' voices growing louder with every second.
Jonah wanted to turn and look back, but he didn't. No one else did, either. According to Stanza, they had to reach the final locks before anyone could stop them.
Hercules and his team were on their own.
*****
Chapter 86
Shakespeare listened from the doorway as the horde of vampire warriors boiled up the corridor toward him. They were a hundred or more strong, charging forth in a seething, screeching wave.
Once that swarm has overrun this cavern, the murder shall begin anew. None shall
stand unscathed in the frenzied war for possession of Empyrea.
"How long do we have?" shouted Alexander as he ran among the troops, preparing a defensive formation.
"A moment or two ere the legion's upon us," said Shakespeare. "No more!"
Hercules threw back his head and roared like a lion. "Death is my mistress! She's carving their names in ebony as we speak!"
Alexander shared his spirit. "How many times have we stood against armies like this?" Grinning fiercely, he let loose a booming battle cry. "How many souls have we sent away screaming while we braided their scalps on our belts?"
Hercules stomped his feet, and the feratu-covered ground shook. "Never enough for the kings of the Earth! Never enough for hearts such as ours!"
It was then, in the space between breaths, in the breath before mayhem, that Shakespeare felt a chill rush up his spine. In spite of who he was and all he'd done and felt and seen, even he was not immune to the immensity of the moment.
An army of death raced toward the heart of Empyrea, raging and slavering for a prize out of myth. An outnumbered band of fighters waited in the shadows, laughing in the face of the bloodthirsty swarm.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, I stand with Alexander the Great himself, with the demigod Hercules, preparing for war. How many men how much greater than I have stood thus, side-by-side with one or the other, in battles mapping the fates of nations and gods?
James seemed to share the enthusiasm. His eyes were wide and his voice quivered with excitement as he stared into the dark corridor alongside Shakespeare. "Where do you want me, Master?"
"Wherever the fight takes you," said Shakespeare. "Our task is to hold them here, that our allies may complete their vital work in the core."
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