Death Deceives
Page 14
Turning in a slow circle, I counted eight imps carrying flamethrowers. Many more of the creatures cavorted just outside the arc of bright lights. One of the imps sent a burst of flame towards me. I sidestepped it easily but another of the bat faced monsters behind me shot his weapon at the same time. Flames licked me and the smell of singed leather wafted away on a faint breeze.
Giggling and gurgling laughter, several of the grey beings aimed and fired. Diving to the side, I did a forward roll then leaped into the air. One of the imps tried to follow my movement and sent a jet of orange flames into the air. Lowering the flamethrower, he forgot to turn it off and accidentally set one of his companions on fire.
Screaming and burning, the female imp ran across the field, leaving a trail of melting flesh behind. Ignoring her plight, the rest of the group moved to surround me again. Far more agile than my much larger former kin, I dodged, ducked, weaved then turned directly into an oncoming fireball.
Engulfed in heat, I fell to the ground, covering my face with my hands. Screaming shrilly, I watched the imps gathering into a tight circle. The upper half of my suit was the only thing burning but I was thrashing around so much that they couldn’t tell the flames weren’t having any effect on me. I felt the heat but it didn’t hurt as I’d expected. I was glad to discover the prophet had been right about my resistance to fire.
Pointing clawed fingers at me and bellowing with laughter, the imps mistakenly thought I was done for. Rolling across the grass, I wrapped myself around the closest clone. My parents had taught me that sharing was a good thing so I passed the flames on. Now it was the imp’s turn to shriek as his loincloth caught on fire and his skin began to melt. Adding insult to injury, I unleashed the holy mark of one of my hands. My fingers sank through flesh, meat and bone until his lower leg came loose.
Hopping on his remaining leg, he crashed into one of the others and the fire spread. Confused questions were bellowed by the imps on the sidelines. None of them seemed to be able to understand that I wasn’t dying. My suit was mostly gone from the waist up but my flesh was unmarked. Finally, one of them realized I was unharmed and turned his flamethrower in my direction. Realizing I was still holding the melted lower leg of the now dead imp, I threw it hard enough to cave the imp’s skull in. He went down with a dazed expression and with his brains leaking out through a crack in his skull.
“The flames aren’t working,” one of the smarter clones roared. As if that was some kind of signal, they started piling on top of me. This again? Hadn’t they figured out by now that crushing vampires didn’t kill them?
I found out that they weren’t intending to crush me fairly quickly. They simply wanted to hold me down.
“Is she secure?” a female imp asked.
“Yes,” came several replies.
“Move so I can see her face,” the female instructed. After some shifting, my head was uncovered. A very pregnant imp crouched down and examined me. I could barely see her batlike face for the bulge in her stomach. She must have been close to term because her skin expanded as tiny fists and feet stretched inside, searching for an escape route. “The First has ordered us to try an experiment if the fire did not kill you,” she said in her guttural alien language.
Translating the words, I felt an automatic chill run through me from my head to my feet. I had no desire to be a lab rat again. “I can’t wait to see where this is going,” I lied.
“He says that you have four shadows because you have tasted the blood of four vampires.” After a short pause, she continued. “He wants to know what will happen if you taste the blood of four of his children.”
My chill became a full blown blizzard through my clogged veins. Strange things happened to me when vampire blood was introduced to my system. I didn’t even want to think what might happen if I tasted imp blood. They have the same blood as us, I told myself frantically. How bad could it be? At worst, I’d end up with another four shadows. Having multiple shadows hadn’t harmed me, so far.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said but they ignored my warning as I’d expected them to.
Gesturing at three of her brethren, the female took a knife one of them offered her and sliced open her palm. The three male clones copied her. One clamped a hand on my jaw and forced my mouth open. Pinned down by a dozen of the grey skinned monsters, I couldn’t move my hands to unleash the holy marks on them.
Helpless, I watched as four large, clawed hands come to a stop over my face. Moving in tandem, the palms tilted and black blood dripped into my open mouth.
Chapter Twenty
As I’d expected, the taste was hideous. Diseased, tainted and acidic, the combined blood burned its way down my throat and into my stomach. Screaming in pain, I heaved myself off the ground and the pile of imps shifted slightly.
“Hold her down!” screeched the pregnant female imp. She scrambled to her feet and readied herself to run.
Writhing and bucking, I fought against the taint I could feel spreading throughout my entire body. The pain spread until I felt it from the ends of my hair right down to my toenails. The thick, ichor like blood in my veins pulsed as the new blood seep in. The marrow in my bones ached, trying to reject the substance that permeated every iota of my body.
Shuddering in reaction, I felt a tingling sensation in my neck then lost all feeling in my body as my head came loose. It rolled away and came to rest near the feet of the female imp. Squawking in alarm, she moved back even further. One of the imps lying directly on top of my body shouted in alarm when one of my hands popped free and scuttled away from the pile. A grey foot stomped down, squishing it into the ground. Broken and crippled, my hand resumed its crawl at a much slower pace.
“Get off her so we can see what is happening,” the pregnant imp ordered shakily.
I could have told her what was happening but my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth in horror. My body had broken apart along the same cuts that had first reduced me to being a meat puzzle before being boxed up in a cemetery.
Once the imps had crawled off me, my parts began inching, rolling and squirming in opposite directions. Since the lower half of my suit was still intact, my legs were trapped. I watched in dismay as my ragged pelvis and jagged upper thighs wormed their way free. My feet had already skedaddled, taking the boots with them. Only my lower legs remained inside the leather confines of the pants. They strained against each other and a seam tore. Wriggling free, one of my lower legs humped away through the grass. The other dragged the torn fabric along, unhindered by the heavy leather.
Grinning at my predicament, the female imp had lost her urge to flee. “Stop,” she ordered when one of her cohorts pointed his flamethrower at my torso. It rolled along the ground, slowly working its way through the long grass. “Leave it be. Once the sun comes up, she will be finished.” I wasn’t about to disabuse her of that idea. “Our father will be very pleased to learn of your demise, Mortis.” With that, she left, taking her cohorts with her.
The bright lights were turned off, plunging the field into darkness. After a short while, a number of vehicles drove away. Staring blankly up at the stars, I recalled a dream I’d had of this exact scenario. I thought it had just been a normal dream but it must have been a vision instead.
“What the hell am I supposed to do now?” I asked the sky. It stared back at me without offering me any insights.
Looking around as well as I could since my face was pointing at the sky, all I saw was a sea of grass. I couldn’t spot anything nearby that I could use as cover when the sun came up in several hours. Then I remembered I’d thrown my backpack to safety so my belongings wouldn’t be torched.
With my neck no longer attached to my body, it took practice to force the muscles into motion. Rocking from side to side, my head finally turned over so I was looking at the grass. It made me dizzy to see sky, grass, sky, grass over and over as I rolled but I finally spotted a familiar dark lump.
Rolling to a stop beside my backpack,
I was relieved to see the coat had come loose enough that I could hide my head beneath it. Grabbing hold of the grass with my teeth, I pulled my head beneath the coat and made sure it was properly covered. When dawn came, my head would be safe but what about the rest of my body? I shuddered to think what would happen to me if I couldn’t get myself back together again. The last time this had happened, I’d vowed I would drag my bits out into the open and let the sun finish me off. I now knew the sun could burn me down to the bone but I would just regenerate again. Miserable and frightened, I huddled beneath the coat, trying and failing to come up with a plan of action.
A couple of hours later, I heard stealthy movement as something approached through the grass. Whatever it was, it made little noise. I didn’t detect footsteps, just a weird sort of skittering sound. Then I heard the same noise coming from the other side. It must be animals drawn by the smell of cooked imps. The bodies had been dragged away but the crispy smell still lingered.
Something poked the coat right in front of my eyes and I mashed my lips closed to keep in a startled squeak. Poking and prodding, it touched my forehead, paused and moved down to my nose and felt the tip. The second animal joined the party and prodded the back of my head.
Expecting the coat to be nudged aside and something with teeth to appear, I was rattled when the backpack was suddenly yanked out from beneath the coat. I saw a flash of something small and white then the black material settled to the ground. Seconds later, the coat shifted then rolled, trapping my head inside.
Both the coat and backpack were dragged through the grass. It was a long and painfully slow process. I could have chewed my way free from the coat but I had suspicions about what had kidnapped my head. The glimpse of the white thing had made me revise my opinion that it was an animal. It had looked like an albino spider, except arachnids didn’t have fingernails, as far as I knew.
At last, we came to a stop and the coat was flipped open. The first thing I noticed was a jumbled mass of white flesh. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or disturbed that my body parts had regathered again. Since both of my boots were mixed up in the jumble, I assumed my feet hadn’t been able to extricate themselves from their confines.
Lefty and Righty sat on the ground before me as if expecting praise. Maybe they were. “Good job at getting me back together, guys.” It was weird addressing my appendages as if they were living, thinking things.
Righty gave me the thumbs up in response as if it really could hear me. A couple of bones were poking out through the skin from when it had been stomped on by the imp.
Lefty grabbed me by the hair and dragged my head over to the pile. I tried to send my consciousness into the detached pieces but couldn’t even sense them. My attempts to possess them had no effect at all. I was afraid of what would happen once they became reunited. Would I even have control over my own body or would the imp blood have control instead?
Placing my head at the top of the pile, my hands scurried to the rest of the jumble. I had a feeling they’d tried to reattach themselves but hadn’t been able to without the final missing piece. As if in response to the thought, the mass twitched. It took some rearranging but first the feet became connected, then my legs, lower and upper body, hands and arms.
Now only one piece remained. With increasing dread, I watched as my feet pushed my body closer to my head. I felt the usual flood of hot pain when the severed ends met. Whole again, my consciousness was suddenly thrust from my body.
Chapter Twenty-One
I floated in a black emptiness that was devoid of sound. Weightless, I drifted aimlessly with no point of reference or direction to aim for. I wasn’t in the cavern of doom. There were no bonfires to light the dark space. I wasn’t in a jungle with something unspeakably hungry beneath the ground waiting for someone or something to come close enough so that it could feed. I was nowhere and nowhen.
Am I dead? The thought should have frightened me but I was actually relieved. Being an unholy creature of the night, I kind of figured I’d end up in hell once I finally died. Maybe this is hell. Maybe I have to float in the dark alone for all eternity.
Before I could become too uncomfortable with this line of thinking, I opened my eyes. Being utterly weightless, I hadn’t realized that they were even closed. A dull silver metal wall stretched out to either side. It was cold when I brushed my fingertips across it.
Something suddenly bumped into my back. Floundering, I managed to turn around and started back at a face only inches away from mine. Aged, pinched and wrinkled, there was something familiar about the shape of the jaw. Lifeless dirty hair hung limply over the person’s brow.
Reaching out, I touched the ancient cheek lightly, wondering how I knew this vampire. His eyes cracked open slightly. “Help us, Natalie,” the wizened creature croaked.
“Argh!” Sitting up, my heart tried to thud in my chest but couldn’t because it had died along with the rest of me the night I’d been turned by Silvius. I’d had a lot of strange visions during the past six months but that had been one of the weirdest by far.
Distant whispers drew my attention and I cocked my head to listen. They sounded like they were coming from behind me. I turned my head slowly and peered around using my peripheral vision. A group of large beings were huddled about fifty feet away. Massed together, all I could see was that they were very dark. Squinting, I turned further to get a better look.
“Shh, she’s awake,” one muttered in a thick, guttural and inhuman voice.
Recognizing it as the voice of an imp, I surged to my feet only to discover that the group had disappeared. Searching the area, I saw no sign that there had ever been a group at all. The grass was undisturbed and the only footprints were mine. The only signs of movement were the drag marks made by my body parts making their way to the unnatural reunion that had occurred not long ago.
Naked except for the pair of calf high black boots, I retraced my steps. I knelt beside my backpack to retrieve one of my two remaining black suits. Sensing movement, I rolled to the side when something came swooping at me. An imp landed on the ground where I’d been a second ago. Strangely, it had made no sound when landing. Even stranger, its skin was completely black instead of grey. Even its eyes were inky instead of orange. It growled in frustration and I heard the sound inside my head rather than with my ears.
Moonlight filtered through a break in the clouds and I finally realized what had happened. Stretching out in a thin thread, the imp was attached to me by our feet. It turned to lunge at me again. “Hold her!” it snarled and three more dark shapes loomed over me. I’d grabbed my swords as I’d rolled and wasn’t about to let them take me down without a fight. Whipping my head around, I saw my four shadows behind me where they should have been. Each looked back over their shoulder, holding shadow swords. I was relieved to see that they weren’t sentient yet.
Now that I had imp blood in my system, I’d also been dubiously gifted with four new imp shadows. They were indeed sentient and were intent on killing me. As I stood, three of the silhouettes made a grab for me. My swords slashed out, cutting through their insubstantial forms. The weapons had absolutely no effect but neither did they. Their hands passed through my flesh as if they were ghosts.
“What’s going on? Why can’t we touch her?” one of the imps snarled in our dead father’s language.
Scratching its head, the first silhouette reached out to prod me with a clawed finger. The finger poked into my eye, cutting off my sight but causing me no pain. Gathering itself, the shadow jumped at me, passed right through and sprawled on the ground again.
“But, one of us is supposed to be able to possess her,” one of the other three whined. “What are we supposed to do now?”
None of them had an answer and I wasn’t about to offer any suggestions. My brain was churning with panic as I donned one of my black suits. I was just as clueless as they were as to why they existed. Shrugging on the coat, I shouldered the backpack. Despite my fear and confusion, I still had a job to
do. I’d worry about my growing following of shadows later.
After my head had been dragged off while wrapped up in the coat, I’d lost my sense of direction. I wasn’t sure which way to go to locate the town containing the captured possessed vampire. Sending out my senses, I found nothing to help me. Either the First hadn’t heard about my supposed demise or he was just being cautious and continued to blank out every vampire and imp within several hundred kilometres.
Hunger gnawed at my insides, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten for a while. Picking a direction, I soon heard the intermittent sounds of traffic. My four new unwanted companions kept up a constant noise of bickering in my head as I sprinted towards the highway.
Reaching the highway, I heard another car approaching and did my best to look small and defenceless. Headlights hit me and I raised an arm to cut the glare. I began to suspect that the driver could see the four hulking imp shadows when the car swerved and almost ran off the road. Having four shadows overlapping behind me was bad enough. Having four monster sized ones standing up, looking around, scratching their nuts and reaching out menacingly with clawed hands was far worse.
Screeching to a halt, the car stalled and panicked screams came from within. Sending an annoyed glare at the new additions to my collection, I jogged over to the car before the driver could have a stroke. Spying me and my escorts coming towards him, he fumbled for the lock but was too late.
Yanking open the door, I pulled the driver out and captured him with my eyes. Instantly relaxing, a goofy smile replaced his expression of abject terror. Small, thin and in his fifties, he didn’t make a very attractive meal but I had little choice at the moment.