by Brian Rowe
“I…” Paul started, but his jaw dropped. “Oh God.”
“What?” Brin asked.
“Mr. Barker!” Paul shouted. “Get away! Get—”
The wolf looked back at Paul, then latched his eyes on Brin, just as Droz revealed a sword in his hand—the second sword of the night.
Mr. Barker didn’t even have time to turn around and face his enemy. Droz brought the sword down and slashed it through the wolf’s body. The sword stopped halfway through the stomach, and Mr. Barker let out a defeated yelp.
“Nooooooo!” Brin screamed.
“Oh my God!” shouted Ash.
The sword was stuck inside the wolf for barely two seconds, when Mr. Barker transformed back into his human self. He looked at Brin, quietly shaking, blood seeping out of his mouth, his eyes darkening. He reached out.
“I’m…. I’m sorry,” he said.
Droz pulled the sword back out of the teacher’s body, and Mr. Barker slumped over to his side.
The tears poured out of Brin’s eyes so fast she almost collapsed to the ground. The immediate pain of her teacher’s absence ate at her from inside.
But as soon as Brin looked down to see her tears dropping against the dusty floorboards, she noticed the first sword—her own sword—that she held in her hands.
“You piece of shit,” Brin said, shaking her head in disdain. She raised her sword up high. “You stupid piece of shit.”
“Brin, no!” Ash shouted and grabbed for her hands, but she pushed him away.
She started creeping toward Droz in the back of the room. He stood next to the fireplace, a triumphant smile on his face. He tilted his head down and snickered.
“Come on now, little girl,” he said. “Show me what you got. Show me what my coward son’s girlfriend’s got!”
Brin stayed focused on Droz and held her sword up high, like the big, final battle at the old-fashioned ghost town was about to commence. “I’m going to kill you,” she said.
“I’d like to see you try.” Droz looked around Brin and pointed at the back of the room. “Paul, you’re still with us, I see.”
“Yes, Dad.”
“Aren’t you going to help your little girlfriend out? Or are you just going to stand in the back like a wimpy little girl?”
“Don’t listen to him, Paul,” Brin said. “I’ve got this.”
Paul looked ready to race toward his father with the deadliest of aggressions, but he stayed still. “Brin… are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m going to take him down.”
“Brin. Please.” Droz stepped forward and swung his sword in the air. “You aren’t going to last five seconds. There’s special blood in you, I know there is, we all know there is. But that doesn’t mean I won’t put you down in the blink of an—”
“Special blood?” Brin tried to whip her sword around, too, with varying degrees of success. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Droz stopped the sword at his side. “You mean… you don’t know?”
Another tear trickled down her cheek when she glanced at Mr. Barker’s motionless face on the floor. She swallowed, loudly, then stared back at Droz. “Don’t know what?”
Droz looked at his son. “You didn’t tell her?”
“Dad, don’t—”
“What?” Brin glanced at Paul, then averted her eyes back to Droz. “Tell me what?”
Droz smiled. “There was something different about you. When I met you two weeks ago, here in Bodie, you smelled different. That’s why I so readily believed that you were a vampire, one of us. I didn’t smell a single drop of human blood in you.” He stepped forward again and raised his sword up just a few inches. “But after you took off with my son and got nearly half my clan killed, I asked around, did a little research on you. I’m amazed I didn’t know about you before.”
“What are you talking about, goddammit?” She turned around to look at Paul again. She had no idea what this creepy old vampire with the top hat was talking about. “Paul! What’s he saying?”
Paul bit down on his bottom lip, appearing more embarrassed than anything else. Ash stood quietly in the shadows, waiting intensely for Droz’s reveal.
“Brin,” Droz said. She turned back toward him. “Haven’t you found it a little strange that all these crazy things keep happening to you?”
“Of course I have. But—”
“Haven’t you wondered why my son took such a fancy to you?”
“I… I don’t know…”
“Why do you think the zombies came up out of the ground, right where all of you were standing? Do you think it was all just some coincidence? The aliens? The demons? Why I wanted a piece of your mother?”
“How’d you know about all that?” Brin said, trying not to explode in anger. “The zombies… the aliens…”
“We’ve been watching you since this morning,” he said. “Don’t be naïve. We knew you were coming. We’ve been following your every move.” He looked down and grinned, as he stroked his fingers against the blade of his sword. “It’s been quiet for many years, Brin. But the monster activity has been flourishing once again these past few hours. The excitement has been killing me. Don’t you realize why?”
She just stared at him. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t even blink.
“The biggest monster of them all,” Droz said, “is standing right in front of my face.”
Brin darted her eyes to the left, then to the right. “Where?” she asked, looking for this so-called monster. “Is there a ghost in here or something?”
“No, dummy.” He tapped his sword against the ground. “It’s you.”
“Me?” She almost dropped the sword she was so taken aback.
“Mmm hmm.”
“What are you talking about? I’m just a human. I’m the most boring ordinary human imaginable.”
“Yeah… you keep telling yourself that—”
“I am!” Brin shouted. “I’m just a sixteen-year-old girl from a tiny Nevada town who likes movies and golf. I’m just Brin!”
He pointed at her hair. “I want you to do something for me. I want you to feel around the top of your head.”
“This is insane,” Brin said.
“Dad, stop,” Paul said, taking a step forward.
But Droz put his hand up in the air and stared angrily at his son. “No. Don’t move. She has to find out who she really is, Paul.”
Brin stood still. Then she started touching the top of her head.
“Do you feel it? The imprint? Do you feel your scar, Brin Skar?”
“What do you mean?” asked Brin.
“Haven’t you ever wondered about those three indents at the top of your head?”
“You know about the bumps on my head?” Brin asked, bringing her hand back down. Nausea started to settle in. “Only my mom knows about those…”
Droz smiled even bigger. “Yes, yes I do,” he said. “That brings me to my final question.”
“What?”
“Why do you think your hair is turning red?”
She’d tried to forget about it. She’d tried so hard. She hadn’t even thought about the strange phenomenon for at least an hour, maybe more. She wanted to ignore it, look into the next mirror to see her pretty black hair—her normal hair.
Another tear fell from Brin’s eyes. “I have no idea. Do you know what it means? Tell me what it means!”
“You’re not just any monster, Brin. You’re more of a monster than I am. You’re the biggest, baddest monster of them all!”
Brin stared at him, waiting for the reveal that would change her life forever. “What the hell am I?”
Droz smiled. “What do you think, dummy? You’re Satan!”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Brin stared at Droz, mortified. She pulled the sword closer to her chest and tried to make sense of the two words he had just uttered. She didn’t break her perplexed expression for at least five seconds.
Then Brin Skar started to laugh.
; “Oh my God,” she said. The belly laughing started quiet at first, then just kept increasing with volume. “The Devil? Are you serious? That has to be the funniest thing I’ve heard in my entire life.”
“It’s not a joke,” Droz said.
“Clearly it is!” She didn’t laugh so hard as to collapse onto the wooden floorboards—she didn’t want to put herself in a vulnerable position—but she laughed hard enough to lose her grip on the sword, momentarily. “I can’t be Satan. I don’t have anger flowing through my blood. I don’t have a single evil bone in my body. I’m just… me. And you’re making this up, asshole, to make me lose sight of what’s really at stake here.”
Now it was Droz’s turn to laugh. He snickered and then took another step closer to her.
“What’s so funny?” Brin asked.
“Nothing. You said, stake. Brin, listen to me.” He started to bring his sword up. Brin did the same with hers. “You must be coming up on your seventeenth birthday here soon, huh?”
“Uhh… no.”
“No?”
“I mean… it’s not until April.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Droz said. “But on the morning of your seventeenth birthday, trust me, you will.”
Brin clamped her mouth shut for a moment and breathed out of her nose. Then: “You seem like you want me to make it to my seventeenth birthday.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“So… that means…” She paused, then let out a big smile of her own. “You’re not going to try to kill me, are you?”
Brin leaped forward, so fast she hoped he’d be unprepared, and swung her sword at Droz’s chest. But he was quick; he tightened his grip on his sword and pelted the sword right out of Brin’s hand. She fell to the ground and crashed against her arms and face.
“Brin!” Ash shouted.
“Brin, nooooooo!” Paul shouted even louder.
“You really are a stupid girl,” Droz said, stepping toward her. “It’s so unfair. If I had been blessed with the soul of Satan, I could really do wonders in this world. Instead, his soul leeches onto the most banal, thoughtless white girl, in the most boring, inconsequential city in the world. Here you are, having almost made it to your ultimate day of reckoning, and you crawl against my floorboards, bruised, scared, and weak. For the first time in my life, I’m ashamed of Satan, and his powers.”
Brin reached her left hand out for the sword. It was mere inches away. She saw Paul and Ash in the corner of her eye looking to run over and help, but she just shook her head, no. “How many times do I have to tell you, you goddamned freak? I’m not Satan!”
“You are. His powers just haven’t consumed you yet. But thankfully for me, and for all the monsters out there, you don’t need to be alive for Satan to rule this world. He will live on forever, whether or not you stick around. He deserves better!” Mr. Barker held up the sword. “Are you prepared to die, Brin?”
Brin’s fingers touched her sword. She looked up at Droz. “I’m starting to think I might be this Devil person.”
“Oh really?”
“Mmm hmm.”
Droz lifted an eyebrow. “And why is that?”
“Because,” Brin said, leaning up and staring into Droz’s eyes, “I think there’s some evil in my bones after all.”
She latched onto the sword, rolled to her left just in time, and swung the sword at Droz’s legs, striking both of them with a heavy force.
“Owwwww!” the clan leader screamed at the top of his lungs. He slumped over to his side, giving Brin just enough time to leap back up to her feet.
“Yeah, Brin!” Ash shouted. “Check it out! The Omen’s kicking ass!”
Brin shook her head at her friend. “Really, Ash? It took you a whole minute to reference The Omen? What took you so long?”
Brin readied herself for her most gruesome act ever. She brought the sword up over her head, closed her eyes, then swung the weapon down at Droz’s neck.
He stopped it with his hand before it even touched his skin.
“It’s not going to be that easy,” Droz said, then kicked Brin hard in the stomach. She smashed her back against the wall and shielded her body with her sword just in time as Droz jumped back up to his feet and swung his sword at hers.
“Oh shit,” Brin said, as he lunged toward her.
“No more talk,” Droz said. “I don’t care if you’re the Devil. I don’t care if you’re Lucifier in disguise.” He swung the sword at her shoulder, missing it by inches. Instead, he cut off a tuft of her red hair. Brin watched it fall to the floorboards. “It’s time… for you to die!”
He swung his sword again, this time at her head. But Brin ducked just in time and missed a beheading of her own.
“Jesus Christ,” she said, as she tried to pierce his chest. He jumped back and stopped the sword with his own. “Guys,” Brin said, pushing Droz’s sword away again, and glancing at the two boys in the corner, “I could use a little help now—”
“Get off of her!” Ash shouted, running over and leaping onto Droz’s back without a concern for the sharp swords at play. He tried to pull the man down to the ground, but Droz shook him off and kicked him in the gut. Ash tumbled backward and smashed the side of his face against the floorboards.
“Ash! Oh my God!” She wanted to help him, but when Droz swung his sword at her head again, she knew she had to keep moving.
Brin tried to run to her right, but he blocked her with the sword, so she jetted to her left and ducked just enough to miss his sword again. She ran toward the window in the back left corner.
She turned around and tried to pierce his stomach again, and then she aimed at Droz’s neck. But he was too fast for her, too quick on his feet. He kept shielding himself with his sword and making a lunge for her every time she made a lunge for him. He knocked his sword against hers so hard she almost lost a grip on her weapon, a second time. She couldn’t afford to do so again.
She brought her sword down to her side and started running away from him.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked, his enthusiasm never weaning. “You can’t back out of this duel to the death now! We’ve only gotten started!”
Brin looked back at Ash, who was still moving, thank God. And then there was Paul, who still hadn’t budged from his spot in the back.
“Brin,” he said.
She locked eyes with Paul and gave him a knowing nod.
Then a severe pain stopped her in her tracks.
“What the—”
Brin looked down to see Droz’s sword sticking all the way through the right side of her stomach.
“Nooooooooo!” Paul shouted.
Ash couldn’t stand back up, but he reached his hand out for hers. Brin looked down at Ash, whose eyes were already welling up with tears.
Droz pulled the sword out of her chest. Brin tried to breathe; she tried to think. She let out the world’s quietest gasp.
Then she tumbled forward and smashed her body against the window. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces.
“No…” she whispered, as she started to fall.
Down, down, down, down…
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Brin landed in a large clump of snow at the bottom of the standard mill. She hit the ground hard, but not hard enough to knock her out. She pushed her right hand up against her chest—and felt nothing but warm, fresh blood.
“Damn it,” she said. “Damn it, no.”
She examined the wound, which hurt like hell but didn’t appear to be life threatening. He hadn’t pierced any major arteries—the sword had only torn up her right hip.
“Damn it, yes,” Droz said, as he jumped down from a ladder and landed firmly on the snow. He twirled his sword around, showing off to no one. “You barely put up a fight. That first class devil inside of you is shaking his head in shame.”
Brin reached for her sword. But there was none to be found. She had dropped it the minute he stabbed her.
“Whatev
er,” he said. “It doesn’t matter. I kill you, and Satan will just find another vessel. There’s no killing him. There’s only more waiting, for when he at his most powerful will strike and change the world for all eternity. It was supposed to be you this time around. But I don’t think you have the guts to be everything that you’re capable of.”
Brin tried to sit up. The pain overwhelmed her. She saw two images of Droz in front of her, and a ringing in her head made her want to scream.
“Please,” she said. She finally was able to scoot herself back up against the snow. She watched as Droz marched toward her, the sword out in front of him. She glanced to her left and right, but, even though she was outside, in the snow, walls still surrounded her.
“Please what?”
“Please… at the very least… let my mother go…”
He stopped. Then he swung the sword through the air one final time. “You will be gone. But your mother won’t care. She’s already stepped over to the dark side. You see, I didn’t even have to make her bad. She didn’t want to be your mother anymore. She wanted to be with me. She wanted my power, my energy, my—”
Brin didn’t have much energy left. But she had enough for one more hit.
She brought her leg back and kicked Droz in the crotch.
He looked down in confusion, then back at Brin. He shook his head in shame.
“Really? Nothing?” Brin said. “I’m sorry, but you’re not going to be able to make my mom happy forever if you can’t… you know… satisfy her.”
He raised the sword up high. “I’ve had enough! You’re dead!”
Brin glanced to her left. She saw a shadow.
“I’m sorry, Satan!” Droz shouted. “But now is not your time! Now is my time! It’s Droz’s time!”
He brought the sword all the way back over his head, then swung it down.
But it didn’t hit Brin.
The sword struck Paul—in the neck.
Brin landed face first in the snow; she had been pushed away at the last second before impact. She pulled herself up and turned to her right. The spite on Droz’s face diminished. Paul let out a loud gurgle; he tried to move, but couldn’t. Droz also didn’t budge.
