One of the tourists looked up from her drink at the newcomer. She flashed me a friendly smile. I waved back at her and then headed down another side street that would take me out of the coastal village and to the nearest hiking trails.
I stole a final glance at the laughing tourists. I found it hard to relate to their carefree enjoyment of the moment. Their thoughts were unencumbered by the shadow world beneath the surface reality of our society. They didn’t have to worry about evil wizards and their monster minions or contemplate some terrible, century-spanning spell that would transport our whole planet into a dimension of darkness and undo life as we knew it. All they had to concern themselves with was their next meal, their next adventure. They had the luxury of being tourists, but I had a job to do.
I scanned my Timex—yes, even fledgling combat mages needed a timepiece—and realized I had about six hours of daytime left. Too bad Octurna hadn’t deposited me closer to my target. Getting into the monastery would take about two or three hours. In theory, that would give me plenty of time to find the blood coffin before its undead guardians came back to life.
My overall strategy was simple. I would play the role of a lost tourist who had foolishly ventured off the trail. My magical disguise would sell the story. One quick glance at a nearby window showed me that I looked nothing like myself. I was thin and wiry with long hair, a far cry from my thickly muscled physique and buzz. I didn’t come off as a threat. Appearances can be deceiving.
I was counting on human nature. The mercs would see me as easy prey and hopefully take me prisoner instead of blowing my brains out from a distance. A lost tourist made for a tasty vampire snack and would be a quick way to incur favor with their undead masters.
The wind picked up as the stone houses receded behind me. The harbor grew from the beachhead on my left and followed the coastline as it swept into the horizon. To my right, I caught sight of another mountain town in the distance separated by a sea of green trees. The area was beautiful, the air fresh with a hint of ocean salt. Suddenly I wished I wasn’t here on such grim business. That I could head to the next village, maybe find some abandoned cottage and start over. I reminded myself that the natural beauty and tranquility of this place was an illusion. The horrors that dwelled in the mountaintop monastery cast a terrible shadow over this idyllic setting. Nothing was as it seemed. Including me.
I wondered if the locals suspected that vampires nested among them. Rumors ran rampant in such small, isolated communities. Stories of missing tourists were bound to spread like wildfire. And that meant these villagers refused to accept the truth or were complicit in the crimes committed here. I guessed there was no place on Earth that could offer refuge from the Shadow Cabal; their dark tentacles had infested even the most peaceful and beautiful parts of our planet. There was no hiding from the horrors, no escape from the monsters.
More reason to stand up to these bastards.
I passed a few villagers and fellow hikers as I neared the mouth of the trail, exchanging brief smiles. Inside I cringed every time I saw another backpacker navigating these ancient mountain pathways, oblivious of the danger. I wanted to tell them to get the hell out of this place.
The flat land surrounding the village inclined, and my ascent started in earnest. Sloping walls of green and staggering cliffs boxed me in. A topographical map of the mountain appeared every time I wanted to gain a better sense of the area. It was like wearing a pair of augmented reality glasses with a crucial difference—the layout wasn’t being conjured into existence by some Silicon Valley gadget but from my burgeoning magical powers. If I needed a map, it blinked into existence.
While my magical HUD was cool, it was also a little scary. What were the limits of my developing magical powers? Would the day come when I would lose control of my fledgling abilities? Weirdly enough, the image of Micky Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Disney’s Fantasia came to mind.
I shook my head at the ridiculous thought. I was a Marine, for Christ’s sake, not a cartoon mouse.
About an hour into the hike, I left the narrowing trail and crossed into a swath of thick forest. According to the map in my head, the spiraling gravel pathway led straight to the monastery. I decided against the direct route. As long as I stuck to the main path, the monastery’s human guards would most likely tell me to head back down the mountain before I got too close. If I approached from the woods, far away from the prying eyes of the local population, they might have a different fate in store for me.
The terrain rapidly grew steeper and became much harder to traverse on foot. Despite my conditioning, lactic acid burned in my calves. I felt increasingly like an intruder, a stranger in a strange land. As I trudged through the lush foliage, the silence and desolate nature of my surroundings weighed on me. Who had turned off the volume? Not even the cries of birds penetrated the dense forest. The simplest creatures sensed the mountain’s evil aura and were smart enough to stay clear of the monastery.
I eyed the somber pile of black rocks at the top of the mountain with growing apprehension. I missed having Octurna in my head. The sorceress had grown dead silent since my arrival in the Italian village, which was out of character for her. There was only one good reason why she was keeping her distance. To maintain communication would be to risk the whole mission. My plan hinged on a crucial detail—no one in the monastery could suspect that I was a combat magician.
The growing sense of solitude came to an abrupt end about a half an hour later. Flashing blips appeared on the magical map inside my head. The enemy was approaching. I steeled myself for what lay ahead. I didn’t have to wait for too long.
I heard a rustling sound, and the foliage in front of me parted, the forest coming alive. The gleaming black barrel of an AK-47 poked from the wall of green, followed by a camouflaged face. The merc’s eyes appraised me impassively. More footsteps grew audible behind me, light-footed but easily detected by my enhanced senses.
I froze and played the part of the stunned tourist.
“What’s going on? Who are you? Um, Ciao, mi sono perso?”
I peppered my speech with a little badly accented Italian to sell the role. I had picked up a few words in most languages during my military years. Judging by the dirty smile lighting up the first merc’s face, he was buying the act hook, line and sinker. And why wouldn’t he? Nothing in his experience suggested I might be anything but what I appeared to be.
The Shadow Cabal’s enemies had been dead for a century and nobody messed with the secret society nowadays. Ever since defeating the Guardians a century earlier, the Cabal had grown complacent and lazy. Octurna and I hoped to take advantage of this mindset, at least in the short term before our enemy wizened up. Running into me was a welcome distraction for these overpaid, under-stimulated professional soldiers who were probably biding their time for a chance at immortality.
I pivoted as three more armed mercs emerged from the underbrush. One glance at their cold hard eyes told me everything I needed to know. These assholes were killers. I staggered back from the gun-toting trio, raising my hands.
“Listen, I’m not looking for trouble…
The words died on my lips as one of the mercs shut me up with a little assist from the butt of his assault rifle. The impact would have knocked the average man out, but with dragon blood pumping through my system, I was far from ordinary. But I played along, feigning unconsciousness. The men lifted me up roughly by my arms and legs and dragged my limp form up the mountain.
“Don’t be too rough with him,” one of the mercs growled. “The master likes his meat undamaged.”
Good to know. I assumed the master, in this case, was Ravanok. With a little luck I would soon make my acquaintance with the vampire king.
About another hour passed before we emerged from the forested hillside. I kept stealing quick glances through half-raise lids when no one was looking at me. The imposing ruins of the walled monastery crept into view, the large central structure huddled against the crest of the
ridge. A mist of yellow light enshrouded much of the mountaintop, compounding the ominous atmosphere.
Whatever it had once been, the monastery had long ceased to be a holy place.
Grunting from the continued effort, the mercs dragged me to a narrow path that cleaved the primeval forest. The wind lashed my face and howled around the imposing walls of the monastery. The sky was darkening, nightfall coming on suddenly. I would have to act fast, knowing that dusk could turn to blackest night in a finger snap at this elevation.
The mercenaries hauled me through a large wooden door. A circular courtyard with an empty reflecting pool and a few headless statues of saints fronted a series of massive, crumbling buildings. About fifty feet away, a church with a bell tower stood separate from the cloister’s main living quarters. They had stripped the former house of worship of all crosses and religious symbols, and I doubted those bells had rung out in centuries.
The courtyard embraced us as we advanced, steeped in silence solely disrupted by the sound of the mercs’ combat boots slapping the flagstones. A few minutes later, we entered the main building, which I assumed were once the monk's living quarters. Nowadays the dead called this place home. A world of shadows awaited us within the crumbling walls.
Pale daylight shafted into the first room. Judging by the long tables and wooden benches, this must have been the mess hall during those bygone days when the residents dined on something other than blood. The second room was smaller and cloaked in darkness. The mercs snapped on night-vision goggles and navigated the pitch-black space. I opened my eyes, not having to pretend to be unconscious any longer. The dragon blood gave me the vision of a jungle cat.
I guess you could say I was a monster hunter who was part monster now myself, an ironic situation that seemed to become stronger in my mind with each beast I slew. I was still changing in ways I didn’t yet understand. So far, those changes had saved my ass on multiple occasions, but I couldn’t help feeling like the old Jason Night was fading away. One day, I’d look in the mirror and see a stranger.
My heart pounded as I took in the contents of the room around me. There were coffins everywhere. The wooden boxes lined up in neat rows and formed a maze, giving the place a crypt-like atmosphere.
I might be part monster, but at least I didn’t sleep in a casket and feed off the blood of the living. I contemplated my next move. The original plan had been to take out the mercs as soon as we were inside the cloister, but I had waited too long to press my advantage. If I pulled a piece on them now, who knew what might happen. The sounds of combat and the resulting bloodshed could easily disturb the nest of bloodsuckers. Octurna said vamps were worse than sharks when it came to detecting fresh blood. I would have to eliminate these mercenaries without spilling a drop.
My chance came when the four men stopped in front of an empty glass sarcophagus located at the center of the chamber. Without a word, they hoisted me into the transparent box. The mercs gasped and grunted, exhausted from carrying my unconscious form for more than an hour now. I still played along, my thoughts formulating a new plan of attack. I needed the element of surprise, and the mercs had unwittingly provided it.
They slid a lid over the coffin, confining me inside the box.
I waited in the dark for a beat. Why would they stick me in a transparent coffin, you ask? Simple—because it was the most horrible thing they could do. Inside the coffin, fully conscious yet hopelessly trapped, I would be able to see the vamps rise as soon as the sun vanished behind the mountains. Hundreds of undead would descend on me like a famished school of piranhas while I laid inside the casket, the transparent glass offering me a perfect view of the fate in store for me.
Octurna’s earlier words slashed through my mind: Fear tenderizes the meat.
Fueled by a new burst of anger over how many innocent people they must have tortured this way, I made my move. I focused on tapping into my magic. The air inside the transparent coffin warped and distorted as I cast my Teleportation Spell. A split second later, I materialized right behind the mercs. They let out shouts of surprise in response to my sudden disappearing act, but none of them thought to turn around. Picturing their shocked expressions brought a dark grin to my face.
Before the paid killers knew what was happening, I descended on them like an angel of death. I wrapped my hands around the closest assassin’s throat and snapped his neck. As his lifeless body slumped to the ground, I slammed the head of the next guy against the coffin’s glass lid. I wasn’t sure if the devastating impact had killed him, but he would eat through a straw for quite some time to come.
Without hesitation, I spun toward the two remaining scumbags. The first guard reached for his handgun, but I was faster. My fingers tightened around his wrist and yanked his arm away with bone-crushing force, sending the pistol flying. As his lips distorted with agony, I karate-chopped his buddy’s exposed throat before the guy got any dumb ideas. The second man crumpled, one hand clutching his collapsed trachea while desperately gasping for air. I let go of the first merc’s broken arm, grabbed him by the back of his neck and wrenched it backward, putting him out of his misery. A kick to the choking man’s face a moment later produced identical results.
Less than a minute had passed since I delivered the first punch, and four downed men now surrounded me. I had broken bones, crushed windpipes but had spilled no blood. The fight served as a sharp reminder of how I’d changed since my SWAT days. There were no more limits, no restraints. We weren’t taking prisoners in this war. These mercs were monsters in their own right, soulless creeps willing to hand over innocents for a taste of power and the almighty dollar. These bastards got what they deserved, and I sure as hell wouldn’t lose any sleep over their deaths.
With this icy thought seared into my mind, I turned away from their bodies. I did not know how many more guards lurked in this haunted place, but I expected to face more of them soon. I would have to find the blood coffin as quickly as possible and get my ass out of here before the sun disappeared.
I took in the eerie assembly of coffins that surrounded me. They pulsed faintly red in my dragon vision, and for a split second, I imagined their lids snapping open in unison and a horde of blood-starved vamps emerging from the wooden boxes.
Thankfully, years of meditation had taught me how to let my mind go blank when my imagination threatened to run rampant. That was one superpower Octurna hadn’t granted me; I’d learned to meditate long ago in the Marine Corps as a way to cope with the stress of battle.
However, magic had its uses. I took a deep breath and concentrated. I needed to locate the blood of the fallen Guardian. Time for Octurna’s latest spell.
My backpacker outfit melted away, replaced by my black combat suit and leather trench coat. The weight of my weapons was reassuring in these grim surroundings. I lifted up the hem of my shirt and touched the tattoo Octurna had marked with her blood earlier.
Nothing happened for a beat. Was I supposed to say something or tap out a secret code?
The thought broke off as the tattoo on my stomach heated up and turned a fiery red. A heartbeat later, a crimson tendril of energy separated from the tattooed flesh and gathered into a glowing ball in front of me. The red orb pulsated with magical power and took off across the coffin chamber like a giant fire wisp. I instinctively chased after the blazing spark of light.
It was showing me the way to the glass coffin. Or so I hoped.
The blood of one Guardian seeking out the life force of another.
I unslung my machine pistol from my shoulder and tracked the red fireball as it zigged and zagged through the coffin chamber like a drone made from pure energy. I weaved through the winding maze of wooden boxes and arrived at a door that led down a stone passageway. I continued to advance into the darkness, my enhanced senses mapping the way.
I rounded a corner and spotted a steel doorway up ahead. It was guarded by two mercs. Under normal circumstances, I would have let my machine pistol do the talking, but the sound of bulle
ts and the resulting blood splatter might wake the vampires. Instead, I formed a circle in the air and hurled a ball of energy at the surprised guards. They were still reaching for their pistols when my energy blast slammed into them. The kinetic power of the energy ball was intense enough to rupture organs. The mercs tumbled like bowling pins.
I crossed the length of the narrow corridor, navigated around the downed bodies, and stepped up to the vault-like steel door, which had to be at least a few feet thick. The red ball of energy danced in front of the door for a beat then passed through it.
There was no doubt in my mind. The blood coffin had to lie beyond this point.
I pressed against the door, but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. And that raised an interesting question—where was the key?
I searched the downed men but came up empty. They had sealed the entrance from the inside. These vamps weren’t taking any chances.
I had already used up my Teleportation Spell and would have to wait twenty-four hours before I could use that trick again. Besides teleportation only worked if I could visualize the area I wanted to teleport my body to. I didn't know what exactly lay beyond this door, and I sure as hell didn’t have twenty-four hours to wait. I would have to find another way to overcome this obstacle.
Luckily, I had a viable backup plan. I would tap into the new spell I’d been working on for the last few days.
Octurna called it Ghosting. This spell allowed the user to transform into a phantom for a few seconds and pass through solid objects as if they were thin air. I had successfully cast the spell once before, but it was still hit-or-miss.
I closed my eyes, turned inward, and stilled my thoughts, shutting everything else out.
At first, nothing happened, but I refused to give up.
This had to work. I would make it work.
The air crackled.
Night Slayer 2: Monster Quest Page 5
