Scarlet Dusk

by Megan J. Parker

  Zoey bit her lip, “What did he say?”

  Zane shook his head, “Nothing important.”

  Zoey set her hand on his shoulder, “Important enough. You know you can tell me, right? I’ve been beside you through everything that monster’s done to you before, and I’d like think I helped on those occasions.”

  Zane sighed and nodded, “Yea. Yea, you did. I just… I don’t think I’m ready to relive all that right now.”

  “I understand. Just know that the offer will always be out there,” Zoey smiled, “Now, you need to head to the infirmary and get the rest of these wounds bandaged up. My synth blood may be strong, but the wounds that are still bleeding after you’ve taken it are the ones that went the deepest. We can talk later.” She gave him a stern look then, “And we will talk later.”

  “Alright, alright,” Zane sighed and paused for a moment before getting up, “Thanks, Zoe. I really do appreciate… well, everything.”

  With that, Zane started off towards the infirmary, leaving Zoey to think about the situation. Sighing, she finally stood and was about to make her way to the cafeteria until she noticed a auric shift at the other side of the hall. Turning, she made her way across the room and spotted Celine walking down the hall.

  “Were you watching us?” Zoey sneered.

  Celine paused, flinching at the sound of her voice, and turned towards her. “N-no… of course not! I was just… just…”

  Zoey shook her head. The shift in the shady vampire’s aura alerted her once more that something was not right with her, and she offered a silent apology to Zane as she extended her aura to probe for some insight to whatever it was she was hiding.

  “I can see what you’re all about,” she sneered, stepping towards Celine as she prepared to enter her mind, “and I’m going to put a stop to it now!”

  She let her aura snake into Celine’s head, ignoring the growing smirk on the vampire’s face as she did. Whatever it was she had to grin about, Zoey was going to know it soon enou—

  The room tilted and faded—colors shifting and melting as Zoey convulsed and dropped to her knees. “N-no… wh-what’ve y-you… d-d-do…”

  “That’s one of the perks of having a “psychic firewall”,” she smirked. “And that’s what you get for digging around where you don’t belong, you stupid bitch.”

  ~DECEMBER 17TH, 893AD~

  ~ARMENIAN OUTSKIRTS; JUST OUTSIDE OF DVIN~

  ~PALACE OF MELEILZSI SHAYKH NAQSHBAND~

  ~JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT~

  FOR A LONG TIME THE CREATURE—A TALL, HUNCHED silhouette looming just outside the gates like a vision of Death—did nothing more than chant Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s name and rattle the gates with steady, rhythmic blows that threatened to tear them from the walls.

  Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi…

  BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG!

  Over and over…

  Four informal chants of the great Liche’s title followed by a series of strikes against the door: each time coming in two sudden pairings in four successions.

  Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi…

  BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG!

  At last, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband could stand no more of the incessant pattern, and he ordered his guards to let the creature enter. Though fear shown like the sun’s rays at the order, all who served Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband knew that there was nothing that could possibly occupy the outside of the palace gates that would be more eager to kill them than their master should his command go unheeded.

  Soon after, the great gates opened, and the creature entered. Three of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s holy men—tasked with purifying any who entered his palace and, as a distant second, offering their guest welcome and promise of hospitality—nervously scuttled forward, their long, black robes offering little concealment for their shaky legs, and offered the creature a bow.

  Three heads simultaneously fell across the palace hall, rolling awkwardly like eggs across the marble. Seeing this, the slaves and concubines fell into panic and scattered like scarabs. The creature offered little acknowledgement of the crowd as it pushed past the sagging bodies of the murdered holy men, letting one of its great feet come down on one of the severed heads and let the sound—not unlike that of a melon rolling from a banquet table and meeting its end upon the floor—echo through the halls. The creature did not worry itself with haste as it tracked down Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, but, rather, leisurely strolled—its great robes offering no evidence of a body, let alone legs, and were any of the panicked servants to pause long enough to admire the spectacle they’d have sworn their murderous guest was floating—through the palace. Occasionally, as though simply plucking a particularly pleasant-looking piece of fruit from a low-hanging branch, the creature would lash out and claim another life. In these instances, the slow, casual pace would erupt into a blur of strife and screams—whichever victim he’d chosen suddenly seizing with great tremors; blood frothing from every orifice, as the distorted vision of the creature’s gray robes cycled about them like a sandstorm—before returning to the casual pace with which it had begun.

  A concubine running towards Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s chambers in hopes of safety stumbled. Before her flailing body could reach the marble floor, she was swept up in the gray cyclone. The young girl’s screams, distorted by the howling of the creature’s unnatural swiftness and inhuman shrieks of bloodlust, rolled with the pitching of her body, the sound growing forced with strain and damp with blood. The blur grew denser, hiding the writhing victim entirely, and the panicked servants slowed as terror gripped them to watch on.

  A whimper.

  Snarling… slurping.

  The gut-wrenching sound of bones being snapped like starter kindling.

  Silence.

  Save for the dying howl of the whirlwind the creature brought with it, not a sound sullied the palace walls.

  The gray haze faded…

  And a young girl’s arm—broken and bent in five spots; two on either side of the still flexing elbow—danced across the floor like a fish out of water.

  And, once again, the creature fell into its casual pace as it closed in on Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s chambers.

  On the Liche master and his prized concubine, Arezoo.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband was outraged!

  Twelve! Twelve of his servants—three holy men, two warriors, six concubines, and an unfortunate chef—had been slaughtered by this monster; a monster that he’d been hospitable enough to invite into his home!

  Twelv—

  One of the guards at his door—one of four who had proven himself brave enough to stand his post in the slaughter—met his end.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband sighed.

  Thirteen. Thirteen deaths that were not of his own making; thirteen deaths that he would become no stronger for.

  This guest was stealing more than just his slaves…

  It was stealing his source for power!

  Bellowing in rage, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband rose from his bed, leaving Arezoo—still naked and spread open in all her glory on his sheets—to smirk at the spectacle.

  Her master finally had a challenger, and, seeing his dark energies course through his body, she felt pleasured through his exuberance.

  The corpses in the walls sprung to action, pounding with a rage that mirrored their master’s own. Even with the doors to his chambers shut, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband could sense the startled energies of the creature spike in alarm as the din rose all around it.

  A great roar shook the palace as the creature slammed itself against the wall. Portions of shattered marble chipped away and fell to the floor, leaving a tremendous hole that the creature thrust a mighty hand into. Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband watched through the eyes of one of his risen slaves within the wall as the creature yanked it from the gaping chasm—forcing several of the surrounding bodies to groan in futile protest as they began to topple through the openi
ng—and began using the flailing corpse as a makeshift battering ram against Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s chamber doors.

  The sequence had been the same as before:

  Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi… Meleilzsi…

  BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG! BA-BANG!

  Over and over and…

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, with a simple flick of his wrist, allowed the barricade on the door to fall free. The chanting and banging ceased.

  The door opened, and Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband and the creature stared one another down. Behind the Liche master, Arezoo felt the swell of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s power and she climaxed; writhing on the sheets and mewling in ecstasy. Neither Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband nor the creature had to shift their gaze to appreciate the spectacle.

  Whatever this monster was, the energies rolling from Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s favorite concubine seemed to have the same effect as all the blood it had consumed.

  And Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, having long-since discovered why many referred to the human orgasm as “the little death,” felt an equally powerful swell of new vitality as his death-magic absorbed Arezoo’s pleasure.

  Finally, Arezoo came down from the throes of her vicarious climax and, no more modest in her post-orgasmic clarity, sat up to watch the scene unfold before her. Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, certain that he would not be interrupting his concubine’s own “little death,” turned his head enough to instruct her to leave the two of them—he and his murderous guest—to their business.

  Arezoo protested.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, displaying a sternness he’d otherwise reserved for all but Arezoo, insisted.

  Arezoo left.

  The creature, once it was alone with Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband in his quarters, slipped free of the hood of its robes before opening the bundle and letting the heap of gray, tattered rags collapse like a dead thing on the floor behind it.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband fought the urge to sneer at this, finding the act almost more insulting than the butchering of thirteen of his servants.

  The creature, beneath its traveling garments, could have easily been mistaken for royalty. Outside of the homely rags, he—there was no questioning the creature’s gender at that point—wore a beautiful tunic dyed a deep and luxurious blue and adorned with beads made of gold and jade. Around his neck, along with the long, tightly-woven braid of raven-black hair that was long enough to circle twice around his throat, he wore a thick, golden medallion that Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband recognized as Egyptian, and along each ear was a row of solid gold hoops; a pair of gold lion-head earrings—each sporting eyes fashioned from blood-red rubies—weighing down his stretched earlobes. His face—a flawless vision of olive-toned skin and khol-framed eyes that matched the jade beads he wore—though clean-shaven and far from elderly did not take on the infantile features that seemed so common in those that wore beards, and, rather, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, despite his ongoing years as well as the long, tapered beard he wore, felt shadowed by his visitor in every possible way. Were he to try to guess from appearances alone, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband might have thought this creature nothing more than a young man barely past the throes of a cracked voice, but, trying to ignore his intimidating height, there was an undeniable air of experience; something far more dated; eternal. Tall as he was, there was a regal elegance—unlike others of such size who usually suffered the crippling burden of their own bodies—that gave Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband the impression that this visitor was blessed with enough riches to accommodate his health’s needs.

  And yet, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband could see that this being took to human politics in much the same light a king would consider the struggles of the sand mites outside his kingdom.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband finally inquired about his guest’s name.

  He was offered only a title: Utukku.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband demanded to know why he’d come to visit him on that night.

  Utukku seemed entertained by that, his shoulders rolling with a silent chuckle as he circled the perimeters of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s chambers, absently running his blood-stained fingertips across the various sundries that the Liche had acquired through the years. After a long and increasingly uncomfortable silence, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband realized that Utukku had no intention of answering his question.

  He asked again, this time shedding all pretenses of pleasantries and formalities.

  This drew forth Utukku’s chuckles in a much more audible manner; his head pitching back as he erupted with laughter.

  The fading glimmer of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s patience shed its final luster and he released a wave of decay at the still-laughing Utukku. As the spell traveled across the room, the vision of everything between them—arts and antiquities and décor alike—shone through the enchantment as a decayed and destroyed copy of what it would become; when the wave passed, so passed the vision of destruction, leaving the room untouched by the magic until it reached its intended target.

  Utukku, still cackling, stumbled back from the force of the spell, and as the liquid-like curtain of death wrapped about him and bled into his body he began to writhe under its magic. His olive-like skin grayed and sagged around his skull; dimming and drooping like melting candlewax. The jade-green eyes, gaping around the pain of the enchantment, dimmed to a pair of murky, pale pools; the dark orbs of his pupils dancing about in their newfound blindness. As Utukku’s body befell the effects of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s magic, it folded over—finally succumbing to the terrible weight of his own frame—and trembled. As the meat and merit of his thinning legs dwindled, his ankle bowed and snapped, toppling his decrepit form and landing him a short distance from the gray rags of his cloak that, like him, lay in a heap like a dead thing.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband scoffed and approached him, calmly explaining to the heaving mess at his feet that, even for an immortal creature, death and the power of decay eventually claim all things.

  Utukku’s hair, already thin and gray, began to shrivel and chip away like dried husks after a harvest; the once proud braid that had constricted around his neck beginning to trickle in grotesque clumps around the gangly folds of rotting flesh. Even without full use of his throat, the heaving soon-to-be-corpse lurched and began to cough out a chuckle…

  Then, with a wheezing intake and a vulgar expulsion of clotted, black blood across Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s chamber floors, Utukku began to laugh.

  Taken aback by this—his victim’s exuberant cackles rolling ever-freely despite his nearly totally decayed body—Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband took a cautious step back.

  Utukku’s shattered ankle shifted and popped back into place, the meat around it beginning to thicken and shift to a healthier shade. Still laughing, the creature stood. Though the effects of the decay spell had taken their irreversible toll on Utukku’s tunic—the dye having bled out and what remained of the wool looking tattered and mangy—and the jewelry had all-but rotted and melted out of its original form, the creature was undeniably reversing the effects of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s spell.

  The Liche, overwhelmed by the spectacle, dropped to his knees and begged to know how such a thing was possible.

  Utukku’s laughter calmed, replaced by an absent chuckle and a condescending and ongoing shaking of his head. He’d called Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband a pathetic child then; comparing his magic to a renegade peasant’s eager flaunting of a talisman with no clue as to how it worked. Waving an arm towards the door—pointing to the remains of the massacre he’d left in the hall outside the Liche’s chambers—he reminded him of all the servants he’d slaughtered just then; all the blood he’d taken into himself. He pointed off towards the side-chamber that Arezoo had retreated to, explaining that her orgasmic energy was just as nourishing for his kind. He taunted Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, scoffing at his beloved death-magic and countering that death was, each and every day, trumped and cycled by new life. His lau
ghter doubled over once more as he called attention to the thirteen he’d killed once more.

  The blood—the very life—of thirteen of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s servants coursed through his body; the combined energies of their terror and Arezoo’s climax just as revitalizing.

  Chortling, Utukku asked Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband how he intended to cast a single death spell when the lives of so many welled within his body.

  And, with that, Utukku took a long, gnarled, grayed fingernail and pressed it to his forehead—piercing through the dried, dead husk of skin—and began to drag it straight down, over his nose and bisecting his wicked, grinning lips; down his throat and further past his chest, splitting through wool and flesh alike as he went. The self-inflicted and ever-growing wound widened as the makeshift claw passed, sprouting the same vile, dark fluid he’d vomited earlier, and, as he reached the upper region of his loins, he let out a deep, relieved sigh and withdrew the talon from his grayed flesh. Eyeing the clotted, rancid residue on his fingertip, Utukku sucked the mess into his mouth—smirking at Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s retch at the display—before working his fingertips into either side of the part at his forehead and beginning to peel them apart.

  Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s eyes widened in shock as Utukku pulled away the dead, gray flesh that his magic had inflicted upon him to expose, just beneath the surface, his young and vital form; the flesh even more flawless beneath the shedding cocoon of decay. The raven-black hair, not yet braided and shimmering like liquid-night, cascaded down his back and came to sway just above his buttocks. Much like the gray cloak he’d shed upon Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s floor moments earlier, Utukku, finishing his task, left the clotted wool of his tunic and the mangled flesh of his nearly-dead self at his feet before stepping towards Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, the joints and muscles of his naked body rolling like a panther’s as he approached the stunned Liche master.