by Jeff Gunhus
“Burn her!”
“Give her the fire!”
“Finish her!”
Shakra raised one hand, and the crowd settled back in the chant.
“It is against our ways to force the eternal gift onto a monster hunter,” Shakra said, speaking to Eva, but her voice carried easily through the cavern. “Sometimes that yields unfavorable results. But if you choose willingly…” Shakra reached out and cradled Eva’s face in her free hand, the torch still in the other. “So much we could do together.” The flaming torch drifted closer and closer to the woodpile. “So much pain you could avoid.”
“Go ahead and do it,” Eva said, her defiant tone unable to hide the tremble in her voice. “Anything would be better than having to talk to you any longer, you stinking corpse.”
“As you wish, young hunter,” Shakra said. “Prepare yourself.”
Shakra raised the torch to the crowd who erupted in cheers. She milked the moment, spinning them with nervous energy and anticipation. She turned to Eva and made a movement to throw the flame onto the woodpile.
I panicked, thinking I’d waited too long. I tore myself from Pahvi.
“No!” I yelled as loud as I could.
The chanting and drums stopped like someone had thrown a switch. Every vampire turned and stared right at me. The crackle of the bonfires was the only sound in the cave. Eva saw me. I wasn’t sure what I expected from her. Maybe a smile. A look of hope or relief. Instead she shook her head in disappointment and disbelief.
Shakra turned in my direction. It was impossible to read any kind of emotion behind her mask. The vampires nearest me shuffled forward like children impatiently waiting for their mother to tell them it was all right to eat a cake sitting on the table begging to be devoured. I was the cake. And the kids looked hungry.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“That’s one way to make your appearance,” Pahvi said behind me. He was smiling, clearly enjoying my discomfort. “Now let’s hope Shakra says something to them.”
“I didn’t know you cared,” I said.
“I don’t,” Pahvi replied. “I’m just afraid they might drain my blood in the feeding frenzy.”
The nearest vampires grew bolder and took a few quick steps forward. The ones behind surged with them, pushing and shoving. A tidal wave of black shapes poured toward us.
“Khalass!” boomed Shakra’s voice over the crowd, sounding amplified by enormous speakers. I recognized the word from our time in Morocco. It meant stop in Arabic. Every vampire in the cave froze in place, some in midstride, their dirty, claw-like hands reaching out toward me. “Tawwel balak,” she purred. “Tawwel balak, my lovelies. This is a special guest. A very special guest.” She motioned to Pahvi. He nudged me out of the way and took the lead.
“Follow me and stay close,” he said. “They look like they are in control, but it’s only by a thread. Some are completely insane.”
The mob parted for Pahvi, and I followed him through the cave. “What was that she said, Tawwel balak?”
“Have patience,” Pahvi replied. “She wasn’t telling them they couldn’t have your blood, just that they couldn’t have it yet.”
“That’s comforting,” I said.
We snaked our way through the crowd and mounted the steps to the stage until I came face-to-face with Shakra. Well, at least face-to-mask. Up close, I could see only her eyes through the two small openings, not enough to give me any idea of her expression as she sized me up. I looked past her at Eva. She looked conflicted, mostly angry. But I saw flashes of begrudging relief that I was there.
“So, you are the great Jack Templar,” Shakra said. “I thought you would be…different.”
“Funny, your master Ren Lucre said the same thing to me when I met him,” I said. “That’s the same night I defeated him in battle.”
“My father was always a bit careless when fighting,” Shakra said, her voice betraying no emotion whatsoever.
This revelation took me off guard. “Ren Lucre is your father?” I asked. I’d counted on rivalry between the two vampire lords. I never expected them to be family. Getting the Jerusalem Stone, while already nearly an impossible proposition, seemed to slide farther from my grasp.
Shakra ignored my question and walked slowly around me. “You’ve caused quite a stir among the Creach, young Templar. No one is sure what to make of you.” I noticed Pahvi bowed his head low as she passed him. “Some think you pose a great threat to the Creach and should be eliminated at once. Others believe the threat is overstated, and you are nothing but a weak little boy, barely in need of shaving yet.” A low laugh passed through the gallery. “Still others believe you might be an opportunity.”
Once she completed her orbit, she stood in front of me. I wondered if I could reach the cylinder, pull Gregor’s dagger, and complete an attack before she stopped me. I doubted I would get as far as reaching for the cylinder before she struck me down. I had no choice but to stall.
“I came here to bargain with you,” I stated.
Shakra cocked her head. She spoke to the crowd. “He says he comes to bargain with me.” Laughter rippled through the vampire mob. “All right, young hunter, let’s hear your bargain.”
“I want my friend Eva released and both of us guaranteed safe passage out of here to the surface.” I lowered my voice so that only she could hear. “And I want the Jerusalem Stone which I know is in your possession.”
“This is an odd bargain. I’m to give you your life and my most precious possession and get nothing in return,” Shakra said.
“Of course you will,” I said. I leaned forward and whispered. “I will deliver to you one last message from Ahmed el-Tayeb,” I said, using Gregor’s Bedouin name. “A message he gave to me right before his death.”
Shakra reared back and struck me across the face. Hot blood filled my mouth. The nearest vampires surged forward, sniffing the air and licking their lips at the scent of fresh blood. I’m not sure what kind of reaction I’d expected from Shakra, but a slap across the face didn’t even make the list. I looked up at her, but with the mask it was impossible to read her expression. I did notice her chest heaving as she breathed hard. I reached my hand to the cylinder, ready to make an attempt to get it out if she attacked. I didn’t like the odds, but it was the only chance I had.
“Bring him,” Shakra commanded. She turned and strode from the stage through a door cut into the rock wall.
Pahvi grabbed me roughly. I shook him off and ran to Eva.
“Are you all right?” I stammered.
“What are you doing here?” Eva asked, trying to appear angry but with tears welling in her eyes. “I’m not some damnable girl who needs saving.”
“I didn’t want you having all the fun,” I said. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
Eva laughed, looking down at the firewood piled around her feet. “I hope you have a better plan than what you’ve shown so far.”
“Only barely,” I grinned. “But I do have something.”
“A broken neck is what you’ll have unless you get moving,” Pahvi said behind me. He acknowledged Eva, who scowled at him. “I’m sorry you were put in this situation. If I had been here…”
“If you had been here what?” Eva snarled. “You would have invited me to become a vampire over a nice dinner and some wine? You’re a putz.”
Despite the seriousness of our predicament, I couldn’t help but laugh. I gave the confused-looking Pahvi a shrug. He pulled me away from Eva and forced me toward the door where Shakra had disappeared. Before we went through the door, he leaned in and asked, “What is this word, putz?”
I looked at him seriously. “It means someone who is irresistible because they are so handsome and charming.”
Pahvi’s face brightened. “Really?”
“No, not really,” I said. “Man, you really are a putz.” It was petty and out of place with the danger I was in, but the put-down felt good. It served a purpose too. I felt myself relax a little, able to gather my though
ts for the confrontation ahead. I steeled myself, knowing that failure was simply not an option, and walked through the door and into Shakra’s lair.
After a short tunnel with a series of open reinforced metal doors, I stepped into a different world. Instead of the bare rock and hard, cold surfaces in the cavern, Shakra’s lair looked like the inside of an aristocrat’s mansion. Soft, plush rugs covered the ground. Tapestries covered the walls, depicting medieval scenes of noble life. A fox-hunt. A masquerade ball. A scene of lords and ladies picnicking next to a tranquil river. Ornate tables and chairs, carved with cherubs and roses, mixed with brightly colored sofas and couches. There were even vases of fresh flowers put out on tables and ledges. A sunrise should light this type of room. Instead, torches lined the walls and a large fire blazed in the hearth casting an orange glow and filling the room with dancing shadows.
Shakra stood against the far wall, unmoving, looking out of place in her armor and mask.
“Leave us,” she commanded Pahvi.
“I…I don’t think that’s a good idea, with respect,” Pahvi said.
A hiss came from behind the mask. “Disobedience carries with it no respect, Pahvi,” she spat.
Pahvi bowed his head. “I will be outside.” He left the room.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” I said. “Very pleasant.”
Shakra didn’t move. She stood frozen against the wall. “Tell me of this message.”
“Not quite yet. I need a few assurances from you first,” I said.
“Perhaps you misjudge how much this information matters to me,” Shakra said.
I shrugged and let the comment hang in the air unanswered. She’d reacted strongly to my mention of Gregor’s name. I was still alive, but it was true that I had no idea how far the promise of a last message from him would carry me. I felt the weight of the cylinder against my leg and knew Gregor’s message wasn’t the only bargaining chip I carried.
I tried not to show any of these thoughts or concerns as I walked farther into the room, looking for a way to put a piece of furniture between the two of us so I could pull the cylinder and the dagger from inside my clothes without her seeing. I’d seen how fast Pahvi could move, and I assumed Shakra would be faster still. The second she thought I was up to something would probably be my last second alive. If I was going to leave this room in one piece, I had to be careful.
“I think if you didn’t care I’d already be dead,” I said. I positioned myself behind a high-backed chair that blocked me from the chest down. Shakra remained against the far wall, unnervingly not moving an inch as she stared at me. I put one hand casually on top of the chair and went to work with the other one unstrapping the cylinder from my leg.
“I don’t know about that,” Shakra said. “The female hunter would be a great asset to me as a vampire. But the last Templar? Think of what your vampire blood would be like. Think of the power.”
I worked the binding lose and slid the cylinder carefully out.
“Dark power, you mean? Used for evil?” I said, stalling again.
“Power is just power, young one. Gregor did with his what he chose. He joined the Black Watch to hunt and destroy his own kind. Is that evil?” she asked. “To you, perhaps not. To me?”
“It was betrayal,” I finished for her. I thought this might get a reaction from her, but she remained totally still. The eyeholes in her mask were black pits staring at me. But it didn’t matter. I had the cylinder out. I just needed a drop of my blood to open it. Only a few more seconds and I would have the upper hand.
“Yes, he betrayed his kind,” she agreed.
“No, he betrayed you,” I said, still trying to get a rise out of her. I squeezed the old cut on my hand and dripped blood on the Revealer. I heard a pop as it opened. I pulled the dagger out. “He wasn’t fighting vampires all those years. He was fighting you, desperate to hurt you any way he could for what you did.” Even this produced no motion from her. “But in the end, right before he died, he learned to forgive. His last thoughts were of you. He wanted you to know this.” Shakra didn’t move. Knowing the story, the words had to hurt. Even so, she stared at me with not even a turn of her head.
All at once, I realized I was a fool.
I spun around and faced Shakra standing behind me.
Somehow she had projected her voice across the room. I’d been talking to an empty suit of armor the entire time, an exact replica.
Lightning quick, she smacked the dagger from my hand and sent it flying across the room. She grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground, her arm fully extended. Her voice bellowed from behind her mask but also seemed to come from everywhere in the room.
“YOU DARE TO SPEAK THESE LIES TO ME? I AM SHAKRA, LORD OF THE VAMPIRES! YOU WILL TREMBLE BEFORE ME!”
Her voice was impossibly loud. I felt it deep in my body, dark and resonant. Even so, it was flat and devoid of emotion. That made it even more terrifying. I kicked and clawed at her hand around my throat.
“You think you know everything, but you know nothing,” she spat.
She heaved me backward. I flew through the air like a rag doll, landed on a table, and it smashed under me, breaking my fall. I scrambled to my feet, my eyes searching for a weapon. Shakra paced back and forth on the far side of the room like a caged animal. The fact that she wasn’t attacking gave me a glimmer of hope.
“I’m telling you the truth,” I cried.
“You’re just a boy. What do you know of the truth?” she replied, her voice cold and severe. “If truth is what you want, I have it for you. With all truth’s pain. And all truth’s heartbreak. If that’s what you came here for, then so be it.”
She raised her hands to either side of her mask and slowly lifted. First the chin, then her lips. She hesitated for a second. “Behold!” she cried. “This is what the truth looks like.” She lifted her mask off her head. Long hair fell to her shoulders, and she stared at me with bright blue eyes.
I staggered backward, clasping my chest, suddenly unable to breath. My head ached with a stabbing pain. Everything in my world, everything I knew to be true, everything I believed, all crumbled to ruins in a matter of seconds.
There, standing in front of me, in the armor of the Lord of the Vampires, was my mother.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Mom?” My mouth formed the word, but only a shuddering breath came out. I staggered away from her, my legs buckling under me. “How…but you’re…” I didn’t know what to say. It was clearly my mother’s face. The same that had come to me when I died on the river before T-Rex resuscitated me. The difference was that then her features then had been soft and compassionate, so full of love and care. Now her eyes narrowed into a tight scowl. She looked dark and menacing, like something out of a nightmare.
This had to be a trick of some kind. Some magic used to exploit my weakness. Still, my mind reeled as she walked to where Gregor’s dagger had fallen and picked it up carefully. She turned it over in her hand like a long lost personal treasure, her fingers moving lightly over its surface.
“Do you not believe your eyes?” the vampire asked. “I assure you this is no disguise.”
When I’d first arrived in the cavern, Shakra had been ready to set Eva on fire, burning her alive at the stake for not agreeing to become a vampire. I couldn’t comprehend my mother doing that.
“You’re not my mother,” I mumbled. “You can’t be.”
“Where is your certainty now?” Shakra sneered. “And you think to tell me about my life. About Gregor. What can you know? You were just a baby when your father stole you.”
Stole me? The idea rattled me even further, and I didn’t think that was possible. She read my expression.
“What did you think? That he rescued you like some hero?” Shakra said. “No, he stole you in the middle of the night like a thief.”
“But I saw you,” I whispered. “Don’t you remember? That night I almost drowned. You came to me.”
“I came
to you?” the vampire said, her turn to be surprised. “And what did I say?”
“Don’t you remember?” I said, getting my feet back under me. “You told me my father was a good man and that I had to be brave. And you asked me to forgive you, but you never said for what.”
The vampire stared over my shoulder as if looking far beyond the walls of this room, perhaps at some past event only she could see. Her face remained impassive, nearly as unreadable as when she’d worn the mask. “Angelica,” she whispered. “You always were the better of us.”
I took a step toward her. “You’re not her, are you? You’re not my mother.”
The vampire jerked back as if I’d just snapped her out of the different time and place of her memory. She looked down at the dagger in her hands and then shook her head slightly. “No, I’m not your mother,” she said. “I have had many names, but my first was Caroline. Your mother was my twin sister.”
I felt a bizarre mix of emotions on hearing this. Relief that my mother was not this monster in front of me. But, monster or not, I’d felt for a few minutes that my mother was alive. A wave of grief from losing her all over again crashed down on me. But as it cleared, a new realization came. Something so large and horrific that the world around me seemed to teeter on edge.
The Lord of the Vampires was Ren Lucre’s daughter.
She was also my mother’s twin – my aunt!
I tried to stop my mind from making the final connection, building up a wall against it. It was no use. The truth clawed its way through and screamed at me.
Ren Lucre is my grandfather!
Yes, Templar blood flowed through my veins, but so did the blood of the Dark Lord, Ren Lucre.
I realized that others must have known the truth. Master Aquinas and Gregor. Perhaps even Aunt Sophie. It explained why Aquinas had been so cautious training me. Was there a chance that I would turn to Ren Lucre at the end and join him? Was she training her future enemy?
Shakra watched me as I processed these revelations. She looked curious, as if interested whether the load of this news was going to prove too much for me, and I would start babbling like a lunatic. Honestly, I felt inches away from doing just that.
