by Ben Stevens
Ratt was nearly upon them, when, at the very last second, Raphael acknowledged his threat, such as it was, and sprang to his feet, delivering a spinning backhand to Ratt’s face. Ratt heard his teeth clack and saw a bright flash of white light as the rest of the world faded to black.
He crumpled to the ground, knocked out for a second or two, but quickly returned to consciousness. As his eyes fluttered open, brushing sand away from his eyeball as they did, Ratt struggled for a full second to remember where he was and what he was doing.
Raphael sat down on his back and pinned Ratt’s arms with his knees, just as the direness of the situation returned to him.
Ratt tried to struggle, but he may as well have tried to convince the entire vampire population of New Puebla to go vegan; it was futile. The fight, sadly, was over. Ratt wept, hating himself for being so weak and helpless. He heard and felt his neck pop again as Raphael reached down and grabbed his chin and forehead to yank his head to the side, exposing the tender flesh of his neck. He felt naked, overpowered, violated, and beyond frustrated.
Raphael leaned in, and Ratt braced himself for the bite, but it never came. His assailant sat back up and called out to Sofia.
“It doesn’t have a stamp.” Raphael sounded genuinely confused.
Sofia stopped feasting on the dying woman, left the crying baby still held in the woman’s arms, and stepped over to Ratt and Raphael. She squatted down and examined Ratt’s naked neck. She reached down and took Ratt’s chin in a strong grip and turned his face up to hers. His neck screamed with the pain of such an awkward manipulation. He grimaced through the tears as she studied him.
“How the fuck did you get in here, puto?” Sofia hissed.
Through the fog of rage and grief, Ratt saw a light and made for it.
“I was invited here by the ruler of the city, Don Luis Fernando.” Ratt caught the glance between the two of them; though he couldn’t see the man, he knew he was looking back at Sofia, could see it in her eyes. Knowing that he was on the right track, Ratt continued.
“I am with Lily Sapphire. A guest of the king. I am Miss Sapphire’s lighting technician.” With that small handful of statements, Ratt may as well have shaped a powerful Strange on his assailants, for their demeanors both changed instantly and dramatically.
He saw the look of sadistic playfulness drain from Sofia’s face as she removed her hand from his chin. She stood up and stepped back. Then, looking at Raphael, she spat, “This one lives.”
Ratt exhaled.
“For now,” she added.
Concern returned to Ratt’s brow.
“Tell your employer what you saw here tonight. Tell her I am not pleased with her home-wrecking intrusion into my city and that after she does her little whore song and dance, I will show her, and you, the real hospitality of New Puebla. My husband be damned.” Sofia turned her back on Ratt and stepped back over to the now dead woman and the crying baby.
Sofia squatted down, pried the swaddled baby from its dead mother’s arms, and carried it back over to Ratt and Raphael. Ratt winced in fresh pain as the weight holding him down shifted deeper into the knees that pinched and pressed down into his arms.
While still pinning him effectively, Raphael came up off Ratt’s back and met Sofia’s approach.
“Watch closely, puto,” Sofia said, the dark, sadistically playful quality having fully returned to her voice. She held the baby up. Its rags tumbled free from its shivering, naked body.
“No, please,” Ratt grunted. The duo ignored him. Raphael took hold of the child’s legs, and Sofia moved her grip from the babe’s underarms to its tiny forearms. She took a half step back and pulled the baby back into a horizontal position, drawn up by its four limbs, held aloft by the two murderous vampires.
Sofia smiled cruelly down at the pinned Ratt, her heavily made-up eyes wide with bloodlust and demonic joy.
“Make a wish.”
14
Don Luis took Maya by the arm and hurried her along, back into the palace. His sudden urgency alarmed Maya, and she wondered for a minute whether the vampire lord would be able to restrain himself until tomorrow night, and whether or not she might have just gotten herself in the kind of trouble she didn’t want to be in without her guardians. Maya had put on a spectacular show in convincing Don Luis of her desire to join him, but if he called her bluff before she was ready, she wasn’t sure she would be able to deal with him alone. Sure, she could shape a Strange to open a small window to the other side of the planet, the side where the sun was out and shining, but would he stand idle while she sang her incantation?
“Where are you taking me, my lord?” Maya asked. Her escort stopped abruptly and turned to face her, still cradling her hand in his.
“Please, as I said before, call me Don Luis. Soon you will be my wife. There is no need for such formalities.” He gave her a wide grin. “I am going to show you the source of all this wonder, the Being that made this possible. I want to show you your new god.”
It seemed to Maya that he wasn’t speaking cryptically on purpose, but that he was drunk on the idea of turning and marrying her. He spoke like a poet who had become consumed by his muse. But while the exact meaning of his statement still eluded her, Maya felt that something important was about to happen, so she took a deep breath, bravely calmed her beating heart, and smiled back, knowing that she needed to be paying attention and be on her guard.
“Sounds fascinating. Please, Don Luis, lead on.”
He did just that, guiding her into the very depths of the palace, past dozens of guards both vampiric and human. She feigned giddiness and fascination as they went.
“But first, we need to stop and get something,” he explained, as though she would know any different.
“Whatever you say, good sir.”
He led her down a dead-end hallway, where a ceiling-high ornate wooden cabinet stood towering like a night’s watchman. Floral patterns, first etched, then painted, decorated both doors of the enormous cabinet. Maya decided that although décor in a monster’s castle, it was admittedly beautiful, and was a testament to fine craftsmanship.
“What is this all about?” Maya inquired, trying to sound casual.
“A little protection, just in case,” Don Luis said with a wink. Then, turning, he reached inside the wide opening of his shirt and fished out a thin string of leather, worn like a necklace. He pulled the loop off his head and Maya noticed that a small brass key dangled from it.
“Behold, one of my most prized possessions,” Don Luis said as he used the key to unlock and then open the cabinet doors.
On the other side of the curio’s double doors rested a pistol of a design Maya had never seen before. Highly polished, clad in chrome, the weapon was mounted in an open-faced shadowbox picture frame, the back of which was fitted with a deep purple crushed velvet.
Don Luis gently plucked the pistol from its mounting hooks and turned it over in his hand, admiring it.
“This was a prototype. A weapon in its infancy, developed by the American military right before the Storm. It belonged to the Cartel Don whom I worked for,” he explained, never taking his glowing eyes off the instrument.
“I’m not much of a weapons enthusiast, but it’s quite lovely,” Maya said, wondering nervously where this was headed, and what he needed a pistol for. “What, um… caliber is it?” she asked.
“It doesn’t have one. This, my dear Lily, is a laser pistol. The only one left of its kind, I’m sure.”
Maya widened her eyes in a combination of feigned and real interest but said nothing.
“It fires a single beam that can travel far straighter and far longer than any conventional bullet. When it finds its target, the super-charged electrons excite and combust whatever material it encounters, almost instantly. Had the Storm not occurred, I have no doubt this bad boy would have gone into mass production and eventually replaced most conventional weapons. Sadly, the beam has the same effect on the air it passes through, so the range is l
imited, for the beam will burn itself out eventually. It’s my favorite toy.”
“Why do we need it right now?” Maya asked, hoping she didn’t sound as nervous as she felt.
“As I said, it’s an insurance policy.”
“For what?”
“You’ll see. Come, follow me to the heart of my palace.” Keeping the precious technological relic in his grip, Don Luis led her back out of the dead-end and deeper into the catacombs.
The air down in the catacombs of the palace was cool and wet and smelled of decay. As they walked on, Don Luis began to tell a tale, a tale of the hell that was Earth after the Great Storm, a tale of life after death, and of how both he and New Puebla had come to be.
“I haven’t told you how old I am, Lily,” Don Luis began. “But when I tell you that I was the same age that I appear to be now when the Great Storm happened, I am not lying. Back then, before the Storm, I lived in Old Puebla, or just ‘Puebla,’ as it was called then. I wasn’t always a king, a ruler, you know. Does that surprise you?” He smirked at his queen-to-be. She smiled back coyly. “I know that is hard to believe—the suit fits me so well, you would think I were born into it—but no. I saw my chance at destiny and seized it.” He slowed his walk for a second and reached behind Maya, placing his hand on her buttocks, and squeezed halfway between gentle and firm.
“Just as you are doing now, my dear.” Ever the performer, Maya as Lily swallowed her disgust and instead bounced her eyebrows up and down and purred. Don Luis removed his hand, and they walked on.
“Tell me more.”
“Before the Storm, I grew up a poor child. At the age of seven, my father was killed. Complications from dealings with the cartels. My mother was left to take care of my three younger siblings and me. This I could not abide. I swallowed my pride and turned my back on my childhood. I went to see the very men responsible for my father’s execution. I’m not sure if this amused them or impressed them, but they took me in and gave me work. I started out as a courier, but I soon worked my way up to soldier, and by the time I should have been graduating high school in another world, I was running a crew and making boatloads of cold, hard cash. My mother and siblings never went without anything. I provided for them in all ways, but I had to do so from a distance. My mother hated me for working for the cartel. Can you believe that? She never once said thank you for all the things I did for her and the children! I killed for her! And she never—!” Don Luis caught himself starting to go off, stopped, and collected himself.
As Maya listened, she began to form an understanding of this man. He was too far down the road for her to truly sympathize with him, but she did begin to see the link between who he had been then and who he was now.
“Many people despised the cartel for its methods, but what they failed to understand is that it provided a type of order. Its methods were in reality no more brutal than any government of the world; sometimes, people need killing for the order to be maintained, for the money to flow. And it always flows uphill. It’s easy to hate a cartel and love a state. But what cartel ever killed as many people as any of the world’s wars? The dons always gave back to their community and protected those who knew their place and didn’t cause trouble. Now that I look back on it, those days growing up is where I studied and learned my methods. I run this city on the same principles, and everyone here, every single man, woman, and child, is infinitely better off under my wing than on their own, out in the chaos of the world. That is a truth that everyone in Old Puebla learned when the Storm came.”
They reached an intersection of stairs, one leading up and the other down. Don Luis gestured to the set leading down, and Maya nodded her understanding, keeping silent to allow him to continue his soliloquy.
“You see, the people never saw the actual order and stability that the cartel brought to the city until it was gone. When the Storm came, and the east coast was flooded, and the ground broke open from all the earthquakes, the seams of the system began to unravel. The head of the cartel, a man named Garcia, died along with his inner circle in the first quake. A gas main ruptured and caused an explosion that took out all the upper management in one instant. Ambitious lieutenants and rivals took advantage of the missing, dead, and distracted leaders of the cartel. War broke out nearly overnight. Food and clean water shortages caused the common people to turn on each other. The cartels were broken and weren’t able to maintain order in the common population, and so chaos ensued.” Don Luis paused, both in speech and walk, and turned to look at Maya. A fire smoldered in his undead eyes.
“Then the Drops happened. What was left of the cartel's soldiers tried to fight off the first wave of monsters, but without their leadership, they soon degenerated into small gangs. Before a month had passed, it was all just a memory. There was no civilization left. If Garcia had lived, he could have maintained order and things would have been different. Without him at the helm, the people, the masses,” Don Luis nearly spat the word, his voice dripping with disdain, “the useless feeders who always bemoaned their status under the cartel, were finally free to run the show themselves, and just look at how they handled it. Not even a month to go from their stable lives to complete barbarism.” Don Luis laughed at this.
Maya wondered at the mind that could think and believe such a spin on the story of the Fall. They walked down one last flight of stone steps and came to a large, circular slab of rock that served as a door.
“My mother and siblings all died shortly after the world dipped into madness. They say nature abhors a vacuum and I believe it. Without a ruler, without the cartel, my people were lost. No better off than animals. This changed all that.” Don Luis let go of Maya’s hand, stepped up to the door-slab, and placed his hands on it.
Even in the dim light cast by the torches now some distance above, Maya could see that the round slab was not featureless. Every square inch of it was covered in an Aztec motif, much like the ubiquitous tattoos that decorated the necks of every human in the city. The carvings were raised, embossed, and she could see what looked like a primitive depiction of what could only be described as a demon’s face in the center of the slab. It had several fanged mouths and many eyes. It was monstrous, alien, and non-mammalian. Even in her guise as a vampire-enthralled Lily Sapphire, Maya was unable to suppress the slight cold shiver that ran up and down her spine, causing a wave of goosebumps. Her soft arm and neck hairs stood up as if being drawn toward something on the other side of the slab, as if by the pull of a dark star.
She watched as Don Luis slid his hands into two of the door-demon’s mouths. He hissed in masochistic pleasure and then removed his hands, now bleeding. It looked like he had reached his hands into a bucket of gore.
Maya began to wonder about the nature of the door’s mouth and the source of the blood on Don Luis’s hands, but then watched as the red streams dried up and vanished like a pond in a drought.
That was his blood. But why? What is this?
Tiny trickles of blood leaked from the stone demon’s mouth, and then the slab began to roll to the side, opening the way to the chamber beyond. The light from the torches did not penetrate the room; it was as if the darkness, normally a simple lack of light, were an actual curtain here, blanketing the chamber beyond. The smell of death emanating from the blackness was overpowering, and Maya winced, fighting back the compulsion to cover her mouth and nose.
Don Luis stepped up close behind Maya and placed one hand on her elbow, the other on the small of her back. An involuntary shudder ran down her spine. He nudged her forward. She told herself that Don Luis hadn’t brought her this far, talked to and gushed over her this much just to lead her into a death trap. He could have killed her ages ago if he’d wanted—or at least tried to—and so she collected herself and took a hesitant step forward. Her foot pierced the curtain of dark as if it were nothing, yet her toes, then foot, then shin disappeared so fully from her sight, she looked like an amputee.
She felt a cold creeping up her leg and felt Don Luis nudge
her again. She set her one foot down on the other side and stepped forward with her other, bringing the black to her face like a handful of cupped water from a pool.
Cold. Darkness and cold. Then she opened her eyes on the other side of the curtain in a small, round chamber of stone. Don Luis was beside her, plucking an unlit torch from the inner chamber’s wall and lighting it. It turned out that the room was the source of the stench, not the curtain of black, and thanks to the flickering torchlight, Maya was able to see what caused it.
There, in the center of the round chamber, chained to the floor in a dozen places, sat a living creature the likes of which Maya had never seen in all her long years.
It was the size of Carbine’s old Mini-Mech and resembled an emaciated sea urchin with noodle-like, prehensile spines, each ending in a tubular mouth or sucker instead of a sharp point. The creature appeared near death, or extremely tired, for the spine tubes that protruded from the upper hemisphere of the thing’s body all drooped limply across its mass and reached as far as the floor.
It looked defeated and deflated. Maya saw it try to writhe, even managing to weakly lift a few of its spine tubes off the floor and point them in their direction. The alien appendages probed the air and behaved as if they were sniffing. The mouths at the end of the spine tubes opened and closed rhythmically, like a fish scenting the water.
Maya couldn’t see well in the dim, fluctuating torchlight, but her eyes caught the blur of rapid movement every time a tube mouth gaped open. Her eyes narrowed, and she leaned forward unconsciously to get a closer look. She noticed a long, skinny, needle-like probe shoot in and out of the nearest mouth nearly as fast as a hummingbird’s wings.
The flashing needle in the spine’s mouth added to the sniffing quality of the creature’s behavior; each tentacle-like appendage looked like a large snake with a stiletto for a tongue. They behaved autonomously, yet were connected, like a pack of wolves working together to hunt prey.
