Zane shrugged, “Acid cannons, laser pistols, or magic wands! Either way, I’m prepared.”
“Magic wands don’t sound too farfetched, actually,” Raith laughed.
Zane smirked, “Yea, too bad I didn’t bring a camera. I’m sure snapping a picture of something like that would make you die laughing. Anyway…” He gave his friend a nod, “Be back in a flash.”
“Be sure you are,” Raith offered.
But Zane was already gone.
Zane groaned as he was dropped on the frigid stone slab.
Where was he?
Hadn’t he been…?
Light. He remembered blue light.
Like lightning.
And pain.
Had he tripped agai—
Hands began to grab and pull at him; yanking his limbs and slamming his head back into the rock he lay upon.
“H-hey! Ow! What the fuck?”
His eyes opened and the vicious glare from the sun blinded him as his senses reawakened all at once.
The scent of blood and…
And the sound of tortured cries.
“Raith? RAITH?” Zane thrashed against the binds and hands that held him against the frigid stone slab, “G-get off me! GET OFF! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING TO HIM? RAITH? RAITH!”
The blood curdling cries of his friend were all the evidence Zane needed to know that, whatever they were doing to him, it wasn’t something he’d want to see. Fully registering this, however, he couldn’t bring himself to stop his struggling against his captors to see past them; to get a glimpse of what the taroe chief was doing.
It wasn’t supposed to have been like this!
It was just a job!
A simple job!
It was never supposed to—
There was a pause in Raith’s cries—a bitter-sweet break in the pained howls—that was occupied by a jagged and tortured hiss as Raith struggled to inhale.
~Five Minutes Earlier~
Somehow they’d known!
Somehow they’d been prepared!
It had all happened in a flash. Practically the moment Zane had vanished from Raith’s sight the ground had gone electric beneath his feet. All at once his body ceased to be his, and his therion form had exploded to the surface in a single moment of bone-and-organ twisting agony. He’d never felt the change like that—his entire body growing and shifting all at once—and it had been enough to force him to his knees.
Only by the time he’d fallen he was in his human form once again.
Unable to muster enough control to move his eyes, let alone transform again.
And then they’d closed in on him…
By the time the taroe soldiers had dragged him to the center of their village, Zane was already stripped and bound to a slab of rock; his eyes swimming lazily about within his skull as he mumbled incoherently in response to the taroes’ harsh treatment.
“You came here to steal from us, yes?” A deep, gravelly voice that sounded as though it was coming from the rocks themselves issued from the depths of the temple. A moment later, a tall, robust silhouette appeared at the entrance and a dark-skinned man brandishing one of Zane’s blades stepped towards them. As he drew nearer, the others of the taroe tribe paused in their onslaught and half-knelt before the newcomer long enough for him to offer a nod at their gesture. No sooner had they dipped their bodies in his direction then they’d returned to their tasks. Closing the distance between him and Raith, the man—his enchanted tattoos already glowing bright enough to cut through even the daylight—brought the flat of the long blade against Raith’s naked side with enough force to make him flinch. “Answer me, you wretched cur! You and that leech came here to steal from us, did you not? To steal this?”—one of the nearby taroe subjects suddenly lifted the relic into view—“This is why you’ve come?”
Raith struggled to pull away, but his weakened body was unable to shake the men that held him.
“Father?” Raith’s eyes widened at the familiar voice, “Father, what’s… OH MY—N-no! What’s happening?”
The chief turned and motioned towards Nicc’oule—tears already streaming down her face—and several of his subjects closed in and caught her before she could reach him. Knowing that she’d meet a similar—if not harsher—punishment for her involvement in their plans, Raith shook his head and silently urged her not to get herself involved.
Seeing the intent in his plea, however, only motivated her that much more.
“DON’T DO THIS! RELEASE THEM! FATHER, PLEASE—I IMPLORE YOU!—DON’T LET THIS GO ON ANY—”
“Take her away,” the chief ordered. “She is young and innocent still; there is no need to corrupt her with such matters.” Turning back, he nodded to the taroe who still held the relic. “Begin the preparations for the Maledictus!”
Overhearing this, Nicc’oule howled with sorrow and, with her tattoos glowing brighter than Raith had ever seen, began to try to fight off the guards who held her. Despite all her efforts, however, their magic proved just as effective at neutralizing her spells, and her cries of protest grew dimmer as she was dragged away.
Fighting the tears that threatened to grow in his eyes, Raith looked down, choking back the sorrowful proclamations of love he’d never got to offer her…
“YOU FUCKS! YOU SICK FUCKS! LEAVE HIM ALONE, OR I SWEAR I’LL RIP EVERY ONE OF YOUR—AHHHH!” The cold that had begun to seep into Zane’s core was flooded by scorching pain. Fighting against the leather bind that held his head, he pushed to see the source.
Then suddenly wished he hadn’t.
The dagger was nearly buried to the hilt; the few inches still protruding allowing him to see the rusted and serpentine metal that had been embedded in his belly.
“Silence that wretch,” the chief’s voice rose over the celebratory jeers of the taroe tribe. “I’ll tolerate no more of his flapping tongue!”
“Shall I carve it from his head?”
Zane wretched and whimpered as the dagger was yanked from his guts and a length of intestine followed.
Raith’s cries were stifled then, the chief letting out a grunt as he fought to maintain control of the therion.
“No,” the chief’s voice oozed with malicious intent, “he’ll suffer far more if we allow him to keep his voice. Here, use these.”
Zane whimpered as he felt the warmth of his insides begin to worm down his hip. “What… what do you want from us? Wh-what—”
A pair of hands seized his face and forced his lips open as another taroe leaned in and pushed two fleshy lengths into his mouth. The taste of therion blood—Raith’s blood!—rolled over his tongue before it seeped down his throat. His vampire body ignored the bitter taste of the source and excitedly compelled Zane to seek out more, but his awareness of who the blood belonged to made him wretch. As his bound body quaked with spasms of nausea, he felt a pair of hardened points rake against his lips.
Claws…
His eyes widened and a muffled cry squeezed around the two fingers that had been cut from Raith’s hand.
“I think the filthy blood-sucker likes it!”
“Disgusting creatures!”
“One of you help me,” the chief called out. “This wretched dog won’t keep his eyes open!”
As a few of Zane’s captors stepped away from the blood-covered stone slab he’d been secured to, Raith’s cries started up again.
“Open the vampire up! Prepare him for what’s coming,” the chief ordered, still grunting over his unseen work with Raith. “You there! Free the therion of his thieving heart!”
The dagger once again found its way into the depths of Zane’s stomach, and the taroe wielding it began the long and purposeful process of sawing from the far side of his right hip to the left. When the process was finished, the blade was removed and embedded in his thigh to free the wielder’s hands so that he could begin shoveling the bulk of Zane’s insides onto his lap.
As Zane was brought to a new threshold of pain that he’d never thought possible, his
mind began to warp the scene around him until all he could hear was Raith’s cries of agony.
They were just as much his own now.
Zane coughed and gagged on his friend’s severed fingers, struggling to keep the self-lubricating hunks of meat from sliding down his throat.
He wanted to curse.
He wanted to yell.
He wanted to say whatever it would take to get the taroe to release Raith.
It was his fault! His greed that had brought them there and his carelessness that had gotten them caught!
He’d brought ruin and death to one of the people he cared about most…
“Yes,” the chief’s voice rumbled over him and he shifted his gaze to take in the taroe’s leering face, “you’ve brought ruin and death to the one that you love.” He paused long enough to nod to the taroe who’d just finished with Zane’s insides, who wiped his hands on his chest before yanking the dagger from Zane’s thigh and stepping around the stone slab to join the chief by Zane’s head. “And that is only the beginning…”
The rusted, blood-stained dagger fell out of focus as its tip neared Zane’s right eye, and he hissed and fought to turn his head away from the encroaching weapon.
“HOLD HIM! KEEP HIS EYES OPEN!”
“Don’t think that I won’t free you of your eyelids to force you to watch, vampire!”
More and more taroe hands gripped his head and pried his eyes open, and the dull, crusted metal began the slow and calculated path in carving his eye from his skull. With the right half of his vision rapidly falling into a dull, dark crimson, Zane’s left eye—darting about in a chaotic panic—caught sight of a familiar brown eye, blood-soaked and dangling by its optic nerve from the delicately pinched fingers of a nearing taroe, as it was offered to the chief.
“The therion’s eye, sire!”
“Excellent! Now to deliver it to its new owner!”
Whimpering around his agony and confusion, Zane felt a flood of cold air fill the vacant cavity as his mutilated right eye was tugged free of his body. Stepping aside, the taroe who had robbed him of one eye made room for the other as Raith’s stolen organ was fed into the vacant orifice.
“Good… Good! Now… the heart! Bring me the therion’s heart! And get the relic in place,” the chief leaned in towards Zane’s left side—the only side that still offered the suffering vampire any sight—and wet his lips, “You’ll be pleased to know that you’ll be leaving here with what you came to steal. I truly hate to part with it—we all do, actually—but the punishment you’ve earned demands that you be burdened with what you sought so greatly to wrong us for. May its weight add all the more to your already sizable burden, Maledictus!”
Zane groaned as the chief yanked Raith’s fingers from his mouth, freeing him of its effects.
“Wh-what… why are you—”
“Don’t you dare ask us ‘why’, Maledictus!”
Zane tried to blink—tried to focus beyond his agony to understand the word—but the stolen eye that now occupied his face made the act excruciating. “Wh-who is… M-Male…”
“Maledictus,” the chief repeated for him, his voice suddenly gentle, “It is what you’ll be known as from henceforth. Now, prepare yourself, this next part will hurt…”
~Three Days Later~
Zane was only distantly aware of the injuries he was sustaining as his body crashed down the side of the mountain. The sound of his bones breaking with each impact against the jagged rocks that stood between him and the base of the mountain were no more relevant than that of the branches he snapped along the fall.
All of it meant nothing.
He wasn’t afraid of death; something deep within him—whether it was the wretched relic that had been crammed beneath his ribcage or the severed heart of his butchered friend that now beat beside his own—knew full-well that he wouldn’t die that easily.
No.
If he’d learned anything from that weekend, it was that death was not as easily achieved as one might imagine. Especially when the combined magic of hundreds of malicious magic-wielding chanters refused to let it!
No…
They hadn’t thrown him from that mountain to kill him.
They’d simply freed something infinitely worse than death into the world!
Nicc’oule couldn’t see past the burning haze of her tear filled eyes. She hadn’t been able to stop crying since the moment she’d seen Raith captured. That wretched thing had been cursed; it had been evil. Wherever it had come from—whatever its purposes—it had poisoned her entire tribe and turned them into ravenous lunatics.
It had driven them to use the one spell their people had sworn never to unleash.
A spell that should have never been allowed to be brought into existence.
A spell every bit as horrible as the relic that had driven it into being.
A spell called Maledictus…
She’d wanted only to free her people of the thing that she saw as a cancer to the goodness of her people, and her efforts had gotten the man she loved killed.
And now his friend—this vampire; this… Zane—was forced to carry the literal weight of his death beside his heart; was forced to see the world through the shared gaze of a beloved friend.
This Zane would have to carry their failure through every terrible act that the enchanted ink they’d laced beneath his flesh condemned him to commit.
And when word got out to the mythos Council that a taroe tribe had committed this unspeakable act on one of their own, there would be hell to pay.
Still unable to see past the burning haze of her tear filled eyes, she blindly navigated the chasm to her and Raith’s secret cave; a cave that she’d never again get to share with him.
Soon enough her village would be wiped out—made an example of by the non-human government who had made it clear to their people long ago that the Maledictus curse was never to be anything but a rumor. And while there seemed to be a poetic justice in letting Raith’s people see an end to her life for getting him mixed up in her tribe’s troubles, she couldn’t bring herself to stand upon the ground as one of the monsters that her people had allowed themselves to become…
Zane groaned, struggling to get his thoughts to function in a way he could decipher. Though he wasn’t sure how he knew or how he’d come to be there, he was certain that he was in his bed. The familiarity and serenity of the home he’d built with Celine was unmistakable…
But something about it felt hollow and incomplete.
Forcing his body to move, he sat up—hearing his bones and joints moan and crack and protest every inch of the way—and scanned the empty bedroom for any sign of Celine. Seeing that he was, in fact, alone in the room, he forced himself to his feet and stumbled his way to the bathroom, feeling, for the first time in a long time, as though he was hung over.
The dull hum of fluorescence set a skeptical calm in his mind as he started towards the toilet, eager to empty his strained bladder. Passing by the mirror, however, a new priority presented itself.
Tattoos!
Dozens of them!
The suddenly familiar tribal designs snaked all over his arms and shoulders, littering his chest and starting up his neck!
And his eyes…
The familiar silver of Raith’s therion form now occupied the right side of his face…
Then…
“Welcome to this world, Male—”
Zane howled in the sudden recollection of every second of agony he’d endured. Dropping to his knees, his bladder emptied itself and he vomited on himself.
“YOU FUCKS! YOU SICK FUCKS! LEAVE HIM ALONE, OR I SWEAR I’LL… I’ll… I’ll…”
His eyes widened as more memories came:
The mountain—the fall—and his broken body laying useless at the base…
His friends, the men he’d grown up with before he’d been turned…
Celine…
He’d been taken home?
He’d…
He looked at hi
s hands and saw blood.
“No… No no no! This… this is a dream! Not real! Can’t be…”
You know what we did, Zane! And while your little whore was a tasty starter, we’re still feeling a little puckish.
Zane cried out and pitched around, certain he’d heard…
“Who’s there?”
Silence…
“Dammit! I know you’re there! Come out and—”
And WHAT, limp-dick! You gonna start some shit with the likes of us? Cinch up your leaky cunt and put your balls where they belong, you sniveling fucking shit! There’s fun to be had, and we’re not gonna wipe baby-boy’s ass while he comes to cope!
“Wh-where’s Celine? Who are yo—”
WE’RE YOU, BITCH! AND YOU’RE US! AND UNTIL WE SQUAT OUT A FRESH SHIT ON WHATEVER OPEN WOUND WE INFLICT IN THE NEXT HOUR, CELINE’S IN HERE WITH US, TOO! NOW GET OUT THERE AND FIND US SOME FUCKING PAIN OR WE’LL BRING OUR OWN RIGHT HERE; RIGHT NOW!!
No sooner had the threat been uttered than Zane’s body was alive with every ounce of pain the taroe had inflicted on him! His howls of pain shook through every atom of his body and his right eye ached as his field of vision shifted and warped…
And then he saw the blood-red aura fade into being around him.
“B-but… that can’t be…”
Previous encounters with auric vampires—the mind feeders of their kind—had made it clear that the unseen energy around his body registered as blue…
Blue!
Red was the color of…
“R-Raith?”
Not anymore, sweetheart!
10
The Ghost of You
The chilled fall winds wrapped around Serena as she walked through the city.
There was so much on her mind.
Too much on her mind!
After that night, she’d been forcing herself to stay awake in hope of another visit-slash-vision with Zane; anything that might bring with it any sort of lead to where he might be. After several disappointing nights of ongoing loneliness, however, she’d given up on a repeat performance.
Scarlet Night: The Complete Trilogy Page 32
