by Graham Brown
Upon reaching the bottom, they entered a chamber with four pathways leading out into the abyss, but only one would take them to the Dark Star.
Kate moved to the path in the center.
“No!” Christian said. “That tunnel leads to a pit. One you can never climb out of, because the bottom is wider than the top.”
He was looking around trying to match what he saw with the Guardian’s memories. Suddenly it wasn’t all that clear. Could it have been a trick Fahad played on him? He doubted it, just a long time since the man had been here.
And then he realized he didn’t need Fahad’s memories at all.
“It’s the one on the far left.”
“How do you know?” Kate asked.
“Because I can feel the power emanating from that tunnel.”
Kate looked at him and then back. “But can you be sure? What about the second one?”
“The second one leads to a labyrinth which slowly changes. The stones move. Once you enter you can never again find your way out. The other two Fahad didn’t elaborate on, but death in one form or another awaits all who enter them.”
She looked unsure.
“Let yourself be still. You’ll feel it too.”
Kate held quiet for a moment and then nodded her head. The power source clearly reacted with the soul of the undead even more acutely than the living. It was like electricity coursing through the air to the Nosferatu.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Together they ventured inside, following the gradient of the rocky tunnel as it slowly pitched upwards. A small opening lay ahead.
This was it. He could feel it.
As they entered the chamber, the flaming torches they carried lit up the room. Part of the ceiling was like blocks of glass and it reflected and diffused the light.
The rest of the chamber was surprisingly sparse. Nothing in it was extravagant, except the golden chest that sat in the center, polished to a mirror-like shine.
Christian’s eye lingered on that chest, not because of its simple golden beauty, but because of the power from within it. He could hear it, feel it, and taste it. It was like rain on the wind, like the throbbing of blood in the ears.
He took a step towards it, wondering how he could remove it without getting caught in the flood. Before he could decide what to do, something wrapped around his neck, pulled him back and whipped him off his feet.
The chain was palladium. He tried to shout, “Run… Kate run!” But only a raspy whisper came out.
He landed on the ground and looked back to see his attacker. Not the Ignis Purgata, not Drake or his minions or even Fahad and his Guardians. It was Kate holding the ends tightly and strangling him with it.
She was yelling something at him, but he could hardly make it out.
“I saw you! I saw you kill him!” she shouted. “You bastard! You son of a bitch I saw you kill my husband!”
He tried to respond. “Not true!”
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “I saw it with my own eyes!”
Drake had tricked her, bent her mind and left her for him to find.
She pulled a dagger out and stabbed down at him. He moved far enough to avoid a chest puncture, but it went into his arm. The dagger was made of palladium as well and Christian realized his second mistake. Kate was still half-human, the palladium would feel toxic to her, rough and charged electrically, but it wouldn’t do to her what it was doing to him. He should have realized that when he found her. He should have realized it was a trap.
With his strength going, all he could do was weakly grab at her. “You’ve been tricked Kate,” he gasped. “Drake lied to you.”
“I saw it!”
“The vision was a lie.”
“You said he wasn’t there,” Kate insisted. “You were so sure of it. Because you were there.”
Christian twisted and squirmed, but she had him tight and her rage was giving her strength. “I had nothing to do with your husband’s death. You know that.” The words squeaked out. “I never met you until our paths crossed in New Orleans.”
“Lies!” She twisted harder.
“Why… would… I…” he managed.
“I saw you,” she shouted, crazed by the pain of the image. “You called out to him, and when he turned you stabbed him and cut his throat.”
Christian managed to knock one of her hands from the chain, but only long enough to shout. “How could I call out to him? I don’t know his name, even now I don’t.”
Kate looked confused for an instant.
“Search my mind—“
Whatever tiny window of reality had opened, it slammed shut with a great bang. She renewed her attack and began choking the life out of him. Christian began to blackout.
“Enough!” a voice called out.
The choking ended and the life was not strangled out of him, but he was weakened, bound and chained. Artimous and another vampire with whom he was unfamiliar came in. This new arrival wore African clothes and took the chains from Kate, holding them in unprotected hands like she had. He must have been in the Half-Life as well. Beyond these two he saw Tereza with her battered face, and their master, his old friend and enemy, Drakos the Deceiver.
“You’ve done well Katherine,” Drake said. “You will avenge your husband yet.”
Chapter 45
In Drake’s presence Kate went still; she seemed almost catatonic. She sidled over to Tereza as if the two had bonded and she was some kind of pet. Christian could see the truth now. They’d broken her mind after all, found her greatest pain and used it against her. She wouldn’t even look at him.
Drake, on the other hand, studied him with great curiosity, examining the stab wounds, the grime of the desert, the burned hands. “You look worse and worse every time I see you.”
Christian couldn’t deny that, nor could he deny that Drake looked better, stronger than he’d been in Amsterdam. Almost back to his old dominant self.
“I gave you a choice on the oil platform,” Drake continued. “Rejoin me or die. You chose death, and that will be your fate today.”
Christian was almost too weak to reply, but he spoke anyway. “It won’t make you whole, Drake. Even if you burn all the churches of the world to the ground, you’ll still be empty. You and I both know that.”
“I beg to differ,” Drake said, turning his attention to the golden chest on the altar. “Can you feel it? The power in this room? It abounds. And soon it shall abound in me. I will be… filled.”
Christian could feel it. It was enough to distract him when he’d stepped into the room, enough to make him slightly dizzy even before Kate had attacked. He only hoped it was having the same effect on Drake. If it were enough to cloud his judgment, to trigger the synapses of avarice that burned so brightly in Drake’s mind, then perhaps Drake would take it, release the flood and drown them all.
Drake broke the lock on the chest and eased the top upward. Then he stood, gazing down into the chest.
Christian could see the reflection in Drake’s mind. A polished obsidian rock. It had the appearance of crystal, but midnight black in color. It was attached to a great, dark chain. The grip was made of ivory and had an inscription carved on it.
Take it… Christian willed.
Drake began to reach for it, stretching his fingers forward, trembling at the power he was about to receive.
Take it, it’s yours…
Suddenly, Drake stopped. He pulled his hand back, got control of himself and realized the danger.
“Bring him here,” he said pointing to Christian.
Artimous dragged Christian over to the podium.
“I should like to kill you,” Drake said, “to give you a soldier’s death. You deserve that much at least. But if I do, you’ll burn to ashes and I won’t have anything left to keep the weight on this podium after I remove the sphere. So instead, I’ll leave you here trapped and buried. You will eventually die, of course, as the palladium slowly burns through your skin, but that
cannot be helped.”
He turned to Artimous. “Lift him.”
Artimous heaved Christian’s bound form up into the air as if he was a feather, and as Drake pulled the chest free, Artimous shoved Christian onto the altar-like platform.
The chest clanged to the ground, and Artimous wrapped the chains that bound Christian around a set of small hooks on the altar.
Even as he did, a strange sound echoed through the chamber like stone sliding across stone. A trickle of water began to flow from openings in the wall, coming in from all sides. But as the echo died, the water dwindled and then ceased altogether.
“Success,” Drake said, grinning in the dark.
He reached into the open chest and gripped the weapon. He lifted it by the handle and the thick chain unfurled link by ominous link. The energy funneled like effervescent fire from the sphere to Drake and back again. Drake opened his mouth as if in pain or pleasure as the power flowed around and through him.
“Are you alright?” Artimous asked.
Drake shuddered for a moment as if it were too much, as if it would bring him to his knees, but he stayed upright and then stiffened again. When he looked at Christian, Drake’s eyes were darker than ever. To Christian’s surprise, his mind was strangely closed off. Not a thought, not a feeling, it was just blank.
“Now we go,” Drake said to his disciples. Even his voice was altered, deeper and raspy.
They filed out one by one, with Kate and Tereza leaving at the last. Christian was left alone in the dark, chained to the rock and slowly dying. It would take days, but the palladium chains would burn through him like salt on slug. It would be a painful, excruciating death.
No, he thought. No!
With all the strength left in his body, Christian began to squirm and twist. The chains burned him anew with each movement, but he didn’t stop.
No! Not like this!
He flopped about like a fish on the dock, throwing himself this way and that, until one of the chains slipped from the hook and he tumbled off the platform.
As he landed on the stone floor, the podium rose up and the floodgates in the ceiling opened. Water came pouring through; funneling toward him from eight different openings, thousands of gallons, crashing around him like heavy surf on the beach.
White foam swirled across the walls and shot up around the altar like a geyser, before dropping back down again. Christian was swung around by the force of the water. He banged against the side of the stone pedestal, but was held fast as he was still attached to the second hook with the chains tangled around him.
The doors began to shut, but Christian managed to kick the golden chest and wedge it into the gap. The door, and whatever mechanism moved it, began to bend and crush the soft metal box, but with every inch of closure the mangled chest was jammed more permanently into the space.
The doors ground to a stop, leaving a two foot gap. The water swirled up and over the obstruction, pouring down the tunnel like a sluiceway in the heart of some great dam.
The sound of the floodgates opening had echoed down the passageway with an odd resonance. When Drake and his followers turned back, the rush of water caught them by surprise.
Because of the slope of the walkway and the narrowness of the tunnel, the flood came at them with swift vengeance. It hit hard, knocking all of them off their feet and sweeping them forward.
They were dumped out into the anteroom and tossed against the stairs. The water surged around them, foamy and white, and began draining through grates in the corners of the room, but it kept coming like a river.
Drake was up first, climbing onto the stairs.
Artimous was next. “Christian must have broken free. Gotten off the pedestal.”
“Thank you for stating the obvious,” Tereza grumbled. “You should have chained him better.”
“We should go back and finish him,” Artimous said.
“Can you wade uphill against a raging river?” she asked.
Artimous looked at the gushing water pouring out of the tunnel. He shook his head.
“Let him drown,” Tereza replied. “We’ll be rid of him just the same.”
Drake said nothing. Their conversations were beneath him now. He was already moving up the stairs, striding with newfound purpose in his mind and the weapon in his right hand. He no longer cared about Christian, it was time to find the Angel, to destroy the abomination, to set right the balance of power and bring all those under his sway back into line.
Chapter 46
Drake walked toward the grand foyer of the Sultan’s House with his mind set on destruction. The angel would be first and then the Church that had vexed him for two thousand years. Zwana, Tereza, Artimous and Kate were with him. A group of guardian Drones waited for them. But soon his entire army would gather and the moments of doubt in their minds would be erased by the power he now held, which all of them would feel.
He stepped through the doors out into the night and was hit with a wave of blue and purple light that blinded him instantly. He dropped to one knee, raising an arm over his eyes.
Artimous, Zwana and Kate were subdued seconds later. There was no sound except for a strange high pitched whirring and the audible cries of the four members of the Fallen.
The pain was intense. It seemed to come from the inside out. Drake had felt it before: daylight, but it was the middle of the night.
Tereza had come out last and unnoticed. She tried to run, but was hit in the back with some kind of barbed arrow connected to a line of high strength rope.
Drake heard her scream and saw her being dragged backward like a spear-fisherman’s catch. She caught fire on the sand. Out in the canyon, he saw a dozen additional fires. More Drones killed and burning.
“Drakos, King of the Demons,” an English voice shouted. “This is your end!”
A crossbow fired, the bolt flying directly for Drake’s heart. Without thinking, he swung the Dark Star and knocked the bolt from the sky. A second bolt was deflected as well.
In a wave of anger beyond anything he’d ever felt, Drake stood and brought the Dark Star down in a crashing motion. The flail impacted the ground and sent out a shock wave that launched everyone in its path flying backwards.
The hunters landed on their backs.
“Get the Nova rifles back on him,” the English voice yelled. “All of them on, Drakos!”
Three of the light weapons converged on him instantly. Two more came his way and then all of them. They burned for a second as the king of the dead stood in the combined beam of ten million candle power, but then the pain vanished and Drake seemed to be glowing darkly, gripping the Dark Star.
He raised the flail above his head, whirled it around twice and slammed it into the ground again. This time the shockwave not only knocked the men down, it blew the weapons of light apart in their hands and raised a cloud of dust between them.
Two of the closest hunters abandoned their rifles and charged, leading with the short serrated swords they so loved to use. They were clad in armor, looking more like machines or even the knights of medieval times whom Drake had fought seven hundred years ago.
Armor hadn’t availed them much then, and it would be no different now. He swung the Dark Star and caught the first man in the chest. The blow crushed the armor, breaking the man, caving his ribs in with a single swing and snapping his spine. It sent his folded body flying through the air, out into the canyon beyond. The second man fared no better as Drake’s return swing took off his helmeted skull.
By now some of the others had gotten their Nova rifles restarted. They aimed them Drake’s way, but the light bent towards the Dark Star, where it was absorbed and extinguished.
With no thought in his mind except devastation, Drake waded into their lines and unleashed his wrath. They had no idea what they were facing. They simply couldn’t comprehend the amount of power Drake now held.
He smashed through them in rapid succession, an unstoppable killing machine. Some of them used knives and s
pears while others resorted to the traditional guns they carried, firing entire magazines of palladium tipped bullets in vain.
Another crossbow bolt glanced off the handle of the weapon, and Drake got the feeling the Dark Star almost had a will of its own, a consciousness that was now joined with him. As if finally freed from its prison the weapon was unwilling to go back and would protect him from everything that came his way.
In a moment Drake had broken their ranks. The screams of the wounded and the dying flowed through the canyon. Some began to flee, but Drake chased them down. Smashing their helmeted heads into unrecognizable pulp, crushing their titanium armored bodies as easily as one steps on a small insect.
The Englishman was the last. He stood with his own sword, unwilling to flee. He even pulled off his helmet and charged. Drake smashed both his legs with a single blow, snapping them like matchsticks. With the man on the ground, Drake knocked the sword from his weakening hand and then brought the Dark Star down upon his skull.
It was over. Never in history had the Ignis Purgata caught him with such a force, and never had he crushed them so easily.
Drake turned to those behind him. “Follow me.”
And without a word, or even a thought, they did just that.
Chapter 47
Back in the hidden chamber, Christian tried to squirm loose from the chains. They weren’t locked but merely wrapped around him like a spider’s thread. Still they proved too heavy to shirk off and too tightly wrapped to slip out of. The water rose slowly to a depth of several feet, but there it reached a point of equilibrium with as much flowing out through the door as there was coming in from above.
Unfortunately the equilibrium wouldn’t last. He could see the flow of water wiggling the chest and the force of the doors continued to crush and tear at the soft gold. A section of it broke loose, the doors crushed the rest and the water began to rise once again.
