by Amy Cross
“One of who?”
“You know, the...” My voice trails off for a moment, before I realize that there's no point being shy. “You're a vampire.”
“Clever boy,” she mutters, turning and heading toward the bottom of the stone steps. “You're obviously one of the more intelligent humans. Which isn't saying much, to be honest. Absalom was right about your species.”
“She's looking for her brother,” I reply, keen to avoid distractions. “Abby has a brother, his name is -”
“I know all that.”
“He's struggling with his -”
“I know all that, too. I've been keeping tabs on them for a couple of days now.”
“She must think he's in this building.”
“He is in this building,” she replies. “I watched him getting led in by a woman who was pretending to be human.”
“You watched?” I ask, shocked by her laid-back approach. “You didn't think to step in and help?”
“When the time is right,” she mutters, heading up the steps toward the door. “Only an untrained mind goes storming in to attack when they first spot their enemy. I wanted to take a little while and soak in the atmosphere around this place.” As I reach her, she places a hand on the door, almost as if she's trying to feel something from the wood itself. “Don't worry, whoever's behind this, they're not going to kill Abigail or Jonathan, not here. They're highly organized, but I imagine this house was put together as a kind of trap.”
“So what should we do next?” I ask. “Maybe if we go around to the rear, there's another -”
Before I can finish, she knocks loudly on the door and then steps back to wait.
“I guess that's one approach,” I reply.
As the door creaks open, we're faced with a tall, well-built man wearing a dark suit. He looks like a nightclub bouncer on steroids, maybe pumped a little more, maybe with a few extra steroids on top, and the flat expression on his face hints at a complete lack of humor. I instinctively reach for my gun, although I can't help noticing the huge muscles bulging beneath the fabric of his suit.
“We're here to see whoever captured Jonathan,” Oncephalus tells the doorman. “My name is Oncephalus, I'm a vampire, and the man standing just behind me is a fragile little human. I don't remember his name.”
“Mark,” I whisper. “Mark Gregory. And thanks for reminding him that I'm fragile.”
“No entrance,” the doorman says darkly.
“Really?” Oncephalus sighs. “Sometimes I think I should have just stayed at Jagadoon. At least I didn't have to deal with idiots all the time.”
“Are you sure you want to call him an idiot to his face?” I hiss.
“I wasn't just talking about him,” she replies. “In fact -”
Suddenly, she reaches out and grabs the doorman's head, slamming it into the frame before pushing him into the hallway. To my surprise, despite his size the doorman crumples easily and Oncephalus steps over him without even breaking a sweat.
“That was impressive,” I tell her as I follow.
“Not really. Whoever's running this place, they scrimped on some of the costs they didn't think were important. Besides, he was like you, he was only human. The day I can't drop a human in one blow is the day I give up altogether.”
“Sure,” I mutter, glancing down at the unconscious man on the floor.
“Quiet!” she hisses, stopping next to a door further along the corridor.
I wait, but all I hear from the next room is a faint bump.
“What -”
Before I can finish, the door is smashed open as a figure is thrown through. Crumpling against the opposite wall, the figure quickly slumps to the ground, letting out a faint gasp in the process. I aim my gun, but Oncephalus grabs my hand and pushes it down just as Abby steps out through the broken doorway and makes her way over to the figure on the floor.
“Okay,” she says firmly, towering over him, “I'll break that rule, I will ask you a second time, but you really need to answer. Where's my brother, and who -”
Spotting us suddenly, she seems shocked.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” she asks.
“Rescuing you,” I reply, although I immediately realize that the answer doesn't quite seem appropriate. “Well, I mean... You know...”
“We're rescuing you, Abby,” Oncephalus says firmly. “Where's your brother?”
“He...” She pauses, before looking back down at the groaning figure on the floor. “This guy seems to know something, but he's not letting on. All I've gotten from him so far is that his name's Grimmholm and he seems to be waiting for word of a payment.”
“Bounty hunters,” Oncephalus replies. “Whoever's running this operation, they're just middlemen.”
“I already figured that part out,” Abby says, reaching down and grabbing the man by his throat, before hauling him up. “I want to know who hired them to kidnap my brother, and why.”
Jonathan
“Change of plan,” Sharon says, hurrying toward me with a hint of fear in her voice. “We're getting out of here, doll. Just you and me. Sounds like Grimmholm isn't doing too well up there.”
I turn and watch as she grabs a set of keys from a hook on the wall. Her hands are trembling, and she's clearly in a hell of a hurry.
“Don't worry,” she continues, “there's an emergency exit in this place. Don't think you can take advantage of the situation, either, 'cause I've got a little trick up my sleeve to keep you under control.” Reaching into her pocket, she pulls out a small device and presses a button on the top.
Instantly, arcs of pain are sent jolting through my body, rippling along every nerve and causing me to almost black out. I slump down, held up only by the chains, and for a few seconds I can barely even remember my own name. As the pain starts to fade, I close my eyes and try to get my thoughts together, but after a moment I realize I can hear the chains being unlocked and finally I crash down against the stone floor, letting out a gasp as I land in a crumpled heap. I immediately try to get up, but the electrical charge seems to have temporarily fried my nerves.
“No time to sleep right now,” Sharon says, gently kicking me in the ribs. “There's an implant in your neck, I can deliver way more pain at the push of a button. You're coming with me to a new rendezvous point, and then I'm gonna hand you over to someone who's gonna pay me a lot of money. Nice and simple, and -”
From the room above us, there's a heavy bumping sound, followed by a faint, plaintive cry.
“Oh, she's torturing Grimmholm real good,” Sharon whispers, with awe in her voice. “Pity I can't stay and watch, but we need your sister to keep busy while we're getting out of here.” There's a pause, and then she kicks me in the ribs again, much harder this time. “If you make one sound, if you even think of crying out, I'll set the implant into permanent mode. Even if your sister manages to get to you, she wouldn't be able to dig the implant out of your neck in time to save your sanity. Maybe in a few centuries you'd stop drooling and writhing in pain, but until then you'd be living a nightmare. So get moving!”
Even though the pain has passed, I can still feel it echoing through my body. I struggle to my feet, trying to summon the energy to take a step forward, but Sharon quickly shoves me in the back, steering me toward a door at the far end of the chamber.
“It's not far,” she tells me. “Try to get a move on, though. I don't want your sister finding her way down here before we're gone.”
Letting out a cry of anger, I turn and swing at her, only for another burst of pain to instantly burn through my body. I fall to my knees again, but the pain keeps going for several seconds before finally starting to fade. Leaning down and gasping, I feel as if every last one of my muscles is on fire, and it takes a moment before I'm able to catch my breath. I thought the pain in my gut was bad when I needed blood, but this is a thousand times worse.
“See how tiresome this is going to be if you keep resisting?” Sharon asks. “Listen, I don't care what
happens to you once you've been handed over at the rendezvous. If you wanna fight back against them, once they've given me the money I'm owed, more power to you. In fact, I'd be kinda impressed. Just save your energy until then, okay? The more you make me keep buzzing you, the weaker you'll be when you need to get away from the other guys. Makes sense, huh?”
I try to get to tell her to go to hell, but for a moment I'm distracted by an image in my mind's eye: I can see a man, naked and bloodied, struggling to his feet. I can barely see him properly in the shadows, but parts of his body seem to have been torn away. A moment later, when he turns slightly, I realize that his face is similar to my own, but not exactly the same. There are hints of Abby in there too, and with a rush of shock I finally start to understand that I'm somehow seeing an image of my father, the same man I briefly saw in my dreams. I want to call out to him, but instead I simply watch as he stands firm in the darkness and -
Suddenly a fresh burst of pain blasts through my body. The image in my mind dissipates as I drop down yet again, and this time the pain lasts even longer than before. As it fades, I hear a metal bolt sliding across and the sound of a door creaking open, followed by a faint rush of cold air against my face. Looking across the room, I see that Sharon has opened a door that leads out into some kind of passageway.
“Let's get moving,” she says with a sigh. “Seriously, you're starting to -”
Lunging at her, I grab her by the throat and slam her into the wall. I immediately feel the pain burning through my body again, crackling from the implant in my neck, but this time I take the agony and use it to make myself stronger. I can hear Sharon's voice crying out, pleading with me to let go, but I simply reach down and take hold of her wrist, snapping it and then tearing it away before tossing her severed hand aside, with the implant's control device still in her grip. As the pain continues to surge through my body, I pull Sharon back and then shove her to the floor. She's still begging for me to stop, but I can barely hear her and the pain is almost blinding me. Reaching to the back of my neck, I fumble for a moment until I feel a small piece of metal poking through the flesh. As soon as I've pulled the implant out, the pain stops, and I get down onto my knees, straddling Sharon as she tries to push me away.
“I'll make a deal with you,” she stammers. “If we play along, we can still get the money and -”
Instead of letting her finish, I shove the implant into her mouth. She lets out a cry of pain, but I hold her jaw closed and tilt her head back, forcing her to swallow the damn thing. Her whole body is convulsing now, straining with every sinew against the pain, but I keep hold of her while watching her horrified eyes. For a few more seconds, she continues to shudder violently, before suddenly jolting one more time and then falling still. I wait, and slowly I start to realize I can hear a cracking sound from further down in her body. Getting to my feet, I'm shocked to see that she's been torn apart at the waist. When I turn to look for the lower half of her body, I see that it has been pulled across the room, and that someone is holding her feet.
“I thought you might need a little help down here,” Oncephalus says with a smile. “Maybe I underestimated you just a little.”
Looking down at the trail of smeared blood, I turn back to see that Sharon's head is still twitching.
“You've obviously learned to defend yourself a little better since the last time we met,” Oncephalus says, walking around me and stopping to look down at Sharon for a moment. “Mind you, these creatures don't seem particularly tough. I'm not quite sure what they are, though.”
“She said she was something called a misoform,” I reply, still a little breathless as Sharon lets out a groan of pain.
“Misoform?” Oncephalus pauses for a moment, before placing the heel of her boot on Sharon's face and pushing down, crushing her skull. “Never heard of them.”
Mark Douglas
“Who's paying you for this?” Abby shouts, holding Grimmholm by the neck as she slams him against the wall. “Is it the spiders? They want me to think they're gone, but that's just another trick! Admit the truth and I might actually let you live!”
He tries to reply, but she's clearly holding his throat too tight.
“You're suffocating him,” I point out.
Pulling him away, she throws him to the floor. Her whole body seems to be trembling with anger.
“It's not the spiders!” Grimmholm hisses, gasping for air. “How the hell would the spiders have hired us? They're all dead!”
“That's too easy,” she replies, stepping around him. “After everything that's happened, do you really expect me to believe that they just vanished in a puff of smoke?”
“They burned,” he stammers, clutching his throat as he sits up. “That's what I heard, anyway. The spiders were duped. They reached Karakh, alright, but then they were slaughtered.”
“Liar!” she shouts, kicking him hard in the back and sending him sprawling back down.
“Wait,” I tell her, “at least hear what he has to say!”
“He's not going to tell the truth,” she replies, with obvious hatred in her voice. “He'll say whatever he's been told to say.”
“You said he was a bounty hunter, right?” I continue. “We have people like that in the human world, Abby, and the only things they care about are making money and getting away to fight another day. This guy knows he's not going to be collecting on his deal, so I'm pretty sure the only thing he cares about is saving his own skin. I think he's telling the truth.”
“Something else is at Karakh,” Grimmholm stammers. “Something has taken over the home of the spiders.”
“Something new?” Abby asks.
“Something old,” he hisses. “That's the story going around, anyway. It's said that there was a race of demons that existed before the rest of us. Before the vampires, before the spiders, before the werewolves and the misoform and the Great Library itself... Haven't you heard the rumors, Abigail Hart? Come on, someone like you, someone who's well-versed in the ancient texts, you must have noticed little hints here and there.”
“Do you know what he's talking about?” I ask her. “Abby, does this make any sense to you?”
She stares down at Grimmholm for a moment, clearly lost in thought. “Absalom mentioned something about them,” she says finally. “I thought, I hoped, that he'd just lost his mind in his last moments, but maybe he was right. I won't truly believe it until I've seen them with my own eyes.”
“I've seen them with mine,” Grimmholm continues. “We dealt with them directly. They sent one of their own, a man with ribbons of blue light burning through cracks in his face. I swear, it was as if he had the power of a cold sun beneath his flesh.”
“I saw a man like that,” Abby whispers. “At Gothos.”
“Why would I lie to you now?” Grimmholm asks, struggling to his feet. “They offered so much money, there was no way we could turn them down. They've put a bounty on your head, and on your brother's too. Every bounty hunter, every thief, every low-life piece of scum from here to the Underworld is looking for the pair of you. Of course, only Sharon and I were smart enough to figure out that you'd come back to New York and that we could maybe use your weaknesses against you.” He stumbles past us, heading to the far side of the room but clearly still in pain from the beating he just received. “I'm done, I'm out of this mess, but if you want my advice, Ms. Hart, I'll give it to you for free. You can't run from this. There are so many others like us, chasing after you. These demons really think they can have you captured and delivered to them.”
“No,” Abby replies darkly, “they don't think that. Not really.”
“So why are they doing it?” I ask.
“To drive us there,” she continues, turning to me. “To remind us of what has to happen next. They want to make us go to Karakh willingly, once we realize we have no choice.”
“So you have to run further away,” I tell her. “Just keep going, find a place where they'll never trouble you.”
“Impo
ssible.”
“Abby -”
“It can't be done!”
“Let me help you.”
“You?” she replies incredulously. “What the hell can you do to help anyone in this situation?”
“I'm not completely useless.”
“This is so far beyond anything you could possibly understand,” she continues. “You're human. There is literally nothing you can do to help.”
“I can try,” I tell her, bristling at her suggestion that I can't do a goddamn thing.
“I'm not running,” she says firmly. “Anyway, the reason they want me dead is that they think I can stand in their way. Even if I run and somehow I manage to hide, they'll be free to make their next move. No world will be safe, Mark. If the stories about the demons are true, they used to be the only empire in existence across all the worlds, and that's what they'll want again. It might take a month, or a year, or even a decade, but eventually they'll show up here in the human world. No-one's safe from these things. They've been here before and they'll come again.”
“I'm pretty sure there's never been a race of demons anywhere near New York,” I tell her.
“That's because they were gone long before human civilization rose,” she replies. “They existed so long ago, even the original vampires didn't believe they were real. There are brief mentions in the Book of Gothos, though, a few scattered hints that some scholars had suspicions. Suspicions that were mocked and ridiculed.” She sighs. “I don't know enough about human religion to be certain, but I wouldn't mind betting that there might be hints in your holy books too. The Bible, the Torah, Qur'an, if you went through them line by line you might find subtle indications, hints that someone once sensed that there was a power before all of us.”
“And now they're back?” I ask.
“They must still be weak,” she continues. “If they had to manipulate the spiders, if they're having to hire idiots to run us down in New York, if they're hiding out at Karakh, they must still be trying to build their power.”
