Bloodfire (Empire of Fangs)

by Andrew Domonkos

  “Yes…your very capable husband. And what, pray tell, happened to his face? I can barely stand to look at the man.”

  Abby was beginning to grow annoyed at her trying mother. “It was a cheap shot, some weapon the Sollero guy had.”

  “I’m guessing that’s the same stuff they used on Vivian? Before she exploded?”

  “Probably. Why do you ask mother? Are you worried about exploding? Last I checked you were still human.”

  Both women sneered at each other for a moment, and then put on their usual phony smiles. Such propriety was deeply etched into them from birth. “Ever the observant one, my daughter. But maybe you should give it some thought. Your husband, charging into battle with some ‘army’ Damon keeps mentioning. Whereas Zara, who has killed two of our…I’m sorry, your kind…and has the Sollero boy at her side who I’m told has killed several ‘thralls,’ whatever they are, and where some ominous ghost person is laying in wake for him. And you at his side.”

  Abby snorted. “So that’s what this is about? You’re worried about my safety? You think I’m weak?”

  “There’s more,” Norah said, eying the house. “Damon is planning something big. He wants to use whatever it was that burnt your husband’s face, to use it against some group called the Lesai clan, as well as creating some kind of inoculation, some defense against sunlight. The whole thing sounds insane. I myself would try to reason with these Lesai people, show them some diplomacy. These ones though,” she waved her hand towards the ivory mansion, “they want to charge in. As all men do.”

  Abby shrugged. The conversation was growing tiresome and she no longer found the garden interesting. She walked past her worried mother, who was twisting a pearl on a string of them around her neck and looking listlessly at a bird of paradise.

  Abby had felt something inside her shift that night in the desert; something irrevocable, like the shattering of glass. The fear in their eyes, the taste of the blood, all of it, had made her forget about pretty things. Drake had shown her the pleasures of the hunt, and she felt more alive than ever.

  20.

  Zara peeked cautiously up over the steps but no ghosts were in the hallway. Perhaps she was going crazy. Maybe all of this was a delusion and she was strapped down in Whispering Pines, drooling all over herself and jabbering about vampires. She looked down the hallway, at the floral patterns on the carpet and the brass accents on the walls. She noticed nothing that might be a product of her subconscious. Perhaps the clerk was just messing with her head. Perhaps the clerk didn’t exist himself. She got a headache just thinking about it. She wished Twig was there to pinch her and wake her up from this nightmare, but if being batted around by Vivian and Micah didn’t do it, she doubted much would.

  She paced the hallway for a bit, wondering what the dead woman’s cryptic warning had meant, if anything.

  She wanted to talk to her again. Her initial fear of the woman was now replaced with pity. She doubted very much that her boy was coming to save her from this place. She must have been trapped in some sort of limbo, damned to pace the lavish hallways of the Alistair for eternity waiting for a son who would never come.

  How could fate be so cruel? Why was so much punishment dealt to the innocent while evil seemed to be rewarded? Zara exhaled, frustrated and angry.

  She leaned against the wall and pictured a younger Naomi, perhaps beautiful then as her fine, sharp jawline and still-vivid eyes suggested. A woman so ruined by the death of her husband that she had threw herself into the dark embrace of a well.

  Zara was snapped out of her haze when she heard a muffled boom outside, and the hallway suddenly became dark save for a slim beam of moonlight coming in from the window of the door that led to the balcony. Her eyes adjusted slowly, and soon she could see everything again, although now everything had a bluish-green tint to it.

  She jerked upright and stood rigid.

  She heard something that sounded like many whispers at once, coming from outside. She crept furtively to the balcony door and took hold of the brass doorknob. She gave it a good tug and managed only to break the lock. She then eased out into the smoky night, onto the crescent patio that jutted out and gave her a view of the thoroughfare.

  The first thing that drew her eye was the high range of mountains. The ridges of some of these hills were glowing red. The wildfires no doubt. As distant as the hills seemed, Zara could feel the flicker of the flames, the insatiable hunger of it that Zara had started to understand.

  She touched her neck and closed her eyes, suddenly lost in a vision. She was standing on a balcony as she was now, only higher and grander. A great mass of people lay before her like an ocean. Beyond this mass, fires swept in every direction for a thousand miles, devouring all.

  She opened her eyes and noticed that one of her hands was out in front of her, balled into a fist. She relaxed her hand, let it drop to her side and returned to the hallway, failing to notice Twig, who was running through the town towards the hotel.

  When she returned to her room she shut the door, locked it, then noticed a hooded figure standing in the shadows in the corner of the room. Her fangs grew almost instantly and she felt her whole body tense.

  “Why have you come here?” The voice said, calmly. He stood as still as stone.

  Zara steadied her nerves. “That’s none of your damn business, whoever you are.”

  The man took a measured step out of the shadows and into a ray of moonlight. She could see now his face was pale and young, and that his irises were two different colors: one blue and one red. She knew immediately that he was the man from her dream and the newspaper clipping. Sam McDermont. The Ghost. His dark hair was disheveled and hung down around his face like oily tendrils. He wore a short, clipped goatee that seemed to add a few years to his young face.

  To show that she was not afraid, Zara too stepped forward where the man could better see her. His mouth seemed to drop for a moment when he saw her.

  “It’s you,” he said.

  “You know me?” Zara said. She was anxious now but she hid it well.

  He reached out his hand to touch her face but she parried it with a brush of her hand.

  He lowered his hand back to his side and his face became placid and calm again.

  “I will ask this only once. Were you sent by Drachen, who now goes by the name Drake, to destroy me?” The man said both versions of the name with equal disgust. “Does he send his bride to do his dirty work now?”

  Zara made a face and almost laughed. “His bride? No, we are not an item. In fact, he is trying to kill me.”

  Sam stood for a long time in silence. “And why would he want to do that?” he said finally, his voice less accusatory now.

  “Because I didn’t want to join their little cult,” Zara replied. “That, and I killed Vivian and Micah Caspari, and my friend killed Jonas Caspari.” Saying the words out loud she suddenly realized just how pissed off she had probably made the remaining Casparis. This made her think of her father and it gave her a pang in her stomach.

  Something Zara had said had made Sam sit on the edge of the bed and hold his head in his hands. He mumbled incoherently in a strange language. It took Zara a moment to realize he was praying, which made her even more uncomfortable in the small room. He finally stood up again and moved over to the window where he gazed out. “Vivian’s was a dark life.”

  It suddenly dawned on Zara that she had been Vivian in her dream. She felt sick and had to lean a hand against the wall. She wondered if this was her punishment for going against the grain, for renouncing her destiny as a vampire. She wondered now, that if her dreams had been real perhaps her vision on the balcony held some meaning.

  “What is your name?” the man said, still looking out the window.

  Zara could think of no reason to conceal her identity to the heartbroken creature. “Zara, Zara Lane. And you are Sam, right?”

  The man sighed. “That was the name they gave me at Ellis Island.”

  Zara nodded tho
ughtfully. This man was at least ten times as old as her or more. She dizzied at the thought of it.

  “I’m sorry about Vivian,” she said carefully. “I think you should know she was not the same when she —”

  “Enough. I don’t wish to ever hear her name again. There is little time for us to sit and talk about things that have come to pass. What matters is what is coming. Your friend has already weakened me by destroying a compatriot in my cause. Drake comes and he wishes to destroy us both.”

  Zara balked. “Wait, who destroyed who now?”

  “Whoever you have brought here has just killed a friend of mine. But it matters not, not now anyway. Drachen comes for you, and he doesn’t come alone.”

  “Abby,” Zara grumbled. She tried to remember her old friend’s face but drew a complete blank.

  “He’ll bring more” Sam said. He squinted out at the window, touching his goatee thoughtfully. “The fire is coming. Maybe it’s our judgment. When they come, bring them to me, in Viper Canyon, three miles north of here along Cyan Trail.” He leaned in and whispered more instructions into her ear and Zara listened. There was a sudden knock at the door and Zara spun towards the sound.

  “Zar! You in there? Let me in!” Twig shouted. He banged against the door a few more times.

  When she looked back Sam had already slipped out through the window. She walked over and unlocked the door, and Twig bolted in the room. He had strapped his stake belt back on and it rattled noisily as he moved. He was sweating and covered in dust and dirt and a little blood.

  Twig began to ramble about a cowboy exploding and a toothless woman when Zara shut him up with a long kiss. He was all she had left now, besides her father who might already be dead. The thought that she had lost him reminded her how much she cared for him, foibles and all.

  The lights suddenly flickered to life and Twig jumped. He was clearly shaken by the whole ordeal with the cowboy. “Are you okay?” He asked finally.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “But Drake is coming. I can feel it.”

  “You can feel it? What you have vampire GPS now? Well whereabouts is he?” Twig ran to the window and peered out.

  “I don’t know. I just know he’s coming,” Zara said.

  Twig produced a cigarette and got it lit and in his mouth. “Well, guess it was a matter of time,” he said between long drags.

  “You killed one of them, didn’t you?”

  Twig gave her a puzzled look. “Yes, he wanted to know where you were. I slipped the last bit of liquid sunlight into his drink while he was distracted. And you know this how? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

  Zara sighed. “You wouldn’t understand. I just know okay? Can you stop grilling me already?”

  Twig nodded and shut the window. “I say we wait in the woods. When Drake comes creeping up to the hotel we jump him.” He swiftly pulled out a stake and jabbed the curtains a few times with it to demonstrate.

  “We jump him? That’s the plan? You learn that from Ghostbusters?”

  “You got a better one?” Twig asked, still practicing on the curtains.

  “Yes, I do actually. Viper Canyon.”

  Twig sighed. “Of course, it would have to be a canyon wouldn’t it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “My dream, I was chasing someone in a canyon, but it wasn’t Damon, it was some other creature.”

  Zara shook her head, annoyed. “Is that what I am? A creature?”

  “C’mon, I didn’t mean that. You’re not one of them.”

  “Oh?” Zara moved to the bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror, letting the awkward silence hang between them.

  Twig followed her into the bathroom. “Okay, maybe I’m being judgmental here; I just haven’t met too many vampires who were as friendly as you okay?”

  “Maybe because they are constantly being hunted. Ever think about that?”

  “Yeah okay,” Twig said, throwing his hands up in the air, “use the old ‘It’s society’s fault’ routine. Fine, but the guy in my dream was no saint. He was being chased for a reason. People don’t assemble posses to go chase down jaywalkers.”

  “Maybe,” Zara said. “So it’s okay to listen to your feelings but mine are just an active imagination huh?”

  “You’re right,” Twig said, flopping down on the bed. “Okay, okay. But what’s the plan here? In my dream it didn’t work out to well for us. He was cornered and he still beat us.”

  Zara didn’t want to tell Twig about her brief encounter with Sam McDermont. It would only make him more agitated and suspicious of her. Likewise, she said nothing about the ghost she had met in the hallway who gave her a cryptic warning about a devil, or that she had had a vision where the world was burning.

  “You remember what you said about the Scout?” Zara asked suddenly. An idea was forming in her head.

  Twig gave her a tired and confused look. “Refresh my memory.”

  “How next time you would fill the tank so that it would explode?”

  “Yeah…” Twig said warily. “Where are you going with this?”

  “I’m thinking a truck loaded with enough explosives might be something Drake wouldn’t expect.”

  “You want to throw a truck at them?” Twig said, sitting up and leaving his jaw hanging open.

  “More or less, yeah. Why not? We rig the truck to blow, lure them into the canyon and then one of us drops it on them. As tough as these creatures are, I doubt they can survive an explosion, if it’s big enough that is. We would need dynamite.” She couldn’t help but smirk at the simple genius of the idea.

  Twig sat down on the bed. “It’s actually not bad. Better than trying to stake them, they’ll be expecting that and there are going to be too many to fight that way anyway. But dynamite? Where the hell are we going to get that?”

  Zara went to the bathroom and got her backpack and began to gather her clothes and stuff them into it.

  “What self-respecting wild-west town doesn’t have a bit of dynamite lying around?”

  21.

  The soldier knocked on Mark’s window with a flashlight. It took a minute for Mark to find the right button to lower the window. “What’s up?” He asked, trying to appear casual in the stolen car.

  “Road’s closed. The wind is pushing the wildfires north and we’re evacuating all the towns north of Silverthorne.” The young man seemed tired and overworked.

  “I understand,” Mark said calmly, “but I think my daughter might be in there, she ran off with her, uh, boyfriend and now they’re stuck.”

  The guardsman remained stone-faced. “I can appreciate that, but our orders are to keep anyone from crossing into this area. I can assure you that we are working to get everyone out, though.”

  “Okay, but—”

  “Sorry, but nobody is getting in there. You’re not the only one with loved ones trapped, we let you in we have to let everybody in. Best thing to do is turn around and wait at the YMCA in Colorado Springs, we’re gonna be bussing survivors there.” The man cleared his throat, knowing ‘survivors’ was not the right term; he had meant to say civilians.

  Mark began to speak but the man had started to walk away and wave with his flashlight in big circles, indicating Mark to turn the car around so he could deal with a line of cars behind him, also trying to get in.

  Mark sighed and navigated the big car around, and started to drive back. He didn’t know what else to do. According to the map he had bought at the gas station on the way up, Lost Valley was about eight miles northwest, and on foot that was a lot of miles through dark woods as well as chasms and gorges. Also, there was the problem of the fire.

  He would head back and wait. Just like all the other helpless people. He made it a mile when the engine began to knock and sputter. “Oh please, not now,” he moaned as the knock became more consistent and loud. Finally something gave way and the car conked out on the shoulder of the twisting road. He beat his head against the steering wheel for a minu
te. He couldn’t remember a worse day of his life than the one he was still suffering through now. He didn’t think tomorrow would be much better. His brother was setting him up, and for what else but money. He got out and kicked the car a few times, denting it good. “Dirty bastard, sells out his own brother!” he shouted, and a howling wind took his voice and carried it over the dark valley of rock and pine like a banshee.

  His phone had no signal, and a little red battery was blinking on the screen. Mark threw it hard into the ravine where it bounced and shattered on a rock and its pieces scattered into a babbling brook. He was panting now, and his lungs suddenly burned. The smoke from the fire was coming in strong over the southern hills. What a perfect disaster, he thought. He looked up at the grayish night sky and cursed it and everyone hiding behind it, those cosmic playwrights who had designed this misery. He sat down and leaned against the car.