by Kirk Zurosky
We dove to take cover behind the same huge hog, who had found a bag of corn to munch on. “Friend of yours?” the Thief asked over the snorting.
“Nope,” I answered, peering over the hog’s back and not spying the creeper. “You?” The bridge had degenerated into utter panic when the hogs had charged, and as the crowds ran from the hogs, no one but us seemed to notice or be concerned with the creeper’s arrows of death.
The Thief’s skin was now diamond hard, although as I observed the bridge stone bubbling from the poison on the chicken, I could not say if she would survive a strike from an arrow. Clearly, she was thinking the same thing as she followed my gaze, and her eyes widened. “What is that foul stuff?” she said.
“I was hoping you would know,” I said.
Her pretty face grew angry. “I am on the side of the good guys,” she said.
“Good people do not take that which does not belong to them,” I said. “And I am one of the good guys, so how is it possible that you are on the side of the good?”
“I can explain,” she said. But she did not get the chance as our hog was struck by an arrow, and we separated, leaping in opposite directions—but not before I had snatched the Moon of Madrid from between the Thief’s heaving breasts.
We stood on either side of the road. “It is not over, Sirius,” she called. “We will meet again. Promise me you will hear me out next time.”
“Sure,” I replied. “But if there is a next time, how about we talk when you are not trying to steal something that does not belong to you?”
Her smile was warm, and the look on her face said she was over the fact that she had lost the Moon of Madrid to me. I could tell she felt this was but a momentary setback. “It is what I know,” she said. “But my purpose is just.”
“So is mine.” I had pilfered from the Thief, and it seemed that act had earned me her respect. It also meant that our game with the Moon of Madrid, and the other Relics, was far from over.
“Good-bye, beautiful,” she called.
“Until next time,” I called, ducking as an arrow clattered against the stone by my feet. When I looked up, she was gone. I pushed the Moon of Madrid deep within my pocket and drew my sword. I grinned in spite of the circumstances. It was always nice to be called beautiful by a beautiful woman.
I decided I would welcome another date with the Thief, but this dalliance with the creeper had grown old. I slipped into a nearby storefront and made my way carefully to the roof, letting my nose be my guide. I stepped out onto a gable—the smell of the black death growing stronger and stronger—and spied the creeper sitting with his back to me, trying to figure out where I had gotten to. His body was tensed, and his fists were balled in anger. I had him exactly where I wanted him. I lunged with a fierce two-handed swing of my sword, but at the last second, the hooded menace got his bow in the way, deflecting my blow but breaking his weapon with an audible crack. I stared at his quiver, and saw he was down to his last arrow. He went to reach for it, but reconsidered.
“Surrender,” I said, as he backed to the edge of the gable and stared down at the raging water, contemplating his violent end. “Don’t even think about it. Death is certain. Surrender to me and live!”
Eyes as blood-red as the sunset blazed at me as his hand went to his hood and flipped it back. “What do you know about death, Sinister?” Kunchen spat. “I told you long ago that I would kill you, and do you actually think a silly little thing like death is going to stop me?”
I could not believe my eyes, for Kunchen had not aged a day since the last time I saw him in the Inner Sanctum at the Temple of Dorje. In fact, he looked even younger than when we last met, his skin almost shiny, like that of a lizard, with great mottled blotches of black pigment covering his face and neck. I don’t think he had added new tattoos, but something else entirely was in his very blood. “Carry a grudge, do you?” I said. “My mistake. I guess you meant what you said. Can’t we just work it out and talk about it like a civilized vampire and whatever the hell you are. Life away from the temple is not agreeing with you, Kunchen, is it?”
His red eyes narrowed as he glared at my ready sword, the only thing that stood between us. “Don’t let that stop you,” I said, motioning with my blade. “If you think you can take me, now is your chance. You said to me at the temple that you could take me on and win. What, now are you not so sure?”
“I have all the time in the world,” Kunchen sneered. He pointed at me for emphasis, the spike of the dagger tattoo on the inside of his arm, peeking out as a reminder of his deadliness. He was well trained and crazy—a potentially fatal combination. “It is your days and those of your children that are numbered. I promise you that.”
I bared my fangs. “And I promise you this,” I said. “My children are just as deadly as I am. And one thing it seems you never learned from Master Lobsang is that there is strength in family, so maybe you shouldn’t have acted like the crazy narcissist you obviously are, and killed all of yours! You alone cannot ever defeat me.”
“Family is another word for weakness,” Kunchen said. “The Duga Paw are fools for banishing those that do not fit into their mold. I am stronger than I have ever been!” Kunchen burst into maniacal laughter as he stepped to the edge once more and teetered back and forth. “Who says I am alone, vampire?” he scoffed, dropping off the roof into the Thames far below, bobbing up for a moment, before getting sucked down into the fierce rapids between the piles and disappearing.
I had a feeling that was not the end of Kunchen. I made my way back to Westminster Abbey, happy to see that Oliver had survived his encounter with those strange demons he had vanquished with some of his mystical vintages. The Howler and I managed a modicum of cordiality as we all celebrated the recapture of the Moon of Madrid in the private back room of a nearby inn. But the joyous mood, elicited from my story of pilfering the Moon of Madrid from the Thief, changed when I informed all of the existence of Kunchen.
“I wonder what evil master that one serves,” Oliver thought out loud. “Perhaps Hedley can clue us in.”
“Indeed,” the Howler said. “Is the Thief pilfering the Relics connected with Kunchen wanting you dead? No offense, but you are so easy to hate.”
“Mother!” Contessa shouted.
“Well, unfortunately she is right,” I said. “People do seem to love me or hate me, with nothing in between. What can I say?”
“You do have that effect on people.” The Howler smirked at me. “You would be wise to step carefully wherever in this world you care to tread.”
I never thought I would see even veiled compassion directed at me from the Howler, but there it was for all to hear. No matter if there was a connection or not, the Thief would continue going after the Moon of Madrid and the other Relics, and Kunchen was hell-bent on completing his mission to see me dead. And somehow, I had to find the connection between the two, if there even was one, or perhaps Kunchen would eventually be successful.
Far down the Thames, in the town of Gravesend, two idle highwaymen sat on a dock, divvying up their shares from a coach they had just robbed. “I love me work,” the fatter and dumber of the two said.
His thinner and smarter companion looked at him oddly. “Deegle, you call what we do work? We steal from people—not exactly an honest job your mum would be proud of, you know.”
Deegle shrugged his big shoulders. “Me mum’s dead, Shanks,” he said. “Where she is, I don’t think she cares a whit about what I do.”
Robert Cruishanks had forgotten he had found Deegle in an alleyway, lying drunk after drowning his sorrows in a bottle of cheap whiskey at his mum’s passing. It was only much later he found out that Mrs. Deegle had died from getting shot at a card game when she was caught cheating. Thinking Deegle was dead, Cruishanks was rifling through his pockets for loose change when he felt Deegle’s meaty hand clasp around his throat. He had barely survived the encounter by prom
ising Deegle riches beyond his wildest dreams. Lucky for Shanks, as Deegle had taken to calling him, Deegle wasn’t much of a dreamer.
“Look, Shanks,” Deegle called, rising to his feet and pointing. “There is a body floating in the river. Let’s get it, and see if he has his change purse on him. He won’t need it where he is going.”
Robert had read a book or two in his lifetime and considered himself quite educated. He remembered some story about needing gold to pass into the afterlife, and opened his mouth to relay this to Deegle, who stood there picking his nose and examining it, momentarily distracted from his quarry. Deegle had found his own gold it seemed. A strong smell of something awful assaulted Robert’s thrice broken nose. “Uh!” he grumbled. “It seems like your buddy floating out there has grown quite ripe in the sun. I say let him be! He’s done spoiled.”
But Deegle would not be denied. “It’s a river, and it always stinks. If we didn’t search dead bodies, just think about how much gold we would have missed out on, right?”
Deegle had a point, but Robert could not shake the bad feeling he got when he looked directly at the body, which the river’s current was bringing right up to the dock where they stood. Then he realized the current was moving in the opposite direction, which meant the body was somehow traveling against it. “It’s a wraith, bogle, or bog monster!” Robert shouted, and began backing away from the dock. “No, Deegle, not this time, let’s go. I mean it!”
But Deegle saw a flash of red and began jumping up and down. “I think I see two red rubies,” he said. “Must be some rings, or a necklace—we are going to be so rich! Rich, I tell you!” The body bumped right into the dock with a sickening thud, its head facing into the depths. Deegle reached down and pulled the robed body up on the dock, rolled it over, and screamed as Kunchen’s red eyes opened wildly. Deegle took stock of Kunchen’s blotchy black skin and aimed a meaty fist at Kunchen’s face. “Ahhh!” Deegle screamed. “Shanks, I caught me a river demon. Quick, come help me kill it!” But Shanks froze halfway down the dock, his mouth opening in horror as he saw an arrowhead sprout from Deegle’s back. Deegle gasped, his eyes rolling back in his head, blood trickling from a corner of his mouth. “Mum,” he coughed, spitting up more blood. “I’m coming, Mum. Be there in a . . .”
“Deegle!” Robert screamed, drawing his sword but still unable to move.
And with that Deegle slumped to his side and was no more. Kunchen flipped to his feet and kicked at Deegle’s torso, knocking him into the river. He laughed and beckoned Robert to come forward and exact revenge for his friend’s death. But Robert Cruishanks’s mother was not a gambler, and she did not raise or suffer a fool. So Kunchen watched curiously and with great disappointment as Shanks threw his sword to the ground and ran off screaming into the forest, not stopping until he reached his mum’s house in Southend-on-Sea, and thereafter dedicated his life to ministering to the poor and infirmed.
Kunchen had weighed pursuing the companion of the oaf he had just slain, but saw, at the end of the dock, a flicker of light signaling the Master was ready to receive him. He had learned early in their relationship not to keep the Master waiting. The Master had an unnatural preoccupation with time and order. Actually, the Master was simply unnatural. Why else—when Kunchen was late returning from a mission—did the Master burn a black crystal into Kunchen’s hand that only worked at the bidding of the Master? Kunchen snorted. It was highly bothersome when he was visiting the houses of the whores. But oddly, the Master did not bother him while Kunchen watched the girls play with each other. In fact, at such times his head was unusually heavy and his hand with the crystal embedded in it actually burned as if the Master were looking out from it into the room. Maybe the Master had some humanity in him after all. Kunchen reconsidered—lust was not unique to humanity. He looked down at the crystal he had taken to calling the Eye of the Master, half expecting to see the Master staring back at him impatiently. He saw only a reflection of his own mottled visage staring back at him. He sighed at having sacrificed so much for the power that ran through his veins. He vowed for the hundredth time for those sacrifices not to be in vain. Next time, Sinister would die a slow and painful death at his hands, aided by the poison of the beast.
He passed through the portal, laughing at the death of the fool Deegle, the lightness of his mood giving a certain old swagger to his step that he had long forgotten. He found himself in a familiar subterranean chamber and gasped as the heat of the air was nearly unbearable. Instantly, sweat welled up on his bald head and began dripping, hitting the stone floor with a hiss. He much preferred the cold of the mountains, where he was born so long ago, than the heat favored by the Master and his pet. Kunchen stared blankly at the dreary gray walls and the dim green light coming off the fungus that somehow grew there, and decided he much preferred the houses of the whores in London. Maybe next time he would not just watch the whores. Maybe next time he would give the Eye of the Master an up close and personal view of his actions. He grinned from ear to ear at the thought of it. But then a fist closed around his lungs and dropped him to his knees.
“Do not let pleasant thoughts of murder and whores cloud your mind,” the Master grated. “And since you have failed—again—you should be using what little life remains in your body to beg for my forgiveness.”
Kunchen’s body was wracked with pain so intense he wished the Master would just kill him and end his suffering. Mercifully, the hand around his lungs eased up just a bit, and he raised his eyes to take in the Master, who flipped back his black cowl and gave Kunchen his undivided attention. Damn. Forgotten was the momentary joy he had felt in killing Deegle and thinking of the whores. Now Kunchen only thought of his survival. In a deep, dark area of his mind that was for now hidden from the Master, Kunchen planned to kill him, take his power, and show no mercy to his enemies, starting with Sirius Sinister. But, for now, all he could do was . . . “Beg . . .”
“What are you saying you pathetic creature?” the Master chided. “I told you to stop trying to think. You are just going to hurt yourself or, worse yet, burn out what little mind you have left. Just hate, kill, and take that which I need. That is all you need to do.”
“I beg of you . . .”
“Oh, Kunchen, you are indeed the lowest of the low.”
“Mercy.”
“Mercy?” The Master laughed. “I show no creature that! Never have. Never will. Showing mercy is showing weakness. Do the crime, do the time. Clemency is for imbeciles. But I suppose I am now done teaching you a lesson. Do not feel, Kunchen, it is only going to get you in trouble. I release you.”
Instantly, Kunchen could breathe again. He slumped to his side. “I tried to kill the girl and take the Relic, Master. I did!”
“I know, I know,” the Master said. “But, Sinister foiled your plans once again.”
“No, my arrow was true. Sinister could not have stopped it.”
“Then what?”
“It was a chicken.” Kunchen closed his eyes and dropped his head, waiting for the pain to come. But when none did, he opened them again, and looked at the Master, who was staring at him quizzically.
“A chicken flew up and took the arrow for the girl? Randomly?”
“Yes,” Kunchen said.
“You know I don’t believe in randomness.”
“She was as good as dead. Her body would have fallen into the river, and the Relic would have been ours. Once the chicken fell to the ground, Sinister and the girl took cover. She left the battle, and I had to contend with Sinister, who I let sneak up on me. I do not know if he had the Relic or not, but you told me not to kill him—yet. So I did as you said, and escaped to fight another day.”
“I am shocked,” the Master said. “You did listen. But I am troubled by something, my obedient Kunchen.”
“By what, Master? We will get another opportunity to take that Relic, and the other Relics too,” Kunchen answered. “And whe
n you let me, I will have Sinister’s blood on my hands. His destiny is ours to command.”
“I am in command of much in this world,” the Master said. “But, as shocked as I am to even say it, there are things on this accursed earth that simply will not bow down to my will. The laws of the universe do not seem to apply to Sirius Sinister, the way they do for most creatures. Perhaps he is such an egotistical bastard that he believes these laws do not apply to him, and that is how he succeeds in bending the rules, as thinking he is above the law makes him so.”
“He is not above your law, Master.” Kunchen bowed his head. “The law and order you will level upon this land for all time.”
“That is all well and good,” the Master replied. “But there is still this confounding bit of . . . of . . . call it luck . . . providence . . . kismet . . . fate . . . whatever, that seems to follow Sinister and keep him, and those around him, annoyingly alive!”
“So we will need to take chance out of the equation,” Kunchen said. “And the best way to do that is with a knife to the throat.”
“Yes, simple one, you may have a point,” the Master mused. “Hmm, ironic, in that I know just the person for the job, but the timing would have to be perfect.”
Kunchen nodded, feeling good that the Master was going to trust him with that job—a job Kunchen knew just how to do. “You know the Dagger of Dorje can kill Sinister,” he said.
“Who told you that?” the Master demanded.
“Lobsang,” Kunchen replied, a little bit scared and a whole lot regretting he had said what he did.
The Master laughed loud and shrill, causing Kunchen to cover his ears as the sound reverberated off the walls and threatened to burst his eardrums. “Indeed it can,” the Master said. “Indeed it can, and it also can help make me the man I was always destined to be. . . . Hmm, just like this little sweet bird coming our way just now.”
