by Aiden James
“Oh, how touching,” he taunted, his voice easily traveling the several hundred feet separating his present location from mine. “And to think you truly might never see them again, depending on how cooperative you become. I can almost hear your son’s eulogy for you now. ‘Here lies William Barrow, father, husband, and terrible spy. Had he not tried to deceive Vlad Tepes long ago, he might not have had to die!’”
“Your jokes suck, Vlad,” I retorted, as I returned to the open floor separating me from the stage covered with gleaming spikes. A pale figure hung precariously above a double-headed spike of gold resembling a devil’s pitchfork. “What have you done to Roderick?”
I hurried to the stage and clambered up the steps leading to the throne, which sat less than ten feet away from where my buddy hung suspended by wires from the ceiling. There hadn’t been any evidence of such a contraption earlier, but I sensed this sort of bondage was among Dracul’s favorites.
“Oh, you like?” He chuckled, and the timber made my skin crawl. “Only the most worthy get to taste death like this!”
“But you promised….”
“I made a deal tied to certain requirements, which in no way constitutes a promise!” he shot back. “However, should you surprise me with some incredible information previously unavailable to me, your shared existence on this earth shall continue until a time suitable to bid either of you, or both, adieu.”
The treachery had deepened, and in truth I had always understood he wouldn’t release either of us without a deal detrimental to one or the other. Most often in the past this meant me.
I could hear Roderick’s labored breaths, and sought to get a better look at the sharp ligatures tied around his neck, shoulders, and waist. They looked like barbed wire in the dimness, and streams of crimson flowed from each restraint.
“Never mind about coming to his rescue,” Dracul advised. “Unless you can fly like Markita and the others, it isn’t possible. Now, to ease his suffering, tell me about the treasure. The sooner you give me useful details, the sooner I’ll be able to relieve Roderick of his misery. Listen to the ripping of his flesh, and know that the duration of his painful regeneration rests entirely upon you!”
It was time to think up a plan, as up until then I had operated largely off the cuff during this entire fiasco. Roderick wasn’t the only one facing a painful demise. Obviously, Beatrice, Alistair, and Amy remained at risk, too. Although in their case, I pictured assassin’s bullets to each of their heads once given word my usefulness had ended. At least it was a fate far less painful than having a sharpened stake travel through their insides until it reached their hearts.
I shuddered and looked away.
An incredible weight settled upon my shoulders, and I knew I’d have to play this perfectly. I could feel Vlad’s voyeur eyes trying to locate images of the treasure inside my head. If he discovered the crystals were in Iran, our usefulness to him would end. Everybody would die immediately.
Of worse concern was what course to take in the meantime. As mentioned before, I could ill afford to think of any telling details about the Garden of Eden’s existence deep within the Alborz Mountains. However, if I blanked out my mind entirely, Dracul would believe he had been lied to by me, engendering the likely impalement of us all without further mercy.
The debate couldn’t be a long one, so I settled on a compromise, focusing on the piles of crystals I witnessed from the explosion of the Tree of Life. Those familiar with my first journal as William Barrow will recall how the Russians’ carelessness sent literally thousands of the shards flying in all directions, and they soon covered the entire floor of the enormous cavern that housed the legendary garden. I made damned sure nothing other than two large piles of these crystals entered my present thought stream.
“Where is this place?” asked Dracul, shifting in his seat. I couldn’t see him clearly, but felt the merciless gaze glowering at me.
“Judas…hear my words, but do not acknowledge me. You need to get him to leave this place and go to Dracul’s bedchamber. Your coin is calling, and it is our only hope. Trust me!....”
Roderick? I tried not to get excited, since our nemesis had unwittingly taken the first step to leaving the cathedral. He was nibbling the bait, and I needed to carefully set the hook.
“It’s a place kept secret for many millennia. But I’m not comfortable sharing it here.”
He motioned for his human guards to leave. I pointed to the center of the cathedral’s soaring ceiling, where several vampires hovered just below the apex.
“Is there not a place we can discuss this matter, where absolutely no one but you can hear me?”
“What, a library or office?” he scoffed.
“The privacy of your bedchamber would do. Otherwise, I won’t divulge anything.” Straight and to the point had always worked best with this psychopath.
Dracul laughed sardonically. “What if I kill Roderick? That might loosen some lips, eh?”
“And seal mine forever. Your threats have grown tiresome, so perhaps I should take this secret to my grave, since I will soon lose everything that matters to me, anyway.”
Dracul nodded thoughtfully in the dimness. He laughed again, but this time nervously.
“So, we shall talk in my bedchamber.”
He clapped his hands. Several vampires appeared as he rose from his throne.
“Take our guest to my personal quarters,” he told them. “I will be along in a moment.”
I glanced at Roderick, who seemed comatose at present. I worried this might be a bad development. Before I could offer a meaningful protest, the bloodsuckers were already transporting me to Dracul’s bedchamber. I fell into the room, tumbling down a short flight of steps that brought me next to an enormous fountain of Greek design. Dimly lit to where the statues’ details were barely discernable, the fountain emptied into a pool. The water was dark, and the smell of death filled the air. Blood!
Beyond the fountain was an enormous bed, with carvings similar to Dracul’s throne. Brashly ostentatious, it was covered in rose petals. From the soft light provided by a candle sitting on a commode, it appeared the roses were the same varieties that had accompanied such charming notes from this monster. It must be where he bedded the females, and occasional males, destined for eternal servitude as vampires, or a future meal should they displease him.
My left arm had begun to tremble upon entering the room, and the sensation became more painful as I approached the bed. Roderick was right, the blood coin was here, hidden somewhere in the room. I was most grateful it wasn’t at the bottom of the fountain of blood, as the sensation grew stronger as I moved past it. I felt most drawn to the bed’s enormous headboard, one that perhaps was a gothic monument from Vlad’s homeland. I tried to keep the stream of happy thoughts going, and not think of the untold victims lured to this bed and brought to orgasm at death’s door. I pictured him offering the choice of eternal life as a vampire or instead becoming part of the reservoir that fed the fountain of blood.
“It’s not as simple as that,” he assured me from the corner of the room, opposite his bed. His fiery eyes were aglow and the cracked porcelain contours of his pallid face were eerily visible by the light of another candle, this one larger and sitting on a long table next to him. “Perhaps I should turn you into one of us…no?”
I was about to come back with something smartass, as I declined the offer, but noticed a soft blue glow emanating from a small crack in a drawer beneath the commode. More childlike happy thoughts.
“Would I be privileged to sleep in a big bloody bed like you?” I asked, trying to refocus my thoughts on the Iranian crystal piles instead of my coin’s call. I could ill afford Dracul finding out that I knew where it resided. But like it or not, I knew the call would grow progressively stronger now that I was within striking distance. Though he and I had never personally discussed my quest to recover my blood coins, it seemed logical he knew about my collecting obsession. “And what would you do when my abilit
y to regenerate tissues kept me looking beautiful, and you…well you can’t win them all, now, can you?” I inched closer to the head of the bed.
Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow….
“Yes, your vanity exceeds my own, I see. So, tell me, Judas, where exactly is the place of the green crystals of life, that come from the Tree of Life and rest near the stream that flows through the Garden of Eden?”
I felt the weight of his stare as he studied me. Impossible to know if he understood what observations and thoughts lay hidden beneath the nursery rhyme. I worried he had picked up a much bigger picture from the Garden of Eden than I had intended. I hadn’t revealed anything about the stream flowing through the garden. Was it a lucky guess, or was he a better Bible student than I had surmised? Meanwhile, I was close enough to the commode to confirm the drawer was ajar, and likely unlocked. If I dropped to my knees, would he be wise to my designs? A better question was ‘How could he not be?’ The cursed energy source behind his Élan vital was less than a few feet away from my recovering it.
If I brazenly tried to recover the damned thing, it seemed entirely plausible I’d be dead before I retrieved it. It was what my gut confirmed for me as Dracul studied me…he knew something was up. If he couldn’t determine my exact thoughts, surely he knew enough to pique his survival instincts.
“What need will you have of my blood coin, considering you shall soon have a room filled with the very crystals containing the essence and life force of The Almighty?”
Honestly, I had no idea the very thing I had pondered seconds ago would come pouring out of my mouth. There was no logical reason for it, other than perhaps Dracul’s five-hundred-year-old vampire instincts had kicked in, and like a talented ventriloquist, caused my mouth to spit out the information I was hiding from him.
I feared his reaction, and knew no matter where things went from here, the outcome would be very bad. He looked at me, wearing the only truly surprised expression I had ever seen from him. But the shock wore off quickly, and he bent at the knees, preparing to launch himself at me.
Following my instincts, I dove for the bottom of the commode just in time. Dracul’s sharp fingernails grazed my scalp as he flew over my head. I pulled the drawer open and grabbed my coin. It turned out to be the easy part, and if not for the unfortunate experience that accompanies the retrieval of each cursed coin, I might’ve escaped unscathed… or at least with a significant head start.
How often do things work out like we hope? Well, this wasn’t one of those times either. Blood coin number twenty-five brought an unfamiliar intensity to the ancient scene that haunts me with each coin collected. Doubtless, it came from the untold thousands of victims Vlad Tepes had feasted on or killed merely for sport. Regardless, the smell of sweat and blood as it poured from the body of Jesus Christ was worse than ever. It was as if I had somehow been literally transported in the flesh to the night of Jesus’s betrayal, and momentarily stood within His personal space.
I never escape reliving this terrible moment in history with each coin I retrieve, and yes, they have steadily gotten worse as I get closer to the finish line. However, this time the experience nearly proved fatal. Jesus recognized me in the crowd, mouthing the words ‘Why, Yahuda?’, as the Roman guards and Caiaphas’s hoodlums beat Him mercilessly. The crowd wanted more, and despite His bravery, in the end He broke down and cried.
I hated myself all over again.
It made it easy to give up, and I was scarcely aware Dracul had his hands around my neck, attempting to squeeze the very life out of me. In truth, I wondered why he simply didn’t finish strangling my ass and then impale the rest of me for good measure. Instead, he reached for my hand holding the coin. Given his superior physical strength, it should have been an easy task to reclaim it.
Hard to say if he felt the sudden intensity change, when the cerulean shimmer grew much brighter. But something changed in the coin’s intrinsic properties—I could feel it, too. As the vampire’s fingers touched the coin’s surface, the energy ignited his fingers. He pulled them back, howling in pain, his hand quickly becoming a torch that didn’t immediately extinguish when he plunged it into the pool surrounding his fountain of blood.
“What have you done to me, Judas!”he shrieked.“I will roast you slowly for this! All of you will die horribly tonight! Agghhhh!”
He reached for me, and as I sought to elude him, the coin grazed his arm as he swung. His exposed skin began to blister. Emboldened, I pointed the silver shekel at him like a talisman, and moved closer, delighted he had somehow become allergic to the coin that once enabled him to steal a second chance at life. Dracul retreated to the edge of the room, enraged more than I had ever seen him before. He shouted fresh threats of revenge and death, and then he disappeared.
The race was on to reach Roderick and my family before he did.
Chapter Sixteen
There are times when I greatly envy the abilities of other immortals. Some of us are true supermen and women, able to break through walls of stone, bend bars of steel, and outrace speeding locomotives, bullets, airplanes, etc.
Skills I don’t possess.
For the most part, my immortality is limited to the curse of being immune to death. Well, let me clarify that statement a bit…I can die, but only temporarily. Most of you by now know if someone like Dracul has their way with me, I’ll lose my current body. However, I will awaken elsewhere with an identical body in every aspect, as compared to the one I just left. I have reincarnated, so to speak, intact many, many times during the past two thousand years. Same thirty-year old Jewish guy with a generous smile, full hairline, and penetrating blue eyes.
But, in every instance of ‘temporary death’ I’ve experienced, I lose something, too. Starting over again is a bitch most of the time, and often I am drawn to revisiting places I’ve lived in before. Sometimes, the ‘layover in light’, as I like to call it, translates to a significant absence from earth. Often, a minimum of several years has passed by the time I make it back here, and in ages past, traveling across continents added many more years before I made it back to mortals I’ve loved. As one can guess, many times it meant visiting gravesites, since loved ones had passed through the veil I’m prohibited from breaching during my absence. The sense of loss is most profound, and is one of the chief reasons immortals of a likeable disposition are inclined to seek out one another. We need the sense of stability such unique companionships can provide.
Why bring this up now? Well, for one thing, Dracul’s penchant for extreme wickedness meant that my longest known immortal companion—who could cross the veil I mentioned and not come back—was in grave danger of making his final exit from the planet. And all it would take is a quick text message to Vlad’s henchmen and Beatrice, Alistair, and Amy would join Roderick in the afterlife.
I couldn’t let any of this happen, and yet as I fled Dracul’s vile bedchamber and pursued him down the long corridor to his throne room, all I could do was pray I wouldn’t arrive too late. I couldn’t fly like my enemy, nor could I cover hundreds of feet in a single leap. All I had was the hope The Almighty would hear my fervent entreaty for mercy, and that He would finally intercede on behalf of the tens of thousands of victims this demon had racked up in less than six centuries, including Vlad Tepes’s mortal years.
“As you can see, you’re just in time for the start of our festivities, Judas!” Dracul exalted.
I had just reached the cathedral. For the moment, Roderick was bound, gagged, and nearly unconscious from his previous suffering. Dracul floated in the air while embracing him, moving to position Roderick’s body above a single spike of gold. I suppose there isn’t much of a thrill thrusting a human being onto a double spike after all, since the single version allows for extended agony—the only thing that seemed to bring supreme joy to this most heinous fiend.
“You’ll never learn, will you?”
I raised the coin and pointed it in his direction, knowing every d
ecision I made from this point until that night’s conclusion could be equally wise or foolish. Not to mention, I was continually forced to deal with my near-unbearable guilt regarding Jesus from the flood of memories brought on by the coin’s touch to my flesh. I felt feverish and knew I wouldn’t be able to cognitively function much longer. Yet, to my knowledge, there wasn’t any other weapon aside from the coin that could work against this monster.
Following my gut would be the only sensible way to play the game, when death and salvation were the only prizes to be had. I held my breath, praying again for my first response to be the right one. Dracul snickered, though apprehensively, as if unsure of what to expect from the blood coin that had once been his friend, the Dragon Coin he assumed would always be loyal to him only. However, when the veins and arteries close to the skin began to expand, his nervousness turned to rage.
“Do you think your coin’s trick can conquer me so easily?”
His gaze shifted to the shadows to either side of me. Before they even attacked, I knew what was coming. Unfortunately, in my zeal to pursue Dracul before he skewered Roderick, I had failed to account for the presence of other vampires.
Like a nest of venomous spiders that had just been disturbed, dozens of nubile bloodsuckers launched themselves at me. I had nothing physically to defend myself with, and despite their youth, each vampire possessed enough strength to toss me across the room’s expanse, or simply break my back and render me paralyzed.
I did the only instinctive thing that came to mind.
