by K. A. Poe
“It is not your fault, Hannah. You found the fountain one way or the other that is all that matters. Besides, it isn’t like we can’t handle them,” I added. “Our blood would be useless to them.”
“Right,” Hannah said, then turned her attention to the woman who had now reached the island. “You people have no idea who you’ve tricked this time.”
The woman cackled loudly, amplified by the caverns. “No. I know of what you all are. Do you think I am blind? I admit I have spent much of my time here in the cave, but I am no closer to being a bat than you three are,” she said as she walked behind the sacrificial stone and gathered up a blunt, bloodied knife.
“Our blood is the blood of the dead,” I explained. “There is no life you could gain from it.”
“The blood of one with eternal youth can sustain the fountain far longer than that of mere humans.” The woman grinned maliciously and started to walk toward us, twirling the knife around in her hand. She signaled toward the robed men with a wave of her empty hand and they all rose and started toward us. One after the other, they sprang us and latched their arms around ours to prevent us from breaking loose. One of them remained at the site of the shrine, watching his fellow cultists hold us.
21. SAVIOR
Salem was the first to knock the men away from him, slamming their robed bodies into the rough stone floor of the cave. They groaned in agony and attempted to stand up but they were out of luck – I watched in horror as two pearly white fangs emerged from beneath Salem’s pale lips and he grasped one of the men by the throat. He lifted him up and went to bite into his flesh until I screamed and his attention was on me.
“What are you doing, Salem?!” I yelled. “You are on your way to freeing yourself from this damned curse, don’t give in now! He isn’t worth it.”
“What difference does it make how I kill him?” he asked, ignoring the sputtering sounds of the man choking from the strong hold Salem had on him.
“You’re better than that… you have gone so long without tasting blood.”
“He tasted yours,” Hannah corrected me and I glared in her direction as we both tore away from our captors.
“That’s different.”
“You’re only wasting your time and ours,” the mysterious woman said plainly as she watched.
I wrestled two men away as they attempted to grab hold of me again. They may be weak in comparison to us, but they seemed to come back faster each time. The water had given them more than extended life – it had given them strength.
Salem’s attention was back on the man whose neck was clasped between his fingers; he was clearly no longer breathing. He tossed him aside, shattering the peaceful water. As the man’s dead body hit the water it began to shrivel up into an empty, lifeless husk as if his blood and life had been drained from him.
“Salem, did you see!” I gasped.
“Yes. The water keeps them alive, but when they are dead I think it takes back what it owns.”
Hannah had two of the cultists dead as well and tossed each carelessly into the water before confronting her next opponent. I knocked the heads of the two men together and they crashed to the ground, their wounds feeding into the water, but it wasn’t enough to kill them – at least not quickly. I watched in horror and amazement as their bodies began to wither slowly starting from the gashes in their heads and moving downward. They screamed and wreathed in torment until the dryness had overcome their throats, silencing them forever.
There were now only three men left, including the one who had falsely told Hannah that his name was John. The three split up and each went to a different target. John had chosen me.
I tried to shove my apprehender away as easily as we had the ones before but he did not budge. He swung his right fist in a wide arc and I barely moved from the blow in time to not get struck. As he staggered from his own momentum I kicked him hard in the ribs and heard a sickening crunch. To my astonishment he turned towards me as if it were only a scratch, despite the red blood dying the side of his robe. These three were far stronger than the previous ones and I had vastly underestimated them.
With some sort of fanatical zeal he came at me with a flurry of attacks, jabbing and kicking as I struggled to block each blow. Unfortunately my best efforts were not good enough as he eventually landed a punch into my left brow, instantly engulfing my eye in blood.
He leapt to my left side where I could barely see thanks to the veil of blood now covering my eye. Before I could turn and anticipate his next move he was on top of me, forcing me down onto the cold black stone. I tried to thrust my arms up and push him off but he grabbed them and forced them under his knees, pinning my upper body down and leaving his arms free. With terror I realized what he was doing. With all his strength and weight he pressed down on my head with both hands, turning my gash towards the waters. As the blood dripped I saw it glitter and disappear in the crystal waters. Struggling against hope I shouted out for Salem as I looked around for either him or Hannah.
From my viewpoint I could see Hannah, fairing barely better than myself, hopping back across some of the stepping stones as her assailant jumped and kicked at her. I saw no blood from her yet though, and as far as I knew the water only reacted to it. I prayed I was right, for her sake.
My attacker dominated the rest of my view through my remaining good eye. If Salem was okay, I couldn’t see him. As a last desperate attempt to rid the hands on my head and face I bit at his flesh, tearing large gashes with my fangs. For a moment I had hoped it would be enough but instead it seemed to strengthen his intent. He pressed harder and I could hold no more, then instantly his weight was gone from me, tumbling over my head and out of view. All I could see now was Salem, still intact other than some rips in his shirt.
For a moment I was relieved and thankful, but then came a loud roar. This time it was not a waterfall. I turned to see John emerging from the waters, his right hand shriveling into a tangle of black. He came at Salem and I both, entirely disregarding the blackness that would soon consume him creeping up his limb. I went in to counter attack when all of a sudden Salem and I were both pulled back. Turned to defend myself against what had undoubtedly been the woman in the tattered dress I was surprised to see Hannah’s face. She must have slain her opponent.
“Don’t risk it, just wait,” she said.
“What?! Don’t risk what?”
“There,” she said, pointing at the withering arm. “He can’t fight that. Just keep your distance until it finishes him off. No need to risk ourselves.”
“And when did you become the voice of reason, little sister?” Salem smirked.
“Fight smarter not harder, I always say.”
This was easier done than said. John ran at us with speed befitting a vampire. We managed to dodge him and he slammed into the altar, the small white mask surrounding his eyes and covering his nose fell from his face. What I saw then was horrifying. Whatever ‘magic’ this water contained was definitely not meant to extend life forever.
His face was more twisted than wrinkled, dark creases and lines ran across his forehead so deep that they appeared to be carved there. The soft under the eyes was drooped and had turned a sickening color of dark, wet purple. I wondered how the woman had not succumbed to this same aging. For the briefest of moments I pitied him, but then came another attack.
Using the altar as leverage he pushed off with one foot and leapt onto Hannah. She hit the ground hard and I could see her golden locks becoming black with blood. Her eyes were closed and she went limp.
“Hannah!” Salem shouted and dashed towards the man who was now more than half withered.
The darkness had reached his right hip and leg and Salem knocked him off balance with ease. John tumbled close to the water, and unable to stand, started crawling his way towards us again. Salem gave him one final hard kick to the side of his head and he ceased to move.
As Salem went and kneeled beside his sister, the woman moved to what was left of her lead follo
wer and spoke for the first time since the fighting had begun.
“Vilas,” the woman said as she shook her head. For a moment I noted sincere sadness as she stroked what was left of his face with her forefinger. Then what seemed like amusement.
Smiling, she lunged at me, slamming my body into the sacrificial stone. I gasped as the blade of her weapon met the skin of my abdomen. “You will pay for this with more than just death!”
I flinched as she began to drag the blade across my stomach, but something caused her to stop. I heard the knife fall to the black stone below and I was shocked to see a steel bolt sticking through the hand that had held it.
“Bull’s-eye,” a voice said and my eyes widened in horror as I tore my attention away from her hand to see the speaker.
“P-Paul?” I stuttered as Salem pulled the woman away from me and held her from behind. There was no mistaking it, standing at the top of the stairs, crossbow in hand and a large flashlight sitting on the ground beside him, stood my father.
“Sorry I showed up a little late,” Paul apologized then let another bolt shoot from his loaded crossbow. I screamed as it soared, knowing that he would finally be able to kill Salem who was defenselessly holding the woman still. The bolt flew through the air as if in slow-motion and struck its intended target.
Salem let the woman fall, the second bolt buried into her heart. Just as easily as one of her minions, the water devoured her, leaving nothing but a shriveled and blackened husk.
“How the hell did you find us! Are you here to kill us?” Hannah asked as she turned her attention to Paul, ready to attack.
“Why would I bother savin’ you if I planned to just kill you after?”
“Maybe you just wanted to save us for yourself!”
Before giving Paul a chance to respond, I spoke up. “Then why are you here?” I asked. It was difficult to look at him, knowing that the last time I had seen him he was trying to kill Salem. “How did you know we’d be here?”
“And how did your big ass fit through that hole?” Hannah added and Paul glared at her angrily.
“I found your journal, and I guessed you might come here,” he explained. “Look, Alex…I have had a lot of time to think about what happened, and I wanted to apologize…”
“This isn’t the time for mushy scenes, we have to figure out how this fountain works,” Hannah said firmly.
“Right…” my father mumbled and slowly crossed the stones to the small island. Once safely beside the altar he offered over the leather bound book.
I took it with a poor attempt at a grateful smile and looked through it for any signs of where we should look. My wound completely healed up – another thing I was going to miss soon – and I glanced up from the book to look around the cave. The images that Ezra had drawn depicted a spring sketched on the old paper; my mouth fell agape and I nearly dropped the journal as I remembered Ezra’s mentioning of the fountain being a spring.
“The fountain isn’t a fountain at all. The spring at the end of the cave back there…past the bodies…that is the ‘fountain’!” I exclaimed excitedly.
I lifted John’s torch from the white altar’s sconce and we all made our way back across the stepping-stones. After waiting on Paul to catch up several times we finally made it to the back where the waters trickled out of the earth from the large horizontal crack. The stench of the corpses stunk fiercely this far back and without thinking I tossed the torch onto the pile which ignited far quicker than I had imagined.
I was thankful my lungs did not function as they did when I had been mortal. The black smoke was thick, and with little place to go it filled the cavern with a thick haze. The sound of Paul coughing caught my attention.
“Maybe you should go ahead and head out,” I said. He didn’t have the luxury of being unaffected by the smoke like the three of us.
“No, I’m fine,” he replied.
I was unconvinced, but he was even more stubborn than I was. My eyes were now focused solely on Salem. This was the moment he was waiting for. The waters flowing below us would be all it would take to give him the life he had always wanted. The one that had been taken from him, as he put it. Now that we were here, I had to seriously question if this was what I truly wanted – after all of the trouble we went through to get here, I felt I had no other choice.
“So this is going to make you all human again, right?” Paul asked.
I nodded slowly in response. “That’s what the journal says.”
“I only wish we would’ve know about this before…before your mother…”
“You had the book before Alex; did you even read it?” Hannah butted in.
“No,” he said with a frown. “After my dad gave it to me, I set it aside and ignored it. I just figured he’d taught me everything he knew, so what use was some diary? I never was much of a reader, anyway.”
“Grandpa never mentioned anything about the fountain?” I asked.
“Well, no one in the family would have ever needed it as far as I can tell,” Paul said and cautiously stumbled toward me. “I really am sorry, Alex. I wasn’t right in the head, you got to understand that.”
“I know, dad. I’d probably have done the same thing if it had been Salem in place of…mom.”
“Enough sob stories, guys,” Hannah muttered. “Just get on with it and drink or whatever. I’ve had about enough of this cave for a lifetime.
Salem knelt at the edge of the water and ran his hand through the liquid. His eyes stared longingly at the rushing water and I knew at once that this was what I had to do. As I was watching him, my naturally graceful stepping failed me and I slid on the slick limestone grabbing Hannah’s arm to catch myself.
“I’m sorry, Hannah,” I mumbled as I straightened myself out. “What’s wrong?”
The look on her face was a mixture of grief, horror and confusion. I knew at once what had happened – she had seen something during the momentary touch shared between us.
“What did you see?!” I demanded, knowing it had to have been something bad.
She didn’t respond, instead she grabbed Salem by the shoulder and tugged him away from the water. Another identical look played across her face. She looked troubled as she stepped away. “You can’t…you can’t become human.”
Salem’s eye narrowed. “Are you doing this just because you do not want us to be human again?”
“That isn’t why!” she cried, “I don’t usually see visions, I place visions in other people’s minds, but…just, trust me. You can NOT do this!”
“Give me one good reason, Hannah,” I said angrily. “Tell me what you saw.”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“If there was a real reason not to you’d tell us. Salem, do it.”
“No!” Hannah shouted, and Salem dropped the knife he had just summoned and it splattered into the spring, “I will tell you, just…come with me first, okay?”
“Come with you where?” I asked.
“Just back down the steps, in the room down there…away from all this smoke and death.”
“But the fountain is right here.”
“Honestly, I think any of the water in here will do. Just trust me.”
22. FUTURE
The four of us sat on the cave floor near the waterfall. Salem and I impatiently waited for Hannah to explain to us why she so desperately didn’t want us to partake in the gift the fountain would bestow upon us. Paul got up and began pacing around, rubbing his forehead anxiously.
“It isn’t all clear, but you have to believe me…please,” Hannah begged, looking at us with pleading eyes.
“We will,” Salem vowed and reached out to comfort her.
“No! Don’t touch me!” she wailed and scooted further away. “I don’t want to see anything else!”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “We will refrain from touching, if it helps you.”
“Thanks…” Hannah mumbled. “If you do this…you will be putting yourselves and the re
st of the world at risk.”
“The world…how?”
“A child…” she shook her head, “I saw a boy. He looked so much like you, Salem…but he wasn’t you. No. There was something wrong…”
I grew worried. Was this our child she spoke of? What was wrong with him? How were we going to risk people’s lives by having a kid? Salem remained calm and composed, at least on the outside – I am sure his mind was flooded with the same curious, haunting possibilities.
“Tell me every little detail you can remember, Hannah. Don’t fight it. I know that it is scary, but we need to know.”
“The boy is yours…I have no doubt. But…” she grimaced at the memory. “His eyes, so red, so menacing.”
I gasped. “That can’t be,” I argued. “We wouldn’t let that happen!”
She shook her head again. “You cannot stop it, Alex. If you become mortal again, and you have this child, he will become a vampire. He will become evil. The things he will do…are worse than anything I have ever done. You will be the parents of the evilest, cruelest, sickest, vampire imaginable. If he is not stopped, the entire world will bleed.”
I almost wanted to laugh. This was ludicrous!
“The future is changeable,” I said harshly. “Just because you see that now, doesn’t mean it will happen like that. You and Salem have both told me how visions are just a possible future.”
“No,” she said flatly. “I have never been more certain in my life. You can argue against it all you want, Alex, but it will happen! You will regret it if you don’t take my warning.”
“Since when do you even care about the rest of the world, anyway?” I asked. “You have spent years killing countless people, and now all of a sudden you see one little glimpse of a possible future and you care? I don’t believe it for a second, what are you playing at?”
“Please, Alex! I know how this sounds, but I really think you are making a mistake! Just live like you have been – immortality isn’t as bad as Salem thinks it is.”
