Slayer: Black Miracles

by Karen Koehler

  The force of the blow hurtled Chimera into the overturned bench. Chimera’s body shattered the wood into splinters. Alek climbed to his feet and approached the creature. Picking him up by the lapels, Alek threw the creature against the guard on one of the broken windows. Chimera’s body rattled the iron bars like the ringing of bells and he spattered the floor in dime-sized dots of purplish blood before slumping down into a bloody heap under the window.

  Alek stared at the thing where it lay, its Glamour waning. It was a ghoul. Which meant, like himself, it was a weird commingling of human and vampire blood. But unlike himself, it had once been human through and through. It had started out as human. But over the years, the unnatural infusion of vampire blood had rotted its body and its mind. Now it was little better than the monster created by Carfax all those years earlier. As the Glamour faded, he saw the thing for what it was—a living skeleton with ropes of flayed, decaying flesh clinging to its bones and a face like a corpse and the madness of its own unending bloodlust in its eyes. A pathetic creature. A victim like all the rest. Alek supposed he should feel a measure of pity for it. Instead, he sank the toe of his boot into the wound in its stomach, making the thing curl up into a ball on the floor.

  “Get up,” Alek growled.

  Chimera groaned and uncurled, then grabbed Alek’s ankle, its broken teeth closing over the flesh and bone.

  Alek kneed it in the groin, then swung his sword and pinned the creature against the floor with the point of the blade. “You fuck.” He pulled the sword out of its lower back and whipped around and kicked Chimera in the head, snapping the thing’s head around and slamming him into the wall. Chimera’s skull cracked against the tiled wall and a new fountain of blood jettied out of its mouth and nose.

  Alek paced back and forth. “Get up. I’m waiting.”

  Chimera reached for the window, using the bars as leverage to get it to its feet. And there it stood, weaving uncertainly, one hand over the two dripping wounds in its stomach, one hand over its right eye where its skull had been split against the wall. Its one-eyed gaze roved all over Alek, feral and hateful, but seemingly imbued with the knowledge that it had lost its advantage and quite possibly its life. As Alek watched, its image seemed to splinter uncertainly, then went from its true ghoul form to its Michael-form.

  “Still trying, are you?” Alek asked, still pacing.

  Chimera’s image blurred.

  “Why did you hurt Phoenix and Lilly?” Alek asked.

  Chimera grimaced. “I was hungry.” Its image reshaped itself into a close proximity of Phoenix, bloodied and torn. Its eyes narrowed tearfully. “Master… ”

  Alek punched it into the wall.

  Chimera bounced once, twice. Its image blurred, returned to that of Michael. It spat blood and teeth onto the broken floor of the Institute.

  “Try again,” Alek said.

  “Michael… ” it whined. Weaving a moment more, Chimera dropped to the floor again, its head knocking against the wall as it slumped bonelessly at Alek’s feet.

  Alek slammed his foot into Chimera’s solar plexus, holding it against the wall. “Michael what? Do you really think your creator is going to save you?”

  Chimera blurred, became Debra. “Michael!” Chimera screamed. “Save me! Michaaaaael!”

  Michael did not answer.

  Alek didn’t think he would. Alek kicked Chimera in the mouth so it spat out more blood and teeth and began to wheeze asthmatically.

  Alek started to pace again. “You hurt them. You raped them. I felt it.”

  Chimera blurred, became himself. Alek had no idea what that was supposed to accomplish. He didn’t love himself that much. He swung his blade around so it came to a halt just under Chimera’s chin, a hair’s breadth from the skin of its throat.

  “You hurt me,” Alek said.

  Chimera swallowed, its throat working against the blade. With its barely-focused brown eyes clotted with blood and its clumped black hair and trembling hands it sought Alek through the haze of its pain. “No more… ” it whispered as if it were grating bones through the blood on its mouth. “Please… no more… ”

  Alek grabbed Chimera by the throat, holding it against the wall. Chimera’s eyes rounded in fear as Alek raised the sword. Using the butt end of it, Alek bashed the hard ivory against Chimera’s mouth, the mouth that had bit and drunk from Phoenix. The mouth that had ended the life of an innocent little girl. Bone cracked and broke like porcelain. Like tile. Chimera gasped through the bloody syrup of its mouth, its rabid eyes flickering. “End… this pain,” he said.

  “Maybe. Why did you hurt them?” Alek said, raising the sword again.

  Chimera shook all over from the pain and the fear. It said, through the mush its mouth had become. “Michael needed… suspect in Ladykiller murders.”

  “And you—or rather, Mr. Bellerophone—was the suspect. Someone the cops could chase. Someone who doesn’t exist.”

  Chimera nodded.

  Alek bashed Chimera’s head against the wall, leaving a new crimson splatter against the white-tiled wall. “You’re protecting Michael after what he did to you? Why?”

  Chimera’s eyes fluttered closed. “Kill me? Please… ”

  “He can’t help himself,” came a voice from behind him. “And I needed him.”

  Alek turned around.

  Michael put his hands together, prayerful. Looking past Alek at his ally lying unconscious against the tiles like a big broken doll, he said, “Chimera was the experiment Dante and I came here to study. Unfortunately, Dante wanted to collect specimens whilst here and I let him. My first mistake. We stayed here too long, and after the police started to close in on the Ladykiller, I knew I had to protect my brother from discovery, so I sent Chimera to Jean Paul’s club to prey on one of his girls. It’s a high-end club and gets rather a lot of attention. The police would be chasing down this Mr. Bellerophone for a long time whilst I managed to abscond with my brother. I didn’t want to endanger Chimera that way, but it was much better than risking my brother’s life.”

  “Still protecting Dante,” Alek said.

  Michael’s eyes darkened. “It was supposed to be a perfect plan, as always. But then you had to interfere, didn’t you?” Again Michael looked at Chimera. “Are you going to kill him?”

  “No.”

  Michael looked surprised. “I thought you killed all your enemies.”

  “This enemy belongs to someone else.”

  “Ah. The little whelp.”

  Alek stalked forward.

  Michael backed up. “Right then. I told you I can’t fight you.”

  Alek swung his sword up under his arm. “You’d better learn.”

  “Don’t you want to know why this all happened? Don’t you want to know what it all means?”

  Alek kicked Michael in the head.

  The vampire flew backward onto the tiled floor, then skidded to a halt on his back some ten feet away. He sat up uncertainly. “I dare say, that wasn’t very sporting.”

  “Neither is cutting up prostitutes for your ungodly experiments.”

  “It’s for a good cause, I assure you… a noble one…!”

  Alek stepped on the vampire’s chest, pinning him to the floor on his back. “Really.” He pointed his sword at Michael’s head. “Impress me.”

  “It’s the Elixir,” said Michael. “Everything we did was for that! Everything we did was to preserve those ungrateful mortals you protect!”

  Alek increased the pressure on Michael’s chest. So it was this Elixir thing again. “What is the Elixir? Some kind of drug…?”

  “More.” Michael’s eyes gleamed. “Immortality. Immortality for the human race. The ghouls are useless, unstable. But we’ve found a way to make the humans truly immortal. No more madness. No more flesh-eaters.”

  A sharp jab made Alek wince and jump away from Michael.

  Michael held up a syringe. “Demerol. Getting sloppy, old son.”

  Demerol. Alek narrowed his eyes.


  Without getting up, Michael idly turned the empty syringe in his hands. His eyes smiled. No… his entire being smiled. “Do you know what the amazing thing about Demerol is? It is an old lumbering dinosaur, basically inadequate to stop pain in humans. And highly toxic, I should add. Yet… do you know what it does to non-humans?”

  Alek took another step back and felt the floor give away. He went down on one knee.

  “It does that.”

  He groaned as a sudden headache hammered his skull into bits. He felt sick to his stomach. Sick to death. The sword felt so heavy in his rubberlike hands it just slipped right through his fingers and dropped to the floor.

  “Relax. It’s the drug taking effect.” Michael’s voice echoed, wavering between a howl and a whisper. “We’re cold-blooded creatures, you and I. But the toxicity in Demerol raises our temperatures almost immediately. Basically, you’re running a fever.”

  Alek shook his head to clear his hearing. The action intensified the pain a dozen fold and took the floor out from under his other foot. He half-closed his blurring eyes and tried to shove off the pain and the sickness. He was cold. He was in trouble. He needed his sword. His hand found the hilt of the katana, but he found to his utter dismay that he didn’t have the strength to pick it up. His big unfeeling fingers couldn’t grasp the hilt at all.

  Michael strolled over and picked it up for him, making it seem very easy.

  Alek reached for it, but the pain was too great and in the end he gave it up and concentrated on not shivering to death on the spot.

  “You don’t need this anymore,” Michael said.

  “Mine.”

  “Really? Then take it.” Michael held it out for him.

  Alek tried to swipe the sword but wound up falling on his face instead and cutting his cheek on the broken tile of the floor. He pushed against the floor but the crushing headache together with the cold kept him on his knees. Sweat ran in rivulets off his nose and plinked to the floor under his chin. He watched the commingling of blood and sweat, mesmerized by the spreading pool. He touched it with his hand and it was hot to his touch.

  But he was freezing to death.

  “Now you belong to me,” Michael said.

  Then he hit Alek across the back with his own sword and darkness took him.

  29

  He was dreaming. And even in his dream he was surprised, because it was such a human dream, so wonderfully normal. It was daytime and he was sitting out in the garden, the sun shining down on his hair as he read a Baron Blood novel. How silly, he thought, turning the pages.

  The self-appointed king of all vampires had just gorged himself on a young girl’s blood and had thoroughly enjoyed himself. Blood oozed down the corners of his mouth as his face took on the mask of humanity. Then he changed into a giant vampire bat and flew off into the night to seek new disciples. How silly, Alek thought again. Yet there was something horribly unsettling about the whole thing. As if he had read this book before. He shifted uncomfortably and blinked against the bright daylight.

  As his memory returned, so did the power of the sun. The once-comfortable warmth began to bake his skin and he wondered why he had ever come outside like this with no protection. Because he thought he could win? Because he thought he was human? He ran for the shadows as his skin began to blister in the harshness of the light. But he fell, pinned on his back by the sun, the relentless sun. And as he writhed in its brilliance he found a man was talking to him in a low voice, seductive and sweet and corrupted.

  It’s Baron Blood, he thought. And if I can just wake up it will all be over.

  But the whispering voice continued to drone on and he realized he was awake. And the man talking wasn’t part of the dream at all. The man was real. And he could not move. He was bound by ankles and wrists to a flat cold platform he could just feel through the layers of his street clothes. The room around him was dark save for one bright focal point of light high overhead. Not the sun, but a light that scorched him nonetheless.

  He struggled instinctively against the bounds, his wrists twisting and turning in the metal cuffs, but he simply could not break free. He was too weak against the bonds that held him. He was helpless against them. He sought his sword but he sensed it was somewhere beyond these walls—and anyway, it was a useless trick when he had no hands to wield it with. He had been captured and the pain from the metal handcuffs was as real as the fear starting to seep into his body and mind.

  “Where am I?” Alek whispered, hoarse.

  The man standing over him stopped talking to himself. He moved to bend over Alek, but because of the blinding light, Alek could not see his face. All he could see was a tall, thin silhouette “You’re awake,” Michael said. He sounded pleased. “Good. Good!”

  “Where…?”

  “You’re in the operating theatre of the institute.”

  The institute. Slowly the battle came back to him. The Chimera. Michael…

  “Yes. You remember.”

  Michael. Michael and his games. Michael and himself alone. Michael trying to make him afraid. “You don’t frighten me,” Alek said, trying to keep his mind under control. But when he realized this was all real and not some Glamour-induced nightmare created by Chimera, the fear was there, hard within him. It was real and the fear made his voice break. “Let me go.”

  But the only answer was the clink of metal. The sound of tools being laid out on the gurney beside him. Then Michael appeared, grinning, as he laid out yet another tool. Alek recognized the glints of steel there—forceps, a bone cutter, scalpels of various sizes and shapes, scissors, razors—every instrument as sharp as steel and ready to cut a body apart.

  He shuddered at the sight.

  Michael noticed. “Afraid of sharp instruments? You? I’m surprised.” Then he moved back and flipped a switch so that a moody circumference of small lights came on around the inside of the theatre dome, illuminating the room and reflecting off the glass panels high up in the walls where once studying doctors had watched surgeries literally unfold. And as the room became lit, Alek realized they weren’t quite as alone as he had assumed.

  A second operating table sat just beside the one he was bound to. But this one had a body under a sheet, amorphous but clearly human. Alek turned his head to see it better. “So… this is where you do it,” he said.

  “The experiments? Yes, this is where Dante and I did all our experiments. Would you like to see the latest? I think you should. It was very successful—though, sadly, I was forced to do it alone.”

  He moved to the second operating table and unsheeted the body.

  It had once been human, but so much of it had been cut and smashed apart, it was difficult to tell who it had once been, or which gender. The body, what remained of it, lay naked on its stomach on the operating table, the skull cut open and the brain and spinal column carved out, leaving only a ragged, shell-like carcass that looked more like a smashed insect than anything that had ever moved around and once been alive. Once been human. Alek felt his gorge rise despite himself. He closed his eyes. “Who was it?”

  “I forget his name. That little man who was giving you such trouble of late.”

  Brett Edelman.

  Alek hissed through his teeth. Now that the dead body had a face and a name, he felt an overwhelming desire to tear Michael limb from limb. He looked at the ruined body, the ruined human, then at the shackles holding him to the table like the next in a long assembly line of death. Brett Edelman had been a fool and had played far out of his league, but he had not deserved this. No one did. Again Alek strained against the binds. Useless.

  “Titanium alloy,” Michael informed him as he chose one of the larger scalpels from the collection. “Even at full strength with your belly full of blood you could not break free. Please stop trying.”

  Michael lowered the scalpel and Alek felt his entire body go as rigid as a corpse as the vampire began cutting away his shirt, the leather separating like a piece of soft bread under Michael’s flashing instr
ument. Michael said, as he worked, “While you were out, I was sorely tempted to add you to my collection, except… well, you’re a special case, aren’t you? I made a promise to you about your heart. About what I would do to you if you ever hurt Dante. I can’t very well take that back, now, can I?” He looked up. His eyes were dead. “That wouldn’t be sporting.”

  “You’re insane,” Alek said.

  The horror was still there, but now the volume of it had gone from a scream to a low whisper inside of him. Fear. It was always Michael’s currency. Because Michael could not fight without it any more than Chimera could fight without his many-changing disguises. “What do you want me to do, Michael?” Alek asked. His voice was soft and strong and remarkably steady despite his surging panic. “Beg you to stop? Bring Dante back? Die of fright for you?”

  Michael ran his hand over the muscles of Alek’s exposed chest. The muscles clenched of their own volition. Michael lowered his head and put his ear to Alek’s heart, listening to it beat for some moments. Then he stood up, his eyes halved. “I miss my brother.”

  “Your brother was a worthless piece of shit,” Alek said. “Just like you. And like me.”

  “Slayers…” said Michael and slammed his scalpel into Alek’s left shoulder in a gout of purple blood that painted his face like a mask. The explosion of pain made Alek arched as far off the table as his binds would allow. “… all of us.”

  Alek fell back onto the table with a grunt of anguish, his shoulder on fire.

  Michael licked the blood off his lips and reached for another scalpel.

  Alek groaned, the pain so great he felt the edges of unconsciousness try to close themselves over his face. Yet through the haze of pain and fear, he saw something move in the loft above, little more than a motion in the dark. A figure. Checking his feelings, what he could feel past the volcanic pain in his shoulder, he realized it was most certainly not another vampire. An idea clicked away inside his head, a way out of this. But only if he played things right. Keeping his eyes averted from their voyeur, he said, panted, “If you want to put sharp instruments into me, Michael… fight me like a slayer, then.”