For one interminable fraction of a second, Constantine turned his ice-blue eyes toward where we grouped in the hellish sheen from the blaze. Amid that cluster of enemies, he pinpointed me, looked pointblank at me. He was trying to connect. His stare bored into my essence until I grew faint, like all my strength had been diverted elsewhere. Then, barely outpacing the fire that whipped up his body, Constantine flung both hands protectively before his face. The signet ring upon his right hand winked a pure luminous gold before the devouring flames blotted it.
My mind tried to scream, but my voice, controlled by Rasputin, refused to obey. So, I watched, silently, in horror, as beautiful Constantine was engulfed in the white-hot fireball of a quick incendiary rush, like the ignition of a rocket. Yet, repellently, some tiny alien space within me watched with unrepulsed fascination as the flames plumed about him. Then, with the same abruptness that it had climbed his body, the flash fire, so intense it had disintegrated his clothes, snuffed forcefully downward, totally extinguished. Constantine crashed backward onto the street.
He appeared almost reposed in a ghoulish parody of sleep. The ruination of this illusion, however, was the glassy, fixed stare of his perfect, incredibly unburned eyes. Presumably they had been saved by the cover of his hands which had not fared nearly as well. In fact, of his entire body, his hands were damaged the most, the worst, blackened, scorched, charred as if they had funneled all the heat and fire away from the rest of himself. Perhaps, I marveled, they had? His gorgeous face, framed as ever by a luxurious mass of coal black—only slightly singed—waves, had survived, although the left side was sooty and blistered.
The beauty of his legs and torso had likewise largely been spared. A few bad places, such as his abdomen and his left thigh, were raw, the skin peeled away to display healthy pink flesh underneath. But the air I rasped into and out of my lungs, that nearly gagged me, told another tale in the acrid undeniable pungency of toasted flesh and scorched hair.
I mouthed his name. Constantine. My soundless appeal to him went unanswered. No sensation returned to me. Of his life, of his being. Nothing echoed back. The tainted air from my apartment stung a tear, or two, from my eyes.
In the fire's eerie shifting glow, I saw Snitch move to stand over Constantine's remains. He crowed, like a scrawny rooster, puffing out his bony chest, cackling in a long high-pitched unbroken note.
Rasputin leaned down into my face. “This immortal won't rise phoenix-like from the ashes of his pyre, Soulsmith. Constantine is no more."
I shuddered and closed my eyes. It was the first full movement I had made of my own volition. When I found the strength to speak, it further proved that I was regaining my own will. Witnessing Constantine's end had roused my survival instinct.
"You and yours,” I sliced a hate filled glance toward Donata, “best watch out, Rasputin, you're not the only one who can arrange an ambush."
Rasputin tightened a crushing grip on the tops of my shoulders. He was angered that his spell over me had slipped, had lessened. “Mind your tongue. It can be removed so easily."
In challenge, Donata hissed at me, exposing the gleaming tips of her uneven white fangs. The other vampires, except for Patrice, who clung to Donata, pulled back to safety. Donata was easily within striking distance of me. The bitch took advantage of that fact! Her extraordinarily long fangs fully erupted. She jumped at me with a wolfish snarl. Rasputin still held my shoulders. His towering blubbery form blocked her reach for my throat, and, thankfully, denied her a killing blow. Instead, improvising, redirecting her attack, she rent my back in long furrows from my shoulder blade almost to my waist. Pain lanced down my body. My knees buckled, but I kept upright. Well, mostly because Rasputin still held me skewered to his claws.
Rasputin ended Donata's assault by a crushing grasp under her chin, neck, and throat used to fling her away. The maneuver to a human, no doubt, would have been fatal. All it did to Donata was stun her. She shook her head. The dull black strands of her lank, lackluster hair swished around her head and shoulders. She raked them from her eyes.
"She's just juicy meat, Rasputin. Let us have her.” With an inclusive sweep of her hand, Donata indicated the small group of vampires. The others, however, stayed well back, yet they scented my fresh seeping wounds. Excitement glowed blood-red, a shade that rivaled the raging fire, from out their avid eyes. They appeared of one accord, all prepared to attack me.
Rasputin denied them all. His voice was a dominant swell of sound. “A Soulsmith, the last Soulsmith, is far too valuable to waste spattered across a street. Have patience, Donata, for soon she will be of us. Perhaps, I shall allow you to aid in her transformation. Relish the thought of her blood thick as whipped cream upon your tongue. It will be worth the wait. And never a sweeter tasting vengeance, eh?"
I was numb, physically and emotionally. My back was torn open. So were my emotions. I couldn't look away from Constantine, amazingly intact, but lifeless, spread out like a cold cadaver in the inferno's bright shifting glow. We hadn't been friends, but TECHNICALLY we had been lovers. His power, sexual and raw, had been too great to deny. It had become an addiction. So, if I managed to survive, which was highly doubtful, who would be my new supplier? That kind of drug, a vampiric aphrodisiac, was not exactly on the market. Or, maybe, with his true death, my ‘need', my ‘hunger’ would also end? I damned well hoped so.
Rasputin's evil attention fastened on to me, leech-like, sucking on my robust emotions of fear, anxiety, loss and, perhaps, grief. A heated gust flapped the thin worm-like strands of the hideous progenitor's hair. His odor, rotten and foul as carrion, even overpowered the fire's smoky haze.
"Have one final look, Soulsmith. Up closer. To allay any false hopes that he yet lives."
And so saying, Rasputin dragged me, unwillingly, to Constantine's soulless physical shell where he forced me to kneel with one of his monstrous claws heavily curled around my shoulder. I tried not to inhale the vile charred air. Worse yet was the acrid stench of burned hair which clung heavy about me although Constantine's glorious coal colored waves were for the most part miraculously unburned. Soot and blisters coated the left side of his beautiful chiseled face, but, just as his hair had been incredibly spared the ravages of the flames, so too had his ice blue eyes, always so dangerous to me, now focused skyward, unblinking, unseeing, unaware.
I hiccoughed back hysteria as I remembered his not-so-long-ago boast that he could survive the vampiric anathema of flame, the purification of fire. Kneeling so close to him—to his mostly undamaged, still elegant body—I psychically detected nothing of HIM, not of his arrogance, his conceitedness, his incredible will. A tear-like emotion knotted in my throat.
In his odd death throe, Constantine's withered right arm stretched out above his head, as if seeking help. And on that gruesome, charred hand gleamed Constantine's solid gold signet ring. It beamed radiantly, scoured to perfection in the crucible of an inferno. Flames, sunny yellow and bloody red, reflected off it, actually refracted off it to cast a mini-rainbow over myself and Rasputin, whose clawed hold shifted to the back of my neck.
"Give it me,” Rasputin, his voice husky, awed with greed, said to Snitch, who stooped covetously over the body. “I'll have his crest. His seal of power. It bestowed him much, even sparing his flesh and bones from the flames. Enshrouded within its power, Constantine very nearly survived that which is a true death."
Snitch, unhesitant, snatched at the ring. It seemed melded to Constantine's blackened finger. The one-eyed vampire gave a shrill cry of annoyance. He snapped the burned digit and wrenched the gold ring from off its owner. He held it aloft, where it seemed to pulse, a perfect golden band, an object to be coveted. And we each did. Even I, for one disorienting second.
Rasputin's maw gaped with excitement. He slurred his words. “Give it to me, Snitch."
"Yes, Master.” Snitch held it for one moment more before he took a chain from his vest which he then threaded through the ring. He presented it to Rasputin with his one good
eye slightly averted, his head drawn down protectively into his stooped shoulders. Rasputin took the fine chain and dragged it over his monstrous misshapen head. This was the only way he could wear the stolen talisman, because his own grotesque fingers were outsized, triple that of Constantine's slender artistic fingers.
"All is as planned. Here ends the reign of Constantine, The Great.” Rasputin, the wormy-haired urine-skinned monstrosity, leaned his weight upon the vulnerable spot where he gripped my neck. He literally spat a curse over my head at the other progenitor, then he spoke to his vampire retinue gathered at his back. “Some one of you come forward and finish the deed. Remove his head and heart, and feed them to the flames. Quarter what is left, then cremate that, as well."
Anger, swift and terrible, suffused me. I wasn't going to allow this!
"No one touch him!” The order shrilled from me louder than a megaphone. It did, indeed, halt those few who had advanced. “Do not desecrate him any further!” A hot wind skirled from out of the burning building, my home, my business. Arm-like trails of sparks accompanied it, but faded before reaching me. The fire towered and glowed ominously against the inky dark sky, as if it could be called down upon those on the street. Pops and sputters gave the inferno a fearsome voice. In the face of that conflagration, mine to summon, the vampires seemed to shrink.
As I knelt beside Constantine, bathed in the hellish shimmering glow, and dared any to brave me, or my fire, a distant but distinct wail from a fire engine arose. The fire department was on the way. That meant firemen, police, EMT's—too many humans to effectively deal with. The time for gloating had passed.
"We shall depart. His remains are empty. Let them lie. It matters not. The last detail is, however, of all import.” He brutally yanked me to my feet. “I have only to bind you, little Soulsmith, to me."
I swallowed, hard. “So you destroyed Constantine. Big freakin’ deal. I'm not his for you to claim.” Was that a half-truth, or a half-lie? “And you'll certainly never hold me."
Rasputin, his stringy hair falling across his rheumy eye sockets, showed his evil serrated fangs in a gruesome smile. “I intend to do more than transform you. This union is going to be legal. Within the law. I intend to make you my bride. For eternity."
His bride, huh? That word complicated everything. With vampires, as with humans, a spouse couldn't be forced to testify against her murderous husband. I wouldn't EVER be able to stand up in a court of law and testify that Rasputin was a slaughtering, murdering beast from hell. Rasputin was legitimately going to take care of the sole human witness to his current—and all his future—crimes. Me. He was going to marry me to do it. Oh, joy.
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Chapter Nineteen
Eternally Yours
I was still struggling with the implications of Rasputin's mockery of a proposal—and with the shock of Constantine's ghastly immolation—as the gargantuan progenitor bodily dragged me through the back streets of the city of Charleston. My enforced march was brutal and frightening. At our approach, overhead streetlamps would detonate like mini-grenades, shattering into desolation and darkness. Animals seemed to avoid us, as when the barks and growls of a scrawny, black-and-tan mongrel had abruptly ceased and the dog had slunk away into the unnatural quiet.
Block after block, Rasputin pulled me along behind him, literally scraping me across pavement or concrete or sewer grates when I repeatedly, futilely dug my heels in to resist. I was bruised and banged worse than a prizefighter. My knees especially were torn up. So, in the end, to keep my legs and feet from being worn to stubs, I tried, again and again, to match his gigantic stride, running, staggering, then tripping, always to be dragged mercilessly onward.
Around us, his entourage spread out, unseen. They moved like shadows, glided without a sound, betrayed their passage with nothing more than an occasional glitter from out of feral eyes. Not even Donata, paralleling us off to the left, visible only by the occasional swish of her long matte black hair, offered any comment. She simply glowered, radiating hate like a toxic waste dump, highly lethal.
The area gradually became seedier, older. It was the commercial district. Many of the large crowded buildings, some wood frame, others steel and concrete, still more crumbling red brick, stood empty. After a long grueling run through the warren of factory-like architecture, a set of railroad tracks bisected the street we traveled. Rasputin jarred me across the graveled train crossing. I toppled once more to my knees and stifled a whuffling gasp of pain. A dizzy sickness hit me. I was light-headed from being cut up by Donata, not-to-mention being overwrought by nerves from my impending nuptials, the arson of my home and business ... and the death of Constantine. The bed of crushed railway stones bit into my already torn up flesh. I cried out, but Rasputin took no pity. He kept up his pace, tugging me still upon my knees across the rails.
There was no traffic here. No unwary traveler. No passerby. No one to appeal to. I gritted my teeth, forced myself upright, and redoubled my efforts to match Rasputin, his seven foot frame humongous, nightmarish on this horrible journey. He wouldn't care whether or not he accidentally twisted my arm from its socket. He might actually like the novelty of a one-armed bride.
He drove further into the old commercial district. At one point, a chain link fence demarcated a State Department of Highways salt depot, a large darkened lot with a corrugated metal building that housed enormous trucks, plows, and mounds of street salt. I considered grabbing the diamond-shaped links, but decided against doing so. I'd most likely lose fingers. We quickly passed by the large darkened lot into a valley of squat two and three story buildings which oppressively loomed over us until, finally, when I despaired of taking another step—my legs were jelly, my lungs ached, my wounds were seepy and raw—we reached our destination, Chantario's, a huge abandoned furniture warehouse.
Six immense glass-fronted showcases, now whitewashed, overhung the street. The showrooms were at eye-level, being some five feet above the sidewalk. One of the showcase windows, however, had been smashed, not completely, but wide enough to make an entrance. Mammoth Rasputin scaled the height with supernatural ease, pulling me behind him, levering me upward by my arm, uncaring that I exhaustedly wavered on that dangerous make-shift threshold. He yanked me inside. Uncannily, he threaded a path through the pitch black of the showroom. He navigated around chunks of plaster, a few pieces of broken furniture, several big rolls of carpeting, and then down three narrow stairs to the warehouse proper. I, too, after initially stumbling in his odious wake, became more able to see in the eerie dark, perhaps tapping into Rasputin's power, a progenitor's power, as I had occasionally done with Constantine.
I consciously looked into the murky depths of the warehouse to attune my ‘enhanced’ vision to the huge echoing place. I marked the scattered remnants of a once thriving furniture business, busted shipping crates, scattered piles of fabric swatches, a three-legged camel-backed sofa, dried up cans of varnish. Tiredly, I stubbed a toe on a box of finishing nails and scattered the rusty contents in a screeching arc over the marbled floor.
Rasputin bared his saber-like fangs at me, angry because of my clumsiness, because of my noise, because of my frailty. By comparison, his people, the silent undead, entered and loosely fanned out around us. They disturbed nothing, not so much as a mote of dust, although it coated the gloomy cavernous warehouse. Donata slunk like a black cat, lithe and supple and deadly, casting anger and hate at me with her shadowed dishwater-brown eyes. Patrice came at her back, practically up her ass. The others maintained a bit more distance. Snitch, the murderous little creep, kept even further away, an unwanted pariah.
As we proceeded further into the warehouse, I became aware of the soft glow of candles. Coincidentally, the area that we approached had once been the lighting showroom. Overhead of that candlelit spot dangled the remains of a trio of chandeliers, haphazardly hanging like bare skeletons from the ceiling. Nary a crystal remained upon the intricate metal frames. All three denuded chandeliers w
ere quite large and heavy and precarious. The centermost was of such elaborate multi-layered proportions as to grace a museum, opera house, or cathedral, some glorious imposing building.
Rasputin dragged me toward where the eerie lightless chandeliers were suspended above tall stands of candle. A lone figure stood in the wavering light. Recognition of the pudgy, balding, robed man jolted me. Here waited Circuit Court Judge Oscar Hyacinth, a well-known and well-respected political figure, Democrat, of course, now relegated to the role of glorified Justice of the Peace, empowered to legitimately marry couples who held the proper licenses. Rasputin no doubt had had the required documents filed in a surrounding county, Roane, Boone, or, perhaps, Lincoln. West Virginia no longer required blood tests, and only a minimal waiting period of three days. Where was the tangle of bureaucratic red tape when I needed it?
Judge Hyacinth calmly rocked on the balls of his feet, allowing the wedding party to settle, unaware that they all, including mountainous Rasputin, kept a respectful distance from him and the bible loosely held open in his hands. Judge Hyacinth was beyond noticing much of anything. He was deeply entranced. Nothing of his current circumstances permeated his fogged brain. He smiled at me with a benign, sweet grin, inspecting the happy couple over the rims of his wire framed spectacles, imagining that we had just completed the traditional wedding march down the aisle in order to marry. Likewise, in his bemused mind, the circle of vampires comprised the wedding party. Did that, I hysterically wondered, make Donata, in her skin-tight black bodysuit, the maid-of-honor?
Judge Hyacinth began the familiar preamble. “Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here to join this vampire and this human in the holy bonds of matrimony.” Yadda, yadda, yadda.
I only half listened. I hated weddings, especially this very inescapable one! Mine. My arm trembled beneath Rasputin's clawed grasp. To ease my wrist of his brutal hold, I listed to the left. I also circumspectly searched for an escape, but I soon acknowledged to myself that there was no realistic way to flee two progenitor's, Donata and Rasputin, as well as a small pack of lesser vampires. I was a mere mortal, so there was no contest. And as my gaze roved the darkness beyond us, identifying the tiny track of a mouse through the dust but oddly unimpressed with such an unnatural feat, the words of the ceremony droned on. In his hypnotic state, the Judge did not seem bothered that neither the bride, nor the groom, responded to the ‘for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health’ litany. I continued visually searching the huge warehouse. Again I discovered nothing in the dusty gloom that offered me any hope. My vision pierced well beyond the sight of any normal woman in both distance and accuracy. This disturbing fact never once dawned on me.
Eternal Bondage Page 30
