“You should leave,” I said. “I’ve already freed your prisoner, and I have the high ground. There’s no outcome in which you come out of this situation on top.”
Barthandelus smirked. “So you say. However, I detect the slightest tremble in the hand which brandishes that pistol. You may have shot a man before, but you’re not comfortable with the notion either. There’s a high probability you’ll miss your shot, and while you may have the high ground, do not believe for a second that means you have an advantage over me, young man. I’ve played this game for centuries. You are but a pup. It would be wise for you to surrender. You may still walk away from this with your life.”
I, of course, had no intention of surrendering. His words, however, did arouse questions with answers I could not fathom. Centuries? I had encountered a man previously who had learned how to extend his life by possessing the bodies of others as he died. I had not decided if he was simply a ghost or demon; however, he was the only entity I had encountered who had survived for centuries. To be confronted by another with the same supposed lifespan, I wondered if he was another of his kind or something else.
“I sense your hesitation,” Barthandelus continued. “No doubt you are considering my words. You do not seem the type to lay down your arms, but I will give you this opportunity. Will you surrender? Do we have an accord?”
Behind him, Jessica appeared from the short foyer through which I had passed earlier. The staff, I assumed, must have provided her with another key. She was armed and held our adversary in her gun sights.
I curtly shook my head. “No, we don’t.” I lifted my gun, aiming at him as well. I kept Jessica in my peripheral vision, making a point not to look directly at her lest I make her presence known.
Barthandelus sighed. “Such a shame.”
The change which overcame him was instantaneous. He lifted his arms, and his face contorted in a scarlet effusion as he arched his neck and silently howled at the ceiling. I could not tell if the emission was simply light or partially fluid, but it emanated from his flesh much like the regeneration energy from the Time Lord in Doctor Who and bathed the entire cabin in its eerie glow. His head snapped down, his eyes enraptured with murderous glee, and he roared. “You sniveling little shit! You won’t stop me from completing the Ritual of Yuul! I will feed on Opopanax, and I’ll eat your worthless soul for dessert!”
A blast of scarlet erupted from his face and I dove aside, losing my grip on my Sig Sauer. The energy burst ripped through the loft, disintegrating wood, showering me with splinters. With dismay, I realized the top of the ladder had vanished, undoubtedly eradicated in the blast.
I turned, finding Vayne on the floor behind me, closer to the yawning fissure that had opened in the blast’s wake. He crawled toward me, eyes wide.
Gunfire erupted below, and Barthandelus howled, enraged. Another blast tore through the cabin, and the far wall behind us disintegrated, obliterating the space where Vayne had been kept. The loft shuddered forward, its remaining support beams unable to withstand the weight bearing down upon the structure. The floor beneath us tilted. I looked over the edge and found that Barthandelus’s top hat had fallen to the floor. When I looked to him, I discovered that a flap of scalp hung loosely over the side of his face, and blood poured from the hole where the bullet had punched a massive hole through his skull. Another round had connected with his left shoulder and elbow as well as his right hand. The shoulder had fared the best from its encounter, but his arm beneath the elbow hung on frayed strands of flesh and dangled uselessly. His right hand was a disfigured stump beyond the wrist.
Jessica hadn’t retrieved her Sig Sauer. She’d gone for her Desert Eagle .44 Magnum.
Shots like this would have dropped any ordinary man. Barthandelus, however, wasn’t easily put down. He staggered around, roaring, and another blast of scarlet light erupted from his face. Jessica dove over the couch and out of sight as the rays tore through multiple stacks of impossible collectibles and the far end of the couch.
I turned, searching what remained of the loft for my firearm. Six feet beyond my reach, it was lodged between a nightstand and the far wall. When the floor shifted, the nightstand slid against the wall, pinning the gun.
Above, the supports groaned. I didn’t have much time. I needed the gun, but I couldn’t risk going for it. The shift of weight could be just enough to hasten the destruction of the loft.
I reached a hand toward the gun, closed my eyes, and focused. In my mind’s eye, I pictured the Sig Sauer, could almost feel the smooth grip in my hand. I imagined the nightstand sliding aside, then with an extra bit of effort, I exerted a small push of thought, and the Sig Sauer slipped into my hand.
One of my newly acquired abilities since the events in Scarborough Hill, I’d discovered, was telekinesis.
I scrambled to my feet and leaped over the edge of the loft as it ripped free and began to fall. I crashed down atop a mound of paperback books (which scattered, ripped, and split beneath me), rolled, and shot to my feet, raising the Sig Sauer as I did so. The loft crashed to the floor behind me.
Vayne had also jumped. As I ran at Barthandelus, readying myself for a closer shot, he yelled, “Stop using my mana!”
The figure turned toward Vayne, his head tilting upward, the blast of mana continuing to usher from his countenance as it ripped above the couch and tore through the windows, blasting them out into the cold night beyond. Dancing snowflakes borne on the cold air drifted into the cabin.
I kicked aside a stack of DVDs, pushing through into the next path as I took aim, confident that I was close enough to hit my mark. The gaping hole in the side of Barthandelus’s skull was turned away from me, but I could see the side of his face as he turned. Even through the swath of scarlet light, I could see his eyes, and they were focused wholly on Vayne as Barthandelus turned to rain hell down upon him.
I fired once, twice, thrice in quick succession. Each round hit its mark, striking Barthandelus in the side of the head. The first decimated his temple, reducing his eye to a blast of gore in what remained of its orbital socket. The other two struck the side of his head with enough force to punch through and spray the air beyond with blood and brain matter as they exited the open wound.
Barthandelus sunk to one knee, the light of Vayne’s consumed mana fading. He turned his head ever so slowly, his one remaining eye fixing me with its stare. Surprisingly, to my horror, it remained very much lucid.
“You are wrong to think I will be put down so easily.”
I shot him again, and he collapsed. Whereas in the past I have felt sorrow and regret in committing such violence, now I felt nothing.
I wasn’t cold-blooded, but I was a killer nonetheless.
Eight
I found Jessica behind the couch still, stunned but alive. The blast had come a bit too close for comfort, I discovered, for the tread on the bottom of her shoes had been partially sheared off. The blasts of mana conducted no heat but were concussive, and while they hit objects at the epicenter of the blast with the force of a bomb, anything along the periphery of the blast could still find the mana slicing through it like a knife through butter. The blast had disoriented her but she military crawled toward end of the couch that hadn’t been blown to smithereens in an effort to evade Barthandelus’s murderous rage.
The three of us – Jessica, Vayne, and I –gathered around the end of the couch, collecting our wits as we cast the occasional glance at our fallen foe. After she saw the damage I’d wrought upon Barthandelus, Jessica took my face in her hands, looked deep into my eyes, and asked if I was alright. I nodded, but I wasn’t entirely sure that was the case.
I hadn’t been alright for some time.
Vayne sat on the edge of the couch, shaking his head as he studied Barthandelus’s body. “It shouldn’t have been that easy to put him down,” he said, looking back at me and Jessica. “He’s a Unatoan. You practically have to banish them from the realm to stop them.”
“A una-what?” Jessica
asked.
“Unatoan. Walking death. Devourer of souls. That’s why he wanted me. He wanted to absorb my mana, then he intended to complete the Ritual of Yuul. It would’ve increased his power exponentially.”
Jessica shot me a look of bafflement. I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I’m hearing too many terms I don’t understand. What is the Ritual of Yuul?”
“He would have taken my soul. Normally he doesn’t need to conduct a ritual. With magical entities such as Opopanax, however, it’s the only way to subdue it.”
Jessica and I exchanged a look. “You called him the walking death?” she asked.
Vayne nodded. “A devourer of souls. Don’t let his appearance fool you. He may have once been human, but he hasn’t been for a long time. He hasn’t been what you would call alive either. He is the personification of death itself.”
My gaze settled on the body. Personification of death itself or not, he certainly seemed dead.
“Hello?” a voice called, and we all looked to the door where Ron, the bellhop, had entered the cabin from the door leading back to the Inn. “Is everyone alright?”
“Hardly,” the body on the floor growled, “but you’ll fix that.”
Jessica and I raised our guns, aiming them at Barthandelus, but he lifted off the floor with such speed that our bullets buried themselves in the floor. He sailed across the room, his phantasmagoric form dripping gore as he went, and landed on his feet before Ron.
“Yes, you’ll do quite nicely.”
Barthandelus took Ron’s head in his hands and snapped his neck with an audible and horrific crack!
“TAKE HIM DOWN!” Jessica bellowed, and opened fire, her Desert Eagle booming with every gunshot. I was firing as well, and the two of us advanced on the bloody figure, disintegrating flesh with every well-placed shot, but he did not go down.
We had crossed half the room when the firearms went dry.
Ron’s desiccated corpse dropped to the floor, his pigment drained, his eyes rheumy and vacant. Barthandelus turned, and I watched as the flesh around his head wounds healed rapidly. The obliterated eye-socked reformed, as did the orb within, and soon he regarded us with two perfect eyes brimming with malignant glee as the rest of his mutilated form regained its previous perfection.
He laughed. “Fools! You thought you could end me, Bartholomew Barthandelus? Please. Bloody amateurs.”
A voice cut through the room then, a new presence none of us had been aware of. “Allow me to try then.” Abruptly, a dagger seemed to materialize in Barthandelus’s throat, its ornate hilt protruding from torn flesh around a geyser of blood.
Through the blasted windows had come a tall figure in a red, flowing cloak held together in the front by an assortment of red and black sashes. The hilts of crisscrossing swords rose to either side of his head from where they were sheathed against his back. His face, already partially obscured by his hood, was wrapped in belts, sashes, and bandages. His black boots gave voice to sonorous thunderclaps, filling the cabin with their boisterous steps.
I recognized the figure immediately. A painting of him hung above the bed in our room back at the Inn.
Barthandelus reached up. With one deft jerk, he removed the dagger from his throat and snarled. He shouldn’t have been able to speak, not with his vocal cords severed, yet he did so anyway. “You hooded bastard.”
“I’ve come to take him back,” the figure said, casting a glance at Vayne. I saw his eyes, like Vayne’s, were red; despite this, I doubted he was like Opopanax. I sensed something about him was different.
“His soul is mine!” Barthandelus snarled, approaching the hooded figure. “He belongs to me now!”
Despite the bandages, I could see the figure smirk. “He belongs to no one but himself, to whom he has remained true even in his captivity. You, however, cannot even address yourself by your true name, can you, Enmerkar?”
“THAT NAME AND YOURS HAVE BEEN LOST TO TIME, WARRIOR!” Barthandelus screamed. He spat a mouthful of blood onto a nearby stack of impossible artifacts.
“But I have not been,” the figure contested. “I have crossed immemorial time and space to find you and others like you, searching for battles only I can wage. I assure you, your name is Enmerkar, and your fight is not with these people but with me, for I am your equal, sir.”
“Then let me rip the tongue from your skull,” Barthandelus sighed, “so you’ll never speak our names again.”
We stood, transfixed, as the two met in a flash, the hooded warrior drawing his ōdachi in swift pulls. As the battle ensued, I caught glimpses of Barthandelus running across the blades, flipping and kicking, punches thrown, and yet the hooded figure evaded most of his attacks and countered. The slashes he intended to land always hit their target, and blood jettisoned along multiple arcs through the air.
Finally, Barthandelus knelt before the warrior, his limbs useless, his body bloody and lacerated, head bowed. He growled then, reminding me of the snarls of a wounded dog. “You’ll never kill me.”
The hooded warrior sheathed one of his ōdachi. “I do not intend to kill you, but I shall banish you from this realm. Never again will you step beneath its skies.”
Barthandelus raised his head. “You’ll deny me access to the spaces between? You’ll trap me forever in one world, where I’ll feed indefinitely on its populace?”
“I’ll do more than that,” he vowed. “You’ll be locked away from the world. You’ll see no living thing other than the bugs that share your tomb.”
Barthandelus opened his mouth to object, but the warrior slashed at the Unatoan’s throat. In one deft movement, he was beheaded, his cranium spinning back through the air.
Next to me, Jessica involuntarily flinched. We had each watched the events unfold in a stupor, unable to act as the encounter unfolded before us. Barthandelus’s beheading, however, was so abrupt, it broke through our stupor, and our paralysis was replaced by action. I stepped forward – to do what, I’m not sure – but the warrior’s reflexes were far faster than my own. He planted one boot on the Unatoan’s chest and, as he leaped forward, drove the body to the floor. I could hear bones crack as they broke under his step, and he snatched the head by the hair before it could hit the ground. He lifted the head, peering into Barthandelus’s eyes. The Unatoan’s mouth worked, forming words, but no voice issued from his lips.
The warrior spoke once more, and the syllables he uttered were mostly alien to me. “Unatoan en sevokah de’merna.”
The disembodied head and the dismembered body both combust into blue flames that quickly turned white, burning so bright and fierce to be nearly blinding, forcing us all to avert our gaze. In seconds, the remains were ash, and the warrior held nothing in his grasp but one of his ōdachi, which he sheathed.
The warrior turned to us. “I trust the three of you are well?”
I nodded. Jessica swallowed. “Yes,” she said.
“Good,” he said. “I must thank you for coming to Vayne’s aid. I fear it took me far longer to track him than it should have.”
“Of course,” I said. “Anyone would have.”
The warrior smirked. “No, not just anyone. Many would have turned and run with their tails tucked.” He stepped forward, regarding me with great interest. “I suspect Opopanax reached out to you directly, am I correct?”
The dream. I couldn’t say Opopanax reached out to me exactly. Quite the opposite, in fact. I wasn’t about to argue with a man with swords longer than my body, however, especially after his most recent display of skill. “Yes.”
He smiled. “Thank you for answering the call. I am in your debt. Should I find occasion to repay you, I shall do so.”
I nodded, unsure of how to respond.
The warrior turned to Vayne. “Shall we go?”
“We shall.” He turned to me and Jessica. “Thank you, both of you. Shall we ever cross paths again, I will find a way to repay you as well.”
Vayne stepped to the warrior’s side, who nodded to us before turning
away. Vayne did the same. A moment later, the warrior spoke in his weird tongue again – “Portaj en’merna!” – and a blue, swirling cloud burst forth in empty space. The warrior stepped forward, slipping into it and thus disappearing beyond its veil.
Vayne cast one final look back at us. He nodded. I nodded back. Then he was gone. The portal closed, leaving Jessica and me in the cabin of impossible artifacts.
nine
Upon our return to the Inn, Sam the barkeep led several others through the doorway to Barthandelus’s cabin. There, they retrieved Ron’s remains and brought them back under a shroud.
I asked Sam what they would do with him. “We take care of our own,” he said before absconding with the corpse into the bowels of the Inn, down the back corridors where only employees were permitted. CindyLou thanked us for what we had done before she, too, disappeared.
Back in our room, I did not expect to find sleep, but I did… although I don’t think I found it so much as it not only found but tackled me. My exhaustion was deep and profound, and while others may claim not to have dreamed during such a state, I cannot say the same.
The dream was disturbing to say the least and once again served as a reminder that, even here, in a place far removed from the world at large, the problems I sought to escape still awaited me. I had no illusions I would evade the ominous forces which insisted upon playing antagonist in my story, but I intended to do so for as long as possible. In facing Barthandelus, I acted without hesitation whereas months ago I would have shrunken from such abhorrent violence. I might not have ultimately stopped Barthandelus myself, but had he been human, I would have.
Moving forward, I would not hesitate. I knew that now. I might question who I was as a person, but I was no longer the frail nomad, determined to slip through encounters by the skin of my teeth. I would do what I must to protect those I loved and those who could not protect themselves. If our night at the Inn had done one thing, it had convinced me I could not simply disappear and expect never to be found. Therefore, I would adapt and learn. When the time ultimately came, I would be ready for whatever horrors awaited me.
Inn Between Worlds: Volume 1 Page 16
