by J. C. Diem
Pulling the bone free, Anna-Eve sent a despairing gaze towards her master before falling to her knees. A slow trickle of black blood oozed from the wound. Long blonde hair slid forward to hide her face as she slowly toppled to the ground. She disintegrated, leaving behind the usual slimy pool of sludge.
The Comtesse held another sliver of bone in her only hand, ready to throw. She debated about the wisdom of using me as her next target and decided against it. I’d never admit it out loud but I was impressed by her accuracy with such a rudimentary weapon. Tossing the bone aside, she stared at me with arrogance pouring from her tiny frame.
Nicholas stood in the centre of his cell, unaffected by his nakedness. A contemptuous smile twisted one corner of his mouth up. He crossed his arms in a deliberate effort to make his biceps bulge. He was still beautiful to look at but his ability to make my flesh hunger rise had vanished. I couldn’t imagine my need for sex ever being strong enough that I would jump the bones of the man who had tried to kill Luc.
“Nicholas was your mole all along, wasn’t he?” I turned to the praying mantis to ask.
Futilely attempting to pat her badly mussed hair back into place, the Comtesse gave up and made a dismissive gesture with her good hand. “I knew you would take pity on him and allow him to join your pathetic band of misfits. I also knew none of you would be smart enough to guess that he belonged to me and was following my orders.” She spoke in French, knowing I could understand her perfectly.
“Was Luc his main target all along or did Nicholas try to kill him when he failed to get me into the sack?”
My query had the impact I hoped it would and the blonde whirled towards her current lover. She was furious that he had tried to murder her favourite sex slave.
“She lies!” the courtier blurted before his mistress could speak.
“He threw a bomb at Luc when his back was turned,” I informed her and watched her rage grow.
“I did not order you to harm Lucentio,” she bit out. “You were merely supposed to take his place in the servant’s bed so he would come back to me where he belongs!”
Bitterness flooded across Nicholas’ face. “Your precious ‘Lord’ Lucentio hates you! He would never voluntarily return to your bed. Only your direct order could force him service your insatiable lust.” His jab was as cruel as it was true. Luc had only returned to her the last time because she had ordered him to. His disgust and hatred of her had been strong enough that he had broken free from her spell when she had been possessed by her shadow. Again, I regretted not killing her when I’d had the chance. I comforted myself with the fact that she wasn’t going to survive this time.
The praying mantis quivered in fury at her lackey’s insubordination. “You have always been jealous of Lucentio,” she snarled. “Your skills in the bedroom are crude compared to his. You could never satisfy me as he could.”
Nicholas sneered but I sensed his deep hurt and rejection. “You act as if you love him,” he scoffed. Love was a concept few of our kind believed in and he meant the observation to be an insult.
Drawing her dignity around her, the Comtesse tossed her head, choosing to ignore the comment. I was disturbed to realize she might have feelings for Luc that extended beyond mere lust. Maybe she did love him, in her own way. “What do you hope to accomplish by holding us captive?” she asked me icily.
“I want to know what Sanderson did to Luc and the rest of my friends. Tell me where they are and I’ll let you go.”
Something that may have been regret flickered to life briefly before she shook the emotion off. “I made you a promise, servant, and I always keep my promises.”
“Are you telling me that you allowed the Colonel to kill Luc?”
“Colonel Sanderson followed the orders his government gave him,” she replied evasively.
I could see us going around and around in circles all night so I walked towards Nicholas’ cage. He backed away a step before forcing himself to stand still. “You will not kill me,” he said softly and with great confidence.
“Where is Luc being held, Mucia?” I asked the Comtesse.
Rage instantly flared to life. “You dare to speak that name in my presence?”
“I dare,” I replied dryly. “It’s pretty hideous. I can see why you kill anyone who is brave enough to use it to your face.”
Nicholas made a sound of amusement and the praying mantis’ expression hardened. “Go ahead and kill him,” she said with a careless wave of her gloved stump. “I have grown weary of him anyway.”
For an instant, I felt sorry for the over muscled courtier. He wasn’t faking the pain her words caused him. My brief moment of distraction was what he’d been waiting for and he leaped towards me.
I’d hesitated to kill Nicholas the last time but this time there would be no escape for him. The machete punched through his chest and burst out of his back. Shock coursed over his face and his hands clamped down on my shoulders, shattering my clavicles. They healed even before I drew the machete back and shoved it into him again. Blood burst from his mouth, splattering my face. His hands ground down on my shoulders again. The Comtesse’s lackey had survived a nick to his heart once but he had come very close to dying from the wound. I kept that in mind as I continued to carve away.
Despite her careless attitude towards her lover, the praying mantis went onto her tippy toes and craned her head to try to see what I was doing.
When I was done, I turned and tossed her a present. Droplets of black ooze splattered the Comtesse as she reflexively caught the shrivelled lump with her good hand. Staring at Nicholas’ heart in horror, she screeched when it suddenly disintegrated. The muscled courtier dropped to his knees as his eyes glazed over with death. His beautifully sculpted body, marred only by the messy hole I’d hacked into his chest, turned to slush.
Rusty hinges squealed and was followed by the pitter-patter of bare feet as my prey made her escape. I turned to see the Comtesse fleeing for the staircase with the arm bone of a dead human clutched in her hand. It had been long enough for her to push the door open and to escape from her prison. I shook my head at her ingenuity. I’d known she would be a wily foe and she wasn’t letting my estimation of her cunning down.
She began screaming for her guards as I loped after her. My hands and machete were still dripping with the blood of her latest sexual conquest. Mucia could scream all she wanted. No one was coming to help her. It was just us two girls left in the mansion now. We would have all the time we needed to finish our business once and for all.
Chapter Eighteen
I caught up to the Comtesse in the same sitting room where I had dispatched four of her guards hours earlier. She had given up on shrieking for help when it became apparent that rescue would not be forthcoming.
Still naked and holding the arm bone like a spear, she whirled to confront me. “What have you done?” Fear warred with anger, making her almost ugly instead of exotically beautiful.
“I did what you would have done if our situations had been reversed, Mucia.”
Loathing at her hated name pushed all other emotion away for a moment. Then my words filtered through to her. “You have killed all of my fellow Councillors, courtiers and guards?” Fear was winning now and her voice dropped to a horrified whisper.
“Every last one of them,” I replied and smiled. It was devoid of amusement and she blanched away from it.
“You are no longer the naïve, stupid servant that I first met many months ago,” my nemesis observed.
“You mean the servant you ordered to undress in front of the entire Court?” I reminded her. She made a dismissive gesture with her stuffed glove. “And the servant you ordered Luc to behead and your guards to dismember?” I added.
Desperate and knowing she was trapped, the Comtesse clutched at the only straw she had left. “Colonel Sanderson will know that you are responsible for our deaths. My government will inform the Americans of what you have done when they discover that my Court has been decimated. The C
olonel and his people will scour the earth looking for you and they will not stop until they have found a way to contain you forever.”
“Actually,” I disagreed, “the men standing guard will tell their leaders that they have no idea what happened to you and your people and that they saw nothing strange at all tonight. No one will ever know I was here at all.”
Disbelief and even a momentary admiration for my cleverness crossed her face briefly. “You have enthralled them all and have altered their memories,” she correctly surmised.
After systematically stabbing every vampire in the mansion to death, I’d waited for a human to wander inside during their next patrol. I’d bamboozled him into calling the other soldiers inside one by one. I’d then hypnotized them all into believing everything was fine. After questioning the last man, he had informed me that they rarely interacted with the vampires. They might not even raise the alarm until night fell again once they snapped out of their hypnotism. I would be long gone and far away by then. No one would know it had been me who had murdered everyone in the building. Unless they dredged the bottom of the sea to retrieve my metal coffin, they would continue to assume I was still imprisoned.
“You can scream your head off and none of the humans will even hear you,” I told her.
Bowing her head, her shoulders slumped. “You have won, Mortis. Kill me so that I can join Lucentio in whatever afterlife awaits creatures such as us.”
I hated to admit it, but I fell for her humble tone. Maybe I was still the same naïve, stupid young vampire she had first met right in this very mansion so many months ago after all. I drew my machete back to stab her through the heart but she beat me to it and struck first. She speared the arm bone through my right eye and took off.
I pulled the bone free and my thoughts were scrambled for only a moment before my brain repaired itself. I dropped the makeshift weapon to the carpet and sprinted after my quarry. With my depth perception ruined, I misjudged the doorway and slammed into it with my shoulder. My eye regenerated as I stumbled sideways, returning my vision to normal and I was back in business again.
The Comtesse might be short but she was fast and she had a head start on me by the time I exited through the front door. A flash of her naked white body caught my eye. She was heading for an army jeep parked in the long driveway. I put on a burst of speed and caught up to her just as she reached for the handle.
Body slamming her into the door, bones splintered and the praying mantis turned to face me with her broken fingers curled into claws. Her stuffed glove had come off and she beckoned at me with her stump. I evened up our fight slightly by tossing the machete a few feet away. Using my bare hands to end this fight would be far more satisfying than giving her a quick death by machete.
We circled each other warily, searching for an opening. She feinted with her stump then clawed at my eyes with her fingers. I knocked her hand away then slapped her hard enough to make my palm sting. If she had been human, it would have taken her head off. As it was, a sharp crack meant something had broken. Steam rose from her skin and she screeched in agony as a red welt in the shape of a cross rose against her pale skin. I hadn’t activated the holy marks but this tended to happen when I used my hands in anger. The mark would feel like acid burning into her skin but it wouldn’t kill her.
The soldiers on patrol ignored us completely as we fought. I was glad I’d had the forethought to bamboozle them into believing everything was fine. Punching, clawing and slapping at each other, I had no doubt our battle would have been entertaining for them if they had been cognizant of it.
While bitch slapping the praying mantis was satisfying, I was hit with the sensation that time was running out. I had learned the hard way to listen to my instincts and they told me it was time to end the fight.
Grabbing the Comtesse’s right forearm, I released the power of my holy mark. Her horrified screams were shrill and ear splitting when the limb came free. I threw it aside and it hit the ground with a meaty thump. “Where is Luc?” I asked her. Backing away from me, she stared at her now matching stumps in a stupefied daze. “If you don’t tell me where he is, I’ll start at your feet and begin melting everything off until you talk,” I warned her.
That broke through her shock and she threw her stumps into the air. “I told you, he’s dead. You have taken everything from me,” she said with utter desolation, completely ignoring the fact that this was exactly what she’d promised she would do to me. “Go ahead and kill me. I have nothing left to live for now.” Her voice was hollow and I believed that this time she was truly broken. She would make no last ditch attempts to escape.
Stepping forward, I took her face in my hands and stared into her eyes. Bitterness and loneliness stared back at me. We both knew she was facing an endless future alone if I allowed her to live. “We are the same, you and I,” she told me softly. “We would both do anything to keep Lucentio in our beds. Let me die so my servant and I can be together forever.”
She couldn’t hide her anguish and it hit me then; Luc was gone. He and my friends had been killed after the Comtesse had bargained with Sanderson to save her own life. She may have been infatuated with Luc but she hadn’t truly loved him like I did. If she had cared for him, she would have done more than just try to keep him in her bed. She would have done anything to try to keep him alive.
“Go to hell where you belong, Mucia.” A surge of power had built up in my hands as my fury and heartache grew. Before she could retaliate to my usage of her hated name, I unleashed the holy marks. My arch nemesis exploded in a wash of ooze, guts and gore. Drenched in crud, I covered my face with my hands and dropped to my knees. Luc and the rest of my friends were gone and I would be alone forever. Wracked with dry sobs, I muffled my howls of anguish with my hands.
Sometime later, my grief was interrupted when I realized I was surrounded by humans. They had been drawn to me by my torment and stood clustered together. For a change, none of them were smiling goofily or telling me how beautiful I was. Their expressions were solemn and solicitous.
Dully dropping my hands, I climbed to my feet. Sorrow and loneliness had settled over me and the emotions were weighing me down. “What do you want?” I asked the closest human without interest. Couldn’t they see I was in no mood for company? My life had been altered beyond repair with the deaths of my friends. To borrow the late praying mantis’ line, I had nothing left to live for now.
“We want to make your pain go away,” the soldier replied in his native language.
“How do you propose to do that?” If any of them offered to have sex with me, heads would roll.
“We might be able to help you find your friends,” the bedazzled man replied.
I had him by the shirt and had pulled him down to my level before I registered my intention to move. His neck was bent backwards at an awkward angle so he could meet my gaze. “Tell me what you know,” I demanded.
“Some of the vampires resisted when they were captured in Bulgaria and were killed to set an example for the others.” I already knew that so waved for him to continue. “Colonel Sanderson had the rest of them taken to an airfield and then shipped to a secure facility.”
“Where is this facility?”
“I overheard one of the Americans say that it is somewhere in Denver.”
“Denver as in Colorado in America?” I asked him incredulously. For some strange reason, I’d expected my kin to still be somewhere in Europe.
“Yes, I believe so.”
I let him go and he staggered to his feet. His army training was strong enough that he automatically smoothed his shirt back into place. “Thank you, I feel much better now,” I told them. Happy to have helped, they dispersed and returned to their patrols.
While cautiously hopeful, I was far from ecstatic at the news I’d just been given. My friends and allies might have been shipped from Bulgaria to the U.S. but I had no way of knowing if any of them were still alive.
I’d always wanted to visit America but
had never had the time or money to do so. I’d never imagined I would travel to the U.S. on a secret rescue mission. God help Sanderson if my friends are dead, I thought grimly. One way or another, justice would be served. As Mortis, there could only be one form of justice. It would be swift, brutal and final.
Chapter Nineteen
My arch nemesis had finally been purged from Earth but the celebrations would have to be postponed for another time. I was too worried about my friends to spare a few moments to dance on the Comtesse’s slushy remains.
Before leaving the Court grounds, I ducked inside to take a shower and to raid one of the courtier’s wardrobes. The black pants were a size too big but the snug shirt and jacket fit me well enough. I found a pair of black shoes that were only slightly too big but had a three inch heel. Far from comfortable, they were better than nothing. Checking my reflection, I looked like a stylish ninja and would probably stand out more than I’d like but it would have to do.
As I headed for the airport, I ran through the disturbing dreams that had plagued me over the past few months. At least I now knew who had been in the dark void with me now, or who would be in the dark void with me when this vision came true. I had only been imprisoned for a few months rather than years. Even if Geordie hadn’t fed at all during that time, he couldn’t possibly have become so wizened so quickly. It would take far more than a few short months of starvation to reach such a decrepit state, surely? Maybe the warning had come to me in time to prevent it from happening. That isn’t very likely, my inner voice said darkly. Every vision I’d had so far had come true. Why should this one be any different?
