Death Embraces

by J. C. Diem

  Relieved, Kokoro handed me the last piece of the suit, the red mask. “Go with my blessing and with my love.” She kissed me on both cheeks then glided away. The lump in my throat grew and now I was perilously close to dry-sobbing. It had been years since anyone had told me they loved me. For a moment, it almost felt like I had a mother again.

  Your mother is long dead and Kokoro will be a slave if you don’t kill the First and his imps, I told myself harshly. In a few hours, I would begin my trip home. It was time to finish the job I’d barely begun before I’d been beheaded by Luc.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Yori was waiting for me in my quarters again. He was still afraid of me but he knew his duty. He no longer wanted to sleep with me, so that was a plus. Not that it mattered since this was to be my last night on the island.

  His eyes went wide when he saw the ooze covering me but he kept silent. I think he would be relieved when his duty to me was done. I fed from him then sent him on his way without saying goodbye. He’d been a good food source but now his job was over.

  I took a long bath then gathered my few possessions. A backpack had been provided and I stuffed my new red suit, two extra black leather uniforms and my two swords into it. Lying down fully clothed in a third black suit, I willed myself to sleep.

  I was back in the vast cavern again. Shadows from the bonfires danced on the dirt floor like ghouls at a feast. Flames leapt towards the rock ceiling far above.

  As per the first time I’d dreamed myself into this place, I didn’t have control of my movements or direction. I was drawn past the fires and the caged humans. The number of cages had increased alarmingly since I’d last been sucked into this dream.

  A mini city had been created within the cavern. To the left were the caged human cattle. Nearby were tents that had been erected for the vampires who had yet to become possessed. Many of the tents seemed to be empty. Either their occupants weren’t in the cave, or their shadows had ascended.

  I guessed the second choice was more likely when I saw the milling mass of vampires that had been taken over by their silhouettes. As always, they were doing a lot of posturing but were accomplishing very little. In between states, they didn’t seem to require either food or sleep. No tents had been erected for them.

  Already converted into their flesh and blood state, the grey imps watched the darkest part of the cavern. Counting them quickly, there were now over forty of the monsters. Their orange eyes glowed softly, seeming to know that something was about to happen. I sensed it as well and tension stiffened my spine.

  Gliding closer, I came to a stop near one of the imps. It didn’t sense me hovering so closely behind it. I could smell its sweat and the sweet, pork-like smell of the last human it had eaten. Why are there so many human captives if there are less than fifty imps? I knew my question was about to be answered when the First stepped forward into the light.

  One by one, the possessed halted their useless chatter then began to drift towards their leader. The First waited silently until a semi-circle of shadow controlled creatures five or six deep surrounded him. All had been irresistibly drawn to him without him speaking a word.

  “My children,” the First said into the silence, “the time has come for you to relinquish your servitude to your hosts.” He wasn’t speaking to the vampires but to the dark creatures that had taken them over. Completely still now, like humans that had been hypnotized, they watched him raptly.

  Raising his hands, the First slowly clenched them into fists. Long claws cut through his flesh and black blood flowed. “Rise, my children! RISE!”

  At his command, the shadows were suddenly sucked inside their vampire host’s bodies. Then, in an explosion of blood, guts and a clear, watery fluid, new, much larger, bodies burst forth out of the old. Screams of agony and ecstasy rang out during the transformation.

  I had just witnessed the birth of an entire army of imps and I was covered in their gunk from head to toe. My lips wrinkled back from my teeth in shocked disgust. Wiping my face, I scraped an eyeball off my cheek. It fell to the ground and burst. Oh, gross!

  Orange eyes blinked, surveyed each other and approved of their new forms. Grins stretched malformed mouths and forked tongues flicked out. Each imp seemed to have been cloned from the same cells. All were revolting, unnatural and most of all, evil.

  Surveying his army of damned, the First grinned in savage pleasure. He’d waited patiently for this moment for tens of thousands of years. Now it was time for the long dead demi-god’s offspring to take over the world.

  “Over my dead body,” I whispered and hundreds of grey, batlike heads whipped in my direction.

  “Ah,” breathed the First, “Mortis has come to pay us a visit.” Nervous, guttural titters ran through the throng.

  Against my will, I began to drift over to him. The crowd parted and I floated down a narrow corridor of seven foot monsters. One leaned forward and snuffled my hair with its flat snout. It grinned at me and drool dripped from its mouth. Just like new born vampires, these monsters had been born hungry. Now I understood why there were so many human captives. They would shortly be spitted over the fires, roasted then eaten.

  I came to a stop before the First. He had moved back into the darkness and was seated on his bone throne. “As you can see,” he waved a clawed hand at the naked, goo ridden throng, “my army is nearly ready. Soon, we shall overrun the humans and then I shall rule.” An expression of extreme arrogance settled onto his misshapen face.

  “And what is your grand plan for taking over seven billion or so people with only several hundred monsters?” He seemed a little put out by that. “Yeah,” I said to the thing that had once been human and had thought eternal life sounded like a good idea, “there are a few more people now than there was when you were human.”

  Leaning forward, he stared at me intently. The red glow of his eyes washed over my black leather suit, turning it bright red. He grimaced at the suit then dismissed it. “I had forgotten that humans breed like rats,” he mused. “Then I have only one option.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “I will make more of my children.”

  “How? It looks to me like you’ve already gathered most of your followers. Are you going to make the few vamps you haven’t turned into hell-spawn turn more humans into vampires? Great plan,” I sneered, “it takes decades if not centuries for your diseased blood to possess them.”

  Snaking out a hand, the First grabbed me by the arm and yanked me forward. “How little you know of my powers.” Up this close, his breath was hideous. “I have control over all vampires, even the ones that have not yet ascended.”

  Uh oh, my panicked brain muttered, this can’t be good. Pulling me even closer, the First whispered a word into my ear then thrust me away.

  Spinning through the air, I was headed directly for the rock wall. I closed my eyes and waited for the impact that would shatter most of my bones.

  I opened my eyes a few seconds later when there was no impact. Rock was above me but it was a ceiling, not a wall. “Thank G-G-G.” Halting my stutter, I tried again. “Thank fuck that was just a dream.”

  Falling asleep again wasn’t going to happen so I climbed out of the low bed. Thankfully, the goo that had covered me in my dream didn’t follow me into wakefulness. I still felt dirty so headed for the bathroom to wash up.

  I didn’t actually notice that anything was wrong with me until I turned on the pair of oil lamps before washing my face. Even then it took a few seconds before something weird caught my eye.

  Turning my head slowly, I saw the anomaly, staggered back and dropped the wash cloth to the floor. Against the wall, my shadow also staggered back and dropped a shadow washcloth. So did the second one. And the third. “What the hell?” Three identical silhouettes overlapped each other.

  My legs felt strength-less and rubbery from shock. Oh my God, the dream wasn’t just a dream. It was real. I remembered the word the First had whispered t
o me and went cold all the way through to my core. “Rise,” he’d said and the extra shadows that had been in hiding had obeyed him. But why do I have three of them?

  Leaving the bathroom, I sank down onto a cushion on the floor. A crazy theory was insistently banging around inside my brain, trying to get out. It was possible that I had three shadows now because I’d been infected with vampire blood not once, but a total of three times.

  My shadows had risen but they weren’t showing any signs of sentience yet. I doubted the First was aware of my strange history. He had no way of knowing that I had the blood of three different vampires in my system. This seemed to have put a bit of a crimp in his plans. My shadows had been given the order to rise by their ultimate leader but something had gone wrong somewhere and I wasn’t being controlled by any of them. “Not yet anyway,” I said and put my hands over my face.

  Surely it was only a matter of time now before I became possessed. I wasn’t sure how that would work with three different shadows ready to do the actual possessing. My mission to find and kill the First had just become even more urgent. I had to take him down before I became the very thing that I had been fated to destroy; one of the damned.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With another hour left before the sun would fade from the sky, I paced up and down inside my temporary suite. Some of the older vampires set to guard the fortress would be awake and moving around. I decided it would be safer to just stay where I was after watching my shadows overlap each other as I paced the floor. They were still behaving like normal shadows but the sight of them might cause a panic. If anyone else could see them, that was. Maybe only I could see them since I was the one and only whacky Mortis. God, I hope so.

  At last, a polite knock sounded. Snatching up my backpack, I shouldered it and opened the door. A guard bowed silently and headed down a hallway I’d never been down before. Time was of the essence if I wanted to be ashore before the sun rose again. I trotted along behind the guard as he led me to a staircase. It descended into darkness, unpleasantly reminding me of the First’s lair.

  Thankfully, there were no bonfires with tasty human treats charring away over the flames or hordes of imps at the bottom. Instead, there was only a dank tunnel that smelled strongly of seawater. The tide was out at the moment but I could tell by the glistening walls that the tunnel would be waterlogged at high tide.

  We emerged from the tunnel onto a tiny beach. Broken shells gleamed whitely against the damp sand. Two vampire guards waited near the water. So did my ride. The boat was similar to the one I’d stolen from the smugglers to reach the island in the first place. Without needing any urging, I crossed the beach and leapt nimbly into the boat. The guard already on board nodded at me briefly then signalled to the other two to push us off.

  With one heave, we were in the water. Starting the motor, the guard slowly and carefully negotiated a path through the rocks. Without a guide, it would have been impossible to make it to or from shore without destroying the boat.

  When we were finally through the rocks, the guard cranked up the speed. His face remained stoical as small waves splashed him. Since I was a passenger this time, I stowed my pack where it would remain dry and took a seat.

  My chauffer remained silent during the trip and I made no effort to start a conversation with him. Worry ate at me, making small talk seem trivial. The First had awoken his army of evil offspring. More vampires would be making their way to him as their shadows took control. From what I’d just dreamed, the First had power over all vampires. Does that mean he’ll be able to call all of us to him now? I had to find him and stop him before his army became large enough to rise to the surface and take over the world.

  Times had changed since the crash-landed alien had first infected the idiotic human who’d wanted to live forever. Now mankind had weapons designed to blow apart large vehicles like tanks and massive battleships. We also had nuclear weapons that could devastate whole cities. Once the possessed ascended to their imp states, they seemed to become flesh and blood again, going by my dreams or visions or whatever they had been. Maybe the humans would be able to battle the monsters with their modern weaponry and win. Then again, maybe they wouldn’t. For all I knew, bullets might not have any effect on them. My best and perhaps only chance to stop the carnage before it began would be to kill the First myself.

  As land, and dawn, drew close, I had a rudimentary plan in place. My goal was to hunt down the Comtesse and torture the whereabouts of the First out of her. Ok, it was a crappy plan without much detail but it was all I had.

  Jumping into the water, I hauled the boat up onto dry land as the guard lifted the propeller clear. We pushed the boat up the beach and into a small copse of trees. Together, we did a pretty good job of hiding it beneath a camouflage net that had obviously been used for this purpose before.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I told the guard then jogged up a rocky slope. When I glanced back, the guard was smoothing out the sand to hide the boat’s arrival. He’d have somewhere to hide before the sun came up in another hour. Now I needed to do the same.

  This beach was just as inhospitable and remote as the one I’d left China from four months ago. We might even be near the same spot I’d hijacked the smuggler’s boat from. Scaling a crumbling cliff, I hoisted myself over the edge and took off running. Spying a concentration of lights in the distance, I judged that I would have just enough time to reach them.

  Sprinting hard, I entered a large coastal town with only minutes to spare. With little choice, I ended up in the sewers again. This time, instead of inhospitable sewer vamps, my only company was garbage, cockroaches and rats. None were on my list of objects or creatures I wanted to hang out with.

  As always, the smells were terrible. Passing what might have been a dead dog that had been washed down from the drain above, I screwed up my nose and hurried past. Not needing to breathe came in very handy sometimes.

  Deep inside the sewer where sunlight couldn’t penetrate and barbeque me, I didn’t feel like lying down on the unclean ground so kept moving. I’d grown used to sleeping on a comfortable mattress.

  Unfortunately, the sewers were nowhere near as extensive as the ones beneath London had been. Coming to my third dead end in a row, I realized I wasn’t going to be able to travel any further underground. I might as well take a break.

  It was safe enough here in the dead end so I put my pack down, sat and took the pair of swords out. I’d been taught how to sharpen and care for the blades so did just that. Refusing to acknowledge my fear that if I slept again I might dream about the First and his army of imps again, I waited out the long day for nightfall.

  Hours later, sensing that the sun had at last relinquished its hold on the earth, I made my way back up to the surface. I was in luck and found a manhole that opened into an alley. I’d never been fond of alleys as a human but as a vampire they were a useful tool. Gently setting the lid down, I wiped my hands on the slick black leather pants. Examining my outfit with a critical eye, I decided I’d better find a change of clothes or risk being noticed.

  Flitting through the shadows, I spied an open window of a dingy apartment three floors up. The ladder had been retracted but that wasn’t about to stop me. I launched myself up and landed lightly on the metal walkway on the first floor. Swiftly and silently, I climbed up two more floors then crouched near the open window.

  Peering inside, I found I was in luck. From the clothes strewn all over the floor and the collection of makeup on the dresser, the bedroom belonged to a girl. Two female voices came from further inside the apartment, bickering good naturedly about what they were going to eat for dinner. While they were busy arguing, I crept inside and raided the closet. Holding up a pair of jeans to judge their size, my head whipped around when one of the voices drew closer.

  Since my vampire mojo only worked on straight men and lesbians, I had only a slim chance of hypnotizing the woman who was about to enter the room.

  “Fine!” she called ov
er her shoulder as she pushed the door open, “we’ll go to the restaurant with the cute waiter. Again.” Her tone was indulgently exasperated. “I’ll just get changed and we can go!” She called this out because she was half buried in the closet.

  Hiding beneath the western style bed, I watched as she searched through the built-in wardrobe. “Hey, did you borrow my favourite jeans again?” she stuck her head out to ask.

  “No! I wouldn’t dare after the fuss you made the last time,” her roommate called back.

  “Like hell you wouldn’t,” the girl in the closet muttered. “If you didn’t borrow them then where the hell are they?” Giving up her search, she grabbed another pair of jeans and changed quickly.

  The pair left the apartment, still arguing like an old married couple. Emerging from beneath the bed, I stripped and pulled on the jeans. They were a little snug in the butt area but had enough stretch to accommodate my slightly fuller curves. I found a dark blue t-shirt and black jumper with a hood that I could pull up and partially hide my face if necessary. Stealing a bra was out of the question, I was much bigger in the chest area than the girl I was pilfering from.

  Done with my thieving, I retreated back to the ground. It was much quieter to simply jump down than to use the rusty fire escape ladder. As I worked my way through the narrow alleys, I debated about whether to pull the hood up or not. I decided I should since I was obviously not Chinese. The idea was to blend in, not to stand out. The Comtesse might have been warned by traitorous Japanese soldiers that I was coming for her and I didn’t want to make it easy for her to know I was out for her blood.

  It was dark in the alleys but I had no trouble traversing over and around the garbage, discarded furniture and bums that attempted to block my way. Standing at the mouth of an alley, I surveyed the street and tried to decide what my next step should be. There were plenty of cars parked up and down the street but hotwiring vehicles wasn’t in my repertoire of skills. I suddenly missed Luc intensely. He would have been able to steal any car in the area easily.