“Then let me free you,” Manus replied.
“You'll have to fight me.”
So they fought again, the flail swinging, the nails slashing. They danced that deadly dance of circles and spirals, tearing lumps out of each other, until both were weak and wounded, until both saw vultures up above, though some were spectral ones.
But Manus was not alone. The bolts of nails came again, striking Lorcan, and the lights flared up once more. The Stalkers came in force and held him down. He writhed in place, but the holds were strong.
Manus hobbled over and knelt upon his chest. Lorcan smiled and snarled. Then Manus took that fabled nail from his belt, followed by the faithful hammer. He lined them up at Lorcan's forehead.
“Through this we cleanse even Hell itself,” Manus said, repeating that sacred line.
Lorcan's smile, now less of a sneer, put Manus off. It seemed almost genuine.
“Please,” he said. “End it. End it now.”
Manus thought it was some trick, some attempt to delay or deceive, but there was an earnestness in Lorcan's voice, a hint of the human beneath the vampire. This one was unlike many of the others. The demon was there, but there was also something else.
“Hurry,” Lorcan pleaded. “For your sake as well as mine.”
Manus drove the hammer down, and the nail entered Lorcan's skull. The vampire wailed and struggled, and that same black shadow arose, drawn towards the nearby Torture Cube. Yet even as the demon was imprisoned, Lorcan spoke his dying words.
“Sweet … release.”
He turned to ash, joining the mountains of it that already littered the battlefield.
43 – AMIDST THE RUINS
The battle was waning, and the surviving forces limped away, few in number. Rua emerged from the castle, holding up her clenched fist. Those still fighting stopped once they saw her. From that hand, she let a stream of dust fall.
“Dearg had some final words for you,” she shouted. “Well, more like a final scream.”
James came out to join her, brandishing the Cross of St. Benedict, which glowed much more powerfully than before. He held it aloft, and the sky seemed to brighten. The straggle of wounded vampires backed away.
“Come down to meet your death, fiends,” Manus cried up to them. He was gravely maimed, and knew that he would bleed out soon. He would not survive the night, but much of the night would not survive either.
“I've met mine already,” Rua said.
James shrugged. “Eh, I can wait.”
“What's that?” Manus asked, staring at the cross. “Is that a blood warden in our midst?”
James stood tall. “You're damn right.”
“Not damned at all then,” the Stalker replied, though it was a struggle for him to talk. His fellow fighters caught him as he stumbled. “I can rest easy.”
The Order of Nails retreated, taking their fallen leader with them, and also several dozen Torture Cubes, packed tight. Those who were dust on the grasses got off lightly.
Boxer from the Favoured Fangs swaggered out of the castle and wrapped his arms around Rua and James, pulling them close. “Well, it's been fun,” he said. “Give us a shout the next war you're fightin'. And try not to have so much good china.” He took a broken shard out of his pocket and flicked it into the air. “That's temptin', that.”
Any surviving members of his gang followed him out. Neither Rua nor James had the strength to stop them, nor the will to fight. There had been too much death dealt at Umbra Montis already.
“So this is how it ends,” Rua said, looking around.
James caught her gaze. “Or how it begins.”
44 – THE BLOOD CULL
The fall of the Kavanagh clan had led to many unwritten rules being broken, including the so-called “blood quota” that kept the vampire numbers down. The O'Neills were not alone in turning new vampires; other families did it too, some in open, others in secret, fearful that they would be caught without an army in the impending war. The result was over a thousand new vampires operating in Dublin alone, with many more throughout the country.
James set out on a mission to cull these numbers, to restore the balance. He was not alone in this, for the government's secretive Project Dandelion agency, and the Order of Nails, set out on their own hunting sprees. Yet it was James who proved most successful, for his power inspired a legend to unfold, which spread as fast as the plague of vampires did. It spoke of some key moments, witnessed by a few, and told to all.
Those moments happened when James rescued some tourists in the Temple Bar area from a gang of newly-turned vampires. These fiends were weak, but stronger than humans, and very thirsty. James leapt down from the roof of a nearby pub, holding aloft the Cross of St. Benedict.
“A brave one,” the lead vampire said. He snarled.
“A healthy one,” another added, licking her lips.
James had not left much of a mark on the lower echelons of occult society yet, but he was about to. These vampires were too fresh to have heard of him, too full of the ideals of eternal life. They hadn't yet heard of eternal death.
One of the vampires raced towards James, claws at the ready. His speed would have made the normal eyes of a human question what they had just seen, but James saw it all. He held out the cross before him like a shield, then pulled it back and punched forward.
The vampire halted, his face ashen, his mouth agape. He trembled and looked down, where he saw the shape of the cross cut straight through him. From where James was standing, he could see the figures of the other vampires through the hole.
The vampire turned to dust mid-collapse, and the others fled in all directions, climbing up buildings, running down streets. Yet before the lead vampire could escape, James fired the cross at him. As it cascaded across, the end of it sharpened, and it pierced the back of the creature, tearing into its heart and turning it to dust even as it continued to run, then stumble, away.
The cross struck the ground with a clang, rocking back and forth until it settled. It was far away now, far enough for another vampire, stalking across the rooftops, to notice. It launched itself down, ready to strike. Then something happened that James did not expect. He held his hand out for the cross, as if it was within reach, and suddenly it rose into the air and came back like a boomerang into his grasp. The assaulting vampire froze just a second before James dusted it as well.
Then James looked at his arm, and he saw a ghostly arm melding with it. He felt a presence, strong and powerful, and knew that it was Lorcan. How, he could not say, and it seemed that Lorcan had no spectral voice with which to speak. He simply extended his arm for James, using his telekinetic powers to return the cross to him.
So it was on future occasions, as James continued the cull. He launched the cross, and it came back. He held it aloft, and the weaker, fresher vampires were rent asunder by it. He made a slashing motion a metre away from them, and they were sliced in half. He made a stabbing motion just out of reach, and it was as if they had been staked by hand. None of this worked on the stronger vampires of the Five Families, who were much more resilient, but it made James a legend among the occult world, someone to be respected, and someone to be feared.
45 – THE BOARD RESET
When the next Red Council was called, the surviving members of all Five Families were present. The O'Connors didn't have quite so many banners, and the O'Neills didn't have quite so many kin.
Rua sat upon her throne, as regal as ever, clutching her sceptre, letting the faint light shine upon her crown.
At her side sat James. He held her hand like Lorcan did, and through it, it seemed that Lorcan held it too.
“This is against tradition,” Ioana Danesti said. Her family stood in disgust around her, arms folded, faces dour.
“We'll make a new tradition,” Rua replied.
James smiled. “Our new perfect marriage.”
“The vampire world will never accept this. They'll fight you.”
James flicked the fi
ngers of his left hand at the cross perched at his side. “I've never been more ready for a fight.”
The Hibernian Hollows continues with Hibernian Charm.
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A final message from Dean:
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this adventure. Before you go, I'd like to ask you a small favour: if you liked what you read, please write a review on Amazon. Short and sweet is perfect. I really appreciate your feedback. Thanks! :)
Hibernian Blood (A Vampire Urban Fantasy) (Hibernian Hollows Book 1) Page 14
