It had just begun, she realized, and at the same time she understood that her old life had come to an end. Allison knew she ought to have mourned that passing, the end of an era, but somehow she didn’t have the energy.
Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 10:35 P.M.:
“Oh, my God!” Courage said, and Cody would have agreed, but he was speechless. He had joined Meaghan, Courage and the nearly speechless Stefan on the ground as Peter soared skyward with Mulkerrin in tow, and had watched in astonishment as the sorcerer’s body shattered wetly not far from where they stood.
“How in hell did he do that?” Stefan blurted finally.
All is not what it seems, John Courage’s calm voice said in Cody’s head, taking the edge off his own anxiety, though he knew from the Stranger’s initial reaction that he was not as calm as he sounded.
“What’s going on, Stranger?” Meaghan demanded of Courage, and Cody wondered if she was thinking the same thing he was, that this was not the Peter Octavian they knew. A thousand years in Hell explained a lot, but how much?
And then Cody saw that the answers would not be long in coming, because Octavian was descending, gliding down toward them even as Charlemagne’s troops formed up in military fashion behind himself, Courage and Meaghan. Charlemagne himself had gone to inspect Mulkerrin’s body, even as Octavian landed on the cobblestones twenty feet in front of the gathered vampires. In seconds, the sorcerer’s death was confirmed.
It said something, Will Cody felt, that he and Meaghan did not immediately rush to Octavian’s side, and he glanced over at her, nodding almost unconsciously as they made the decision not to approach him at all. Everything about Peter, his manner of moving, of speaking, had suddenly become alien to them. Certainly Courage had sent Meaghan, Alexandra and Lazarus to Hell to retrieve Peter because he’d thought Octavian could be of help. Peter had obviously shared his time in Hell with Mulkerrin, and if one had grown powerful, it was assumed the other might have benefited as well.
But what powers had Octavian gained, to so easily murder a madman they had fought so hard and so fruitlessly to overcome?
“Your time away from this world has changed you, Nicephorus Dragases,” John Courage said, and Cody was only partially surprised that Courage knew Peter Octavian’s birth name. After all, he knew about all his blood-children. On the other hand, Cody expected Octavian to be shocked by it, and perhaps Courage did as well. But such was not the case. Octavian merely smiled.
“Such a simple ploy, Stranger,” Octavian said, his voice sounding harsh, guttural. “So you know my true name, and names have power, as we know. But I know you, as well. I know who and what you are, and I know your name. I know the games you play on this plane, with these creatures.”
“You know nothing,” Courage said flatly, his eyes not betraying either hostility or concern.
“On the contrary,” Octavian said grimly, his eyes slitted now, mouth set in a line, “it is you who know nothing, are nothing.”
Octavian took several steps toward them, and Cody and Meaghan automatically took up fighting stances, while Courage, Charlemagne and his one hundred soldiers did little more than blink.
“Charlemagne,” Courage said, and Cody felt as if he’d been broken out of a trance. Here was a vampire, the first vampire and the true king of shadows if everything Cody believed were true, calling to battle one of the most powerful kings in Europe’s history, also a vampire, against a shadow who had only five years earlier saved their race, not to mention the fact that Octavian and Cody were blood-brothers, and friends.
“Peter,” Cody said, and caught Meaghan’s warning look out of the corner of his eye. “What’s the matter with you? What’s going on here?”
He stepped away from the group, and toward Peter, even as Charlemagne came forward and drew his sword, a challenge to Octavian, only two yards away. But Cody was having none of it, stepping between that gleaming silver sword and his strangely acting friend.
“You’ve finally defeated Mulkerrin, and we may not have the answers, but it’s what we all wanted,” Cody said, meeting Peter’s eyes and finding only ice there. “We’re friends, brothers. Why are we suddenly at odds?”
He could see that his words were having no effect, so he reached out to lay a hand on Octavian’s shoulder.
“Peter, please explain . . .,” Cody began, and then erupted into a terrible scream as his hand landed on Octavian’s shoulder. His hand was burning, burning with a pain unlike anything he had ever experienced, nearly blinding him. And he couldn’t let go.
“Dolt!” Octavian yelled. “Those who touch me, die!”
And Cody realized that, somehow, he was dying. As the burning began to spread up his arm from his hand, he knew its tendrils would reach his heart and brain, and immortal or no, he would die. Whatever Mulkerrin had, Peter had that and much more.
Then the pain was gone, and his hand with it. Cody found himself lying on the cobblestones, clutching at the place where his hand had been. He looked up to see Charlemagne bringing his sword down in a crushing sweep toward Octavian’s neck, and Cody realized that the old king had cut off his hand, saving his life. Apparently, he was not invulnerable to all magic. Something told him that, whatever Octavian had done to him, it would be a while before he could grow his hand back.
Charlemagne’s sword sliced toward Octavian’s neck, and his soldiers were already moving in to back him up as Octavian reached up and stopped the blade with his bare hand then yanked it from Charlemagne’s grip. Peter turned the blade on its owner then, with a lightning-fast thrust that skewered the bearded ancient before he could move out of the way, and long before any of his soldiers could defend him. Octavian pressed close, hugging Charlemagne to him, and pulled up on the hilt of the sword, ripping the old king’s insides even as a half dozen of Charlemagne’s warriors tore the two apart and drove Octavian to the ground.
Even as the warriors struggled with him, they screamed with the pain of the same fire that had burned Will Cody, and Courage yelled, “Leave him alone!” But it was too late for those six, as their bodies withered to grotesque husks in seconds and began crumbling into flaky ash.
“You son of a bitch, who are you?” Meaghan shrieked as she leapt forward, her right hand extended to become a metal claw which tore the flesh off the left side of Octavian’s face.
Peter lashed out at Meaghan, and the blow hurled her, tumbling, twenty feet across the plaza, in the direction of the huge gash in the earth Mulkerrin’s last earthquake had left.
“Stop!” Courage shouted, and Charlemagne’s troops froze.
Cody struggled to his feet and went to help Meaghan, as two warriors knelt by Charlemagne’s side and helped him up. Half of Octavian’s face was torn away, and not healing. Cody noticed, but he merely stood, arms crossed, waiting for Courage to speak.
“You went to great lengths to arrive on this plane,” Courage said to Octavian. “Don’t think for a moment that you will be staying.”
“Oh, I shall stay, and I fully expect you to stay out of my way,” Octavian said reasonably. “In fact, I would suggest you abandon this plane altogether.”
“Do you get any of this?” Cody asked Meaghan, completely confused.
“Unfortunately,” she answered, “I think I’m beginning to. Though why they’re standing there chatting and not going at it tooth and claw is beyond me.”
“But that’s Peter!” Cody said, bewildered.
Meaghan only looked down at where his hand used to be, as she held both arms over her chest, crushed from Octavian’s blow, and then she looked back at Cody’s face.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said.
Cody looked over to where John Courage and Peter Octavian squared off, and he stared hard at Octavian’s face, at his eyes. And he could no longer deny the truth of what he saw.
“We’ve been set up,” he groaned. “The whole fucking thing, just a setup!”
Movement blurred in front of him,
as Courage’s hands grew huge and impossibly long, each finger a razor-sharp silver blade, and he dove for Octavian—who didn’t move as those blades passed through him and emerged out the other side. His face showed that the silver caused great pain, and he hung there, impaled ten times over, until Courage removed the blades and Octavian slumped to the ground.
“Oh,” Octavian said breathlessly as he knelt, bent over his wounds, “you’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Kill him,” Courage ordered. “Send him back where he came from.”
Ninety old and powerful vampires moved in, their silver swords held high.
And then Octavian began to grow, his skin tearing away in strips from what was underneath.
21
Pongau Basin, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 10:53 A.M.:
Rolf Sechs lay in the ruins of the mountainside, at the edge of a crater where ice caves had once stretched beneath tons of stone and soil. The caves were still there, extending for miles on either side of the crater, underground. But on a quarter-mile, roughly circular scar of land, thermite had blasted down to bare stone. Ash and debris, by whatever had not been vaporized and set free to the winds by the blast, floated down to form a fine layer on the stone.
Rolf was in pain, but he was alive. That was pure, unadulterated luck. He never would have guessed what Hannibal had in mind. Rolf could not have known that the elder had prepared a retreat before he betrayed the SJS, but he felt he should have known. Hannibal had not only had a group of his followers stay behind, out of the battle, but he’d had them set a trap in the ice caves, laying thermite charges in that cavern. And it had worked, to a point.
Two things had conspired to keep Rolf alive: his feelings for Elissa and Hannibal’s ego Flying up to attack Hannibal, even as Elissa’s gored body was dropped, another vampire might have dodged her falling body in order to reach her killer. Rolf couldn’t do that; the human part of him wouldn’t allow it. It was more important to slow her fall, to see if there was any life left in her, to ease her passing somewhat, if at all possible. And if she were dead, he still had to have respect for her corpse. Besides, there had been four other vampires there to press the attack on Hannibal.
Still, Rolf would have died had not Hannibal, at the last moment, shown his savage hand. Jared, Carlos and Annelise were on the attack, nearing the hole in the ceiling to the cavern. Rolf and Erika lay sprawled in a pile on the ground with the corpse of Elissa Thomas on top of them. Rolf had looked up then and seen what Hannibal held in his hand. His reaction was instantaneous. Only in flight was survival possible; and only in survival, vengeance.
Leaving what he now knew was only the empty husk of his lover, and grabbing hold of Erika, he rushed with all his vampiric speed toward the tunnel through which they had entered. Even as Hannibal set off the thermite charges, Rolf had metamorphosed into a flaming ball of ash, and seeing this, Erika was in the process of doing the same as the explosion rocked the cavern.
Rolf had concentrated on keeping himself together as the heat of the blast obliterated the tunnel around them shooting him forward like a flaming bullet in the barrel of a gun. At the edge of the blast area, he’d managed to crawl up from the tunnel, and now, as he got to his knees, every atom in his body screaming from the pain of healing, he finally had time to wonder what had happened to the others. He was fairly certain that Annelise, Carlos and Jared could not have survived, but Erika? What had happened to her?
She was far younger than he, and though he’d shoved her in front of him just as he made his change, she might not have had the concentration to retain cohesion under the buffeting force of the blast. Her molecules might have been spread through the fire of the thermite explosion, becoming a part of it. She might very well be dead.
Several minutes passed before he could stand, but when Rolf managed it, he made his way back down into the crater. It would be useless to search the scorched earth, he knew, but if Erika had survived, there was only one place she could be. The tunnel. It was much wider now, ice melted away from stone, blasted and blackened even this far away from ground zero.
About thirty feet in, away from the crater, where not all of the ice had melted, he found Erika. Her flesh was charred, and her left leg seemed to be missing from the knee down. Rolf assumed that she had not completed her change when the thermite charges exploded, but however it had happened, that leg would take a long time to reconstruct itself. Still, Erika had survived, and that was more than he could say for the others.
When he lifted her head into his lap, Erika moaned. Rolf stroked the new growth of hair that had already sprung from her pink scalp, and she opened her eyes. Erika tried to talk then, seeing that she was in Rolf’s hands, and barely managed “The others . . .?”
Rolf only shook his head, for he could give no other response, and Erika’s eyes closed for a moment. When she opened them again, twin tears, pink with blood, streaked her flaking cheeks.
Don’t worry, young one, Rolf thought as he cradled the girl in his arms, you’ll be better soon.
And then we’ll hunt the bastard down.
Salzburg, Austria, European Union.
Wednesday, June 7, 2000, 10:59 A.M.
Meaghan had seen the demon before, and now she stopped wondering why he hadn’t attacked them when they had invaded his sanctuary in Hell. Even as Beelzebub grew, tearing his way out of Peter Octavian’s flesh, which slapped the cobblestones as he shed it, Charlemagne’s troops were on him. They kept a distance, respectful of the power the demon had already shown, yet slashed at him with silver swords. The demon was hurt by the silver, but laughed as he grew. One warrior got too close, and the demon’s now huge hands lifted the man, tearing him in two, and when the halves of him hit the ground, they were no more than steaming bones.
And the same will be your fate. The thing’s voice slithered into Meaghan’s head, and she remembered it from those years ago in Venice. That was why she had not been able to mind-link with Peter; his mind, if it still existed, was not in control of his body.
Get out of my head, filthy creature! she thought, and put a hand to her scarred face.
I just wanted to say that your girlfriend was a very tasty morsel, that terrible voice said and filled her head with laughter, but then, you knew that, didn’t you?
She didn’t bother screaming her rage as she began to change, forcing herself into the winged human form that seemed so well suited for battle, coping with the pain of learning such a change. But just as she took wing, strong hands held her legs, pulling her back to earth. She spun to attack, only to find Will Cody and John Courage defending themselves from her blows.
“What are you doing?” she screamed at them. “It’s taken everyone I loved from me! First one lover, then my real love. Cody, they were your brother and sister! We’ve got to destroy it.”
She tried again, to pull away, but they wouldn’t let her go. Instead, they both pressed closer to her, forcing her to do what she didn’t want to, to look at their faces and see the reason there, all the reasons, she ought to stay back.
Charlemagne, Courage called out mentally, and Meaghan was surprised that she could hear it, keep the damned thing occupied!
“Play all you want, Stranger!” the thing’s voice boomed. “But I’ve won, and you know it. Once I’ve destroyed this group, the game is over, and to the victor go the spoils!”
Meaghan tried not to look at it, but couldn’t help herself. Even though she had recognized the demon, it did not look the same as it had that terrible night in Venice. It was perhaps thirty-five or forty feet tall, with reptilian flesh and hooves rather than feet. It was an awful gray-green, which seemed to absorb the sun rather than reflect it, and its head had more eyes and teeth than it seemed the thing ought to have been able to accommodate. Its horns and scaly, ridged back made it look more dinosaur than demon. Meaghan realized that it was hardly as ugly as many of the other creatures they had battled, but it was far more fearsome in it
s power, in its intellect, in its true evil.
The demon-lord Beelzebub met her eyes, and she thought it smiled before she looked away.
“Meaghan, snap out of it!” Cody was yelling at her. She shook her head, and knew she’d been over the edge for a minute. She touched her face and found that the scars had healed, then released a breath and nodded, telling him she was all right.
“So what do we do?” she asked. “What can we do?”
“We’ve got to send him back!” Stefan said loudly, and they both looked at him in surprise, having nearly forgotten he was there.
“We need the spell!” Cody swore loudly.
“It won’t work,” Courage said gravely, his face sculpted into a deep frown. “I know the spell that would send him back, if he had been summoned. Demons are only able to come to Earth through a summoning, but in this case, the way was opened by Lazarus, and Beelzebub wore the flesh of Peter Octavian to pass through the portal unscathed.”
“But there must be another spell,” Stefan continued. “If Lazarus opened the way here, we must be able to open the way back and force the demon through!”
Stefan was pleading, and Meaghan said a silent prayer that he was right, but the look on the Stranger’s face when he turned to them was one of despair. She shivered as he spoke, sternly, so Stefan would stop pushing, and Cody put a hand on the young shadow’s shoulder.
“There is a spell,” Courage said with great sorrow. “And it might be able to force the demon to return to its home. But to use it would allow, would invite, other demon-lords into our dimension, and then what?”
Meaghan’s mind was whirling with questions; how to destroy or banish the demon in their midst, and how John Courage could have known these spells in the first place were chief among them. It was clear to her that they needed The Gospel of Shadows, but Lazarus had had that book in his hands when he was trapped in Hell. She realized now that Beelzebub had somehow engineered that event, to keep the book on the other side. And now Courage seemed to be losing the confidence he had shown.
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