The Heads That Rolled
Page 6
Sebastien lunged for him again, but Lucius managed to jump away. “It’s your fault she’s dead. I begged her to stay away from you, and those damned revolutionaries,” Lucius said, swiping at Sebastien’s face again. This time, he managed to slice his right eyelid in twain.
The syrupy, black blood which poured from the wound struck a dissonant chord of dread within Sebastien’s soul, for what creature was he, if he did not bleed red? His eye screamed for mercy along with his disquieted spirit. Another surge of disgust and fury seized him, and the vampire became the sole target of his distress.
The cell was far too small for Lucius to avoid Sebastien’s grasp any longer. Despite the black, tar-like blood obstructing most of his view, Sebastien managed to tackle Lucius at the waist. With one swift jump, he pulled the struggling, bruised, and dizzy vampire down to the floor. Sebastien pinned Lucius beneath him, biting into his neck, tearing into his dead, quiet jugular. The taste of his foe was a firebrand in his mouth. The vampire’s blood danced upon his tongue in hues of bitter, stingy horseradish, and his muscles became invigorated despite the foul savour.
Terror and pain seized Lucius, and his bloodred eyes widened, aglow with the reflection of dozens of torches advancing down the corridors. Sebastien’s back was facing the door of the cell, and he could not see the advance. His once heightened senses, overcome with fury, were deadened to the threat winding its way through the abbey.
Metal doors creaked open, and prisoners screamed as the sans-culottes began the September slaughter. The drunk, enraged crowd swelled like the sea in a hurricane. A set of heavy iron keys jingled, and the door to Sebastien’s cell opened, bathing the small, filthy room in weak rays of light. Sans-culottes rushed inside, bearing pitchforks.
With his talons sharp as sickles, Lucius tore at Sebastien and sliced the skin on his arms and chest to ribbons. Sebastien’s skin ignited in pain, stinging with loathsome rampage. He groaned and tore yet more chunks of flesh from the vampire. Sinewy pieces of tendon and ripped veins hung from Sebastien’s fangs. Splintered bones pierced his lips, and his face was covered in the vampire’s blue blood.
The rival creatures were too enthralled in their rage, pain, and bloodlust to pay the mob any mind. Like a set of knives cutting into butter, one sans-culotte, his blue cap askew and sweat dappling his forehead, pierced Sebastien directly into the heart with a rusty pitchfork. The newly born halfling dhamphyr fell unconscious on top of Lucius, whose blood stilled, and neck began to stitch together. The sans-culotte let go of the pitchfork and fainted from both fright and drink.
Lucius saw his escape. He quickly transmogrified into his ermine form as the crowd tore apart the room, whooping and shouting with drunken delight, and continued their murderous advance throughout the prison walls. Hundreds of years’ worth of the lower classes’ suppression, fear, and agony boiled over that night into a frothy and heady mix.
Beneath Sebastien’s unconscious form, the ermine pressed himself between the dhamphyr’s pierced ribs and the dirty, cold floor, and ran out from underneath his half-immortal enemy. He dashed between dozens of pairs of dirty boots and muddied slippers, winding his way through the crowded hall. Someone stepped on his tail, and he swallowed a yelp. Finally, he reached the steps of the abbey prison. Keeping close to the risers, he climbed the stairs and scurried outside into the smoke-filled, night air of Paris.
The atmosphere of the city he so loved was as empty as a tomb without Therese in it. And his rivalry with Sebastien and his ambitions to open the Nephilim’s portal were the only thing that urged him to continue his twisted consciousness for many years to come.
VII
As daylight broke, the prison grew silent. On the cold, slate flashing of the abbey rooftop, a collared dove waited and listened. The air in Paris was still and heavy, as thousands of people hid inside their homes. Doors and windows were shuttered as last night’s murderous revival came to bleary-eyed light in the grey dawn of morning. The city rubbed the shame from its eyes, purple and bruised, with hands and fingers caked in blood.
The dove took flight, and fluttered down through an open window, entering the abbey. He flew through the dark, smoky halls, slowly beating his wings in the still air. The smell of anger and fear flooded his senses as he hastened his descent down the staircase into the prison below. Once he crossed the main landing, he could smell the newly minted dhamphyr, clean and cool as autumn rain, and fresh as plowed earth. The dove followed his faculties, gaining purchase on the location of the new halfling. The sight of dozens of broken bodies assaulted his vision. Clumps of hair, broken fingernails and gelatinous, visceral matter painted the walls and floors in myriad, sickening shades of browns, reds, and greens. Finally, he reached a bend in the subterranean corridor, and stopped midair, fluttering thrice, before transmogrifying.
Aldrich Coldiron landed on his feet without a sound. He was an impressive, muscular man. The untrained, human eye would have thought he was in the peak of mid-age, but Aldrich Coldiron was more than seven hundred years old. His bare feet crushed the loose straw on the prison floor as he entered Sebastien’s cell.
With his back to Aldrich Coldiron, Sebastien lay in a deadened slump with the pitchfork piercing his middle. He was as still as the grave.
Vampires and their halfling brethren were rendered into a frozen and dreamless state of unconsciousness if their hearts were pierced with anything other than hawthorn, for hawthorn was deadly. Sebastien breathed not, and he stirred not, as Aldrich approached him from behind.
Sebastien’s skin was an awful, deathly purple shade. Coldiron bent down and gripped the handle of the pitchfork. It was sticky with dried blood. He wrinkled his nose, and let go of the handle for a moment, searching for a part that wasn’t marred with filth. Coldiron hated the sight, the feel, and the smell of cold blood. It was an abomination to his heightened senses. It must be warm, and from the vein of the living.
Someone shouted an unintelligible plea deep inside of the prison, and to Aldrich Coldiron’s keen ears, he knew he must hurry. He came to a dry, clean spot on the handle of the pitchfork and tightened his grip. For a moment, he wondered if the newborn halfling knew of his transmogrifying power. Coldiron guessed he would be a stag or a spotted axis deer. The shouting grew louder, closer. Coldiron gave a swift tug on the pitchfork, loosening it from Sebastien’s ribs. The instrument gave a sickening, squelching sound as it left the dhamphyr’s body.
Sebastien gasped as his eyes opened, and he began to turn red.
* * *
To be continued . . .
Afterword
Nefarious V, the final book in the series, will be released on Valentine’s Day, 2019.
In the meantime, check out my newest work I am Drusilla, coming to Amazon on the fifth of November, 2018.
I am Drusilla
An Excerpt
Drusilla and Egino were lovers, and their passion began at the edge of time. In the dawn of their youth, they were the envy of all men and beasts, mortal and immortal alike. But jealousy is a horrible creature. And in the heart of an evil one, it becomes lodged in harder than a nail.
Drusilla’s jealous vampire brother, the Great King Abaddon, vowed to crush his eldest sister’s joy, unless she gave him what he truly wanted, a way to the sun. But he couldn’t touch her, for she was a witch of the most potent magic. With the flick of her wrist or a well-placed nod, she could shatter his ancient body to pieces. And so, the vampire king would take what she loved the most; Egino.
At dusk on the day of Drusilla and Egino’s wedding, The Great King Abaddon transmogrified into his viper familiar. He lay curled in the shaded, exposed roots of a great eucalyptus tree, waiting for the hopeful groom. With his slithering, forked tongue, the viper Abaddon tasted the vibrant air, seasoned with flora, peppered with the delicate scent of the sun’s rays, which he so longed to feel once more.
At the edge of time, the earth was always warm, and gods and mortals lived, died, fought, and loved together in a perpetual summer. But
the vampire king and his lowly brethren were cast into shadow. The daylight slowed their already sluggish, ghostly hearts, and the unbroken rays of the sun caused them great pain and the true death.
Egino approached the wedding eucalyptus. The youth was swarthy and robust. Abaddon could hear the half-mortal blood rushing through Egino’s veins, for the high witch Drusilla used the magic of eons to extend his life. The viper hissed as Egino stepped closer, with the shaman leading the wedding procession close behind. Tambourines clashed, horns blew, and lyres sang sweetly across the Elysian field. The music of the burgeoning crowd encouraged the snake, and he began to uncoil his slippery form slowly. The grass tickled his opening jaws, and the dust of the dry earth scratched his cold undercarriage.
Egino and the shaman stopped and waited for Drusilla in the shade of the eucalyptus tree, where the snake took his chance. With a quiet hiss, Abaddon struck the tender heal of his sister’s love.
Egino groaned, lifting his foot, and the viper let go. Abaddon hurried to slither away as the shaman chased the snake with the end of his club, pounding the earth, trying to break the snake in two. The snake struck the shaman as well, and slide into a hole in the ground.
The music ceased as the wedding goers screamed. And as the shaman and the youth fell to the parched earth, the sky immediately darkened. Thunder clapped, and a wicked breeze started, gathering strength as the viper disappeared deep into the underworld.
Also by Lucille Moncrief
Hannibal Steele and the Bone Elixir
Nefarious Volume One: A Dark and Erotic Tale
Nefarious Volume Two: Honor the Suffering
Nefarious Volume Three: The World is Our Exile
Nefarious Volume Four: The Dirigible Airship Disaster
I am Drusilla
The Keystone Curse