by Oliver Atlas
I raise my hand in turn. And pull the AbraCannon’s trigger.
With a startled scream, the woman flies across the room and slams into the wall, crumpling down to the floor. Her head snaps up and the soft allure of her face is gone. “I’ll murder you,” she grates through clenched fangs.
“No you won’t, sister,” rumbles the figure behind us. He throws back his hood to reveal a masculine face to match hers: strong, chiseled, and darkly regal. “It’s my turn.”
I stride down the center of the sanctuary to stand before the man I know to be Gavalier Lightkeeper, the Mayor of Bentlam.
“What do you want, Mr. Prose?”
“I want Jenny.”
“Hmm . . . do you know how hard it is to find and discreetly secure a girl with her particular qualities?”
“I have no idea. And it doesn’t matter.”
Lightkeeper rumbles another dubious hmm. “Doesn’t it? Is that because it doesn’t matter to you? Well, it matters to us. The Nameless One keeps us in food. It keeps us from feeding on your kind. It keeps us at peace. Surely, you should appreciate that. Surely, you can appreciate the grays in life. You can appreciate that we are what we are, and do what we must.”
“Not really,” I say, raising the cannon to his chest. “I can appreciate that you’ve grown used to living in your current state. I can appreciate that you’ve grown used to its power, its lusts, its illusions. You think you don’t have to face death. You think you’ve transcended good and evil. But all you’ve done is taken a piece of humanity’s basic despair and twisted your soul around it.”
Lightkeeper sniffs. “Proud words from a provincial boy.”
“Not really,” I say, feeling weary anguish. “They’re honest words from a selfish man. I can only tell you what you are because I can imagine all too well how easily I could be the same—how I already am the same in many ways. So when you speak of appreciating life’s grays and accepting your bloodsucking identity, I can only hear you asking me to join you in make-believing that the illusions you’ve built atop far-gone, childish choices, are lasting and good. It’s pretty much the same as when you ask me to let you have one girl—just Jenny—for the sake of all your so-called kind. You want the ends to justify the means. You want the ends to erase and write over the means. You want to turn life into a game of moods and whims, of sums and scales.”
“What I want,” he says, “is for you to—”
“I’m not finished,” I break in. “You want control. But as long as your desires and identity are built atop lies, you’ll create only lies. And no matter how beautifully you may spin and adorn them, they’ll still be ugly, they’ll still be petty, they’ll still be rotten with a worming splinter of torment. You’re a person, not a god. You’re a man, not a monster.”
The great vampire narrows his brooding eyes. “Are you done with your tawdry rhetoric, boy?”
With a sigh, I nod and fire the cannon once more. Gavalier Lightkeeper plunges backwards through the curtain and disappears with a crash. His sister leaps for me with a snarl and the cannon fires again, flinging her away. I doubt the cannon will keep me alive for much longer, but, I remind myself, ultimately I’m not trusting the cannon to keep me alive. I’m trusting it to get me to Jenny.
With a grim stride, I enter the inner sanctuary.
Behind the curtain is a drab cement room. A single, lidless lightbulb dangles from the ceiling to cast things in a brackish white light. Twenty feet to my left, Mayor Lightkeeper rises to his feet. To my right, chained to the wall like a gothic installment of Da Vinci’s Universal Man, is Jenny. Her head is shaved. Her body bruised. Her eyes closed. Before her stands Hinton Maplenut. He is wearing his typical frumpy suit and mischievous smirk.
“Well, well . . . Mr. Prose. I’m so glad you made it. When I made you Western Ranger, I thought for sure either Yaverts or the Banshee would kill you. But I had a perverse hope that you might actually live up to the badge and make my life interesting. You see, when you’re as old and devious as I am, the worst thing in the world is boredom. It settles on us like sunshine on trolls. It turns us to stone—figuratively speaking, of course. Even considerable danger fails to thrill after a while. Most things can’t kill us, and even those that can kill us can be anticipated and calculated, and therefore, in a sense, possessed. You underdogs, however, are special. You mystic scrappers are what old monsters like me hunger to find. You’re so temptingly unpredictable.” Maplenut puts his hands on his hips. “I’m so glad you made it, Blake!”
And with that he vanishes.
My finger twitches on the cannon trigger and I catch myself just in time to keep from blasting Jenny. On pure instinct, I spin to find Lightkeeper flying at me, three inch fangs sprouting up and down from his jaws like a piranha’s. This time my finger knows what to do. The cannon rips the air and the venerable Mayor of Bentlam goes hurtling through the curtains again, landing in the outer sanctuary with a satisfying crunch.
Seizing my chance, I run for Jenny. I make it three steps before my face smashes into an unseen force and I flip onto my back, watching the AbraCannon fly away through the air.
“Hello, Blake,” says Maplenut, suddenly appearing over me and dropping his knee into my stomach with all his weight. I wheeze and writhe. My body feels as though half its organs have just been displaced. The stodgy man throttles me with one impervious hand and bends near, his breath bitter with blood and garlic. “You were an amusing little foe. Much more interesting than either Moon or Schlozfield. They play like old men, you know, so calculating and wise. You, on the other hand, try to be wise and wind up living from passion. You try to be cautious but end up giving yourself away in romantic gestures of hope.” Maplenut extends a finger, now tipped with a long black claw. He taps my nose with it before driving it into my leg. I scream as he twists and pulls. “And do you know what, Blake? Your hope is so . . . how should I say? Fresh—that’s it! Your ideals are so fresh and naïve, you make me wish that I could suck more than your blood. You almost make me wish that I had hope too. You almost make me wish that I, too, could believe everything wasn’t doomed to end in darkness.”
He pulls his pointer finger from my leg and dabs his tongue on its wet surface. “Not bad, Mr. Prose. But not my favorite. I think I’ll give you to Moira. She would probably savor showing you what she really intended with all those supple promises. I do, however, have a thing for brown eyes.”
And with that, he reaches out with two fingers, pinching for my left eye.
Wait, I gasp, though the word comes out as a faint rattle.
“What is it?” asks the vampire. “Are you afraid?”
My voice is still little more than a series of ghostly breaths: “I want to show you something first.”
“What?” he taunts, leaning closer and leering. “Do you want to show me the error of my ways?”
I have breath enough left for one word: “Yes.”
In that moment, my right hand stops fighting against his own, letting him push even harder against my throat. His eyes widen slightly in surprise. He didn’t take me for the kind to surrender without fighting to the end.
Only he’s right: I’m not surrendering.
My hand blurs into my shirt and tugs free the wooden cross I’ve worn since coming to Oregon. With all of my might, I slap it across the Mayor’s temple.
A clap of golden light bursts into the dingy room and vanishes.
Based on my vast experience battling vampires—albeit vicariously through old movies—I expect Maplenut to incinerate or detonate. At very least, I expect him to hiss and scream and shrivel.
Instead, he grunts like an old man who’s been bludgeoned on the side of the head. He rolls off of me holding his temple and groaning. I stagger to my feet, wincing as the hole in my leg pulses and burns.
Ignoring the monster behind me, I limp toward Jenny. After a few minutes of careful slicing and prying with my boot knife, the little girl is free and in my arms.
“H?” cries Lightkeepe
r from the other side of the curtain. “Is he dead yet?”
“Not quite,” I call back, saucy as I can manage through the pain.
Gavalier Lightkeeper rips the curtain aside and storms into the light of the one bare bulb. His barrel chest is heaving. His pincer-like fangs are out. He catches sight of Maplenut roiling on the floor and raises an eyebrow in confusion. That lasts only an instant. In the next, he turns on me and uncoils like a serpent, surging forward, jaws agape.
Unable to do anything else, I simply raise the little cross, setting it between us.
Lightkeeper slams into it as if it were the great Wall. Another shock of light bathes the room. His head snaps back and he crumples to the ground.
Too weary for much more ado, I sidestep his body and bear Jenny out to the sanctuary where Moira stands waiting. Her perfect mouth hangs slack-jawed. Her exquisite eyes are wide. She’s thinking I shouldn’t have emerged at all, and certainly not with Jenny in my arms. I should be on a spit by now. I should be deboned and bloodless. But for all her heaving, rutting rhetoric, I think maybe she does see things differently than the men, because instead of rage or fright, I think maybe—just maybe—her eyes flash with wonder.
“How . . . ?” She can’t say any more. Skirting the sanctuary, she leaves us be and enters the inner sanctuary to investigate. A minute later, when I’ve almost made it down the aisle to the outer door, she cries out from behind:
“Wait!” She runs to us, not like a vicious temptress bent on revenge, but more like a hungry little girl chasing down a traveling baker. “How did you do it? They’re . . . they’re . . . ”
A bloodcurdling scream cuts her short. Another scream joins it in chorus. Together, the woeful sound blares out of the inner sanctuary until it dwindles to faint sobbings and bursting whines.
“You . . . ” She raises her gaze to me as though in wonder. “You made them human again.”
She takes a step toward me, her dark eyes afire with devilish orange and wide with awe. I wonder if it’s a trick, the proverbial one last trick that will do us in.
“I didn’t do anything,” I shrug, raising the cross. “I just tried the last thing left to me.”
Moira cocks her head and studies the necklace. “Crosses don’t work. . .” She catches herself and mumbles, “At least, most don’t.” Her eyes shift from it to me. “But maybe . . . would you . . . would you touch me with it?” She takes another step. Again, she raises her hand with entrancing grace. “Please?”
I’m frozen. What else can I do but grant her wish? If she wants her curse to end and I can end it, how can I refuse? But what if—
In a flash, the soft awe on her face twists into sadistic glee. Less than three paces away, her long, talon-like nails flick toward my head at impossible speed. I don’t even have time to shut my eyes or regret putting my guard down.
I’ve lost. I’ve failed.
The claws spell our end.
Except they never reach us.
A foot from my face, the ten treacherous darts tremble to a stop, quavering for a second, stuck in the air. And for the barest span of time the human eye can see, I think that maybe—crazy as it sounds—that maybe I catch the glimmer of a giant hand guarding me, a hand the size of a shield, a hand made of light. In that glimmer I see more than I should be able to—the hand’s knuckles facing me, as well as its palm facing Moira, pierced with her talons.
Both she and I goggle, uncertain what we’re beholding, and then the hand flashes away from me, rushing at Moira. She explodes off her feet, launching the length of the sanctuary and crashing with an unceremonious series of thuds and clatters into the dingy facsimile of the holy of holies.
Trembling, cross still held high, I wait.
For a long while my bloodshot eyes search the many-colored, smoke-filled room. The tendrils of incense ink skyward. In the dimness to my back, mournful whimpers of the revived undead rise as well. The vampires are beaten. And the giant hand?—the deus ex machina of my last-second deliverance? It ripples around me like a zen pool in the rain, like a prolonged green flash at sunset. Slowly, it condenses into a tinseled silhouette twice my height. A humanoid. A giant. The figure looms over me for a second. It then turns and strides toward the mottled sunshine.
Breathless, shivering, yet feeling Jenny warming in my arms, I follow, stumbling at last into the surreal brightness of day.
Save for the haunting traces of my spectral savior, still lingering like morning mist, the courtyard is empty. Lancaster Moon is gone. His dark-robed attackers are too. Splashes of blood shine here and there on the stones and the great water basin has been overturned. Towering clouds sail obliviously across the cerulean sky. A falcon circles and cries in a widening gyre.
Not far away, the courtyard gate shakes and buckles. Judging from the volume of the gargling moans beyond it, all of Bentlam must be putting their Jenny-hungry shoulders to its hinges. One hinge has already broken. I can see the others expand and bend with each new push.
“Well, now,” I say, closing my eyes and feeling daylight on my face. “Here we are.”
A nearby scuffle interrupts the moment.
From behind the pyramid-pyre, a lithe stallion appears, towering and greenish yellow, the color of a leaf held up to the sun.
Abe.
Rather than coming to me, the tensile horse saunters straight to the nearly invisible figure and the two merge, suddenly one. Somehow, I can spot an extra luster now lambent under the stallion’s skin. He studies me with eyes at once the color of earth and water and fire, at once familiar and foreign, native and unearthly.
This is no horse. This is something else—someone else.
With steps that ring oddly portentous on the stone, Abe approaches and kneels. Like a camel before a magi, he bows himself down as far as he can. Even then, it’s barely low enough for me to get Jenny set up on his neck and to throw my bad leg over. After a few heaves, however, I’m finally mounted. The otherworldly creature whinnies lightly and rises.
It’s surreal. The whole of earth suddenly seems small. From the stallion’s smooth tall back, I have the ridiculous notion that I can peer anywhere I want to. The thought makes me grin. More than that, I imagine I can feel the foundation and air of every place I can see; its grit is in my teeth; its smell is in my nose. The pulse of everything and everywhere rises and falls inside my veins. The feeling is so absurd that I laugh loud and raggedly, not unlike a madman, a drunkard, a sojourner through the West’s darkest shadows.
At the sound of my wild mirth, Jenny stirs in my arms, still asleep but waking.
She murmurs something, a gentle, comforted sound, and Abe must take it for a request to be off, because he raises his head and springs forward. And suddenly my eyes are flooding with light.
* * *
End of Book One
About the Author
Oliver Atlas resides in the Pacific Northwest where he enjoys tromping around mountains, paying soccer, and scavenging through obscure bookstores — all while mulling the his next book.
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