The Well of Many Worlds

by Luke Metcalf

  Mitchell hacked and slashed his way through a group of zombies back to the door of the dungeon, holding the corpse of the princess in one hand. He pounded at the door with the hilt of his sword. “It’s Mitchell, open the door.”

  Emily came to, crawled to her feet in a daze then ran up the stairs to the door, throwing it open. Headless bodies of zombies and ghouls were strewn about the great hall as Mitchell entered carrying the still-withered corpse of the princess. She was moaning and Emily looked at her with a mixture of revulsion and fascination as Mitchell slammed the doors behind him and locked them. He then carried her down the stairs and laid her on the cold stone floor.

  “If I can revive her even the tiniest bit more I will be able to read her mind and see what she knows.” He slashed a gash in his wrist and squeezed drops of blood into her mouth.

  “Yes, her mind has not been destroyed,” he whispered excitedly, closing his eyes to concentrate. He focused intently, searching for thoughts. “She found the rest of the diary – the records of one of the first vampires on Earth – in the Kungur Ice Caves.” He looked at Emily. “I see the rest of the diary in her memories.” He closed his eyes to concentrate harder. “An old, tattered book. Much is badly damaged, illegible, but there are still some readable parts. The year is 1781, and the author’s name is… Yes, it’s her, Selina – I can’t make out her last name.”

  Emily leaned closer to hear Mitchell’s voice, which had grown dimmer from the effort of concentrating.

  “It says: ‘I have come to hate these accursed caves. We have been hiding here for an eternity…’ Then it says, ‘We are making good progress… nearly figured out… words of command… written in a strange tongue. These words are alien to this world… I fear our Master has gone mad.’ There are pages torn out here. The next page reads, ‘I think of my children and wonder what their fate will be. Those nights when I slipped away in secret to make my children… yes, without a doubt the most exciting and fulfilling experience I have had since my birth into immortality. I will escape this madman and return to them someday, my children of the night…’” Mitchell paused and opened his eyes, staring into space. “So she was the one, Selina! She must mean the vampires she made – Fionn, Baelaar, Prince Vlad the Dracul, Squire Griffith and Princess Katharina… and who knows who else.”

  “I wonder who she was in life,” Emily said quietly. “What she was like when she was human.”

  “We’ll probably never know.” Mitchell sighed, then closed his eyes and continued to focus. “‘Our Master knows not that I have created them, nor do the others. I will never tell them about my children. They are my secret and I am confident they will remain my secret as our dark Master thinks of nothing save the artifact and no longer concerns himself with reading our thoughts. When we arrive in America, I will find a way to escape and then return to Europe to find my children. I fear nothing in this world save the loneliness of eternal night… We are to travel from London to New York on a passenger ship called the Pinalute. I look forward to the new world.’” Mitchell stopped. “There is no more.”

  Emily felt her face turn pale. “The Pinalute?”

  “Yes, why?” asked Mitchell, opening his eyes and looking at her curiously.

  “Well, the antique desk my father left for me, hidden in my mom’s garage, that had Vadas Asger carved in it. There was a plaque on the side that said Pinalute …”

  Emily trailed off, taken aback by the ferocious look in Mitchell’s eyes.

  “The Pinalute? Where is it? Where is this desk?” He lunged forward, grabbing her arm, shaking her. Frightened, Emily shrank back, and Mercurios appeared in front of her, staring warily up at Mitchell. Realizing that he was scaring her, Mitchell released his grip and stepped back. “I apologize, Emily. You must understand – this is of the gravest importance. Where is it?”

  “Buried outside Portland. It’s just an empty desk, I already searched it.”

  “That must be the captain’s desk. Thank you, Emily,” he said softly, kissing her cheek. “This changes everything.”

  He began pacing as he tried to piece his thoughts together. “Once Baelaar finally managed to capture the princess and read the diary in her mind, he would have assumed the Well was aboard the Pinalute when it crossed and would have searched the shipping records in New York to track the ship down. But they obviously couldn’t find what they were looking for. Reading the minds of the Initiates I dispatched in Portland, I learned that they have been hunting for something up and down the eastern coast of the US for several years now, but they didn’t know what it was.” He paused. “I don’t understand. The shipping records should have given them all the information they needed about any ship that arrived to the New York port…”

  “Unless it never arrived,” Emily whispered.

  A look of revelation crossed Mitchell’s face. “Yes. Yes, that’s it. That’s it! That’s why Baelaar has recruited everyone he can, even humans – the crime gangs, the drug traffickers, your friend’s father that owns the shipping company, Mr. Denman – anyone connected with the eastern ports, eliminating anyone that refused to work for him. If there was no record of the ship’s arrival, he’d assume the ship either sank or was blown off course by a storm and forced to land somewhere else. And all this time it was you – you – who had the captain’s desk. It must have been washed ashore somewhere, probably containing the captain’s log, which would have the last coordinates, the last location of the ship before it sank or went off course! If I can find those coordinates, I might be able to find the Well of Many Worlds.” Mitchell’s eyes were delirious with excitement.

  “That’s why they killed my father,” Emily murmured to herself. Stunned, horrified. All along, it was the artifact that had brought her to this world that had cost her father – the most important part of her world – his life. At last she understood. “The desk must have been sent through Sammy’s warehouse when my father bought it from whoever had found and restored it. When Cady came looking for it, Sammy must have told him that my father had a desk from a ship called the Pinalute. Cady contacted my father but was so aggressive and rude that he suspected something and denied having it, hiding it away in the garage so that he could do more research on it and find out why Cady wanted it so badly. Why it was so valuable to him. Dad must have thought it was an important historical artifact, worth a lot of money, and that maybe this was going to be his big financial break, and that he would be able to get his family back. But he never found out why they wanted it.” Emily came back to the present and looked at Mitchell. “But what is Vadas Asger?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Remember how at the warehouse they said they are going to liquidate all the works of art for gold?” said Mercurios. “Gold is valuable in Magella too. Perhaps it is the common currency in all the worlds. Indeed they are not just planning slaughter and enslavement here. They are also planning on traveling to Magella and perhaps beyond, with their gold, conquering and enslaving and slaughtering all mortals. They conquer one world, turn all its wealth to gold, take the gold to the next world where they use it to gain total power and loot and slaughter that world, then turn all the valuables of that world to gold, then take that gold to the next world and so on…”

  “Yes, that’s it!” exclaimed Mitchell. “They will have mountains of gold when they are finished selling everything, trillions of dollars worth. They are not just going to enslave and slaughter here, they are going to use the Well to systematically conquer all the worlds they can, looting each to finance the conquering of the next!”

  “But I’m telling you, the desk is empty,” said Emily. “There’s nothing in it.”

  “Do you think you can teleport us back? Every second counts.”

  Emily nodded. “I-I think so.”

  “Your bedroom,” said Mercurios. ‘You know every inch of it, you should be able to visualize it very clearly.”

  “Are you sure? If I mess up we could be disintegrated.”

  “You can do i
t, Emily,” Mercurios assured her.

  She forced herself to concentrate as best she could. The fear of disintegration actually helped her focus.

  “Take your time, Emily,” Mercurios said, taking her hand as if protecting her from Mitchell’s pressuring. He eyed Mitchell, and then squeezed Emily’s hand again. “Yes, there is no need to rush. Just concentrate.”

  Emily struggled to block everything out, as she took Mitchell’s hand and Mercurios hopped up onto her shoulder. She pictured her bedroom as clearly as she possibly could, felt the energy of the universe flowing all around and through her, and began channeling it. When she spoke the command words, there was a rushing sound all around them, and everything went black. Emily felt as though she was floating in the emptiness. Then they were back in the bedroom.

  She let out a gasp of relief. “Yes, it worked!” she cried, as Mitchell embraced her.

  “Amazing, Emily!”

  The excitement faded as quickly as it came. There, sitting in her bedroom chair, casually flipping through a very old, battered book was Tom, still in his Crimson Ghost costume.

  Twenty-Five

  “What’s he doing here?” Mitchell demanded.

  For a moment Emily thought she saw a flicker of jealousy in his eyes. The thought thrilled her.

  “Tom,” she said nervously. “What are you doing here?”

  Tom looked at Mitchell with utter disdain. “Jealous, buddy? I’ve been in her bedroom lots of times.”

  Mitchell gripped the hilt of his sword but Emily placed her hand on his.

  “No, please don’t hurt him,” she whispered. “He’s a really good person when he’s not possessed.” She turned back to Tom. “Tom, that’s a lie and you know it.”

  “This is an interesting read,” said Tom, tapping on the book. “Near the end, there are some particularly interesting entries. A lot of it’s still legible. Shall I read it?”

  “The captain’s log!” Emily’s eyes widened. “But where…?”

  Tom stared back at the book, running his fingers over the pages. “I knew there must be something important in that desk, so I dug it up and smashed it. There was a hidden compartment.”

  Mitchell tried to read Tom’s mind but saw nothing but darkness.

  Emily took a few careful steps toward him. “Tom, that log is incredibly important.

  Give it to me, please, and…”

  “Stop,” Tom snarled. He held up a hand and green flames burst from his palm, swirling around his fingers. “Unless you want me to incinerate it, you’ll stay right there, shut your sweet little mouth, and listen like a good girl.”

  Emily froze. Mitchell’s eyes blazed and he stepped forward but Tom moved his hand even closer to the book, his eyes challenging Mitchell to come closer. Mitchell stopped. He dared not risk the flames reaching the ancient, dried-out pages. Tom cleared his throat dramatically and began reading.

  “There has been another murder. A young girl was found dead early this morning. Many of the passengers have locked themselves in their cabins… Blah, blah… Ah, here we go… A storm seems to have arisen out of nowhere. It is growing in fury by the minute.”

  “Tom?” Emily ventured carefully.

  “Ah, ah… Shh…” Tom wagged his finger at her then turned to the final page of the book. “One of the passengers has lost his mind. He appeared on deck holding the decapitated heads of his companions, two men and one woman, by their hair. In his other hand he held a long, blood-streaked blade. As he faced us the storm seemed to heighten. The wind howled like a demon beast. His eyes were glowing crimson. I am now certain that he and his companions are responsible for the mysterious deaths on board. They are not human. I believe they are demons from the pits of Hell. May God save us! The crazed man hurled the heads overboard and screamed into the sky, ‘I, Vadas Asger’”

  “Vadas Asger!” Emily and Mitchell repeated in unison.

  Tom looked at them. “You know him?”

  “No,” said Emily. “Never mind.”

  “So Vadas Asger was the first human on Earth to be turned into a vampire,” muttered Mitchell.

  Tom resumed reading. “‘I, Vadas Asger, say that we are a blasphemy against God! Do you hear me? But no longer! When I am gone, this curse will be wiped from the Earth and the dead and damned will no longer walk with the living!’ Then, he slashed his own throat so violently that his head was nearly severed from his shoulders, and he plunged into the seething waves.” Tom burst out laughing. “Man, I wish I could have seen that, that would have been hilarious!” He shut the book and gave Emily a penetrating stare.

  “So that’s what happened to them,” said Emily quietly, glancing at Mitchell.

  “Vadas killed them then destroyed himself, thinking he was ridding the world of vampires, not realizing that Selina had made others.”

  Tom chuckled. “Pfft, and your boyfriend here is descended from those bloodsucking freaks.”

  “Tom,” said Emily, trying to stay calm. “Mercurios knows what happened to you. He’s figured a way to cure you. Right, Mercurios?”

  Mercurios appeared on her desk. “Yes, I believe I have.”

  “What is that disgusting little thing?”

  The imp glared angrily at him. “Very foolish words, yes, very foolish indeed.”

  “What a hideous little toad creature!”

  “I’m an imp, damn you!” shrieked Mercurios shaking his little fists.

  “Once I’m finished with smart guy here” – Tom gestured at Mitchell – “I’m going to squash that repulsive little toad head of yours, you freak.” He stood up and faced Mitchell. “I don’t like you hanging around my girlfriend, she’s my pretty little pet, get it?”

  “Tom!” Emily was frustrated beyond endurance. “Please just give me that book. We don’t have time for this!”

  He pushed his Crimson Ghost face into hers and screamed, “Don’t you understand? I love you!”

  Mitchell moved to protect Emily but Tom grabbed him with superhuman speed and Mitchell burst into green flames. He howled in pain and rage and his whole body thrashed violently about as he burned. Tom spun and hurled him backward with such force that he launched Mitchell like a cannonball through the window, glass shattering as he flew through the branches of the tree outside.

  “Mitchell!” Emily screamed.

  Never had Emily imagined that her death would come like this. Not that she had given the subject much thought. But nothing that had happened in her life previously could have prepared her for the events of the last two weeks.

  Tom tore off his mask, revealing the crazed obsession that burned in his eyes. He advanced upon her and gave her an almost friendly smile and a wink.

  Emily felt a terrible sadness that she would never be able to avenge the murder of her father. She then thought of her love. Had he been destroyed? Her fear vanished and was replaced with a feeling of overwhelming gratitude for having been able to experience something so transcendental. She loved him unconditionally, irrevocably and eternally. The thought filled her with courage.

  Tom’s eyes had turned into glowing green orbs, inhuman and demonic. Emily raised her chin and stared into them defiantly, daring him to kill her.

  “You’re mine now forever,” Tom whispered fiercely.

  Mitchell came leaping back in through the window, the flames extinguished, and threw himself on Tom. They both crashed clean through the wall and across the guest bedroom next door. Emily spotted the book on the floor between Tom’s feet and remembered her Ring of Teleportation. Taking a picture in her mind of the scene that lay before her, she closed her eyes and spoke the command. A split second later, she was right beside them. As she reached for the book she was hit by Tom’s elbow as he drew it back to punch Mitchell. She tumbled over the bed and hit the dresser.

  “Emily!” Mitchell shouted, but Tom kicked him in the chest, sending him flying through a large, standing mirror. Tom snatched up the book.

  “You hit my elbow, you idiot!” he shouted at the unconsc
ious Emily.

  Tom was creating orbs of green fire in his hand and hurling them like fastballs with superhuman speed and agility. Mitchell dodged three and swept out his sword, using it to deflect them in every direction. As they hit the walls, ceiling and floor the orbs burst into flame.

  Coming to and shaking the stars out of her head, Emily grabbed her wand from where it had fallen on the floor. Tom was throwing five fire orbs every second. Mitchell had got his eye in and was now batting them back straight at Tom, sending him stumbling backward, momentarily stunned.

  Seizing his opportunity, Mitchell leaped across the room into a diving roll while sheathing his sword, rose up from the floor in front of Tom, grabbed him by his jacket and pulled him into a back somersault, using his feet to launch him, upside down, through another wall.

  Flames rushed up the walls, burning in waves across a section of the ceiling and consumed a chair in the corner.

  “You all right?” Mitchell shouted and Emily nodded. “Good. Get out of the house!”

  “Mitchell, please don’t kill him, we can still save him!” she screamed.

  He nodded and charged after Tom, rocketing across the room through the hole in the wall as Emily ran out of the burning bedroom and down the stairs. Mitchell jabbed Tom in the face as he was getting up. Tom tried to swing back but Mitchell was faster and hit him with a couple of body shots and a thundering uppercut.

  “Emily is mine!” Tom screamed, catching Mitchell with a right hook and pushing him back through the hole into the guest bedroom. Mitchell swiveled, grabbing Tom in a bear hug, powering right through the window, crashing together through glass and branches.

  As Emily ran for the front door, Mitchell and Tom plummeted past the window and she stopped to watch what would happen next. They hit the ground hard and continued their struggle. Mitchell swung at Tom, who ducked at the last moment. His fist smashed into the trunk of the tree and splintered a section of it. Tom caught Mitchell with a straight left that sent him sprawling across the lawn. He was back on his feet in a flash, kicking Tom in the knee and sending him backward toward the street. Mitchell pounced on him, viciously pummeling his face. The book soared out of Tom’s hand and skidded onto the street.