by Ana Calin
People pulled my arms up and sideways as if crucifying me. I put a foot on the floor and tried to help myself up. Suddenly, a female voice echoed a command I didn’t understand, and a hand grabbed me by the hair. I cussed, filled with ire, which fired up a notch when I looked up coltish legs in leather and fitted black top. I was looking into Svetlana’s face.
Her hatred of me complemented my disgust of her. She had a fist in my hair and a blade in her other leather-gloved hand. Her background was at first fuzzy, but soon I recognized the walls of the abandoned St. A’s church, the vaulted ceiling high and hollow.
The parched mural paintings were old enough to ensnare tourist interest – which was kept at bay with stanchions at the entrance – and the putrid wooden benches had last served their purpose over a hundred years ago. Draught wheezed and pulled at my wet forehead in this monument that I knew had been sold to a ridiculously rich Anonymous a few years ago.
People kept me on my knees in the middle of the aisle, facing the old altar doors that hung large and askew from hinges eaten by rust.
The man I’d caught a glimpse of in the booth at the Marquette, the one who’d been sitting on the couch with a glass of scotch in his hand, glided my way. The shape of his body was lean, and he moved smoothly, with elegance. He wore a clearly expensive grey suit. Everything in his attitude screamed power and money.
Against everything I expected from a man whose hair had looked white in the club lights, the Regent looked young. Yet his expression was ancient. In the moonlight, his skin glowed white as ivory, making a chilling contrast to his pitch-black eyes. Silver curls framed his head, glinting like snakes made of precious metal.
As he approached, a grin stretched on his face. He clapped his hands and stopped by Svetlana’s side, staring down at me with a special brand of interest. Those full black irises froze me to the bone, seemingly inhuman, and yet they glistened with a feeling that was hard to classify. Similar to enthusiasm, but somehow colder. As if felt with the mind, not with the heart.
“Fascinating,” his slivery voice filled the nave, crawling up my spine. My first thought was of a speaking serpent.
I’d never seen or heard a creature quite as strange as the Regent. A true mix of animal and man – or rather Upgrade. When he hunkered down to face me, our eyes on the same level, fear scraped its way through my veins. His breath was cold on my face, and he smelled of dried lilies, like flowers on an old grave. It felt like I was facing a ghost. Instead, I was facing the mighty head of the hydra: The mastermind at the top of BioDhrome.
“Just fascinating,” he repeated, inspecting my face as I did his.
“The Executioner followed,” a familiar male voice sounded close by, “but we haven’t seen him since the crash. It was his car that cut our way. He left Svetlana no choice.”
The crash. Hector, Svetlana, the car, the hood wrapping around a tree on the side of the road, Damian had caused that?
I spotted Hector behind the Regent, and identified him as the speaker. Head bent, legs slightly apart in the position of a security guard. He wore the same black pants, jacket, and turtleneck from before, but something was very different from the last memory I had of him.
He raised his lids shortly, then they fluttered back down – he was ashamed to look me in the face, I sensed it clearly. And, I sensed he was confused. He barely still had it in himself to dislike me or even the Executioner. The way he said the name lacked the usual hostility. When the Regent didn’t reply, keeping a keen inspection on my face, Hector pushed.
“It could’ve killed her in the crash he caused.” Then he paused, watching the Regent’s back from under his eyebrows as he finally made his point. “Maybe she’s not that important to him. He’s had her already. He might not come.”
The Regent pushed slowly to his feet.
“Oh, he’ll come,” he said, and walked with elegance back to the altar. Hector moved out the way, head down.
The Regent stopped right in front of the lopsided rift between the parched altar doors, and turned around to face my way. He spread his arms and threw his head back like a fanatic in a trance, and laughed hard. The splintery sound of it made my skin crawl and my lids screw shut. The laughter ceased seconds later, only the draught filling the silence, as if the place was dead empty.
When I opened my eyes, I found black-cloaked figures lining the nave, their faces obscure under their hoods. It looked and felt so much like a satanic ceremony that panic lumped in my throat. The Regent no longer stood alone on the broken pedestal, but was being flanked by two ominous men. Both of the men were tall and barrel-chested, both wearing the aggressive expressions of career bullies and the beauty-glaze of Upgrades.
The Regent stood between them like a master of ceremonies, those sinister black eyes hooded. His splintery voice infiltrated my ears, as if spoken only in my mind. I didn’t even see his lips move.
“Despite what the Executioner is, you love him.”
“He is what you made him.” My voice echoed shaky but crystalline. I barely recognized it. Had I not been aware of the words in my mind that I’d meant to bring about my lips, I wouldn’t have known I’d spoken.
The Regent’s black eyes bored into mine. This time he spoke loudly, for the hall.
“Make? Oh, no, my dear.” He shook his head mockingly. His English was beautiful and polished, but I could sense the slight French accent. “BioDhrome doesn’t make creatures like him, you see. We seek and discover rough diamonds. We drill through layer after layer of human junk to the divine core. When we find it, we unleash it. We switch it on, if you will.”
He made a show of the information, propaganda for his sick practices, so I didn’t reply. It was now clear to me I was a sacrificial lamb in the hands of sick bastards, shiny black shoes visible from under their cloak hems. The Regent walked to me with the elegance of a silver-haired, black-eyed serpent.
“Damian Novac,” he said as he advanced toward me, “The Executioner – had killed before. When he was still a child. And he’d enjoyed it.”
“I know,” I retorted, and regretted it a second later. I should’ve continued to play dumb.
Svetlana retreated, making room for the Regent to circle me. The cold air shifted as he walked around me, and my skin creased.
“He told you?” I sensed the display of teeth in a reptilian grin. “Why, fascinating indeed. Did he also disclose how the Executioner was awakened? Did he tell you what the Executioner is?”
My sight grew blurry, my pulse rising, my brain boiling. I sensed Damian close. I knew he was here now. So did the Regent. I could tell from the satisfaction in his following, “Ah.….”
The two bullies still standing in front of the altar tensed and leaned forward, as if ready to leap into a fight. I wondered if they were BioDhrome’s “new project.”
“He’s an Upgrade,” I provoked further conversation, drawing attention to myself in the hope it would grant Damian advantage.
“And what’s an Upgrade?” the Regent inquired like a teacher to his pupil.
“Is this a test?”
I sensed his grin stretch like gum. Wind gushed sharply through the nave, blowing the cloaks that lined it on both sides, sifting through my wet hair and freezing my back. The front doors burst open and banged against the walls, stanchions flying from their way. Papers and leaves surged in, spiraling in the air. I squeezed my eyes shut against the sting of dust. When I opened them again my heart jumped into my mouth.
Damian stood between the bullies where the Regent had stood. His sweater clung soaked with blood to his statuesque body, his face smeared dark red from those he’d killed. His hands were at the bullies’ backs, surely holding weapons against them. One of the bullies kept an icy expression on though, while “what the hell” read clearly on the other’s furrowed brow.
That moment I realized what was happening with me – I was a sponge of others’ feelings. Instinctively, I spread the invisible antennas towards Damian like my arms, virtual tentacles sp
ringing from my chest. The emotions from all around me reverberated. I could use these tentacles like parts of my physical body. But the strongest signal I got from him was focus. Undeterred, steely focus.
I sensed the Regent’s slithering enthusiasm behind me. His looking at the Executioner like he never had before. He laughed and clapped his hands.
“Fascinating,” he exclaimed. “She’s really got that cold blood of yours boiling, hasn’t she?”
“Let her go,” Damian said evenly, “if you want to keep your head guards.”
Both bullies grimaced, so Damian’s weapons must’ve pushed into their backs. They didn’t risk a move, probably aware that Damian would be faster to wound or even kill them.
“I suggest a different deal,” the Regent raised his voice in a rather theatrical manner. “You kill them, and I kill her.”
As if already knowing what to do, the two men clasping my arms straightened me up. My knees hurt as I tried to balance my own weight. I couldn’t put up the slightest resistance at the pull on my hair that forced my head back.
All I could see now were contours of the vaulted ceiling in the dark, but the tension between the two most powerful people in the room – the Regent and the Executioner, a serpent and a killer – was so thick it choked me. The Regent applauded and giggled in a disturbing way.
“Am I really seeing this?” His shoes clicked on the stone floor as he moved away. “Is that emotion in your eyes? Is that hurt, Executioner? Are you actually hurting?”
No answer.
“I understand you don’t agree with my suggestion, no?” the Regent continued his show.
“Let her go,” Damian repeated in his voice like black velvet, the voice of a man and yet not. Emotion rippled in its lower frequencies and all through my body.
“Is that a plea?” the Regent slivered.
Pause. I felt Damian’s gaze on me for a few intense moments. “It is.”
“And what are you willing to trade for her life?”
Another pause. Much shorter this time. “What will you have of me?”
“You know that very well, Executioner. You’ve known for a while now. My brother, the Viscount, helped you understand.”
The Viscount? His brother?
The Regent walked back to me and seized my hair from Svetlana’s clasp. His fingers, long and cold, sank to my skull from behind, his cold breath hitting my jaw as he spoke again.
“You owe me a lot, Executioner. I discovered you. I arranged the breakdown of your train all those years ago, the initiation at the inn. I delved into your mind, pulled out your core while you trembled before me, hungry and naked, and scared in the bowels of the mountain.
“I polished that core, I made you a god among men, and you belonged to me. But in return you not only robbed me of my investment, but joined the Order of Lords and wiped out half of my damned Guards!” Anger broke through in his last sentence, his breath cold on my skin. Spittle flew out of his mouth.
“You want my life,” Damian said, his voice deep and dark, vibrating against the walls like a voice from another realm. “You’ve been wanting it for a long time. So have it now. I won’t put up a fight. But let her go.”
“What? No!” I called out, despair twisting my stomach. The Regent tugged hard at my hair and laughed again, the sound shrill in my ear.
“I’ve wanted your life, Executioner, yes. I’ve daydreamed about taking it. But now, thanks to Alice here, things have taken a new turn. There’s something that will give me even more pleasure than feasting on your dead body. I don’t desire your death anymore.”
His hand coiled in my hair, twisting it around his wrist and tugging hard. He pushed my head downward and stopped it when I could look right ahead, at Damian. He stood in front of the altar, hands at the two guards’ backs, his crystal eyes focused, his jaw hard.
“I find it incredible, Executioner,” the Regent raised his voice, making further show of his words, “that you should be ready to die for her. It’s incredible that you actually feel…love. Considering what you are, I mean.”
Damian’s jaw rippled.
“Oh, she doesn’t know, does she?” the Regent continued with fake apprehension. “She doesn’t know what you are. And you would have it stay that way, I presume.”
Still no answer, but the expression on Damian’s face said it all.
“I must wonder…” The tips of the Regent’s fingers massaged my scalp a little too hard, as if he barely refrained from breaking me right in front of Damian. “How strong are your feelings? Considering that you shouldn’t be able to feel at all.”
“Stop,” Damian’s bass voice echoed across the nave. I sensed the Regent’s grin stretch to an unnatural length on his face again.
“Take off your sweater, Executioner.” At the sound of it, dread rippled through me.
Damian hesitated only for a moment. He dropped his weapons, two daggers clattering on the floor behind the bullies. The guards made a half-turn and glared at him, but they didn’t attempt to grab him. It was as if they were following a scenario, as if the Regent had anticipated everything that happened here.
Damian pulled the sweater over his head. His muscular torso glistened, honey-skinned and stained with blood in the moonlight, his sculpted face hard. It was a vision of a fallen angel, perfect and smeared with blood, to be sacrificed on an ancient altar. My chest caved in, pain knotting my stomach.
The Regent let go of me, and ran to Damian like a starved hyena. He flashed the tip of a blade under Damian’s chin, but the Executioner didn’t move an inch.
“Bring the chains,” the Regent ordered with sick pathos, his eyes wide and eager.
Two hooded cloaks ripped from the lines on each side, rushed into the altar through the side doors, and reemerged moments later carrying massive chains the color of copper, which they placed on the floor by the bullies. Each bully grabbed a chain with one hand, and Damian’s wrist with the other. I realized they were going to chain him, and my heart shrunk in agony. The metal looked like it weighed much too much, heavy enough to rip arms from shoulders. I took a step forward, determined to intervene somehow, but the men pulled me back as the two bullies wound the first loops above Damian’s wrists.
To my jaw-dropping surprise, Damian gripped the chains with such strength that he made it impossible for them to go on. His arms flexed, displaying the brutal force they commanded, veins swelling through his muscles. The bullies tugged at the chains like kids struggling to move a titan, but Damian didn’t even mind them, his glare fixed on the Regent.
“You won’t harm a hair on her head.”
“You have my word, Executioner.”
I froze in dread as I realized he intended to torture Damian, who was agreeing to it in order to save me. The Regent hadn’t been able to capture and defeat the Executioner, so he’d forged a diabolical plan to make him give himself in to torture. Now it dawned on me that Damian had known ever since he’d seen the Viscount, and he’d played along. I howled in pain and struggled like a possessed woman.
Damian’s hands loosened from the chains, and the Guards quickly wound two more loops around his forearms. I screamed with all I had, but one of the Upgrades covered my mouth.
The bullies fastened the ends of the chains into heavy rings in the sidewalls. Now Damian stood in front of the altar with his arms spread, an offering to the Regent’s sadistic fantasies. This was indeed no different from a satanic ceremony, only that I’d never been meant for sacrifice, but the Executioner himself.
He was the strongest of all genetically engineered killers, paying for his betrayal in an open display of cruelty. It hit me – the Regent was not only fulfilling a sick dream, but also setting an example for anyone who might entertain the idea of deserting his ranks.
“You know, I’ve always wondered, Executioner,” the Regent said, black eyes and long white fingers stroking the blade he’d held under Damian’s chin, “can you take as much pain as you deliver?” He moved the blade from left to right
, whipping the air. “More? Less?”
Damian refused to grant the Regent even the satisfaction of looking at him, and directed his eyes ahead. To me. My heart slammed into my ribcage as our gazes locked. His otherworldly stare infiltrated through my pores, but it didn’t only give, it also took. Motivation. Motivation to withstand whatever was coming at him. And when the Regent’s blade slanted through the dusting of hair on his pectorals, dark blood swelling in its wake, the pain burned a hot trail into my flesh as well. Emotional and physical. I inhaled sharply, but choked on the hand that gagged me.
“He is not human,” the Regent raised his voice to make sure I could hear him clearly, his eyes yet on Damian, relishing the hurt he caused. “But neither is he beyond pain, if inflicted with the proper instrument and proper force.”
“Please, stop,” I screamed, but the sound came out muffled against the Upgrade’s steely palm.
“His flesh, you see,” the Regent continued as if nothing, a finger wiping the blood off the copper-colored blade. He held the finger up. Of their own accord, my eyes zoomed in on the tip of his finger, where thick drops of the darkest red I’d ever seen began to turn into crust like solidifying lava. “It’s as impenetrable as a tank’s armor. Only Upgrades are strong enough to pierce it, with weapons made of dead Upgrades’ flesh, and not even they without effort. He can put up with a lot, you see. I could practically disembowel him alive, and he’d probably still stand. He’d be wishing he could die like a human, though.
“But the only way to kill him – or any Upgrade, for that matter – is to aim directly at one of his vital functions. Piercing the heart or beheading, for example, but none of that is easily done. Your lover here is particularly skilled at it. The Executioner is the best killer ever born. We’ve enhanced him to end Upgrades, because by the nature of his core, he’s superior to most of them in physical strength, speed, and dexterity. Therefore, there are very few ways of defeating him, if he doesn’t somehow allow it. As he allows it now.”