by Mark Tufo
“Why would he wait for the full moon if he had the flower?” I asked. “He could strike at any time.”
“Perhaps he was not in place at the time,” Partrib said.
“Calamus is not an abundant plant; he would want to conserve it whenever possible. He may be able to strike at will, but chose to test his strength when he had the moon to his back,” Bailey said. “And it is generally thought that werewolves are stronger under the influence of the moon as opposed to that of the plant.”
“A thousand werewolves? How many settlements has he destroyed? There will be nothing left for him to rule over by the time he is done. I thought his brother didn’t have a clue about conservationism! This ass is taking it to a whole other level.” Again, dim-watted lights went off in my mind. “I have an idea.”
Bailey shook her head. I caught the subtle movement out of my peripheral vision.
“You know, you look just like him when you do that.” I was referring to BT and she knew that. “Seriously though. This could work.”
“We have the time to discuss this, or I would feign important business elsewhere before you could begin speaking,” Bailey said.
“You’re not supposed to tell me that, Bailey. You are supposed to listen intently and nod at all the pertinent points.”
“That implies that you are going to make some.”
“You do realize I came back from the dead, right? I just might have something important to say.”
“My guess is they got sick of hearing your ‘ideas’ and tossed you out.”
“That really hurts, Bailey.”
She was smiling. “Perhaps I am happy they got sick of you,” she acquiesced.
“Still not much of a compliment, but I’ll read more into it later,” I told her. “Listen, I know this sounds crazy, but if he has no Lycan with him that probably means he has no Lycan allies.”
“Does that not work in our favor?” Partrib asked. “He is weaker without them.”
“I agree,” I told him.
“And?” Bailey asked.
“It is possible they don’t know what he is up to,” I said.
“And?” Bailey prodded.
I sighed. “They won’t be fans of him purging the earth of resources.”
“And?”
“You have got to ask a better question.”
“Oh...I see where you are going with this, Michael. I just like to witness your strange and wonderful reasoning unravel. I will use one of your colloquialisms; it is very much like watching a ‘brain wreck in slow motion.’”
A momentary confusion glazed over my features before it dawned on me what the hell she was talking about. “Although brain wreck works in this instance, the saying is ‘train wreck.’”
“You see any trains, Michael?”
“Point taken,” I told her as I was handily defeated by her realism. “We talk to the Lycan; we tell them what is going on. Wouldn’t they want to stop him?”
“Lycan are craven cowards. You, of all people, should know that. They do not wish to fight. Besides, they live in very small clans, none of which would be able to do much of anything against that size army. We would need Xavier—whom you destroyed—to be able to pull enough of them together to launch an offensive, and I am not sure if even he could have got them to go head first into a battle against their own.”
“How can something so bad come out of something so good? We won; didn’t we? We were victorious. We stomped out the threat, never realizing there was a larger one hiding in the shadows. It’s the smart ones; it’s always the smart ones you have to watch out for, the ones you don’t see coming until it’s too late.”
“You walked back over the threshold; would it be possible to get Xavier through?”
“First of all, you have a very skewed concept of my time away. It’s not like we had addresses and I could just look him up. Thankfully, he was someone I did not bump into on my travels. Plus, once he killed Lunos, we’d be back to square one with Xavier. Pretty sure he has not had a huge revelation since his departure of how much of an asshole he had been.”
“We are on our own then, it would seem,” Bailey replied.
“One dickhead. It does not seem right that one dickhead can cause so much hate, ruin, destruction, and despair. I need to kill that bastard or figure out a way to unite the Lycan against him. My only concern is that another one of them will get the thirst to rule, much like the brothers.”
“You forget, Michael, you are no longer an Old One. They will not have that abject fear and respect for you anymore. As soon as you walk anywhere near a clan, they will eat you, never questioning why you are in their presence. They will realize you are human long before they feel that they should be intimidated by your return from the dead.”
“Shit. Never thought of that.”
“Are you not glad I am here to advise you?” she smiled sweetly; it made me cringe a little.
“If you had shown up in my life a long time ago, you really might have saved me from a lifetime of bad decisions and choices.”
“I think it would have been much more fun to sit back and watch the events unfold as they may. Certainly less work for me.”
“Yeah, there’s that. Bailey, I know the Lycan angle is a long shot, but it might be the only way. There is not one human settlement big enough to defeat him, even if we manage to connect to our allies. Not to mention that he will only grow stronger as he sweeps across the land. If and when Lunos finds out I am no longer a vamp, he will cease to fear me. Then he will strike out unafraid, certain that he can never be defeated.”
“We have kept an eye on the Lycan. They have been continually moving farther and farther west. They are more fractured than they have ever been. They were never meant to be united or lorded over. From what my scouts could tell, there is intense fighting amongst the clans; they may not care for our troubles, even though they are ultimately affected by them. You would be entering into an extremely volatile situation.”
“Yeah—as opposed to what is going on now,” I said.
“You know what I mean. We must, at least, warn Denarth and have them send delegates to Robert’s Land to warn them. The one thing we have in our favor is that it does not appear as if Lunos is pushing his werewolves as hard as Xavier did,” Bailey said.
“No, he understands the benefits of keeping up the troops’ morale and strength. He’s found a balance of keeping them on his side while he destroys their kind. We need to figure out a way to tip that fucked-up scale.”
“It has been a long enough day. We will be in Denarth tomorrow afternoon; perhaps we should all get some rest.” Before I could protest Bailey had ordered the column to stop and prepare to set up shelters and get dinner prepared.
I was going to stay up and ponder the wonders of being alive again and, more importantly, what being human felt like, but once I finished my meal I could barely keep my eyes open. If I hadn’t known better, I would have sworn my food had been drugged. I wasn’t yet used to being mortal, with the physical limitations that came with it. It was incredible to know that I would finally be able to be with Tracy again, that there was, indeed, a light at the end of this extremely long and foreboding tunnel. It was a strange place I found myself in. I could think of no sweeter reward than to be in her arms, but now that I was human, I wanted to savor all that entailed. I looked forward to dying at some point, just not right now. Yet I could not get the feeling out of my head that the time left afforded to me was in a very small hourglass, the bottle already upturned, and the sand pouring through at an alarming rate.
Chapter 5
MIKE JOURNAL ENTRY 5
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING brought with it something I had not experienced in many years, a sore throat, a general feeling of malaise, a tightness in my chest, and a stiffness of my muscles. I had a fucking cold.
“Motherfucking germs.” I inadvertently swallowed a particularly thick and chunky congealed wad of phlegm. “Oh, that’s just fucking gross.” I
coughed.
“You do not look all that well,” Bailey said. She was dressed in some formal robes that somehow gave her an even more regal appearance. There is not a time or a place on this earth that she would not have garnered deep respect, admiration, and awe. She was a beauty almost without compare. How in the fuck she was in BT’s lineage I would have to ask him when I got to see him. Kind of weird to get “warm and fuzzies” thinking about one’s death, but that was exactly how I felt. As long as I didn’t fuck up too bad on this, my four-hundred thirty-second chance at life, I should be alright.
I could barely keep my head up as we came closer to the city limits of Denarth. Much like Talboton, they had also been busy increasing the stalwartness of their walls. They had not been as willing to relinquish their old wooden timbers, though, and instead had built something taller and stronger right behind the original structure. Had to admit, it was rather formidable looking. What was nice was that the front door was basically wide open. They were not expecting trouble and looked to be willing to accept any and all visitors. That was indeed a significant change from the Denarth I knew.
A horn sounded from the wall, trumpeting our approach, would be my guess. Bailey stopped a respectful distance away as we waited for the greeting committee. A different guard holding a rifle waved at us in a friendly enough gesture.
“Do not even think of flipping him off, Michael. Our two communities are closely tied and he will know what it means,” she said quietly to me.
The thought had sort of crossed my mind, but even thinking about raising my sore shoulders to pull off the small maneuver seemed too difficult.
“Bailey!” Lana shouted from the parapet. “I was hoping I would see you soon! Don’t go anywhere—I’ll be right there!” We watched her run to what must have been steps and then she descended out of our view.
“Where the hell does she think we’re going to go?” I asked sourly.
Bailey tsked. “She should not be running. That is not appropriate action for the Governor of Denarth.”
“Lana is running the show? Are you kidding me?”
“Her father stepped down after his mishandling of the crisis. It was almost a unanimous decision on the council’s part to elect her Governor.”
“And all those people in there are alright with a nineteen-year-old telling them what to do?”
“You yourself said there is more to Lana than befalls the eye. They see that, too.”
“Fine. Use my own words against me. And me too sick to defend myself.”
Lana was barreling through the gate and had made it about halfway to us when her steps began to falter before slowing, then stopping completely.
“What is this vision before me? Bailey?” she asked, a noticeable tremor in her voice.
“Governor?” came a questioning query from above when they saw her hesitation.
“Surprise,” I said as I got down off my horse.
“This cannot be.”
“Oh, it can be.”
“Are you a wraith?”
“I’m as real as you are, Lana.” I took a step toward her; to her credit she didn’t back up or even run, but she sure didn’t come any closer, either.
She turned to face the guard. “Please tell my betrothed to meet me outside the gate.” She looked back over her shoulder before turning around. “You do not look well; was the other side unkind to you?”
“It was indeed unkind, but that is not the reason I look like this. I have a cold.”
“I did not think a vampire could catch a cold, Michael.”
“They can’t.”
Her face lit up when she realized what I was saying. This time, she did back up a step but it was only so she could get more speed as she rushed towards me.
“I bruise easily!” I put up my hands and braced for impact. I’d played football for years and I’d been crushed by some of the meanest linebackers I knew. They had nothing on Lana. She drove through me like I wasn’t even there. I was pushed over; she landed on top of me. I grunted as she forced all the air from my lungs.
“You are real!” she squealed, kissing my face.
“Governor Saltinda! What will your subjects think?” Bailey asked.
“They will think that I am very excited to see a dear old friend!” She had looked up and stopped kissing me for a few seconds before she resumed.
“Ahem.” Mathieu cleared his throat. He was walking up to the spectacle before him. “We have been apart for less than an hour yet when I find you, you are on the ground kissing a stranger. Should I be concerned, my love?” There was humor in his voice.
“I do not think you should worry.” Lana had got off of my stomach and was helping me up.
There was a choked sob from Mathieu, his eyes immediately watered. He had lost his voice as it caught in his throat. Tears, free falling from his eyes, cascaded down his face. He quickly spanned the distance between us and embraced me in a hug that threatened to crack my ribs.
He was finally able to get out: “I’ve missed you.”
“I missed you too, man.” I did my best to escape his death clinch.
“How are you here?” he asked as he stepped back, unabashedly letting tears continue to fall.
“I heard you were having a Chinese food buffet at your wedding, plus an open bar. There was no way I was going to let death cheat me of that.”
“Come! Come! I made a new beer called Talbotbrau in your honor!”
“Wait...” Now it was my turn to cry. “There’s a beer named after me?”
Not sure I even need to write down how the night went. Especially since at some point, I got so black-out drunk I decided to take off the majority of my clothes and go caterwauling through the streets of Denarth singing a bad rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way”.
Mathieu and I ended up in a bed together, his arm draped over me in the most manly of ways. I didn’t give a shit, even when Bailey pushed my shoulder to wake me up.
“Do you have no scruples? This man is engaged to be married.” She was smiling.
“He has beer; I’m a beer whore. What do you want from me?” I pushed Mathieu off of me. He landed on the floor with a heavy thud.
He sat up. “I like mules!” Then he went back down and was snoring before I could get my pants on.
“What happens now?” I asked her as I put my boots on.
“Denarth sends some delegates to Robert’s Land and we hope that they heed the warning.”
“Why don’t we just send an army?”
“An army would be spotted long before we could arrive. That in and of itself would be considered a declaration of war. This is the way it must be done.”
You do realize that the town could fall long before we are able to create diplomatic ties, right?”
“I did not say we were not going to do anything. I just said we can’t go marching en force to Robert’s Land.”
My brain was still foggy from the previous night, but I was able to figure out what she meant. “We’re bringing the fight to Lunos.”
“I see no other choice.”
“Lunos is going to know that. He’s too damn smart for our own good.”
“Do you propose a better idea?” Bailey asked.
“If I wasn’t so damn hungover I would actually laugh at the notion of having a ‘better’ idea.”
“Or a thought, really.” It was Lana. “What have you done to my intended?” She was peeking in through the doorway.
“I gave him a walk on the wild side...a night he’ll never be able to forget. When he wakes, just tell him I can’t quit him. It’ll make absolutely no sense to him, but it will make me immeasurably happy.”
“And where are you going?” She’d come into the room and lightly pushed against Mathieu’s rump with the toe of her boot. He grunted something about not being a machine and fell back asleep. Lana had a splash of red creep up her neck and wash across her cheeks. I smiled; one way or the other she was going to be the death of him.
“I t
hink Bailey and I have a date with Lunos. We are going to go and kick some werewolf ass, then let the world take a collective sigh before the next set of monsters are revealed. Given the current set of circumstances, I don’t imagine it will take too long, either. Wow.” I shook my head. “That was a heavy dose of pessimism. Wasn’t it?” I looked to Bailey.
She nodded.
“Sorry, I’m not usually that bad. Maybe I should drink a little to take the edge off.”
“I think you’ve had enough.” Bailey pulled me out of the room.
“Can one truly have enough?” I asked longingly.
“I will have him up and ready in fifteen minutes,” Lana told us.
“Why?” Bailey and I asked back in unison.
“To fight with you, obviously,” she replied.
Bailey beat me to the next sentence, but not by much. “You are the leader of Denarth, Lana, you cannot leave your gates to fight. We will gladly accept some soldiers, though.”
“I will not send our sons and daughters off to fight while I sit back in relative safety. And what of you, Bailey? Are you not the leader of Talboton? Yet here you are, ready to go into battle.”
“She’s got a point,” I said.
“That’s the best you can offer to the discussion?” Bailey turned her mounting wrath towards me.
“Hey, I’m not the one that came up with a faulty argument.” I’d put my hands up. “And you sure can’t say it’s because she can’t fight because we know that’s not the truth. Come on, it will be like old times.”
Bailey was far from mollified. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say I was pretty lucky she hadn’t given me a black eye. Within the hour we were once again on the road. My stomach sounded like I had placed a five-gallon bucket full of hamburger helper into a washing machine and it was now on the rinse cycle. There were all sorts of unsavory noises going on amid our column as we moved out through the gates of Denarth. My digestive system felt like it was going through one of those old time wringers. It was so loud, my horse kept looking back at me in disgust. I’m not kidding. He would shake his head and whinny at me every time. I told him I was sorry; he didn’t give a shit.