by Aiden James
“Then, that’s what we’ll do.” Chanson ignored my snide remark and her smile was especially coy. “It definitely means you must never venture beyond the reception area where your food is set each day. Are we clear on that point as well, cousin?”
What could I say? She wasn’t about to let up until she got her way. And the compromise we had worked out was one I could live with.
“Yes, I’ll do as you ask,” I said. “It’s settled.
The plan went off without a hitch; the iPod was filled with music from my list and a bunch of other random stuff. Some of it was good, some not so much. I asked about it and Garvan told me that he was friends with a French DJ who scoffed at my list, but filled it nonetheless and then added the rest. The iPad had some games and I binge played through them getting sick of one and then moving on to the next for a while before finally settling down into a routine where I limited the amount of time I spent on any one game so I wouldn’t completely burn out by February. It was pretty delightful, I must admit. I ended each of my days with a little bit of reading time snuggled up under the covers. For the last couple of weeks, the routine was pretty comfortable. The music definitely made exercising while confined inside the palace as I kept up my end of the bargain much easier.
One afternoon in mid-January, all of this was to change. I had pushed my hunger to the point of physical weakness in order to make the food taste a little better. The sun was shining with few clouds in the sky, and yet a light fog had gathered around the palace below my view from the now-repaired grand window on the third floor.
I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked as if there were more dragon tracks in the freshly fallen snow. Although the temperature was still quite chilly and much of the morning had been cloudy with flurries, the beautiful afternoon was something worthwhile to embrace. I held my arms out to my sides, closed my eyes, and let the sun’s soft warmth bathe me for a moment.
A light growl from my stomach prompted me to head downstairs to the main level, clasping the top buttons to my blouse to shelter my neckline. For some reason, my birthmark felt oddly exposed―especially as I moved past the window on the second floor.
As I stepped onto the ornate marble surface of the first floor, the sound of a girl weeping outside the front door broke the stillness. Two little servant girls placed the food on the table where I usually took my meals; steam rose from the plates and dishes they had arranged for me. They left, seeming oblivious to the whimpering growing steadily louder behind me.
I hesitated before continuing up to my food; Chanson’s warning echoing in my mind. Really, I had no intent of seeing what was beyond the door, especially since there wasn’t a peephole. I suppose Himalayan vampires don’t worry much about home invasions.
I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t worth worrying about and headed to my table, ignoring the image in my mind of a young Chinese woman begging for her life before becoming dragon cuisine. I believe if I could’ve moved out of earshot―even barely―the outcome of that afternoon might’ve turned out far different than it did.
I sat at the table, put my back to the door, and wished I had brought the iPod with me instead of leaving it to charge. I picked up the lacquered chopsticks and used them to dip a piece of chicken into some plum sauce. As I put the first bite in my mouth and began to chew, the sound was, at first, indistinct. Yet, a moment later, the voice and words became clear. Tyreen, in rising agony, called for me—more like begged for me to come to her rescue.
So I did. I dropped the chopsticks, stood fast enough to knock the chair over backwards, and ran to the door. I fought with the locks until I managed to loosen them all, and pulled on the door, hating the low moan the heavy wood made as it rubbed against the marble tiles.
“Txema help! I’m burning up! You’ve gotta get me back inside Aaaiiiiii!” She screamed incoherently.
“Oh my God—Tyreen!”
The mist parted, and behind, it my best friend was smoldering under direct sunlight. Her vampire flesh blackened and glowed like charcoal on the icy walkway. She was wearing the same maroon yoga tights and gold pullover I saw her dressed in the night before. She screamed, reaching out for me to grasp her outstretched burning hand and arm.
In a matter of seconds, she would explode into flames and cinders. I knew that I had to move quickly to save her life, and reacted without thinking. I raced out through the door, unconcerned what would happen to me, or the baby I carried if I slipped and fell on the ice.
As I ran toward her, Tyreen shimmered and vanished. I slowed to stop and tried to make sense of what happened, the door slammed shut behind me, and I realized I had been drawn into a trap by some kind of illusion.
Two dragons stepped from the shadows of the immense entrance to Xu Zheng Palace. They eyed me with cold crocodile eyes, almost orange in iridescence, and their mouths were slightly open, exposing twin rows of long sharp teeth. The monsters were nearly identical, covered in the same gray skin as the dragon I saw on Christmas Eve. Each was roughly ten feet in height, though they seemed much shorter, crouched as they were to leap. When they did jump at me, their long, muscular legs made the jump over to where I stood in broad daylight an easy effort.
I was still speechless, and at first couldn’t find my voice to scream with. Instead, I found myself offering rapid-fire silent prayers that the pair would start flaming up like the image of Tyreen did, and then explode into nothingness. Unlike my vampire associates, or perhaps like the previous dragon, the sun held no danger for them.
They flexed and closed their sharp claws as they moved to corner me. The one to my left had fluttering wings protruding from its shoulders. In a panic, I scooted away from them as much as possible, slipping and sliding on the ice, which didn’t seem to bother my pursuers in the least. I scrambled further away from the palace and my only safe haven. I found my voice and screamed as loud as I could, calling desperately for help. To Garvan and Chanson mostly, but even throwing in Gustav’s name or anyone else who might be listening.
But, I was on my own…
I thought about making a run for the palace, as if I could somehow make it around or through the legs of one of these lizard beasts. It didn’t seem possible… no, correction, it wasn’t possible at all. Not with their proximity and the slippery ice. Worse yet, a sheer precipice stretched out behind me; a fall that would send me tumbling thousands of feet to my death was less than fifteen feet away.
I was fucked. I had disobeyed Chanson’s strict orders, and now I would pay for it with my life. I had screwed things up royally for not only me, but also my child.
While I lamented this and felt my throat go hoarse from all of my screams, the pair moved in to where less than six feet separated us. One took a swing at my face. I ducked, and my hair fluttered in a brief, but powerful breeze. I didn’t expect the bastard would miss the next time it took a swing. It hissed at me, and a voice like thunder boomed from above us.
“Teng! Woˇ jiangˋhuiˋ sha le niˇ!”
A shadow descended. As I cowered, a figure dressed in a crimson and gold changshen landed directly in front of me. Like the illusion of Tyreen, whoever this was seemed ready to burst into flames at any moment.
This mysterious figure faced the dragons and raised an ornate sword. The golden crown with jade symbols told me who this must be, but I wasn’t positive. “Run, Txema―flee while you can!” It was Xuanxang. He pointed to a path nearby that looked as if it descended the mountain without taking his eyes off the monsters. Ice covered the route, and it looked rather steep. Great, he was giving me a choice between suicide by fall or slaughter by dragon-tooth.
“I can’t do it! Just hold them off and I can make it back inside!”
“There is no time, and the conspiracy to kill you is too widespread in our midst to protect you any longer.”
He risked a glance back at me. The flames started to spread across his face, and I thought he would definitely die. But then his skin stopped burning and instead peeled away. As it did, loud r
ipping noises erupted from his back, and he turned to fend off the dragons, who had recovered from their initial surprise and focused their wrath upon him. Meanwhile, large red fins grew out of the back of his head and trailed down his spine, and his hands transformed into the same raptor-like claws of his counterparts.
In less than half a minute, the vampire Xuanxang had gone from a daylight-stricken inferno to a powerful dragon who towered over the other two by a least a foot. I was still petrified with fear. As in unable to move. Something within him was sensitive to my plight and he faced me after whipping the other two dragons off their feet with his fin-covered tail. Great gold-red eyes brimmed with the struggle of vampire, human, and primitive beast going on inside.
“Run!” he roared, his voice no longer containing any aspect of humanity. His eyes grew darker. “Run before we devour you!”
My legs felt even weaker than they had when he first addressed me. But I crawled away while I felt him leering at me, surely struggling to contain the monster within that would love to tear me open and devour my entrails. As soon as I could, I stood and ran for the path, casting a series of brief terrified glances behind me.
The dragon that was once Xuanxang managed to subdue one of the others. But the winged fiend slipped away from him and pursued me in earnest. If I could reach the top of the path and make it down a few steps, I thought might elude the monster. For a moment, it looked as if I would do it. Survival was within my grasp. Yet, as I began to navigate the initial icy steps and stared down at the sheer drop of several thousand feet, my feet slipped out from beneath me. Pulling myself up by the flimsy wooden rail that supported the path, I watched in horror as the dragon flew into the air. Its wings were not vestigial as I had hoped. It careened through a serpentine turn and dove toward me, tooth and claw poised to rip me apart.
I closed my eyes and said goodbye to everyone I loved, beginning with my unborn daughter, whose brief existence would end as a minuscule morsel in this fiend’s stomach.
A pair of sharp claws ripped through my shirt and tore my skin. Warm blood oozed down my back, but I was surprised to feel anything less than agony. I braced myself for an inevitable bite that would likely kill me outright. The claws gripped my shirt, causing it to bunch up and serve as a sling to lift me into the air. Another angry roar prompted a defiant screech, and I opened my eyes.
Something huge and ugly, but certainly not a dragon, carried me. Picking up speed as it soared over the chasm, I dared to look up beyond its grayish-green, leathery legs. It was sort of like a bird, and also not at all. It had no feathers, and was much bigger than any bird I’d ever seen in pictures. It seemed impossible… and yet what was impossible in this crazy world of vampires and other immortals?
The thing looked like a pterodactyl, with a wingspan of over twenty feet. It had the classic reddish bony knob on the back of its head, and a long, narrow beak filled with sharp needle-like teeth—the biggest damned flying creature I’d ever seen.
But, that was not the most frightening aspect of this thing. It pulled its legs in closer to its body and I wondered if it was an instinctive move to reduce the wind drag. I reminded that it was my curiosity about strange animals that got me into this mess to begin with and was just grateful that the work of keeping our combined weight aloft was generating a lot of body heat that was bleeding off and kept me from freezing to death. It was flying at an incredible speed. Perhaps to its nest where it could feed me to its young? Or, maybe to the deepest, rocky chasm to dump me into, and let natural forces tenderize my flesh. All I knew at that moment was Xu Zheng Palace and the icy precipice it sat upon grew smaller and smaller in the distance behind us. Soon, the realm of vampires that were also dragons in the daylight would be visible no more.
t would be near impossible for me to guess with any accuracy how long this pterodactyl-thing carried me through the air. Was it an hour or two? Or, maybe almost three? A better way for me to describe my trip is to detail what we passed and how the incredibly brisk air at the outset steadily became warmer. Warmer, I should say, especially after we left the glacial region of the Himalayas, and by my best guess, headed mostly south.
Traveling over ever-thickening forests, the foliage became less pine needles and more broad-leafed trees. An abundance of rivers and streams passed below, along with occasional ponds and lakes. My captor’s altitude steadily dropped once we left the mountains, and by the time we reached a sub-tropical area that followed a beautiful winding river, we sped along less than a hundred feet above the ground. Not that I felt any safer since the creature was still traveling extremely fast, but at least I was no longer looking down at gorges and other chasms several thousand feet deep.
Other than the steady flapping of its wings, the creature had been relatively quiet. For no particular reason, it screeched loudly and dove toward a jungle near the river. I feared this might be where its lair lay hidden, and tried to stay alert in case a brief opportunity to escape presented itself. It picked up speed, and I thought for sure we’d crash into the trees. Somehow, it managed to maneuver through the branches and we emerged next to the river. It stretched its wings fully extended, silent save for the feathery-leathery fluttering of membranes. We coasted for a while, following the path of the water. When we came upon a roped wooden walkway, the creature pulled up to halt in midair and dropped me gently onto a white sand beach.
Surprised to find warm sand under my knees and fingers, my aching joints gave way and I just rested there. For a moment, I forgot about the flying lizard, or the fact it would likely come back for me. I was exhausted and also not freezing, nor being pursued by killer dragons. I was too tired to move and frankly had no idea where to even start, so it wasn’t so much a conscious decision to wait as a lack of options. Despite, or perhaps because of that, I was struck with a deep sense of peace in the moment. Even the pain from the slashes in my back had dulled to a distant, almost but not quite numb throbbing.
While marveling about how the area carried such a settled spirituality, a white-haired naked man walked by, carrying a small gray pack as he hurried out of the sun’s direct reach and into the jungle less than fifty feet away.
There was something familiar about the man.
“Txema…come here… move quickly!”
Kazikli?
I couldn’t believe it—it sure as hell sounded like the vampire that had recently taken a keen interest in my plight. He had the same white hair and muscular build, too, although I hadn’t seen his naked backside before. Only the white hair made him look older. But nowhere near as old as a normal middle-aged man would appear. Thirty-ish Sam Elliot was the way Tyreen had described him.
“Kazikli… is that really you?” I staggered to my feet and walked over to where I had last seen him.
I figured he must’ve moved deeper into the shade after what we’d both witnessed earlier that day. I doubt this very ancient vampire ever worried about someone like Abraham Van Helsing trying to kill him. But playing in the bright light of day appeared to be a unanimously excruciating experience for any vampire, regardless of age.
I followed him into the coolness provided by the canopy of thick branches and leaves. It surprised me that I was actually happy for the slightly cooler temperature away from the sunlight after enduring sub-freezing temperatures earlier without a coat. The scent of fresh apples and spice grew stronger, and Kazikli soon appeared before me dressed in a Buddhist monk’s triple robe. The main part was bright yellow, and a sash hanging around his waist like a sarong was a reddish purple. A thick orange robe hung over his left shoulder―equally effective for a privileged follower of Caesar back in the day or a modern-day Tibetan monk.
He smiled and motioned for me to sit on one of the wooden benches that surrounded a small fire pit. Thick bamboo canes surrounded the area, and dense foliage from several banyan trees effectively blocked the sun’s rays from reaching the area. I wasn’t sure if this was his private sanctuary, or if it belonged to someone else and he brought me here for a
chat.
It all seemed weird to me: the desperate rescue from death, the dangerous and weary flight to wherever we were, and now a little ‘get together’ with an ancient vampire turned ascetic monk.
I opened my mouth to express these thoughts, but he held up a single finger stop me from speaking and then he was gone. A second later he returned, and a part of his robe was wet. He ripped the corner off and walked behind me and began to clean the wounds on my back.
“Txema, you certainly must be wondering why I brought you here. Why here in a remote jungle instead of finding a modern facility like the Marriot or Residence Inn in your country… correct?”
He took a moment to dab some odorless salve on the rag. When it hit my shoulders, a shock of pain flashed through me―but only for an instant before it was gone.
“That’s a good place to start, I guess.” I frowned as I looked out through the trees toward the white sand beach and the swirling waters in the river next to it. “Where are we, exactly? This is beautiful, but I don’t think I have ever even seen a picture of it online or in a magazine or anything.”
“We’re in Nepal, near a small remote village that I’m quite fond of just north of the country’s southern border.” He returned to the facing bench and smiled proudly. “The water you see is the Kosi River—one of the few in the world with miles of white sand beaches. All that surrounds us are jungles and majestic mountains in the distance. Very few human beings reside here. If it wasn’t so hard to get to, it would make a fine resort, don’t you think?”
“If the food has some variety it would definitely be an upgrade over the Motel 6 we’ve been staying at,” I said, deadpan. The white peaks of purple and blue mountains in the distance looked as if the clouds and the sprawling snowcaps merged into one seamless band across the sky. It was like the cover to a fantasy novel. “But… I feel stupid asking because it is both so obvious and so unreal. Did you have something to do with that flying dinosaur?”