The Fell of Dark

by Caleb Roehrig

  Anger finally tightens Rasputin’s features, his brows pulling together. “You pretend to have authority over me? Your ridiculous organization makes a mockery of what our kind can be, what we are destined for! You crawl in darkness when we might all march in the light, and I reject your petty restrictions.” He waves his hands, and eight of his minions turn toward Jude with a guttural hiss and a flaring of their eyes. “You may go. I am in a good mood, so I will even allow you thirty seconds before my children hunt you down.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Jude returns darkly, his teeth stretching longer.

  “Then you won’t be leaving.” Rasputin’s claws extend, his face beginning to reshape. Behind him, those eight minions step out of formation to flank him. “I have business to attend to, and I fear no retribution—not from humans, and certainly not from you.”

  “Have it your way,” Jude says with a feral grin—and right on cue, more figures come crashing through the pines behind him. Eyes blazing and faces sharpened like axe heads, two dozen new vampires appear, arraying themselves for battle with rehearsed precision. “I didn’t come armed with words alone.”

  Rasputin’s eyes flicker, and over by the rolling cage, the blowtorch extinguishes as silent communication passes between the master and his progeny. He’s got twenty mindless, helter-skelter goons willing to die for him, but as he faces twenty-five of the Syndicate’s hand-picked enforcers, he’s starting to look like he might be at least a little afraid of retribution after all.

  Hostility crackles in the air as the two factions square off, and I glance nervously around the clearing, thinking about my great escape. These gangs are ready for battle, but they’re not going to forget what they’re fighting over; and while Jude may speak for the Syndicate, he doesn’t control the vampires backing him up … and plain as day, I can hear four of them thinking about their private orders to take me into custody at any cost. I’m not out of the woods yet—figuratively or literally.

  The opposing packs advance on each other, and I step back. It’s cold and getting colder—but my breath leaves no trace on the night air, and I’m hoping neither side notices. Sixteen of Rasputin’s flunkies now fall in line as he closes the gap with Jude, while two stand guard by my parents’ cage and two more focus their attentions on me. The cleric bares his teeth, about to speak … when a ghostly cry pierces the building tension.

  An owl swoops across the clearing, its wings spread against the moonlight; as it circles, its call is answered, the treetops coming alive with a strange howling. The raptor banks sharply and plummets—coming straight at me, with dark vapor pouring from its feathers. When it’s four feet away, the creature suddenly rears, erupting into a starburst of smoke that swallows it … and then dissolves to reveal a smiling Viviane Duclos.

  “Hi, Auggie.” She surveys the disagreement taking shape around us, and her eyes smolder to life. “Looks like we joined the party just in time.”

  The picnic grounds fill once again with that cacophony of eerie hooting, and then bodies begin to drop out of the trees. The birch grove shivers as eight vampires—including Gunnar—leap to the ground behind Rasputin’s crew and eight more break free from the shadows atop the evergreens, landing to instantly outflank the Syndicate. The League of the Dark Star might be the smallest force on the ground tonight, but they’ve already got their foes surrounded.

  Perforce, the other factions divide—splitting their focus again. Eight of Rasputin’s sidekicks turn on Gunnar, while eight stay with their master, and ten of the Syndicate enforcers reverse position to counter the rear ambush. The four that were watching me earlier simply break ranks, their agenda here wholly different than that of their friends. When they inch in my direction, Viviane brandishes her claws, daring them to try.

  My heart beats in my throat as I watch this all unspool, a tinderbox moment on the verge of exploding, and I take another step back. This chaos is just what I had in mind.

  Bloodshed was always inevitable, the killers and cultists dogging my footsteps, clamoring for violence from day one. All along I’ve known that I would be helpless in the end: one pathetic little art kid against a legion of vicious, undying monsters. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy—but if I can force them to fight each other, they’re useful, nonetheless. I gave Rasputin an ultimatum, and I told both Jude and Gunnar beforehand to make sure their sides would be present as well. All that’s missing is the one group I have no “in” with, and I can only hope that the bread crumbs I arranged will lead them here.

  “You must be Viviane Duclos.” Rasputin evaluates her carefully, and I finally realize that the night they fought in the street, he had no idea who she was. Until now, what she really looked like had remained a calculated mystery, and the glamours she’d cast over herself to become Daphne Banks were sophisticated enough to fool even him. With mock formality, the Mad Monk notes, “We are ill-met by moonlight—again.”

  “Like old times.” Viviane gives him a sweet smile with malice carved into its edges. “Sad to say, I won’t be pulling my punches tonight. If you have any last words for your drones, you should probably get them off your chest now.”

  “A very good point.” He rubs his jaw. My captive parents were his advantage, but they’re now a liability; he still has to guard them, even while fighting a war on two fronts and trying to keep me out of enemy hands at the same time. With Viviane as my personal guardian, his job just got even harder. After a moment, he calls out, “My last words: Kill them all, and leave no one standing but the boy.”

  With a gesture, Rasputin signals the two minions he’d assigned to watch me, directing them to rejoin their brethren while he moves to face Viviane himself. Jude evaluates the change in lineup, his gaze moving from us to the cage with my parents in it, and, back among the birches, Gunnar is doing the same. I can practically hear the fuse sizzling as the tinderbox prepares to blow, and still the guest list isn’t full yet.

  The spark jumps suddenly, the twenty-one vampires of the Northern Wolf snapping their jaws open and hissing in unison—and then it’s bedlam in Colgate Woods. All three factions surge together, a storm of teeth and claws and golden eyes, flesh tearing and bones shattering in a grotesque symphony. Those four Syndicate vampires finally make their move on me, but Viviane and Rasputin both whirl, lunging to intercept the attack. Their magic crackles, smoke threading under the moon as they streak through the air.

  The Syndicate vampires don’t stand a chance. The first quite literally loses his head, as well as a few vertebrae, when Rasputin decapitates him bare-handed—and the others fare no better. In two swift moves, Viviane produces a hidden stake, diving under one man’s arm to thrust it into the chest of another. Then, she swings back in the same motion, impaling the first as he spins around to face her. Both enforcers drop to the ground, already rotting, just as the Mad Monk is polishing off his second victim.

  The decks cleared, the two faction leaders eye each other again—and charge. More smoke rolls across open ground as they finally clash together in a furious display of feints and strikes. Their back-and-forth movements are hypnotizing, violence as choreography, feet and claws meeting like swords in a fencing match. My time is running out, I can feel it, but I stay put. Jude and Gunnar are both fighting their way closer to the traveling cage, and I can’t go anywhere until I know my parents are safe.

  Three of the four groups that have been stalking me these past weeks are currently on the field—and there’s no warning when the last domino lands, and the missing faction that I’ve been expecting finally joins the fray. Viviane and Rasputin wheel suddenly apart, and the cleric reaches out in the nick of time, his grip stopping a fiery arrow an instant before it hits him. His eyes go from shocked to understanding, and then more arrows hurtle across the night sky, flames licking the stars and plunging down.

  “Brotherhood!” One of the vampires shouts. Bodies are hit, the blazing missiles surging on impact, and the undead begin to scatter in panic. The first salvo is followed by a
second, arrows crisscrossing overhead, their trajectory seeming to anticipate the disarray. More targets are struck, flames engulfing them with unnatural speed—but I hold my ground.

  One of the arrows lodges in the wooden frame of the cart, the boards blackening as the fire threatens to spread. My parents yelp and whimper, huddling closer together, and my insides revolt in fear. Across the clearing, despite the confusion and the mounting danger, Jude and Gunnar are frozen in place. Their promise, and the magic of a blood oath, means they have to act—now or never.

  They exchange a glance … and then break forward, racing across the picnic grounds, converging on the wheeled cart. At the same moment, black-clad figures come springing out of the trees behind me, agile and silent—at least fifteen of them, each wielding a sword. Polished metal flashing, their blades swing with deadly intent as they storm the field.

  Viviane is closest to the trees, and the Knights reach her first, four of them bearing down at once. She pauses only a second before erupting in a cloud of smoke, shifting back into an owl and spiraling for the sky. Two more arrows launch at her from the trees, but she barrel-rolls, dodging both and flying out of sight.

  Four others target Rasputin, rushing at him in an acrobatic advance, blades slicing loops from the air. The cleric vanishes suddenly, reappearing behind his assailants—snapping a Knight’s neck before vanishing again when the others whirl to catch him.

  As the Russian taunts his adversaries with a deadly game of keep-away, Jude rips the lock off my parents’ cage, and he and Gunnar dart inside. Two more flaming arrows carve bright tracks through the air, and I’m dizzy with fear, but their fiery tips hit the cart—missing flesh, both alive and undead.

  I don’t get to see if the rescue is a success.

  Three of the Knights reach me at last, and I don’t even bother to run. There’s no point. The first to come within striking distance thrusts his sword straight into my chest, and the second plunges hers through my back. The metal edges meet with a terrific clang and then glance apart, vibrating where my body is supposed to be.

  I see my own reflection in the tinted goggles of the man facing me, and I give him a cheery smile a moment before I glimmer out of sight.

  35

  My eyes pop open and I gasp for air, my face sweaty and body trembling. Beside me, her clammy hand locked tightly with my own, Hope Cheng looks even more wrung out than I feel. She’s pale and breathing hard, her shoulders quivering—but there’s a giddy smile on her face.

  “It worked,” she pants hoarsely, sounding almost astonished. “I can’t believe it!”

  Rubbing my forehead, I blink a few times. “You … didn’t think it was going to work?”

  “I had no idea.” She gives a breathless shrug, combing her fingers through her damp hair. “A detailed, interactive illusion, cast from a distance? That’s telepathy, projection, remote viewing…” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Honestly, I’m proud of myself if I can even match my socks in the morning. This was, like … a shitload of advanced magic.”

  I lick my lips, and wind tosses the branches around us. Behind their chattering, however, the drumbeat of violence continues loud and clear. “Just so we’re on the same page … you told me you would do it, but you didn’t know if you could do it?”

  “I told you I would try,” she corrects me. The color is already coming back to her cheeks, her hands steadying again as she pops the cap off a bottle of water. On Wednesday morning, Jude and Gunnar each left me a vial of vampire blood; tonight, I drank one and gave the other to Hope—and already it’s replenishing the energy we lost from our intensive spell-casting. Wiping her mouth and nodding toward the chain-link fence that separates us from the trees, Hope adds, “And look: We pulled it off!”

  A smile steals across my face at last, because somehow? We really did. We got Rasputin to bring my parents into the open, at a location of my choice, making a rescue possible; we lured all my enemies into a trap to fight one another—including the Brotherhood, thanks to the notes Hope and Adriana scattered all over town; and we projected the illusion of my presence on the picnic grounds long enough to set the conflict in motion. I’m still worried about my parents, but at least I know Jude and Gunnar have them now.

  Seated together inside a chalk circle, magic symbols scrawled around us on fissured pavement, Hope and I huddle in the shadow of the Trapans Glassworks factory. Old crime scene tape is strung around its perimeter, the broken windows a haunting reminder of what happened here a week ago. At most, we’re a quarter mile from the bloody skirmish being waged over the entity that continues to percolate inside of me.

  “You pulled it off,” I point out, giving her a hug. Euphoria is building inside me, endorphins riding a wave of vampire blood, and my nerves are beginning to vibrate with it. “I was just here to hold your hand. You know, literally.”

  The most critical step in my half-assed plan depended upon Hope’s abilities as a water elemental—to cast illusions and hear things she’s not supposed to hear. Without her, my parents’ rescue would have been impossible. The coven would still do whatever it is they plan to do, of course, and maybe I would be saved … but my mom and dad would have been killed for certain. It turns out that Hope, appropriately enough, was my only hope.

  Hand in hand, with her gift for sorcery and my borrowed magic—boosted by syzygy and vampire blood, and amplified by the Nexus—we powered a walking, talking apparition that fooled even a sorceress as strong as Viviane Duclos.

  “We did it.” Hope tilts her face to the stars and closes her eyes, breathing in the night. “And it was … incredible. I’ve never wielded magic like that before. Am I … I mean, am I an asshole for being just a little sad that it was a once-in-a-lifetime thing?”

  “I get it.” And I do. But our lifetimes might be over sooner than either of us thinks. As my senses sharpen, I detect something I’ve never felt before—a hairline fracture where I end and the Corrupter begins. He’s starting to separate.

  My eyes dart back to the trees, my good mood vaporizing instantly. Colgate Woods was the only location I knew of where a final battle could take place without innocent lives being lost in collateral damage. Meanwhile, the site of the ill-fated rave was the only one that offered both the privacy and proximity Hope needed to pull off a trick this complex. The strongest sorcery needs to be worked close at hand—the greater the distance, the weaker the magic. Which is something that both Viviane and Rasputin will know.

  And even now, with multiple vampires crowding my awareness, I can sense the two faction leaders connecting the dots …

  “Can you tell what’s happening down there?” Hope interrupts my darkening thoughts, as if reading my mind. Or maybe she is reading my mind. “Are your parents—”

  “I think they’re okay.” I spit it out quickly, because now that I’m reaching out with the Corrupter’s radar, I can tell how rapidly things have deteriorated since I vanished.

  Now that the flaming arrows have stopped flying, and the prize they were competing for has vanished, the vampires have turned on the humans in their midst—a common foe they can eat. With numbers on their side, the undead are swarming; and even as some of them disappear from my radar, falling prey to the Knights, I can tell by the pattern of their movements that they’re prevailing.

  Maybe I should feel guilty. The Perseans are human, and they want the same thing I do: to prevent the apocalypse. The only thing we disagree on is, you know, how dead I should be to get there. If they killed me, the world would be saved … for a while. But Azazel would just keep coming back. I’m the first vessel in generations with any hope of stopping him for good, and who knows when there could be another?

  The Brotherhood volunteered to die for this cause, but nobody bothered to ask me. I want to live. I want a chance to make the world better, to do something beautiful. The Knights on the field always planned to die for their beliefs. I intend to live for mine.

  “Jude and Gunnar are leaving the picnic grounds.” I can
feel them, darting through the trees along the streambed, a blur of speed. “They’re heading toward Adriana.”

  A few blocks away from us—close enough to reach on foot—Adriana sits behind the wheel of Hope’s car. She’s the getaway driver, waiting for her girlfriend and my parents to fill the empty seats so she can take all of them as far away as possible.

  “Then they have your parents!” Hope squeezes my hand again. She’s made the same deduction I have, and I reach out with my mind, because I have to know for sure. It’s Gunnar’s thoughts I find first, and when I understand that he’s carrying my mother as he sprints after Jude, my eyes well with tears. But there’s no time to cry, because I’m picking up other thoughts as well—ones filled with malevolence.

  “You should get moving,” I say urgently. Rasputin’s forces are dwindling fast; he’s losing his followers, and no matter how satisfying he finds it to kill, he’s losing his patience with the distraction of the battle. In fact—“Go! Now!”

  Four of the remaining Northern Wolf vampires suddenly spring away from the clearing, each hurtling with impossible speed in a separate direction. I don’t even have to reach into their easily accessible minds to know that this is a recon mission—that Rasputin wants to find me, and these are his advance scouts.

  One of them is headed our way.

  Hope pales, lurching to her feet, and she starts to run—but she barely makes it five yards before a figure rises into the night sky, arms wide and eyes blazing, soaring above the trees that separate the factory from Colgate Woods in a gravity-defying leap.