by Jack Conner
Soon hundreds of others had flocked to his side, eagerly joining his army and signing on to battle his enemies. Some, of course, had been spies. For others, the fair-weather followers, betrayal hadn't entered their minds until he started to lose. Even now the thought made him livid, but he could not surrender control, not now with four guards on the battlement with him. Poise was important, especially when things were going so sour.
Far below, on one of the catwalks, Ambassador Mauchlery approached. Four guards flanked him, too, although these guards were not simply to protect, but to prevent their charge from escaping. The very sight of them made Sarnova's fist ball up until it shook. When the trembling reached his elbow, he took a deep breath and went back to watching the skyline.
In time, the Ambassador disappeared into the tower and began ascending the stairs.
Sarnova appraised the shadows of the chamber, where a large and expensive missile launcher had been pushed back from the large window. The machine was intended to protect his castle from airborne assaults. In the old days, boiling water would have sufficed. Maybe some rock-throwers or archers for good measure. Back then, castles had been efficient structures insofar as safety was concerned.
Nowadays, one should have an underground bunker of some sort. Of course, he had one of these, too, though it wasn't very scientific, just a tunnel into the deepest part of the mountain, but that was only protection for him, and he was a man very concerned about the well-being of his subjects; old age had mellowed him. The question was how to fit a castle so far underground that it could resist nuclear attack. That was his greatest fear.
Hopefully Subaire and her followers would not use such tactics; they wanted the Castle whole, as well as the subjects at his command. As for himself, they wanted him dead only if he couldn't be persuaded to see their point of view. Which he couldn't.
The thing that troubled him most at the moment, though, was the reason the missile launcher had been pushed back from the window in the first place: to clear the area before the window in case a summary execution of his oldest friend proved necessary. It was for this event that Roche Sarnova had donned his ceremonial cape, hoping even as he did so that it wouldn't be required. It all hinged on what the Ambassador had to say for himself. A few wrong words and he would be positioned at the edge of the window (where the launcher had heretofore been placed), then flung out the window into the abyss, where he would plummet until he was obliterated against the ice-encrusted chasm floor. If that didn't kill him, nothing would.
Sarnova’s ears pricked at footsteps from below. The Ambassador and his escorts stepped into the chamber, moved a few yards toward their Lord and stopped at an appropriate distance.
"Good evening, Ambassador," Sarnova said.
Mauchlery nodded. "I hope so, Roche."
The Dark Lord said nothing, contemplating the familiarity with which his old friend spoke. It was unnerving at a time like this.
"I presume you know why I summoned you.”
"At the secret meeting last night, you must have had a mole."
"Yes. You ..." Roche cleared his throat and began again. "You plotted to overthrow me."
The Ambassador opened his mouth. When nothing came out, he closed it and reconsidered. He didn't seem to know what to say. Neither did Sarnova, and he'd had longer to think about it.
The wind made the only noise, though this at least was a roar. Snow drifted in through the glass-less window and struck the floor, throwing up little drops of water where other flakes had recently melted.
"Why?" asked Sarnova. "Why did you do it?"
Mauchlery’s voice was quiet. "To save you, my friend."
"Explain."
The Ambassador sighed. "I knew that some of the officers were holding secret meetings, so I placed a few moles myself and discovered, not to my surprise, that they were discussing the situation as if the war was already lost. Or nearly so. They thought the only solution was to replace you, at least temporarily. They lacked direction, though, and I was approached twice by them; they were subtle, but it was clear they wished me to lead them, to give them strength. At first I pretended ignorance, as if they were being too subtle."
He smiled then, as if to show that this was a joke. Tentatively, Sarnova returned the gesture. He so wanted to believe. Therein was the danger.
Mauchlery continued: "Then it occurred to me that if I was their leader, I could control them. It was clear to me that sooner or later they would've gone through with it, with or without me. They might've bungled it. You could've gotten hurt. Either way, they would've deposed you and surrendered to Subaire. I couldn't let that happen. So I summoned them all together, knowing you would've probably planted a mole yourself, and told them that I was taking over their operations." He paused, as if considering his words carefully, or maybe it was only to show his triumph. "They were relieved," he said. "I outlined a plan to depose you without you getting hurt and told them to gather support from their own subordinates."
"Why?"
"So that there would be no confusion in the ranks. I didn't want the younglings throwing a coup of their own. I wanted organization, and I wanted to lead it. After the mass recruiting, I would've been the silent leader of the rebels, and I could've stalled them for as long as I wanted. I knew it was risky, I knew you would probably find out about it, but it was the only thing I knew to do. As the old saying goes, The surest way to prevent a house from being built is to be the carpenter that builds it." He stopped, looked Sarnova in the eye. "Do you see, Roche? Do you see why I had to do it?"
Sarnova let out a breath.
Francois had said everything he'd wanted to hear, and that was the problem. It was too perfect. Of course, that's the way it would've been, and that's the way it had all gone down according to Roche Sarnova’s moles. The question was what the Ambassador had really intended. Had he been doing it all for Sarnova's benefit, or for his own? The crux of it was that Mauchlery had never wanted any position of leadership, not in all the millennia the Dark Lord had known him; it was just not in his nature. And Sarnova had, over the centuries, come to trust in that nature ... which might have been the mistake. Then again, maybe all this treachery was just making him see fangs in every shadow.
"Very well," he said, indicating that his decision had been made. He would now announce the verdict.
Mauchlery waited, silent.
"I believe you," said the Dark Lord.
Visibly, the tension drained from the Ambassador's face. After a few moments, he smiled. The smile was genuine, if a touch nervous, though it was clear the encounter had taxed him. Even as he observed this in Mauchlery, Sarnova felt the same in himself.
"You had me scared there for a minute," Francois said, his eyes glancing at the window.
Sarnova smiled, stepped forward and embraced his friend. "You scared me, too," he said into his ear.
"But you understand," Francois demanded, pushing Sarnova away just far enough so that they could look into each other's eyes. "Blackie, it's not enough that you believe me. You must understand why I did what I did."
The Dark Lord squeezed his friend's shoulder. "I understand. And I thank you for it. If you hadn't stepped in, I probably would've been overthrown within a week or so."
"Good," Mauchlery said, and it was apparently all he could say at the moment, his throat being constricted as it was. Sarnova noticed that he refrained from blinking so that the lens of water over his eyes would not break.
Sarnova ran his hand through Francois' golden hair with one hand and patted him on the cheek with the other.
"Come on, Ambassador. Let us go have a drink."
* * *
Alone, Danielle wandered the castle, thinking. At first she wanted to seek out Harry or Sophia for guidance, but this would be a mistake, she knew. He was the angel on her shoulder and Sophia the devil. Since they would only cancel each other out, their advice was useless, which left Danielle in the position of having to decide what to do herself. As it should be, she suppos
ed.
Revenge or forgiveness, revenge or forgiveness …
In the end her judgment was surprisingly easy to arrive at. Having made up her mind, she descended into the catacombs.
Into the dungeon.
At the entrance to the dungeon, guards blocked the way, but she flashed her key and they let her through without comment, although she thought she saw them stifling grins. They knew the situation, then, at least as best they could.
Let them laugh. She was beyond caring.
After exploring the prisoners' tunnels for some time, she came upon the door that led into Malcolm's room. It was metal, and she remembered that most of these rooms were designed to hold immortals. The prisoners would be drained of as much blood as they could afford to lose and thrown into one of these cells to whither away, too weak to escape through the walls or even open the door with their mindthrust—though this last was a talent few of them would have in any quantity. Few possessed the telekinetic strength of Ruegger.
Danielle stared at the door. She made no move to open it.
What would Ruegger say about this whole thing? At Kharker’s Lodge, he’d said that she must follow her heart, but the heart is not a simple thing; it’s multi-faceted and one must consciously chose which facet to pursue.
Taking a deep breath, Danielle unlocked the door, swung it wide and stepped into the chamber beyond.
Kicking the door shut behind her, she gave her eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. The room was made of thick stone and the ceiling stretched away into high shadows, narrowing into a sort of dome. On a ledge sticking out from the circumference of this dome crouched a dozen large stone gargoyles, glaring down into the room with malevolent eyes.
Along the wall lay rumpled sheets where Malcolm must be spending his nights—if, that is, he could tell them from the days—but he was not among them. Instead, he stood tall and proud and completely naked in the center of the chamber, holding his ground against her. She wondered what she must look like to him, she the creature that had haunted him for so many years, a creature he had lived with in his youth and ultimately betrayed.
"You stand tall for a coward," she said.
He stared at her hard and seemed to shudder.
At a flick of her wrist, the large curved knife she used for these killings shot from the sleeve of her jacket into her waiting hand—a cross between a dagger and a scythe and a machete, yet none of these. The blade glittered even in the faint light, as if over the years it had captured some wispy fragments of the souls it had liberated and now they were making themselves known.
"All the others died by this blade," she told him, watching his reaction.
He visibly fought to maintain composure.
"Where's the music?" he asked.
“‘Night on Bald Mountain’? I decided I didn't want to listen to it, not now. The only music I want to hear is your screams."
He swallowed, took an involuntary step backward.
"Don't," he said. "My wife, my kids ..."
"Yeah, I talked to Harry. He almost had me convinced, too, but then I thought to myself, If Malcolm gets away, then he will’ve had his cake and eaten it, too. You were evil, and now Harry says you're not—if that's even possible—but still you live the good life. You were never punished, never brought to justice."
"I've changed. Please, Danielle..."
"I'm not sure I believe it's possible to change, Malcolm. Ruegger says it is, but he still struggles with it to this day, so maybe he's wrong, although in his case I'm willing to cut him a little slack."
"It is possible to change. I'm not evil! Danielle, I'm not evil!"
She stepped forward swiftly and raised the scythe high over her head. Immediately, Malcolm/Martin dropped to his knees, his hands knotted together over his face, maybe in prayer, maybe for protection.
She grabbed him by the hair, wrenched his head away from his hands and placed the blade at this throat, cutting him just a little. Blood ran down his neck and stuck in the thin hair on his chest.
"Convince me," she said.
Panting heavily, blinking to keep the sweat out of his eyes, he nodded as much as the knife at his throat would allow.
"I've ... I've had a lot of time to think about evil over the years," he began.
"I'm sure you have, you fucking bastard."
"I've come to the conclusion that there isn't such a thing, not really."
"Convenient."
"No, no. That's not what I mean. I mean that really evil's just a way to say cruelty or sadism or self-absorption to the exclusion of all else ... Okay?"
"Talk!"
"So—well, once I was cruel and I enjoyed it. Then came a time, when I was on top, a successful player in the drug world, poised to become a major player ... I lost all taste for it. The cruelty, I mean. The barbarism. Somehow, it struck me, what I'd been doing, what I'd become, doing junk all the time, whoring and boozing and killing—I wanted out. Don't know why it happened, it doesn't to most, but it did to me. You understand?"
"Epiphanies are easy reprieves, Malcolm."
"Well, I ... I saw all the, ah ... destruction I was causing and I grew a distaste for it, for myself. I wanted to be different than who I was. Constructive, I guess. So I got out, successfully, which is rare. Most usually get busted or killed, or kill themselves one way or another. I got lucky."
"That's right."
"So you see?"
"I see."
"You won't kill me?"
Hope welled up from the depths of his eyes, and she enjoyed it for a moment before saying, "I understand you were lucky, that you made a clean break. That's why I must make up for all the good fortune that went your way. You never had to account for your sins, not until tonight. I hope you understand."
She placed the knife at his hairline and slipped the knife under his skin, stripping the flesh from his skull like peeling an orange. She grabbed the scalp and tore it free. As she tossed the strip of skin and hair to the floor behind her, Malcolm screamed and leapt backward on his hands and knees.
Calmly, she pursued him to the wall, where he turned as if about to fight. He was pinned. She kicked him, hard, in his chest, in the stomach. In the face. She could hear bones crunch under her heels. She moved in with the knife, cutting him across the breast, opening his skin in long arcs. He crawled off, screaming, trying to escape her.
She stopped and smiled, listening.
"That's what I like to hear," she said, and went after him.
He had crawled over to the door and was clawing at its metal surface with his fingernails.
"Sorry, Malcolm," she said.
He turned as she approached, his face a mask of horror, and let loose his loudest howl yet. His next words were the only things that had any chance at saving him, and he knew it.
"I'm sorry!" he shouted, tears coursing down his eyes. "I'm so fucking SORRY! Danielle, PLEASE! Don't kill me! I’m SOOOORRRRY!!!"
His voice cracked. His words became inaudible as he placed his hands over his face and supported his arms with his knees. He was just sitting there by the door, curled up and miserable, waiting for her vengeance, bleeding all over, his skull gleaming a ribbon of blood where she had peeled him. Of course, it was far from over. She might take hours or days with him, soaking up his pain. She could feel the knife in her hand and the grin on her face.
This was going to be beautiful.
She moved closer.
He didn’t pull away.
This was going to be …
He just sat there, shaking, weeping.
"Forgive me!" he shouted from behind his hands. Then, less distinctly, "Don't make my wife and kids suffer for what I did. Please, please don't do that to them ... Forgive me, forgive me ... forgive me …"
"You bastard," she spat, and took another step.
"... forgive me ...”
She brought her knife across his exposed legs, slicing open his shins. He howled with pain and fell over on the stone floor, crying and wailing, but not
trying to escape.
She towered over him, the knife dripping his blood onto the floor. His muffled sobs, her jagged steaming breaths and the faint splashing of blood were the only sounds in the room.
"Do you like being the victim?" she asked.
" ... please ... please ... no ..."
She studied him, then the knife. She frowned.
She let the knife slip from her fingers and clatter to the floor. He looked out from behind his hands, saw the knife on the floor and stared up at her hopefully.
"It took all the others," she said of the knife. "I didn't drain them. For you, I'll make an exception. I want to feel you die on my teeth. I want to taste you as you go."
He only sobbed, wrapped his arms tighter about himself.
She knelt beside him, grabbed him by a tuft of graying hair and brought his sweaty face up to hers. He’d aged, she thought, almost to the point were she couldn't recognize him. His eyes stared into her eyes, remembering her ... really remembering her for the first time.
"Danielle ..." he said.
"Malcolm."
She tilted his head, exposing his neck, and sank her fangs into his warm salty skin. Blood spurted into her mouth, as hot and spicy as it always was, and she drank it in, lovingly. He convulsed and beat at her, but she wouldn't be denied. She held him to her breast tightly, trying to still him, and finally his limbs seemed to loose their strength. She could feel him going, almost on the brink of death.
"Danielle ..."
She tore herself away and brought her face to look at him again. As she did so, she could feel his blood trickling down her mouth and knew that he was watching it. How does it feel, she thought, to see your own life plastered across the face of someone else, to know that the sum of your fears has materialized?
"Danielle," he said. "Please ... don't ... do ... this ..."
"It's almost finished," she told him softly. "I could've taken much longer. Hours ... days ... but I've made it short for you."