The Last Vampire

by Jon F. Merz

  “What does love have to do with anything? What does that have to do with this conversation?”

  “Love has everything to do with this,” said Isella. “Humans are ever so fond of holding love up as a symbol of hope and faith. Yet there too, it is nonsense. More atrocities have been committed in the name of supposed love than anything else.”

  “What about organized religion?”

  Isella chuckled. “Perhaps a fair point. But let’s stick with love for the time being since it’s germane to our conversation.”

  I tried to shrug. Doing so loosened the bonds on my wrists a bit and I had some more wiggle room to work with. “You’re leading this talk, so why not?”

  “Did you love her?” asked Isella. She cocked her head to one side. “I wonder if you did. Or if you’d even admit to it.”

  I frowned. “Love has nothing to do with it.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Isella spread her hands. “Isn’t it that which drove you as much as it did. Didn’t you tell yourself that you were doing what you did because of the love you had, whether it was for the country or for her?”

  “I do what I do for the promise of ridding the world of creatures like you. Not for love. Not for anyone. Just the promise of a better world.”

  “So she meant nothing to you?”

  “I mean I guess maybe she did. She’s a good woman. A decent human being. She’s made some mistakes, but who hasn’t?”

  “Indeed, Declan,” said Isella. “Who hasn’t?”

  “Where is she?”

  Isella eyed me and then cracked another grin. “Fascinating. Declan you are indeed an interesting specimen. I find the way your mind works almost intriguing.”

  “Almost?”

  “Tragically, you’re as beholden as the rest of your species to certain patterns and behaviors. There is an occasional glimmer of something unique there, but it’s rapidly obscured by the more rudimentary aspects of your kind.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “I mean here we’ve spent so much time discussing your past and the things you’ve done and yet as soon as I mention a certain word, you seem to forget all about your past and the things that were supposedly so dear to you.”

  “I’ll never forget the things that were dear to me. They will be where they always are: in my heart. Forever.”

  “So why did you think I was talking about Ares when I asked that question? I didn’t mention her by name. I only asked if you’d loved her. And yet you went right to the one you once considered to be ‘bait.’ Why?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.” In truth, I didn’t know. Isella had mentioned love and for some reason, I thought she was talking about Ares. But she wasn’t. And I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought about Denise first and foremost. “Maybe it’s because you didn’t really love her,” said Isella. “Maybe it’s because you’re realizing now what you’ve been denying for so long: that you didn’t really know true love in your former life. Did you?”

  I shook my head but the images came at me faster and faster. All the times we’d argued. How she hated me for joining Six. The amount of time I was away. The loneliness she felt. The times she begged me to leave and get a different job so we could have a normal life. All of it. I could hear her crying as I walked out of the door on another deployment. See her tear-stained face as I left not knowing if I’d ever return. How she’d had to shoulder all the responsibility of raising Cole.

  I cleared my throat. It was hard to swallow again. “I did once. I loved her and she loved me. I know that for a fact. But…things change. Our lives changed.”

  “You went one way and she went another,” said Isella. “And then you had a child.”

  I smiled. “My son. The light of my life.” I closed my eyes and saw his face, felt his warm embrace whenever I would return from overseas. The love within it. Nothing could ever destroy it.

  I opened my eyes and saw Isella looming before me. “I told you I would see you in pain the likes of which you’d never known.”

  I shook my head. “You can’t.”

  “But I can,” said Isella. “That one last piece of joy in your mind right now? Your son?”

  “What about him?”

  “You’re not his father, Declan.”

  29

  “You’re full of shit,” I said, straining again against the ropes that bound me.

  But Isella was laughing now and she didn’t even hear me. “No, Declan, you’re not hearing the truth. You haven’t been listening to me. I told you the Mortal Makers weren’t some new thing that got invented just recently. You created them centuries ago in another lifetime. You, Declan. Through the use of the supernatural. The forces of good, as it were. And by using them, you introduced their essence into your bloodline. You passed it on ever since. Those qualities that make you a Mortal Maker would also make your offspring Mortal Makers. Shared blood. Do you get it now? Do you? Cole wasn’t your son. He never was. If he had been, he wouldn’t have become one of my spawn. His blood would have been toxic.”

  “FUCK YOU BITCH!” It erupted from the depths of my soul, the shout, the explosion of emotion and sadness and resignation. The rope holding my hands loosened even more as I strained against the knots. I knew Isella was right, but I wanted to kill her so much with every ounce of my being. I wanted to drive my staff right through her heart and watch her die impaled on the end of it as the blackness came for her one last time.

  But even as much as I wanted to deny my wife’s infidelity, I knew I couldn’t. I could see the image in my mind, the time when Denise had told me she was pregnant while I’d been deployed. The satellite connection had been fuzzy and as much as she tried to smile as she told me the news, I sensed something else. Almost…a sadness. I’d written it off because I was so happy. I was going to be a father! But now, knowing what Isella had told me, I could see it was all true.

  All of it.

  She’d fooled around on me and gotten knocked up.

  I was angry and sad and devastated and not surprised and resigned and so many other emotions, I could barely process them all. But somewhere deep down inside of me, I knew and I’d known. Maybe forever. Our marriage hadn’t been the best. How could it be? I was away most of the year. If we didn’t have a mission, we had training. We were in the mountains, in the deserts, in the oceans. I was on a sub or jumping out of an airplane or fast-roping onto the top of a skyscraper. I was blowing stuff up, killing bad guys, and risking my life every single day.

  Yeah, you had to learn how to shut it off and come back and be a regular ordinary citizen, but could you ever really do that? The stuff we did? The adventure, risk, danger, excitement? You couldn’t just turn it off. It was a drug. A subtle addiction, to be sure, but it was an addiction nonetheless. You didn’t join the Teams if you liked sitting home and knitting on a Saturday night. You joined to test yourself.

  And apparently, I’d joined because I was driven to get the sort of training that would - unbeknownst to me at the time - eventually lead me here. Tied up in some shitty subterranean chamber while the source of the vampiric infestation of my world hovered around me, helped by two human shitbag traitors who desperately needed to be killed.

  Her laughter drowned out my profanity. She was enjoying this. Loving it, even. She twirled around the chamber, making a wind with her robes, or whatever the hell she was wearing. She sang an old tune that I’d never heard before but that sounded strangely familiar.

  “We’ve danced together so many times before, Declan,” she said. “And I always enjoy it so. But this time, you have come to the end of your journey. Warsaw and Kort are going to help me finally and completely kill you.”

  “Get on with it then,” I said. “Stop delaying the inevitable.”

  Isella loomed over me again. I don’t know how she seemed to be hovering in the air the way she did, but maybe it was part of her magic. Part of what she could do.

  “Are you prepared, Declan? Truly prepared for what lies before you?”

&
nbsp; “According to you, nothing lies before me,” I said. “You’re going to kill my very soul so I can never come back. There doesn’t appear to be much to say after that.”

  “Indeed.” Isella licked her lips. “And don’t worry about Ares. I will take very good care of her. Very good care indeed. She’s beautiful, don’t you think? Perhaps I will take some time and enjoy the fruits of her flesh before turning to my other needs.”

  “Tell her I said good-bye.”

  “I shall,” said Isella. She turned away from me and looked at Warsaw and Kort. “Are you ready?”

  Warsaw grinned and I saw that he had a nasty curved knife in his hands. Kort stayed behind him, also armed with a knife.

  “So what does this entail?”

  Isella glanced back at me. “The careful dissection of your body such that the vital organs are not disturbed until the very last possible moment. You will stay alive during the entire process if these two perform the ritual properly.”

  “I thought you were doing it.”

  Isella smiled. “If I were with you physically, I would.”

  I looked around. If she wasn’t here, then when the hell was she? “Where are you?”

  “Do you really think that I would subject myself to your stench, Declan? That I would breathe the same air as you? It’s not just your blood that I can’t stand; it’s your very presence. I find it nearly intolerable, although just being around you won’t kill me. But have no fear, these two shall do exactly what I tell them to and the ritual will go through as I planned it so very long ago.”

  “You certainly know how to hold a grudge,” I said.

  “Eons have passed since we first joined battle,” said Isella. “And I have waited for this day for every moment since then.”

  Warsaw walked over to where I was. “You really should have listened to Kort when he told you to get out of my town.”

  “Would it have mattered?” I asked. “The whole thing was a trap anyway.”

  He smirked. “And you fell for it just like she said you would. Guess you’re not the badass warrior you thought you were, huh?” He ran the blade of the knife across my cheek and I felt the metal bite through my skin, drawing blood. This time it was real and not some illusion.

  “Enough,” said Isella. “Do not damage him anymore. The ritual will not tolerate it.”

  Warsaw frowned but obeyed Isella. He stepped back and then I saw Isella’s face one more time.

  “This will be the last time we ever speak Declan. Do you have any final words?”

  I nodded. “I’m coming to get you, Isella. And no ritual will ever stop me. No attempt at killing my soul will ever stop the justice I’ll carry to you.”

  “Brave words,” she said. “But your time has at last come to its inevitable conclusion.” She moved away and then I heard her voice fill the chamber. “It is time. Begin the ritual.”

  Warsaw and Kort started drawing a shape in the dirt around the stone slab I was tied down to. They moved from end to end and then back again. It looked like a couple of points and Warsaw was now drawing sigils of some sort on the floor of the chamber. I guessed it was some paranormal thing that would protect them during the ritual. Don’t break the circle and all that jazz.

  As they worked, Isella started speaking in a language I’d never heard before. Or maybe I had and I couldn’t remember. According to her, I’d been alive for a long time.

  Warsaw and Kort picked up the language too and started chanting as they continued drawing sigils on the floor. I hated them all the more in that instant. They’d both clearly sold out their human brethren in exchange for something. Maybe Isella had promised them more than just their own private kingdom. Maybe she’d promised them much more than that.

  Did it matter?

  They finally finished drawing the sigils and the patterns on the floor and stood back to admire their handiwork. Isella continued chanting as Warsaw and Kort moved to retrieve their knives. They stood motionless as Isella flew around the chamber, continuing to speak and chant.

  The energy in the chamber grew electric. I could feel tiny jolts of voltage sparking in the air and close to my body. Whatever Isella was doing, it was apparently working like a charm and that made me even angrier.

  Finally, her voice feel silent for a moment, as if she was taking a break. Then she intoned one final command to Warsaw and Kort.

  “It is time. You may begin the dissection.”

  30

  Warsaw and Kort approached me from opposite sides. I could feel my heartbeat kick into overdrive as my eyes focused on the blades they held in their hands. I strained against the knots holding my hands behind me and felt them give a bit more. Then Warsaw stood before me and ran the back of the blade along the skin of my forearm.

  “You must strip his shirt first,” said Isella. “And then we will start the process.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked her. “Isn’t that more gratifying than using a bunch of losers like these guys to do your dirty work?”

  Kort punched me hard in the jaw, snapping my head to the side. I saw stars. The guy could hit, no doubt about that. I spat blood on to the ground.

  Isella screeched and flew right at Kort. “Do not harm him yet! The ritual must be performed exactly as the old ones wrote it. One misstep will result in it not working.”

  Kort dropped to his knees. “Forgive me, mistress.”

  I wanted to barf. Seeing a human kneel before a vampire disgusted me. How dare they surrender so easily. I shook my head. Neither Warsaw nor Kort was worthy of living. It would be up to me to punish them for their crimes against those of us who survived after the Event.

  Isella looked over at Warsaw. “His shirt. Get it off of him.”

  Warsaw grabbed my shirt and tore it open. It was cold and I shivered once before settling my breathing down. I’d been far colder before and a little brisk air wouldn’t kill me.

  Those knives, however. They most definitely could.

  Warsaw looked at me and shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many scars on a human being before.”

  “This is what happens when you actually stand up for things instead of being a pussy,” I said. “But I doubt you’d know anything about that.”

  “I’ve stood up for things,” said Warsaw.

  “Like what? Your little community here? Please. You only do things that are self-serving. But when it comes down it, you won’t do what’s right because it’s too hard or it puts something at risk. You’re not a real man at all. Just a pretender. The men and women I served with, fought alongside, bled with…they were real badasses. You’re just a petty little despot anxious to preserve his own tiny piece of pie. You don’t realize that you’re in as much danger as anyone else. Isella won’t honor her pact when she no longer needs you.”

  “You lie,” said Warsaw. “We’ve had a good relationship for years now.”

  I shook my head. “Obviously you’re too stupid to see what’s coming. So I won’t even bother trying to convince you of the error of your ways. You’ll find out soon enough, I expect. Once you’re done doing her dirty work, she’ll devour you too.”

  “I doubt that,” said Warsaw.

  Kort had apparently recovered from Isella nearly killing him for punching me and stood there grinning like an insipid fool. He handled his knife easily, though, and that concerned me. “Can we kill this guy now?”

  “You will obey my commands exactly as I state them,” said Isella. “If you do not, then I will destroy you both as well. Is that understood?”

  “See?” I said. “She’s already planning on killing you but you two idiots can’t even see it. Fucking morons, the two of you.”

  “I really want to punch him again,” said Kort.

  “You will die if you do,” said Isella. “However, you may start with the tattoo on his arm. That is the first thing that must be disposed of.”

  I glanced at the mark of the Mortal Makers on my arm. It had been branded in my skin
years back after I’d made my first official sucker kill. We got drunk and then got branded. It didn’t hurt all that much thanks to the buzz I’d had at the time. Over the years, it had been a badge of honor for me to wear it.

  Then again, I’d apparently created it, so go figure.

  I felt my heart thundering in my chest now. Warsaw grabbed at my arm and twisted it, trying to get better purchase on the tattoo. As he did so, I felt one of the ropes give way.

  “How should we cut it off?”

  Isella loomed closer. “Draw a square with the knife around the perimeter of the tattoo and then dig it out. It goes deeper than mere skin. In his case, it is seared into his very essence and must be completely removed.”

  I felt the blade bite into my skin and jerked my head back, nearly knocking myself unconscious against the slab of stone I was fastened to. That was the last thing I wanted to do; I needed to be fully alert because I was going to kill both Warsaw and Kort in moments.

  Warsaw was clearly enjoying his work. Blood ran down my arm as he cut into my skin.

  “Not to deep,” said Isella. “He will bleed to death if you go in too deep.”

  “I understand.”

  I strained against my bonds and felt another part of the knots give. I could maneuver my hands better now, but I had to resist the urge to move the one that Warsaw was digging into. I bit down and jerked my other hand, feeling the ropes fall away from where they’d rubbed my wrists raw.

  I was free.

  My feet were still bound so I needed to time this just right. Fortunately, Kort was too distracted with watching Warsaw to notice that my arms were now free. As he leaned closer to me, his jaw came into perfect range and I moved all at once.

  Warsaw’s knife bit into my arm too deep as I came alive suddenly, punching Kort right on the button with my good hand. He fell away, grabbing at his jaw.