by Nathan Spain
“Stand the rest of your men down or we’ll kill them,” Selene commanded.
Thanatos’ face was grim and stony. “Do what you will. This desperate outburst won’t stop us.”
Rosanna flashed him a manic grin. “Of course not, you self-righteous idiot, but it makes a marvelous distraction. Stormfangs! Attack!”
In an instant, the dam burst. As one, the crowd of Stormfangs leapt upon the guards and savagely clawed at their faces. Flailing blades found some of their marks, but the element of surprise gave the Stormfangs the edge. The guards fell under the weight of their attackers, too besieged to come to each other’s aid, and their weapons were swiftly snatched away and turned against them.
The Winebloods were only a second behind. Draven threw himself at the nearest guard, knocking him to the ground and smashing his head brutally against the pavement, while by his side, Ariadne dodged blows from two Blackwings, her teeth bared and snarling.
A short distance away, Damian ducked and weaved as a Nightcloak soldier slashed at him with a long, serrated knife. In a matter of brief, chaotic seconds, the separations between the groups disappeared into a single mass of struggling bodies and splattered blood.
Draven slammed his foe’s head against the ground once more, and the man went still. He glanced toward the lodge, where Rosanna and Selene held off a wave of foes. The stairway, short as it may be, caused a congestion of bodies as Thanatos and Brone’s personal guards funneled down it to attack Selene and Rosanna, who efficiently cut them down as they came, fighting side by side.
Draven watched as Brone, a fearful look in his unmutilated eye, retreated into the safety of the lodge, escorted by three of his guardsmen. But Thanatos just stared down at the melee below, his face a mask of steely rage.
Draven snatched a machete from the defeated Blackwing beneath him and rose to his feet, intending to come to Rosanna and Selene’s aid. Before he could do so, a Nightcloak charged at him, swinging a blade, but Draven artfully spun out of his enemy’s reach. The Nightcloak stumbled, following the momentum of her swing, and Draven pushed off the ground with one foot and slashed his blade in a wide arc that severed his foe’s head from her shoulders.
Disoriented, Draven tried to locate Rosanna and Selene through the crowd once more, but instead he spotted Damian grappling with a heavyset Blackwing much larger than him. Both were unarmed, but in a straight-up brawl the Blackwing had a clear advantage. Fear for his friend swept through Draven; Damian had never been a fighter.
Draven, about to intervene, stopped dead as he heard a chillingly familiar cry, like a sound from out of distant memory. He turned to see Ariadne on the edge of the fight, disarmed and knocked to the ground. She held her arm reflexively in front of her face. A man with a scarred face and a leather jacket straddled her, a blade raised above her vulnerable form.
An unfocused image flared up in Draven’s mind like a signal; something that had happened once, in what felt like another life. Without taking the time to think, he raised the machete in his hand and swept his arm in a controlled arc, releasing the handle at just the right moment to send the blade flying toward Ariadne’s assailant.
It struck the man between the eyes. His head snapped back and his weapon dropped harmlessly from his hand as he staggered, the blade of the machete sticking out from his skull. He fell forward and collapsed onto Ariadne, pinning her beneath him. Draven ran to help her.
“Thanks,” Ariadne gasped as he pulled her to her feet. She wiped sweat from her brow, out of breath but otherwise unharmed. Draven glanced down at the prone figure of her attacker, and saw that it was not the Son of Helsing out of memory, but a burly Blackwing.
Some strange expression must have shown on his face, because Ariadne frowned and asked, “What’s the matter? You okay?”
“I thought…” Draven blinked and forced himself to breath, untwisting the knots of fear in his stomach. He met her gaze, and in her eyes he found the center he needed, the stabilizing force that grounded him once more to the here and now. “Came way too close to losing you again, that’s all.”
Something stirred in her eyes at his words, but before Draven could think on it, he remembered Damian, and a new wave of fear broke across the bow of his mind and washed over him. He frantically scanned the battle, looking for a glimpse of his friend among the rapidly-shifting landscape of dueling figures.
Selene and Rosanna had broken away from their isolated clash at the foot of the stairs to come to the defense of their clan members. The tide of battle wasn’t going in their favor; the Nightcloaks and Blackwings had rallied together, forcing the opposing clans back onto the defensive. They were slaughtering anyone they could isolate from the larger groups. Draven and Ariadne had ended up outside the area where the fighting was thickest, and had momentarily been overlooked.
Before he could locate Damian amidst the chaos, Draven saw something else, something that would have made his heart stop, had it still been beating. From the foot of the lodge on the other side of the driveway-turned-battlefield, a tall figure strode purposefully forward, wielding a long, pale sword.
Lord Thanatos had joined the fray.
Barely breaking his stride, he elegantly dispatched the enemy combatants in his path. His eyes burned with cold fury, fixed on Selene.
Selene saw him coming and spun to face him as he approached. She held a combat knife in each hand, and though the longer reach of Thanatos’ sword gave him the advantage, she stood her ground, curling into a fighting stance.
Draven sensed Ariadne tense next to him, as if to spring into action, but they were too far away – it was much too late for either of them to make it to Selene’s side. Thanatos fell upon her with a snarl and a slice of his blade. Selene dodged and parried, a tornado of sharp steel, locked in a deadly dance that could be cut short by a single wrong step.
Thanatos swung downward with a forceful two-handed blow, and Selene sidestepped to her right to avoid it. But Thanatos simply let go of the sword with his left hand and lashed out, backhanding her across the face and knocking her to the ground.
He stood over her as she lay stunned, and raised his sword above his head, the point aimed downward.
“No!”
Before Thanatos could act, a figure jumped him from behind and wrapped their arms and legs around him. Draven sucked in his breath in recognition. It was Damian.
Thanatos cursed and twisted in an effort to shake Damian from his back. Beneath them, Draven saw Selene stirring on the ground.
As Damian fought to maintain his grip on Thanatos, the Nightcloak lord seized his attacker’s arm. He pulled Damian roughly over his shoulder and flung him away. Ariadne screamed as Damian went flying, landing hard on the pavement. A group of still-battling vampires stood between them, but through the frantic motions of the crowd, Draven saw Damian lying unmoving where he had landed.
But his distraction had bought Selene time to rise to her feet, and just as Thanatos turned to face her, she lunged at him and drove her knife straight at his head.
For a moment, Draven thought the knife’s blade would pierce Thanatos’ skull and lodge itself in his brain, and thus put an end to him. But the Nightcloak lord’s reflexes were inhumanly fast. As he ducked under her blow, he grabbed her arm and pulled her close – directly into the waiting point of his sword.
The blade thrust into her abdomen and burst out again through her lower back. The force of her momentum lifted her off her feet as he held up the sword, and for a moment she hung limply in the air, a shocked look on her face, impaled on the end of the blade.
Savagely, Thanatos pushed Selene’s body to the right as he drove his sword in the other direction. Selene screamed as the blade cut through her stomach and out her side, cleaving her wide open. She fell to the ground, mouth gaping, her hands clutching at her side, holding her guts in.
Ariadne, unable to hang back any longer, took off like a flash toward them. Draven charged after her, unsure what would happen when they reached Thanatos, but ce
rtain that he could not allow Ariadne to face the threat alone.
But someone else got there first.
“Selene!”
Rosanna charged to the rescue, a sword in her hand.
She leapt at Thanatos like a tiger, fangs bared, but he set his feet and his hand shot out. In one swift motion, he seized her by the throat in midair and slammed her hard into the pavement.
Draven and Ariadne were nearly there, and Thanatos saw them coming. He lifted Rosanna’s stunned body back into the air by her neck and flung her at the onrushing pair, knocking them over like bowling pins. Disoriented and winded, the three of them struggled to disentangle themselves from each other and get back to their feet.
Seeing their leaders brought down, the remaining Stormfangs and Winebloods rushed to gather around Rosanna, Draven, and Ariadne. They crouched with their swords raised, the points extended outward in a defensive barrier. But they had suffered many casualties, and their opponents still outnumbered them.
The Nightcloaks and Blackwings similarly rallied to each other’s side, ready for a final skirmish.
“We aren’t going to win,” Draven said to Rosanna. “Order your people to retreat. We have to get out of here while we still can.”
Rosanna looked at him, then at Thanatos and his forces, who looked prepared to tear into their ranks at any moment. She nodded, fists clenched. Turning to the nearest Stormfangs, she shouted, “Fly, retreat! Away, away!”
The Stormfangs and Winebloods began to transform and take to the skies as bats. Draven was about to follow suit when Ariadne stopped him with a cry.
“My father! Draven, we can’t leave him.”
Draven hurriedly glanced to where Damian had fallen. He was still there, unmoving but overlooked by the combatants.
“He’s out cold. I’m sorry, Ariadne, we can’t take him with us.”
“Damn it, Draven,” she shouted, panic in her eyes. “I can’t – I won’t leave him behind.”
All around them, the battle moved to the air as the Blackwings and Nightcloaks pursued their fleeing enemies. The skies filled with fluttering, screeching bats.
“We have to go now, Ariadne.” Draven desperately clutched her head in his hands and stared directly into her frightened, tear-stained eyes. “We can’t do anything to help him. We have to leave now, or they’ll kill us.”
“Screw this shit,” Rosanna shouted. “Stay if you like, but the rest of us are getting out of here.”
Ariadne tore her gaze from Draven’s eyes and looked at the spot where her father lay, and then to where Thanatos stood. All around them their allies were abandoning the fight and taking to the air.
From Ariadne’s lips roared forth a desperate scream of sorrow, anger and despair. She sprang forward, twisted and transformed, while Draven and Rosanna quickly followed.
“Stop them,” bellowed Thanatos. “Don’t let Rosanna escape!”
Draven flew blindly through a sky thick with bats; bats fleeing the scene, bats in pursuit, bats swooping and screeching and biting each other in aerial combat. He soared through the maelstrom of wings and claws alongside Rosanna and Ariadne, trying desperately to stick together, while praying that they could lose their pursuers in the chaos.
Onward they flew into the darkness of the night, faster than they had ever flown before, leaving the lodge on the ground behind them, the hopes and dreams it once contained now broken and discarded like the bodies of their fallen friends.
None of them dared to look back.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Draven, Ariadne and Rosanna flew north in shell-shocked silence. In the whirling chaos of winged bodies, they had managed to peel off from the crowd and make their escape. Now they flew low to the ground, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the lodge. Draven detected no signs of anyone in pursuit, but he couldn’t be certain they had made a clean getaway.
After hours in the air, the first hint of a gray dawn spread across the night sky. If they were being pursued, their enemies would soon be forced to take shelter from the sun, as would they. And so they finally came to a halt, swooping down through a hole in the roof of a decrepit old barn on a forgotten patch of rural farmland.
The three vampires transformed and collapsed onto the scratchy straw that coated the ground. Exhaustion clung to Draven like a haze; they had flown long and hard, and now he found himself too tired to move.
Rosanna leaned against a hay bale and broke the weary silence. “We need a plan, Draven. Where are you leading us?”
Draven sat cross-legged on the straw. “We have a plan.”
“You’d better,” Rosanna replied. “Half the people I brought to your clan’s damned summit are dead, and the rest are scattered to the winds. I left them behind in unfamiliar territory, leaderless and hunted. I only followed the two of you because I assumed our retreat would be a tactical one. So yeah, you’d better have a plan, and it had better be a really goddamn good one.”
Draven rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry, my Lady, but there’s not much we can do for your people. Or our own, for that matter. Most are either dead or captured by now, and those that escaped are on their own. We can’t afford to go searching for them.”
“Why the hell not?” Rosanna bristled. “My concern is for my people, not self-preservation.”
Draven rose to his feet. “This isn’t about self-preservation. This is about everyone’s preservation. The situation is bigger than you or me or our friends. No one is safe anymore.”
“So then what are we going to do about it?”
“We have to get to Wineblood Manor. We must warn the court and tell them what happened. Perhaps, if we get there first, there will still be time to rally the Wineblood forces to rescue Lady Selene from Thanatos and Brone.”
“Selene’s gone.” Ariadne’s voice sounded defeated, empty of all inflection. Draven glanced over to the corner, where she sat propped up against the wall, but she didn’t look at them; she just stared numbly ahead. “Thanatos will have killed her by now.”
Draven shook his head. “He needs her as a hostage. She’s no use to him dead.”
“And my father?” Now Ariadne did look at him, and Draven saw fierce anger in her eyes – the sort of anger that can only be born from fear. “Is there any reason they would need him alive? Or do you think they’ve already executed him on the spot?”
Draven struggled to push down the same fear that was wracking Ariadne. He knew that what they both needed was the right balance of realism and reassurance. “If I had to guess, I don’t think they would kill him. Damian’s not a fighter, and he was unarmed and incapacitated. Thanatos has proven he’s not above killing his own kind, but I believe him when he expressed regret over it. With the battle over and our resistance squashed, I suspect he’ll try to avoid further needless bloodshed.”
“But you can’t say for certain,” Ariadne countered, her fists clenched, “because you left him behind. You didn’t even try to save him.”
Draven opened his mouth, closed it again, and turned to Rosanna. “My Lady, we won’t get far if we let ourselves starve. We need to keep our strength up. Do you think you could go out there before the sun rises and find us something to feed on? Anything with blood in its veins will do.”
Rosanna looked surprised; a vampire of her status was doubtless unaccustomed to being asked to hunt and forage for others. She seemed on the verge of protesting, and indeed perhaps she would have, but Draven never found out. Her eyes darted from him to Ariadne huddled in the corner. She gave a brusque nod and turned to leave.
Draven touched her arm. “Thank you. And please, stay close. We need to be careful.”
She nodded again in acknowledgement and flew away.
Draven watched her go, heaved a sigh, and sat down in the hay across from Ariadne. She hugged her legs to her chest to make space for him, but kept her eyes pointed down at the ground.
"I'm sorry about what happened with Damian,” he began. “I didn't want to leave hi
m either, but I had to prioritize getting you out safely. It's what he would have wanted."
Ariadne looked up and her eyes flashed, little pinpricks of light in the gloom. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?" She stood and strode away, pacing across the barn as though suddenly unable to bear sitting still.
"How could you stand to do that?” she shot at him. "How could you just leave him behind like that?"
Draven stood as well, but he remained where he was, giving her as much space as she desired. "Do you think I'm not also worried about him? Because I am.” He thought about Damian, unconscious on the ground while battle raged all around him, and a pang of guilt squeezed his stomach.
Anger left Ariadne’s face, revealing the exhaustion and fear underneath.
"I just don't understand how you can be so calm," she said, her voice filled with quiet desperation.
"Because I have faith in your father. Damian is tougher than he lets on.” He stepped forward and took her gently by the shoulders, and she allowed him the comforting touch. "We'll get him back, Ariadne. I promise. This isn't over."
Ariadne held his gaze for a moment, searching for the sincerity behind his eyes. Then she gave a little nod and collapsed into him, holding him tight and pressing her face into his chest.
It was the most vulnerability she'd shown him since they reunited, and it took a second for Draven to decide what to do with his hands. He settled on wrapping one arm around her and placing his other hand lightly on the back of her head. As he held her, he felt both the weight of her body against his and the weight of the past thirty years. It had been a long, long time since anyone had embraced him that way.
Too soon, the moment passed. Ariadne dropped her arms and pulled away. She looked up at Draven again, her mouth open slightly, and there was something unplaceable in her eyes. But then she turned, walked over to a corner and sat down on a hay bale.
Draven stood there for a short time, waiting to see if she would speak, but she just stared pensively into the shadows. He thought he had some small idea of how she felt, of the conflicting emotions competing for dominance inside her at that moment, and so he resisted the urge to break the silence. Instead he held it with her, leaning against a post and waiting in tense and tired watchfulness for Rosanna to return.