by J F Cain
“You idiot, you almost killed her!” Lucard roared.
Vincent gritted his teeth. He thought that his accomplices would keep their mouths shut, some of them out of fear and the rest out of self-interest.
Fucking vampires, he cursed inwardly. Now what was he going to do? He couldn’t hope for any help from Lucifer. He had made it clear that, until his goal was achieved, he wouldn’t be openly helping him. He had to protect himself on his own, and right now there was only one way that he might escape the most powerful vampire’s rage. So he fell on his knees and bowed his head with profuse servility.
“My master, let me explain. I …” he began to say.
“Explain what, you retarded bastard?” the elder interrupted him in a harsh voice. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to calm the immortal blood boiling in his veins and demanding death for it to be appeased. “Lucky for you, she survived. Otherwise the council would have had you meet the sunrise tied to a stake. What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry, master. I thought it would be easier to abduct her if she couldn’t put up any resistance.”
The ridiculous excuse enraged Lucard even more.
“And that’s why you poisoned her? Do you realize that if she had died, there would have been nothing left with which to achieve our purpose?”
“No, no,” Vincent objected hurriedly. “There was no way she would have died.”
“And how do you know that?” the elder asked reproachfully, even though he knew what his subject’s conviction was based on.
“I made the poison,” he mumbled, hoping his master didn’t realize someone else had initiated the attack.
Lucard restrained himself so that he wouldn’t lift his foot and crush the cunning snake’s head on the dais.
“And you handled it so well that you almost finished her off,” he scoffed with a contemptuous grimace. “Do you realize how much danger you put us in, you brainless dolt?” he bellowed. “If she had succumbed, entire armies of Ethereals would have descended on us, and it makes no difference if they were Angels or Demons. They would have wiped out every single one of us, you jackass! You almost caused our complete destruction.”
Vincent very wisely kept his mouth shut. If he dared to deny the irrefutable truth, there would be nothing that could save him.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to cover this mess. There will be consequences. The council won’t let your actions go unpunished,” Lucard went on more calmly, but still obviously vexed.
“Please, master, save me,” the young vampire pleaded with dramatic flair.
“You’re not worth the trouble,” the elder replied coldly. “Your stupidity is constantly causing me problems.”
Keeping his head lowered, Vincent surged forward and hugged the legs of the most powerful vampire.
“I swear I won’t put you on the spot again. I won’t take any initiative. I swear it. I will do nothing that you haven’t commanded me to do,” he promised, coloring his voice with terror and despair, while inwardly he was assessing what his chances were of defeating his master if he cut off his legs with the blade on his wrist right there and then. They were slim to none, so he immediately chased the thought from his mind.
“Take your filthy hands off me!” Lucard snapped.
Vincent quickly withdrew his hands.
“Forgive me, master.”
“I had warned you, Vincent,” the elder said with contained anger. “The council is annoyed with you, and you have given them the opportunity they were looking for.”
The young vampire became indignant. He had thought it would be easier to convince his leader to save him from the clutches of the other elders, who wanted to see his ashes scatter in the wind, above the castle’s rooftops. His only solution was to appeal to the excessive egotism of the race’s leader.
He lifted his head and looked at him, pasting a despairing expression in his face.
“But master, you control the council. You have the power to …”
“Shut up! How dare you look me in the eye and address me, you useless punk!” Lucard roared, forcing Vincent to lower his head once more. He sat down in his armchair and remained there for some minutes, silently regarding his pitiful subject. The way he looked now, with one hand, his hair a mess from the slaps he had received, and his face dripping blood on his black frock coat, he resembled a crippled wretch. He looked nothing like the vampire leader’s right hand, the one who he had made immortal so that he would have a trusted accomplice and supporter of his authority. His subject wasn’t the proud and strong vampire he had thought him to be. He was an incompetent creature of low intelligence not strong enough to take responsibility for his actions. Instead, he lay there humbled and pleaded for his life. “This is your last chance, Vincent,” he said harshly. “If you let me down one more time, I will not wait for the council’s demand to send you to your final death.”
Vincent bowed his head further to hide his cunning smile. He had managed to save himself once again.
“I understand. Thank you, Master Lucard.”
The elder’s gaze fell on him, dripping venom.
“Now get out of my sight.”
The young vampire pushed up on his only hand, stood up, and brushed back the hair that had got stuck on his bloodied cheek.
“Thank you so much, my master,” he repeated, avoiding the elder’s contemptuous gaze.
He bowed deeply and hurried out of the chamber before he gave in to the urge to pounce on the elder and cut off his head with his blade.
Seated in his ostentatious armchair, Lucard listened to his former right hand’s footsteps fade away in the hallway outside the chamber.
The idiot. He never managed to cover his presence and actions, he thought with anger born of disappointment. The inferiority complex that plagued him because his mother had been a servant and his nobleman father had rejected him pushed him to want to show off at every opportunity, exposing himself to dangers he didn’t have the power to deal with. He was stupid, thoughtless and, worst of all, ungrateful.
What a disappointment! The creature he had rescued from its misery, which he had freed from the shackles of mortal life and given the power and prestige a count’s bastard could only dream of, had betrayed him. And in the most idiotic way: he had joined forces with a Demon he couldn’t handle. How stupid could he get? His subject had learned nothing in all the centuries he had been at his side. Although he wanted power, he hadn’t observed the schemes and underhand tactics that he, Lucard, used to eliminate his rivals. The only creature he had cared about had let him down, not only as a master, but as a mentor too.
You’re on your own again, and you need to act quickly to take control of any developments, Lucard told himself. The first thing he would do was to permanently shut the mouth of the vampire who had betrayed Vincent, so that he wouldn’t tattle to anyone else. That way, he would hush up what had happened. If the other elders found out, he would feign ignorance. His subject he would deal with later, once he discovered if it was Lucifer or one of the Archdemons who had instructed him. He wanted to know if there was a new player in the game, or if one of the players already after the Superior had decided to take action. He definitely had to find out who he was dealing with, and if necessary change his plan. He would let Vincent think that he had fooled him and, once he discovered who had given him the order, he would put an end to the traitor. Vincent was Lucard’s creation and pawn. He would allow no one else to use him, and especially not against him.
CHAPTER 15
The next morning, as Aranes and Abaddon walked down the hospital’s corridor, all the nursing staff’s gazes were on them. She had changed the previous evening’s dress for a charcoal mohair dress and a coat in a lighter shade, which Mrs. Cole had brought for her early in the morning. Strangely, she hadn’t done the same for her spouse, who was still wearing the same suit and was unshaven, yet still magnificent in the opinion of the female nurses.
The hospital was buzzing with commen
ts and gossip. But no matter what their opinion, everyone agreed that there was something strange about that couple. Merely the fact that they had everything one could ever wish for, and this to extremes, made them seem unnatural—like the descendants of a superior race with distinctive qualities that protected their kind from intermarrying, or examples of a new breed that had just emerged on Earth and had only a small number of representatives. Opinions varied, but it crossed no one’s mind that these two unique people could be extraterrestrial entities. The humans never imagined that walking among them were hyperdimensional beings, what they referred to as Angels.
“My rapid recovery has been remarked upon,” Aranes said softly, looking around her.
Abaddon glared at a visitor who wasn’t taking his eyes off his wife and was thinking clearly male thoughts about her. He wanted to punch him in the face, but it would look crazy to hit someone out of the blue, and she didn’t approve of such behavior. So he kept on walking.
“It was to be expected, but don’t worry, I’ve taken care of it with John. He’ll cover it up,” he reassured her, swallowing his irritation at being forced to restrain himself and at the insult to his male ego.
“The two of you were speaking for quite a while,” Aranes remarked. “I’m curious, what did you tell him?”
After everything her body had been put through, she had slept through the rest of the night. And since the moment she had woken up in the morning, they hadn’t been alone at all for her to ask him.
“I had to tell him some things,” Abaddon said casually.
His answer alarmed Aranes.
“You revealed who we are?” she whispered.
He sensed her alarm but carried on walking calmly.
“Not exactly,” he said tersely.
“Abaddon, did you forget that one of the most important Rules forbid it?”
The Dark Angel turned to look at her.
“I thought it more important not to let the man go mad. I know very well what it feels like to search desperately for an answer and question everything, even if you really saw what you’re sure you saw.” He faced forward again. “John has been through a lot because of us. It’s not his fault if he got mixed up in this situation. Besides, I’ve noticed that the Rules have blatant exceptions.”
Aranes couldn’t disagree with that and even though she felt he could have handled the matter differently, she wasn’t about to discuss it in a hospital corridor.
“Never mind, it’s done now. But we need to be more careful in the future,” she said, looking curiously at the nurses to their left and right who were following them for some unknown reason.
“I totally agree,” Abaddon replied emphatically.
The glass entrance doors slid open automatically as they drew near. As soon as they stepped outside, Aranes stopped abruptly at the sight in front of her. It was then that she realized that the nurses were following them because they wanted to see the sensational departure. It stood to reason, since it wasn’t every day that they saw such a spectacle. In front of the hospital entrance were five black jeeps with tinted windows. Next to the doors stood Guardians, wearing black suits and earpieces. Abaddon had turned the theurgists into bodyguards. Aranes assumed that there were more warriors behind the dark windows. The ones she could see were too few to soothe her partner’s obvious anxiety about her safety. It was just as well he hadn’t brought in trucks full of mercenaries and helicopters to monitor them from above.
“What’s all this?” she asked, a note of displeasure tinging her voice.
“What we were just discussing,” Abaddon answered. He turned to her with unyielding determination written all over his face. “As you just said a moment ago, we need to be more careful.”
Aranes headed for the jeep in front of her without a word. The hospital’s entrance was also not the right place for her to raise her objections about his unjustified, in her opinion, panic.
Seeing her approach, Fares opened the back door. He waited for her and Abaddon to get in and, after closing it, got into the passenger seat.
“We can go,” he told Diana, who was sitting behind the wheel, and then instructed the other drivers using a walkie-talkie. The two front jeeps set off, followed by Diana and then another two, and the convoy headed for the main road.
“We have to talk,” Aranes said in a neutral tone of voice.
“Of course, once we’re at the Guardians’ castle,” Abaddon replied politely. But his expression told her clearly that no matter what she said to him, it wouldn’t change a thing.
Aranes was surprised.
“What? I thought we were going home.”
“We can’t risk it,” he replied. “If we’re attacked there, I won’t be able to use my powers in front of the staff. Right now the castle is the safest place for you.”
Aranes sighed quietly and turned to look out of the window.
Throughout the journey to Long Island, she sat silently gazing at the winter morning’s cloudy gray sky. Neither of them spoke. The only voices heard inside the vehicle were Fares asking the Guardians in the first and last jeep if they had spotted anything suspicious every five minutes and the negative replies he received. Only when the convoy of vehicles came to a stop in front of the castle’s gate did Abaddon rest his hand on hers, which were crossed on her lap.
“Are you alright? Are you maybe feeling dizzy?” he asked and, even though he said it in a formal tone of voice since there were others present, his gaze clearly showed his concern for her.
“No, I’m fine,” Aranes answered, her tone convincing everyone that nothing was amiss—everyone but her partner, who sensed her mood.
Disappointed by her lack of understanding, Abaddon withdrew his hand and, as the cars moved up the driveway that passed through enormous perennial oaks, he used his supernatural vision to scan the castle and surrounding area for any threatening presences. The procession stopped in front of the castle’s main entrance and Fares got out immediately and opened the back door. Abaddon came out first and glanced at the imposing building as he waited for Aranes to descend.
The walls with their massive gray stones, the crenellated battlements with their corner turrets rising above the second story, and the onetime keep in the middle, which had an extra level to emphasize its significance, captivated him as much as they had the first time he had seen them. And unlike then, when the cameras on the stone walls, the heavily armored doors, and the shatterproof windows had made a bad impression on him since they ruined the building’s aesthetic, he now felt grateful for these interventions. After the last vampire attack, Eiael had further enhanced the already state-of-the-art security measures. Now, no Cursed would be able to enter the impregnable fortress and harm Aranes.
He lowered his gaze and climbed the few steps to the flagstone landing with his partner. There, next to a large reinforced door that stood wide open, the head of the Guardians stood waiting for them.
“Welcome, Superior, I am glad you are well!” the theurgist greeted the highest of the Celestials.
Aranes stopped in front of her.
“Thank you, Eiael,” she replied, returning her spiritual daughter’s warm gaze.
“Our residence is at your disposal. Please, come in,” the Guardian leader said and followed the celestial couple into the entrance hall.
The large crystal chandelier hanging above the round wooden table in the middle of the hall was lit. The radiant light from its dozens of lamps made the well-polished parquet floor shine and the large Oriental carpet in pale shades of beige covering a large part of the floor appear almost white. As if still imbued with energy from the mighty theurgists that had once owned them, the antique swords with their striking sculpted scabbards hanging inside square frames on the oak paneled walls radiated a strange power, creating a mystical atmosphere that was in complete harmony with the space.
There were no Guardians in the hall. Except for Eiael, Abaddon had forbidden them all from being there when they arrived. Even those who had ac
companied them from the hospital were waiting outside. He had known that his partner wouldn’t agree with his decision. And a welcome ceremony, no matter how simple, would for her be a ceremony to say goodbye to those who were about to die.
“We have prepared the room you’re going to need. Your things will be arriving any moment now,” the mistress of the castle informed Aranes as they headed toward the stairs leading to the second floor.
“I appreciate your help, Eiael,” she replied politely.
The theurgist’s enhanced empathic ability helped her pick up on her high-ranking guest’s displeasure. She had also known that the Superior wouldn’t welcome her partner’s decision. However, this time, the Guardian head was in complete agreement with the Dark Angel.
“I’ll show you to your room,” she said, a composed yet pleasant expression on her face that showed how happy she was to host the Guardians’ protector.
Abaddon let the long-lived theurgist and his partner walk ahead up the wide staircase with the wooden banister and followed them silently. When they reached the landing, which offered a panoramic view of the impressive entrance hall, they turned into the right wing and followed the wide corridor with oak paneling, bronze sconces hanging on the walls, and thick carpets on the floor.
Aranes’ mind traveled a few centuries back, to the last time the werewolves had attacked the castle. In the same corridor, the hybrid beings had immobilized Alric. The previous leader of the Guardians had forbidden any contact between Galen and Cathryl, the Guardian the werewolf had had a relationship with, even when she had been on her deathbed and had been crying desperately for her beloved. When they had first been forbidden to meet, the two lovers had met secretly on the mental plane, where shamans, theurgists, and sorcerers could go in their spiritual bodies. When Alric had found out, he had taken measures to prevent this contact. In order to see the woman he loved and use his shamanic powers to turn the tide and prevent her death, Galen had burst into the castle with his pack, but he hadn’t been able to get anywhere near her.