“Remember, the vamps can throw things at you, Xena,” Lancelot retorted. “I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“It’s a little late to worry about crap like that now, Monte. You worry about Dunkan, and we’ll worry about the rest. If the single combat goes well, what do we do about the other vamps?”
“I think they must die, my lady,” Serge spoke up in a loud whisper. “They will have been corrupted by Dunkan, as was the one Kara and I questioned. Silver will not phase the Lilith offspring, so I hope Monte’s old piece of junk sword works on him.”
“Piece of…” Lancelot twisted around to see Serge waving at him, and Mallor stifling a laugh. “Nice one, Fang.”
“It will work, Serge,” Vivian stated confidently. She stopped with Lancelot near the warehouse entrance, murmuring an incantation. “Stay away from me now, Fang, I’m deadly.”
“By your command, my lady,” Serge dropped back to the rear of the group.
With Lancelot in the lead, the group went into the warehouse through the single glass door at the building’s right corner. The silence drew a head-shake from Lancelot. He turned to his companions with a wry smile in the dim light.
“It’s a trap. I figured they’d miss the shifters.”
“At least we didn’t have to fight our way in through the pack,” Serge countered. “Fight with a damn shifter and smell like wet dog for hours.”
“Good point, Fang,” Vivian muttered. “Heads up, guys.”
As if on cue, a black-haired female vampire in low-cut jeans and black blouse crooked a finger at them from the doorway leading into the warehouse. She smiled at Lancelot. “Please come this way.”
“Serge, back and above,” Lancelot said quietly. “Mallor, Vivian, front and sides. Spread out when we get through the doorway.”
Chapter Twenty-Three: Final Battle
Lancelot followed the vampire’s direction. The thin veneer of civilization drained from his features, and his senses seemed afire as he contemplated what lay ahead. His hand rested on the sword-hilt sticking up over his shoulder. Lancelot felt the comforting warmth, smiling in anticipation of his warrior’s dream: a cataclysmic battle with all of civilization riding on the outcome. Inside the warehouse, red-shaded lighting cast an adequate but eerily tinted pallor over the huge open area. Many sets of glowing orbs watched Lancelot’s group approach. Tension permeated the room – a whispering thief of courage.
“Shit, Monte, there’s at least a hundred fifty vamps here,” Serge complained.
“Don’t ruin this moment for me, you molting undead worm,” Lancelot hissed over his shoulder at Serge, sending all three of his companions into a paroxysm of laughter, which had been his intent. “Say a prayer to the great Lord our God in thanks for this night. Its like has not been seen in over a thousand years.”
Their vampire guide glanced back at her charges uneasily, the first pangs of something’s being not right assaulting her heightened senses. The wave of vampires gave way before her. Lancelot stopped, turned, and motioned for his friends to stay where they were. Two vamps streaked in at Lancelot from opposite sides of the surrounding crowd. In seconds, two piles of dust lay on the cement floor, and the rasp of Lancelot’s sword returning to its sheath was the only sound in the aftermath. Lancelot grinned at the vampires around him, turning with hands out from his sides.
“Come, come…don’t be shy. Who else would like to dance?”
Booming laughter, hideous in its tenor as if a leaden bell were given voice, issued from the huge figure approaching through the vampires opposite Lancelot. The spawn of Lilith walked with agile grace. Dressed in black leather breeches and a black silken sleeveless shirt, he seemed to Lancelot to be nearly seven feet tall. He clutched Excalibur in his left fist.
“I am Dunkan, and you must be Arthur’s pet, Lancelot. I see you do have skills,” Dunkan conceded as he gestured with amusement at the piles of dust. “They were only meant to test you a little, not harm you. There was no need to destroy them.”
“Oops.”
“I wager you never meant to face me without this.” Dunkan held up Excalibur, and the vampire army yelled out in a deafening clamor. Some screamed his name, while others howled delightedly for Lancelot’s head.
“Only one man in all history ever wielded the cursed sword with honor,” Lancelot replied with fervor when the cacophony of sound diminished. “I plan to return it to him, once I wipe off whatever slimy residue you leave on it.”
A hushed murmur ran through the throng of vampires. Vivian exchanged grim glances of appreciation with Serge and Mallor. Dunkan’s uplifted hand holding Excalibur wavered, his fist acting as a tuning fork for the rage coursing through him at Lancelot’s words. As Dunkan’s nearly preternatural beauty and finely honed features contorted, his human visage slipped away. He regained control, lowering Excalibur to his side and smiling with blatant hatred at Lancelot.
“You risk much by baiting me. I can be merciful and grant you a quick death, or make your death horrific.”
Lancelot laughed, his mirth reverberating off the warehouse walls. He shrugged his shoulders at Dunkan. “Do your worst, Demon. I ask for no quarter, and I give none.”
“I see Mallor Blackstone with you. Do you tire of life so much you wish to die with this false legend, Blackstone?” Dunkan called out.
“I would rather die at Lancelot’s side than grovel at yours,” Mallor retorted, gesturing at the other vampires. “Can any of you say as much of your master? I call Lancelot friend and brother. What do you slaves call this popinjay?”
An eerie hush followed Mallor’s words, and a peculiar look came over Dunkan’s face. He shook a fist at Lancelot.
“This is the last chance you will get, Lancelot,” Dunkan said. “You and your friends must bow to me, and all will live.”
Lancelot pulled off the strap holding his sheath. The old blade slid from its scabbard with oiled smoothness and a whisper of metal. Lancelot tossed the sheath aside. “I believe we’ve spoken enough today. I’ve waited a millennium for this meeting. I ask our Lord to accept my offering here today, no matter the outcome. Come, Demon. Your future lies just beyond my cold, dead body.”
Dunkan charged Lancelot with sword-swings impossible for normal senses to comprehend. Lancelot met the barrage with equal ferocity. Vivian listened to Serge’s grunts of approval, hoping the blur seesawing back and forth across the open space boded well for Lancelot. Shrieks of metal rasping, sparking and colliding against metal went on until there seemed no break in the sound. Vampires clasped their hands over their ears to muffle their ultrasensitive hearing. Vivian looked to Serge, who had clenched his hands into fists, as a smile of intense pleasure illuminated her vampire companion’s features.
Dunkan broke free of the melee, with Lancelot’s sword left weaving hypnotically. Muscles and tendons writhed with every movement, as Lancelot, his tee shirt wet with sweat, watched Dunkan with wary satisfaction. Nothing else moved inside the warehouse. The vampires and humans waited with the dread and fascination observers of a train wreck feel.
Lancelot grinned, and Dunkan rushed him once again. All hint of arrogance was gone from the vampire’s demeanor. A half-hour passed as does a minute to some, and an eternity to others. Dunkan lunged back away to disengage, and Lancelot sliced a thin red line down the retreating vampire’s thigh. A wisp of smoke spiraled from the wound, and Dunkan cried out in agony.
Lancelot waited no longer. He jetted toward the retreating Dunkan, his sword weaving an arc of death.
“No!” Serge shouted, his face petrifying Vivian and Mallor, who had thought Lancelot near victory.
The moment progressed in slow motion for Vivian. She saw Lancelot lunge. Dunkan parried and sliced with a triumphant grunt of confidence. Vivian thought Lancelot would be sliced in half, but at the last split second, the First Knight dived back, and Excalibur sliced across Lancelot’s chest. Dropping his sword, Lancelot’s left hand flashed to his back, and a blade glinted momentarily. Dunkan�
�s killing slice had carried the vampire slightly off to his left, and in an instant Lilith’s offspring realized his error. Lancelot touched off with his right hand, reversing momentum into a tucked roll to the demon’s right. The blade flashed, and blood gushed from Dunkan’s right ankle, where Lancelot had severed the vampire’s Achilles tendon with his silver-bladed knife. Dunkan screamed. His leg collapsed under him, and the wound smoked. Rolling to his feet, Lancelot recovered his discarded sword. Blood oozed down his chest.
Dunkan crawled forward, thrusting Excalibur toward Lancelot in a desperate attempt to turn fate. Leaping over Dunkan, Lancelot stomped down on the vampire’s sword arm. Landing behind his opponent, he sliced through Dunkan’s left ankle completely, the bloody stump falling grotesquely to its side. Lancelot stalked around the howling vampire, who had dropped Excalibur to clutch his burning wounds. Completely unfamiliar with pain, Dunkan flopped around on the cement floor, his consciousness totally focused on the agonizing wounds.
Lancelot kicked Excalibur toward his friends, who were awestruck at the sudden ending to the battle. Dunkan’s vampire army moved away from their fallen leader, a murmur of dread rising amongst their ranks.
“Well now, Sparky,” Lancelot drawled, tapping Dunkan’s shoulder with his sword blade, “I don’t think you’re up to the mark.”
Dunkan extended one bloody hand upward toward Lancelot. “Mer…mercy…”
“No quarter asked for, no quarter given,” Lancelot intoned.
Lancelot began to methodically hack Dunkan apart, until the creature burst into a final flame. A moment later, only ash remained of Lilith’s once-dreaded offspring. The moment Dunkan ceased to exist, Vivian gasped as something wondrous surged within her. She joined with Mallor and Serge as they ran up beside Lancelot triumphantly, all keeping their weapons trained on the demoralized army surrounding them.
“I smell a lot of newbies, Monte,” Serge sighed, clapping Lancelot on the back. “That means blood and bodies. Damn, brother, you had me worried that time.”
“What do you suggest, Fang?” Lancelot asked, as Vivian gestured Serge back and healed Lancelot’s wounds.
“I’ve always been short on dedicated employees at the lab. They don’t look as enthralled with their bloody Dunkan now. Perhaps Kara and I can rehabilitate them. I will, of course, need some seed money for a first-class operation, if the Black Knight would be interested in a very profitable enterprise.”
“I’m in, Serge,” Mallor agreed immediately. “I need more European contacts, and I have the shipping line to transport these wayward souls while you and Kara vacation in Vienna.”
“Why did you ever hurt this man, Monte?” Serge queried as he embraced the laughing Mallor with affection. “You crude, uncivilized brute, did you not know the depth of this angel of mercy?”
“Fine,” Lancelot replied, gesturing Serge to silence. “Cover me, my friends. I have hearts and minds to win over today.”
The three turned their weapons toward the vampire throng instantly, all levity aside. Lancelot walked toward the silent creatures, sword in hand.
“On your knees!” Lancelot shouted.
“What right do…” a male vampire began to speak at the front.
Lancelot drew and loosed his knife with amazing force. The vampire turned to dust so rapidly that the knife went through him and pierced the skin of a vamp behind him before clattering to the warehouse floor.
“I said…on your knees!”
The vampires knelt as one.
“You live and die at my command!” Lancelot shouted. “My brother, Serge, will be your lord and master from this day forward. His will is your will. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Master!” The answer rang out loudly from over a hundred voices.
“If any betrays me, I will kill you all! Stay here until my brother returns with new orders. Have you enough sustenance?”
The woman who had led them inside the warehouse stood and approached Lancelot. She knelt at his feet.
“We have sustenance, my lord,” she answered. “I…I know you will not like this, but I wish no further ill will toward you in the matter. There are two other places where the gangs recruited to do our bidding hold humans for our feeding.”
“What is your name?” Lancelot asked, his anger held in check with force of will.
“Elizabeth, my lord.”
“Take this horde, and close the feeding stations. Release the people, and see to their well-being. Feed on the gangs you’ve recruited. Make no new vamps. Return here when you complete your mission.”
“By your command, my lord,” Elizabeth stated.
Lancelot grabbed the vampire up by her chin, the strength of his grip nearly collapsing her jaw. “I wish for you to be third in command behind my brother Serge and his woman Kara. Make me believe that you can do it in my absence. I will send the shape-shifters in when I leave. They are not to be harmed. They will help you in your mission.”
Lancelot released Elizabeth, who turned feral in an instant. She cowed the vampires, flitting amongst them with Lancelot’s professed endorsement. In minutes, she owned them for her new lord. Elizabeth returned to her knees before Lancelot.
“It will be done as you command, my lord,” Elizabeth said, holding out Lancelot’s knife with two fingers on the hilt.
Lancelot nodded. “I am impressed. Keep me that way, Elizabeth.” Having accepted the knife, he walked away with his friends, who backed out after him, their weapons ready.
Mallor handled Excalibur almost with distaste. Having been freed of the vaunted sword’s spell, Mallor felt only a mild revulsion as he carried it. On seeing Mallor’s handling of the weapon, Elizabeth ran out of the warehouse, returning before Lancelot’s group reached the outer door. She carried Excalibur’s scabbard, and handed it to Mallor.
“My lord.”
“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Mallor said gratefully, and in an instant Elizabeth was gone from sight. “What say you to a meltdown of the legend, Lancelot?”
“First Arthur, and now you, my friend.” Lancelot grinned at Mallor, as they approached the BMW. “We’ll complete this final act together.”
“You were right, Renee,” Petri muttered in awe as he watched Lancelot approach, the pack moving uneasily at Renee and Petri’s backs.
Renee nodded, unable to speak. She had not believed she would ever see Lancelot again, in spite of her arguments earlier.
“You can go back in with your pack, Renee,” Lancelot told her, as she handed Mallor the keys to the BMW. “Serge, here, will take you and the vampires to Europe with him. Perhaps my friend can help you all with some meaningful labor over there, too.”
“The more the merrier,” Serge agreed. “Just stay with the vamps, Renee, and I’ll contact you with details as to when we will be leaving.”
“Is…is Dunkan really dead?” Renee asked, unable to comprehend the fact.
“Oh, he’s dead all right,” Serge answered, patting her shoulder. “Go on in and check it out for yourself. Dunkan’s the big pile of ash in the middle of the warehouse.”
Renee gestured, and the pack moved as one toward the warehouse.
Vivian took Lancelot’s hand as he watched the pack move toward the warehouse. He smiled down at her. She leaned into him with her face against his chest.
“We are so close, my love. I…I doubted…in the warehouse…”
“Hush,” Lancelot whispered, his left hand lightly touching her cheek. “The Lord was with me this night. My thousand-year journey on which you started me ends with Excalibur’s return to Arthur’s hand. From there, we forge our own way.”
“I am with child,” Vivian said, looking up into Lancelot’s stunned face happily.
“How…I mean…it’s only been…”
“The moment Dunkan died, I felt the new life inside me.”
“Congratulations, Monte!” Serge clapped the shocked Lancelot’s shoulder.
“Come, brother.” Mallor opened the BMW’s rear door, laughing at Lancel
ot’s sudden discomfiture. “I am eager to see you rid of Excalibur, and I believe you are frightening your child’s mother.”
“Sorry, my lady,” Lancelot whispered, hugging Vivian to him tightly, his lips meeting her trembling ones.
Lancelot’s joyous realization ripped through Vivian’s mind and heart, casting down all momentary doubt at his initial reaction. Their mental bonding released the anxiety-filled memories of days past, joining them as one in Vivian’s new revelation. Serge’s repeated throat-clearings induced a reluctant parting finally, as Mallor started his BMW.
“Some other folks are very worried about us, and I detest sharing good news on a cell-phone,” Serge stated, urging Lancelot and Vivian into the BMW.
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