Night Slayer 2: Monster Quest

by William Massa

  I narrowed my perception, allowed my world to grow smaller. There was no monastery, no chamber full of coffins and vampires, no sorceress or war against magic and monsters. There was only me and the door.

  My fingers touched its surface. Steel pressed against my fingertips.

  I increased the pressure against the metal. Imagined it giving way under my touch, becoming liquid.

  Moments later, my fingertips passed through the solid surface. Doing my darnedest not let my excitement break my concentration, I walked through the steel door. The unnerving sensation of fighting my way through a syrupy substance ended as soon as I emerged on the other side.

  More coffins filled this room. Unlike the other chamber, this space was a lot smaller, and to my surprise, all the coffins inside were made of glass. The place looked like the cryogenic chamber of a spaceship from some science fiction flick. Each capsule-shaped coffin contained a beautiful naked woman who appeared to be dead to the world. Sleeping angels, like a Victoria’s Secret catalog come to life. Except these dormant beauties had ditched the lingerie for red capes—the only scrap of clothing any of them wore.

  Leaning closer, I noticed that the women’s throats were all marked with the same Coven tattoo I’d first spotted on Naja.

  I pulled myself away and eyed the ball of blazing red light which now hovered over an oversized glass sarcophagus positioned in the middle of the chamber.

  I advanced gingerly.

  This coffin was twice as large as the others and was filled with blood. No doubt about it, I stood before Octurna's prize.

  The orb of crimson power zapped back into my stomach, and my tattoo stopped glowing. The magic had done its job. Now it was time for me to do mine.

  I crouched before the sarcophagus, and my eyes widened. Three naked human forms lay submerged inside. A beast of a male vampire had his bulging arms wrapped around two females, their long hair and beautiful features masked in blood as they slept.

  My gut told me this undead Casanova was the vamp who reigned over this monstrous Coven.

  I was looking at Ravanok.

  The vampire lord had to be way over six feet tall, his body packed with thick bands of muscle. A thin patina of blood covered his massive pecs and rippling six-pack. The monster’s flesh glistened in the blood pool, the liquid forming a sharp contrast with the unnatural pallor of his skin. A wild mane of jet-black hair framed his chiseled visage, and twin fangs poked from his mouth. This was Dracula on steroids.

  I eyed all the unconscious ladies in the chamber with deepening understanding. I was looking at Ravanok’s personal harem. Naja’s willingness to betray the vampire made even more sense now. She had sported the same tats as these other women. Naja had been one of Ravanok’s concubines but had somehow fallen out of the vampire king’s favor.

  Hell had no fury like a woman scorned.

  I circled the glass coffin and considered my options.

  Was there a way for me fill Octurna’s chalice without waking the vampire lord and his two brides?

  I also wondered why Ravanok would sleep in the blood of a slain Guardian. Drinking the blood of a dead combat magician would have dire consequences for a vamp, as I’d seen firsthand at the warehouse, but perhaps soaking in it while he slept had the opposite effect? He sure looked like the Mr. Universe of vampires. Was the Guardian blood turning Ravanok into an uber-vampire of some kind?

  Considering the size of his harem, the guy had an ego to match his massive, shredded physique. I could barely manage a pair of golems, so I doubted Ravanok could keep all these vampire ladies satisfied. Maybe that’s why Naja left.

  I returned my attention to the problem at hand. Could I pull off a classic Van Helsing move and stake Ravanok before he could launch into me? But even if I pulled it off somehow, there was still the matter of the fifty vamps in the adjacent chamber. I doubted they would be all too pleased with me driving a stake into their master's heart. Duking it out with the entire coven felt like a losing proposition.

  But there might be another way.

  Maybe I could open the coffin without waking these creatures.

  Besides the Ghosting Spell, I had recently picked up a Levitation Spell. It worked like a magical version of telekinesis. So far I could only levitate smaller items, but I was confident my mastery of this new spell would suffice to raise the lid of the coffin.

  Here we go again!

  I focused on the sarcophagus and allowed everything around me to swim out of focus. A few tremors passed through the casket, and I prayed the vampires were heavy sleepers. My magic enveloped the sarcophagus, and the lid soundlessly lifted into the air. It froze in place about three feet overhead.

  Time for me to make my move.

  I removed the chalice from the satchel slung across my shoulder and leaned over the open coffin, my mind busy maintaining the Levitation Spell while my hand reached into the blood pool. I swiftly filled the silver cup. As I did, I wondered how the sorceress hoped to tap into the blood’s power. I remembered the emotional tone in Octurna’s voice when she first told me about the slain Guardian. Whose blood was this and how well had Octurna known this fallen Guardian?

  The answers would have to wait.

  I raised the full blood chalice almost as if I was toasting my own success…and that’s when the eyes of one of the vampire brides snapped open.

  We stared at each other in frozen horror, and I realized something else.

  This woman wasn’t a vampire.

  She was human.

  5

  Time stretched as we stared at each other.

  A few crucial details suggested this beauty wasn’t a bloodsucker. At least not yet. Besides the woman's obvious terror, she sported no fangs in her wide-open mouth, and her skin was flush with color, a detail previously masked by the blood that covered much of her face.

  There was no doubt in my mind. This woman was still alive.

  I could almost hear Octurna’s voice in my head urging me to get my ass out of this hellhole before it was too late.

  This is war, she would say. You can’t save everyone.

  Well, watch me.

  I pressed my index finger to my lips and shushed the traumatized woman. I needed to think. How could I get the woman and her sleeping friend, who also appeared to be human on closer inspection, out of the blood-filled glass coffin without waking Ravanok?

  I checked the time. I still had a few hours before the sun would set. Hope flooded my heart. You can do this, I told myself.

  Thankfully Octurna wasn’t around to point out what a terrible idea this was.

  I offered the woman my hand, and to my surprise she let out a shrill scream as if I was the bogeyman himself. Her arm lashed out and knocked the chalice out of my still-outstretched hand.

  A string of words uttered in what sounded German followed her cry of terror.

  I didn’t need Google Translate to know that she was warning the vampire. What the fuck?

  A ripple passed through Ravanok’s massive chest, and his blood-red eyes flickered open.

  A few things became clear. Yes, the woman was human. And yes, she was terrified.

  But the source of her fear wasn't the vampire. It was me. She was afraid I was about to murder her undead boyfriend and destroy her best chance of joining his harem of monster brides.

  Suddenly I was glad Octurna wasn’t ghosting around inside my mind. I would have never heard the end of it.

  Still cursing my foolishness, I staggered back from the coffin and scooped up the chalice from the floor. Miraculously, none of the blood had spilled during the fall. The chalice’s magic must have prevented even a single drop from escaping beyond the edge of the cup.

  I placed the blood-filled chalice in my coat pocket, jumped back to my feet, and froze.

  The massive vampire lord rose from his glass tomb, incredible power coiled to strike with the deadliness of an irritated cobra. His shirtless torso loomed before me as if he was auditioning for the lead role in the new Te
rminator flick. The monster’s eyes burned with hunger, lips twisted in a vicious snarl that exposed his razor-sharp fangs. Ravanok’s expression was one of controlled cruelty.

  Someone was pissed to have his beauty sleep interrupted.

  I recovered from the initial shock and flashed the king of the night a snarl of my own. He didn’t appear impressed.

  “Kill the intruder, my lord,” the woman said. The human bride-to-be’s lips curled upward in an expression of deep satisfaction, clearly eager to see blood flow.

  I mentally released the floating casket's lid and sent it crashing down on Ravanok’s head. It shattered on impact, glass raining down into the blood. Jagged fragments covered the vampire’s body, yet he stood his ground.

  I never expected the maneuver to do much except distract the bastard long enough for me to bring up my machine pistol and squeeze the trigger. My gun cracked, and a hail of blessed silver and wooden bullets hurtled at the pumped-up vampire.

  The volley never reached him. Before the ammo could blow the master vampire’s head off, Ravanok dispersed into thin air.

  Menacing tendrils of mist enveloped the glass coffin and flared out in thin wisps, making me think of the tentacles of some smoke monster. I emptied another blast, and my bullets harmlessly shot through the mist. Instead, they smashed into the coffins on the other side of the room. Shrieks of agony and shocked surprise filled the crypt as the stricken vampire brides inside the coffins lit up like firecrackers on New Years’ Eve.

  Fuck, I had to get out of here!

  I retraced my steps down the short corridor, quickly arriving back at the steel door. This time no ghosting trick would help me escape. I turned my attention to the door’s locking mechanism as the screams and shouts behind me grew louder. I fiddled with the lock for what seemed like an eternity, and at last it snapped open. About goddamn time.

  I flung open the door. Fifty ferocious pairs of vampire eyes bored into me. All the coffins in the vast hall were open now, and vampires either sat erect inside their wooden boxes or stood in front of them. Disturbing Ravanok had triggered a chain reaction, awakening all of his minions.

  There was no way I was getting past this undead army.

  As the band of vamps circled around me, I noticed that these beasts didn’t share the harem’s fashion. All the vampire minions were bald and wore black monk’s robes, raising the possibility that these monsters might have been the original inhabitants of the monastery—unfortunate souls Ravanok had turned centuries ago. Time to put the poor bastards out of their misery and offer them the peace the vampire lord had denied them for so long.

  I fired off two rounds at the nearest vamp. The barrage struck him full force, one bullet punching through his cheek and exiting the back of his head in a spray of black ichor. The creature unleashed a bloodcurdling shriek that would have done any horror movie scream queen proud before erupting like a fiery torch.

  I unleashed another volley at the next two vamps. Like Ravanok, they transformed into mist, and my volley of bullets passed through them.

  I sensed movement from the corner of my eye. A human-shaped cloud of fog was creeping up on me from behind. I pivoted toward the living fog as the swirling tendrils of condensation turned back into a vampire. The dual blades of my gauntlet shot out like a pair of fangs and speared the incoming monster, reducing it to crackling flames.

  I exhaled sharply, a savage smile plastered over my perspiration-coated features. I had destroyed two vampires in less than a minute, but the remaining creatures already backed off and appraised me from a safer distance, their slitted eyes burning with hate as they prepared for their next attack.

  The bloodsuckers had swiftly concluded that I posed a real threat, but they also understood that they outnumbered me. And then there was the matter of Ravanok and his vampire brides, who would soon join this party. I had to make my escape before it was too late. Despite their higher numbers, these undead bastards wouldn’t dare follow me into the sunlight.

  A phalanx of vamps blocked the chamber’s main exit, but I had spotted a side door. I whirled away from the throng of advancing bloodsuckers and ran toward this exit. I did not know where the door might lead to, but anything had to be better than this. Two vamps tried to stop me, but a hungry burst from my machine pistol taught them the error of their ways.

  I made it through the door, which led to a winding hallway. I hauled ass and prayed the vampires wouldn’t pass through the thick walls in their mist form to cut off my escape. I did not know where this passageway would take me, but hoped it would lead me outside. I still had a few hours of daylight left. Plenty of time to make it down the mountain and reach the sanctuary.

  The corridor took a sharp right and opened onto an ascending staircase.

  Shit.

  I toyed with the idea of going back and looking for another way out, but the shrieks behind me convinced me otherwise. The stairs were my best bet. I didn’t know what other horrors awaited me on the next floor, but I guessed the steps would eventually take me to the monastery’s roof.

  Out of options, I sped up, taking two to three steps at a time. Twenty seconds later I reached the top of the staircase, passed through a wooden door, and froze dead in my tracks. A foul odor of decomposition made me gag.

  I pressed the arm of my leather coat against my nose, but it failed to improve the sickening stench. Guard up, I edged into the room. About twenty corpses in various stages of decay surrounded me. The dead hung upside down from X-shaped crosses, their bodies bound to the beams. Twin puncture wounds covered their bloodless corpses where the savage beasts had slaked their thirst. Anyone who felt like romanticizing undead bloodsuckers only had to look at this landscape of carnage to realize they had gotten it all wrong. Vampires weren’t tortured souls—they were predators.

  With a jolt, I realized that some of the poor bastards in here were still alive. They stirred as I approached, their terrified eyes fixating on the stranger who had stepped into this den of suffering and death. God, how I wished I could cut them loose and help them escape this godforsaken place. The vamps had stripped these poor souls of their dignity and humanity, reduced them to blood puppets designed to feed the hungry horde below.

  I locked eyes with one of the desperate victims and made a silent promise that I would come back for them if I should be lucky enough to survive whatever followed next.

  With a heavy heart, I pulled myself away from the horrific blood farm and rushed toward a large window. Sunlight enveloped me and I drew comfort from the heat against my face. I poked my head out of the window and cursed.

  The monastery was built into the cliffside, and hundreds of feet separated me from the jagged rocks and foaming ocean below. There was no way I could climb down the yawning monastery wall, and unfortunately, I didn’t have a hang-glider or flying spell in my magical repertoire. My only option was to brave the remaining ten feet to the roof and scale the stone wall to the top of the monastery. Daylight promised to buy me some time to strategize. Perhaps Octurna could materialize her castle up there now that she didn’t need to worry any longer about tripping any magical alarm systems.

  I climbed out of the window and nearly lost my footing as a sudden gust of wind hit my face. Damn, this was going to be tricky. I gnashed my teeth and searched the broken wall for something to hold on to. A heartbeat later, my hands closed around two rough brick stones, and I pulled myself upwards. My coat danced in the air as I scaled the rock face. The muscles in my shoulders protested, but the rivers of adrenaline coursing through my body told them to shut up.

  After a few minutes of fighting both gravity and the howling wind, I pulled myself up onto the roof. The setting sun was blinding up here, but I didn’t give a shit. The vampires couldn’t reach me on the roof. At least not for a little while longer.

  Blinking against the harsh light, I studied the terrain. The angled, tiled surface measured about half the size of a football field. A few turrets jutted nearby, and the crumbling bell tower rose ab
out fifty feet up ahead.

  “Okay, Octurna, any way you could get me out of this pickle?”

  Silence greeted my question.

  I considered my options. I had about a half a magazine left in my machine pistol and a full one in my satchel. A quick glance at my Timex told me the sun would set in two hours. That was long enough to come up with a new exit strategy-

  I stopped in mid-thought, my blood turning to ice as I caught a glimpse of a most disturbing sight. An unnatural fog was rising around the roof from all directions. The gleaming yellow mist wafted toward me.

  I had a bad feeling about this. Was I looking at Ravanok’s disembodied vampire army? That should have been impossible but how else to explain the eerie cloud closing in on me from all sides? I couldn’t even make out the bell tower any longer, the thickening soup having erased the world around me.

  Human shapes formed in the swirling tendrils. As the outlines multiplied and solidified, the mist dispersed. A minute later, all traces of the spooky fog had vanished, and a phalanx of stunning tall vampire women surrounded me. Black-red capes danced around their naked bodies in the harsh mountain wind.

  This was not supposed to be possible. The lore was clear on one point—sunlight and bloodsuckers didn’t mix. Ravanok’s coven appeared to be the exception to this rule.

  And talking about the devil himself…

  A few remaining wisps of condensation balled into a spherical mass that took on a human shape—the familiar figure of the vampire master who ruled over this kingdom of blood. His ivory muscles flexed and shone in the sunlight but refused to burst into flames. A smile stretched his lips, revealing the white of his protruding fangs.

  It was official. I was facing a special breed of vampire, a race of daywalkers who didn’t have to fear the daylight even though they still spent their days slumbering away in coffins. I guess old habits die hard. These assholes weren’t playing by the rules. So neither could I.

  Ravanok stalked toward me. “Who are you, wizard?”

  My gaze remained locked on the vampire lord, but I didn’t say anything. My mind was running at a million miles per hour, trying desperately to think of some way out of this mess.