Harold shook his head, shrinking back into the cowardly skin suit of the old Harold — the Wolvesless Harold. “No. I’m not going to fight. Listen, buddy, you got the wrong person.”
“I’d recognize those eyes if I was blind.” He leaned over and spat, then his gaze flittered up the hall, up the earth carpet and the red stream of blood to where the throne was and where Sahara lay crumpled and broken like a dying piece of garbage. “What about her? You kill her too? After you thought it a good idea to come into Vampire territory.” The man smiled. “Seems like your plans got a little off the rails.”
Harold coughed, wheezed, felt the fire burning in his lungs from the pressure exerted on him from the old man’s size fourteen boots. Fourteen because Harold could see the number on the sole, just inches from his chin, shining in red blood, like some kind of sadistic stamp. Fighting the coughs, he said, “Well, you must be Frank, huh? Real…c-clever.”
“Why’d you do it?” Frank asked. A wilder gaze flickered in his eyes. Harold saw the sweat running down his cheeks. “Why’d you have to kill my boy?”
Harold squinted, “What in the Hell are you talking about, man?”
“I-I saw you do it. I watched you draw your blade and slice him up like he wasn’t a human being at all, like he didn’t have a soul or a heart. Like he didn’t have a father who loved him.”
“I think you got the wrong guy,” Harold said. “My name is Harold Storm. And if you haven’t noticed I’m completely burned to shit. I think you’d remember me, buddy.” He raised his arm as far as he could, which was about an inch, to point to his face.
“That’s just your true self showing. I know my Demons, son. You can’t fool me. Rumor has it that once the Portal to Hell has been shut, you can’t go crawling back to Hell. So the Hell starts showing all over your face.”
“Yeah, no, man. The Portal to Hell is wide open, but I’m not from there at all. I’m a Realm Protector. I’m the reason this Realm hasn’t been completely swallowed up by Hell. You kill me and you kill the Realm.”
Frank eyed him as if he were crazy, as if none of it was real at all, and maybe they were both just a couple of loonies having a whacked-out conversation in the halls of a psychiatric hospital.
“But your eyes…” he said. “I remember those goddamned eyes. Nothing else in all of the world — ”
“Realms,” Harold corrected, then shimmied, attempted to shrug, “I know, I’m still getting used to the idea of it, too. It’s weird.”
Then the butt of the crossbow lashed across Harold’s face, raking his burns like a mace tinged with lemon juice, shutting him up fast. No more jokes. No more explanations.
“Enough, Demon,” Frank said. “You will answer for your crimes. And I am your judge, jury, and executioner.” He reached into a belt under his jacket, where the arrows were lined up in a neat row. There were five left, but something told Harold that he wouldn’t live long enough to see all of them shot. Because Frank pointed the crossbow right at Harold’s forehead, with only about two inches of space between the deathly tip and the skin and only about an inch of skull separating the tip from Harold’s brain, and the end of his life.
CHAPTER 8
Everything in Frank’s body, mind, and spirit told him to pull the trigger. Let the arrow lose into the Demon’s head, get your revenge. The nightmares would stop then, wouldn’t they? Except they were no longer nightmares — not even something he could classify as night terrors, though they were terrible. To Frank, they had felt so real and a part of his very soul that he’d label them as visions. Horrible visions he no longer wanted any part of, or ever wanted any part of in the first place.
Yes, an arrow dipped in the antidote and jammed through the Demon’s head would solve all his problems.
But they won’t bring Travis back, will they, Franky? the voice in his head asked him. No, he’ll be six feet underground for the rest of time. The worms will chew at his flesh until they’re fatter and plumper than a Thanksgiving turkey. And it’s all your fault. Go ahead and kill that Demon. Get your revenge. But you’ll never feel full again. You’ll be empty for Eternity.
Yet those eyes. They watched him with a controlled fear. Never blinking, never wavering, always intent on meeting Frank’s. He could be wrong about the creature staring down the sight of his crossbow, couldn’t he?
Yes.
But the forest and the large trees. The blood Shadow had told him to go to the forest, and there he would find him. Him, the one Frank had wanted — no, needed — revenge against.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” the Demon who named himself Harold Storm said.
Frank’s fingers shook. His right index finger rested centimeters away from the trigger, brushing against the cold metal.
“Kill me or don’t…shit or get off the pot, buddy.”
A fresh stream of blood rolled from the man’s quivering lips, running over the various craters and scabs and popped blisters — the skin yellow near the mouth, milky white under his sunken eyes, and dotted bits of fiery red in other places; the skin of a Demon, of a creature born in Hell.
But the eyes, the way he looked at Frank. There was no possible way Harold Storm was a man of Hell, Frank could see it in that look. A Demon would’ve put up a fight, wouldn’t have succumbed so easily.
But an innocent man wouldn’t either.
No, Harold Storm was not an innocent man.
“Take a fuckin’ picture, it’ll last longer,” he said, blood spraying from his mouth in a fine mist.
Frank grunted in an attempt to hide his cowardice, dropped the crossbow to his side. Then his shoulders slumped, buckling under the weight of his heavy heart.
“Well, you aren’t as dumb as you look, I guess,” Harold Storm said.
Frank lifted his boot off of the man’s chest. A crude imprint of the number 14 showed on his red skin in a heavenly white, tinged with blood.
“Be quiet. And be grateful I’ve shown you mercy.”
“No need to get all macho on me, man. Just admit that you’re batshit crazy and move on.”
“Not without a thanks,” Frank grumbled. He kicked the dead Demon at his feet with the toe of his boot. A black stream gushed out of the wound of its neck, reminding Frank of a dreadful river, but he smiled nonetheless. There was nothing like ending the life of a supernatural — slitting the throat of a creature supposedly more powerful than you. It had been nearly a year since Frank tasted the sweet blood of death, and god, he missed it. He would’ve put it up there with sex, cigarettes, and health insurance — three things his life had lacked as of late.
“Thanks for what?” Storm said, trying to pull himself up, frankly looking like a corpse rising from the dead. Watching made Frank’s stomach flip — what if he was wrong? What if the damn thing turned out to be a Hellion after all?
Frank gripped the crossbow a little tighter, and his index finger found the trigger again. He felt a little better doing so.
“For saving your life,” he said, eyes narrowed. “Wasn’t for me that goddamn bat would’ve torn your head off.”
“No, I think the bat was in the process of saving my life, but it’s cool. He was kind of a dick anyway. Besides, I don’t know how much longer I could’ve looked at that thing.” He bowed his head, studying the crumpled, overweight figure dressed in ripped leather and doused in the black blood that resembled spilt oil. “Though I don’t think his real form was much better.”
His shoe brushed away spilled entrails in a lame attempt to put the man back together again, and Frank noted that he kind’ve fit the description of Humpty Dumpty just a little bit too perfectly. Despite the fact that he’d been the King of the Vampires in the northern sector of America. One of three who ruled the States, mostly kept to himself, but Frank had heard the stories — the torture, the deaths of innocents disguised to look like random civilian murders, and suddenly Frank had to fight an urge to spit on the corpse. The one thing Frank wasn’t was disrespectful, even to a creature of the King’
s level of despicableness. Hell, the Vampires as a whole. He’d not been brought up that way. Killing a creature was disrespect enough, besides the damn thing was dead, and spitting on the King’s corpse would be a waste of spit to Frank, especially in his current situation. No sleep, no eating, hardly any drinking — his mouth felt full of desert sand.
The man named Storm walked over to the crumpled corpse of the girl. Frank could see his erratic breathing as he scooped the girl’s head up. A head full of beautiful red hair clashed harshly with the man’s skin.
“You won’t get out of here alive, you know,” Storm said. “Those Vampires aren’t too…forgiving.”
“Believe me, I’ll be fine.”
And he knew he would be because a man on a mission was not a man to fuck with. Vampires would be like overgrown weeds, and he’d be the machete cutting into the dark forest, just as he had upon his arrival into the literal Dark Forest.
But admittedly, he had slipped into the great tree without much resistance, for the Demons and Vampires were at a war where both sides were on track to lose, both sides heading towards obliteration. His bow had struck a few stragglers outside, but the amount of blood flowing had been caused by the two armies. The real challenge had been on the inside. It had gone perfectly until a few Demons broke in, and Frank either had to hide or die, which went against every rule of Hunting his father had taught him.
Rule number one: Fight and don’t die.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Storm said. He lifted the girl off the ground, rippling muscles flexing in the holes of his ripped and tattered black trench coat. To Frank, it looked as if the man struggled to lift a woman that might’ve weighed a hundred and ten pounds — maybe one-twenty. And Frank found himself chuckling under his breath.
You old kook, thinking this man to be dangerous. Can’t even lift a dead featherweight.
He began to turn towards the ruined iron door and the heap of dead Vampires and equally dead Demons when the image of the ghostly Shadow lingering over his bed popped into his mind.
You will find him at the Forest.
He could still hear that ghostly voice as if amplified by the screams of a thousand dying souls, could still feel the blood on his face, the mess on his floor. The coldness in the room and the darkness that followed the ghost’s departure. Yes, he was there for a reason, but all he’d found at the Tree was death, blood, and destruction. There was no him.
Frank shook his head.
No. No, Franky Baby, you’re just going crazy. That Shadow — those nightmares — all just products of rampant dementia and post traumatic stress disorder, that voice in his head spoke, and with the utmost confidence.
He shrugged off that moment of doubt and began walking away. He might be going crazy, and he might eventually have to accept the fact that it would be his undoing. But still optimism was another thing preached by his original teacher, his father. And he could ask the questions that mattered if it meant finding the Dark One who’d slain Travis.
Questions like: How many more trees would he have to visit before he found him, the him the voice spoke about? How many visions would he have to have before he couldn’t take it anymore and he actually pressed hard enough on the arrow against his neck to free him of it all?
He didn’t have the answers, but he was willing to find out, willing to swim in the blood of the Vampires and the Demons for the rest of time if it meant gaining that knowledge.
“Not even a goodbye? After you tried to skewer my brain, really, man?”
Frank turned his head until his chin hovered over his left shoulder, not giving the burned man his full attention, crossbow still in his right hand, somehow heavier with the weight of failure, and he said: “It’s not goodbye, Storm. I imagine I’ll see you in Hell before this is all said and done.”
“Ah nice, real philosophical. Can I get a little help over here? I think you owe me that much. I’m not exactly in my best physical condition, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Leave the girl, and save yourself, Storm,” Frank said before turning away and leaving.
Behind him, he heard the man’s lagging footsteps shuffling. And he had a smile on his face as he thought about the impending conflict. He craved blood and he only needed the slightest sign of ill will for provocation — for a reason to pull the trigger. He’d killed innocent supernaturals for much less, and a man like Storm — one who’d hung with the Vampires and burned in the fires of Hell — didn’t deserve to walk amongst the Mortals of Earth.
Rule Number Two: Don’t swing first, but make sure you swing last, his father’s voice sang in his mind, like a preacher.
So many voices.
But the distant echo of his father brought him back to the riverbed, near the reeds taller than his ten year old frame, stronger too. Father wrestled a worm onto a fishing hook, making a show of how harshly he’d speared the insect, making sure the punch of metal into wormy flesh coincided with swing last.
“I wish it were that easy,” Storm said.
And Frank wheeled around to see the razor-sharp point of a blade running from the flesh of the red-headed woman in Storm’s arms. His fingers curled around the girl’s hands which curled around the hilt, directing the movement like a demented puppeteer.
Frank backed away, but the blade followed until the harsh wooden walls pressed against his back and the blade dug into the wrinkled flesh of his neck, right above the healing cut of his own doing. And when the blade met his skin, a voice shrieked in his head, one he’d not heard yet, but he recognized as pure evil.
“Now, the way I see it,” Storm said, eyes narrowed at the tip of the blade disappearing into the folds of Frank’s neck, “You owe me for the stress you put me under for no apparent reason other than the fact that you didn’t like my looks. Which, I guess, is typical from an old asshole like yourself, but what can I do? I think it’s time you pay your dues. And if you obey, and help me get out of here alive, I’ll spare your life.”
Frank tried to talk. But his muscles had froze, fearing that one wrong syllable would cause his Adam’s apple to bob up and he’d choke on a pool of his own blood.
“I think you and I could make a great team. We both have a common interest, and if we get my friend some help here, we might even be the Three Musketeers 2.0.” Storm paused, regarded Frank carefully, then: “I told you my name, now what’s yours?”
“Frank King,” he answered, but that was all he could say as he nodded, his father’s voice ringing in the back of his mind:
Rule Number Three: Don’t be a cocky asshole, or you’ll die.
CHAPTER 9
Sahara didn’t have much time, if any at all. Harold could feel her heartbeat slowing as he cradled her against his chest. For such a petite girl she must’ve weighed close to two hundred pounds, yet he didn’t know whether that had to do with the fact she was a Protector of the Realms, or the fact she had what must’ve been about a hundred pounds worth of Demon venom coursing through her body.
All Harold knew for sure was that he needed to get her help, and she needed that help fast. The Vampires may not have liked him, but Sahara was an old friend — and he felt his face flushing thinking about it — to Roman; an old flame perhaps. She’d never revealed any details, but there was evidence enough. When Roman was alive, Harold could’ve gotten high on the hormones leaking off of their skin, like they were bugs and mating season was nigh.
Bleh, he thought, shuddering.
Sahara had been the woman of his dreams and without her, he didn’t know where he’d be — dead, probably. She was there when he needed her, and in the past few days that was a lot. They had been fast friends, and — he hoped — slow lovers. Now she needed him, and he wasn’t going to let some grumpy, older and much uglier version of Legolas stand in his way.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?
Besides, that crossbow seemed to come in handy against the Demons. If there were anymore outside of the throne room, Frank could cut a path, a
nd Harold could find the Vampires. One of them would be sure to help, wouldn’t they?
Outside of the room, past the crumpled iron door and the sea of black blood, a smell of death hung in the air like the smell of a dying fire. The decay of venom-induced corpses would probably never leave Harold’s nostrils, sadly, and he accepted that. A torch flickered at the end of the hallway, near the steps, wooden and intricately carved by the Keebler Elves, at least Harold made himself think that to lighten the dark storm brewing in the recesses of his mind. A mind balancing on a high wire ten feet above a volcano with one foot and no safety net below; a mind threatened by the venom.
But no, Harold wouldn’t — couldn’t — let it take him. The thoughts, the dark thoughts. The death, the power. Oh Dark One, the power.
Where you belong, Harry.
Come home.
No.
He wouldn’t. He was a Protector, even if his Deathblade was gone, and the Wolves were dead inside of his mind, decaying, with the maggots devouring their flesh, laying their eggs in their dying warmth. Protectors persevered, and Harold was sick of giving up. Marcy had been right back at her apartment complex when the rage boiled inside of him and he nearly killed her model boyfriend. She had told him how he’d been a failure, and he’d been blinded by the fact that time had been in his favor. His acting career would take off one day, right? He’d get out of the city and into a mansion in the mountains. Parties every night. The booze would flow like the blood of the dead ones strewn in the hall he walked through on his way to the steps, with Sahara cradled in his arms, her death blade extended, and Frank ahead of him, sights aimed down.
The girls, too. He’d have any girl he wanted. And his bank account — would never have to worry about money again.
Right?
Wrong.
Though Marcy had been right.
Frank sucked in a deep, shaky breath in front of him. Harold could smell the fear rolling off of the man — and the doubt.
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