by Peter Dawes
The journey forward could only be described as torturous.
I cried out several times as four sets of hands gripped me tight and held me in place through the journey. We exited the room and emerged into a narrow hall, hewn out from stone and cramped enough for the position they held me in to add insult onto injury. I tried to thrash, but regretted each extra movement and forced myself to relax by the time we emerged into a much larger area lest I pass out. Oil lamps flickered all around and what little I could make out through the agonizing excursion reminded me of an amphitheater, though this one was hidden underground.
We descended a long flight of stairs and I gave up squirming. My fangs descended and I moaned when we alighted from the last step onto a long, much wider walkway. Taking in several deep breaths, I attempted to work through the misery somehow, to have some notion of what they intended to do with me, and came up empty along the way. Seats fashioned from rock made up the tiers, lacking occupants and stretching all the way from floor to ceiling. I was being carried toward a platform and winced anew while my transporters ascended the stairs toward the center of it.
Valeria stood near an altar with her hands folded in front of her, watching my approach. A morbid portion of my mind considered the contrast – one place of sacrifice to another – from church above to pit below.
I noticed the arcane circle carved into the floor as an afterthought, something quickly dismissed in light of a much more real and present concern. We crossed the distance to the dark witch and my body was deposited on top of the stone slab, the gesture dismissive, causing the sharp jolts of pain to surge through me again. I shifted in position and as I did, felt something move beneath me, distracting me from musing further on my injuries.
Taking breaths in lusty swallows, I turned my head to regard where I lay. One more shimmy of my body produced the edge of one of the parchments, peeking out from under my back. I furrowed my brow, but my focus jumped quickly to the human minion as he showed up again on my right side.
“Hold him down,” he said, looking at the four vampires who had carried me in.
One walked around and grabbed hold of my left arm. I turned my head and gasped with horror as the human scurried over, pulling chains with him and motioning for my wrist with a shackle. “No –” I managed to bark the protest, but was silenced when another vampire pulled up my shirt cuff and the metal contacted my bare skin. The sizzle and smell of flesh burning filled the air, as did my wails. They quickly moved to the other side and did the same with my other wrist. By the time they had my ankles secured, my vision had clouded over, consciousness something clung onto and finally lost for a moment.
“Now, now, seer, you should be awake for the festivities,” a discordant voice said from behind me.
My eyelids fluttered open again, my mind dizzy and every nerve ending alit with fire. The hazy image of Valeria filled my line of sight, her mocking smile coming into focus. “Ah, there you are,” she said. A finger coasted across my cheek, tracing a line down to my chin. “Look at you. And you thought you were bruised and beaten a moment ago. Where is that defiant glint in your eyes now?”
I struggled for speech, not knowing what to say. My lips motioned for words, but it seemed an eternity before my voice produced sound. “What…?” I began, but the rest of the question had been captured. I gritted my teeth and gasped out the rest. “What are you doing with me?”
“Forcing your cooperation. Very easily done, really, which tells me your brother either didn’t truly translate the texts or failed to tell you enough about them.” Her finger slid down to my chest and lifted as she began pacing away from me. “The writings on the scrolls are instructions. They state how to cast or destroy them. I discovered that when I stole mine. The magic itself is in the parchment and has a catalyst.”
“What catalyst?”
“Your blood.” She laughed. “There’s nothing for you to cast and nothing for you to preside over. Though, I will say, had you joined with me, this would be a lot less painful than I plan on making it.” I turned my head in time to see her snap her fingers in the direction of the human minion again. He bought over a dagger and she nodded thanks before directing her attention back to me.
Her eyes danced with sadistic glee as our gazes met. “Here we are at the sanctuary where our father consecrated these parchments,” she said, arms spreading wide as though to embrace the entire room. “It was here he retreated, to leave us his power before it could be snuffed from this world. It has taken too long for us to reassemble his inheritance from the thieves who stole it from us. They tried to burn them, but no fire could touch them. They tried to disperse them, but we have gathered them together, with your help, seer. The one who could tread on the Order’s hallowed ground, where they entered into an unholy pact with our vampire progenitors to keep this upstart faction from rising to prominence again. We knew our day would come, and you have been our champion, vampire Flynn.
“But you have also been our traitor,” Valeria continued. She raised an eyebrow at me, her expression sobering. “You were given the offer to stand by our side and lead the faithful into battle. Such a powerful creature, so capable of being a commander of armies, and you spat in our faces thinking you might seal our fate until the next of your kind came along.” A sardonic chuckle punctuated the comment. Her arms fell to her sides for the briefest of moments, until she lifted the dagger she had been given and approached me. I tensed in response. “I will show you and your puppeteers just how little their power means to us now. On this altar, I will bleed you dry, but I will not grant you death. We will keep you from this point forth as our trophy, starved and beaten as the symbol of our victory.”
A look of severity overshadowed her countenance. “You will beg for death, seer,” she said, “but I will not grant it to you. Not now. Not tomorrow. And not a hundred years from now.”
Lifting the dagger, she took hold of its hilt with both hands and drove it downward. I saw the action almost as if in slow motion, the tension in my limbs shifting the shackles and causing them to burn my flesh anew. Another scream had already formed in my throat by the time a new form of pain surged through me, my eyes beholding a knife sticking out of my wrist and blood cascading from the wound.
‘Well, would you look at that?’ a familiar mental voice quipped. Mine, but not. ‘Have we become Christ?’
“Shut the fuck up, Flynn,” I spat as tears formed in my eyes, madness overwhelming me as I ascended to a new form of agony. If Valeria paid any mind to my delusional ranting, she gave no outward sign. Her minion followed her around to my other side holding a box of knives and had I been in my right mind enough to count them, I might have seen six others. A violent shudder overwhelmed me, and rather than being granted the reprieve of unconsciousness, I felt aware of everything, my whole form shaking beyond my volition. Another cry passed through my lips when Valeria drove the next blade through the other wrist.
“I am not your sacrificial lamb,” I called out, attempting to flex my fingers, but finding the task impossible. My eyes narrowed, moisture sticking to the back of my neck I could only imagine as blood sweat. ‘A parody. A bloody parody,’ the voice persisted. ‘Fight, Peter. We are not going to be an effigy.’ Nodding in response, I focused hard on the dagger jutting out from me, attempting telekinesis to extract it. I had managed to budge it a centimeter, and might have done better if not for what I saw happen to the parchment underneath my wrist.
The blood trickling from the wound hit the scroll. Each drop sizzled upon impact, absorbed into the paper as though it could consume my life force. My eyes widened, another shudder racing through me like quicksilver, but this one not born from pain. A chill filled the air, dark smoke wafting lazily from the points of impact and coiling around my arm as though it had gained sentience. I tried harder to shift the blade out from inside me, but it proved to no avail. The parchment disappeared just before the first jolt rocketed through me.
When my lungs spat forth the most blood-curdlin
g noise my lips had ever produced, I could not tell its direct cause. Another dagger plunged into my stomach, where I had been impaled by Robin’s sword, and its drops of blood worked with the ones trickling down my other wrist to trap me in the throes of the spell. The sensations of two blades inserting into one leg, and two into another, bore none of its bite in comparison. Before I knew it, the entirety of my form had been enveloped by dark magic.
The veins in my wrist turned obsidian; my skin ashen. I lost all sense of time and place, watching the network of capillaries branching out from my wrist take on the same cancerous appearance, too driven from my senses to wonder what had been done to me. The distant sound of chanting somehow made it past the shouting yet pouring from my mouth and in an instant, my throat dried up and I was rendered mute. Everything around me turned dark, but not from a loss of consciousness. Such would have been far too much of a mercy. Whatever had been summoned forth would not be undone now. In fact, it seemed bent to undo me instead.
Helpless, I had been left to choke.
Until Valeria took hold my shoulders and gripped me tight.
Her rhythmic chanting increased in tempo, gaining urgency. A faint red color married with the dark purple swirling around me, its glow increasing in intensity the longer she spoke. Her hold on me felt heavy, something changing enough to summon a thought of wonder through the haze. For a few moments, she felt inside me, swimming through those black seas and squeezing every bit of me out into her, tearing me apart from within. As she siphoned from me, I felt myself weaken. And when she tore from me, I had been depleted just as much as she warned I would be.
So many voices danced in my head for a moment, one belonging to my brother, one to myself, and another to what sounded like Monica, but I could make out none of the discordant muttering my brain had fashioned. The image of the room around me faded in and out of existence, shimmers of light catching my attention, random flickers from each direction materializing into actual beings. The stone benches began filling in with what appeared to be vampires, just as a final shiver overtook me, a mark of completion from the most thorough of beatings.
I could not trust the reality of anything I saw. My head throbbed despite the lack of a pulse, unconsciousness seeming imminent as several sets of footsteps closed in on me. They paused at my sides just as my head lolled, but I clung on to the embers of lucidity I had left. My gaze jumped to the dark shadows of bodies in the amphitheater, regaining focus enough to confirm what had truly happened.
So many bodies filled the seats. So many of them confused, and yet all of them rapidly becoming focused on the feature taking place in the center of the room. My stomach twisted, eyes darting back to Valeria as paced closer and blocked my view of anything else. “Go and retrieve the witch,” she said to one of the underlings. “The rest of you, toss him into one of the cells. We’ll deal with him later.”
The vampire who stepped forward bore a level of familiarity to him. “You promised –” he begun.
Valeria lifted a hand, cutting him off. “He turned on us,” she said sharply. “Be thankful I let you keep your life.” She raised an eyebrow and he retreated, just as her head tilted to survey the other creatures gathered. These, she addressed as she continued. “Brothers, you live again. Only fitting we sacrifice a sorceress to celebrate, don’t you think?”
The tentative response of the first few immortals grew in volume, gaining confidence as it seemed the others latched onto what had happened, even if I did not fully understand it yet myself. “Over my dead body,” I murmured, the defiance nearly a knee-jerk reaction.
She turned to face me, the delighted grin she had undoubtedly flashed the newly-formed crowd still lingering on her lips. The gemstone hanging from her neck bore an ominous glow, now a blood red color with the tendrils of black smoke circling around it. “The dark father lives again,” she said once she saw where I had glanced. “He lives within me. Now, go and languish until I have a use for you.”
Her words seemed to spur the others into action. They maneuvered around me, pulling daggers from me with rank dismissiveness. As my shackles were freed – and my body lifted up – I could not cling on any longer. The battle had been lost before I waged it and black overtook me, leaving me to my enemy’s tender mercy.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Even through the shroud of pain-induced sleep, I became aware of my body being tossed onto a cot, too weak to issue any stronger protest than a whine in response. Barely a wheeze of air escaping my lungs, it still bore enough volume for one of my handlers to laugh. “Look at him,” they said, revealing themselves to be male. “This is the seer half the continent has been nervous about?”
“I wouldn’t be so dismissive if I were you,” responded another. My eyes fluttered open to regard the group, but could not manage to complete the effort. Images danced across my field of vision like shadows during the few seconds I kept my lids cracked. “You would have gotten more trouble had he not been injured.”
“Maybe. Then again, that doesn’t speak very highly for him, either. He let himself be stabbed in the back. Might as well have slit his own wrists for us and been done with it.”
“That it could have been so easy.” A pause, deliberate in nature. “Such things in this world rarely are, though. Which doesn’t bode well for you, despite the fact that he’s incapacitated. You might have drained him of his blood...” I heard the sound of a scabbard hitting the floor, footsteps pacing backward in response. The man’s voice bore a grin to it when he spoke again. “But I have his sword.”
The flurry of activity which commenced behind me spurred me into lucidity just enough for me to force my body to roll, the effort laborious and yet, worth the while. I forced my eyes open again in time to see a suit-clad, ponytailed man with a katana slash through one of the vampires and impale another through the heart. Flicking a glance at the human who had shackled me cowering in the corner, I did not linger on him long before my attention was summoned back to the impromptu battle.
The ash of one vampire fell atop the other, and even then their executioner did not tire. Swiftly, he turned to force two others back against the bars of my cell. They flashed fangs at him, but he held the blade perfectly at-the-ready, advancing forward another pace and one additional step beyond that. A smirk curled the corners of his mouth, his own pointed incisors beginning to peek out. “Nobody ever fears the stuffed-shirt scholar,” he quipped. “A pity for your sakes, I suppose.”
One opened their mouth to scream, but wound up with a slash across their throat faster than they could issue a sound. The other attempted to lunge for him, and he responded by plunging the blade through her chest first before pulling it out and finishing off their counterpart. With a jerk of his waistcoat, he brought himself back into order and glanced at the blade in his hands. “This is a good sword,” Robin said. “I can see why you insisted on keeping it.” His gaze flashed toward mine, the look in his eyes conciliatory.
I could not summon the wherewithal to respond. Nothing about the events playing out made any sense to me and my body lacked the energy to force my mind to work. A slight shift inspired me to groan, everything hurting in response to the motion, my body weak and drunk on pain. I shut my eyes briefly and forced them open when I heard the sound of a sword being sheathed. “You’re a wreck,” my brother said, walking closer. “I apologize. I didn’t expect her to do that to you.”
“All is turnabout in love and war,” I murmured, speaking nonsense. “Or is that fair play?”
“We’ll consult Master Shakespeare in a moment. For now, you need to feed.”
“Please, do not…” I began, but he had already moved to suit actions to words, lining the human familiar in his sights. The man’s eyes widened, his hand lifting and head shaking in response while the taller, lanky Irishman closed in on him.
“My mistress will have your life for this,” he barked, yelping when Robin took him by the shirt collar and tugged him over toward me. Throwing him onto his knees, my brot
her grabbed him by his hair and pulled, revealing his neck to me. No sooner had my mouth opened to ask what was being requested of me than he had one of my daggers in hand, swiping it across the man’s skin to inflict a deep gash.
Blood rose up from the cut and my response was instantaneous.
The scent of filled the room in a rush. My ears finally heard the pulse thrumming in his veins and my fangs descended while my wits tumbled from disoriented into feral. Robin shoved him closer still and I took hold of him, burying my face into the open wound and lapping up the rivulets which had already risen to the surface. When this was not enough, my teeth plunged into his throat. I began to drink him in, bereft of myself and parched for sustenance.
Too many wounds needed to mend. I ripped into flesh all the more just to bathe my lips in the flow and moaned nearly after each swallow, consumed entirely with the act of drinking. Slowly, one by one, the lights in my psyche turned back on. The aches and pains began to fade, and even after the man’s pulse stopped, I still spent a moment lapping up whatever my tongue could reach, allowing his body to drop and running my fingers across my mouth just to lick them clean. The fog lifted, the first sight I beheld after opening my eyes being my brother, Robin.
My brother. The traitorous bastard.
My animalistic instincts still held me soundly in its throes. I bounded up before I could stop myself, taking hold of the other man and shoving him against the stone wall of the far end of the cell. Heaven only knew the mess I was; if I still bore crimson staining my chin and how wild the look in my eyes had become. Fangs still out, I hissed at him, eyes narrowing. “Give me one good reason why I should not rip your heart out of your chest,” I spat at him.