The Huntresses' Game

by Joe Jackson

  “Oh, you always were a fool,” Annabelle said. “Here I thought perhaps you might come with some of your allies, and try to do with overwhelming force what you weren’t able to do on your own so many years ago.”

  “And bring you more people to control or raise as thralls? I don’t need help to deal with a walking corpse like you,” Kari shot back.

  The shriveled snout curled up even more, making a sneer out of the exposed fangs. “Idiot. You still haven’t figured out a thing.”

  Kari rolled her eyes. “By the gods, can we stop with calling me an idiot? If the best you can do is call me a whore or a moron, this is going to be a very short day for you.”

  Annabelle rushed forward with a snarl. She pushed Kari toward the stairs with a vicious combination, and then slipped sinuously into the routine Kari remembered her favoring in their past lives. Kari remained defensive, acclimating herself to her old friend’s style once more, and she feinted and sidestepped to get away from the stairs and into the open room.

  The vampire came in, more quickly and fiercely this time. Kari realized the value of the paluric armor wasn’t lost on her old friend; she was being much more reckless and taking greater risks, knowing the armor would protect her. Kari, by contrast, was dealing with a much heavier set of plate armor than she was used to, and had to be more controlled and measured in her own movements to maintain her stamina.

  Kari slammed Annabelle’s blade down, stepping in to riposte hard, and her scimitar cut brutally across the vampire’s throat guard. It was for naught, though, as the paluric armor turned the attack aside harmlessly. Kari threw her weight behind it, pushing Annabelle away, but the vampire simply came in again, engaging in a more reckless variation of her old routines. Kari was left to wonder how long Annabelle could keep up her pace; would a vampire ever get tired?

  Back and forth they traded combinations and gambits. Kari remained conservative, more dependent on being defensive without that cushion of paluric armor. Annabelle sensed it, and increased her pace, apparently intent on wearing Kari out if she couldn’t beat her outright. The vampire certainly acted like she would never tire, but Kari had a backup plan. When she began to reach her limits, she would open the floodgates of Zalkar’s power, and let his glory flow through her as she’d done when she fled her last encounter with Annabelle.

  Kari parried another attack, and felt a tingle of familiarity in her mind. While she hadn’t sought to draw Zalkar’s power into herself, what she could only describe as his memories began to come unbidden to her mind. She moved in tandem with him as he defended his countrymen, shielding them in their retreat from the ambush that left so many of them dead. Each turn of her wrist, each sliding step to stay balanced and yet steadfast mimicked one of his own, and in her mind, she danced with her deity. She had done so before with Sakkrass, but never before with Zalkar, and she relished the moment.

  His symbol began to glow upon her chest, and she felt union with her master. She paid little heed to Annabelle’s movements and attacks, each one being met perfectly by the instinct of memory. Every battle Zalkar had ever engaged in, every training session, every humiliating lesson learned at the hands of his own masters synergized perfectly with Kari’s experience. She felt Zalkar’s strength side by side with Suler Tumureldi’s, felt the harmony between their differing styles that came from their purpose.

  Selfless defense of others.

  Kari continued her dance, turning aside Annabelle’s every attack. She kicked on instinct, crushing the vampire’s teeth together as she hit that blind spot she had been struck in so many times in recent years. Annabelle snarled, but Kari was almost in a trance, continuing to dodge and weave despite a lack of action on the part of her enemy. The black weave of Kari’s blades began to glow golden again, and the symbol of Zalkar flooded the room with a synergetic blue light. And in that moment, Kari realized an incredible truth.

  “Can’t beat me with your own prowess, can you, little slut?” the vampire snarled. “I’m not surprised. Can’t fight your own battles any more than you can get someone to love you.”

  Kari stopped her rhythmic defense. “What?”

  “I never loved you, you were a convenient plaything.”

  “You are not my friend,” Kari insisted, pointing a scimitar at the obnoxious undead.

  “Oh, but she is in here,” Annabelle said, tapping her temple with a desiccated finger. “Every bit of her memories is still here, and I know the truth you have fooled yourself into being blind to all these years. She never loved you. She only wanted to learn from you, for you to teach her that legendary fighting style you hoarded to yourself. And when you refused, and you left her to die, know that she hated you in the end.”

  “That’s not true,” Kari growled.

  “She didn’t even enjoy being intimate with you. Thought you tasted…tainted.”

  That’s impossible; Annabelle never knew, did she? Kari thought, and her hesitation was all the vampire needed. She was on Kari in an instant, and drove one of her blades into the plate armor of her belly. Kari turned at the last moment, but the sword ripped through flesh, tearing the skin and the muscle beneath, even if it didn’t catch her squarely and impale her. Annabelle drew out her blade and kicked Kari hard, sending her reeling and then down the stairs with a prolonged, echoing clatter.

  Kari spilled upon the landing before the keep’s front door, and was able to stop herself from rolling all the way down to the lower level. She was bleeding badly, and she wasn’t sure if the healing energy she could call upon from Zalkar would be strong enough to stop the flow, much less heal the wound enough to fight. She set her mind to it anyway, though; after all, what did she have to lose? Annabelle was stalking down the stairway, and unless Kari could get back on her feet, this was going to be over in a moment.

  The door to the keep swung open, hitting Kari in the rump, but she welcomed the sharp pain. The sun spilled in and reinvigorated her, but not nearly as much as the sight before her. There was Aeligos, swords in hands, and he moved between Kari and Annabelle, causing the vampire to come to a stop. “Are you all right?” he asked Kari over his shoulder, only taking his eyes off the vampire for a second.

  “I will be, if you can buy me a minute or so,” Kari said. “But be careful, Aeligos.”

  “I will,” he returned, approaching the vampire warily. He engaged her, but though he was dual-wielding longswords, he used a fencing style to protect himself and keep Annabelle at bay. Aeligos was not nearly as armored as Kari, and likewise nowhere near as skilled with the blades. All he needed to do, though, was buy her time and keep Annabelle busy.

  Kari concentrated on her wound; it was healing fast. Too fast to be the result of that limited healing power she had always called upon in the past. She got to her feet, felt a tightness where the wound had been, but little pain or evidence she was hurt at all. She recovered her swords, watched them emit their golden glow, saw the accompanying blue glow of Zalkar’s symbol, and felt his power flow through her again.

  “Still can’t beat me yourself?” Annabelle taunted.

  “That’s the whole point,” Kari answered, approaching. “I almost failed this test, but I just realized it has nothing to do with beating you. It has to do with trusting him. This isn’t about my glory, it’s about Zalkar’s. And you, whatever the hell you are, are about to taste of his glory for the first and only time.”

  “Kari?” Aeligos prompted.

  “Stay or go; your choice,” she said, thinking of the Oracle’s words to him. It was entirely possible that Kimlerin’s comment to him had nothing to do with Kari or even this mission, but if he had to make a choice between living or dying here, Kari wasn’t going to take that away from him. “I’d rather you were outside and safe, but if you think you should be here, then stay.”

  “Then I’m staying,” he said.

  He and Kari moved to flank Annabelle, and the vampire began to retreat up the stairs. Kari was still wary; there was a reason Annabelle had wanted her here
and hadn’t simply killed her on the previous occasions. She pressed her momentary advantage, but not too forcefully; she wanted Annabelle to throw down her hand first. Aeligos followed her lead, and Kari worked in carefully to engage the vampire. Once they reached the great room, Annabelle ran out of space to run, and the companions took up striking her from opposite sides, working together to wear her down. The paluric armor still protected her from any real harm, but if it was possible for the vampire to become fatigued, it wouldn’t be long at this pace.

  Annabelle met Kari’s attacks, and the demonhunter realized they were getting a little too predictable in their flanking maneuvers. Aeligos flapped his wings, and the sound captured Annabelle’s attention, so Kari tried to capitalize. The vampire recognized the feint and caught Kari with a shallow stab. The demonhunter backed off a step and hoped that Zalkar’s power flowing through her would seal this new wound as well.

  Aeligos flapped his wings again, and nodded his head toward Annabelle. Kari wasn’t sure what he was trying to suggest, but then it occurred to her. She pressed the vampire with another routine, then backed off slightly as usual for Aeligos to press in. Kari turned and spun to her left, though, and stabbed backwards at the vampire. She had the right idea, but her aim was slightly off, and her scimitar missed the wing slits in the back of the paluric armor.

  Annabelle turned on Kari with a snarl when she realized what had almost happened, but she cried out when Aeligos’ blade sunk into the other wing slot. On a normal person, such a blow would’ve punctured a lung at least, but it didn’t seem to have all that much effect on the vampire. Kari surmised her own swords would be necessary to inflict a more punishing wound on their enemy. But now they had Annabelle cornered; they knew it, and she knew it. Her only hope was to reveal whatever her locational advantage was.

  The vampire fled to the stairs and down to the lower level. Kari and Aeligos gave chase, with Kari on point as they rounded the bends. The lower level, just as Kari recalled, was a sprawling, high-ceilinged room sufficient for the black dragon to curl up in. She’d been suspicious that he might be waiting there for her, just as he was so many years ago when first she’d hunted Annabelle, but only the vampire was there now.

  With only Annabelle in the room, it felt cavernous. Kari and Aeligos approached again; she was out of places to run. If she dared try to escape the keep completely, there were a few dozen men waiting for her. They had her cornered, but Kari didn’t get overconfident; she could still well remember how fiercely Turillia had fought when so “cornered” in Barcon. A measured approach would work best, and Kari thought it was about time she started working specifically to disarm their enemy, so the two could use their martial arts to subdue the armored shell.

  Annabelle smiled, a decrepit, horrid expression that said she had something else up her sleeve, and that coming down here had not been a last-ditch effort to hide, but the exact ace-in-the-hole Kari had suspected. The back wall of the cavernous dungeon turned to pitch blackness, even to the low-light vision of Kari’s eyes. The luminescence of Zalkar’s symbol did nothing to light up that wall. She could feel a force tug at her, almost like wind passing by, but it had no effect on her hair; this was something ethereal, tugging on the soul, not the body.

  “Bow to my command now, worm,” the vampire said to Aeligos. He shook his head and put his fingers to his eyes, and Kari knew at once something was different. Where he’d shrugged off Annabelle’s attempt to dominate his mind in Solaris, the presence of this dark vortex gave her further power. With this advantage going to the vampire, Kari understood she was going to quickly lose the upper hand.

  Kari couldn’t concern herself with Aeligos at that moment. She dashed forward and sought to sever the vampire’s willpower before she dominated the rogue’s mind. Kari went on the offensive, but made sure to attack at angles, that Annabelle’s counterattacks might glance off her plate armor rather than piercing it. Their fight reached a fevered pace, but Kari had to break off when Aeligos came in behind her.

  The rogue struck true, slamming the flat of his longsword across the side of the vampire’s head. Though it didn’t pierce the paluric armor – not that the flat of the blade was meant to in the first place – it knocked Annabelle off-balance. And that was all the opportunity Kari needed. She grabbed at the vampire’s wrist and turned with her, driving her scimitar deep into the wing slit in the back of her armor.

  Annabelle screamed and thrashed, trying to dislodge herself, but Kari stayed with her, keeping her head low to avoid the vampire’s throes of pain. There was the sizzling sound of flesh burning, and Kari pushed Annabelle to the wall. Kari levered her blade up to the right, toward the base of the neck. She had no idea what it would take to sever the malevolent force animating her friend’s corpse, but she was pretty sure tearing her head free would do the trick. Annabelle fought even with Kari’s sword buried as far as it would go into her back, so the demonhunter thought of something better.

  Kari hooked her hand under the chin of the helmet and yanked it off, the same way Turillia had done to her in Barcon. She had now exposed Annabelle to the same weakness she herself had almost succumbed to so often. The vampire stumbled, though, and Kari realized the damage she’d done was substantial. She kicked Annabelle’s legs out from under her but caught her in a kneeling position.

  For a moment, those faded, dead eyes looked up at Kari, and took on their familiar ebon luster. “Kari? Kari, what’s happening?” she asked.

  The demonhunter shook her head; she was not going to be fooled again. “No. You are not my friend,” she growled, but still she hesitated, her sword held aloft, ready to decapitate the foul monster.

  The milky white, dead eyes returned. “Bitch! I was always better than you!”

  Kari tilted her head and sighed. “Don’t listen to it!” Aeligos yelled, approaching with his own sword raised to strike.

  Kari scowled down at the captive vampire. “My friend would have never said that to me,” she spat. “She practically worshipped me. She wanted to be me. Whatever you are, whatever pieces of her are still inside you, you know nothing about her, or about us. You’re just a vicious, pathetic spirit that I’m going to send right back to the grave. To hell with you.”

  Kari sliced the vampire’s head off cleanly, and let the corpse slump to the floor. A foul, black, gel-like substance seeped from the severed neck. Perhaps it had been blood at one time, but whatever the ichor was now, it was disgusting and unnatural. As unnatural as the cold chill that bit into Kari’s flesh a moment later.

  “Aeligos, run!” Kari shouted.

  He didn’t listen, staring wide-eyed at the corpse as an inky shadow seeped out from it. “Gods, Kari, what is that?!”

  “RUN!” she shouted again, breaking through his trance. The rogue turned and fled to the stairs, not even bothering to look back.

  The demon emerged from Annabelle’s corpse and coalesced into a vaguely humanoid form. The chill of its presence was considerable, and Kari wondered why she couldn’t feel as much when it had been in possession of Annabelle. And that in itself opened so many more questions; was Annabelle actually dead before Kari killed her, or simply possessed? Was she a demon-possessed vampire? Was Zaliskower, too, demon-possessed? And how might all of this be connected to the current goings-on across Terrassia?

  The range of possibilities and their ramifications was substantial, but Kari had little time to consider any of it. The demon hissed at her, and Kari held her blades up, their golden light keeping the creature at bay. It began to slink toward that wall of inky darkness, and beckoned for her to follow. Part of Kari was satisfied that she’d done what she came for, but there was a rage that burned deep inside her at this insidious creature’s actions. She wanted it to pay, and as long as she had the means to do so, she was going to take revenge for everyone this monster had ever hurt – Annabelle not the least of them.

  She followed it to the wall, and after only the briefest pause, she passed through and into the realm of shadow. He
r swords and Zalkar’s symbol lit the area a little bit, and she could see that she was once again in that fortress on the edge of oblivion. She was pretty sure she was in the entry chamber near its massive double doors, but it was hard to see much. And wherever her enemy had gone, she could not see it at all.

  “Show yourself, monster,” she growled through gritted teeth.

  A cold pain in her arm told her it had touched her, and Kari swung instinctively in that direction. It touched her again, and then again, the cold sapping the strength and stamina from her as surely as if she wielded a pair of overweight hammers. She backed up toward the wall, trying to find the doorway back to Citaria, but she wasn’t where she thought she was. Kari had a brief moment of panic, but even as she was touched a fourth time, she calmed and called out.

  “Where are you, my angel?” she asked. “I need you again, my friend.”

  The room lit up, but Kari’s eyes adjusted without any of the blindness or painful period of getting used to the light. There was that bobbing ball of warmth again, and its luminescence made the demon stand out clearly. There was a moment where living light faced off with living shadow, but where the shadow caused the light no harm, the light clearly inflicted pain upon the demon. The shadowy evil spirit fled through the doorway to the next room, but Kari hesitated.

  “Should I go back and get my armor?” she asked her angel.

  The light began to pace back and forth, so Kari figured it wasn’t necessary. She made her way after the demon, and the light kept her way bright and clear. Even in this shadow realm, the light of her angel fought off the darkness, and Kari could practically feel the discomfort of the realm itself at being lit up. There was a vague sense that the light’s presence was awakening something greater, but Kari concentrated on her immediate goal. Room to room she passed with her guiding light, giving chase to the demon, until at last they came to the very circular staircase Kari had come down when she’d woken up in this nightmarish place.