by J. X. Evans
“Damn guard tried to send us into a trap. He probably figured that these guys here would have been awake already. Our timing was fortunate.” Rob signaled at the other two with hand signs.
“What do we do with these ones?” Mark signaled back at him.
“Nothing, they will be out of it for quite a while probably.” Rob answered.
“Well, more than a while means brain damage. But it’s not like we have much time at our disposal.” Perry chimed in.
“Death means certain and major brain damage. Better this way.” Rob answered and gestured for the other two to follow him.
“Arguable.” Perry whispered, eyeing Mark, and smiling at him. Mark would have smiled back and made a joke, but even though he had compelled himself to be calmer, he had not yet reached that level of casual banter.
They walked through the door, down the hallway and found themselves to the living room. It smelled of blood and death and foulness, and there were unnatural noises coming from behind a set of slightly rattling wooden-carved doors. The pungent smell was strongest there than elsewhere. They did not even need to share a look or make a hand gesture. And it turned out that after all they did not even have to inquire where the thralls were being accommodated. They looked around, made a mental map of the place and they moved to start ascending the steps of the left staircase, quite as mice.
The doors of the room next to the thralls’ slid open and a pair of tall, pale, slender figures emerged. A man and a woman, both with long light-brown tangles and thin eyes, like two drops of water that only curved in different places from top to bottom and vice versa. Both groups stopped moving and looked at one another.
“So much for the stealthy approach then.” Perry mumbled in Rob’s ear.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Susan and Jacob. What are you two rascals doing here?” Rob asked the pair of vampires standing by the rattling door.
The woman took a small step forward, “What do you think? We learned the good news and we came over to enlist ourselves but…” The man took over for her after the pause and continued her sentence, “It seems that we missed the owners, so we waited…” The woman looked toward the man from the corner of her eye, “Maybe we should come back later?”
“I don’t know, should we?” The man answered.
The rattling behind the door had seized for a couple of seconds and suddenly there were screams and screeches and wild heavy thuds coming from behind them. Both burst open to let a wild torrent of vicious, frenzied thralls in the room. Some were evidently newly arisen since they seemed almost no different than normal people, and some were already messed up and evidently weakened; probably from the fight in the café, red and black charred limbs and burnt clothes on them and some with missing body parts, but no injury seemed to dissuade them from a charge.
“Dammit!” Rob and Perry cursed in sync, and Mark accompanied them with a low ‘Fuck’ from his own hard pressed lips.
“Perry!” Rob shouted and he turned to place his shield on the ground, one foot against the wall, the other in front of him for balance and most of his weight pushing against the shield. Perry turned around as well to face the horde of the rampaging undead. There were too many of them, and watching such a crowd of super strong, nasty, grunting undead humanoids running towards you with the sole thought on their rotting brains being that of killing you, dismembering you and feasting on your flesh and bones (not necessarily in that order) can be an uncomfortable notion to say the least. Perry pushed Mark out of the way a bit with one hand and extended both arms outward, one parallel to the other, and both emeralds in each of his chains flickered to a brilliant light, like the eyes of a hideous monster from within a gloomy, dark cave. The front of the wave of the crazed thralls was only five steps away from his outstretched arms. Perry braced his feet, took a deep breath and tensed his whole body, he grunted in effort and let loose. Deep vibrant green masses of pure, destructive force shot out of his open palms to crush onto the oncoming thralls and leave a wide lane of blood and broken bodies that begun from the front of the crowd, continued past the broken doors, and ended in the far side of the room where it shattered windows and left deep cracks on the sturdy wall. At the same time he had wanted to aim for the pair of vampires but they split up and ran in different directions, too fast to follow, so he settled on focusing his efforts in destroying as much of the horde as possible; which he did marvelously.
Mark saw the vampires moving and took aim at Jacob, or was it Susan? The one on which he had the best shot at, and he pulled on the assault rifle’s trigger. The weapon rat-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-taed, but the vampire seemed too agile and fast, but he managed to land a couple of shots in the monster’s thigh before it managed to take cover behind a large marble pillar.
Perry was devastated from the attack’s backlash. He clenched his jaw and was almost lifted from his feet. He landed hard on Rob’s shield as he fell backwards, and the burly man grunted and pushed with his back foot harder against the wall. It was a combination that they had been working on for a situation such as this one, and it had done its job of stopping a wave of maniacal monstrosities yet again. Rob flicked his huge shield to one side and sent Perry right into Mark’s expectant arms.
Mark stooped shooting and grabbed a hold of Perry, ‘Well, that could not have been pleasant. But sometimes if you want to double the gain, then you should be ready to double the pain.’ It was one of the most destructive displays of magical force that Mark had witnessed from a Knight, and he felt bad for actually feeling relieved that he was not the one that had to go through the awful sensation. ‘It is only pain, he reminded himself. Except when the force actually snaps a bone or two in half or to bits, then it’s a fracture. Or when it damages a vessel, or a muscle. But such injuries were a reality of either a newbie or an amateur, and Perry was neither.’ He let Perry lean against the staircase and he lifted the burrowed assault rifle to his shoulder once more. “Are you ok?” Mark asked as he started aiming at ugly heads and pressing the trigger in regular intervals; unfortunately one bullet to the head though would not do it for these guys, usually three or four were needed to do sufficient damage to the skull and brain as to leave the thralls incapable of continuing their crazed struggle.
“It’s a hundred years too early for you to be asking me these kinds of questions kid.” Perry answered though his teeth. And Mark actually smiled for a second.
Rob lifted his shield up after he had sagely deposited Perry to Mark’s arms, drew his mace and launched forward. The thralls in the center of the fray had mostly been dealt with. It is important for masses of enemies not to crowd together in front of a Knight for that exact reason, not that the stupid monsters would be able to understand it on their own. The excess energy that escaped to the left and right from the two large masses of force had displaced and divided the remaining thralls to either sides of the room. Rob took the head off a thrall with a swift strike of his hammer, struck one into oblivion with his shield and blocked another one that launched on him like an arrow with perfect concentration and balance of energy as well as timing with his citrine gem. The thrall slammed face first in the semi visible yellow dome and slid to the ground, its nose flattened and broken while Rob himself had barely even moved. Rob split its disfigured head open with his heavy boot as if it was a ripe melon.
The vampire that had made itself scarce during the beginning of the fight dropped from the ceiling almost on top of Rob, kicked him to the back of the head and drove him slightly out of balance. Mark launched forward, and swung the rifle in an arc to smash its wooden butt on the vampire’s back; a blow that sent it sprawling and skidding on the slippery floor for a couple of seconds.
Rob placed his left palm on the ground and sent a wave of frost and thin ice to cover a large region of the already slippery floor of the room in front of him and towards the sprawled vampire that was certainly Jacob. The vampire found its limbs and parts of its body in a thin, icy prison; while thralls with their unbalanced and rushed movements f
ound themselves sprawling and falling head over hills to the ground, again and again.
Rob turned and pointed with a blue, frosted over index finger, “Someone go find the children!” Then he turned again to resume striking at attacking thralls as if they were poorly thrown baseballs and he was striking Home Runs one after another; while continuously retreating towards Mark and Perry at the foot of the staircase.
Perry grabbed Mark by the shoulder and Mark turned, a bit jumpily, “Are you alright?” Mark asked him.
“I am fine you idiot. Just go!” Perry answered. He flicked his metal whip free from his belt and jumped in the fray at Rob’s side.
Mark lingered only for a second to see the ice imprisoned vampire escaping from within its relatively weak shackles with nothing other than brute force and the other vampire rushing to its side; the places were four bullets had lodged themselves moments earlier already seemingly healed. ‘I have faith in them’ he thought while climbing up the steps two at a time in quick succession. He turned at the corner at the top of the stairs and saw a light creeping through the slit of a barely opened door. There was a man standing inside the door, peeking through the slit. He saw Mark and pulled the door closed. There was the sound of a key getting turned and steps moving hurriedly away.
29. THE OLD AND THE YOUNG
Mark ran at the door and knocked on it, “Hey, open up. I won’t hurt you. I am with the good guys.” No answer came. “I need your help. Please?”
Mark put his ear against the sturdy door and he heard scrambling and the sound of a window shutter getting opened. ‘Damn’. Mark aimed a hard kick right next to the lock, and the door burst open. Mark saw an old haggard man in thin, blue pajamas and a brown wool sweater with one leg out of the window and the other on the floor. The man seemed to be in a panic. He looked at Mark just as he came in the room, his eyes sunken, his sparse hair and patchy stubble in disarray. He turned his face out of the window and jumped.
Mark dashed forward and dived, catching the old man’s forearm with one hand and the side of the window with the other. That was close, if the old man had managed to fall from this height, then he would have certainly broken something...maybe a lot of somethings. Mark pulled him back in through the window with casual ease and placed him at the edge of the bed that was nearby. While the old man was struggling, and trembling, and covering his face with his arms and hands.
“Stop it. Hey, stop it, please.” Mark was trying to get him to stop squirming and he caught both his wrists and lowered his hands down. “Listen to me, it’s alright, it’s alright. Calm down, calm down… that’s it.”
The old man took a couple of heavy breaths and he mumbled “I thought that those monsters from downstairs went in a rampage. I, uh, I panicked.”
“Look mister, it’s alright. It’s understandable. Are you feeling a bit better now?”
“I can’t, I can’t anymore. They made me. They made me. I tried to kill myself, again and again but it’s so hard. It’s so ha-ard.” Tears of frustration and sorrow and fear started running down the old man’s pale, sagging face as he started sobbing and trembling uncontrollably, and he tried to hide his face in shame.
Mark placed a hand on each of the man’s trembling shoulders. “Listen mister, I can only imagine how hard this must be for you. I know that you did not want any of this and it isn’t your fault. You must believe me when I say this.” Mark grabbed a half-filled plastic water bottle from the night stand and pressed it in between the sobbing man’s hands. The man unscrewed the cap with trembling hands and wet his lips.
“Are the vampires here now?” Mark asked.
The old man shook his head left and right, “No. I don’t know where.”
‘Good, that is good.’ But the thralls spotted them, so that meant that the vampires knew, and if they were anywhere close by, then they were hurrying over right this moment. They had to move fast. “I will get you out of here, don’t you worry. I just need you to help me a bit first. Pay attention please. Are there any children in the mansion? I am looking for them.”
“There are. Two of them.” the man answered in a bit calmer and steadier voice, his face seemingly getting light by an invisible spotlight, but then darkened again “They…they let me bury them at first, and then they made me dig them up and feed them to those abominations…children, adults, men and women… I can’t.”
The man was teetering near the edge once again, Mark had no time to waste, “It’s alright, stay with me please, focus. Mister. Mister! Look at me. Take me to them, and I will protect you and the kids. I know that you did not mean for any of this to happen but if you help me save the children that they keep here, then at least something good will have come from all this mess and you will have been a part of it. We will have to hurry though. Get up, no more tears.”
A wave of resolve passed through the old man’s face that made his watery eyes and cheeks shine with newly-found purpose. “Follow me.” The old man said as he stood from the bed, his stance taller and straighter than Mark had imagined possible when he looked at the haggard man that had tried to jump through a window not a minute earlier. His knees though still cracked like dried twigs when he stood up.
They came out of the room and the sound of blood-frenzied thralls reached Mark’s ears. He turned and gathered his energy. He almost started concentrating it inside his half-broken ruby, the power of habit since the ruby was his go to gem… he should drop this one, for a little while at least and immediately. He saw three thralls that must have managed come past Rob and Perry, they were so many that it was bound to happen, but the two Knights were presumably still alright since the sounds of battle were still echoing throughout the mansion.
He gathered his concentrated energy inside the sapphire instead and the gem glowed blue and brilliant and he felt the electrifying energy coursing from his wrist, to his palm and out of the tips of two extended fingers. The streak of lightning shot forth, momentarily brightening the dim room with blue light. It passed right through the chest of the first thrall and continued to scorch through the bellies of the second and the third one. It was over in an instant and the three monsters fell to the ground with smoke and fire rising through the scorched holes in their bodies which marked the place where the powerful current had struck them.
Mark looked at his hand in amazement, he was maybe more surprised even than the old man beside him. Mark had passed most of the rest of his previous night revisiting the basics and performing energy concentrating techniques… it appeared as if it had payed off. He had managed to gather more power, in less time than usual and his hand was barely even numb…considering. It might have been only the first blast of the evening and thus less impactful, but still… he was impressed with himself. He ought to start training that way again more often. No wonder Rob and Perry were always telling him to revisit the basics as often as possible.
Mark turned to the old man who was looking at him with his mouth halfway open, “I will explain later, I am on your side, remember that. Go on now.” And Mark patted the old man in the back slightly to gesture him to resume walking. The old man’s damp hair clang to Mark’s palm somewhat and then stood a bit upright in even more disarray from the electricity that was still enduring in his hand.
The old man shrugged it off for the moment and started jogging down the hall, as much as his old and painful legs would allow him to anyway. The old man stopped outside a closed door. He was breathing, so hard in fact that it seemed to Mark as if the butler would draw his last breath right then and there. The old man raised a slender finger and tapped a frail nail against the door. “Here…Kick…It” the old man gasped between deep inhalations.
Mark tried to turn the handle to find out for himself that the door was really locked, and he shouted for anyone on the other side to get out of the way. He kicked the door down the same way he did before. The door splintered and fell open. The room it revealed was dark and damp and dusty and a boy with dark blonde hair was laid down on a small bed, covered wi
th warm blankets. The boy was skinny and deathly pale, his cheeks hollow and his lips shriveled and cracked. There was a machine next to him that made swirling and beeping sounds and looked as if it would never not look out of place, no matter the place. It was the size of a medium sized closet and grey of color with lots of buttons and screens that showed numbers and various abbreviations next to each one. There were two large tubes which ended in large needles lodged inside the kid’s arms and legs; on the opposite side they were connected to the machine where there were two large plastic bags, both half-filled with blood. One tube was apparently used for transporting blood to the child from one bag and the other to take it back out again and storing it in another bag.
“Move, fast.” The old man gasped at Mark, and Mark moved. He placed a hand over the boy’s mouth. He wasn’t breathing. Two fingers at his neck and over his chest. Blood was flowing but the heart was not pumping, the machine did the pumping for it. He took the needles out of the boy’s arms and tied the bleeding holes with cloths that turned red and damp at first, but the bleeding seized after a while. Mark took the boy in his arms with the heavy blanket still wrapped around him. He was sickened, and he was fairly certain that the boy was dead. He did not know much about the turning process but if he had ever read anything like that, then he was certain that it would have remained in his mind. Rob would have been furious if he had witnessed the sight. Mark wanted to be sick. He just could not see the boy surviving.