by Rob Cornell
I looked down at my clothes. I wore my new pea coat and some relaxed fit jeans. My trusty boots had survived the cave in at Toft’s. And while I had a black button down shirt under my coat, he couldn’t see it. “I dress a little nicer than this on dates.”
He shrugged and moved to the edge of the ruins, lined up to where I had pointed. “Down here?”
“If we can get close to the work bench, we should be good.”
Problem was, a pair of rafters crisscrossed and leaned into the space with a bunch of wet drywall crumbled into the bottom V of the rafters, not giving us much room to get down there. We might have been able to stand on the wreckage and still have enough proximity to draw the bubble to us and open it, though.
I couldn’t see any other way, short of lifting out the debris with magic, and I didn’t want to waste energy doing that like I had at Toft’s, because the way Mom explained things, I would need every ounce of my power to open the bubble.
Markus, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have any such concerns. He pulled a full-on Yoda and lifted the beams and most of the broken drywall without much thought or care, simply holding out his hands and maneuvering them as if holding a miniature version of the stuff he manipulated.
As he dropped the stuff onto the driveway, I glance back at Mrs. Snoopis’s picture window. The curtains were closed, but they ruffled as if very recently disturbed. If she’d seen Markus’s handiwork, what would she do? Call the police? The local news? Or hide under her bed and try convincing herself she had hallucinated the whole thing?
She had already witnessed a bunch of vamps burn down the house with flamethrowers—though she probably hadn’t realized they were vampires—so how much worse could some flying rafters and crumpled pieces of wall be to witness?
Best not to think about it and get this shit done.
Once Markus had a space open by Dad’s workbench, he turned to me and gestured to the basement. “Youth before experience.”
I glanced between the basement and him. Hesitated. We go down there. We get the cloak. What then?
“It’s starting to rain steadily,” Markus said. “Let’s not dally.”
I had barely noticed, but the drizzle had grown to a steady patter against my head and shoulders. I looked up at the night sky. The moon peered down through a gap the rain clouds. Its light made the rain drops sparkle like falling diamonds. Each drop felt like ice against my cheeks and forehead. I could feel my hair getting weighed down. Some of my pomade, softened by the rain, released its scent as if I had just put it on fresh. It smelled like a barber shop.
I blinked away the rain getting in my eyes and moved my gaze back to Markus. His robe had begun to sag like the branches of a willow tree. “Well?”
I nodded.
The climb down was the very definition of precarious. The pieces of the house and the random flotsam of tattered books and broken artifacts kept slipping out from under my feet. The rain on it all made things even worse. But we both made it down into the clearing without breaking our necks.
Down in it, the remains smelled like old ash and left a burnt taste in my mouth after each breath.
I dug into my coat pocket and brought out Mom’s wedding ring. She and Dad had made the ring into a key which would unlock the bubble once we channeled enough magic into it. With the ring, the incantation itself was simple. A few words in an archaic language the mortal historians had no idea existed. They required a ticklish roll of the tongue, but were otherwise easy enough to speak.
I held the ring out in the palm of my hand.
Markus clasped my hand, pinning the ring between our grasps. I felt the row of small emeralds press against my skin with a touch of pain.
Markus asked, “Are you ready?”
I nodded.
“Then let’s give it all we’ve got.”
We spoke the words, but each of us in the reverse order of the other. It was a little tricky at first keeping rhythm because we said different words at the same time, the lack of pure synchronicity awkward.
I pushed more and more of my magic into my hand, willing the ring to take what I offered. And it took. The ring sucked in my power like a parched sponge. I could feel it draining away, could sense the coming barrier put up by my brand, the point where my available power stopped, and the power that kept me from turning began. I didn’t think anything could pierce that barrier, but I didn’t know that for sure.
A cold sweat broke over me as I feared what might happen if the ring did rip past the barrier and steal that magic, too. I would end up spending my soul to retrieve the cloak. Not a fair trade, if you asked me.
Then I felt a surge into my hand that buzzed so hard I thought my knuckle bones might shake loose.
Markus’s magic. A lot of it. It took some effort to hold on. It took more effort to stay concentrated on contributing my part to the incantation.
We spoke the words faster and faster.
Suddenly I heard a pop, like a cork shot free of its bottle. My ears rang. A pressure wrapped around me and squeezed. My eyes watered as they pulsed in time with my heartbeat. The pressure seeped inside of me, crushing my ribs, my stomach, my brain. Along with the ringing, I could hear my rushing blood in my ears.
For a moment, I felt certain the pressure would kill me.
Then, all at once, it stopped.
I gasped for breath I hadn’t noticed I’d lost. My hand slipped out of Markus’s clutch. I heard the ring clink onto the concrete floor. The smell of ozone pushed out all other scents.
I staggered away and leaned against a crooked beam with a ragged, broken end that stuck out of a pile of drywall and bricks.
“Are you all right?” Markus asked.
I blinked away the water in my eyes so I could see. He stood right where he had when we started the incantation. He showed no signs of the after effects I suffered. In fact, he smiled.
He held the cloak in his hands.
The artifact was beautiful. The hummingbird feathers glistened in the falling rain. The ends of the feathers flashed with a bright blue glow every time Markus moved it in his hands. He held it in front of him like a magician about to reveal his next trick.
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you so very much.”
My head was still a little cloudy, but his voice sounded weird. Full of relief and awe.
And hunger.
“Do you have any idea how long we have waited for this moment?”
Then my cloudy mind cleared. The truth hit me like a sucker punch to the gut. It knocked the wind clean out of me like a real punch.
I had trusted him. Against everything in my being that had said I shouldn’t. I had trusted him. And now he was in the process of betraying me. Betraying Mom.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…and I’m a gullible fucking idiot!
“Take a deep breath, Sebastian,” Markus said. “What we have planned for this city will undo its dismal reputation. Detroit used to be a wonder to behold. It deserves that. It deserves to rival the likes of Chicago. Maybe even New York.”
The rain came hard enough now that water flung off his lips as he spoke, making him look like the mad bastard he really was. A little bit of foam would complete the image.
With my wet hair plastered to my scalp, and water rolling into my eyes, I felt heavy, slow. Part of that probably came from spending so much power to open the bubble, too. But it didn’t matter.
“I can’t let you leave with that.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
I raised both hands in front of me and called on the element of fire. The rain could not cool the heat of my magical flame. And it wouldn’t have, if I could have conjured any.
Opening the bubble had dried me out.
Markus looked sad. “I have what we want. You and Judith can walk away from this now. There’s no reason to fight this. And you can’t win.”
“I can’t stand by and let you feed thousands of innocents to the vampires. I just can’t.”
>
“I care about your mother very much. I think you know we had something special a long time ago. Something more than friendship.”
“Shut up!”
“If you care for her like I do, you’ll step aside. If the ugliness of our plan is too much for you, leave Detroit. You’ll miss out on the beginning of a new history for this poor city, but maybe you can come back when you see what we’ve accomplished.”
I wiped rain out of my eyes. “You are a twisted bastard. All of you are. Making deals with vampires? Do you really think, once they’re all fat and happy, they’ll let you run the city? They’ll take this place over. They’ll turn every last one of you into a meal or a member of their fang club.”
“We have the Ministry’s resources at our disposal. I’m not worried about the vampires. Once they’ve served their purpose, we will sweep their dust from the streets.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The downpour came harder.
Markus pulled his hood on then swung the cloak across his shoulders.
“It’s time for me to go, Sebastian. Wish your mother well for me.”
An undulating green and blue light rippled down the cloak’s feathers.
For a moment, all I wanted to do was tell Mom Markus wished her well. The cloak’s influence. But it wasn’t mind control. He had made a suggestion I wanted to follow. Nothing more. And, thank the gods, my will was strong enough to bury the urge and tell Markus, “Go fuck yourself.”
He shook his head, started climbing out of the hole.
I charged at him.
He saw me coming before I made two steps. With a wave of his hand, he knocked me off of my feet and onto a cracked chunk of concrete from the basement floor. My forehead glanced off a nearby lump of bricks. Sparks exploded across my vision. By the time I got my senses clear, Markus was already out of the hole.
I tried to get to my feet too quickly. The rain had made some of the finer debris slick like mud under my feet. I slipped in it and landed on my ass. Before I had a chance to try again, I heard Odi scream.
Chapter Forty-Six
It’s hard to be careful when you want to run. But I had to take to my feet a little less recklessly than I had the first time. While I stood, I heard Odi scream again. This one sounded different. His teenage voice had ripped open and let a vampiric screech tear loose. It sounded like the edge of a tin sheet drawn across steel.
I felt shaky, cold, and heavy. When I tried to climb out of the basement, my wet hands made my grip slip. It took me too long to get up. An age. The lifespan of a star before it goes supernova. Odi kept screaming the whole time. And something screamed with him. A thicker, louder version of a typical vampire’s cries. More guttural and threatening.
I had a sick feeling I knew what made that noise.
Sure enough, when I finally managed to pull myself up enough to look out, I found Odi on the ground, a bloody mess (again!), and Beastvamp looming over him. The beast had one clawed hand raised, ready to shred Odi in half.
“Hey,” I shouted. “Go back to the jungle you came from.”
He turned his searing red eyes toward me. Rain and watered down blood dripped off his pointed chin. His lips peeled back in what looked like a grin, exposing his red-tinged fangs and gray gums. Then he opened his mouth wide and let free an ear-rattling screeeeeee.
The sound shocked my nerves so hard, I nearly lost purchase on the cement edge of the basement and fell down into the hole. I gritted my teeth, propped one elbow up onto the edge, then the other, and dragged myself up, feet kicking at the landslide of debris that had turned mushy in the rain.
Mud streaked the front of my coat as I wriggled onto the lawn. The smell of wet earth filled my nostrils. I could also smell the dirty sock stink coming from Beastvamp.
He turned from Odi and stomped my way, each footstep pressing into the sod and leaving craters behind.
I scurried to my feet, held my hand out at my side, and felt the empty and rude reminder that I had spent the last of my power basically handing the cloak over to Arbiter Hope.
The beast grinned as if he understood my dilemma, despite his dumb primal appearance. Maybe he had more brains than I thought. Big, strong, scary, and smart? Bad news.
I couldn’t back off. I’d tumble back into the damn basement. I bent my knees and readied myself to leap to either side if he charged me.
He didn’t charge, though. He closed in slowly, intently. Three of his wide paces from me, he shouted at me again. The spray of rain and blood from his mouth spritzed my face, smelled like rotten beef. The taste of bile pooled in my mouth.
I didn’t have any time or many options, so I took my chance and sprinted along the length of my destroyed house, the edge of the crumbled foundation less than a foot to one side of my boot. A bad step would pitch me down into the ruins and probably get me a broken joist through my chest.
Light bulb!
I heard Beastvamp give chase behind me. He would only need a few of his long strides to reach me before I could slip him. I had to time my next move with more precision than I felt confident I had. Adrenaline can do amazing things, though. Time seemed to slow. A bolt of hubris made me feel buoyant. This motherfucker didn’t stand a chance against me, I thought, while at the same time knowing it was bullshit.
But it gave me the edge I needed to do the next crazy bit.
I eyed one of many broken wall studs down below. This particular one had a canted but otherwise upward trajectory. I timed my next step to launch me out into the emptiness and sail down toward that makeshift spear, but hopefully a foot or two just beyond.
I felt weightless for a second as I jumped into the open, like Wile E. Coyote right before he realizes he’s run off a cliff. I pedaled my feet on the way down, my body’s instinctive response to the sudden fall. I landed on a tilted piece of wall with bricks scattered the length of it. My foot hit one of the bricks and twisted my ankle under me. Any hope of staying on my feet went out the door.
I crashed down onto my side, more bricks jabbing me with their corners in various spots along my body. Pain popped like corn kernels inside of me.
But I had cleared the wall stud and avoided a brutal stabbing.
My beastly friend did not fare so well.
I never had a chance to see him leap after me. I was too busy getting a good thumping by gravity to look back. I did hear the wet squish and crack of bones, though. And when my forward and downward momentum quit, I rolled around on my bed of bricks to find the thing speared onto the stud like I had planned.
I let out a whoop in celebration, but the celebration died quickly when I realized the makeshift beast-sized stake hadn’t caught him in the heart. Instead, he had speared himself through the crotch and up out the small of his back. The ripped and twisted remains of his vamp junk dangled off the stake among a smear of brackish blood.
I gagged at the sight, wishing Beastvamp had had the courtesy to shop at a big and tall store instead of going nudist.
Despite his genital massacre, the beast was still alive and mad as hell. He lashed out with a claw and raked across my leg, ripping my jeans and a few lines of flesh in the process.
For the gods’ sake, I was ruining a lot of clothes lately.
And skin.
I kicked my heels, scrabbling in the bricks to push myself out of Beastvamp’s reach.
He took another swipe at me.
I jerked my leg up.
His claw busted a hunk of drywall in half and sent bricks scattering in all directions. One of them thumped against my shoulder, and I went numb down to my elbow.
He reached out again and grasped my ankle. The strength in his grip made me cry out as he squeezed. It didn’t help that it was the same ankle I had twisted in my landing. He pulled me, dragged me through splintered wood and crumbled bricks.
I jammed my heel down against the lip of a chunk wall on its side. The wet wall crumpled against the force, and my foot broke right through it.
When Beastvamp had me close e
nough, he grabbed my arm with his other hand and lifted me over his head. Vertigo spun my head like a top. The ground became the sky. The rain fell upward and into my nose. I sputtered for air while the water flooded my sinuses and ran down the back of my throat. Then I gagged on the rain. Breathing became impossible.
Breathing seemed like an afterthought, though, when the beast pulled my leg in one direction and my arm in the other. He pulled slowly, as if he wanted to draw as much pain out of me as possible before he ripped me in half like a cold band of taffy.
I cried out, which made me choke on the rain all the more.
In the corner of my eye, I could see the beast grinning at me. I could see in his eyes the anticipation of hearing the snap in my spine or the pop from a socket. My heart raced, its rhythm thrumming in my ears. A greasy smear crossed my vision. I had been close to dead before—hell, Markus had nearly done it a couple days ago—but this was a new brand of agony that trumped even the feel of Markus’s cougar claws cutting through me.
A stray and distant thought wanted to know why he hadn’t repeated that trick tonight, instead of siccing his oversized vamp pet on me. Had the incantation to open the bubble drained him, too? Seemed impossible. Also seemed irrelevant, as I was about to die.
I felt something give in my lower back. A vertebra popping loose maybe?
Then I heard its nails-on-a-tin-sheet scream again, and saw a person-shaped shadow descend from above.
Odi landed on Beastvamp’s back, wrapped both arms around the beast’s neck, and hugged him like a long-lost lover.
The beast snarled and tried to shake Odi off, but Odi hung on like a cowboy riding the ugliest bronco this side of the Mississippi—or the planet.
With this new annoyance on his back, Beastvamp flung me aside like an old piece of laundry. He threw me hard enough, in fact, that I landed on the front lawn. I rolled through the mud a dozen times, my injured ankle twisting and re-twisting with each impact to the ground. When I finally came to a stop, pain jagged up past my knee. I felt wet, sticky mud clumped on my face. But the rain quickly began to sluice it away.
I had to squint through the downpour to see Odi. The beast reached behind him, trying to claw Odi off. The silhouette of spurting blood shot off Odi’s back. He screamed and screamed, but did not let go. I had to do something or that thing would shred him to pieces.