by J. Armand
Chapter Ten
I’d never been the type to question the meaning of life or contemplate what came after death. Whatever happens, happens, for one reason or another. There was nothing that anyone could do to change the rules of something so fundamental, so there was no use in worrying about it.
However, after the last few nights, my philosophy was being seriously tested. Who was to say what constituted being alive and dead? After what I’d seen, could I ever again believe that clinical death truly marked the end to a life? The Archios’ hearts might not beat, but they still went about their business as if nobody had clued them in that they should be six feet under.
Even when the body was destroyed, ghosts cheated the rules by escaping their final judgment, so what was death? Was death a choice? Did you simply choose to throw in the towel, fold your hand, and fade away? Was life simply the measurement of a person’s will to exist?
Was it not as black and white as alive or dead, but instead a spectrum of possibilities? What gave a person that drive to keep going? Love? Hate? Hope? Or just unfinished business?
Maybe I was already dead and on my way to reunite with my parents.
What was I really still here for? I had hoped things would get better, but every step forward was followed by two steps back. I wanted revenge against those who murdered my family, but how do you take the life of something that just refuses to stay dead?
Maybe Noah was right when he said my parents were better off.
It seemed so much easier to just let go when I had nothing left to hold on to. If I closed my eyes, would it all finally stop? Noah would probably call me weak if he could hear me, but was wanting peace a weakness?
I looked on as two young men and a woman, all dressed in their eighteenth-century finest, ushered my body into a nondescript European car. They didn’t seem to notice or care about Lyle as he ran over to stop them, until he got too close. The woman’s eyes shone coldly as she stared into his. Lyle drew his gun, mechanically placing it to his temple.
Maybe it would be better this way for him too. We knew this was inevitable, since he chose to stay after my parents’ death.
One of the men waved his hand in the air, conjuring flames that converged on Lyle. I watched his body burn on the ground as we drove out of sight. Forgive me, Lyle. I hope you find peace.
We traveled for hours without a spoken word. The man and woman my body sat between exchanged occasional glances as if in some silent conversation. All three of them were very noticeably undead. Unlike Noah’s healthy tan or Vivian’s flawless porcelain skin, these three were borderline gray and sickly, with visible postmortem veins in some places. The woman’s eyes had a harsh, sinister luminescence and her fangs were clearly prominent, also unlike the Archios. Her long ringlets were grayish-white, even though she did not appear much older than the men. She wore an old-fashioned gray skirt and high-collared jacket that was clean, yet severely outdated. A silk cravat covering her neck was adorned with a blue gem and matching ribbon.
The man to my left appeared only a couple years older than Noah, possibly twenty-eight or twenty-nine at most, but nowhere near as attractive. His slate-gray eyes looked hollow against his pale, dead skin. Light blonde hair reached almost to his chin, but didn’t look maintained or styled in any particular fashion. He was wearing a hooded tunic with leather pants and riding boots that reminded me of the Renaissance.
We kept driving as the sun started to rise ahead of us. I expected us to pull over or seek cover somewhere, but the driver sped up toward the sunlight instead. The other man bit down hard on his index finger to draw blood and used it to write something on his window. Arcane symbols lit up for a moment and then disappeared, turning the interior of the car as black as night. These were certainly the Strigoi that Noah and Vivian had mentioned.
The driver continued to accelerate until we were pushing ninety-five miles an hour. My out-of-body experience wasn’t making me feel any safer, but the others didn’t seem concerned. We attracted the attention of law enforcement, who signaled us to pull over. The driver gazed at the cop car in the rearview mirror. His eyes glowed in the dark of the car and the police immediately gave up their pursuit.
Hours passed. The signs along the side of the road were in German now, so we must have crossed the border at some point. The car was running out of gas. We pulled into a gas station. The driver opened the window a crack to give the attendant a command. The man returned to the driver’s window to collect his money when he was done, but our driver had something else in mind. In one smooth move, he pulled the attendant through the open window by his hair and sank his fangs into the man’s neck. The attendant was easily double the driver’s size, but couldn’t break free. His body stopped struggling and went limp while the driver finished his meal. I felt I should be sad at the man’s slow, violent death, but it just made me wonder if he was better off too. Whatever was in store for me at our destination would probably be much worse.
The bite mark on the attendant’s neck sealed with a touch of the driver’s fingers before he was discarded out the window. We continued speeding down the open road for a while longer until finally turning onto a dirt path. From Noah’s description of the Strigoi, I was half-expecting to wind up in a library, but we slowed down when we reached an old factory. The grass was waist-high from neglect in places alongside the path to the badly rusted-out facility. The driver took the car into the dark ruins of the building through a loading bay, which closed up once we passed.
A cloaked figure emerged from the shadow of an old jeep to greet us once we got out. “Splendid! I see you have succeeded in recovering the boy, Minerva,” the cloaked man praised.
Our driver helped escort my body out while Minerva spoke. It was the first time I got a good look at him. The driver was tall and slender, probably around my age when he was turned, and he looked like he could be related to the other man with us. His clothes had a pseudo-Victorian gothic flair, giving him a much more ironically youthful image.
“Of course I have, for I am not a miserable failure such as yourself.” Minerva stared ahead past the cloaked man.
“Rightfully so, Archmage, but surely you can understand how the circumstances were more challenging than we had anticipated.”
“No, please explain how woefully inept you must be, when I simply walked onto the Archios’ estate and took our property from right under their noses. Your incompetence disgusts me,” Minerva jeered. She made a slight gesture of her hand, and the cloaked man exploded in green flames until nothing was left but the echo of his screams.
The two men from the car gave each other an unsettled look as they followed her deeper into the facility. We stopped in front of a huge metal security door. The driver stepped up to a broken-down control panel and placed his hand over it, causing the circuitry to spring to life and open the door.
We walked across several narrow catwalks in near-total darkness. Beyond a few more heavy metal doors and down a flight of stairs we reached an area with overhead incandescent lights that flickered on as we walked and then off again as we passed. This wasn’t just a factory, it was an abandoned military bunker from the Cold War that the Strigoi had repurposed as a laboratory. Trailing after my body in my incorporeal form, I had no sense of smell, but if I did, I was sure this place would reek of must from the state of disrepair and neglect everything was in.
Our tour brought us to a gigantic circular room resembling a missile silo. All around, the Strigoi were busy fiddling with clockwork contraptions and reading from archaic tomes.
“Colleagues,” Minerva greeted the crowd. “I have returned, victorious where others have failed in such a simple task. And now you are all of no use to me.” Her audience burst into green flames that reduced them to ash in seconds. The two men we had traveled with were appalled as they watched the massacre.
“Minerva! What are you doing?” the older one shouted.
“Cleansing the cancerous disappointment this coven has suffered from for too l
ong,” she replied without the slightest hint of remorse.
“They were our allies,” the younger man spoke. “When the other houses hear of this …”
“Then I shall deal with them in the same manner if they are unable to comprehend my superiority. Prepare the subject. I will return shortly,” she ordered. I was immediately drawn back into my body once she left.
The men walked me to the center of the floor, where a large circular indentation was carved and outlined in runes. I was still finding it hard to speak or concentrate. The men took a step back while the younger one magically activated another control panel that brought down a glass containment tube around me. As the feeling in my body returned, I asked myself how they expected glass to hold me. The older-looking of the two bit his finger like in the car and drew a line of runes on the glass with his blood. The bloody symbols, along with the ones on the floor surrounding the tube, lit up momentarily. I banged on the glass, but anytime I did, the runes would illuminate again, shielding it from damage.
“I can’t believe what I just saw,” the younger man said to his accomplice. “That fire …”
“Soul-searing balefire from Hell. A gift from a demon,” the older man stated.
“You knew about this?”
“I had my suspicions.”
They completely ignored me as I banged on the glass and shouted at them to let me go. Any use of my powers and I risked losing myself to the infection. I contemplated just allowing it to take over while they continued to talk in front of me.
“Why didn’t you do something about it? Pacts with demons are forbidden for good reason! We have to tell the other Archmages.”
“Keep your voice down, Tristan,” the older man hissed. “I had no proof and never thought it would come to this. There is nothing we can do but go forward. Now help me find a cure.”
They were going to cure me? I thought I was about to be cut open and studied. The man put his hand out to me. I felt a strange pulling and then saw tiny droplets of blood leaking from the pores in my exposed skin. It collected along the glass and dripped down, pooling at the bottom, where it drained into the indentation on the other side. The man bent down and scooped up the blood in a jar.
“Curious.” he questioned after tasting it. “The Archios must have given him blood?”
“That could be useful,” Tristan said, watching me.
Without Noah’s blood, the infection was spreading rapidly through my veins. They performed the same spell twice more, first collecting my pure blood and then a sample of the black blood. I dropped to the floor, shivering as the cold clutches of death gripped me.
“How can you be so calm about this?” Tristan asked.
The other man ignored him and read something from a tome, causing my body to seize up. Once it relaxed all the pain and shivering was gone. Whatever spell he had cast sedated me so heavily that my body lay there lifelessly while my thoughts faded in and out.
“Calm about what?” Minerva asked from behind them.
“How could you kill all of our colleagues? And demons? You know they are forbidden!” Tristan exclaimed.
“Nothing is forbidden to me. Placing needless limitations on ourselves makes us no better than mortals. We are not to be handicapped by morals and myths. The true quest for knowledge cannot be confined by such petty idealisms.”
“I do not believe the source of the infection is viral, bacterial, or magical,” the older man said in an attempt to change the conversation. “We took samples to begin work on a cure.”
“A cure? There is no need for a cure.”
“Isn’t that the whole reason we reclaimed him?” Tristan asked.
“I have no use for him alive. Kill him. Once his soul has been severed from the body we will begin the infernal possession ritual.”
The two men looked at each other and then at me.
“That wasn’t the plan,” Tristan argued. “He wasn’t meant to be used as a vessel for a demon.”
“The plan is what I say it is,” Minerva snapped at him. She conjured a grisly-looking leather-bound book in her hand. “This has everything you need to prepare the ritual.”
“The Grand Grimoire?” Tristan read the title out loud. “This is a demon’s manuscript on making deals with the Devil.”
“Good, I see you can still read. You should have no problem making preparations.”
“How did you get this? Humans have kept it out of reach for centuries by sealing it in a holy place.”
“The copy in the humans’ possession is a fake, but we now hold the original. The author loaned it to me so we can finish our work. The Infernals whispered to me from beyond the Gates of Hell to create them an army capable of standing against the light. And that is exactly what we have done.”
“Surely you cannot be comfortable with this, brother.”
Tristan looked to the other man, who was doing his best to remain silent.
“See to it that everything is in order for my return later tonight,” Minerva commanded. “Can you do that?”
Tristan stared down at the grimoire, thinking. “No, I won’t do it. I cannot be a part of this.”
“Very well,” she said calmly.
Tristan caught fire, burning to cinders like the others while she watched.
“No!” the other man exclaimed and kneeled over the ashes. “He was your nephew, Minerva! Why, why would you do this?”
“He was incompetent. Take the book, Vance, unless you wish to share his fate. Have the ritual prepared by the time I return at midnight,” she demanded before leaving the room in a magnificent display of fire and smoke.
Vance worked for hours in the poor lighting while I lay there unable to move or feel anything. He didn’t look at me or his brother’s remains once. Every so often he would glance at the jars of blood he took from me and then continue reading to himself or mixing some concoction. The anxiety of not knowing what was coming, or how bad it would be, was worse than anything I had felt up to now. I just wanted it to be over, one way or another.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Vance’s voice spoke in my head. “But I promise your death will be swift.”
“Just let me go, please! I’m really not worth all of this.”
“I can’t do that, or she will kill me too.”
“Your brother died standing up to her because he believed what she was doing was wrong. I know you feel the same way; I could see it in your face. Don’t let Tristan’s death be in vain!”
He didn’t respond; I wasn’t even sure he was still listening. He just kept working with the same stoic expression. It figured the braver of the two brothers would die, leaving my only chance at survival barred by the one too afraid to act. Noah was always preaching that cowardice would be the end of me, but I assumed it would be my own.
After a while, he left the room with his head still stuck in the diabolical spellbook. The wriggling in my veins had been creeping up this whole time, but at a much slower rate than usual, thanks to whatever paralyzing spell he had cast.
Once he was gone, I started to regain my motor functions along with the increased spread of the infection. I got up slowly and banged on the glass for help, although I wasn’t sure why I expected to get any. The vibrations from the hair-raising death rattle shook the glass around me.
I clawed frantically to get out as my body went numb again. The only feeling left in me was a brief stinging in my fingertips from the nails breaking off. There was no holding off the frenzy any longer. I didn’t recognize my own face in the reflection of the glass. I was hideous; the whites of my eyes were black again, leaving just the gray ring of my iris, and my skin was covered in dark veins and dried blood from where I was bled out.
The massive steel doors opened again. I expected to see Vance, but another group of robed Strigoi entered instead. They investigated the piles of ash scattered around the room and the curious machines and notes lying around, occasionally muttering to each other in German. My body was acting on its ow
n, twitching and jumping aggressively at them as they passed by and looked in at me. My mind was fading away in a pre-sleep state, but I could still make out a little of what was going on.
Vance marched into the room with his head down, reading, just as he had left. He seemed startled by the visitors.
“So it is true, demon worship in our very own coven!” an elderly Strigoi said, taking one look at the book Vance carried. “You know this act is forbidden. Hand over the Grand Grimoire and I may grant you leniency.”
“No,” Vance responded. “This artifact is not mine to give. If you wish to claim it you would do best to speak with the Archmage of this house, but you most certainly will come to regret it.”
The group was aghast at Vance’s insubordination. They chattered among themselves for a moment until the elderly man silenced them with a raised hand.
“You dare threaten a member of the Council? Contact of any kind with demons will not be tolerated, nor will your insolence. I will not have you, nor your Archmage, bring doom upon our coven over some foolish lust for power.”
He raised his hand, summoning the grimoire to him from across the room, and spoke a phrase in some unfamiliar language that bound Vance in rings of light. Vance was a lost cause now, but I was more scared for myself at the moment. I felt like my tongue was trying to crawl its way out of my throat. I kept grabbing at my neck to make it stop as it drove me mad. The glass began quaking as my powers flared out of control, clashing with the magic that shielded it. My vision was almost completely obscured by pulsating darkness, but it was a single sound that mattered to me the most. A sound I heard even above the shrieking, snarling death growls. It was the sound of glass cracking.
Chapter Eleven