The Montague Portrait

by Matt Drabble

  Vargas was hit by a speeding line of bullets that ran the length of his torso and ended up blowing one of his eyes out of his head. The big man fell like a tree as he tottered then timbered. Sage turned her gun on the nearest man to her and shot him in the head at pointblank range and Travis felt the sickly sweet splash of blood as it hit him. The second man turned towards her in shock and his body jerked violently as she emptied her clip into his chest. Using him as a shield she turned towards the man who had gunned down Lochay in the doorway. She grabbed the machine gun from the dead man she was now supporting and raised it up. Her aim wasn’t perfect, but what the weapon lacked in accuracy it made up for in quantity. She fired until the gun was empty and the man was a greasy smear. She dropped the gun and her now dead human shield and ran towards the stricken Vargas.

  Travis quickly checked himself and was relieved to find that somehow he was still intact. As Sage ran to Vargas he crawled across the floor to Charlotte. Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked up at him with a distant gaze.

  ‘Charlie?’ he whispered as he took her hand. ‘Are you there?’

  Her eyes were foggy as though she was trying to focus on his face. Her forehead was wrinkled in confusion.

  Travis heard gentle weeping behind him as the Sage woman knelt over Vargas’s ruined body. He was trying desperately to think of a way out of this fiasco. Just what the hell were they going to do about a stack of dead bodies without either Vargas or Lochay to clean up the mess? He was still trying to find a way out of the maze when he heard Sage gasp. His heart skipped a beat and his guts rolled over in fear.

  Still holding Charlotte’s hand he turned to the two figures on the floor. Sage had backed away on her knees as Vargas started to move.

  Inexplicably the big man was sitting up. His expensively tailored black tuxedo was torn apart by bullet holes. Most of his insides looked like they were splattered on the outside, and his crisp white shirt was soaked through with blood.

  Travis stared in wonder as Vargas sat all the way up. Strange lilac smoke whispers drifted out of each of the man’s bullet holes. Vargas’s eyes emitted the same coloured glow. His normally blue irises were completely burned away as was the whole pupil. The air was thick with the crackle of electricity and Travis’s nostrils were full of the rich and sickly aroma of burnt flesh.

  He looked on in disbelief as Vargas stood upright, despite the obvious fatality of his wounds. With a cocked head the big man looked down at Sage who was now retreating fast across the ground in a clumsy crab like motion. She reached behind her, trying to grasp one of the discarded weapons lying on the floor. Travis wanted to scream at her not to. Something told him that pointing a gun at Vargas was not the greatest idea in the world.

  Vargas began to move towards her, only he wasn’t walking. His feet seemed to levitate several inches off the floor and he glided with outstretched hands twisted into claws. The lilac smoke that clouded his eyes was now bursting from his opened mouth.

  ‘I am filled with a power that you can never comprehend,’ Vargas said without moving his lips. His voice rumbled with a thunderous noise far deeper than any man Travis had ever heard.

  ‘I am possessed by elemental forces that will bring the world quivering under my fist.’

  Still on the ground, Sage clasped her throat as Vargas closed his fist in the air without touching her. Her eyes bulged as she struggled for breath. She clawed at her throat, raking the skin with her manicured nails. She jerked violently, her hips bucking wildly as she kicked her legs uselessly. She gouged out long tracks of flesh from her throat as she fought for air.

  Suddenly Vargas snapped his fist shut and the sound of Sage’s neck snapping echoed off the walls as Travis fought the urge to vomit.

  ‘Such unpleasantness,’ Vargas mused still floating and his voice still coming from deep inside his torso instead of his mouth. ‘Now, where were we?’

  Travis flinched as Vargas turned his attention back to Charlotte.

  ‘I’m afraid that we are only halfway done, Mr Parker. Young Charlotte and I still have business to attend to.’

  Travis scrambled up from the floor and stood defiantly between Vargas and Charlotte.

  ‘Playing the hero, Mr Parker?’ Vargas said, his tone mocking. ‘Not exactly your forte now, is it?’

  Travis thrust out his chest and tried not to tremble as the monster drifted towards them. Vargas flipped a hand to one side and without being touched Travis found himself airborne. He crashed hard against the wall and felt his shoulder come free of its socket. With his head spinning he slid down until he landed on the wooden floor. ‘Don’t you touch her,’ he whispered.

  Vargas turned to him. With densely coloured lilac eyes there was no room for expression or emotion. But his mouth was twisted into a cruel perversion of a smile. ‘I’m afraid that you don’t get to ask anything, Mr Parker. I’m afraid that the entire world no longer gets to ask me for anything. For now you owe me nothing but reverence and devotion. I am your new god, Mr Parker, for I am your everything.’

  Travis watched in horror as Vargas gently flicked one finger. At the same time he felt two of his ribs snap. He clutched his side in agony as his breathing became hitched and shallow. But still he tried to stand.

  Vargas laughed, a deep grotesque sound in Travis’s ears. ‘Oh, Mr Parker, you are too much. Did you fight this way to save your wife? Did you fight this hard to save Amy?’

  Travis finally clawed his way up the wall until he was standing. His left arm hung uselessly as the shoulder was no longer in its socket and his right was wrapped around his broken ribs.

  ‘Very well, Mr Parker,’ Vargas rumbled. ‘You may watch if you will as I usher in a new dawn.’

  Travis did watch as Vargas turned back to Charlotte. She abruptly stood, though not of her own accord. Her thumb crept to her mouth and her eyes were wide with terror. Travis did not understand what was happening, but he could see that she had been stripped of her adulthood. The warrior woman had reverted back to that terrible night when she witnessed her father murder her mother, and now stood as a child.

  Vargas began chanting in a strange tongue that Travis did not recognise. The words were alien but seemed full of ominous power. The big man stretched his arms out wide and the room began to fill with smoke the same colour as his eyes. The thick lilac fog swirled round and round with increasing speed – a mini tornado running faster and faster as it battered the walls and buffeted the occupants.

  As the room shook Travis felt himself pressed against the wall by the strength of the fierce winds. Reluctantly he released his grip on his broken ribs to shield his face. Vargas rose further and further off of the ground with his arms out wide as he welcomed the power, his voice rising louder and louder.

  The bodies of Sage and her compatriots were dragged into the rising storm and Travis caught sight of her bloated face as she whipped past him. Through the raging torrent he heard Vargas’ voice as it changed from its foreign chanting back to English.

  ‘I release you, oh father. I release you from the burdening ties to this world. I give you the last of the Wheeler women and allow you to bathe in the blood of your just vengeance. Your work is now complete and I relieve you of your powers so that I may continue in your name.’

  Stiff with horror, Travis watched as Vargas approached Charlotte. He drew a wicked looking blade and held it out menacingly.

  If there was one thing that Travis could tell about the craziness spinning out of control around him, it was that there was a sacrifice about to take place.

  Fighting against the strength of the rising lilac winds, he inched his way along the wall towards her. As he limped he could tell immediately that he was never going to make it in time. His heart sank in defeat as the second love of his life was about to be taken from him by yet another monster.

  Suddenly a voice across the storm caught his ear. It was a new voice that hadn’t existed before in the madness. Holding his hand to shield his face, he desperately searched the r
oom for the voice.

  Yes, there! There at the door, a man was peering around the corner and beckoning him – a tall man, thin with an elegant grace about him, and he was shouting, trying to scream above the booming sound of the howling wind and Vargas’s thunderous voice. But Travis could barely hear a word.

  Forcing his back harder against the wall he pushed himself onwards. He risked a look at Vargas and could see that whatever the man’s intentions, they were drawing closer to fruition. He had pulled Charlotte into the eye of the storm and the centre of the pentagram drawn on the floor. The knife he held was now inching closer to her throat and she seemed incapable of defending herself.

  Ignoring the white hot pain in his shoulder and ribs he doubled his efforts. At last he hooked a hand around the doorframe and pulled himself within earshot of the newcomer.

  ‘You have to exorcise the portrait now, quickly, before he’s finished the transfer,’ the tall man screamed against the storm. ‘He wants to complete the transfer of Hugo’s power before he exorcises the painting. You have to stop him before he’s absorbed it all.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Travis yelled back as the storm intensified and the windows exploded, sending vicious glass shards to join the whirling tornado in the centre of the room.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ the man yelled back. ‘He’s set up to finish his father’s power. It’s just a matter of timing now. If you don’t do it now he will become unstoppable.’

  ‘But he just got machine gunned and then sat up! I think he’s pretty much unstoppable already!’ Travis shouted back.

  ‘Not yet. He’s still at a crossroads. Exorcise Hugo’s spirit before Vargas absorbs all the power, and Vargas will be human again.’

  ‘What do I do?’ Travis yelled, just as Vargas stopped his chanting.

  ‘The bones in the middle of the pentagram,’ the man yelled, pointing and gesticulating wildly. ‘They need to be salted and burned.’

  Travis cared little for explanations at this point. There was a lilac tornado inside the room and Vargas was holding a knife to Charlotte’s defenceless throat. Whoever the man in the doorway was, he had little choice other than to try his suggestion.

  But there was no way now that he could stand up against the power of the raging storm. The winds were too powerful for him to even try to walk to the pentagram. Vargas was standing in the very centre of the tornado with Charlotte hanging limply in his grasp.

  With a last gasp and a silent prayer he gritted his teeth against the pain and flung himself into the wind. In his shoulder bone scraped against bone. As the winds whipped a vicious protective circle around the pentagram and Vargas, his body was flung around and around in ever dizzying circles. Shards of glass and long sharp wooden splinters from the imploded windows tore at his skin. The four dead bodies of Sage and her cronies slammed against him as he flew. He could see inside the circle and Vargas was about to finish it. As he was whipped from side to side, he desperately tried to snag a purchase of the big man. It was difficult to see through the flashes of blinding lilac lightning, and words were useless now as the deafening noise was exacerbated by loud blasts of thunder.

  With no way to reach the man all seemed lost. Until surprisingly Vargas himself reached out and snatched him into the calm circle. Inside the eye of the storm there was less noise – enough to hear Vargas.

  ‘Pull up a chair, Mr Parker,’ Vargas rumbled through still lips. ‘You have a front row seat to the dawn of a new world and the birth of a god.’

  After everything, Travis thought, his Achilles heel is always his ego, just as Lochay told me.

  He could see the pile of decayed bones in the centre beneath Vargas. Charlotte’s eyes were still glazed and distant and Travis was grateful for this. If it came to it, at least she wouldn’t see it coming. As he started to crawl towards the bones, Vargas turned back to him.

  ‘Tut, tut, Mr Parker,’ Vargas said, chuckling. ‘Yours is a watching brief only, I’m afraid.’

  With that Vargas turned his wrist over slightly and Travis felt a monstrous pain in his leg. The sound of his piercing scream somehow resonated with Charlotte and the faintest flicker of recognition ran through her eyes. Her gaze locked with his and he saw that she felt the pain of his broken leg.

  As Travis lay helpless Vargas closed his eyes in ecstasy and began to complete the last of the transfer spell.

  Travis saw a slight twitch in Vargas’s eyelids and knew he sensed something was happening. But the monster opened his eyes too late. Charlotte reached up and grabbed the wrist that held the dagger. Deftly she turned it over and drove it backwards, plunging the blade into Vargas’s chest and tearing open a hole.

  Vargas lashed out and Charlotte was sent spinning backwards, falling just short of the wall of wind. The lilac smoke rose until it became a solid beam of blinding light. The wound in Vargas’s chest opened wider and wider, and his body shuddered and jerked violently as the power within could no longer be contained by his fragile form.

  From his prone position Travis could see inside the light beam as two silhouettes were twisted and locked together in mortal combat for control. Travis knew instinctively that it was a battle between Vargas and Hugo; the old man was not going to go without a fight. It quickly became clear that no matter who won, it would be a meaningless victory, since Vargas’s fragile human flesh was not going to able to control such forces. He was like a nuclear reactor that was leaking coolant; the man was about to explode and who knew what devastation that would cause.

  Travis looked back at the bones and crawled towards them as Vargas continued to shake. Hand over hand he pulled himself towards the centre. His head was foggy with pain and he had to fight to stay conscious. His shattered body screamed in protest but he kept moving forward. Vargas was now a spinning blinding light, all semblance of human form dissipated as his body tore itself in two.

  Stretching out a hand to Hugo’s remains, Travis found the bones were coated with something bumpy that was probably salt. He thought one of the craziest sights of the night was that despite the raging tornado inside the room, the five purple candles still flickered strongly with flames intact. He saw that Charlotte hadn’t moved since Vargas had struck her, but he knew there was no time to check on her, and could only hope that he was saving a world with her still in it.

  Dragging his broken leg towards the nearest candle he reached out with his one good arm and with trembling fingers grasped the burning candle. The scalding hot wax dripped onto his hand but considering the rest of his injuries it was like a feather tickle.

  He had no idea if he was supposed to say any magical words over the bones. In the end he settled for a ‘Fuck it’, and threw the candle into their midst.

  The remains exploded in a brilliance that dwarfed all others. Travis heard the distant sound of wailing from the Vargas/Hugo hybrid. It was the most terrible sound of pain that he had ever heard and he was glad to hear it.

  Every piece of light, wind and noise in the room was sucked inward to the centre of the pentagram. It drew every ounce of energy into a giant sized swirling, condensed ball of sheer power before everything went black.

  Travis felt himself floating on the wind, but this was no tornado – this was a gentle soft summer breeze, a world of comforting darkness and welcoming light all at the same time.

  Mingled with the ocean air and freshly cut grass, he could hear every song he had ever loved playing in perfect harmony. He was everywhere and nowhere. He had a million joyous things to do and an eternity to lie back and do nothing. Every face he had ever loved and lost floated before him with outstretched arms and he felt their warm embrace.

  And then he saw Amy’s hand. The cancer that had ravaged his wife’s gentle face with ravenous claws was long gone. She was a happy child and a contented grandmother all at the same time and her eyes were full of joy. He wept and he laughed, he lusted and he loved and then suddenly she was saying goodbye. She never spoke aloud and yet he heard every word. This was not his time.r />
  When Travis opened his eyes again he felt the huge slab of guilt fall freely from around his heart. His eyes were wet with tears and he somehow knew that they would be the last. Amy had sent him back with a message and the permission to live again.

  He looked around and was astounded to find the room intact. There had been no explosion, no nuclear meltdown, just a wink out. He tried to get up but his broken leg betrayed him. He was twisting around on the floor desperately looking for Charlotte when he felt a soft hand on his shoulder and he could smell her scent. He turned and looked into the most beautiful face that he could imagine. He tried to speak but no words would come out. His whole body was wracked with pain and he didn’t think he could move unaided. Charlotte lent forward and pressed her lips against his forehead and he smiled. His smile faltered as he heard a noise stirring in the corner of the room. They both looked over to see Vargas inexplicably stirring. The power was gone and he was just a man again, but that man was still the Vargas who had been immeasurably dangerous even without dark powers.

  ‘This is only a delay to the inevitable,’ Vargas said, his voice slurring as he tried to stand. ‘I will find a way to recreate my father’s formula and I will not be kept from my destiny.’

  Travis looked frantically around the floor for a working weapon, but there was none in sight.

  ‘Of course neither of you will be permitted to leave here tonight. Too many wagging tongues. It would appear that the opposition is no more,’ he said, spotting Lochay’s body. ‘All that remains is to –’

  The gunshot hit him hard in the chest and he looked down in disbelief at the red circle that was expanding outwards. He sank to his knees and opened his mouth to speak as Travis leaned forward to listen to the great man’s last words. But there was no Hollywood death speech. Vargas simply fell forward and died.