by Jack Conner
But the lunatic he would kill. Kiernevar was a powerful wild card who obviously hated Ruegger, and Ruegger simply couldn’t allow him to persist, whether he’d saved Danielle’s life or not.
He never got the chance.
Junger and Jagoda and an army of zombies sprang into the room, guns and blades at the ready.
“Goddamn you, Ruegger!” shouted the bearded one, surveying the wreckage with an anger so livid it almost took on a life of its own. “Look at what you’ve done! Fool. Stupid, stupid fool. Why? Why did you do this? You knew you couldn’t get away with it.” He shook his head in mock pity. “Now we’re going to have to teach you a lesson that you’ll never forget.”
“No,” said Ruegger. “I don’t think so.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
Ruegger shrugged. “Because you’re trying to possess the mind of a god, and neither the Sabo nor I like you very much.” He gave them all a sharp salute. It was the end of his only middle finger.
Just as the zombies started to fire at him, a giant mud-shark surfaced directly beneath Ruegger, its mouth wide open, and swallowed the Darkling whole.
“See you in hell!” he shouted to the Balaklava as the Sabo-controlled parasite bore him away, through the endless earth and, hopefully, toward Danielle.
He reached out psychically to the big mud-shark, trying to establish a link with its mind. Weary as he was, he finally succeeded. “Thank you, Sabo.”
You’re welcome. Roche Sarnova has been a friend of mine for many years, and if you are his Heir and his friend as well, then you are also a friend to me. But you will uphold our bargain?
“Of course, if you still desire.”
I set you free, and you kill them, yes? Junger and Jagoda. That was the deal.
“You’ll die if I do.”
I know. But it is better to be dead than a mindless slave.
“I’m sure Roche will miss you.”
A pause. They’re fighting me, Ruegger. Trying to win back this parasite, as you call it. I cannot hold out for much longer.
“Enough to get me to your borders?”
I hope so, or else I will have failed you and myself as well. Are my acids stinging you badly?
“I’ll get over it.”
And you will kill them?
“If you can get me to your borders, then I can kill them.”
We’re almost there.
Ruegger settled back in the belly of the worm, exhausted, both physically and mentally. And, he supposed, magically. He still held the rusted saber he’d taken from the zombie in one hand. As he slipped it through his belt, he felt the big mud-shark angle itself upwards toward the surface.
They’ve almost won me, Ruegger. This is as far as I can take you, but it should be far enough. Just head forward. You’ll come to the end of my domain. No marker marks it, but you’ll notice the difference just the same.
“Thank you.”
And I thank you.
Ruegger could somehow feel it smile.
You know I am no god.
It laughed, telepathically, and he joined in. As evil as the Sabo was, he was almost beginning to like it.
They surfaced. Ruegger hauled himself up through the worm’s throat, past its tonsils and into his mouth.
Hurry, it told him.
Just as he scurried past the teeth, he realized what its warning meant: the mouth closed with a snap as his last leg cleared it. Junger and Jagoda possessed the worm once more.
The Sabo had told him to run forwards, and it had placed itself in the center of a wide corridor, its face angling in the direction it wanted him to go.
He ran.
The mud-shark followed.
As he rounded a bend, he saw maybe twenty zombies racing toward him. Of course. Junger and Jagoda would’ve placed sentries to guard their domain.
“Damn it all,” Ruegger said.
He drew his saber and charged forward. As he drew closer, he saw the look of fear in the zombies’ eyes and for a moment was almost flattered. Then he realized he had one large mud-shark hot on his heels. The deaders were afraid it would get them if they got too close.
He resheathed the blade, wrenched a torch off the wall and leapt forward. The zombies backed away, and then he was among them, waving his torch in their faces. Afraid of both fire and shark, the zombies fell back.
The dirt tunnel ended, replaced by brick instead. Ruegger could almost feel a difference in the air. This was where the Sabo ended.
He turned back to see the mud-shark reach its boundary and submerge again, then circle angrily, clearly unhappy it could no longer pursue him. Reluctantly, it sank back into the mud and disappeared.
The zombies, seeing their opportunity, ran at Ruegger.
Tossing the torch back at them, he fled, soon finding himself lost in a maze of brick-walled rooms and ancient crypts. At last he came to a room with no doors. Secret walls. He could sense them but couldn’t see them.
“Fuck it,” he said and, using the last ounce of power he had, he leveled every ancient brick in the room. The walls tumbled down in a loud roar, but he didn’t stop to enjoy the spectacle. There, an opening! He dove through it.
It led into another door-less chamber. Great.
The scraping and whooping of the zombies grew louder at his back. I don’t have much time.
He saw it, then. The casket of a mummy. He broke upon the door, tossed out the ancient cadaver and burrowed through the back of the casket. He stumbled into another room, but this one had a door. Thank the gods for doors. He rushed through it, and through another, and found himself in the main part of the catacombs. Still carrying the saber at his side, he did a quick check of the area, recognized it, and hurried off toward the nearest exit.
Noises behind him.
He whirled. The zombies’ half-jellied eyes glistened by the light of a nearby torch as the creatures raced towards him.
Ruegger hurled the saber at them. It clove through three of their heads before it stuck in the forth. The other deaders paused, then came on.
Ruegger turned and bolted up through the catacombs toward the exit. Sometimes the noises of the zombies drew closer, sometimes further. Finally, he came to the stairway that led up into the Castle … where a garrison of Castle soldiers aimed machine guns at him from behind a barricade of sandbags.
Seeing him, they tensed and prepared to fire.
“Hold your fire! I’m Ruegger!”
They paused, and before any of them could respond the zombies chasing Ruegger spilled out into the hallway behind him, growling and slashing. Ruegger threw himself to the floor just as the soldiers opened up with their weapons, and the cacophony of gunfire filled the hallway. When it was over, a pile of broken bones and dried flesh heaped in mounds where the zombies had just been and smoke rose from the barrels of the soldiers’ guns.
Cautiously, Ruegger raised his head, then hauled himself to his feet. When none of the soldiers fired at him, he approached their line, but one raised a hand to stop him.
“How do we know you’re not a zombie, my lord?”
Goddamnit. “What’s your name, soldier?” Ruegger said.
“Major Ackmoore.” The soldier leveled a rifle at Ruegger’s head. “The only way for us to make sure you’re not a deader is to shoot you in the skull.”
“If you shoot me, I’ll go down. I’m weak enough as it is.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but this could just be another of the Balaklava’s ploys, like Kiernevar was.”
“Fine. Then shoot me in the head and cart me up to the Dark Lord’s room. I’ve got to see him urgently. Do it quick and get me there fast. That’s the condition. Agreed?”
Ackmoore squeezed the trigger.
* * *
When Ruegger awoke, he found himself lying where’d he been standing, the group of soldiers above him. Nowhere near Roche Sarnova’s rooms at all. That Major had betrayed him.
When Ruegger opened his eye, Ackmoore knelt beside him. “See, fellas? He wasn
’t a deader at all. Guess we’re going to have to haul him up to the Lords’ rooms, after all. Looks too weak to move by himself.”
“Not for long, you shit,” Ruegger said.
His arm shot out, seized the surprised Ackmoore by the throat and dragged him to his mouth. The Major screamed and thrashed, but none of his buddies came to the rescue; he’d just shot the Dark Lord’s Heir.
When Ruegger was full, he tossed the still-moving Ackmoore aside and climbed to his feet. He felt much better. Still, he had a score of ragged holes in him, was missing most of an arm and all of an eye, and was generally not in the best of moods. But he’d survived. He’d failed, but he’d survived. And somehow, someway, he’d think of another plan. He was sure of it.
“Want any help, sir?” called several soldiers as he brushed past them, on his way up to the Dark Lord’s apartment.
He didn’t answer. He marched purposely forward, daring to hope that he’d actually see Danielle again. Ever faster, he moved up through the Castle.
And stopped dead.
For there, running straight at him—running so fast she didn’t even look up to see him, was Danielle herself.
Then she did look up and a smile blossomed on her face, wider than any he could remember. They crashed into each others’ arms, and he felt overwhelmed by the touch and smell of her body.
“Dani …”
“Oh, God. Rueg. I thought you were dead. When Harry told me what happened ...”
“It’s okay, baby, I’m here. Alive.” He pointed to the bullet wound on his forehead. “The good Major Ackmoore proved that beyond a doubt. But what are you doing here?”
“When Harry told me you were trapped, I ran straight to get you out myself, me and Jean-Pierre. We didn’t think we could survive a direct attack like you did. The bastards didn’t have as much reason to let us live. So we went down into the Refuge to try to find that secret entrance they’d used. We thought a sneak attack would work better than a frontal assault, but we spent like two hours down there and couldn’t find it.”
She laughed self-deprecatingly, as if her own trials had been nothing. “I was going hysterical. So I said fuck it, went back to Roche’s room and came down here. Better the direct route than none at all. Jean-Pierre had to stay behind. Part of the plan. So I came here to get you out myself, me and Blackie.” He could feel the wetness of her tears biting into his wounds and stroked her hair. “But you’re alive,” she said, squeezing him tightly. “You’re alive.”
He didn’t question her, not then, just held onto her tightly until they were both calmed. At last they pulled apart, staring into each other’s faces.
“Jesus, look what they did to you,” she said. “I can’t believe—”
“I’ll mend,” he said.
“Damn right.”
Suddenly it struck him. She was different now, transformed. Her body radiated an intensity, a power or quality she hadn’t possessed before.
She saw the question in his eyes. “My plan. I … well, now’s not the time.” She glanced over her shoulder, at Roche Sarnova just now catching up. He too seemed different, but Ruegger couldn’t place just how.
When the Dark Lord saw Ruegger, he laughed and greeted the Darkling warmly, then said, “How’d you get out?”
“Later,” said Ruegger. “There’s something I need to tell you. Junger and Jagoda sent a werewolf named Byron, now a zombie, off with a tactical nuke. I think he’s gone up into the Castle, but I’m not sure. You need to find him.”
“Those bastards.” Roche made a fist, then nodded to himself. “I’ve just sent off a message to my heads of security. They’re on it. Byron … I don’t know him. I doubt my people do either. It will be hard to find him if we can’t recognize him. But we will. We must.”
“Come,” said Danielle, sounding shaken. “I told the others to go ahead with the plan, that we’d catch up once me and Roche had gotten you out of that hellhole.” She hugged Ruegger again. “Nuke or not, you’re alive.”
“What’s this plan? Why are you two so ... different?”
She shook her head. “I told ‘em we’d catch up, but really we didn’t expect to, not for some time. We thought breaking you out would be awhile, if we could do it at all, so I told them to go on down and get started.”
“Get started?”
“Let’s go. They’ll have just left. Maybe we can still catch up to them. Let’s hurry.”
“But where?”
“Down.”
She grabbed him by the hand, gave Sarnova a nod and the threesome ran off, soon ascending a flight of stairs that opened out onto a wing of the castle where the low-rent denizens lived. At their approach, a residential door swung open, startling a sleeping vampire, but, as soon as he saw Roche Sarnova, the man bowed and scuttled off to the far end of his bed, probably convinced he was still dreaming.
“Thanks,” Danielle said as she led Ruegger and Sarnova over to the corpse-chute, then turned to address Ruegger. “As I said,” she explained, gesturing toward the aperture. “We go down.” She kissed his shoulder above the stump and said, “I’ll fill you in once we get there, okay?”
Confused but certain she knew what she was about, he watched her usher the Dark Lord into the chute before returning her attention to him.
“This time,” she said. “I’ll go first.”
* * *
After Junger and Jagoda had raised Kilian and the other zombies from their second deaths, they stood over the charred, unsalvageable remains of the Romanian girl and shook their heads.
“We underestimated him, didn’t we?”
“Indeed. And lost our bait in the process.”
“Maybe that’s true, but Amelia doesn’t know that. Our plan should still work.”
They laughed, then debated amongst themselves whether or not to raise Kiernevar. Should they chop him up and finish him off so he’d be truly dead and then resurrect him? Or just chop him up and let him rot? Or should they let his own powers bring him back to life instead? They weren’t sure if he was yet strong enough to survive a beheading.
In the end, they decided they didn’t want him as a zombie; he was far too interesting as the wild card that he was. So, with some amused reluctance, they retrieved his head and stuck it back on his neck, then sprinkled some of their own bloods down on him.
While Kiernevar was on the mend, although as yet unconscious, they sent a message out to their mud-sharks: fetch the Sabo’s central form back once more and bring it here. Junger and Jagoda could not afford the Labyrinth to betray them again. Once a creature was killed and resurrected twice, the chances of it having enough will to act against them were negligible, and of all their zombies it was now clear that they couldn’t afford for the Sabo to have that will.
“You know,” said Junger, as they waited. “If we made Jean-Pierre a deader, he could probably control it.”
“You’re saying his psychic tricks are more powerful than the two of us combined?” After a moment, Jagoda nodded, “If we could only get him into our hands ...”
It was a mission for the future, though. For now, in companionable silence, they waited for the arrival of the Sabo—and, more importantly, of Amelia.
They would yet be kings.
Chapter 3
In the Chamber of the Green Lake, Danielle and Ruegger lay on their backs hand in hand on a tree-less isle and watched the tumult of the winged creatures above as they dove and swept and played amongst themselves while waiting for the next victim.
Danielle had sent Sarnova off to find the others, Jean-Pierre and Sophia and Kharker and Mauchlery, to tell them that Ruegger had been found, alive, and that they should all wait for the odd flock to catch up before moving on.
Ruegger enjoyed the relative quiet, just him and Danielle, alone at last on an island in a magical realm. None of it felt real, except her. He wrapped his arm about her and cradled her to his chest.
Meanwhile, Danielle told him the story.
“They give me credit f
or the plan, but really it was Jean-Pierre’s idea,” she said. “He said we needed kavasari to control the dragons, but the only other known kavasari around were the Sangro Sankts, and they would’ve killed Francois, so we couldn’t call them. The idea was abandoned, and we went down to brainstorm. We were all too shell-shocked, though, I guess. I made everyone promise to be open to something really off the wall, something radical. Got them prepared for it.
“So then I turned to Francois and sprung it on him. He didn’t like the idea at first, thought it was preposterous, but I badgered him and badgered him and demanded if anyone else could think of a better way. No one could.
“We needed kavasari. We needed dragons and whatever else we could find to help us. Eventually, he gave in, and by this time I’d gathered the support of everyone else. It was all on him, the whole war, to win or lose. All he had to do was make us all kavasari, and we might stand a chance. We would have dragons, and they just might be enough to turn the tide in our favor. Reluctantly, he agreed. He said that since I was so keen on this, that I should go first and if I still felt the same way about it afterwards, he’d turn the others, if they wanted to be turned. So I went.
“I put my wrist in his mouth and put my mouth on his throat. I fed him and fed from him, and he turned me. Then the others went. It took a long time, most of the day, because he had to rest after each time. But he fed on more shades today than he’s fed on in a long time, so he was strengthened as much as weakened. He had to wait, though, in between turnings, for our bloods, now in him, to be transformed by his body into true kavasari blood; that way we would all be strong. Then at last Roche comes in.” She laughed. “The surprise on his face! He said he’d just heard from the Sabo and had a message from you to send me your love.” She smiled.
Ruegger didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Sabo, or Roche Sarnova, had invented the message. Besides, if he’d been able to, that’s exactly what he would have asked the Sabo to do.
Danielle was a marvel. She had devised a plan, infinitely better than his own, to defeat the three armies, win the war and pave the way for peace between humans and shades. Not only that, but if the three armies were defeated, magic would be saved from oblivion. Ludwig had indirectly died for all this, and so it seemed to Ruegger that the best way to avenge his friend's murder would be to defeat the enemies of the Undead Homeland.