by Jack Conner
“Yes. If she was informed that we have Ruegger, she’ll come for him directly and do her best to kill us. We’ll have nipped her wrath in the bud.”
“What a fine zombie she’ll make.”
“That should be amusing. Now. Ready for our next masterpiece?”
“Let’s carry on, old man. I think we should dedicate this one to Ruegger.”
“An excellent idea.”
They advanced on a large group of zombies and began the first delicate steps toward creating another Collage. This one would be different, they knew. It would be their strongest yet, for more than half of it would be fashioned from shade-zombies and would have their power. Yes. It would be beautiful, full of lovely embellishments.
One of these would be a tail with a three-pronged end forged of three werewolves: Loirot, who had returned from his meeting with Subaire; Kilian, who, as the strongest, would be its center; and the third would either be a rather unremarkable werewolf zombie the Balaklava had just turned two nights ago, or—if Kiernevar turned out to be dull once he’d regained his senses—Kiernevar. It would be lovely. To top it all off, its mouthpiece would be the newly restored Laslo.
Yes, indeed, this one was for Ruegger.
Chapter 5
The Kavasari Ruegger and the Kavasari Danielle lit cigarettes as they made their way to the campsite of an hour before to find that the other five were just gathering.
“Are we ready?” said Mauchlery.
“Ready,” came the chorus.
“Then let’s be off. The Meadow is not far.”
“Isn’t there a quicker way to reach the dragons?” asked Jean-Pierre.
“Afraid not,” answered Roche Sarnova. “We were careful to isolate them from the rest of the Refuge. The only way to reach them is to swim down to their Lair, deep in the heart of the mountain.”
“I remember.”
“Good. Because it’s about seven now, which gives us two hours to reach them, do our thing and get Francois back up for the speech. Time will be tight.”
The coven—as that’s what they had taken to calling themselves, however inaccurately—reached the Meadow in about ten minutes. Before entering it, Ruegger and Danielle imbibed some of Kharker’s blood to protect them from the magical sun. Then, much to Ruegger’s delight, they emerged from the stale dusty corridors into the wide rolling hills of the Meadow. Its scents intoxicated him. He inhaled deeply, holding Danielle’s hand as she did the same.
He marveled at the sun. It was the first time he’d seen one in two hundred years. Artificial or not, it was spectacular, and he said as much.
From a nearby hill, covered all over with large bright flowers, a score of fiery shapes emerged, all ragged and lean, except for one, who stared at the coven of kavasari with hungry cat eyes. The Demons’ leader, most likely. The two Dark Lords hailed them, calling out a greeting, and Jean-Pierre waved at the fiery shape, who seemed to smile at him. Quickly, the albino lowered his arm and glanced nervously at Sophia, who hadn’t seemed to notice.
The coven pressed on, and when Ruegger turned to Kharker he saw a light in the Hunter’s eyes that endeared him to Ruegger in some vast but intangible way.
“Magnificent, aren’t they?” breathed Kharker.
“As game or as individuals?” asked Danielle.
“Why, both, I suppose. But I referred to neither. I meant collectively, the enormity of it all, the sheer ...”
“Magic,” Ruegger finished.
Kharker smiled, clapped him on the shoulder and the three marched on.
Eventually, and much to the odd flock’s disappointment, the coven left the Meadow and plunged into a new network of tunnels that reeked of stale air and bat guano. Ruegger noticed that Jean-Pierre glanced all about, probably for that Ladrido fellow, but the man-of-bats made no appearance and Jean-Pierre seemed disappointed.
Kharker had been thoughtful enough to bring along some Glocks and a richly-embroidered scimitar for Ruegger, for which Ruegger was very thankful, even if the blade was a touch gaudy.
Danielle still carried her curved machete and with her new powers carried it in her sleeve in synch with Ruegger. Along with four .45s, she was equipped with a pistol-gripped riot gun, which she also wore up one sleeve, suspended there by her newly-enriched power of telekinesis.
The party struck a faster pace as they entered a more dangerous zone of the Refuge and did not abate their pace for some time.
Off and on, some odd creature would make an appearance, much to everyone’s delight, even though sometimes these creatures proved unfriendly. Several had to be cut down. Roche and Mauchlery shook their heads over the losses, but insisted that the coven keep a rapid pace.
It was a long and, for the most part, disappointingly uneventful trek. What of the unicorns? Ruegger wondered. What of the winged nymphs or siren rainbows Jean-Pierre had spoken of? Ruegger hoped someday he would have more time to explore.
After leaving behind what they’d thought to be the danger zone, the group relaxed, and when the ambush came they were passing through a high-ceilinged tunnel, toothed by dark stalactites and stalagmites. Ridges and alcoves peppered the higher regions of the stone walls, and precious few torches provided illumination.
With terrible war cries and guttural howlings, surreal monsters lunged out of the alcoves and from off the ledges, sweeping down on the coven, and their bared muscles and intestines glistened in the faint light as they dove.
The skinless humanoids Jean-Pierre had spoken of, Ruegger knew, the ones that lived around the sentient spring, the ones that had gone insane through centuries of boredom and innate savagery. Ghouls.
Winged and fanged and taloned, some with barbed tails, the ghastly things fell on the coven, maybe thirty-five or forty of them in all. Ruegger and Danielle merged back to back and armed themselves.
The other kavasari were not so lucky, as the humanoids dove right into and around the heart of the coven, isolating each individual and making any organized defense impossible.
A winged ghoul, its skinless face elongated into a wolf-like shape, rushed straight at Ruegger, long teeth bared and coated with saliva, its great claws ready to rend him limb from limb or maybe to steal his skin. Its eyes blazed with madness.
His battery of Glocks hovering over him and his gaudy scimitar in one hand, Ruegger fired a steady stream at his assailant, but the wolf-faced thing didn’t pause, though Ruegger could see lungs rupturing and bones blown to splinters under the metal hail. Heedless, the ghoul surged forwards.
With one quick sweep, Ruegger hacked off its head.
The battle took another ten minutes to conclude. Well over half of the humanoids had been outright killed, most were critically wounded and the others had simply run off in sheer fright.
None of the kavasari were badly wounded, except for Sophia, who’d had the skin of her left forearm stolen from her. When questioned about it, she couldn’t remember quite when it had happened, being in the thick of the battle and all, but she said it was a queer and painful sensation that she never wanted to experience again.
As she was speaking, a great flurry of bats stormed through the room and dove into a body of one of the humanoids, one that had not quite been killed. Within seconds, the body rose from the ground, dusted itself off and limped—as one of its legs was half severed—over to the coven and grinned.
“Ladrido,” said Jean-Pierre, and struck out his hand.
After shaking it, Ladrido looked down at his new body, badly punctured and clearly dying, and said, “Not much of a catch, my friend. But it will do. Maybe I’ll have a dip in the Red Spring and rejuvenate it enough to please the nymphs. What do you think?”
“I’d, ah, have loved to, Ladrido—but let me introduce my wife.”
Sophia took his clawed hand.
“An honor, my lady,” bowed Ladrido.
“The honor’s all mine. Jean-Pierre’s told me quite a bit about you, how you saved his life.”
“What are friends for?”
<
br /> “Ladrido?” Roche Sarnova said.
The ghoul looked down at the man who had imprisoned him and nodded. “The Dark Lord, so we meet again. I never thought the day would come.” His eyes darted to Lord Kharker and whispered, “So Jean-Pierre wasn’t fibbing? The Hunter, at last. You saved a friend of mine, I recall. A dragon named Damara, if you remember her.”
Kharker laughed. “She was quite a beauty. Yes, of course I remember her. In fact, we’re on the way to visit her and her friends at this very moment.”
“Would you care to join us?” Jean-Pierre said.
Ladrido shook his ghastly head. “I can’t go into that water, remember? It’s my border. Besides, this body won’t last much longer if I don’t get to the spring. And by the look on your faces I can see you’re short on time.”
“That we are,” said Roche. “But I put you here, and now, if you want, I’ll lift the spells that keep you. We’re on a mission to free everyone down here, and I always regretted imprisoning you in the first place, so it seems logical that you should be the first.”
Ladrido stared. “Do you mean ... ?”
“Yes.” The Dark Lord closed his eyes and chanted a few words in some ancient tongue that Ruegger did not know. As if a wave had struck him, Ladrido stumbled backwards.
“My …” he said, examining his arms for any sign of change. “My ... I can’t see it, but I can feel it. You’ve freed me.” He turned his gaze. “And you, too, Jean-Pierre. Without you ...”
Jean-Pierre smiled. “Hurry up, get to that spring and heal yourself. Then catch up with us if you’ve a mind to.”
Laughing, the bat-man disappeared down a side tunnel and was gone.
More wary this time, the kavasari bundled up into a tight group and headed off down the hall, and within twenty minutes the coven stood before the same pool of water that Jean-Pierre had emerged from to find his way to the Castle. They stared down into the glittering depths and exchanged nervous smiles.
“Okay,” said Mauchlery, “this is how it’s going to be.”
Quickly, he outlined their next steps and asked if there were any questions. There was only one.
“Which dragon do we visit first?” said Jean-Pierre.
“Gethraul.” Not seeming to notice the brief unease on the albino’s face, Mauchlery said, “He was one of the few wyrms I helped capture, and that’s why I chose him for the deed against the late Colonel De Soto.”
Roche nodded to both Francois and Kharker. “I guess we’re about to see what our combined labors wrought.”
“You mean you haven’t been down to see them since they were preserved?” Ruegger said.
“Oh, yes. Francois and I’ve visited them occasionally, but only occasionally. They seem to prefer their own company for the most part and resent us for capturing them in the first place.”
“Arrogant wyrms,” murmured Kharker. “Always thought anything smaller than themselves hardly worth the effort to acknowledge ... Still, I can’t wait to see them free. Hell, they’d better be freed soon, before those spells run out, or else they’re going to rot down there.”
“I don’t get it,” said Jean-Pierre. “Why would the dragons die? What magic keeps them alive?”
“Why, their hordes, of course. Thought you would’ve learned that from your experience. See that dagger in your waistband, the one you, er, borrowed from Gethraul?”
Jean-Pierre fingered the weapon. “What of it?”
“Gethraul’s horde is a forgery, as are all of the dragons’,” Kharker explained. “One of the sorcerers’ greatest triumphs, I suppose. It’s all an illusion, a trick of magic, like the suns and whatnot. That dagger? When the sorcerers’ spells run out half a year from now, that thing won’t be golden, or jeweled. It’ll be a simple and crude wood-carving of a dagger. That’s all. Now it’s the real thing, and other riches like it keep the dragons healthy and fit. But in six months, when their hordes are reduced to rubble, the dragons will slowly lose their strength and die. Many are the times that Roche and I have spent walking along some river with a wrym, talking and enjoying each other’s company. More than once has a dragon saved my life. To call them friends would be an understatement.”
“We won’t allow them to die,” said Sarnova. “Or anything else in the Refuge either, even the ghouls and other assorted ruffians that attacked us. They’re just doing what their nature calls them to do, and once they’re freed they will be very unlike the riff-raff you just observed, Ladrido and the Meadow Demons excepted. The ghouls, for instance, will regain their sanity and walk around in human skin. The Demons will have their sun, a true sun, and a Meadow not constructed by magic. The unicorns will have fields to romp in, and the sprites will have a waterfall far removed from the inside of a mountain. Our mission is to liberate them, and ourselves. No longer shall magic stand in the shadow of humanity, but beside it, among it. It is the way things should be.”
Ruegger found himself nodding along with the Dark Lord’s words and turned to Danielle to gauge her reaction. She was smiling.
God, Ludwig ... it’s a shame you died when you did, he thought. This is a revolution you would’ve been proud to assist in.
“Are we ready?” Mauchlery said.
“Ready,” they said.
As one, the coven dove into the clear water and plunged downward toward the Lair.
* * *
“So we’re agreed,” said Cloire, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms across her chest. She leveled her eyes, one green, one amber, at Harry like a pair of guns, reminding him of her words just a short while ago: this was to be a professional endeavor, nothing more. She seemed to be holding up her end of it, whereas he, with every minute he spent around her, only wanted her more. He glanced around her wrecked room, chairs and lamps broken everywhere, and knew that somewhere behind that cool gaze lurked some passion for him yet.
“Yeah, we’re agreed,” he muttered. “If they did send Byron up here with the nuke, they’d want to wreak as much havoc as they could. They’d use him to bomb the assembly at Mauchlery’s speech.” Candles flickered enticingly about the room, burning his nose with their vanilla aroma; for some reason, it reminded him of the way Cloire smelled after sex. “Problem is ...” he glanced at a watch “... he’s due to give the speech in just under two hours. Not much time to search every battlement that Byron might be hiding in.”
“Then let’s get cracking.”
As they entered the hall, they were greeted by ten Castle Guards, all wearing the familiar black uniforms with the silver buttons and the occasional gold medal, stripes on the arms signifying rank. Harry looked from the soldiers to Cloire and back to the soldiers, all neat hard-looking men and women who would have enough kills to their credit to account for every night of their undead lives. The shade military, God help us.
A tall Romanian officer approached and said in good English, “Cloire? Lavaca? I’m Lieutenant Popescu. We’ve been ordered to assist you in any way we can.”
Cloire nodded curtly. “Good, we’re going to need it. But if Blackie or the new one sent you to help us, why only ten?”
“Oh, we’re just the ones sent here to find you. We’ve a hundred others, all combing the hidey-holes and the battlements around the Upper Courtyard.”
“You came to the same conclusion we did, then.”
“That the sniper means to strike at the speech? It was only logical. Besides, that’s what Lords Sarnova and Mauchlery have ordered us, through mortal contacts, to look for. Problem is, my men have been scouring the battlements and hidey-holes for half an hour now. Possibly they’ve run into your Byron and didn’t recognize him. That’s why we need you. There was some doubt as to whether you’d help us or not.”
She gave Harry an impassive sideways glance. “I’ve been persuaded.”
“Then, shall we?”
Harry was glad that he and Cloire had gotten some badly needed help, that they wouldn’t have to hunt for Byron alone. But he felt a pang of unease, and, when he l
ooked at Cloire, he saw that, try as she might, she felt it too.
These soldiers would not be interested in sparing Byron. Their mission was to stop the coming massacre, and they’d do it by whatever means necessary, probably by killing the big Australian. Out of all the members of the death-squad, Harry had found Byron to be the least objectionable of the lot, and he didn’t want the big man brought down, zombie or not. And he was certain that Cloire harbored feelings for Byron far deeper than his own.
Which was why he was so surprised to see her nod her head again, even more curtly this time, and say, “Let’s do it.”
* * *
When the coven of seven entered Gethraul’s lair, they found him seemingly asleep atop his great mound of gold and riches. The sight awed Danielle so much that she huddled close to Ruegger—not hiding behind him, but seeking comfort from his presence.
This was the dragon Ruegger had slain, or nearly so, but even his vivid depictions of the wyrm were nothing in comparison to seeing Gethraul herself. His sheer vastness, and that of his lair and his horde, made her feel almost insignificant in comparison. How was she, and the rest of them, supposed to control such a creature? All at once, her plan spun about and stared her in the eye.
Despite herself, though, she smiled, watching the slumbering wyrm, his shining green scales, fierce spinal horns and the gleaming underside of his gold-armored belly. The entire lair radiated raw, visceral power, a feeling that was almost hypnotic. No doubt part of the dragon’s magic.
Slowly, Francois approached the being and stopped when Gethraul opened one enormous azure eye and fixed it on Jean-Pierre.
“I smell what is mine,” growled the dragon in a voice that sounded like a roaring train, lifting his great horned head and speaking from lips that, when lifted, exposed his savage teeth and rolling red tongue.