by Jack Conner
“So,” cooed Junger. “You don’t want your precious Danielle to die. Unfortunately—unless we need her as a witness to legitimize your handing us the crown—she will. If you can stomach to see us tear off her head and break her body apart and eat it right before your eyes, fine. We’ll find some other way to legitimize our seat.”
Damn it all. What could Ruegger do? Could the bastards find another way to legitimize their authority? He didn’t think so. They were bluffing, he was sure. This was their one and only chance to become Dark Lords, and the burden fell directly on him. With Danielle’s and all the others’ lives hanging in the balance.
He couldn’t kill them. They were powerful, vigorous and healthy. He and Danielle were weak. So, in the end, it was not a battle of muscle or even brain. It was a matter of will, and honor.
“Don’t do it,” Danielle wheezed. “I don’t care if they kill me, baby. Don’t let them be kings.”
“But—”
“No. When it happens, just close your eyes. Stop up your ears. But don’t give in. All the others ... they’ll feel the same way.”
From somewhere on his person, Jagoda produced a dagger and plunged it into Danielle’s back so that its red tip poked out her chest. She opened her mouth to scream, then shut it, obviously trying to be strong for Ruegger.
“We mean it, Darkling,” said Junger. “Close your eyes if you want to, but I don’t think that will stop us from having our way with your beloved. In one night, we’ll have killed both of them.” He smiled. “Danielle’s words were pretty and from the heart, but you’ll regret having listened to them when we’re tearing her limb from limb, raping her in every hole, even some new ones, and eating her alive. Stop your ears if you want, Darkling, but I’m sure her screams will still get through.”
Slowly, Ruegger’s gaze drifted from Junger to Danielle.
“I love you,” he told Danielle.
“I love you, too, Rueg.”
Gulping, he said, “It’s … it’s Noah, baby. My first name.”
Despite herself, her eyes widened, and she even gave a small smile. “I love you, Noah. Now close your eyes.”
* * *
“This is no good,” Jean-Pierre said.
Sophia pressed against his back, her borrowed sword raised before her. Zombies pressed in from all sides, scores of them, rotting and grinning. Jean-Pierre cut one down as it sprang at him, and the others around him paused. It wouldn’t hold them for long, though. Somewhere Kiernevar and Ladrido would be fighting, if they were still alive, but they wouldn’t arrive in time to save the albino and his daughter.
“The air,” Sophia said, and leapt overhead.
“No!”
Too late. Instantly the quasi-pterodactyls dove toward her, screeching. She sliced off one’s head, then another’s beak. Another bit off a chunk of her arm, and still another bit at her neck. She just barely dodged in time.
Jean-Pierre flew up and dragged her out of the path of the screeching cloud.
“The air’s no good,” he said.
“Where’s Ruegger and Danielle?”
Frantic, he looked around, and felt the blood freeze inside him when he saw Ruegger on his knees before the Balaklava and Danielle gripped in the iron claw of Junger.
The screeching cloud of bird-things wheeled about, coming around one more time to bear on Jean-Pierre and Sophia. There was no escaping them this time.
Unless …
“Come!” Jean-Pierre said. With new energy, he raced through the air toward Junger and Jagoda.
Sophia followed.
* * *
“Well?” Junger demanded. “What’s it to be?”
Ruegger opened his mouth to refuse them one more time. He knew it would herald the death of Danielle—of everyone—but what choice did he have?
Before he could speak, he heard the screeching of the quasi-pterodactyls. He snapped his head to see the cloud boiling toward them through the skies, Jean-Pierre and Sophia right ahead of them. The albino and his daughter blazed straight for Junger and Jagoda, both letting their swords lead the way.
Jagoda waved his arm, and a giant mud-shark burst through the ground at them. Jean-Pierre and Sophia flew over it, their trajectory taking them just above the Balaklava. Even as the mud-shark subsided into the ground, the tide of pterodactyls sailed over its snapping jaws and after its quarry, barreling straight into Junger and Jagoda on their way. The Balaklava swore and gestured, but evidently their control of the Sabo and its minions was not absolute.
It was all the distraction Ruegger needed.
He plucked up his sword from the ground with his mind and hurled it at Jagoda. Busy swatting away bird-things, the Balaklava didn’t see the sword coming until it was too late. Once again, Ruegger hacked through his dreadlocks and severed his head. Only this time, Ruegger was determined, there would be no coming back.
Junger screamed, his bloodshot eyes swinging to Ruegger even as Ruegger flew like a dart toward him. The Baklava started to shift shapes, to become a demon-thing in order to better grapple with Ruegger, but Danielle, still held against him, jabbed him in the eye and bit him on the shoulder. His form blurred but didn’t change.
Ruegger tackled him with such force that Danielle spun away, free. Ruegger drove Junger back, and back. Junger slammed his fists into Ruegger’s face and side, but Ruegger felt no pain. He lengthened his fangs and tore out Junger’s throat.
Finally he smashed Junger into the ground. The ground split under them, and blood spread out below Junger. It pumped like a geyser from his ruined throat, then lessened.
Feebly, Junger gestured toward Ruegger, directing the Sabo.
The pterodactyls returned, circling overhead, and the zombies milled over. A fin erupted from the floor. The minions seemed unsure, however, and they didn’t close on Ruegger. Junger had lost too much blood.
Ruegger held out his hand, and the scimitar returned to it, almost eager.
Danielle approached, then Jean-Pierre, Sophia and the others. Quietly they stared down at the last surviving Baklava. He glared up at them, hate and loss etched in every feature.
“Any last words?” Ruegger said.
Junger opened his mouth to speak, but Ruegger didn’t give him time. He swung, and Junger’s head rolled free. Blood spurted from his neck.
Danielle picked the head up in both hands, stuck her tongue at Junger’s still-moving face, and tossed the head upward, into the cloud of quasi-pterodactyls. No longer controlled by the assassins, they tore it to shreds.
Jean-Pierre and Sophia took up Junger’s body and tossed it to the zombies, who did the same. Next they found Jagoda’s remains and fed the pieces to different mud-sharks.
With the screeching of the quasi-pterodactyls in the background, the remains of the coven turned to each other, too tired to smile or do much of anything but hold themselves upright.
“It’s done,” Ruegger said, throwing an arm around Danielle. She leaned into him. “It’s finally done.”
EPILOGUE
Harry Lavaca, sipping on a very dry martini, watched the sun as it set spectacularly over the ocean. He sat, relaxed, on the large patio of his beach house on Swakashani, the main island of the Swakashani Islands, while a warm wind tossed the palm trees off to the side and ruffled his curly dark hair. Though he’d only lived here for about three weeks, he thought he could get used to island life.
As the last rays of the sun disappeared over the sea, two figures emerged from the water, both naked and smiling. Harry grinned at their dripping appearance and, being the good host that he was becoming, stood, collecting two robes and two towels, and marched down to the white sandy beach.
Ruegger and Danielle smiled at him, not at all embarrassed by their nudity, as they dried themselves, then shrugged on the robes. The three exchanged a few comments and moved to the deck, where the warm winds further dried the two immortals.
“Have a good day?” Harry said.
“Hell, yeah,” said Danielle. “You’ve go
t some great diving down there, marine life up the kazoo.”
“It was something,” Ruegger admitted. “I think Cozumel’s got some competition.” He grabbed a pack of smokes off the table, extracted two, stuck one in his mouth and handed the other to Danielle. As if by magic, the end of the sticks flared.
But Harry wasn’t going to be distracted; he’d spent too much time puzzling over the events of the past month, and he wasn’t about to be put off by small talk now.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” he said. “You pretty much left me on a cliff-hanger. We can talk scuba diving later.”
Ruegger seemed amused. “Sorry we got here so late last night. We didn’t have time to tell you much. And we spent all day in the water instead of checking out your guest rooms ...”
Harry waved this aside. “That, I’ll forgive. Hell, I’m the one that suggested you spend the day underwater. You came here for a vacation, after all.”
Danielle patted him on the hand. “You always were smart.”
The shades exchanged glances, and Ruegger turned back to Harry, smoke blowing like dragon-fire from his nostrils. “When’d we last see you, anyway? I mean, when did you leave the Castle for the second time?”
“When Cloire did. After your coronation ceremony. About a month ago.”
“And how far did we get in telling you about the night ... that night?” It clearly pained the Dark Lord to talk about it, but he seemed to feel he needed to, that speaking about it would erase the pain. Or, at least, alleviate it to some degree.
“I think we left off telling him about disposing of the bastards’ bodies,” Danielle supplied.
“Ah.” He nodded, apparently relieved. “We got through the worst of it, then.”
“Well?” Harry demanded. “What happened?”
“Once Junger and Jagoda were dead, the zombies ... they just all stopped. Slowly, they came back to themselves, and most asked to be killed rather than wait and die without chalgid blood.” He paused. Sadly, he added, “Their wish was obliged.”
Harry waited, trying not to picture the scene. “What about the Sabo?”
“It chose to wait,” Danielle said. “In fact, I think it’s still alive, after a manner of speaking.”
“And the nukes?”
“We dismantled them telekinetically on the spot—it was less risky than it sounds,” Ruegger said. “We could sense when we pushed in the wrong direction. Later we made sure the components were properly seen to. That was that. It took awhile, but finally everyone ... Jean-Pierre, Sophia, Kiernevar, Ladrido, Danielle, me ... we gathered up top. We gave aid to the survivors and tried to start picking up the pieces, establish some order. At one point, a powerful shade contested my rule.” Ruegger sighed. “He didn’t get far. Not that I wanted that authority, but I wanted him to have it less.”
“I remember,” Harry said. “I didn’t leave till just after that. Cloire said she couldn’t stand it anymore and wouldn’t come back until there was electricity.”
“That’s right.”
“I want to know about what happened after we left.”
Ruegger nodded. “The remnants of the Funhouse of the Forsaken gathered in the ruins, and they entertained us by lantern- and torchlight. It was surreal. Jean-Pierre finally gave Max the blood he’d promised him—not enough to make Max a kavasari, but enough to make him stronger than he was. By then, the Sangro Sankts had arrived. They’d felt Roche’s death and flown in to observe what was going on, if not to help. They … bowed to me. Before everyone. I told them I didn’t want the throne. They said I had no choice, that from what they’d seen I’d make a great king. They said I could have Danielle by my side as Queen. We’d rule together. Neither of us wanted any part of it, of course. But their response was, ‘We understand that, but who else? Pick someone you’d throw this burden on if you could, in good conscience, and we’ll abide by it.’
“So I told them I’d be their rotten king if they disbanded, or at least changed the priorities of their order. Reluctantly, they agreed. Some were sympathizers of Roche’s vision, but were bound by their order to fight him. After all the turmoil, the war ... after Amelia’s death ... she’d been one of them. Their morale was low, their faith in the priorities of their quasi-religion deflated, and their founder was dead and had exposed the order for what it was. Francois had taken the mythology out of it. Well, they acquiesced.”
“It wasn’t easy,” said Danielle. “We stood there arguing with them for some time.”
“They were stubborn, alright. But their faith was in tatters. All they needed was a push.”
“How did you change them up?” asked Harry.
Ruegger and Danielle smiled, almost laughing.
“What? Tell me.”
“They’re now our police force,” Danielle said. “It was our way of making sure they only fed off amoral shades. Actually, it was Jean-Pierre’s idea. A good one, too.”
Harry opened his mouth to speak, then paused.
“What is it?” Ruegger said.
Harry fortified himself with a sip of his martini and said, “After all you’ve been through, have you now come to any new, ah, beliefs?”
“You mean ... God?”
“Not necessarily. Just ... anything.”
“We believe in magic,” said Danielle. “And to tell you the truth, we’re glad to be away from it. Right before we came here, Ruegger made the taxi that picked us up at the airport stop off a Super Burger and we chowed down something fierce. But God? Or gods? No. I don’t think so. But, as Ruegger says, our minds are more open to the possibility than ever. If magic can exist, why not God?”
“And what about evil?”
“Evil,” Ruegger repeated slowly. “Yes. I guess Danielle believed in it all along, but I only started to when I realized how utterly immobile Junger and Jagoda were in their ways.” He ran a hand through his black hair, still wet. “Through the fifteen hundred years or so they’d been alive, they hadn’t altered at all—in fact, if anything, their appetites had increased. So, yes, I believe in evil now. But not as an element of nature or anything like that. I believe it’s just a state of mind, and like all states of mind it can be transitory, or, in some warped brains, it can linger.”
“So what happened afterward?”
“You mean, once Ruegger and I were crowned King and Queen of the Dark Empire?” Danielle said.
“Yeah. I’d never have thought either of you, even under the most bizarre circumstances, would fall into seats of power—much less the King and Queen of the only formal empire in immortal society.” Hastily, Harry raised a hand. “Don’t misinterpret me. I see you didn’t have a choice, and to tell you the honest truth I believe the same thing the Sangro Sankts did. I couldn’t pick a worthier pair to rule it. So what happened?”
“It was tedious,” Ruegger said. “I’ve never liked bureaucracy and sure didn’t like to be the head, or one of the two heads, of one.” He made a distasteful face. “Wasn’t much fun, especially at first. Danielle and I sent out word to all the far-flung elements of the empire that the war was over, peace was restored, all that. We invited them all to come to the Castle at a certain date.
“We gathered up the survivors of the Castle, hired some more shades, and began reconstructing what had been destroyed. Thank the fates for telekinesis; otherwise we’d never have been able to restore that ruin in a decade. But we did. The work’s still going on, sculptures and paintings being reproduced, etchings and all that. But by and large, it’s finished. Enough so that when the two weeks came about Dani and I stood on a replica of that same white tower in the Upper Courtyard and gave the speech to everyone. We told them everything. Everything. It took most of the night. For the next week we settled disputes among the people. General Brasher was chomping at the bit to have a go with one of the Councilmen that had comprised Subaire’s Half. He actually wanted us to set up the Pit again so he could duel it out with the Councilman.” Ruegger shook his head. “It was a tense week. In time ...�
�� He shrugged.
“In the meantime,” continued Danielle, “we asked Kiernevar to go down into the Refuge and renew all the spells laid by the sorcerers Subaire killed, the spells that were about to expire. He’s still down there, I think. Kind of made a home of it. Making the lives of the inhabitants of the Refuge more bearable. That’s one of the things Ruegger and I’ve had the hardest time with: should we maintain all those creatures? Some of them are pretty damned evil. We still haven’t come up with a solution we can live with, but we’re working on it. Also, we’ve made our convictions known about establishing a land of our own, a homeland, and about making peace with humanity. I think it’s having some effect. We hear them arguing over it, some for and some against, in the restaurants and taverns. Instead of just telling the Council to do what we want, like Roche did, we’re planting the seeds. Speaking of that, we don’t have a council, except for Jean-Pierre and Sophia and Ladrido—who’s now a man again. Kiernevar lived up to his word.”
“Also,” Ruegger said, “we’ve issued an edict preventing innocent blood, mortal or not, from being shed, and we’ve made the presence of the Sangro Sankts known. Now all shades are aware that if they kill an innocent, they’re likely to wind up as dinner for a hungry kavasari.” He laughed. “It wasn’t a popular introduction. We thought the Castle was going to mutiny on us there for awhile. But the four of us—Jean-Pierre, Sophia, Dani and me—we’re all still kavasari. No one attacked us. I think we’ve earned their respect, too. And it’s generated a whole new industry; now the slavers can’t just kidnap random humans and sell them off. Now they have to actively look for evil humans, which takes more time—and, naturally, they charge higher rates.
“And the Blood and Stone! Now that’s got to be an expensive place, now that it’s got an all-Vegetarian menu. We thought that in itself might generate a rebellion.” He cleared his throat, but the corners of his mouth were turned up. When he resumed, his voice was more subdued, but still charged with emotion. “So ways are changing, Harry. Whether they like it or not, shades are going to have to be moral from now on. But it’s a tough transition, and we’re getting a lot of static from it.”