inherit the earth

by Hunter

  At first the changes were subtle, a halo of light where there should be none, the sparkle of — something — in the center of a pool of darkness. Jake blinked, backing slowly toward the door. Then the dust on the floor whirled, caught in the grip of some errant breeze, and images began to transpose themselves over the drab interior. Bodies moved in time to a soft undercurrent of music, light glowed dimly, brightening gradually and glittering off a million pinpoints of crystal — a chandelier — dangling from the center of the cathedral-height ceiling.

  To his right, Northwind gasped.

  Jake was still backpedaling, the door a few footsteps away. He glanced over and saw that Northwind was not moving toward the door. She was turning slowly, eyes wide, staring into each comer of the room. Jake saw her hips sway, ever so slightly, and his mind correlated that motion with the sound - the music. The lights were still brightening, and the dust had faded, all but disappearing from the furniture — more furniture than there could be.

  Those moving about them paid no heed to the two intruders, but danced slowly. Peels of laughter echoed through the suddenly festive hall. Festive, but with a dark edge to it that Jake couldn’t quite put a name to. Something decidedly bitter and stale permeated the air. Jake stopped his retreat and stepped toward Northwind.

  “Hey, ” he called out softly, for some reason unwilling to disturb the music more than was necessary.

  He got no response.

  “Hey! ” he called out more loudly, stepping close and letting his hand drop onto the girl’s shoulder. She spun wildly, her arm drawing back as if she would strike him and her eyes wild. For a long moment Jake held his breath, readied to drop back, or block her arm if she swung at him. Slowly, her eyes focused, and she began to tremble, slumping. Jake managed to catch her, barely, before she hit the floor.

  “What.. “ her question remained unfinished. Steps sounded on the stairs, and Jake turned, the motion drawing the girl close to his side.

  It was Scyther. He was stalking down the stairs like a slender cat. In his hands, he held a book — the book? The volume was clasped before him, held reverently close to his chest. His eyes shone with energy. He stared right at Jake. Right through Jake. He continued down the stairs as if no one but he, and those who’d stopped their eerie dance to witness his arrival, existed in the world. Jake drew Northwind back against the wall and held her close to his side, watching the panorama before them.

  There was a disturbance along the back wall, near another doorway that led beyond the parlor. Jake turned, keeping his gaze fixed on Scyther, or whatever passed as Scyther, from the comer of one eye. The crowd was parting, and someone was entering the room from the far side. At first there was the vague sensation of motion. Then there was a scent, a certain scent that sent Jake’s sense reeling

  — because it was hers — and then the crowd parted and deep, endless eyes stared into Jake’s own, and beyond.

  A crashing sound reverberated through the house, and the images crumbled. They had formed slowly, intricately — they ended in a sudden crash of silence, then the scuffle of rough footsteps.

  Thinblade strode into the room, puffs of dust rising around him, Janey at his side. From the far side of the room, where Jake had seen Phaedre

  — Brad stepped into sight, swinging his head from side to side and searching the shadows.

  Jake could only stare, and he felt Northwind trembling hard against his side. He knew she’d seen what he had seen, or something very close to it. It was equally obvious in that moment that none of the others had seen a thing.

  “No sign of anyone on this side, ” Brad called out. “No prints, and the dust is thick enough to have been here for years. A lot of years. ”

  “Same in back, ” Thin replied, nodding. They all spun to where Jake and Northwind stood, trembling, near the wall.

  “What happened? ” Thin asked, stepping closer. Jake felt the young man’s concern slide over and off and onto Northwind.

  “I — WE — saw — something, ” she managed at last, fighting for each breath and then exhaling it in a rush that barely formed words. “A party, they were dancing, and… he was there. “Thin’s face tightened. “You saw him? Does he know we’re here? ”

  “Not him, exactly, ” Jake cut in. “What we saw wasn’t — here — I think. It was like a vision. We saw what happened here a long time ago. It was Scyther, all right, but there was more. I saw Phaedre. ”

  “How could you know that? ” Brad cut in. “Maybe it was him, sending thoughts into your head. ” “I’ve heard they can do that, ” Thin said, nodding and staring at Jake dubiously.

  Jake grew very still, then reached beneath his shirt and pulled out the book. He turned the pages slowly, skimming in the gloom, until he found the passage he’d been looking for. Without hesitation, he read.

  “Things were getting into full swing when I finally made my way into the thick of things. Monty and Belle were entertaining at the bar, several of Le Duc’s charges, bound to the table, stripped of annoying human garb and squirming so prettily against the wood. Different vintage for each taste — two of the young girls had been given wine so their blood — their emotion — would bear that stain — others had been whipped, stripped, blindfolded. There was Latin blood to taste, and tender white skin. A smorgasbord and I, the maitre d’, watching over it all.

  “As I made my way in, Phaedre finally took leave of her tedious studies to join us. A festive night indeed, and the best still to come. ”

  “It was just like that, ” Northwind breathed softly. “You read the book, ” Thinblade cut in. “You read that, then your minds built it around you. ”

  “Both of us at the same time? ” Jake tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice. “I don’t think that’s likely. “Something happened here. A warning? A vision? A trick? I can’t tell you that, only that it happened. ”

  A voice whispered, very softly — deep inside. “Some fairy tales are real. ”

  Jake shook his head and frowned, backing toward the door again.

  “He drew us here, ” Jake said quickly. “He saw me in that auction, and he knew me. He left this damned book, ” he shook the old volume toward the stairs, “knowing we would find him. Maybe he even knew I’d found you. ”

  “We were careful, ” Thin replied, shaking his head slowly.

  “He is older than you are, ” Jake said slowly. “He has seen things and known things we may never even fantasize. What makes you think he couldn’t get through our defenses? For that matter, if you believe he can put thoughts in people’s heads, what’s to keep him from taking others out? ”

  “Doesn’t matter, ” Brad cut in. “We’re here, for whatever reason, and he’s got Danielle. We have to find him quick. Sun isn’t going to last forever, and we have hunting to do. ”

  Thinblade nodded quickly and turned toward the stairs.

  “I don’t plan on waiting for bright-boy to wake up. He may have drawn us here, but that doesn’t mean we lose. It only means we have to get smarter. ”

  “He came from there, ” Jake said, pointing to the stairs. We have no way to know he sent that vision. Maybe others did. Maybe those others that Northwind sees are trying to help. ”

  “Couldn’t hurt, ” Janey grinned. “Let’s go see if the ‘Master’ is in his chambers. ”

  They turned as a group and mounted the spiraling stairway, heading upward into the shadowed gloom. The dust was thick, rising in clouds that threatened to cut off their air. Some of the clouds took shape and danced momentarily, only to fade into darkness. Jake concentrated on the steps leading upward, clutching the book to his chest like a talisman.

  They reached the upper hall and stopped, staring down a seemingly endless corridor of doors. The carpet was musty and dank, the air scented with mildew and the musk of animals. Still, through it all, the building held a decadent grandeur deep within its walls. It seeped out to draw the eye to a bit of woodwork - a particularly gaudy lamp - long dead and lightless, clinging to the
wall with all the grace of a skeletal arm embedded in stone.

  Northwind hadn’t moved far from Jake’s side. It was obvious, though she kept to herself, that she saw more than they did. She shivered, gasping occasionally. Jake scanned the corridor, then fixed his eyes on her face. She was fixed on one door. There was no reason to pick it from the others. There must have been a dozen, but she walked straight ahead, one hand reaching out to trail along the wall, leaving trails in the dust.

  Jake laid his hand gently on her shoulder. “What do you see? ” he asked.

  “They litter the hall, ” she said softly. “Young, beautiful — young men and women. They died here. So much blood. So much. Now they are watching me - watching you. ”

  “I don’t think anyone’s been here for a very long time, ” Brad said. He and Thinblade had nearly reached the end of the hall. Neither seemed in a hurry to push open any of the doors

  - as if they feared what they might find. What they might learn.

  “He’s here, ” Northwind whispered. “He’s been here ever since - then. ”

  “The party? ” Jake asked.

  “Yes, ” She replied. “Since then. Alone. ” Thinblade was staring at his younger companion, a skeptical frown creasing his forehead. “How do you know that? ” he asked at last. “They are telling me, ” she whispered. “In my head, all of them, dead, bleeding through the rug so it dripped to the room below, wasted

  - so much waste - and it wasn’t enough. He was - angry. ”

  “Then why did he stay? ” Jake asked quickly. “Why kill everyone - everything - even the house - and stay? ”

  “She left, ” Northwind shrugged. Her eyes were distant, and it was obvious that whatever voices whispered in her mind were distracting her from her surroundings. Her words had a disjointed rhythm, and Jake was afraid she might pass out at any moment. Extra-sensory overload?

  “The voices. ” Janey breathed. “I’ve heard voices. Hell, we’ve all heard them. You know that Thin. Kept us alive this long - you going to give up on them now? ”

  “Not if they help me kill that bloodsucker, ” Thin scowled, turning toward the doorway that Northwind was fixated on.

  They all filed in behind, Jake leading Northwind by the arm gently. The door wasn’t locked, and it swung inward with a loud groan. Rust and rotted wood - and the scent of lilies. Suddenly, the air was filled with the scent of lilies. Jake stepped forward to glance over Thin’s shoulder.

  The floor was littered with the petals. Pots with withered plants lay in every corner and on every horizontal surface. There was a bed in one corner. It wasn’t rotted, nor was it covered in dust like the rest of the old home. It was clean and the sheets were bright white. The surface of the quilt covering the mattress was littered with more of the lily petals, so many you could barely make out the material beneath, and in the center of it all, eyes closed and head listing to one side against a soft, down-filled pillow, lay Danielle.

  “What the fuck is this place? ” Brad whispered.

  No one answered, but Jake slipped away from Northwind and over to the bed, sitting on the edge of the mattress and reaching out quickly to check her pulse. It was there, weak, but there.

  “She’s alive, ” he said, turning.

  As he turned, the shadows in the furthest comer of the room rustled, and he was there. Scyther, just as he’d looked at the auction -darker - eyes blazing with an inner light that seemed to ripple and spark as his lips curled into a leering smile.

  “So good of you to come, ” he said softly. Though the words were not spoken loudly, they carried. They echoed and whipped about a room suddenly devoid of breath, or sound.

  Jake stood, turning to face the vampire. He knew he was protected, somewhat. The others he didn’t know about, so he spoke.

  “You left little choice. ”

  “The world is nothing but choice, ” Scyther replied, stepping just a bit further from the shadows. There were no windows. There was no light. Still, it seemed remarkable to Jake that the vampire could move at all.

  “Why Danielle, ” Jake asked. “Why me? ”

  “You were an afterthought, ” Scyther replied with a smirk. “The woman and I have danced for years. Do you truly believe she thought she’d kill me? That this is the first time she’s been here? That anything you believe is truth when everything around you fades to lies? You remind me of another -though I don’t know why. You - and the books. I wanted that one back. ”

  Scyther was pointing to where Jake still clutched the leather bound volume to his chest. “It was mine, ” the vampire went on.

  “Why do you want it? ” Northwind asked, stepping forward suddenly. “They are gone. All of them are gone, and they aren’t coming back. ” Scyther’s expression darkened with the swiftness of a rising storm, but Northwind appeared not to notice. She knelt slowly, reaching out to an empty space on the carpet. Jake’s gaze followed her slender fingers. He knew he should not look away from the vampire. He knew, and yet - something was happening. He couldn’t not look away.

  Where there had been only dust and the withered, dried lily petals, a long, slender body was taking shape. The limbs were sprawled at odd angles. Impossible angles. It was a woman — long legs and dark hair, pooled like blood around her face, blending with what must have been blood on the carpet, lips parted in an expression close to a smile and so far from it that it defied description.

  Very suddenly, and very quickly, Scyther was moving. He rushed toward Northwind, who seemed oblivious to his existence.

  “She loved the flowers. ” Northwind’s voice was clear, and something in the words struck the vampire with the force of an anvil - dropping him to his knees.

  “She loved the flowers, ” Northwind repeated, turning toward Scyther slowly, “but she didn’t love you. Never. You couldn’t have her, so you took the flowers — you wrote the words, trapped the images in that book forever - and you took this one. ” Northwind’s hand trailed along the shimmering body on the floor before her. “You took her because she took her first. ”

  “She should not… she.. ” Scyther rose suddenly, anger flaring in his eyes.

  “You have no right to those memories, ” he grated, stepping forward again. “You have no right to see my dead. You have no rights here at all, except the right of death. ”

  Scyther suddenly seemed taller. The room was darker, and it was hard to focus because he moved so quickly, like a flitting shadow. His voice came from all around them at once, and Jake drew Northwind back to her feet.

  Thinblade, who’d been watching, and listening, had not been idle. He had a long, slender blade in his hand — polished wood, honed and balanced. He gripped Janey by her shirt and dragged her to the center of the room at his side. Brad closed in beside Janey on the other side, and Jake, catching on quickly, backed into the circle, drawing Northwind behind him and tugging her into place between himself and Thin.

  “You can stand together, ” Scyther taunted them, slipping around the room, more and more quickly. “You can run, and fall apart. You can watch one another’s backs and curse me with your last breath. You will all die.

  “I will not be stalked and mocked in my own home. I will not have you, ” a hand reached out of nowhere, gripping Northwind’s hair and yanking her roughly off balance, only to slip away again, “and your half-truth stolen memories haunting me. You know nothing of her. You can’t know the barest edge of my pain. ”

  “She hated you, ” Northwind said, standing straighter. “They all hated you. No matter what you did, how extravagant, it was never enough. Danielle hated you too, and still you hope. She will hate you when she wakes, and again if you kill her and bring her back. Just like the others. You took her parents, how could she not hate you? ”

  There was a quick growl and Scyther shot from the darkness like a bolt from a crossbow. Jake whispered a single word as he frantically jerked Northwind aside.

  “Phaedre. ”

  Scyther’s lips parted, his eyes widened, and
at that moment, hands reached up from below, long slender fingers whipping through the air like lightning to grip his ankles like iron fetters. He slammed forward, crashing to the floor and whipping around. Too late. That moment was all it took for Thinblade to launch, and his stake / knife severed the vampire’s heart with a clean stroke, sending a sudden cloud of choking dust whirling to the floor to settle among the dying flowers.

  Northwind pulled away from Jake and knelt once more beside the body on the floor. It glowed more brightly than before, shimmering. Thinblade and the others gathered around, and Jake could tell that they now saw the woman as well, or that they saw something.

  A voice slipped through the silence. Jake couldn’t tell if the words were spoken, or if he somehow just heard them. They were not spoken for him alone.

  “I loved him. ” The ghostly woman turned slowly, so that she lay flat on her back and her eyes - bright lights in a dark visage — stared at the ceiling, and beyond. “I was the only one. I loved him, and he brought me here - to a room of her flowers - to die. He killed me because she left, and he didn’t bring me back.

  “He once called me his Lily, ” she breathed. The word ended in a rasping sigh and the image broke, so much smoke in the darkness. The room, very suddenly had the empty chill of a tomb.

  “Let’s get out of here, ” Thinblade rasped. He leaned down, picking Danielle up in his arms, and turning toward the door. They filed out after Kim, down the winding stairs and toward the world beyond slowly, each lost in his own thoughts.

  Jake’s thoughts were the image of the party, Phaedre, parting the crowd as she exited the library. The others slipped out the front, but Jake turned, moving quickly across the great hall and into the library beyond. The books were rotting on the shelves, some leather and older than he had ever seen, most crumbled, pages lying like the lily-petals above, scattered on the floor.