by Mairsile
“So, if we don’t kill her here, then we will be within our rights to go to Russia and kill her there,” Cristaldo stated.
“Who needs permission to kill the bitch if she comes here trying to kill us?” Vince thought, forgetting that Nikki was not the only one who could hear them.
The other Spirit immortals chuckled, and one of them called Vince a wanker under his breath.
Vince gave him an angry glare and thought purposely, “Jealous?”
“Ludovico, control your children or send them from of the room,” Cristaldo said light-heartedly when he noticed Vince frowning at the other man.
Their sire shot them an angry glare and Nikki and Vince stood at attention, nodding in compliance.
“Actually, my children are here to demonstrate a new weapon my labs have developed,” Ludovico said, waving Vince over.
Vince walked up to Ludovico and drew his crossbow pistol from his side holster. His sire handed him a dart, which he laid on the barrel. He cocked the string and waited.
“Which one of your brave children will volunteer?” Ludovico asked the group.
“Volunteer for what?” John asked cautiously.
“Agonizing pain worse than death,” Ludovico said with a glint of satisfaction in his eye. “But don’t worry, they won’t die. I only put half a dose in the cartridge.”
Yamamuro raised his hand and signaled for one of his men. A medium-sized man with a small but muscular frame, wearing the traditional black Ninja-type uniform, quickly walked up to his sire and bowed. Then he turned to Vince and bowed. Vince half-heartedly bowed back and then, without fanfare, shot him in the leg with a dart.
The man looked down at the dart and angrily pulled it out, cursing in Japanese. He looked back at Vince and growled. Vince hid his smile as he held up three fingers and proceeded to count down. Just as he lowered the last finger, the man’s eyes bulged in pain and he grabbed his leg and went down.
“As you can see, the poison spreads out rapidly, and…” Ludovico waited as everyone watched the man writhing on the floor, screaming and grabbing his chest. “Now it’s in his chest. Be prepared, he will start bleeding from every orifice in a moment.”
Yamamuro, more interested in the poison’s effects than in his man, stood up and leaned over him, observing him closely, careful not to get his son’s blood on his shoes.
Leonard, who Ludovico had warned ahead of time what would happen, still cringed and fought the nausea churning in his stomach. He was the only one in the room who looked away.
“We know all about using the blood of dead humans, Ludovico,” John stated, unimpressed.
“That looked like more than just a dead human’s blood reaction to me, John,” Mairéad said.
“You are correct, Mairéad. I used a special blend of blood, holy water, garlic and salt.”
Laughing, John rebutted, “You think myths from the Old Country will stave off our enemies? That’s ludicrous.”
Ludovico bared his fangs and glared at his archrival. He filled his mind with cuss words so as not to alert John’s mind reader, but if a poison bullet accidently found its way into the Yankee, he hoped it was him who fired it. “And yet, you witnessed the results of using only half a dose. Have you ever rubbed salt in a wound?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “The garlic and salt inside the bloodstream burns the poison deeper into the veins and adds to the pain and bleeding.”
“And the holy water?” Cristaldo asked.
“Oh, that was just symbolic,” Ludovico said with a wry smile. “You don’t really need it at all.”
Yamamuro waved at his other man, who hesitated a moment before his sire shouted in Japanese, and then he rushed over. Ludovico waved over Nikki and Vince and the three of them carried the man out of the living room and out the front door.
“As you can see, one dart of the poison incapacitates the victim. Four or five darts would kill a man of his size. A larger man would take a larger dose, and so on. Two or three darts gives us a chance to wade through the enemy and kill them easily.” Ludovico held his hand out and Vince picked up an arrow and handed it to him. “And if you’re in a hurry,” Ludovico continued, “this is a very special arrow, its long shaft filled with enough poison to kill a man. No need to shoot twice.”
“That is not the honorable way to fight,” Yamamuro said as he sat back down.
Ludovico shook his head. “There is no honor in what Irinushka has done. We have no way of knowing if she is the only one with the five elements.”
“I doubt she’d allow anyone else to have all five,” John interceded.
“Maybe not,” Cristaldo said. “But you can bet they have more than one element between them.”
“It would be the smart thing to do if you’re planning a war,” Mairéad agreed.
“Y’all can fall on your sword if you want to, Yamamuro,” Ludovico said. “But this is my land, and I reckon I will fight her with everything I’ve got. And should I lose, she will come after you next.”
Ludovico nodded at Nikki and Vince, as they returned without the two Japanese immortals. “Bring over the ammo.”
The siblings walked out to the hallway closet and then came back in carrying three medium-sized boxes each. They set the boxes on the coffee table and opened them up. Then they began pulling out bullets of every size and darts, all with vials of the poison cocktail inside. They passed them around to each leader as Ludovico explained how they were specially made. He did not mention the Spirit blood he had experimented with on Nikki. Some secrets needed to remain just that.
The two Japanese vampires came back in, one dragging the other, weakened and bloodied from the poison. The leaders watched as the man slowly eased himself down to the floor and sat very still, waiting for the nausea, something he had not experienced in decades, to pass. If they weren’t sold on the idea before, they were then.
“Finally, because Irinushka has sent her soldiers to attack my people on my own land, I claim my right as land owner and territory leader to kill her myself. Understood?”
Grunts and head nods assured Ludovico that he would have his revenge.
*
Lilah took the jeep, hoping it would make better time back to the ranch, and she was right. The twenty-minute drive it took to pull the trailer to the campsite only took six minutes to return. Thinking about Nikki and how mad she was going to be with her, did nothing to deter her lead foot from holding the gas pedal down. Not knowing what was going on was the hardest thing for Lilah to accept, especially when it came to her father.
When the police called saying that her mother had been in a car accident, they wouldn’t tell her over the phone how bad an accident it was. Just that her mother had been taken by ambulance to the hospital. The police had called her at college instead of calling her father, because they were unable to reach him. Leonard was out on the open range branding cattle, and there was no cellphone reception in that area, so Lilah had to search for him by jeep. Except for now, where she was certain she was going to die, it was the single most frightening drive of her life.
Her mind distracted, she didn’t see the man standing in the middle of road until it was too late, and she hit him with the front of her jeep. “Oh my God!” she screamed and slammed both feet on the brake, almost losing control of the vehicle. “Oh my God!” she repeated, throwing the jeep into park and jumping out. Running over to where she was sure she had hit the man, she was stunned when she didn’t find him.
Something’s not right. She drew her pistol and looked around. A noise from above, like the wind rustling through the trees, if there were any trees in the vicinity, caused a flashback reminding Lilah of Vince flying in the air. She looked up, expecting to see him, and gasped when she realized it wasn’t him.
“Who are you? Tell me or I’ll shoot you dead.”
The vampire laughed as he floated closer. “Your silly bullets can’t hurt me, little girl,” he said and landed in front of her. He extended his fangs as his smile spread across his face.
“I haven’t eaten all day,” he said, and took a step closer to her.
She didn’t aim, she just pointed and fired, sending a bullet into his heart. He laughed again, and Lilah began to shake uncontrollably. She stepped back, firing repeatedly, blindly, frantically. The immortal finally grabbed his chest and fell to his knees before he collapsed to the ground. Still shaking, she tried to reload her pistol, dropping a few bullets in the process. The vampire moaned and Lilah shot him again and again, until she emptied the gun a second time. He didn’t move, but she couldn’t trust that he was dead, so she holstered her empty revolver and ran back to the jeep and gunned it for home.
*
“Vince, hurry,” Nikki whispered, hoping that her sire was too distracted with the leaders to see her pulling Vince toward the door.
Vince didn’t say or think anything as he allowed himself to be pulled into the foyer.
Still not wanting the others to hear her, Nikki continued whispering. “Something’s terribly wrong. I can feel Lilah’s heart pounding; her thoughts consumed with terror. We have to find her!”
“Come on, I’ll fly you up to the camp,” Vince said urgently, running for the front door.
Nikki ran after him, saying, “I don’t think she’s at the camp, because I can hear her. She has to be close by.”
When Vince reached the front porch, he stopped suddenly and drew his crossbow. Nikki also stopped short, sniffing the air as she pulled her sword from her back. Cautiously both of them walked down the steps and looked around.
“Nikki, run!”
“Lilah?” Nikki looked up just as the vampire, holding Lilah by her collar, with his knife in his other hand, descended.
“Come any closer and she’s dead,” he proclaimed. He stood there, still holding Lilah off the ground, as if he were waiting for something.
“Put her down, you bastard!” Nikki demanded. The tears of fear streaming down Lilah’s face were more than she could bear. Once she had her safely secured, she would kill the bastard slowly, with as much pain as she could inflict, and then she’d revive him and kill him again. It would be worth the insanity.
Ludovico, Leonard and the rest of the immortals ran from the house with their weapons drawn, some of them hurriedly loading the poisonous ammo.
Lilah kept her eyes on Nikki. “I’m so sorry, Nikki. I didn’t see him.”
Nikki could hear her heart beating erratically, her breath in shallow gasps, and the smell of pure fear emanating from her soul. Her thoughts became chaotic, tumultuous, and then suddenly they were calm, as if she had come to a conclusion. As if she had given up.
“I love you, Nikki. I love you so much!”
“No! I demand that you release her now!” Nikki yelled again.
But the vampire wasn’t concerned with Nikki any longer. He had the audience he was waiting for.
“My mistress sends a message,” the immortal stated, finally letting Lilah’s feet touch the ground, although he did not release her.
Ludovico stepped around Nikki and stood in front of the vampire. “And what message would that be?”
The man grinned, winked at Nikki, and then plunged his knife into Lilah’s heart.
Chapter Seventeen
Blurred figures, like apparitions, floated in front of Nikki in slow motion. Strange voices, garbled and hollow, drifted to her ears. What was he saying? Who was lying on the ground?
“Nikki! Nikki, snap out of it!” Vince shook Nikki. “You’re in shock, sister.”
Nikki blinked away the haze covering her eyes. “Lilah Rose!” she cried, finally releasing the scream that had stuck in her throat. She ran to her and flung herself at Lilah’s side.
Leonard was already there, pulling the knife out and putting his hands over his daughter’s heart, trying to stop the bleeding. There was so much blood.
Beulah held Lilah’s hand, pink tears streaming down her face. A human body is made up of fifty to sixty percent of water. A vampire’s body is made up of forty to fifty percent of blood so their tears are tinged with blood.
Cristaldo pulled out his knife and sharpened it on the stone, soaking it in the poisonous blood.
“No, I want him alive,” Ludovico barked.
“She’s not breathing. Her heart’s stopped,” Nikki exclaimed when she couldn’t hear Lilah’s heart thumping any longer.
Leonard, white as a ghost, knew that she was gone. Her pupils were fixed, and her face was gray. His anger boiled the tears in his eyes, and his heart turned to stone. He walked over to Cristaldo and held his hand out. Cristaldo looked at Ludovico, who nodded, and then he handed Leonard his knife. Every man there knew that it was Leonard’s right. Leonard stood in front of the immortal, held securely by several men, and without preamble, drove the knife up to the hilt, into his heart. “She was my only daughter, damn you!” he shouted. Leonard turned, wiped his tears, and walked back to where Lilah lay.
“Oh God, Lilah!” Nikki scooped her up in her arms and cradled her. “Vince, help me.”
“Do it, sister. I’ve got your back,” Vince assured her.
Nikki laid Lilah gently on the ground and then stood up and pulled out her pocketknife.
Suddenly, all the immortals smelled another vampire at the same time, and all eyes lifted toward the roof of the house. Even with the warning, the vampire was able to get off a shot with deadly accuracy. Vince pushed his sister out of the way even as the Air immortals took to the wind and pursued the assassin.
Vince looked at Nikki, then down at the arrow sticking out of his chest. “Oh, shit.”
Ludovico rushed over at inhuman speed and quickly pulled the arrow out. Then he sniffed the tip. His face became stone, his eyes an angry red.
Vince clutched his chest and fell to his knees beside Lilah, landing in Leonard’s arms. Blood and tears from Leonard’s shirt dripped into Vince’s open wound, sizzling into a vaporous cloud. The sight of it sent Leonard over the edge. He convulsed in hysterical laughter, the shrill of it echoing for miles. Beulah knelt beside him and touched his arm, sending her calming influence into his distraught mind.
His eyes churned with waves of pain, grief, and anger, but after a few moments, Beulah’s energy calmed the crashing tide of his emotions, and he was able to focus again. “She was my little girl.”
Beulah wrapped her arm around Leonard’s shoulder and held him. There was nothing she could say that would comfort him, nothing more she could do. It would be up to Nikki, now.
“No!” Nikki screamed, kneeling beside her brother. “Don’t worry, Vince,” she said, drawing Vince’s attention away from Leonard. “There are plenty of Spirit immortals here. You’ll be all right.”
“I’m sorry, Nikki,” Cristaldo said, looking down at Vince. “But this is war and we can’t afford to lose another man, especially a Spirit. But I promise that this boy’s death will not have been in vain.”
Nikki’s anger was immediate. She turned to Cristaldo and yelled, “Fuck you, Cristaldo! I’ll do it myself.”
“Nikki, you can’t save both of them,” Beulah explained in her mind.
Vince, with a shaky hand, grabbed Nikki’s shirt. “Save her,” he gurgled, blood dripping from his mouth. “Save her, Niko.”
Nikki looked at Lilah and knew that time was running out for her, but she was determined to save them both. She’d never heard of a Spirit immortal bringing two people back from the dead at the same time, and she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be so easy regaining her sanity this time, but it didn’t matter; losing either one of them was unacceptable.
“Nikki?” Beulah said out loud, her heart aching for the decision she knew she had to make.
Nikki opened her pocketknife and sliced a cut across the palm of her hand. She knelt beside Lilah again, as Beulah pulled Leonard back. With her bleeding hand on the wound over her heart, Nikki put her other on her forehead and then pushed her energy, her love, and her life blood into her limp body. “Come back to me, Lilah. Please come back.”
Ludovico wal
ked over to the captive, now on the ground frothing at the mouth from seizures. “Tell me what was on that arrow. Tell me, damn it!”
“Death,” the vampire replied between violent spasms. He was imploding from the inside out.
“He will spare you, if you give us the antidote,” Cristaldo bargained, cleaning the vampire’s blood from his knife.
“Never mind, Cristaldo. He’s dead,” Ludovico said, kicking the body.
Yamamuro waved his two men over. “Take the body out to the desert where it can’t be found and decapitate it. The sun will take care of the rest.”
Ludovico threw them a set of keys to a truck parked nearby, and the two men picked up the body and tossed it into the truck bed. As they drove away, the Air immortals returned with the sniper in their grasp. He was missing an arm.
They dragged him over to Ludovico, who grabbed a handful of his hair and yanked his head back. “Where did you get this arrow?”
The assassin, clutching the stump of what was left of his arm, wasn’t as cocky as the other man. He pleaded for his life. But that wasn’t the answer Ludovico wanted, so he nodded at his men and they yanked the man’s good arm out and sliced just deep enough into the bicep to cause more excruciating pain.
“From inside the house!” he yelled, nearly collapsing.
“Damn it!” Ludovico shouted. “It’s one of my own damn arrows.” Ludovico looked at Vince, who stared at him incredulously through the burning pain that was spreading across his chest.
Vince had waited until Nikki’s energy was bonded to Lilah, and then, with his last ounce of strength, he stirred up the air until it grew strong enough to lift him from the ground. “Take care of yourself, sis,” he said with halted breath.