He stood up from his chair and advanced toward us. A few of the doors on either side of the long hall opened. Pale vampiric faces appeared, but Ginger Guy held up a hand. “I don’t need help with this abomination,” he told his companions. He waved a hand, and Tess and Kamila flew back into the wall. I felt the wind and the pressure, but I stayed where I was.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” the thing sneered. “Half of vampire kind is all up in arms about this Legion Flame thing, and it turns out to be you? Give me a fucking break. I’m thousands of years old. I’m going to crush you like the insect you are, and when I’m done, you’ll be begging for the sweet release of death.”
He moved with the speed of a rumor to stand before me, our toes nearly touching. His icy fingers wrapped around my throat, cutting off my air with a casual squeeze. “I won’t give it to you, though. In fact, I might chain you down and keep you around for eternity.” He squeezed. “It would be a good punishment for the imbecile they insist on calling the Legion Flame.”
It took me a second to remember I didn’t need to breathe. Then I pushed out, shooting even more flame from every part of me. I focused on my rage. It didn’t kill him, but it made him put me down. “You can take your Legion Flame, and you can take your war, and you can take your ego, and you can wrap them all in duct tape and shove them right up your ass.” I could smell the burning flesh, like burning and rancid pork. “You don’t get to control this. You don’t get to control any of this. The world doesn’t belong to you, not now and not ever.”
He clawed at his eyes, now boiling in their sockets, and he staggered back. Then he lifted his head to show me my handiwork. The skin around his eyes had blackened and charred, and the sclera was red, but he didn’t seem permanently harmed. “Do you honestly believe you can stand against me? I am Chilperic. My Father, my Lord, and Creator was the Great Demon Malphas himself. Malphas is a Prince of Hell. You? You’re nothing but a cow that had to piss. You may have a couple of parlor tricks, but you’re an insect, a gnat. You’re nothing at all compared to those of us who serve Malphas, and your place is under my fang.”
He reached for my chest. I had no doubt that Chilperic would reach into my chest and pull out my heart, given half a chance. That would be all she wrote, game over, nothing left. I would be dead.
My anger only grew. I screamed as I launched a new flame at Chilperic. Everything I had went into those flames. I focused with an intensity I’d never felt before, not even when fighting other vampires. I might die trying, but I was going to make Chilperic pay for everything he’d done. My blood sang with lust for his death, and my vision began to narrow form the effort of killing the prick that had stolen my life.
Chilperic had orchestrated everything. He hadn’t meant to create me as a Ferin, but he’d had every intention of taking my life that night in Maine. He’d orchestrated the attack on Owl’s Head. He’d ordered the attack on Kamila’s house, too. He’d almost certainly killed Mort, and he’d definitely had the Ferin here in Twin Falls killed.
I thought about the pit of migrant workers, rotting away where no one would ever find them. That had been Chilperic, too. I envisioned the faces of relatives, here and abroad, who would never know what had happened to their loved ones. Energy surged through me, fueling my flames with righteous hatred.
Chilperic kept laughing. I could smell his skin burning and even his hair, but he kept laughing. “That’s good. I like to see so much passion and anger in the young. You’d probably have made a decent vampire if I’d gotten to you thirty years ago. Of course, I didn’t. Your wife? Oh, now she was delicious. I banged her like a screen door in the wind, and she loved every minute of it. That’s something you could never do, isn’t it? You could never satisfy her. But I could.”
I didn’t rise to the bait. Linda had long since ceased to be any concern of mine. Chilperic’s clothes ignited. For the first time, I saw him sweat, beads of blood standing out against his skin. He began to stipple under the rush of my attack.
I pushed even harder. For a second, it felt like I was pushing against a mountain of granite, cold and unyielding. Then the wall gave, and a stream of water erupted from underneath the lair. It looked like a main break with enough pressure to pin Chilperic to the ceiling.
I didn’t let up. I didn’t know where the unexpected line rupture had come from, but I couldn’t afford to lessen my assault, even for a second. The water turned to steam where it hit the flames, making his skin bubble and begin to slough off in glorious shades of pink and red. I hadn’t gotten deep enough into Chilperic to make his blood boil yet, but I would get there.
Moreover, he began to think I could.
“You’re pathetic,” he taunted. He struggled to get down from his perch, but the geyser kept him pinned to the ceiling, pummeling every inch of his roasting body. “Do you honestly think a mere Ferin can stand against a son of Malphas?”
A couple of the other vampires decided to ignore their leaders’ orders and enter the fray, claws slashing, and fangs bared. Tess and Kamila had recovered from Chilperic’s attack and jumped in to defend me, so it was still just my maker and me, fighting to the death. I was going to destroy Chilperic, or he would end me just as he’d begun me—brutally. Either way, there would be no half measures. Only one of us would leave this place.
My head throbbed, and blood trickled from my nose, hot and coppery in my senses. I had to boil Chilperic’s blood right down to the last cell. It might be the only way to stop him. I could feel his own attack, an unseen pressure that was alien and invasive, but I had no context for what he was trying to do. Either I was immune, which would be a best-case scenario, or his attack hadn’t reached critical mass.
He looked uneasy now, blood streaming from skin that warped with rippling wounds and healing, every action consuming his reserves in an endless cycle of pain. “Yield, and I’ll be generous,” he promised. “I’ll kill you fast. No torture first.”
I pushed harder. I knew now what he was trying to do. Even as I tried to boil his blood, he was cooling it down, his vampiric energy lancing through his own tissue like the breath of winter. He wasn’t able to fight me, fight the water main, or help his minions against Tess or Kamila. All he could do was fight against me. I had him alone despite being surrounded. I had him vulnerable despite being immortal.
It was a heady feeling nearing godhood, and I gave another push against his icy defenses as they fell, one by one. He opened his mouth to scream, but I filled it with fire.
Chilperic began to howl.
37
When the geyser first erupted underneath Chilperic, it felt accidental. As my fight with my maker continued, I realized I could feel the water.
More to the point, I could feel Chilperic pushing back against it.
I couldn’t allow that. If he could move, he could fight me hand-to-hand. If he hit me or tried to tear my throat out, I’d lose. I increased pressure on him from the water, and that kept him exactly where I wanted him—up against the ceiling, splayed like an insect on a specimen board.
I kept the flame on him regardless of the cost to me. I hadn’t tried to exert myself like this before, but I’d never found a limit, nor did I know what would happen when I reached it. I kept the pressure on even as my own body began to warp inside, each lance of flame and power consuming the fire within me, like coal being taken to stoke a boiler. Every time one of his walls fell, I was gifted some of my own strength back, a small rush of cool calm that infused me from head to toe. I would not rest until he was ashes. Failure was not an option.
“Two tricks in one day. You’ve grown since the floor of that shithole bathroom.” Chilperic’s charred lip curled with disdain. I speared him with yet another vein of liquid fire that tumbled through the air to splash over his skin like napalm.
He grunted, but his chatter didn’t die. “Fire and water, how absolutely adorable. Tell me, can you roll over? Can you play dead? I can teach you those just fine, Piss Boy.”
He was getti
ng weaker—I could feel it—but my control over my abilities started to slip as I consumed my own reserves. When I began to waver, my power took over, leaving me as a passenger in my own body. The sensation was distant if violating, but I didn’t fight it. I embraced the heat and let it flow.
My hand reached out of its own volition and wove a complex glyph in the air. In that instant, the geyser turned to superheated steam, combining water and fire in one beautiful column. Chilperic howled in agony, but he still had the strength to negotiate. “You can’t finish me, Piss Boy. I’m too old. I’m too strong. Take your whores and go. You may yet see another sunrise.”
I opened my mouth to shout at him, but I had no breath.
I had fire.
I became a dragon, if not in body then in flame. Fire streaked from my mouth in a cone of such light and fury that the walls around us began to crack. Hidden metals in the stone melted, dripping to the floor in fat, searing globs. I could see a scorch pattern on the stones vaulting above us, making an outline of where Chilperic writhed. His struggles grew feebler by the second, but I didn’t trust it. I couldn’t. He was evil incarnate, and he would absolutely feign weakness to get down from that ceiling. I opened my jaw wider, reveling in the feel of my power. I was fire.
He shrieked in a symphony of pain, his neck bulging with the effort to make himself heard over the roar of my fire. Black blood shot from his mouth, thick and stinking, then he closed his mouth with an effort and tried to sneer, but his body betrayed him.
“You are no Lifebringer,” he cackled, spraying blood with his denial.
Tess grew tense, then turned her sights back to the remaining vampires, their howls of rage filling the space around us one by one, they were picked off by fire, or spike, or both.
“I don’t know or care about your Lifebringer.” The voice coming from me didn’t even sound like me. Of course, I wasn’t myself just then. I was somewhere between fire and dragon, and a far cry from a middle-management cubicle jockey. “I will slaughter you and all you care for. I will end you. Here.”
“Sons of Malphas don’t care for much.” Chilperic coughed another gob of blood and spat it onto the floor. “It’s ironic that you fight me here since it is you, the Lifebringer who’ll bring about the death of all Ferin. I’m proud of you.” He grinned, cooked and bloody. “Son.”
I snarled. “You know I’ll have nothing to do with that.” The words weren’t mine, but the sentiment was. I would deny him what he wanted now, here at the end. I opened my mouth again to unleash the killing blow, pure in light and heat and purpose. The fire struck true, as I knew it would.
Chilperic arched his back and howled as steam poured into his lungs, the clouds vanishing inside him in a whirlpool of superheated vapor. His hands crabbed into gnarly shapes as a series of gunshot cracks echoed through my head. His spine was breaking, bone by bone as he fought me for control of the last parts of his body. I felt a weak attempt as he tried to turn me away but swatted his efforts down with a disdainful snort. My abilities weren’t affected, so I allowed his attack to fuel the end of his life.
Every inch of Chilperic’s skin burst into flame. I could feel the heat from his fire, and when molten metal dripped to the ground, I realized his buttons and zipper had been destroyed, finally melting as the last of his defenses collapsed.
He claimed to be thousands of years old. Who else had suffered at his hands? How many others had been torn apart by this evil being? If I let him down, and he healed and walked away, how many more would be destroyed?
I moved, directing a stream of flame into his open mouth. He gagged and screamed in a high, piping voice gone brittle from the scorching effects of my fire. Spots erupted from Chilperic’s body, black and gray and red, winking with light as the skin grew thin, then stretched, and finally broke. Deep underneath all that dry, marbled skin, the blood he’d stolen from countless other people was boiling. One by one, those spots erupted, releasing steam into an already super-heated atmosphere, the scent of new pennies heavy in the air as his food became the thing that would kill him in the end.
Chilperic knew his life could now be counted in minutes, if not seconds. He raged and clawed at the ceiling to no avail. This monster, this thing that had occupied so many of my nightmares and my motivations, was reduced to sobbing and begging for his Master. He wasn’t even speaking English anymore, only whatever long-dead language had been his before his Master took him.
He exploded, shaking several stones loose from the ceiling, the rocks now crumbling as they struck the floor. His body was ash before it landed, and I was in control of my own body again, even if every nerve in my body sizzled with the unseen war of fire and healing.
I puked into the standing water. The water main no longer shot up into the air, but instead bubbled into the basement. Obscenely cheerful and clean.
All movement in the basement ceased. Ten vampires still survived. For half a second, I hoped, against hope, that they might flee now that their leader had met his end.
It was a vain hope. They swarmed, fangs out, and I felt disgusted like nothing I’d ever known possible.
Kamila reached under her jacket and pulled out her shotgun. She tossed it to me, sensing my exhaustion. I was nowhere near the shot she was, but I didn’t have to be with a shotgun. I aimed at the vampire farthest from the ladies and pulled the trigger. The resulting kick made me wince even as the shot tore into the vamp, leaving heart and ribs exposed to the light before the creature collapsed into ashes.
Tess had her hands full with another vampire, stabbing wildly at the tall blonde, but the fanger danced out of her reach. This brought Tess into range of a smaller Asian vampire, and the two tried to attack her at the same time, pairing up to squeeze Tess in a vice of fangs and teeth.
It might have worked on someone with less skill and experience, but Tess was too good for that. She threw an elbow into the Asian vampire’s face, stabbed the blonde, and spun around in time to catch the vengeful Asian in the chest.
Kamila was torching another vampire, her lips set in a grim line. She had some success earlier making their blood boil, but that task was beyond her now in our weakened state. She had plenty of juice left for fireballs, though, and most of the vampires still standing were low enough on the totem pole to be vulnerable to that kind of attack. She fired off one, two, three fireballs, all at one vampire who towered over the others at nearly seven feet of height. He screamed like a banshee until his vocal cords turned to ash.
I fired my gun at another vampire. This shot took out the head, vaporizing it so thoroughly there was nothing left. The body stood there for a few seconds and even took a few steps toward me in a hideous approximation of a person. Then it turned black and collapsed into dust.
Tess took on a dark-haired vampire who looked like he’d been taken at a Sex Pistols concert. He moved so fast, my exhausted eyes could hardly follow his movements, but I didn’t have to. Tess kept up with him, matching him blow for blow until he made his final mistake. She took him out with a roundhouse kick to the chest, followed by a pounce and a silver spike to the heart. I’d never seen someone look as surprised as when the punk rock vamp died, his eyes round with shock and hate.
A vampire came upon Kamila from behind, but I didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting an ally instead of the hysterical vampire with bad hair and a long nose. Ferin don’t have an issue with silver, but a bullet to the face or heart will probably hurt us no matter what metal it was made from. She scowled and put her hand on the vampire’s arm for a second, and the vampire screamed. He pulled away, clawing at his arm, but it didn’t help him. Apparently, Kamila had enough energy left to boil one more enemy’s blood.
I shot the next one, just as the man with the boiling blood exploded. Tess got another one in the heart, this time from behind. He didn’t have time to defend himself, but he had enough time to die. I shot the last one too, and Kamila and I leaned against one another for support, our bodies shaking with fear, exhaustion, and adrenaline.
>
We surveyed the room. The water was up to about our shins now, a mirror on the darkened room. Rafts of sooty goo floated on the surface of the water, spreading oily clouds of iridescent residue.
We were wading through water covered in a thin film of vampire bits. “We need to get out of here,” I said.
Tess took a deep breath and shook her head. “There are a lot of doors here.”
Kamila scowled. “If no one came out during the fight, no one’s going to. We’re good to go.”
I did check each room, one by one. We found one vampire. Tess spiked him before he could protest, and his ashes were kicked into the hall, just so much more dust and memory.
We found our way to the stairs and staggered up to street level. The sun was just starting to set over the brick buildings of old Twin Falls, and I wanted to be gone long before the authorities came.
38
We didn’t leave right away. I saw some workmen off in the distance, looking for the water main break. I thought it odd that the utilities people showed up before the police. The world was a weird place.
We didn’t have a lot of time to wreck the church. For a minute, I thought about letting it lie, but if there were other vampires out there, I needed to be sure their base was gone. And right now, I couldn’t do it alone. I reached out for the water while it was still there. I couldn’t be sure about this. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I had to try.
The water was there. I could feel it flowing under my feet. It wasn’t just in the pipes, either. It was all around me in underground aquifers and streams. Even though my head hurt so much I couldn’t see straight, I reached out to the water and pulled it toward the foundation.
Most were necessary for life, but it could be terribly destructive too when it wanted to be, like a hurricane or a hundred-year flood.
I took my fear, my hatred of vampires, and even my fatigue and fed them all into the water under Twin Falls. Then I directed them toward the foundation of St. Agatha’s Church.
Forever Young Page 22