by Zara Novak
He would tell me what I wanted to hear, or give me the broad strokes at least, just so he could make himself feel better by demonstrating his knowledge.
A smile tugged at his lips. A spark glimmered in those red eyes. Gears were turning, figuring something out. He was going to bite.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re wrong,” he said after a long moment. Gotcha. “Dead wrong. You didn’t see it when we came in because you were unconscious, but we have a flight deck on the castle roof. There are a couple of fighters that we stole from big covens in the vampire cities.”
My jaw would hit the floor if I wasn’t trying to hide my reaction. Instead I played dumb. “Fighters? Like jets? Woah. How would a stupid girl like me pilot something like that though? I bet it would be way too complicated.”
He practically rolled his eyes. “That’s where you’re wrong again. Those babies are foolproof. Ninety percent autopilot. All you’ve got to do is jump in, hit the start button and grab the sticks. It’s like a giant toy made for adults. I’ll show you sometime. Even a dumb chick like you could do it.”
“Wow… that’s a vote of confidence right there.” He smiled and slapped my ass.
“Come on. It’s time to go back to my room.”
We left the pool house behind and Victor led me down a long corridor and through a set of dark oak doors that opened into a bedroom with a large roaring fire. Over in the far-left corner a tall window looked down over a snowy river deep below us.
“This is the V-Pad,” he said as he gestured across the room. On the room’s longest wall shelves were lined with hundreds of films. Most of them appeared to be action or featured cars in some degree. Nothing overly mentally stimulating, but it looked like a fun collection at the least.
“You’re a film geek?”
Victor smiled and shook his head. “Nothing like that. I appreciate a good martial arts film or an adventure flick. Gotta love explosions and guns.”
I had to give it to him, those films could be fun.
“What are these wooden doll things?” I said, approaching a wooden mannequin that sort of resembled the human figure and a coatrack.
“Mu ren Zhuang,” Victor answered. “It’s a sparring tool, a wooden dummy used to hone fighting skills.” There were several of them across the spacious room. He approached the one I was looking at, gestured for me to step back and his arms began blurring against the wooden device, moving with ferocious fluidity that both impressed and terrified me.
“You’re… good,” I said as he stepped away.
“I might be a bonehead, but fighting is the one thing I know how to do well. I have a personal gym down the hall as well, and a small library for combat study. It’s nothing compared to Xander’s library of course, but—”
“What about this?” I said, moving across to the corner of the room to a drink’s cabinet sculpted from dark cherry wood. “Is this your frat boy side showing?”
Victor smiled. “I liked to get fucked up every now and then. What of it?”
I laughed. “I didn’t realize vampires could get fucked up.”
“Alcohol and blood are the best cocktail in the whole damn word. No lie. Shit. Add blood into the equation and we get fucked up extra fast.”
“Is that so?” I said with a playful lilt of my head. “I would have thought vampires could hold their liquor.” I’d happened to hear rumors that vampires in the city imbibed, and when alcohol was mixed with blood vampires could get tanked pretty fast.
This is my chance to get out.
“Oh, I can drink with the best of them, don’t get me wrong,” Victor said, rolling his head on his neck and cracking his fingers as though getting ready for a fight.
I let a playful smile dance on my lips, begging, no inviting him to the challenge. As it happened, I came from a tribe that had an abundance of amateur brewers. My people were particularly gifted at brewing Hangza, an illegal homebrew drink that sold for good money in the cities. On cold winter nights there wasn’t often much better to do than party on our own supply, so my liver had an iron-tolerance to alcohol since I’d come of drinking age.
I wasn’t an alcoholic or anything like that, far from it in fact. Of all the people in my tribe I was probably one of the lightest drinkers, but skills were few and far between in the outlands. We regularly made good money by challenging rival tribes to a drink off during normal trades. People in my village could all hold their liquor.
Victor didn’t know what was coming.
“You know I never met a man that could drink me under the table,” I said, floating the offer into the air. I knew there was no chance in hell that Victor was going to let me, a poxy little girl, put his fragile masculinity under threat and not do something about it.
He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, I knew you were going to be good fun. None of the other sissies in this castle can match me. Let’s play.”
In a manner of seconds Victor pulled up two stools and a side table. He grabbed two bottles from the cabinet, a pair of glasses and slammed it all down. We both sat at the table.
“Russian Vodka,” he said as he gestured to the bottle next to me. “You won’t believe how hard it was to get my hands on this.” He looked at the other bottle. “Vodka with blood. It’s mixed so it’s a similar strength for a vampire like me.”
I pulled a face. Vodka was fine, but if I was being honest, I was most used to Hangza, the street wine that my people specialized in brewing.
“What’s the matter?” Victor teased. “Vodka too much?”
“I was thinking it’s a bit weak. Do you have any Hangza?”
His brows moved right to the top of his head. “Shit! Now you’re talking! I knew you were the type that liked to party, but this is something else! Hang on!” Victor scurried out of the room with an excited step in his walk and was back a moment later, carrying a huge bottle of misty white liquid. That was Hangza all right. He put the bottle onto the table and joined me again.
“Shit… now I don’t know how much blood to put in here to make this fair, if I’m being honest the raw stuff fucks me up enough.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Drink raw. I can handle it.”
“Suit yourself. Here’s the game: shots ‘til one of us drops.”
“Sounds good to me.”
He lined up two shots, we clinked our glasses and downed them. The liquid burned my mouth and throat in the same way it had done many hundreds of times before. I calmly set my glass back down and smiled. As far as Hangza went it was okay, but it was nothing like the stuff my tribe brewed.
Victor’s face went red straight away and he burst into wild fits of coughing which quickly turned to laughter as he wiped tears from his eyes. “Damn!” he said, slamming his glass back down against the table. “You made that look easy!”
I shrugged, poured two more measures and clinked his glass. The second shot went down easier than the first. I was warmed up now. Victor’s reaction was a little less violent this time, but I could tell he was fighting the urge to cough. For what it was worth he was already doing very well. Eighty percent of the men I went up against passed out within seconds of the first round.
Our glasses touched the table again and he placed a hand down, already looking as though he was steadying himself. “You’ve done this before,” he said, one eye trying to focus on me as he scrutinized my stoic demeanor.
“Once or twice,” I said with a smirk. “Are you getting the next shot ready?”
He smiled, paused a moment as he considered the bottle and filled us both up again. A light swirling danced at the edges of my vision as I felt the drink start to take its effects. I could comfortably go for a little while longer, but hopefully Victor would crash out soon. Holding liquor wasn’t a problem for me but escaping from a castle in the mountains while blind drunk might make things more difficult than they had to be.
We clinked glasses and knocked our drinks back again. This time as Victor slammed his shot down his gl
ass fell onto its side and both his hands were clamped on the table to keep himself on the stool. I too was starting to sway a little.
“You’re turn…” he mumbled.
“I’ve got a different idea. Have you ever played waterfall?” He looked up at me, his eyes moving all over the place. His expression told me he hadn’t. “It’s very easy. We take turns being the lead. We both drink from a bottle…” I hopped up and fetched two empty ones from the shelf besides me. They were both opaque, which was necessary for this trick. “And you can only stop when I stop. Then you lead the next turn.”
He looked visibly terrified by the idea, but he nodded his head as if to give the greenlight. Ah, fragile masculinity. Was there anything more beautiful?
I filled up both bottles from the main Hangza bottle and handed one to Victor. We clinked, I raised the neck to my lips and held the bottle up high. Now came the trickery. All I had to do was keep my lips closed and pretend that I was drinking. Victor was already fucked up, and from the corner of my eye I could see he was drinking for real.
After five seconds I lowered the bottle and pretended to wipe my mouth. Victor slammed his bottle down and swayed all over the place, nearly falling off his stool. “God damn you can drink…” he slurred.
“Your turn,” I said. “You start drinking whenever you’re ready. You set the pace this time.”
After a few seconds he held his bottle up again and started drinking. I lifted mine once again to pretend to drink when I saw him fall back and hit the floor. Bingo.
One unconscious vampire.
Setting my bottle down, I hopped up from my stool and went over to Victor to make sure he was okay. I rolled him onto his side, put his bottle onto the table and covered him with a blanket. He was out cold. Time to escape.
After quickly ransacking his room for supplies I slipped out the doorway wearing clothes that could withstand the cold and a bag with water and food for a few days. I had no idea where about in the castle I was, or even how big the castle was, but I started moving quickly and went up every staircase I came across.
As I ran, I was constantly looking over my shoulders, pausing at every corner and running back as my mind played sounds of imaginary pursuers. The further I ran the clearer it became that absolutely no one else was following me. I was convinced the vampires would somehow know I was escaping, but the more I thought about it the more I realized they would have already stopped me if that was the case.
So, I disregarded my paranoia and focused entirely on escaping, dashing up staircases and following hallways, taking turns at random and hoping I could somehow find my way up and out.
Somehow, I did.
I wasn’t sure at first, but as I got higher up it became clearer that I was definitely on the right track. The hallways felt quieter, the stone felt colder. I was leaving the heart of the castle and heading towards the roof. Then I found myself running up a narrow staircase at the end of one long hallway. The staircase wound up in a clockwise direction for what felt like several stories. At its top sunlight came through the cracks of an old wooden door. I twisted the rusted iron ring that made up its handle and pushed it open.
Light flooded into the dark stairwell, blinding me momentarily as I stepped out onto the snow-covered rooftop. All around me the peaks of countless mountains stood like frozen giants in endless blankets of swirling snow. A vast and seemingly endless rooftop stretched out before me, highlighting the sheer size of the enormous vampire castle.
And then I saw something beautiful hidden amongst that endless labyrinth of stone, a sleek and modern overhang nestled a few rooftops over from me. I quickly set off, following rooftop paths until I reached the hangar Victor had boasted about only an hour ago. As I rounded the corner, I saw three glassy black jets sitting under the shelter, completely protected from the heavy snowfall. These vehicles had to cost millions of dollars, their anti-gravity engines alone were guarded military tech.
Foolproof, Victor’s words said, echoing in my mind. I ran up to the jet at the front of the trio and climbed into the cockpit. To my surprise his description had been accurate. There was one physical button, which I pressed. The engines suddenly roared to life and I strapped myself in.
“Welcome,” a robotic voice said. “Initiate automatic take off sequence?”
“Uh… yes,” I answered. I wrapped my hands around the joysticks. I had no idea how they were supposed to work, but if I wanted any chance of escaping now was the time to learn.
The jet started to lift off the ground though, its body vibrating slightly as the powerful engines hummed all around me. To my surprise the sticks moved in my hands as the plane moved up.
“Engines engaged. Lift off, prepared.”
Without further warning the jet rocketed forward at hundreds of miles an hour, forcing all the blood to the back of my body as the castle was left far behind us. In a few seconds the autopilot sounded again.
“Take off completed. Transfer to manual.”
“Wait!” I said. I was still fucking dizzy from that take off and it turned out that several shots of Hangza did not go well with military equipment, even if you were a hardened drinker. “Wait! Keep autopilot! Keep autopilot!”
My hands desperately clung to the sticks and I realized I was pulling them back sharply, which made the ship start to thrust through violent backflips.
“Warning! Warning! G-Force exceeding safe parameters! Warning! Warning!”
As much as I wanted to let go I couldn’t. The ship was locked in endless somersaults at ever increasing speed and I was quickly losing consciousness. My hands only slipped off the controls as my head lolled back and things went dark.
I had no idea how long I was out, but when I came to again the jet was still flying. I say flying but spinning wildly out of control was perhaps a better descriptor. The jet was rocketing down towards some sort of swampland, locked in a tight corkscrew as sirens flared all around me.
Then the nose smashed into water, and my head careened violently off the side of the cockpit.
Flying and drinking. Not my brightest idea.
3
I woke to the sound of alarms, smashing glass and rushing water. Amid the cavalry of noise there was also the endless ‘Warning! Warning’ from the ship’s computer. Then someone was unfastening my harness, then they were dragging me out of the cockpit.
Breath was only a liberty for a few seconds. As I managed to open my eyes, I saw darkness all around me. Water was gushing in on all sides. It came over me as a tepid blanket of suffocation, filling my throat and lungs.
I tried to bat and kick at the person dragging me up through the water. I guess it was kind of strange to attack someone rescuing you, but adrenaline and Hangza had a strange way of making you say thanks.
My savior dragged me up through murky brown waters, to a surface that shimmered with warm yellow light. We broke through the waters and I found air again, my lungs burning with the need to empty all the water I had swallowed.
Sun blinded me momentarily, and I clung to the man holding me as he swam for the nearest shore. He lifted me up out of the waters, dropped me onto the sodden marsh and I coughed and spluttered until I could breathe again. I was on all fours, a bedraggled and shivering mess. Looking up I saw people standing all around me. I also saw my surroundings properly for the first time.
Hot and arid sun. Endless swampland that seemed to stretch on in all directions. The people staring back at me were instantly recognizable from their attire. They were a mix of all different races, like most groups these days, but their rags and the boned jewelry adorning their bodies told me everything I needed to know.
They were the Udari, a cannibal group that were infamous in the outlands.
A man with filed teeth smiled down at me, pointing a crude spear down at the side of my body. “Life bringer,” he snarled.
Instinct took over and I tried to grab the spear, but the man was too fast for me. He hissed and jabbed the point into my side. I let out a shar
p cry as the burning stone punched my flesh. I fell to the ground and stared daggers at him. Now I had a nasty little cut just above my right hip, and it fucking hurt.
“Life bringer,” another said. A woman standing in the crowd behind him held up a holo-tablet. On it there was a picture of my face and words scrolling across the bottom. The words read ‘Bounty: Escaped Breeder – 10,000 credits.’
I dropped my head and sighed. “God damn it.”
Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Then they were pulling me up onto my feet, wrapping my wrists and ankles in shackles made from vines. It looked like the entire village had come here to celebrate my arrival. They were cheering and laughing now, screaming with salacious primal energy that struck fear into my bones.
The procession marched me through the swampland, over carpets of vines and through twisting trees, following invisible paths through the impossibly thick bracken until we came to a clearing where they had hidden their village.
Not much was known about the Udari, other than their penchant for eating their fellow man. They were feared by most for being unpredictable and somewhat terrifying. I had never dealt with them myself, the village I came from was much too far from the swamplands to worry about that, but everyone in the outlands had heard ghost stories about the Udari and their unusual ways.
I knew they didn’t like to deal with others much, unless they absolutely had to, and I didn’t imagine they cared much for the credits my bounty would bring, so what did they have in store for me?
Several wooden huts made up the village, the structures were made from bamboo stems and grass-reed panels. Roofs were tipi-like in structure and layered with large palm fronds. I reckoned there were about thirty or so huts dotted about through the main village.
In between the huts I saw large bamboo lattices laid across the ground. I wondered what their purpose was when I saw trenches beneath them. Hands poked through the lattices and dark and sunken eyes looked up at me as the Udari led me through their camp.