Tales of Magic and Misery: A Collection of Short Stories by Tim Marquitz

by Tim Marquitz

  The demon lieutenant sat in the back with two of my uncle’s goons, another up front. Two of them were dressed like they were going to church, clean suits and ties, long jackets and nice hats, while Baalth and the last of them had on police uniforms. They all sat low in the seats, trying to be inconspicuous. There were too many unfriendly eyes on the street to be so transparent as to cover the rear windows. I’d just have to drive and hope for the best.

  Before I could worry about it too much, we were there. I pulled into an alley that led to the rear of the warehouse and parked, leaving the engine running. Baalth smiled at me and stepped out, shotgun in hand, motioning for me to wait. The three demons slithered out as well. The one in the uniform carried a shotgun like Baalth, the other two toted Tommy guns. Baalth led the way up a short ramp as a German Shepherd, tied to the bumper of an old truck in the parking lot, growled and barked at them. It knew what was coming, even if those inside didn’t.

  Baalth and the others slipped into the warehouse through the back door. Not five minutes later, after some muffled gunshots, the demon lieutenant and the other police-disguised demon came back outside, holding their shotguns on their own men, leading them at gunpoint back to the car.

  That was my idea. If anyone had heard the shots and was peeking outside for a look-see, all they’d remember is two cops taking away a couple of suited malcontents. Misdirection at its finest.

  Once inside the car, Baalth smiled at me. “Drive, Frank.” In his free hand, he held a bloody cloth with something wrapped inside. It seemed to pulse.

  I didn’t hesitate, tearing out of the parking lot, the screech of tires drowning out the dog that howled at our backs. Once we were on the road and across the north-south line, Baalth opened the package and showed it to me. It was a heart, its beat winding down. It’d run too long to be human, so it had to be the demon’s.

  A squirt of blackened blood struck my arm at its final spasm, and I waved the heart away. “Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.”

  The End Begins

  Featuring Katon

  Originally published in Beyond the Veil 2013

  The vampire smiled in the darkness.

  He knew I hunted him. Unlike his brethren who died in their pseudo-sleep, entombed within their earthen haunts as they awaited the demise of the sun, this one was ready. His makeshift crypt was empty when I pried it open.

  A chill settled over me as I felt his eyes at my back. He was toying with me. His quiet laugh echoed in the ruined halls of the warehouse, distorting his location. I tightened my grip on my pistol and turned slowly, scanning the room. The soft flutter of his movement sounded near the back of the building, but I knew better than to follow. He was luring me deeper in. Vampires didn’t make noise unless they wanted to.

  Instead, I headed the opposite direction, toward the exit with a casual gait. The night had yet to come, and the sun still clung to the sky. I had time. If he wanted me, wanted revenge, he’d have to catch up before I hit the door. I let my boots slap the stone floor as I walked. The flutter of his pursuing movement pattered nearby, along the rafters.

  “Come now, hunter, do you think me so easily drawn out?” he asked from the shadows. He spoke in his native German, not bothering to care whether I understood him or not.

  This one was arrogant.

  “I had hoped, to be honest,” I answered in his language, one of the many I learned in my training at MI6. “Your Führer sent a dozen of you here to Tobruk, and you’re the last of them.” I let out a low chuckle, certain he would hear it as clearly as though I stood beside him. “They certainly didn’t put up a fight, so why would I expect you to?”

  He met my comments with his own laugh. It seemed to ooze along the ceiling. “Because I’m better than them.” A gentle breeze stirred in the darkness. He slipped into passable English, perhaps thinking it easier for me to understand. “The only reason you still live is because your boldness amuses me.”

  I hadn’t stopped walking. Just a few feet from the brightness outside the warehouse, I rattled his cage to get his cold blood flowing. It was now or never. “Too bad you can’t hurt the war effort on your own, but I’m sure Hitler can recruit more of your kind. He’s sure to have plenty of German corpses lying around Berlin in the wake of our bombing. Who knows, they might even be family.”

  A serpentine hiss cut the air between us. I spun to meet the sound, a smile on my face as I raised my gun. He was on me before I’d even lifted the barrel. My wrist snapped in his grip. I heard the pop before I felt it, and then sharp agony wiped my smile away. Spots of light dotted my vision. I heard my gun clatter away despite the volume of my screams.

  The next thing I knew, I was in the air. My chin bounced off my chest as he swung me over his head and slammed me to the ground. The impact forced the breath from my lungs and whiplashed my head into the floor. I felt teeth shatter, broken remnants spearing my tongue. Blackness crowded out the glimmering lights, narrowing my field of vision. I saw nothing but his grinning face as he hovered over me.

  I gasped anemic as I truly saw the vampire for the first time, thinking myself delusional.

  “What’s the matter, assassin? Am I not what you expected?”

  He wasn’t. Not even close.

  Ever since Hitler deployed vampires to the front lines to soften the populace and bleed the resistance dry ahead of Rommel’s advance, MI6 had been training soldiers to take them out. So far, we’d been pretty successful. Bound to the darkness, vampires were easy targets during the day. Once we tracked them down, it was only a matter of putting a blessed-silver bullet in their skull and lighting the body up like a torch. I’d killed over fifty that way.

  But this one was different, in more ways than one.

  He was black.

  His brown eyes stared down at me, but he stayed where he was. Silver SS tags were pinned to the lapel of his long black jacket, and he wore the traditional red armband of the Nazi party members. The swastika glared in the white circle of it. He was giving me time to work it out, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea.

  His lips peeled back to display brilliant white teeth, sharpened fangs protruding at the eyeteeth. He reached down and wrapped his frigid hand around my throat. His grip was like cabled steel. “Come now, it can’t be that difficult to imagine, can it?”

  He yanked me to my feet and hurled me into the wall without waiting for an answer. A great, groaning bell rang out as hit. I blacked out for an instant and awoke to the wall trembling at my back. The tang of blood filled my mouth and ran thick down my throat. It choked me. My thoughts flailed inside my skull. The vampire stood before me, his smile no less broad than it had been the moment before. I reached for the knife sheathed at my back.

  “What choice did I have?” He dropped to his knees before me, ignoring my obvious fumbling. “It was this or face a firing squad or perhaps even worse, a cruel end by fire in one of the konzentrationslager. Hitler promised he would spare my family—my wife and boys—were I to submit, were I to become the first of his ebenholz speere.”

  Ebony spears. The words circled inside my head. I couldn’t help but feel a pang of pity for his position and the man he’d once been. We’d heard rumors of the prison camps the Nazis had built, the torture and genetic experimentation that went on there, but we’d little knowledge of specifics. All of MI6’s intelligence was second hand, word filtering to us through a handful of choked whispers, but the arrival of the German vampires gave credence to the tales.

  And here before me was further proof of the depths the Nazis would go to win the war. They were recruiting blacks, men destined to die at the hands of Hitler’s legions, and mutating them to fight a cause that only furthered their enslavement, even after death. It sickened me to think about it, but I couldn’t let it get in the way of what I needed to do.

  I yanked my blade free and went to drive it into his eye. He caught my wrist without even looking. The bones ground together in his grip, and he shook his head, disappointment
sapping the strength from his smile. He twisted my arm up and around with a casual motion. My wrist gave way with a muffled creak, the snap of my elbow reverberating through my body. I screamed and felt my throat give away with its vehemence.

  He followed through and tugged my backward arm over my head, pulling my body in its wake. I landed once more on my back, my limp and shattered arm dropping lifeless at my side. Spasms wracked my chest and crimson spewed from my mouth as I rolled to my side. The world swam before my eyes and I fought the encroaching unconsciousness. If I went out, I was dead.

  “You were right to try to kill me, for I intend you no less,” he told me, confirming my thoughts. He circled me as I fought to get to my knees. I could feel the weight of his undead stare. “This is a freedom I would never know, in your land or any other.” The vampire roared into the darkness, his fists pounding against the necrotic flesh of his chest. “Tell me, assassin, would your people offer safe passage to me and my family, an escape from the war and the color of my skin? Would the Americans?”

  Despite the wish of hopeful thoughts, I didn’t think they would. I got to my feet as he moved behind me, my legs trembling as they challenged gravity. The glimmer of daylight through the warehouse door beckoned, but he was too close. I’d never make it; not without help. I heard the distant thunder of war, death once more raining down over Tobruk as Rommel announced his presence.

  I turned to face the vampire, meeting his dark eyes. “It’s a shame your sons won’t live to see what you’ve become.”

  Eyeteeth flickered in the dim light of the warehouse as the vampire loosed his rage. Twin palm prints burned at my chest as he shoved me. My ribs shattered. Their sharp points speared my lungs and perhaps my heart, but I couldn’t tell in the wash of searing agony.

  The wind whipped past as I flew into the warehouse wall. I heard the impact of flesh against wood and then a splintered screech as the timbers gave way. Brightness filled my eyes. I tumbled through the air only to have the light stolen away when I struck the ground. Somewhere in the chaotic swirl of my mind, I felt the earth cradling me with her unforgiving solidness .The taste of dust joined that of blood, each labored breath bubbling with the end of my life. My gambit had succeeded and failed, all at once.

  I twitched against the hard ground, unable to rise, but I could feel the muted rays of the sun returning to shower me in their light. I’d made it outside, but at what cost? My chest rumbled with every wet breath, and I could feel the creep of cold, which tingled down my limbs.

  He’d killed me.

  The thought was a shroud that buried my resistance. I quit my struggle and gave in, letting my head rest against the dirt. The bombs drew ever closer, the world rumbling beneath me as they fell to ground. The Germans were coming, and I’d failed. I cracked my eyelids to watch the last moments of the fading sun, only to have the light suddenly blocked.

  The vampire stood before me. His smile had returned.

  In his cold shadow, I wondered if I were not already dead. “I-I—“ The fragments of my question ran wet down my chin.

  “It’s wunderbar, is it not?” Once more he hovered over me. The sun struggled to sneak past his darkness, sparing only a sliver of its brilliance to warm me. “Hitler promised me Herr Mengele could make me a god.” He stood to his full height and obscured the light, his arms stretched to his side as he stared off at the sky. Thunder roared in the distance. His voice rang out, matching its vehemence. “I am the true herrenvolk, not these pale skinned sacks of meat who lord their blue eyes over my family. When this war is done, they will know my wrath.” A sinuous chuckle slipped loose as he dropped his gaze to mine. “But now, it is you who must die.”

  I tried to rise, to fight back, but my strength had gone. My resistance was little more than a gurgled complaint as the vampire reached for my throat. I closed my eyes and cast a prayer to the heavens.

  “Leave him alone.”

  Spoken in Arabic, the words were so fragile, so delicate, that I doubted I’d even heard them. If I hadn’t still suffered the pain of my wounds, I would have believed them imagined, a figment of my dying mind. But the vampire had heard them, too. He straightened and glanced over his shoulder. My gaze followed on the tail of his.

  Near the shattered warehouse wall stood a boy. He was no more than eight years-old. Darker of skin than even the vampire, he almost faded into the shadows of the building.

  “Go away, child,” the vampire said, reverting to German, though I doubted the boy understood.

  Little more than an emaciated skeleton, he stood his ground. Shirtless, I could count his ribs, his chest puffed out almost unnaturally. His dark eyes held the vampire’s gaze without fear—or more likely with ignorance. He couldn’t have known what the man standing over me was, but to the boy, it didn’t seem to matter.

  “Please, mein kind, go…leave us.” The vampire returned to broken English, his voice almost pleading.

  The boy continued to ignore him. In his hand he held a slim branch, its knots and skin scraped away to smooth its length. He raised it up and pointed it at the vampire. The boy said nothing, but even as broken as I was, I could sense the threat in his posture.

  “No, boy, go…please,” I begged. Moments from death, I didn’t want his blood on my hands.

  The vampire grunted and turned toward the boy, a sneer peeling his lips back. He took a threatening step forward, showing his eyeteeth. He’d had enough. “Last chance to flee,” he warned.

  The boy extended his stick. His eyes narrowed as a glimmer of red appeared at the point of the branch. The vampire froze at the sight of it. I stared at the dot, blinking to see if it went away, but the flicker seemed to grow larger by the moment. The subtle tang of burnt wood wafted to me as the child advanced on the vampire.

  The boy grinned, his face taking on a maniacal expression as he wielded the stick like a gun. Then it went off.

  A brilliant flash of ruby stole my sight. I felt a sudden loss of pressure, my ruined lungs gasping to draw breath, and then the air was back. It hit me like a tank. I was whipped into the air and tossed about. My body was peppered with debris and what bones had still been whole crackled and broke apart beneath the hurricane force. A rotten sickness welled inside, the world spinning into a blur. I tasted the rubbery foulness of dead meat and smelled the purification of old death. Then the winds were gone.

  I fell like a stone, dropping to the ground like a sack of grain, limp and weak. Gratefully numb, I barely noticed. I gasped to draw a breath. My lungs resisted the air and I wondered if this was how it felt to die.

  Unable to explain what happened, I cracked my eyes and saw the young boy standing over me. A crooked smile twisted his lips. He was unhurt. I hurriedly looked about, but I could see nothing beyond the wreckage of the warehouse. It appeared as though a bomb had struck it dead center. The vampire was gone.

  “Are you well?”

  My gaze went back to the boy when he spoke. He held a small, calloused hand out to me. I resisted a moment, expecting the darkness to whisk me away, but I remained; just me and the boy. I thought him an angel. No air circled my lungs and the thump of my heart had stilled in my chest, yet there he stood. I could hear none of the distant bombs or the shouts of dying men. There was no more pain. This could only be death.

  He waggled his fingers in my face, calling me up. “Come, Katon, he is waiting.”

  My name sounded in my ears. The boy knew me. I was dead.

  The realization hit home like a raindrop in the ocean. I expected to be sad, to break down and cry, but I felt nothing. No tears clouded my eyes and no sorrow weighed upon my silent heart. There was simply nothing.

  “Come,” he repeated, an impatient wiggle shaking his hand.

  I gave in and reached out. A blackened hand grasped his in place of mine. My vision wavered at the sight, but yet I could feel his thin fingers against my palm. I followed the strange arm down its length, spying the ebony shoulder that sat beside my head. Another dark hand kneaded the leathe
rn flesh there. It stopped at my behest. The sense of it made my head spin.

  “What—“

  My panicked question was interrupted by a gentle voice beside me. “I’ll explain, but we must go, Katon. We have little time before the Germans resume their shelling.”

  I looked past the dark flesh of the strange shoulder to see a young Mexican. His hair was full and dark and wild above the thick glasses he wore. Bright green eyes appraised me through the lenses. Wiry beneath his nondescript outfit, he slipped his hand under the dark arm and lifted. I rose with the arm feeling a strange sense of dislocation.

  “Lead the way, Rahim,” the man said.

  The boy nodded and jogged off. I was tugged along behind. My feet were leaden and stepped out of time, but I feared looking down at them. Shadows flickered in my peripheral vision as I let the man lead me.

  “It will all be clear soon,” he said. “I promise.”

  Discordia Ascendant

  Featuring Rahim

  Originally published as Discordia Ascendant Illustrated by Robert Elrod 2014

  Night had fallen hours earlier, a leech suckling the veins of sordid humanity, gorging itself sick. The pretense born of the sun lie withered in shadow, husks draped in funereal dreams. Whispered prayers serenaded the dawn while mankind grasped at the illusion of safety, sand slipping through their fingers. While the slumbering masses might well awake to taste the fruit of another day, those who braved the El Paseo streets tonight were far less likely to see morning. Something stalks the city, preying on the foolish and lost, trailing bloodless corpses in its wake.

  That’s why I’d come.

  Normally I would have sent Katon to investigate, but since my transformation, I’ve found myself drawn to the darkness more and more; found myself craving it. It calls to me, but I don’t dare tell the others. There’s been too much death, too much betrayal to burden them with this. We’ve been going through the motions since Abraham was killed, the line of our faith drawn in the sand, and we’re too close to tumbling over.