by J. C. Diem
We weren’t out of danger yet so Luc and Igor headed outside to find us suitable transportation. Kokoro looked unlike herself in a pair of tight black pants, sneakers and a sweater. Being twelve, Ishida suited the clothes much better than his prophetess did. Gregor grimaced at donning cargo pants and a hoodie jacket but Geordie took to them like a natural. He admired himself in one of the mirrors then pointed at me and giggled. We were both wearing dark blue hoodies and black jeans. With our similar height and build, we could almost have been siblings. I was glad his trauma had lessened and his sense of humour had returned.
A horn beeped outside. I glanced out the window to see a school bus pulling over with Luc behind the wheel. “Forget we were ever here,” I advised my minion as we left his shop and piled into the bus. He nodded dazedly, eyes scanning the shelves that now had gaping holes that he would never be able to explain.
Geordie took the seat beside me as the bus lurched into motion. We sat just behind the driver’s seat with Igor and Gregor in the seat across from us. The rest of our small team took up almost all of the other seats. Sorrow hit me again when I realized we were all that was left of our kind.
“What happened to you after you left with Colonel Sanderson and his men to kill the Second, Natalie?” Gregor asked and the quiet murmurs immediately ceased.
It seemed everyone was interested in hearing my tale of woe and betrayal. It was a long story but it would take us hours to reach Denver so I might as well tell them. “We found the creepy castle and I snuck inside alone, as planned. The Second was waiting for me in the tower. He’d set a trap.”
Geordie’s face darkened at that news. “What kind of trap?”
“He pulled the curtain covering the window aside and I wasn’t quite fast enough to avoid the sun.” I paused while the expected sounds of shock sounded. “Half of my face was burned away and while I was incapacitated, the Second chopped my head and hands off.”
“I think we can guess what he planned to do to your body,” Gregor said with a twist of distaste to his mouth.
Baffled, Geordie looked at me for clarification. “He was going to feed his flesh hunger on me,” I explained. It was a much nicer way of saying he had planned to rape me repeatedly.
“You did not give him a chance to, though,” the teen said with utter confidence in my abilities to protect myself.
“Of course not.” I didn’t mention that my subconscious had had to come to my rescue and tell me what to do. If word got out that I listened to voices in my head, my kin would start to think I was crazy. If they didn’t already. I described how I had put an end to the nemesis that we had all banded together to hunt down.
“It was a fitting end to the Second,” Ishida declared weakly. He was still being propped up by Kokoro but he seemed to have regained some of his strength.
“What happened next?” Geordie asked me impatiently.
The colonel’s betrayal would be hard to tell so I put it off by explaining how I had tracked down and dispatched the caches of fledglings that had been stashed inside the castle. “Then Sanderson and his men tossed me out into the sun and blasted me apart with their prototypes,” I finished quickly, glossing over the most horrendous event that had ever happened to me.
“Even when your entire body was exposed to the sun, it still didn’t have the power to kill you?” Cristov said incredulously. He sat beside Aventius, who was still wrinkled from his long immersion in water. I didn’t know Cristov very well but he was already far less of a pain in the butt than Joshua had been.
“I’m pretty sure by now that nothing can kill me,” I said without a hint of boasting. It was fact, pure and simple. “The sun has the power to hurt me, though.” Some of the Japanese warriors nodded knowingly. They were well aware of what had happened to me after I’d been thrown into their pit of death. “Once I’m away from it, I tend to regenerate again.”
“What did the Colonel do to you after they shot you?” Geordie asked in a small voice. He slipped his hand into mine, either offering me comfort or seeking it.
“My consciousness became detached from my body but I’m pretty sure they crushed my bones to pieces then let the sun turn the rest to ash.” His hand trembled in mine or maybe it was the other way around. Luc’s shoulders were hunched as he drove. It couldn’t be fun for him hearing what I’d gone through. “They scooped up what was left of me and put it in a metal box. Then they tossed the box into the sea.”
One of Aventius’ people posed the question on everyone’s mind. “If you were ashes in a box at the bottom of the sea, how are you now whole and with us once more?”
This was going to be hard to explain since I didn’t really understand it myself. “I can take control of my body parts when they’ve been severed.” Again, the Japanese warriors nodded in understanding. They’d witnessed this for themselves after Ishida had ordered his right hand man to chop my right hand off. “I’m still not sure how I did it but I took control of some of my particles and found a tiny hole in the box. Once I shifted my remains into the water where they had room to move, I regenerated.”
At my explanation, looks of amazement were shared amongst the survivors. “I wish I had that talent,” someone muttered.
It was pretty awesome but I wasn’t about to rub it in. “I found the warehouse where I’d seen you all last and saw that some of you had been killed.”
“Chenku saved my life that night,” Ishida said barely loud enough for me to hear him. “He stepped in front of a bullet that had been meant for me.”
I knew who he was talking about instantly. The man who had taught us both how to fight with swords, whose name I hadn’t known, had died an honourable death. “Chenku was the greatest warrior our kind has ever seen,” Kokoro said and bowed her head. We all did, mutually mourning someone that we had all admired.
“What happened next, chérie?” Geordie asked impatiently, inadvertently shattering the mood. It was just as well, we needed to be sharp and not to allow ourselves to wallow in sorrow.
“I had no idea if any of you had escaped or if you’d been taken hostage. If anyone had escaped, I figured they would have headed back to the Court mansion or the safe house nearby.”
Luc glanced into the rear view mirror and met my gaze. His was full of a mixture of dread and anticipation.
“I headed back to France and found the mansion and grounds crawling with French soldiers.” The Europeans weren’t happy to hear that and some muttered darkly. “I snuck inside the next night and overheard one of the Court guards mention that the Comtesse had made a deal to save herself and her remaining courtiers and lackeys.” No one appeared to be particularly surprised by that revelation.
“What was the deal she made?” Igor asked. His dour expression told me he had already guessed the answer.
Glancing back at Ishida, I saw his eyes were closed but he appeared to be listening. “She convinced him to ally with her after Anna-Eve ordered her minion to blast me to pieces. As well as showing him how dangerous I was since I can’t die, Anna-Eve also demonstrated the quickest way to incapacitate me.”
Gregor’s probing look at my face was shrewd. “What other information did she offer the Colonel in trade for her life?”
Taking a deep mental breath, I answered his question reluctantly. “She agreed to remain on the Court grounds, not to feed on humans or to make any more servants. In return for being allowed to survive, she told Sanderson the location of every vampire that she was aware of.”
Silence descended. Then Ishida’s eyes opened wide as the implication set in. “Did that include my people?”
I hated to be the one to break the news to him but Kokoro was in no condition to do so. She sat on the seat beside him with her head bowed in sorrow. “I’m sorry but they’re all gone, Emperor Ishida. I heard one of the soldiers say that Sanderson bombed your island.”
A babble broke out amongst the Japanese warriors as Ishida tried to contain his anguish. He had been the ruler of a small but thriving empire
and now he only had a dozen people left. Geordie gave a dry sob for their loss and I folded him into my arms.
“A remnant shall remain,” Gregor whispered. Despite the prophecy, no one had anticipated that the remnant would be a bare twenty-nine vampires out of the thousands that had once existed worldwide.
“How long will we be able to survive with Colonel Sanderson and his people hunting for us?” Geordie asked in a hushed whisper.
No one had an answer for that, not even Gregor.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Dawn was still a few hours away when we reached the airport near Denver. We avoided the terminals and headed straight for the tarmac. There were few people around this late at night and we had no trouble bamboozling our way over to a plane that was about to take off.
“Where is this plane headed?” I asked a baggage handler as my kin climbed into the cargo hold.
“New York first then on to Montreal,” was his dazed response.
“I’ve never been to Canada,” Geordie said when we were settled inside. “I’ve heard it is nice.”
Gregor shifted a few suitcases around, turning them into a semi-comfortable chair. “We will not be there long enough to enjoy the scenery.”
“Do you think we should split up when we reach the airport in New York?” Cristov asked.
Kokoro shook her head. “We must remain together from now on.” Her tone was quiet but adamant.
“What else could possibly happen to us now?” her young ruler asked. He looked exhausted beneath the layers of wrinkles that lined his face. “Have we not already suffered the ‘death and darkness’ that you foresaw?”
“I am afraid not.” I wasn’t the only one stunned by her answer. “That is yet to come, my Emperor. We must all remain with Mortis or we will perish.”
Every eye went to me. Our kin had spread out amongst the baggage, each making a comfortable nest. Some had opened the suitcases and were rifling through the contents. They paused as they waited for me to say something. Luc put his hand on my leg and Geordie took my hand. I wasn’t one for making speeches but it seemed like the time for one. “I didn’t exactly sign up for this job,” I began. Several sniggers were hastily stifled, Geordie’s included. “But since it looks like I’m stuck with it then I’ll do my best to keep you all safe.”
Gregor gave me a tired smile. “You have already saved us from torture, Natalie. We should all be grateful to you for that.”
“If she had never been turned in the first place, we wouldn’t be here right now,” a sullen European muttered.
Geordie immediately bristled. “Well, Nat was turned and we are in this predicament so learn to deal with it!”
“If you want to blame someone,” I cut into the babble of raised voices. “Blame my maker.” A few heads swivelled to Luc. When Luc and I had first arrived in France, the courtiers had assumed I was his newly-made servant. We hadn’t corrected their mistake and the rumour still persisted. “Luc didn’t turn me. It was Silvius who had that dubious honour,” I told them.
Aventius’ already water-wrinkled face crinkled more with distaste. His skin was beginning to dry out but he still looked a bit prune-like. “I can easily believe that Silvus could have created the being that would result in our eventual destruction.”
“You knew him well?” I asked the ex-councillor.
He grimaced and nodded. “We were created by the same master nearly five thousand years ago. In a way, we were brothers.”
“What was he like?” Since we were speaking of the vampire that had killed me, I was fascinated. All I knew about Silvius was that he had been ancient, bald, ugly and completely insane. He had been the first vampire I’d met who’d had a shadow that was capable of acting independently. I could still remember my creeping horror as it had pointed and laughed at me soundlessly. He had been the first of the damned vampires that I had killed but he had been far from the last.
“Silvius was evil from the first moment we woke as the undead,” Aventius responded. “He took to being a vampire far more quickly and easily than I.” He gazed inwardly, dredging up long dead memories he probably didn’t want to bring forth into the light. “When our master was slain, we remained together for a time. We joined the Comtesse’s revolt when she planned to overthrow the King. Then the Council was formed and I was chosen to be one of the Councillors. Silvius was less than pleased that he had been overlooked for the position. He chose to go his own way from then on. It was common knowledge that he in turn plotted to overthrow the Council and to destroy the Comtesse.”
Reminded of our earlier conversation regarding the praying mantis, Geordie turned to me. “You never finished your story about how you found us. What happened after you heard the Comtesse had betrayed us all to save herself?”
Luc’s hand tightened on my leg. “Are you sure you want to hear this?” Heads nodded, even my beloved’s. “I waited for dawn then killed the Court guards. I bamboozled all the humans so they wouldn’t come to investigate if they heard anything strange going on inside. When everyone had died for the day, I, uh, killed most of them.” My voice dropped down low when I admitted that. I darted a quick glance around but no one was staring at me accusingly.
“Who did you leave alive, chérie?” Geordie asked me.
Gregor held up a hand to stop me. “Let me guess. The Comtesse, of course.” I nodded. “Anna-Eve would no doubt have incurred your wrath.” Again, I nodded. Studying me, one eyebrow went up briefly then lowered in a frown. “Do not tell me that Nicholas was also there?”
“Yep. Mucia wasn’t alone when I went to her room.” Shocked sniggers sounded when I dared to use the praying mantis’ real name. “Nicholas was in her bed.”
“Nicholas was a double agent?” Geordie said in wonder. “So, Anna-Eve was lying when she said she wanted to kill him?”
“It sure looks like it.” I squeezed the teen’s fingers in sympathy at being duped. She had tricked all of us. “Anyway, after killing the Councillors, courtiers and guards, I took Anna-Eve, Nicholas and the praying mantis down to the catacombs.” A few chuckles sounded at my pet nickname for the late Court ruler.
Thinking back, transporting all three of the vampires who had betrayed me into the catacombs had been the fun part. I’d dragged the praying mantis by her immaculate white blonde hair while her tiny bare feet had clonked down each step. I’d grown tired of dragging her after a couple of flights so had tossed her to the bottom instead. I’d done the same with the other two. Nicholas had been far heavier and bulkier than the women but I’d manipulated his unconscious body as easily as I had theirs. “I put them in separate cages then made some crosses with candle sticks and put them on the doors.”
“That was a clever move,” Luc complimented me and I smirked at his rare praise.
“I bet they had the shock of their lives when they woke,” Igor commented.
“I wish I’d had a camera handy to record the moment,” I said in agreement. “To make a long story short, Anna-Eve confessed her part in setting me up and Mucia killed her by spearing a piece of human bone through her heart.” Thankfully, no one asked me how I’d managed to get Anna-Eve to confess. Admitting that I could now hypnotize our own kind probably wouldn’t be received very well.
“Did you torture Nicholas before you killed him, chérie?” Geordie’s tone was hopeful.
“Not as badly as the Comtesse did.” The pain I’d caused him had been physical but the mental anguish his lover had meted out had been far worse. The teen seemed puzzled by my answer so I clarified it for him. “She told him he was crap in the sack and couldn’t compare to…others she’d been bedded by.” I flicked a quick glance at Luc and saw that he knew I was talking about him. “He attacked me and I stabbed him with one of Igor’s old machetes. I hacked his heart out and tossed it to the Comtesse, since it belonged to her anyway.” The Russian looked gratified that he’d played at least a small part in the ex-courtier’s demise.
“While I was distracted with Nicholas’ body disi
ntegrating, Mucia used another human bone to push the door open. I caught up to her upstairs and we had what was possibly the most epic girl fight in history.”
Geordie squirmed on his suitcase in excitement. “Did you dismember her? Did you tear her intestines out and strangle her with them? Did you tear off her leg and hit her with it?”
“Ok, maybe not the most epic,” I corrected myself. He was crestfallen at my words. “We did the usual punching, slapping and eye gouging until I got the upper hand.” Luc may have hated his creator but he didn’t need to hear all the gory details. “She told me you were all dead and that she had nothing else to live for so I might as well kill her. So I did.”
Luc withdrew his hand from mine and crossed his arms, distancing himself from me. It hurt but maybe he needed time to assimilate the fact that the monster that had tormented him for seven centuries was finally and irrevocably dead.
“One of the soldiers I’d bedazzled told me that you had been captured and taken to Colorado. So I hopped on a plane and came to your rescue,” I finished up my story.
“If anyone else had told me this tale, I would not have believed them,” Gregor said.
Igor gave a snort. “I would have put them out of their delusional misery.”
“I also would have not believed them and most likely have had them put to death for telling such lies,” Ishida admitted. “We are all in your debt, Mortis.” He and his people bowed and I bowed in response.
“Now we just need to find somewhere safe to hide where Colonel Sanderson can’t find us,” Gregor mused out loud. This opened up a flood of suggestions.
“We could return to Japan,” one of Ishida’s warriors said. “There are many islands where we could remain unnoticed.”
“No. They’ll look for us there,” a European responded. “We need to go somewhere our kind wouldn’t naturally be drawn to.”
All answers were shouted down and it came to the point where there were very few options left. “How about the moon?” Geordie said with a frustrated sneer. “They probably wouldn’t be able to find us there.”