by Gary Jonas
“But you just said the vampires have to fight if their firsts are killed.”
“Indeed I did, but the vampire lord who takes the field last isn’t going to go after the other vampire right away. He or she will let his army swarm the vampire enemy while avoiding the other’s army. The sheer numbers are too much. Meanwhile, the other vampire is in defense mode and using his army to try to protect himself. The last vampire mostly waits for an opening, steps through shadow, and slays his opponent. I’ve seen four of these battles, and it’s gone that way every time. The first vampire to have to take the field is always the one who dies. You and I are essentially cannon fodder. We won’t see midnight.”
“I love your positive outlook.”
“Ms. Chan, there are fifty Watchers in Victor’s army, and each of them can pop in and out of the shadows you see hovering all around this battlefield.”
I looked at the shadows.
“At any moment,” he said, “scores of warriors can pour from every shadow to attack you from all sides.”
“And?”
“And the sheer numbers make it impossible to handle. They will be everywhere at once. When you go down, I’ll try, but I know I won’t last five seconds on the field. This is the day my existence ends.”
“There are only a fifty of them?” I asked.
“Only?”
I smiled and patted him on the chest. “You go sit down. You won’t be taking the field tonight.”
“Overconfidence will get you killed. These are not normal warriors, Ms. Chan. They can pop in and out of shadow. You can’t.”
“I’ve seen your shadow hoppers in action.”
“I predict you last less than thirty seconds.”
I pointed at the sideline. “Go sit down.”
Sinclair stopped at his feeders and took a quick sip from the male. “Quality,” he said. He saw me approaching and folded his arms. “Ah, Ms. Chan. Are you ready?”
“I want your word that when I slay Victor, that you’ll free Amanda.”
Sinclair laughed. “I don’t want you to kill him. I want his army depleted, and his companion dead, but I intend to spare his life as he will mine. We might not like each other much, but we have a long history. This is just me flexing my muscles a bit to remind him that he’s no better than I.”
“And you’re willing to sacrifice me and Geoffrey to do that?”
“Of course. Your life means nothing. Your life is like a shooting star across the sky, burning out in seconds, while mine is like the moon, always there. Geoffrey is like a shooting star that crashes all the way to earth. You’ll be dust and I’ll still be here hundreds, perhaps thousands of years from now.”
“You’re a wonderful man,” I said. That time the sarcasm did make it through.
He flinched at the tone, but then grinned. “I forgot, I told you to be honest, but you can’t speak ill of me.”
I tried to kick him, but I couldn’t do it.
“Once the battle starts, I command you to kill Victor’s second and first as quickly as you can. But you are not to slay Victor.”
I nodded. “First, second, army, but then stop.”
“Ms. Chan, you amuse me.”
“Give me your word that you’ll save Amanda.”
“You are not in a position to make demands.”
“What harm would it do to save her?”
“None. But what good would it do me? None. That makes it a wash, and not worthy of my effort.”
I narrowed my eyes. I wanted to rip his head off.
Sinclair brushed past me and smiled at Victor. I followed him because I had nothing else to do.
“William,” Victor said, “allow me to present my second.”
The woman in the robes and hood stepped forward. She reached up and pulled back the cowl to reveal her face. Chantelle West.
Sinclair started.
So did I. “Chantelle?”
“One and the same,” Victor said.
“But she died,” I said.
“Indeed,” Victor said. He addressed Sinclair. “She is merely an animated corpse, but she’s fully under my control, and due to the nature of the death spell you used, I think she’ll still be standing at the end of the battle. What’s wonderful about her current state is that she can’t be stopped.”
“Anything can be stopped,” I said.
Victor grinned at me. “When the battle starts, cut off her head. Watch what happens. Well, you won’t be able to watch at that point because you’ll be besieged on all sides by my army, but if you could watch you’d be impressed. I’ll be sorry to see you go, Ms. Chan.”
Two men pushed a large cabinet out the player’s entrance and onto the sideline. “Oh,” Victor said. “My swords.”
“I’ll use my own,” I said.
“Suit yourself,” he said. He snapped his fingers and an unending stream of men clad in blue coats, white pants, and black boots poured out of the rectangle closest to the cabinet. Each chose a sword and moved off down the field.
Two more men pushed a similar cabinet from the entrance and parked it next to the first. Sinclair’s sword cabinet.
Sinclair snapped his fingers and a line of warriors clad in red coats, white pants, and black boots poured out the trapezoid closest to the sideline, and chose swords as well.
I stared at Chantelle. She had no expression. Her eyes were blank. She was an empty shell. Whatever it was that made her herself was gone. Call it the soul. That worked for me. It was Chantelle’s corpse, but there was no spirit there. No sentience. Just a body.
Ben approached me. “We have five minutes before they begin the festivities. We could pop into the locker room for a quickie before the battle.”
“You’re certainly persistent,” I said.
“No offense, but when the battle is over, the army will have cut you to pieces, and I won’t want to have anything to do with you.”
“No offense,” I said, “but when I take down the walking corpse over there, I’ll have to kill you too. Sinclair commanded it and I can’t break free of that spell.”
Ben smiled and patted me on the cheek like I was a child. “Oh, Kelly, I’ll never have to take the field. You’re sure about not going to the locker room?”
“Quite.”
He sighed. “Damn shame.”
“I can’t believe he’s using Chantelle’s corpse like this,” I said.
He winked at me. “Told you it was going to get interesting.”
“Right.”
“You’ll see.” He wandered off to choose a sword, though he clearly thought it a mere formality.
The warriors in red lined up on the south side of the stadium while the warriors in blue lined up on the north side. Sinclair told me to remain at the center of the field until the battle began. Chantelle’s corpse stood opposite me and removed the robe to reveal a skintight blue bodysuit. Her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders. A sword hung at her waist.
Victor approached his first feeder. He patted her on the shoulder, leaned down and pulled the tube from the collar. He wrapped his lips around it and drew a drink of blood from her vein. Ben joined him, smiling without a care in the world. He really didn’t think he’d have to fight.
On the opposite side of the field, Sinclair smiled, and sipped from his feeder while Geoffrey wrung his hands.
I looked at the crowd of warriors at the other end of the field. The blue warriors would come for me, but the red warriors would not. If Sinclair wanted me cut down by his own warriors, he wouldn’t have bothered with this setup. He would have them focused on Chantelle. I counted the blue warriors. Sixty-seven. Fifty were Watchers, and the rest were vampire underlings. I didn’t care about the red warriors. I couldn’t kill them due to the stupid command anyway.
As for Chantelle, she was already dead, so cutting off her head wasn’t a big deal to me. I didn’t want to kill Ben. He was crude, but I kinda liked him. And I wasn’t allowed to kill Victor. I did want to kill Sinclair, but he’d commanded
me not to lift a finger against him. I really hated being under his control.
A voice came over the loudspeaker. “Welcome to the battle between William Sinclair and Victor Pavlenco!” The crowd went wild. You would have thought we were wearing orange and blue. While there were only a couple hundred in the audience, they were certainly engaged. The crowd cheered louder for Victor.
“Currently acting as seconds we have Chantelle West for the Pavlenco army, and Kelly Chan for the Sinclair army. The rules are simple. The armies will fight to the death. When a second is slain, the first must take the field, and when the first is slain, the vampire lord must take the field. The battle is to the death unless the vampire lords choose to negotiate terms. Do either of you wish to negotiate?”
Victor took a microphone from his pocket. “No,” he said.
Across the field, Sinclair removed a microphone from his own pocket. “Are you quite certain?” he asked.
“Quite,” Victor said.
“Very well,” Sinclair said. “No negotiations at this time.”
“No further opportunities will be presented until a vampire lord must take the field of battle,” the announcer said.
I gave the crowd one last look. I knew that once I went into full-on warrior mode, I wouldn’t notice any of them unless they were a threat. I couldn’t tell the vampires from the Watchers, with the exception of the well-dressed Council members off to one side. They wore dour expressions. I focused on my immediate task. Survival. The announcer’s voice thundered through the stadium.
“As there are no reprieves, the battle will begin in five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One. Begin.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ben was right. Things did get interesting.
I launched myself forward, and before Chantelle’s corpse could draw her sword, I sliced her head off, but her left hand shot out, caught the head and put it back on her neck where it instantly fused back together leaving her whole.
“I don’t like that,” I said and sliced off her right arm as it drew the sword. The arm started to drop, but then snapped back into place, fusing itself to her body. The blue material remained cut, but her skin did not, though it did have a pink line like an old scar.
Five blue-coated warriors appeared before me, and at the same time several red warriors attacked Chantelle. I whipped my sword around, parried, stabbed. My blade went through a warrior’s eyeball into his brain and he dropped to the ground. I spun, kicked, punched, sliced, and two more warriors fell.
The announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker, but I was too busy to pay attention, and I certainly didn’t need his color commentating to keep track of what I was doing. I was having fun!
Most of the sounds around me never registered as I went into full-on warrior mode where all my senses were focused on things to keep me alive. The clang of sword on sword didn’t matter, but footsteps behind me did. My senses tuned to the things that mattered in the moment. I couldn’t hear the roar of the crowd, but I could hear someone land on the field ten yards away. While I normally spent my time in what people might call a heightened awareness state, in warrior mode, I was on a completely different level.
One man tried to grab me around the throat as he drove a sword into my back. I reached up, grabbed his neck, dropped low, and flipped him. He hit the ground on top of a corpse, and I jammed my sword into his skull to finish him off.
As I rose, I twisted to reach the sword in my back and yanked it free. Now I had a sword in each hand. “Let’s play,” I said.
Warriors popped out of shadows. I did a shoulder roll to get room to maneuver and saw Chantelle slice two warriors in half while others stabbed her over and over again. Another blue coat appeared in front of me and I sliced off his sword arm, spun and cut off another warrior’s head.
Blood flew in every direction. The grass turned red as I hacked, slashed, cut, stabbed, kicked, flipped, swung, chopped, and sliced opponent after opponent.
My foot slid in the blood-slicked grass, but I didn’t lose my balance. I went with the slide, avoided a blade, parried another. They popped in and out of shadows all around me. I kept moving like it was a dance, and I smiled because I was in my element. I didn’t care who I slashed. These were Watchers and lesser vampires, and I could slice and dice as much as my little heart desired. I took a few cuts, but they healed quickly. A sword went through my left arm, but it was a clean skewer and not a slice. When the warrior pulled back, I used my right hand to swing a sword and cut off his head.
A quick flip while spinning and swinging both blades and another head bounced on the battlefield. They kept coming, and it felt wonderful to just let loose. I cut one man’s leg off and another warrior kicked it aside.
“Hmm,” I said as I cut off his head.
I glanced back to Chantelle. Her corpse walked along having pieces cut off by warriors, but those pieces snapped back into place and she dispatched each man in turn. There were women warriors too, but they were few and far between.
A man darted out of a triangle. I kicked him in the head, ran a sword through his chest, then used my other sword to slice through his neck. Jonathan used to talk about horror movies, and he rated some of them based on the number of heads that rolled. Heads were rolling all over the place here. I ran toward the center of the field again, but a warrior leaped from a square shadow at me. I smacked him in the face, and he flew into a triangle, then appeared again from a circle to land on his feet and charge me. I cut him in half and his legs tripped over his torso sending him sliding through a puddle of blood.
I kept moving, always swinging, slicing, parrying. I ran another man through ear to ear. The sword got stuck in his skull, so I yanked him around to let another attacker stab him while I worked my blade free. I spun to kill the guy behind me.
And my eyes went back to Chantelle.
Bodies piled around her. She walked over some. Swords sliced through her, but each time something was severed it instantly reattached.
One of the warriors tackled me. I lost a sword as I rolled. I tried to roll farther but slammed into the line of wooden spears. The man sliced down, and I barely managed to block the attack with my sword. I grabbed hold of a spear and used it to pull myself up. Then I jerked the spear from the ground, twirled it with one hand to block another attack.
On and on it went.
My arms were soaked with blood. I knew my face was covered in blood. My clothes were ruined.
Finally, I decapitated one more warrior and looked around. Corpses littered the field from end to end, and the only warriors standing were Chantelle and myself. I sheathed my sword, and grabbed another spear from the line so I held one in each hand. I wiped blood from my eyes with my forearm, but mostly I just spread the blood around. Chantelle stalked toward me, her sword dripping crimson. Droplets splashed in the red grass.
As she moved toward me, I surveyed the audience. They sat in stunned silence. More than a hundred and twenty corpses covered the field, most of them in pieces. I eased a few steps toward the center. Chantelle walked toward me and raised her sword.
I launched a spear at her. It caught her in the chest. She didn’t even slow down.
The spear bobbed up and down as she walked, but it was firmly embedded in her chest. Right through the heart. But a corpse doesn’t need a heart.
I grinned and pulled my sword. I walked forward to meet her, sword in my right hand, spear in my left. She tried to slice, but I parried the attack and dropped my spear so I could grab hold of the weapon protruding from her chest. I drove it deeper, then pushed up, knocking her off her feet. I planted her on her back, drove the spear all the way through and pinned her to the turf. Then I lifted my dropped spear. She tried to swing her sword, but it was ineffective. I cut off her hand and it instantly reattached.
“Let’s try that again,” I said.
I cut off her sword hand, and batted it to the side with the spear. She released the sword. When the hand shot back, I skewered it through the palm and dro
ve it into the ground a few feet from her wrist. The hand twitched, but couldn’t go anywhere.
I calmly walked back to the line of spears, yanked several free and returned to Chanelle’s body.
“Let me know when she counts as being slain,” I said and cut off her head. I kicked it up into the air and drove a spear through the left eye. The head tried to shoot back to the neck, but I stabbed the spear into the ground. I cut the head in half, and pinned one side to the grass. I cut the other half in two, and skewered one of them. Soon, I’d cut the head into twelve small pieces, each pinned to the field by a wooden spear.
“Shall I continue?”
Victor patted Ben. Ben’s eyes were wide as he stepped on the field.
I strode forward. “Sorry, Ben, I can’t stop. I’m still under Sinclair’s control.”
He raised his blade. “Can you at least make it look good? Make it look like I can put up some semblance of a fight?”
I shook my head. “I can let you take a swing, but then you’re done. At least you’ll go down fighting. That’s an honorable death.”
He nodded and tried to stab me. I didn’t even bother to parry. I simply sidestepped his jab then cut off his head.
The stadium was silent.
Victor’s reaction was telling. He didn’t have one. Either he would be a monster poker player or he cared as little for Ben as for the grass beneath his feet.
I felt nothing. Ben was just another dead thing to me, and as I stared at his head lying in the grass, I wondered what that said about me. My friend Jonathan told me I could be more than just an assassin, but would someone who is more than just a killer be able to look at the severed head of a man she’d spent time with and feel absolutely nothing one way or the other? Or perhaps the fact that I even considered that put me above the rest of the cold-blooded killers. Regardless, the only thing that bothered me about killing all these people, be they Watchers or fledgling vampires or companions, was that it didn’t bother me.
I looked into the crowd and spotted the vampire with red hair named Stacy Fitzpatrick. Not much of a vampire name, I thought. But behind her was another familiar face. TJ. He leaned out, met my gaze and gave me a nod. How strange.