Poisoned metal had a distinct sound as it flew through the air, like the hiss of a snake before it strikes. Just like that. Within a heartbeat or two, vampires were unmade. Quick as striking lightning, in a explosion of dust and venom, ten of the reborn army dissipated into bits. With them fell Celestine’s last chance.
I watched in horror.
No time left. Not even a second.
The chain of Icarus still bound Celestine to me—chest and arms, heart to heart. Even though she was weak, she lived. That was all I needed right at that moment.
Everything I possessed holding one end of a delicate chain of links.
As smoke and dust came pouring in through the broken crypt door, as the reborn army turned to recognize the danger that came from the hallway, all I saw was Celestine.
I looked up at the dancing woman who kept the predators at bay. Peggy never abandon her post. She still stood, guarding my back, protecting her mother, protecting me—a stranger.
“What do we do?” I asked, unable to see past the wall of dancing bodies formed by the vampire dojo. I missed the brunt of the initial attack.
The good news?
Striking down the vampires that hung on the ceiling meant that the hunters disrupted everyone’s vision. In a flurry of chalky death, the air filled with particles of pulverized rock, concrete, dust, and floating bits of ruined vampire. Within moments, I couldn’t see the entrance to the crypt at all.
It was difficult to see much past the dojo students.
Far enough from the main entrance to the crypt, the three of us still had a few seconds of visibility.
I stood up as the billowing cloud of dirt and dust and death came barreling towards us. Thick ash began falling down around our heads. Choking. Caking our eyelashes, skin, hair, death coated the insides of our mouths, noses, and lungs with sour, rotting particles.
I turned a bit green thinking about what or who I inhaled with each breath.
“Let's go~” Peggy shouted in the middle of the concussions of sound and dust, grabbing my arm. In one smooth turn, I picked up Celestine’s unconscious body.
Magnificently, she still lived. I held on to that fact.
We had managed to bring her back from nearly destroyed undead. She was still bound to me by the ancient chain.
We had an advantage, a small one.
Peggy and I had been in the crypt before. We knew about the secret exit. Was it possible we could escape that way again? In all the chaos, that was the one chance I seized.
In her hands, Peggy held the halberd, resting the pole over her shoulder, its blade trailing behind us. We didn’t need to worry about the reborn vampires right now. Every undead thing in the room focused on the frontal attack coming from the hall.
The hunters had arrived.
Reaching into her sequined evening gown, Peggy pulled out the only chance we had of escaping. Her back-up plan: the skeleton key. It had saved us once.
I had hoped Celestine would be able to turn the vampire army away from our throats, that her rising would save us: Peggy and I...
Now no one was safe, not ever again.
“Run!” Peggy cried as she moved to the back of the crypt. The possibility of fleeing grew smaller by the second. All around us, vampires exploded until the world was chalk white, ash covering every surface. We could do nothing as the last hidden fortress of the vampires in the city of Los Angeles fell.
Slightly ahead of me, Peggy took out the skeleton key as we raced to the only remaining option.
It’d worked before. I clung to that as I ran with Celestine in my arms.
We'd escaped the first time from ravenous monsters. Now we fled something far worse: humans focused on destroying everything that we held dear.
In my arms, her body didn't weigh more than a pillow. A vampire, creature of the night, legendary shadow walker… she was light as a cat—as if her body was made from thunder clouds.
As if she were already gone.
Celestine was too light to live really. What do I know? She was everything that I was not. Frightened, I watched the flutter of her eyelids for any sign that she lived—not an easy thing in the heavy dust and ash that filled the air. There was no heartbeat to measure. In my shaking arms, I held an injured vampire. I could feel her life force through the chain that bound us together.
That meant there was hope.
I seized on to that with no intention of ever letting go.
Stumbling through the choking air, we reached the back wall. It helped that layout of the elaborate room and our perilous situation felt familiar, down to the wall, the panic, the need to run, even the skeleton key.
I couldn’t see Peggy, but I could hear her as she tried to locate the hidden lock. And tried. And then she cried out.
“No. Dammit all to hell and back!” she exclaimed, “It’s-it’s broken, Tristan.” My heart sunk. I could hear the tears. I didn’t need to see Peggy’s face when she muttered, “T-the key is useless.”
Pure panic mixed with a burst of adrenaline in that moment.
Trapped. Blinded. Hunted. Words soon followed by Dead and Buried: that was my fate. Certainly, that was Celestine’s fate. And with the chain between us… if she died, I believed I would, too.
Cornered.
Cursing, Peggy stifled back a sob.
Me?
For the first time in more than three years, I stood up straight. I refused to cower. I denied the impossible over and over again.
And I took a step back to the crypt, back to the battle I couldn’t help win. Back to the reborn army that only survived as long as they were cloaked in dust and ashes, I slowly walked, holding the most precious creature I had ever known.
“You are wrong,” I spoke into the silence of the darkest hallway. “You hunters. What you do here is murder.”
The silence on the other side of the thick clouds of dust and venom was enough of an answer for me.
I didn’t know what else to add. How could a voice from the murky ground convince warriors not to kill?
“The way of life is not to eliminate your rival but to find balance.”
“What a load of horse shit,” someone shouted from the hallway. A deep voice, full of laughter and a sneer I didn’t need to see to understand. “Whoever you are in there, you are on the side of the devils. You walk amongst the fallen. No idea how you’ve managed it. I admire your courage but only a fool would walk into a leech’s crypt. You are proof positive that Darwin doesn’t always win.”
“There is a place on earth for both vampire and human.” I spoke confidently even though I only clung to a sliver of hope.
I held her in my arms.
Bastet had sent help. Gods had intervened for me to bring her back from dissolution. The chain. Our chance finding of the halberd… there had to be a reason. The story of our lives couldn’t end like this.
I spoke with a confidence I summoned like a cloak around my shoulders, covering my heart and her frail, unmoving form. “You must stop. Let us talk, compromise, find a way. Something better than this constant battle between hunter and vampires.”
In between the words of the appeal I attempted, the hunters moved, shifting positions, getting ready to strike. They used the time wisely while I stood there, exposed, mortal, in the middle of the cavernous room.
I spoke the truth even though I knew they would never hear me. I bluffed to keep them distracted. Anything to buy time for Peggy and the vampires to regroup. We all knew this conflict wasn’t going to end in hugs and kisses.
Time purchased with empty words was still precious.
“If you kill me, it’s murder,” I yelled, taunting them, daring them to strike, wishing they would leave, knowing the hunters would not listen, would not abandon the field because of a few words from a mortal in a dust storm.
Leaning down, I placed my cheek against her ash-covered hair. I challenged the mortals ready to destroy every moving thing in the crypt, speaking truth to the hunters, “If you kill them, it’s geno
cide.”
They had had enough time to pinpoint my location. Even if they didn’t know who I was, they definitely knew where I stood. The game of delay was up.
“Every vampire must die. Every. Single. One.” Deep-voiced hunter made his declaration of war as if the battlelines weren’t drawn hundreds of years ago. He included a little dig for me. “And any mortal who sides with the beasts will be put down like a rabid dog. Make your peace, fool! Judgement day has arrived.”
Again, silver flew through the air. Blurs of blue lights streaked in every direction as the hunters launched their weapons.
Three more reborns died. Each explosion was a knife that found its target—ash their only defense.
Fool that I was, I stood there. Linked to the source of all the trouble by ancient magic, I was as weak and frail as the woman I held. What good were martial arts when my arms were full and my flesh was mortal? What chance did I have with rude words against silver imbued with some arcane magic?
Squat. Diddly squat.
I had no chance at all.
Pulling Celestine tight to my chest and shoulders, I turned my back on the crypt door, on the source of the scowls, taunts, and their deadly weapons.
The silver would hit me first. With my body, I chose to block their poison. Dust covered us both, not even a gentle breeze would clear the chalky air of death, earth, and decay. I didn’t care.
Blinking away the heavy dirt, my eyes were focused on her upturned, porcelain face. Like a clay mask, each feature was obscured, every bit of her face covered in a dull ghostly white.
“Celestine,” I whispered.
Her eyes fluttered but she didn’t wake. Frankly, I didn’t want her to regain awareness. It was far more merciful that way. When the end came, she would step into that deep oblivion peacefully. For me, death was easier to embrace if it meant she lived even a few seconds longer.
Carefully, I held her body.
With a brutal thud, the first silver dagger hit my shoulder. The sting of a wasp, the shocking pain of the deep cut—at my core, I felt none of it. Nothing. I refused to flinch.
I kept my eyes on the only thing that mattered: Celestine. The chain of Icarus glowed between our hearts in the darkest hours. Even covered in ash, the magic lit the way.
I held on to what was real. What was important.
When Marian died of cancer, I stood by helpless, unable to do anything but hold her hand as the monster ate her from the inside out.
I learned from that pain. Crippled by her loss, I hid. And then, I adapted.
Now I held another woman, a stranger—our hearts bound as one. Already, I offered my life for hers. Gods and goddesses had conspired, high above my pay grade. Some power made a way for a mortal man to glimpse immortality—for me to find my own Isolde. For the ring of fire around us to run through our skin, under our bones, and surrounded our lives, uniting two opposite beings into one.
Wrapped in its metal links, the chain of Icarus was the portal between our vastly different worlds. That glowing artifact’s connection was the single most important object in my entire life.
We were one in magic.
She was unconscious.
I was wounded.
Death came knocking, again and again. And the worst was yet to come.
And yet… falling in love in a few days really did happen. It happened to me.
The chain was a miracle made metal.
How it worked, I couldn’t begin to guess. I was familiar with the ancient Greek myths. Daedalus and his son Icarus had taken a dare, trying to escape his past. He had built a machine of wax and wings and flown across the vast, mighty ocean… only to fail. It was never his flight that killed him, though. It was his pride… instead of flying for home, he flew too high, wanting to rival the sun.
I didn’t want to be a vampire.
I didn’t want anything.
Except the life of the undead woman who rested in my arms.
Another dagger hit my shoulder. Same side as the first.
Same bitter sting.
The blow sucked all the air out of my lungs. I coughed at the shock of sudden pain.
Grunting, I absorbed the blow.
In a focused rush, my students collapsed into a tight wall around us. I carried Celestine, and they protected me with their bodies.
“No,” Keen anguish ripped across my heart when one of my students fell, struck by the silver. Here beside me one moment and then gone the next, Petra, one of my brightest. Vanished to the winds.
“ No, no. Stop. We can't afford this loss,” I said to them, ignoring their fangs and the inhuman red lights in their eyes. “Y-you have to escape. You have to get out... you can't die shielding me... protecting her. ” My speech stuttered.
My heart broke.
Josiah blinked at me and smiled, covered in ash and dust. And then he was gone.
In a cloud of venom and death—erased. Devastating. Annihilation was never pretty. Being on the losing side never was.
The beauty of their youth did not save my Dojo students from the curse of the silver as the encanted weapons struck another one down.
Laura. Gone.
That was more than my heart could take. The others closed rank around me, protecting my back with their bodies. “You can't,” I denied the terrible reality. It wasn’t right that they die for me. Or for her. Dammit. They were just kids, goofy, socially awkward—transformed by venom and need into reborn vampires. I wanted to protect them. Instead, they saved me.
I wanted to brush them away but the cost of sacrifice was too great. The part of them that was still human, the memories that remained of the dojo, of the exercises, of me… I clung to saving that, if I could.
But then I stopped. My students—they chose. And I would honor that. They gave their lives to save hers, even just to buy Celestine a few moments more.
Just like me.
Another silver dagger hit the back of my arm, wounding me with a glancing slice off of my shoulder. That hurt.
For a human being, the daggers were deadly—murder by a thousand scratches. But for those vampires around me, the young men and women that I had led in my dojo for the last three years—each silver weapon’s touch was instant obliteration.
Still, they refused to flee the fight. These were the real heroes: the ones who gave all.
A fierce pride swept through me.
Along with an odd, nagging feeling that there was something I could still do to change the results of this massacre. But how?
I didn't know any deities.
I mean, I was familiar with the sages of the eastern world, Buddha, Confucius, Tao. Jesus. Oh yeah, and the Tooth Fairy. It had never occurred to me to call them by name, and expect any answer. Not even from a bodhisattva. Enlightenment never was war. Wisdom attained meant avoidance of violence. The problem was I had entered another whole universe of deities and undead. Inner light and meditation wouldn’t save me now.
Prayer didn’t deflect the sharpened weapons of the vampire hunters.
Good thoughts didn’t stop vampire venom.
My thoughts turned inward. What do I know? Really know, down to the atoms of my being?
We had met Bastet. She had helped us, guiding us to this moment. I believed she might come again. I knew she existed, somewhere, unknowable by a mere human. But still…
Perhaps I only need to ask?
Apollo might throw in on this fight too…. After all, Peggy held his halberd. He had sent help even when I had no awareness of any of his power.
Bigger forces were at work all around the crypt.
What did the Gods want with us?
My heart lurched. I held Celestine and searched desperately for a way out of the dead-end trap that the crypt had become. So much of this supernatural stuff was new to me, untested, undiscovered. I started with what I had actually experienced.
“Bastet? Are you there?” I muttered into the thick, choking, dusty air.
I didn't believe in much since Marian die
d.
And face it, whatever it was that vampires worshipped, well—that was far beyond any secrets Celestine shared with me. I only knew what I felt and seen with my own two eyes. I had seen the Egyptian cat goddess. I had seen a living ancient deity. So Apollo's weapon or not, the only goddess I knew was the one I called on. She might as well have been an alien to me, a deity from a long-dead race as strange in her motivations as I was in mine.
A creature as different from me as Celestine.
“Ummmm… Bastet,” I framed my request as kindly as I could. I didn't know any rituals. How should I get the attention of a deity so old her world is a whispered legend, so powerful cat lovers across the world still know her name? Patron goddess of the furry balls that owned us all, I took that chance. She might listen, I figured.
“Can you hear me, Bastet? Don't cats want humans to live? Someone has to stay around to pet them, right?”
And before another one of my students could fall to the cursed silver, there was a indescribable shimmer in the air. I only managed to see it in the corner of my eye. Bigger and bigger, the disturbance in the air spun until there was a vibrant ripple across space, time, and devotion. There wasn't much light, and whatever power filled that area—it wasn't sunlight for certain. No vampires burst into flames as the ripple spun in the air off of Peggy’s shoulder.
My jaw dropped.
It was like watching a galaxy form—miraculous, unexpected, magical.
There was this unexpected sound. A pop like the world imploded, followed by a silence so heavy that it almost smothered us all.
And then, in the middle of the swirling blue sparks of light emerged the glint of metal. Shining bits of fire and power appeared in the air, cut out of nothing whole cloth, and then another wave bloomed, and then a third, and then a hundred more as some kind of armor was conjured out of the shimmering, impossible spiral.
With a clank, a breastplate fell out of the summoned portal—heavy, ornate, beautifully wrought. Even from where I was, the quality was obvious. The solid metal shoulder covering depicted images of snakes intertwined with dragons. The skill alone was suited to a museum display. Around the collar and breastbone, the carved designs acted as if the metal itself promised to protect any worthy wearer.
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