by Avin Vang
Matthias started to laugh, a response in mind, but it was cut short by a hand on his shoulder. The wolf he had hit was still on his feet, and Matthias was caught off guard. He took a swing at the wolf, but he was tackled by Roman and his pack.
Matthias was pinned to the ground. The power drain was even stronger when his back was touching the ground. The wolves were clawing at him; only Roman was still in his human form. They had been shifting slowly as the fighting went on.
Matthias managed to get his shoulder up and get the wolves off of him, but he was moving slower as he got back to his feet. Everyone seemed to notice how weak he was feeling. Roman was smiling wide as he motioned for the wolves to move again.
The first wolf jumped for Matthias and he shifted on his feet. Grabbing the wolf by the legs and the snout, Matthias pulled him in and ripped his throat out in a single motion. The fresh blood exploded in every direction. The wolves took a step back, and Matthias started to see fear in their eyes. They weren’t ready to die for this.
“We don’t even have to kill you right now,” Roman laughed. “If we wait long enough the castle will kill you for us. So, what’s the plan?”
“Love will find a way,” Matthias knew that sounded corny, but he said it anyway. It wasn’t a dead giveaway, but it was enough to tip Roman off that there was a plan larger than the one he was seeing. He looked at the two wolves closest to the castle.
“Go and find the girl!”
The wolves ran to the castle. Matthias was going to go after them, but a wolf jumped on his back and bit down on his neck. The wolf was gone before he could turn, and the next wolf was already at the back of his neck. There were three bites before Matthias caught on and started moving away. The plan had changed, the wolves were just going to keep him in place.
“I can get out of here any time I want,” Matthias taunted, trying to stay ahead of the lunging wolves.
“Then do it,” Roman was laughing as he stood back from the action. He still seemed confident that he had the upper hand. Matthias wanted to wipe the smug look off the kid’s face.
Matthias dodged the next lunge and tried to get up into the air. It wasn’t pain, Matthias didn’t remember what that sensation was. The teeth sank into his heel, breaking through the tough outer layers. The crunching sound made Matthias’s stomach turn. The crunching continued as Matthias was dropped into the dirt.
He could feel the power being sucked out of his body. The castle grounds were hungrily draining him. He wouldn’t have long to live if he didn’t get back to his feet. He was waiting for more fangs to sink in, but the wolves had backed away.
“I think it’s more fun to just watch you die this way,” Roman was sounding just like his father. The rivalry between Zdeno and Matthias had built up over centuries, and yet, by killing the boy’s father, Matthias had created an instant replacement for his enemy. “When you get weak enough my boys will bring the girl out, and you can watch me rip her head off.”
“Is that who you want to be?” Matthias coughed the words into the dust that covered the ground. “Take it from someone who’s been there. You don’t want to go down this road.”
“Stop talking!” Roman yelled. Matthias could see in the boy’s eyes that he wasn’t the monster that he wanted to be.
He wasn’t a monster yet, that is. Matthias had gone through the transition at a very young age, but he remembered a time when it was hard for him to kill people. He was a vampire, but he still had his humanity. Every evil act peeled away at his humanity. Matthias tried to explain this to Roman, but the words were falling on deaf ears.
The vampire’s head fell back into the dust. His strength was gone. Matthias had been prepared for this moment when he first started this trip. He hadn’t even expected this trip to go as well as it had gone. The prophecy had said Raven would kill him, but he couldn’t have envisioned this. He let his shoulders drop down into the dirt.
As he lay there feeling the life force trail off into the top soil, Matthias started to think about his life. With 500 years to draw from, Matthias was surprised to find that all of the images were of the last few days. Seeing her eyes for the first time, smelling her hair, and the first time that their hands touched. All he could think about was getting to Raven.
His insides felt hollow, and his ankle was cracked, but he started to move again. Matthias rolled to the side and got a knee up to push up off the ground. His hands fumbled on the ground; it was hard to get them moving the right way.
"He's moving," a wolf yelled. Matthias could hear them laughing as he struggled to move. The laughter stopped when he pushed forward almost five feet. The vampire was still on the ground, but he had moved fast, and the wolves were giving him a bit more space.
"He's not going anywhere," Roman yelled. "He does not make it to the castle alive." The wolves were growling and snarling as Matthias started inching his way toward the castle gates. "Stay down!"
"Never!" Matthias screamed as he launched himself forward. The first teeth sunk into his neck. One leg, then the other, the teeth were ripping at the vampire’s rock hard flesh. Matthias wished he had the ring. The battle would already be over. He fought and struggled to get free of the wolves.
"Finish him!" Roman was screaming.
Matthias gritted his teeth and continued to push forward. He was only 20 yards from the gate, but reaching it would be a miracle.
Chapter 13
Raven
“I just want a little bit of…light.” The door had slammed closed and Raven was left in a cage in complete darkness. She had been hoping for a bit of civility. She wasn’t sure what she had done to deserve this treatment. She had been drinking and partying with those guys at the beginning of the week. Now they were leaving her to rot in a cage.
“Why are you doing this?” She yelled out into the darkness, but there was no answer. Raven could feel the cold emptiness of the room starting to consume her. It wasn’t just the dark. Raven had never liked the dark. It had a strange power over her.
Until recently the strange feelings had felt like her imagination playing with her, but now that she knew she was a witch, Raven wondered how real these feelings actually were. It was the same feeling that she got in the clearing with Matthias. She was drawing in the power of the world around her.
Here in the dungeon it felt stronger. Like somehow the dank prison was charging her body with power. She closed her eyes and allowed the power to flow through her. She could feel the spirits of the castle moving through her. Centuries’ worth of residual human energy was moving through her body.
Opening her eyes, Raven could see that the room was glowing. There was light moving out from her to the rest of the room. She looked down at her grandmother’s talisman. It was glowing brightly, and Raven could see the source of the light buried in the necklace.
“It’s the ring!” Raven cried out as she pulled it out of its hiding place. As her fingers made contact with the ring she was transported through time and space to an open field.
A family was having a picnic. Raven recognized the scene right away. She was in the picnic from the legend of the raven. The family couldn’t see Raven as she moved over to the blanket that they had laid on the grass. The bird landed beside the blanket on the grass and when it shifted into human form Raven gasped.
Her grandmother had been a lovely young woman at the time, but it was definitely her. Raven watched her grandmother cast the spell and she watched the arrow go through her wing. The young Helga dropped the ring and flew into the trees to find cover. The family searched for the bird for hours afterward.
The vision started to get muddled as Raven was transported again to a new scene. It was a dark night and a young boy was being ripped out of his castle by a group of soldiers. “They can’t help you,” a soldier laughed as the boy reached out for a frozen guard. “No one can help you, Matthias.”
Raven could barely watch as her grandmother moved toward the two young boys that had been dragged out into the courtyard. “Y
ou will drink this potion or I will kill your brother,” Helga snarled at Matthias. “You will pay for what your father has done.”
Matthias drank the potion and fell to the ground. Helga turned to the older boy. “When your brother awakes, he will have quite the thirst for blood. I am almost certain that he will kill you, but I need to be sure.” Raven cringed and gagged as her beloved grandmother stabbed the young boy.
Helga searched through the boys’ clothes and found the ring on a necklace around the older boy’s neck. She laughed as she put the ring into her pocket. “Kill the guards and anyone who has ever seen the boys’ faces. We are erasing this family, but we still need the name.”
The soldiers all laughed as they headed off to murder the castle guards and household staff. Everyone in the castle was still frozen in Helga’s spell. The witch was laughing to herself as she watched Matthias start to stir.
“This will be your first meal as a vampire, and your last time on these grounds,” Helga warned as she watched the scene with great anticipation. She seemed eager to see what would happen next. The sleepy-looking Matthias followed his nose to the blood. He licked it at first, and then he bit into the source and drank it. “Feed, you need your strength.”
Matthias seemed stronger, angrier as he lifted his head to look at Helga. He glared at her, but then his eyes caught something else. “Ladislaus!” He grabbed his brother’s face and looked for signs of life.
“You killed him,” Helga taunted the young vampire. “You are a monster. You will bring nothing but death and destruction to the world, much like your warmonger of a father.”
“Ladislaus,” Matthias whimpered as he collapsed onto his brother’s lifeless body. Matthias was shaking and convulsing as the emotions swept through him. Raven could feel the pain coming through the ring in her hand. She could feel the pain that the ring had caused.
Helga left with the ring and the vision seemed to melt away. Raven collapsed back onto the floor of the dungeons. She was shaking and her stomach turned. Raven propped herself up on all fours and started to retch. Her heart cried out for the vampire. He had seemed like such a monster at first. Raven understood so much more about Matthias than she ever had before.
The young witch collapsed to the floor and hoped that the power would once again start to surge. She was hoping that it would help settle her stomach, but there was no more power for the room to give her, or she was no longer receptive to it. Either way, Raven was left shaking on the cold floor. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be a witch anymore.
With no windows it was impossible to tell how much time was passing. Raven wasn’t even sure what time she had arrived at the castle. She knew it was early, but that was about it. When there was a sudden noise at the door she wasn’t at all sure who or what to expect.
“We need to leave,” Carrie said as she pushed the door open. “There is nothing but trouble waiting for us out there.”
“What are you talking about?” Raven asked as she recoiled from the light. It was far too bright in the room all of a sudden. Carrie rushed in and tried to pull her out of the room, but Raven felt drained. Ali was dealing with the guards.
“What are you doing?” Carrie was frustrated by her slow pace, and urged her to hurry as they needed to get out of Hunedoara immediately. Raven however knew that her place was in the town. She needed to fix the mistakes that her grandmother had made. She now understood her place in the legend.
“I need to get to Matthias,” Raven sighed as she got Carrie’s hands off of her. “Do you know where he is?”
“He’s gone,” Carrie said the words, but it was her eyes that gave away the truth.
“Why are you lying to me?” Raven asked, but then she heard the commotion in the courtyard. “He’s here!” Raven tried to push past her friend. “Why would you let him come here? It’s going to kill him.”
“He came here to save you, but now it is time to go,” Carrie was trying to be the voice of reason. Raven could see the concern in her eyes. She knew that Carrie really thought she was helping. “He knew he wasn’t making it out of here alive.”
“He can, we are going to save him,” Raven looked desperately from Carrie to Ali who had appeared at the door, searching for support. Their faces weren’t filling Raven with hope.
“It stopped,” Ali pointed out the silence coming from the yard. Raven’s shoulders slumped as she realized that her lover was likely dead. The wolves weren’t going to keep a vampire alive for any reason that she could think of.
“Bring her out here!” The voice came booming in from the courtyard. It was definitely Roman, the new, more vengeful Roman. “I want Matthias to watch her die.”
“We need to get out of here,” Carrie whispered, and grabbed both of her friends by their arms.
“No!” Raven urged as she broke free. “We can’t go now. This is perfect.” Raven grabbed Carrie’s arms and looked her right in the eyes. “I have a plan and I need your help.”
“No, can’t…”
“We can do it,” Ali nodded. “Come on Carrie, this is serious. This is the man she loves.”
“What about Roman?” Carrie was getting nasty. She was glaring at Ali and looking for anything she could use to get the others moving out of the castle and Hunedoara. “Are you going to betray the man you love? To save a monster who just killed his father?”
“That wasn’t his fault,” Raven sighed. She wished that she could show Carrie the vision that she had seen in the ring. Then they would understand why they had to save the vampire. “I am going to save him with or without you.”
“We can’t leave you,” Carrie muttered in dejected acceptance. Ali smiled at Raven. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
Raven looked over at the guards, and then she turned back to her friends with a big smile. “I think what you two need is a makeover.”
Chapter 14
Matthias
The vampire hadn’t lost a fight in nearly 600 years. Since the last time he was on the castle grounds. Seeing Raven led out to meet them was the worst thing he had ever seen in his life. It reminded him of the moment he realized that the taste in his mouth was his brother’s blood. He had murdered his own brother, and yet this moment still felt worse.
“We are about to witness something special, boys,” Roman laughed. “It is rare to see a monster like our friend here grow attached to a human, but that’s what has happened, and now we’re about to rip all of that away from him.”
Matthias could barely hear Roman. It was more like a dull roar than words. Matthias was too busy imagining ripping the guards to pieces. The two wolves leading Raven out of the castle were going to receive a special level of murder for the role that they played in Raven’s death. Matthias tried to summon the strength to break free.
“Hold! Hold!” Roman yelled as he delivered four powerful kicks that almost collapsed Matthias’s chest. “Wow, that felt like it hurt. I guess the amulet is working. Do you recognize the handiwork? An old friend of yours made this for my father.”
Matthias looked up at Roman and the amulet. It looked almost identical to Raven’s necklace. Helga’s magic had always been incredibly effective against Matthias. He recoiled when he saw it. That was why Zdeno felt so strong, Matthias thought as he tried to back away. He was being wrestled to the ground.
“Ahhh!” Raven screamed and Matthias’s heart sank as she was thrown towards him. She crashed into him and he tried to get his arms around the young woman. Even sweaty and covered in dirt, Raven was a sight for sore eyes.
“Why did you do that?” Roman mock yelled at the wolf guards. “We’re already killing her, there’s no reason to be mean!” Roman led the chorus of laughter.
Matthias looked into Raven’s eyes expecting to see fear and pain, but she had a twinkle in her eye as she grabbed his hand. Matthias couldn’t even process the feeling of what her hands were doing. He looked down and shot up to his feet.
“What?” Roman screamed. “Don’t let him up!”
&n
bsp; Matthias looked back at the wolves who had been holding him down, and they all ran for the hills. They weren’t bonded yet to their new pack leader. Matthias had seen this happen several times before. The leader had to earn the loyalty of his pack, and that could take years.
“Where are you going?” Roman backed away himself as he grabbed at his amulet, debating a fight with a vampire. “Cowards!”
“These wolves don’t have any guts.” Everyone was confused as the words seemed to come from one of the wolf guards who had dragged Raven out. Roman fell backwards as the guards’ faces began to melt away. “You!”
Matthias looked over at Raven, so surprised he barely noticed his body giving way. Raven grabbed hold of him and went to the ground with him. “What’s wrong? I thought the ring fixed everything.” Raven was already trying to get Matthias back on his feet.
“He’s hurt!” Roman laughed. He was moving forward again. Matthias’s fall had helped the werewolf find his courage. Roman delivered another kick to the chest.
Raven got her wand up and tried to cast a spell, but the magic was absorbed by the amulet around Roman’s neck. Raven wasn’t sure how to get around that. She was too new to the magical world, and Roman stepped toward her with a murderous look on his face.
“I am so glad that I still get to kill you,” Roman laughed. “And it’s all because of your grandmother. Is that irony?”
“No, it would be irony if she was her grandmother,” Ali said. Everyone stopped to look at the witch who didn’t normally sound so switched-on. Her comments were normally restricted to drinking and flirting. “I think, you know what, I’m not sure.”
“Well, I’m sure I don’t care,” Roman laughed as he went to grab Raven.
A hand wrapped around his neck before the young werewolf could reach her. “I’m pretty sure you should care,” Matthias had gotten back to his feet. He was crushing Roman’s windpipe. Roman was surprised at first, but quickly recovered and sent Matthias back to the ground. The vampire could feel his body failing.