by Unknown
“And you couldn’t do it yourself?!” I snapped, suddenly enraged that all of this bloodshed could have been prevented.
“I regret I could not,” he said with unfailing politeness. “It was not my place, and as you yourself must surely have concluded, it would have created a power vacuum that would have been counter-productive.”
“You mean to tell me,” I said slowly, “that my wife could still be here, but she died because you thought that it wasn’t ‘your place’ to act?!” I tried to keep a bottle on my rage, trying to keep it in for use against Sharriana. I had a feeling I’d need it.
“Everyone has a duty to act, Markus. If you are still around when I am done here...we are going to have to talk.”
“As you will it,” he said politely, and stepped aside.
I glared at him for a moment, before turning to the door and dealing it a single, powerful kick.
The door was ripped from its hinges, and Sharriana turned to face me slowly. She was wearing the armoured black dress again, only this time she carried a long, black sword, a black darker than even my own blade. It was as if it murdered all light around it, giving it the appearance of always being cloaked in shadow.
“Well, that was a trifle melodramatic, was it not?” the Countess said with feigned disinterest. I could still smell her fear, the terror that poured off her in waves.
I bowed mockingly to her.
“My Lady,” I said, my tone dripping with every ounce of hatred I harboured for her.
“Are you truly certain you wish to go ahead with this ridiculous notion?” she asked, stepping out from behind her desk, and I turned both of my swords backhanded, keeping them close to the underside of my arms. I stood side on to her, ready to act without giving anything away.
I stayed silent, indulging her for a moment.
“Really, Deimos, you have to see that you are not going to win,” she added, with a smug grin that reminded me too much of Irenae. “I am after all over three thousand years old, and I have mastered ove-”
With a speed I could never have imagined before, I had released both swords, thrown a volley of throwing knives at Sharriana and caught both swords again before they even hit the floor.
She had been fast, but not fast enough - one of the slender blades still caught her in the throat, and she pulled it free with a snarl.
“Fine,” she croaked. “Let us end this now.”
“Thought you’d never ask,” I answered, and prepared to meet her rush.
It quickly became clear that where Irenae had been purely a duellist, Sharriana was a duellist and a fighter - and over her three thousand years of life, she had gained a terrifying array of skills.
She was unbelievably fast, her blade weaving around my blocks and guards even while I was still registering the previous attack. She swapped hands repeatedly, often in the middle of many of her moves, making it even harder to predict where the attack was coming from, and she changed from backhanded strokes to forehanded and back again with enviable speed.
It felt like I was fighting a black lightning bolt armed with death.
I felt the blade lance into my left thigh, before being roughly pulled free and slicing deep into my right shoulder almost a split second later. Although the shoulder guard of my combat suit absorbed a lot of the blow, whatever her blade was made of went through my armour like it wasn’t there. She made it clear she could kill me at any time, but she wanted to make an example of me...or she wanted to break me, so that she could still use me as she saw fit.
“Are you quite finished, Mister Black?” she asked me, sounding as if I had been fixing a shelf.
I pushed myself upright, feeling the burn in my fresh wounds that told me her blade was also treated with that damned chemical. My leg, my shoulder, a carving gash across my stomach and a deep cut down my face that almost took my other eye all burned as if infected, and I could feel my body growing weaker by the minute.
Not all of her attacks had gotten through, I’m proud to say. She was insanely fast, true enough, but her arrogance often blinded her to simpler attacks - like the knee I had managed to drive into her belly, at the expense of the gash across my own. As she had doubled over I had plunged Black Terror deep into her side, hoping to finished her quickly after that, but she had recovered unbelievably fast and pulled my sword from my grip, shortly before she pulled it from her side. With only one blade for defence, she had dealt me the punishing counter-attack that nearly claimed my eye, and that was when she had asked so politely if I was done.
“Sh...Shivan’dethae,” I managed, telling her it was a duel to the death. I was not going to let her have her way, even if I lost.
“You are so stubborn, you really are,” she said, stamping down on my wounded leg and pressing hard. “Why you insist on doing this is beyond me. Your wife is dead, you imbecile, and nothing you do is going to change that. Not this idiotic venture, not taking her dear friend into your bed, none of it. So why fight?”
“First of all,” I heaved, ignoring the pain stabbing through my leg, “Lori and I are just friends. Honestly, I don’t...understand...why people don’t get that.”
“And secondly?”
“I fight...I fight because I have something you don’t.”
She laughed uproariously, like I had told her the world’s greatest joke.
“Really, Mister Black? And exactly what might that be?”
I drew on all of my emotion once more, every single last vestige I had left, everything from my very core, and held it ready before I replied.
I had to swallow a couple of times before I managed my response.
“Balls.”
Immediately I hurled a wave of psychic force towards her, knocking her to the floor. As I pushed myself upright I channeled some of my psychic force inwards, screaming in pain as I purged the chemical from my blood. With that done I pulled Black Terror back to my hand with a thought, and lunged for Sharriana again.
This time, I didn’t block any of her attacks - I simply willed them aside, and pressed the advantage as soon as she was off-guard. One attack was deflected to my left, and my rapid series of counter-attacks shattered her stylised breastplate and opened her chest to the bone. I turned another attack aside, laying open her right arm in four places, before avoiding another attack all together and carving open her back.
But even that couldn’t last forever. A sudden rapid flurry of attacks left me mentally weakened, as each one I deflected drained me more and more. Finally one strike scored a deep gouge in my chestplate, and she spun on her heel to deliver a single, powerful thrust-
- straight through my chest, through my heart and out my back, achieving in reality what she had managed in a figurative sense.
“I told you,” she panted breathlessly, unused to actually having to work for a victory, “you. Cannot. Win.”
“And I told you,” I choked, “I will have your head!”
I dropped Crimson Raven and grabbed hold of Sharriana’s hand, pulling the blade deeper into my chest to bring her close to me. I seized her shoulder once she was close enough and surged forwards, slamming her against the bookcase that occupied the entire length of the room. As soon as I had her there I drove Black Terror into her own chest, with enough strength that the blade pinned her to the bookcase.
I stepped back, pulling the darkened sword from my chest, and retrieving Crimson Raven from where I had left it a moment before.
“And what better way to do it,” I said weakly, “than with the blade of the woman you had killed, purely for the crime of serving The Order’s ideals.”
“Deimos, please do-”
I threw all of my weight behind the second surest, most devastating strike of
my career, Corvi’s keen blade making a mockery of flesh and bone and burying itself in the wood behind Sharriana.
Only the blade lodged in her chest prevented her body from collapsing, as her head slowly fell from her lifeless neck.
I fell to the floor, my legs too weak to keep me upright any longer, and I pulled the raven hair clasp from its place of honour.
“I did it, my beloved,” I told it softly, tears gently rolling down my cheeks. “Did you see? I took her down for you...” I laid down on the blood-soaked floor, and clutched the memento to my chest.
“I miss you, Corvi, and I love you...so, so much. I hope...you have peace now.”
At those last four words I passed out, mental exhaustion and physical pain finally overwhelming me.
As it should be clear, I didn’t die. As far as I could tell, what little of the chemical remained on her sword was simply not enough to stop me healing properly, and so while I was passed out my body carried on fixing itself. I awoke only a short while later, in a bed in the fortress’ medical wing.
I found several people staring at me, and I looked back at them nervously.
“Whatever I did wrong, I’m sure there’s a totally awesome explanation for it,” I told them weakly, and a familiar face framed by pure white hair smiled at me.
“Wrong? Not likely, killer - you basically just rescued The Order from certain madness.”
I had been about to reply when a small, crimson-haired person ran over and hugged me tight, causing the ache in my chest to flare into agony.
“You deserved that, you bastard!” Tis snapped, despite smiling at me. “Don’t you ever go and get yourself killed again!”
“I’ll try and bear that in mind, sis,” I told her, and tried to make sense of why the others were staring at me.
There was Seraph, the tall, brooding one I’d met what must have been only hours before, his dark hair fleck with dirt and blood and his clothes torn. Even he wore a subtle smile, which worried me. Lorelei, I was glad to see, was leaning on her naginata, the blade broken halfway down. She leaned on the pole and seemed to be favouring her right side, but she was alive, and she was grinning.
And there was Markus, the annoying git, smirking like an idiot.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” I said. “What the hell is so funny?”
“Markus told us what you said to Sharriana,” Lev offered. “He was just outside, after all.”
“I said a lot of things, you cheap German bastard,” I said to Markus, who just laughed at me. “What in particular did you tell them about?”
“Shivan’dethae,” Seraph said helpfully. “The rules are quite clear.”
I stared at them in confusion, then in horror.
“Oh no, you are not putting this on me. Not a chance.”
“You made the challenge, Mister Black,” Markus said, shaking his head.
“I didn’t mean it!” My sudden outburst caused my chest to spark fresh pain, and I settled down. “I didn’t exactly expect to survive that fight. Hell, I nearly didn’t.”
“And yet you did, after issuing the challenge,” Seraph finished.
“So...what do you need of us, My Lord?” Lev asked, beaming like the cheshire cat.
I hated her sometimes.
EPILOGUE
The work never ends
The last of these events must have happened about two years ago now, and since then my work never really stopped. We rebuilt, mostly, turning Sharriana’s testament to her own ego into a working headquarters for The Order - the organisation that I now command.
I should have known that Fate would kick me in the teeth again. Shivan’dethae, I’d told Sharriana, a duel to the death...in which the winner inherits everything the defeated owned or had rights too. Had Sharriana won, she wouldn’t have inherited anything worthwhile - not to her, anyway. But since I was the winner, I inherited everything - her title, her lands, her money...her organisation.
For all intents and purposes, I am now Count Deimos Black, not that mortal society would recognise a title wrested from a woman who the national records claimed was dead.
So, you’ll want the run-down on the changes, I expect. Well, Lev took my sister on her ‘long holiday’, as promised - it actually lasted two years, since after Mexico they went travelling across half the world. And, while their engagement was secret - which I don’t begrudge, it’s a very private and personal thing, after all - their marriage last September wasn’t. Lev, possibly inspired by my own wedding, had enacted the vampiric marriage ceremony, and it was my honour to stand as her Vithenai.
Lieutenant Tavoy, sadly, was killed in action, his death allowing the soldiers he commanded to push on and aid me. I didn’t know it at the time, but his squad accounted for maybe half of the soldiers that tried to stop me getting to Sharriana. Without them, I wouldn’t have made it. The fallen are all honoured on our own cenotaph, standing at the west side of the compound, overlooking the sea. I thought it might be peaceful for them there.
Kelly Dumfries was unanimously voted as the best to take over from Tavoy, and she rose to the task with professionalism and skill. She’s getting promoted to Captain this week, and she still leads Corvus Team even now.
Seraph, still a moody bastard but less so to me, went back to his base in Nottingham, because that was where he preferred to be. I left him to it, but told him that anything he needed from me was his to ask.
I think he’s still mulling it over.
Lori, my dear friend Lorelei, stayed on at the fortress as my personal tech witch and occasional aide - she was my right-hand person when Lev decided not to come back for another year and not tell anyone. Both of us still miss Corvi, but time and companionship has eased those wounds considerably.
And Kalin...the man has been like a brother to me. I lost track of him during the fighting, but apparently he had helped take the airfield and keep it in our hands. Since I’ve taken over the whole organisation, he was granted command of the Oxford base. It was the least I could do for him.
So that’s about all of it. Even now there are threats out there that demand my attention - despite our purges of the other bases, removing those elements loyal to Sharriana, some still got out. They formed their own little group known as The Crucible, and they still maintain that to rule, and not co-exist with, mortal kind is the vampiric destiny. I think they’re idiots.
Plus of course, there’s the hunters, still insisting that we are the biggest threat to humanity since the Black Plague. They never seem to let up.
Well, all that remains now is to thank you - you took the time to read this messy account of my bizarre life, and I hope you found it of interest.
Just remember, we are not your enemy. We may even have saved your life, without you even knowing about it.
But don’t try to cross us. You’ve read what happens to those who do.
Farewell, people. I hope you all have much less interesting lives than mine.
Regards,
Count Deimos Black, Head of The Order
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
There’s a few people I want to thank and acknowledge, without whom this book would never have made it. First of all, my long-suffering fiancé Revah, who regularly confiscated my phone and ordered me to some writing. She was my sounding board, my muse, and it was always easy to discuss ideas with her. Her support never faltered, and because of her I got this book finished.
My dad, Ian Currill, who also supported my writing, and also helped with constructive criticism where necessary. Also acted as my sort-of military advisor. Thanks, Padré!
My long-standing friend, Dan Oliver, who was another sounding board for ideas. He’s also been like another brother to me, and aga
in, without his back-up I’d never have made it this far.
The many people of YouWriteOn.com, who offered advice on the earlier drafts of this story and convinced me to bin much of the early stuff. It was pants. This way went much better.
And lastly, but not at all least, my fellow creator of the fantastical, H. Leighton Dickson. She offered some great pro tips which allowed me to edit for better flow, and she also created my kick-ass cover. Many thanks go to her for all of her work.
I’d also like to thank you, for taking the time to read my debut novel. I don’t intend it to be the last, and I do hope you’ll join me for the ride.
I am on Twitter, @Maliceunchained (don’t ask), so feel free to drop me a message sometime. I’ll try not to bite.
Thanks for reading.
With respect,
Martyn Currill