Verdigris smiled, but only on the inside. Good. He lived for the feeling that he was successfully playing someone.
Verd decided it was time to move on, and Rancor followed. The lights went out behind them.
Verd displayed the many rooms of his first research facility like the fine gems they were, laying them out for Rancor’s admiration. And, grudging though the admiration was, Rancor did deliver it. What was more, he was showing definite signs of desire. He wanted this place, Verd’s first “home.” He wanted it badly.
Good.
“I’ve saved the best for last,” Verd said smugly. “I wanted to make sure you appreciated this place. I can’t leave it to someone who won’t use it properly.”
Ah, there it was. That little glint in Rancor’s eyes that said “Oh, I am your equal. And with what I do here, you will acknowledge that I am not your underling, I am your partner.”
Hmm hmm. Oh Rancor. That will never do.
He opened the last door; this time, lulled by the rest of the tour, Rancor went in ahead.
Verd slammed and locked the door on him, and activated the intercom.
He waited until the cursing stopped.
“Now, now. I told you this place will be yours, and it will. But you have to earn it first—just like you have to earn the Methusalah Virus. Yes, I know we were going after that together, but I’ve gotten a teeny bit ahead of you, and you know how I hate coming in second.” Verd laughed. “But you can still have it, and you can still have this place.”
He pushed the last button on the remote, activating all the traps. There was one thing to be said about going old school, in this “old school.” C4 never let you down.
“You just have to earn it, Rancor,” he repeated, stepping into the elevator. He thumbed a few buttons on the remote. “She has a lot of life left in her, but you need to learn how she really ticks. Tick tick ticks. You need to romance before you can have her, and she is just so sensitive. You have to earn her.”
“How do I do that?” Rancor’s voice growled from the speaker.
Verd had just enough time to call out before the elevator carried him beyond the sound of anything—voices or explosions.
“Survive the next 30 minutes.”
His first lair felt like going home, sure, and even like a first love—but he’d gotten over every girlfriend he’d killed just fine. This was just the prom date of supervillain lairs.
The sound of Verd’s laughter echoed up the shaft, and then with the slam of a multi-ton door, was gone.
MERCEDES LACKEY was born in Chicago Illinois on June 24, 1950. The very next day, the Korean War was declared. It is hoped that there is no connection between the two events. In 1985, her first book was published. In 1990 she met artist Larry Dixon at a small Science Fiction convention in Meridian Mississippi, on a television interview organized by the convention. They moved to their current home, the “second weirdest house in Oklahoma” also in 1992. She has many pet parrots and “the house is never quiet.” She has over eighty books in print, with four being published in 2010 alone, and some of her foreign editions can be found in Russian, German, Czech, Polish, French, Italian, Turkish, and Japanese. Another current addiction is role-playing gaming in the online game City of Heroes. From this collaboration with Dennis Lee, Cody Martin and Veronica Giguere came the Secret World Chronicle, www.secretworldchronicle.com, a five book series of which the first two: Invasion! and World Divided are available from Baen. The second book features villain Dominic Verdigris II, of this story
LARRY DIXON was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts during high school, and then at the Savannah College of Art and Design; his story work became as popular as his artwork. He has been an uncredited co-plotter or co-writer for many popular properties, bringing jovial and energetic approaches to collaborative work. Many cover-credited novels have followed, too, including the ever-popular Gryphon series, the Winds, Storms, SERRAted Edge, and Owl books with the mighty Mercedes (Misty) Lackey. Born to Run has been hailed as a “romp with a conscience,” and The Black Gryphon has been critically referred to as “a modern classic,” and is in its nineteenth printing. As a birds-of-prey rehabilitation specialist, he and his wife Misty have gotten hawks, owls, falcons and corbies back into the wild from their home-based facilities in Oklahoma. Additionally, Larry is an accomplished race car driver, world traveler, aviculturist, model maker and Internet veteran.
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
(Another Mid-Death Crisis)
Chris A. Jackson
Brimstone and ash vent from the beast’s nostrils as the darkly armored figure kicks its flanks. The creature—half horse, half demon and long dead—leaps into a gallop, heaving beneath its master with an ungainly lurch. The spires of Kaegengul Keep swim into view through the dust and ash of the undead army’s passage, lit like a burning hell with the setting sun.
Kaegen looks upon the fell towers and his cold heart swells with longing.
Home…
The Necromancer of Kaegengul kicks his mount ahead of the van of his army, spurring it toward the ancestral home of his forefathers. The black iron portcullis screeches in its tracks as he approaches, lifting from his path as the taskmasters’ whips crack, flaying the backs of the slaves manning the winches. He jerks his mount to a halt, sparks and ash flying from its burning hooves and nostrils. He steps from the saddle and flings the reins toward the master of stables. He ascends the broad stair to the towering obsidian doors that defend all that he holds dear, all that he fights to protect in this wretched world. He flings them aside with a single word of power, doffing his fell helm as he passes the portal.
“Wipe your feet, for Hell’s sake!”
Kaegen freezes in his tracks and looks down at his evil boots, and the track of dark smudges he’s left on the silk rug. Ice water invades his veins, and he takes a hesitant step backward.
“No! Don’t move! You’ve already fouled the carpet. Just hold still!” A tall, pale figure strides forward flanked by several cowering servants. Beautiful and cold, dark and smoldering, his wife, the Vampire Thotris, glares with eyes that glow dark crimson, her pale hands on her shapely hips. “Do you know how hard it is to remove entrail stains from a fine Trokarian rug?”
“Thotris…I…” Words catch in his throat like cinders. “I didn’t think…”
“Of course you didn’t think! You never think, Kaegen, you just conquer, and then you track home the refuse for everyone else to clean up.” She glares at him for a short eternity, then snaps, “Servants! Take my lord Kaegen’s boots, and his helm and cloak while you’re at it. They all reek of death and carnage, and I won’t have them in this keep until they’ve been cleaned.”
“Yes, Mistress,” the entourage of servants says in unison, skulking forward to aid the removal of their lord’s evil accouterments.
Kaegen places his helm into the hands of one unfortunate wretch, and watches her skin blister beneath its foul touch. One of the servants falls to all fours behind him so that he can sit and have three others pull his evil boots from his evil feet. His evil socks, however, are not any more floral than the remnants of the enemies that cling to the heels of his boots. It has been a long, hard campaign, but a victorious one.
When he is free to stand again, he announces, “I have conquered all of Lower Mulavia!”
“And did you bring me anything?” Thotris asks, her undead eyes boring into his. “A piece of jewelry? An object de art, perhaps?” When he doesn’t answer immediately, she continues, “A souvenir spoon, even?”
“I have brought fifty wains laden with the spoils of my conquest, dearest Thotris.” He bows low, sweeping his evil gauntlet wide. “It is all for you, milady! And I have taken the head of their traitorous king, Saer Musalisku, to boot!”
“Spoils…” Thotris says the word as if describing something moldy she has discovered at the bottom of an icebox. Sh
e waves yet another servant forward, a tall, well-dressed youth bearing a silver slaver and a single cup. “That doesn’t sound promising. And don’t think for a moment that you’re going to mount another smelly head on a plaque and hang it in your den.”
“Well, I thought…” The young man proffers the cup. He is well-built, with wavy black hair and broad shoulders. His face is pale, and a bare hint of blood shows at the white collar of his dress shirt. Kaegen takes the cup and quaffs its contents without tasting it, then recognizes the man’s vestments as those of the house butler. “What happened to Melvin?”
“Oh, he fell ill,” Thotris says with a dismissive wave. “I had to send him away.”
Acute anemia, I’ll wager, he thinks as he returns the empty cup to the tray. The youth shows every sign of vampiric charm. Kaegen opens his mouth to comment that his dear wife seems to change butlers more often than he changes evil socks, but she beats him to the punch.
“Oh, and you’re late! We have a dinner at the Zorkins’ tonight! Or did you forget? Again…”
“But dearest Thotris, I just conquered all of Lower Mulavia! I can’t possibly…”
He quails under her glare.
“Dinner?”
“Oh, you’re hopeless, Kaegen! Just go up and get changed, and I’ll get the children ready. Hurry now! The sun’s already down!”
“Of course, dearest Thotris.” He strides past her, trying to maintain some dignity as his evil socks swish-swish along the spotless carpet.
5
The last buckle of Kaegen’s evil armor finally gives way, and he heaves a sigh of relief. It has been nearly a month since he’s had the enchanted armor off, and he feels as if the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders. He steps into the cleansing chamber and summons a pillar of unholy fire to burn every last hint of filth, carnage and sweat from his body. His evil undergarments also go up in smoke and ashes, but that is no real loss. They weren’t evil when he put them on.
He strides past a long mirror on the way to his dressing chamber, and pauses to gauge his reflection. Not bad for three centuries old, he thinks, pulling in his stomach and turning just so. He is still a powerful man, and a necromancer to boot. He can raise the dead with a wave of his hand, as his armies of undead minions are testament. He has taken a vampire to wife, and has sired two offspring from her undead womb. No man, living or dead, could call him less than virile. A slim smile graces his evil countenance, then falters with one shrill note.
“Oh, for the Devil’s sake, put some clothes on!” Thotris storms into their chambers, averting her eyes as she passes. She didn’t used to do that. “I’m slaving away to get the children ready for the evening and you’re up here preening naked in front of a mirror! You think it’s easy raising the undead, let alone getting them to wear decent clothes for dinner? Stop admiring yourself for two seconds, and hurry and get dressed already!”
“The children are only half undead,” he says, hurrying to his dressing chamber. “And I wasn’t admiring myself! I have not seen my likeness in more than two months, and I thought I might have developed a slouch from so much time in the saddle, that’s all.”
“Oh!” She vanishes into her own dressing chamber, sarcasm fairly oozing out beneath the door.
You’re just jealous, he thinks, pausing only a moment to pick out a suitably dark vestment and cloak. At least I have a reflection! He dresses in haste and affixes a belt of enchanted basilisk hide around his waist. When he emerges, however, he is met once again with Thotris’ smoldering disapproval.
“Oh, please, Kaegen, wear something besides black for once! This is a dinner, not a funeral.”
He opens his mouth to deride her own choice of garments in kind, but it is impossible. She is, of course, flawless. In a snug crimson gown, she looks like a tall, slim goblet of blood, curvaceous and exuding all the alluring charm only a vampiress can.
“What,” he asks with a courtly bow, “would you prefer, dearest?”
“Oh, stop it and just pick out something not black!” She waves him away and storms out, unimpressed by his acquiescence to her wishes.
He turns back to his dressing chamber and takes a moment to actually look upon the racks of cloaks, vestments and accoutrements. Dismay unknown throughout his centuries of conquest smites his evil heart.
She has bought him new clothes…
5
“New cloak, Kaegen?” Terian Zorkin asks, raising his glass in toast.
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” Kaegen touches the rim of his glass to Terian’s and quaffs half of its contents in one swallow. “Thotris had it made while I was away. This and a dozen others. She evidently has a new tailor, and keeps him busy.”
“I’m sure she does,” the other man quips with a slim smile, sipping his drink daintily. “Rather different look for you, isn’t it?”
Kaegen brushes the pastel blue satin, plucks at the ruffled collar and gulps the remainder of his bloodwine, wondering if he can accidentally spill some of the dark red liquid down the front. It might even look like blood. “Yes, it is different.” He leans into his host’s ear, and says, “Bloody awful, isn’t it?”
Terian sighs, “Well, we are all victims, are we not? Conquerors or peasants, we are all brought low in the end.”
The end…he thinks, wondering if his existence has come to this. He waves to the waiter and takes another glass of bloodwine.
“So, Lower Mulavia!” Terian says with a grin. “Must be beautiful down there this time of year.”
“It was, until I finished with it,” Kaegan remarks, grinning at his host. “I left it a burning wasteland, unfit to support life for a century at least.”
“That must have been…gratifying,” Terian says. “Was it profitable?”
“Very,” he replies with no small satisfaction. “I took a full fifty wains of—”
“No shop talk, now!” Thotris’ lilting contralto cuts through their conversation like a knife through willing flesh. They both turn as she saunters over, their host’s entourage in tow. Thotris is, of course, ravishing in her blood-red gown and glittering ruby jewelry. One of the advantages of being undead, he supposes, is never losing one’s figure.
“My dear Thotris, you are positively lovely this evening!” Terian bends to kiss her pale hand and smiles. “I see you’ve met Bulavia, my most recent…” he winks sidelong at Kaegan, “conquest.”
“I have! She’s lovely! And oh so…charmed.”
“A new look for you, isn’t she?” Kaegen says, unable to resist the dig. Terian’s wife is a beauty indeed, pale, tall, shapely and utterly charmed with her new husband. Literally charmed…he’s a sorcerer, and she is his eleventh wife. She’s got that glassy-eyed look.
“She is! It’s been blonde after blonde, so I thought, how about a redhead for a change!” He holds out a hand and the woman goes to him like a moth to a flame. “I tell you, she makes me feel a hundred years younger!”
“She’s lovely,” Kaegen says, thinking, I wonder if he would teach me that spell. He dreams wistfully of a quiet, compliant wife as the conversation buzzes around him. He finishes his glass of bloodwine and calls for another.
Thotris glares. “That’s your third, my lord. Perhaps you should wait until dinner is served to slake your seemingly unquenchable thirst.”
“And perhaps you should—”
A throng of children go tearing through the sitting room, a dark-haired boy wielding a blunted (barely) sword behind a flock of girls squealing in mock (also barely) terror.
“Oh, how I do wish you would set a better role model for young Kaegen Junior,” Thotris says in a tone she usually reserves for servants who have outlived their usefulness, except for their nutritional value. “Every time you come home from conquest he is utterly unbearable!”
“Like father like son!” Kaegan says proudly, though he has certain concerns about
his son’s capacity to uphold the family name. The boy loves violence like no one he has ever seen, but he has the mental capacity of a root vegetable. Still, he is Kaegen’s namesake, and will inherit Kaegengul Keep when the time comes. “He’ll be out conquering on his own before long!”
Thotris glares at him again, and he knows he will pay for this later.
Their daughter, Pwison, joins the group. She is the elder, but doomed to be married off to some lesser noble by the curse of her sex. Half-vampire, she shares her mother’s alluring look, but is shrouded in utter darkness; skeletally thin and pale, her dress all black, hair black, eyes black, lips black. She stares at them all, and Kaegen feels a deliciously evil chill race down his spine.
With no greeting, she says, “Can we go now?”
Kaegen stifles a smirk—She must have read my mind!—but Thotris intercedes before he can say a word.
“No dear. Dawn is still hours away. Why don’t you have something to drink? Bulavia tells me that all of their servants donated a pint for the evening.” Thotris sips her glass of blood appreciatively.
“Drinking blood is barbaric, Mother!” Pwison says with a curled lip.
No wonder she’s so thin, Kaegen thinks.
“Not, my dear, if you are a vampire, or a half vampire, as is your case.” Thotris drains her goblet and licks her luscious lips. “You’ve got to take something, dear. You’re starving yourself!”
“Oh, leave her alone, Thotris,” Kaegen says before his brain can stop his mouth. “It’s not like she can starve to death.” This earns him another glare from his wife.
His daughter just looks at him and says, “That color is nauseating, Father.”
He smiles, and cocks an eyebrow at his wife. “And I thought we didn’t agree on anything, dear Pwison.”
When the Villian Comes Home Page 43