Grim Tidings

by Theophilus Monroe

  “You still didn’t answer my question. Who sent you?”

  “His Highness has been known by many names… his life, spanning the centuries. He knows the past and also the future. He planned all of this, mademoiselle, before your birth. And in his grace, he granted me this last opportunity.”

  I squinted, the light that illuminated the room dimming slightly. “Opportunity for what?”

  “For revenge!” Ramon shouted as he lunged toward me.

  His hands gripped my neck, his jagged nails digging into my skin. Ramon reared his head back, exposing his fangs. One thing I wasn’t about to let happen was to get bit. I quickly focused my will and screamed, “Beli!”

  I felt my dragon blade form in my hand, though this time it wasn’t in the shape of a blade, not like I was accustomed to. Instead, the elemental formed into something else—a stake, illuminated with pink and green energies. I tried to press Ramon away from me with my opposite arm, but he was too strong… too powerful.

  Through his back! Isabelle shouted.

  Gripping my soul weapon tightly, I pressed it through the middle of Ramon’s back, praying I’d strike his heart.

  In an instant, Ramon’s body dissipated, sent by my dragon blade—or in this instance, my dragon stake—back to the land of the dead, Samhuinn, the dark side of Guinee.

  I reached for my neck, coughing and gasping for air before drawing on Isabelle’s magic to heal whatever damage Ramon might have done to my neck and esophagus. As it healed, I felt some blood gather in the back of my mouth, which I promptly spit into the dirt.

  “Bravo!” Another voice said—a male voice, deep and smooth. Whoever approached was clapping his hands.

  I turned to look. His whole body was covered in a black robe, a large hood obscuring my view of his face. A red glow emanated from beneath his hood. He held a scythe in one hand. Another figure, shrouded similarly but shorter and more petite in stature, lurked behind. The second figure stood, long hair flowing out from her hood, her hands folded in front of her waist.

  “The Grim Reaper and his apprentice, I presume? You can’t be serious,” I said.

  The figure released a raucous laugh. “But it’s fitting, Mulledy, don’t you think?”

  “Who are you, and how do you know me?”

  The figure snapped his fingers, and torches mounted in all the walls surrounding me lit aflame. I released the energies I’d been channeling from Isabelle—chances were I’d need some extra magic to spare sooner or later. “Think hard, Mulledy. From your perspective, it wasn’t that long ago. From mine, I’ve waited centuries for this very moment.”

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t know who you are or what you want with me. But you’ve got my parents in there.”

  “All part of a plan I’ve been orchestrating for some time, but I can assure you, your parents are well. They have a craving, of a sort. Something you are sure to find distasteful. But I should say, once the aspect within them awakened upon my return, their memories and minds were healed. It’s remarkable really.”

  “You’re Baron Samedi? The red Baron?” I asked, my heart thumping in my chest.

  “Ha!” the cloaked figure said. “He wishes…”

  “Tell me who you are… and what do you want with my parents!”

  He’s not a Loa, but not entirely a vampire. There is an aura, an energy. Something human that remains…

  “Your parents are simply leverage… to ensure your compliance. You owe me a favor, Mulledy.”

  “A favor? A favor for what? I don’t even know you.”

  “But you do,” the figure said as he drew back his hood.

  I gasped. The face that looked back at me… I couldn’t believe it. His features were all the same—good-looking, a smooth complexion, but flush of color. Not full of life like he had been before. He had that disdain in his eyes he’d always had for me, but now it seemed to be mixed with pain, with wisdom. There was a depth there I hadn’t seen before.

  “Nico… I… I can’t believe it’s really you. How did you…”

  “I’ve been waiting for this moment for nearly a thousand years.”

  I scrunched my brow. “What are you saying?”

  “You left me in Guinee. You brought me there without my consent. You asked me to save you. Then you left me there.”

  “I tried to get back…”

  “How do you measure time when you are in a realm outside time itself? It felt like a lifetime that I battled with the red Baron. For a long time I held him in check, but I grew tired, and he was resilient. He just wouldn’t stop. No matter how many times I crushed him with the doll I’d made, he kept coming. I just couldn’t do it anymore… I accepted his bargain.”

  “You made a bargain with the red Baron?”

  “Do you judge me? I would have before, but what would you have done? I kept thinking you were out there, trying to find me. Trying to get me back. I trusted that you weren’t such a bitch that you’d suck me into another realm to save your ass, then leave me there forever. But I should have known better. You were always a bitch.”

  Tears welled up in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine what he’d been through… what I’d put him through. I never liked Nico, but he was right. I used him. I left him in Guinee. And I failed to bring him back. “I’m sorry, Nico. I tried, I really tried.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough!” In a split second, Nico was behind me. He grabbed me around the waist and yanked at my hair, exposing my neck.

  “Nico, please!”

  “Are you going to drive that stake through my heart, too? Are you going to send me back to hell… again?”

  “I won’t… I can’t…”

  Nico’s cold breath struck my neck, sending shivers down my spine. “For centuries I wanted nothing more than to hurt you, to bite you, to taste your blood. What would it taste like? The blood of two souls mixed into one?”

  Give me the reins! I can stop him.

  In truth, I was oddly relaxed in Nico’s grasp. I could have given Isabelle control. I could have stopped him. But for a second I knew how Nico had felt, stuck in Guinee, fighting an unending battle. At a certain point, everyone breaks. He sacrificed himself in a bargain. I didn’t know the terms of the bargain he’d made—clearly it had turned him into this… vampire… this creature he’d become. But could I blame him? I’d been fighting this shit my whole life. Ever since I was nine. The idea of letting him win, letting him sink his fangs into my neck… I’d regret it later. But there’s a freedom in resigning, in giving up.

  Nico released me, pushing me down as my body hit the cold floor at the feet of the second figure, the apprentice who stood behind him in the shadows. I looked up at her, and I could see her eyes. They were black, but there was something else there, too. Something good, even beneath the veil of the demon she’d become. I could almost feel her empathy as she looked down on me. But then her empathy faded. Her face, though cloaked beneath the shadow of her hood, turned furious. Her heeled foot crushed down on the side of my head. I screamed in pain.

  Nico’s laughter echoed through the mausoleum. “Give in to her power, Annabelle. Kiss the sole that crushes you. She is my apprentice, but your goddess. You are nothing compared to her.”

  I writhed in pain as the girl’s heel pressed into my temple.

  “With just a little pressure, she could kill you. How does it feel to be at the mercy of someone else… hoping, praying, for mercy?” Nico chuckled. “How ironic, for that is her name. Annabelle, meet Mercy. But don’t let her name fool you. She is merciless. And you just staked her boyfriend. You sent Ramon to hell. I couldn’t blame her if she did the same to you.”

  “Please,” I begged. “Don’t do this…”

  Annabelle! I can stop this!

  But Nico wasn’t going to kill me. He’d said it himself. He’d waited for centuries. I wasn’t even sure how that was possible. But he’d been longing for revenge. He wasn’t going to give up his chance in order to teach his apprentice a lesson in brutality.
But if this girl really did love Ramon, the vampire I’d just staked and sent to Samhuinn…

  “Beg for Mercy!” Nico shouted.

  I had too much pride for that. At least I typically did. But all Nico wanted was my humiliation. He wanted me to feel powerless, to feel trapped. To feel like I depended on someone else’s power. So I did it… I shouted, “Mercy, please!”

  She released me and pressed the sole of her shoe to my lips.

  “Kiss it,” Mercy demanded.

  I gulped… and kissed the vampire’s shoe.

  “Doesn’t it feel good to know your place, bitch?” Nico asked. “To finally realize you’re nothing compared to me, nothing compared to even my apprentice.”

  “I’m sorry, Nico…”

  “Stand up. This was for my… amusement. And as much as I’d like to ruin you, I’m going to do what you never did. I’m going to give you another chance. A chance to atone for your sins.”

  I briefly made eye contact with Mercy, who had pressed her lips together. A lot can be said through a glance, through a single expression. I could see it in her face—pain, viciousness, and regret. There was a darkness that loomed over her countenance, but there was something else. A goodness. And pain. Something I knew she was hiding from Nico, something she didn’t want him to see. But she wanted me to see it. Whatever it was. There was more to this girl… I wanted to help her, somehow. But there was nothing I could do.

  “You find her… alluring, don’t you?” Nico asked.

  “She is beautiful,” I said, quite honestly, as I returned to my feet.

  “No mortal I’ve met can resist her charms. It’s what makes her so brutal, so dangerous. It’s what I love about her. But we’re not here to talk about Mercy.”

  “Then what do you want with me, Nico. If you aren’t going to get your revenge, what do you need?”

  Nico sighed as he began to pace. “I’ve been testing you, Annabelle. The vampires I’ve been sending to your plantation—all young acolytes, all hungry, but foolish. I’ve been watching how easily you eliminated them. Ramon begged me for a chance to do the same. I warned him against it, but he insisted. So the way I saw it, he’d either eliminate you, in which case it would show you were too weak to fulfill the purpose I require. Or he’d serve as another test. A stronger, more experienced vampire… a formidable foe. But you handled him quite quickly.”

  I glanced back at Mercy, who still held her head low. Did this girl really love Ramon? Can vampires love at all? Why couldn’t they? I mean, we think love is a human emotion. But it’s more than that. It’s a divine emotion, and if the divine is in all things, why wouldn’t that include these creatures, these monsters?

  “So you were testing me… to do what, exactly?”

  Nico folded his hands, released one of the crypts that I presumed held… someone… and leaned against it. “Why don’t you take a seat yourself. To tell you what I need of you requires I tell you more of my story. How I came to be what I am.”

  Chapter Nine

  “When I saw you dive into the gate, heading back, I figured my time was short. I twisted my doll’s head, forcing the Baron’s neck to snap, and ran straight for the gate. I could see you. I saw you on the other side. I saw you tell them that I was still in there. And then Ogoun betrayed me a second time.”

  “A second time?”

  “The first was when he chose you over me as his initiate at the Academy. And then, he told Aida-Wedo to close the gate, to withdraw her rainbow that held it open. I saw it all.”

  “Then you know I tried…”

  “You tried, which gave me hope that you’d come back for me. You were the one, the only one as far as I knew, who had ever managed to summon a soul blade capable of piercing the realms.”

  “But I had no control when in the timeline of Guinee I’d arrive. Beli, my dragon… he can get me back here more or less moments after I leave. But it doesn’t work in reverse.”

  Nico nodded. “So, I’ve come to learn. Your timeline in Guinee is always and only your timeline. You can never go backward, because there is no past or present there. The past, present, and future in Guinee are always in you.”

  “That’s kind of a mind fuck,” I said, scratching my head. “But that does make sense—sort of. Not that I can get my mind around the idea. But it would explain why…”

  “It explains why you never found me. It doesn’t excuse it.”

  “Nico, that was only a couple months ago! I haven’t given up. If you didn’t start sending vamps my way, I maybe never would.”

  “I have to confess, my initial plan when I had myself resurrected here was to tell you why you couldn’t find me. To help you, possibly, find a way to get back there. But then I realized it was pointless.”

  “Pointless, how?”

  “Because if I succeeded in doing that, you would have come and saved me. You can’t change the past by going back into time. You can’t fuck with time at all. And even if you did, we’d never know it because it would always be what always happened.”

  “That’s awfully… fatalistic of you.”

  Nico shrugged, tossing his scythe into the corner. “Sorry, I don’t actually use this thing. It was just for dramatic effect.”

  I rolled my eyes. “You just wanted me to piss my pants?”

  “Basically,” Nico said, chuckling to himself. “Did it work?”

  “Almost, but I have seen the real Reaper, and you aren’t him.”

  “Back to that in a minute…”

  “To the real Reaper? To Baron Samedi?”

  Nico nodded. “First, as I told you, I kept using my doll, the one I’d made in dollcraft, the one that contained the essence of the Caplata. And through her, the aspect of the red Baron allowed me to punish him repeatedly. But he always healed. He seemed to enjoy it, the sick fuck…”

  “He’s certainly that,” I said. “And this went on… for a lifetime?”

  “Seemed that way,” Nico said. “Though I can’t say for sure. The sun never rose or set there. It was always light. So we went to Samhuinn. I lured him across the ley lines into the land of the dead. I figured if I couldn’t put Death away in the garden of life, in Eden or whatever the fuck that place was, then I’d try on the other side.”

  “Sounds like a mistake… to take on Death on his own turf?”

  “It was. But I had to try something. I was getting nowhere.”

  “And that’s when he got the upper hand?”

  Nico nodded. “In the garden, I’d crack a limb, break his back, whatever. It would at least slow him down for a while. But over there, in Samhuinn, it didn’t matter. He’d just keep coming.”

  “Home field advantage?”

  “Something like that…”

  “And you couldn’t bring him back to the gardens?”

  “I tried, but I couldn’t lure him back. He had too much control.”

  “So what happened?”

  “That’s when I agreed to a bargain. He’d figure out how to get me home again, if I’d assume his aspect.”

  “But you already had his aspect, right?”

  “Not his aspect… not exactly. I had it like you have Ogoun’s aspect. But the dark side of a Loa’s aspect—one that only emerges for a few of them, as it does with the Baron—it doesn’t work the same way. It wants to spread… It gives you a compulsion. It’s what makes us vampires.”

  “A compulsion for blood?”

  “A hunger, yes… but only because the bite passes along the aspect like a virus. You could bite anyone you want and nothing would happen. Only the dark aspect, the evil side, the kind that seeks to dominate, to gain power and control. We have a hunger, but that hunger is a primal urge meant to propagate the dark Baron’s aspect. And if he returns—when he returns—he’ll be able to control all of us. He’ll destroy everything…”

  “I thought he did return. That’s how my parents’ aspect was awakened.”

  “Your parents awakened as vampires because I returned, Annabelle. They cam
e to me because I called them, as I’ve called all who’ve inherited this aspect through me.”

  “But I thought they got it from the zombies, the ones raised by the Caplata, the ones who attacked us.”

  “They weren’t bitten by Baron Samedi. The zombies who bit your parents were raised by the Caplata, and from whom do you think she got her power?”

  But Messalina… she learned her abilities from other priestesses, from the Bokors.

  “Messalina, the Caplata whose power you harnessed in the doll. She got her power from the Bokors. She raised the Baron herself.”

  “She raised the Baron, but she’d received her power from me, from my bite.”

  “She was a vampire?” I asked.

  I can’t believe that… she never…

  “She had a unique ability. She knew our arts well, and she managed the gift I’d given her. Used it to raise herself again. You see, the aspect of the Baron—green or red, doesn’t matter—does give one the ability to return from the grave. But she was special. She was a gifted Caplata. If she could bring back the Baron, bind him to her power, then I could control him through her.”

  “But you failed,” I said.

  “Not at all. I knew the plan was going to fail. You forget, I’d discovered the truth about you before any of this happened. I’d been told, by way of Legba, who apparently ended up being Kalfu all the while. My bad… I thought you were the one who was possessed. Never would have thought it was Legba.”

  “So you knew that using Messalina to raise the Baron would fail, then why did you do it?”

  “Because it created you. You and Isabelle were the product of my failure. And while my own action became my own damnation, I figured I would rather it all be a part of my plan rather than something that the fates had levied upon me. I took control of my history, my curse, my past. I became the author of who—of what—I eventually became.”

  “And it put Isabelle and I together… inseparably…”

  “And set you on a course that would eventually lead you to the Academy, to acquire Ogoun’s aspect, to do all the shit I hate about you. When I devised this plan, I realized that everything had happened for a reason. And that reason was so that I could use you to seize the Baron, once and for all. The Baron summoned by the Caplata… he was incomplete. The red Baron alone—no access to his other side, the side that guards and protects my soul. I need you to bring me the complete Baron—green and red. The one who can realize the bargain he and I made.”