by Nick Cole
I look up at her. It is not the few teeth in her crooked smile. Or her weathered face etched by a thousand lines. No. It is the eyes. Completely white. As though she is blind.
She smiles at me knowingly.
Then straightens with effort and a soft groan.
She hobbles off into the darkness of another room I hadn’t noticed.
Only the hellish orange light from the brazier illuminates the room now. The shadows cast by the hood of the man opposite me seem to make him swim and move. Like the fog beyond the paper walls.
He reaches out one long hand, takes up a spoon, and begins to eat.
The soup is bright yellow with chicken broth. Small green onions and strands of saffron dance within its depths.
Its aroma is the very essence of savory.
I try it.
It’s delicious.
For a long while the stranger and I eat our soup in mutual silence. I try the liquid in the cup and find it to be a hot liquor, almost vinegary. But it pairs well with the soup, which I eat by drinking from the bowl, for there is no utensil for me.
When the soup is gone I set the bowl aside. The hooded stranger is still taking long raspy sips from his spoon. In time, he finishes.
Each of us turns to the liquor, and after a long moment he asks me, “You seek the temple, Samurai?”
My cup hovers at my lips.
Wait.
Consider.
“Yes,” I admit. And nothing more. Because who knows if the hooded stranger isn’t working for Alucard. The priest himself.
His head is bowed. His features are hidden beneath the hood. And I am acutely aware of my sword lying on the floor next to me.
“You’re in over your head and you don’t even know who you are?” says the hooded man, his head still lowered.
“Then who am I?” I ask.
I hear the hiss of the brazier from across the room. Some sudden shadow shifts. And in that moment I have drawn the sword like lightning. The blade’s angular tip hovers just beneath the gaping void that is the hood of the stranger across the table.
“What you will be…” the smoky bourbon voice seems to rasp from within the darkness, “… you are now becoming.”
The sword gleams in the barest of light. It is steady and true and wavers not in the least. But the hooded figure does not move.
And then he speaks. “To reach the temple you must defeat the Baron. It is as simple as that.”
“I have no idea what any of that means.”
“It means,” says the hooded figure after a long pause. “That evil exists. And to find its source you must start with one of its many forms. Tonight… if you wish… I can take you through the castle of the Baron. At its end lies the way to the temple… and of course…”
He chuckles softly.
“There you will find Alucard, if you truly wish to.”
I wait. Weighing everything from pushing my sword through his face, to just leaving. And even why I am here and why it’s so important to destroy a man I only met once, in passing, as he ran down a simple girl and made his escape from a keep lost along the border.
Why is that so important? some other voice asks me.
Because she was someone, I answer. And I don’t know why that’s important. I just know that it is.
Because she was someone.
Because no one should die in the street. And because someone must exact justice.
“All right,” I mutter. “Take me to this castle. Let’s go meet this… Baron.”
That soft dry chuckle mocks me as I lay my sword on the table. Like dead leaves on a grave. Driven by an autumn wind. Like smoke and bourbon.
“I said… take you through.”
And then a hand appears from within the cloak and drops two strange dice on the table between us.
“I am death, and death takes you.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Death stares across the table at me. Not that I can see his eyes. I can only feel them coming from the darkness beneath the hood. They bore into me from somewhere in that darkness.
“Let us dispense with this old woman’s brew and drink something more appropriate,” whispers Death. From out of the folds of his cloak he produces a bottle. It’s filled with amber liquid. On the label is a word. Clevinger’s.
I know it. I know its taste. I know the cheap burn it will give as it goes down. But I have no memory of ever drinking it.
I glance up from the bottle, and when I look at the table once more I see two cut-crystal glasses. Death uncorks the bottle and pours two fingers for each of us.
We drink.
I hear that dead-leaf-rustling chuckle once again.
But the hot fire of the bourbon is good, and it’s the opposite of the fog now peeking through the small cross-barred window along the far wall of the room.
“The game begins…” announces Death. “You are summoned to the castle of the Baron.”
This is an odd game.
I reach for the crystal glass and absently take a drink.
On the long low table before my eyes sprouts a gloomy forest in miniature. The tiny trees are twisted and dark, reaching up for us like tiny skeletal hands. The landscape is gray and blue as though revealed through a pale moon on a cold night. It’s like some elaborate model. Except it is real and alive. I see yellow eyes within the forest down there. Dark and shadowy things move about. Small bats dart from stands of dead trees to other twisting and withered stands.
Stranger and stranger…
It’s incredible, and I bend close to study the dark hunched shapes moving through the woods like lumbering shadows. The eyes of dark birds watching from the dead limbs of twisting trees.
At the end of the table between us, a bridge begins to throw itself over a mist-shrouded chasm. All of it in a fantastically minute and shocking reality. The detail is incredible. As though it is a model of some very real place. Or some imagination even more real.
Beyond the bridge rises a castle that is more tall than immense. Its very form conveys an imperious grandeur that seems to despise all beneath its transcendent glare. A tower rises from its center. And just across the bridge lies a gate that looks more like a gaping mouth than a portal.
Still holding that crystal glass of Clevinger’s just below my lips, marveling at every detail within the tiny living world that has taken shape on the old table beneath us, I must have whispered, or sighed to myself.
“What did you say?” asks Death.
“It’s incredible.”
I set the glass down and see a tiny me standing before the bridge. Waiting to cross the yawning chasm.
Then Death reaches out one long and bony finger while the rest of his claw holds the luminescent glass of bourbon. Pointing at the tiny me, the samurai beyond the bridge waiting in front of the castle, Death says, “You.”
After a long moment I ask, “What do I do?”
Death takes a swig of cheap scotch. A breathy ahhhh emits from within the hooded void. Then… “Why, you play the game, Samurai. And if you win… you advance to the temple. Lose, well… I can only keep her at bay for so long.”
I hear a thump. Not a small thump. But a large one. Distant. Out there in the fog and the darkness.
“And I must tell you,” chuckles Death. “Even your fabled blade would be no match for her. Not against the Black Queen. Not yet. It’s not time.”
My eyes catch the remaining scotch in my glass. Concentric circles emanate out toward the delicate crystal rim with each distant strike.
THUMP.
Again.
THUMP.
The silence between these titanic thumps is deafening. Or ominous. Both have intersected and become one.
THUMP.
“And how do I win?” I ask Death.
The tremendous dull crashes have ceased. And if that should have comforted me, it doesn’t. Because whatever is making them is still out there in the mist.
“Slay the Baron. And find the key.”
“And I’ll find him in there,” I say, pointing at the menacing-looking little miniature castle.
Death laughs softly.
“He’s waiting for you, Samurai. And that was a hint. Slay him. Of course he’s going to try to kill you. But in this part of the game you’re not really supposed to know that. Which is rather ridiculous. I mean… c’mon. The Baron. Foreboding castle. Obviously, anyone can figure out he’s a vampire, Samurai. The very dread that hangs over this forsaken castle tells you all you need to know. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I hadn’t really put that together. But I’m just getting started. And now that I look at the whole gloomy scene of the haunted-looking castle, the dark tower, the gloomy forest… yeah, Death is right. How could it be anything else but a vampire?
“All right then…” I say as I pour a touch of scotch into my glass. I nod at Death and receive the barest of movements from the hood. I fill his glass. “Game on then. I enter the castle.”
I watch as my plucky little avatar crosses the yawning bridge. Slowly the immense castle moves closer to the center of the table as first I approach the gates and then pass through them.
Tiny little torches, just a few, wait within a revealed courtyard beneath our gaze. I peer down and see crumbling gray steps rising up to the front doors. I study the scene on the table, watching for enemies or traps I might fall into. Focusing on where I am, as opposed to the lifelike detail of the fantastic castle. Bats cross the towers and rooftops. Figures move beyond high windows, briefly crossing through the wan illumination from some source within. Creating some story I’ve yet to discover. Blood-red light shines out into the gloom from behind one window. Others are of massive stained-glass. I try to examine the pictures, but their images scramble my mind the more I study them. As though the things depicted are somehow so wrong, my mind refuses to organize the information.
THUMP.
“Hurry,” murmurs Death drolly as he takes a long slow slip from the Clevinger’s. “We only have all night.”
I point to the oaken double doors bound in black iron.
“There. I’ll go there.”
Slowly, cautiously, on the table beneath my eyes, the little figure representing me advances up the wide stairs and knocks on the dark doors. They swing back with a groaning creak… but there is no one there.
I nod at Death and enter the castle.
An entry hall lit by candles and draped in rich tapestries reveals itself within. It’s just as detailed as the outside. I can see the reflections on the beautifully checkered floors, the patterns woven into the tapestries. But the cones of light thrown by the tiny miniature candelabras illuminate only so much of the room, leaving shadows everywhere else.
A double door at the end of a long hall seems the only choice available to me.
At that moment I hear an organ. In a minor key. Playing some mournful tune. A dirge perhaps. But it’s more grand than that. A funeral requiem.
At the double doors, tiny me waits. I take a deep breath and whisper, “Go ahead,” as I watch the table, conscious that Death is watching me.
The doors open and the small samurai advances through. A room leaps up and into shadows. Stone gargoyles watch over tiny me with a malevolence I can see from here. But they’re only statues. Other exits and stairs rise up into a gloom I cannot yet penetrate. Maybe I have to go there for those places to be revealed on the living map the old table has become.
To the right of my miniature self is a long candle that is brighter than the rest. It waits on a small table beside two open doors.
I merely move my eyes toward that area and the samurai advances cautiously. Beyond the doors is a dining room. On the far wall, a grand pipe organ rises up into the shadows. A tiny sumptuous feast is set out on a table laden with minuscule silverware, little platters and petite fine bone china. Again, the detail is remarkable. I can make out the individual forks and knives.
Seated at the organ is a man. He is hunched over, enraptured with his work on the three tiers of bone-white ivory keys. His head rises and falls with the haunting chords of the requiem.
And then he stops. Straightens as though only just now sensing my presence. Slowly he turns from the keyboard, and what I see is the classic vampire. Except not camp. Not cheap. Not sideshow second-rate B-movie actor slumming it for a check.
What I see is…
Trim. Powerful. Imposing. Cold. Merciless. Cruel.
And evil.
Death picks up one of the dice and tosses it onto the table, startling me.
The vampire glares into my eyes.
Not tiny me’s eyes.
My eyes.
And now I’m in that room. No longer at the table with Death. I’m there beneath his gaze. Being consumed by it. Devoured already. I feel someone, people, many, pushing past me. Filling the room. Taking their seats at the table where the feast is set and only the main course is missing.
The eyes of the vampire grow, blocking out the raven-haired beauties in tight capes, full lips pouting and parting to reveal fangs. Dark eyes sparkling as they watch me. All becomes fog as the vampire’s eyes grow and swell. Becoming the world. Becoming death.
I try to feel my hand. Try to find it. And when I do, there is no hilt like I desperately want there to be. Need there to be in this moment of being dominated and losing my very will.
But there is something in my hand. Something small. Polygonal. Cold and tiny.
I drop it to the stone floor and hear it as clear as I heard the cyclopean thumps out in the fog and the dark in the forest.
I hear the die rolling on stones. Finding the number that decides what happens next. Whether I win or lose. Live or die. It seems to roll forever, and still the vampire’s eyes grow and grow.
“Twenty,” murmurs Death.
And the trance is broken.
I pull Deathefeather from the scabbard at my belt.
And then it’s game on.
All six of the vampire beauties are wearing hijabs now and they pull back their robes to reveal stunning bodies barely covered in black lace. For a moment I’m torn. But the flashing fangs gnashing in their faces draw me back from an abyss of lust.
Behind them, a satisfied smile washes across the vampire’s ivory face… He smiles. And I know that smile. It’s a prince’s smile.
I’m frozen and I need to move. Now!
Serene Focus swims into view.
I hear simple strings pluck out a melody. Maybe even just three notes. Rain falls onto a pond. Slowly. Slower. Slow. I watch the individual drops fall and strike the water like small nuclear weapons on a winter afternoon.
It’s beautiful.
I drive forward, leading with my elbow, sword held back. Leaping in, I strike suddenly at the first vampire bride, cutting her throat with a smooth swipe. Deep red blood paints the walls of the grand dining room. The other brides turn in slow motion, their silent screeching growing like some chorus of the damned. One comes at me, her hands now claws, her eyes greedy. The one whose throat I have slashed backs away from the fray, but she’s not dead.
In some other part of my mind I realize this is extremely important.
But the one coming at me must be dealt with. Behind her, her ravening sisters spread out to surround me. I twist the katana and drive it into the closest one’s chest. Her scream is abruptly silenced as she chokes on the steel I have sent through her. That look of ravening hunger is gone.
Only horror shows within coal-dark eyes sparkling in the candlelight.
That horror grows as I push Deathefeather out through her back, then plant my knee in her stomach and push her away. She collapses a very old woman, disintegrating into grave dust.
Gray hair. Sagging paper skin gone yellow. Shrunken cheeks.
Because of course… vampires must be staked in the heart. And in this game, Deathefeather counts as just such a stake.
The brides come on as the vampire towers above the carnage. I remove claws and slash throats and open abdomens from which no bloo
d or gore flows. Though the vampire beauties are not slain, the wounds of the fabled blade burn like fire across their features. It is only when I choose an opportune moment to savage one in the heart that she is felled forever. Otherwise, despite their terrible wounds, they remain intent on my blood.
The last one comes at me crying, screeching. I’ve just finished one of the others and I’m exhausted, my lungs heaving like a bellows. The focus, that serene focus, is fading. Time is returning to normal. She comes at me and I have no defense other than to heave the blade from right to left. From east to west. I put all that remains of me into it. Everything. And I know there will be nothing left for the Vampire Prince. Nothing for the Baron who is someone else.
But the brides must be dealt with first.
The blade separates her voluptuous torso from the rest of her body. Blood sprays out across the walls, the rich red curtains, the black candles.
She goes down. Finally dead.
Legs planted, gasping for air, I turn and see that the vampire has disappeared.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It’s noon when I wake up.
And I definitely have game hangover.
Which is weird because I used to play games for nine to twelve hours at a time. Now… not so much. I’m starting to slip. Starting to feel it.
I wake up in a tangle. A tangle of a lone blanket and some dream I can’t remember. And I’m pretty sure that’s a metaphor for my life. I feel the urge to get a taxi, or even take the Porsche and get out of Calistan right now. Get to the border and get the hell out of here.
And then I remember two things.
I have an intense desire to…
… what?
Somehow make sure Rashid doesn’t get away with everything.
And how are you going to do that? I ask myself. He owns a country. Chances are, he’s getting away with it whether you like it or not. That and probably a lot more. And if you’re lucky you’ll take your five million in gold and try to forget what you had to do to get it.
“Yeah,” I mumble as I pull on a pair of shorts. I head out onto the deck of the sailboat. Try and forget.