Unhallowed Shadows

by Stefanos Kottas

  “Good, now call the contact under the initials T.M.”

  He heard the vampire pressing some buttons on the device, something he probably wouldn’t have been able to do himself, even with his eyes open. He felt him placing the cell phone in his hand and raised it to his ear. A familiar and particularly grating voice was heard from the other end of the line:

  “What do you want, Lucas?”

  “Where is she, Travis? Answer me, or I’m going to find you and then no one will be able to save your sorry hide”.

  He was speaking calmly, but he knew he had terrified that particular hacker enough in the past to be able to scare him even now that he had the backing of his young master. And, indeed, following a brief silence, he was given the location he was looking for, whereupon he hung up. He turned his attention to Ron.

  “Now, Ron, I want you to bring me a black scarf, long as you can get, along with my sword from the storage room”.

  Ron began trembling, but he obeyed.

  After a while he returned and handed him the sword, handle first, and then the black piece of cloth. Lukas tied it around his eyes and then got up from the stool, holding the sword. With his free hand, he grabbed Ron and had him sit down on the very stool he had been sitting on moments earlier.

  “Stay perfectly still and you shall live”, he announced.

  The rest of the vampires in the room gathered opposite him; they had realized what would follow. They began growling, either in anger or in fear, but Lucas did not react at first. He focused his mind on the image of his sister and then let his body loose.

  “I’m sending you an escort, little sister; they are unworthy of the honor, but I’ll be joining you soon, as soon as I find the bastard who killed you. I’m coming!” he mumbled to the empty air around him.

  With terrifying speed he got amongst the vampires, howling in rage. He plunged his sword right on the heart of one, killing him instantly. He had little trouble parrying the attacks of those around him; he didn’t need his eyes to know where he was standing. Grabbing a second by the head, he slammed his forehead against it, crushing the skull of the lesser vampire. With his blade he scythed another two vampires, in quick succession and then launched it towards the other end of the room, striking a third one, who was yielding a pistol. He sensed a flurry of blows land on his body and growled furiously. Their fists practically had no effect on him. He returned the blows and felt bones crushing under his massive strength. Grabbing a youngling, a vampire that couldn’t have been over twenty years old, he slammed him against the wall, turning him into mush. He faced the remaining creatures. Their taste for battle was all but gone; already they were attempting to flee. Moving quicker than them all, he materialized before the door. No one would get out of that place alive. Their only choice was whether they would die proudly in battle or cowering in some corner. One of them tried to get past him by breaking into a run, but with a massive hit to the head Lucas floored him, dead, launching him back to the spot where he had started running, and the slaughter recommenced.

  Already he had bitten Marcos when Erica sensed his presence and turned towards them. Up to that point, she hadn’t even heard him, and that was no mean feat for him. Erica’s surprise became even greater when she recognized the beggar to whom she had offered alms, who, at that point, was tossing Marcos against a wall as if the policeman were a ragdoll, with blood seeping out of his neck.

  “Flaming blood!” he told her, impressed. “A fine meal you got here, impostor!” he added, before lunging at her.

  Erica expertly avoided his attack and armed herself with the daggers she had brought along. The nails of the beggar were like massive claws, blacker than black. He tried striking her with these, but at the very last moment she was able to parry the attack, using her blades as a makeshift shield. She had expected to see those claws burn when they came in contact with her silver daggers, but they appeared wholly unaffected. Irritated, she summoned her powers and materialized behind him, plunging one of the daggers straight on the heart of the beggar, believing he would turn instantly into a pile of ashes. The beggar’s flesh began smoking, but he seemed unfazed by the strike and with an explosive move slammed his fists on her. Erica felt as if she had been hit by a battering ram. Before she had time to react, he landed a kick on her, sending her flying backwards by several feet. She slammed on the wall behind her, painfully, feeling several of her ribs crack, but her body, now attuned to her powers, instantly healed its wounds. Expecting the barrage to continue, she jumped up at once, ready to parry his next attack. Yet the vampire appeared to have lost any interest in her. He pulled the dagger from his chest, threw it down and turn to look at the remains of the Ancient. His intense sadness and pain were showing clearly on his face. He approached the skeleton and lovingly touched the skull.

  “He forced me to watch. He made me watch him die, before he even had the chance to awaken. You were late, impostor! You deceived him! He was counting on you, but you let him die!”

  The beggar had once again turned towards her; his anger had pushed his sorrow aside.

  “You are one of the Dead, that’s why you didn’t die right now”, said Erica. “Your heart is safe back at the Temple of Blood”, she murmured, more to herself than to him, struggling to come up with some tactic to defeat him.

  “Ah, such a bright lass you are!” exclaimed ironically the Dead one. “Such hopes he had for you, but you failed him miserably!”

  “Such hopes? If they wanted something from me, they should have told me! Right from the start, straight and true, not through whiny little messages! Tell me what you know about this whole thing! Help me make some sense out of it!” replied Erica, furiously.

  The Dead cackled; it was a disgusting, otherworldly sound.

  “I know very many things. He told me. Not that it matters. Still you don’t understand, do you? You were supposed to know! You were supposed to save them!”

  “They have been hiding from me! How was I supposed to save them?”

  Erica was so enraged now, she was howling.

  “They weren’t hiding from you! They had gone into hiding, hoping to survive! You pathetic little creature! You don’t deserve the powers you have!” said the Dead and once again he attacked her.

  Erica wasted no time; rolling on the floor, she grabbed both her daggers and plunged them in his chest the moment she came to rest before him. The Dead completely ignored the blades and punched her. He grabbed her by the hair with one hand and he stuck the claws of his free hand deep inside her ribcage. Erica got hold of the hand holding her by the hair and with a twist broke it, pulling him forward, despite the pain his claws were causing her. She managed to get him off and her body immediately began healing. She threw a kick at him and immediately wished she hadn’t done it; the Dead possessed similar healing powers with Erica. He blocked the kick and with one push threw her back. He jumped up and in a flash he was on her. A flurry of blows followed, with Erica desperately trying to parry his strikes. She felt the claws on the Dead’s hand slice her ribcage close to her heart, but managed to grab his hand moments before he was able to push upwards. Mere inches and she would have been dead. Again, she tried kicking at him, but his body felt like a rock on her. With his other hand the Dead one was furiously bashing her head, attempting to loosen her grip on his other hand.

  Two shots resounded in quick succession, forcing the Dead one to turn in surprise towards the place where he had tossed Marcos. The policeman had regain consciousness, although he looked poorly, pale from all that loss of blood along with the pain from his cracked ribs. He kept on shooting at the Dead, though his bullets were not affecting him. Yet those shots were enough to offer Erica a reprieve. Letting her powers loose, she was immediately engulfed by shadows. She materialized again at the other end of the crypt. Enraged that she had escaped him, the Dead howled and lunged at her. Erica kept utilizing her powers, teleporting from one corner of the crypt to the next, infuriating her enemy and gaining enough time to heal her bod
y and also to hatch some plan. Again, she gathered the shadows around her, pretending she was about to teleport once more and, the moment the vampire attempted to guess where she would materialize next and move towards that spot, she let the shadows dissipate and grabbed him by the neck with one hand. She clenched her fist in an attempt to pin him down, while throwing a barrage of blows to his head with her free hand. Just for a split second she managed to stun her undead opponent; it was all that she needed. She repositioned herself behind him, grabbed his head with both hands and twitched. She was rewarded with the satisfying crack of his neck breaking. She pulled free one of her daggers, which the Dead had left on him all this time, and plunged in on his spine, at the nape. This time the pain was too intense for the vampire to ignore and he was raked by violent spasms, as his body was unable to heal his broken spine, with the silver blade preventing it.

  “That should stop you for a little while”, murmured Erica.

  Yet she knew right then that her trick wouldn’t hold for long. His body slowly but surely would push out the dagger and all her efforts would have been in vain. She glanced around, searching for some solution. She had been prepared for many things, but not to do battle against a Dead one. These were enchanted vampires, unable to attack the Ancients, but either something had frayed this magic or she didn’t truly possess the powers of Naram-Sin. At that moment, she was unsure which of the two was scarier!

  An idea came to her mind. She tried to touch the necklace she had been wearing, but realized that she had lost it during the clash. She looked around frantically and the moment she located it she began taking it apart. It was made from several silver droplets and as she was pulling these off, she started placing them inside the body of the Dead, piercing his body with her other dagger. The pain experienced by the vampire multiplied, but that was not enough, either. She lifted him up and moved him to the tanks. In vain she searched for some handle, but then she realized that the tanks would have been automated. She looked around their base and quickly noticed a small hatch. She opened it and found a small numeric keyboard, along with some other buttons. She was lucky that it wasn’t locked. She pressed the “open” button and with a heavy mechanical hiss, the blood contained in one tank began flowing from the tubes. The dead women inside, the moment their prison was emptied, turned to dust; the blood had been preserving their bodies, even in death. The moment the last drop was drained, the tank opened and Erica placed the Dead one inside. She pressed another button on the keyboard and the reverse process commenced. The vampire had been trapped inside. One of the tubes began pumping thousands of silver fragments, while the other was pumping blood to refill the tank. Erica was not entirely sure whether this would be enough to keep the Dead trapped forever, but she felt it would prove sufficient until she came up with a more permanent solution. She couldn’t even blow up this whole place; the humans would investigate and she didn’t want them to discover in the rubble something that they shouldn’t.

  Slowly, she backed away. She wanted to leave this place, she was feeling completely exhausted. She thought about it and decided that there was no way the Dead would have gotten there the same way she had. So, it stood to reason that there must be some secret exit. She glanced at Marcos; he was lying in a pool of blood on the floor, unconscious once more. She could sense his life force seeping away. She thought that he would weigh her down, delay her escape. She took a step towards the exit of the crypt. She paused and looked at him again. She did not want to care, she wasn’t that person any more. This man was now utterly useless to her, he had served his purpose. Better that he died, in fact, so that he wouldn’t reveal to the rest of the world the existence of vampires. And yet, he had tried to save her, by shooting at the Dead one. Infuriated, she approached and bit her arm, to draw some blood. She placed the open wound on his mouth and her blood flowed in him. Without waiting to heal or regain his senses, she hefted him on her shoulder and set to locate that hidden exit.

  He was in danger, he could sense it. Marcos opened his eyes and jumped up. He was swimming in sweat, feeling as if he had swallowed molten lava; the blood in his veins was boiling. Instinctively, he tried to grab his pistol, but it wasn’t in its holster. In fact, not only was his weapon gone, he was shirtless. Gradually, he realized that he was lying on a double bed and that he had just regained consciousness. He remembered what had happened; someone had attacked him, wounding him grievously, so he tenderly touched his ribs. There wasn’t a scratch to be found there, while a quick examination of his neck revealed that it was entirely free of marks. And yet, he didn’t know where he was, he didn’t recognize the room he was in. He got up from the bed and noticed that next to him there was a nightstand, with a large mirror and in front of it stood a chair, from where his shirt was hanging. He resisted the temptation to waste time examining his reflection in the mirror and hastily got dressed. He tried looking for his gun, but the only other piece of furniture in the room was a closet, which contained nothing but women’s clothes. He walked out the bedroom as quietly as he could. There were other rooms around, along with some stairs going down. He decided to try the stairs. Again, he moved quietly, trying to figure out if there was anyone else at the house and who had brought him there. He hated the idea that he was walking down unarmed.

  Downstairs, before he even had the chance to reach the end of the stairs, he discovered whose house he was in. He found Erica sleeping on a couch, with a laptop still on in front of her. Marcos paused for a second, unsure what to do. He didn’t know if he should wake her up or not. He glanced around, saw a clock on one of the walls and realized it was the next day, almost noon. He wondered whether she had stood guard while he was unconscious. Myth had it that vampires slept through the day. He concluded that the sun had risen while she was lying on the couch and so he did not attempt to wake her up. He returned to the bedroom and began searching the closet for something that had caught his attention before. A couple of minutes later he was walking down the stairs again, approaching Erica as silently as he could. He noticed that she had changed clothes; now she was wearing shorts with a light shirt. Against his will and for a mere moment he paused to admire her beauty. He shook his head, in a fruitless attempt to resist her charms and then covered her with the blanket he had gotten from the closet, starting with her legs. He wasn’t sure whether she was cold, but he was freezing; the central heating appeared to be off. He began rubbing his arms in order to warm up, while his mind feverishly attempted to recall all that it could about the vampire mythology. He didn’t know what to think or how to react, he was feeling lost. He had never been a fan of fantasy fiction, and the fact that before him there was a creature that wasn’t even supposed to exist confused him terribly. He looked around; all the windows of the house were hermetically closed. The daylight couldn’t get in, only the lamps were on. Despite that, he covered her head as gently as he could with the blanket, leaving only the top of her face so that she could breathe and see when she woke up.

  He walked away from the couch and headed towards the kitchen. He was famished, but when he opened the fridge he felt utterly disappointed. He was mainly angry at himself, for expecting to find real food in the house of a vampire. Unsure what to do and not wanting to leave Erica alone, he sat on a stool he found and placed his hands on the kitchen counter. He waited like that for a while, examining the room, trying to find something interesting to do, until, quite suddenly, his brain began functioning better.

  “You were awake all this time, isn’t that right?” he said to the empty air, but not too loudly, in case he was mistaken.

  He got his answer immediately in the form of a charming laughter from the side where he had left Erica.

  “I wanted to see what you would do!” she announced, getting up from the couch. “By the way, thanks for the blanket, although I don’t need it”.

  Marcos couldn’t define exactly his feelings. On the one hand he was feeling rather daft for having been fooled like that, and on the other he was overjoyed that sh
e had spoken to him so sweetly. Erica got him out of his dilemma within a moment, when she materialized next to him, making him jump. She held him softly by the neck, examining the spot where the vampire in that crypt had bit him.

  “It’s completely healed. I was worried, for a while you were teetering on the brink of death; I wasn’t sure whether my blood could save you”, she said and, noticing the look of sheer terror in his face, added: “No need to worry, you won’t become a vampire by drinking my blood” and, following a brief pause, smiling mischievously, she concluded: “Neither if you are bit by a vampire!”

  “Thank you”, he told her, looking her in the eye.

  She returned the look and Marcos realized that Erica was trying to find out whether he meant what he had said. It would appear that she decided he was being sincere, because her face softened and nodded at him; that was her way of saying “you’re welcome”. They stayed like that for a while, looking at each other. Eventually, it was Marcos the one who broke the silence.

  “So, what did happen? I can’t recall much from last night. Who was that guy who attacked us?” he asked.

  Erica jerked backwards. She went back to the couch and when she spoke again her voice had lost that previous sweetness. She began explaining in detail all that she knew, starting from the beginning. She told him about Naram-Sin, the Dead ones and the Temple of Blood. At first, her candidness caught Marcos by surprise, but soon he focused on what she was telling him and in memorizing details. She told him about the duel, the way she had managed to trap the Dead inside one of the tanks, about how she had brought him here, the secret entrance the Ancient had been using for his comings and goings.

  “Just one question… I’m sorry, but I have to ask. Why did you tell me everything? Please don’t misunderstand me, I appreciate it and clearly you have no reason to fear me, you could kill me more easily that I’d like to admit, so… Why?”

  Erica looked at him coolly. Marcos was quite unable to read her intentions at that moment and he began feeling that he had said something wrong. He tried to speak, to apologize, but she beat him to it.