by Hunter Blain
My eyes grew wide in disbelief. I had put up with this animal for decades, no, centuries. Oh Lilith, centuries. My gaze shifted to the ground and everything went unfocused as I dug deep into the perfect recall of my memories. I entered the city of my mind and went to the theatre, where I rewatched the events of every search in an instant. Camp after camp. After all our travels. Not a single calendar could be seen in my mind’s eye.
“Ulric,” I started calmly but with a flat undertone, “why did not a single camp have a calendar? A dated scroll?” I looked at him after speaking, awaiting his response.
Ulric sighed and did something I wasn’t expecting; he looked right at me with cold eyes and said in a tone of finality, “Because I removed them before you could figure out that the mortal commander was long since dead, you petulant child.”
PS knocked me over and grabbed the reins, hard. In one instant, I stood paralyzed in disbelief. In the next, I was flying through the air at Ulric with a bloodlongsword in my hands. It was the mightiest weapon I could imagine in my fury. As I swung, Ulric moved with impossible speed, even for my eyes, and what must have been a cannonball was shot point-blank into my stomach. My momentum was canceled completely, and I hunched over Ulric’s fist, utterly stunned.
Ulric removed his fist from my stomach and used his index finger to raise my chin high so that our eyes met. His were predatory red.
Still hunched over, I put all my strength into my legs and jumped off the ground with enough force to leap over tall buildings. As my feet left the ground, I tucked one knee up and went for Ulric’s jaw.
As if I were moving in slow motion, he turned around and hooked his hands around the back of my bent knee. All I could manage was a grimace as the filthy cobblestones rushed up to meet my face. As I lay stunned, I noticed vermin had stopped to watch the show, twitching their noses in interest.
Regaining my senses, I rolled onto my back and whipped the sword around in an arc toward Ulric’s knees. The sword went into the nearby brick wall and lodged itself. Ulric stood on top of the blade, pretending to check his nails for dirt with a smirk at the corners of his mouth.
While still on my back, I swung a leg around to try and trip up Ulric, who all but vanished in front of my own supernatural eyes. Lilith, he was fucking fast.
Eyes wide and searching, I got up, using my moment of reprieve to yank my sword off the wall. I pulled, hard, and wound up back on my ass as the sword came loose.
Ulric appeared behind me, emerging from the shadows, a chuckle escaping from between his lips.
Sighing, Ulric said, “I will miss your buffoonery, child.” His words straightened my spine and stole my breath, like jumping into a frozen lake.
I shot up, holding my sword in my right hand and my left hand in a defensive position in front of my body.
One instant, Ulric was ten feet in front of me, his eyes intent on their prey. In another, we were standing nose to nose. I choked in surprise and started to fall backward.
Ulric grabbed my sword-wielding wrist with one hand and my elbow with his other. With barely a grunt of effort, my hand was ripped off and replaced with a white sheet of pain that sent a bolt of lightning through my entire body. I went to my knees, mouth agape and eyes glazing as I began to tumble from my vantage point behind my eyes and into the welcoming darkness. I fought to regain control and swam back to an unfocused world. A crimson river flowed from my jagged forearm. In the back of my mind, an image of my father hanging a freshly butchered pig flashed; its throat slashed and gushing as it thrashed, helpless to its fate.
I was unable to focus on the wound and close it due to not only the blinding pain, but the pure loss of life energy that left me empty.
With eyes that trembled in their sockets, I managed to focus on Ulric, who was standing a few paces away now, holding my hand and the sword that was still in it. The long, heavy blade was melting like an ice sculpture exposed to a roaring flame. Ulric smiled at me with his abnormally wide mouth, teeth on full display; but it wasn’t a smile I had ever been on the receiving end of. In all of our travels, he had been tough with me, but it had all been for the sake of learning to be better than I was. This grin was reserved for the most defiant of his prey, knowing that the end was coming and the mortal wouldn’t be able to stop him. I had only seen it a few times, and it had always unnerved me how malicious it was. Now I was its recipient.
The loss of energy stunned me for an uncomfortable period. This must be what it felt like to a soldier when he lost a limb on the battlefield; their brains unable to comprehend what was happening and refusing to step through the doorway of their new reality and accept the loss, as if in fighting it, the limb might reappear.
Though I couldn’t dissect the thought, the overwhelming feeling of being powerless grew inside my mind. I might as well have been the hanging pig to Ulric.
“Do you feel that, John?” Ulric cooed in a silken, nefarious voice. His eyes narrowed at me as he started to casually pace around where I kneeled. “It is your final lesson, one that I had been saving for just such an occasion. If we lose our blood manifestations, we are forever cut off from the power it took to create it. This sword,” he gestured to the half-melted sword still in my hand, which was in his hand, “took a lot of uncontrolled energy to create. You precariously expended too much of yourself, child. Letting your emotions get the better of you has cost you dearly. I dared not counter the attack directly, as I was not willing to risk pouring that much of my own life into a weapon. I learned that long ago. Instead, I used my clear mind to, if you will forgive the expression, disarm you,” he chuckled to himself toward the end. As he finished, the sword coalesced into a pool on the ground.
As Ulric was wrapping up his monologue, I reached out to PS in my mind. He was just as scared as I was. Ulric had always been the alpha, and PS knew this; respected it. Now he was placed in a position to bite the hand that feeds, or potentially die. Ulric’s motives weren’t clear to PS yet, but I knew what the words he spoke meant.
As if on cue, Ulric pulled out his own sword, a rapier. The choice of those in charge on the battlefield. I had witnessed him pulling out the same sword on those who were damned by the malicious shark’s grin he had just pointed at me.
He’s going to decapitate us! I urgently shouted at PS. His response was to lower his head and close his eyes tight, a show of submission. I was on my own.
My eyes flickered around, desperate for anything. Ulric was smiling as he ran a finger down his blade, dramatically testing its sharpness. The blade glinted in the light.
The lamp! I yelled at PS. He looked up at me and nodded, hope and desperation growing in his eyes.
Ulric paced back and forth in front of me, savoring every syllable of his monologue. When he turned his back to me, I reached out with my good hand and extended a whip to the lamp. It wrapped around the base, and I almost fainted from the use of energy.
With my remaining strength, I lunged forward and threw my weight into my arm, ripping the lamp from the wall.
Seemingly in slow motion, Ulric turned with a contorted, dumbfounded look on his face. The lamp struck home and exploded against his shoulder, spreading oil and flames all over the side of his body.
I remember his primal, piercing screams with crystal clarity. Walls shook. Rats scattered, trying to flee from the audible assault.
As he flailed, I cried out to him, “Ulric, what was the lesson on vampires and fire?”
Ulric turned to face me directly, teeth bared, as his face began to liquefy. He did something that would haunt my day-dreams forever and lunged for me, flaming arms outstretched. As he leaped, I fell on my back, startled, and pushed my legs out in front of me instinctively. My feet landed directly into his stomach as our momentum rolled me backward, and I sent him flying overhead, a flaming artillery shell. A claw raked my face and popped an eyeball as he flew past and into a pile of discarded wooden boxes that contained remnants of hay. They ignited in a blaze of hungry fire and choking smoke. Ulric co
ntinued to scream. I could hear his vocal cords bubbling from the flames. It sounded as if he was trying to swallow thick porridge while screaming.
The fire raged on, and all I could do was watch in morbid fascination.
A melted, glowing hand reached out from the flaming debris and hooked on the cobblestone. Bones, glowing red and black like embers, were pulled with shriveling muscles until lidless, glaring eyes were freed from the flames. They disintegrated while staring directly into my own eyes, dissolving into white, bubbling pools in their sockets. Somehow, the emerging skull emanated a feeling of hate that I had never experienced. The jaw dropped open as muscles turned to ash, and the head went lax, setting surprisingly lightly on the ground just outside the flames. I watched as his clothes smoldered, letting the flames eat the exposed flesh, which ignited as if marinated in oil. Within a minute, he was mostly a blackened skeleton with dried tendons holding joints together. Some meat had survived, though charred, but I knew by his burnt skull that he was gone.
In the distance, I could hear the frantic citizens approaching the smoking alleyway. I couldn’t let them find Ulric’s fanged skeleton. I would have to remove his remains and bury him.
I looked around, desperate for anything to put the roaring flames out.
An idea struck and I walked up to the flames, feeling the heat threaten to conflagrate me. I stuck my arms out to either side, like a bird stretching its wings before flight. I was going to slam my hands together at supernatural speed to put out the fire. That’s when I remembered my broken wing, which had stopped spurting precious blood, but remained, well, gone. I commanded my body to start the healing process as I figured out a different plan. An idea struck across my mind.
I slammed my only palm flat on the cobblestone with enough force to send out a shock wave. I was thrown back into the opposite wall of the alley, where I was briefly stunned. The air also smashed into the fire and scattered flaming debris in all directions in a beautiful explosion. Captivation took hold as I watched it rocket toward the heavens. Doubt and then worry replaced the awe I experienced as the firestorm slowed in midair, stopped, then changed course, heading back down.
Time was running short, but I couldn’t help but watch what I had just done. A sickening feeling bloomed in the pit of my gut.
“Shite…” was all I could manage as flaming wood landed on nearby buildings. With helpless eyes, I watched as they began to ignite. They were going up faster than a painstakingly prepared campfire. Within a few ragged breaths, the entire block was smoking.
Screams began then. Men who were already approaching the alley called out an urgent warning, but the flames were growing rampant, feeding on the buildings with an insatiable appetite.
Footsteps approached.
I snapped myself out of the horror of my impulsive action, scooped up Ulric’s charred remains, and ran. There was a vague awareness, and even awe, that my arm was healed up to the wrist now. I continued to run as my eyes drifted to my hand, which was beginning to sprout.
I ran with Ulric’s shrunken frame curled in my arms; partly out of practicality, and partly out of the loss I was trying to fight back in my head. Though he was going to kill me at the end, he was all I had known for the last almost two hundred years. Even if I hadn’t been aware of the passage of time, that was still a hell of a long time to travel the world with one companion. It was like the stories I had read where the protagonist was forced to kill their abusive spouse or parent. They felt a crippling grief at having to take that kind of action against someone they loved, no matter the reason.
As I reached the edge of the city, I turned and was hit by a brick wall of guilt. Just north of the River Thames and west of the Tower of London, the city was glowing orange. Even in the blackness of the night I could see the billowing smoke blotting out the stars, creating a divide in the heavens. I felt like an evil doppelgänger to the righteous Moses.
After what could have been hours of watching the glowing in the city grow, I was met by the first tendrils of the sun. It was time to finish this.
I dragged Ulric’s corpse to a nearby tree and dropped him at the base. Lifting my freshly grown palm, I sent out my blood into the dirt, creating two shallow graves. While holding the dirt in the air, I looked at Ulric with a frown.
“You may have lied and manipulated me, but you also made me what I am. Your part is over. Rest now,” I said solemnly. I pulled his smoldering body into the grave and laid the dirt on him.
I climbed into the other hole and let the dirt rest on top of me just as the sun peeked over the horizon.
My mind raced with the surreal events that had just taken place. I forced my thoughts to settle into reality. This had happened. Ulric was dead.
I was free. The world was mine.
But with Commander Godwin dead, what was I to do? What was the point of existing with no hope for vengeance? Hating Godwin had become a part of me, and with him gone, I had redirected that hate toward my maker.
A tear freed itself from its prison and absorbed into the dirt as unconsciousness took me.
Chapter 19
Present day
I followed the screams of terror. Most of the time, mortals disregarded supes as a trick of the mind—they’d see a glimmer of an apparition, or a giant fur-covered beast dash between the bushes, then quickly tell themselves they were just seeing things. But when a giant, hulking monstrosity was rampaging down the street just after sunset and ripping people apart, the dread sank in.
This didn’t happen often, of course, as there were rules against revealing yourself to mortals. Rules that were punishable by death. But demons didn’t give a damn. This one in particular seemed to revel in the limelight.
I bounded down the street, passing half-eaten bodies with looks of horror permanently etched into their faces. Sporadically, I passed by a supe whose human skin had fallen away with their demise. Trolls, faeries, goblins, ogres, and even rebellious demons were strewn about, all trying to stop the mortals from gathering proof of our existence.
Then, I saw it.
It stood the size of a house. “Holy shite!” I yelled in panic. It was the demon from my nightmare. I skidded to a halt and started to hyperventilate. The creature heard me and began the long process of turning around. Terror gripped my body and filled my muscles with concrete. I couldn’t move.
Its sunken, red-fire eyes spotted me, and its giant maw slowly turned up into a smile. Within its massive body, a deep rumble began that moved up its throat and escaped its mouth.
“Mos-qui-to,” it rumbled, barely audible with the sheer force of its voice. Windows shook and car alarms went off. I peed a little.
It charged impossibly fast at me, intent on doing its master’s bidding and killing the last vampire; or so I assumed by the sparkle in its eye.
Instinct took over, and I crouched while leaning to one side, making it look like I was about to run in that direction. He took the bait and changed course like a speeding train on a curving track. I went the opposite way and willed my blood through my palms, joining them together and forming a giant Viking sword. I swung with all my might at the creature’s back as he passed, trying to stop his momentum. The bloodsword struck armor and shattered. I cried out in shock as the moderate power required to create the weapon was lost. A flash of doubt entered my mind, as I either hadn’t used enough energy or the demon somehow canceled my power. I would have to be more careful, and as Ulric had taught me, use a clear head.
In my moment of bewilderment, the monster swung its massive, bone-spiked arm and hit me dead on. Bone spears pierced my torso and face at my cheek. I flew what had to be several hundred feet down the street. But luckily, a sturdy panel van made of solid metal broke my momentum. A giant, me-sized crater bent the van nearly bumper to bumper, forcing the ends to try and meet like a folded piece of paper. Stuck in the middle, I pried my limbs from where they had imprinted and forced myself into a ball. I wriggled until I was facing one of the sides and found purchase with my fe
et and hands, pushing the van apart. Once there was enough room, I let myself drop to the ground and muttered, “…Jell-O…”
My intestines were hanging out of one of the holes in my stomach, so I did what any normal person would do and pushed them right back in. After a moment, the holes knitted themselves shut. I felt somewhat of a relief that he hadn’t used hellfire with his attack.
The brief reprieve was short-lived as I both felt and heard the monster’s footsteps approaching.
I turned with a new focus. I refused to be beat by some pawn of a demon in my town. Teeth clenched and eyes narrowed, I stared at my opponent and tried to find any weaknesses in his armor. There were gaps between the plates, about six inches apart, to allow for movement and bending. As big as he was, he wasn’t as agile as me, and those gaps provided a perfect place to focus my attacks. But I would have to be in close range to be effective.
Through my palms, I manifested two gladius swords that were made for speed and stabbing rather than blunt force. I stood my ground as the creature confidently approached. A toothy smile twisted its face.
Closer and closer it came, crumbling the cement beneath its monstrous feet. I bent my knees.
Only a few more steps and I would be within its reach. I crouched lower and moved my center of gravity to my legs.
It took a deep breath that sounded like the wind from a tornado, and bellowed directly at me, throwing me slightly off-center. My eyes blurred and ears rang, but I held fast, feeling its movement beneath my feet. Once it thought I had been incapacitated from its verbal assault, it ran the remaining steps.
I acted. My eyes refocused, and I sprang forward with enough force to high-five the clouds had I been going straight up. The street shattered beneath my feet as I propelled myself impossibly fast in the direction of my prey. The monster had a brief look of incredulity before adjusting and reflexively swinging its massive arm in a wide arc.
As the arcing limb was about to hit, I leaped and landed on its wrist, then started running up its arm toward its center. The demon leaned back to avoid my approach, but this only helped to widen the gaps between his torso plates. Still running, I pulled my arms back into a striking position and then lunged forward, jumping off the appendage and toward his house-sized center mass. My left blade struck the corner of a plate and shattered, causing me to gasp at the permanent loss of energy, but my right blade found purchase and drove into the demon’s chest, close to the heart. The creature roared in immense pain and momentary panic. Viscous black oil spurted from the wound, spilling the creature’s blood.