by Ben Zackheim
He turned and looked right at me.
His army did too.
“I knew we could count on your arrival, Arkwright!” he yelled up at me. His voice echoed around the chasm. The unmistakable sound of flying Vamps from above made me throw my hands up. Yeah, I could have put up a fight. I had some juice left. But they had my team.
The flying Vamps lifted me from under my arms and pulled me up in the air.
They dropped me at the emperor’s feet. I fell to my knees, which pleased him. A Vamp pulled up my charred shirt to check for guns.
I looked at Bonehead, who waited patiently behind my zinging friends. The twins had reverted back to human, or whatever they were. They were moving too fast for me to see whether they were conscious or not.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked the emperor.
“We were waiting for you,” Tabitha said. I had no idea where she came from but I wasn’t surprised to see her. I expected it. Now that I knew she was as much an asshole as the rest of them, she was predictable.
“Let my friends off of your fucking ride. You have me.”
“You think so much of yourself,” the emperor said.
“Been hanging out with you clowns for too long. It’s rubbing off.”
“Maybe I keep them up there to amuse myself,” he said.
“Maybe you keep them up there because you’re afraid I’ll find a way to take your lapdog down.”
His smile faded. A passed out Rebel, Rose and Cassidy suddenly skid across the dirt. Cassidy’s naked body was covered in cuts and burns. If he was alive he’d wish he wasn’t soon enough. Rebel landed near me. I went to help her but the emperor stepped between us.
“Now you can watch what happens next,” the emperor said.
“Listen, emperor,” I said, trying not to sound too snarky. “I don’t think you’ve thought this one through. If you break continents off of continents then the whole world gets hit hard. No one survives, including your kind.”
“We’re prepared for the floods,” he said. “Quakes, fires, inactive volcanoes finally able to spew their seed again after a billion dormant years.” He turned to his small army. “We look forward to it!”
“And what will you eat with no humans around?”
“Enough of you will survive.”
“Be careful, my dear,” Tabitha said.
“Thank you for your concern, my queen,” he said, coldly. Then he turned back to me. “And those who do survive will have a home. Well, a place to live.”
“You mean a slaughterhouse,” I said.
“Not quite. You’ll have your government. You’ll be productive. You’ll have opportunities for advancement. Under supervision.”
“Sounds like a boring job for a vampire,” I said.
“Us? No. We don’t care. There are others who want to see how humanity does if it gets a chance to start over. And you’re right. It does sound boring.”
“My king,” Tabitha said softly. “You’ve said too much.”
“I can handle this without your fake concern!” he shouted.
“As you wish,” Tabitha said. She backed off, bowing her head. Guy had a temper. My read was that he was an immortal spoiled brat. Even more than your normal Vamp.
“Arkwrights always lose in the end,” he said. The smile on his face was filled with secrets. I braced for anything.
Except what he said next.
“I should be thankful, really. It was your father who woke the vampires after all.” He glanced at his wife. “Some would have had us sleep another thousand years. Or forever!”
He faced Tabitha now.
She met his glare with her own. She was not playing the submissive queen role anymore. Good. It didn’t suit her.
He was the one who blinked first. He turned away from her to face me. He thought I’d be an easier target.
“Bullshit,” I said, not believing it was actually bullshit. A part of me knew my family was caught up in the Vamp mess.
“Partly, I suppose,” the emperor said. “He didn’t do the actual awakening. He just told other people where we were and they took care of the rest.”
“Where is he? Where is my mother?”
“Oh, they’re around,” he said, breaking into laughter before he finished the sentence. “They’re all around.” Other Vamps joined in on the fun fest. I noticed that Tabitha didn’t. She just looked at me with an unreadable Vamp face. I hated her most of all at that moment. Whatever I’d felt for her before had flipped. I wanted to take them all down. All of them and their secrets and stupid plans that made no sense.
“Ooooo, look at Kane,” the emperor cooed. “He’s getting angry!”
“I don’t care what secrets you have,” I said. “I don’t care what your plans are, so spare me the bad guy speech, asshole. Just let my friends go and let us try to survive this Armageddon you have on the calendar.”
He stopped and wore his best impressed face. “That’s actually an interesting idea,” he said. “I suspect a lot of the fun will go out of finding food starting in, oh, about three minutes. But if I kept you alive there would always be a wild card.”
He paced for a full minute, enjoying the tension in the air.
“Nah,” he said. “UP, MY CHILDREN! UP!”
The Vamps floated straight up, looking at me like I was a roach about to get sprayed.
“What’s going on?” Rebel said from the ground. “We win yet?” Her face was a mess of bruises. Her left eye was swollen shut. She flicked her hair out of her face with her fingers and slashed herself on the cheek. “Ouch,” she gasped softly.
“No, we’re about to lose,” I said.
The vampires were floating high enough to avoid whatever fireworks were about to happen. Some Viking Vamps stood in a circle around Hakkar.
“Nice going, asshole!” I yelled at him, angling to get in his field of vision. He could have been asleep under that fucking mask though. “Quite a legacy you’re leaving behind.”
He raised the shield over his head.
He yelled a battle cry that pierced the stone around us.
Wait.
He raised the shield over his head?
He brought it down on the hammer laying flat at his feet.
I jumped on top of Rebel to protect her.
I never thought I’d hear a sound that could kill a man. But this one was deadly.
The last time Iceland saw an explosion like that was millions of years ago. But this wasn’t an explosion of fire. It was an explosion of noise. Like the pent up scream of a thousand gods. Like the rage of a planet given voice.
Nothing touched my body. The explosion did nothing to the air except fill it with a furious wail.
And above it all I could hear a man’s voice screaming. When the light faded I opened my eyes to see who it was.
The emperor floated above us, a purple glow surrounded him and his eyes burned red with a power as primal as the one we’d just felt.
“TRAITOR!” he yelled.
Hakkar stood over the shattered pieces of Mjölnir. The shield in his hand was intact
Boneface had destroyed the hammer. Hakkar had saved the world.
Chapter 51
“Give me the shield,” I said to him, instead of saying thank you even though I was very, very thankful. “I’ll keep it safe.”
His creepy mask faced me. “Not as safe as I can, Arkwright.”
I heard a rumbling in the distance but I didn’t have time to look for the source because the emperor slammed into the ground behind me. So hard that some of us lost our balance.
I wasn’t his target this time. Hakkar was.
And it was my turn to spring some surprises.
“Rebel?” I said.
“I’m good.”
“Flame Spell.”
“You got it. Come on, Kane,” Rebel said, running ahead of me. “Pick up the pace.”
I wasn’t sure how she could be standing much less conjuring a Flame Spell. But as she ran, her fists glowed
that familiar blue and then orange and then white. She opened her fingers and two fireballs boomed all over the emperor.
It barely slowed him down.
In fact, I could swear he was growing in front of my eyes. By the time he reached Bonehead there was no question about it. The vampire could grow into a big motherfucking vampire.
Drama queens.
I mean, really. Why? Why have a ten foot tall vampire? Where does that fit into the unnatural order of things?
I heard the sound of a jet nearby. Maybe it was help?
The emperor brought a huge fist down on Hakkar but our new ally blocked it with his shield. The Vamp’s fist bounced off and he wailed in pain.
Suddenly, a jet pack dropped from the sky, fire flaring out of its ass-side. Hakkar slipped into it. He zipped straight up into the night sky and drew a streak of light between the stars.
We heard his sonic boom five seconds later.
Half the vampire army flew after him.
The other half looked down at me and my team, one half of whom was still dreaming about butter houses or super-powered pencils or one of those ridiculous dreams I always had to hear about when I was unlucky enough to be in the kitchen at midnight to witness a disheveled twin stumble in to drink the milk from the fucking carton and call me by the wrong name.
I was elated.
I’d never felt so lucky.
Or excited to be alive.
The remaining Vamps floating above us be damned. It was time to carpe diem.
Rebel and I stood over the twins, ready to fight. The serum’s effect was almost gone and I didn’t have anything but my fists to work with but I’d do my best until the end. Besides, Rebel could probably take them all, even in her present condition.
The floating Vamps touched the ground.
“You sure you guys are all cleared to kill us?” Rebel asked.
“Good point,” I said. “She makes a good point guys. Things may have changed with all that betrayal stuff.”
They growled.
Rebel click-clacked her fingernails together. Made me cringe.
“Then let’s live La Vida Loca!” Rebel yelled. Music started to play all around us.
She’d cast the Soundtrack Spell. An annoying thing of her own making. It played music all around us. I hated that thing but it usually did do a good job of distracting the enemy for a second.
We ran at the Vamps full speed.
“Really? All the songs in the world and you choose this one. Did you hit your fucking head?” I asked her as I leaped over the rocky terrain.
“Sorry, yeah, I guess.”
But we never got to swing to the music.
The vampire’s heads dropped from their bodies before I even heard the slashing sound. The lineup of bloodsuckers dropped to their knees without their noggins and the sandy chasm floor went black with their blood.
Tabitha and several other Vamps stood behind their fallen brethren. They each held a sword. Some were medieval shortswords, some katana, and even an Egyptian khopesh.
“Go,” Tabitha said. “Take your children and get as far from here as you can. He will be back and we must all be far away.”
“Fuck you,” I said, as I got ready to do exactly what she’d just told me to do.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Kane,” she said, slowly rising over my head. “I warned you. There must be balance.”
“Stick around and I’ll show you balance,” I said.
She tossed something to the ground and then flew off. Her posse followed.
It was the Trolls Cross. I pocketed it.
“What the hell kind of comeback was that?” Rebel asked. She was kneeling over the twins. “You’ll show her balance? What does that even mean?”
“No idea. How are they?”
“They’ll live. Strong auras.”
I took a look around at the devastation. Piles of bodies, stray pieces of the fallen Leviathan, fires. Against the purple sky it looked like Armageddon had come around after all.
I sat on a boulder and put my head in my hands. I could fall asleep right there.
With the fighting done, all I could think about was Coleslaw.
The twins stirred. They rubbed their heads. They looked like they’d been drinking for twelve days. Cassidy realized he was naked, except for his watch, and covered by random pieces of clothing, not his.
“What the fuck?” he said. “Rebel, did you do this to me?”
“You wish,” she said. She turned to me. “We all lost our cells on this vacation so you should swap yourself home and get us a ride out of here,” Rebel said. “Swap with Lucas in the library.”
“What time is it, Cassidy?” I asked.
“3,” he looked around at the Icelandic sky. “PM? Maybe?”
Lucas was always in the library at this time of day.
“He hates being outside,” I said. “When he’s swapped here he’ll be a motherfucker. You ready for a fight with a demon?”
“Always,” she said with a smile. She put her hand on my shoulder. I must have looked uncomfortable because she quickly pulled it away, the smile fading.
“After you swap, we’ll head north,” she said.
“I’ll get Dino out here in a helicopter,” I said. “It’ll be 2 hours max.”
“We can handle two hours.”
“I don’t like the idea of being naked for two hours!” Cassidy yelled.
“Look around, dude!” Rose hollered. “Take your pick of Viking Vampire couture!”
They didn’t look like they could handle two minutes, but I knew Rebel would tell me if she was worried.
“Maybe Fox will show up and save the day,” I said. It came out more sarcastic than I meant it to.
Maybe.
“Hope not,” she said. “Sick of that guy.”
“Really?”
“No, not at all. He’s so fucking hot I can’t take it.”
“Right,” I said opening my portal.
“Hey,” she said as I turned my back on her. I stopped. But I didn’t look back. “Good job today.”
I walked into the portal to leave that moment way the fuck behind me.
I wished I could leave my sunken stomach and cracked heart behind too.
Chapter 52
I had a Wah-Fest for a few days after we all got home.
I sat in my chair in the library and listed out everything that had gone wrong in one mission. Did it make me feel better? Hell, no. But I wasn’t looking to feel better. I was trying to get everyone to join me in my dark place, or just leave me alone.
The twins were stuck with powers no one had seen before. Worse, no one could even make an educated guess about why one was a fucking Wendigo and the other one was something that could sniff out treasure, shoot fire arrows and look creepy.
My dad was a traitor to humanity. Everyone was paying way too much attention to how I felt about that news. I didn’t have an answer but apparently that wasn’t an acceptable answer around there.
Fox and Rebel had a thing going, but didn’t because they couldn’t. Or something. If Merlin’s curse was real then Rebel was on borrowed time because of Fox’s fee-fees.
And I was caught in the middle.
Mjölnir was smashed, which solved half our problem but now we had to track down the shield. Hakkar took it for a reason. I didn’t know if he had good or bad intentions but that didn’t matter. I couldn’t have a relic floating around in the world. I had to secure it.
Oh yeah, and I fell for a murderous vampire queen who’s fucking Attention Deficit Disorder made all of us some kind of twisted balancing game to her.
Her husband, emperor of Vampistan, wanted me and my team dead.
I’d made an enemy of Merlin with around five stupid words.
And Coleslaw was dead. Dammit.
It was like Christmas for the bad guys.
I wanted to be alone. I would have given my fortune to be alone. But when you’re in this line of business it’s always business. Taking a
break isn’t an option unless you’re ready to quit.
And I was far from quitting.
“How you holding up, Kane?” Rebel asked. She stacked the books on the coffee table in front of me. I’d been trying to escape into good reads for three days straight.
“Could use some coffee.” I answered, honestly.
“Don’t pull that shit on me,” she said.
“What’s wrong with coffee? Fucking A!”
“We can’t pussyfoot around this for much longer, partner! We need to talk about how the news about your dad affects our team.”
I shrugged. I couldn’t show her what I was feeling. If I started, where would it end? I needed to focus on what came next. I couldn’t spot the big picture anymore. It had been so easy to follow one relic after another. Now I had to factor in what my dad did? I had to make up for his mistakes? Fuck that.
“It’s going to be like that then, huh?” she said. She sat across from me and sank into the soft leather of the chair. She threw her feet up on the coffee table and then leaned them on mine.
She just stared at me while I stared into the fireplace behind her. She had her poker face on.
Rose walked into the library and stopped short at the door.
“Intense,” she said. “You should see the energy between you two. It’s like a boxing match and porn all rolled into one.”
“Shut up, Rose,” we said together.
“I’ve been thinking about your dad, Kane,” Rose said.
“What a surprise.”
She ran her fingers over a shelf of books. “And I think you need to take a vacation. Get your mind cleared up.”
“Sounds good to me,” Rebel said.
“Why don’t you guys go somewhere and leave me here?”
“So you can brood and make bad decisions?” Rebel said. “Forget it. I don’t feel like cleaning up any messes for a couple of weeks.”
“It’s not like Kane had anything to do with what his dad did,” Cassidy said, suddenly appearing in the library door.
“Oh look, it’s a party,” I said.
“Dude, he just learned that his whole life was based on a lie,” Rose said.
“I wouldn’t say…” I started to say before Cassidy interrupted me.