“Master, I am Urad-Betti.”
“Please get off the ground, Betty. I am an American, and we are all equal to everyone else, and a damn sight better than most. Don’t bow to me.”
She straightened up, so that she knelt with her hips over her ankles, her feet tucked under her. She had been trained to sit with her shoulders back, so that the fabric of her tunic strained against the swell of her pert bosom. I put her age at maybe sixteen. Old enough to wear lipstick, and, if her parents were permissive, to stay out until eleven. No later.
“I will kill someone to avenge the indignity done you, Miss,” I said, teeth clenched. I could feel the muscles in my jaw twitching as I ground my teeth together.
She lowered her eyes, unwilling to look me in the face. “By what name shall we worship our master?”
“Don’t call me master. It makes you sound like Barbara Eden. My name is Ilya Muromets. As soon as I rescue you damsels in distress, I will officially be a hero. Right now I am just kind of winging it.”
She lowered her head in a bow. “Your maidservant does not understand your words, mast—”
“My first command is that you not call me master and stop taking commands! I hereby free you. You are manumitted. All the other girls also. Stop bowing!”
She straightened up, blinking, looking alarmed.
“Sir does not like it?”
Not like what? Having a beautiful girl fawning all over me in a getup skimpy enough to make a Vegas showgirl look overdressed?
All I said was, “Gather your things.”
“We have nothing, sir. We have no possessions to bring.”
I said, “Then loot the place. Do they dress you in jewelry? Gold? Anything like that may be useful where we are going.”
Urad-Betti said, “But where are we going, sir?”
Just at that moment, I heard the noise of wind, and the sound of voices, but no footsteps. I said to Urad-Betti, “I am about to find out myself where we will go. Get the other girls ready. If there is anyone sleeping in the back, wake her up! Prepare everyone. And don’t be afraid! I’ll get those collars off you. I promise.”
I looked up at the ceiling, and whispered, “Saint Peter Claver! Help me not to fail of that vow!” Saint Peter Claver is the patron saint of slaves and those who free them.
As I drew my eyes up to breathe that brief prayer, I saw a coffin floating in midair come wafting through the broken balcony where we entered, halfway up the dome, pushing aside music stands and instrument racks.
Abby was sitting atop the coffin, and she waved at me.
3. Open Lid
The coffin swooped and made a perfect three-point landing next to me. A feeling of dizziness wiggled through my head from the cold issuing from the coffin. I sheathed my blade slowly, and then jumped up and backed away rapidly. “Watch it! Don’t let him get too close to me! Just being near him makes us weak.”
Ossifrage emerged as if from a mist, along with Nakasu the headless giant, and Foster in his white hood and cloak. The crucifix I had loaned them was on the coffin lid, held in place with the copper chain from Abby’s kusarigama encircling the coffin. The long loop of rosary beads swung and rattled from the crucifix.
Abby hopped down. She said, “Who is ‘us’?” She looked at the slave teens not much older than she (who were bustling about), then glanced at Penny (who was still singing) and at Rahab (who was still writhing and drowning silently in a bubble of red-sizzling but invisible water).
I nodded at the quivering form of Rahab. “Him and me. His name is Raw Hate, or something like that. He is one of the Host that Yearns for Death in Vain. I figured this is the best way to fulfill his yearning. Or do the next best thing.”
There came a pounding and a scratching at the coffin lid from the inside, and a voice like ice spoke in Greek. “Release me, that I may slay you all. I feel life, precious life, life like a bonfire near me: I must drink your soul, even if it burn me. I am Vorvolac! Vorvolac! None live who know that dread name and fear it not!”
“None live who know that dumb name and can pronounce it,” I shouted back (in rather ungrammatical Greek). “Shut your mouth! We are deciding how much to kill you!”
The icy voice grew even colder. “Fool! You would not have borne me here unless you seek to bargain with me. You will spare me if I serve you, is that it? But why should I trust your oath?”
“I am an honest man,” I said.
“You are not a man at all: you are prey. Can the pigeon cow the raptor into obedience, or the yearling awe the jackal?”
Ossifrage said something in Hebrew, a question.
Abby answered him, saying, “I will be the one to threaten the Cold One. He is as a corpse, and my people can handle corpses.” She drew her green shawl to shadow her head, pulled up my father’s huge crucifix in her hand, and retracted the chain holding the coffin shut.
Penny stopped singing long enough to shout, “Don’t look in his eyes!”
4. Time to Die
Because her singing was interrupted, the bubble of imaginary water surrounding Rahab popped and spread. (I mean that literally. I felt something cold slosh against my toes, even though I saw nothing.)
Rahab coughed and roared and rose to his hands and knees. I picked up the nearest heavy object at hand — I think it was a vase or a bottle sitting on one of those wee little tables that dotted the garden beneath the pleasure dome — and chucked it into the glass bars right next to Rahab. Shards and fiery garnet sparks shot out, but I was standing far enough away not to be jolted. He wasn’t far enough away, and he stumbled, and fell onto some upjutting blue glass shards that still had some pain inside them.
Vorvolac the Cold One came out of the coffin like a cobra, his white glow-in-the-dark body sliding like it had no bones in it, only elastic springs.
He went right for Abby’s throat. She threw up her hands and the heavy crucifix spun and glittered in the air, and he threw himself backward onto the floor to get away from it. Vorvolac clutched at his own face with pale fingers, writhing and howling an eerie howl. Foam gushed from his mouth. Abby blinked and straightened up, puzzled.
Nakasu stepped and stooped and grabbed Vorvolac, and, with the grisly huge teeth of his belly-mouth, first on the left side, then on the right, ripped the Cold One’s leathery glider wings to shreds. The devil screamed like a devil, and bled a copious amount of white, oozy fluid. Nakasu spat Vorvolac out and beckoned to Ossifrage.
Ossifrage raised his hand, and levitated Vorvolac straight up into the air, and out of claw-range.
Foster shot a glass arrow into the creature’s leg. Then Foster touched his gold forearm-protector, and gestured toward Vorvolac. A wreath of mist issued from the arrow and formed about the creature’s bald head.
Foster said, “You can look at him, now. If he cannot see you, he cannot make eye contact, and his mesmerism won’t work.” Abby translated that to Nakasu and Ossifrage.
I said, “Abby, you’re going to have to tell the Cold One, Cadillac or whatever his name is, to drain the life-energy out of the—”
Ossifrage waved a finger and casually tossed the Cold One spinning through the air to land on top of Rahab.
5. Caveman Moment
Penny stopped singing and screamed in fear, and I took the opportunity to snatch her up from where she knelt, throw her over one shoulder, and run a short distance away, my hauberk ringing as I ran.
The warm curve of her hip was against my cheek, the nicely feminine weight of her body against my shoulder, and I could see her slender legs kicking in front of me. And, of course, I had arms wrapped about the taut muscles of her thighs.
That moment was worth all the fighting and whatnot I had gone through since, I dunno, before I was born.
Unfortunately, I stopped after a few long strides, far enough to put us out of melee range, and turned, and put my hand on my grandfather’s sword. It actually takes two hands to draw properly, since you are supposed to push the first inch free with your thumb against the hil
t, and then take the sheath in one hand and the grip in the other and draw apart your arms in a smooth motion. So I did not draw it.
And I was unwilling to take my right hand off of Penny’s smooth upper leg, because I did not want to drop her. Mostly.
When I turned, I looked back and wished I hadn’t.
Vorvolac was splashed all over with blood, and the red droplets were crawling and writhing like termites across his face, jaws, and upper body. He had ripped open the steaming chest cavity of Rahab, and the meat-dripping bones of the ribcage were each separately twitching like crab legs. Vorvolac swallowed the way a bird swallows, by throwing his head all the way back and pointing his jaws toward the sky.
The thing in his mouth I thought at first was a red octopus covered in gooey red ink, pulsing. No, it was the heart of Rahab, lashing out with veins and arteries in a futile attempt to escape the frozen fangs of Vorvolac. The Cold One was gargling and slurping and giggling with joy, as happy as a baby allowed to eat his first banana split sundae. The severed, jawless head of Rahab had abandoned his body and was trying to wiggle away from the messy feasting using its tongue as a pseudopod. I won’t even try to describe the insane look in its eyes.
And the little pool of water, still snapping with the occasional dark red spark of pure pain, was all around them, so the Cold One would jump and shriek from time to time, and Rahab’s body parts, any little worm of flesh or bone that was trying to escape, would jerk back together. The slobbering and guzzling and shrieking noises were not as ugly in the ear as the smell of the whole event was to the nose.
“Put me down, Caveboy,” said Penny in a dry tone of voice from somewhere near the small of my back. “I can't see anything at this angle!”
“You don’t want to see this,” I said.
“After what he said he was going to do to me? I think I do.”
I put both hands about her waist and lowered her to the floor, facing me. “Sorry, Miss, um. Penny. I thought you were in danger.”
She tossed back her head, and smacked me in the jaw with the little book that was still in her hand. Its gold metal corner was harder than I would have expected. “I know what you were thinking. Keep your oversized hands off me!”
I snatched my hands back, and rubbed my jaw. “Sorry, but seriously, don't turn around, because if you do—”
She turned around.
She turned back toward me, raising one trembling hand to her eyeglasses. She removed them and tried to wipe the lenses with the hem of her skirt, which was really too short for that operation. “Okay—okay. That was—wow—really gross.”
She hung her eyeglasses by the earpiece from the front of her shirt, pulling it down. It was hardly my fault that the movement drew my eyes in that direction.
I said, “You need to watch more horror movies. You can desensitize yourself to gore.” The vampire was tearing out the belly of the immortal, and the guts were unwinding like spaghetti. I winced and added, “Eventually.”
Penny darted a glance at me sidelong from underneath her long lashes. “The blood is saltwater and remembers when all life was in the sea, before the One God called up the land.”
“What does that mean?” I asked. She was licking the lock shut on her little black book and stuffing into its plastic baggy.
“It means you are on your own, tough guy. My chants cannot enchant him, nor my glamour bewitch and ensnare. He’s your headache now.” She put both pinkies in her mouth, and emitted a shrill whistle. Then she tossed the black shagreen book up into the air.
Her fierce little bird — I did not see where she came from — dove down and snatched up the book in her claws. Through the hole in the bars she flew like an arrow.
“Where is your bird going?”
She was smiling, watching the falcon depart. It was a look of pride and friendship. “She has carved out a niche or nest partway into the shadow world, where the stars cannot see. Isn’t she the cleverest bird?”
I wondered if Penny were seeing the same nasty, cold-eyed eyeball-eating carrion bird I was.
After Vorvolac gnawed the still-moving body of Rahab down to about half its size, all at once the body turned black and melted, or dissolved into some sort of muddy ash. The lumpy pile of black ooze rested unquietly, trembling and bubbling on the marble. It was still not quite dead.
Vorvolac rose to his feet, mouth gaping, eyes ablaze. “Life! I quaff not merely human, but more than human! Endlessly more! I have swallowed the ocean and the roots of the ocean! It grows inside me, trying ever to escape, more and always more! It flows through me! I am infinite!”
I could feel it was true. I was the farthest one away from him, and I could feel the cold, like the cold of infinite outer space, pulling at me, blindly hungry for my soul. The light from the glowing sawdust in the air had faded where the Cold One stood, and an Arctic chill entered the air.
He turned his maddened eyes left and right blindly. Foster’s trick with the mist was still working, because the Cold One could not see us. Even so, I could feel the hypnotic magnetism in his inhuman eyes. I felt like I was drunk when I looked straight at them, and my thoughts began to slide and drift like in a fever dream.
“You lowly, crawling things!” shouted Vorvolac in his high, thin, piping voice. “You worms! You have granted me endless power! How can you hope to withstand me? Now, I am a god!”
“Not my god,” said Abby.
Abby had looped my father’s crucifix around the end of the copper chain of her weapon, and now the chain reared and reached like a metallic snake, and thrust the cross against the Cold One’s kneecap. The whole leg twisted and blackened like a stick held in a fire and the leg below the knee fell off. I stared at the stump, dumbfounded. In some dull part of my mind, I guess I was expecting the leg to get better and grow back—fighting an Undying One will warp your perceptions and reactions—so it was a moment before I realized that that vicious amputation was permanent. Vorvolac was Cap’n Ahab from now on.
Vorvolac writhed in the mud puddle, clutching his stump, and shoveled more of the muddy remains of Rahab into his mouth. Maybe it dulled the pain like whiskey.
Abby yanked back the chain of her weapon. I mean, the chain did not retract. It had lost its coppery luster about a foot or two from the end. She put her foot on the spot where the dead dull chain met the bright still-coppery chain and yanked. The dead links fell off, and Abby used her weapon-chain, now eighteen inches shorter than before, to pick up the crucifix once more.
Abby said, “Dread servant of the Dark Tower, highly favored! You have consumed a servant of the Dark Tower more highly favored than you. The Master of that Undying One will consult his horoscope, see you, and find you.”
The look of horror on the face of Vorvolac almost made me feel sorry for him.
But he rose to his hands and his one remaining knee, still twisting his head blindly one way and the other. “The Master of Rahab is Anshargal himself, the Great King. Rahab-ut-tennin Ushumgallu is His Majesty’s special assassin. If any horoscopes foretold this event, I would have been slain years long past! Yea, years ere ever I won my first painful injection of that deathless mercury, which dripped from the glass of the anathor where the Stone of Philosophers burned, expelled my human blood and all its humors and weaknesses, and yet was not consumed.”
I looked at the puddles of white fluid which dripped from Vorvolac’s still bleeding wounds. Mercury? It was a poisonous metal. While Penny had called this thing a vampire, it was actually made by alchemy. Apparently there was some particularly nasty magic chemical they took into themselves. So this was not some poor sap who had been bitten against his will by Bela Lugosi. This was someone who had sold his humanity. An ex-human.
Abby said, “I am of the foreverborn, risen from the water. There are no horoscopes of any deed I do this day. I brought you here. You are hidden from retaliation only until I cease to hide you.”
I was not sure if that was exactly true, but then again, if I understood how this worked, anyth
ing Abby did that was underhanded, lying or stealing, would be part of her lower nature, and would let the horoscopes get a reading on her. So I guess she was telling the truth.
Vorvolac, of course, was from this world, or nearby, and he knew things I did not. He grimaced in mirthless mirth. “You cannot throw aside the shadow in which you walk so easily!”
Abby said, “It is not the shadow in which I walk, but the light.”
“Bah! To my kind, light is darkness!”
“Is life also death? All I need do is bow to the stars and worship them, and I will be in the night once more, and be seen of them. It takes only a moment, only a word. Shall I speak the word?”
“You would die as well!”
“I am Foreverborn—so my living always begins, never ends. You drink the lifeblood to fill your void, but it will not fill it so your dying never ends.” Abby said softly. “Why did you make yourself no longer you, no longer man?”
“I am more than man, little girl!”
“Less. You fear death more than I do.”
6. Cushing Moment
I said, “Foster, can you part the mist so that our vampire friend can see the crucifix, without seeing us?”
Foster said, “If Monkey Girl holds it away from herself, sure.”
But she heard what he said, and dangled the crucifix of the rosary on the end of her prehensile, coppery chain several yards to one side.
I said in halting Greek, “Beast who steals and drinks the blood of men! I am a man who drinks the blood of God, freely given! In days gone, you were a man. In days to come, I will be more than man. Come, and see!”
Vorvolac focused his eyes on the crucifix. He screamed with every ounce of strength in his lungs.
It worked just like in the movies, or more so. He was rolling on the floor, yowling, ignoring the lingering red sparks of pure pain, as if this pain were worse. He started to beat his head against the marble, breaking his own nose and drawing blood from his own forehead, as if to try to drive the image of the little ivory man hung on a little wooden cross from his sight.