"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN: Ayer’s Rock

 

            “C’mon, then, you drongos,” Aussie Donna called out, her Aussie dialect scrumptiously thick, more so than I remembered.  “I reckon I saved yer arses… right ‘fore you all came a cropper, eh?”  She looked fully flabbergasted when no one moved a muscle or said a word, so she helpfully elucidated: “Let’s GO, you Yankee gits!  Move out!  NOW!”

            In perfect synchronization with her final exclamation, bright red faerie wings popped out of her back, and she trembled briefly in what looked like sheer bliss.  Bellissima’s face brightened, and she was briefly bathed in a cardinal glow, as waning moonlight filtered through Aussie D’s iridescent wingspan.  “Oh!  Are we all flying somewhere, sis??”

            “Nup!” Donna said.  “I just like the look of ‘em.  Aren’t they loverly?”

Donna walked briskly toward Adrianos and Siren, giving me an ambivalent look in passing.  She halted.  “We’re goin’ on a ‘short’ walkabout,” she said, snickering at the inherent contradiction… and looking fairly put-out when no one else got it.

“Ayer’s Rock, o’er yonder,” she continued, gesturing grandly at the looming sandstone monolith.  “‘Tis where we’re going.  Sanctuary, and whatnot.  We’ll be safe -- safer, mind you -- from these whackers,” she said, indicating the bodies of the dead Kindred.

Speaking of whackers, Donna sprightly whacked me on the arm… it hurt more than it should, almost as if there were a little extra mystical ‘punch’ behind it.  “Mind that bloke, Nevik,” she warned, waggling a pale finger at Adrianos.  “Lord Ad looks like he’s about to chunder…”

I blinked at her, a puzzled look on my face.  I stuffed the bounty scroll into my pocket.

“A liquid laugh,” she said, intending to clarify.  I just shook my head, ostensibly clueless (I knew what she meant, although I partly felt like she was erecting a wall of words between us… I suppose I just needed the chuckle).  “Technicolor yawn?  Toss his bloody-butter cookies?  Pray to the porcelain devil…??”

Who knows how long she might’ve gone on… she stopped her steady string of euphemisms when Adrianos did actually double-over and spew forth a ‘chunderous’ mass of blood and bile.  Siren winced as she sat up, hugging Adrianos as she diverted him away from the gnarly-looking puddle of blood and laid him down on his back.  I felt the too-familiar itch of jealousy crawling under my skin, and I mentally scratched it away.

I walked back over to Siren and Ad.  Aussie Donna did, too, skipping slightly ahead of me, her right butterfly-like wing ‘accidentally’ smacking me in the side of the face.  I turned away from that antagonistic appendage, glancing behind me… Bellissima and Spike were chasing after us, holding each other’s hands, Belli’s slightly-rosy fingers interlaced with Spike’s snowy-white ones.

            Bending down, I saw Siren’s necklace on the ground -- next to Ad’s opened, shaking hand -- and moved to pick it up.  But I dropped it when I felt an intense, unexpected warmth suddenly emanating from the opalescent gemstone.  Siren reached over and grabbed it, seemingly not singed in the least, and she fastened it around her neck once more.

            “Siren, your opal… it burned me!” I protested, the words sounding ludicrous to my own ears.

            Siren barely spared me a glance.  “That’s ridiculous,” she professed, but an incriminating half-smile flickered momentarily on her pale red lips.  Then she turned her full attention back to Adrianos, placing his hands on his chest and brushing dirt off of his shirt and face.  Ad’s eyes were closed; he looked eerily like a corpse in repose.

            “What’re we gonna do ‘bout moving HIM?” Donna asked, putting her hands on her hips and tapping her foot whilst flapping her wings impatiently.

            “Leave that to me,” Spike said, stepping to the fore.  “Just give me a little space.”  She loudly cracked her knuckles… Aussie D, Bellissima and I backed away, but Siren stubbornly sat where she was, her hand resting on top of Adrianos’s.  “My Lady Siren, if you please??”  Spike’s words were sickly-sweet, her eyes narrowed a smidgen.

            ‘Do you trust her?’  A question, Siren’s voice in my head again.  I looked into her eyes, that turquoise tempest that still stoked a storm of emotions in my lack-of-soul, and I nodded.

            Focusing back on Spike, she at last acquiesced, standing and backing up a step or two.  Feeling a bit impulsive, I slid over and put my arm around Siren -- she didn’t flinch away, but she didn’t exactly melt into my side, either.  Spike picked up a loose stick and began to draw a rough oval around Adrianos’s prone form.

            “What is she doing?” Siren peevishly whispered, but I had a notion.  Before I had a chance to answer her, though, Spike completed the ovoid shape, and she broke the stick in half.  In response, an oblong chunk of earth rose about three feet in the air, with Ad’s unmoving body on top of it.

            “Nice trick there, luv!” Donna enthused, and her wings flapped together in a way that suggested large gauzy hands clapping.

            “Lead the way, Aussie D,” Spike said, coolly and evenly, and the floating hunk of dirt and rock started to slowly float beside her.  She placed her hand over Adrianos’s to help guide it… and I couldn’t help but notice Spike throwing a catty glare back at Siren.

            Siren skulked after Spike, and Bellissima walked over to her sister, whispering something to her.  I hurried over to retrieve my whip, loosely coiling it before throwing it over my shoulder (being very careful not to let it touch bare flesh).

            I then froze, in a paralyzing moment of shock and alarm, as there were multiple, simultaneous flashes of bright, golden light.  All of the bodies of the Aboriginal vampires, in their various states of dismemberment, vanished in silent *POOFS* of ash and dust.  I jerked my head to look at Aussie Donna -- and her right arm was extended over her head, a light that looked like a tiny golden firework fading out from over the shaman’s dainty hand.

 

* * *

 

            A short while later, the six of us were nearly to the forbidding edge of Ayer’s Rock.  The easily 1,000-foot-tall monolith had swallowed up the moon, and we all stood in its cold, foreboding shadow.

            As Aussie Donna strode up to the sandstone wall, tapping on it in various places with her fist, I walked up next to Siren, who was standing on the side of the hovering Adrianos-oval opposite Spike.  She turned her baleful gaze away from the sorceress, and instead fixed it fiercely upon me.

            “Dani…” I began.  I still wasn’t used to calling her by that name -- her real name, her human name -- so I started over.  “Siren… can I speak with you?”

            Predictably, she easily snatched the intended topic of conversation right out of my gray matter: us.  “Now’s not the time or the place, Nevik,” Siren said.  She tried to change the subject, inclining her head at Aussie D.  “Your friend’s an odd one, isn’t she?”

            “Where would you rather be?” I asked… gently, or so I thought.

            “Anywhere… anywhere but here,” was her distracted reply.

            “When will the time be right!?”  Not-so-gentle that time.

            “Anytime but now!”

And that was the end of that.

            “OY!  Here it is!” Donna exclaimed.  Her curled-up hand ‘hit’ the rock again, but didn’t make a telltale noise like the first few times.  “Come on, then… time’s a’wasting…”  And, with that, Aussie D walked right through the barrier of stone and disappeared.

            Bellissima let out a screech of delight as she barreled past Siren and I, her passage stirring up a brief breeze that ruffled our clothes.  She leapt at the sheer rock-face, doing a ballerina-kick as she, too, seemed to pass right through solid rock.  Spike touched the medallion around her neck before grandiosely waving her hand at the rock wall… the illusion flickered for a moment, and we saw the yawning cave-mouth beyond it.

            Spike grinned appreciatively, and then started to push the Adrianos-oval like a gurney toward the hidden cavern.  Siren started to follow, but I stepped in front of her, somewhat determined to interpose myself betwixt the two envy-gripped vampiresses.

            Stepping through the illusionary wall was like passing through cool, dry mist, and next we found ourselves in a long, nearly pitch-dark tunnel that sloped gently upward.  Aussie Donna was already well ahead, out of sight.  I heard her voice, but it was muffled and distorted by echoes… it was immediately followed by a girlish gasp, and then Bellissima’s soft laughter.  I think my ears started burning right around that point.

            “Welcome to Ayer’s Rock,” Donna announced, from some indeterminate distance away, voice echoing but clear.  I though I saw a pinprick of light ahead.  “Or, Uluru, as the Aborigines call it.  Most of the Aboriginal tribes are lurvely people, fair-dinkum… don’t let those vampy nutjobs we just off’ed make you think otherwise!

            “This is one of my li’l mystical hangouts,” Aussie D continued.  “Lucky, ‘twas, I was here, communing with Gaia when you five ‘dropped in.’ Serendipitous, even.  Fate, mayhap.”  I smiled a joyless smile in the dark.  I used to believe in fate, in destiny.  Not anymore.  My destiny was stolen away from me, three hundred years ago.

            “You’ll have to tell me more about her someday,” Siren said, out of the blue.

            “Wh--… What??” I blubbered.  Even though I knew full well that she was a mind-reader, it was something one never really got accustomed to.  “Who?”

            “Llewellyn,” said Siren.  That name made me simultaneously happy and sad, still.

            “Wait just a… what did that white-haired witch just call me!?” Siren snarled.  Another idiotic ‘Who?’ perished, unspoken, as I watched Siren gallop in Spike’s general direction.  Sensing an inevitable escalation of hostilities, I chased after her, sublimating into the black smoke of my Mist Form.

            I had a vague sense of the lengthy tunnel ending in an expansive chamber, and, as I quickly returned to solid-form, my eyes took in all the details.  From a ceiling that was so distant it could barely be seen, stalactites hung down like rocky fangs.  Glowing lichens covered the walls, casting a kaleidoscope of colors here, there, and everywhere.  I heard the sound of flowing water nearby, like a waterfall, though that seemed implausible.

            With Aussie Donna around, though, the implausible quickly, easily, and often became reality.

            Aussie D was sitting on a rock, her legs spread in a decidedly unladylike way, only the gathered folds of the thin fabric of her dress preserving her modesty.  Bellissima was next to her, rubbing her exposed right hip, perhaps thinking that if she did it often enough her cherished silver dagger might miraculously appear.

            Adrianos still appeared to be unconscious, and the large piece of earth that Spike had magically exhumed now rested on the cavern floor, the flat top surface at a slight angle.  Spike and Siren were slowly circling each other, fangs and claws out and gleaming in the phosphorescent light.

            Let’s call it what it was: a vampire catfight.

            “Say that again!”  Siren crouched low, looking like she was readying herself to pounce.  From my vantage point, the most interesting thing in that moment was the way her opal pendant rolled off the smooth swell of her perfect breast.  “I dare you!!”

            Spike’s visage was the epitome of indignation.  “I didn’t say anything!”  She wiggled her wicked-looking nails, and I saw an arc of electricity pass between a few of them.  And the tattoos on her exposed shoulders and arms were changing, morphing.  I saw inky images of famous women who had been killed: Cleopatra, the asp slithering into her bath; Joan of Arc, burned at the stake; Marie Antoinette being led to the guillotine… and, ominously, they all seemed to have Siren’s face.  “Just because you can read people’s thoughts, did you ever stop to think that maybe you shouldn’t?  That it’s actually pretty rude?!?”

            “Being ‘rude’ has kept me alive,” Siren argued, “and happy as a vampy clam.  You, on the other hand, don’t seem very happy.  So, what’s wrong… ‘Scully?’”

            Spike’s eyes immediately turned red, glowing with such ferocity that the meek light from the fungi seemed to retreat.  “DON’T CALL ME THAT!!” she thundered.  In a flip of the usual order, the lightning followed the thunder… a saw-toothed bolt shot out of her hand toward Siren, but the other vampiress had foreseen the attack and was already well into a series of nimble back-handsprings.  “Only my friends get to call me that… and you’re NOT my friend!”

            I backed up until I was even with Donna. “Think we should do something?” I asked.

            “Nah… thish ish funsh to watcsh!” Aussie D replied.  I glanced down, laughing in spite of myself when I saw her shoveling blood-drizzled popcorn into her mouth, which she had summoned from… well, who-knows-where.

            “You’re going to have to do better than that, Spike,” Siren taunted, drawing my attention back to her (she never really had to try very hard to do that).

            “Le mew?” Spike replied, tracing the beginnings of a circle in the air with her still-sparking claw.  “If this is a catfight, let’s invite Skaar to come play…”

            Siren took a step, and then, in the next moment, she was on the other side of the cavern, her mesmerizing eyes staring deeply into Spike’s.

            “You don’t need Skaar to help you,” Siren cooed, her words rife with Glamour.  Hypnotizing humans was easy for just about any vampire, but I’d never known another who could Glamour a fellow Kindred like Siren could.  “You’re doing just fine on your own…”

            “I don’t need Skaar to help me,” Spike agreed, her eyes wide and wavering, giving her the appearance of a scared anime character.  “I’m doing just… fine…”

            Blinking her eyes, Spike slashed her claws at Siren’s chest.  Siren hopped back, half-smiling in amusement, but the ‘spell’ was broken.  “Stop it with that Jedi Mind-Trick crap!” Spike hissed.

            I glanced at Bellissima, suddenly feeling the need for a second opinion.  But Belli was seemingly oblivious to the ongoing battle.  She was kneeling next to Adrianos, leaning over him… protecting him.  I felt another pang of jealousy, but it was muted this time, muffled by my growing concern for Adrianos.  That… and the fact that I knew I could never be with Bellissima.  That same old truism immediately came to mind, though:

            ‘Never’ is a long time, for an immortal…

            “I’ve known him, I’ve loved him longer than you have!” Siren declared.  She took a step or two toward Adrianos… but a foul look from Bellissima stopped her in her tracks.

            “What about Draconus?” Spike countered.  She jerked a thumb in my direction. “What about NEVIK!?”

            “…um… leave me out of this…” I mumbled.

            “What about Rodger??” Siren mocked… and that was the last straw.

            Spike made a sudden, sharp chopping motion with her right hand, horizontally even with her lava-like eyes.  Siren gasped and reached out toward Adrianos before turning to mist… just before a fusillade of detached stalactites crashed to the ground, failing to harm Siren and falling dangerously near Adrianos and Bellissima.

            Aussie Donna nearly choked on her latest bite of popcorn.  “Nevik…!” she shouted, but I was already on the move.  Leaping, I dropped in behind Spike, gently pulling her hands behind her and binding her wrists together with the pair of silver handcuffs I’d ‘borrowed’ from Siren’s office.

             “OWW!!”  Spike cried out as the silver in the ‘cuffs burned into her wrists… the pain shouldn’t be too unbearable, but it would keep her from turning to mist, or (hopefully) from being able to concentrate on anymore spells.  “I’m sorry, Nevi… it was an accident.  Please let me go…”

            I barely saw the outline of Siren’s Mist Form before she rematerialized next to me, nudging me aside with her hip.  She pulled a tiny key out of midair -- yet another ether pocket -- and unlocked the handcuffs, letting them fall to the ground with a clang.

            “Lady Spike,” she began, bowing her head.  “I suggest we set aside our differences, for now… for Ad’s sake.”

            Spike turned around, tenderly rubbing her wrists, her eyes back to a star-sapphire blue.  She opened her mouth as if to speak, and Siren tensed noticeably... but then Spike just nodded her head, her platinum hair looking pale green as it undulated in the moss-light.

            “Aussie Donna,” Spike said, her voice cracking, and the mystic vampiress rushed over, folding her arms around the sorceress.  “Adrianos is dying!  I couldn’t bear it if we lost him.”  She flicked her eyes up at Siren.  “None of us could.  Please… please help him…”

            Aussie D gave Spike a comforting squeeze.  “No worries, Spike!  We’ll make ol’ Addy right as rain.  Now, then…who else wants some popcorn?”

 

* * *