"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Twenty-Three

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Ninth Circle

 

            “VORENUS!!!” Bellissima screamed, her damaged shoes slipping off as she charged headlong into the room, brandishing her blade.  She came to an abrupt halt, though, seemingly stopped and then pushed back by a strange, shimmering haze.  I looked wildly about �" feeling comforted, somewhat, as Siren pressed her body against my back �" quickly getting the feel of what would soon be our final battleground.

            The room was a slightly oblong circle, with a thick but still-transparent dome of red-tinted glass above.  An ostentatious desk, a tall bank of video monitors, a safe, bookshelves, and other furniture were still in the process of slowly sinking into the floor.  The floor seemed to be many different colors and varieties of hardwood, intermeshed to form a dizzying spiral… calling to mind the swirling caldera of a volcano.

            Lord Vorenus stood at the opposite focus of the ellipse from Belli, looking (unsurprisingly) not a day older from when I had last seen him, in 1774.  He was wearing a black vest, slacks, and shoes, with a red dress shirt and necktie.  His dark-brown hair was short and slicked back �" reminding me, startlingly, of Draconus �" and his eyes were still that unlikely all-black, unique and unusual for a vampire, like the pupils had expanded and sucked all the light out of his cruel gaze.

            “I’m right here, Miss Bladedancer,” he said, his voice a sonorous baritone that reminded me of Adrianos’s in timbre, before his recent misfortunes.  Vorenus then gave a short, mocking wave.  “No need to yell, this Vampyre can hear you just fine…”

            Belli hissed loudly, like a wounded cobra, her red hair flaring out threateningly like its hood.  “Don’t flatter yourself!  You couldn’t possibly earn that title in a hundred lifetimes!!”

            The smug smirk melted from Vorenus’s sharply-defined face.  “Don’t cross me, Bellissima.  You are, perhaps, the only other vampire I’d like to see leave here still ‘alive.’”

            Vorenus dipped his pointed chin, and the leading edge of the hazy barrier resolved itself into a murderer’s row of previously invisible Kindred.  Belli took a deceptive step back… but then charged, alternating rapidly between her solid and misty forms as she cut into her enemies with dagger, claws and fangs.

            Another Mist Form swooshed over my shoulder, and I almost took what would have been a pointless claw-swipe at it before I realized it was Siren.  She was arcing across the ceiling toward Vorenus, and he only grinned, beckoning as he saw her coming.  I glanced back at Spike, who was standing protectively between a barely-conscious Adrianos and the multiplying mob of Vorenus’s clan.  I saw the intense emotions in her sky-blue eyes… and I was worried that I saw more fear than fury.

            But I didn’t have time to dwell on that.  As long as we were in a would-be Ninth Circle of Hell, the devil inside of me wanted to make itself at home.  So I obliged it.            “VORENUS!  If you so much as HARM a HAIR on her pretty HEAD…!”  Bellissima ducked under my beating wing as I soared over the vampiric multitude, casting pyrokinetic fireballs down at them like a rain of damnation.  I landed hard next to a rematerialized Siren, right in front of Vorenus, causing a spider-webbing series of cracks to radiate away from my clawed feet.

            “Impressive, Nevik,” Vorenus said, taking in my demon-form and backing up slowly as Siren and I advanced on him.  “Most impressive.  You should thank your Maker that you were given such a dark gift, hm!?”

            “HAH! …a GIFT!?” I bellowed, incredulous.  Siren glanced sideways at me, and I wondered if she was also thinking back to that dark, dreary night in 1975, when I used this awful form to drive a stake into our love affair, one that I once thought was hopelessly permanent.

            Siren turned her angry, aquamarine gaze back to Vorenus.  I thought I saw him gulp, and I knew her intense Glamour had to be affecting him at least a little bit.  “Why were we attacked by those Aborigines?” she demanded, her claws coming out, wickedly long and black as the threads of Death herself.  “How did you know we’d be at Ayer’s Rock!?”

            There was a blur of movement, like a flip-book with most of its middle pages missing… suddenly Vorenus had an ornate silver rapier in his hand, and Siren was yelling in pain at the deep slash across the front of her face!  I lunged at Vorenus, rife with rage, jagged jaws closing on his head �" or, that is, where his head had been a split-second ago, as he took a step and zipped away with ludicrous speed.

            “Too slow, Nevik,” he taunted, from afar.  I knelt before Siren, clumsily trying to pull her shaky hands away as she held them in front of her mutilated face.  “Maybe if you were just a little faster, a little smarter, that tasty-looking vampiress girlfriend of yours would still be around.  What was her name again?”  He briefly held a pose of mock-thoughtfulness.  “Oh, yes, that’s right… Llewellyn.  Rest in pieces.”

            Again, my right hand ached for the familiar feel of the Kindred’s Bane.  I glanced to my left, and I saw that Bellissima was still holding her own, carving a swath through the legion of Vorenus’s vampire allies.  Spike had joined the fight as well, although she was mainly trying to safeguard Adrianos, flashes of fire flaring from her hands.

            “Should I play the role of the arch-villain, Daniela?” Vorenus called out, waving his sword for effect.  “Needlessly explain all the gory details of my master plan?”  He cackled maniacally, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was meant to be intentionally over-the-top or not.

“Oh, very well… I had one of my spies tailing you at The Underworld Club, of course!  Once I knew where you were headed, getting a juicy bounty to a tribe of already bloodthirsty Aboriginal vampires was a triviality.  I am the Broker, after all…”  A roar of fury, mixed with equal parts dismay, escaped me.  So that’s what Bellissima had caught a whiff of at the ‘Club, before we passed through the Portal.

Vorenus disappeared again… whether he had turned invisible, or was moving with his uncanny speed, the effect was the same.  I had no idea that his intent was to plunge the tip of his rapier deep into my enlarged demonic heart.  But, luckily, Siren did…

Siren spun away from me, and I was heartened to see that the edges of the wound across her cheeks and nose had already begun to heal.  She lashed out with her claws, seemingly at nothing… but then she plowed her nails into Vorenus’s chest, and he grunted in pain as he reappeared, his sword-thrust disrupted and thrown off-course, but still penetrating deep into the mottled flesh of my left arm.

I stumbled back, whirling and brutally backhanding a trio of vamps who dared to get too close.  I watched as Siren lifted Vorenus up, her talons still buried in his torso, and slammed him down to the floor.

“WHY, Vorenus?!?” she screamed in his face.  “The Vampire War is supposed to be OVER!”  His vest had fallen open, his tie was cut in half, and Siren proceeded to rip his shirt to shreds.  I lumbered back toward them, and I took a certain dark delight from seeing what I expected to see… a long, serpentine scar across his stomach and right side, one that I had caused with my whip, three centuries prior.

“It’ll NEVER be over, Scion,” Vorenus rasped.  He sounded a bit more like Adrianos now.  “Hadn’t you heard!?  There can be only one…”  He laughed wildly again, even as Siren slashed her claws across his face, one hand then the other, blood spraying.  “Although that is a bit ironic, coming from me…”

I wondered what he meant by that, and I looked around for Bellissima, thinking to summon her over so she could be the one to land the killing blow.  But, instead, I saw the impossible: Vorenus, another Vorenus, becoming visible… behind Spike, who had strayed perhaps too far from Ad as she fought the other vampires… ether-drawing another silver rapier, and swiftly swinging it at the throat of a defenseless Adrianos.

With one mighty flap of my demon’s wings, I soared across the room, but I knew I wouldn’t get there fast enough.  Spike turned around, but her scream of utter despair was cut short, as I saw the same thing she saw �" the Vorenus twin’s blade, inches from Ad’s neck, stopped by another rapier, which seemed to hang magically suspended in midair.  But its owner soon turned visible… a vampiress who was still resplendent in her white lace dress… Makenna.

“Hello again, Sire,” Makenna said as she forcefully pushed Vorenus’s sword back.  “Long time no see.”

I skidded to a landing behind the Vorenus doppelgänger, with designs on crushing him to a pulp with my fists.  But I instead felt a sharp pain in my right side, and looked down to see a lengthy slash across my ribcage.  Bellissima appeared at my flank as the cause of my latest injury misted into existence… a white-faced Japanese vampiress, wearing a kimono, and wielding a very long, curved tachi.

“Bellissima, my dear,” Vorenus said, his eyes still locked on Makenna, “meet my darling new assassin.  Seeing as how you insist on fighting me, think of her as your… hmm… replacement.”  The undead geisha, Kyoko, leapt at Belli, and their weapons sparked as they crashed against each other with lightning speed.

Spike and I soon had our own additional problems to deal with, as even more of Vorenus’s clan appeared in the domed ‘office’ �" it was like there were coming out of the goddamned walls!  An invisible vampire clawed a series of slashes across Spike’s belly, and another stabbed its fangs into her from behind.  I watched helplessly as she started to swoon, busy fighting off a couple dozen vamps myself, but she managed to get out a weak-sounding, “Le mew?”  In the next instant, Skaar appeared, ripping the vampire on his Mistress’s back to shreds… and I knew she’d be okay, for a while.

 “My dear Makenna,” the ‘other’ Vorenus said, pointing his rapier at her.  “Surely you don’t intend to duel me… your Maker, your Master… not after all I’ve done for you?”

            ‘Kenna made a mock-salute with her own weapon.  “You are my Sire, I can’t deny that.  My savior, my teacher, my Kindred… but you were never my friend.  These are my friends, and I can hardly believe the horrible things you’ve done to them!”

            Vorenus narrowed his eyes at Makenna, snarling, “you ungrateful little…”  I decapitated a nearby vampire with a swipe of my forearm bone-spikes, and made a move to attack Vorenus from behind.  But, all of a sudden, Bellissima and Kyoko were before me, their own intense duel continuing.  I took a swing at the geisha, but she made a blind, overhead swipe with the insanely-sharp tachi sword, simultaneously cutting the claws of my right hand down to the quick.  Then both she and Belli turned to blue and red mist, spiraling around each other and away from me.

            I looked up from my bleeding claw, just in time to see Vorenus and Makenna clash their rapiers together.  “Why are there two of you??” Makenna demanded.

            “Don’t be dense, childe,” Vorenus spat out, pushing her back with his sword.  “One of us is a clone.  How else do you think I was able to create such a convincing double of you, ‘Olga,’ one for the right people to find at the proper time, so they’d think you well and truly dead?

            “Ever since I met Rasputin,” Vorenus continued, circling ‘Kenna, “and helped him cure your brother Alexei, I’ve been fascinated with blood diseases, and how they could be… enhanced, with vampiric magic.”  Vorenus laughed evilly.  “Grigori wanted me to ‘turn’ him, of course, but he was, to put it gently, STARK RAVING MAD… an affliction which, I fear, not even vampirism would cure.”

            “Enough talk, Vorenus!” Makenna shouted.  “Let us speak with our swords…”

            Their duel was a five-second long frenzy of motion.  At its end, Vorenus was left standing near the open double-doors, pressing his fingers to the cut in his neck.  “Touché, Duchess,” he said, with what almost sounded like genuine admiration.  “You actually managed to hit me…”

            Makenna said nothing, and she appeared uninjured as a quivering smile brightened her face… but then, multiple patches of red bloomed, staining and spreading on her white dress.  ‘Kenna dropped her weapon with a clatter as she collapsed onto her back.

            “NO!!!” I roared, rushing after Vorenus �" was it the original, or the clone… did it even matter? �" once again.  I had barely taken two steps before I felt the steely, silver-edged bite of Kyoko’s tachi, this time cutting across the backs of my calves, dropping me to the floor in a demon-heap.

            I glanced back, glaring, and Kyoko’s little self-satisfied smirk disappeared as Bellissima dropped down from above and stabbed her in the shoulder.  The geisha rounded on her opponent, and it looked like her blade cut into the tops of Belli’s thighs, chopping off the bottom part of her dress and drawing blood, just before the other assassin dissipated into vapor.

            Looking back at Makenna’s prone, bleeding form, I started desperately crawling toward her.  Vorenus hardly spared me a glance; he stood over ‘Kenna, lifting her rapier into the air with his foot before catching it.

            “Dosvedanya, Makenna,” he uttered, positioning the tip of her sword above her left breast… above her beautiful, heroic heart.  I could barely stand to watch, knowing there was nothing I could do to stop him, as he pulled the rapier back, preparing to strike.

            The sword came down brutally fast… but it only pierced her left shoulder.  Makenna cried out in pain, but I could scarcely believe that Vorenus had missed �" at least, until I saw Adrianos, his fangs sunk deeply into the back of Vorenus’s neck.

            Vorenus stabbed his rapier backward under his left arm, and it must have connected because Ad stumbled back, clutching his hands to his stomach.  Vorenus pointed at me, tiny points of red like laser-dots in the middle of his black eyes, and he yelled to his myriad minions, “tear that half-demon monstrosity apart!!”

            I felt the vampire-pile on top of me, crushing my wings, and my efforts to stand up and fight were thwarted.  And yet, I heard an unexpected noise �" a repetitious CRACK! �" and the load on my back seemed to be getting lighter, little by little.

            “I’m surprised you aren’t dead yet, Adrianos,” Vorenus sneered, turning invisible.  Ad’s head jerked back like he had been punched, and he thrashed about for a moment in blind, fruitless retaliation.  “That blood-poison you took in from my ‘sacrificial lamb’ was quite potent, brewed up over decades, made especially for you.  But perhaps this is better… now I can kill you face-to-face instead!”

            Adrianos flinched as a deep laceration split his cheek open.  Meanwhile, I heard another CRACK, and I was able to get to my knees.  “Face-to-face, eh?” Adrianos grumbled.  He closed his eyes, and started into the meditative movements of a martial-arts kata.  “Why are you afraid to show your face then, pendejo!?”

            CRACK!  Now it felt like there were maybe two pesky little vampires clinging to my back.  I stood up, reached back with both hands, and pried them off with hardly any trouble.  It also wasn’t too much trouble to mash their invisible heads together like invisible melons, resulting in a quite-visible mess of blood and guts.

            Vorenus reappeared behind Adrianos, sword raised to strike.  Ad opened his eyes and delivered a back-kick to the other Scion’s chest that sent him flying backwards and colliding with the wall.  A crack propagated up the side of the dome, all the way overhead.  Adrianos grinned at me, licking Vorenus’s essence from his lips �" a sample of his blood-antidote �" and then gestured behind me before going after his foe.

            I turned to look, my damaged wings aching as they flopped about uselessly.  Siren was still sparring with the other/original Vorenus, although he was back on his feet… Bellissima was upside-down on the crimson curve of the cracked dome, parrying a sword-strike from Kyoko… Spike was twirling a flaming scythe that she had summoned from somewhere, cutting down V’s vamps right and left while Skaar did more damage hither and thither…

And my benefactor was standing in the very middle of the room, a small patch of moss at her feet, wearing a willowy, see-through dress that had concentrations of rhinestones in a few strategic places.  A quintet of long, snake-like vines �" which had no business growing out of the floor of an evil vampire’s Las Vegas casino penthouse office �" grew out of the floor, making loud noises (CRACK!) as they whipped about in space, wrapping up wayward vamps and popping their heads off like party favors.

“Oy!” Aussie Donna called, waving happily.  “Did you all think you were gonna take these bloody biters down without lovable ol’ me?  For shame…!”

 

* * *