"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Twenty-Five

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Closure

 

            “Destroy him!” Vorenus thundered, gesturing madly at Draconus.  “Kill them ALL!!”  I laughed derisively, each chuckle a fresh bit of agony, but it was worth it.  I couldn’t help but muse upon the fact that Reybeart had said almost the exact same words… right before he’d met his much-deserved True Death.

A shirtless Drac quickly ripped the other vampires around ‘Kenna to shreds, his eternally frozen-in-time bodybuilder’s physique rippling.  The phalanx of Vorenus’s vamps that had been advancing on him stopped, suddenly wary for some not-so-strange reason.  Draconus snarled at them, the bloodlust burning like a supernova in his completely red eyes.

Crouching down, he pulled the rapier out of Makenna’s breastbone, and she shot to her feet like she had been brought back to ‘life.’  Drac lowered his mouth to her cleavage, instantly slurping up the blood there as he planted a fond, delicate kiss.

“Ah, Señorita Makenna, que linda eres,” he said, his voice gruff but somehow incredibly smooth at the same time.  “So beautiful… and muy delicioso, as well.

“Spasiba, Drac,” said ‘Kenna, a hint of color returning to her face.  “We’ll have to see where else we can ‘taste’ each other, when all this is over…”

            “Dios mio…” Draconus said, grinning.  He flipped the sword around, presenting the hilt to Makenna.  He then launched himself into the loitering congregation of V’s vampires, serrated bone spikes emerging from his hands, tearing into them like a rabid wolverine.

            I looked straight up, my sight becoming blurry, but I could see Vorenus gazing down at me… coal-black eyes shimmering with hate.  “Time to DIE, Nevik!” he screamed, pulling his rapier back.  I turned my head to look upon Siren… I wanted her gorgeous face to be the last thing I saw.

            The sword plummeted down, its edge gleaming like the shears of the Fates… but it failed to impale my heart.  Instead, it speared down into the floor next to my left arm, knocked aside by another rapier �" the one Siren had just ether-pulled from Spike’s back.

            Vorenus yanked his sword out of the wood and turned to face Siren, his back to me.  In my mind’s eye, I whipped the ‘Bane at him, cutting him in half… but my now hand-deficient right arm failed to obey, and I could only watch, impotently.

            “Do you really want to duel me again, Siren?” Vorenus crowed.  “My ‘other’ nearly finished you, I do believe, and this one…” �" he kicked his heel into my arm, flaking off another bit of ash �" “…isn’t in any shape to save you next time!”

            Siren pointed the near-duplicate of Vorenus’s rapier at him.  “Makenna taught me a thing or two about how to handle a sword… en guarde, a*****e!”

            “So be it.”  Vorenus lunged at Siren, as fast as ever, and she was immediately completely on the defensive, barely blocking each swing of his sword.  He shook his head irritably.  “Get out of my head, woman!”

            Siren smirked, her eyes flashing dangerously.  “So sorry, ‘V,’ but that’s a request that I only honor for my dearest friends.  I’m afraid you don’t quite make the cut…!”  Siren ducked as he over-committed on a wide slash at her head, dropping into a split before tearing into his knee with the tip of her rapier.  He staggered back before coming at her again, but she somersaulted forward, helicoptering her long legs and kicking him twice in the face.

            As their battle continued, I barely saw Makenna go whizzing by, cutting down an octet of vamps who were trying to attack Siren from behind in a rather unsportsmanlike fashion.  Vorenus’s vampires were giving me a wide berth, but I wasn’t surprised, given the ‘Bane and the fact that I had been declared ‘contagious’… plus, I wasn’t exactly a threat right now.

            Next I knew, Spike was leaning over me, with Ad close behind her.  She had blood all over her chest and neck, and her skin was a diseased-looking greenish-gray… but she was smiling, all the same.  Adrianos had even more blood all over him, but I was pleasantly amazed that he was even upright.

            “Lord Nevik,” Adrianos said softly, and I dimly recognized that it was the first time Ad had ever used that title in conjunction with my name.  “You look like I feel…”

“Oh, NEVI!” Spike cried out.  “What did he do to you??”

            “Spike…” I gasped.  I was parched with an overwhelming thirst… one that perhaps not even all the blood in the world could quench.  “Why aren’t you… using your magic…?”

            Spike scrunched up her face, looking like she was about to cry again.  A rather unhealthy-looking black tear trickled out her eye.  “I… I don’t know if I can.  Not like before, anyway… I lost my necklace, my token of Malekus, and now…”  Her voice trailed off.

            I shook my head slowly, distantly worried that the motion might cause it to fall off.  “You are… the most amazing… sorceress… I’ve ever known, Meia,” I wheezed.  “You don’t need that medallion… it’s… it was… Dumbo’s f*****g feather!”

            Spike laughed, and what a beautiful sound it was.  She nodded her head enthusiastically, and her platinum hair started to rise like it was full of static electricity.  She reached down and touched her hand �" which now had a soft blue glow to it �" to my deflated chest.  A fresh group of vampires suddenly appeared in our vicinity, but Adrianos made short work of them with his pair of sabers.

            When Spike pulled her hand away again, I felt… better.  “I stopped Vorenus’s spell,” she said, and though her eyes were bloodshot, the irises were a softly-glowing bright blue.  “I reversed it best I could, but I don’t know how long that’ll last.  See if you can find and help Belli… and Donna.”  She glanced back at Adrianos, coughing up a bit of blood before grinning wickedly.  “Ad and I will see how much trouble we can get ourselves into…”

            They ran off together, Adrianos pulling down a lightning bolt from the clouds above while Spike summoned one from within herself.  I slowly got to my feet; once I was reasonably confident that my legs weren’t going to crumble apart underneath me, I picked up the Kindred’s Bane in my left hand and started searching for one or more beloved vampiresses.

            It didn’t take long to find Aussie D, in the northwest ‘corner’ of the room, and I felt my heavy heart skip a beat when I laid my eyes on her… remains.  She was on her back on the floor, in a pool of her own blood, her eyes closed, and… her body was in four pieces �" her legs amputated at the knees, and her upper torso separated from her abdomen.

            Screaming out in unadulterated anger, I swung the ‘Bane in a circle over my head.  It crackled with hungry teeth of icy shadowfire, and at least a dozen vampires on all sides of me were reduced to the same fate as my dear Aussie Donna.  I fell to my knees, dropping the whip and putting a hand to her cold, lifeless cheek.

            “Aussie D… Donna, I am so sorry,” I said.  “I’m sorry we dragged you into this.  Sorry that… I couldn’t give you all the love that you so deserved.”  I glanced to my right, briefly distracted by the peculiar sight of vampires lining up in neat rows, facing the west side of the room, almost like they were paying their respects to the truly dead.

            When I looked back, something else strange started to happen.  The pool below Donna’s body began to bubble… then red tendrils flowed between her severed body parts, like bloody vines… and then she, incredibly, pulled herself back together again!

            Aussie D’s eyes opened, and she sat up like she was just waking up from a catnap.  “Oh, bother,” she said, glancing down �" her dress had been sliced apart below the bust, and she rested her hands over her flesh-colored underwear.  “My knickers are on display, eh!”

            I bent down and hugged her fiercely.  “Aussie D, you’re okay!  But… how…?”

            Aussie Donna pushed me gently back, a silly smile on her face.  “I was jus’ playin’ possum, ‘course!  That daffy Vorenus forgot to go for the ol’ head-shot!”  Donna stuck her tongue out as she ran the edge of her palm across the front of her throat in a grisly charade.

            Then, she leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek.  Her orange-red hair swung forward, tickling my nose… it smelled like freshly-bloomed wildflowers.  “That was very sweet, what you said, Nevik,” she whispered.  I started to say something else, but she just shushed me and winked.  “Save it, dearie.  For now, let’s get a move on, ‘fore we get crushed!”

            “What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.  But then I saw it.  I picked Aussie Donna up and held her over my left shoulder.  I glanced at the ‘Bane on the floor, but left it behind… as I ran.

            I slid to a stop next to Spike and Adrianos, who were on the south end of the room, near the double-doors.  Ad was carving up any vamps who dared to come close with his blades, and Spike had her eyes closed, waving her hands in the air while doing a pretty fair Yoda impression.  I even heard her whisper: “Size matters not…”

            Siren was still fighting with Vorenus, near the chasm in the middle of the floor.  At some point, she had wrapped the last scrap of her shredded black lace robe around her chest like a bandana.  She was giving off a nearly palpable aura of Glamour, and no doubt the well-ordered ‘formation’ of vampires was somehow her doing.

            They all looked very happy… even as Spike giggled and dropped her hands… and the upper half of the ersatz Eiffel Tower, telekinetically summoned from across the street, dropped onto their heads, crushing them all into a bloody pulp.

            The impact was incredible, and the entire building shook with a violent tremor beneath our feet.  Siren staggered forward, recoiling �" perhaps the sudden, simultaneous death of so many of her Glamoured ‘subjects’ affecting her �" and I watched helplessly as Vorenus stabbed her in the belly.  She started to teeter backward, the gaping hole threatening to devour her… but Draconus swooped in, catching her and knocking Vorenus over as he sprang away from danger.

            Vorenus regained his feet, glaring furiously at the six of us… seven, actually, as Makenna became visible next to Spike, her rapier covered in dripping ichor.  “Well done, Kindred,” he said.  “You’ve won this round, I suppose.  See you again soon…”

            He started to fade out, turning to a transparent Mist Form… but he abruptly flowed back together, dark eyes bugging out as he was seemingly forced to become solid.  He turned his head toward a fiercely feminine voice calling his name: “VORENUS!  We have a score to settle!!”

            Bellissima emerged from the dust cloud kicked up by the plummet of the tower.  The bottom three-quarters of her dress was torn off, and she was covered in blood, both others’ and her own.  She held a decapitated head in her right hand, long black talons curving over its forever-frozen face.  She threw it away as she pointed at Vorenus.

            “If you try to run and hide, I will just track you down again.  You know I will, and you know that I know how.  The ‘Council gave you up… you have no safe haven anymore.

“I challenge you to a duel… to the True Death.  Just you and me.”  She glanced at me, and the others.  “My friends will not interfere.  You have my word, by the Assassin’s Code.”

Vorenus appeared to contemplate her offer for a moment.  He smirked, saying, “very well.  I accept…”  …and he flashed by Belli, opening up a fresh cut in her side with his sword.

“NO!” Makenna yelled.  She dashed at Vorenus, but he fought her back in a flurry of vicious swordplay.  Draconus set Siren down gently on the floor, and he charged in next… but something invisible knocked him back, and I wasn’t entirely sure if it was Vorenus or Belli who did it.

            “SPIKE, PLEASE!” Bellissima yelled, and perhaps some sort of wordless communication passed between the two vampiresses, because Spike nodded intently.  The sorceress clapped her palms together, and there was a sudden strobe of red.  When she pulled them apart again… a transparent, reddish-pink barrier popped into existence around Vorenus and Bellissima.  But there was a hole at the top of the hemisphere �" so that either of the combatants could escape, if they wished to.

            “Spike, what are you… doing…?” I grunted, stumbling forward so that I was now leaning against the wall of the miniature dome.  I felt my blood run cold again; it felt like whatever Spike had done to suppress the black magic of the blood-to-ash curse was wearing off.

            “This is what she wants,” Spike said with a shudder.  She coughed violently, and Adrianos wrapped her up in an empathetic embrace.  The rest of us gathered around the perimeter of the dome.  We could hear through the gap in the top.  We watched, and we listened…

            “I’m surprised you agreed to a stand-up fight,” Bellissima hissed through gritted teeth.  “You usually seem to like getting other people to do your dirty work for you.  You manipulated us into killing Daemus… made me think he had been the one to kill Darius!”

            Vorenus bowed, dipping the blade of his rapier away from his forehead.  “Of course I did.  And you took the bait quite nicely.  Our world is a better place without the Lord of the Nosferatu in it, don’t you think?”

            Belli clicked her claws together angrily.  “Spare me your sanctimony, Vorenus.  You wanted him dead because he was a Scion.  Same as Adrianos, or Siren, or any of the others you killed, or had killed.  Same as… my Darius.”

            I saw Siren perk up at the sound of her name.  She pulled her hand away from the wound in her stomach, and it was mostly healed.  Draconus placed a tender hand on her forehead.  “Dani, mi Reina… why did you wait so long to free me from my cage?”

            Siren chuckled quietly.  “I was too worried about you, Drac, my sexy beast.  I didn’t want… to see you get hurt.”  She looked up at me as she said those last few words.

            Our attention was brought back to Vorenus as he laughed obnoxiously.  “Yes, yes, your poor, dead Darius.  You understand that it wasn’t personal, don’t you?  That it was just the unfortunate business callously thrust upon us Scions?”

            “I LOVED HIM!” Bellissima wailed.  Vorenus was so moved by her exclamation, he rushed by and gave her a matching wound on her other side.

            “Spike!  Get rid of this damn barrier!!” Makenna pleaded, pounding on the conjured wall with the butt of her blade.

            Spike just shook her head.  “It’s what she wants,” she repeated.  “I don’t like it, either.  I want that b*****d dead, too.  And he… I think he killed my kitty, Skaar!”

            Aussie Donna tore her forlorn-looking gaze away from the scene playing out inside the enclosure.  “Oh?  Pish-posh… we’ll just see about that.”  I watched Donna walk slowly toward the dead-looking body of the black jaguar, her fingers glowing with a pale green light, and then I turned back to peer within the dome.

            Vorenus was standing directly in front of Bellissima, who didn’t seem to be trying to fight back.  He slashed his weapon across her shins, and she fell to her knees.  I did, too, both from the pain of seeing her systematically mutilated, and the evil bit of magic that was again creeping through my veins.

            “So many interesting tattoos, Belli,” Vorenus said, and I didn’t at all care for the way he was ogling her nearly-naked body.  “One for each kill, isn’t that right?”

            “That’s Bellissima Bladedancer, to you,” she growled.  “Only my friends call me Belli, and you were never my…”

            Her next word caught in her throat as Vorenus poked the tip of the rapier into the skin of her left breast.  “And what’s that blank patch for, right above your cold little heart?”  He leaned down to take a closer look.  “Is that… to mark the kill of your final revenge?”

            Not waiting for an answer, Vorenus yanked the sword out and tossed it aside.  He plunged his fangs into Bellissima’s chest, right into that unblemished flesh like it was a target.  He suckled hungrily, and I could only watch, utterly appalled, as she weakly wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him even closer.

            “SPIKE!  This is madness!” Adrianos lamented, and he, too, dropped to his knees, convulsing as he threw up a great gout of blood.

            Spike just shook her head, black tears trickling down her cheeks, slow as molasses.  “It’s what she wants… oh, Belli, what are you doing??”

            I turned from Spike and Adrianos back to Bellissima and Vorenus.  He was draining her, and quickly, too.  He pulled his mouth away, shuddering with delight.  “Mmm, Belli, your blood is sublime!  I can’t believe I haven’t had a taste ‘til now.  I’m afraid I just won’t be able to stop.  Now I understand why your Darius went to such lengths to protect you…

            “He did die well, I’ll have you know.  I knew he was an excellent swordsman, that’s why I wanted to fight him face-to-face.”  Vorenus brushed blood-soaked red hair out of Bellissima’s face with ironic tenderness.  “Not as skilled as me, of course.  Although, it was a bit odd that, at the end, he tried to fight me with a broken katana.”

            “I know…” Belli breathed, her eyes unfocused.  “I buried him with it…”

            “That’s sweet,” Vorenus muttered, licking his lips.  “Just like your sweet, sweet essence…”  He sank his fangs into her breast again, and I punched the unyielding wall with my one good hand.  My vision was getting blurry again, and it seemed like all the sound was being sucked out of the room.

            One of the last things I heard was what Bellissima said next…

            “I buried my love with his precious katana… and I remember exactly where it is!”

            Bellissima stretched her right arm out, and her hand disappeared into an ether-pocket.  I imagined I could feel her fingers brushing against the chest of her dear, long-dead Sire.  She pulled the broken blade of the katana from the ethereal… and brutally slashed Vorenus across the throat with it.

            I fell to the side as the barrier abruptly disappeared.  Vorenus teetered backward, eyes wide, blood erupting from his torn-open neck.  His lips parted, like he meant to say something else, but Bellissima just stabbed the jagged end of the katana into his mouth.  She grabbed his hair, her talons digging into the sides of his face, and turned him around toward the rest of us.  “Adrianos, Spike… come get your ‘cure’…”

            The two vampires descended, crimson promises of the True Death in their eyes.  I watched them triumphantly feed for as long as I could, before I drifted off.  I was so very tired.

 

* * *

 

            ‘Nevik?  Please wake up, my darling…’

            “Nevik?!?”

            I awoke, still terminally exhausted, like there was no blood at all left in my body.  I felt a phantom-pain in my right hand.  I looked… it was still gone.

            Siren was leaning over me, her blue-green eyes rimmed with red.  Everyone else was gathered around as well… Makenna was squeezing Draconus around the chest, a healthy-looking Spike was holding on to a hale and hearty Adrianos, and Aussie Donna was smiling wistfully as she scratched a rejuvenated Skaar behind the ears.  Bellissima was standing just behind Siren, her hand resting on Siren’s shoulder.

            “Siren… be careful.  Vorenus said it was contagious.”

            Siren just shook her head.  “He was a serial deceiver.  I don’t believe it.”

            My vision suddenly turned muddled and gray.  Siren gasped, and as she ran a hand over my face, I realized she was brushing the ash out of my eyes.  “We did it, Nevik,” she said.  “I just wish… I…”

            I just nodded.  No more words were needed.  Almost.

            “B…” I tried to say

            “What’s that, Nevik?” Siren asked.  She gently squeezed my left hand.

            “Be…”

            Siren sadly nodded her head.  “Belli.  Yes, of course, she’s right here.”  She started to turn away.

            “Be… be mine… Siren.”  If those were to be my last words, they would do.

            Siren bit her tongue, and she lowered her lips to mine.  Like so many stories of love and loss… this one ended with a kiss…

            In the end, my friends surrounded me.  And the woman I loved, loved me back.

            I was content.

            I was…

            …

            ..

            .

 

* * *