Vlad, chapter VIII: The Death of Lamia

Meanwhile, the King's expeditionary force charged into the wood, sending hounds to pick up Lamia's scent and track her through the night forest. Little did the soldiers comprehend her guile as the hounds breathed the gorgon's miasma and fell upon one another in a savage frenzy. Lamia chuckled, gasping delightedly while listening to their song of agony. Upon discovering the mad hounds, Captain Gregory ordered his men to destroy them and continued pursuing Lamia, venturing more deeply into the forest, drawn by Lamia's wails and a sense of their own valor. And so, Lamia doubled back on her own trail, waiting in ambush as Gregory and his men passed by, unaware of her presence as she crept from behind.

***

Desponia's eyes glowed in the dim carriage light, and she placed a hand on her gypsy's clutching arm, realizing for the first Luminita's diffidence as the child glanced nervously about, shrinking from the war clatter of Beowulf's men following close behind. She pulled Luminita's head to her bosom, stroking the gypsy's hair as Dracula regarded her with astonishment, unable to suppress rising phantoms in the recesses of his soulless frame: his wife and children, lost in the passing centuries yet forever a dagger to his immortal heart.

"If only you'd left the gypsy to fate."

"As if fate were not a scoundrel," returned Desponia.

***

Lamia snatched a straggling soldier and tore him in half. She drove a talon through the breastplate of the next and scooped his heart out while vomiting poison in the face of a third. For a paralyzed moment, confusion gripped the column; then, the good soldiers rushed to the fray. But they were lambs for Lamia's terrible sickles. She cut them down like wheat, cursing their mothers and promising an afterlife to those who pledged allegiance to Hera with their dying breaths. 

Captain Gregory charged to the fore and Lamia crushed him with a single backhand, then lifted the captain's horse over her head and hurled it into the line with hurricane force.

***

Onyx ran up a hillside, then leaped to an outcrop, letting go with a summoning howl that brought a pack of thirty wolves to his side. Together, they ran, shadows filtering through the twilight's violence. 

The moon shone high above, casting pale rays upon the arena as Vlad's column entered a glade. 

Beowulf raised a herculean arm. Ehrlich reigned in his team and leaped from the driver's box, taking up a truncheon and preparing himself for battle. 

Onyx and his pack burst into the clearing as Desponia stepped defiantly from the carriage with Vlad at her side. 

And now Luminita held her hands up in fright, framing her tragic beauty, ruby lips, and the sea-green apprehension of her eyes. 

Desponia extended her arms, lifting a thousand-pound boulder, holding it at the ready with an invisible force that emanated from her fingertips. 

At the same time, Beowulf advanced on the tree line with his warriors behind a wall of shields and protruding spears.

On came Lamia, launching out of the tree line, her eyes burning with hatred. She leaped over the shield wall with blinding speed, thinking to quickly destroy Desponia and escape a battle with the Geats. 

But Beowulf had anticipated her maneuver and dropped back to defend the carriage. Lamia lashed her tail, cutting down a score of Vlad's soldiers while Onyx ducked under the swinging blade, then caught hold of the serpent appendage and bit down with all his force. Lamia swung him, toy-like, using his body to club the wolf pack. Desponia's boulder found its mark, striking the monster in the face as the Geats surrounded her and stabbed at her horrible sex. 

Once again, Lamia leaped over their heads and made another play for the goddess. But Vlad flew at her missile-like and turned her away. She wailed in anger, reaching for Onyx, who released his grip and ducked out of the way.

And then came Beowulf, and Lamia's courage faltered. She ran from the glen with Beowulf in pursuit, distancing the Geat with cheetah speed, but the hero was tireless and steadily closing the gap. 

Feeling Beowulf's breath on her back, she whirled in desperation, roaring as she squared for her final battle. 

But the Geat was a mountain. He forced her onto her back, pinning her arms with his knees and pummeling her with the savagery of his anvil fists. 

She croaked out vomit as Beowulf pushed her head aside with crushing force. Lamia's jaws collapsed, her poison trickling on shrubbery that steamed and wilted as she used her last, catching breath to gurgle a supplication for Hera's blessing. Beowulf severed her head with a stroke of his war ax, then returned to the glen, where he dropped Lamia's head at Desponia's feet. She stepped back in disgust, pulling the gypsy close as Beowulf stood among his company. In the next instant, they vanished together.

Startled spearmen approached the head cautiously. The gorgon's snakes still lived, writhing over one another with bared fangs, dripping poison while in a frenzied search for their lost leader. Their poison scorched the ground where it leaked, sending miasmic wisps into the air with cyanotic effects.

"Hold your positions," Vlad warned as his archers aimed.

Overwhelmed with nausea, Luminita collapsed into Desponia's arms while arrows skewered the steaming head and severed the serpents that hissed, died, and turned to ash. Desponia swept Luminita up and carried her to the carriage while Vlad pointed the spearman forward. They rushed in, driving pikes into the gorgon's eye and earhole. Glandular secretions dripped from her fetid mouth. The eye burped a stinking custard and collapsed.

***

Hera's ruby heels clicked the expanse of the temple's Olympian floor. Tiles of gold and jade glimmered under her feet. She passed columns of turquoise, reaching stratospheric heights to support a ceiling the Titans had forged from the metal of asteroids. The dazzling architecture rose eternally to distant constellations as she stood before the oracle.

"How well does Desponia lay in her grave?" she asked.

"It is Lamia who has fallen," answered the oracle. "Her body lies at the gates of the underworld."

Hera's complexion darkened.

"By the hand of whom?" she hissed.

"By the hand of Beowulf, Odin's warrior."

"But how!" shrieked Hera. She tore at her hair.

"Desponia and the vampire possess the Book of the Dead. Beowulf was brought from Valhalla through incantations."

"Zeus!" shouted Hera in a voice that carried across galaxies.

But Zeus did not hear his queen's voice as he lay hidden in Elysium, taking incestuous pleasures with Persephone, the bride of Hades.

***

Meanwhile, Desponia summoned a flock of cherubs who, upon arriving, hovered above, batting their eyelids mechanically.

"Carry this abomination to the crater of Mount Vesuvius, then send it to the molten interiors."

Luminita called to Ehrlich through the carriage window. 

"What is this place of which my lady speaks?"

"The volcano of Pompeii."

He looked at the moon's position and called out to Vlad.

"The sands of time are falling, sir."

He pointed to the pale orb.

"Not six miles off, there is a waystation with stables and quarters for her ladyship and the gypsy. Let us leave this scene with haste."

"Yes, Ehrlich, prepare a note that my bird can carry to the waystation and alert the staff to our arrival."

"But, sir, no pigeon will fly at night."

Vlad lifted an arm, and a horned owl swooped to his wrist.

"Yes, my lord," said Ehrlich, opening a trunk for quill and ink.

"Leave a detachment to assist in the collection of our slain. Send a trusted man to the fortress for a corpse wagon. Let him decry an attack by highwaymen and, on the trust of my signature, pay their families a year's wages, burial costs, and so forth."

Ehrlich's hand worked quickly as he scribed a parchment for Vlad's signature.

"By the gods, Ehrlich!"

"I am a simple servant, your lordship."

He held the parchment against the moonlight. 

"One cannot but wonder at virtue and artistry when bumpkins possess opulent quills. Does my hand not reflect the fire of Homer about its interiors?"

"As I've said, Ehrlich, either you're a rogue or a monk!"

Ehrlich laughed heartily and bowed to his master.