Vampire Cursed (Northern Creatures Book 2), page 13
My brother stood.
I was still in the bed of my truck, but I lost his head in the fog.
“We have business, you and I,” he boomed.
Behind him, the other two horses whinnied.
“Tony! Ivan!” I yelled. “He will turn on you! You two must understand your own natures well enough to know what’s about to befall you.” Perhaps sowing dissent might fracture my brother’s power.
The giant standing on the back of the stallion laughed again. “The one you call ‘Tony’ is my true brother,” he said. “We are bound by blood.”
Whatever he used to stabilize himself slammed into the concrete. Metal shrieked.
My brother used his stabilizer—it had to be a pole of some kind—to vault off Bloodyhoof’s back.
He landed on the truck’s hood. Metal groaned, and the front windshield cracked with a loud shrieking that echoed through the swirling ash.
The power of the landing washed over me—and cleared some of the air between me and my brother.
He crouched on the hood of my burning truck, the shadowed figure, with one hand on the metal and the other to his side, gripping a staff so tall its top vanished into the ash cloud. His face was still shrouded, but not the armor he’d fashioned from the soot in the air. This armor glowed a dull, dead red as if he’d mixed in the blood of all his victims.
Plates and guards sheltered his shoulders and neck. A breast plate protected his chest. Individual guards protected his arms and legs.
The dull red of the pieces farther from his dead heart brightened. They pulled in on themselves, forming a pulse-like line, which moved to the next piece in. Then that piece “beat” and sent another pulse inward. Then another, until the symbol on his chest shimmered with all the hate this creature carried. Until all that anger, all that motivation—every ounce of the psychosis that allowed this thing to care inside The Land of the Dead—lit up a symbol I recognized.
We had never met, when we both walked Europe. At the time, I stalked my father in a vain attempt to force a rectification of my pain and isolation. But I’d heard rumors. I’d seen bodies. I’d met one or two of the sniveling-type vampires, the once-men and -women who existed solely for the use and enjoyment of their master.
At the time, I lived in the shadows. I hid. And I read history.
I recognized the crest on the creature’s breastplate. I knew exactly what it meant.
The thing on the hood of my truck stood. The ash moved around him as if it was as much a part of the body in front of me as the stitched-together parts of vampire corpses that constituted its frame.
The lightning-bolt-like scar snaked from his cheek to his jaw and under the pulsing, undead, ash armor. His black hair shimmered with a fake life. His eyes mirrored to the world the forces that kept his body animated.
He towered over me, as he had the last time I met this body; now, with the boots and armor, he might have reached a full eight feet in height.
I shouldn’t be surprised. I should have suspected that when he dissociated in the Carlson house, one of his constituent parts would take control.
But I never expected that part to be the voivode of Wallachia, her High Prince and her ruler. I never expected Vlad Tepes, the man so terrifying that even in death, his viciousness gave the uncaring of The Land of the Dead purpose. The man whose ghost had whipped up the demons who became the first vampires.
His armor pulsed again, and I realized the staff wasn’t a staff.
It was a pike.
I stood with only the burning cab of my truck between me and Vlad the Impaler, the creature Western Europeans knew by another name:
Lord Dracula.
He grinned. “Hello, Brother,” he said, and swung his pike at my head.
Chapter 17
I dove over the side of the truck’s bed. I instinctively held Sal between the side of my head and the sweeping growl of Dracula’s pike, but I knew it would do no good. Sal could take one, maybe two hits. That pike, whatever it was, wherever he’d pulled it from, was magical beyond the talking elven battle axe I carried.
It was magical beyond the point of the dagger still in his shoulder.
Sal screamed at the remains of the dagger. She pushed and she pulled, and my balance pushed and pulled right along with her.
My dive over the side of the truck bed ended with me dropping unceremoniously onto Main Street, with Sal skidding into the haze in the direction of Ellie and my dog.
Rocks bit into my hands and rashed my cheek and neck. I groaned, but pushed off to run for Ellie.
The ash screamed. It wailed and it shrieked and the pike pierced the concrete directly in front of my face.
My brother—part of my brother, the strongest part by every possible measure—stepped out of the haze and wrapped his hand around the shaft of the pike.
Behind him, in the twilight fog, I could just make out Ellie’s outline. She still held Marcus Aurelius by the collar. He twisted and shook, and leaned against her leg, but he kept quiet. Sal sat on the ground at her feet.
Ellie balanced her camera against her chest by using the strap of her bag to hold it in place.
Dracula looked down at me. “I have many brothers,” he said. “Many children.”
He slid his hand down the shaft of his pike as he squatted, and tentacles of ash burst around his fingers like pixie-wraiths. “You are the son of Victor Frankenstein,” Dracula said. “The man who breathed life into your body is the same man who breathed life into mine.”
I was my father’s first draft. Dracula was his bigger, stronger, smarter, second.
His fangs extended out of his mouth and over his lower lip. “Such delicious life,” he said.
Behind him, Ellie capped her camera. Marcus Aurelius yipped. She gently touched my dog’s snout and shushed him. He whimpered, but quieted.
Dracula continued to grin with his yellow-blue, sulfur-on-fire fangs out and ready to slash.
He was oblivious to Ellie and my dog. Utterly unaware of their presence.
The concealment enchantments were doing their job even inside this pocket of The Land of the Dead: hiding Ellie—and whatever was right next to her—from a highly magical creature.
They could escape. She could walk in any direction and get out of the ash cloud and get away from this vampire.
Slowly, she stepped over Sal and moved closer. Not away. She moved herself and Marcus Aurelius close enough that I could get a read on her expression.
She understood the implications of not being noticed. She knew she could run. But she tucked her camera into her bag and leaned closer to listen.
“How far around the town does your ash-caused twilight extend?” I asked as I stood. I wiggled my shoulders with as much bravado as I could muster, mostly to hold his attention just in case he caught the emperor’s scent.
Dracula mirrored my movements right down to the shoulder reset. “What makes you think this is the town, son of Victor?”
I was correct. We were in a pocket borderland.
Ellie shook her head. She waved her hand through the haze and mouthed “too much magic.”
She didn’t think they could get away.
Dracula cocked his head as if listening. “Where did you toss your wood chipper?” He scowled. “It used its magic and helped you send away my puppy.” He tapped his fingers on the pike’s shaft. “It allowed you to pick it up.” He tapped again. “This body remembers that axe.”
Ellie had moved away from Sal, and now the vampire remembered that I’d taken the axe out of the toolbox.
She stepped backward.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
He looked around, and continued to scowl.
Maybe, like the combined personality whom I had called Brother, the Dracula persona inside the body in front of me wanted to talk. Isolation made anyone chatty, and there was nothing more isolating than being an indistinguishable part of a whole.
“What have you done here?” I asked.
Dracula’s hand tightened on the pike. The ash-made pixie-wraiths slowed around his knuckles, ducking and biting like tiny vampire bats.
He didn’t seem to notice.
“You are using fae magic,” he muttered.
I glanced at Ellie. She stood over Sal and backed away farther, her hand still on my dog’s collar. They stopped in almost the same position where I’d left them.
Dracula looked over his shoulder. “I smell you, little elven axe.” He lifted the pike’s tip out of the concrete, then slammed it down again. “I will fracture it into shards,” he said.
Ellie knelt. She balanced the camera again, and slowly reached out her hand toward Sal.
Which was a bad idea.
“Touching that axe isn’t possible unless you have its permission,” I said.
Ellie pulled her hand back, and stood again.
Dracula chuckled. “I will not touch it, brother. I will shatter it into tiny little pieces.”
“Where are the elves?” I asked. “Where are the people?”
“The elves are, right now, scrambling to counter the seeping infection from my little burst boil in the center of their town.” Dracula waved his hand and inhaled. “I smell them.” He opened his eyes and inhaled again. “Four of them move outward along the cardinal directions around this point.”
I glanced at Ellie. She nodded.
“They’re going to cleanse your fogbank right off the face of all the Realms,” I said.
Dracula laughed. “I certainly hope so.”
Ellie’s eyes widened. She nodded again.
Off in the haze, a horse whinnied. Tony’s voice followed, then the sound of Bloodyhoof retreating.
Dracula looked away as if watching them go. “Unlike you, son of Victor, I realized how that witch had enchanted the ash.” He winked. “I think my realization had something to do with my affinity for the small, creepy things of death and decay.”
“You still cannot walk in the day, nor can you move through The Land of the Dead with that dagger in your shoulder, so you enchanted the ash to build a version of it here, the way Rose enchanted it to build a version of her house.” I waved my hand through the thick air. “Thing is, it’s still a boil, as you said. It’s still not real and it’s still isolated. How will this help you get what you want?”
His hand shot out. He had me by the neck before I could react. “I thought you were fast.” He twisted his head and peered at my face. “How is such a dead thing so alive?”
One of the horses clopped up.
Tony, dressed in armor almost identical to Dracula’s, looked down at us. “It is almost noon, brother,” he said.
“I thought I was your brother,” I choked out.
Tony reined the blue-black Percheron gelding around. “Why are you playing? We need him in position. The elves are about to open their floodgates.”
“Radu thinks our discussions are a distraction,” Dracula said.
“Radu?” I asked. “Is that your real name?”
Tony—Radu—smirked down at me from the back of the show horse that was his stolen mount. “I am Radu the Handsome, younger brother of Vlad the Impaler.”
Dracula grinned.
I sniffed. “That’s one hell of a better story than a Russian Cold War spy, Tony,” I said.
Tony slapped his reins across my cheek. “You will not survive this, corpse,” he said. His horse snorted like Bloodyhoof, and hellfire bled from his eyes.
“Won’t be the first time I didn’t survive,” I said.
Dracula chuckled again and cupped my face with his hand. “I like you.”
Tony huffed.
Behind him, the other horse whinnied.
“We need to be in place,” Tony said.
Dracula let go of my face. “It’s almost noon.” He turned his face upward as if feeling the sun on his face. “Time to energize the base, as they say.”
“What are you doing? What’s happening here?” If I got him to talk about it, Ellie might be able to get to Ed, and Ed might be able to get to the elves.
The other horse clopped up.
Ivan looked down at me over his hooked nose. “Mr. Victorsson. Are you well?” he hissed.
I opened my mouth to respond, but thought better of it. Ivan never asked questions. Ivan used questions to provide answers.
He looked out over the fog. “Strength, yes?” he said. His horse pawed at the street. “Like aggregate in concrete.” He chuckled and walked his horse backward into the ash.
Dracula watched him go. “Do you know why Roman concrete still stands after millennia of abuse, and the pathetic mix they make in America can’t hold up even a decade?”
Why were they talking about concrete and building materials? “No,” I said.
Dracula tapped my forehead. “They mixed the ash of Vesuvius with the blood of a sacrificial ox.” He flicked my forehead this time.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Dracula laughed. “You expected me to explain our plan in great detail, didn’t you? Radu warned me.” He patted the haunch of his brother’s horse.
I glanced over at Ellie. She continued to hold Marcus Aurelius but she’d wiggled an arm out of her t-shirt. She pulled the shirt over her head next, and pulled it out from under the strap of her satchel.
What was she doing?
“Brother,” Tony said. “Listen.”
Dracula let go of my face. He took a step to the side and cocked his head. “So they’ve figured out their pet jotunn is the center of this spell.” He inhaled deeply. “The elves are frightened.”
Tony grinned. “Ivan, take your place.”
“Good. Good.” Dracula grabbed the rope and quickly tied my hands. The hatchet, he dropped to the street. “Let the games begin.”
He whistled. Bloodyhoof trotted up and, like the magnificent stallion he was, threw his head and snorted hellfire from his nostrils.
Dracula tied the rope to the pummel of his ash-made saddle. “I have questions, son of Victor,” he said.
I looked back at Ellie. She’d taken off her shirt and dropped it over Sal.
A loud, painful bell tone blasted through the ash-fog. The air vibrated. I cringed. And Ellie dropped to her knees onto the fabric-covered axe while wrapping her arms around Marcus Aurelius’s body.
I blinked.
Alfheim bustled around me. People sat at the café tables laughing and sipping their lattes. Others poked at the gallery’s art. Another pair walked out of the second-hand book and record store. My burning truck had vanished, and the intersection stood clear.
I was in the exact center of the intersection, equidistant from the buildings. The streets ran due north-south and east-west, and directly overhead, the sun pulsed down warmth perpendicular to the world.
There’s a geometry to the universe. A geometry that often either amplifies or suppresses magic.
The elves picked noon because it would amplify their cleansing spells.
My brother spoke of sacrificial oxen. Of blood spilled to amalgamate the ash and the aggregate into an unbreakable concrete.
How could he make his bubble real?
He had the ash. I was pretty sure I was the ox.
The world wavered again, and about ten feet away, to my side, Ellie and my dog appeared. She said something I could not hear, but I thought I understood: The elves’ cleansing spells reset glamours. They clicked over all enchantments, and set everything back to default.
Which meant she was about to vanish. The spell would sweep through and reset her concealment enchantments and the beautiful woman I was just getting to know would be thrown back to her cottage.
I’d forget her again.
Underneath Ellie’s knees, Sal did her best to cooperate, and to not scream in agony. The concealments were no more compatible with Sal’s magic than was the dagger in Dracula’s shoulder.
But the woman and the axe had a plan, and even though they burned each other, they would not be deterred.
Ellie pulled my huge dog as tightly against her body as she could, and—
Ivan appeared. Not the vampire, but the ghost man, the version who had been helping me on and off since my brother first stepped out of The Land of the Dead. Ivan with the curly brown hair and the wide, human eyes. Ivan, who must have died centuries ago.
He looked to me, then at Ellie, then back to me. He held up his hand.
Ellie, my dog, and my axe disappeared.
The real world vanished with them, and the ash and smoke of Dracula’s pocket borderland returned. Reality—and Ivan—both turned their ghost backs to me. Ivan swirled with the smoke and ash, but he took up a defensive posture between Dracula and someone who was no longer with us.
Trust, touched my mind. Trust that you are loved.
Loved, I thought. Why did that matter now? All sacrifices were loved. That’s why they’re sacrificed.
I looked away from Ivan just as Dracula ran his pike through my chest.
Chapter 18
The Norse believed in nine realms. Everybody got a place—fire and ice, gods and men, elves and giants. It was a free-for-all of home-granting, but no one engaged in that unseemly practice of mixing.
And we all know how unseemly it is to mix up one’s worlds. Not only is it bad form, but it often caused monsters.
But the real problem here wasn’t the mixing. The problem was the human inability to distinguish a solution from a state change. Asgard to Vanaheim, that’s just one set of gods to another. It’s tribe to tribe. Alfheim to Jotunheim, that’s elf to giant, magical to magical. Again, tribe to tribe. No issue there. Mixing requires stirring, but stirring takes a lot less effort than actual change.
Real problems start when you change a state. Fire to ice. Living to dead.
State changes were changes from one state to another—where a person becomes a ghost or, in my case, a corpse becomes a living man, or an unstable bubble becomes a real borderland to The Land of the Dead—which require actual energy. Spellwork. Knowledge. Planning.
