Bloodliner (30 page)

*****

 

Chapter 82

Mavis held tight to Arthur's hand as he led her through the gateway into the castle. At first, she saw nothing but stone floor and shadows. As the portcullis opened further, letting in more light, she saw stone walls on either side, a tunnel marching off into absolute blackness.

"What's ahead of us?" Mavis whispered to Arthur, guessing his vampire eyes could penetrate any darkness. "What's in there?"

Arthur pocketed his sunglasses. "Just a tunnel." He squinted hard and shook his head. "I can't see where it leads."

"Let's go." Stanza raised her arm and switched on the light beacon under her sleeve, the one she'd used to blind vampires. "We have work to do."

Jonah reluctantly followed her. "This is Heaven? A dark, musty castle?"

"There's more to it than that." Stanza marched forward into the darkness. "You'll see."

Chills ran up and down Mavis' spine as she and Arthur fell in behind Stanza and Jonah. The further they walked down the winding corridor, with only Stanza's wrist light to break the complete darkness, the more scared Mavis got. Her imagination conjured phantoms in the shadows, shades of vampires and Lampreyus and blood demons lurking just out of sight, waiting to snatch her and spirit her away before Arthur could stop them.

Anything could be out there, following us. Reaching for me.

Shivering, she latched on to Arthur's arm with both hands, holding on for dear life. Praying she wouldn't be taken.

"Here we are." Stanza stopped and ran her light over something in their path, something dead ahead. A door. "This is where it's all going to happen."

Mavis picked out details in the flashlight beam—plates of gleaming black metal, bolts the size of her fist, strange symbols chalked or painted in white all around the frame. And in the very center, two square panels of polished scarlet, mounted side by side.

"Jonah? Mavis?" Stanza bobbed her head, calling them over. "Still bleeding, I hope?"

In her fear of the darkness, Mavis had forgotten about the cut. Releasing her grip on Arthur's arm, she stepped forward and held her hand up to the light. A thin line of bright red glistened in her palm. "Still bleeding," she said.

"Me, too," said Jonah.

"Good." Stanza focused the light on the twin scarlet panels set into the door. "Could you open these locks for me? Just like you did before."

Mavis and Jonah pressed their bloody palms to the panels and waited. After a long moment, Mavis noticed a change—sharp tingling, like before, and a flurry of bright red sparks swirling inside the panel. She felt light-headed and clenched her teeth to hold steady.

Then, the door began to move.

Stanza grabbed Mavis' shoulder and pulled her back...pulled Jonah back, too. Tremendous rumbling and grinding sounds filled the tunnel, as if an ancient mechanism were turning after centuries of being frozen in place. Then, there was a deafening
crack
as the ancient seal broke and the door shuddered inward, away from its frame.

Instantly, a draft of cold air swept out through the cracked door with a
whoosh
, smelling of dust and sulfur. Terrified of what might burst forth when the door opened wide, Mavis flung her arms around Arthur and hugged him tight.

*****

 

Chapter 83

The half-hour was up. Shakespeare's forces had followed Stanza's orders and held off Genghis' troops for exactly that long. Now, still following orders, they were in retreat.

But Genghis' people were close behind...and some were closer than that. As Shakespeare and his allies fell back, charging on horseback up the mountain toward the castle, a handful of Genghis' best riders managed to pass them, racing along the length of the column. In no time at all, they had galloped past Shakespeare himself, cutting him off from the only other horse ahead of him.

The one carrying James and Thomas.

So it's five against two...make that one. Five horsemen against James, with Thomas still unconscious. My charge and his twin won't likely survive those odds.

Shakespeare spurred his horse but couldn't catch up that way. He had to try a new approach or risk losing the twins for good.

Let's see how fast they ride with Hell's Tempest striking from above.

Vaulting from the back of his horse, Shakespeare changed into his full bat-form and took to the air. His leathery wings expanded fast and caught the wind, lifting him high while his gray horse continued toward the castle.

With great sweeps of his wings, Shakespeare closed on Genghis' riders. The five of them were bent low like jockeys at a race track as they hurtled toward their prey.

Shakespeare matched their speed, then rocketed downward. He angled and swooped along their path, raking every one of them with his claws before they could react.

One man fell away screaming and clutching his face. The other four wobbled, grabbing at their head and chest wounds, but kept up the charge.

On his next pass, Shakespeare snatched up a rider and whisked him skyward, then dropped him in the path of his comrades. One of the three horses still in formation stumbled on him and went over sideways, catching its rider underneath when it crashed.

Looking ahead, Shakespeare saw that the twins were within three hundred yards of the castle gate. Unfortunately, Genghis' two remaining riders were almost upon them.

Shooting forward, Shakespeare blinked away the raindrops that had started falling. When he'd gone well past the two riders, he whipped around and dove at them with fists clenched.

It was only then that he saw one of the riders had drawn a crossbow and was pointing it at him. The crossbow's wooden bolt would be as good as a stake for killing a vampire like Shakespeare.

As Shakespeare raced toward the bolt, the
feratu
in his chest pumped his veins full of fire. Shakespeare realized he might be about to die, and he found it funny.

Here lies the man who wrote
Hamlet
and lived over four hundred years. Killed by a stick of wood on a tropic island not fit for Prospero.

If I wasn't the one about to die, I'd write that play and make it sing.

Shakespeare blazed forward, determined to drop the shooter and his partner on the way to his mortal end. But he did not end as expected.

Suddenly, the point of a spear plunged through the crossbow shooter's chest. The man fired his weapon, but the shot went astray, flying wide of Shakespeare.

Glancing in the direction from which the spear had come, Shakespeare saw who'd thrown it: Hercules, riding hard and roaring with laughter, racing up from the rear guard in the nick of time.

As the speared shooter bounced off his horse and hit the ground, Shakespeare swooped around and blasted the final rider like a battering ram, both fists plowing into his skull. Shakespeare hit the rider with such force that he blew him right out of the saddle without slowing down. As Shakespeare veered off, the rider's momentum flung him fifty yards further before he finally dropped and slammed to the ground.

Hercules' horse leaped over him without breaking stride. "Well played, friend Shakespeare! You fight like Ares the god of war himself!"

Shakespeare waved him onward. "Come on!" He beat his wings harder, redoubling his speed toward the castle. "We've got to beat Genghis to Empyrea!"

*****

 

Chapter 84

Mavis had half-expected some kind of creature to burst out from behind the ancient door and attack her and the others. She had held her breath and clutched Arthur's arm, shivering as she watched the door swing open in the beam from Stanza's flashlight.

But no attack had come. She'd seen only absolute darkness beyond the doorway.

Maybe there would be no attack...or maybe, a monster lurked in the darkness, waiting for them to come closer so it could spring a trap.

"So, uh...what's in there, anyway?" Mavis tried not to sound nervous.

"The heart of Empyrea. The core of Heaven." Stanza stepped through the doorway. "The crucible of God."

Jonah hesitated, then followed her. Mavis entered with Arthur, against her better judgment. It was either that or stay in the hall, alone and without light.

As Mavis entered the darkness, she felt something crunch underfoot, something like autumn leaves or dry sticks. She kept walking forward, holding tightly to Arthur's arm, looking all around for glowing eyes or telltale flickers of light in the blackness.

"Here." Stanza's wrist light picked out an object a few yards away—a gleaming, smooth-faced box atop a waist-high pedestal of the same black metal as the door. "Keys, could you give us a hand again?"

Reluctantly, Mavis let go of Arthur and walked with Jonah to the box on the pedestal. Up close, its polished surfaces looked like they were cut from the same glassy, scarlet material as the locks on the door and the outer gate.

"Put your hands on the sides," said Stanza. "Your bloody hands."

Mavis pressed her bleeding right hand against one side of the box. As soon as Jonah did the same on the opposite side, Mavis' hand tingled, and the box pulsed and danced with red sparks.

The tingling quickly became uncomfortable, but Mavis didn't pull her hand away. Gritting her teeth, she looked to Arthur for strength; she could barely see him as he nodded in the shadows.

Then, as Mavis watched, the darkness slowly faded around him. A dim gray glow spread out from above like the first hint of pre-dawn gloom in a newborn morning.

Looking up, Mavis saw the glow was coming from enormous, concentric circles in a distant, domed ceiling. Looking down as the light continued to rise and spread, she at last saw the scope of the place she'd entered, the vast space concealed until now by darkness.

Mavis stood at the edge of an enormous, circular chamber, a cavernous expanse that looked too big to be contained by the castle around it. What looked like thousands of slender crystalline pillars descended like stalactites from the domed ceiling, glittering in the gray glow from the lit concentric rings above. The pillars were separated at most by a few feet, and they reached all the way to the floor. Piles of crumpled black debris were heaped around the bases of the pillars; the same debris covered the entire floor of the chamber from wall to wall, extending even to the edge where Mavis stood.

As the light came up, she finally saw what the debris was made of, the debris that had crunched under her feet like dried leaves or sticks. The same debris that blanketed every square inch of the chamber before her.

There were no sticks or leaves at all...just a carpet of gnarled black bodies, twisted and tangled. Each one a shriveled, hairy bulb surrounded by twelve withered tentacles. Each one a creature, wicked-looking as a giant tarantula, bigger than her fist.

And she was surrounded by them. They were everywhere. No escape except back through the open door.

"Oh my God." Chills shot up Mavis' spine as she gaped at the creatures. "What
are
these things?"

"
Feratu
," said Stanza. "The parasites that transform ordinary people into vampires."

Mavis was seized by uncontrollable shivers. "There are
thousands
of them." She moved, and a
feratu
crunched underfoot. "Are they
sleeping
?"

"All dead." Arthur kicked at the tangled black bodies. "Mummified. See how dried out and brittle they are?"

"Preserved by the conditions in this chamber," said Stanza.

"Yet once, each was alive and potent." Arthur speared a
feratu
mummy and held it up on the tip of Excalibur. "Each inhabited a vampire host, pumping inhuman power into his veins and sinews...power fueled by the
blood
of others, taken by
force
."

"You mean...these are the same as...as what's inside
you
?" said Mavis.

Arthur touched the dead
feratu
to his chest. "Yes." He flicked it away. "Instead of a heart, I have one of
these
."

"Just
look
at all of them." Jonah turned in a circle, gaping at the
feratu
-covered floor. "How did they
get
here?"

"The same way Arthur's did," said Stanza. "Inside the bodies of human hosts."

"And then what?" said Jonah. "The hosts had to
die
for the
feratu
to leave, right? Then where are the bones of all the dead
vampires
?"

"I don't see any." Stanza started forward, shuffling through the carpet of desiccated remains. "Just
feratu
."

"This doesn't make sense," said Mavis. "Isn't Empyrea supposed to be a vampire paradise?"

"There are many definitions of paradise," said Stanza. "Sometimes, it's nothing like what we expect."

"Wait a minute," said Jonah. "Genghis said this place will give him godlike powers."

"Yes," said Stanza. "He did say that, didn't he?"

"So if there are godlike powers at stake," said Jonah, "why aren't we trying to stop Genghis and his men from getting in here?"

"Is this a trap?" said Mavis. "Is that what all the dead
feratu
mean? Will this place lead to the destruction of Genghis' forces?"

"Not at all." Stanza kept heading toward the middle of the chamber, kicking through the mummified
feratu
. "It will lead to their salvation."