The Vampires' Birthright (38 page)

“Armando, watch out!” shrieked Tyreen, as an unusually tall enemy vampire snuck up on him from behind. If she hadn’t warned him when she did, his head might’ve been rolling next, as the fiend swung a gleaming machete that barely missed Armando’s neck.

“Get on the floor between my legs, Txema!” Chanson shouted. She motioned for Tyreen, Raquel, and Nora―who had worked her way over to us―to form a protective circle around me. Meanwhile, Franz joined Garvan and Armando in their quest to push back Ralu’s ever-growing army. Hundreds of these vicious aggressors swooped in and darted away repeatedly as they sought to find a weakness to exploit. “If worse comes to worst, since we have no immediate way to get out of here, we all will cover you to sacrifice ourselves for the greater good―the survival of our kind and your sacred bloodline.”

“No, you need to take care of yourselves and let me find Alaia,” I shouted, wanting to flee desperately and try to rescue my baby girl.

But I had no clue where to start my search, since vampires were everywhere. By then, a sizeable portion of Ralu’s army had seeped into the palace. Outside, it was impossible to see past them, and the moon’s light was effectively blocked by their presence. I couldn’t believe how endless his vile army seemed to be. Gustav’s allies had slaughtered hundreds of his brother’s forces, but now the first casualties on our side occurred and began to multiply.

The violence was so swift that my eyes had trouble following the action. Most often, I only saw the results of an engagement. Amongst the carnage of the gore and severed body parts, I soon began to recognize pieces of vampires I had become familiar with, although none were close friends. Unlike the smoldering foulness of Ralu’s warriors in hastened decomposition, the European version of the undead merely disintegrated once the blood drained from their violated bodies.

A Chupacabra approached Tyreen and seemed to slow enough for her to catch it. She bit into it like a tiger, and I swear, for a moment, it looked like the crazy Chupacabra smiled, before shoving her away and flying back into the chaotic melee.

Seeing this heightened my fear to near hysteria, and I retched where I lay, though whether from terror or revulsion I honestly cannot say. Chanson offered neither comfort nor a rebuke, as she fought off a horde of attackers that repeatedly lunged toward her and the rest of the quartet defending me as I lay prone beneath her.

For the first time, I considered the real possibility that we might lose this battle.

One of Ralu’s warriors wrapped herself around Chanson and shrieked as she tried to bite my cousin’s head off. I reacted without thinking, grabbing the female Chupacabra’s leg and visualizing the sun around my hand. The results weren’t nearly as dramatic as I had hoped, but tendrils of smoke rose from between my fingers and the creature howled in pain and glared down at me. That was all the distraction Chanson needed to finish her off. Chanson raised her eyebrow at me questioningly.

“We need to get the fuck out of here,” I screamed. “Pick me up, and let’s fly to someplace safe.”

“It’s not as easy as that,”
she shouted back, while deftly avoiding a flying machete aimed at her head. “We can’t leave until we have regained the advantage, and have defeated Ralu himself.”

Great. Just fucking great. We hadn’t even seen Ralu yet. With the way things were going, I wondered if he might’ve turned everything over to his wicked minions while he snacked on my precious daughter’s remains. I had to find a way to block such images from my mind, but at the moment felt powerless… until I saw Gustav, Kazikli, Koimala, and Xuanxang join to form an impenetrable phalanx.

They moved together and soon swirled as a unit. I only caught glimpses of the four vampires who had become a small cyclone, ripping through hundreds of Ralu’s warriors at a time. As the enemy weakened, many Chupacabras looked around warily when one moment they fought side by side with a partner, only to find a diced-up corpse an instant later. My protectors’ stamina wasn’t limitless; some of the blurs took on a recognizable form, but despite this, the battle was clearly turning in our favor. If they were able to hold out a bit longer, I felt our cause might not be lost.

I started to feel hopeful, and wanted to announce what I witnessed as an encouragement to Chanson and the others protecting me. But their attention was drawn to a sudden explosion and a new gaping wound in the palace’s northern wall. Within it soon stood an enormous vampire… one I had seen only in my nightmares.

Ralu. Ralu the demon in the flesh. His eyes were fiery coals that glowed with more rage than I’d seen from him, even when he’d invaded my dreams.

My skin crawled in revulsion, even though he was nearly a hundred feet away from me.

“Face me alone, Gustav,” he roared. “This battle should be between you and I, and the winner’s kingdom takes all.”

He waited while the swirling cyclone dissipated. Stepping forward with an air of confidence and regality, Gustav motioned for the other three to remain where they were. He accepted his brother’s challenge.

“Why would Ralu issue such a challenge?” I whispered to Chanson in the sudden silence.

“He has seen that there are too many elders here. His slaves will likely overwhelm us, but he knows that it is the only way
he
might survive.”

All of the vampires in attendance―both mongrel and human-like―became spectators for the only fight that now mattered. Enough space was cleared amid the slippery gore and overturned furniture. Then we all nervously awaited the outcome.

I expected a martial battle and was surprised to see Ralu produce a jeweled scepter from inside his robe, and Gustav withdraw his own as well. The two approached, each one cautious as if awaiting the initial move in this match for supremacy. I expected Gustav to be the gentleman between the two, despite my unease when around him. I wouldn’t have been disappointed if he had chosen a more aggressive role in this confrontation, and perhaps he should’ve done just that. He was completely unprepared for the bestial frenzy that Ralu was to unleash.

Ralu made the first move, sending a white-hot bolt of energy from his scepter toward Gustav’s midsection with a spoken word. Gustav stepped aside at the last possible moment, barely escaping the attack that lit his ceremonial robe ablaze.

Unlike me, our European king has no modesty. He threw off the flaming garments. Dressed only in a loincloth, he circled cautiously toward Ralu, lobbing lightning bolts from his scepter. Despite his bulk, Ralu easily sidestepped the bursts.

Ralu howled with such fury his beasts cowered like abused dogs before their master. Spittle flew from his mouth as he shouted the words. His eyes were wide and the syllables slurred together. It seemed as though every hateful thought from centuries of banishment poured into his incantations, and the arcane energies reflected his madness. Where the first bolt had been a controlled beam of energy, these seemed ragged and torn, but no less dangerous for their disorder.

Gustav was caught off guard by this onslaught and flew to the side at the last moment, his skin blistering from the wake of superheated air. A European vampire with spikey blue hair that I had not yet met caught the blast in the center of her chest. It punched through her and reduced her to ash before her face even registered any pain. It continued on, destroying another five and wounding a dozen others from both sides.

Ralu pressed the advantage and sent another rage-fueled beam into the sky at Gustav where he was circling and giving his charred skin a chance to heal. The king dodged and countered with a riposte of silver lightning, which the demon batted aside with his scepter.

The whites (or reds) around Ralu’s eyes and his shrieked spellcasting showed his already tenuous grip on sanity seemed to be slipping. Another bolt of energy coursed along the scepter, this one with such force that the gems cracked each in time as the energy flowed through them, like fuses blowing. The beam exploded from the end of the rod, turning the precious metal to slag as it went. Ralu flexed his powerful legs and jumped into the air, following a fraction of a second behind the energy.

Gustav dodged the killing beam and the demon adjusted trajectory to slam into the king before he could bring his scepter to bear. Ralu discarded his worthless relic, grabbed his brother’s arm, and hugged him close around the waist in a bear hug. They spun and twirled in air in a brutal mockery of the graceful dancing I had witnessed at Huangtian Dadi’s palace just a few months ago.

They twisted and plummeted to the ground, slamming into it with bone shattering force that separated them. My mouth was agape as I watched broken bones retreat into flesh and scrapes vanish as these two elders faced off. I felt a moment of hope when I saw that Gustav still held his scepter, which he raised. The arcane focus trembled unsteadily as three of his fingers popped and regained their natural shape.

“This ends now,” Gustav said.

Ralu must have been blessed with the luck of the Devil himself, for Gustav’s thumb chose this moment to realign, which caused his aim to dip. The demon flew forward, twisting his body as he did, riding a reserve of energy that felt unfair to me. The lightning tore through his lower torso, leaving intestines trailing behind him like streamers, but his shoulder hit Gustav in the stomach, and I was reminded of a linebacker tackling a quarterback. Ralu grabbed his brother’s wrist and, jaws distending and elongating, he chomped Gustav’s arm off at the elbow and cast it aside, scepter still gripped tightly in the amputated limb.

A collective cry of anguish rose up from our side.

“Do something!” I directed my plea to Chanson, but hoped anyone would stand up to this brute who squatted toad-like over Gustav’s chest, pinning his one good arm with a knee. Whether by design or fate or chance I cannot say our faces were near level in height and separated by less than twenty feet.

“It’s impossible,” she said. “No vampire may interfere in this kind of challenge no matter how much it is wished. Our blood is bound by our king’s oath.”

The face from my nightmares looked at me and, for a second, a leer and a look of exulted triumph replaced the rage. He turned back to the foe beneath him.

“It’s over, brother.” said Ralu with enough volume to be heard by everyone. “You should have killed me long ago.”

He began to punctuate his sentences with vicious blows to Gustav’s face, reminding me of that scene in the movie
Fight Club
. Something beautiful was being destroyed.

“I will take your kingdom.”
Crack
! A bone in his face broke. “I will destroy the network of humans you have built.”
Thuck
! A softer sound of meat hitting meat as Gustav somehow still had the energy to roll his head with the blow. “I will take your breeding bitch and her whelp.” Gustav’s nose flattened; blood streamed, and I wondered how much more he could take. “I will keep them in a drinking chamber and your kind will drink my blood before hers and be bound to me forever.”

Enough. Tears streamed down my face. I was not a vampire. My blood was my own. I was not bound to oaths of kings and if I were going to die, it would not be as a slave. I reached beyond myself and dug deeper than I ever had before. I felt myself fall away, as I had into the void over the Kosi River, but this time I wasn’t afraid. I drew upon the peace I felt from those who lived at that village. I called up every memory of love I had ever felt in my life. Those times I spent antiquing with my mom and Grandma Terese singing to me both out of key and changing the words every time. My father never missing a single game my entire high school career. All those little things that people think kids don’t notice but they do. Alaia was there most of all. Her laugh, her cry. The feeling of her on my breast and the contented smile she has when she sleeps in my arms. I drew all of that up into a ball of light, made it brighter than the sun, and released it toward the blight of darkness that was Ralu.

I would like to report that it blasted through him and turned him to ash. In reality, I think the actual effect was more like the reflection of the sun on a piece of broken glass on the road, although I’m not sure
what
he actually saw. I only know that I caught his eye and, for the first time in his presence, I wasn’t afraid. I saw his ugliness and more than that, I saw the darkness of his solitude. He was confused at first, and then his face softened; if it were any creature other than Ralu, I would have sworn I saw regret reflected there. He glanced around at the carnage, then back at me, and closed his eyes.

Gustav slid his good arm out from under Ralu and punched it through the beast’s chest and out his back, gripping a blackened, overgrown heart. Gustav pulled his arm back through the hole, clutching the organ. Ralu never opened his eyes. He just fell over on his right side, still squatting—although lying there, he looked to almost be in a fetal position.

“He’s dead! Gustav the Mighty has killed him!” shouted Franz, breaking the moment of shock that held everyone frozen and sending the horde of Chupacabras into a mass retreat.

Nearly everyone from our side―excluding Gustav and Xuanxang―joined in a ragged celebration. A number of vampires attended to Gustav. One of them, a young brunette, Anne I believe her name was, offered him her throat and he drank with such gusto I feared that she would join the fallen. I turned away.

For the first time in an hour, I was allowed to stand and move about freely. It seemed that no one was aware of what had transpired at the end of the battle.

“We will discuss this later,” Chanson said.

Well, almost no one.

My immediate concern was to locate my daughter, and that was what was on my mind. When the vampires assigned to protect me saw me frantically scanning the room for Alaia just in case one of the creatures had brought her to its master, they joined my search.

“We should decapitate him to ensure he remains dead,” said Xuanxang.

Three of Ralu’s warriors flew over to his body and hovered protectively. Gustav, who was much recovered thanks to Anne’s ‘ministrations,’ save for his still-missing arm, pointed his scepter at them. When they didn’t budge, Xuanxang produced his scepter and pointed it at the three while shouting an incantation in Chinese. I knew I was losing valuable time in the search for my daughter. But, as I headed for the passageway that led to the garden and lagoon outside, I looked back as the three warriors transformed into Huangtian Dadi and two other vampires from his court.