Twists and Turns
Part Six of "North of Midnight," a Spell Weaver novella
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Where we left off: Alexandra and her friends made an effort to free the captives, but they didn’t fare well in a battle with Elatha, “Dracula,” and their guards. An unexpected appearance by Antonio, who is clearly not himself at the moment, might be reason for hope—or despair.
“Stop!” said Antonio. His voice was loud enough to get everyone’s attention, but it didn’t sound like his voice. Yet he showed obvious signs of still being human. I could see him breathing, for instance. I didn’t know what to make of him.
“Surely, we are on the same side,” said Dracula. “Why would you want us to stop?”
“These humans are mine,” replied Antonio with a sweeping gesture.
“And why is that?” asked Elatha, his voice deceptively pleasant. I had no doubt he’d chop off Antonio’s head if he gave the wrong answer. I could hear vampires snarling all too close by. They were eager to feed.
“Because I say they are.” What was Antonio doing? Though I might just as well have asked, what was Antonio? My new magic sight could still see light and dark forces struggling inside of him, but he showed no outward sign of that inner conflict. Nor was there any sign of his original personality.
And why did “Dracula” seem to think Antonio was a vampire, or at least, an ally? Looking more closely, I could see the battle between light and darkness appeared to be localized, with the light somewhere inside and the darkness more obvious on the surface. Even so, I had no difficulty seeing the difference between his internal energy and those of the vampires hovering nearby. Why couldn’t this Dracula imposter see the same thing?
“Everyone in this town is ours by right of conquest,” said Elatha, raising his sword in a threatening way.
“Yet you have not conquered the town,” said Antonio, acting as if he couldn’t even see the blade. “Awen is still under human control, as are several other spots. And these people have not yet lost.”
Antonio didn’t even look at us, but it was true we all still stood, though Jimmie had lost his sword. However, the battle hadn’t been going well when he arrived.
“That’s sounds like a challenge to finish them off,” said Elatha.
“If you really wanted to finish us off, you would have done so when you had a chance earlier,” I said, surprising even myself. I knew better than to draw the attention of vampires and their allies. Yet her I was, grabbing all the attention I could get.
“We do have a use for some of them—but not for you,” said Dracula. He stared at me as if he could see everything going on inside me—which perhaps he could. “I expected you to be dead already. Apparently, that magic accelerator is less dangerous than we were led to believe.”
“Enough talk!” said one of the vampires in a hungry voice. “It is time for us to feed.”
Dracula looked in his direction and scowled. “I am your king. You will feed when I say you may.”
“Stop moving around!” said Elatha, swinging his sword so fast that I could hear it whoosh. The others had indeed subtly shifted positions, though what their goal was, I couldn’t be sure. “And you, shadow assassin, I need you to cancel the poison that is afflicting my men. Don’t look at me like that. I know that you can.”
“If you know shadow assassins, you know I will not,” said Umbra, sounding almost as emotionless as Antonio. I figured she was bluffing because of what she’d said to me earlier, but I would never have been able to tell that from her carefully controlled demeanor.
Elatha prepared to strike. Moving with speed the human eye could hardly follow, Dracula put a hand on his shoulder, but the former Formorian king pulled away from him.
All of our opponents had been carefully watching us, though Antonio’s arrival had been a small distraction. The visible conflict between Elatha and Dracula was a larger one, especially since the vampires hissed and showed their fangs to Elatha in support of their master’s desire.
That was the moment my new friends chose to strike. Khalid fired an arrow vampire, who was jolted by each energy burst the arrow radiated. When the sunlight burst came, the other vampires, except for the dubious Dracula, were momentarily blinded.
Jimmie made a dive for his sword. Dracula kicked it out of his reach—but close enough to me that I might be able to grab it myself if the chaos continued much longer. Umbra threw herself at Elatha but vanished as she entered his shadow. Between Dracula’s effort to stop him from killing her and Elatha’ momentary confusion, he was off balance when he also vanished. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought maybe Umbra had pulled him into shadow with her, forcing him into a one-on-one battle on what must have been home turf to her.
Lucas hit Dracula with a kick to the chest which Jimmie followed up with a punch, Such physical blows wouldn’t do much harm to a vampire—if that was even what Dracula was—but they did keep him off-balance.
His vampire minions charged, but Khalid was ready with a barrage of arrows that looked more like four archers firing than one.
Antonio eyed the approaching vampires but did nothing to stop them. I felt a chill. Was his current state just temporary, or was he gone for good, replaced by something that resembled him only physically?
Trying to put Antonio out of my mind, I made good use of Dracula’s distraction to grab the Apollonian sword, from which light blazed the moment I touched it. That was enough to drive back the vampires who had nearly reached Khalid. Blinded and burned, they were easy enough for Khalid to finish off with his magic arrows, though I had no doubt more were nearby.
Dracula was another matter. He still didn’t react to sunlight. He didn’t burn. He didn’t even smoke a little. I stepped forward to expose him to a larger dose. He still didn’t react.
I couldn’t help noticing his occasional flicker when he took a blow or moved too fast. I don’t know how the vampires could miss these clues, but I couldn’t have missed them if I tried.
“Who are you?” I asked. “You aren’t Dracula—who is fictional—and you aren’t even a vampire.”
Dracula didn’t answer. He was too busy dodging Khalid’s arrows and Lucas’s flying kicks. I wasn’t much of a sword fighter, so I moved in Jimmie direction, intending to return the sword to him.
I realized I’d forgotten about the Formorian women in the purple fog when the fog was suddenly behind me—and very close. I could clearly see magic rippling through it—dark magic. I instinctively stumbled away from the fog is it billowed in my direction.
Khalid shot a couple of arrows into it, but even though the fog patch was relatively small, he didn’t strike any of the Formorians within. They might be shifting around inside the fog so fast that they could dodge the arrows. Or perhaps the fog interfered with normal spatial relationships somehow. I could see some kind of shifting happening at its periphery, as if reality was softer there.
Was such a thing even possible? I was no longer sure where the line between possible and impossible lay.
The Formorian fog began to expand. I could easily run away from it—except that I still held the Apollo-blessed sword that would keep more vampire troops from attacking the others. If I got too far away from them, they’d be vulnerable.
I did the only thing I could think of—I charged Dracula. The fog was moving slowly, perhaps inhibited by the sunlight. It wouldn’t reach me in time to stop me.
Focused on Lucas and unaffected by sunlight, Dracula didn’t see me approaching until I was almost on top of him. I thrust the sword straight toward his heart. He managed to dodge, but he lost his footing and fell. Jimmie kicked him from one side and Lucas from the other, not enough of an attack to injure him but enough to keep him from getting up again. Lying more or less flat on his back, his extra speed wasn’t much of an advantage.
The vampires screeched at me as I raised my sword to strike what I hoped was a killing blow. They couldn’t come to Dracula’s rescue, though. They’d be burned to a crisp before they could reach me.
“I have those two souls!” yelled Dracula. Those words were enough to freeze my sword in midair.
“If I die, you’ll never get them back.”
He might be bluffing about that. I had no way to know. Khalid, Jimmie, and Lucas evidently didn’t know, either.
But if I delayed too long, the purple fog would reach us. I had a feeling that we needed to avoid its touch at all costs.
Antonio, still as a statue for some time, walked over as if he didn’t have a care in the world and stood right behind me, facing the purple fog.
A sudden burst of emotion gripped me so strongly that it almost lifted me off the ground. I wanted Antonio so badly that if not for the immediate threat of death looming over us, I would cheerfully have made love to him right now, lying on the sidewalk if need be.
I didn’t have to be an expert in magic to know these feeling weren’t normal. They were like Antonio’s earlier magic on steroids. Khalid had told Antonio didn’t consciously control his magic, so perhaps he hadn’t fully mastered it yet. But I needed him to rein in his power before I became lost in it.
Khalid, oblivious to the hormonal flash-frying of my brain, was focused entirely on Dracula. “Here’s the deal—the souls in exchange for your life.”
“We can’t just let him go,” said Lucas. “He’s killed people—or at least, his vampires have.”
“Their cries still ring in my ears,” added Jimmie. I had no doubt he meant that statement literally.
“How…how do we know we can trust him?” I asked, my voice shaking, my sweat dripping down the sword hilt.
“Oaths can be made binding on supernatural beings,” said Khalid.
“I have a counterproposal,” said Dracula. “Give us what we came for, we’ll return the souls, and be on our way.”
“What did you come for?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. “Obviously, it wasn’t Jimmie’s sword.”
“No,” he admitted. “It’s the dark altar on which Taliesin was once nearly sacrificed.”
“That’s in pieces,” said Jimmie. “I was hanging around as a ghost at the time, and I saw it being destroyed.”
I knew he’d been dead, but I’d always imagined he meant briefly, like one of those stories about being clinically dead for a few minutes and then reviving. I’d never imagined he spent time as a ghost.
“The pieces can be easily reassembled,” said Dracula. He sounded calm but his eyes never left the blade that was still poised to plunge into his heart. “We’ll take those fragments—and Ceridwen’s cauldron.”
“They’re both in the hands of the Order of Ladies of the Lake,” said Jimmie. “We couldn’t give them to you if we wanted to.”
“As I recall, the two souls I possess belong to Ladies of the Lake. I imagine the Order would pay handsomely to get them back.”
“Not much of a plan,” said Khalid. “If you knew the Order at all, you’d know it would never yield potentially dangerous artifacts to someone like you—not even to save two of its own members.”
I felt magic twisting behind me, and despite the danger of taking my eyes off Dracula, I had to turn and look, if only for a moment.
Antonio was glowing with a pure white light that had evidently collided with the advancing purple fog, which seemed unable to keep moving in the light’s direction. Instead, it was writhing into the air as if it could find a way around the power he was radiating.
The power of love. Khalid had said it was potent against evil. He hadn’t exaggerated.
But Antonio just stood there, arms raised. His power was a great protection, but he could easily have advanced, driven the Formorians back. He didn’t. It was as if he acted out of reflex or instinct rather than strategic thought.
I couldn’t make myself turn away from him, even though all I could see was his back. How I longed to put my arms around him…
A thud and a shout forced me to turn around. My distraction had given Dracula time to grab the slower moving Jimmie, whose neck he seemed on the verge of breaking. Lucas was looking for an opening to get in a good kick, but the supposed vampire king gave him no opening, using Jimmie as a human shield.
Calling on every ounce of willpower I had, I managed to rip myself away from Antonio. My intention was to position myself on the other side of Dracula from where Lucas stood. Dracula couldn’t possibly use Jimmie to shield himself from two simultaneous attacks from opposite directions. And, though I always went for the kill when dealing with vampires, I was pretty sure I could do nonlethal damage that might slow Dracula down enough to allow us to find a more permanent solution.
I never got to complete that maneuver.
Purple fog erupted from right in front of me. But it wasn’t from the Formorian women. Elatha jumped out of it, carrying his blood-dripping sword in one hand and holding a severed head by the hair with his other hand.
It was Umbra’s head.
“North of Midnight” is related to the Spell Weaver series.
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