The young woman stood in front of the bookstore window, her eyes ranging over the ostensibly occult texts that were on display. Her lips quirked in a smile as she caught sight of her reflection; it always struck her as funny when she caught a glimpse of herself in this fashion; a brief moment of unfamiliarity that gave way to self-recognition. Her hand reached up and toyed with her black hair, curling a ringlet around one finger.
“If Jack could see me now,” Topaz murmured.
“Russell always struck me as a lackwit, my dear. You are better off without him.”
Topaz turned slowly. Dracula smiled and bowed with a flourish. As he rose, he said, “When I caught sight of you, I knew it was fate, my dear.”
“Dracula,” she said, heart beating faster. If she could make it to the end of the street-
“You won’t,” Dracula purred.
Topaz blinked. She glanced up, at the sun overhead, then back down. Her eyes narrowed. “Human.” Dracula flinched. It was a barely evident thing, a minor twitch of his angular face, but Topaz noticed it. “You are human. How?”
“None of your concern,” Dracula snapped, grabbing her wrist with iron fingers. “Now, you-”
Topaz gestured and a fat spark of colored light burst into life between them. Dracula stumbled back, teeth bared. The light faded, but Topaz had not moved, save to cock her head. “Why was it fate?” she said.
Dracula massaged his hand and blinked, trying to clear his eyes of the cantrip-light. “How could it not be? I am here, the situation is as it is and I come upon you?”
“The situation?” Topaz stepped forward, extending her hand. Dracula tried to retreat, suddenly off-balance, but he wasn’t as fast as he had been. Her fingers touched his cheek, tracing the line of his jaw, now covered in stubble for the first time in centuries. She rubbed it, seemingly entranced. Dracula found himself unable to look away from her. He drank in her cinnamon skin and dark curls of hair.
It reminded him of something. Someone. His mouth felt dry and his heart thudded painfully. With a sudden snarl, Dracula slapped her hand away and turned, hunching beneath his cloak.
Topaz rubbed her hand, mimicking Dracula’s gesture from earlier. “What situation?” she said again. Dark whorls of emotion blazed from the reborn man standing before her. Torment and tragedy in equal measure. The black stink of sin. “What do you want from me?”
Dracula spun, his face contorted as if he were spitting nails. “What do I want? What do I WANT?” He took a shuddery breath. “Nothing less than your help, my dear!”
|
#6
MAY 10 |
 |
“Weird Sisters”
Venice. Beneath the city
Blade swept his sword out, hacking through the neck of one of the Prince of Venice’s handpicked guard. Blood fountained as the blade caught on the rings of rusty chainmail. Cursing, Blade released the weapon and spun, firing his pistol. Blessed bullets punctured the antique breastplate of a second vampire, knocking it backwards. Blade stepped back, gun raised, reaching for a second holstered under his arm. His back connected with another person’s. He glanced over his shoulder, teeth bared.
“You,” he said.
Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, met his snarl with one of her own. Her clawed fingers were curled, ready to rend and tear. “Blade! I should have known that you’d find your way here sooner or later. Still nosing about my father’s cancerous trail?”
“Could ask you the same thing, lady,” Blade replied. Back to back, they spun slowly as the Prince’s guard closed in on them from all sides. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Blade, meet Emilio Mazarin. Mazarin, meet the Daywalker,” Lilith said, laughing.
A tall figure in crimson robes stepped out of the crowd of vampires, his face hidden behind a golden mask. “Daywalker, is it?” Bandaged hands intertwined, long forefingers tapping an engraved chin. “Blade. I’ve heard of you.”
“Can’t say the same about you,” Blade said, aiming his weapons at a point somewhere between the Prince’s eyes.
The Prince laughed softly. “And why would you? I have taken great pains to hide my existence from your wretched crusade, Mr. Brooks.” He spread his long arms. “I have no interest in pitting my meager resources against the feared Daywalker.”
“Smart man,” Blade said.
The Prince inclined his head. “Thus, I offer you your life. Leave and we’ll trouble each other no more.”
Blade’s smile was like something etched in stone. “Isn’t that just dandy? How generous.”
“Isn’t he just?” Lilith said. “Thinking of taking him up on it?”
“Nope.” Blade’s pistols spat fire and the Prince shrieked in rage as bullets caromed off of his mask, knocking him backwards into his men. The vampires surged forward in response, an all-consuming tide of claws and teeth.
Somewhere in Northern France. Approaching a village with no name
The car had been waiting for them at the airfield. Michael Morbius, sometimes known as the Living Vampire, hunched in the back beneath a blanket, waiting for the sun to set. Simon Stroud, former CIA agent and current operative for the Black Chamber, sat in the driver’s seat, forcing the car down the rutted road.
“This woman--” Stroud began.
“Montesi. Victoria Montesi,” Morbius interjected. “Do her the courtesy of using her name. Especially in light of the circumstances…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stroud said. “Is she going to be trouble?”
“Define trouble.”
“Is she a freak like you?” Stroud said.
“Like me?” Morbius sounded amused. “No. Nothing like me. I am merely vermin, Stroud. She is something else entirely.”
“You scared of her?”
“No. I pity her.” Morbius shifted, rising up, the blanket over him like a hood. “She has been a tool for most of her life, with a decided lack of knowledge and consent on her part, a tool for powerful forces, going first one way, then another, then back again. Used, abused and manipulated by men like your masters.”
“They ain’t my masters. I’m not a slave.”
“Unlike myself,” Morbius said.
“You think you deserve better?”
Morbius was silent. Stroud allowed himself a small smile and made a notch on a mental column. One for him. His smile faded. As long as he could keep the high score, he could keep from thinking this through. Keep from wondering what his employers had planned for this Montesi woman.
He remembered Budapest and the woman they’d tried to feed to the leech. Morbius hadn’t taken the bait, but Stroud put that down more to contrariness than anything else.
Still, the offer had been genuine. And that shook Stroud to his core.
His career, such as it was, had been built on the hunt for the man-the leech-he was now sharing a car with. Morbius had climbed high on the most wanted list. He was a foreign national, a murderer and a Person of Interest in any number of Incidents of Note. MH-STARGATE-IMPALER, as the file said; cryptonym puzzle palace bullshit that basically meant ‘high-profile vampire’.
Only Stroud had met real vampires over the course of that hunt, the walking corpse kind. And that wasn’t Morbius.
Memories of the hunt reeled in his brain. He swallowed, feeling the old bile building in his throat. He remembered things. Towns empty of blood. Delicate minuets danced by cannibal fiends.
Helleyes.
Stroud’s fingers clamped convulsively on the wheel. A million eyes, each of them full of the sum total of the universe’s evil, staring at him, staring through him. A world of fleshy plants and abominable insects, too hot and the stink of it…God! The stink!
Morbius was looking at him. Stroud composed himself. “What?”
“Nothing. For a moment, I thought I--” Morbius grinned. “Never mind. It was nothing.”
In the nameless village
Victoria Montesi wandered through the street market plopping exotic fruits into the basket hanging from her arm. The vendors smiled and nodded as she paid them and they spoke to her in a dialect of French that hadn’t been common for centuries.
She could barely understand it, but she was learning. Just as she had learned to ignore the strange, feline shadows that extended behind the inhabitants of the town when the sun was high.
“We’re being followed,” Nash murmured. Victoria started, surprised as the other woman suddenly appeared behind her. “Also, I found some lovely courgettes.”
“I hate egg plant,” Victoria said, looking at the demoness who had taken the name of her dead lover. “Who? The villagers?”
“No.” Nash’s delicate nostrils flared. “Something more unpleasant. More familiar.”
Victoria froze. “How familiar?”
“In the original sense,” Nash said, putting a hand on Victoria’s arm. “We need to go. They’ll be coming.”
“I thought you said we were safe here.”
“I thought we were. I thought that there was an…understanding.”
“Obviously you thought wrong,” Victoria said. “Maybe something has changed. Maybe--”
As one, the vendors hissed. It was an eerie sound, like the collective snarl of a tribe of tigers. The men and women faded back, falling out of sight as something appeared at the end of the row. A snuffling thing, that brought with it a stink like a slaughterhouse.
Nash pulled Victoria behind her, and tensed. The snuffling thing growled as it caught sight of them.
“Oh God,” Victoria said.
It was the body of skinned man covered in the ragged hide of a dog. A malformed head cocked, and poached eyes glistened and rotated in its skull. The quivering slits of its nostrils flared and then it sagged back on its haunches, arms dangling, and let loose a monstrous bay!
London
Topaz’s flat was functional, but tasteful. Dracula perched on a chair, ill at ease in the surroundings. A cup of tea sat on the table before him, untouched.
“You must be thirsty,” Topaz said.
“Not for…tea,” Dracula grunted. He gestured towards her. “When I last saw you, you were golden-haired and fair. Now, you are what?”
“When my master found me in India, I looked thus,” Topaz said, gesturing to herself. “When I met Jack, I changed.”
“And now you are back again? Intriguing.”
“Is it?” Topaz took a sip of her own tea. “Tell me.”
Dracula hesitated. As before, in their first meeting so long ago, he felt inexplicably connected to this woman, as if trusting her were the most natural thing in the world. It was stronger now, something he could only attribute to his reduced circumstances.
“I have been…stripped of my birthright.”
“Is that what you’re calling it now?”
Dracula’s fist slammed into the table. “Do not mock me!”
Topaz eyed him, serene. “Do not strike my table.”
Dracula’s lips writhed back and he made to stand. Topaz caught his wrist. “Have you lost your manners as well as your curse, voivode Dracula?”
He glared at her for a moment more, then, startlingly, smiled. He shook his head. “Ha! Yes. So I have. I apologize, madam.”
“No need.” She put her cup down. “You want my help, you said?”
“Yes. To reclaim my rightful place.”
“No.”
“What?” Dracula’s eyes widened.
Topaz tilted her head. “Why should I help you, you who have massacred entire generations? Ghosts cling to you like links in an infinite chain, Dracula. I can see them, even if you can’t. I can hear them. Why should I help you return to that?”
“I--” Dracula hesitated. His hands clenched. “I make no apologies for what I am, woman. For what I was or what I might possibly become. I am Dracula.”
“You say your name as if it holds power,” Topaz said. “But now you are powerless. And it eats at you like a disease.”
Dracula looked away. Topaz leaned forward. “After our first encounter, I read what I could find on your history. Jack’s mother had quite the esoteric library. I know you as well anyone can, I think.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know you need my help. And I know that you will agree to my price to get it.”
Beneath Venice
Blade fell back, bowled under by the sheer weight of his opponents. The stink of blood and rust mingled in his sensitive nostrils as he fought to get out from under the wave of claws and fangs.
He jabbed an elbow into the maw of one, shattering teeth, and cleared enough room to fire his pistol. A vampire shrieked and clutched at the smoldering holes in its face.
Lilith, for her part, was meeting the vampires fang-to-fang. She wrenched a lower jaw away from a face and broke the bloody bone across the skull of another leech, staggering it. Her stiffened hand pierced an ancient breastplate and tore through an unbeating heart.
With wild abandon, she danced through the warrior-dead, returning them to the grave with a horrible grace.
Blade rolled across the floor and grabbed the hilt of his sword, wrenching it from the decaying body of the vampire he’d killed earlier. He swept it up, lopping off the hands of another. The creature squealed and fell backwards.
“Blade!”
Blade spun at Lilith’s cry, his sword coming up just in time to block a blade wielded by the Prince of Venice. Mazarin stepped back, robes rustling. Blade grinned. “Got some fight in you, old lich.”
“I was at Lepanto, pup. I have more fight in me than a nation.” Mazarin darted forward, sword arrowing for Blade’s heart. The two dueled for several minutes, the basement ringing with the sound of steel on steel.
Then, as they broke apart, a solid column of flame engulfed the Prince of Venice. He wailed as his golden mask buckled and melted to the face beneath. Flinging aside his sword, the ancient vampire slapped Blade aside and rushed towards the water of the canal.
He hit the filthy water with a hiss and vanished from sight. Blade made to go after him, when a voice said.
“Mr. Brooks! Was it him?”
Blade turned as Cardinal Vinchenze and the armored and cowled brothers of the Montesi Order made their way down into the basement on rope lines. Vinchenze awkwardly unhooked himself, batting aside a brother’s attempt to help him. “Was it him? Was it the Devil’s Son?”
“No. Some other monster.” Blade gestured towards Lilith with his sword. “But I’m betting she can give us a nudge in the right direction.”
“Who--” Vinchenze looked at Lilith. His eyes widened. “You!”
“Me. And who are you?” Lilith asked, flicking blood from her fingers. “Never mind. If you think I’m going to help you--”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Blade said, cleaning his sword. “You want your daddy dead just as much the Pope, right?”
“I--” Lilith looked at the Montesi brothers. “The Pope? Has the Inquisition decided to break their truce with my father at last?”
“Truce?” Blade looked at Vinchenze. “What truce?”
“Ignore her, Mr. Brooks. She is the spawn of Dracula and, thus, a liar. They all lie, Mr. Brooks. But you are correct, she can indeed help us.” He looked at his men. “Bind her!”
“Vinchenze?” Blade raised a hand. “Wait--”
“It was lovely to see you Blade, but I think I’ll be leaving now!” Lilith said, laughing as her shape began to shrink in upon itself and darken.
“No! Stop her! Burn the witch!” Vinchenze howled, stepping aside as one of the brethren hunched forward, raising the same flamethrower that had dispatched the Prince.
Lilith screamed as fire enveloped her. She fell to the floor, rolling to try and extinguish the flames that devoured her changeling flesh. As she thrashed about, more brethren ran forward, carrying silver plated chains. Lilith wailed as she was wrapped in chains and hoisted aloft.
Blade felt sick as Vinchenze swung a triumphant smile his way. “Now, Mr. Brooks, now we will bring Dracula to heel!”
“Yeah.” Blade looked at Lilith, her face burnt and slack with agony. No one deserved that. Not even Dracula’s daughter. He looked back at Vinchenze. “Yeah.”
Northern France
“Darkholders,” Nash said, dropping her basket of vegetables.
“Oh God!” Victoria Montesi said again, turning to run, but too late. Men in black, wearing hoods and grotesque masks seemed to bleed out between the abandoned stalls. Some carried swords, others knives and clubs and pistols. One pointed at her.
“Montesi,” he said.
“No. No! I’m done,” Victoria said, backing into Nash, who faced the dog-thing and bared her own impressive teeth. “We’re done! Chthon is gone!”
“Not gone. Delayed,” the Darkholder said. He held out his hand. “Come.”
“No.” Victoria’s hand clutched at the pistol stuck in her waistband and hidden beneath the tail of her shirt. She yanked it free and took aim. “No more.”
“Victoria--” Nash said.
“No!” Victoria screamed.
“Duck!” Nash shoved her down even as the dog-thing leapt, crashing into the demoness and carrying her backwards. They rolled over Victoria, and her pistol was knocked from her hand. She scrambled to her feet and looked around wildly.
“Victoria! Run!” Nash said, even as she fought with the abomination that strained towards her jugular. Victoria hesitated. Then, knowing it was the only option, she ran.
She sprinted through the market, weaving around stalls. Behind her, the Darkholders came silently. She could outrun them, but where could she go?
She skidded into a stall and jumped over the counter, dropped behind it. If she could double-back, get to Nash—
A sword blade chopped through the counter and the stall was rocked to the side. Victoria scrambled free as it toppled over. She looked up, teeth bared in defiance. She crouched, ready to employ her rusty self-defense skills. “I’m not going with you. I’m done with you, with your god. With the Darkhold. Done!”
The Darkholders surrounded her, saying nothing. The one who’d spoken earlier jerked his sword free of the wreckage and said, “You don’t have that luxury.”
“I beg to differ,” someone hissed. Victoria looked up. Crouched above, on the edge of a building, beneath the overhang of the roof, Michael Morbius looked down at her. “Hello again, Ms. Montesi. And you as well, boy,” Morbius said, looking at the Darkholder with the sword. “I know your scent. Budapest. You shot me. Allow me to return the favor in my own inimitable fashion!”
Morbius dove from his position, claws out, fanged mouth gaping!
To Be Continued...
Next Issue: In Midnight Sons #7: Morbius and Stroud battle the servants of the Darkhold! The Monster of Frankenstein fights alone! And Dracula must confront the fury of the Werewolf By Night!Be here in thirty for ‘HAUNT OF HORROR’!
Previous Issue | Next Issue
Blade swept his sword out, hacking through the neck of one of the Prince of Venice’s handpicked guard. Blood fountained as the blade caught on the rings of rusty chainmail. Cursing, Blade released the weapon and spun, firing his pistol. Blessed bullets punctured the antique breastplate of a second vampire, knocking it backwards. Blade stepped back, gun raised, reaching for a second holstered under his arm. His back connected with another person’s. He glanced over his shoulder, teeth bared.
“You,” he said.
Lilith, the daughter of Dracula, met his snarl with one of her own. Her clawed fingers were curled, ready to rend and tear. “Blade! I should have known that you’d find your way here sooner or later. Still nosing about my father’s cancerous trail?”
“Could ask you the same thing, lady,” Blade replied. Back to back, they spun slowly as the Prince’s guard closed in on them from all sides. “What the hell is going on here?”
“Blade, meet Emilio Mazarin. Mazarin, meet the Daywalker,” Lilith said, laughing.
A tall figure in crimson robes stepped out of the crowd of vampires, his face hidden behind a golden mask. “Daywalker, is it?” Bandaged hands intertwined, long forefingers tapping an engraved chin. “Blade. I’ve heard of you.”
“Can’t say the same about you,” Blade said, aiming his weapons at a point somewhere between the Prince’s eyes.
The Prince laughed softly. “And why would you? I have taken great pains to hide my existence from your wretched crusade, Mr. Brooks.” He spread his long arms. “I have no interest in pitting my meager resources against the feared Daywalker.”
“Smart man,” Blade said.
The Prince inclined his head. “Thus, I offer you your life. Leave and we’ll trouble each other no more.”
Blade’s smile was like something etched in stone. “Isn’t that just dandy? How generous.”
“Isn’t he just?” Lilith said. “Thinking of taking him up on it?”
“Nope.” Blade’s pistols spat fire and the Prince shrieked in rage as bullets caromed off of his mask, knocking him backwards into his men. The vampires surged forward in response, an all-consuming tide of claws and teeth.
Somewhere in Northern France. Approaching a village with no name
The car had been waiting for them at the airfield. Michael Morbius, sometimes known as the Living Vampire, hunched in the back beneath a blanket, waiting for the sun to set. Simon Stroud, former CIA agent and current operative for the Black Chamber, sat in the driver’s seat, forcing the car down the rutted road.
“This woman--” Stroud began.
“Montesi. Victoria Montesi,” Morbius interjected. “Do her the courtesy of using her name. Especially in light of the circumstances…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Stroud said. “Is she going to be trouble?”
“Define trouble.”
“Is she a freak like you?” Stroud said.
“Like me?” Morbius sounded amused. “No. Nothing like me. I am merely vermin, Stroud. She is something else entirely.”
“You scared of her?”
“No. I pity her.” Morbius shifted, rising up, the blanket over him like a hood. “She has been a tool for most of her life, with a decided lack of knowledge and consent on her part, a tool for powerful forces, going first one way, then another, then back again. Used, abused and manipulated by men like your masters.”
“They ain’t my masters. I’m not a slave.”
“Unlike myself,” Morbius said.
“You think you deserve better?”
Morbius was silent. Stroud allowed himself a small smile and made a notch on a mental column. One for him. His smile faded. As long as he could keep the high score, he could keep from thinking this through. Keep from wondering what his employers had planned for this Montesi woman.
He remembered Budapest and the woman they’d tried to feed to the leech. Morbius hadn’t taken the bait, but Stroud put that down more to contrariness than anything else.
Still, the offer had been genuine. And that shook Stroud to his core.
His career, such as it was, had been built on the hunt for the man-the leech-he was now sharing a car with. Morbius had climbed high on the most wanted list. He was a foreign national, a murderer and a Person of Interest in any number of Incidents of Note. MH-STARGATE-IMPALER, as the file said; cryptonym puzzle palace bullshit that basically meant ‘high-profile vampire’.
Only Stroud had met real vampires over the course of that hunt, the walking corpse kind. And that wasn’t Morbius.
Memories of the hunt reeled in his brain. He swallowed, feeling the old bile building in his throat. He remembered things. Towns empty of blood. Delicate minuets danced by cannibal fiends.
Helleyes.
Stroud’s fingers clamped convulsively on the wheel. A million eyes, each of them full of the sum total of the universe’s evil, staring at him, staring through him. A world of fleshy plants and abominable insects, too hot and the stink of it…God! The stink!
Morbius was looking at him. Stroud composed himself. “What?”
“Nothing. For a moment, I thought I--” Morbius grinned. “Never mind. It was nothing.”
In the nameless village
Victoria Montesi wandered through the street market plopping exotic fruits into the basket hanging from her arm. The vendors smiled and nodded as she paid them and they spoke to her in a dialect of French that hadn’t been common for centuries.
She could barely understand it, but she was learning. Just as she had learned to ignore the strange, feline shadows that extended behind the inhabitants of the town when the sun was high.
“We’re being followed,” Nash murmured. Victoria started, surprised as the other woman suddenly appeared behind her. “Also, I found some lovely courgettes.”
“I hate egg plant,” Victoria said, looking at the demoness who had taken the name of her dead lover. “Who? The villagers?”
“No.” Nash’s delicate nostrils flared. “Something more unpleasant. More familiar.”
Victoria froze. “How familiar?”
“In the original sense,” Nash said, putting a hand on Victoria’s arm. “We need to go. They’ll be coming.”
“I thought you said we were safe here.”
“I thought we were. I thought that there was an…understanding.”
“Obviously you thought wrong,” Victoria said. “Maybe something has changed. Maybe--”
As one, the vendors hissed. It was an eerie sound, like the collective snarl of a tribe of tigers. The men and women faded back, falling out of sight as something appeared at the end of the row. A snuffling thing, that brought with it a stink like a slaughterhouse.
Nash pulled Victoria behind her, and tensed. The snuffling thing growled as it caught sight of them.
“Oh God,” Victoria said.
It was the body of skinned man covered in the ragged hide of a dog. A malformed head cocked, and poached eyes glistened and rotated in its skull. The quivering slits of its nostrils flared and then it sagged back on its haunches, arms dangling, and let loose a monstrous bay!
London
Topaz’s flat was functional, but tasteful. Dracula perched on a chair, ill at ease in the surroundings. A cup of tea sat on the table before him, untouched.
“You must be thirsty,” Topaz said.
“Not for…tea,” Dracula grunted. He gestured towards her. “When I last saw you, you were golden-haired and fair. Now, you are what?”
“When my master found me in India, I looked thus,” Topaz said, gesturing to herself. “When I met Jack, I changed.”
“And now you are back again? Intriguing.”
“Is it?” Topaz took a sip of her own tea. “Tell me.”
Dracula hesitated. As before, in their first meeting so long ago, he felt inexplicably connected to this woman, as if trusting her were the most natural thing in the world. It was stronger now, something he could only attribute to his reduced circumstances.
“I have been…stripped of my birthright.”
“Is that what you’re calling it now?”
Dracula’s fist slammed into the table. “Do not mock me!”
Topaz eyed him, serene. “Do not strike my table.”
Dracula’s lips writhed back and he made to stand. Topaz caught his wrist. “Have you lost your manners as well as your curse, voivode Dracula?”
He glared at her for a moment more, then, startlingly, smiled. He shook his head. “Ha! Yes. So I have. I apologize, madam.”
“No need.” She put her cup down. “You want my help, you said?”
“Yes. To reclaim my rightful place.”
“No.”
“What?” Dracula’s eyes widened.
Topaz tilted her head. “Why should I help you, you who have massacred entire generations? Ghosts cling to you like links in an infinite chain, Dracula. I can see them, even if you can’t. I can hear them. Why should I help you return to that?”
“I--” Dracula hesitated. His hands clenched. “I make no apologies for what I am, woman. For what I was or what I might possibly become. I am Dracula.”
“You say your name as if it holds power,” Topaz said. “But now you are powerless. And it eats at you like a disease.”
Dracula looked away. Topaz leaned forward. “After our first encounter, I read what I could find on your history. Jack’s mother had quite the esoteric library. I know you as well anyone can, I think.”
“You know nothing.”
“I know you need my help. And I know that you will agree to my price to get it.”
Beneath Venice
Blade fell back, bowled under by the sheer weight of his opponents. The stink of blood and rust mingled in his sensitive nostrils as he fought to get out from under the wave of claws and fangs.
He jabbed an elbow into the maw of one, shattering teeth, and cleared enough room to fire his pistol. A vampire shrieked and clutched at the smoldering holes in its face.
Lilith, for her part, was meeting the vampires fang-to-fang. She wrenched a lower jaw away from a face and broke the bloody bone across the skull of another leech, staggering it. Her stiffened hand pierced an ancient breastplate and tore through an unbeating heart.
With wild abandon, she danced through the warrior-dead, returning them to the grave with a horrible grace.
Blade rolled across the floor and grabbed the hilt of his sword, wrenching it from the decaying body of the vampire he’d killed earlier. He swept it up, lopping off the hands of another. The creature squealed and fell backwards.
“Blade!”
Blade spun at Lilith’s cry, his sword coming up just in time to block a blade wielded by the Prince of Venice. Mazarin stepped back, robes rustling. Blade grinned. “Got some fight in you, old lich.”
“I was at Lepanto, pup. I have more fight in me than a nation.” Mazarin darted forward, sword arrowing for Blade’s heart. The two dueled for several minutes, the basement ringing with the sound of steel on steel.
Then, as they broke apart, a solid column of flame engulfed the Prince of Venice. He wailed as his golden mask buckled and melted to the face beneath. Flinging aside his sword, the ancient vampire slapped Blade aside and rushed towards the water of the canal.
He hit the filthy water with a hiss and vanished from sight. Blade made to go after him, when a voice said.
“Mr. Brooks! Was it him?”
Blade turned as Cardinal Vinchenze and the armored and cowled brothers of the Montesi Order made their way down into the basement on rope lines. Vinchenze awkwardly unhooked himself, batting aside a brother’s attempt to help him. “Was it him? Was it the Devil’s Son?”
“No. Some other monster.” Blade gestured towards Lilith with his sword. “But I’m betting she can give us a nudge in the right direction.”
“Who--” Vinchenze looked at Lilith. His eyes widened. “You!”
“Me. And who are you?” Lilith asked, flicking blood from her fingers. “Never mind. If you think I’m going to help you--”
“Why wouldn’t you?” Blade said, cleaning his sword. “You want your daddy dead just as much the Pope, right?”
“I--” Lilith looked at the Montesi brothers. “The Pope? Has the Inquisition decided to break their truce with my father at last?”
“Truce?” Blade looked at Vinchenze. “What truce?”
“Ignore her, Mr. Brooks. She is the spawn of Dracula and, thus, a liar. They all lie, Mr. Brooks. But you are correct, she can indeed help us.” He looked at his men. “Bind her!”
“Vinchenze?” Blade raised a hand. “Wait--”
“It was lovely to see you Blade, but I think I’ll be leaving now!” Lilith said, laughing as her shape began to shrink in upon itself and darken.
“No! Stop her! Burn the witch!” Vinchenze howled, stepping aside as one of the brethren hunched forward, raising the same flamethrower that had dispatched the Prince.
Lilith screamed as fire enveloped her. She fell to the floor, rolling to try and extinguish the flames that devoured her changeling flesh. As she thrashed about, more brethren ran forward, carrying silver plated chains. Lilith wailed as she was wrapped in chains and hoisted aloft.
Blade felt sick as Vinchenze swung a triumphant smile his way. “Now, Mr. Brooks, now we will bring Dracula to heel!”
“Yeah.” Blade looked at Lilith, her face burnt and slack with agony. No one deserved that. Not even Dracula’s daughter. He looked back at Vinchenze. “Yeah.”
Northern France
“Darkholders,” Nash said, dropping her basket of vegetables.
“Oh God!” Victoria Montesi said again, turning to run, but too late. Men in black, wearing hoods and grotesque masks seemed to bleed out between the abandoned stalls. Some carried swords, others knives and clubs and pistols. One pointed at her.
“Montesi,” he said.
“No. No! I’m done,” Victoria said, backing into Nash, who faced the dog-thing and bared her own impressive teeth. “We’re done! Chthon is gone!”
“Not gone. Delayed,” the Darkholder said. He held out his hand. “Come.”
“No.” Victoria’s hand clutched at the pistol stuck in her waistband and hidden beneath the tail of her shirt. She yanked it free and took aim. “No more.”
“Victoria--” Nash said.
“No!” Victoria screamed.
“Duck!” Nash shoved her down even as the dog-thing leapt, crashing into the demoness and carrying her backwards. They rolled over Victoria, and her pistol was knocked from her hand. She scrambled to her feet and looked around wildly.
“Victoria! Run!” Nash said, even as she fought with the abomination that strained towards her jugular. Victoria hesitated. Then, knowing it was the only option, she ran.
She sprinted through the market, weaving around stalls. Behind her, the Darkholders came silently. She could outrun them, but where could she go?
She skidded into a stall and jumped over the counter, dropped behind it. If she could double-back, get to Nash—
A sword blade chopped through the counter and the stall was rocked to the side. Victoria scrambled free as it toppled over. She looked up, teeth bared in defiance. She crouched, ready to employ her rusty self-defense skills. “I’m not going with you. I’m done with you, with your god. With the Darkhold. Done!”
The Darkholders surrounded her, saying nothing. The one who’d spoken earlier jerked his sword free of the wreckage and said, “You don’t have that luxury.”
“I beg to differ,” someone hissed. Victoria looked up. Crouched above, on the edge of a building, beneath the overhang of the roof, Michael Morbius looked down at her. “Hello again, Ms. Montesi. And you as well, boy,” Morbius said, looking at the Darkholder with the sword. “I know your scent. Budapest. You shot me. Allow me to return the favor in my own inimitable fashion!”
Morbius dove from his position, claws out, fanged mouth gaping!
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To Be Continued...
Next Issue: In Midnight Sons #7: Morbius and Stroud battle the servants of the Darkhold! The Monster of Frankenstein fights alone! And Dracula must confront the fury of the Werewolf By Night!Be here in thirty for ‘HAUNT OF HORROR’!
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