Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (36 page)

    Bennet and Alonzo found themselves in Central Park where
just
over a hundred young couples that had met on the Internet were having a picnic.
Laughter and joviality were as abundant as alcoholic beverages concealed in plastic containers.
Everyone had been looking forward to the get together for weeks.
The planning and the emails had been abundant. Several couples had actually flown in from England.
The
y were on fifty different style
blankets and had just commenced to eat.
Chongan,
a small oriental man that was t
he organizer had just finished giving
his speech of how he hoped that this one
was
the first of many such encounters
.
That life was too short to simply stare at a computer screen all day.

    Alonzo and Bennet stood at the tree line and watched. The spell had already weakened
slightly
but unfortunately not enough to keep them from completing their mission.
They were having a great time until the two brothers started taking their head
s
off. Then there was screaming and running, as they repeatedly blurred and killed without thought or consideration to their pleas of mercy.
Heads hit the ground like so
many
dinner rolls being tossed.
In less than a minute twenty seven were dead
.
Only one young man attempted to fight back when he realized that it was impossible to flee their swiftness.

    Throats were cut and the blood of humans splashed onto the green lawn coloring sections of it red.  One poor fellow’s head rolled to his wife’s left knee, stopping there as if to bid her farewell. His mouth slowly opened as his muscles relaxed. His lifeblood squirted several more times out of his neck as she fainted.

    An old Korean man stood and his right arm was cut off at the elbow. He knew there was no escape and bravely accepted his fate
, staring directly into Alonzo’s eyes
as his head was cut off, his torso falling straight forward, his blood splashing onto his fiancée’s white dress. She was one of the lucky ones that managed to run and get away.

    Wei and Bao showed up. Wei attacked Alonzo and they battled furiously. Blade hit blade with tremendous force, had they not been reinforced with magic they would have broken for sure. The sheriff was surprised by Alonzo’s speed when he was caught in the left shoulder, creating a three inch wound that hurt like hell; he was happy that it healed rapidly. He kicked the vampire so
hard that it sent him tumbling on the lawn, but he immediately got up and attacked again. It was then that he noticed something strange about his eyes, dark and disturbing.

    Bennet attacked Bao, missing his face by less than a half inch
, then their swords collided as they came face to face. The sheriff thought that he looked more zombie like than human. Bennet threw his sword and it went right through Boa stomach, as he fell the evil vampire was on him trying hard to physically remove his head. Wei summersaulted, pulling the sword out of Boa, allowing the wound to heal. With no sword to defend
him
, Boa easily took Bennet’s head and then stomped his bones.

   Alonzo sliced Wei straight down his back, cutting into his spinal cord. He did a backflip, cutting the top off Alonzo’s head,
and
then taking the rest of his head off for good measure. He kicked the skull, launching it across the lawn, further than any football player could kick a football.

  
The remaining carnage was an awful sight to behold.
The tears and the cries of the humans that remained was something that they would never be able to forget.
There were not many sounds in the world that were worse than what they were hearing.
The job of a red sheriff was not usually a happy one
, but without their valour and courage life would be unbearable
.
It was time to aid the wounded as best they could.

CHAPTER FORTY
-ONE

    THE TWO GENTLEMEN IN EGYPTIAN GARB continued to cycle through their spiel.
“I told you she would make it this far!” Worset pushed Hebeny hard, almost knocking him over.

    Jenny had lost track of time, perhaps it was part of the strange atmosphere that had commenced as soon as sh
e had managed to get inside the
cottage.
Or perhaps it was because those two were driving her crazy.
She wasn’t sure if she had been gone two days or two hours. It seemed to he
r that every inch of the
place had a spell on it. It could be that her magic was fighting its magic spontaneously; she felt some sort of pull and push down there.
Jenny was starting to feel trapped no matter what room she was in; it seemed to her that it was a little like being in prison.
It would be a relief if she ever got to smell the fresh air again.

   
Jenny now had an idea of w
hat that crazy spell was about,
to distract her from concentrating o
n the problem at hand, now
to make her way out of the chamber.
It was a
simple spell in a sense but quite effective. It was
so
difficult to think
.
There was more intelligence than brawn
that had
gone into the enchantment.
The girl was learning that it didn’t take a mighty enchantment to be effective.
E
very single time that she attempted to concentrate th
eir voices would get louder. Jenny
thought that they could probably
drive a person insane if they kept at it long enough, and she was convinced that they would never stop.

    W
ere
spells
only limited to
the imaginations of the wizards? S
he supposed there were rules of magic that had to be followed. Inexperience was never an advantage it was knowledge that wore the crown. Jenny started to make her way through the cham
ber, checking the walls
but found nothing of interest.
She used her vampire speed to check high up on the walls where no human could reach.
Nothing interesting on the ceiling either. She commenced to walk over every single inch of the floor, jumping up and down on any area that appeared to be the least bit interesting.
T
he room was vexing and
they wouldn’t shut up! How many times had they said the same thing, acted out the same
scene, over and
over?
 

   
Then she noticed that every time she approached the two gentlemen they got loud
er
.
Now to the girl wizard that was interesting. Why hadn’t she noticed it before?
Why would they do that?
Wa
s that a clue?
It was not only
an
effective part of the spell bu
t maybe the telling part as well
.

    “Oh, you sneaky devils.” Jenny went right inside the holographic spell and looked down at the floor. Sure en
ough there was a small lever,
as soon as she pushed it the Egyptian gentlemen vanished.
The silence was as welcome as a visitor bearing gifts.
The
n the
sound of rock grinding on rock and displaced dust revealed stairs leading down to another level. Having nowhere else to go she headed down the stairs into yet another chamber. There was a small mou
ntain of keys like the first key she had taken
. Si
x feet tall and thousands and thousands
of keys, but at least this time there was an open door that led to another room. Jenny took two handfuls of the keys and
examined them; they
all
seemed to be identical. She threw them back into the pile and headed for the open door and looked into the next room.
Her eyes had commenced to blink oddly.

    “You have got to be kidding
! What is the point of all this?” Inside the next room were lions, all different sizes, just laying around apparently waiting for someone to
eat?
She knew instinctively that they were not ordinary lions.
Any human stepping in there would be
dead;
any w
izard best have a proper defence
.
On the back wall was a
n ornamental carving, a
lion’s face with what looked to be two holes for eyes? She would need two keys and she only had one.
A large male lion was
tenderly
licking a female. Nothing was stopping them from entering the room where she was but none seemed interested in her.

    Jenny
looked back into the room with the keys, she
blinked and the lens
es in her eyes changed. The keys
had now changed colors; they looked chocolate brown instead of gold. The thought popped into her head that she had to find a single key in that pile
. One must look different than all the others. She ran into the keys and scattered them. The flo
or was now covered with them
, and her lenses automatically changed and continued to do so, but they all appeared to be the same. She kicked and spread the keys around more. Her chang
ing eyesight was disorienting and
she almost fell over. She sat,
picked up a handful
and threw them against the wall. Now they all looked pink
.
She thought that she probably needed the patience of a century old wizard, but it would take her a hundred years to get there.

    The girl was fru
strated and tired of it all. Jenny
wondered what her mother was doing. It wasn’t bad
enough that she couldn’t find the
key, but even if she did
how was she going to deal with a pride of l
ions? She threw a key into the room with the lions
and two of them stood up. One ran to the door and look
ed
in at her but seemed incapable of entering the room
;
it stared at
her as if she was a tasty gazelle.
Showing its fangs it was definitely intimidating, a scary look especially since
she had nowhere to run
, nowhere to hide
. An ordinary lion she could probably kill
, but a vampire?
Lions looked funny with fangs but she thought that the bite wouldn’t be so amusing.
The lion continued to stare as it let go with a short roar.