Limbo's Child (23 page)

Wallach was up in a fraction of a second, and tossed half of the divan at Hokharty. Hokharty batted it away mid-flight and sent it crashing to the side where it crushed Sky’s beanbag and sent the five kitten sisters scattering.

“Whoa,” Schuyler muttered. Miles guessed he was glad he wasn’t sitting there anymore. Wallach didn’t wait for Hokharty to cross the hall but jumped him again. Hokharty jumped too and the pair met in mid air. Miles quickly moved to the side, so he could observe safely from a distance but still keep his eye on Wallach. He was certain it was helping Hokharty, even though he wasn’t certain how.

The two were leaping around the room now, faster and more violently than Miles had ever seen two vampires ever move – not even Ulami and Forzgrim moved that fast. Wallach was throwing kicks and hits with expertise, but Hokharty was deflecting each blow deftly. Finally, determined his blows were useless, Wallach grappled with Hokharty bending his arm behind his back, trying to rend it clean off. Hokharty was bent face forward in a crouching position for a moment, but redirected and pulled Wallach’s own arm around his neck choking him. Wallach responded by jumping straight up and slamming both of them into the ceiling shattering a beautiful plaster roundel in the process. Hokharty wasn’t fazed and responded by slamming Wallach to the floor, hard. Wallach squirmed away and attacked again with an incredible kick, but Hokharty caught his foot and spun him back to the floor once more. The whole room shook with the impact.

Hokharty was redirecting and neutralizing every one of Wallach’s attacks, much as he had Schuyler’s back in the alley. He was working harder, but Miles could tell Hokharty wasn’t much worried. In fact, aside from Wallach’s opening moves, it wasn’t turning into much of a fight. Miles caught Sky out of the corner of his eye. He was dancing anxiously on the balls of his feet. Miles could tell that he was having an internal debate about what to do. He was seeing an opportunity. Wallach needed help and this just might be his chance to forever ingratiate himself to his master. He took a half step forward, but Miles reached out his arm to stop him.

Schuyler stopped but looked affronted. “Dude! That’s our master getting his butt handed to him out there!”

“I know!” Miles said, “But he may not be our master much longer.”

Schuyler stopped to think this over and Miles took his gaze off the battle for a second to see the genuine doubt on Sky’s face. It wasn’t often Miles got to feel like he was ahead of Schuyler.

In the split second Miles looked away, something monstrous happened. Wallach was shrouded in a cloud of smoke that was billowing all around him. When it cleared, Wallach’s form had been replaced by a monstrous, shaggy, black dog with tiny, blazing-red eyes, a high arched back like a hyena and mouth more like a crocodile’s than a canine’s.

“Holy crap!!”

“Sweet Brigid!!” Both Schuyler and Miles backed all the way up to the doors opposite the hall. Several of the vampires that had lasted this long took the opportunity to vacate the premises. Graber dragged a nearly catatonic Tim from his fetal position on the floor to a more protected corner. The monster unhinged its jaws so wide it looked more like a bear trap with legs than a dog. Hokharty tried to dodge, but the mouth was just too big to miss. It clamped shut on his mid section with a horrific sound like a thousand meat cleavers dropping on to a single butcher block at once.

“Whoa!!” Sky had lost all eloquence, and Miles couldn’t do much better. What was left of most of the furniture was destroyed by the rampaging monster as it thrashed the limp body of Hokharty around the room like a rag doll. It threw him into the air and caught him again in its giant jaws with a thunderous crack. He chomped down hard on the supposed Father of All Vampires with so much force and so many times that it was almost unthinkable that Hokharty could have remained in one piece let alone survived.

“How do you like your new best buddy’s chances now?!” Schuyler screamed. Miles had to admit it didn’t look good. The animal was ravaging the body that must be lifeless, but as it shook him violently back and forth, Miles could see Hokharty’s face. It was still alive and utterly calm. Now it was Hokharty’s turn. His body began to writhe into a red smoke that grew into a massive snake. The snake grew so big, the enormous jaws of the dog monster could hardly close on its girth, and it pried open the monster’s jaws as it grew. The snake slithered its coils out of the monster’s mouth and wrapped them around the dog’s huge, hulking, shaggy body. Each time the dog struggled, the coils of the snake used the movement to tighten the trap. Soon the dog was down, completely cocooned in the coils of a massive red snake that was slowly constricting ever tighter. Finally it let out a yelp like a whipped puppy and began turning back into thick, black smoke. As the smoke cleared slowly, the form of the dog was replaced by the form of Wallach’s gasping body.

The transformation continued, and the coils of the snake ratcheted down even further, until it held Wallach’s body motionless. Schuyler let out a low whistle. All that could be seen of Wallach’s face was his frantic eyes. Just when it looked as if the snake would crush the body down to oblivion, it released him, quickly turned back into the red smoke and then reformed into the standing Hokharty, who looked perfectly fine for having been used as a chew toy by a monster dog not minutes ago.

Wallach lay panting on the floor. He glanced at Miles and shot him a look of venom. Miles felt a stinging pain between his eyes, but he somehow pushed it back and Wallach winced and looked away.

“How about now, Wallach,” Hokharty spoke, “Are you convinced of my identity yet?”

Schuyler was shaking his head in admiration. He leaned over to Miles and spoke in a delighted hoarse whisper, “
He was toying with him the whole time!
”

“Yeah, but why bother? Why go to all the trouble?” Miles asked genuinely curious.

“Effect, buddy!
Effect!!
Had he just dispensed with him, the other vampires would have just thought it was a one-off, a fluke, but by doing it this way, they got to see Hokharty beat Wallach at his worst. It’s genius!”

Miles sighed. Schuyler may have gotten this nuance quicker than he did, but then Miles didn’t nearly jump in on the wrong side either.

Wallach’s eyes were darting around the room in a panic. The remaining vampires, about half had already fled, were slowly gathering over to Miles and Schuyler’s side of the room. They had made their decision. Only Ulami and Forzgrim remained on his side. Wallach shot a glance their way with a desperate look that said, “HELP ME!!”

Hokharty raised a hand and began to say, “Don’t,” but it didn’t matter. Bitterly loyal to the last, they obeyed and lunged at Hokharty instantly, however, when they got there Hokharty was gone. He was replaced by a swarm of golden insects. The cloud of insects gathered densely around them, lifting them into the air as they thrashed and swatted at them impotently. In the dark, glittering cloud, Miles lost sight of them, then as the cloud dissipated, large chunks of the two vampires fell to the floor.

“OH, MY GOSH!!” Tim made a sound from behind Graber like he was trying to keep from retching and even several of the vampires cringed. The cloud of insects gathered into Hokharty’s familiar shape in the middle of the room. He looked calm and somewhat despondent as if he was saddened it had come to this.

Wallach blinked in disbelief, and then he looked frantically for an exit. He was hardly up to his feet when Hokharty spoke, “Enough of this.” He turned to Graber and said a word Miles didn’t recognize.

“Angriffein.”

Graber moved surprisingly quickly across the hall. Wallach rushed forward to the dais, rummaged around in the rubble and pulled out a saber. Just as Graber was reaching for him, he swung and caught Graber across the face just above the nose.

The top of Graber’s head was rolling around on the ground like a dropped bowl full of lumpy gray oatmeal with a couple of large, white hardboiled eggs thrown in. Those were Graber’s eyes. Graber acted like it was a mere annoyance and scratched the exposed brains and flat stump of his partially decapitated head like a man absent-mindedly scratching his scalp. Tim began throwing up for real now, and the five white kitten girls gathered around Schuyler’s middle and clutched onto him like frightened children. Miles gaped himself. He had seen a lot of vampires recover from some pretty horrific wounds, but never, EVER had he seen a vampire that could get by without the top of his head.

Wallach dropped the sword in horror as Graber’s massive hand closed on his face like a vice, stifling the scream that never made it out Wallach’s throat. He held him up by his head, his feet dangling, arms flailing powerlessly. He turned his eyeless face to Hokharty for the command.

“You came to this land to die Wallach. Now I am going to grant your wish.” Hokharty made a slight flitting move with his eyes and Graber turned.

Despite now being blind, Graber somehow dragged Wallach across the dais to the boarded-up double doors on the opposite side of the hall. With a single kick he broke the doors open letting in the morning light. The vampires cringed and huddled together on the opposite side as far as they could. The sun was up. It was already past dawn. A single patch of growing golden light was cast under the trees on the lawn. Graber walked out of the doors dragging the writhing body of Wallach the whole way directly to the patch of light. When he got there, he didn’t hesitate at all, but walked straight into it. Wallach kicked furiously as his body began to fester and burn. Thick smoke began to rise from his hissing body. Graber wasn’t affected in the slightest but stood inertly like a large bull sunning himself in a pasture. It was the first time Miles realized Graber was no vampire, but something far scarier. The whole assembly watched for the better part of twenty minutes as Wallach flailed in agony, held silently in Graber’s immovable grip. Finally, after several more tortuous minutes, the twisting, smoldering body of Wallach began to stop wriggling and burst into bright orange flames. Graber dropped the body and turned his back on it like it was pile of burning trash. It moved only a little after that and soon stopped moving altogether. And that was the end of Wallach.

As he watched the burning corpse of the most frightening vampire he had ever known, his endless tormentor, Miles felt his chest enlarge and something like a breeze flowed over him. It was like taking a long, deep breath after having been under water for a very long time. Things were different now.

Graber came back inside and brushed Wallach’s ashes off his hands like a workman brushing off the sawdust from a day’s honest work. Hokharty had walked up to the open doors to watch the spectacle but didn’t venture outside. Still, he obviously had a much higher tolerance for sunlight than your average vampire. He was rolling the fingers of his one hand near his face in his typical thoughtful gesture. As Graber returned he said to him simply, “Fetch her.” Graber walked purposely through the hall to the other double doors and the small crowd of vampires parted around him. He put his hand on Tim’s shoulder and started dragging him after him.

“Great! Where are we going now?” Tim whined. As they turned and left, Tim wiped some vomit from the corner of his mouth and said, “How on earth are we going to cover up your head after THAT!” gesturing to Graber’s truncated head. “It’s not like you can go around wearing a motorcycle helmet the whole time!” The two left but didn’t close the doors behind them.

Hokharty shut the doors to the garden and the whole room breathed a sigh of relief to be spared from the sunlight and the view of Wallach’s ashes. Hokharty went first to the girl that had provided Wallach with his last meal and brushed the rubble off her. Then he carefully closed her eyes, laid her out flat and crossed her arms across her chest. He found Wallach’s cavalry coat and covered her face and top with it. She was dead. It was oddly tender. Wallach never treated the bodies of his victims with such deference. No vampire did. Hokharty walked around the room and found one of the least damaged chaise lounges, dusted it off, brought it back and centered it on the dais carefully. Miles half expected him to sit on it like a king on his new throne, but he didn’t. He just left it and walked casually to the middle of the room.

“We have much work to do –
all
of us. First, some rules.” The entire vampire company snapped to attention. The room went dead silent.

“I would be greatly displeased if any harm were come to the mortal, Tim.”

There was nodded consent all around. “That should encourage Tim,” thought Miles. He would make sure to tell him when he got back.

“No one is to attack, harm or kill any mortal without my express permission.”

No objections to that either.

“Finally, these two,” and he pointed to Miles and Schuyler, “are my personal lieutenants. You are to obey their word as you would my own.”

“WHAT?” thought Miles, “Was he serious?”

The five white kitten girls who were already sheltering around Schuyler’s feet began mewling, purring and nuzzling Schuyler like beloved pets. Schuyler was enjoying it a bit too much.

“Oh, sure,” thought Miles, “
NOW
they like him. Bloody Suck-ups. Phonies.” But he couldn’t help but notice that no one was nuzzling up against him and felt a little hurt.

“Miles, Schuyler…a word.” Hokharty gestured for both to follow him and then turned to walk back to the dais.

“What?” Schuyler shook himself from his daydreaming and idiotic grinning. “Oh, yes…of course…
Master,”
he added with a note of extra reverence for good measure and then to his newfound groupies, “Sorry ladies, duty calls.” Schuyler pulled himself from the girls with some difficulty while they clung to him and whimpered like jealous girlfriends.