Nevermore, the Complete Series (53 page)

Stuck in somewhat of a daze, I scarcely noticed him move away and began entering the crevice in the rocks, scarcely wider than his shoulder width. When I did realize it, I began to panic a little. Salem had completely vanished from sight.

“You next,” one of the robed men said and pushed me forward. I was not comfortable with his forcefulness, but I was more desperate to make sure Salem was safe than to complain, besides…if it came down to it we could easily defend ourselves against these mortal men.

The entrance was barely large enough for me to slide through. How the first man slid through so easily eluded me. As I wiggled I could feel the scratchy edges of stones threatening to cut my torso and legs. Before I knew it however, I was out. With what little light from the hole shone through to this side, I could vaguely make out Salem and the first man who had entered. Without saying a word I stood and hugged Salem tightly. He was fine.

The cavern was far taller than I could have imagined. Rocks jutted here and there out of the high walls ahead of me and I could barely make out what seemed to be an old wooden ladder spiked into the stone, zigzagging its way to a faint slit of light high above us.

“Where does that go I wonder,” I whispered to Salem in a voice I thought was scarcely audible.

“Lighthouse,” John said unexpectedly.

Before I could inquire any further, Hannah and the other two men were inside the cavern, standing beside us and all thought of the old lighthouse and the precarious ladder faded. Before I had time to even ask where we went next, the men started walking in single file off into the blackness. Not wanting to get lost in what could potentially be a treacherous cave, the three of us filed in closely behind. It was beyond difficult to see. Before long we could only follow the sound of their footsteps, mere feet in front of us.

Without missing a beat in his methodical march, the leading robed figure grabbed something from the wall and continued onward. Moments later a blazing light appeared from his hands and I realized the object he had gotten was an old torch.

After what had seemed like a long time, I thought we had to be nearing our destination, but I was mistaken. We walked onward, through twists and turning passages, always leading downward. After a series of tunnels barely large enough to walk through without ducking, we came into a larger room. I hadn’t realized just how high the ceiling went here until a drop of moisture from a stalactite dripped down through the abyss and hit me on the shoulder, causing me to look up through the dimly lit air. As I looked back down to Salem’s back I could hear the distinct sound of distant roaring, but it couldn’t be that of an animal – it was a constant, unending growl.

Before I had time to take everything in, we were out of the room and heading deeper still. The light of the flame bounced around and I spotted the source of the sound that had been steadily growing as we had marched deeper. The giant waterfall stood before us, an ever flowing sentinel of this place which had undoubtedly ever been glanced by a few lucky souls. As we walked onward I could feel cool, moist air gently gusting passed us. When I looked behind me to ensure Hannah had not fallen behind, I was relieved to see her golden hair bouncing in the wind.

As we came closer to the falling water I saw something unexpected take shape - a stone stairway built directly into the cave wall, leading up and behind the falls. The men
began to ascend. The limestone stairs were wet and slick; had it not been for the mats of moss carpeting them we would have undoubtedly fallen into the water or the rock floor below. Despite the fright of this dangerous place it was truly beautiful. After following the steps as they circled behind the deep cut in the rock the waterfall had made, we finally reached the top.

The beauty of what lay before us dwarfed that of the waterfall I had been admiring only moments before. A steady stream of crystal clear water, fierce and calm at the same time, fed the falls below. From the water’s edge was a series of stepping stones that led across to the center of the giant round circle of the pure liquid. There, centered with the waterfall stood some sort of large altar atop an island of smooth black rocks. It seemed to be one thick slab of white stone, contrasted sharply with the black at its base. Why there was an altar here, I did not know, and I wasn’t about to ask – perhaps these men had worshipped the power of the water here over the years.

Without realizing it, I started to follow the men across the stepping-stones, not being as cautious as I should have as I marveled at this place. As I stared into the water I noticed that there was something more to it than its crystalline clarity – it seemed to sparkle as if an endless amount of clear diamonds had been laid within. It was even more amazing than Ezra had described in his journal. Despite the majesty before us however, something about it made the hairs on my neck stand on end. This was definitely the fountain, it could be nothing else. If it were to be revealed as a hoax now I would applaud the elaborate measures and detail to what must have taken forever to build.

My attention was quickly averted from the resplendent water and my thoughts as I stepped from the last step and onto the smooth black island. The white alter now dominated my vision. There was something terrible in its splendor. Something that made me
want to turn and leave this place forever. The closer I got to it the more I noticed that it was not solid white. Dull to the point of barely being visible, old red stains spread across the surface like veins.

While studying the stone and the before unseen tiny mote of dark water hugging against its base, I hardly noticed four new hooded figured approaching across the stepping-stones. When they arrived, silent as the water before the falls, each sat around the altar. The man holding the torch placed the flickering light in a sconce attached to the head of the white stone before joining the others seated on the smooth blackness.

“What is this?” I asked as the unmistakable scent of blood wafted off of the stone.

“This is the Sacrificial Stone,” the men replied.

Salem, Hannah, and I exchanged glances. “What is it that you intend to sacrifice?” Salem asked as he moved to stand in front of me.

I saw a wicked, foul grin spread across the men’s faces. “Blood is required to replenish the water’s gift.” They said in unison, the last of their words reverberating off the cave walls.

“You’re joking, right?” Hannah said.

The one we knew as John spoke alone this time, “We have lived for centuries because of this water. Our leader instructed us long ago to bring who we could to this stone, spill their blood, and renew the water’s powers.”

I glanced around cautiously, straining to see the rest of the cave encircling the water. Towards the back of the cave, where the water first appeared from a long horizontal crack in the rock, I could vaguely make out objects piled on either side. As my eyes adjusted to the light and with a little help of the vampire powers now within me, things began to take shape. There, beside the ever-flowing water lay mounds of discarded bones and recently deceased. These men were murderers! They didn’t intend to help us at all, they wanted to make us their victims and steal our years for their own longevity.

“You are sickening!” I shouted, “How can you willingly kill these innocent people in order to keep yourselves alive!”

“Innocent?” an unfamiliar voice said. “There are few who are innocent, child. Do you want to hear what the last man thought who we brought here and bled dry? Do you want to hear the disgusting memories he held?”

“It doesn’t matter! It is murder!” I seethed.

The voice had come from a woman dressed in a black tattered dress and a veil over her head. A mane of silvery white hair was visible beneath, but nothing more could be seen of her as she slowly crossed the waters with her bare feet silently touching each stepping-stone.

“Who are you?” I asked, vaguely noting how the circle of the robed watchers began to bow their heads low to the ground.

“Who? Would you like a name? Ah…well, which one? Over the centuries I have gone by many. Names are not important, especially for you. You will not be alive long enough to utter it.”

“I’m so sorry …” Hannah whispered remorsefully. “I should have known this was a trap. I didn’t even think to look into his mind.”

“It is not your fault, Hannah. You found the fountain one way or the other that is all that matters. Besides, it isn’t like we can’t handle them,” I added. “Our blood would be useless to them.”

“Right,” Hannah said, then turned her attention to the woman who had now reached the island. “You people have no idea who you’ve tricked this time.”

The woman cackled loudly, amplified by the caverns. “No. I know of what you all are. Do you think I am blind? I admit I have spent much of my time here in the cave, but I am no closer to being a bat than you three are,” she said as she walked behind the sacrificial stone and gathered up a blunt, bloodied knife.

“Our blood is the blood of the dead,” I explained. “There is no life you could gain from it.”

“The blood of one with eternal youth can sustain the fountain far longer than that of mere humans.” The woman grinned maliciously and started to walk toward us, twirling the knife around in her hand. She signaled toward the robed men with a wave of her empty hand and they all rose and started toward us. One after the other, they sprang us and latched their arms around ours to prevent us from breaking loose. One of them remained at the site of the shrine, watching his fellow cultists hold us.

Salem was the first to knock the men away from him, slamming their robed bodies into the rough stone floor of the cave. They groaned in agony and attempted to stand up but they were out of luck – I watched in horror as two pearly white fangs emerged from beneath Salem’s pale lips and he grasped one of the men by the throat. He lifted him up and went to bite into his flesh until I screamed and his attention was on me.

“What are you doing, Salem?!” I yelled. “You are on your way to freeing yourself from this damned curse, don’t give in now! He isn’t worth it.”

“What difference does it make how I kill him?” he asked, ignoring the sputtering sounds of the man choking from the strong hold Salem had on him.

“You’re better than that… you have gone so long without tasting blood.”

“He tasted yours,” Hannah corrected me and I glared in her direction as we both tore away from our captors.

“That’s different.”

“You’re only wasting your time and ours,” the mysterious woman said plainly as she watched.

I wrestled two men away as they attempted to grab hold of me again. They may be weak in comparison to us, but they seemed to come back faster each time. The water had given them more than extended life – it had given them strength.

Salem’s attention was back on the man whose neck was clasped between his fingers; he was clearly no longer breathing. He tossed him aside, shattering the peaceful water. As the man’s dead body hit the water it began to shrivel up into an empty, lifeless husk as if his blood and life had been drained from him.

“Salem, did you see!” I gasped.

“Yes. The water keeps them alive, but when they are dead I think it takes back what it owns.”

Hannah had two of the cultists dead as well and tossed each carelessly into the water before confronting her next opponent. I knocked the heads of the two men together and they crashed to the ground, their wounds feeding into the water, but it wasn’t enough to kill them – at least not quickly. I watched in horror and amazement as their bodies began to wither slowly starting from the gashes in their heads and moving downward. They screamed and wreathed in torment until the dryness had overcome their throats, silencing them forever.

There were now only three men left, including the one who had falsely told Hannah that his name was John. The three split up and each went to a different target. John had chosen me.

I tried to shove my apprehender away as easily as we had the ones before but he did not budge. He swung his right fist in a wide arc and I barely moved from the blow in time to not get struck. As he staggered from his own momentum I kicked him hard in
the ribs and heard a sickening crunch. To my astonishment he turned towards me as if it were only a scratch, despite the red blood dying the side of his robe. These three were far stronger than the previous ones and I had vastly underestimated them.

With some sort of fanatical zeal he came at me with a flurry of attacks, jabbing and kicking as I struggled to block each blow. Unfortunately my best efforts were not good enough as he eventually landed a punch into my left brow, instantly engulfing my eye in blood.

He leapt to my left side where I could barely see thanks to the veil of blood now covering my eye. Before I could turn and anticipate his next move he was on top of me, forcing me down onto the cold black stone. I tried to thrust my arms up and push him off but he grabbed them and forced them under his knees, pinning my upper body down and leaving his arms free. With terror I realized what he was doing. With all his strength and weight he pressed down on my head with both hands, turning my gash towards the waters. As the blood dripped I saw it glitter and disappear in the crystal waters. Struggling against hope I shouted out for Salem as I looked around for either him or Hannah.

From my viewpoint I could see Hannah, fairing barely better than myself, hopping back across some of the stepping stones as her assailant jumped and kicked at her. I saw no blood from her yet though, and as far as I knew the water only reacted to it. I prayed I was right, for her sake.

My attacker dominated the rest of my view through my remaining good eye. If Salem was okay, I couldn’t see him. As a last desperate attempt to rid the hands on my head and face I bit at his flesh, tearing large gashes with my fangs. For a moment I had hoped it would be enough but instead it seemed to strengthen his intent. He pressed harder and I could hold no more, then instantly his weight was gone from me, tumbling over my head and out of view. All I could see now was Salem, still intact other than some rips in his shirt.

For a moment I was relieved and thankful, but then came a loud roar. This time it was not a waterfall. I turned to see John emerging from the waters, his right hand shriveling into a tangle of black. He came at Salem and I both, entirely disregarding the blackness that would soon consume him creeping up his limb. I went in to counter attack when all of a sudden Salem and I were both pulled back. Turned to defend myself against what had undoubtedly been the woman in the tattered dress I was surprised to see Hannah’s face. She must have slain her opponent.

“Don’t risk it, just wait,” she said.

“What?!
Don’t risk what?”

“There,” she said, pointing at the withering arm. “He can’t fight that. Just keep your distance until it finishes him off. No need to risk ourselves.”

“And when did you become the voice of reason, little sister?” Salem smirked.

“Fight smarter not harder, I always say.”

This was easier done than said. John ran at us with speed befitting a vampire. We managed to dodge him and he slammed into the altar, the small white mask surrounding his eyes and covering his nose fell from his face. What I saw then was horrifying. Whatever ‘magic’ this water contained was definitely not meant to extend life forever.

His face was more twisted than wrinkled, dark creases and lines ran across his forehead so deep that they appeared to be carved there. The soft under the eyes was drooped and had turned a sickening color of dark, wet purple. I wondered how the woman had not succumbed to this same aging. For the briefest of moments I pitied him, but then came another attack.

Using the altar as leverage he pushed off with one foot and leapt onto Hannah. She hit the ground hard and I could see her golden locks becoming black with blood. Her eyes were closed and she went limp.

“Hannah!” Salem shouted and dashed towards the man who was now more than half withered.

The darkness had reached his right hip and leg and Salem knocked him off balance with ease. John tumbled close to the water, and unable to stand, started crawling his way towards us again. Salem gave him one final hard kick to the side of his head and he ceased to move.

As Salem went and kneeled beside his sister, the woman moved to what was left of her lead follower and spoke for the first time since the fighting had begun.

“Vilas,” the woman said as she shook her head. For a moment I noted sincere sadness as she stroked what was left of his face with her forefinger. Then what seemed like amusement.

Smiling, she lunged at me, slamming my body into the sacrificial stone. I gasped as the blade of her weapon met the skin of my abdomen. “You will pay for this with more than just death!”

I flinched as she began to drag the blade across my stomach, but something caused her to stop. I heard the knife fall to the black stone below and I was shocked to see a steel bolt sticking through the hand that had held it.

“Bull’s-eye,” a voice said and my eyes widened in horror as I tore my attention away from her hand to see the speaker.

“P-Paul?” I stuttered as Salem pulled the woman away from me and held her from behind. There was no mistaking it, standing at the top of the stairs, crossbow in hand and a large flashlight sitting on the ground beside him, stood my father.

“Sorry I showed up a little late,” Paul apologized then let another bolt shoot from his loaded crossbow. I screamed as it soared, knowing that he would finally be able to kill Salem who was defenselessly holding the woman still. The bolt flew through the air as if in slow-motion and struck its intended target.

Salem let the woman fall, the second bolt buried into her heart. Just as easily as one of her minions, the water devoured her, leaving nothing but a shriveled and blackened husk.

“How the hell did you find
us! Are you here to kill us?” Hannah asked as she turned her attention to Paul, ready to attack.

“Why would I bother savin’ you if I planned to just kill you after?”

“Maybe you just wanted to save us for yourself!”

Before giving Paul a chance to respond, I spoke up. “Then why are you here?” I asked. It was difficult to look at him, knowing that the last time I had seen him he was trying to kill Salem. “How did you know we’d be here?”

“And how did your big ass fit through that hole?” Hannah added and Paul glared at her angrily.

“I found your journal, and I guessed you might come here,” he explained. “Look, Alex…I have had a lot of time to think about what happened, and I wanted to apologize…”

“This isn’t the time for mushy scenes, we have to figure out how this fountain works,” Hannah said firmly.

“Right…” my father mumbled and slowly crossed the stones to the small island. Once safely beside the altar he offered over the leather bound book.

I took it with a poor attempt at a grateful smile and looked through it for any signs of where we should look. My wound completely healed up – another thing I was going to miss soon – and I glanced up from the book to look around the cave. The images that Ezra had drawn depicted a spring sketched on the old paper; my mouth fell agape and I nearly dropped the journal as I remembered Ezra’s mentioning of the fountain being a spring.

“The fountain isn’t a fountain at all. The spring at the end of the cave back there…past the bodies…that is the ‘fountain’!” I exclaimed excitedly.

I lifted John’s torch from the white altar’s sconce and we all made our way back across the stepping-stones. After waiting on Paul to catch up several times we finally made it to the back where the waters trickled out of the earth from the large horizontal crack. The stench of the corpses stunk fiercely this far back and without thinking I tossed the torch onto the pile which ignited far quicker than I had imagined.

I was thankful my lungs did not function as they did when I had been mortal. The black smoke was thick, and with little place to go it filled the cavern with a thick haze. The sound of Paul coughing caught my attention.

“Maybe you should go ahead and head out,” I said. He didn’t have the luxury of being unaffected by the smoke like the three of us.

“No, I’m fine,” he replied.

I was unconvinced, but he was even more stubborn than I was. My eyes were now focused solely on Salem. This was the moment he was waiting for. The waters flowing below us would be all it would take to give him the life he had always wanted. The one that had been taken from him, as he put it. Now that we were here, I had to seriously question if this was what I truly wanted – after all of the trouble we went through to get here, I felt I had no other choice.

“So this is going to make you all human again, right?” Paul asked.

I nodded slowly in response. “That’s what the journal says.”

“I only wish we would’ve know about this before…before your mother…”

“You had the book before Alex; did you even read it?” Hannah butted in.

“No,” he said with a frown. “After my dad gave it to me, I set it aside and ignored it. I just figured he’d taught me everything he knew, so what use was some diary? I never was much of a reader, anyway.”

“Grandpa never mentioned anything about the fountain?” I asked.

“Well, no one in the family would have ever needed it as far as I can tell,” Paul said and cautiously stumbled toward me. “I really am sorry, Alex. I wasn’t right in the head, you got to understand that.”

“I know, dad. I’d probably have done the same thing if it had been Salem in place of…mom.”

“Enough sob stories, guys,” Hannah muttered. “Just get on with it and drink or whatever. I’ve had about enough of this cave for a lifetime.

Salem knelt at the edge of the water and ran his hand through the liquid. His eyes stared longingly at the rushing water and I knew at once that this was what I had to do. As I was watching him, my naturally graceful stepping failed me and I slid on the slick limestone grabbing Hannah’s arm to catch myself.

“I’m sorry, Hannah,” I mumbled as I straightened myself out. “What’s wrong?”

The look on her face was a mixture of grief, horror and confusion. I knew at once what had happened – she had seen something during the momentary touch shared between us.

“What did you see?!” I demanded, knowing it had to have been something bad.

She didn’t respond, instead she grabbed Salem by the shoulder and tugged him away from the water. Another identical look played across her face. She looked troubled as she stepped away. “You can’t…you can’t become human.”

Salem’s eye narrowed. “Are you doing this just because you do not want us to be human again?”

“That isn’t why!” she cried, “I don’t usually see visions, I place visions in other people’s minds, but…just, trust me. You can NOT do this!”