Authors: Tim Marquitz
Epilogue
God had been true to His word. Karra and the
baby and I were returned to Earth, along with Vol and Rala, none of us the
worse for wear; at least not physically.
I set the aliens up with digs in Hell and
promised I’d do what I could to make their lives better than the ones they’d
left behind. It was a tall order, but with the keys to the castle, I figured I
could make it work.
As for Karra, she still couldn’t bring
herself to speak to me. She’d gone off on her own, and I’d let her. As much as
I wanted to scream, to rant and rave and fight and bawl, she walked away
without either of us saying so much as a single word. I stood stoic as the door
closed between us. There was no defense for what I’d done, no explanation that
would ever make it better. I’d killed her father and stolen everything that was
him.
It had been weeks since Karra left, and I’d
heard nothing from her, not that I’d expected to. I hadn’t even dared go
topside, fearful of what might happen, of how DRAC and the Department of Supernatural
Investigation might react to the
new
me. There’d been enough misery of late, and I didn’t want to share it as much
as it begged for company. Alone was best, I’d decided.
I had no doubt the bridges were still
burning, and I wanted no part of the repairs until I was certain they’d cooled
some; if they ever did. Things were different now, and there was no hope of
them ever returning to how they used to be. There was only forward from here. Perhaps
that was how Lucifer felt when God cast him out of Heaven. Make the most of
what you’re given because it can all be taken away at any moment.
It was a bitter lesson to learn.
I strolled through the corridors of my
father’s
gift
to me, as I had a
thousand times since I’d returned to Hell, and let my thoughts circle like a
murder of crows inside my head. They would peck me to death one day, of that I
was certain, but if that was my destiny, so be it. I couldn’t bring myself to
care.
I walked on, just to have something to do
besides sulk, when a muffled warbling drew my attention. The sound was
distorted by the emptiness of Lucifer’s chambers, the curving corridors and
sprawling depths, so I chased after it, the strangeness of it comforting for
some odd reason. By the time I reached the room from which the sound
originated, the slightest flicker of a smile had fallen warm upon my lips.
The vicious bark of Dark Angel’s “The
Promise of Agony” met me at the door. I stepped inside at the chorus and joined
in.
Chatterbox crooned a welcome, and if only
for a moment, I’d found a sliver of peace.
Read on for a bonus short story in the
Demon
Squad Universe
The
End Begins
(Katon)
The vampire smiled in the darkness.
He knew I hunted him. Unlike his brethren
who died in their pseudo-sleep, entombed within their earthen haunts as they
awaited the demise of the sun, this vampire was ready. His makeshift crypt was
empty when I pried it open.
I’d killed all the others as I’d been
ordered by Command, but this last one had other plans.
A chill settled over me as I felt his eyes
at my back. He was toying with me. His quiet laugh echoed in the ruined halls
of the abandoned warehouse, distorting his location. I tightened my grip on my
pistol and turned slowly, scanning the room. The soft flutter of his movement
sounded near the back of the building, but I knew better than to follow. He was
luring me deeper in. Vampires didn’t make noise unless they meant to.
Instead, I headed the opposite direction,
toward the exit with a casual gait, as though I hadn’t heard. The night had yet
to come, and the sun still clung to the sky. I had time. If he wanted me,
wanted revenge for the others, he’d have to catch up before I hit the door. I
let my boots slap the stone floor as I walked. The flutter of his pursuing
movement pattered nearby, along the rafters.
“
Come
now, hunter, do you think me so easily drawn out
?” he asked from the
shadows. He spoke in his native German, not bothering to care whether I
understood him or not.
This one was arrogant.
“I had hoped, to be honest,” I answered in
his language, one of the many I learned in my training at MI6. “Your Führer
sent a dozen of you creatures here to
Tobruk
, and
you’re the last of them.” I let out a low chuckle, certain he would hear it as
clearly as though I stood beside him. “They certainly didn’t put up a fight, so
why would I expect you to?”
He met my comments with his own laugh. It
seemed to ooze along the ceiling. “Because I’m better than them.” A gentle
breeze stirred in the darkness. He slipped into passable English, perhaps
thinking it easier for me to understand. “The only reason you still live is
because your boldness amuses me.”
I hadn’t stopped walking. Just a few feet
from the brightness outside the warehouse, I rattled his cage to get his cold
blood flowing. It was now or never. “Too bad you can’t hurt the war effort on
your own, but I’m sure Hitler can recruit more of your kind. He’s sure to have
plenty of German corpses lying around Berlin in the wake of our bombing. Who
knows, they might even be family.”
A serpentine hiss cut the air between us. I
spun to meet the sound, a smile on my face as I raised my gun. He was on me
before I’d even lifted the barrel. My wrist snapped in his grip. I heard the
pop
before I felt it, and then sharp
agony wiped my smile away. He was so much faster than I imagined. Spots of
light dotted my vision, and I heard my gun clatter away despite the volume of
my screams.
The next thing I knew, I was in the air. My
chin bounced off my chest as he swung me over his head and slammed me to the
ground. The impact forced the breath from my lungs and whiplashed my head into
the floor. I felt teeth shatter, broken remnants spearing my tongue. Blackness
crowded out the glimmering lights, narrowing my field of vision. I saw nothing
but his grinning face as he hovered over me.
I gasped anemic as I truly saw the vampire
for the first time, thinking myself delusional.
“What’s the matter, assassin? Am I not what
you expected?”
He wasn’t. Not even close.
Ever since Hitler deployed vampires to the
front lines to soften the populace and bleed the resistance dry ahead of
Rommel’s advance, MI6 had been training soldiers to take them out. So far, we’d
been pretty successful. Bound to the darkness, vampires were easy targets
during the day. Once we tracked them down, it was only a matter of putting a
blessed-silver bullet in their skull and lighting the body up like a torch. I’d
killed over fifty that way.
But this one was different, in more ways
than one.
He was black.
His brown eyes stared down at me, but he
stayed where he was. Silver SS tags were pinned to the lapel of his long
jacket, and he wore the traditional red armband of the Nazi party members, bold
and out in the open. The swastika glared in the white circle of it. He was
giving me time to work it out, but I just couldn’t wrap my head around the
idea.
His lips peeled back to display a brilliant
white grin, sharpened fangs protruding at the eyeteeth. He reached down and
wrapped his frigid hand around my throat. His grip was like cabled steel. “Come
now, it can’t be that difficult to imagine, can it?”
He yanked me to my feet and hurled me into
the wall without waiting for an answer. A great, groaning bell rang out as hit.
I must have blacked out for an instant as I awoke to the wall trembling at my
back. The tang of blood filled my mouth and ran thick down my throat. It choked
me as neatly as the vampire had. My thoughts flailed inside my skull. The
vampire stood before me, his smile no less broad than it had been the moment
before. I reached for the knife sheathed at my back.
“What choice did I have?” He dropped to his
knees before me, ignoring my obvious fumbling. “It was
this
or stand before a firing squad or perhaps something even
worse, a cruel end by fire in one of the
konzentrationslager
. Hitler promised he would spare my
family—my wife and boys—were I to submit, were I to become the first of his
ebenholz
speere
.”
Ebony
spears
. The words circled inside my head. I couldn’t help but
feel a pang of pity for his position and the man he’d once been. We’d heard
rumors of the prison camps the Nazis had built, the torture and genetic
experimentation that went on there, but we’d little knowledge of specifics. All
of MI6’s intelligence was second hand, word filtering to us through a handful
of choked whispers, but the arrival of the German vampires gave credence to the
tales.
And here before me was further proof of the
depths the Nazis would go to win the war. They were recruiting blacks, men
destined to die at the hands of Hitler’s legions, and mutating them to fight a
cause that only furthered their enslavement, even after death. It sickened me
to think about it, but I couldn’t let it get in the way of what I needed to do.
I yanked my blade free and went to drive it
into his eye. He caught my wrist without even looking. The bones ground
together in his grip, and he shook his head, disappointment sapping the
strength from his smile. He twisted my arm up and around with a casual motion.
My wrist gave way with a muffled
creak
,
the snap of my elbow reverberating through my body. I screamed and felt my
throat give away with its vehemence.
He followed through and tugged my arm over
my head, pulling my body in its wake. I landed once more on my back, my limp
and shattered arm dropping lifeless at my side to join its broken and useless companion.
Spasms wracked my chest and crimson spewed from my mouth as I rolled to my
side. The world swam before my eyes, and I fought the encroaching
unconsciousness. If I went out, I was dead.
“You were right to try to kill me, for I
intend you no less,” he told me, confirming my thoughts. He circled as I fought
to get to my knees. I could feel the weight of his undead stare. “This is a
freedom I would never know, in your land or any other.” The vampire roared into
the darkness, his fists pounding against the necrotic flesh of his chest. “Tell
me, assassin, would your people offer safe passage to me and my family, an
escape from the war and the color of my skin? Would the Americans?”
Despite the wish of hopeful thoughts, I
didn’t think they would. I got to my feet as he moved behind me, my legs
trembling as they challenged gravity. The glimmer of daylight through the
warehouse door beckoned, but the vampire was too close. I’d never make it; not
without help. I heard the distant thunder of war, death once more raining down
over
Tobruk
as Rommel announced his presence.
I turned to face the vampire, meeting his
dark eyes. “It’s a shame your sons won’t live to see what you’ve become. Hitler
might well have promised their safety, but the allies have made no such deal.”
Eyeteeth flickered in the dim light of the
warehouse as the vampire loosed his rage. Twin palm prints burned at my chest
as he shoved me. My ribs shattered. Their sharp points speared my lungs and
perhaps my heart, but I couldn’t tell in the wash of searing agony.
The wind whipped past as I flew into the
warehouse wall. I heard the impact of flesh against wood and then a splintered
screech as the timbers gave way. Brightness filled my eyes. I tumbled through
the air only to have the light stolen away when I struck the ground. Somewhere
in the chaotic swirl of my mind, I felt the earth cradling me with her
unforgiving solidness. The taste of dust joined that of blood, each labored
breath bubbling with the end of my life. My gambit had succeeded and failed,
all at the same time.
I twitched against the hard ground, unable
to rise, but I could feel the muted rays of the sun returning to shower me in
their light. I’d made it outside, but at what cost? My chest rumbled with every
cloying breath, and I could feel the creep of cold, which tingled down my
limbs.
He’d killed me.
The thought was a shroud that buried my
resistance. I quit my struggle and gave in, letting my head rest against the
dirt. The bombs drew ever closer, the world rumbling beneath me as they fell to
ground. The Germans were coming, and I’d failed. I cracked my eyelids to watch
the last moments of the fading sun, only to have the light suddenly blocked.
The vampire stood before me. His smile had
returned.
In his cold shadow, I wondered if I were not
already dead. “I-I—“The fragments of my question ran wet down my chin.
“It’s
wunderbar
, is it not?” Once more
he hovered over me. The sun struggled to sneak past his darkness, sparing only
a sliver of its brilliance to warm me. “Hitler promised me Herr Mengele could
make me a god.” He stood to his full height and obscured the light, his arms
stretched to his sides as he stared off at the sky. Thunder roared in the
distance. His voice rang out, matching its vehemence. “I am the true
herrenvolk
, not
these pale skinned sacks of meat who lord their blue eyes over my family. When
this war is done, they will know my wrath.” A sinuous chuckle slipped loose as
he dropped his gaze to mine. “But now, it is you who must die.”
I tried to rise, to fight back, but my
strength had gone. My resistance was little more than a gurgled complaint as
the vampire reached for my throat. I closed my eyes and cast a prayer to the
heavens.
“Leave him alone.”
Spoken in Arabic, the words were so
fragile, so delicate, that I doubted I’d even heard them. If I hadn’t still
suffered the pain of my wounds, I would have believed them imagined, a figment
of my dying mind. But the vampire had heard them, too. He straightened and glanced
over his shoulder. My gaze followed on the tail of his.
Near the shattered warehouse wall stood a
boy. He was no more than eight years-old. Darker of skin than even the vampire,
he almost faded into the shadows of the building.
“Go away, child,” the vampire said,
reverting to German, though I doubted the boy understood.
Little more than an emaciated skeleton, he
stood his ground. Shirtless, I could count his ribs, his chest puffed out
almost unnaturally with his challenge. His dark eyes held the vampire’s gaze
without fear—or more likely with ignorance. He couldn’t have known what the man
standing over me was, but to the boy, it didn’t seem to matter.
“Please,
mein
kind
, go…leave us.” The vampire returned to broken English, his
voice almost pleading.
The boy continued to ignore him whether he
understood or not. In his hand he held a slim branch, its knots and skin
scraped away to smooth its length. He raised it up and pointed it at the
vampire. The boy said nothing, but even as broken as I was, I could sense the
threat in his posture.
“No, child, go…please,” I begged. Moments
from death, I didn’t want his blood on my hands.
The vampire grunted and turned toward the
boy, a sneer peeling his lips back. He took a threatening step forward, showing
his eyeteeth. He’d had enough. “Last chance to flee,” he warned.
The boy extended his stick. His eyes
narrowed as a glimmer of red appeared at the point of the branch. The vampire
froze at the sight of it. I stared at the dot, blinking to see if it went away,
a figment of my damaged mind, but the flicker seemed to grow larger by the
moment. The subtle tang of burnt wood wafted over as the child advanced on the
vampire. The boy grinned, his face taking on a maniacal expression as he
wielded the stick like a gun.
Then it went off.
A brilliant flash of ruby stole my sight. I
felt a sudden loss of pressure, my ruined lungs emptied of breath, and then the
air was back. It hit me like cannon fire. I was yanked off the ground and
tossed about. My body was peppered with debris, and what bones had still been
whole, crackled and broke apart beneath the hurricane force. A rotten sickness
welled inside, the world spinning into a blur. I tasted the rubbery foulness of
dead meat and smelled the putrid stench of old death. Then the winds were gone.