I'm still alive. Or perhaps I should say that I still have the ability to type. The whole alive thing is debatable. Anyway, I've settled into the college routine, though it isn't that hard, except for the fact I have double anatomy at 8 o'clock in the morning. (Not a good thing) I still haven't gotten the net here, but I'm using the school computers to send this off, so bear with me. Here's part seven. I had it written a while ago, but hadn't gotten around to sending it off. I also want to take this moment to complain about the wonderful people at Rogers Cable Company. They're wonderful in the same sense that a crypt is a good place to hold a baby shower. I've had nothing but problems with these people. Sigh okay I'm done now.
Thanks to everyone who wrote me regarding the last installment and of course all of the installments before that. You guys have been great. Special thanks to Kenitra, Shade, Aeoros, Kent, Tim, Di, Aphrodite and so on. There are more of them, but I haven't written this in a month, so I'm forgetting a few.
The disclaimer part. This story is fiction, entertaining, but fiction. It is in no way supposed to reflect the sexuality of any of the members of the group N'sync. If homosexual themes offend you, then leave. If you're to young in your area, or it's illegal to be reading this, please leave as well. Parts of this story are based off the RPG Rifts. All trademarks belong to Kevin Siembieda and Palladium books.
As usual give me feed back. I love hearing from you guys and gals. Both good and bad. Tell me what you like and what you don't like. Responses will be a touch slower then you're used to with me, again due to the fact I'm using school computers for the net. I can type at home, but I've got to use the school to send anything off. You can reach me at either Mist_dark@hotmail.com or Mist_dark@yahoo.ca I check both regularly.
Until next time, Rune
PART SEVEN
Sighing, Lance set the book he was reading on the table. It was a thick tome on particular uses of diabolism. He had figured out the basics fairly quickly but the more complex ideas still eluded him. The part he was reading at the moment was on the effects of diabolism on the human body. It was interesting, but very difficult to follow.
He ran his hand over his short blonde hair and glanced at the book. He slid it away from him and stood from the table. He paced over to the window without making a sound. It was a trick he had learned from Selvar. Neither one of them made a sound as they moved around the castle. Or rather Selvar hadn't and Lance still didn't. It was still painful for him to think about the dark elf. But he could do it now. He knew it would hurt for the rest of his life, but at least he knew he could care on with his life. Though he didn't want to do it without Selvar.
Turning from the window Lance's gaze fell on the war scythe above the mantle. He cocked his head at it. "That's strange."
He walked over to the mantle and pulled down the bone white scythe. He ran his hands over the handle of the weapon. It was meant to be a weapon. It could have been used to cut grain, just like a normal scythe could have been used as a weapon. But this one was designed to kill, or at the very least maim. Being careful not to cut himself he touched the blade of the weapon. Like the handle it was bone white.
Lance had discovered the weapon in Selvar's room. Maria had left it there for him to find, as a keepsake of sorts. He had immediately decided to place it above the fireplace in the bedroom that they had shared. It was a reminder of what they had had once. Just like the ring he always wore. But the last time he had looked at this scythe it had been covered in runes. He had never taken the time to read them individually and figure out exactly what each one did.
"Cro?"
"Yes?" The book floated across the room from the bookshelf and hovered next to him.
"Why aren't there runes on this any more?" Lance offered the scythe to the book to see, even though the book didn't have eyes.
"Don't know," Cro admitted. "Sometimes I'll hide my runes to disguise what I am. Of course I don't know if that's the case. Of course it might just be some enchantment on it."
"That was remarkably unhelpful," Lance muttered. "I'll have to deal with this later. Justin and Joey are suppose to be back soon."
The doors exploded inward. Pieces of splintered wood sprinkled around the blonde's shoulders. He spun with the scythe in his hands. His fingers laced themselves around the two handholds. Without any training Lance was holding the weapon as if he had all his life.
A slim woman stood in the shattered remains of the door. Her white hair framed her face to reveal incredible beauty. A pale blue dress clothed her form. Under other circumstances she would have been stunning, but the look in her eyes destroyed the effect. Hatred burned in her ice blue eyes.
"Do not think about making this more difficult then it has to be mortal," the woman spat at Lance.
"I don't suppose you'd just leave?" Cro asked. "Would you?"
"I have come for the Seeker," the woman said. "And I will have him."
"'fraid not," Cro said. The book's covers flew open and the pages flipped themselves as if they had been touched by an invisible wind. They stopped on a page that bore the image of a flaming humanoid figure. The image flickered on the page and then faded from sight. A moment after it began to leave the pages it began to appear between Lance and the newcomer. The entire process had taken a few seconds. Cro wavered in his flight and fell to the floor.
"A wonderful parlor trick." The woman seemed completely unimpressed. She strode toward Lance despite the flaming obstacle. When she came with in touching distance of it she opened her mouth and exhaled deeply. A bluish wave of frost hit the fire and extinguished it. The flaming humanoid screamed in agony an instant before vanishing from sight.
"Damn," Cro muttered. "Get out of here Lance." It shakily floated upward. The book's pages began flipping again. This time it fell on the image of a phoenix.
"You had your chance to help," the woman said. She breathed frost at Cro. A layer sealed itself to the pages preventing them from turning again. The layers of cold built up until the book was surrounded in a block of ice. The ice hit the floor with a `thunk'.
"Who are you?" Lance asked. He was still holding the scythe in front of him as he backed away from her.
"I owe you no answers," the woman snarled. "I am here to collect the Seeker, and since you're the Seeker I'll be taking you."
"I'm the what?" Lance asked. He didn't like where this conversation was going, but he was trying to stall for time. Chris was probably somewhere in the castle and might be able to help if he heard them. And there was the off chance that Joey, Justin and Pyre might get back in time to help. He doubted it but he could hope.
"As I said, I owe you no answers."
The woman took two steps backward and waved her hand in an arc. A blast of freezing cold air surrounded Lance. The world was momentarily obscured. When it cleared he had left the bedroom and was standing in a bluish room. The woman was standing the same distance away from him as she was when they were in the castle.
"I'd asked if you were comfortable, but I don't care." She turned and walked through a door that had been hidden behind her. She closed it behind her without looking back.
The room, or cell as it should have been referred to, was large enough that Lance could have lain down twice widthwise and three times lengthwise. Pushed up against one wall was a cot, a chamber pot sat in another corner. Other then that there was nothing in the room. There wasn't even a window in the door of his cell. He was completely cut off from the outside world.
Chris had always been getting himself into awkward situations. Ever since he had been able to walk he was finding himself in some sort of trouble. Though usually he was able to get himself out of trouble without too much of a problem. This time was different. This time he knew he was pretty much screwed.
He took a sharp breath when he heard the shouts of the mob that had been following him. Or more accurately had been hounding him. He had been running from them for almost four hours, give or take a few minutes. It had felt like an eternity.
Even he had to admit that throwing balls of fire at the strange woman in the castle had been a bad idea, but he had been working under pressure. He didn't know how she did it, but she'd sent him here with some cryptic message about `playing with the Gemini'. Whatever that meant.
So he had appeared in the middle of a rocky desert town. Right next to a nice looking fountain actually. The water that had been pouring from the fountain, however, hadn't been as nice looking. It had a brown sickly look to it. The same look that the water on the various documentaries he had seen had had. Which probably meant it was full of bacteria and other wonderful treats.
From what he could see of the rest of the town, it wasn't faring much better. The soil was dry and didn't look like it could support any sort of plant life. And since most of the trees and bushes were in various stages of dying, he was pretty sure he was right. The leaves that still clung to a few of the trees were covered in yellow splotches. Chris didn't know enough about botany to say what was wrong with them, but he did know something was wrong.
The villagers themselves were in as much pain as the land itself seemed to be. None of them appeared to have eaten in sometime and the effects of starvation were starting to show. Some of them had painful looking boils. Others had oozing sores that refused to heal. A small boy lay outside a home. A blanket covered his tiny form, and elderly woman bathed his forehead with a cloth. Now and again the boy would twitch in a feverish sleep.
Chris walked around for a few minutes trying to comprehend how this town had been hit by so many disasters. It was almost as if they had been hit by every plague he'd heard of. The water was polluted, the people were disease ridden and starving. The only thing that needed to happen to complete the cycle was for a swarm of locusts to eat their crops. And judging by the emancipated looks, that was a possibility that might have already happened.
His wanderings were cut short by a shout. Chris turned to the source of the sound. A bald man stood next to the fountain. He only wore light brown shorts that stopped just short of their knees.
"There he is," the man said. Something about the way the man spoke seemed odd to Chris. Like the man was missing something. "He is the one that caused all these plagues. Kill him and the spirits will leave. He is commanding them."
Chris looked around him in horror when he realized that the man was pointing to him. Fear began to take him when the people started to look at him with hatred in their eyes. Hatred mixed with anger and touched with fear. They believed that he was responsible for whatever had happened here.
"Kill him," the man called again. Chris looked at him once more before he turned and ran. The look on the man's face spoke volumes. He knew that Chris was innocent, but he need a scapegoat. And the singer was to fulfil the position nicely.
And now here he was. Huddled in an alley as dusk fell, hoping that no one knew where he was. And hoping that if they did find him that he would be able to get away from them. He could hurt them if necessary, but he didn't want to. But he would if he had to. What worried him most was that that man could manipulate all these people so easily. It also worried him that he had no idea what that man could do. Though Chris suspected that he was responsible for all of the misfortunes that had befallen the town.
A hand clamped over Chris' mouth. "Need some help?" A warm female voice asked. Chris looked up and in the fading light could see a woman hanging upside down from the building by a rope. She was visible if you were close enough because the pale stone that building was made of contrasted sharply with the black of her clothing. "I'm going to let go of your mouth now. I don't think you should scream."
"Yes," Chris said when she let go of his mouth.
"Pardon?" The woman asked. She uncoiled her legs from around the rope and landed in a perfect handstand. She flipped forward and came to her feet.
"I do need some help," Chris said. "I don't know where I am, where to go, and I've got an angry mob on my tail."
"Thought you needed some." She gestured up the rope. "I think we should continue this conversation on the roof though. Less chance of it being interrupted." She stepped away from the rope to let Chris get to it more easily. "You first. I'll bring it up after me."
Chris nodded and took the rope firmly in his hands. It gave it a few tugs to check if it was secure. It was. Leaning backward he began walking up the wall. It had been a while since he had climbed a rope, but gym class came back to him. When he got to the roof he pulled himself over the edge and looked down to see how his rescuer was fairing. She looked up and down the alley before taking the rope. Wrapping the rope around her foot twice, she started up. It took her far less time to climb the rope and she didn't touch the wall once. She just used her arms and legs and it almost looked like she flowed up the rope.
"It's time for introductions now," she said once she reached the top. "My name is Mala." She offered her hand once she had coiled the rope and attached it to her waist.
Chris shook the offered hand. "Christopher, though most people just call me Chris."
"Alright Chris," Mala said. "Care to share why you were hiding in the alley with the entire town screaming for your blood?"
Chris shrugged. "If I could I would. But all I did was appear in the town square and then this man said I was responsible for whatever's happened here. One thing led to another and I ended up in the alley."
"About this tall?" Mala asked. She held her hand up. "Bald, dark brown skin, wears only a pair of brown shorts?"
"That's him."
Mala sighed and rolled her eyes. "Did you see two of them? Identical twins I mean."
"Nope. Just the one. Why?"
"You met one of the Gemini my friend." Something about the way Mala said the word `Gemini' made Chris' skin crawl.
"Are they suppose to be scary?" Chris asked. "Because other then being nasty he didn't seem to dangerous."
"Wrong," Mala said. "Dead wrong. He's dangerous and so is his twin. They're even more dangerous when they're together."
"What?"
Mala walked to the edge of the roof and looked over. "We should have enough time before they figure out we're not on the ground." She walked back to Chris and sat cross-legged in front of him. "This will probably be easier to accept sitting down Chris."
"Why do I not like the sounds of that?" Chris asked as he sat down.
"The Gemini are not nice people. They're sort of evil actually. They inflict pain because they can. But they're also curse bringers."
"Curses?" Chris asked. "As in bad luck?"
"More then that," Mala said. "I've seen curse bringers in action before. They can do small stuff like fevers and headaches on the spot. Hell, they can blind you with a thought. But they can do really horrid things if they're given enough time. Droughts, famines, any sort of disease you can think of, plagues of insects. You name it and they can do it. One curse bringer can bring an entire kingdom to its knees."
"So why does this guy want me to be blamed?" Chris asked. "I mean if he's got that much power he shouldn't have to worry about retribution."
Mala shrugged. "I don't know. Could be for any number of reasons. But since the Gemini are horribly insane at the best of times, I wouldn't go looking for to deep a reason."
"Great. So I've got some madman on my tail because I happened to show up at the wrong time. And to top it all of he can curse me just by looking at me. Or if he wants he can do it from the comfort of his own living room."
"It could be worse," Mala said.
"Care to enlighten me?"
"His twin could be here too. Then things would be really bad."
"That is not comforting," Chris told her. He brushed his pants of as he stood. "Any ideas on how I can get back to England?"
"Several actually," Mala said as she joined him standing. "But they're all going to take a while. England is a tad of a trip from where we are."
"And where exactly is that?"
"The southern tip of Africa," she told him. "I think and area south of here used to be called Cape Hope."
"Wow," Chris said. "This day just seems to be getting better and better."
"I'll be fine by myself for a few hours," Joey said. He, Justin and Pyre had returned to the castle an hour before and had discovered that Lance was missing. Pyre wasn't one hundred percent certain, but he was pretty sure that a dragon had taken Lance. They'd also found that Chris was missing. It seemed like whoever had taken Chris had also taken Lance, but probably not to the same place.
"What if they come back?" Justin asked. "I know it's not a great idea to leave the castle undefended, but it'd be a lot better then having you kidnapped like everyone else seems to be."
"I won't be alone for long," Joey reasoned. "David will be waking in about two hours. I'll be able to take care of myself until then. Besides I can use the time to figure out where Lance and Chris were taken to."
"I don't like this," Justin admitted.
"You're not suppose to. I found where JC is and all you have to do is go get him. I'd be no help hunting vampires."
"He's right," Pyre said. He had been silent during the exchange between Justin and Joey. "He's powerful, but he's not up to fighting vampires yet."
"I picked it up quickly enough," Justin pointed out.
"But you had me by your side the entire time," Pyre said. "We're marching into the den of a master vampire. I won't have time to watch him, and I trust your skills enough to know you won't get yourself killed."
"We don't know it's a master," Justin said.
"Actually we do," Pyre said. "The attack was to organized for the vampire behind this to be anything but. I would guess at least one secondary vampire and a few feral. They could have been controlled by a necromancer, but I doubt it."
"Alright," Justin sighed and flopped down in a chair. "So we're going into a master's lair. Anything I should know about? I've never fought a master before. And other then Maria I've never even met one."
"They're nasty," Pyre said simply. "Very very nasty. They have all of the powers of a normal vampire amplified. Can command lesser vampires and usually have a few other abilities. They're stronger, faster and smarter then normal vampires."
"Other abilities?" Joey asked.
"Summoning fog, vermin, and other animals. Some masters were rumored to have been able walk in sunlight. Though I doubt it." Pyre rubbed his chin and neck. "And of course they usually have a few more psychic powers." He shrugged. "It varies from master to master."
"So there's not a whole lot we can do to prepare for this master?" Justin asked. He looked a little worried.
"They can be killed in the normal manner. It just takes a little more determination," Pyre assured him.
"I guess we go in with more firepower," Justin said.
"Interesting expression," Pyre said. "I don't think I've ever heard you use it."
"Have to keep you on your toes." Justin leapt to his feet and walked over to his love. "Let's get ready. I'd like to hit this place during the day. I don't like the idea of waltzing into a vampire's lair at night. And this one's probably crawling with them."
"Isn't pain a wonderful thing?" Yesena asked. She coiled the whip she had been using on JC and set it on the table. She turned to Calypso and smiled sweetly. Though it looked more like a predatory grin then anything else. "Now I don't want you to feel left out my dear shapeshifter. That would be cruel."
The vampire had both of them spread-eagle against the wall. She was apparently content to abuse their fronts for today. Both of them had been stripped of their clothing. Yesena had told them that she believed that it was far easier to break a person if they were naked. Not nude, she had pointed out. Nude was simply without clothing. Naked was being completely stripped of your defenses. Once a person was naked they were far more fun. She hadn't worked either of them to that point, but she was close with JC. He had been able to put up with a great deal of physical punishment before, but he was close to permanent panic because of the metal plate that was clamped over his mouth. Calypso was holding up very well though. She had endured everything that Yesena had given her with only screams of pain. The shapeshifter refused to beg.
Yesena walked to the shelves against the far wall. The room was purposely situated so that those being tortured knew exactly what was coming. The tools were always in plain sight. The vampire selected an iron rod from the shelves and returned to the two people strapped to the wall.
"You've already realized that I enjoy explaining what each of these devices does. But I think I'm going to do more of a physical explanation with this one." She looked at JC. "And don't worry. I'll explain it to you as I go. I know you won't be able to ask the questions yourself."
She spun the end of the rod and the other end of it split in half. About two inches of the rod had split and fell to either side to form prongs. Yesena spun the prongs counter clockwise. There was a click and she stopped trying to move that end. Instead she spun the first end again. This time the two prongs glowed orange and gave off faint heat. Not the heat of normal magic, but more like the heat metal gives off after it's been pulled from a blacksmith's forge.
"This is going to hurt," she said calmly as she pushed the prongs against Calypso's naked flesh. She was rewarded with an agonized scream. She pulled the rod away and JC saw blister's forming on the skin. "Interesting," Yesena mused. "Apparently I've broken you enough that you can't shift to hide the damage. Oh well, I guess that means this won't last as long as I'd hoped."
Yesena touched the rod across Calypso's stomach. Another scream and more blisters formed when she pulled the rod away. Smiling to herself the vampire touched the shapeshifter in several other places. When she stopped Calypso had burns across her chest and arms. Countless blisters had formed all over her legs. For some reason Yesena had toned down the power of the rod and had only left red welts across the woman's face rather then the blisters that coated the rest of her body.
"Alright that should be enough for now," Yesena said calmly after Calypso had passed out. She turned from Calypso and looked at JC. "Though I'm curious about how you'll take this. After all you can't exactly scream. Well you can't, but it won't do you any good."
The vampire adjusted the rod again, pumping up the power, and touched JC's chest with it. He tried to scream, but only a very faint noise was heard. Barely a whisper. The smile returned to her face. She touched him in a few other places with the rod, drawing whispers of pain from him each time.
"Well this is almost as much fun as she was," Calypso said. "But I think one more should do it." She touched the rod to the middle of his chest and pushed on it to make the burn more severe.
Tears of pain rolled down JC's face as he screamed his whisper scream. And Yesena laughed at him. The metal plate ripped itself from JC's mouth along with pieces of his face. A bestial cry filled the room. A blast of pure sound slammed into Yesena's chest and hurled her across the room. She flew over the table and hit the wall next to the shelves.
JC's cry still filled the room. A ripple in the air was all that could be seen of the power of his voice. The wave of sound touched the table Yesena had set the whip she'd been using earlier on. The wood shattered in thousands of fragments. Pieces of the shelves joined the table an instant later. Chunks of stone were being carved out of the wall and fell around the dazed vampire.
"Silence," she whispered when she'd recovered. Her eyes glowed red. "Silence." And the room was suddenly filled with the ringing sound that comes after a loud noise. She graceful got to her feet and flowed across the room with inhuman speed. "I would not do that again if I were you." She wiped some of the blood the ran down JC's torn lips. "Though it does give me a chance to taste your blood again." She licked her fingers clean. "A siren's blood is so exotic. I won't underestimate your power again though." She grabbed his head and slammed it against the wall once. His consciousness fled.
TBC
That's it for now. Let me know what you think.
Rune