The weapon that had done this was already back in Rei-Ginsei’s hand. It resembled the boomerang the ancient natives of Australia used so effectively. Unlike the boomerang, however, Rei-Ginsei’s weapon was razor sharp on both the inner and outer edges. What’s more, it was made of iron. Most non-Aborigines had trouble throwing a plain wooden boomerang effectively, yet this handsome youth, as limber as a sapling swaying in the breeze, could throw the iron blades any way he pleased with just one flick of the wrist. His unholy skill lent blades of mere metal the kind of cutting power reserved for magic swords, pushing them through a human body, or the trunk of a tree, or even through stone.
Furthermore, they didn’t just strike in a straight line. They could come at the target from the right or the left, from above, even from the feet—there seemed to be nowhere they couldn’t go. And while it was impossible to defend oneself from even one of these blades, it seemed unlikely there was anyone in the world that could fend off two or three successive attacks, let alone multiple blades thrown at the same time. The iron blades were liable to slice through any shield as easily as they went through their usual prey. Such were Rei-Ginsei’s “shrike-blades.”
The ground shook and verdant moss flew everywhere as the monolith fell.
Doris stood at the bottom of a lush green bowl of a depression, stock still with amazement. It was ten feet to the nearest stone wall.
Swaying like a flower in the morning breeze, Rei-Ginsei laughed. “What’s wrong? I thought the nature of the beast was to flee when hunted—”
Suddenly, he swallowed his words.
Doris’ expression filled with hope, because two things had suddenly changed.
A heavy white mist from nowhere in particular had begun to fill the ruins. It clung to Rei-Ginsei’s hand as he held his weapon, and to Doris’ cheeks, forming tepid beads. And far off, a horse was whinnying.
Doris made a mad dash for the stone wall. While the fog might protect her from an attack, she didn’t think it would blind her foe long enough for her to get away. She would try to get close enough to whoever was riding the horse she’d just heard to call out, and would try to borrow some weapons, though she might lose an arm or a leg in the process. Of course, she didn’t think that would be enough to beat him anyway.
Nothing came knifing through the air after her. Leaping over the wall headfirst, she held her breath and tried to judge the distance to the next bit of cover.
The voice that echoed across the distance rendered her determined gaze as lifeless as that of a corpse.
“Boss, I’m gonna help myself to your playmate.”
In a dimly lit world, where a dripping, white veil hid the blue of the sky, the shadow of death crept ever closer to the one, lone girl. Rei-Ginsei and his three henchmen—any one of them was more than a match for her.
“What happened to Witch, boss?” another voice inquired.
“She got put down. Lost her head to a pretty little bird.”
A low, rumbling stir went through the fog. The voices she heard were choked with blackest rage.
“I’ll gouge her eyes out.”
“I’m gonna twist the arms and legs off her.”
“I’ll tear her head off.”
Then Rei-Ginsei was heard to say, “And I shall take my pleasure from what remains of her body.”
Doris hadn’t spoken. She couldn’t even be heard to breathe. The men had simply sensed the presence of a girl paralyzed by imminent death. The milky fog reduced everything to vague silhouettes.
Rei-Ginsei held a shrike-blade ready in his right hand. Without a single word of prompting, at that same moment elsewhere in the fog, Golem drew his machete, a bowie knife gleamed in Gimlet’s hand, and Chullah’s hump split in half.
“Well, now…”
Just as they were about to unleash their murderous assault, Rei-Ginsei suddenly froze.
There’s something out there!
Yes, out in the eddying mist, out in the sticky, unsettling fog that steadily gnawed away at their psyches, which soaked through their skin to threaten the flame of life, Rei-Ginsei clearly sensed the presence of something other than his group and their helpless prey. Not only was there something out there, but it was enough to stop a man like him in his tracks. Rei-Ginsei couldn’t physically see it, but he felt the presence near the monolith he’d toppled with his lightning-fast throw.
He’d hadn’t known anything about this. How could he have guessed the monolith had stood there since time immemorial, blocking an entrance to the subterranean world? The fog around them was one that had risen from the bowels of the earth.
“So, this is the outside world?”
The query came in just the sort of unsettling voice one would expect from a demon of the mists. It had such an inhuman ring to it that Rei-Ginsei and his three brutal henchmen found themselves swallowing nervously. Stranger yet, it was a woman’s voice.
“It’s so chilly ... I like it so much better down below,” said another woman.
A third said, “We really must find something to fill our bellies—oh, well, isn’t there something right over there? One, two, three, four—five in all.”
Rei-Ginsei shuddered, realizing that the three speakers could see perfectly well in the fog that left all others blind. Due to the weirdness of the presence he sensed out there, he’d forgotten all about lowering the shrike-blade he’d raised earlier. He felt there were two things out there. And yet, he couldn’t help thinking that one of those was split into three!
“Your guide duties have been fulfilled. Get below again,” a rusty but much more human voice commanded. No doubt that was the other presence he felt. But while the voice was more human, the presence itself was far more daunting than the source of the disturbing female voices.
“Oh, you can’t ... Look at how handsome he is ... He looks absolutely delicious ...”
Quickly surmising that these plaintive cries referred to himself, Rei-Ginsei got chills.
“No, I forbid it.”
He felt extremely thankful for this second command.
“Let us go, my sisters. We have our orders.”
“It’s such a waste, but I suppose we must.”
“But, well … when shall you visit us again? When will you come to our abode far below, oh beloved one?”
The last voice was entreating.
There was no response, and before long, the strange thing with three voices and one presence moved reluctantly through the fog and disappeared back underground.
The source of the remaining presence spoke.
“I’m not interested in fighting anyone but the Nobility, but if you’re hellbent on starting something, then step right up”
He’s challenging us!
Even with this realization, the quartet found that their will to fight remained weak.
“D ... I know it’s you, isn’t it?”
Doris sounded on the verge of tears.
“Come to me. Relax. There’s no need to hurry.”
Out in the fog, there was the sound of teeth grinding together. He said there was no need to hurry because he was sure the quartet wouldn’t do a thing to stop him. The gnashing teeth testified to the gang’s resentment of his scathing insult. But the fact of the matter was the unearthly aura radiating from somewhere out in the fog bound the villains tight, preventing them from so much as lifting a finger.
The little bird that had almost been in hand walked over to the source of the voice. Shortly after that, the bandits felt the two of them moving far away.
“Wait ... wait just a minute.” At long last, Rei-Ginsei succeeded in forcing words from his mouth. “At least tell me your name ...” Forgetting his customary eloquence, he shouted into the fog, “So, is that your name, asshole? D?”
There was no response, and he felt the pair getting further and further away.
The spell over him was broken.
With a scream, Rei-Ginsei hurled his weapon. Extraordinary in its power, speed, and timing, nothing could stop it; with complete confidence in that fact, he let the shrike-blade fly.
Out in the fog, there was the sound of blade meeting blade. After that there was no sound at all, and silence settled over the white world. All trace of the pair was gone.
“Boss?” Golem inquired dejectedly a few minutes later, but the beautiful spawn of hell-sent supplications just stayed there with his right hand stretched out for a shrike-blade that never returned, his countenance paler than the fog as he sat frozen in the saddle.
.
A sculpture of a gargoyle with folded wings trained its mocking gaze on the room from its lofty perch. The room was one of many in Count Lee’s castle. Completely windowless and far from spacious, it was simple in design, but the robot sentries lined up along one wall, the chair on a dais a step up from the stone floor, the person in black scowling from a colossal portrait that covered much of the wall behind the chair, and the general air of religious solemnity that hung about the room suggested it was a place of judgment—a courtroom of sorts.
The defendant had already been questioned about their crimes, and as the ultimate judge, Count Lee raised his eyebrows in rage.
“I will now pronounce the sentence. Look at me,” the Count commanded. He spoke with the dignity of a feudal lord, in a low voice from his place on the dais as he desperately fought back the flames ready to leap from his throat. The defendant didn’t move. Brought to the room earlier by the robot sentries, the defendant remained sprawled on the cold stone floor.
Three pairs
of vacant eyes wandered about the room, across the floor, into space, and then up to reciprocate the gaze of the gargoyles near the ceiling. The black hair that reached to the end of the defendant’s massive tail made the floor a sea of silky black. It was the three sisters from the subterranean aqueduct—the Midwich Medusas.
“You have forgotten the debt you owe me for sheltering you three long millennia in the waters of the underworld, safe from the eyes of man, and fed to the point of bursting. Not only did you fail to dispatch the worm I sent you, but you even aided his escape. This sort of betrayal is not easily forgiven. And so I condemn you here and now!”
The three heads didn’t seem to be shaken in the least by the Count’s barrage of abuse as they drifted through space and their eyes seemed to be covered by a milky membrane. Then, all at once, they let out a deep sigh and murmured, “Oh, the divine one ...”
“Kill them!” Before his indignant shout was done—a cry that some might even call crazed—the robot sentries unleashed crimson heat-rays from their eyes, vaporizing the trio of heads. Without so much as a glance at the corpse still smoking and wriggling on the floor, the Count curtly ordered, “Get rid of it,” then looked sharply to one side.
He hadn’t noticed her entrance, but Larmica stood beside the dais. Even garbed in a snow-white dress, the girl had an air of darkness about her. Returning her father’s bloodshot gaze with eyes full of icy mockery, she said, “Father, why have you done away with them?”
“They were traitors,” the Count spat. “Of course, there were extenuating circumstances. The stripling drank their blood and made them his slave, and they led him back to the surface. You see, when I awoke, the computers informed me that one of the entrances to the subterranean world had been opened early this morning. My first thought was to have them dragged from their lair for questioning, and they confessed everything. Not that it was difficult—they seem to have been robbed of their souls. They were only too happy to answer my questions.”
“And what of the entrance?”
“The robots have already sealed it.”
“Then you mean to tell me he made good his escape?”
Averting his gaze from his daughter’s face as her expression became ever more fascinated, the Count nodded.
“He got away. But the fact that he beat the three sisters ... not by killing them, but that he bit their throats like one of us and made them do his bidding ... I get the feeling he is no ordinary dhampir ...”
Dhampirs with less self-control fed on human blood from time to time, but there had never been a case where the person they fed on became the same sort of marionette Nobles made of their victims. Being only half-vampire, dhampirs’ powers didn’t extend that far. Stranger yet, this victim hadn’t been a human, but rather a true monster among monsters—the Midwich Medusas.
Larmica’s eyes began to sparkle with an ineffable light. “I see. You let him get away from you ... Just like the girl.”
Not surprisingly, the Count’s visage twisted in rage, and he glared at Larmica.
The girl, of course, was Doris. Larmica referred with sarcasm to how he’d set out flush with confidence to claim his prize, but had been forced to flee after meeting brutal resistance. Even more filled with the pride of the Nobility than her father, Larmica sternly opposed elevating any human to the ranks of her kind, no matter how much her father might be attracted to his prey.
With feigned innocence, she asked, “Will you be sneaking off again this evening to see her? Will you pay another call to that beastly smelling excuse for a farm?”
“No,” the Count replied, his voice once again composed. “I believe I’ll refrain from that for a while. Now that the stripling is back with her, it might prove difficult to have my way.”
“Then you have abandoned your plans for the human girl?”
Now it was the Count’s turn to grin slyly. “Again, no. I must pay a call on someone else. Before I had the Medusas executed, the eldest of the sisters made mention of some curious characters.”
“Characters? You mean humans, don’t you?”
“Yes. Using them, I shall see to it the whelp is destroyed—though you shall have my condolences.” There was nothing whatsoever of a consoling nature in his tone.
In a low voice Larmica asked, “Then you will have the girl, come what may?”
“Yes. Such exquisite features, such a fine, pale throat, and such mettle. These last few millennia, I’ve not seen such a precious female.” Here the Count’s tone changed. “Seeing the grueling battle she gave me the other night, never giving an inch, has only increased my ardor. Ten thousand years ago, was there not the case of our Sacred Ancestor failing to attain a human maiden of his heart’s desire?” As he said this, he gazed with reverence, equal to what any of the Greater Nobility would show, at the colossal painting occupying the wall behind him. “I have heard that the woman our Sacred Ancestor desired was named Mina the Fair, and she lived in the ancient Land of Angels. And it seems our Sacred Ancestor found the blood coursing beneath her nigh translucent skin sweeter and more delectable than any to ever wash across his tongue, though he had already drunk from the life founts of thousands of beauties.”