"Hurts to think," I answered. My body was wracked with so much pain that all I wanted to do was lay still and die. "Sleep now."
"Owen, stay with me. Just hang in there. I'll think of something."
She kept talking, but I was fading fast. My body had simply taken too much punishment to stay awake for long. My thoughts began to drift. This was it. My befuddled brain could not see any way out of this. The journey was almost over. The Cursed One was going to win.
Julie tried her best to keep me engaged, to keep me focused; but I continued to drift. If only I could open my eyes to look at her one last time. I had never been the kind of man to fall for someone, but I had fallen hard for her. I loved her. I'm not by nature a romantic, nor am I very eloquent when it comes to things like feelings or emotion. A few months ago if someone had told me there was such a thing as true love at first sight, I would have laughed at them, and probably taken their lunch money. But if I ever knew anything, it was that Julie Shackleford was my soul mate. If only I could do something to save her…
Why was Julie chained here anyway? Why did they keep her alive? They had their sacrifice. But I knew the answer, and to deny it was to lie to myself. I remembered the Cursed One's promise when he had invaded Mordechai's dream world. I remembered his offer in the ashen rows of the blasted church. He was going to hurt her as punishment against me, and after he destroyed her, he was going to give her to her mother to be turned and enslaved. She was doomed. My Julie was doomed to a fate literally worse than death.
But it wasn't just her. If the Cursed One completed his ceremony tonight, then everyone was doomed. Every person that I had ever loved. Every person that I had ever met. Every person in the world. That might not be what Lord Machado's goals were, but I had seen the ugly truth. The real evil was out there, just waiting for the beachhead to be established. In the world of the Old Ones, there would be no room for puny, sentient mammals, other than entertainment or, if they were lucky, food.
They were out there waiting. And once and for all, it was going to be finished tonight.
"Julie…" I interrupted her desperate scheming. "I promise that I'll stop them."
"He must have hit you harder than I thought. Is your brain swelling?"
"Don't worry. It'll be okay."
IT IS TIME.
"He's coming," I said. "Whatever happens… I love you, Julie."
"I know," she replied. "Owen, it's the vampire. Get away from him, you son of a bitch! Leave him alone!"
I could sense the presence of the Master vampire. The already winter temperature dropped a few degrees. I hated that precise German accent. "Such flame. Lord Machado will enjoy breaking you. Now silence, Fraulein Shackleford. You will get your turn." I felt cold hands encircle my neck and pull me painfully to my feet. If I had been able to, I would have screamed.
"HerrPitt. Your time has come. It is a great honor to serve in such a fashion."
I tried to spit in his face. I failed miserably, it was more of a sputtering noise through my swollen lips, and the bloody saliva dripped uselessly down my broken face. He laughed and dragged me away from Julie. She shouted after me.
"Don't give up, Owen! Don't give up!"
I felt the cold snow drifting over my legs as the vampire pulled me along. I began to feel a humming in the air. It was the artifact. I had never been so physically close before. It was a tangible thing, the power. It called to me.
We stopped. I could no longer hear Julie. "I've waited so long for this," the vampire said with obvious pride. "I ended my mortal life in shame when the ceremony failed last time. Little did I realize the blessings I would receive for my dedication… the opportunity to live and serve once more. I took great pleasure in cutting the heart out of your Juden friend, and I will greatly enjoy seeing Lord Machado take yours. Such a remarkable time, indeed… Look upon your end, Hunter," the vampire crowed.
"Can't see… dumb ass," I croaked.
"That just won't do." I felt something cold and wet drag across my eyes, moistening the blood. Then Jaeger brutally cracked my eyelids open with his long thumbnails. "Hmm… your blood is delicious. I will feast on your corpse once the ritual has been completed. I need to regain my strength. I will admit, you put up a good fight. You should be commended."
It even hurt to blink. I was able to see again, out of one eye at least. My right eye must have been blinded, put out in the beating. We stood at the base of a small pyramidal structure. Snow was thick in every direction, coating what appeared to be an alpine forest. The entire world seemed to be small. The horizon visibly lifted only a short distance away, as if we were in a small valley, and the sky seemed bowed. When I had first been tugged into the pocket dimension, I had fallen down what I had thought was a hill; rather, it was just the curved boundary of this small place. It was almost as if we were the occupants of a snow globe.
The ruins were in the center of the dimension-obviously the focal point. Jaeger dragged me up the stairs, my legs thumping up each stone step. I left a small trail of blood in the snow.
I tried to move my arms. Nothing. They were too badly broken to do anything other than quiver and hurt. One of my legs responded a bit. I was still wearing my armor, but I could not tell if I still had any of my weapons. I had lost all of my firearms, but maybe I still had a grenade on me. If I could get the pin out of a frag, that might put a kink in their ceremony. From what I had seen, it might not work if they had to scrape up the sacrifice with a spatula.
"My Lord Machado. I present the sacrifice."
PREPARE HIM FOR HIS FATE.
I was hoisted up and tossed violently onto the frozen block of stone. I lay on my back, looking up at the shallow gray sky. Jaeger broke the buckles on my armor and ripped through the Kevlar covering my chest. I heard a clatter as the vampire tossed aside the tool that he had used. I looked over. Bastard had used my own knife. My wrists were shackled and chained to the stone. Not that I could have done anything anyway.
The Cursed One stood hulking a few feet away. He was a massive shambling thing. The helmet and armor had been polished to a mirror shine. The flowing robes were opulent red silks, but under them the flesh was a twisting mass of oily darkness. He just oozed evil.
"You will fail," I said calmly. "Just like you failed sixty years ago."
NOT NOW, BRAVE HUNTER. FOR THIS IS THE TIME.
His thoughts stabbed into my brain, causing mental pain equal to the physical. What had Mordechai said? He had told me to remember the things that he had shown me. I had to think of something. I tried to recall the hazy memories. I was grasping at straws. The Old Man surely couldn't have foreseen a way for me to get out of this.
"You don't know how to finish the ceremony. Thrall killed your priestess. You don't know what to do. You'll fail again."
The black thing shook. Trembling beneath his robes, bubbles rising through the space that should have been his face, splattering congealed fluids onto the snow-he was laughing at me. I had amused him.
BUT IN THIS PLACE, MY LOVE RETURNS TO ME TONIGHT.
The helmet dipped, nodding toward Jaeger. The vampire bowed, always subservient, and placed a rolled-up bundle of cloth on the ground at the base of the altar. The vampire untied the rope that encircled the package, and unrolled it on the snow.
It was a skeleton. An ancient, dried and brittle heap of broken bones, still chipped from where an ax blade had been used to peel the flesh away to ease Lord Machado's burden.
"Koriniha," I gasped. "No freaking way."
DO NOT TAINT HER NAME WITH YOUR FOUL MORTAL LIPS. IN THIS PLACE, WITH MY POWER, WITH THE ARTIFACT OFKUMARESH YAR,SHE SHALL RETURN TO ME.
The artifact was removed from under his robes, coated in black goo He kept it inside his body for safekeeping. As it was revealed, a jolt of power surged through the pocket dimension. I felt it down to the core of my being. I had seen the artifact in my visions. When I had died in Natchy Bottom, I had touched it with my spirit. It had shown me things, things which no human should have seen. It was not of this world. It did not belong here, in our time, in our space, in our plane. It was a token of the evil of the others. The Old Ones. The forgotten trespassers.