Demon Vampire (The Redgold Series) (45 page)

“What're you going to have soldier?” The bartender spoke up while polishing a glass. His muscles pulsing in his sleeveless linen shirt to the motion of each pass.

“Whatever the house usual is.” Orhn said glumly.

“Are you sure, it's their strongest drink.” The man to his left said lightly with a faint Slavic accent. “The alcohol has an effect that can make you either see things, or begin to forget them altogether.” The man's face was turned away, mostly covered by a pair of red and white fox pelts covering his shoulders. His shirt was tanned leather, his pants were stitched darker leather. A clothing set that was familiar to Orhn.

“That's good advice, but who are you to warn me. Maybe there are some things that I'd rather forget and some things I wouldn't mind imagining.” Orhn didn't care, he wanted to lose himself in the alcohol. His mind was set on personal destruction.

“Now that's not the temperament I remember.” The man said to Orhn. “But that is the same face from two and a half years ago.”

The words provoked Orhn, he looked closely at the man's face as he turned to meet Orhn's eyes. The deep scars, lengthy stature, the stunted nose, and finally the purple eyes gave it away.

“You're the-” Orhn rouse from his stool in shock and utter fear.

“Yugo Sokolov, pleased to meet you again, Orhn Damascus.” Yugo raised his glass as he smiled at Orhn.

“What are you doing here?” Orhn said hastily.

“I'm here to take away your pitiful life.” The tone of Yugo's voice echoed through the room.

The two men at the table heard it clearly, as well as the bartender that stopped polishing the glass in his hands.

“You've done so little these last years, Orhn. Your death only seems natural.” Yugo finished his drink.

Orhn slowly eased backwards, saying nothing.

“Now you know that won't do any good. I've already made my decision.” Yugo stood, he appeared to be more worn out than he was when they first met. Fresh blood lay on Yugo's shoes with small splatters on one of the fox pelts.

The bartender said carefully. “We don't want any trouble here, just settle this somewhere else. Please.”

Yugo did not reply.

The two men at the corner table dashed for the door. They were unsuccessful. Yugo was at the door the moment they arrived. He touched their shoulders with a sigh to his breath. Yugo walked away from them as they stood motionless. Yugo had a pleased expression as he appeared back at the bar and sat down. The two standing patrons took but a few steps more towards the archway, then held their throats in agony. They attempted to cough while no sound came forth. They were suddenly choking, and quickly fell to the ground. They passed out, unable to breathe. They were dead soon after. On the floor, water slowly poured from their lips.

“What the hell are you doing!? Those were my customers! Get the hell out, now!” The bartender yelled at Yugo. Sweat dripping from his forehead.

Yugo's left hand was long enough to reach the bartender's chest from the seated stool. The second Yugo's index finger touched him, the bartender clutched his chest, hard. Yugo had done something unknown. He wasn't drinking their blood, nothing like a mythical vampire would do. He was doing something else, something powerful. The large man collapsed on the floor in pain. Yugo was killing them, there was no doubt to that, but he was not commencing it in the same way he did two years ago. Yugo did not take a single drop from their necks, or any other part of their bodies. This made Orhn wonder why Yugo was really there. Orhn thought hard, nothing was coming to him other than intense fear. What did come to Orhn's mind was the fact that it was mid day when he entered the bar. The sun was shining high in the sky and it was no time for a vampire to be out and about. Everything Orhn had known about vampires told him that daytime was their only real enemy. Seeing Yugo at the bar challenged everything he knew. It rocked him to the core.

As the three men in the bar lay dead, Yugo spoke again to Orhn. “I came here for exactly what I mentioned, your death. To celebrate it and mark it with my own hand.”

Yugo slowly stood up and walked to Orhn.

Orhn was paralyzed by the gripping fear he experienced that night two years ago. He was reliving it.

Yugo placed his left hand on Orhn's cheek. “You've gone and cut yourself up since we last met.” Yugo looked at all the small scars covering Orhn's body. Not one was on his face, but the ones that showed on his flesh more than made up for the lack. “That's too bad, you looked so young and inexperienced back then. It suited you well. Now you appear to be battle worn and tough against the sword.” Yugo lowered his hand. “You are afraid, are you not?”

“Yes.” Orhn said, startled that Yugo would bring up the subject when he already knew the answer.

“Still as honest in the moment as you were that night. I liked that about you. In fact it is the only reason I am here today.” Yugo smiled fiendishly.

“You've come to kill me for witnessing what you did that night? Then why wait two and a half years? Why not kill me then?” Orhn was becoming defensive, shedding off a layer of terror to clothe himself in the skin of the attacker in this conversation. “Why give me time? Why make me think about what you were?” Orhn was getting angry. “Why let me return as a coward? Why did you wait!? Why the hell did you ruin my life, vampire!?”

“Why did you stand still that night, Orhn? Why bark at me now and not then? Why risk this behavior after you've seen what I can do to you?” Yugo was making too much calm, cold, calculating sense for Orhn to be mad at.

Orhn lowered his voice. “I was in awe of something I had never known to exist. You are a myth, a story told to children to keep them in their beds at night. I was afraid. I've been thinking about why you might come back for me. I thought you would kill me silently while I slept when the two years were up. That night came and went. I've been waiting for you to do it. During the day, I showed no fear in combat whether you ended my life regardless. I thought that if you were going to kill me, why should I fear a man with a blade? If a monster had chosen my name already, what would I truly have to scare me? Now that you're here.” Orhn's eyes trailed for a moment. “You're late.” Orhn said under his breath.

“What was that?” Yugo knew damn well what Orhn said. He wanted to hear him say it with confidence.

“You're fucking late! You told me two years! I've been waiting to die since that night! How could you do such a thing to me!?” Orhn screamed out. Yugo, nor the dead men in the bar wished to settle him down.

Yugo leaned in towards Orhn. He placed his lips to Orhn's left ear. “I'm a vampire. I do what I want, when I want. Time is nothing to me, especially me.” Yugo relaxed, backing away from Orhn to let him breathe.

“I've been fixating on you. Dreaming of what excuse you would give me when you finally came. I hate you vampire! You've ruined my life! You've taken from me the home I was to be a hero in, and why? For what amusement do you get off playing with my world?”

“I have a name, Orhn. Call me Yugo.” Yugo stated clearly.

“Fuck you! What do you want to do with me? What use am I as a man to you?” Orhn shouted at Yugo.

“You pose an interesting thought. Honestly, as a man, you are no use to me.” Yugo said to Orhn cryptically.

“What?” Orhn didn't understand.

“I did what I had to test you, Orhn. To see if you were able to live beyond the humiliation, the exile. I had to know you were able to walk under your own strength. In that regard, you have been proven.” Yugo suddenly disappeared, he was behind Orhn now. With one of Orhn's short swords in his left hand. “I've been watching you carefully, Orhn. Cilia was a beauty, I was sad to see you leave her. At least she will bestow the land with gorgeous children.”

Orhn tried to turn around in time, but Yugo was already looming over one of the two dead men near the door. With Orhn's sword in hand, Yugo stabbed the man in the neck, holding a cup from the bar underneath the wound. The blood poured down into the glass with ease and control. Yugo had obviously done this before. The precision he commanded with each movement was absolute. Yugo took up the glass as a salute to Orhn. He chucked it back, finishing the blood.

“What are you doing!? They'll think I was the one that did this!” Orhn yelped and rushed towards Yugo.

“You are quick as usual. It's good to see that sharp wit at work.” Yugo stabbed the body again with the tip of the blade. “That's the goal, Orhn. They can't think a vampire killed these men, that would be insane.” Yugo pulled the weapon out. “But if you, a depressed soldier, killed these men, everything would fit quite nicely.” Yugo's overall posture seemed to brighten slightly. His flushed skin receded to a warmer glow, as if his humanity flooded back into him. He appeared less beaten, less burdened than he was when Orhn first saw him at the bar. “There needs to be a damn great and wonderfully legitimate reason for why you left your camp and never returned.”

“Who said I'll never return?” Orhn asked.

“I did.” Yugo said with conviction.

“And if I say no?” Orhn tempted fate.

“You still die either way. The difference is that come next week, you won't be walking.” Yugo's statement was concrete. He was not threatening Orhn, Yugo was warning him. Yugo threw the sword down into the base of the bar, between two stools were they had sat earlier. It was buried to the hilt and even cracked the wood next to where it entered. “If you choose to die tonight, you will rise again tomorrow.”

“But if I'm dead, the only thing I'll be raising are the flowers above me.” Orhn's logic was sound enough.

“You will, if I grant you some of my blood.” Yugo paused. “This is a gift Orhn, one that I will only offer once. I have studied you, I've seen the man you are when you believe you are alone. You are not the best human being in the world, but you are a just man. All that is missing is that your morals are lacking definition. You favor exile for yourself as a welcome path to redemption. If the rest of the world thought as you do, we would all be godless martyrs too hell bent on our own causes to see the good in anything. But thankfully, even though you are not a wonderful example to the human race, you will be a hallowed specimen as a vampire.”

Orhn froze. “You plan to make me one of you?”

“Yes.” Yugo's face was flat, with no emotion.

“And you must kill me to do that?” Orhn weighed his options.

“Yes.” Yugo held his disposition.

“And I'll come back as a vampire?” Orhn's voice was shaky, his body flaccid.

“Yes.” Yugo smiled delightfully.

“All you need is my consent? The permission to bring me back, the choice must be mine?” Orhn was thinking about it, he was actually considering it. Not just as an alternative to death, but to wield the same power that Yugo displayed. The power of a vampire in a trained soldier's hands. The very idea was temptation itself.

“It is your choice, it has to be made willingly without regret.” Yugo's voice lowered, his somber tone became the moment. “I'm asking you to join me.”

Orhn contemplated the offer with honesty. There was a willingness to hear everything Yugo had to present, an argument that was too hard to deny. “I'm listening, Yugo. Besides life, what can you give me?”

“That's the man I knew from the battlefield. The same man that cut all those men down without hesitation fight after fight. You've gone from quivering in fear to actually bargaining with me. Damn you have gall Orhn.” Yugo grinned wide, his purple eyes glistening. “That's why I like you. I believe I have found a good friend in you, an apt pupil to teach. As to what I will give you, it is knowledge. You will know that which no other can acquire in a single lifetime. I will give you the strength to defend any cause, any religion, any people you desire. As long as you stay by my side as my apprentice, I will grant you dominion over that which holds you back in life. I offer a life without fear from a second death. I offer immortality.”

Orhn had become a very patriotic man over the last two years defending his country. Yugo's deal was a prompt way to serve his nation from the shadows. To hold the power to overstep the bounds of his empire and execute whomever he chose as an impediment to their sovereign goals. Orhn knew that Yugo had appealed to his sense of pride. Both Yugo and Orhn knew the answer on Orhn's lips, he only need to speak it once.

Orhn braced himself for the killing blow to come. He closed his eyes. “Y-.” Orhn was unable to finish the one syllable word that would change his life forever.

“I've already done it, Orhn. Peer down at your feet if you do not trust me.” Yugo's voice was soft, consoling.

Orhn's eyes were heavy. He looked at a pool of his own blood dripping freshly on the wood floor.

“I didn't want you to feel it. My hand plunged into your chest and stopped your heart the moment you opened your mouth to say it.” Yugo told Orhn what had happened. “I needed only here what you were going to say. To see the sound on your lips as you died in order to bring you back.”

Orhn was confused, he felt betrayed.

“I told you I was going to kill you, Orhn. Your answer did not mean I would make an exception to that decree. It only meant that I would resurrect you after I did it.” Yugo felt Orhn slump down, leaning his weight onto Yugo's arm.

Orhn's eyes gazed down as he slumped forward. He wasn't able to breathe, his lungs had collapsed. The blood simply flowed out of Orhn's chest without any pulse to show he was alive. Yugo had done exactly what he said. He had killed Orhn. Yugo laid him down, with his body losing the little blood it had left. Yugo removed his arm from Orhn and pulled his other sword halfway out of its scabbard. Yugo cut the edge of his own right wrist, slightly, with enough pressure to call an amble sampling of blood. Yugo placed the sword back. He slid his wrist over Orhn's chest, letting the blood drip into the wound he had made. Five small drops were all he let fall, then it was on to Orhn's mouth. Yugo made sure the blood flowed into Orhn's throat, wasting nothing to his lips. Orhn did not swallow, not at first. His last breath was already gone. Orhn was for all normal purposes, dead. Yugo picked Orhn's body up carefully to cause no further injury to him. He was taking his time to treat Orhn with respect now. Yugo took one of his fox pelts and covered Orhn's chest cavity. He pushed the door open to the bar and gently took Orhn away, into the full daylight.