Scarlet Dusk (14 page)

Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband, not a fool by any stretch of the imagination, could see that his prized concubine was pushing him to counter the prior night’s “eclipse” with a display not only for the sake of meeting Utukku’s challenge, but for her amusement as well.

Were she but any of his other servants, he’d have executed her for such brash efforts at manipulating him.

But this
was
Arezoo, and under the weight of her insistence he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything other than the thrill of the challenge.

Finally nodding to her, he issued her to his balcony.

She eagerly obliged.

From the vantage point of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s personal balcony, he could overlook the lights of the city Dvin in the distance. There were so many of them down there, and he absently uttered this aloud for Arezoo to hear.

Intrigued, she asked if he meant the people.

Shaking his head and smirking, he motioned to the great land before them and explained that so many years of death and burial had created an unseen and often ignored
foundation
of death beneath the feet of those going about their lives.

So many corpses.

So many dead.

And the dead
were
his power.

A display of power.

The thought rolled with Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband over and over until it became auditory. And while he knew that Arezoo was audience to his ongoing mantra, he was somehow certain that Utukku was not far and just as privy to the chant.

Then he acted…

Willing them—all of them; each and every corpse dwelling beneath the lands before him—to awaken and make their might known.

The hour of midnight came and went as Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband continued to usher new life into everything dead; commanding them to rise.

So Utukku wanted to hide the moon?

Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband would shake the very earth!

The sands began to shiver.

The wail of frightened livestock grew.

Startled cries and shouted warnings grew…

As did the tremors.

Until all of Dvin and its surrounding lands shook with the combined rising of the dead.

Buildings toppled, burying entire families and communities.

More and more deaths; more and more fuel for Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband to will into action.

For every body that fell, a new minion arose to follow the Liche’s command.

Soon, excluding the corpses that had been dead prior to Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s display, he’d accrued over thirty-thousand new playthings.

Arezoo’s eyes—unblinking and awestruck—took in the spectacle as she absently dipped a hand between her thighs.

More than thirty-thousand deaths…

Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband smirked, beckoning to Utukku and demanding to know how a mere eclipse could fair in comparison to a being that could make the very earth quake with the dead beneath it.

Utukku answered.

The air shimmered with grayish-blue strands of light, like glowing lengths of thread that arched over Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s balcony and wavered before his chest; tickling the marble length of the railing. Then the strands began to vibrate with such ferocity as to drive both the Liche and his prized concubine back several steps…

And, as though he’d been there all along, Utukku was there; crouched like a lion on the railing and glaring.

He roared; declaring him a greater fool than he ever could have fathomed.

His mouth gaped far wider than any man’s should, his teeth quivering like the sands of Dvin and growing—two dagger-like pairs of fangs along either side of the upper row and another pair like them from either side of the bottom—and his eyes glowing like a pair of green suns. The bluish strands emerged once again, though Arezoo seemed unaware of them this time, and shot from Utukku’s shoulders; lashing at Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband’s palace. Utukku moved then, though Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband could not trace the motion and only saw the powerful creature—once perched on his railing—suddenly standing before him.

How could he move so quickly?

What was happening?

Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband ordered Arezoo back into the chambers; demanding that she warn the guards and have them prepare for battle once and for all against this monster.

His concubine offered none of her typical, playful resistance, and fled with such haste as to inspire some meek hope in the Liche. Confident that his beloved was at a safe distance, he worked a death-wave into his palm and prepared to strike. Though the attacks had not been fatal for the creature before, he was confident that he could cripple its onslaught long enough to grow his forces and, perhaps, call the thirty-thousand lumbering minions he’d ushered into being to his aid.

If he could only hold this blood-and-soul-sucking monster at bay long enough…

His powers welled and he moved to hurl the attack…

Only to find his left arm no longer attached to his body.

Eyes widening as the sudden rush of pain and horror struck him, he looked up at Utukku, realizing that this creature had severed one of his limbs with such speed that neither pain nor motion had registered in any sense to him.

He was still so very, very human…

And Utukku…

What a monster earns in challenging another…

You’re no monster, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband,
Utukku snarled again, and the strange strands began to rip the walls of his palace down,
But you can bring them down upon this world with such recklessness.

Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband abandoned his severed arm
and
his lingering hope then; turning on shaky feet and sprinting back into his chambers as the outer walls of his palace crashed down and began to pelt the balcony behind him.

He didn’t need to look to know that Utukku was no longer occupying that space; somehow he was already inside, laying waste to all that Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband had worked to build.

The screams of his servants began to echo through the chaos—new ones birthing before the old had even had a chance to fall silent with their impending demises.

Utukku was a
true
monster, and a far more effective being at bringing death.

The eclipse hadn’t been a full display of power!

It had been a display of control!

A blood-red sign that
true
power wasn’t in breaking the dam and letting the full capacity of destruction consume all in its path, but in letting a small river destroy enough lives to
show
what potential awaited
should
the dam be broken…

Arezoo lay sobbing on the floor, the vision of the three guards’ dead bodies outside the chamber doors—the fruit of stolen their stolen glances at Arezoo’s body never to offer them a moment of comfort—giving Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband a sudden awareness that the murderous monster had spared his prized concubine long enough to offer him some chance at atonement before death came to them.

A rage welled within the Liche; a destructive hatred and wicked perverseness that consumed everything he was.

Utukku had humiliated him and destroyed his legacy.

And he had only a great quake within the destroyed city of Dvin in response to an awe-inspiring eclipse to show the world what he’d been worth.

He wanted to maim!

He wanted to rape!

He wanted to claim every bit of terror and pain and destruction that was coming down upon him; to multiply all of it upon the world as the greatest destructive force both man and monster would ever witness.

A great curse upon the world.

A
maledictionem
of destruction and despair.

But his body wouldn’t survive that night, not with Utukku’s tirade taking everything at such a rate. He wasn’t strong enough…

Not as he was.

Pulling Arezoo to her feet, he told her that they were about to die, and that, in their deaths, he would see his final act as the Liche master Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband offered them a new potential when the time came.

His beloved concubine’s eyes showed that she did not understand, and he didn’t expect her to.

Offering Arezoo one final kiss, Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband spotted his coveted chalice—the perfect relic to fulfill his needs—and he scooped it up into his remaining arm; pressing his lips against its polished surface.

Carry us, great treasure,
he could feel Utukku’s presence at the chamber door, and he turned to see the creature closing in on Arezoo.
Carry us, and find us our new body… our Maledictus!

Throwing the chalice into the air, he aimed his open palm at his beloved, howling his magical command.

Arezoo’s body seized, and Utukku paused to watch as the blonde-haired beauty rose into the air like a holy creature. A light grew behind her eyes, increasing in luminosity until it erupted and bathed the room in a blinding wave that forced Utukku to shield his eyes.

When, at last, the light died down, Utukku watched the broken and decayed bodies of Arezoo and Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband collapse to the floor along with a hunk of metal; as black and festered as the blood that he, himself, had shed upon those very floors over ten nights ago. Lifting the strange trinket, he felt a dark and horrible energy coursing through it, and instantly thought of a warped chalice teeming with something evil…

The Liche had done
something
with this abominable relic, but, with the palace of Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband coming down and all of its inhabitants dead, Utukku cared little for whatever the late Meleilzsi Shaykh Naqshband had planned for it.

He could only hope that The Council would recognize his efforts in keeping their kind hidden from the humans and spare him the indignity of taking more of his fingers…

May the world never have to suffer another moment from that awful wretch!

“FUC-FUCKING P-PUNKS! BUNCH OF BLIND—AH! Dammit!—blindsiding assholes!” Maledictus groaned, pulling a warped crossbeam that had wedged a large portion of one of the wood chippers on top of his legs. Freeing his right leg, he kicked at the pile until enough had fallen free for him to pick away the remains with his hands and exhume his mangled left leg from the pile of twisted metal on. “Gah! That
does not
fucking look good! Motherfuckers…” he grumbled as he pushed himself up and took a labored, painful step out of the wreckage.

Still cursing Zane and the others, he faltered on his broken left leg, and his body—the lizard brain beginning to overwhelm his own logic and telling him over and over again to simply
eat
the crippled appendage—let out an instinctive hiss as he glared down at the three predominant breaks traveling the length of the leg. His femur—
thankfully
—hadn’t suffered any breaks when he’d been buried in all that collapsing hardware. Had he not been cunning enough to shield himself under an overturned portion of the platform, he might not have gotten out of it with such minimal injuries.

Still…

The leg bent forward at an aggressive and unnatural angle just below the knee—break number one—before suddenly shooting inward with a compound fracture that left the exposed portion of sharp bone pointing down in a morbid mockery of where the leg
should’ve
led—break number two—and, finally, “righting” itself with a nearly ninety-degree bend that, by some strange fate,
hadn’t
pierced the skin despite its jagged appearances—and that one made the hat trick.

Maledictus growled. The ongoing streams of witless, sarcastic nonsense in his head making him wish that Serena actually
had
struck his brain when she’d attacked him with one of his horns.

All thanks to Zane
, he groused to himself,
him and his friends and his infernal obsession with sporting events.

Hat trick, indeed.

The real trick would be collecting all those hockey player’s testicles and stuffing them in a hat!

He laughed at the thought and, trying to take another step out of the lumber yard, heard something snap in his leg and toppled over on himself.

“SON OF A FUCKING WHORE!” he hissed and writhed, struggling against phantom opponents as the pain overwhelmed his body; his mind succumbing to the illusion of battles that weren’t there.

The logical part of him didn’t care.

Let the body have its moment; let the stupid animal exhaust itself and go into some hibernation in the back of his mind so that he could, for once, not be forced to warp his perception with its carnal contributions.

Then something caught
both
their minds—animal and monster alike.

Flashing lights.

The familiar shrieking, two-note melody.

Maledictus grinned.

“Lights and music?” he mused, sitting up, “Looks like Christmas came early this year.”

Police
and
fire units. No doubt in response to the collapsed machinery that he’d just dug himself out of. The three cop cars—screaming a brightly-lit path for the two fire trucks taking up the rear—ground to a halt just beyond the entrance to the lumber yard, their tires squealing like excited children rushing to their stockings and kicking up a blizzard of dirt and sawdust. Six doors swung open like the flaps of holiday packaging being yanked open, and twelve eyes fell on Maledictus.

“Oh? Is it
my
turn to open a present?” he leered, rolling onto all fours—letting his broken left leg drag beside his tail—and taking a scuttling advance towards the response team. Three sets of high-powered spotlights came to life—each mounted over the driver’s side mirror of the squad cars—and came to focus on Maledictus, momentarily blinding him.

He hissed and scuttled back, the body once again going into pain-fueled fits and rolling about on the ground, kicking up dust and debris.

“Sweet mother of—what is that? Some kind of body armor?”

“Shut it, Ians, we ain’t got—”

“POLICE! DROP TO YOUR BELLY WITH YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD OR WE
WILL
OPEN FIRE!”

As the trucks came to a stop behind the police cars, several of the firemen occupying them poked their heads out to get a look at what

“Is that thing even
human
?”

“What the hell else would it be?”

“I dunno. Looks like a damn croco—OH SHIT! LEWIS!”

Even down one leg and exhausted from his battle, Maledictus had enough strength to launch himself across the space between him and the nearest cop. Gunfire erupted around him as the other five officers came to their colleagues. The bullets that found their mark stung Maledictus, but few actually punctured his still-scaly body. The sudden uproar of screams and gunshots set off a primal rage in
both
Maledictus and the ykali, and the first cop cried out as a giant clawed hand came down on his shoulder—breaking his collarbone—and forced his head into the doorframe of his squad car.

Maledictus slammed the door.

“Oh god! Oh sweet holy mother Mary and baby Jesu—”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Maledictus roared, yanking the headless body of Lewis from the warped car door and flinging it over the hood and into his panicking partner. “If you’re gonna pray, pig, you pray to
me
!”

The other cops rushed from their cars to help pull the body of their late comrade from the shrieking, blood-covered officer beneath him.

“Backup!” one shouted over the chaos, “Call for backup! We need SWAT in here YESTERDAY!”

“O-officer down. I-I… I repeat: we have an—oh god, please n-no—we’ve got an officer down! Lewis… they got Lewis!”

“Idiot! Give them the damn location, rookie!”

“Ah, uh… right. L-location… uh, officer down at… uh, the Willsbury Lumber and Logging Pla—AH!”

“HEADS UP, FUCKER!” Maledictus retrieved Lewis’ decapitated head and pitched it with all his might at the stammering cop, grinning at the sight of the right-half of his head caving in under the force of the collision.

The four cops turned towards Maledictus at once, pistols drawn.

“TAKE ‘IM OUT, BOYS!”

Maledictus chortled as he ducked behind the frame of the car—the windows shattering and raining down glittering reflections of blood-splattered moonlight all over the ground—as the officer’s on the other side peppered the vehicle.

“Keep ‘im down! Keep ‘im hiding ‘til we can get Ians out of here! Just keep ‘im—”

“Fuckin’ dumbasses!” Maledictus laughed to himself, hooking his talons under the frame of the tortured police car and flipping onto its side, “Can’t you brain-dead pork-chops see that Ians is already dead?”

“Did that thing just ta—”

“GET OUT OF THE WAY! MOVE!”

Maledictus tipped the police car, letting it roll onto its roof and, in the process, onto two of the cops that weren’t quick enough to jump free of it.

One of the pinned cops, still alive as he tried to pull himself from the overturned car, let out a startled cry as Maledictus’ foot came down on his skull.

The two remaining cops let loose another storm of bullets, forcing Maledictus to drop to all fours once again and scuttle behind the closest police car for cover.

Coming face-to-face with a fireman as he did.

Though clearly terrified, the fireman—having seen the fate the other cops had been met with—pulled a serrated hatchet from a sheathed pouch at his hip and brandished it as a weapon against him. Laughing at the sight, Maledictus grabbed the fireman’s arm in his left hand struck forward with his right, forcing the hand holding the weapon to slam back into its owner’s face and embedding the steel pick opposite the axe blade into the fireman’s skull. The body slumped—the helmet crashing loudly against the reinforced back window of the cop car—and fell to the ground before Maledictus made a note of tossing it back towards the fire trucks as a warning.

All those dead humans—five in less than two minutes—and he could
feel
the death inside him; could feel his body responding to their lost essence as he soaked it up. It made him stronger. It made the pain from their bullets and the haze of their noise fade away. It numbed his leg; hell, he could
feel
the broken bones trying to heal with the death-energy.

“Oh yes,” he chuckled, kneeling down and beginning the painful-yet-somehow-pleasant process of manually resetting his leg.

Bones ground together and scraped against the splintered sections of their once unified counterparts—the vibrations traveling the length of the bones and tickling his kneecap—as he worked to marry them back together.

He laughed.

The compound fracture ripped more of his flesh as he jammed it back into his body and wormed it past the torn muscle and ligaments.

He roared.

A pair of cops flanked the car, one on either side, as they came around to get the drop on him. Maledictus yanked the spotlight over his head and cast its beam into the face of the front-side cop, who howled at blinding light and began firing blindly in a panic. The rear-side cop charged Maledictus from behind, the sound of metal snapping against metal and the sharp intake of a trained fighter—Maledictus’ residual memory from being trapped inside Zane told him that the cop had pulled a switchblade—as he closed in. Maledictus scoffed, glancing back and, with a quick pass of his tail, took the cop’s right leg off above the knee. The policeman hissed in pain, keeping his teeth clenched to avoid screaming and keeping his eyes trained on his target. Maledictus smirked and turned to face him, letting his already blood-splattered tail blindly eviscerate the blinded cop at the front of the car.

“You’re a soldier?” Maledictus sneered.

“So,” the cop’s voice came out in a pained rasp, “it can talk.”

Maledictus growled. “It?”

The cop laughed at his reaction, nodding. “Ain’t gotten a good look at yourself lately? You look like I ate a desert toad in a drunken bet and took a bloody shit on one of my kid’s dinosaur toys,” he scoffed. “I can’t say what you are exactly, it-man, but I’ve read enough—”

“Enough
what
?” Maledictus glared, “Enough of the Bible to—”

“To answer your first question, it-man: I was a
marine
, and, before I answer your next one”—he lunched forward on his remaining leg, plunging the switchblade just above the gaping wound that Serena had given him—“
that
should teach you not to interrupt.”

Maledictus hissed in pain and rage, staggering back and clawing at his face in a blind scramble to rid his jaw of the second thing to get stabbed into his face that night. “FUCKING SHIT-SUCKER!”

The switchblade clattered to the ground and Maledictus lunged at the one-legged marine, jumping into overdrive and positioning himself behind the man.

The marine didn’t bat an eyelash at the giant monster suddenly vanishing, but, rather, turned his head knowingly.

“Before I kill you, man-pig,” Maledictus planted a clawed hand at his throat, “I want to know what it is you’ve read… and what you think it’s taught you about me.”

“Comic books,” the marine said flatly. “Things like you are a dime a dozen in those stories. And, in all the best comics, there are those just as strong and powerful as the things like you, and they
always
win.”

Maledictus scoffed, “Oh? Comic books, eh? So what, in this disgustingly two-dimensional world of make-believe that you jerk off to, would you be?”

“Us?” the marine looked around at the dead policemen and the terrified firemen, who were, at that moment, radioing for backup. “We’re fallen heroes; those brave enough to fall trying to stop the likes of you and prove to the readers that you’re an evil monster in
desperate
need of whoever’s going to kick your ass to do
just
that.” He smirked and shrugged, “We’re a necessary tragedy, and I gladly take that role knowing that my boy will remember me as a hero… and
knowing
that, when whatever superhero you’ve gone and pissed off catches up to you, you’re going to get what’s coming. And on
that
day, it-man, I’ll be watching, and I’ll be cheering!”