The Blood Talisman (25 page)

He continued to circle her. Selene
became slightly dizzy. Her arm started shaking and Hyperion stopped
moving. He appeared as if he were preparing to reach for the gun as
he inched closer to the barrel.

“
The dead will rise,
Selene, if you kill me. You mustn’t be foolish,” he whispered to
her.

She jumped as she felt Alex’s two
strong, bloody hands touch her shoulders. His hands slid down her
arms to her hands. He helped her hold the gun up straight and kept
her from shaking.

“
I can’t do it,” she
whispered to him.

“
Just close your
eyes.”

She closed her eyes and thought about
what she was doing. Her whole childhood flashed before her closed
eyes. The memories of all of the stories her father would tell her
before bed and the sweet kisses that she would give him every time
he had to leave home seemed so vivid. Then she remembered what he
had said when Rose died: he couldn’t see the decision that Selene
would make. She wondered if that was why he was making it so
difficult, or maybe, he did want to die after all, having lived so
long.

She remembered that he had disowned
Sol for attempting to kill him and she wondered why he hadn’t done
the same with her. He could stop time so she wondered why he wasn’t
stopping Alex from helping her.

She breathed in a deep breath and
exhaled with her finger on the trigger. She wanted to squeeze the
trigger but couldn’t. Her heart was stopping her. At that point she
didn’t understand how Alex lived with himself after killing the
people that he had killed. But then again, he didn’t have to kill
someone he loved.

She resigned herself to not
being able to do it and so she waited for everyone to realize that
she
was
the weak
person that her dad had claimed she always was. In that thought,
her finger squeezed. A bright light flashed and then a loud bang
sounded. She had done it. She had killed her father. Or so she
thought.

She peeked her eyes open to see her
father on his knees, falling dead to the floor. Alex released his
comforting grip from her and ran over to him. He closed Hyperion’s
eyes with his hand and searched in his shirt for the blood
talisman.

Selene dropped the gun and ran over to
help in the search, but it was too late. The blood talisman was
gone.

“
What happened? I shot him,
right?” Selene asked Alex.

“
No. You didn’t pull the
trigger. It was your brother Sol. He showed up, shot Hyperion, and
yanked the blood talisman from round his neck before he hit the
floor,” Alex responded.

Selene sat on the floor beside her
father and cried. She held his strong hand and wept aloud. Alex
attempted to comfort her but, it offered little help. She wailed
out in great distress as her tears fell onto his body.

Her cries were disrupted by a man
screaming. They both turned to see Ram leaning over John’s body.
John’s arms were flailing, knocking everything around him over. He
grabbed a piece of couch and knocked Ram over the head with it. It
broke into pieces over his head but Ram didn’t budge. John’s
flailing hands grew weaker and weaker until the movement
stopped.

Ram rose up from John’s lifeless body
and took a deep breath. His werewolf bite and scratch marks were
completely gone. He stood up and looked at Selene and Alex. John’s
blood was dripping from his lips. He wiped the residual onto his
sleeve and said, “Great job Selene. Didn’t think you had it in
you.”

“
It wasn’t me,” Selene
muffled out through her tears.

She cradled her father’s head in her
arms.

Ram looked to Alex for answers. “Well,
who the hell was it then?” he asked Alex.

“
Sol.”

Ram just stood there, not knowing if
he should be happy or worried.

“
I guess it worked. I’ve
never felt better. Been waiting to kill off that useless blood bag
for awhile,” Ram said as he kicked John’s boot. “Had to keep him
around for emergencies.”

“
So you’re immortal now?”
Alex asked him.

“
I feel immortal. I feel
like I could eat the world,” Ram said.

Alex glanced down at his feet. The gun
that Selene tried to kill her father with was laying at his feet.
He picked it up, pointed it at Ram, and said, “We could find
out.”

“
No!” Selene screamed out.
“I’ve seen enough death to last me my whole lifetime. I can’t take
anymore.”

“
This guy’s one of the
reasons your father had to be killed. He’s the reason why I’m a
werewolf. How can you not want him dead?” Alex asked.

Selene didn’t answer. She turned back
to her father’s dead body and wept again.

“
I think we would all be
better off with you dead,” Alex said to Ram.

“
I’m your meal ticket home,
wolf. I don’t think you realize how handy an immortal vampire can
be right now. You have a very powerful witch out there who is one
sibling away from having complete power. If you think there isn’t a
war coming then you are sadly mistaken.”

“
I have Amalia. Now that
she’s alive, I don’t need you anymore,” Alex said.

He fired the gun, again, and again,
and again.

Ram fell back at every shot but was
only slowed down. He never fell. He unbuttoned his shirt and
watched the bullets fall out of his chest onto the ground at his
feet. He looked up at Alex and said, “That kinda tickled.” He
chuckled and smiled at Alex.

Alex dropped the gun and lunged for
him. He turned in mid-launch and went straight for his throat. Ram
punched him in his wolf mouth and dodged his lunge, sending Alex
straight into the stone wall behind him. His head hit the wall
hard, knocking him unconscious.

Selene laid her dad’s head down gently
and raised her hand to Ram. His face began to burn from across the
room. He grabbed his face with both hands and screamed out in
pain.

“
Stop!” he
yelled.

Selene lowered her hand and said, “No
fighting, no killing. Enough is enough.”

She hovered her hand over her father’s
body. Hyperion turned to ashes at her feet.

“
Get me something to put
his ashes in,” she ordered.

Ram reluctantly picked up a decorative
metal canister that sat on the only shelf that remained hanging on
the stone wall in the great room and took it over to Selene. He
handed it to her graciously. The ashes swirled up into the canister
with a wave of Selene’s hand. She put the lid on and turned back
towards Ram and Alex.

A groaning noise came from John’s
lifeless body. They all silenced themselves and listened curiously.
Ram looked over at Selene’s confused face and said, “It’s normal.
Dead people still have air in their system that needs to come
out.”

“
Are they supposed to sit
up too?” she asked, pointing over at John’s body.

All three watched as John rose to his
feet. His eyes were a hazy grey, much different from the hazel
brown they’d been before he died. He shuffled a few steps towards
Ram and Selene. They watched him as he slowly paced towards
them.

“
John?” Ram
asked.

John gave no response. He kept coming
towards them. Ram unconsciously shielded Selene with one arm. She
moved closer to him. John was within breathing distance. He reached
out his arms and grabbed Ram’s shirt. John attempted to drag Ram
closer to him but Ram resisted. John opened his mouth, ready to
bite. Ram pushed him back, making him fall onto the floor. John got
back up and came towards them again. Ram pulled his gun out and
shot him four times in the chest. The bullets made a thud as they
lodged into his body. No blood came from his wounds as Ram had
drained him of every drop. Yet he kept coming.

Alex, who had stood silently watching,
broke off an antler from one of the hanging deer heads that had
fallen from the wall during the struggle. He jammed it in the top
of John’s head. It exited through his mouth and John fell to the
floor.

“
What the hell?” Selene
asked them both.

“
You really didn’t listen
to your father’s predictions, did you? He said that the dead would
rise,” Alex answered.

“
I thought he was talking
about vampires and werewolves, not humans,” Selene said.

“
Yea, I kinda thought that
too but it made sense when John rose with an appetite.”

“
This isn’t good. I mean,
we are under a graveyard. How are we going to get out of this
place?” Selene asked.

“
Well, let’s see. You have
an immortal vampire and a werewolf at your disposal. I think you
stand a decent chance. It’s a good thing your boyfriend here didn’t
kill me, after all,” Ram said.

“
I still just might figure
out a way to,” Alex warned.

“
I think our safety in
leaving is most important right now. Don’t you?” Ram
asked.

“
Ram makes a good point. We
need to get back to the hospital and let Amalia know what’s
happened, but first I need to get my dad’s Book of Shadows from his
office. Won’t take but a second,” Selene said.

“
What’s a book of shadows?”
Alex asked.

“
It’s like a witch’s
guidebook. Usually has every spell they’ve ever done recorded in
it. I should be able to figure out how to end all of this,” Selene
answered.

Alex watched her run off and return in
minutes with a bag with the top of a large book sticking out of it.
She stuffed the canister containing Hyperion’s ashes down into the
bag as well and threw it over her shoulder.

Alex led them back to the stairwell.
Ram was last. He picked up all of the dropped guns in the room,
shoving some in his pockets and carrying the rest.

Chapter
3
0

The winding stone stairwell was just
and quiet as they ascended. They reached the very top and stepped
over a pile of what was left of the armored guards at the
doorway.

Ram peered over into a coffin that had
been cracked open and was on the floor. The bones were still inside
and immobile.

“
Maybe we got away with
this one. They’re still in there and not moving,” Ram
said.

Alex glanced out of the mausoleum
doorway and said, “I don’t think so. They’re rising up all over the
place out there.”

“
My ancestors were of the
immortal blood line. They wouldn’t be affected by this curse,”
Selene said.

“
Let’s run,” Alex
said.

They followed behind him closely as
they jumped over hands grasping out of the dirt and dodged round
half rotted bodies that had broken fingers and hanging flesh from
their arms. The resurrected dead grasped at their feet and clothing
as they ran through the graveyard. Ram made a point of kicking and
punching as many of them as he could along the way.

Selene tripped, skinning her knee on a
footstone. A hand grabbed her by the ankle and wouldn’t let go. She
screamed and frantically hit it with her hand repeatedly but the
zombie wouldn’t release its grip. Ram stomped on the arm, breaking
it into releasing Selene from its grisly hold. He helped her up
from the ground and ran, trying to catch up with Alex, who had kept
running ahead of them.

They reached the black wrought iron
gate that led into the cemetery. The two vehicles that had brought
them were parked where they’d left them. Ram fumbled into his pants
pockets and pulled out a set of keys to the SUV.

“
I only have the set to the
SUV. John has the keys to the car,” Ram said.

“
What about our stuff?”
Alex cried.

“
Get new stuff. Let’s go,”
Ram responded as he ran to the driver’s side and hopped
in.

The undead had nearly caught up with
them. Alex and Selene joined Ram in the vehicle just as a couple of
the corpses placed their hands on the windows. They banged on it
and moaned. Ram nervously placed the keys into the ignition and
started the engine.

One of the undead had the nerve to
attempt climbing on top of the hood of the SUV. Ram placed the car
into drive and took off with the corpse still in tow. He tried the
windshield wipers but it didn’t seem fazed by the new
motion.

Ram slammed on the brakes, slinging
the corpse off of the hood and then stamped on the gas, running it
over. He looked at the corpse in his rearview mirror. It was still
wriggling and pulling at the ground, attempting to come after
them.

“
I don’t know why
you’re
so scared. You’re
immortal now,” Selene pointed out to him.

“
I don’t know what their
bite would do to me. I don’t think walking around with zombie bites
all over will allow me to enjoy much human blood.” Ram
answered.

“
If this invasion spreads
much further then you may not have many humans left to choose
from.”

Ram hadn’t considered that. He worried
more about that than actually looking presentable. Human blood was
now his life force. He wouldn’t be able to live without
it.