CHAPTER 44 Battle of Ichor Dome
As they prepared to leave for the mountains, Alex still had one last chance to worry. She looked at Jaklin and Mikhail. "Oh," she said. "Here's one. Pagomas. The giant feral. You might want to avoid him."
"How will we know him?" asked Jaklin.
"You see him, you'll know."
Catherine was standing nearby and heard what Alex had just said. "Pagomas is quite a story," she added. "He was always much larger than anyone in his community but a weakling. Some glandular ailment, I imagine. His size was no advantage, and he was quiet, easygoing, always depressed over his anemic condition. His father died before he was born, but he had a very strong mother. He was a mama's boy. Alu recruited him for years before he consented to being turned. Of course, with vampire robustness he became enormously powerful. Dabbled in American basketball. Arrogance and belligerence followed. And now he's feral. Still, it's a shame."
They all realized that if one word of this military operation got out, the ferals would scatter. They were to fight during daylight hours to keep the ferals from escaping. They decided that Silent Scythe would attack from within the cavern, taking the same inside path Alex had trudged down to the bridge after killing Braxton. Alex, Jaklin and Mikhail would enter the cavern from the remote external portal that only Catherine knew about. Since it was well hidden, she would go with them in the hours before dawn but would return in daylight, which wasn't a problem since she was now human and sunlight was her thing. Alex wasn't about to leave Andra alone with a vampire of any caliber, not even one from Silent Scythe, so Daniel and two nuns came to care for the infant while Catherine was gone.
Alex became more fully aware that she had lost her physical quickness to Jaklin and her intellectual capability and decisiveness to Mikhail. Perhaps some of her confidence had been lost when she gave birth. She felt a deep responsibility toward Andra and wanted desperately to be around to fulfill it, something her own mother didn't take seriously. Andra certainly wasn't a normal child either. She was too active and didn't sleep like a baby only a few days old. She was physically normal but too alert, too aware of her surroundings. She saw too well and seemed to understand too much. When she got a little older, she'd be a pill, and would need someone who could understand and not try to break her spirit. Alex felt that she had to live over this battle, for Andra.
All the time Catherine was driving them from south Sinaia along DN71 into the mountains, headlights illuminating the way, Alex was having these disturbing thoughts and also difficulty staying awake. She kept lapsing into vampire psychic space beyond Millennium Road. Catherine was behind the wheel of what had been her daughter's car and jabbering on and on about returning during daytime and having never driven in sunlight.
"Watch the road," Mikhail kept saying as he fiddled with the crossbow mechanism. "Your not in Scotland. We drive on the right here in Romania."
Alex was in the backseat with Jaklin, and Jaklin kept trying to wake her and asking what was wrong. "You're just weird, Missy," she said. "Can't you feel the excitement?"
Alex was struggling. Millennium Road seemed to be flooding into her consciousness, and the darkness before dawn made it worse. Her cross no longer helped. Finally, Jaklin quit pestering her, and she lapsed into a deep sleep.
Alex found that she'd left Cheiron's grotto and was headed back toward the Garden. She again negotiated the dark ravine, passed through the tunnel, and out into the forest. She skirted the meadow and the gazebo, working her way through the dense forest to the far side and stepped out onto the path leading up the mountain that she'd seen before. She looked both ways and, with no one coming in either direction, started up the incline.
The strange thing was that the path and forest looked familiar. She turned to look back over the meadow. And then she realized the cause of the familiarity. The Garden was similar to her grandmother's Estate, without the house and other assorted structures, of course. Only the gazebo was apart of this setting and in the same location as her grandmother's. This was not a copy of her grandmother's property. This was the original. Everything about it seemed perfect, but not perfect in the earthly sense. Perfection, in the divine sense.
Alex turned back up the trail with renewed urgency. She knew what she was going to see before it came into view, so she turned to look back down the mountain again, to verify her revelation. Sure enough, there on the other side of the Garden, farther down the mountain, was a church made entirely of glass and laced with silver and gold, not one of stone and tiles like the Sinaia Monastery, but one of unmistakable similarity. Alex turned back, ran on up the hill to the top, and there it was, a sight even more astonishing than she could have imagined. And then quite suddenly, it all fell into place. She recognized this castle. Actually, it was a temple. Peleș was similar in style but didn't approach the magnificence.
Jaklin shouting jolted Alex awake. "Missy! Wake up! We're here. I thought you were in a coma. What's wrong with you?"
Catherine had just pulled to the side of the road at a nondescript section of interstate. She cut the headlights. They all got out of the car in the dark that was slowly turning to shadows as the orange glow of the sun to the east over the mountains now provided a pale light. Catherine led the way off the road and down the hill through towering pines and thick brush. They approached what appeared to be the old mossy roof of a structure built into the mountainside. Catherine followed a path around to the front where they saw a normal front door flanked on each side by small windows grown up with shrubs but lit from the inside by candlelight.
"Looks like something out of a fairytale," said Jaklin.
"This is where I'll leave you," Catherine said. "You're not going to find Goldilocks inside but a couple of feral guards is a good bet. I talked my way past them, but I'm sure you'll encounter resistance."
"Hurry home," said Alex. "Lock the doors and windows and let no one inside until I return. Not even a human being. No one."
Catherine wished them luck, hugged them, and with a tear in her eye, clasped Alex's hands one more time, kissed her. "The worries of a great grandmother are many," she said. "Protect yourself. Don't be stupid." She took a couple of steps and then looked back. "One thing I've learned being in the world for over one hundred years is that failure is always an option and never as bleak as it seems. If it gets too tough, run for it." She hurried back up the mountain to the car.
"That's not what I needed to hear," said Mikhail.
"Don't worry, Ruski," said Jaklin. "I'll keep your courage up."
They then turned their attention to the door. Alex tried it and found it locked. They peeked through the windows, and sure enough, four vampires. Alex knocked, but no one answered. "Come on," she said. "We know you're in there."
"Go away," said a voice. "No visitors."
"We're not visitors. We're vampires. The sun is about up. Have a little consideration."
"Find some shade."
"That's rude," said Jaklin.
They looked at each other, and all three put a shoulder into the door at the same time. The frame exploded and the door fell into the living room with a crash, splinters and dust flying everywhere, but the ferals were ready for them.
Jaklin wedged through the entrance in front of Alex and took on the feral guards as if she could do the job by herself. Alex's heart stopped. But Mikhail and Jaklin dispatched the first two, Jaklin with a decapitation and Mikhail a thrust with a wood stake. Alex took on a third and ended the brief struggle with a thrust from her grandfather's walking stick, but the fourth got her from behind and bit her. Too bad for the feral because it instantly burst into flame. They shoved him out the door at Alex's insistence, and they were all a little dizzy from the fumes.
Jaklin had just killed her first vampire. Mikhail had killed his first also, but it didn't seem to affect him. Jaklin, on the other hand, was excited to a point of rapture. "Wow!" she said. "What a rush."
"Calm down," suggested Alex. "It won't all be this easy."
"We ju
st killed four people," said Mikhail. "Have a little remorse."
"Still," said Jaklin. "The thrill of us working together. I mean, this is war." She kept eyeing Alex's sword, Achilles, which Alex had strapped to her back and had as yet to put into action. "Use it or lose it," Jaklin said, as if she were ready to jerk it away.
The rest of the rooms were empty. They'd still have to protect this entrance from escape because the western hillside was still in shadow and would be for a couple of hours after sunrise. Alex checked the time on her cellphone. They were running late. Catherine had told them of a back room with a false partition. They searched all the walls, pounded them but couldn't find the false panel that would indicate an entrance to the Ichor Dome. They stood staring at each other.
"We're going to miss all the fun," said Jaklin.
Just as she spoke, the entire far wall started to move to the side, two ferals pushing as it gradually revealed the dark entrance of a tunnel.
Jaklin and Michael sprung into action with Alex right behind. Jaklin cut down the first one, and then helped Alex and Mikhail take care of the second. Immediately, Jaklin was off through the tunnel, with Alex following and Mikhail bringing up the rear. They felt the humidity increase and encountered a foul stench that did not bode well for what they'd find up ahead. The tunnel was not natural but chiseled out of the mountainside, deep and dark and quite small, but heavily used, the floor swept clean of debris and paved. They crouched low and moved forward quickly. It was much longer than they anticipated, but soon they heard voices echoing in a large chamber ahead. They slowed. They could tell that Silent Scythe had yet to arrive even though they were behind schedule. They saw a dim light and then the end of the tunnel came into view. As they approached the outlet, they saw shadowy figures moving about frantically. Although the battle hadn't started, obviously the ferals knew something was coming down from the Cathedral.
All the ferals' attention had been directed toward the bridge where only a few days before Alex had seen Cletis and Mitchum standing guard. It appeared that a ruckus had broken out just this side of it, but Alex couldn't determine the cause. The disturbance spread like a gust of wind through the crowd of ferals that had rushed there. Then Alex realized what it was — Silent Scythe. They were invisible in the dim cavern light, and they came like a tornado tearing through the legion of ferals.
Their job was to protect this west exit from any ferals escaping, and Alex stayed in the gaping entrance while Jaklin and Mikhail attacked nearby ferals from the rear, lopping heads and running them through with silver swords. Alex hung back but was blindsided herself, bitten, and thus she smoked another feral. Mikhail, seeing Alex under siege, came back to help. Another attacked her, tried to run her through, but Alex seemed to maintain her invulnerability, and it was a good thing too because she no longer had the skill or temperament for the task. Mikhail dispatched him with an arrow from the crossbow. Alex saw Pagomas on the far side of the Ichor Dome wreaking devastation on Silent Scythe.
Alex was distracted and again bothered by vampire psychic space, unbearably drowsy. Why is this sleeping sickness upon me now? she wondered. She had strapped Achilles to her back and carried her grandfather's walking stick, but now she unsheathed it. Perhaps it would add a little zest to her effort. The feral that came toward her, she intimidated by slashing back and forth and twirling Achilles, but the sword felt heavy and unwieldy, her motions encumbered by its primary purpose as far as fighting vampires were concerned: decapitation. She abandoned it, and took the vampire out with her walking stick. She slipped Achilles back in its sheath.
Mikhail shadowed Alex, watching her back. It was as if he had a sixth sense, always knowing her position and able to protect her as she fought. Jaklin was the buzz saw. She knew all the moves, and was quicker than Alex. Jaklin cut her way to the front and fought alongside Mary. They are perfect together, one's moves synced to augment the other's.
Even though the ferals were greatly outnumbered, all was not going well. Pagomas had stopped the flow across the bridge, Silent Scythe avoiding him and the normals cowering before the giant. The huge vampire turned and lumbered toward Alex, his pale presence seemingly lighting the Ichor Dome. The rest of Silent Scythe and the normals streamed across the bridge.
Alex delayed taking on Pagomas herself, perhaps because Catherine had mentioned his mother. But something was not right. The really frightening realization was that so far they had not seen Alu. It was a sad business they were in now, and Alex felt the tragedy of the human lives Alu had destroyed and was eager to see him reap his punishment. She and Mikhail fought together, he always at her back fending off ferals, first with a crossbow, but his quiver of arrows was limited, and once he'd expended his stash, he drew his small sword and beat them off, occasionally driving its pointed end through the heart of one who got too close.
Gradually Alex forced herself out of what seemed an encroaching coma. She came alive and went to work with her grandfather's walking stick. Where Jaklin lopped limbs and heads, Alex clubbed and stabbed. The battle waged on, and finally Alex made it to the street where she'd seen the huts and cages where the humans had been imprisoned. She ran along the paths looking inside the makeshift dwellings. All empty. Turned feral, she thought. She stepped inside many but they were all vacant. She darted along the backstreets still checking.
Nothing.
They pushed the ferals to the far end of the Ichor Dome, but Pagomas finally muscled his way to Alex. Mikhail sprang to her defense, but the giant tossed him aside as if he were a child. Alex drew and tried to wield her sword, but one swipe of the mace sent her crashing into a structure and stunned her, her weapon sent clattering among the rocks. The giant loomed over her to send her permanently to Millennium Road. She struggled to her feet but was dealt another crushing blow that sent her up against the stone wall. She could not defeat this vampire. How did she believe she could accomplish this?
While on the ground, her weapon flung far from her, out the corner of her eye, Alex saw Jaklin pickup Achilles. She stepped forward. "I was wrong about you," Jaklin said, giving it twirl. "That great warrior woman Penthesilea said I'd see? I saw her in the mirror there in the arsenal. Pagomas? He's mine." Jaklin picked up a stone and hurled it at the giant's head, stunning him momentarily, and he turned from Alex and took a step toward Jaklin.
"No! Jaklin, no!" shouted Alex.
But Jaklin flew into him. Alex had thought her own moves before her weakening had been fast, but Jaklin was a marvel. It wasn't so much her strength, and she had considerable, but her lightning quickness. Alex never saw her take a blow. She circled her adversary, dodging the swings of his mace, spinning to avoid a thrust of the sword in his other hand, until she drove her own sword into his midriff. The blow would never kill a vampire, but the pain of his entrails hanging from a stomach wound was enough to slow him, and with that advantage she eluded another blow, ducked behind him and with one swift swing of that shinny silver sword, decapitated him. Blood spurted from the severed neck, a fountain of fell fluid the fog of which lofted into the breeze that always blew in the cavern and lent a stench to the entire Ichor Dome. The mama's boy who had never known his father was no more.
An unrepentant Jaklin stood, arms outstretched, eyes focused on the Dome's ceiling and let out a screech like a gigantic bird of prey, victorious in her first one-on-one against a formidable opponent.
Alex heard a shout. Farther down the cavern another firefight had broken out. This evidently had been only the ferals' first line of defense, and now Silent Scythe was in a tough battle for another chamber. Perhaps Alu is there, she thought. Jaklin and Mikhail ran to help, but Alex heard an unusual noise, a call for help and looked inside a small hut. There she saw three young girls.
"Help us," one said. "We're still human." They were chained to a wall. "They're all gone," the oldest said. "None of the important ones are here."
"Where did they go?"
"No idea."
"Have you see Alucius Kardasi
an?"
"Alucius who?"
"Alu Kard."
"Oh. You mean Old Rat Neck? The bloodsucker. That's what the ferals call him behind his back."
"That would be him."
"Don't know. It happened suddenly, and those left behind, which were most, were not pleased."
Alex broke their chains, pointed them in the direction of the escape tunnel. "Once outside, go up the mountain to the highway. From there you can flag down a car. Someone will help. When you make it to Sinaia," she said, "go to the Monastery and ask for Father Zosimos. Tell him that Alexandra Eidyn sent you. Tell him what you've seen here." She hated to leave them to their own devices, but she had other business and was beginning to believe it wasn't there in the cavern.
While watching the girls disappear inside the tunnel, Alex was tackled by a feral, and the two fell among the debris as he sunk his teeth into her. Instantly he started to smoke and sparkle, and she struggled to get loose as the fumes caused an unavoidable drowsiness. She rose to her feet but slowly crumbled back among the dead. Sleep overcame her, and she was again in vampire psychic space on the hill up from the Garden viewing the heavenly version of Peleș Castle. But even that structure wasn't what impressed her most. Hovering above it, she saw angels, one or two at first and then more. As she got closer, she saw a multitude of heavenly creatures, not just angels but real people, or the souls of real people. It was such a glorious sight that at first she'd missed something. All was not well. The people didn't seem to realize it, but the angels were in a panic and apparently could do nothing to remedy the situation. Alex tried to enter the complex but security guards, in the form of the butterfly like creatures who'd built her Chateau, came forward and would not let her pass.
She now understood the problem that caused the angels so much concern and realized that she couldn't solve it there. She turned and ran back down the mountainside. Perhaps if she could get back to Millennium Road and the Chateau, she could make a difference, but she also knew that the real battle could only be fought in the real world. Alu was launching a battle not only against the people of Earth but against Heaven itself.
Alex woke and was once again in the Ichor Dome. In her comatose state, she had been surrounded by ferals like a swarm of mosquitos. But once her blood was in their system, they stopped feeding, became confused and wandered off a few steps where they internally combusted. Jaklin and Mikhail had been in a panic looking for her. They scattered the ferals with the help of Mary and Silent Scythe and then roused her.
"Did you see me?" asked a smiling Jaklin. "Did you see me take out that giant? Wasn't I amazing?"
"You were amazing before you took out Pagomas. And that was stupid taking him on by yourself."
"You and Mikhail would have helped me if I'd gotten into trouble. Mary keeps telling me I'm green. But wasn't I amazing?"
"Where's Alu?" asked Alex.
"Well, yeah. There's that. The action has slowed," said Jaklin. "This thing is over. All but the cleanup work. We'll find Alu. He's back there somewhere, hiding."
Alex started to tell them that the rest of the ferals and Alu were somewhere else when they heard a loud shout, and Silent Scythe rushed to another chamber farther down. Loud screaming and a cry of "Ichor Haven!" split the air along with the thud and clang of a short battle, but by the time they got there, it was over.
They entered a dark chamber with more sophisticated housing arrangements. This was not the horror that was the Ichor Done but a plush chamber with expensive sofas, tall mirrors, a dining area with five tables, each set with ten chairs and thrones at the ends. The entire chamber had been swept clean of rocks and other debris and carpeted. The walls had been carved into intricate statues of vampire royalty obviously going back centuries. How had Alu kept it secret? But the strangest part was that, other than a couple of guards and servants, Ichor Haven was empty. Alu was not there, nor were those who would have occupied the seats at the tables.
They heard another shout from the end of Ichor Haven. "Another chamber! We found yet another part of the cavern." It was Katsumi.
They rushed forward to where Katsumi and two other members of Silent Scythe had pulled down a partition to reveal a small opening into a large chamber that looked hardly used. The problem was, once inside, they discovered that it had four different trails leading off into more dark caverns. The pathways could go on forever.
Mary stood at the crossroads and shook her head. "We have no way of knowing which track they took."
Alex stepped up beside her. "We've been duped," she said. "This isn't where the action is at all. I found a few survivors. They said that Alu and all the really important vampires left some time ago."
"Where would they have gone?" asked Mary.
"Where we knew they were headed all along. Peleș Castle."
"We're too late," said Jaklin. "Alu has already launched his attack."
"You don't know that," said Mikhail.
"We have until Shadowrise," said Alex. "I'm not sure we can get there in time."
"We can. We have to," said Mikhail.
Mary pulled down the top of her camosilk suit exposing a mass of golden hair. "All this for nothing," she said.
"No. Not for nothing," said Alex. "We'd have had to clean up Alu's mess here regardless. We just have more work to do."
"But how do you know they've gone to Peleș?"
"I've had an unusual experience in vampire psychic space. Have you seen Cosmina? She's not here. Is she?"
"She disappeared just before we were to make our run down the cavern path to come here. We left without her."
"Did she talk to you about coming back from Lake Acheron with Alu?"
"What? Acheron? That's what separates us from Heaven. Alu and Cosmina have been there? Together?"
"Cosmina has defected," said Alex.
"How do you know?"
"During the initiation, Cosmina and I traveled up Millennium Road to find Alu and the Centaur. We found something beyond Millennium Road and beyond Acheron. I don't have time to explain, but if we have any chance of stopping Alu we must leave now. We can't wait for Shadowrise. Jaklin, Mikhail and I are going back."
"I'll go with you. Wait here while I get Katsumi to take command."
She was gone but a brief moment and then returned, her face full of concern. "If I do go, I'll have to stay outside until Shadowrise. I'll miss it all."
"Listen, Mary. You could go out with us."
"What do you mean?"
Alex stepped closer to Mary and lowered her voice. "I could do for you what I did for Catherine. Turn you back human. I saw the look on your face when you heard what I had done for her. Look. Your business here is finished, and I don't mean just this battle. You've fought the good fight for two millennia. Now you should get back to the mortal life you once had and leave this for others. Do you want that?"
"Of course. At least, I've always thought so." Mary looked terribly confused.
"Yes. Bigger decision than you thought. I get that. Also, you'll lose strength and not be able to join the battle once we get to Peleș, but you'd be human again."
Mary took a deep breath, shook her hair out. "Let me think about it. So much to consider. Why don't I just wait until later? You can always turn me back."
"I don't know if that's true. I'm losing strength and agility by the minute. My intuition tells me that something big is going to happen at Peleș. I don't know for sure, but it could be the end of me."
"Whoa!" said Jaklin. "What are you talking about?" She looked really startled.
"Later. On the way, Jaklin," said Alex. She turned back to Mary. "You wait too long, if the window closes, you'll never forgive yourself. I can't promise that you'll have this opportunity much longer."
"I'll go with you and make the decision before we exit the cavern. How long does the transition take?"
"Practically instantaneous."
"If I decide to remain a vampire, I'll stay inside the cavern. If not..." Mary took another d
eep breath. "Lead the way."
All four were off at a dead run.