“What are you going to do with me?” Xander asked. His fear increased tenfold.
“Alcazar thinks you talk about yourself too much.” Malum waved his hand and then covered his mouth as he cackled. “Seriously though, we’re here to make sure the status quo remains intact. The only way this world works, is if it is unfair. The Shroud commands you to cause suffering, misery, pain, loss, for these are strong emotions, and while they power the Shroud, they help weaken our enemies, too.”
Incredulous, Xander shook his head. “That’s all I’m here for…to destroy for the Shroud?”
“Yes,” Malum simply replied. “Let’s drop the charade. I am a royalist. Therefore, I am here to put a king back on the throne for all immortals and humans alike. One king. One government.”
“What about free will and choice?”
Malum flipped the back of his hand dismissively. “Mere illusions of the mind. The knights, with all their glorified ideals, would have you believe there is a Reckoning, where everyone will live in ultimate wisdom—an ideal system without any sort of government whatsoever.” He winked, shaking his finger. “But while I know this is impossible, these thoughts are dangerous, and can spread like wildfire if not subdued. Ideas are the most dangerous things there are. For you can kill a person, but not an idea.”
Xander forgot himself. “Dude, this is getting wack.”
“Oh, yes.” Malum rubbed the thin, greasy, gray hairy strands drooping from his head. “That’s Lord Malum to you, BTW.” He clicked back his thumb and shot his finger like a gun at Xander. “The knights would take everything from us. Our power, our position, they would all be gone…why they would even make humans our equals if they could!” Malum’s face reddened. His cracked teeth ground from side to side.
Xander squinted time and again. He felt woozy and lightheaded being upside down for days on end. He had been in that same position for so long, his blood felt as heavy sand deposited by moving water, swishing about his brain in frequent headaches. “What I’ve seen out here, it’s anarchy.” His own thoughts became foreign to him.
Malum paced, his boots clumping around the room. His brows arched up and then down like caterpillars, inching slowly along, occasionally pausing to consider Xander. “Picture a theater with a central stage surrounded by seats, and in those seats are people, lots of them. Now picture a platform projecting from an upper story and enclosed by railing, which projects out over the main floor.” His tone swelled with pride.
“Okay?” Xander narrowed a single eye.
“We immortals are in the upper platform and the humans are in the seats below, and I own the building, so I own you now.” Malum’s deep tone carried. “There are hundreds of immortals walking the earth who you do not know. They all serve the Shroud, as you serve the Shroud! I don’t know what lies Maximillian told you, but,” he said with a sparkle in his eye, “Vincent and Noemi should serve as a warning example to any who question the Shroud.”
“I don’t want to kill people,” Xander cried out.
Malum snarled a long groan. “You are young, Xander.” He highly embellished the word young. “In all of your sixteen years of immortality, you have figured out the universe. Have you not? I suppose my seven thousand years, by comparison…is what…nothing compared to your infinite wisdom at sixteen. Don’t incur my wrath, boy.”
“No…” Xander shrank back.
“The humans are unreasonable so as to be ridiculous.”
“What?” Xander asked, followed by a wary glance.
“They are a trite nothing.” Malum placed his hands on his hips and his elbows bent outward. “They are unthinking animals. Their entertainment, their leaders, their entire society is influenced by ME!” he screamed, pointing his finger at his own chest, foaming at the mouth, spitting gobs of salivating rage. “They only live because of my will! And I will that the humans serve as fuel for the Shroud!”
Alcazar flapped his wings, jumping up and down high above the wooden beam. Caw! Caw! The jet-black crow continued pecking at the rope, unwinding the individual fibers, pulling at them with his beak, and each time, Xander felt it slack off with a dropping sensation.
Malum stretched his arm out toward Xander. From ten feet away, he squeezed his palm shut. Xander began to suffocate. His face strained and lips turned a bluish purple.
“You did poorly, and for that, this is your punishment.” Malum trotted over and with balled fists hit Xander in the face, punching him with blow after blow, again-and-again, while a bedlam of laughs surrounded them in the asylum. He struck Xander’s face until his knuckles drenched with blood. Malum took an old rag and wiped Xander’s blood from his hands. Then he pulled a bottle of Absinthe from his pocket. He held the murky, green drink over his head in the air, licking his lips as he inspected it. “What a waste of a fine drink.” He abruptly smashed the bottle against Xander’s chest, and then summoned his blazing striker. “Don’t worry. You’ll survive this, but…” Malum wagged his finger, “it might sting a little.” He touched the blazing striker to Xander’s saturated chest. Xander instantly burst into flames from the combination of heat and Absinthe.
The fire scorched from chest up.
“AAAAHH! NOOOO!” Xander spun and thrashed wildly. The smell of cooked flesh permeated the room as he screamed.
“Yes, Alcazar, you’re right, we have other places to be.” Malum held a treat above his head, and the crow swooped down, grabbing the crumb, then landing on his shoulder while gobbling it up. Stroking Alcazar’s feathers, he casually offered one last nugget of advice while Xander screamed aloud. “It wouldn’t be so cruel or offensive if you just didn’t think about the humans as significant.”
Malum and Alcazar meandered out of the room, leaving Xander still bound. The flames spread quickly, now engulfing him. He howled and gyrated, swinging himself with momentum, yet this seemed to fan the flames rather than help him escape their scorching agony.
“You can’t leave me like this!” Xander screeched. He moved his head back and forth, shaking his entire body as if in a seized fit.
Without a reply, Malum walked out the way he came, and back down the dark hallways of the insane asylum. He ignored Xander’s desperate cries, yet he opened his hand, snapped his fingers, and the rope split in half.
Xander plummeted to the floor with a crash. Landing head first, he was unmoving in a pool of water, and all his sounds of protest were hushed in deathly silence.
Moments later, a half a world away, Malum walked along a grassy knoll near a heavily wooded and remote area.
Up ahead, a blonde figure remained posed, clueless, and gawking at the distant landscape. Her face, once etched with contention, now seemed gazed upon nothing at all.
Malum snaked a sidewinding motion and slowly crept around the light-haired beauty. She was of fine breed. Her perfect skin was smooth, and reflected a porcelain glass quality in direct sunlight. Malum imposed the back of his hand against her soft cheek. He closed his eyes as he touched her silky, straight hair, rubbing the last follicles between his fingertips, and smelling it before he released the blonde, frosted tips.
When Malum had quenched his longings, he lastly plundered her moist lips, debasing them with the cracked, dry heat of his puckered skin.
At once, he held his hands at face level and clapped twice. Vanessa awoke from her stupor. She stood dumbfounded, with distressed scowls spreading from the center out to the far reaches of her attractive face.
“What? Where’d she go?” Vanessa looked at the wildflower clusters and sea-blown, long grass on which she trampled. But Revekka was nowhere in view. “I had her! She was right here a second ago!” She whipped her head in all directions, her eyes at a salute, her hands cupping over her brow, serving as shade from the glaring sun.
Malum removed himself near the dark wooded area. His hands each crossed parallel inside his long, belled sleeves. “My dear girl, don’t tell
me that you let Revekka speak, especially when I told you not to?”
Vanessa instantly realized her mistake. She covered her mouth, her eyes anticipating the worst. “I—I don’t know what happened.” She began to ramble incoherently and cry. “I had the map, and then she was telling me about what the Sphere Atlas does. Then…I guess she was gone and you were here.”
A single black crow hovered high in circles overhead. Malum gestured a slithering shrug. “Save the false tears for someone else. You are my third first-in-command. The first, Noemi, betrayed me for that bum Vincent. The second, Dominic, was powerful and cunning, but his ambitions got him marooned on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.” With a swift, enquiring look, he tapped his index finger to his lip. “I had much higher hopes for you.”
Vanessa’s eyes fell. “I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“Then what now?” She kept touching her long, silky blonde hair, moving lost strands behind her ear, while batting her lashes.
An uncomfortable pause advanced before Malum’s next words. “Vanessa…what do you want most in the world?”
She quickly answered, “To serve the Shroud.”
“Why?”
“Because it has shown me the truth.”
Malum was not convinced that a stunning, clever girl in her teen years, like Vanessa, could be interested in such trivial things like truth, yet he played along. “You are beautiful, do you know that?”
“No.” She admired the comment as much as she admired herself.
“Aha.” Malum smiled. “Tell me…” He looked askance. “Was it troubling when Vincent chose Noemi over you?”
Vanessa hesitated. “What?” She shook her head, pretending not to understand.
“No, never mind.” Malum flipped his hand up and away, dismissing the question with a frown.
Vanessa switched the conversation. “What of the other half of the map? Did you get it?”
“I tried to stop the other half of the Sphere Atlas from getting out of Europe, but one of our agents, Xander, was tortured by those,” he pointed at the tip of a castle spire, which extended above the tree line, “hideous knights. I fear they will again use this map to destroy and kill many humans, causing only more fear among the mortal population.” His eyes covered with a glassy film like sorrow hiding anger. “I believe an attack around Glasgow is imminent as a warlike act of revenge by the knights.”
“What about those disgusting creatures you’ve been collecting?” Vanessa stroked her silky hair, inspecting the ends. “Can’t we unleash them upon the castle now?”
“Soon the Dwellers will be ready, but not yet.” Malum walked toward the dark forest. “Come, my dear.”
“Where are we going?”
“We are following Alcazar. He is leading us to the next phase.”
Vanessa watched as the crow silently floated in circles over the dense wood. Her innocent glimmer faded. She eyed Malum, who stood at the edge of the forest with its tightly packed trees and thick brush.
There was more to Vanessa than she ever cared to show. Malum knew as much, and enjoyed the game. Vanessa knew, but thought she had everyone fooled. She was a master of the arts, a skilled warrior, a beautiful girl, discreet and detached, yet complicated and able. Once a young knight herself, one of her former friends was Aurielle—a knight now hidden away in the castle up on the hill. And the best friend Vanessa wished she could forget was Noemi. Who, to her knowledge, was dead after Malum flung her off the ocean cliff behind where she stood, along with Vincent—who was a traitor to Vanessa’s own jaded heart.
Vanessa took in a last pondering glimpse at the castle spire before entering the dark glen. She had unfinished business with Aurielle, and when she was done, this time, the redhead in the castle would pay back the favor she owed.
Until then, Vanessa was content to be Malum’s number one in command of the Shroud. She would let the old, unsightly man look, and think he knew her, that is, until she was ready to stick her dagger into his heart and cut off his head.
Malum glanced back. “I say, child, are you coming or not?” He slipped through the forest, slithering between trees and weaving in and out of the thick brush nimbly and with nary a sound.
Vanessa eyed the beautiful flowers in front of her feet, admiring them, yet she smashed her foot down on top the bushel of blooms, crushing their petals, grinning afterward. She sped her pace, skipping, while following both Malum and the crow before each had disappeared altogether from her sight.
Vanessa paused briefly with a contemplative sigh before she too entered the dark woods.
After several miles up uneven, harsh, mountainous, rocky terrain, Malum and Vanessa reached a tall cellphone tower. Alcazar had beaten them there, flapping his wings and cawing from above on one of the metal branches of the tower.
“Now what?” Vanessa scratched her head. “Where are we?”
“We are exactly where we need to be.” Malum slowly neared the base of the cellphone tower. He reached his hand out, and Alcazar suddenly flew from off the metal branch, quietly disappearing back into the forest.
Malum touched the cellphone tower. His body jolted forward, and his eyes rolled back before they closed. His body jerked in a controlled manner, and he began uttering gibberish.
At that moment, around the earth, cellphones of all kinds rang unexpectedly. In many different countries, and many different languages, hundreds of surprised owners grabbed their phones out their pockets and purses, yet before they could even say hello, a stranger in each case walked up and took the phone from out their hand.
Male and female alike, stole the phone, held it to their ear, speaking a single word, “okay,” and afterwards, destroyed the phone, smashing it on the ground, much to the protest of the phone’s owners.
Back at the cellphone tower on the mountain, Malum removed his hand, and he returned to his baseline self. “They’re on their way.” His knees gave out. He braced himself against a tree, almost dropping face first.
Vanessa grabbed his arm. “Are you all right?”
“Fine.” Malum hunched forward, rubbing his sparsely growing strands of white, stringy hair. “Quick, we must get ready for their arrival.”
“Who?”
“Hundreds of immortals that have dedicated their lives to the Shroud, and they are ready to destroy the knights’ castle.” Malum hurried his speech, appearing confused and unfocused. “Come, we must get back to camp.”
“You need to rest.” Vanessa was flustered. “Besides, what’s back at camp, and what did you just do with the tower?”
Malum straightened his crooked, bony hands in prayerful fashion, placing them sideways against his lips, and then pointed them at Vanessa. “If you stay loyal, I will teach you the things of the Shroud, but first, a guest is coming.”
“A guest?” Vanessa’s voice pitched high at the end. “But what about that thing you just did.” She pointed at the cellphone tower. “Is that why you’re so weak now?”
“Oh, that.” Malum flipped his wrist limply. “I’ll teach you how to control every piece of human technology in the world, and I’ll recover in time, so come, for we have much to do.” He ushered her down the mountain with him, and back into the dense forest from which they came.
In one of those places where Malum caused the cellphone to ring, a young, baby-faced, gorgeous man entered Vatican City.
His entire being wrapped in style, he had an aqua-green suit jacket, with only a single of the coat’s buttons buttoned. Underneath, he wore a loose white dress shirt, undone halfway down his chest, and faded jeans, along with sporty loafers on his feet without socks. With large, dark aviator sunglasses covering his eyes, his hair was short, nearly shaved on the sides and back, but long and flowing in layers, with a dry, natural look on top.
He strutted with a sort of entitled conceit, yet appeared unnoticed by t
he thousands of tourists gawking about. He seemed to know where he was going as if he had been there many times before, and he had a confidence of posture, a sureness few of his tender years possessed in the abundance he did.
He walked up to one of the restricted sections and waited for a moment. He glanced up at the sign on the ancient church before ignoring the restricted part. He ducked under a rope, after, walking up the building’s stairs.
A man dressed as a priest put his hand up, stopping the youth from entering the building.
“You cannot be here!” The priest shot an immovable glare and stood in front of the baby-faced, young man. “Where did you come from? Who are you? I’m calling security.”
The baby-faced youth simply pressed his lips together, quirking an upward, easy grin. “Though you do not know me, this is my house.” Then with a piercing look and drifting grin, he said, “Now go and make me a sacrifice for your sinssssss!” He carried the S sound for a long second after.
The priest’s eyes emptied. He dropped all individual thoughts, and his face sank into a waking sleep. “Yes, I can see you now in all your wonder and glory,” the priest said to the baby-faced youth before he ran from the building entrance and down the street.
The baby-faced youth entered the building. With a casual flip of his finger, the heavy double doors opened for him. He sighed, walking up the middle aisle, passing rows of pews, until he took one of the front pews of the enormous, decadent cathedral.
He browsed around at its stained glass windows full of saints. He peered at a golden chalice representing The Holy Grail, and gilded crosses to Christ in the front above the altar. Though the building’s wooden pews had a worn appearance, they were shiny, with a polished finish that even reflected the brilliant colors of the stained glass on each side from where he sat.