Bryan Smith - Queen Of Blood

And so of course he returned to haunt and taunt her now.

Giselle awoke gasping, her psyche still reeling from the long-suppresed images of her decades-dead brother. Wakefulness failed to banish the memories. Her body shook and her heart raced like an athlete’s at the end of a series of sprints, a manic thump-thump-thump that made the blood sing in her ears. Or was that just the memory of her brother’s wailing pleas for mercy? Hot tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cold cheeks. She remembered it all now. How he’d called out for his mommy and daddy over and over, even though they were already dead. Even though he’d watched them die. As if some part of him really believed their mutilated bodies could reanimate and come to his rescue. Because that’s what mommies and daddies did. They came to your rescue. They kept the boogeyman away and held you and rocked you when you were feeling bad. He was just a little kid and he’d been unable to accept that there was no one to play that role for him anymore. Not even his beloved older sister, who had turned against him so cravenly, just to save her own hide.

Giselle’s scream echoed in the dark chamber.

She shook her head hard, her sweat-soaked, stringy hair flailing in the darkness. She cried and jibbered like a madwoman locked in the padded room of some asylum.

NO!NO!NO!

NO!NO!NO!NOOOOOooooooo…

But the images refused to recede. It was as if, having thought of them, having allowed them room to breathe in the haunted cavern of her mind, she couldn’t not dwell on the awful memories.

She let out another keening cry of grief, raised her hands to her face-and felt the stumps prod her cheeks.

A moment of perfect stillness elapsed. In this moment, she held her breath, not daring to breathe. Not daring to acknowledge existence itself. Her mind was blank. Then she released that breath and gently touched the stumps to her cheeks again… There was a faint phantom limb sensation, but it diminished as her mind accepted the simple physical evidence of her mutilated flesh.

Her hands were gone again. She experienced a moment of desperate, yawning disorientation, as if she were standing at the edge of a great abyss. One more step and she would plummet into forever darkness. She struggled to comprehend what had happened. There was no pain. No throbbing ache of infection. These were not fresh wounds. Rather, these were wounds that had healed over time. Months, maybe. Her “restoration” had been a kind of illusion all along, an elaborate trick played on her by the Master while he masqueraded as Azaroth and awaited her inevitable downfall. She’d even half-suspected it near the end of her reign here.

She was as she’d once been.

Completely.

Her body was real again. Not whole, but real. Unenhanced by magic. In fact, she felt not the faintest trace of magical energy lurking anywhere within her. Whatever abilities she’d possessed were gone, beyond any hope of recapture. The damping energy Dream had wrapped her in was gone, too, no longer needed.

She was as she’d once been.

Completely.

With a broken body.

And a fully functioning conscience.

This realization at last banished the memories of her brother, but there was no relief in this. Because now her mind was flooded with a ceaseless series of images of the horrible things she’d done over the last few months. A nonstop film loop of atrocity with her in the starring role. And Ursula in a second-billed role, always by her side, inflicting pain and death because they enjoyed it, because they reveled in the screams and cries of their victims. Had she really thought she loved Ursula? Because she felt no connection to that emotion now. It, too, had been an illusion.

Giselle pressed the backs of her forearms to her face and cried some more, her chest heaving with the force of emotions artifically held in check for too long.

She thought of Eddie, her blood sacrifice to “Azaroth.”

Sweet, trusting Eddie.

And that look of confused betrayal on his face in his last moments.

The crying only began to dry up as she felt the subtle vibrations in her bones. She sat very still for a moment and waited. And felt the vibrations again. Then she drew in a series of deep breaths and felt herself grow calm.

She then situated herself in a corner of the swinging cage and awaited the arrival of the ones who had come for her. She thought about them and wondered what they would do with her. She supposed they would torture her. And then kill her, of course. There would be much pain. But contemplating this failed to disturb the new, sudden sense of peace that had settled over her. She supposed she deserved whatever they had planned for her. She thought about the dragon tattoo. If she could see herself in a mirror, would she still see the dragon? She thought not.

She was as she’d once been.

Completely.

She closed her eyes in the darkness and thought of a time when she’d done heroic things. Memories that were bittersweet now, but no less true than the memories of horror. When the tears came again, they were the soft, noiseless tears of a black-clad mourner at the grave site of a long-estranged former lover or friend.

The room was enormous, a large, open space big enough to encompass some of the smaller rural homes Allyson had seen on the way to this place. A portion of it functioned as a library and den. At the far end was a living space, with a canopied four-poster bed, wardrobe, and vanity.

A man in a black uniform stood in the center of the room, hands upraised, lean body in a stiff pose of surrender. Allyson tightened her grip on the M-16 as they moved deeper into the room. Something about the atmosphere here didn’t seem right. It was warm. And yet she felt a bone-deep chill. She shivered slightly as they advanced on the man who looked to be all that was left of the pathetic security force they had just vanquished.

The man was smiling as they neared. There was something unsettling in the man’s steady gaze. His dark eyes were the cold, unblinking eyes of a lizard. Allyson, seized by the absurd notion that he would have a forked tongue, suddenly didn’t want him to open his mouth. She imagined that tongue flicking out between teeth too sharp and too white, the only sound emerging from his mouth a low, sibilant hiss.

The image was so vivid she drew in a startled intake of breath when he opened his mouth to say, “Welcome, honored representatives of the Order of the Dragon.”

He bowed slightly at the waist as he said this.

Bai bowed in return and said, “I am Bai, designated by the Order to retrieve Giselle Burkhardt from your custody. And are you Schreck?”

The man in black straightened and nodded. “I am.”

Bai sheathed her sword. “At ease, then.”

The man called Schreck lowered his hands with deliberate slowness, as if he did not yet trust that he was safe in their presence. He looked at Allyson, then, a glance so quick she almost missed it, and her sense of unease deepened. It wasn’t just that oily, insincere smile that bothered her. She thought she’d detected something in that glance, something inscrutable directed at her. But that was crazy. And paranoid. She’d never met this man before, had no knowledge of him prior to walking into this room.

Then he spoke again, a comment directed at Bai.

“Shall we finish our business now?”

Allyson frowned.

There was something familiar in the timbre of his voice, a faintly insinuating and mocking quality. She had heard this voice before, she was sure of it, but the connection eluded her as, for some unfathomable reason, Schreck and Bai approached a drab and blank expanse of wall opposite the big bed. Schreck leaned close to Bai and said something she couldn’ t make out, a mumbled whisper. Then Bai nodded and extended a hand to the wall. Her forefinger described a vague shape on the wall. It might have been a door. She spoke in a whisper and Allyson moved a step closer, straining to hear. The words became slightly more distinct, but Bai was speaking an Asiatic language, so the meaning remained elusive.