Stephen: Odd Things Happen When Seeking Revenge

“So,” I said with a cheery smile as I plopped a black duffel bag of equipment on the floor of the passenger seat. I sat down and adjusted the back, giving me more leg room.

“So,” Evadne repeated in a completely different tone from me. She opened her door and got in the driver’s seat.

“There is an amulet, right? Containing the spirit of an ancient sorcerer, dark and wicked, potent with power?”

“Right,” Evadne said, gritting her teeth. She buckled her own belt and placed her hands on the wheel.

“This amulet showed up in an eBay sale for a couple of bucks.”

“Right.” Her hands were tightening on the wheel, her knuckles paling from her grip.

“And you sent out a minion to pick it up, correct?”

“Good so far, yes.” I could tell from her tone she was irritated. 

“And the minion put it on.” 

“Right.” She pushed the start button on the car and accelerated. The tires whined as they spun in the slightly slick road. The car hopped a curb as she took a corner a little too fast. I kept my grin up and started humming, trying to cheer her up. Evadne was driving angry tonight. 

I couldn’t imagine why.

The Amulet of Belteshazzar was something Evadne had run into at the beginning of the 20th century. After the opening of King Tut’s tomb, amateur archaeologists and grave robbers were everywhere, digging in the sands for any trinket they could get. It was too bad that the plain, unadorned copper amulet this one found was possessed by a Babylonian warrior mage. 

Belteshazzar made himself immortal to continue his plans for conquest, but they were foiled when the man he was possessing got lost in a wadi and drowned during a storm. The amulet was thought lost, the spirit banished, but the sands of time can reveal what the sands of sand hide. 

It possessed a series of people, coming from Mesopotamia to the shores of the United States in a matter of weeks. Evadne was in town taking pilot lessons down in Florida when it was unloaded. She was able to pick up on the magical ambiance of the amulet and tracked it down to a dock worker wearing it. The fight took most of a night, but the rising sun forced her to retreat. The next night she was unable to locate it, though she found the last bearer of it drowned.

Unable to detect it, Evadne moved on with her unlife and the training she was there to get. Periodic sweeps in the plane she was training in revealed nothing. Evadne assumed it was lost to the sea like it had been lost to the desert before. 

The fight was intense enough that Evadne felt unsatisfied at the way it ended. She had sent out occasional magical pings to locate it, but the family was struggling back then, moving from place to place and hiding from the larger vampire clans. Basileus had her tasked with far more important things than hunting down a several thousand-year-old bauble. 

My skill at modern technology had changed all of that. The ability to scour the internet was magic to a vampire born before Nebraska became a state. Thanks to a stroke of luck, we didn’t even need to get the amulet shipped to us, it was just an hour away. 

For whatever reason, Evadne was somewhat annoyed. I think it was because she had hunted this thing for over a century, and I had found it in less than a month after she told me about it. That and the fact that the family minion we sent to pick it up in the harsh light of day fell for the temptation of power and put the thing on.

Yeah, that had to be it.

We of course had a tracking spell on the minion. We were worried that Belteshazzar’s spirit might see it and dispel it, so Evadne was speeding. A lot. My job was to keep an eye out for any cops that might want us to stop that and cause problems for them.

We were partially relying on stealth, which was why Evadne had turned all the lights in the car off. With her nearing her second century of undeath, Evadne could see as well as if it were day. My own enhanced senses were slowly coming in, but I was a youth compared to her. We were totally safe.

Of course, I don’t know if the elderly couple we passed on a back road doing almost ninety miles an hour would be comforted by the fact that the car swerving into the other lane beside them was being driven by a vampire.

“Equipment check,” Evadne said, staring straight ahead. I reached into the duffel bag at my feet and started pulling out the gear we brought.

“Your sword and gun,” I said, setting them on the console between us. She preferred a saber that was large for her frame and a handgun that was even more out of proportion. “My sword and gun.”

My own sword was a straight, hand and a half bastard sword. I could easily wield it in one hand with the strength undeath conferred on me, but sometimes you wanted the extra leverage of a longer lever. It was too long to wear at my waist so it would go over my back. The baldric was balanced by my weapon of choice, a pistol grip pump action shotgun. I had a variety of ammunition for it on the pouches across my chest. Silver buckshot, blessed olive wood, rock salt, all kinds of variety for the up close and personal mayhem Evadne and I got into as the family troubleshooters.

“Communication equipment. Checking connection…” Usually Evadne and I went into a fight with spells tying our thoughts together, but with this enemy able to influence you by speaking into your mind, we had mental bunkers spells cast. We had to rely on simple technology. These earpiece sets had a small piece of mildly adhesive wire that could run down to under your bottom lip to act as the microphone. They were top of the line, looted from a local military base. The connection lights flashed green, so I handed Evadne her own.

Placing my earpiece in and adjusting the microphone, I looked in the bag at my feet and gave a whistle. 

“Four fragmentation grenades, four flash bang grenades, and two thermite grenades.” I glanced at the speedometer, suddenly nervous since I realized I had explosives between my legs. “Would you mind easing up on the corners some?”

“Absolutely,” she replied as she went around another turn at a ridiculous speed. “Just for you babe.”

I tried to unobtrusively buckle my seat belt, but I caught the flash of a grin. Evadne was excited to be on the hunt, moving to engage an ancient enemy. 

“Ward bracelet, ring of fireball, ring of healing, ring of…” I trailed off as I pulled out the matching pieces of jewelry. I handed each piece of hers over, though I didn’t like the way she took her hands off the wheel to get them. Not anymore. “I can’t make out what this one is, and it doesn’t have a matched set. It is more complicated than I am used to.”

“That is a ring of I Can Understand Babylonian But Not Speak It, just for you. It might come in handy to know what the wizard ghost possessing our guy is bellowing.”

“Clever.” I slipped all the rings on and flexed my hands. The solid metal of the enchanted pieces of steel would make for a decent knuckle duster if it came down to fisticuffs. Evadne always thought ahead like that. “Do you know where we are going?”

“As near as I can tell, the bus depot on the far side of town. The signal hasn’t moved in several minutes.”

“Either he’s stopped there or found the spell and is planning a trap.”

“You’re just a bucket of sunshine tonight, aren’t you? 

Before I could come up with a witty rejoinder, we rolled past one of the local cops. At the speed we were going, we were almost a mile ahead before they pulled out with their lights on. They weren’t going to catch us, but we didn’t want them calling for backup. I gestured for a few moments, muttering under my breath. My spell released and all the electrical energy in the cop car discharged into the ground, bringing it to a halt as the motor and radio lost all power.

“Good work,” Evadne said. Her tone was more relaxed, calmer after the almost ritual inventory of equipment. “We should have brought Kilcullen; running from the cops like that is second nature to him.”

I grunted in reply, pretending I agreed with her. Evadne’s younger brother was my elder by almost a century and lorded both that and the fact that he was a direct child of Basileus over me. He thought my behavior was unbecoming of a vampire and kept cajoling me to act more like he thought I should. The cruelty and reveling in death and blood he expected wasn’t what I wanted. Thankfully Evadne backed me up, but his snide remarks and casual bullying wasn’t helping me come to like him.

 “What’s the plan?”

“We’ll park outside the depot,” she told me. “Clip the fence, come in low. Use cover to get closer to him.” She was silent for a moment, thinking.

“We don’t really have much information on him. When we fought last time, he tried to take over my mind first. When that didn’t work, he fell back on fireballs and wards. The body he is in isn’t very combat oriented, so if we get close, we can take it down.”

“Do we save our guy?”

“If possible. There may not be much left of him in there. Belteshazzar is not the most subtle of men. He kind of hollowed out the wearer he had in the past.”

That morose statement killed the joy I had been faking to try and cheer her up. Her own mood darkened. Neither of us were fans of mind control nor mental magics like that. It was rude to take free will away from people. Far ruder than just killing them with a fireball. A bit of an odd distinction, but that is how we felt.

The rest of the ride passed in silence. There were no more cops, so I spent my time idly casting ward spells. Practice was important if I wanted it to become as instinctive as it needed to be. 

At our speed, it took another six minutes until we made it to the outskirts of town. The bus depot was still over a mile away when Evadne pulled onto the shoulder of the road. She nosed the car into the woods, slowly creeping until we were hidden from the road by the trees. 

We took a few moments to finish strapping on the equipment we had brought with us. The grenade we split between us. The five hung heavy on my belt opposite my pistol. Thankfully they were different enough I could tell them by feel. It would be a bad to grab a fragmentation grenade when I wanted a flash-bang.

It was overland then, darting through the woods at a dead sprint. Emphasis on dead. The dark rolled back to our eyes, the scattered stars and moonlight were enough to avoid the trees and branches. Evadne started a quick game of tag as we came along, daring me to catch her. The superior speed and agility of her age kept her just out of reach, but it was good practice.

We arrived at the bus depot with the moon high overhead. Evadne used her claws to clip the chain link fence, and we slid in unobserved. I heard some shouting, and we started towards it, hiding behind the rows of charging buses as we moved. We came to a halt as we moved to the last one, peering into the brightly lit shelter of the depot.

“I don’t think I need the tracking spell anymore,” Evadne said.

Our minion was standing in the driveway of the bus depot, shouting at the people under the small pagoda. I flipped my vision to view the magic in the area and I saw that he was wrapped in spells. He had an impressive defense array set up. Our guns would miss him at anything beyond six feet or so as the spell work would throw the bullet off course. He also had an array of small wards moving around him, floating in space. Making a ward that moved was complex and intense magic. 

The other spells visible were lines of control arching from him to the eight people waiting for a bus this late. They were staring at him, slack jawed and wide eyed as he shouted and gestured. This close, I could make out what he was saying. 

“Obey to me, the greatest one! Genuflect the respecting of your superior!” It was incredibly odd to hear him speaking ancient Babylonian but having the translation hit my mind at the same instant I heard it. I shook my head, trying to clear it, but the effect persisted.

“I think the ring you enchanted is just a little off. He sounds odd.”

“No, that is just how he talks, I think. You’ll learn the language eventually.” Evadne drew her sword, holding it while staring at the wizard. “Someone is high on their own supply.”

Belteshazzar continued hollering, my mind translating it to twisted, broken English. He was asking who could drive the “mighty chariots” and commanding them to step forth, but no one was moving. The bus driver was obvious by his uniform, but he was standing there unmoving. Impulses of power flew along the connection between the mage and them, but nothing happened. 

I was trying to study the spell controlling them from this far away but couldn’t see anything wrong with it. It seemed like a simple, basic mind control spell. Not one that allowed for a lot of personal initiative, but they should have been following his commands. I was trying to see a flaw when Evadne gave a snort and started giggling.

“What is it?” I hissed. Thankfully at this distance, there was no way Belteshazzar could hear her over the sound of his own angry shouts.

“Can you guess the likelihood that anyone at a rural Pennsylvania bus stop would speak ancient Babylonian?” she forced out between giggles. It hit me then and I had to laugh a few times as well. Belteshazzar was delivering orders with gusto and force to a crowd ready to obey them, but they couldn’t understand a word he was saying. That must have been why he was getting so angry and frustrated.

“That does mean there probably isn’t anything left of our guy in there,” Evadne said, sobering up. I peered at the lights of his spirit, trying to see if I could discern anything. I was too unfamiliar with this style of reading people and couldn’t garner any information from it this far way. “If it was just a controlling personality overlay, he could pick up the language from the memory inside.”

That killed the mirth we were feeling. We had hoped to be able to save the guy we sent out to grab the amulet, if only because we knew the story would inspire loyalty among the other mooks we had running around. The cult of servants wanted to feel valued and respected by their unliving masters, and going out of our way to save their lives was a good way to do it.

Plus, it was just the decent thing to do, really.

“That means he doesn’t know what all this around him is, right?” I asked Evadne.

“Right.”

“I have a wicked idea,” I said as a huge smile grew across my face.

It took some finagling, but we were in position in minutes. Evadne had snuck to the primary generators and was going to cut it on my signal. I was watching Belteshazzar grow more and more frustrated, looking for any sign that there might still be someone in there.

He cast a dart of flame at one of the waiting passengers and her clothing burst into flame. She fell to the ground burning, not even able to scream as his iron grip on her mind prevented her from taking any action he didn’t order her to. 

“To be the future of you all, if then you do not provide me tribute do to me!” he screamed. I gave Evadne the signal as he prepared another lance of fire. I couldn’t let him burn someone else.

The lights went out, plunging the depot into darkness. I hit the ignition on the bus and floored the accelerator. I had pulled out the portion of the engine that made the false noise all electrical vehicles were required to make for safety, so I was cruising silently in the dark. Belteshazzar looked around in a panic, spells flying into the night. 

One fizzled out as it left his fingertips. After Evadne cut the power, she moved up into position, countering any light spells Belteshazzar cast. He turned to where she had been, screaming about “devils who are in the night” and sent a bolt of fire into the darkness. Evadne of course was already moving and the spell splashed harmlessly against a supply shed.

It was smart of her to let that fire through, thinking about it. Ruining Belteshazzar night vision would help with my part of the plan. 

There was about two hundred feet between me and Belteshazzar. The bus was easily getting up to forty miles an hour by the time he noticed me. He turned to me and threw his arms wide.

“The driver has come! Deliver the destination of my goal and…” That was as far as he got before the crunch. The bus was so heavy I didn't even feel a bump. 

I’ve got to give the guy credit for bravery. Belteshazzar didn’t flinch or at all on the approach. Of course, he didn’t know what a bus was and just saw the faint reflection of distant flame on chrome. He stood up to the mystery of it and tried to command it. That was a kind of courage.

Or blatant ignorance and arrogance, which looked enough like courage in the dark.

Hitting the brakes, I eased the bus back to a normal parking lot speed. I steered it into the automated cleaning station. Once we could turn the power back on, the evidence of Belteshazzar’s accident would wash away. I turned the bus off and climbed out.

Evadne had swooped onto the corpse within moments of me leaving it behind me. There wasn’t much of it left, not after several tons of bus hit it going that fast. Thet amulet was still intact, though. The enchantment on it made it difficult to damage, so I wasn’t surprised to see her standing with it in her hand as I approached. The mental protection spell we had cast on ourselves diminished the urge to put on the amulet. The sensation made my teeth itch as I approached, though.

“What should we do about them?” I asked, hooking my thumb towards the people waiting under the bus stop pagoda. The burning woman had gone out and they were standing motionless in the dark.

“We can fix them up once we clean the place up some. The spell would fade naturally in time. Help me with the bodies, then we can speed it up.”

The burned corpse was still hot to the touch as we lifted her and carried her to the hole we had made in the fence. We didn’t want to leave anything behind for the investigators to pick up on, so she would be coming back with us. We vampires knew a thing or two about disappearing a body.

As for our minion, though, there wasn’t much left for us to carry. Not in one piece, at least. Thankfully no one would come looking for him. No one outside the cult would miss him or put in a police report. Just one more sacrifice for the glory of the family.

Evadne went to turn the power back on while I got a high-pressure hose disconnected from the automated cleaning station. I ran it over to the pagoda and sprayed the remains, forcing them to flow away to the storm drain at the curb. A quick few minutes of work with the cleaning station and all the blood was gone.

I cast a few spells to clean up the ash that had fallen from our burned corpse while Evadne went around poking the brains of the people waiting. They would awaken soon with no memory of what happened. There would be mysterious lost time, but there was nothing we could do about that. We just had to be gone when they came to. 

“What are we going to do with the amulet?” I asked as we moved through the fence. Evadne handed the body through the gap we made, and I threw her over my shoulder. It wasn’t the most respectful way to carry her, but she wasn’t one of the type of dead that could complain.

“I kind of want to put it on a parrot and ask it questions. Belteshazzar knew things we didn’t, I want to interrogate him.”

“Just make sure it's one that can’t fly away,” I said as we moved through the woods. Evadne gave a big sigh as she came through the fence. “What is wrong?”

“It’s just… I fought him for nine hours straight across Pensacola, down in the sewers and up again. This is…” she trailed off here.

“Anticlimactic? Boring? Not satisfying?”

“Yes, dammit. I really wanted to throw a grenade tonight.”

“Well, what can I say? I make this look easy.”

Even with my preternatural reflexes I couldn’t dodge the slap to the back of my head. Evadne did have a smile on her face as we walked back to the car.