"WEEPING WILLOW"
Starring Blade
Written by Zak Chambers
Rain lazily dribbled onto the cobblestone streets, audibly marking the night as a solemn one. Decades ago carriages would have strolled up and down those streets, replaced in present day by the sporty automobiles that the rich community had come to recognize as a status symbol. The small town of Willow, a few miles northwest of the English Channel, was a quiet place reserved for the crème de la crème of society. Retirees and Old Money kept to themselves, untouched by the dregs of the general populace.
A tall man stood under a weeping willow tree, a fitting piece of flora given the particular town. The sun had gone down almost an hour ago, yet nothing had yet stirred from within the mansion he carefully watched. Droplets of precipitation made their way through the maze of branches, every so often falling on his shaven head. He ignored the dampness, focusing his entire faculty on the doors and windows of the sprawling house.
There was something inside the house. Something old and strong. Something that needed to be killed.
Willow rarely received transients, and even rarer still did it play host to tourists. The inhabitants were surprised when a young and dashing man swept into Willow and bought out an elderly couple of their estate. Even more curious was that older couples total disappearance. So when reports started circulating online of people disappearing from the secluded English town, the attention of certain circles was thus caught.
He had breezed into Willow the morning before, beginning a makeshift investigation to follow up on the clues. He had found all the telltale signs that he had suspected he would: missing children, unexplained discrepancies in hospital records, and dug up graves.
It seemed that Willow was the budding home of a new vampire.
For the tall man under the weeping willow, it was business as usual. He didn't like to travel so far, but there was something about this particular case that made him go the extra mile. Maybe it was the seclusion. Maybe it was the missing kids. Maybe it was something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Whatever the reason, there was no arguing the fact that his skill was needed.
He had a full name, but it wasn't his anymore. Only a handful of people actually knew what it used to be. These days the bloodsuckers he hunted down like dogs feared the name the night had given him: Blade.
Blade, still ignoring the drizzle, checked his cache of weapons hidden throughout his person. The classic instruments were mixed with new age technology, all useful in his quest to annihilate the predators of the night. Satisfied that he was prepared for whatever awaited him, Blade finally stepped out from under the tree and crossed the cobblestone street. He unlatched the small white gate that bordered the mansion's grounds, granting access to the stone walkway. His eyes remained fixed on the windows.
Even though the sun had dropped below the horizon Blade still wore his trademark sunglasses. His vision was keen, thanks mostly to his heightened senses from being a human/vampire hybrid. They called him the Daywalker, a term when he heard uttered usually stirred his adrenaline. The general human race disregarded him along with the vampires, pretending that they didn't exist. Easier to sleep that way. When someone called him the Daywalker it meant trouble was in the near future.
The pathway to the front double doors wound slightly around various bushes and shrubs that the original owners had planted themselves. Blade guessed that the elderly couple, who had contracted the mansion's construction themselves nearly fifty years ago, were probably rotting in the basement of the house somewhere. Vampires had little use for the elderly.
A few moments before he reached the front porch, a wide patio made of an entire oak that preceded the double doors, he caught a small amount of movement in the corner of his eye. One of the lace curtains behind a window moved, but the window was closed. A gentle wind hadn't moved that curtain; someone had been watching him watch the house.
Sching!
The tip of his sword slipped out of its sheath on his back with a small metallic noise. He had figured on encountering at least a half dozen baddies. He doubted the first would open the door and greet him, so with minimal effort thanks to his enhanced vampire-like strength, Blade kicked in the front doors. His boot connected between the two thick doors, splitting the lock and cracking the wood. They crashed open loudly, bidding him to enter. But the inside was still unlit and appeared vacant. Letting his sword pierce the dark shroud of shadows before him, Blade took his first step into the mansion.
From his right he heard a gun being cocked. He reacted instantly, hitting the floor to get out of the line of fire. The first gunshot was high, shattering a window. Blade rolled forward, careful to avoid the fine edge of his sword. The second bullet lodged itself in the floor near the door, quickly followed by a third and a forth. Blade found himself behind an expensive set of sitting room furniture, upholstered in fabric that only an aristocrat would find attractive.
The gunfire continued, randomly peppering the room with stray bullets. The gunman appeared to just pray that his shots would catch Blade. There was no structure or finesse to his aim. That meant Blade's quarry was either naïve or scared. Maybe both.
Snatching a phosphorus flair from under his black overcoat, Blade flipped the latch and threw it into the center of the foyer. It exploded in a flash of light, pulling out a scream of panic from the gunman. The flair burned brightly, illuminating the room enough for Blade to see exactly where the gunman was. He flipped over the chair he had rolled behind, crossing the foyer in a few bounds. Before the gunman knew what was happening Blade was on top of him. He knocked the gun to the floor, slid an arm under his chin, and dug the tip of his sword into his side just enough to let him know who was in charge of the situation.
"Christ!" the gunman, a young man with a thick English accent, yelled as he shivered from the surge of excitement. "Let go, arsehole!"
"Something tells me you aren't from around here," Blade grumbled into the young man's ear. "You a look out for your masters? Hoping they'll turn you?"
The teenager chuckled slightly. Blade could just barely make out a tattoo on the side of his cheek, a vampire glyph that marked him as a familiar. Humans like him sold their services to the vampires in hopes that their masters would some day see their contract fulfilled, granting them the same eternal night that all vampires embraced.
"Just keeping you stalled," the kid said. "Been waiting for you to get the stones to come inside. Heh. Now the party can really get started."
Blade followed the young man's gaze to the far end of the foyer. The phosphorus flair was beginning to die down but he could still make out the impressions of several figures stepping to the entryway. He could tell instantly that they were different from the familiar he gripped in his arm. The way they moved. The weight of their steps. The shape of their outlines in the dark. They weren't human.
Blade had been wrong. Willow wasn't home to just a single vampire. Apparently an entire nest had burrowed its way into the small town.
"Shit," he swore.
His fist flashed across the familiar's face just as the last traces of the flair extinguished. The teenager fell limply down, slumping in a pile of bullet shells that were still hot. Just as Blade reaffirmed his grip on his sword the vampires, three total, hissed and growled in challenge.
The vampires charged forward and Blade met them halfway. His sword sung again, this time from being forced through the undead flesh of the lead vampire. The first one's upper torso slid off the rest of his body from the clean cut Blade's weapon had made. The blessed silver that the sword had been made of burned as it plowed through the vampire's chest, igniting the creature's skin. By the time the torso hit the floor it was nothing more than ash. The lower portion of the vampire's body began to turn to cinder just as the other half was finished combusting.
The second vampire caught Blade with a kick to the face, while the third slashed at him with her sharp talons. His training overtook his movements, making him gracefully duck under another volley of slashing nails. He followed through from his first strike with a second, cutting off the hands of the third female vampire. She screamed and her hands burned away into ash, no longer useful as weapons. Another quick strike with his sword and her head flung up against an oil painting on the wall, burning away within a moment.
There was only one vampire left in front of him, but Blade was sure there would be more on the way. These were weak lackeys, barely turned longer than a few weeks he estimated. Cannon fodder for the lord.
"Piss off!" the vampire snarled as he flashed his teeth. "You bloody well better take off if you know what's good for you!"
The vampire's skin was darker than a normal human. A slight blue hue was mixed in to what otherwise looked like living flesh. This vampire was just a fledgling, blindly following orders. He probably lacked the knowledge of the rest of the true underworld, ignorant of all the other creatures that went bump in the night. Undoubtedly he was also ignorant of people like Blade, who were more than capable of taking away what his vampire master had granted him. More than likely he was one of their familiars that had been chosen to bolster their ranks.
Blade ignored his comments and leapt into the air. He spun counter-clockwise, extending his thin sword as he rose. Its edge sliced into the vampire's forehead, cutting easily through his skull. The top of his scalp came clean off, revealing the rotting pink brain matter housed within. The vampire fell to his knees while his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His body began to burn away to ash just like the others. Before Blade's feet touched back down on the hardwood floor the vampire was completely smoldered.
Blade grunted in approval, checking the surrounding area for any more enemies. He re-sheathed his sword, slipping it over his back. The foyer seemed clear, which meant it was time to head deeper into the house and search for the lord. His original assumptions had been wrong, which meant that anything could be awaiting him.
Killing was something that had come disturbingly easy to him. Ever since his youth, when he had gained the strength and ability to defeat vampires, Blade had moved more distant from his human side. Retaining a shred of his humanity was what kept him from becoming that which he hated, but with ever fanged creature that fell before him he felt like he took one more step from the light. It was ironic. His sense of duty to protect something also separated him from it.
Beyond the foyer was a dark hallway, encompassed by a large mural of what he assumed was a family tree. Going back generations he saw that the diverse bloodline had a prolonged history, and that the elderly couple who had been presumably slain were the last of their kin.
The hallway split to both the left and right, forcing him to choose which way to go. To the left he could see what appeared to be a dining room, filled with silverware and fine antiques. To his right there came a pungent odor, prompting him to take that route. Keeping his sense sharp, Blade turned to the right and approached a swinging door, pushing it open with one hand. The stench billowed out of the room, a kitchen, and overtook him.
While the rest of the house seemed exquisitely clean and well-kept, the kitchen was a horrific mess of mutilated flesh, blood, and other things he couldn't quite identify. If he wasn't already accustomed to such things he may have gagged from the sight. Blood had been splashed on the walls and stainless steel refrigerator, dripped in a path from the counter to the small table in the corner. The ghastly creatures that were known to consume blood for sustenance had apparently mimicked the eating habits of the human owners by feasting at the table.
Strips of flesh, gnawed on by something that was more savage than his typical prey, were strewn about the floor. He spied a lump in the corner that resembled a human liver, but couldn't be sure. Large teeth marks resembling X's were bitten into the pieces of human meat, marking them as the meal of something more terrifying than a vampire.
The blood was streaked across the tiled floor, leading him to another door on the other side of the kitchen. Leaving the disgusting room behind him, Blade entered another hallway that spilled into a spiral staircase that took up the entire side of the house. The blood trailed down, leaving the higher levels of the mansion untouched by its odor. Pulling in a deep breath, Blade stalked down the staircase toward the unknown.
Whatever light that the moon provided through the mansion's windows was now completely gone. The steps wound down and down. They became thinner as he descended, with the spilled blood making it a treacherous and slippery path.
He yanked out a handful of glow sticks from his overcoat, cracking them over his knee to activate the chemicals that would provide him with light. The green ambience bathed him in its eerie touch. He threw a couple behind him to mark where he had been and then threw the rest down the center of the spiraling staircase. Their light dimmed as they fell deeper into the bowels of the house, finally hitting the ground with a soft thump. He was shocked to see just how far down the stairs went, but it wasn't so outrageous a depth that he couldn't make it down in a few minutes.
After a few more steps he heard a scraping sound bellow up from beneath him. He peered over the edge to see the shadow of some four-legged creature hunched over the glow sticks he had dropped, sniffing them. It circled the sticks, its claws scraping the cement floor. It suddenly turned its attention up toward him, sniffing the air above it. It shrieked in defiance of his presence and leapt up onto the side of the stairs.
He watched in slight interest as it burrowed its claws into the side of the staircase, climbing up the center of the spiraling column. He didn't recognize it, which since he had seen many wandering creatures in his journeys, surprised him. It looked pale and its haunches were higher than its head, which was quite large itself. Its ears stuck straight out horizontally from its face. As it grew closer he saw it had tufts of fur splotched around its body, which seemed to be falling out in clumps. The most evident things about the sickening creature were its blood soaked mouth, which wielded a set of fangs that jetted out under its jaw into sharp points, criss-crossing at the ends.
Whatever this thing was, it apparently had developed a taste for human flesh.
It growled a much lower tone than any dog, which it may or may not have had any relation to. Blade jumped back as the four-legged creature reached his height on the stairs, pulling itself over the edge in one final effort. It swiped a claw at him as it hit the thin steps, tagging the fringes of his overcoat.
Its powerful legs catapulted it at him, diving on top of him. He collapsed back, barely managing to grab its throat in time to hold it at arm's length. It weighed considerably more than he did, giving it the added momentum to knock him on his back. Blade wrestled with it, holding it tautly by the thick hide around its neck, trying to keep its snapping teeth from closing around his face.
Gobs of drool dribbled onto his shoulders, white and stringy. Its breath was pungent, reeking of the consumed muscle, blood, tendons, and internal organs. Blade's strength held out, but the beast was clamoring too much for him to keep it at bay for much longer.
He angled one arm under it to hold it back while he grabbed a curved, twin-bladed metal instrument from his vest. The custom weapon had been a gift to him from an old mentor, something he often used to tackle his adversaries from a distance. Grasping it by the handle in the center, a curved edge extended from each side, made of silver similar to his sword.
The beast snarled again and snapped at his head, nearly chomping away a good portion of his face. Quickly he stabbed the curved weapon into the creature's stomach and pulled to the side. He had stuck the beast with the blade against its curve, and as he pulled back he tore into its underbelly viciously. Black fluid oozed out of it, coating his chest and the steps beneath him.
The creature shrieked and pulled itself off of him. It swayed from the pain, but continued to growl and keep Blade its glare. Blade leaned forward to stand back up, but halfway through the movement the creature leapt at him again, intent to finish the kill. This time Blade rolled with the lunge, sweeping his arm under its haunches and spinning it onto its back. He pinned it with his left arm while his right brought the curved weapon down into its neck.
After several stabs the four-legged creature finally died with a whimper and it stopped struggling. Whatever it was, it would no longer feed on the scraps its masters threw it. Blade stood back up to his full height, now more intent than ever to kill the vampire lord that had brought so much misery to the small town of Willow. The presence of the beast lying at his feet worried him. Only a powerful vampire, ancient and experienced, would be able to command a creature that was of other brethren.
He ran down the rest of the staircase, hopping sections of steps a half dozen at a time. The wooden walls soon gave way to brick and crumbling mortar, making him wonder just how old the mansion was. He must have descended nearly a dozen floors before reaching the bottom, catching sight of his glow sticks that he had dropped.
There was only a single door at the base of the stairwell. Embedded in the wall and covered in shadow, Blade withdrew his sword once more as he kicked in the warped wood of the door. Orange and yellow light hit his face as he looked into the single room that doorway opened into.
The brick and mortar that comprised the walls of the room were the same as the stairwell: old and brittle. Decorations of weaved gold and silver silk adorned the walls, draping like tapestries every few meters. Torches were lit in the corners to light the room, and candles sat on the long slender table that ran down the middle of the chamber. Shadows danced along the edges of the wall, gleefully watching the display of grotesque ancient practices.
The three lone occupants of the room looked to Blade as the door was knocked off its frame. An old man stood high over the table, a slender golden knife clutched tightly in both his hands, raised over his head. Beside him stood a young and attractive woman, wearing little more than the see-through pieces of gold and silver cloth that similarly hung on the walls. Anger was their only response to Blade's untimely entrance, as both of them barred their fangs and hissed.
The remaining occupant, a small girl that could have been no older than three or four years of age, caught Blade's eye. He saw the look of pure terror burning deeply within her. The golden knife hovered above her like a buzzard, waiting to swoop down and steal away the last trace of life from her.
"Defiler!" the old man accused. "You have broken the sanctity of our home! Be gone!"
The young vampire woman beside the man pounced through the air at Blade. Her teeth were bared and her claws were extended, viciously swiping at the air between them. The tethered silk clinging to her body fluttered in her wake, nearly tearing away from the force of her leap.
Blade barely dodged out of the way of her attack. Even though his reflexes were on par with any vampire, the shock of what he saw slowed him down. She avoided the tip of his sword just as he had her claws, and so it went back and forth. Their movements almost seemed choreographed from afar, had the intensity of the situation not taken a deeper hold of them both it might even seem comical.
"Kill the interloper!" the old man commanded. "Keep him away from the girl. I must slay her to regain the lost life!"
Out of the corner of his eye Blade saw the man once again raise the golden dagger over his head, preparing to stab its edge into the girl strapped to the table. The vampire female tried to take advantage of the distraction, pushing herself on top of Blade. She hit him in the chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs and making him stumble back. He quickly regained his balance, but she was already off of hers as she had expected him to fall over completely. She strode right into his sword, which he promptly pushed the whole way through her gut until it poked out her back, barely missing her spine.
She squelched a scream as her innards began to burn away into nothingness. Her blood red eyes met with Blade's as they rolled into the back of her head and then blew away with the rest of the cinders.
Blade quickly flicked his wrist, sending his curved weapon that he had used to kill the four-legged beast flying at the old man. It sliced into the man's forearms, severing both of them from the rest of his body. The blessed silver of the curved blades easily burned away the separated arms, the ash spreading over the tear-filled face of the little girl underneath the elder vampire. The custom created weapon clanged against the far wall, falling to the dirty floor.
"No!" the vampire screamed. "No! I will not be denied!"
The old man stumbled back, staring at the blackened stumps that used to be his appendages. Blade hopped onto the table and yanked away the restraints from the child, scooping her up in one arm and placing her down on the far side of the table. He turned his gaze, a gaze that had held captive many of his prey, back to the old vampire that now seemed so weak.
"My eternal night cannot end," the vampire said, muttering the words beneath his lifeless breath. "The spell…the spell taught to me can still be cast…"
Blade grasped the crazed vampire by the throat, holding him against the wall at arm's length. He picked him up, holding him nearly a meter in the air. "Quit babbling," Blade told him. "What is this place? Who are you? What were you going to do to her?" he asked, motioning to the cowering child in the corner.
The dark eyes of the elder vampire blazed to life. He smacked Blade in the head with one of his stumps, but without a fist to accompany it the strike did little to sway the vampire hunter. Blade looked at him with disdain, irritated from the feeble strike. He held up his sword to drive through the heart of the vampire, which promptly caused the creature of the night to start talking.
"Fine, fine…" the vampire began to explain. "This house has but one owner. Myself. It is an old as the town itself."
"Bullshit. I looked into the history of this place. The pattern doesn't fit. You're lying. If you've been here for years then why are the attacks only reported now?"
"You saw the mural?" the vampire questioned. "It is a mere illusion, created to sustain that my family has owned this property. In truth this poisoned ground is a collective place of evil magic that I have spun to my own ends for generations. My youth is restored once a generation thanks to the sacrifice I was about to make. By spilling the blood of the young in this place, my darling bride and I would forever remain youthful. The attacks were only reported recently thanks in part to the new age of information. Yes, Daywalker. It is true."
"And the other lackeys I met upstairs?"
"My…my bride convinced me that an army should be amassed given the wealth of attention our actions would draw. Now kill me, Daywalker. Send me to Hell with my bride and the rest of our kin."
Blade gripped the handle of his sword tightly. "Gladly," he said as he thrust the tip directly into the vampire's heart. His already brittle skin burned away, leaving nothing behind as evidence of his unlife.
A small, almost inaudible whimper reached Blade's ears. He turned to see that the child had yet to flee and was still cowering in the corner. Her clothing was turn and her cheeks were red. Her eyes dribbled tears in a steady stream down the sides of her face. She shook slightly from the horror of all she had witnessed. There was no telling what revolting acts she had seen before her captors were ready to take her life as part of an ancient ritual.
Blade returned his sword to its resting place in an attempt to look less scary. She watched him intently, unsure of whether he was a savior or another creature that would take advantage of her. He removed his sunglasses and offered his hand, bending down on one knee.
After a log moment she placed her hand in his. The terror she had unwillingly been a part of that night would forever be intertwined with her spirit, but her soul remained intact. Blade took little solace in that fact, but it was better than the alternative, as he was sure the little girl would someday come to realize.
"What is your name?" he asked her.
She hesitated, possibly too frightened to even talk. The words bubbled up from her stomach, finally parting her lips in a burst. "Willow," she answered.
Blade picked her up and held her closely, making sure her head was buried in his shoulder to keep her from seeing any more of the filth in the house. He exited the chamber and began the long walk back up the winding stairwell.
The night was still young, but he would only return this girl to her waiting family. She may have nightmares from the events, but at the very least she would sleep in her own home tonight.
For the small town of Willow, the nightmare was finally over.