THE QUESTERS, PART XXIII

We were one but at the same time we were three: Jonah Parker, Venom, and Lockheed.

Moving slowly and precisely, as silent as spirits, we carefully followed Smit on his final hunt.

Smit was leaving himself no chance for survival. On the other claw, perhaps we would survive - and perhaps we would not. That would be in accordance to the will of the gods and the Great Spirits. But no matter what, we'd made the decision to do whatever it took to kill Dracula.

The three of us considered our ends in manners peculiar to us.

Jonah had made the decision to risk his life more than once, but now he was experiencing the strange hollowness that came with actually signing your life away. He touched his chest, where Venom now covered the spider medallion of Jonah's faith. Then Jonah began saying his final prayer, for the last time begging forgiveness for the death of his great-grandfather.

Lockheed commended his soul to his ancestors and wistfully remembered a long-gone Wilder girl who he had loved. He hoped they would soon be together again.

Venom only barely cared.

We continued our descent into the depths of the island. It became steadily cooler and eventually the cavern opened up into a wet chamber, with a jagged floor that was spotted with salt-rimmed pools of water. There was the sound of trickling and dripping liquid. The scent of wet rock was complemented with that of sea-water and strange nitrates. Presumably, we were just above sea-level.

Smit was still somewhere ahead of us, but we'd lost sight of him. By then we were tracking him by mere heat traces. We could see nothing else - no stray drops of water; no disturbances in the dust and salt. It was amazing how little of a trail Smit left.

Our plan was heartlessly simple. We would wait for Dracula to attack Smit. Then, while Dracula was killing him, we would catch Dracula in a counter-ambush. Smit's survival was not particularly a part of our plan. But then again, none of use really expected to get out of this alive.

Lockheed sensed Jonah's distress and from his place flattened against our spine, he slowly, comfortingly, rubbed the side of his head against the back of Jonah's neck.

Jonah finished his prayer. And we didn't think he would have the time to ever pray again.


"Rahne?" Rose asked. As she spoke my name, I could hear the desperation in her voice.

I opened my eyes. I was on my back, slumped against Faye and in her arms. Meanwhile, Rose was kneeling next to us, my wrists in her hands. Off to one side, a torch was embedded between a trio of rocks and provided a flickering light. I didn't need it, but Faye and Rose did.

"You collapsed..." Faye said to me uncertainly.

"It's fine, Faye," I replied. Moving slowly, I sat up. Rose kissed the top of my head and released me. Then I looked around. Faye, Rose, and I were alone except for Beck's body. She had been respectfully laid out on the cave floor, with Rose's cloak covering her body - and especially her ripped-open neck. Her arms were crossed over her chest to hold the cloak in place.

Around us, I could sense the spirits of those who'd been murdered on this island. They were watching in stillness.

I wondered if Beck was with them.

"Was that something to do with spirits?" Faye growled. "Is that where you went?"

I nodded silently.

"Fucking hell," Rose snarled in disgust. "Can the spirits quit screwing around and either actually help us or just bugger off? And can they not knock you out when we're ass-deep in trouble?"

Actually, the spirits had helped. I just didn't have time to explain it to Rose.

"Jonah and Venom are still missing," Faye told me. "Alex eventually took off after them. I think Ed is with the the Spider-grunts. No clue about Ed."

Rose nodded. "Alex said he couldn't wait any longer. He had to be with Jonah."

I got to my feet, rubbing cave-dust from my eyes. "That's no surprise," I told Rose. "Alexander and Jonah have sworn themselves to each other as blood-brothers. Alex was torn between two responsibilities and he picked the one nearest to his heart. He did nothing wrong."

Rose nodded but I could tell she had doubts.

There was no sign of the sword that the Lady had gifted me with. But that didn't bother me. The sword had not physically real. It was a thing of the spirit world: a sign - a blessing - from the Lady of Blades. And I knew it was still with me. I could feel it inside.

I flexed my empty hands. Then I opened my hand-claws.

My exposed blades gleamed metallic and bright in the torchlight. Rose stared at them. Faye whispered an oath. The spirits all around us stirred.

The Lady of Blades was with me.

The Lady was one of the three goddesses. Logan was the Old One himself. Thor was the last of the old gods who still maintained a connection to the modern world. They had all come together and we were their servants. They wanted us to destroy Dracula.

"Let's go," I told the others.

By all rights, Faye and Rose should have told me to go to weaponex. But instead they followed me.

"Take me, not them," I heard myself whisper.

Rose couldn't hear me, but Faye gave me a hard look.


It seemed unlikely that Dracula was alone, but when he finally attacked Smit, he was unaccompanied. Of course, thanks to logistics, Dracula never really had too many of his subjects on his island. And the battle was steadily exterminating them.

Then there was a movement of air - nothing more - and suddenly Smit was in a fight for his life. And it was a fight that he was losing from the very moment it began.

Dracula was a blur of dark motion. I caught a glimpse of hellish yellow-red eyes. Smit howled in defiance as his claws slashed through the air.

Still silent, we lunged into the fight. We were half-way there when Dracula somehow sensed us. He spun Smit around and smashed him into a pillar that ran from the cavern roof to the cavern floor. Stone and dust flew through the air as the pillar splintered. We could hear the breaking of Smit's bones before he went limp.

Then we vomited a gout of red flame that engulfed both Smit and Dracula.


"What the hell was that?" Rose asked tensely.

Ahead of us, there had been a rushing sound. It was accompanied by a blast of hot wind and a sulfur-like stench. The temperature rose quickly, and I could feel sweat beading up on my body.

"Dragon fire," I replied offhandedly.

"Lockheed?" Faye asked.

I listened to the sound of a battle that was raging ahead of us.

"It better be," I said grimly.

Rose snorted.

We abandoned stealth and began running towards the fight.


At first, we were winning. We actually caught a flame-wrapped Dracula off-guard. Ignoring the flames, we cartwheeled into our foe.

We should have remained silent, but we couldn't help but give voice to our defiance.

"Dieeeee," Venom hissed. Lockheed and I let out animal growls of agreement.

My tongue, coated with razor-sharp bone-blades, wrapped around Dracula's neck. Jonah's twin-swords whipped through Dracula's torso, cutting loose two streaks of acrid vampire gore. Lockheed's head - black and sleak - lifted loose from the back of our Venom form and sent out another narrow and concentrated jet of dragon-flame. This time, it went directly into Dracula's face.

We heard the bubble and pop of Dracula's eyeballs bursting from Lockheed's alien heat. Most of the flesh on his already burning and melting face was sloughing away.

That was our surprise attack, and it was a good one.

Then Dracula began fighting back.

There was a series of attacks so fast that we couldn't actually see them. We were battered around like a toy doll. Then a back-hand blow smashed us away from our prey. Our tongue actually tore loose, a loop of it remaining wrapped around Dracula's neck and the base in one of his claws. After that, we skidded and bounced across sharp rock outcrops and ended up in a stinging pool of salt-water.

We forced our head towards the surface and tried to breath and curse at the same time, but blood-ichor was spilling from our mouth as our tongue tried to regrow itself.

We couldn't move. Everything was hazy and we were seeing double. I wondered distantly if our skull was fractured - or just plain broken open.

Lockheed gave up on us, and tore loose from Jonah and I in a spray of blood, ichor, and water. Rolling away from our joining, he let out a defiant cry that we could hear even underwater. It changed into a deafening machine-like howl as Lockheed began to grow into his titanic form.

*Get up! Get up, you freak!* Jonah sent as he and I struggled and floundered. Our joining was splitting apart and we were sinking back into the pool. We would die in mere seconds if that happened.

*Motherfucker,* I snarled mind-to-mind as we struggled for the surface. It was a pungent word I'd learned long ago from a Scatter named Cage. At the moment, I didn't really know if it was directed at Jonah or Dracula.

Thinking we were surfaced, we took a deep breath of what turned out to be salt water. Unable to breath, we began to weaken even more...

And then Alexander was there, deep in the water with us. He wrapped his arms around our chest and hauled us towards the surface.

"Get up! Get up! GET UP!" he was screaming at us as we finally broke surface.

"Brother..." Jonah managed to choke out. It was a single, deeply grateful, word.

Like all of his kind, Jonah didn't want to die alone. And he didn't consider me to be much in the way of company.

That... hurt.


With cloths wrapped round our faces, Faye, Rose, and I entered a fire-engulfed cavern. Breathing was difficult.

By then, we could hear the fight and see dark shadows flickering within a yellow-red flame.

I jumped over the form of what I took to be Smit's broken and blazing body. Incredibly, it was twitching coherently.

My claws still gleamed in the semi-darkness. Faye did that damn thing she always does and leaped ahead of me. She calls that 'running interference'. Then Rose sent her iron-studded wooden stakes whipping up ahead - a flight of silent death.

Off to the side, Venom and Jonah crawled out of a brine pool. Alexander was with them.

Ahead of us, Dracula and a now-gigantic Lockheed were locked in swirling, flame-shot, battle - the Son of the Dragon against a Dragon from the Stars. Dracula had his arms around Lockheed's long neck and was relentlessly squeezing. Lockheed was savagely clawing at his foe. As Lockheed struggled, his wings and tail were smashing against the cavern roof, and rock was collapsing all around us.

Rose's stake-blades streaked through fire and smoke and slammed into the battle. Some were deflected by the rockfall. I think at least one hit Lockheed. But the others cut deep into Dracula. As near as I could tell, they did nothing.


Our body ached miserably. We were regenerating, but not as fast as we would have liked.

*It was a bad idea to do this without the ladies,* Jonah admitted as we limped around the flames, looking for an opening and dodging Lockheed's lashing limbs.

Venom didn't respond. There wasn't any point. In order to have a chance of killing Dracula we needed to hit him with a single overwhelming attack. For that, we needed silence. Rahne can do our kind of silence - but Faye and Rose cannot. And they're mortally attached to Rahne. So we tried it on our own.

But Jonah was right. We needed greater numbers.


I don't now how Dracula did it, but he managed to somehow flip Lockheed head over tail. Lockheed crashed into us and kept rolling away. Faye was buried underneath him, but Rose plucked me out of the way and after a hot, smoke-filled, and half-blind tumble through mid-air, we landed behind Dracula.

By then, Dracula was a shambles. Much of the flesh on his upper body was burned to dark cinders and there were massive rents in what was left. But he was still fighting. And he was very aware that we were right next to him.

Trying to buy us time, Rose began surrounding us with a hemispheric shield of her strange energy. I got between her and Dracula.

And then Dracula vanished.

He reappeared immediately between Rose and I.

Dracula clawed at us both. I barely managed to duck below his attack.

Rose screamed.


We could see that Rose was down and Rahne was in trouble. Fortunately, we had managed to catch our breath, and were recovering with a speed that even most Blood would have found incredible.

*Dammit!* Jonah howled in frustration as he retrieved his dropped swords. After that, we shot out a strand of webbing that attached to a patch of cavern-roof that wasn't in mid-collapse. Then we used it to vault upwards and across the burning cave, into the battle between Dracula and Rahne.

"Will you WAIT FOR ME!" Alexander yelled from behind us. Then he began running after us, leaping and dodging through the flames.

Meanwhile, Faye managed to crawl out from under an unconscious Lockheed.


I was bleeding and reeling from Dracula's last attack. Faye lunged to her feet, carelessly striking out at Dracula as she frantically tried to defend me. Dracula smashed her down yet again.

The others were approaching as best they could.

Rose clung to me as her life-blood splashed over us. Our eyes met and I could see that she was in that place where life hasn't yet fled, but death isn't yet final.

Beck's death had been a preview of Rose' death.

"My queen," Rose said to me in a tiny, gasping, voice. Then she fell away. I let her fall because there was nothing I could do for her.

There's a female-Blood trick where you jump up, flip in mid-air, and lash out with your foot claws. Many non-Blood can't see it coming. Even Blood males can be caught out by it.

I tried it. Dracula effortlessly caught one of my ankles in mid-kick and heaved me overhead, trying to flail me against the rocky floor. I only stopped that by burying the claw of my free foot through his head. The foot-claw penetrated through one of his temples and out the other. Even Dracula couldn't ignore that and I managed to kick myself free from his grip. But when I landed, I immediately fell flat. My left foot was dangling by torn flesh and broken bone and it couldn't support me.

Dracula could have killed me then and there, but he had to turn and face Faye. She was a streak of dark-green fury as she again jumped at Dracula. Dracula punched her in mid-air and she bounced away. But that meant he was off-balance when Venom-Jonah landed on his back and buried his swords deep.

I heard Dracula actually make a sound. It was both an angry snarl and a moan of pain.


"GOT YOUUUU!" Venom exulted. We thought it was over and we had won.

Dracula snapped one of our forearms. We didn't even see his follow-up attack but it broke our jaw and knocked us flat. We lost both of our swords yet again as Jonah blacked out.


I tried to get up, thinking I might be able to get back in the fight even if I only had one good foot. Instead, I fell again.

Dracula was in mid-dematerialization. Despite our continued battering, we were overwhelming him, but he still had a final means of retreat. If he got away, the fight - and all of the deaths - would have been for nothing.

Then a yellowish glow surrounded Dracula as his murky and translucent form wavered back into full existence. He had no face for me to read, but his body language seemed more surprised than anything else. Illyana's Darkhold-fueled magiks were still preventing Dracula from using the full range of his powers.

But now another form was tangled up with Dracula. It was a ghostly Smit. The spirits of the dead that surrounded all of us had chosen their champion, and it couldn't be one of the living. Smit's spirit wrapped Dracula in his arms and began using his now-sharp teeth to tear gobbets of charred flesh from Dracula's neck.

The spirits of the dead began moaning as they sensed Dracula's weakness. But only I could hear them.

Alexander jumped out of a bank of flames, his armor blackened, and his body steaming and smoking. Getting behind Dracula, Alexander dropped to one knee and slashed open the back of Dracula's legs with his claws. Then, with his claws still in Dracula's legs, Alexander stood, ripping upwards. More undead flesh peeled loose from Dracula's thighs.

Dracula reached deep into Smit's shade, seemed to find something he could grasp, and ripped it out. Smit howled silently as he began to disintegrate. However, he was still fighting.

Faye wobbled over to me and picked me up.

"Closer," I whispered as I spat blood.

Faye gave me a puzzled look.

"Get me closer to Dracula," I told her.

The brief look Faye gave me was indescribably skeptical.

"Please, Faye. Please," I begged her.

Faye nodded once. Then we stumbled forward to where our two most unlikely Samurai were struggling against an ancient evil.

Venom was also slowly staggering towards the fight. It was only then when I noticed that Jonah's swords were still buried in Dracula's lower chest. They formed an 'X'-shape. That was a sign, of course, and I was grateful for it.

Alexander was still behind Dracula, pressed up against him like a lover. He was still tearing upwards with this claws and I could see strangely discolored intestines spilling out of the deep cuts in Dracula's torso. The stench was horrible.

Faye didn't have time to be artful, she simply put us in front of the struggling Dracula. The two of us actually stepped into the diffuse form of Smit's dissipating shade. There was a coldness all about us and in addition to Dracula's intrinsic corruption, I could smell the brittle dryness of old bone and the bright-red wetness of fresh-spilled blood.

"Old One. Lady of Blades. Thunderer." I gasped out. "Let this end."

Smit's glowering spirit finally vanished as my claws flicked open. And around my wrists, hanging by slender chains, there were the amulets of Mjolnir and the Old Folk faith that I'd last seen attached to a deadly lady's sword. My claws had an oddly subdued purple-white glow radiating from them. I can't even name the energies that were now a part of my claws.

Alexander still had Dracula pinned in a deadly hold. If Dracula hadn't been so badly injured, Alexander would never have been able to do that.

Dracula's eyeless face turned in my direction and he seemed to consider me. It was impossible to read his expression - his face had been burned and torn away. But in his form, I seemed to see frustrated fury combined with a sense of agonized exhaustion.

All around me were the spirits of those murdered by vampires. The weren't joyful as they observed Dracula's long-awaited end. They simply watched with a still intensity that was completely merciless.

"My name is Vlad Tepes," Dracula gasped out, his voice gurgling and distorted. "I am by birth a Prince and by my own hand a King. I will not be destroyed by some spirit-calling fanatic. And only royalty can end me."

That was very dramatic. It deserved a response.

"I'm a Queen of the Dead, you rat-bastard son of a bitch," I told Dracula.

Really, neither my birth-father or my adopted-father would have approved of that sort of language.

Then, using the artless cross-armed slash of a young Blood warrior, I decapitated the King of the Vampires.