I dedicate this fanfiction to my girlfriend and all my readers, reviewers and the beta reader wallaceb.
CHAPTER 36 – Demon's Heart
Jonathan turned slowly, his legs were shaking. Luckily he was already sitting on the ground, otherwise he would have fallen.
The darkness was lit by the rays of the morning sun, and what the human saw went far beyond his imagination.
A monstrous creature was staring at him with its great yellow eyes, majestic, larger than the wounded dragon behind him. It was on all fours and kept its head low to the ground to be up to the boy.
"Ma-Mavy" The vampire stammered.
"T-this monster is Mavis?" The boy asked even already knowing the bitter truth.
"Too late, my son." The bat demon growled turning to Dracula. "Mavis is already dead!"
"Nooo!" The vampire cried, choked by despair, trying to stand up, but the wound was still serious and he fell again to the ground.
The demon walked slowly toward the two.
"If you don't believe me, I can prove it!" He sighed with a sadistic smirk.
It stood up showing his full height of forty feet, it was very thin, almost skeletal, so that the shape of its bones were also visible from under its thick black fur covering the entire body, while the shadow of its long wings left trailing on the ground plunged them again into darkness.
Then it put a hand over its head preparing to unleash an attack against Jonathan who froze, seeing his love become a terrible monster who had no qualms about hurting her friends, to seriously injure her father and now is ready to kill her boyfriend too was too much for the boy.
"Losing Mavy... No... I can't accept..." The human muttered, looking down regardless of the demon's claws which were reaching him.
TZA-BAM!
A cleaning bang, like a lightning bolt threw the boy and the vampire a few feet away, and when he opened his eyes he saw the claws of the demon stuck a few feet away from him. He looked up, the bang raised a thick cloud of dust, but he could distinguish Camazotz on the ground as it was knocked down by something.
A shadow jumped from above the demon's head and landed close to Jonathan. Through the dust it appeared to be the figure of someone with a stick in his hand, but when he approached he appeared for what he really was, a man almost as tall as Dracula, armed with a spear, wearing a dark blue scale armor, very shiny, and with the upper part of the face covered by the helm in the shape of a dragon's head with two thin and long green plumes.
A knight who looked like he came from the fantasy games and movies the young man loved so much.
He passed the human limping without deigning a glance at him and knelt beside Dracula.
Jonathan just now noticed that this warrior seemed exhausted, the beautiful armor was severely damaged and a trickle of blood fell from the helm down his cheek.
"A-are y-you hurt?" The boy stammered, but he remained unheeded by the mysterious warrior who, with a blow of the lance, pierced the throat of Dracula and lifted him from the ground approaching his face to his own.
Jonathan froze for a moment by this sudden and violent attack, but then he took courage and threw himself against the warrior, yelling:
"Stay away from him!"
But he was rejected by an air wave which threw him to the ground again.
"Even if my spear didn't want to hurt you, you hope to die in battle..." The man said in a voice full of contempt against Dracula, "Because what I'll do to you will be much worse!" He concluded threateningly, and then he drew back the spear which left no mark the vampire's throat who fell to his knees on the ground, upset.
"I'm sor-"Dracula began to apologize, but he was interrupted by Camazotz who began to move.
The three men took a step back, and the warrior stood in guard position.
The demon slowly stood, chuckling:
"Jump, jump, young dragoon, jump like a cricket, but be careful because I might squashed you like a bug!"
The dragoon moved the spear in offensive position:
"I've already knocked you down!" He replied, arrogantly.
"The boast is in vain if it comes from the mouth of a corpse!" The demon sentenced. "Then why do you persist to fight me? You cannot do anything against me and if I wanted I could kill you all at once! Why die when you can finally be free to be who you are without having the fear of humans?!"
"Mavis, please return to yourself! You're not evil! You're not a monster like that!" Dracula begged her; he could not accept the death of his daughter.
"Why do you insist on calling her? Her soul has fallen into the oblivion, and finally she's free! The feelings of her soul chained for too long, the power of her spirit making her a booby, but now I can finally reveal myself in all my power!"
Hearing these words Jonathan curled himself into a state of shock, crying. By now he had accepted the fact that this was no longer Mavis.
"Little human, don't cry, it's thanks to you that I got free, so I will give you a choice, you either become a vampire and convince your friends to not waste my time or I kill all of you?"
The human did not answer.
"And this would be your anti-demon secret weapon?" The warrior asked Dracula in a voice full of poison. "A spineless and whiner human?"
The vampire did not answer; indeed, he did not even have the courage to look him in the eyes.
"Camazotz!" The knight said to attract the demon's attention "Go if you want, I will not stop you, not now!"
Camazotz looked at the man, and then turned his gaze to the sky.
"The night darkness is better..." It commented wistfully, then leaned back on all fours and went on his way.
"How can you let her go like that?" Dracula scolded him.
"I risked mine and my dragon's life to fight a demon because YOU KNOW HOW TO SAVE HER and what the hell have you done? You lied to me! You cheated me!" The dragoon replied more and more angry, then turned to the dragon and began to walk toward him concluding in a quieter voice, "Our Contract is fulfilled. I will call the other dragons and break down this Camazotz."
"No! Please, I do not want to lose my daughter..." The vampire implored him. "And you know what happened during the last battle between the dragons and a demon?"
The man stopped to answer:
"Against the Kraken twelve thousand years ago? After a day and a night of battle an island larger than Australia disappeared, I know... necessary sacrifice..."
"Atlantis was pulverized, the greatest civilization of the time, do you want that to happen again?"
"Don't blame me, I was not there, and neither were you! And then from such a powerful demon Lilith was resurrected, and you know what happened as a result of the battle between her and the dragons sixty-five million years ago?"
"There must be another solution! And I won't give up until I've saved her!"
The dragoon started walking again ignoring the vampire.
"I will do anything you want, but please help my daughter; she is all that remains of my family!" He whimpered, kneeling behind the warrior.
"I have already done too much, I must warn the Order of the Dragon that I stumbled upon a demon instead of the "half-demon still able to recognize herself" of which you told me about."
"But they will kill her!"
"But it's the only thing I can do, do you realize that?" He said while he had reached his dragon, but this time he turned to look at the vampire in his eyes, "I held off Camazotz until you brought your imaginary "secret weapon", but you failed miserably. Now I will become a hero which would not be bad since all the dragons hate me, or I stay and fight Camazotz alone. If I do somehow survive I would be sentenced to death for having concealed the existence of a demon. Do you understand that I do not have many choices?!"
Dracula lowered his head.
"You're right; I shouldn't have involved you..."
"Agran, come on." The warrior said turning to his dragon, who stood up, "Are you hurt? Can you fly?"
"Yes, I'm still not so bad." The black dragon said.
Meanwhile, Dracula came to Jonathan trying to comfort him:
"Jonny, don't worry, I promise we'll be able to save her."
"Drac, are you serious?" The boy asked with a glimmer of hope.
"Don't make promises you can't keep, and then you won't give false hopes to people..." The Warrior strongly criticized the words of the count, but the two did not give his words too much weight, and together they ran in pursuit of the demon.
"I want to help them..." Murmured the dragon watching Dracula and Jonathan disappear into the dense forest.
This last statement caught the knight by surprise.
"Are you crazy?" He reproached, "Do you want to get us all killed? What do you gain?"
"The honor. You've made a deal, and you should respect it."
"Tszh! You know my Spirit compels me to respect contracts, promises and pacts but this time I feel the freedom to retire myself because the pact was not observed by the other side, and therefore I consider it canceled!"
"You need a contract to help a friend?" The dragon criticized him.
"I have no friends, I'm a mercenary."
"This is why the other dragons hate you, they think you have no honor, but I know that is not so."
"No, they hate me because they are racist. Someone like me will always be seen as the son of their archenemies Lamie... and then there is no honor in death, there is only stupidity."
There was a moment of silence before Agran the dragon answered grimly:
"Maybe the other dragons were right about you ... I'm afraid I was wrong, I was hoping you were a brave warrior, but perhaps it's not so..."
"Better late than never!" The dragoon mocked him, "And yet you knew when you chose me that I'm a mercenary who sells himself to the highest bidder, ready to betray everyone to be on the winning side!"
"Do what you want, but you'll have to go home without me."
The knight glared at the dragon.
"You're an asshole... You know that being abandoned his own dragon is the second worst dishonor for a dragoon!"
"And where is the problem? You said that you're a warrior without honor!" He chuckled sarcastically.
…
"Mavis, stop!" Drac and Jonny shouted in unison.
Camazotz stopped, stood up on two legs and turned to the two.
"Human... you've decided what you want to do?"
"We will not allow you to hurt anyone, go away from Mavis!" Jonathan growled.
"You're challenging me? Crazy man!" The demon said chuckling, Dracula, kill the boy..."
Jonathan turned to the vampire who slowly looked up at him.
"Drac?" The young man asked fearfully.
The Count smiled, and then from under his cloak drew his rapier.
"Woh! No, no, no!" Jonny said, placing his hands in front of himself, "Don't you start too, the situation is already bad enough." He concluded, terrified.
Dracula lifted the sword and pointed it at Camazotz, surprising both the demon and the human.
"Your hypnosis has no effect on me!"
"Cannot... You wear a Holy Armor? Why my sons should be allies of dragons?"
"What? That's cool! You're a dagoon?" Jonathan asked him, excited.
"Not really, I am one of the founders the Order of the Dragon, but I'm a politician, not a warrior... this cloak was made of black wyvern's wings, and it protects me from curses."
"You may be resistant to my hypnosis, but can you also resist this?" The demon said raising a hand which began to burn in a dark fire, blacker than the night, "Do you know the pain to feel your own soul burn?" He concluded, smiling, while the two took a step back.
The demon swung a blow with his claws, but Dracula managed to take Jonathan and keep him safe.
"Face your fate now, because you cannot run away forever." The demon sighed, moving closer to the two.
Jonathan began to retreat, but stopped when he noticed Dracula was not following him.
"Drac, what's wrong? Let's go! We cannot fight her in a direct clash! We need a plan!"
The human got no response.
"Drac, are you liste..." But he stopped when touching the vampire; the boy realized he was shaking.
He was holding his arm, it appeared scratched, and from it a faint black flame was emanating.
"Damn it..." The vampire muttered, "This shadow flame will burn my soul if we don't wake up Mavis soon..." He continued in a voice broken by pain.
"It's sad, don't you think? I myself have given life to this vampire, killing the human he was, and I myself will be his murderess again, but this time he will not wake up, and nothing will remain of his soul and his spirit."
The voice of the demon was close behind Jonathan, so close to him that for the second time its dark aura crushed his heart, but despite everything he could speak:
"I will not let you hurt those I love!" The boy said turning to find the face of Camazotz a few inches from his, but he did not flinch, "You don't scare me!" He shouted in a bullying voice.
"I feel the sweet taste of your fear, useless to hide it behind courage... Fear is always fear."
Then the demon inhaled, while in its mouth that dark and cold black fire was developing, and was ready to blow.
If you liked the chapter remember to review it!
Thanks to Sondardo for the suggestion about the title :-D
See you soon!