Christian’s eyes felt like they were about to dislodge from his head. Going on eight hours without as much as a pinprick of light was painfully trying. A few times, his eyes started playing tricks on him, and he thought he saw shapes in the darkness. Other times, he imagined he heard crying somewhere out there in the blackness, but he decided it had to be his own mind messing with him because as far as he could tell, he was completely and utterly alone.
For about the hundredth time, he decided to shout at Daunator and demand he come and face him. Taking into consideration what Cassidy had said earlier about the Findley sisters, a tactic he had yet to try, he called out into the darkness. “Daunator! I know you’re nearby! And I know you can hear me! I have something that you want, you know? I have access to the Findleys. I was just talking to Cassidy a moment ago. She can read minds. If you show yourself, perhaps I can strike up a deal with them!”
He waited for some sort of response, and when there was none, he felt like a fool for even believing Daunator really existed. Standing down there in solitude for so long had made him begin to question everything. As much as he tried to avoid going over the mistakes of his past, there was no better time or place for ghosts to come to the surface. He’d rather deal with Vampires.
“Daunator! What are you afraid of? You know the only reason you’re here today is because of me, don’t you? The two of us are tethered! Show yourself, you massive coward!”
Once again, his shouts were answered by the echoes of his own voice and possibly a whimper off in the darkness. Frustrated, Christian ran his hand down his face and let out a sigh and then a growl almost as loud as the shouting.
“You seem to be rethinking your decision to come here.”
The voice was a low rumble emanating somewhere from the pitch darkness. Every hair on Christian’s body stood on end, and the familiar sensation of dragons flying in his gut whenever a Vampire was nearby launched into full power mode instantaneously. “Is that you, Daunator, or did you send one of your lackeys to deal with me?”
A low rumble of a laugh came in response, the kind a human might dread to hear in a haunted house or a horror movie. “Why have you come?”
“Show yourself, and I’ll fill you in.” His hand automatically went to the grenades on his utility belt. He had more in his pockets. The portal should’ve taught him that blowing up an enclosed area with minimal exits wasn’t a good idea, but if he had the opportunity to end Daunator, he would take it and worry about getting out later.
“Do you really think your rudimentary weapons can stop someone as powerful as me?” The laugh was back again, and Christian questioned the use of the term “rudimentary” to describe his state of the art silver nitrate grenade.
“You’re just hurling insults for insults’ sake.”
Daunator continued to laugh, and the sound seemed to echo all around him so that Christian wasn’t even sure which direction he should be facing. Then, off in the distance, ten or fifteen yards in front of him, he saw a soft light begin to flicker. It grew and expanded, getting closer, until Christian recognized that he was looking at the alabaster face of an ancient man with poor hygiene dressed all in black, with steel gray eyes rimmed in red, the hood of his black cloak concealing everything but his wrinkled, nearly translucent face.
“So... you’ve decided to show yourself at last,” Christian said, his confidence fueled by an anger that had been burning deep inside of him for far too long.
“Forgive me. I’ve been busy attending to the others.”
“The others?”
Daunator’s floating head bobbed up and down. He was closer now, and Christian could see the outline of his form against the black. The monster raised one arm, and around him, the cries and wails he’d heard earlier sang a chorus of anguish. “You didn’t really think you were my only pet did you?”
Christian swallowed a lump in his throat. Who were the others? How did they get there? And if he started tossing grenades, what would become of them? His hand flickered to his Glock. It wouldn’t be enough to end Daunator on its own, but it might be enough to slow him down while Christian decided whether or not it was safe to use the grenades. He also had a new weapon with him, one that was inserted under the skin of the Vampire and detonated much the same way as the grenade, but it was designed to burn the Vampire from the inside out. If he could get that implanted in Daunator somehow....
The time for thinking was long over. Christian pulled his Glock and emptied the entire clip into the creature before him. The sound of the bullets exploding was deafening, echoing around them and amplifying indefinitely until the others, which Christian still could not see, began to scream and shout even louder than they had been before, and Christian was tempted to muffle the noise by covering his ears, though that would be impossible until after he stopped pulling the trigger.
Once the final bullet was expelled from his weapon, he lowered the gun and surveyed the damage. Daunator’s face continued to hover in the same place, and from what Christian could tell, there were no smoke plumes, no holes in his features, no indicator whatsoever that the bullets had done any good.
And then the laughter started again. “You can’t honestly think to end me that way, can you? Don’t be ridiculous.”
Furious, Christian pulled a grenade from his utility belt and launched it at the Vampire. It exploded on contact, and this time there was a bit of a reaction. Daunator growled, but the damage was minimal, and the smoke emanating from where Christian believed his arm and shoulder would be hidden in the blackness dissipated quickly enough. The ground shook slightly when the grenade went off, and tiny pebbles peppered them, but it wasn’t enough to cause a cave in. Nor was it enough to harm the monster.
“Really, fool, please stop embarrassing yourself. You should know, there is nothing you nor any of your pathetic teammates can do to end me. For all intents and purposes, I am indestructible.”
“As am I,” Christian reminded him, though he didn’t quite agree with Daunator’s assessment of himself. There had to be something they could do to kill the beast.
“We shall see.” The Vampire’s eyes seemed to glow, the red rims lighting up the rest of his face in a horrific pink tinge, something like blood in the water. “For now, I shall leave you to your own devices. And... feel free to call your friends to come and rescue you. That is precisely what I was hoping for. To think, all of this time, I was wondering what I would need to do to draw them in, and here you came, saving me valuable time and resources.” If the creature was capable of smiling, that was what his face seemed to be trying to do, though it came across as a mixture between a grimace and a snarl.
As quickly as he had appeared, Daunator was gone, leaving Christian alone in the dark again, down a clip, a grenade, and any dignity he’d ever had.
