Page 100 of Of Flame and Fate

“Taran!”

The vampires are screaming for me.

“For fuck’s sake,” Agnes pleads. “You have to help the master.”

I can’t see her, or Johnny, or any of the vampires. I only feel them, lingering close while their voices screech further away.

Around me, the earth burns, roasting the skulls and releasing a sickening aroma that makes me cough. I’m perched on my hands and knees, my fingers digging into the barren wasteland the garden has become.

I whip around at the sound of Misha howling in agony. He’s on his knees, beating the flames overtaking a giant tiger with his bare hands. His efforts and despair are pointless, she’s dying, her roars mercilessly raking against my ears.

“No!” I scream, racing forward.

It’s Celia, it has to be by the way Misha is losing it. I struggle to reach them, every step I manage taking them further away from me.

Misha’s cries turn wretched and his magic responds in turn, sending another burst of his power coursing through me. My arm reacts to the invasion of energy, flailing madly and throwing me against an invisible wall.

The scene breaks apart before I can gather my senses, the inferno and heat surrounding me replaced with large snow drifts and a cruel wind that sails my hair behind me. As I watch, Misha’s clothes dissolve. He collapses into a drift, naked and unmoving.

I lurch forward, cursing when I strike the wall and can’t find my way around it.

Misha is dying, I sense it even from where I stand. I pound my fists against the walls, calling forth fire that fails to come. Images of the skulls appear and fade. I don’t know if they’re real. I don’t care if they are. I only see Misha, his long, wet hair and limbs strewn across the frozen ground.

He’s half the man he was moments ago, his frame lanky and emaciated. His chest heaves as a pool of blood forms beneath him, trickling and tainting the otherwise pure white surroundings. I think he’s trying to rise, or breathe. It’s only when I stop pounding the clear wall that I realize he’s crying.

My hands slide along the invisible barrier keeping me from him, each ragged breath and sob that breaks through his throat like a shard of glass that pierces my heart.

His torment is more than I can take. I’m not certain what happened to him until the long tail of a whip soars past me and the tip cracks across Misha’s back.

A man dressed in fur spouts angry words in Russian as he sends the whip soaring again and again, slicing through the muscles along Misha’s back and exposing the bones.

“What are you doing?” I scream at him.

He ignores me, pulling back the whip and bringing it viciously down.

“You’re killing him,” I shriek.

“Stop it!”

My palms slap against the invisible divider.

“Stop it!”

I curse, begging the man to show Misha mercy.

He won’t listen. Instead he shakes out his hand, now sore and swollen from the strength he used to hurt Misha, and passes the whip to another man.

This other man, he’s not tired, and more than eager to take over his comrade’s task. Snow falls in wet clumps as he lifts the whip and strikes Misha’s broken body.

A streak of blood splatters against my face with the next lash. Somehow it breaks through the invisible space keeping me in. I run forward, tripping over a long skirt I shouldn’t be wearing and falling beside Misha.

My long dark hair is now blond and streaked with gray, the force of my fall spilling it from of the head scarf I’m wearing and draping it over my wrinkled and battered hands. My mouth moves, speaking words in Russian I shouldn’t be able to say.

The first man swings back his leg, kicking me hard in the stomach, his heavy boot-clad foot cracking a rib. I roll over, gasping for breath as he straddles me.

I beat my fists against his chest, thinking he means to rape me, until his fist comes down in an arc and crashes against my sternum.

I didn’t know he had a knife. I caught the glint of the blade as it came down and buried deep into my chest.

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