A Dragon at the Gate (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 2) Read online

  The smart thing would be to remain cautious, but the energy flowing through me like electricity urged me to action. I was able to fairly easily sublimate this with my research and study since my breed is notorious for its academia or ‘greed’ for knowledge. However, now out and about the town I was feeling very unwilling to go back to my old methods of keeping my head down. I suppose I would have to work out some sort of balance.

  “You’re going right past the entrance imbecil... I mean Professor.” I slowed down and looked at the vampire somewhat incredulously. For someone that obviously wanted a favor, his attitude was appalling. Admittedly, I did accidentally burn off his hand but it was already almost grown back. He was right, though. I had almost gone right past the entrance. How I missed it, I don’t know. The slick obsidian surface rose to its usual monolithic height. It was made slightly less impressive by the cratered walkways and streets as well as the empty windows covered with temporary tarps, sheets, and various random items. Apparently, the vampires’ need to block out the sun overcame their pride.

  “Where are the usual goons,” I asked, glancing from side to side. The last few times I had been here the entrance had two very large vampires. Here in the shadow of the building, there really was no reason not to keep a few minions at the entrance.

  “They are presently incapacitated.” Laurel drawled.

  I stared at him. How the heck could vampires be incapacitated? They may not have become deities in this new world but they should be slightly stronger and their immunities to most types of damage certainly wouldn’t go away. Now that I think about it, I hadn’t seen any vampires in my trip across the city except for my escort. While they were a minority, they weren’t rare. I was beginning to suspect that Vivian really did have a very real need for my services.

  “Well, if it’s not too far beneath your dignity, perhaps you could open the door and take me to the resident councilor.”

  He snorted indignantly and delicately got out of the cart and leisurely walked to the entrance where a sparking biometric reader scanned him. The fifth attempt it finally recognized him and we entered the once majestic lair of the undead.

  It wasn’t nearly as impressive this time. The last few times I had been here the huge lobby was literally transformed into the likeness of a moonlit meadow. Very spacious, at least in seeming. Now the emergency lights were on, lending a reddish hue to the atrium. The most basic duracrete surfaces were now visible. Mostly covered in fine cracks, with a few large crevasses canvassing the floor. Off to one corner, debris from the damaged floor and parts of the collapsed ceiling had been piled.

  “We’ll have to take the stairs. The elevator is out of order,” the undead guide muttered sourly. We did walk past the elevator. It was ajar. Finger indentions showed where the doors had been forced open and it was clear they were now firmly jammed. The slight scent of decay wafted from the interior and I could see stains on the elevator floor where some poor soul had met their end. It wasn’t that surprising considering that the thing had used barely legal momentum compensation. Very advanced technology and also obviously broken in a most likely fatal way. Some poor mortal had likely suddenly experienced several hundred gravities.

  After dozens of floors, we exited the stairwell. Unsurprisingly, neither of us had really noticed the insignificant exertion of our rapid ascent. Amusingly enough, the stairs opened up closer to the meeting room than the elevator had. The floor no longer lit our way like a modern willo wisp and the lighting seemed dimmer than before. Actually, the entire building lacked the feeling of being lived in. This may have been due to the lack of people. Where before the corridor bustled with people, now it was completely deserted.

  I had just been wondering where everyone was when a faint premonition of danger caused me to tilt my head to the side. A shadowy figure arced over my shoulder, ruffling my hair. Spinning around, I saw a raggedly dressed man wearing what appeared to be the remains of a torn and stained tuxedo. Brown stains. Lovely, obviously blood splatters.

  Landing, he spun around and leaped at me again with a feral cry. I didn’t bother moving out of the way this time. I raised my arm and caught him by the arm, spun in a semi-circle and threw him the length of the hall. He rolled end over end for the hundred feet to the stairway door, broke through it with little resistance and was out of sight.

  Laurel was off to the side buffing his nails. I shook my head in dismay. These people's sense of hospitality sucked worse than mine did. Last time I was here they tried to poison me and this time a crazed vampire jumped me.

  “This is why I have my house set to vaporize the undead,” he stopped smirking. Down the hall the door burst open and the crazy dead man ran down the hall, towards us once more. Vampires are fast. Admittedly faster than I am, as far as movement goes. Still, he was a hundred feet away and I had plenty of time to see him coming. They aren’t that much faster.

  Laurel actually moved to block his path. I could tell he was doing it reluctantly. I waved him away. One rabid vampire was not a real concern unless it was armed with an artifact. I checked again to make sure there wasn’t a dragon slaying harpoon hidden on his persons. That would have been embarrassing.

  This time when he reached me and dove on me I was better prepared. In his mindless frenzy, he was easy to predict. I could have simply encased him in a force bubble, but since I still had to get home while dragging several tons of meat behind my rickshaw, I thought it better to conserve my psionic reserves. Instead, I reached out and grabbed the feral by the throat. I had slightly enlarged my hands and extended my nails as far as I could. Not quite talons but still utilitarian. I placed my other hand on his shoulder and clamped down.

  While I had been capturing him, he had taken the time being close to me to claw at my face. I leaned slightly away and the vampire’s claws scraped the side of my face, leaving faint scratches that faded within seconds. Setting my shoulders, I clamped down on my grip and tore the creature’s head from his body.

  This elicited a subdued gasp from my companion and a groan from me. The groan was in response to the fountain of blood that was now covering me. I really hadn’t thought that through very well.

  Vampire juice is disgusting. That type of undead is incredibly difficult to kill. In fact, the beheading I had just accomplished wasn’t likely to do much, except force the creature into a mist form and to dissipate. Whereupon it will probably reform into a perfectly healthy vampire specimen within twenty-four hours. Unfortunately, my poor tweed suit would need far more time to recover from this assault, especially with vital services such as cleaning and housekeeping still not restored.

  “Damn. I forgot how messy you guys are. Let me borrow that handkerchief,” I said as I deftly snagged his monogrammed hankie from his breast pocket. I received a glare equivalent to a thousand dying suns before he hid his ire and pasted on a plastic genial smile and gestured down the hallway.

  “Vivian!” I cried exuberantly, as I walked into the meeting hall I had come to know and loath. Vivian was standing next to the dining table staring at some tomes. Turning to me at my exclamation, her brows furrowed in concern. She looked the same as she had the first time I came. A dark haired elegant lady fashionably dressed in black formal dinner wear. In fact, I think it was the exact same dress. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

  “Professor, I am glad you could come...” she paused as her eyes widened in dismay. Perhaps it was from seeing me covering in blood and gore. Perhaps it was because I crossed into her personal space and gave her a thorough hug. Perhaps it was the blood and gore that now covered her. “What the hell are you doing! Get off me you freak!”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you missed me and that’s why you arranged to have one of your psycho drug addled converts come say hello to me,” I said with a wide, somewhat false, smile.

  “This was one of my few remaining dresses. This damn audit was supposed to end weeks ago. I should have taken your head off with that stone,” she muttered angrily, looking at her stained dr
ess.

  “Then why are you still here? Where is Mr. Fiero anyway?”

  “The head of the Clan Fiero is... indisposed,” she said uncomfortably. “The plan that Jin enacted has had some effects that required me to remain.”

  “Does this have something to do with the fact that the only vampires I have seen since Vatapi opened his portal has been a crazy vampire, Laurel and you?”

  “Who is Vatapi?” she asked, somewhat befuddled. “Who is Laurel?”

  “Vatapi is the demon lord formally known as Jin. Laurel is that skinny guy you had escort me here. The crazy guy is the bloody giblets clinging to both of us. Apparently, I can’t come here without a vampire attempting to kill me. Although I suppose when I had Beth with me I was safe. Maybe I need an eight-year-old human child to escort me in order to keep me safe.” I offered with a smirk.

  “Jin was a demon lord,” she fixated on the one part of my explanation. So very small minded. “That explains so much. The council would thank you for eliminating him, but there are other issues in play.”

  “I’m sure. One of them may just be he’s only temporarily dead.”

  “What do you mean he’s not dead. I have reports that you tricked Jin somehow and he was slain.”

  “Tricked? I tore him in half,” I exclaimed indignantly.

  “So you didn’t turn his own spell against him?”

  “Um,” I waffled a moment, my pride competing with my common sense. I had told General Armbridge that fairy tale. “Yeah, that’s what happened,” I continued rather dejectedly. “Anyway, demons can’t be killed outside their own plane. He’s spending some quality time pulling his body together. A lot like a vampire.”

  “One more problem to our list,” she sighed. The blood on her clothes was steaming. In fact, the blood on my clothes was doing the same thing. Darn, in moments she would be completely clean again.

  I frowned as I looked down at myself. It could be my imagination, but the suit seemed cleaner than before. The vampire blood I had expected to be vanishing, now that I was reminded that vampires were self-cleaning. However, I could swear the chunky giblets of dinosaur brains were also vanishing. A moment of observation showed that, yes, the dino blood was vanishing too. The flesh bits weren’t, but they were drying into a fine dust. I took a moment to pat the dust from my clothes drawing a sigh from Vivian as she stepped away from my personal cloud. Holy cow, what an awesome way to get rid of blood stains!

  “I suppose we will have to deal with him when he comes back,” Vivian growled. I looked at her in blank surprise.

  “Like how you dealt with him last time,” I prodded. “Because that looked a lot like hiding under your bed until the boogie man left.”

  “The council’s decision wasn’t... very wise,” she reluctantly admitted. “Especially after what we have been experiencing as the fallout of the demon’s spells.”

  “I assume this side effect is why you have called me here.”

  “Yes. We need your help...”

  “Not to nitpick, but why exactly would I help you?”

  “We worked together to thwart Jin,” she began.

  “You gathered information and then sat back and let everyone else throw themselves at a demon lord so that we would clear your territory of minor demons without you having to get your hands dirty,” I clarified.

  “I did as much as I could without drawing the council down on me. I stretched the definition of information gathering as far as I possibly could,” she stressed. Although she was hiding it fairly well I could tell she was desperate. Vivian was the oldest and perhaps the most self-possessed supernatural creature I knew. I couldn’t imagine what would make her so anxious.

  “Fine. You personally did as best as you could,” I sighed. The least I could do is hear what she had to say.

  “I need you to promise not to reveal what I am going to tell you. It would be disastrous. For everyone.”

  I thought about this for a moment. I wasn’t a demon that was bound to their word but I did take it seriously. “Okay. Go for it.”

  “The kindred of the world are going feral.”

  I stared at her. “All of them?”

  “To some degree or another. Even I have been having violent urges that have been very difficult to control. I have had all the mortals leave and the kindred of the city are in lockdown in the basement until we have a solution. The council informs me that most cities have done the same.”

  “So Mr. Fiero is actually...”

  “I had to wrestle him into submission.”

  “How do you even do that without a ward?”

  “It involved a stake. He will remain in torpor until the situation is resolved. Or we all descend into madness.”

  This was pretty serious. Where I came from all vampires were ‘mad’ or perhaps a better description would be feral. Evil would work too.

  I glanced over at the huge books laying on the table with new understanding. “What do you have so far?” I asked as I walked over to them.

  “Myths mostly. Some garbage about the first vampire being Caine and him being punished for slaying his brother.”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “People have been romanticizing vampires for millennia. We have had members that were alive before the old testament. There was no Caine and Able. Or if there was, there were vampires before that. The oldest councilors left, after Jin’s massacre, mentioned worshiping various gods of death. They know nothing of any previous times of madness.

  Gods of death. I absently flipped through the tomes. Various journals and histories from before the vampires outed themselves and marketed themselves as the fluffy undead. Not terribly good but not evil.

  “Where I come from there is a theory that the vampires of that world are creations of an entity or god. They are all feral. Evil through and through.” I heard her gasp in surprise. I suppose she had confirmation that now that I was not from this dimension. “Imagine my surprise at finding a whole breed of vampires not inherently evil. I had to rethink a lot of my assumptions.”

  “Such as...”

  “Although I am not an expert in dealing with gods, I have had some talks with Stella who has far more practical knowledge. Gods can create servile races or alter existing races for certain characteristics.”

  “You believe the kindred were created by a god.”

  “My most recent theory,” based on conversations with an elitist elf and wild conjecture. “Is that a god or god-like entity in my world created vampires as a servant race or perhaps a method to create worshippers.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “The gods get power through worship. They actively encourage it in most worlds, it's why you see the same pantheons over and over again on different worlds.”

  “How does this affect things?”

  “What are the differences in this new world we live in from before?” I asked her, still paging through the books. Ignoring her aborted response, I continued, “There is more ambient energy, but vampires don’t absorb significant energy from the world around them. I don’t think you’re going power mad. At least in that manner.”

  “There are the storms.”

  “Already mostly dealt with and simply a symptom of the excess energy. I am not sure if you know it, but the demon lord aimed to set up his own domain. He linked together ten dimensions and inscribed an amazing circle that locked out everyone else.”

  “You sound like you admire him.”

  “He was a Rakshasa. They are known to be masters of the mystic arts, but he was really good. I can see what he did, but I would even be able to dream about doing it myself for centuries. Not that I would want to...”

  “So you think that he locked out the influence of the god that created us?”

  “That would be a possibility. But do you consider yourselves inherently evil?”

  “Of course not,” she retorted, mildly offended.

  “So why would be acting like my old home brewed undead if one god’
s influence was simply removed?”

  “You think there is a usurper,” she spat in disgust.

  “Well, I was thinking a hijacker. There’s no proof, but what if your own god was outside the ten bound dimensions and there was one god that happened to be inside.”

  “Damn! What can we do about a god?”

  “A god that has had his entire set of worshipers taken away...”

  “You are making an assumption that he wasn’t already based in one of the worlds we are locked in with.”

  I paused. That was a good point. There was no reason that such an entity couldn’t already be there. Baron Samedi’s world and the dinosaur planet were the only dimensions I knew of, but there was no reason he couldn’t have been based there. Without traveling there and seeing if the more traditional ‘evil’ vampires existed there prior to the binding of the worlds, I couldn’t be sure.

  “Point. Okay, he may still have his power base and he may be in the middle of a hostile takeover now that your creator is locked out.”

  “So how do we deal with this thief?”

  “Not a clue,” I shrugged. “Last time this world dealt directly with a god Moscow blew up and the mages all turned stupid and shared their idiocy with the world leaders. I am going to need some time to think about this.”

  “Don’t take too long or you’ll have a world full of mad kindred.” And she would be one of them.

  Chapter 5

  By the time I got home it was dark. It didn’t really bother me much but I had several close calls, as the drivers on the road, many of which hadn’t ever actually driven a car before, swerved around me. A few time the rickshaw shuddered as the carcass was sideswiped or someone ran over the tail. It didn’t complain so, I didn’t think much of it.