Chapter Forty
“Are you sure everything’s in place?” Rick inquired while scanning the numerous candles spread in a circumference around a table directly in front of the tall throne. Each candle had been lit. Upon the table, perfectly centered, was a vase which contained the remains of some unsuspecting person.
“Everything’s in place except this,” Stan called over to Rick and reached down into a box lying on the floor at his feet and pulled out the severed head of a rather large pig. When he saw Rick’s confused expression, “Sacrifice. All spirits need some kind of acknowledgement.”
Rick nodded and glanced around once more. He was beginning to doubt this journey. To put more plainly, he was beginning to fear the journey. It was the conversation he had with Orion in the corridor earlier that his mind kept going back to. If Orion hadn't mentioned Emily, his feelings about the séance might have been different. What if something goes wrong and Emily should just happen to walk in at the wrong time and see whatever Rick was terrified of?
“We’re all set to go then?” he asked and Stan shrugged.
“Just about. When we begin, I’ll need to make a bonding circle around the table and throne with blood. So it’s your call when you want to start.” Stan replied and walked the pig’s head over to the throne chair and dropped it down on it.
Rick looked down at his watch and saw that it was quarter of nine and then glanced up at the tall windows when he saw a flash of lightning. His gaze turned left and he looked at the throne with loathing in the pit of his being. “Let’s do it,” he finally said behind a growing rage that was yearning to explode.
Stan nodded and reached down inside a box and pulled out a jar of blood and saw Rick’s disgusted expression. “It’s only pig’s blood – probably from that poor bastard,” he replied and glanced over at the decapitated head of the pig resting peacefully on the throne. Without waiting for an acknowledgement, he opened the jar and began making a perimeter around the table and throne. “You’ll need to be inside the circle,” he said and Rick nervously went over to the table.
Once Stan sealed the circle, “You needed to be inside the circle before I closed it; otherwise it’d look like you were trespassing.” He let a long sigh escape his nostrils and then studied the pitiful figure of the man standing before him trapped by a circle of pig’s blood. It’s your bloody life, mate. Not mine.
He pulled out a notebook and flipped a couple of pages and then stopped and held it open as far as it would allow him. With one hand holding the book open, he raised his other hand out toward the circle and then closed his eyes. “We wish to see King Darvon. We need him to show himself. We need to talk with you about your son,” he called out and waited.
Rick, too, waited and nothing seemed to be happening. The candles were the only things in the great hall to be making any movement. Suddenly Rick was startled by a crack of thunder and flash of bright lightning. The wind had picked up ferociously causing the long tapestries to float in the air. And then all the candles blew out in unison with one another.
“We need a flashlight,” Rick began when he couldn’t see anything in the room, save for the continuous flashes of lightning.
“No. This is his doing. Now’s not a good time to piss him off,” replied Stan in a cautionary tone. “We are your humble servants, King Darvon. Please allow us a moment to converse with you about your son,” he began and, as if in out-rage, all the candles exploded and their flames grew to two feet.
And standing between them, several feet from Rick, stood the tall figure of the disgruntled King Darvon. He wore brown fox fur for a coat and covering the coat dangled many gold necklaces of various designs. One Rick noticed to be that of the constellation of Orion.
Darvon turned and looked at Stan first. “Who are you to want to talk about the son I had disowned?” he inquired behind a hard, irritated voice.
Stan swallowed and closed his notebook, he didn’t expect this meeting to have worked, and placed it in his back pocket. “It is I, Stan Stevens. I come only as a guide for this man here – Richard Hopman,” he explained and now Darvon turned to Rick with fire in his dark eyes.
“Sir,” Rick began before Darvon could say anything. “It is very important that I talk to you about your son,”
Darvon waved a large hand in front of him. “Nay. Have I not told you – I have no son? Fear has been dead to me long before the bastard killed me.”
“Fear, Sir? Do we speak of the same creature that hides beneath a black cloak? We call it Orion.” Rick watched Darvon’s eyes narrow and his mouth turn downward in contemplation.
“Aye, it was my cloak I gave him when I brought him into this world. Fear is the name he gave himself when he first introduced to me his army of Dreamkillers. Once Nanaac fainted, I pulled – Orion – from her and wrapped the disfigured child in my cloak. Back here I had Nanaac imprisoned for sixteen years. During that time my offspring had been trained the same way my army had been trained and it was my most trusted men – Barbus Whitaker – whom I entrusted with most of the training. Upon his sixteenth year, he had surpassed even my most ornamented officers.
“To make sure that he was to be trusted, I had him sacrifice his mother to me and our god Orion. Of course she vowed vengeance but we had her impaled when she would not die.
“He found ways to travel in the dream world and enter other people’s dreams and he had transformed his friend Alexius into some hideous beast and had killed Alexius’ bride-to-be. He was just a lad, both of them to be sure, and I tell you now – I have never slaughtered children!
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“I did not like killing people in their dreams as he was doing; it was too easy and they were helpless. I suppose he found this out and he killed my father and shortly after that, me.” Darvon paused to compose himself. He lowered his head; as if pitying himself. “No, I do not have a son.”
* * *
She was tired. She could see her breath emanating into the cold air. Her feet were surely cut and bruised. She had traveled all day and well into the evening and had even found safe passage across a large body of water Tracy had not even realized she had crossed. In fact, during Tracy’s moments of pain, which were now many, her brain switched off and Nanaac’s switched on.
“Please, I need to rest,” Tracy begged as her legs buckled and she fell to the ground, her nails digging into the wet earth. “I’m tired… I’m in pain,” she whimpered.
There was a pause and then she heard Nanaac sigh. “No. I have made this journey many times with my army – sometimes several times a month. We must carry on if we are to reach Darvon Keep by nightfall.”
After a sigh of annoyance and with a great bit of reluctance, Tracy pulled herself onto her feet and put one in front of the other and began walking once again. She just then realized that they were now in England.
* * *
Bolan remained both motionless and quiet as he watched his master pace anxiously back and forth. Abruptly Orion stopped and turned to face Bolan and formed a hungry smile beneath his cloak. “Am I angry that my father is talking to Hopman? No, I’m not. In fact,” he paused and nodded his head. “I think it’s time to awaken my children,” he said and quickly turned from Bolan’s view to look down the darkened corridor; leaving Bolan to stare at his master with a look of pure terror in his gray eyes.
Bolan had not been afraid of his master before now. Even when the cloaked bastard rambled on with his tales of revenge and what hell really felt like; even the tale he loved to tell about how he, Orion, escaped the Prince of Darkness; how he had slipped right through his shackles thanks to his beloved and most devoted Allen. But now the insane beast wants to unleash his children into the real world – he knew the real world can never be his to have. Not anymore. He had chosen to remain in this hell with Orion as his master only because Orion had given back to him his life, so to speak. He will never again be able to walk amongst the living as one of them, but he can at least watch them and maybe even envy them every once and awhile. But, surely it wasn’t his choice to be as he was.
Orion needed him, but for what, he hasn’t a clue. He was beginning to have his doubts about his master – he even hated referring to the bastard as his master. If he ever got into Eden, Bolan would ask to be set free.
But still, he followed Orion to the very spot he was resurrected. In fact, Orion stopped and looked down into the chasm created by Bolan’s blood. When Bolan arrived he thought Orion was listening for something and then he saw his white hands begin shaking. He bowed his head and spoke into the earth.
“My children, who have slept for hundreds of years – arise and wake! It is our time to live again!” he beckoned and they heard the roar of shouts answering their master’s call immediately, as if they had been waiting.
What Bolan witnessed in the next several minutes would be forever branded into his skull. The underworld began shaking and the thundering footfalls of hundreds of feet bounced off the walls. And then he saw the first of the horde emerge from their resting place somewhere deep below ground. They came, side by side, up the stone steps and continued to file past Bolan and their master until they reached an adequate length for them to spread out to listen to their master give command.
Bolan studied every grotesque face as he watched them without as much as a gasp when he saw the next atrocity file past him. There were gray beasts as well as red – and almost every other hue in between. Their eyes, however they may appear in various shapes and sizes and numbers, were red or black. All had sharp teeth and fangs which dripped phlegm of green and yellow when they smiled at the sight of their master and maker.
Bolan noticed, too, that not one carried any form of weaponry in their large claws. Dear Lord, he thought. These godless things are the creations of normal people. Now they are merely savages – no need to wield any weapon. They simply use their hands and teeth to devour their victims.
How many actually spilled blood before their extended slumber he didn’t know, but he was sure by the look of hunger in their eyes that they knew the value of pain. And this time it wasn’t for personal enjoyment; this time it was war!
Is this what the Great War looked like? And if it was, how were these hell beasts contained below and locked up?
Once the procession ceased, Orion stepped up on a large rock and held out his arms to his children. “We have a new mission for a new time. You are to go above-ground and wreak havoc – you are free now. Our battle with the Grendels has ceased, so now is your time to live out your fantasies. I have promised you all this, have I not?” He saw that they were confused; several even had lost expressions on their faces.
“You are no longer under my command. You are relieved of duty. Go up and have the time of your lives – you all earned it. Turn everything upside-down. Topple buildings if you wish. Take whoever’s lives you wish.”
These were his lost army now. They were like children, really. They were lost without his command. They were forced to become what they are, and now they are told to go and live among those of which they once were.
Orion saw the shuffling of feet and noticed their shifting eyes and he smiled at them reassuringly. “This was not my command, my children. It was commanded of me by Orion, our god.”
That was all the inspiration they needed and one of the taller Dreamkillers in the center of the group raised his large arms. “Destroy everything and everyone who let us look like this! They gave up on us, Orion saved us! Long live King Orion!” he shouted and was met by thunderous applause and shouts of approval.
“Let us plow and show our king what his kingdom will look like!” screamed another creature and received agreement.
With that, the horde of hideous Dreamkillers turned and marched through the corridors of the middle ground and ascended up a slope and was not stopped when they saw that their exit was blocked. They merely kept pushing until they exploded their way out and took their first gasp from above ground.