Blood was pooling in Nicholas' palm, slowly running in rivulets down his wrist and across the wooden tabletop. He sat in an excellent reproduction of a Louis XXI chair while the elegant period table was slowly stained crimson.
Peter Styverson's lifeless body lay at his feet. His chest rendered open with a fist-sized hole just under the sternum, his heart dropped haphazardly on the floor before his open, sightless eyes.
Once again Michael had slipped through Nicholas' fingers, once again a subordinate had not been up to what should have been the simple task of killing Michael Dane.
Rising, Nicholas stretched, walked over to the table he picked up the phone.
""What is his location now?"
"They just left Heathrow, flight plan shows Tokyo as the final destination."
"Onji, damn. All right, get everything packed we leave for Singapore at the earliest opportunity."
Nicholas slammed the phone onto its cradle.
"I should have killed you when I had the chance Onji, sealed you in concrete and dumped you in the Sea of Japan."
Nicholas paced around the room. He had no fear of Onji or of Michael meeting with him. It was simply another inconvenience, which he had little time for.
Nicholas had been psychotic after the death of Ian. To be so close to his goal, of uniting the greatest powers of chaos and order only to have nothing happen was far worse than underestimating the outcome and losing the battle. He was sure the old fool would abide by the ancient rites, take Michael himself to the other clan leaders before giving him the throne. Ian had always been one for pomp and circumstance, just like the rest of his pathetic countryman.
Once Nicholas had recovered his senses he understood that Ian hadn't given Michael the power, that Michael was not yet ascended. Ian had simply given it back to that winged golden whore of his.
He sent in a strike force, it should have been enough to take out Ian's security. But that damn Nigel and a larger than expected contingent of Dragon Security personnel had foiled that plan.
And then it happened. As always, when one ascends the ripples of power that such an unholy union creates fanned out, marked only by those just as damned as the newly made chosen.
"You should have refused Michael, you should have packed your bags and went home." Nicholas snarled. There was no sorrow or actual feeling behind Nicholas' words. They were the solitary ramblings of man consumed by his thirst for power and pain.
The ringing phone broke Nicholas from his ruminations. Walking over to the phone, hand outstretched to grab the receiver, he froze in mid-stride.
Vision blurring, pain searing through his body, a scream started deep in his throat, a wail of pure torment the likes of which few have ever uttered and taken another breath behind. Nicholas convulsed as if being electrocuted for a moment before dropping to the floor, his scream cut short in the physical world as his body gave out against the onslaught of suffering that enfolded him in a straitjacket of agony.
His spirit was not as fortunate as his body.
The shrieking wail of pain and terror continued as that dark, malevolent core of consciousness that encapsulated all that was Nicholas was pulled to a new and most decidedly unwelcome destination.
"MASTER, PLEASE..."
Nicholas' cry echoed around the rocky promontory that he now found himself kneeling upon.
Not for the first time, his knees and elbows flared with white-hot pain as they were pulled across the rough stone of the cliff toward its edge.
The gray sky roiled with clouds releasing icy rain that soaked through cloth and skin and bone, wrapping him in a shroud of clammy cloying pain.
From below the edge of the cliff a rumbling akin to thunder began. It cascaded up and over the cliff, buffeting Nicholas like the wind of a thousand hurricanes. The rumbling clarified and gained a rhythm, the rhythm of laughter. Sick and demented in cadence and intent, Nicholas cowered under its power.
"You Dare Beg Mercy of ME? Foolish child, how is that you are the last of my great line, how is it that one so incompetent could carry my essence within them?"
The earth moved under Nicholas, the rain picking up in intensity, the wind now augmented by some unseen force. Unseen but not unknown. Nicholas knew that wind, tinged with the stench of sulfur and death, it meant that his master wished to look him in the eye.
Nicholas bent his head to the hard wet stone. His forehead pressed so hard against it that deep gouges appeared, blood tinting the rainwater that coursed over his head crimson as it fell to the rough black stone below.
"Look at me."
Sirrush's venomous hiss caused Nicholas' head to snap up. His eyes locking with those of his master. He was, as always, lost the moment he gazed into their swirling obsidian depths. Now paralyzed like a rat before a cobra, Nicholas could do nothing but stare.
The stark reality of Sirrush's form would have caused even the strongest of people to simply let slip their hold on reality. His enormous black body, covered with glittering scales looked as though it was made of black ice. The intermittent flashes of lightning reflected across their wet surface like deep scars that shone for an instant only to be swallowed by the inky blackness the next.
Onyx teeth the length of short swords curled haphazardly out of his mouth. Small pools of poisonous ichor pooling below them, he stood sneering at his groveling minion.
Sirrush's voice was low and dangerous as he spoke to Nicholas.
"How many times Nicholas? How many opportunities did you lose to end her line? End her arrogance? End my own pain at her very existence? Was it six or seven? Your failures mount up so quickly that it is hard for me to keep count. Why have I been cursed for almost three centuries with such a loathsome acolyte as you? What deity must I suckle and subjugate myself to that I may finally be rid of you?"
Sirrush shuffled closer to Nicholas' prone form. He could feel the earth tremble with each grating step his master took.
"Ian is no more my lord, I bathed my flesh in his blood, tasted his coppery essence in my throat. Michael is lucky, he will not escape me. Soon our place as rulers will be assured. The planet will weep to its very foundations at our coming."
Nicholas had recovered somewhat, knowing that only by standing up to his master could he hope to avoid further more degrading and painful punishment.
"Our place, our coming."
An ebon claw flashed out, tearing a deep livid gash diagonally from Nicholas' neck to his lower back. Nicholas' screams were drowned out by Sirrush's roar of anger.
"Never dare place yourself at my side fool. Under my claw, begging for scraps from my table, like the foolish peasant you were born to be. That is your station, never forget that."
Nicholas could no longer keep to his knees. Blood coursed out of the long gaping wound to his back as he toppled over, curling into a fetal like repose.
"For ... forgive me ... master."
Nicholas had no more strength to speak; he felt his life force ebbing away in the face of his masters' wrath. He felt his masters hot bile drip slowly onto his cheek. Looking up he found ancient fangs only inches from his face. He did not pull back, he held his place as best he could as his master spoke one last time.
"Kill him Nicholas, rip his heart from his chest, feel the last pulse of humanity's hope beat its last against your palm. When this is done, perhaps forgiveness I shall deign to provide. Until then, understand that I shall accept no more mistakes, no more missed opportunities. Your eternal soul dangles over an endless abyss Nicholas, do not force me to cut the tenuous thread which sustains you."
Nicholas could hear rock fracture as Sirrush beat his wings, lifting off from the cliff. His battered body was rocked by the force of the wind beating down on him, giving his masters bulk purchase in the air. He did not look up to watch as Sirrush circled above him, did not see his master power through the air like a great shadowed demon toward the ruins farther up the hillside. He did not have to. This place was seared into his memory. Branded there so many centuries ago. For now he simply wailed as the pain from his masters poisoned talons seared through his body, understanding that soon enough they would be burnt away, leaving a new scar, a new reminder of what it meant to serve instead of lead.
In a croaking voice that broke with every syllable Nicholas spat out his own curse at his lord.
"Soon you old villain, soon you will know this same pain and a thousand times more. Over an age, or hundred ages you shall come to know pain and subservience. A thousand damnations I owe you, I shall repay them ... tenfold."
Nicholas slipped into unconsciousness. His soul temporarily trapped between the dreaming hell of Sirrush's creation and his true physical form. He wandered here, where memories are tangible and have fangs of there own.
...
The bellowing call of Hans' deep tenor rolled through the apartment like a crashing wave.
Nicholas opened and then quickly closed his eyes when he realized that the sun was still up. It had been four years since Nicholas had seen Hans.
After leaving the farm in the south of France where his training had begun, Nicholas and Hans traveled north again. Through France and Belgium until finally passing into Germany.
Nicholas was struck by just how different the places and people seemed as they had traveled. He made mention of it to Hans as they passed through the black forest about a days ride from their final destination, Berlin.
