Katarina Kills: Part III

Okay, I'm going to go all Star Wars on you. Nope, this excerpt isn't kiddie fiction, but rather chronologically juxtaposed fiction. This series of novel excerpts started with Kat, Mike, and a pair of Russian soldiers. This scene is the scene immediately preceding the first Katarina Kills. So read, enjoy, and move on to reread Katarina Kills. Mike and Kat are fun. Different.

Katarina Kills III (Actually the part before part one.)

“Where is it?” She no longer lay beside him. Pacing, in the gray shadows, careful not to step in the sliver of sun slicing past the drapes. Naked, a body of curves. Immodest, uncaring. Intent on the moment, intent on the question, a cigarette cupped in her right hand.  

Hudson sat on the edge of the bed, also naked, watching. Interested in her interest. He shrugged. “I left it in the back of the APC, but that was a couple of days ago. Who knows where it is now.”

She stopped the pacing, turning to him, her naked beauty unsettling. “Do you understand?”

Hudson flicked apiece of lint from his thigh, and cocked his head as a large diesel engine rumbled by on the road outside. Maybe a Russian APC? Kat’s eyes glinted in the near dark. “Yeah, Kat, I understand that this stone is important. A key in this thing your kind has for the Lycans.”

She drew from her cigarette, the tip lighting her face. “Not just a key, Mike.” Running her hand through her hair she exhaled. “It might damn well be the key. You remember the inscription?”

Hudson nodded. “Sure, ‘He who holds the stone controls the heart.’ But what heart are we talking about?”

Üdvöske

“The Lycans, Mike. The Lycan’s heart.”

She dropped her cigarette on the wooden floor, grinding it with the ball of her foot, unflinching. At the bed she sat. Without looking at him she began. “Humans are unperceptive.”

Hudson pursed his lips, “Thanks.”

“Yeah, well that’s the way it is. There is so much more to this world than meets your eye.”

“I’m beginning to understand that.”

“But what you understand is so little.”

Hudson nodded. “Again, thanks.”

Kat continued. “You see the ice that covers a deep pond never understanding what lies beneath, the depth of what lies beneath. I am descended from the Order of the Dragon, from the originator, Vlad the Impaler, Drakula. He was the first, birthed of a pact with a demon.”

“Satan?”

Her head shook. “I don’t know if there is such a being. There are, however, demons, fallen angels, beings of incredible power, incredible evil.”

“Humankind believes your kind is evil.”

“What do I care? Are you concerned with the cattle’s opinion of you?”

“Once again, I’d like to thank you.”

Her eyes flashed, her irises bright blue. “Mike! This is not a joke. You think the world has gone mad? Chaos reigns? Let that rock fall into the wrong hands and you will see true chaos.”

“Okay, okay. Chill.” He placed a placating hand on her thigh. “No need to go neon on me. You have my attention. Tell me what we are up against.”

For a moment she was quiet, sitting in the darkness, her head turned from him. At last she sighed. “We are, I am, of the Order of the Dragon. Lycan are of the Order of Corvinus. In the latter part of the 15^th century Matthias Corvinus betrayed and imprisoned Vlad Drakula.”

“Matthias I, the last King of Hungary?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “I see you know your history.”

“I know a lot of shit, most of it useless.”

She pointed to the pack of cigarettes on the bedside table. Hudson shook one out, lit it, and passed it to her.

“You know those things will kill you,” he added, mimicking her earlier admonishment.

She smiled. God how he loved that smile. “Hardly an issue for a vampire.”

The smoke passed smoothly between her lips, curling to the ceiling. “King Matthias feared the Impaler.”

“Yeah,” Hudson answered, “vampires are some scary shit.”

“Vlad was not a vampire then. He was as human as you, but he was a giant among men. Ruthless, power hungry, a legendary warrior. Matthias feared him even as a human, wanted to control him, in fact Matthias converted him to Catholicism, married Drakula to his daughter, Annuska. ”

 Hudson nodded. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

“Exactly.”

Her thigh was cool beneath his hand.

“Drakula never forgave Matthias his imprisonment. It mattered not that he was treated like a lord, provided Matthias’ most beautiful daughter, still Drakula chaffed. He was a man meant to lead, his life’s ambition was to rid his beloved Wallachia of the Ottoman threat. After six years he was released. Within a year he renounced Catholicism and beheaded Annuska.”

“Wow, remind me never to marry the dude.”

“Pray that you never meet him.” For a moment she sat quietly, as if the thought of Drakula was enough to still her. “Vlad returned to Wallachia, liberating and ruling for a final time. In 1477 he died. In 1478 the plague rose in Budapest.”

“Plague?”

She nodded. “Vampirism. The people didn’t understand it as that. At least not at first, but Matthias knew, and he knew that there was no stopping it, not by earthly means.”

He removed his hand from her thigh, wiping his face with both hands. “I see where this is going. Lycan are the Order of Corvinus, Matthias I needed something to stop rampant vampirism. Matthias birthed the Lycans. He was the original werewolf.”

Kat shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. Matthias was just a human, a Catholic.” She spat the word “Catholic” as if it were a piece of bad meat. Hudson began to speak, but she held up a halting finger. Slim, nail unpainted. “Matthias wasn’t, his cousin, Abjars was. Turned by the evil witch, Üdvöske, a woman so beautiful as to be irresistible. If she asks, men do.” Kat shrugged. “Or so the legend goes.”   

She pulled on the cigarette, squinting at Hudson through the smoke. Overhead, beating its way through the light that Hudson knew Kat could never see, a helicopter passed. Probably a Hind, thought Hudson. Not many of our Cobras left.

She nodded. “Probably. This war isn’t going well for your country.”

“What?” The exclamation was louder than he intended and both shut their mouths, glancing about the room as if the word might summon an enemy. Then he remembered, recalling the night they met, the drive home in his ratty old Volkswagen.

“Can you read all my thoughts?”

“No, the stronger the emotion, the easier it is. It’s a skill, some of my kind can sense every thought, every emotion, some can even control. It is not something I work at.”

“Bet that makes the sex nice.”

She laughed quietly, quickly. The moment passed and her face was once again serious. She dropped the cigarette on the floor. Again crushing it with her bare heal.

“This is someone’s room.”

“Yeah,” she replied.

“Adjar was young, brash, a womanizer,” Kat continued. “Matthias promised Üdvöske gold, more gold than one could imagine. And then he introduced the two.”

“And the rest, as they say, is history.” Hudson intoned.

“Living history,” she replied, voice quiet.

“They are still alive?”

Kat ignored the question, stood and walked to the front wall. The window looked out onto the house’s small front lawn. Hudson knew she would never look out that window. Not while the sun shone. She leaned against the wall, placing her ear to it. Hudson waited.

“Soldiers.”

Hudson knew better than to question how. This woman was stronger, faster, and more intelligent by far than any human. Why wouldn’t she hear better?

“How far?”

She shrugged, keeping the ear on the wall, hair falling onto her face.  “Maybe a block over. Noisy.”

Hudson stood, pulled the M16 from the wall and checked the action and magazine. Eleven rounds. He lifted his pants from the floor. She stood by the window, arms crossed. “Seriously?”

Hudson smirked. “I don’t want to die naked.”

She didn’t move. “No one’s dying.”

Hudson crossed to the window. Pulling the curtains with the back of one hand he peered out. Nothing.

“Üdvöske turned Adjar. He became a beast that lived for the hunt, craved the taste of flesh. Those he bit, the ones that lived, also turned. Humans by day, wolfs by the light of the full moon. You know the story. “

Hudson craned his neck. Nothing on the street to the front, nothing to be seen in the houses across from them. He didn’t look back to her. “I’ve heard the stories, but I thought they were just that. Stories. Then I met you. Then I killed the Lycan family” (See Revelation –Mark).

“The Lycan freed Budapest, hunting and killing my order ruthlessly. The plague was cured, but the cure was worse than the disease. Üdvöske was a clever woman, an insatiable woman. She wanted more than gold, she wanted Budapest. When she wove her spell, she created an artifact to control the Lycan.”

Hudson turned to her. “The stone.”

She nodded, “Yeah, the stone.”

“But why a cut stone, a halved stone? What I held in my hands wasn’t just broken, it had been cut, as if it was a piece of a puzzle.”

“Ah, yes, that was the Cleric’s doing.”

“The cleric? This sounds more like a fairy tale every second.”

Her voice was low, menacing. “No fairy tale. The desperate truth.” She pulled a stray strand of blue-black hair behind her ear. “Father János served King Matthias. Matthias believed himself to be a king of the people, he often walked among them unannounced in peasant garb.”

Hudson flicked a piece of something, he couldn’t tell what, off the M-16’s barrel. “You speak as if you were there.” Kat didn’t answer.  

“In one such walk he met Father János, a priest to a clan of Christian gypsies, and took the man to be his court cleric. But the cleric was more than a Christian.” She smiled. “Better than a Christian.”

“You’re not a big fan of Christianity, are you?”

She shrugged, “I’m not a big fan of hypocrisy, among other things. But let me finish, we don’t have long.”

“What?” Hudson glanced through the drapes, saw nothing.

She ignored the question “Father János knew of the deal Matthias struck with Üdvöske, and he discovered her deception. He stole the stone, intending to destroy it. She paused placing her ear to the wall.

“And?” Hudson asked.

“He couldn’t. The stone not only controlled the hearts of the Lycan, but also corrupted the heart of whoever held it, filling it with greed. He felt the dark magic working insidiously on his soul, and in a final, ultimate struggle, shattered the stone through gypsy magic.”

“And he and the beautiful princess lived happily ever after.”

“Not quite. King Matthias hunted him, Üdvöske hunted him, Adjar hunted him. So he ran.”

“To where?” Hudson asked.

“To Sixtus IV”

“I’m not quite up on my Papal history, but I’m guessing he was the dude in Rome?”

“That’s right. A nepotistic sodomite, but powerful nonetheless. He received the Cleric and believed him. He tried to destroy the pair of stones, but like János, found them indestructible.”

“You’re telling me they simply couldn’t crush the rocks? The one that I found just felt like a simple rock.”

“You can be so human,” she sighed. “I’m telling you that the Paladin told to smash the rocks went insane, instead rampaging through Saint Peter’s Basilica during morning mass, murdering priests and worshipers alike. I’m telling you that the purest man in Rome, Cardinal Bernardino of Siena, and an entourage of priests, threw the stones into the Tiber at midnight. The next morning the stones were found at the foot of the bridge, beside the severed heads of the Cardinal and his entourage.”

Hudson checked the front yard. Sun played across the uncut grass. Two houses down a brown dog darted across the street. No sign of soldiers. He looked at Kat. “I held the stone, I felt nothing.”

She crossed her arms and leaned back against the wall. “Exactly. Sixtus’s men discovered the same phenomenon. Separated, the rocks held no sway.  And that brings us today. Sixtus separated the rocks, sent them to the care of two separate monasteries, special monasteries, guarded by Teutonic Knights.”

She pointed at Hudson. “You,” she smiled, “have found one of them.”

Ten seconds passed. “If I wasn’t standing in a darkened room, talking to a naked vampire, I’d have a one-word answer, and that word would be, ‘Bullshit’. But I am here, and it isn’t bullshit, it’s some seriously creepy shit.”

For a moment she pressed her ear against the wall. She pulled back. “It’s more than creepy,” she said, “If ever the rocks are brought together, the holder would control the Lycan. But enough talk. It’s almost time. “

And then the back door opened.

Mark H. Walker served 23 years in the United States Navy, most of them as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal diver. He is the owner of Flying Pig Games, the designer of the aliens-invade-Earth game Night of Man, the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military science fiction novel with a twist, with plenty of damn science fiction in it despite what any reviewer says, as well as World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, Everyone Dies in the End, and numerous short stories. All the books and stories are available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. I mean, what the hell? The games? Well that's Flying Pig Games. Retribution will release in the summer of 2015.

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