Chapter 19: The Exorcism of Belfast

July, 1989

"Two someones actually, my lord," an elegant baritone voice said behind me.

Glancing over my shoulder I saw someone standing in a darkened doorway I had not noticed earlier. Alexandrios of Byzantium stepped into the subdued lighting of the warehouse. There were a couple of spots of what I had to assume were blood on the frilly white shirt he wore. It was almost like those shirts the heroes always wore in the old pirate movies except it had frills down the front and at the cuffs. It was unlaced to mid-torso and tucked into a pair of black jeans that were in turn tucked into a pair of black leather boots. His shoulder-length black hair was caught in a tight pony tail and his skin was flushed, not the alabaster-pale it was the night at The Waterside Inn. I noticed that his eyes were not the plain medium brown I thought them to be that night but an almost maroonish brown that seemed to glow in the dim warehouse. I tore my eyes off of his and he smiled a pleased smile.

"I figured I would need the extra strength," he added, his eyes never leaving my face. "Oh, you have no idea how much I wish I would have found you first, Al-lice. Alas, I am long enough lived to know who not to cross and my Lord Balor is one of those. Perhaps if he manages to tame you he would allow me a sip before I move on. Simply smelling you is like catching the wafting scent of a heady wine or a finely aged cheese."

I turned and backed up a bit so I could keep both of them in my peripheral vision at once. "Do none of you watch James Bond movies?" I asked snarkily. "Or is it that you watch too many? Because if all of you monsters talk this much before I have to kill you, I might have to invest in some good ear plugs."

Alexandrios smiled and bowed his head while the demon giggled. "Oh, you are a treat, Alice," Balor simpered. "Boys, please move the brave Weres out of the way so Alice and Alexandrios do not trip over them whilst they play."

I thought maybe the guards who ran out when they realized nobody was answering their radios might have come back but no, five of the black dogs sprang into action, leaving two to stand guard on either side of the demon. They clamped their massive, tooth-filled jaws onto the corpses and dragged them over to the wall opposite the hostages, leaving long bloody smears across the floor. When they were satisfied with the pile of dead bodies, they bounded back across the warehouse to sit at their master's feet once more. They licked their lips as they stared avidly at me with those eerie eyes that looked more intelligent than they should.

"Excellent! Now to the main event," the demon said grandly. "Alexandrios, if you would, please."

Alexandrios bowed with and ironic look on his face. "As my lord commands."

A sword not all that different than the one I carried appeared in the vampire's hand. I don't know if it was magic or he had it in a sheath on his back or what, but there was suddenly a dull steel blade a little over a half meter long in his hand. It looked old and well-used, the handle worn leather and the cross piece of the hilt showing a knick or two. Alexandrios made a few passes with the sword and he moved as if the blade were an extension of his arm, smooth and graceful.

"I have not been bested by an opponent with the sword in nearly twelve centuries, my dear," he remarked in that melodious voice of his. He sounded like he should be announcing selections on a classical music radio station or something. Then he lowered his voice so the sound only carried to my ears and promised, "Much as our master would like this to last, I will try to make this as painless as possible. I have enjoyed our interactions and respect you too much to play with you before the end. Someone your age should never have been forced into such a life so young. God is rarely merciful or considerate, merely demanding and stern. Your life was always going to be one of hardship and loss and so I guess I will have to be the merciful one in your life and do my best to dispatch it swiftly and with dignity. Perhaps your father will even be able to bury you under your own name, rather than this identity others have cobbled together for you. Come, I will send you to your maker so that you may rail at him for the both of us."

I had to smile at that. Whether he was trying to psyche me out or that was truly how he felt did not matter. What mattered, to me at least, was that he ran this entire show for the demon. Without Alexandrios of Byzantium, Hestia would still be alive and William, Grandmother, and Lady Ancen would never have known about the Dark underbelly of the real world. William would have gone off to Oxford or Cambridge or the continent, competed for a place on the British fencing team going to Barcelona in 1992, and followed in his father's footsteps without ever touching the world trying to suck me into its clutches. Grandmother would have remained blissfully ignorant, spending her waning days visiting her favorite shops, gossiping with the other matriarchs of British nobility, and hounding her son to remarry and have more children. And Lady Ancen would have stayed the comfortable British lady with the oddly friendly relationship with her ex-husband, watching proudly as her son grew into his fate as a great British lord.

While some of that might survive today, some of it was really gone that night a couple of weeks ago at The Waterside Inn. The Darkness touched them that night. They did not recognize it for the momentous event it was, but that was the night they looked into the Darkness and the Darkness looked back, seeing them for who they were: weaknesses of mine.

So we get the situation we had; me trying to rescue the hostages and them mostly unhurt but their lives forever changed. The smile I turned on Alexandrios probably would have done a great white shark proud. "Fast or slow, either way, you are just another thing getting in my way. I did not come here for you, so I will give you the same option I gave the foxmen: leave, this is between me and the demon."

The very Greek face smiled at me, reminding my hormones that he was very handsome. "Do you not care that it was my people and me who killed your teacher? She was quite good. I lost more people than I could ever have suspected I would against mere humans. Her defense of your new home is why you face me alone and not some of my children as well. They sleep away wounds your teacher and her confederates inflicted. I brought you here, whether you knew it or not. I suggested hostages. I planned the assault on your ever so well-defended home. I wrote the invitation to you, which brought you here alone. They come for you, mistake me not. By the time they get to Belfast and find this place, however, you will either be dead or the plaything of the Demon. I offer you a way out of that fate."

A growl of disgust sounded to my left and I darted a glance at the demon sitting on the edge of his seat. "Come now, surely you are finished offering personal insults and challenges by now. Fight!" Balor commanded petulantly, the black hounds at his feet looking restless.

That momentary glance almost killed me. Before Balor got through half his sentence, Alexandrios was moving. I thought the werefoxes were fast but Alexandrios should have been nothing but a blur, so swiftly and smoothly did he move. Somehow I was keeping up with him. The thing saving me was the dueling dagger I drew from my belt following a quick retreat from the flurry of slashes, jabs, and counter-parries with which he began. He was every bit as good as he boasted and only using a second blade allowed me to keep him away from me.

Something else besides gratefulness for the extra weapon occurred to me as I parried and dodged a savage flurry of thrusts and slashes aimed at my legs and arms: he was a vampire. He did not need to breathe, save to talk and our talking was done. His muscles would not cramp; he was dead and lactic acid was no longer a worry. And he just woke up and refreshed himself with two fresh bodies. I had been up since midnight, fought a couple of dozen humans and five werefoxes, and had not eaten since dinner early yesterday evening. Unless you counted the guards' fish and chips almost and hour ago, which I did not. Those calories wouldn't be helping me until it was too late. Once more I was in a fight I needed to end now. I was not fighting excitable werefoxes this time, though. I got the feeling two thousand year old vampires were, by definition, not excitable.

In an effort to find some kind of rhythm against so fast an opponent, I stopped looking for the killing blow and simply surrendered to the flow. My movements changed from tense and hard to smooth, relaxed, and soft. My blade slid his thrusts and slashes to the sides, my body always moving into him, trying to take away his tremendous reach advantage. As I slid around his moves, I used the dagger more and more to stab and cut anything I could reach. His white, frilly shirt was soon in tatters, the sleeves sliced to ribbons with splatters of blood here and there showing where the blade actually found his arms beneath the billowy sleeves. The vampire's pale torso was showing through the cuts to his body, more splashes of crimson a telltale that the slashes and thrusts to his chest and abdomen were hitting more than missing.

In exchange for this success, I paid with cuts of my own. Mostly minor that I was able to dodge enough to get away with little damage. Alexandrios scored hits on my left shoulder, right thigh, and chin, all of which were bleeding freely. More than once I caught him scenting the air and licking his lips. The metallic smell of blood and the rising outhouse/slaughterhouse smell of violent death were now noticeable even to my human nose over the musty, moldy smell that pervaded the warehouse.

Alexandrios and I broke apart from each other for one of the pauses between flurries of blows. As he did so, he dipped his weapon twice, looking sharply at me.

"What?"

"That is the signal between swordsmen of honor suggesting a pause to catch our breaths, so to speak," he told me, still watching me closely. "While I do not need a breath, even I have need to pause and take stock of my body after a protracted duel and I can clearly see you could use a breather."

While I was not panting, I was breathing heavier from the exertion. I also would not mind the chance to make sure I had not overlooked cuts that were more dangerous than I assumed. I nodded and backed away several feet, keeping the vampire and his boss in sight.

Alexandrios grinned, taking account of his own wounds. "I must commend your teachers, Al-lice. Nobody in seven centuries has pushed me this far, never mind bleeding me so," he said as he ripped his tattered shirt off his muscled body and tore it into strips to be used to bind a couple of the more serious wounds on his right thigh and arm. He was still bleeding freely from a few places, the leprechaun's sword working on him as it did on the foxmen. "Wherever you got that blade, you owe them your successes today. I had thought it lost millennia ago."

It was almost as if he read my mind. I held up the sword and raised an eyebrow. "You know this sword?"

The grin widened into a wicked smile, tying off one of the strips of his shirt. "My father watched its last bearer kill Emperor Carinus with it around 285 A. D. They believed him possessed by a Demon bent on destroying the Empire. He, of course, was killed in turn by the Praetorians who betrayed Carinus to Diocletian. The sword disappeared until this day. I believe the Celts called it the Godslayer."

"Enough ancient history and enough rest!" Balor snapped, his eyes suddenly less demented and more serious as they looked closely at the sword hanging at my side for the first time. "Continue before I lose my patience with both of you! This is a fight, not a tea party!"

The warehouse was suddenly stifling with power. Or maybe that should be POWER! It wasn't just my imagination, either. I could see Alexandrios felt it and the hounds' ears were perked up, their eyes on their master, bodies tensed for action.

Alexandrios grimaced before saluting the demon with his sword. "We who are about to die salute you," he intoned sarcastically before darting at me.

I ducked under and into the thrust, bringing the short sword up and across his ribs. Spinning, I got the sword up just in time to block the backhand slash he aimed at my neck, flicking the dagger across his wrist before he could withdraw his blade for another attack. On the defensive, Alexandrios tried to back up, to reset himself for another flurry of strokes at me. I, however, was tired of the game. Perhaps if we had met the way the way I met Lars we might have becomes friends, but we had not. And besides, he struck my creep-radar pretty hard whereas Lars did not. I had the feeling that this was one vampire the world would be better off without.