Harrison walked off, leaving me with Selene, Lucifer, and Zamek. “This is a stupid idea,” Lucifer said. “But it’s probably the least stupid idea we could have at the moment. You want someone to come with you?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want him to realize that there’s more than just me, and if fifty soldiers go down there, he might start trying to pick them off in the darkness.”
“What if Lee has allies down there?” Zamek asked.
“He’ll want me for himself,” I said, feeling hopeful about being right.
“You have three minutes, and then we come in,” Selene said. “If he has help, and they’re ignoring you, that gives us something to do while you have Lee’s attention.”
“See, I’m all about delegating the hard work to everyone else,” I said.
We stopped at the entrance to the ruins. “If you didn’t know they were there, you’d walk right past,” I said after crouching down behind a tree large enough to conceal a dozen people. The only part of the ruins that were visible were three large stone columns, and even they had been mostly consumed by vegetation.
“The entrance is behind the columns,” Harrison said. “My people are already moving on around the back of the ruins. If anyone is watching for us, they’re going to think we couldn’t find them. Or at the very least that we’re going to ambush them.”
“I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I?” Selene asked.
“I’ve done this kind of thing before,” I said.
“You’ve done this kind of thing before?” Zamek said. “You’ve gone up against a vampire who may or may not have at least part of the soul of an ancient vampiric devil inside of him?”
“Every Tuesday,” I replied. “And twice on Fridays.”
“You’re so full of shit,” Zamek said with a grin as he removed the battle-axe from his back and tested it for weight. Harrison had made sure the things taken from us when we were first arrested had been returned, and Leonardo had given us all any extra weapons we’d need. For a man who hated the idea of his inventions being used for war, he sure was good at creating them.
I unsheathed the silver broadsword that Leonardo had given me and walked around the tree toward the hidden ruins. As it turned out, they weren’t so hidden when you got close, and while vegetation had grown all around the steps moving down into the ruins, it only made them difficult to see from a distance.
Small purple crystals lit the inside of the ruins. I’d been worried that I’d have to use my fire magic to let me see in the dark, a simple proposition in the Earth realm but one that was liable to start a forest fire in Shadow Falls.
I waited at the bottom of the long staircase into the ruins and allowed my vision to become accustomed to the new lighting before continuing. The plant life of the realm had long since overrun the ruins, and occasionally I’d hear something scurry around in the darkness, but I had no interest in finding out exactly what it was, so I hurried on.
The elven ruins would probably have been beautiful back in their day, and evidence of that beauty still existed in the ornate carvings on the walls, and pillars with stone that shone brightly as the light from the crystals touched it. After thousands of years of disuse, their work remained functional and impressive. Occasionally I saw something that interested me enough that I wished I’d the time to stay and examine it more, and it was easy to understand why Leonardo loved coming here to excavate. Elven culture was a mystery to most of us, and even to those who lived at the time it was something that had been kept largely secret, so to be able to wander around their achievements, even after millennia had passed, felt like how humans must have first felt when they’d finally discovered the Rosetta stone.
I occasionally stumbled over loose stone, which was neither stealthy nor particularly heroic, and I made sure to omit that detail from any epic storytelling I’d undertake about my descent into elven ruins to fight a master vampire.
“Nate, you came.” The voice echoed all around me just before I entered a large room with several exits. The room had a high ceiling, where the crystals lit up the remains of the faded murals.
“I’m not doing this,” I called out. “This isn’t some bad-vampire-movie crap. I’m not doing the follow-the-disembodied-voice shit. You’re not Christopher Lee, and this isn’t a Hammer horror.”
The voice laughed.
“My word, you’re a dick,” I said.
The laughter stopped. “Take the third path from the left. There are no traps. I want you to see me for who I am. I want you to witness my glory before you die.”
“I want you to shut the fuck up, but that doesn’t seem to be happening, either.” I walked over to the exit Lee had told me to take and stepped inside. It wasn’t going to be a trap—I was confident of that. Lee thought he was more powerful than I was—if he didn’t, we wouldn’t have been having the conversation—and I knew that Lee would fight fair if he thought he would win.
I followed the path to a second large room. At the far end of the room was a throne, upon which sat Lee. He’d changed a lot since I’d last seen him. He’d kept the goatee, proving he was in fact evil, but grown his red hair out so that it was long enough to touch his shoulders.
“You look like something out of a romance novel,” I said. “I assume you swoon about, too.”
Lee stood up, revealing the long coat and expensive suit.
I sighed. “Seriously, that’s what you think you should wear as a vampire? Haven’t we all moved on from the stereotypical bullshit?”
A flicker of anger moved across Lee’s face before being replaced with a calm smile. “It’s been a while, Nate.”
“Not long enough. So, you’re a vampire. How’s that working out for you?”
“I was made an offer, and I just couldn’t refuse it. Do you know what that offer was?”
“To look like you stalk young high-school girls? Did they teach you to talk with a really bad Eastern European accent, too? Say, ‘I vant to suck your blood.’ Make sure it’s ‘vant,’ though, not ‘want.’ That’s very important.”
“You think you can mock me? With all the power I possess, I could snuff out your life in an instant.”
“You are literally the least threatening vampire I’ve ever seen. The count from Sesame Street looks more badass.”
“You think you can goad me into making a mistake.”
“Mate, you made a mistake the second you got up and decided that was a good look.”
Lee smiled. “You know the horror I inflicted in the city, yes?”
“Yeah, it came up. I’m beginning to think someone else did it, though. Because if you killed them looking like that, I’d think they were more embarrassed than anything.”
More anger, this time staying for a few moments longer. “I murdered those people and bathed in their blood.”
“It’s good for the skin apparently.”
Lee walked down the steps from the stone throne, standing only a dozen feet from me. “I killed my parents. You remember them, yes?”