The Thirteenth Lord
M.T. Murphy
Copyright - 2015
CHAPTER ONE – What’s
in the box?
Manny and Carl stood
at the dead man’s feet.
“He looks like hobo
Elvis,” Manny said.
The sun was directly
overhead, keeping their shadows from touching the corpse. Hobo Elvis’s hair
stopped just short of his shoulders, but his sideburns threatened to take over
his jaw. He wore only jeans and boots, with a dress shirt tucked into the side
pocket of his jeans.
“Don’t you think he
looks like Elvis? Maybe if the King fell on hard times right after the ’68
comeback special. You remember that?” Manny lit a cigarette, not really
interested in Carl’s reply.
“I wasn’t even born
in that decade, gramps.”
“Of course you
weren’t. Rub it in.” Manny knelt down to get a better look at Hobo Elvis. “That
was a damn fine shot. Right in the heart.”
“I’ve been
practicing.” Carl stroked his chest-length beard while twirling his 9mm pistol
old west shooting show style. Then he dropped the gun into the dry Mexico sand.
“Keep practicing,”
Manny said. He kicked the body just to be sure. “What the hell was he pulling?”
Carl shrugged.
“Looks like one of those old timey wooden coffins you see in the movies.”
Manny walked around
the corpse and tapped on the top of the coffin. “It’s wood but it feels like
there’s iron underneath.” He picked up the thick chain Hobo Elvis had been
pulling and gave it a tug. “Jesus. That thing weighs a ton. Give me a hand.”
Carl took hold of
the chain. They both planted their feet in the sand and pulled. After much straining
and profanity, the coffin had moved less than a foot.
Manny slammed the
chain onto the coffin. “You saw what I saw, right? Elvis was dragging this
thing like it was nothing.”
“Yeah,” Carl
replied. “He just kept walking like he was in a trance or something. I told him
to stop unless he wanted a bullet in the chest. Bastard winked at me. So, I
shot him.” He tried to pull open the lid, but it would not budge. “It’s locked
up tight. Seems like it’s sealed from the inside. How did they manage that?”
“Look,” Manny
pointed into the distance. A four foot wide trench stretched across the desert
and into the horizon behind the corpse.
“Elvis must have
been on a whole cocktail of drugs or serious steroids.”
“Don’t matter now. ‘Roids
didn’t stop the bullet. That box must have valuable cargo to be wrapped up so
tight. Let’s pull the truck around and hook it up. We’ll drag it to town and
open it there.”
They headed toward
their truck.
“What do you think
is in there?” Carl asked.
“Lucy,” a raspy
voice replied.
Manny grabbed Carl’s
arm. “What did you say?”
Carl held his pistol
up. “I didn’t say that.”
They looked down at
the corpse. The eyes were still closed, but his chest rose and fell with
shallow breaths.
“Lucy’s in the box,”
he whispered.
Manny slapped Carl
on the back of the head. Then he let out a relieved sigh. “That scared the crap
out of me. Shoot him again.”
Carl nodded and took
careful aim, firing off two more shots into the stranger’s chest.
The man groaned and
clutched his chest. “Cut that out, you arse,” he growled.
“Keep shooting till
he’s dead,” Manny said.
Carl held up his
empty gun. “I’m out. Practice takes bullets, man. We never see nobody out here.
How was I to know I’d need more than three?”
“Fine,” Manny said,
taking out the foot-long bowie knife that had earned him the nickname of “Manny
the Blade.” “If I get blood on my boots,
you’re buying me a new pair.”
Manny knelt down by
the writhing stranger. Either the damage to his organs would kill him or he
would bleed out in less than a minute. Manny waited, but the man kept
breathing. With a resigned sigh, he stepped around and knelt down behind the
man’s head, thrusting the knife toward his throat.
A hand shot up and
engulfed the blade, stopping it an inch from its target.
Manny was no novice
to fighting and killing, but the speed of the man’s movement startled him. He
tried to pull the knife away, but the stranger tightened his grip, digging the
blade deep into his own palm until it scraped bone.
The shaggy-haired
man stopped groaning and clutching his gunshot wounds. He sat up and turned to
face Manny. “I tried to be nice,” the man snarled with more than a hint of an
Irish brogue.
Manny punched him in
the face as hard as he could.
The man recoiled
with the blow, then spoke as though he hadn’t even felt it. “I let ZZ Top over
there shoot me once. That was a freebee. Then, he shot me two more Goddamn
times. I still might have let you live. I would have let you drag the coffin
for a bit if you were going the right direction and then taken it from you
later. But you,” he pointed a sharp nailed finger at Manny, “were going to slit
my throat.” He shook his head in disgust. “That’s sloppy and unprofessional.”
Manny let go of the knife
and sprinted for the old pickup truck. Carl joined in, racing for the passenger
side.
Manny grabbed the
door handle. At that instant, the knife flew, end-over-end, impaling Manny’s
hand into the rusty metal body of the truck. He screamed and pulled on the handle
but the blade wouldn’t move.
Carl tried to run
but the shaggy-haired man moved faster than a human being should have been able
to move and blocked his path.
“That’s a lovely
beard you’ve got there,” the stranger said, “but it ain’t going to save you.”
Carl pulled his own
knife and held it up in front of the stranger’s face. “Back off” he said.
“No,” the stranger
replied.
Carl stabbed the
man, pushing the knife’s blade into the side of his chest just below his heart.
The stranger did not
flinch. Ignoring the knife, he reached out and grabbed Carl’s head with both
hands and twisted it, breaking his neck with a sickening pop.
Manny fought back
nausea and pulled on the knife with all his might. He heard Carl’s body hit the
sand. Then he heard the stranger’s footsteps drawing closer.
The blade broke free
from the truck. Manny groaned as it cut his flesh upon removal. He spun to face
the stranger.
The man calmly
pulled Carl’s knife out of the side of his chest and dropped it.
Manny brandished his
knife again, pointing it at the stranger’s eye. “What the hell are you?” he
asked.
The stranger raised
a hand and pointed his index finger to the sky. An already jagged fingernail
grew into an inch-long talon.
The stranger’s lips
pulled back into a smile, displaying massive canine fangs. He peered at Manny
with eyes of glowing crimson. “What am I? Nothing special,” he replied. “Just a
werewolf.”
“Well, you are
crazy, I’ll give you that,” Manny said.
The stranger chuckled.
Manny slashed at the
stranger’s throat.
The shaggy-haired
man waved his finger toward Manny at the same time. The talon on his finger
ripped through Manny’s throat, cutting short his swing.
Manny fell to his
knees as his life drained down his chest. As darkness overtook his vision, he
watched the shaggy-haired man lick the blood from his nail, pick up the heavy
chain, and resume his trek to the east.
Manny died, silently
cursing himself for not tripping Carl and escaping in the truck when he had the
chance.
* * * * *
Moments before
sundown, the shaggy-haired man arrived at his destination with the coffin in
tow. A palatial mansion sat atop a plateau in the middle of Mexico’s Chihuahua
Desert. A fifteen foot tall electrified fence separated the mansion grounds
from the rest of the desert.
He sat down next to
the coffin and gently patted the lid.
“Here we are, Lucy.
One compound in the middle of fucking nowhere, just as you requested. It would
be nice to know why the hell we’re doing this.”
The coffin was as
silent as it had been during the rest of the fifty mile journey from El
Infierno. She would awaken soon. He longed for the moment almost as much as he
dreaded it.
The waxing gibbous
moon taunted him, making its presence known in the eastern sky long before true
sunset.
His attackers had
helped stave off the craving. The urge to hunt and kill was less intense, but that
wouldn’t last. When the moon was high that night, he knew the beast would want
worthy prey. It had little interest in weaklings.
That was the
problem. The vampire in the box was one of the most feared on the planet. The
beast wanted very much to fight and kill her.
What a glorious battle it would be. The beast did not care that this
vampire had kept it from going insane over the centuries like most other
packless werewolves.
“No,” he said aloud.
“There is no ‘me and the beast.’ I am the beast. And I am in control.” He said
it in a forceful tone as if to convince someone, but the only ears around were
his own.
The sun fell lower
against the horizon. Night was about to arrive.
“Lucy,” he said.
“It’s getting worse. I can’t control meself during a half moon. What will
happen when she’s full?”
Only a sliver of the
fiery sun remained visible. The man ran his fingers through dark, shaggy hair and
kept his eyes closed. He did not want to see the end of the light that kept his
shining tormentor in check.
The sun disappeared
and his brief respite of lucidity slipped away.
The coffin opened
with a soft click. An alabaster hand grasped the edge from the inside. A pale
form poured out of the box and rose next to the trembling werewolf. She wore
her black hair pulled up so it cascaded around her face much as it had in her
human life in ancient Rome. The dress was pure modern day Hollywood: a tight,
black, sleeveless affair with a slit that began at the middle of her left
thigh. Her form was too athletic to be mistaken for Hollywood starlet, but she
was far too beautiful to care.
Lucifera Romana, the
nineteen century old master vampire of Los Angeles, arrived in the waning
twilight the same way she arrived anywhere else: like she was the queen of all
she surveyed.
Her beauty stirred
up memories in the werewolf. For two and a half centuries they existed as the most
feared pair of monsters on the planet, due as much to their own power as their
forbidden pairing of werewolf and vampire. Two months earlier, a rival stole most
of her power. She prevailed, but her newfound weakness revealed the flaw in
their pairing. Their happiness had been based on her lust for his blood and
vampire ability to suppress the natural deterioration of his mind from man to
beast. She could no longer heal his mind.
From over her
shoulder, her companion glimpsed the shining moon. Memories washed away,
leaving him consumed by the desire to hunt and kill. The prey no longer
mattered. The vampiress before him was as good a choice as any.
“Did you say
something, wolf?” she asked.
Her melodious voice
strengthened his resolve just enough to keep the beast caged.
“No,” he growled.
Then, he pointed toward the mansion. “Let’s go. We’re here to kill vampires,
ain’t we?”
She smiled and
reached out for his face. He turned away. In the corner of his eye, he saw her
smile fade.
“If any oppose us,
we kill them, but we are not here for ordinary vampires,” she said. “We are
here for a vampire lord.”
