He barely has time to find his feet before the sword is back, flashing and striking and cutting. It is all Clifton can do to defend himself. But the magic behind the sword is too strong. The blows are too powerful. Each one sends him reeling and stumbling...

  ***

  The dark-haired boy takes a deep breath...and pulls hard.

  Once again the circular room rotates, revealing the secret chamber beyond. The dark-haired boy watches, stunned. Then he sees the chaos in the room beyond. There, lying on the floor, is the same girl he had seen earlier. There, beyond is the boy—who’s fighting a sword with no body.

  “Bloody hell?”

  And there, perhaps most disturbing of all, is something old and ancient and clearly from a world of nightmares.

  He stares for only a moment before springing into action. He dashes through the doorway and finds another sword on a nearby wall. He grasps it, pulls it down. So far, the ancient wizard hasn’t noticed the newcomer, so intent is he on compelling the magical sword to fight the boy.

  Now the dark-haired boy creeps up behind Merlin. Monique awakens now, turns her head, watches the scene unfold. She stifles a gasp.

  The dark-haired boy is suddenly not sure about this plan. He pauses, swallowing hard. The sword falters, shakes. But still he raises it over head—

  And just as he does so, the wizard turns to face him.

  Too late, the boy is already swinging the sword as hard as he can—

  The wizard raises his hands—

  The sword flashes as bright light erupts from Merlin’s fingertips.

  Wizard and boy stare at each other.

  In the back of the tomb, the disembodied sword that Clifton had been battling, promptly clatters to the ground.

  Back to the dark-haired boy as he stares down the great wizard. And we see that a red slash has appeared across the magician’s throat. A throat that had been looking younger and younger.

  Now the red slash turns into a stream of blood.

  And the wizard’s head promptly falls off to the side, and the body collapses.

  ***

  Clifton, out of breath and sweating, dashes over to his cousin who’s still lying on the floor. He lifts her head, cradling it. Her skin is rapidly reverting back to normal, and young Clifton watches in fascination and relief as her aged face grows young again.

  “Clifton?” she mumbles.

  “You’re going to be okay.”

  He helps Monique sit up against the arched opening. Once done, the young adventurer heads over to the dark-haired boy who’s still holding the sword and staring down at the wizard’s headless body.

  “Thank you! But there’s no time to waste. We need to light the candles again. And get him back in the sarcophagus.”

  “The what?”

  “The big casket.”

  “Oh, right.” But the dark-haired boy still sounds dazed. “Why?”

  “Just trust me.”

  Using the torches the two boys light the candles again. Next, they drag the headless body back to the sarcophagus. A grim business. Both boys frown and look away. Finally, a brave Clifton picks up the head by its long hair, holds it out before him, and looks away as he carries it back to the ancient casket. Once there, he tosses it inside, and both boys close the lid.

  “Let’s get out of here!” says Clifton.

  No one disagrees. The three of them exit the hidden chamber, with Clifton supporting his cousin. Once in the circular outer room, the dark-haired boy promptly pulls the lever/torch in the wall. Almost immediately, the room rotates again, sealing Merlin’s chamber closed—and opening the far tunnel. Their exit.

  Before leaving the circular chamber, the dark-haired boy breaks off the tip of the wooden torch within the opening, jamming the lever. He looks at his handiwork, grins. “That should do it.”

  Torch in hand, they head back through the long tunnel. Once at the winding stairs, Monique has regained her strength enough to climb on their own. Long minutes later, each is out of breath when they reach the altar again. The dark-haired boy kicks open the secret entrance and, as they scramble through, another priest spots them.

  “Come on!” the dark haired boy says. “I know another way out of here!”

  As the trio dash through the sanctuary, the boy snatches up his sketching pad. He leads them through a side door, down a side hallway, and soon the three of them emerge into an alley—and into the afternoon sunshine. They keep running and soon turn down a busy street, where they disappear among the throngs of people.

  A short while later, the three of them step down another alley, each hunched over, winded, and laughing.

  “Thanks for helping us,” Clifton finally says when he catches his breath. “That was really brave.”

  “And you were really stupid,” says Monique, elbowing her cousin.

  The dark-haired boy grins. “No problem.”

  “I’m Clifton. This is my cousin, Monique.”

  The dark-haired boy grins and shakes their hands. “Pleased to meet you,” he says in a thick, German accent. “My name’s Adolf. Adolf Hitler.”

  The young Hitler holds up his drawings of the church’s interior. The drawings are surprisingly wonderful. He smiles, but there is a distant, haunted look in his eye.

  “I’m an artist.”

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Samantha Moon’s Guest Blog

  Some call me a vampire.

  I say, why use labels? I’m uncomfortable calling myself anything other than a mother. That’s the one label I am comfortable with. I’m a mom first and foremost. A private investigator next, even though that is fairly recent. Seven years ago, I wasn’t a private eye, but a federal agent.

  So, even that was subject to change. Perhaps someday I might find myself better suited for a different job, although I will always help those who need help. Although I’d always admired Judge Judy, I would never want to be in her position: to judge the actions of others. That took wisdom...a lifetime of wisdom. Technically, I’m only in my mid-thirties, although I look much younger. Still, far too young to judge others.

  Truth was, my current lifestyle was perfectly suited to private investigation. Other than meeting new clients, who tended to want to meet during the day, I got along just fine working the night shift.

  So, yes, one of the constants in my life was that I was a mother. Of course, even that was threatened just a year or so ago, when a rare sickness almost took my son from me. A son who was growing so fast.

  Supernaturally fast.

  Don’t ask.

  I have a daughter, too. A daughter who offered many challenges, the least of which was that she could read minds as easily as she read her Facebook newsfeed.

  Yes, I was a mother...and a sister. My sister has had a rough time of it, of late. She’s recently been introduced to some of the darker elements of my world, and might be holding a grudge against me. But she would get over it. She’s better. I need her in my life.

  Of course, there was another constant in my life...a constant that I ignored. A constant that I denied. And, as they say, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

  Denial is my sanity.

  You see, I have to deny what I am. Who I am. Or I would go crazy. I know I would. In fact, a part of me is certain that I just might be crazy. But let’s not go there.

  Yes, call me anything. But please, just please, don’t call me a vampire.

  At least, not to my face.

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Dark Side of the Moon

  The kids were away, and I wanted to fly.

  And I mean really fly.

  Maybe I was inspired by my kids going to Space Camp. Mary Lou’s kids were supposed to go, but they had the mumps, so Tammy and Anthony got to go in their places.

  So here I was, alone. Free.

  For some time now, a very simple question had been in the back of my mind: Just how high could I fly?

  It was a legitimate question, one that not even Fang could answer. Yes, Fang was back in my life now, kind of. Feelings were raw, open and unexplored. We were both hurt. We were both confused. For the most part, Fang was not the same Fang I remembered. He was colder now, more calculating, more confident. He was also closed off to me, and so that beautiful telepathic bond we’d once shared was gone. But we had, of course, a different kind of bond.

  A supernatural bond. A vampiric bond.

  Fang was, in fact, the only other vampire I associated with, now that Hanner was gone.

  But that’s another story, for another time.

  For now, I wanted to fly, as high as I possibly could.

  I wanted to test my abilities, test my limitations, and explore myself fully.

  It was crazy. I knew that.

  I should be at home, doing laundry, or working a case. Not flying high above the treetops. Hell, in the very least, I should be powering through my DVR recordings. I had a whole month of Nashville episodes waiting for me. No, I didn’t watch many of the vampire shows. They often got it wrong, or focused on issues that were foreign to me. I didn’t sparkle or keep a diary. And I wasn’t like those other vampires who were played by beautiful, young actors. My God, I had kids. A dead husband. A sister who was still traumatized by the events of last month. She was getting better, yes. She was coming out of shock, slowly but surely. But for a few weeks there, she wanted nothing to do with me. She only wanted to be around her family: her kids and her husband.

  She didn’t blame me for her kidnapping. She blamed the situation that I had found myself in, the situation she had been drawn into.

  Mostly, she was in shock. Her world had been irrevocably rocked, shaken. The poor thing had thought she would die. Or, in the least, turned into a creature like me. Then, of course, she had been there when my ex-husband had been killed.

  Yeah, that had not been a good night for Mary Lou.

  I’d told her that I was there for her if she needed me. She didn’t, not now. She needed her family—mumps and all—and I understood that.

  I continued flying, gaining altitude. It was colder up here. I didn’t mind the cold. Hell, I enjoyed the cold. My God, I lived in perpetual cold!

  Anyway, the temperature was dropping to near freezing. Near freezing didn’t bother me much either. So, I continued up, higher than I ever had before. Higher and higher. My breath didn’t form vapor puffs before me, as the creature I became didn’t need to breathe much.

  I liked flying because it gave me a chance to reflect on my life—where I had been and where I was going.

  I finally realized something: I had accepted Danny’s death.

  My kids were another story. They had, of course, lost their father, and my heart broke for them every time I looked into their faces.

  At first, I listened to their crying at night. I had often caught Anthony crying alone in the bathroom, of all places. With the door locked, he had let it all out. Tammy was inconsolable in that dramatic way that adolescent girls had. She didn’t hide what she felt like Anthony tried to. He was trying to be such a little man. And he had been. I had let them weep. They had to weep. It had been a while since Danny’s death and now I hoped their trip would distract them. They had been excited to go.

  When alone, I cried, too. Once, and then let it go. Danny was a bastard in the end, and a lot of my love and compassion was long gone. But I wept for the young Danny I had fallen in love with, the young Danny I had married and started a family with...and then, that was all the tears I had shed. No, he didn’t deserve what had happened to him; the poor sap hadn’t realized he was being used as a pawn. That he had aligned with Hanner to take me down should have been reason enough to not cry at all. But Danny was an idiot and he had been scared. Of me. He based many of his decisions on fear, which was never a good idea.

  No, I chose to remember the Danny who had proposed to me with a mood ring as a stand-in because he was too poor to afford a real engagement ring. I still had that mood ring in my jewelry box. I’d often considered ditching it; now I wouldn’t. I hadn’t kept much of our sentimental stuff, but I would keep that.

  Mostly, my heart broke for my kids. I couldn’t imagine what they were going through. Worse was the secrecy of it all. Yes, not only had their father been killed—murdered—but they were being asked to cover up his death.

  To pretend it hadn’t happen.

  To pretend that their father had simply disappeared.

  He hadn’t disappeared. He was entombed in a cavern, along with two vampires, both dead.

  I flew faster now. Faster and higher.

  Indeed, I was more upset over my kids—and what they were presently going through—than with Danny’s death. Did that make me a bad person? Maybe, maybe not. I grieved for Danny, yes, but I wept for my children.

  They hadn’t asked for any of this. Neither had I, for that matter. Still, they were just kids. Jesus, how were they going to move on? How were they going to heal?

  I didn’t know, but I knew they had to.

  I had to trust that I was doing the right thing for them, even though I was asking the world of them, to keep their father’s death a secret. At least, for now.

  My kids are special, I thought as the wind thundered over my perfectly aerodynamic body. They can make it through this.

  I knew that most mothers thought their kids were special. But my kids weren’t like most kids. In fact, they weren’t like any kids.

  Indeed, my son had all the strength of a vampire, without actually being one...and my daughter was growing more telepathic and more psychic every day.

  We’re the Addams Family, I thought. Only cuter.

  Higher I flew, higher and faster. I never got tired when I flew. The creature I became seemed to have endless energy. Supernatural energy.

  I noted that the temperature was dropping rapidly, but the dropping temperature didn’t affect me. The creature that may or may not have been summoned from another realm, another dimension, did not get cold or fatigued. As best I could tell, the creature had armor-like skin. Scales, perhaps. A true dragon. In fact, creatures such as this—creatures such as me—were surely the source of dragon legends.

  I knew what I was doing was crazy. I had even done the research. I knew how fast I had to fly to break free of the Earth’s gravity.

  26,000 miles an hour.

  I didn’t know how fast I could actually fly, of course. My guess was maybe a thousand miles an hour. Maybe more, maybe less.

  Then again, I had never tried to fly at top speed, whatever that might be.

  Well, I was about to find out.

  Crazy, I thought, even as I beat my wings faster and faster. Hummingbird fast. A blur of wingtips that I could see out of the corners of my eyes.

  Nuts, just nuts.

  No way could I fly that fast.

  No way.

  But maybe.

  Just maybe.

  Of course, I knew there was a very strong probability that I would die. That something very bad could happen as I tried to escape Earth’s atmosphere.

  Except, I knew that this creature’s hide was thicker and stronger than the tiles that protected the various space shuttles. Also, this creature didn’t need to breathe. The vacuum of space, I suspected, would pose little problem in that area.

  Besides, I suspected that this hideously beautiful creature that I had transformed into would be just fine in space. How I knew this, I didn’t know. Then again, how I turned into a giant flying beast, I didn’t know either.

  But I somehow knew that this creature could easily handle the rigors of space. Even more, that it was perfectly adapted for space. Which begged the question again: where exactly did it originate from? I didn’t know, but I hoped to someday find out.

  I figured that for a creature who could come in and out of our reality, hop from dimension to dimension, world to world at a moment’s notice, and take a quick jaunt to the moon, shouldn’t pose a problem.

  Or so I hoped.

  I was now higher than I’d ever been before. My guess, maybe 50,000 feet up, higher than most commercial jets flew.

  This is insane, I thought.

  It was, of course, all the more insane because I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have any precedent, nothing to base the outcome on.

  Just my gut.

  Or rather, the creature’s gut.

  Which got me thinking: did it need to eat? If so, what did it eat?

  Who are you? I suddenly thought.

  There was, of course, no response. Who or what or even where this creature was summoned from, I didn’t know, but I suspected the Highly Evolved Dark Masters—those entities that fueled creatures like vampires and werewolves—would know. More important, they had something to do with it. And it occurred to me then, as I flew higher and higher and as the Earth slipped farther and farther below me, that the creature itself had taken a sort of back seat to allow me in.

  He’s here, I thought. Watching me, observing me, wondering what I will do next with his body.

  Was he a sentient creature? As in, could he rationally think? Was he intelligently aware?

  Can you hear me? I asked it.

  No answer. Still, I thought he was there, listening, alert, curious. All were aspects, of course, of a thinking, intelligent, sentient being.

  He’s not a monster, I thought. Then directed my thoughts to him: You’re not a monster.

  There was no reply, nor did I expect there would be. To date, I had transformed into this winged nightmare countless times. Never once had we communicated. To be fair, I’d only recently learned that it was being summoned to here from another reality. What reality? Where?

  Crazy, I thought. Everything is just so damn crazy.

  And yet, this winged creature that I had become projected a sense of serenity, greatness, and perfection in its own way. It maneuvered beautifully, flew powerfully, and had instantly given me access to how to do it all.

  I saw the logic to that. Had I been anything other than an expert, I might just have damaged this beautiful creature. Perhaps worse than damage...possibly even destroy it.