The Last of the Twenty: Broken Pawns

Chapter 20

Alex had taken the last few bites of an entire large pizza when the headache hit. Although it was nowhere near the intensity as the headache that crippled him in the woods during his encounter with Ethan, it was bad enough to force him to lay his head down on top of a greasy plate pizza crusts. The sounds of video game machines in the next room as well as the cars passing on the street outside became almost unbearably intense as the headache grew. The moment before he passed out a white light filled his vision behind his closed eyelids.

Images flashed through his mind quickly, at first too fast and distorted to make out, but as they slowed their pace the images began to clear, becoming pieces of memories long forgotten. They were memories of past lives, of places he had been and the people he had been involved with. Each memory was accompanied by a flash of light and burst of pain, pain so intense it was as if someone were tearing pieces of his brain apart in his skull.

He saw himself standing in the Roman Coliseum, masking as a slave and surrounded by vampires dressed as gladiators. Around them all lions pulled at long chains, barely held at bay by handlers who struggled to keep them from the fray as the vampires moved in for the kill. His vision faded as one of the lions turned on its handler, the closest vampire drawing his sword...

Alex felt himself moan in another world as another burst of painful light shot through his mind, bringing on another furious assault of memories. They cleared through the painful fog of white hot light, solidifying into a single vision. Alex felt himself awaken in another body somewhere in Europe long ago, standing his ground on yet another battlefield as men on horseback fired arrows at screaming crowds of peasants as they passed like a dark swarm. Alex felt himself picking out the few vampires that road amongst them, felt himself dodging their arrows as he chased them down faster than their horses could carry them.

In another world his hand grabbed a fork on the table next to his unconscious body, bending it in half as even more pain and images swarmed through his mind. Each one a different place, a different time. Every now and again he saw faces with glowing eyes, some green, others had blue, but most of all he saw a single face with yellow eyes. It flashed across his memories over and over again. Sometimes fighting alongside him on battlefields, sometimes helping him hunt down vampires, but always around, traveling with him throughout the centuries. It was the only face he recognized, the only face that always felt familiar. It was Mark.

The memories faded away into liquid darkness, replaced by the living nightmare of a black past, an ancient enemy. It was in that state that Alex saw him. He approached as nothing more than a shadow, a powerful and evil presence that sent shivers of fear throughout Alex's pain-filled mind. Like his brothers, the centers of the man's eyes glowed with their own light, a light that wasn't solid as it should be, but rather a flickering mix of reds and yellows and oranges, surrounded by a ring of black smoke. The man was powerful, filled with a dark energy that emanated feelings of hatred and anger, jealousy and dark desires.

Alex felt as if he were standing naked and helpless on an open field of thick black smoke, unable to move as the man's dark form approached. He had no face, no discernable form, only the hellish lights flickering in his eyes. The man laugh as he approached, a merciless and hate filled sound that hit Alex like a wall of needles. Alex screamed in both horror and frustration as he tried to run away from the man, as he tried to escape the tainted air, poisoned by the thick smoke that clung to the ground around him.

As the man came within steps of Alex he spread his wings. Like all of his kind the dark man's wings spread from nothing, seeming to grow out of his back like an evil wind. The wings spread like an explosion, catching fire in a burst of searing heat. As if in slow motion, Alex watched the flames that burst forth fall and burn towards the ground like cascading water. As the flames intensified, Alex felt the fire pull heat from his own body in waves, sucking warmth from everything around to feed their demonic fire, nearly freezing his body solid. The pain was unbearable.