“That’s not what we agreed on,” Vlad objects furiously, stepping forward and grabbing my father’s shoulder.
But Vlad yanks his hand back almost as soon as he makes contact with Father’s coat, grimacing in what looks like pain and deep confusion as he shakes it out.
But the confusion is only a flash before it’s replaced by fury. “You dare attackme! Do you know who I am? I am Vlad Dracul, inheritor of immortality and the Divine Right of Dracula, Voivode of Wallachia, defender of Europe against the Ottoman Empire and the great Mehmed II. You dare burn me with the heat of your touch? I will send my sons and my son’s sons to smite?—”
But Vlad’s great speech is cut off when my father flicks a few fingers in his direction with a roll of his eyes.
And Vlad is immediately engulfed in a head-to-toe column of blue flame.
His screams echo off the atrium walls and Phoenix shudders and moves closer to me.
Vlad writhes and tries to run. But he’s caught in place by the flame that’s already burned through his clothes as if made of paper and started on his immortal flesh. The shock on his melting face is as clear as the anguish of what looks like extreme pain at being burned alive.
Phoenix turns her face away. Even though he was her tormentor. She can’t watch him burn for his sins.
My father was always known as the Avenging Angel. In paintings of old, they depicted him dressed in white and drawing a flaming blue sword as he decimated ancient cities all on his own. He only pawned out the task to us, his sons, because it began to bore him. Plus, he always wanted destruction on a grander scale than one measly town at a time.
Vlad falls to his knees, the bones of his rib cage already showing through as the flesh, muscle, and sinew is burnt cleanoff his body. The screaming stops, only because he has no throat to scream with as he writhes in agony.
It’s over quickly enough.
Within another few seconds, he’s nothing more than a pile of blackened, smoking bones on the floor, and only then does the column of blue flame dissipate like a gas burner being shut off.
My father turns his back to the pile of bones, face gentle and amiable as if he didn’t just burn the most intimidating enemy of so many with barely more than a flick of his hand.
“Where were we before that little annoyance?” he asks, spreading his hands wide, as if a magnanimous host. “Ah, yes. Phoenix. My lovely crack in the barrier between realms. When you wormed your way into this world, you created a crack in this dominion that allows it to be a nexus point toallrealms. You haven’t even begun to realize the conduit you could become with the right…”
He grins, showing all his glistening white teeth, “…manipulation. With you, I canfinallyachieve the perfection I was never able to with my own disappointing children. Born of both worlds, the spirits the two of you birth into this world will be my true perfect creations.”
“Never,” Phoenix spits. “I’ll never let you use me like that. You can turn me into a pile of bones right here. Go ahead!”
“No!” I shout, but my father just laughs.
“Destroy such a perfectly lovely conduit. No. I don’t think so. I have so many intentions for you.”
“Fuck your intentions!” Phoenix says and I have to grab her arms to hold her back from running at my father. She fights me but I hold tight.
His terrifying display a moment ago was only a tame demonstration of the brutality I know he’s capable of. He found endless ways of tormenting me and my brothers when we were under his control, including pitting us against one another inways we’ve only begun to unravel these past couple years aftermillenniaof enmity.
He’s a being of poison and manipulation, and I can’t let Phoenix anywhere near him.
Desperately, I look at the shining runes that make up the circle encasing us. There’s got to be some way out. Running is the only sane option when faced with an evil power like my father until we can find a way to regroup.
“What do you really want, deep down inside your soul?” my father asks, his voice as smooth as honey even as Phoenix struggles to get at him.
“I’m on your side, don’t you see? I just liberated you from your tormentor. You and I are the same, aren’t we? Beings from another realm, trespassing here? He told me all about you, you know.”
Phoenix has stopped struggling, all but frozen. My hands drop from her biceps, but I clasp her hand. “Don’t listen to his poison words,” I whisper. “You know who you are.”
But my father is relentless, the worm in the ear of a hundred emperors and kings. “He told me how you’ve always wanted to beanything elsebut what you are.”
My father’s handsome face gentles with compassion. “You just want a normal life. Isn’t that right?”
I see the shocked truth of my father’s words on Phoenix’s face. Her gaze drops to the floor like she’s guilty at being caught out.
“Don’t listen to him,” I whisper. “Of course you wanted a normal life. Every kid does.”
“Ah but you weren’t a normal ‘kid,’ were you?” my father asks, holding Phoenix’s eyes in a mesmerizing gaze. “You were an immortal spirit from another realm wearing a body you so cleverly stole.
