Dracula: Hearts of Fire (Dracula Heart's) (43 page)

    Being a wizard was
tricky business.
The magic
could turn on him without sufficient spel
ls of protection
, but sometimes the error was in knowing how much protection was enough.
It involved supernatural substances that no one fully understood, and even the so-called experts had holes in their body of knowledge that one could run a freight train through.
Playing with the unknown was not for those with weak spirits.
It was trial and error
and the experience of both was what
shaped a wizar
d. The Blood Book called to him like a naked lady in the night.
It was a large tome that contained such a high level of magic that wizards felt its pull from miles away.
Achak
picked up his black coffee and downed the remainder of it.

  
Achak stood turning pages in the book
.
He needed to get back to the same spell that he had been perusing last nigh
t, and normally
it wasn’t a problem as the book usually started with the last thing viewed.

   
The Blood Book that had attached itself to Achak was now only showing him evil spells
. He had increased his level of negative energy to such a degree that he had caught the attention of evil ghosts.
Those evil spirits were now stretching from one dimension to another.
They no
w pl
ayed with his mind and clawed
at his soul
with razor sharp talons
. One threw a ball of fire out of the flames and when it burst at his feet
the spirit
took some satisfaction that it had in
teracted with the outside world; it hoped for its release and the taste of fresh blood.
The sound of the crackling
fire was soothing to the wizard like the plea
sant sound of rain on a tent
.

    A Yellow-bellied Sapsucker was pulled out of the sky and into the flames. Feather
s then flew out of the blaze
, burning up as they hit the ground. T
he woodpecker’s fate was sealed. The life energy that had been contained within the bird was now in the fire.
The flames appeared to produce a happier crackle
, a state of excitement
.

    Achak stared at his wigwam and got lost in his own thoughts. A man is built upon his actions and not on his thoughts; the poor do not feed on good intentions or well wishes.
His soul cried inward for a change in direction but he couldn’t hear it, and when it attempted to get his attention in his dreams he couldn’t see it.
His conscious continued to argue with him but was summarily dismissed
; there was no time for that anymore
. His
once
white soul was darkened by his deeds
, filled with so much caustic smoke
, dark and dreary
.
It choked the nature out of what it once was.
He had freely chosen his path and was now mired in it. It would not release him without a
n epic
fight.

    “He
re we go.” Achak had come upon the
page that was surrounded by dimensional red skulls; they spun slowly and occasionally halted
their rotation, as if to stare at him
.
There were n
ine skulls in all. It was the most skulls that he had seen on a page, and therefore assumed that it was one of the most formidable spells in the book.
Words on the page
changed as they morphed; it read
THE ENTITY RELEASED WITH THIS SPELL WILL SEEK OUT LEVELS OF ENERGY TO INCREASE YOUR ABILITIES NINE FOLD.

    “That’s
exactly
what I need.”

    Achak couldn’t fool himself any longer; this magic w
as as the earth would be without the sun
. No light would escape from it. All the good deeds that he had accomplished in the past would either be wiped away or set aside. It was said by some that the soul wrote two book
s, one white and the other
black. Whichever was heavier in the end determined where a soul would be sent, heaven or hell. Achak’s little b
lack book was now not so little and was more than twice the weight of the other.

    “What is this? It wasn’t there yesterday.”

     There was
a warning at the bottom of the page but it was written in symbols in an unknown language, it resembled to a degree Egyptian hieroglyphics but wasn’t.
The symbol of the sword and shield was repeated several times
, and one that resembled a man hanging from the gallows
.
One could have been the symbol for fire but he couldn’t be sure.
Another looked like a man having his head chopped off with a sword.
He had never come upon such a thing before,
a warning from
the book t
hat was indecipherable.
Other symbols were unrecognisable and resembled
animal scratches.
What was the point in showing the warning? Achak considered what to do next. He stared up at the torso floating in the flames, watched as it vanished deeper into the
fire.
As his level of power increased the better he would be able to defend himself from anyone or anything.
The page then quivered as if to get his attention. The warning turned into solid symbols, broke and then fell off onto the forest floor
, turning to dust
at his feet
.
It was
as if the book had a mind of its own.

   
A
skull larger than the others protruded partially from the fire; its
gravelly
voice
spat flames
and embers out of its mouth past rotten teeth
, including one of the bird’s feathers.
“Do you
want
to be a
follower
or do you
want
to be a
leader?
”

    Achak
watched as an ember struck his left forearm and burned, it healed but the scent of burning skin remained. He
knew that he lacked one vital ingredient for the spell; he needed a live wizard to toss into the fire because he certainly wasn’t going to jump in there.
He could feel the fire pulling at him but it wasn’t nearly strong enough to cause him to worry.

    Two skulls in the fire were fighting one another, with the sou
nds of bone hitting bone as their
heads collided
.
Tok, tok, tok!
Achak turned and starred at the battle
as it was amusing. One hit the other wi
th such velocity that it
knocked the
other more than a foot
out of the fire
but then was pulled back in.

    Achak would have to leave his forest home to capture a wizard.

CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT

    P
IERS ANTHONY ENTERED THE LIVING ROOM
where Dracula and Moon Diamond were having a conversation head-to-head.
It looked amusing to actually see
the cat laugh
.
He was
aware of how beautiful
the
cat was, and how awful
Zacharia
’s situation being
trapped inside it.
Life was unpredictable with the seemingly impossible sometimes being possible.
Piers could hear Allison rattling around in the kitchen as she was preparing to bake a Chiffon cake.
The writer was wearing
a nice dark suit with expensive bat cufflinks.
He was also wearing an impressive looking
Japanese Musashi sword, which had been forged in the Japanese Nihonto tradition
.
He looked down at Dracula as the Master looked up at him.
A moment of silence as Piers hesitated.

    “Well, well, Piers
Ant
hony. Nice cufflinks. And what are the circumstances of this visit? Someone somewhere must ce
rtainly be killing humans. The famous author
refuses to engage in battle.
Zacharia, h
e’s a Sagittarian don’t you know.
”

    “Vegetarian.”
He nodded toward the cat.

    Moon Diamond nodded, commenced to clean himself with his tongue, and then fought with itself as Zacharia tried to get the cat to stop. It appeared as if the cat was taking a fit.
Those two souls in that one body would never be in harmony.
One may as well place an antelope into a cage with a tiger and tell them to get along.
It was a situation that simply wasn’t meant to be.

    “Were you two talking about me?” Piers sat on the sofa, on the opposite end from Dracula.

    Dracula looked more relaxed than he had in a long time; his face was devoid of stress.
He looked quite comfortable.
“You are not that important
.”

    Piers looked at the Siamese who was
now
nodding and admitting that they were in fact talking about him.
“There’s a vampire down by the Magnetic Hill Zoo; he or she has killed two people in the last two nights.
Someone should do something about it. I thought that vampires would flee any area where they could sense you?
”

    “
The whole planet is going to hell. Some don’t even believe in me. Why don’t you go get him?
” Dracula gave him the look. “You were turned by the Master, or so I hear.”