The Only One Who Remained
Ceramic shatters, and someone screams.
Ingrid doesn’t care about the woman she frightened when she dropped her drink. She doesn’t even care that every eye in the small courtyard, tourists and locals alike, is fixed on her. She has kept a low, nearly invisible profile for nearly a dozen lifetimes. For the first time, she doesn’t care about that at all.
Can’t they tell? Don’t they feel it?
The tremor that ran through her, a wave of magic that practically erupted from the earth. It was distant, she knows that much, but even still she swears she can hear the voice behind it, rumbling as it passes around teeth and vibrates through scales:
I’m free, Tyrus roars in triumph. And my retribution is at hand.
Ingrid’s hands are shaking, but not from fear. At last…At last…
“Brothers and sisters,” she murmurs. “Give me strength. I’ve found him again.”
“Fehlschlagen? Miss?”
Ingrid blinks and comes back to herself. Some people are still staring, wondering, perhaps, who this young woman is that shatters cups and stares into the void. She let her guard slip. That is sloppy.
“Are you all right, miss?” the waiter asks again, in English.
“I’m fine, danke,” Ingrid replies. She winces. Despite having lived in Germany for a time, and in Hallstatt, Austria for two years, her German is still a bit rusty. Likely it’s tinged with the accent of half a dozen other languages.
The waiter offers her a kind smile and bends to start cleaning up the pieces of what had been mulled wine.
“Here, let me help.”
Ingrid kneels and grabs as many of the flecks of ceramic as she can, the smell of vanilla and nutmeg rising from between the cobblestones. A corner of a piece nicks her and a spot of blood smears the stone.
Blood of your kind, blood of your blood. May you never rest until you spill his at last. That is your curse.
Ingrid squeezes her eyes shut to drown the voice out. Blood is a powerful thing, but it doesn’t connect her to Tyrus. He can’t know she is still alive. He can’t possibly remember what he did to her and those she loved.
A prickling runs up Ingrid’s neck. She tenses, looks over her shoulder, absentmindedly going for the knife tucked away in her coat.
The crowded central square sparkles with light and laughter, gently sloping upward beyond the fountain toward the mountain backboarding Hallstatt and pressing it against the lake. The Austrian alpine homes, with pitched roofs and vibrant colors, are all covered in a thick layer of snow. The place is packed with tourists. Packed with locals. No one out of the ordinary or paying her any attention.
And yet…
Despite not having found Tyrus, she’s kept busy with personal projects and righting wrongs, and that has gathered her a fair share of enemies. Some she’s made purely for what she stands for. The Convocation would jail her in a heartbeat if they knew who she is.
But who would be out here? Nobody. She is sure of it, after giving the square a second scrutinized look. She’s been so careful, has always been so careful.
“Are you sure you’re okay, fehlschlagen?
The waiter is looking at her again.
Ingrid hurriedly grabs the remaining pieces of the mug and piles it into his apron. She shoves a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Yes. Tired. More tired than I thought.”
“Perhaps it is too crowded. And there are many children running about. It is not a bad a night for early rest. Though one such as you does not need beauty rest, I think.”
Ingrid could have been alive for another thousand years and still be terrible at flirting, but even she picks up on his compliment. She offers a small smile. He is cute. Twenty, maybe. No more than a couple years older than her. Or a couple years older than how she looks.
“That is kind,” she says. “I think some rest would be good.”
“Then when you are done, I could see you again?”
He’s produced a napkin with a phone number on it. Ingrid stares at it. In it she sees nearly a dozen lifetimes, friends, families, lovers she’s used to ease the aching loneliness, but always she has to leave them behind. Always it ends in heartbreak.
She takes the napkin, crumpling it into nothing but a tiny, torn ball the moment it’s in her pocket. I will not. No more hurting anyone else. I’ve found my freedom and I will have it.
She gives the waiter another smile and, hands in her pockets, takes off for home.
She’d thought Tyrus would be here, in Europe, near the place of his birth and the birth of all dragons. Apparently she was wrong. The tiny pulse, the sense that has only heightened since she first became a dragon hunter, tells her he’s far away. She doesn’t know exactly where, but she will find out. If she’s lucky, there will be others who have already started trying to kill him.
Ingrid pauses at a V in the street, where the steep cobblestones lead two directions, both narrow and encompassed by white-walled houses, overlooked by tightly shuttered windows and empty flower boxes. She prays that the Convocation hasn’t found Tyrus. The dragon lovers…Tyrus’s smooth tongue can manipulate anyone, even those dedicated to fighting his kind of evil. She’s seen it happen to those she thought most entrenched in their righteous cause. If the Convocation has found him and taken his side, then her task will be near impossible.
“Enough,” Ingrid mutters to herself. “I have survived this long. I will overcome this, too.”
“Pardon?” An old woman says. “Did you say something?”
Ingrid forces a smile and keeps moving. She reaches the small bottom-floor flat she bought using untraceable cash two years ago. That has been the one plus of living as long as she has: it has given her time to accumulate wealth, much more than she could have dreamed of having during her own time. Then again, gaining money shouldn’t be all that impressive. If she had been alive this long and didn’t have much money, then she truly was a failure.
“Having a good night, I hope?” Her neighbor, (Lorenz? She never took the time to learn) waves at her from his balcony next door, a blanket over his legs and cup of something steaming clutched in his hands. “Such a pleasant evening.”
Ingrid follows his gaze, back across the tops of the pointed steeples and pitched roofs, to the Hallstätter See, the lake Hallstatt borders. The tight muscles in her shoulders relax. She will miss this. This peace. These people, though she doesn’t know many and none really knew her. But it will be good to have a purpose again.
“It is stunning,” Ingrid agrees. Then she pulls out her key and lets herself into the flat. Right before she closes the door, she swears she feels another tingle of watchful eyes her back, this one impossible to shake off.
There is no time to waste.
No place she ever stayed felt like home. This flat is no different. Sparsely decorated, with little but the essentials. Ingrid swiftly changes into clothes more suited for travel and extreme, violent movement if that becomes necessary. Beneath the floorboard of her closet she withdraws the backpack pre-packed with everything she will need, always ready everywhere she goes. She double checks everything is there.
A red cross pattée, worn smooth, most of the color lost. She has not worn this for years, its symbol taken over by a far more recent, newer, symbol tattooed just behind her left shoulder. A knife she keeps oiled and sharp to ensure that no rust touches it. She has stashes of other weapons, beast-killing weapons, and she will need to pick them up before she meets with whomever she will be helping.
There are also nearly ten passports with names she has almost forgotten: Charlotte Evans. Susan Connors. Aimée Montagne. The only one missing is her original name.
She doesn’t know why she keeps these. Sentimentality? Because they were, at times, so difficult to get? Whatever the reason, she has them now, along with everything else she might need.
Ingrid double checks the flat, looking back one last time as she steps out the front door. She truly will miss this place, something that can’t be said for everywhere she’s been. As always, time will pass before she’s missed. People will start to talk. Questions with no answers will be asked. And eventually, Ingrid Bendorf will fade away into obscurity and, if she survives, a new young woman will arrive in a new place and start her life over again.
Ingrid closes the door, locks it, and sets off toward the bus station.
The streets have filled even more. Happy revelers spill out of brightly lit doorways. Tourists move in and out of shops, holding tightly to children as they ooh and ah over trinkets.
Ingrid moves away from the crowds and cuts through a side street. There is no one here, thankfully.
Until a man steps out from a doorway.
He moves casually, as though just starting out on a walk himself. But he steps deliberately in front of Ingrid and faces her, and in his eyes Ingrid sees that she’s the one person he’s been looking for.
“Such a pleasant evening, isn’t it, Miss?”
Ingrid slowly stops. “That’s the second time I’ve heard that tonight. I’m beginning to think it might not stay that way.”
The man grins. He’s got buzzed hair and a cruel smile. He isn’t dressed like a tourist or local, but in heavy black combat fatigues. Clothing meant for fighting. “That very much depends on what you do next. Would you like to join us on a little walk, or do we have to break your legs and drag you along?”
We?
Ingrid senses the other two, no…three, people as they slide out of the doorways behind her. Four of them in total. She’s surrounded. The prickling sensation she’d felt earlier wasn’t wrong, and Ingrid curses the years that have blunted her skills and instincts as much as it has her weapons.
“You were very difficult to find,” the man says as the other three close in behind her. “We’d heard rumors in Bruges. Then again in Munich.”
A chill ran through Ingrid. “You’ve been after me that long?”
“Our master Tyrus doesn’t forget his enemies so quickly. He wanted to ensure that when he became free—and he is free, that display at the café makes it obvious you know, too—that there would be no real threat against him.”
“There will be others,” Ingrid says. “There always are.”
A woman behind her cackles. “They have no clue what they’re up against. Convocation, Slayer, don’t matter. The second that Master Tyrus is at full power—”
“Quiet!” the man hisses. His eyes flick to Ingrid, but her mind is already racing. So Tyrus is roaming again, but he is weak. That means she may not be too late.
“I see you scheming.” The man draws the hilt of a sword and clicks a button. A short blade unfolds and locks into place with a solid snick. Three more blades draw similarly behind her. “No more of that, now. Please let us kill you without any mess. We know how long you’ve been at this. Let us give you some peace.”
Peace. That sounds awfully nice, more than Ingrid wants to admit. But she’s evaded death this long. She won’t let four cultists of the dragon deliver it to her now. Not when she has a chance to fulfill her purpose.
She draws the knife from her jacket, then the other from her backpack. “Tell me, how many has Tyrus managed to convince with lies of power and prestige? How many are willing to give up their lives for a creature who sees them as nothing more than ants beneath his feet?”
“Our reward will be far greater than you can imagine,” the woman behind her snarls. “We’ll be kings and queens of the new world he’s going to create.”
Ingrid nods toward her. “Seems his lies have gotten more grandiose since we last met. Still, seems there’s at least one stupid enough to believe them.”
“Don’t—” The man yells a moment before the woman lunges with a screech, sword up.
Ingrid drops. Those blinded by rage are always the easiest to handle, and with a swift kick upward—muscles pulling slightly from lack of use in this position—her heel catches the woman in the chin. Her head snaps back. Her momentum carries her a couple more steps before she collapses face first into the street.
“You only brought four cultists,” Ingrid says as the other three gape at their friend. “Either he forgot who I was, or he didn’t tell you just how dangerous I can be.”
The man in front of her charges, snarling. Ingrid throws her backpack at him. It catches him in the shoulder, spins him slightly so he’s forced to readjust. As he does, Ingrid stabs one of her knives into his shoulder and through the muscle, driving him back until he’s pinned against the wall. He tries to scream but she smacks him across the face, stunning him into silence before turning on his friends.
They’ve moved closer than she realized.
A sword zips right by her head, followed by a meaty fist. The giant of a man wielding both grunts in annoyance, then tries to grab her neck, as though she is a goose he’d like to strangle. He tries to grab again, and Ingrid rewards him by ducking beneath it and stabbing through his forearm, then pulling with the hilt of her knife until he’s close enough she can smash the heel of her hand into his nose.
Cartilage snaps. Blood sprays. The man drops like the weightless sack of meat and bone that he now is.
“Are there more of you?” Ingrid asks the final woman. She’s gazing at her incapacitated comrades with a mixture of horror and rage. “Here in the city? Are there more who are after me?”
The woman locks eyes with Ingrid and sneers. “There will always be more. As long as master Tyrus is here, there will always be more.”
That sounds eerily familiar to a promise she’d made long ago. Strange… Once, it sounded threatening, even encouraging. From another, it sounds unhinged.
The woman takes a more cautious approach than her companions and comes in low and slow, jabbing out with her sword and using the longer reach to keep Ingrid at bay. Behind Ingrid, the man she’d pinned to the wall has started to recover and is trying to coax himself through the agony of removing the knife from his shoulder.
She needs to end this now.
The woman stabs again and draws her arm back quickly. Ingrid follows, letting the point of the sword remain against her stomach. If she isn’t fast enough, that point will be going through her.
She snaps her arm out, clubbing the woman across the side of the head. She staggers. Ingrid steps to the side and snaps a roundhouse kick to the woman’s midsection. She can feel ribs snap as the woman’s hurled to the ground and lies there, painfully gasping for breath.
The man pinned to the wall has nearly broken free. Ingrid walks over and drives the knife back into the wall, then clamps a hand over his mouth until his screams subside.
“Where is Tyrus?” she asks. “I felt his presence. He was hiding for years, but now he’s made himself known. Why?”
The man grimaces. “I’m not going to—”
Ingrid twists the knife and the man hisses. He tries to grab for her, but every time he so much as twitches the knife gets another turn.
“Where, and why, that’s all I need,” Ingrid says.
“Won’t…tell…Gonna have to…kill me…” He grins at her, blood between his teeth.
Ingrid stares at him. At one time, she would have. She has no issue with taking life if it’s necessary, but over the years she’s seen too much unnecessary death. She’s found it easier since then to not add to it if given the choice. If she leaves them here, they will be found. Perhaps—and she grimaces at this—by the local Convocation. She would rather not have their help, but…
Ingrid releases the knife. “I’ll find him myself. He’s in America, I know that. Surely someone there will have heard of an enormous mythical beast flying around. Though if he’s smart he’ll stay hidden. Things have changed from what he remembers. There are other ways beyond swords and knives that can hurt a dragon.”
“Not…him,” the man says. “When he’s strong enough he’ll make everyone bow to him. Human, dragon-kin, Merlin, doesn’t matter. Only we the loyal will be spared.”
He starts to laugh until Ingrid knocks him senseless. She retrieves her backpack and ensures that everything is still in there before continuing to the bus, now at a faster pace and head on a swivel, checking every side street, every doorway.
She will find whomever she needs to help, and she will find him.
If not, she’ll never have to worry about creating another identity ever again. Tyrus will make sure of that.
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