Her Billionaire, Her Wolf(62)

Here, there were above ground tombs, unlike the rest of the grounds which were much more modestly invested. Among the tombs, most heavily carved with deep incisions into marble and granite, inscriptions meant to last an age, there were veritable mausoleums, with colonnades and extravagant sculptures in every direction.

He could see from the dates on most of the edifices that all of it went back as far as the city’s own origins. These were the last resting places of wealthy nobility that had come to the new world to make their fortune.

And, perhaps, they had. But even they were not immune, despite all their riches, to old man time and the hooded one who follows in his path, a bloody scythe always at the ready in his bony hands and never flinching to cut the threads of life.

Massive figures in cut marble stood upon pedestals among the tombs. Some were more fantastic than others. Most were out of scale, massive in size and meant, perhaps, to dwarf visitors and remind them of their insignificance.

In the depths of a cold night, Clement had happened upon this place and as he had wound his way among angels holding mighty spears, or fair maidens pouring pitchers that held nothing but sorrow and loss, he had heard a voice.

His senses had warned him that it was none other than a blood drinker. Yet, the words were seductive to the hunter. The voice proposed to aid him. It said that it would tell him all he needed to know to keep his sword’s blade at work as often as he might like.

The voice had not lied.

Night after night, Clement was told where to go...where to wait. And the hunt had been fruitful.

But the time had come for answers and if he had to wait until darkness fell, he would, and there would be no escape this time for the owner of that voice. It would give him answer or he would hunt it down and end its days upon the earth.

The life of a woman hung in the balance, and if not entirely an innocent, she did not deserve being delivered into the hands of monsters.

Clement feared that he might be her only hope. But also that the wait for darkness might mean he would not arrive in time.

He turned about, looking for a likely place to pass the time until nightfall when he saw something out of place.

At first, his eyes scanned past it, noting nothing out of order, then he was drawn back to what he had seen. And what might have been perfectly ordinary for anyone else suddenly pitched into the realm of the impossible.

Among the statues surrounding him, there was one of a gargantuan man. He was carved with a robe most resembling a toga, although it was a spare garment that left the sculpture’s torso and legs bare. Clement imagined that it might have been Herculean in its intent, but he saw no lion skin, nor a club that an artisan would have included as a finishing touch.

He looked closer, but there were no spears of lightning, there was no trident either. However, what drew his attention more than anything were the tendrils of fog drifting from the sculpture’s shoulders.

On a dewy morning, it would not have been unusual to have seen the first light of day drying the marble figures in the graveyard. It would lend an eerie air to an already unnerving place, but it would not have been out of the ordinary.

But now, especially now, it was anything but ordinary. It was late afternoon and the sun had ridden up high and warm.

No other statue steamed like that one and as he watched, Clement had the impression that it was not water vapor rising from the thing’s shoulders. He could have sworn, in fact, that the thing was actually smoking, as if the sun itself was burning the stone.

Then, it moved.

He thought it was trick of the light, or that, somehow, his own eyes had betrayed him. Except that it did it again, shrugging its enormous shoulders then turning its massive head to look directly at him.

Clement took a step back and as he did, his sword was already hissing as it slipped from its sheath in his tight grip. He did not doubt that there were very few swordsmen alive who might best him. But, the thing that began walking toward him left him shaken.

Vampires, werewolves, all of them existed on a scale that was understandable. They were horrific, but they were not something that went beyond human beings in their size.

This thing, though, as it walked steadily toward Clement, was terrifyingly huge.

He had not realized just how far away it had been when he first saw it. The statues next to it had seemed small, maybe representations of fairy women, only with each advancing step, Clement saw how mistaken he had been. The sculptures of women that had ringed the colossus were made to human scale. It was the gargantuan itself that had dwarfed everything around it and as it came toward him, its size became far too apparent.

The colossus stood at least ten feet tall and as it neared, he could see streamers of smoke issuing from its body.