Dear Adam Driver….you’d look hot tatted

*sigh* I think the honkers post manifested this

Happy ✨HONK✨ Friday

Charlie Barbers actual true love

Hand. Pinky…choke me…what? No. Yes?

If bad, why hot?

Thank God they kept his beautiful hair…

Just imagine they gave him a bowl cut *shudders*

Make A Wish

Make A Wish

Vampire Jacques Le Gris x Vampire Hunter Reader

Word Count: 14.5k

Warnings: NSFW. Smut. Horror. Adventure. Graphic Violence. Blood & Gore. Humor. Romance. Sexism. Bromance.  Campy Bullshit. B-Movie Style Monster Crossovers. Vampires. Djinn. Nietzche. Violence Against Women and Children, but They’re Monsters and They Deserve it. 

AO3 Link

Author’s Note: I wanted to write a Vampire Jacques fic using the @writer-wednesday prompt and because I love him! Then, some of the other bs I’ve had on my mind while working on an adventure novel crept in, and this turned into some kind of insane rabbit hole that I felt like following. Now, it reminds me of one of those old movies like Dracula vs The Mummy! Hopefully, it’s still palatable to some of you! Vampire Jacques edit by the enormously talented @kyloremus

Blood on the moon was seen as a bad omen to many. Almost every civilization throughout history had found it a point of concern when a red hue was cast over the moon’s yellow glow. You never believed in such superstitious nonsense, and the lunar phenomenon made for a much more beautiful evening, as it was on this night. A full moon tinted the color of blood rose high in the midnight sky, casting a scarlet veil over the monoliths that guarded the Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt. Even the sands of the desert were painted crimson instead of their usual gold and the waters of the Nile rippled as dark and shiny as oil in the moonlight.

The oppressive heat had evaporated in the nighttime air and a soft breeze rustled your hair as you looked on at the entrance to the temple, hidden in shadow like a place of forbidden mystery. It was a breathtaking sight, timeless and serene, save for one intrusion.

Echoing through the stone chambers of the temple out into the peaceful night air was an utterly misplaced sound. The heavy bass and rapid electric tones of Deadmau5 reached your ears, the driving beat suitable for a club or even a rave. Only an ear as sharply trained as yours could also hear the terrified screams and the unnatural growls beneath the sound of the music.

This was a common experience for you. Being a vampire hunter often led you to the most remarkable places on earth on the grisliest of prerogatives. Your prey had grown smart over the centuries. Vampires rarely hunted alone, unless they were very new and foolish or very old and clever. Their common practice was to employ strength in numbers, forming a coven of anywhere from tens to hundreds. Instead of stalking their victims, they would entice their prey to come to them willingly, like cattle walking docilely to the slaughter.

Vampires naturally sought out the places of the world with the best underground infrastructure. The Catacombs of Paris, the New York subways, and the Gotthard Tunnels in Switzerland were favorites. Ancient tombs and cities also drew covens of vampires from the gold mines in the American West to the Turkish city of Cappadocia, and even the tombs of Ancient Egypt. They had infiltrated many of the hidden places of the world.

In addition to shadow and darkness, these places had a unique benefit to covens. What better way to lure willing, unsuspecting, and often inebriated prey into their claws than by throwing a party in such a forbidden place under the light of the full moon? Multitudes of eager partygoers and edgy patrons would fight each other to be the first through the entryways of sacred sites like the Karnak Temple, their excitement blinding them to the smear of blood on the stone walls from the guards and the smell of death that leached from every crevasse.

However, this same trap for the vampires’ intended victims made it easy for you and your partner, Logan, to gain access to the coven and ensure the body count of the undead surpassed that of the living. Your beauty paired with Logan’s handsome smile and strong square jaw ensured you were never denied entry to even the most prestigious events. Rarely was a body search conducted, enabling you both to successfully conceal your weapons in your tailored clothing.

Bullets would slow a vampire, like a punch to the gut, but not stop them. The problem was that bullets punched all the way through their bodies, allowing them to heal, and guns were noisy and cumbersome. The best methods for killing vampires were also the oldest. Direct sunlight worked like a charm, and a good old-fashioned stake would also do the trick – or something along the same lines, like an arrow. Decapitation was an option, but that necessitated a face-to-face confrontation with a creature who had superior speed and strength. However, the old methods could always benefit from a modern touch. The stakes you carried and that armed Logan’s crossbow were made of titanium and tipped with hollow points filled with irradiated liquid that emitted ultraviolet light. These would also not pass completely through a vampire’s body, but remained lodged inside, preventing them from healing before death consumed them. The blades of your daggers were coated with the same substance, and Logan had a number of grenades hidden on his person as a last resort.

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Deep inside the Temple of Karnak, Logan had you shoved against the wall of a stone corridor. Your breath came ragged and sweat dripped down from his dark hair along the thick muscles of his neck as he turned to fire his last remaining round of stakes from his crossbow at the vampires that pursued you both. His aim was precise, and several of the creatures fell to the dirt floor of the temple, squealing in pain as death overtook them.

You were grossly outnumbered. Your usual attack on the usual rave had gone as expected, with you and Logan killing a small army of vampires while terrified humans ran for their lives and escaped out into the desert. What you hadn’t expected was the temple was not just the site of a party, it had become a full nest of vampires. Unbeknownst to you, there was a vast maze of ancient tunnels and catacombs beneath Karnak. By all appearances, these tunnels had lain untouched for millennia until some industrious vampire had knocked through a wall of the temple, seeking deeper dark and cool, and inadvertently discovered a labyrinthian system of tunnels snaking away from the temple.

A vague part of your mind wondered what the ancient Egyptians had intentionally sealed beneath the grand Temple of Karnak and what they had wanted to secure with their stone guardians the size of modern towers. Had it all been designed to keep looters out, or to keep something terrible sealed deep within?

“I’m out,” Logan gritted, pressing his back to the wall beside you, his green eyes focused and hard in the scarce light. “You?”

“I still have a few.” You held up a bundle of stakes with faintly glowing tips.

Without asking, Logan snatched the stakes from your hand and fed them into the breach of his crossbow. It was constructed like an automatic rifle that reloaded itself after every shot and held a magazine of several stakes. You had made the mistake of sleeping with him on more than one occasion, which served to cloud his judgment more than your own. He was now reckless in his duty to protect you. He was a burly handsome man, but ill-suited to the task of satisfying you in all the ways you desired.

With quick military dexterity, Logan laid a trip wire across the tunnel that attached to the pin of one of the grenades. As he stood, he pulled a lighter from his pants pocket and held it aloft. The small flame flickered on an almost imperceptible breeze. That there was airflow in the tunnels was your only hope for a way out. Logan grabbed your shoulder, pushing you ahead in the direction of the breeze as he turned to glance back down the way you had fled. The screech of vampires echoed toward you as an untold number chased after your scent like a pack of braying hounds hot on a fox’s trail.

Running ahead in the darkness, your only light was from the glowing blue tips of the stakes, which penetrated only a few yards ahead. You had not run far when some unlucky vampire hit Logan’s tripwire and blew the grenade. The deafening sound of the explosion reverberated through your skull making your ears scream in pain and confusion fog your mind. The concussion of air from the blast overtook you, knocking you to the ground with Logan sprawled on top of your back, trying to shield you from the debris that followed. The stone walls around you shuddered malignantly and a cascade of rocks rained down on you both from the trembling ceiling.

Only feet away from you, the wall on the opposite side of the tunnel crumbled before your eyes. Like checkers sliding off a tilted board, the stones in the wall shook free from their motor and fell to the ground in a dusty waterfall. When the sound of falling rocks and the din of collapsing walls stopped, Logan lifted his head from where he had tucked it into your back as he lay over you. He pushed to his feet and waved his muscled arm through the air to clear the dust away.

The collapse had revealed two things. Above you, a red trickle of bloody moonlight danced down through the newly cracked ceiling. The opening was just large enough for you to squeeze through, if you could climb to it. The place where the wall had fallen away revealed a chamber. A room had been sealed and carefully hidden, deep down in the hidden abyss of the maze of tunnels.

Inside the room was a large ornate jar painted with flourishing script in a language you couldn’t read and beautiful gilded designs decorating its surface. It stood alone with no other accoutrements. As you watched, the jar rocked as if by an unseen hand, first back and then forward. It tipped over onto the ground and the jar’s lid rolled away. From the open mouth of the jar, a wisp of what looked like green steam slithered out, curling toward the ceiling.

Logan didn’t notice the jar and its leaking smoky contents, or he didn’t care. He deftly attached a carabiner and a length of cable to the end of one the last remaining stakes. Aiming at the newly exposed crack in the ceiling, he fired. The stake buried itself deep and secure in the rock, providing an escape by climbing up the cable. He hooked the carabiner to his belt and gave it a firm tug to check its hold.

Tearing your attention away from the mesmerizing jar, a pair of vampires ran into view around a turn in the tunnel. They must have just cleared the blast. Their eyes locked onto yours, glimmering red in the darkness, and their fangs flashed white as they rushed at the pair of you. Logan swung his crossbow toward them, still shielding you with his body.

It wasn’t the vampires that startled you, but an entirely misplaced sight.

Inside the hidden chamber now stood a little girl. She looked to be around eight years old and wore a pristine white dress. With black hair and rosy cheeks, she looked like a young and innocent Snow White herself. Her visage seemed at once both familiar to you, like an image pulled from your subconscious, and the most disturbing image you could fathom. She looked at you, tilting her head curiously to the side the way an intrigued animal would. She spoke to you in a voice that was not a young girl’s but a monstrously deep growl that shook you to your bones, asking you a question in a language you didn’t understand, something far older than Arabic or Hebrew.

The girl, the creature, then turned its glowing gaze to the two oncoming vampires. It smiled an evil smile that was too big for its girlish face, filled with too many jagged teeth that were sharp as daggers. As soon as the creature’s eyes fell upon the vampires, they flinched and shrieked in pain, stopping mid stride and falling to the ground like they had been struck down by a bolt of lightning. You watched, transfixed by horror, as the vampires’ pale exposed skin began to sizzle and boil like bacon in a frying pan. The vampires writhed and clawed at their own skin, seeming to burn from the inside out. Around you, the tunnel grew hotter with every passing second, fast becoming an oven.

“Climb!” Logan shouted at you, hauling you up to your feet and giving you the highest boost he could up the wall. You gripped the cable, bracing your boots on the stone wall as you pulled yourself upward toward the night sky.

The screams of the vampires devolved into wet gurgling sighs as their skin began to melt and peel away from their bodies, sloughing off in fatty rinds. In seconds, what remained of their bodies twitched in greasy bloody heaps of mangled tissue.

As you reached the top, hoisting yourself through the opening in the ceiling out into the crisp night air, Logan began climbing up behind you. You turned to look down at him, laying on your belly and reaching your hand down toward him. The girl creature stood below him now, its head canted up to look at you again with that same terrifying bemused interest. Before your eyes, the girl unfurled a pair of white feathery wings like those of an angel. She floated up from the ground, pirouetting in the air as she ascended quickly to Logan as he climbed furiously. Batting her wings, she leaned toward him and placed a gentle kiss on his cheek before looking up at you again. The girl’s skin then turned from porcelain white to necrotic black, scales bloomed on her flesh, and her slitted eyes flooded with a toxic green.

The creature evaporated in a wisp of green smoke, becoming one with the darkness of the catacombs. Suddenly an angry scarlet sore appeared on Logan’s cheek right where the creature had placed her kiss. In the span of a heartbeat, sores erupted all over his body and beads of sweat shone on his brow. His strong arms shook and his hands tremored as he struggled to maintain his grip on the cable.

“Christ, this is smallpox!” He shouted in horror at the sight of the malignant red sores. Wide with terror, his eyes were bloodshot now and jaundiced yellow. “Run! Get out of here now!” His eyes were filled with sorrow and bloody tears as he turned loose his hold on the cable, falling back into the chamber to his death rather than risk infecting you.

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By the time you reached Cairo that morning, sad and weary, a sense of dread had settled upon you. Some animal instinct deep within your subconscious told you that you had awakened some terrible creature that had been sealed away en memoria, a creature that would never stop. You had no idea the havoc this creature could wreak upon the world, but you assumed that you had not seen the full measure of its black talents down in the hidden tunnels beneath Karnak.

Two days later when you left Cairo after formulating a plan, you knew it wasn’t a coincidence that every news station blared about the unprecedented outbreaks of cholera and the bubonic plague. 

The nature of this creature was unknown to you, but it had effortlessly and indiscriminately killed both vampires and humans. Whatever it was, you had never before faced such pure unadulterated evil nor looked into eyes as ancient and sinister. You had spent a lifetime killing vampires who in turn preyed upon humans, but they were not inherently evil. After all, they had begun their lives as humans. Now, they just found themselves on opposite sides of the game board from you. You could not imagine vampires themselves being friends of this creature who killed them so viscously and with such ease.

What was the phrase? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Not all vampires were created equal. As a vampire hunter, you knew this all too well. There were several casts of vampires, the most common of which were the vampires that had been turned by being bitten and were commanded by their baser impulses, many of them little better than animals. There were also familiars, lesser vampires and also simpering humans who were slaves to their masters. Then, there were the master vampires themselves, those fearsome creatures who were eternal and as powerful as gods among mortals. Master vampires were the rarest, of course, and each was unique. They had not been turned by a simple bite, but had found their creation through more nefarious channels. Only a few of these dangerously elite creatures had ever existed and fewer still remained today. Many who did were in hiding or in hibernation, the delights of the world as mundane as ash on their tongues and the foibles of humanity interminable. These vampires were thepaterfamiliasof the population of lesser creatures that had been turned by bites and had passed their curse along down their line of victims. Whereas the vampires created by bites had vulnerabilities, such as allergies to sunlight and garlic, the master vampires had no such Achilles heels. They still preferred darkness and they could see better in darkness than any other nocturnal creature, but sunlight presented no danger for them beyond making them squint their eyes.

The upper echelons of vampire nobility that remained active in modern society were small and exclusive. All vampire hunters knew of these elite few, and all also knew to keep their distance. These vampires had no concern for the lesser of their ranks that the hunters slayed, just as they had no regard for the legions of humanity they had butchered throughout the centuries of their eternal lives to slake their hunger and bloodlust. However, they had little patience for hunters trying to make sport of them and they would deal with such intrusions with unmatched ferocity.

You had long planned to someday hunt these vampires, to hunt lions instead of zebra. You had studied what you could and listened to legends where no information existed. Tales far older than your entire family line hailed an illustrious knight who had become a vampire to stave off a death during war. According to some legends, this was the knight who spawned the tale of Lancelot stealing Guinevere from King Arthur’s bed. According to others, he was the inspiration for St. George slaying dragons to rescue fair maidens. Some myths say that this man was the model for Dracula himself in Stoker’s fable. Of course, the most common thinking was that an eccentric French family had bred within itself closely enough for centuries to ensure every heir had the same appearance as the man who preceded him. You found that theory the least likely of all.

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This vampiric knight’s castle was secluded in a large meadow in the Ardennes, its peaks and turrets reaching high into the sky. The dense forest around a meadow cloaked the finely manicured grounds of Sir Jacques Le Gris’s sprawling castle. You wondered if the lawns around the castle were kept open to enable its owner to easily spy any approaching guests. A statue of a proud knight kept guard over the grounds, waiting just outside the castle. Instead of facing out to greet incoming visitors, the stone knight faced the home, as if he wanted to bear witness to all the secrets and delights happening within its stone walls. The features of the statue were detailed with stone eyes that were keen to watch over his keep, whoever the statue was modeled after was a handsome man. The stony guard had no doubt stood for centuries but despite the age of the castle and its sentry, the stonework shone almost glossy in the light of a golden dawn.

Dawn, you reasoned, was the best time to catch a vampire off guard and vulnerable. The ancient books on vampire hunting that you had studied instructed you that hunting vampires in daylight was a simple feat, like creeping into the cave of a hibernating bear to catch him unaware. This was a fallacy, written by scribes who never got their ink-stained hands bloody. It was true, however, that the cover of darkness was nothing but a disadvantage to the hunter.

Vampires could see better in darkness than in daylight. You guessed that the owner of the castle would have his bedchamber on the North side, with as little exposure to sunlight as possible. Approaching from the East, you kept the sun at your back to help blind your approach in the morning glare and the lingering mist that hung in a low veil over the grass.

The stone knight watched you with an amused smirk and eerily lucid eyes as you tried to stalk unseen to his castle.

A castle such as this would have servants, likely familiars who were bestial vampires wholly under their master’s dominion. You made for an unobtrusive servants’ entrance. You had expected the locks on any doors to be as ancient as the castle itself and were disheartened to see that instead, the doors had contemporary electronic locks that would have given James Bond pause.

Just as you looked up the stone walls, trying to assess the ease of scaling up to an upper balcony or a window, the lock on the servants’ door opened with a metallic hiss. You quickly ducked behind the corner beside the door before a servant girl emerged, pausing to hiss sullenly up at the rising sun like a wet cat before she skulked through the shadows along the castle walls off on her unknown errand. You were just fast enough to catch the door before it closed and slip inside the castle.

For this mission, you were armed with a gasmask and a gun that emitted cyanide steam when its trigger was pulled in addition to your usual weapons. Killing this particular vampire would not serve your purpose, but cyanide could incapacitate the best of them. Weaker vampires would lapse into unconsciousness almost instantly and even the strongest ones would be subdued after a breath of the poison like a human infused with nitrous oxide. Cyanide dens were popular among some of the upper casts of vampires in the same way that opium dens catered to those who wanted to chase the dragon in another age. The cyanide in your gun was much more concentrated and toxic than a recreational dose and you hoped it would knock your prey out cold.

Maneuvering stealthily through the castle, you searched for where your target rested. You were currently on the ground floor. The vampire you hunted would surely either be in one of the upper stories in a grand bedchamber, or down in an underground story away from any intrusive sunlight. You decided to take the low ground first and made your way to a stairwell that spiraled downward a story.

Emerging in the lower level, you first passed a wine cellar with enough aged vintages to supply an army of sommeliers. Torches lined the stone wall in ancient iron sconces and medieval tapestries decorated the walls even in this area of the castle. Next, you came to what had been the dungeon centuries ago. The iron cell doors remained, as did some other unique features such as heavy chains fitted with collars and iron handcuffs chained to the walls. The remainder of the dungeon had been renovated into rooms that looked like Victorian parlors, filled with plush scarlet velvet and sensual black leather. The number of chairs, settees, and beds left little wonder as to what this dungeon was now used for. You could almost smell the air, heavy with perfume and lust, taste the wine and delicacies, and hear the simpering laughter of many women and the commanding tones of men before that same laughter devolved into first sighs of pleasure and then later, pleas for mercy followed by screams of horror.

Your instincts were sharpened to a deadly point from a lifetime of hunting and they piqued now, alerting you to something your eyes had not yet seen. As if little more than the sighs you imagined only moments before, the faintest sound of wispy breath met your ears. You had suspected this castle housed a company of female vampires to entertain their master.

Drawing a UV-tipped titanium stake, you spun around to face back the way you had come. Three women vampires had emerged from the shadowy corners of the luxuriant playroom, gliding into view like ethereal spirits. They wore diaphanous slips and robes that drifted over their bodies as though on a breeze and their eyes glinted hungrily and as sharp as the fangs that peeked between their lips. Each vampire was extraordinarily beautiful and each possessed a unique allure. The trio was composed of a petite blonde who could have been a prima ballerina, a modelesque brunette who would be at home on any catwalk, and a voluptuous redhead whose hourglass curves would be the envy of even the sultriest silver screen siren.

“Ladies,” you greeted them sarcastically as you twirled the stake in your hand. “I’m here on business, not pleasure. So, if you don’t make trouble for me, I see no reason to kill any of you.” You smiled wickedly. “Today, that is.”

“You have come for Jacques, then,” the brunette stated in a Russian accent, a warning edge to her voice.

“You know she has!” the blonde replied in an English lilt. “Look at her! Listen to the beat of her lusting heart!”

“Jacques has been a bad boy lately,” the redhead added in an American drawl. “What better way to punish him than by dismembering his new plaything here?” Her fangs extended further from her gums and her icy blue eyes glittered with malice.

“Come now, ladies,” you teased. “Act your age.” No vampire woman wanted to be reminded of her true age, even if she never looked a day older than the day she died.

In a hiss of gnashing fangs and scratching claws, the women lunged for you.

They didn’t expect you to meet their attack with your own. Rushing forward toward them, you ducked below their snatching nails and slammed your stake into the blonde’s solar plexus in a viscous uppercut. She was in the center of the three, and she fell gasping to the floor, desperately grasping at the stake as the uv fluid fatally flooded her body.

You pulled two more stakes from your clothing, holding one in each hand. The remaining vampires were crazed with fury and attacked again. The brunette was tall and had the longer reach. You blocked the slash she aimed at your throat, yanking her body between yourself and the redhead, and drove a stake straight into her throat, killing her instantly. As her body slumped, you caught the redhead’s wrist as she clawed for your eyes. She was the strongest of the women, but you were faster, plunging your stake down into her heart.

When the bodies of the three women lay dead on the floor, you watched for a moment to ensure they would not be rising again before taking a breath and calmly resuming your search.

Beyond the dungeon was another set of stairs descending another level. A single door stood ajar at the bottom of the staircase, emitting the golden dancing glow of firelight. The door looked medieval, wooden with iron strapping across its surface. As you passed through the doorway, you noticed that the wood of the door was only the exterior and that behind that guise, it was steel with bolts drawn back and ready to lock into place like the door of a safe.

Inside the room was small and square, nondescript, save for four coffins. Three smaller woman-sized coffins made of glossy wood sat in a row with their lids closed. Positioned at the far end of the room was another coffin, large and antique. It was not wooden as were the others, but was a medieval stone sarcophagus. The lid of the sarcophagus was a three-dimensional sculpture of a knight in armor, by all appearances the same knight as the statue outside the castle. The knight lay on his back, eyes closed peacefully in death. His hands clasped the hilt of his broadsword to his chest, its blade resting along the knight’s body with its tip between his feet.

Silently, you advanced toward the knight’s tomb until you were close enough to rest your hand on the stone. Your hand didn’t shake as you held the cyanide pistol in front of you, ready to douse the vampire within the sarcophagus with poison and immobilize him before handcuffing him for a chat. A little rough play with some handcuffs and cyanide was perhaps not the best method of persuasion, but how else could you reason with a monster who was likely to kill you before you could state your purpose? And if he wasn’t inclined to go along with your plan, you would try your hand at killing your first of the vampire elite.

“Coffins are terribly passe,cherie. My bedroom is much more inviting,” a voice as rich as dark chocolate melted through the room.

Startled, you jerked back around to see a man leaning casually against the doorframe. He was very tall and powerfully built with the broadest shoulders and chest you had ever seen. He was dressed in a shawl-collared robe of quilted black silk, belted at his trim waist over black pants. The robe was open enough to reveal the cleft in his thick chest. His body looked more solid than the statue itself. He was wickedly handsome with penetrating amber eyes, a mane of glossy black hair, and a goatee that framed full lips. Those lips parted in a grin at your shock, exposing two razored fangs on each side of his smile.

“However, I find them a very useful prop to lure hunters into this chamber, right where I want them.” He stroked his large hand along the doorframe, keeping his fiery eyes fixed on yours. “Care to stay forever? Because with the flip of a switch, this door will close and seal you here until I have my servants sweep your bones off my floor.” Now, his eyes trailed down your body, caressing you with his gaze. “Or perhaps, I’ll lock myself in here with you and drink your lovely screams down with every last drop of that delicious blood I can smell pumping through your veins so rapidly.”

“I didn’t come here to hunt you,” you finally spoke, trying to keep your voice even.

“Did you not?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. He held one of the stakes you had used to kill the women, its silver length and blue glowing tip slick with their blood. “A stake tipped with liquid light? Quite brilliant. You are a woman who commits the oldest sins in the newest ways, cherie.” He regarded you silently for a moment, seeming to make some internal decision before continuing, “Do you think your little toys will cause any great trouble for me?” He raised the stake to his lips, meeting your eyes and lewdly licking the blood off the shaft. He then used the UV tip to pick between his twin fangs, making a show for you.

“I didn’t intend to kill your women. That is not why I’m here,” you tried again. “I offered to play nicely. They wouldn’t have it.”

“That, I believe.” He grinned at you and pushed away from the door, slowly stalking toward you like a wolf with the same lupine eyes. “After all, they would not have been in my company if they played too nicely.” He stopped less than an arm’s length away from you, continuing in a lower rumbling tone, “Still, you have broken into my castle, quite rudely, I might add, and cast a pall over a rather promising morning. How should I deal with such naughty behavior from such a captivating huntress?”

“You’ve already decided that you will at least hear my reasons for seeking you out before trying to kill me.” You raised your chin confidently to look up at him squarely. “Otherwise, you would have killed me already.”

“Perhaps I am a man who simply enjoys foreplay in all its forms.” His goatee twitched when his lips pulled into a smirk at the sound of your heart hammering furiously in your chest.

“In that case, your pleasure will only be extended by humoring me and listening to what I have to say,” you dropped your voice to a sultry whisper, playing his own game right back.

“That,cherie, is a much more appealing proposal,” he huffed and took a step back from you. “You may state your business.” He looked down at the bloody stake he still held, asking you, “What if the ladies you killed had been dear to me? You took a great risk, for if they had been, nothing would stop me from tearing you apart.”

“If you had cared deeply about any one of them, then you would have only had her and not the extra two,” you replied confidently.

“Clever girl.” He grinned at you and offered a slight nod. “Although, one of them was a favorite of my closest friend, which is unfortunate. I shall have to supply him a replacement. She was exceptionally nubile. Pity.”

He offered you his arm, and you knew that he would not lead you out from the sepulcher unless you took it. Placing your hand on his strong forearm, you allowed him to take you back up the stairs to the interior of his castle.

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Walking through his sprawling estate, you felt as though you could get lost in the maze of marble hallways. Jacques took you to a grand dining room, complete with a fireplace, elegant brocade drapes covering tall arched windows, and a dining table large enough to host two dozen guests. The drapes were drawn closed, the room softly lit by dozens of candles as opposed to the natural light that could have streamed in through the expansive windows.

“I hope you don’t mind conversation by candlelight,” Jacques stated, gesturing toward the table. “I find firelight enhances any beauty its flames dance upon.”

The settings at the table were placed at its head and at the seat immediately adjacent on its right. Jacques pulled your chair out for you and poured you each a glass of tea from a silver service before taking a seat himself. 

It was remarkable how, in the span of minutes, your morning had transformed from that of stalking one of the most formidable vampires in the world, your nerves on edge and senses alighted, to feeling almost at home in the company of your mysterious host. His allure was subtly commanding, almost hypnotic in the way he put you at ease in his presence. You suspected he could just as easily strike abject terror into the heart of the bravest man or twist a person’s thoughts until they went mad. 

At one end of the room, a large oil portrait hung on the wall. Its subject was a Victorian gentleman, standing resplendent in a black coat with a blood red brocade ascot, the likeness of Jacques himself, just as the statue of the knight on his grounds. 

“A relative of yours?” you teased the centuries old vampire. “Is he also related to the knight guarding your lawn?” 

“Ah, the subject of that painting was a barrister of renown who lived in London during the time of Jack the Ripper. Scotland Yard was too incompetent to realize the two men were one and the same,” Jacques told you with a wicked grin. “The knight fought in many battles during many wars. He was formidable and rather bloodthirsty, if I do say so myself.” 

“What a wonderful gift,” you mused genuinely. “To be able to live so many different lives.” 

“The line between a gift and a curse is often fine and blurred.” Jacques’s grin turned into something like a grimace, but it passed just as quickly. “But surely you did not grace me with your presence this morning to admire my paintings and statues.” 

Jacques listened silently as you told him about the creature you had encountered in Egypt and how it had dispatched of the two vampires with as little regard as it had your partner. His unnerving eyes never strayed from yours as he absorbed every detail. When you finished, he thought for a moment, tracing his long forefinger along the blade of a cutlery knife on the table. Pursing his lips, he slid the knife to you. 

“Prick your finger,” he instructed. “A single drop should do.” 

“Excuse me?” you asked, confused. “Are we going to make a blood pact like girls on a sleepover?” 

“I have not lived so long by taking people or their words at face value. I prefer to see for myself.” He leaned closer to you across the table and dropped his voice an octave, “I would be pleased to taste your blood the old-fashioned way if you prefer.” 

You had heard legends of a rare few vampires who were capable of the feat of drawing memories from someone’s blood, but you had never seen it firsthand. Jacques was apparently one of those vampires powerful enough to command the ability. 

“Your hand will be steadier than mine.” You pushed the knife back and held out your hand to him, palm up. 

Jacques took your hand in his enormous grip, holding you gently. With his other hand, he lifted the knife and brought the tip of its blade to the inside of your palm and met your eyes. Without breaking your skin, he trailed the blade across your palm and down the length of your index finger. Pressing harder when he reached the tip, a single drop of your blood plumed beneath his knife. Without dropping his gaze from yours, he returned the knife to the table then raised your finger to his plush lips. Something between a groan and a growl rumbled in his chest when he sucked the blood from your fingertip, his eyelids fluttering in a mask of ecstasy. His eyes remained closed as he savored your taste and examined your memories; when they opened again, he had sobered and his demeanor was instantly serious. 

“You did not come here idly,” he said in a voice now devoid of any playful lift. He still held your hand and his grip tightened. “This is an ancient creature of great power and consummate evil. You have unleashed more evil upon the world by intruding upon its slumber than Pandora herself.” He shook his head, his brows knitting together. “Call it whatever you like, it has many names. Demon. Djinn. A Horseman of the apocalypse.” 

“A demon?” you laughed outright. “I expected more from you than a fairytale.” 

“So, you believe in vampires and creatures of the night such as myself, but you draw an arbitrary line at demons and devils, do you?” Jacques asked sarcastically, but his mien was still consternated. He was clearly troubled by what he had seen. “What is a demon? Who is the Devil? I thought I was making a deal with the Devil Himself when I became a vampire.” He paused at the memory of his own dark past and the pain surrounding it. “Perhaps I did meet the Devil. But perhaps, it was some other kind of creature entirely that the church labeled a devil. The term hardly matters, does it?” 

“I suppose not when you put it that way,” you sighed, still not believing him fully. 

“I can only say with certainty the creature that made me what I am was not then nor had it ever been human.” He took a long drink of his tea. “Such as this creature you awoke. This is nothing like a vampire you can hunt and kill, not with a uv stake or a silver bullet. Nor can you appeal to its reason or emotion. This is evil in its purest form.” 

“If all you have to offer is doom and gloom, I can get that anywhere.” You tried to pull your hand away, but he held you fast. 

“Once, long ago, I fought such a creature.” The gravity in his words commanded your attention. “There is a legend of me, of a knight who slayed a dragon. I did, in the sense that was one form the creature took. It was deep in a cave in the Scottish Highlands during the Hundred Years’ War.” His handsome features aged a decade when he added heavily, “Unlike the myth, I was unable to save the fair maiden from its clutches. It was she who had summoned it forth and it took her away with it when it departed this world.” 

“How did you kill it?” You returned his grip on your hand for the first time. 

“I died.” He smirked mirthlessly. “I sacrificed myself.” 

“At least you know you can’t die now.” You tried to be light. 

“Perhaps. But against some enemies, I have not yet been tested.” He shook his head ruefully. “However, the prison of my eternal life is not my concern.” 

“Then, I don’t understand why this seems to trouble you so much?” Even as you asked your question, you saw a shadow pass behind his vibrant eyes. 

“Becausecherie, this creature comes for you.” As he spoke, you could feel a sliver of the dread he had experienced long ago hang like smoke in the air. “You awoke this monster; it is beholden to repay its debt to you. It will be drawn to you and it will find you. It is bound to repay you with a wish, but anything you wish for will be turned into a terrible curse.” He ran his free hand through his luxurious hair, thinking. “I had help centuries ago, we shall need help again now.” 

*******************************************************************************************

“I am Jacques’s oldest friend,” Count Pierre D’Alencon announced proudly after Jacques introduced him to you later that evening in his opulent study. He had come at once when Jacques had summoned him, although his disappointment was apparent at being hailed for business instead of pleasure. 

“He loves to say that.” Jacques shook his head fondly. “It does get old, indeed.”   

“Everything gets old, my friend, except for you and me!” Pierre laughed and then clapped his hands together. “Now, let us get to the evening’s festivities! If I am going to help you battle monsters yet again, I am not going with an empty stomach or a full sack.” He looked around expectantly as Jacques sheepishly scratched the back of his neck. “Where are Lady Agatha, Princess Sonja, and Baroness Croft?”

“I’m afraid they won’t be joining us.” Jacques ran his large hand through his hair before flashing Pierre his most handsomely appeasing grin. “They met with an accident brought about by my lovely guest here. You know how reactionary and jealous women get. They erred in picking a catfight with a lioness.”

“Good god, man!” Pierre looked incredulously at Jacques. “All three of them? I loan you my three favorites in good faith and this is what happens to them in your custody! Never ask to borrow one of my cars. Do you know how long it took me to cultivate such a fine set of girls?”

“You’ll have plenty of fun putting together a new set of them,” Jacques teased, pouring some wine into Pierre’s glass before refilling yours and his own.

“I suppose you’re right. I often find the chase is better than the catch.” Pierre looked surly for a moment but then his eyes lit up at another thought, “And this means that you owe me! You will have to help me vet my new recruits!”

“I agree that I owe you,” Jacques laughed, casting a sideways glance at you. “But I am not committing myself as to how hands-on my role will be.”

“No, no, I’ll hear none of this temperate nonsense.” Pierre shook his head and then addressed you with a teasing lilt to his voice, “You wouldn’t think a man who can satisfy three ravenous women at once would be so prudish, would you?” He gestured toward the window, sloshing the wine in his glass. It was now dark outside and the drapes were open to admit the moonlight. “Did you see the statue of our host? I commissioned that as a gift for him a few centuries ago. It’s not bad at all, but I commissioned it as a nude.” He paused to squint his eyes at Jacques. “But its model refused to pose accordingly. Shameful. The sword that statue has on his hip is a very poor substitute for the other tumescent accessory that could be standing at attention!”

“That is a shame, I agree!” you laughed at the blonde Count and the way that Jacques blushed at his shameless harassment, even after no doubt being subjected to it for lifetimes. “The statue you had in mind would certainly have caught the eye!” You looked at Jacques with a smirk, “You didn’t want such a grand conversation piece on your grounds?”

“My dear girl, such a statue would draw hordes of women, the likes of which would overwhelm even me and my inexhaustible appetite,” he toyed with your question, but his cheeks still held a tint of blush. Clearing his throat, he added with more playful sarcasm, “I am more discerning than Pierre would lead you to believe. I only bestow my affection on those lucky women I deem worthy, instead of advertise to the world what they shall never have the pleasure of experiencing for themselves.” He then looked at Pierre and smirked at his friend, “Isn’t that a torment in itself? To know with certainty the pleasure one is missing?”

“Now you’re just being cruel.” Pierre grimaced and took a drink. “But I see this as your way of forcing me to talk business. Very well.” With a sigh, Pierre seated himself in a tufted chair and spoke to you, “We vampires get endless hassle for enjoying a little blood here and there, but the best of us are simple hedonists, like Jacques and myself. A djinn, however, feeds on chaos and suffering. It grows stronger with every life it destroys. It will never stop. It can only be locked away, as it was in Karnak, or banished back into its receptacle.” He took another drink and looked between Jacques and you with a knowing eye.

Jacques had moved to stand close to you, leaning his arm on the high mantle of a large fireplace. Pierre cocked an eyebrow at Jacques’s proximity to you before adding, “It is very possible you have awakened a creature that could incite the next world war or spread the next black death.”

“Anyone could have made the same mistake.” Jacques waved his hand dismissively. “I forget the number of times I’ve made a little misstep and unleashed a plague or started a war over the centuries.”

“Are you sure you’re not one of the Horsemen of the apocalypse yourself?” You smiled at him with genuine amusement. “You sound like a real Typhoid Mary.”

“Mary! I hadn’t thought of her in ages.” Jacques looked at Pierre. “But Pierre knew her far better than I did. I’m sure you take my meaning.”

“Anyway, how do we find the djinn?” you asked, rolling your eyes at Jacques.

“It will find you,” Jacques answered with a smile full of regret. “You alone can summon it. Make a wish, and it will come to you.”

“But we must think this through carefully, because it will twist your wish against you,” Pierre added. “Ask it to solve world hunger and it will eliminate two thirds of the world’s population. Ask it to make you rich and famous and it will give you the short life of Tutankhamun and all his lasting fame and wealth. We must tread cautiously.”

“That’s reassuring.” You took a large drink of your own wine and leaned your shoulders back against the mantle, inadvertently leaning toward Jacques’s extended arm. His closeness was comforting, his strength almost a tangible presence.

“What matters is that it can be killed,” Jacques said with determination. “Or at least contained. I was able to kill one, the dragon. These creatures are shapeshifters. If it maintains any form after sustaining a serious injury, if it is injured gravely enough to prevent it from changing form, it will succumb to the biological implications for that form. That’s why it is seldom in the form of a creature of this world and takes the shape of something otherworldly, a dragon, a sphinx, an angel or demon, and so on. If it is some strange creature, who knows what biological defenses it has instilled with a physical form purely of its own creation.”

“So, the rules don’t apply with a dragon or a sphinx?” you asked Jacques. “It took the form of a girl when I first saw it, when it spoke to me.”

“It must have plucked an image from your mind that you found comforting,” Pierre explained. “You are its master, after all, until it satisfies its covenant and grants your wish.”

“Can’t I just wish it away, then?” you asked the men, looking from one then the other.

“Alas, no.” Pierre shook his head. “No more than I can wish that my statue of Jacques was properly nude.”

“If she can get it to appear again as a human girl,” Jacques’s mused, pursing his lips. “If I can ambush it in that state, I can kill it.”

“Oh dear, that will do nothing at all for your illustrious reputation,” Pierre laughed at Jacques. “Killing little girls! Even if they are evil incarnate.”

“Can’t I kill it myself?” you asked the two men. “There must be a way. Jacques, you killed one as a man?”

“Yes, and like I mentioned, I died to do it,” he replied sternly, the unpleasant memory flooding his thoughts. “Not a course I’d recommend.”

“Old Jacques has been bitter for centuries over giving his life for the one woman he ever loved and then having to watch her die anyway,” Pierre sighed with theatric embellishment. “One would think he would simply enjoy the battalions of pretty women I have sent his way since to ease his suffering and end his pining.”

Jacques shot him a glare that was devoid of playful teasing, for a moment looking every bit a ferocious beast, but it passed quickly and his pleasant mask returned.

“According to the myths, because it feeds on evil and misery,” Pierre continued when Jacques fell silent. “If you pose a wish that it cannot corrupt, it will be banished back to its prison in the netherworld - the jar that it escaped from.”

“Is there any risk for either of you?” you asked, considering for the first time that these vampires might be risking their eternal lives in this endeavor.

“An otherworldly creature made me a vampire, gave me my eternal life. Perhaps this one can take that away from me.” Jacques looked almost hopeful for a fleeting instant. “To die could be a great adventure. Still, if it can be killed, I will find a way.”

“Yes, well, I leave the heavy lifting to the pair of you. I am solely the brains of this operation.” Pierre downed the remaining wine in his glass and stood from his chair. “I will make our arrangements to travel to Egypt now.” He winked at Jacques. “I trust Jacques can keep you occupied while I put our affairs in order.”

Jacques remained leaning casually against the mantle of his fireplace when Pierre left the study, closing the door behind him. You could feel the intensity of his gaze fall upon you as soon as the door closed.

“You’re a highly intriguing woman. Impressive,” Jacques said to you, his voice lower and his fiery eyes dancing like candlelight. “Something I am, frankly, unused to.” 

“Intriguing is an interesting choice of words for a compliment,” you laughed, cocking an eyebrow at him. “If that’s how you meant it.” 

“It is. And it is one of the highest compliments I can pay you.” Jacques watched you closely, a grin playing on his lips as he considered his words. “I could praise your beauty, as I have no doubt you’ve heard from countless men. I could marvel at your intellect, but you’re quite aware of your prowess in that regard. The same could be said for your bravery, and I can see how you take pride in that attribute.” 

“I’m glad you view those traits of mine so favorably.” You smiled in a self-deprecating way. “Most men would just call me a handful.” 

“Tonight, you are my guest.” Leaning slightly toward you, Jacques moved his hand closer to yours on the mantle. He lightly caressed his fingertips along the back of your hand, even his barest touch was enough to raise a rash of goosebumps running up your arms. “Persuade me why I should fight a dragon once again?” 

“You said it yourself,” you spoke with a breathy timbre, a smirk playing on your lips. “This is your chance for a great adventure.” 

“Perhaps the greatest adventure of all is standing right in front of me now.” He leaned down deliberately, wanting to kiss you. 

“Perhaps.” You tilted your face upward, inviting him. 

Jacques didn’t need his vampiric powers of perception to know exactly what you wanted, placing his hands on your hips as you stepped closer to his large body. His mouth curled into a smile when he lowered his head, meeting your lips in a hot kiss. Licking along your lower lip, he encouraged you to part your own and he slowly deepened his kiss relishing every moment between you. Looping your arms around his neck, underneath his long hair, you pulled him close against your body. 

Never before had Jacques felt such a rush of warmth as when his lips met yours. It had been centuries since he had experienced anything other than detached stimulation, never accompanied by a fraction of the emotion that threatened to overwhelm him now from something so simple as a kiss. Groaning into your mouth, he savored the taste of you on his tongue for long seconds, dragging out his pleasure and yours until he had to break away or risk being too far gone to stop. 

*******************************************************************************************

Less than twenty-four hours later, you were back beneath Egypt’s night sky. Enroute on Pierre’s jet, you learned that the creature had likely not yet reached Cairo. Its path of destruction was easy enough to follow through news reports of catastrophe, natural disasters, and death. Almost as soon as the plane had landed, a dust storm raged across the desert toward Cairo, the worst Egypt had seen in one hundred years. This was the work of your djinn.  

Pierre and Jacques had decided upon a location. A complex of ancient unnamed ruins lay to the south of Cairo, abandoned to the sand thousands of years past. They were the graves of servants and paupers, looted for their meager treasures long ago, and of little interest to anyone today. There were several mostly enclosed structures that still remained, fragments from a temple and the city that once existed. Beneath the complex were the catacombs and tunnels of the graves of countless members of the lower cast of Ancient Egypt. What survived, figuratively speaking, was only the base of the obelisk. There was sure to be no other humans for at least one hundred miles in any direction, especially with the gale strength winds and stinging shrouds of sand of the haboob. 

“How do you know about this place?” you asked them suspiciously. 

“Life can get boring when you have so much of it,” Jacques explained. “We both felt like having some excitement and seeing more of the world when circumstances were ripe for it a little over a century ago and it brought us here to Egypt.” 

“He’s being coy, which I always try to correct him of,” Pierre interrupted. “Jacques rode with Colonel T. E. Lawrence during the first World War. Rather boring, if you ask me, mucking about in all that sand and sun. I was the smarter of the two of us, and spent my days as an unseen guest in the harem of a sultan. Jacques trespassed upon my lodgings often enough to make the ladies dissatisfied with me in favor of his talents.” Pierre shrugged, “So then, I punished them. The fangs came out and I did what vampires do best.”

“What vampires do second best,” Jacques corrected with a smirk. 

The plan was simple, to set up booby traps and remote weapons for an ambush. You were each armed to the teeth but skeptical that your weapons would be of any use. Once you were all in position, you were to summon the djinn under the guise of collecting your wish. Jacques had repeatedly and with great concern impressed upon you the importance of not actually making a wish because it would almost certainly be corrupted and lead to your torturous death.  

It was not unusual for you to be both the hunter and the prey. Adrenaline coursed through your veins but your nerves were steady, well-conditioned, like those of any other predator. 

The ruins were arranged around a collapsed Temple of Isis that had faced the ages for over four thousand years. Now, only the remnants of stone walls and a few towering pillars remained, their carved hieroglyphics still decipherable. The dust whipped around you violently, the grains of sand stinging your face and exposed skin like a thousand bees. Jacques pulled you close, sheltering you as best as he could with his large body, as he ran with you toward the entrance to the network of graves beneath the temple. 

Between two sections of broken down wall that at one time formed the corner of the temple was a collapsed obelisk. Beneath its cylindrical body that was as thick as the trunk of a redwood, you could see the opening of a darkened shaft that descended into the sand. The partial walls offered some protection from the winds and sandstorm as the three of you appraised this blockage. 

Jacques stepped to the toppled obelisk, sucking his teeth at the task of trying to move so much weight. Part of the obelisk was propped up by the short ruins of the wall, chest level to him as he stood. Wrapping his left arm underneath it, he bent at the knees to put his left shoulder under the obelisk. With his mightiest effort, he heaved up against the stone column that had to weigh a ton. The obelisk moved, rising up a couple inches. Growling through clenched teeth with his effort, his lips pulled back to reveal the points of his fangs, the thick muscles in his thighs strained the fabric of his pants, his chest and arms rippled with strain, and his knuckles were white from the force of his grip on the obelisk as Jacques lifted harder, using every ounce of his great vampiric strength. Slowly, he was able to move the obelisk far enough to clear the entrance. Grunting from the pain of the weight he held, Jacques slipped his shoulder free, letting the column fall back to the ground. 

The black opening of the tunnel stared at them ominously, seeming to warn them against venturing down into its depths. 

“Don’t you ever get tired of abysses gazing back at us?” Pierre joked to Jacques. 

“Death comes on swift wings to he who intrudes upon the dead,” Jacques translated a line of hieroglyphics carved into the top of the stone entryway for you before grinning. “Ladies first,” he teased before taking your hand and leading you down into the maze of catacombs. 

Pierre carried an LED torch for your benefit alone, he and Jacques were able to see better in stark darkness than in bright sunlight. Pierre, too, was a tall man, and the torch he held aloft illuminated the tunnels and crevasses in a warm yellow glow. 

The shaft dropped steeply away; you were barely able to keep your balance as you all but slid downward for a one hundred feet before the ground leveled again. For the first few yards underground, the tunnels were littered with rocks and debris that had fallen down the shaft over the millennia, then the space around you cleared and it was surprisingly pristine. You felt as though you could have been walking alongside ancient Egyptians through these chambers. Only the musky scent of the ages belied the length of time these passages had laid undisturbed by the presence of man. Every few yards, you passed a hollowed out enclave the size of a dinner table that held a simple stone sarcophagus, some were broken open to display a skeleton resting within. 

After a long period of walking through the labyrinth of tombs, you arrived in a larger chamber. Here, Jacques stopped, looking around the room to evaluate it. The chamber was mostly round with a tall ceiling. It was a mass burial chamber, littered with nondescript stone sarcophaguses and the paltry belongings their occupants had taken with them to the afterlife. 

Jacques nodded his approval of this chamber to make your ambush and he set about making preparations. He shoved the heavy stone lid of a sarcophagus slightly ajar, just enough for Pierre to place something inside. Pierre withdrew an insulated flask from his pocket that smelled strongly of bourbon and twisted its lid open before setting it inside the sarcophagus. 

“Better than a clay jar to seal away a djinn, I say,” Pierre told you before joining Jacques in laying a line of explosives at the entrance to the chamber so it could be blown and collapsed if you were all lucky enough to escape. 

“Are you ready?” Jacques asked as he approached you from behind, his chest nearly touching your back. 

“As ready as I’m going to get,” you replied, turning your head to look at him over your shoulder. 

“Remember, once you summon the djinn and I engage it, you run like hell.” He lowered his head to bring his lips to your neck. You could feel the sharp tips of his fangs on your skin as he placed a delicate kiss to your pulse point. “I’ll trigger the explosive before it can escape, even if it means I seal myself in with it. It cannot be allowed to leave this tomb.” 

Jacques’s presence left your back and faster than you could blink, he and Pierre had vanished into the shadows where they lay in wait. The chamber was now devoid of any sound other than your own breath and the pounding of your heart. You could see nothing outside the glow of the light that Pierre had left on the lid of a sarcophagus, but you could still feel Jacques’s protective eyes on you. 

Taking a breath to steady your nerves and clear your mind, you focused all your thoughts on the little girl you had seen emerge from the jar at Karnak and on your intention of making a wish. You closed your eyes with the force of your concentration, picturing her in your mind’s eye. 

The dry air in the tomb seemed to thicken and a weight settled around you as if all the joy you had ever known faded from your memory. When you opened your eyes, she was there to greet you. The pretty little girl who looked like a darling Snow White stood out of place in the tomb only a few feet from you. She looked at you with an unnatural smile and tilted her head to appraise you. You could feel the malignance and sheer consuming evil curdling the air around her. 

“Your wish is my command,” she spoke to you in English this time, but her voice was still a deep growl that could have vibrated up from the depths of Hell itself. 

“Are there any limits to my wish?” you asked, stalling for time as you took a step back toward the entrance. 

“Your feeble human mind can think of nothing that is beyond me,” the djinn replied as her face cracked in that sinisterly wide and pointed grin. “You cannot conceive of my power.” 

You opened your mouth to pose another question, but the djinn’s head jerked to the side and her eyes flooded black with malice. “Come out and play, little vampires,” she snarled into the shadows. 

The djinn jumped at you, her mouth like that of a piranha, exposing several rows of serrated teeth. You parried backward, but Jacques was faster than both you and the creature. Lunging out of the shadows, Jacques grabbed at the girl, his own fangs bared in a ferocious snarl. The djinn evaporated before Jacques could close his hand around her throat, sending him stumbling forward off balance toward you. He stood between you and the interior of the chamber, us

I have complicated feelings about The Last Duel. There’s no way I can deny the affection I have for Ridley Scott as a director. I love Alien. I love Blade Runner. Legend, fuck yes. Thelma and Louise? I love. G.I. Jane, I’m looking respectfully. Gladiator, Black Hawk Down, Kingdom of Heaven, American Gangster, Prometheus, The Counselor … I enjoyed Alien: Covenant. And I’ve watched with excitement all of his other work. I don’t care if it isn’t “great.” I like what he does.

So I was interested in any new Ridley Scott movie purely on the level of being a Ridley Scott fan. It’s also fair to say I’m not a fan of Ben Affleck or Matt Damon. I don’t find their abilities as actors compelling. If there is a lesson to take from them it is to write your own material and make yourself marketable as a player/coach, so to speak. That’s not something they invented. I think Sylvester Stallone is a great example of write-your-own-great-story and cast yourself. Again, it isn’t to suggest that’s easy, but that writing is a good skill and possibly a way to break through, but writing is also a positive emotional outlet. 

The Last Duel is based on a book by the same name. The book very carefully lays out how the law works at the time of the tale’s telling. It explains the custom of trial and the recognition of rape as a crime, although it is a crime of property and EW to that. But the book is the kind of detailed, popular history work, that’s accessible to lay readers, like me. I’m not writing a thesis on medieval rape culture of the 14th century but I can follow the twists and turns of the case thanks to the book’s attention to detail.

The movie doesn’t have that depth. Some of that is due to the limits of nuance that movies can convey, but the script is also at fault. I watch this movie and think, “Ohhhh, Damon and/or Affleck came across this book at a galley and thought ‘Ooooh 14th Century #MeToo.’" 

The book is fair and unambiguous is believing Marguerite’s account of her rape. The movie lays out Jean’s, and then Le Gris’s account before her’s. To its credit, the movie actually subtitles her account as the "Truth.” But the clearness of her rape and Le Gris’s guilt is apparent early in the book. Giving the game away does not a good movie make, so we have the movie’s three account structure to keep us hooked.

Regarding the limitations of the script I still can’t help but wonder if it was acted by players other than Damon and Affleck would the movie have been better. Indeed, the moments when Jodie Comer and Adam Driver are on screen together feel like a different movie because they are that much better actors.

Ridley Scott blamed millennials for this movie not performing at the box office. Even as a millennial, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he made those comments during the promotion of House of Gucci and his words were less a millennial slam than a marketing ploy. Ironically I didn’t see House of Gucci at the movies, but my Boomer aunts and uncles did.

Having said all that, it does feel really fucking satisfying to see a rapist beaten in a duel to the death and strung up by his boots.

Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel is good, but the book by Eric Jager is better.

Jacques Le Gris

Made a poster for The Last Duel

inspired by a Rashomon poster (the one in the replies)

If i follow that too much Adam Driver should be on this, but i think it’s obvious that Jodie Comer needs to be on it instead